Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  He looked at me for a moment with a puzzled look on his face, as if trying to recall something, and then he said. “You’re Cahill aren’t you?” Then feeling rich from all my successes, I proudly announced, “Yes sir I’m John Cahill, pool seller, selling a lot today”. Suddenly I felt a very sharp pain in my face, then a kind of blackness came over me, and the next thing I remembered was being sprawled on the wet ground outside his door. I was dazed and confused while looking back up at the closed grey door. I recovered quickly only to find that all my sheets and my coins were then scattered all over the street. That towering man was Guard Ryan. He had lashed out and hit me straight into the face, but not a punch for sure, as I was not bleeding in any way. It was a very hard slap, and that, coupled with the shock of it, had knocked me to the ground. Adding insult to injury, he had slammed the door shut on me and gone back inside. There he left me to search for my coins, for my soaked pool sheets, for my pride, and my self worth, which remained on the ground in Buttevant that day.

  As best I could, I gathered up my papers and the scattered coins, breaking down into floods of tears as I did so, feeling greatly ashamed of myself for no apparent reason. I know that I cried uncontrollably as I crossed the road, feeling glad of the safety of the other side of the street. I am quite sure that no one ever saw what had just happened to me, but perhaps they did. In any case I got away from that place as fast as I could. I slunk off down the street to Nannie’s house in a terrible daze, all the while trying to understand what had just happened and why it had happened. I could not figure it out. All I had done was try to sell him a pool, so why had he struck me? What had I done so wrong?

  When I got in home I threw what money I had collected down on the Nan’s table and told her angrily that I was never again selling pools; then I immediately went upstairs and began to play with my toy soldiers as if nothing had happened. I never shed a further tear that day, nor did I tell a single soul about it later in life. It was as if by not talking about it, I could deny its reality, and I hoped that the memory might one day go away, but it never did and never has because it’s as vivid today as it was all those years ago. In the end I learned to accept it, but in writing this account of my life I have realized an extraordinary thing. In all the years that have since passed by, and in all the times I had later to pass that house, I never once actually walked on the pavement and passed that door again. In over fifty years I have never stood on the spot where it happened. Subconsciously I chose to walk the road or the other side of the street rather than the footpath. One day I will face down my fears and walk that footpath again, …but not just yet.

  Nannie never again asked me to sell pools. I did have to collect them though. Without ever knowing the truth, she felt that I was no salesman. In her mind I was a Cahill, and what else could she expect out of that lot, sure they were all ‘useless’. Even her John, and their father, who was stuck inside in bed, was the worst of them all. Many years later, and by a sheer accident, I was to overhear the real story behind Kyrl’s house and the rows with the guard, and it all made sense to me then.

  Until recently, my mother never knew what her well meaning act had done to her eldest son, but I think she would still have been against Kyrl’s unnecessary eviction. Today, I believe the memory of that single incident was, and still is, the greatest impediment I face to becoming rich. Since it happened, I have always associate selling of any kind and taking money into my hands with unexpected pain. To this day I still hate that area of my town. It’s all changed now of course and I’m sure that the guard has long since passed over, and may he rest in peace. With all that I now know about life and who we really are, I have learned that the only real way to release such pain is to forgive the perpetrator, and of course I have done that. He was probably having a domestic argument when I arrived and he just lashed out at the seed and the breed of someone he understandably hated, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The real downside for me though has been that from that day onwards I developed a terrible fear of asking for money, no matter how hard I work for it, or how much I deserve it. I know now that it’s very unlikely I’ll ever be a salesman of any kind, and that is a terrible pity, because on that Saturday I began to really enjoy the challenge of convincing a customer to buy my pools, and I was already preparing my mind for a second go at the ‘no people’ the following week. Fortunately traumas like this are not hereditary, and all of my children have an uncanny self confidence and belief in their real worth, unlike their father, who had it taken from him many times as a child.

  I honestly believe that Guard Ryan was just like myself, a pawn in the great chess game of life, who unknowingly provided me with personal challenges I needed to face throughout my life. It is said that hindsight is not an exact science, but had I known earlier what I know now, my whole life would have been very different. Then, instead of you reading about struggles, dramas, and dreams, you would surely be reading about a life mirrored on that of my greatest of heroes, Richard Branson.

  Christmas times

  Each year the approaching Christmas was met with a combination of excitement and dread by us all. I think to this day I still feel the same way. Of course it’s insane now at this age of my life, but that’s how it is for me. Even though we are going through the worst economic period in our history, where our little country has been bankrupt by greed and corruption on all sides; by comparison to the late fifties, we live almost in Heaven. It’s a wonderful experience to go back in my memory to some of those Christmases even though some of those times were quite bad.

  My earliest memory was one year both Kyrle and I got the gift of a set of boxing men each. They were worked by a small rubber pump in the shape of a ball. The boxing men boxed each other as long as you pressed the pump, but that was the entire extent of their movement. We could not even have a boxing match between us, because each toy had its two men on the same pump, so we could not fight each other. Pretty soon I wanted to know how they worked and I prized off the little rubber ball from its connecting pipe. I blew into the pipe and the men moved. Kyrle did the same thing. After a few minutes of this blowing we got tired of it, but then the pumps would not go back on the pipes and our toys were ruined and useless. That was all we got that year and the present lasted a whopping ten minutes.

  Another year we got a Christmas stocking made from some kind of mesh stuff. This was great. It had card games of Ludo, Drafts and the inevitable and brilliant Snakes and Ladders with a little dice for throwing. I think also it came with a bar of chocolate and a catapult. We got immense satisfaction from these simple toys and I always loved the Christmas stockings ever since. Today of course it’s more like a Christmas sack that kids get, and it’s filled with electronics of unimaginable entertainment, yet I bet most real children get more fun from the box than the gift inside. One year we got an amazing toy. It was some kind of small round plastic pole that had an elastic band inside attached to a propeller. As you wound it up and let it go, it actually flew way up in the air. I loved it and so did Kyrle, but I only remember one of them. We played with this for hours, maybe days even, before it flew up onto the roof and may still be there for all I know. I tried to make one of these flying machines later but could never get the propeller right. Since then, flight has fascinated me. Just how did this twisted plastic shape grab the air so well as to be able to lift itself. This was a question I asked everyone over and over and never got a convincing answer either. Eventually I would find the answer in what I called my Knowledges. These were a weekly magazine that became an encyclopedia when all one hundred or so were collected. Uncle Michael religiously gave me the shilling every week to buy my book and they taught me almost everything I know, and on Christmas there was a double issue which was the best of all gifts.

  I would say I was about eight when that particular Christmas we got a big toy fire engine between us. It had a long ladder and a little fireman who would climb up the ladder by magic. The only problem was that it was
one fire engine between two boys and who would be allowed drive it. Mother had some kind of lino on the kitchen floor and we soon discovered that if you raced the engine along the lino, it would somehow gather speed and fly across the floor. We couldn’t figure out how it did this. For a good bit of the day we played back and forth, but in the end the curiosity got the better of us and we decided to rip it up to see what made it go. Father had a drawer in the back kitchen where he kept all kinds of little tools. It didn’t take long before we got at the body of the engine with screwdrivers and a pliers, and soon we had it in bits. It was never the intention to destroy our wonderful toy, we just wanted to see what made the wheels go. We kept stripping until soon we were down to the mechanism. This mechanism was a kind of box of cogs, axels and a big heavy wheel. We studied it up and down and soon an argument developed as to what the heavy flywheel did. I was sure it was the driving force and Kyrle thought I was wrong. So I said if we take it out and it still works then I’m wrong. More ripping took place and suddenly the wheel and a load of cogs flew out all around us. I think there must have been a coiled spring buried inside the box, so now we were in trouble, because nothing we did would get it back together again. I blamed him and he blamed me and tempers flew. We started to really argue and a punch up began. At some point in the fight he grabbed the heavy flywheel which had caused all the trouble, and threw it at me. I ducked and it went clean through the glass pane in our kitchen door. By then it was definitely time for me to beat a retreat over to Nannie’s, because this was going to get very bad. The fire engine was in bits, being hardly a day old, and the window was broken. I don’t know how Kyrle got out of it, but I’m sure he blamed me, as mother came over in a rage to complain me to Nannie. I had spun my own tale to her and she told mother to, “Clear out of my house and don’t darken my door again,” her usual retort to my mother when she wanted to be rid of her.

  Another year the father had taken up teaching music to some children. He had been at this for some months prior to the Christmas period, and it gave him some extra spending money, keeping the Guinness family in funds via Kit Roche’s bar. I have no doubt at all that he was a great teacher, because he was. He had an infinite patience, capable of going over and over the children’s mistakes until they got it right. One such child was a farmer’s son who could never get it right, no matter how long he played for. Even I got so fed up listening to the same scale being played wrongly over and over again that I used to shag off when that boy would arrive. Mother too would be out on purpose when that child arrived and we all wondered how the father stuck him, but he did.

  Probably in preparation for the dreaded Christmas dinner, mother made a deal with the boy’s father to pay our father with a goose, not cash. That way she was at least guaranteed the Christmas dinner, and perhaps the thought of a goose for the feast was the real reason father persisted. The weeks passed, and in those days she used to do part time work as a barmaid in the same Kit Roche’s pub that father was supporting so well. By then it was almost owned by my father because of his drinking habits. A few days before the Christmas, the farmer arrived with his goose in an old canvas bag. The goose was alive and was flapping about, probably suspecting what lay ahead. Mother was over in Kit’s working and father was out, and as no one was at home, the farmer just dropped the bag inside the door and left. Father arrived home first, saw the goose in its bag and totally ignored it, and retired to his bed. Much later, the mother came in as well. Her arrival scared the poor goose from its sleep and once again it began flapping about in the bag. Being no farmer, my mother thought, “Oh that’s too cruel to the poor goose, sure I can’t leave him like that,” so she took it outside to our yard and opened the bag so that it could ‘get a bit of fresh air’. It got air alright and I think the goose could not believe its luck, because first chance it got, it flew off over the back wall. Our Christmas dinner, and father’s infinite patience, had literally flown away. Later still when she was taking father a cup of tea, she railed on about the farmer and how cruel he was to the poor goose. She’s telling her Henry all about giving it air and opening the bag in the yard, when father realizing the disaster says, “What did you say, did you say you left him out in the yard? …Well he’s gone now for sure”. They rushed down to see, and sure enough the goose was literally gone. That year the children of two walls and a roof had a chicken from Gracie, and were very glad of it too. No one ever blamed the mother, there were no recriminations only laughter. In spite of our adversity, somehow we could all see the funny side of what had happened and the ability to laugh at adversity has remained with us all even today.

  House fire.

  My next experience with fire happened during a very bad winter. I had been forced into the ‘altar boy business’ by Nannie. I think the local Canon had gone around to the schools picking ‘suitable’ boys for his altar service, and neither I nor Kyrle were initially chosen, probably because we came from the poorer class, or we didn’t look good enough for the Church. Obviously he had his own reasons and method of choosing his boys, but Nannie took it as a personal insult on us Cahills and she marched up to his door and made such a stink that he changed his mind. We were soon reluctantly seconded into his flock, against my will at least. There we were forced to learn how to answer Mass in Latin, and as I was already well into my anti-religious phase since about eight years of age, this was not going down well with me at all. It was a damn nightmare in fact, and even at that time, it did strike me as odd that this priest would have some of the boys sit on his knee as he examined their Adeum qui le tificat gibberish, but I never saw him do any more to them. The more I saw of this Church the falser it felt to me, even at that early age, and I believed everyone was being conned by that particular religious organisation, which was an astute observation, as time has since borne out. I was by then beginning to read all about the real world in my Knowledge’s, and the more I read the more I asked questions about life, and no one could give me any real answers to my probing questions, even our all-knowing father. Everything about our so-called Catholic religion seemed to be ‘a mystery’ which you dare not question. Oftentimes I would persist in questioning these mysteries only to be told, you have to believe them, and this irked me a lot because I felt no one knew the answers themselves. I felt that Huck Finn, my hero then, never learned Latin or went to Mass, and why should I have to do it, especially if none of it made any sense to me. I suppose too that getting the odd clatter across the face or the head from that old priest when I missed some verse was both a punishment for the missing and a revenge for the Nan’s attack on him, and it did not endear me to a Church that preached love and dished out violence. Left with no choice, I tried my best to learn the strange language of Latin and I eventually served his Mass for a number of years, but I always hated doing it. I was not alone in this Mass hatred either. One of the other boys used to be so sick of this Mass going that he began slugging down some of the altar wine each morning before the priest arrived. He said it was great stuff and that I should give it a go. I was too chicken to try it, thank God, and years later I heard that he became an alcoholic and died a very young man from the drink. I can still see him today in his white altar outfit, holding the bottle up to his head and guzzling away, offering it to me now and again, “Ahhh give it a go John, you’ll love it boy, tis great stuff. Sure he’ll never miss it, the ould bollix”.

  As time passed, my hatred for both the early morning risings and the Mass serving grew worse. I took it as a sign from God when one morning about seven am the Nan came tearing up the stairs shouting, “Get up! Get up will ye, the house is on fire. Get down out of here quick, tis on fire I say, hurry! Up, up!” I was in the last year of sharing a room with Uncle Michael, and after Nannie shouted those words into our room she took off back down the stairs again, screaming, “Fire, fire, get up will ye, get up I say!” We ignored her completely, but I did try to sniff the air for smoke, with no success. Within minutes she’s back up again shouting as loud as ever. ”Get up, the
house is on fire, tis on fire I’m telling ye”.

  Her screaming had absolutely no effect on either Michael or me, as she usually did a similar screaming bit on a Sunday morning, though usually from the bottom of the stairs, and she never shouted the words fire before, so this was a new development for her I thought. I tried to go back to sleep, but I had become a bit unnerved by her screaming, as she did seem to be in a genuine panic.

  In those days I was sharing a bed with Michael, and after a few more air sniffs I did think I could smell smoke, but I wasn’t sure. Michael, who was tired out from his writing late into the night, and probably thinking it was a Sunday morning with her up to her usual tricks, just covered up his head and said, “Ignore her Chicken, there’s no way there’s a fire in this house. Sure we hardly have coal, how could we have a fire?”

  But very soon she was back up again, and this time she’s trying to tear me out of the bed. By then it’s obvious, even to me, that the room was rapidly filling with smoke, and I knew by her panicked look and the smoke around us that this was no trick. I’m out of bed in a flash shouting at Michael to get up, which he ignored, and I grab my pants, running for the stairs. So is the Nan, but before she starts down, she gives one more roar back in at Michael, “Awright so, go on then, burn if you want, but I’m not burning to save your lazy arse, and neither is my John,” and she pushed me down the stairs before her. In the middle floor and one floor closer to safety, I’m hopping around trying to get my pants fully on. I have one leg in and I’m clutching the other when I see this really terrified look on her face. She was even scaring me then, and I ran for the lower stairs to freedom, while still trying to keep my pants pulled up. The smoke is acrid and choking us as I almost run down the lower stairs followed so closely by the Nan that she pushes me in terror and I fell down the last few steps into the kitchen, still clutching my pants. Initially I got a terrible shock, because looking up from the floor I could see that our ceiling was really on fire, and I’ll never forget it.