Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  We sped into Mallow at about four am and never heard from the customers again. Next day Georgie refused to go to work, claiming he was traumatised by my trick, and so I ended up doing his calls as well as my own. He had a minor victory after all.

  I caught Georgie again on another day while we were out doing our television calls. We were to call to a very rich and precise customer in the west end of Mallow. This woman needed to have an aerial cable tacked around the skirting board in her living room, and on that day I persuaded Georgie to do the tacking while I helped because I didn’t trust myself to be neat enough for that woman. I have always loved art and sculpture, and when we arrived to survey the room, I noticed a little, open, three-legged cabinet fitted into one of the corners of the room. This cabinet had three shelves full of ornaments, and one of them was the armless Venus de Milo. I knew Georgie wouldn’t know the statue so I saw an opportunity for fun at his expense. I stood in front of the cabinet so as to block his view of the statue, but I warned him about the ‘valuable ornaments’ in the cabinet behind me. As I’m doing this I removed the Venus and hid it behind my back. Then I suggested he remove the ornaments very carefully while I got our tools and cable from the car.

  When I came back in he had removed the cabinet from the corner, and all the precious ornaments were laid out carefully behind him on the floor. I placed the statue under the lower shelf of the cabinet and said nothing. I told Georgie that I needed to go back to the car for more tools and left, knowing he would surely find the statue after I left and go into a panic, and that’s exactly what happened. When I returned he was clutching the statue in his hand and searching all over the floor like a mad man. He looked ashen faced and says, “Jesus John, look at this. I must have dropped the statue and the arms are broke off and I can’t find them. Help me find em will you”. I go into ‘shock’ and say to him, “Didn’t I warn you about these things, didn’t I tell you she had valuable stuff? Now you’ll have to pay for it, and I bet it’s expensive; hundreds for sure”. He swears he never even saw the statue, and I say it doesn’t matter, we will be blamed for sure. At that moment the woman comes back in to see the work, and Georgie quickly hides the statue behind his back like a bold child who is in trouble. When she left he says “I swear I never saw this bloody statue,” and I tell him to keep looking around for the miniature arms as they must be there somewhere. In seconds he’s back on his knees again looking everywhere, then all of a sudden he looks up at me and says, in all seriousness, “What will we do when we find em, Superglue is it?” At that idea I just can’t hold it in any longer and I burst out laughing, telling him that in my opinion he is an ‘ignorant philistine’, and that this particular statue never did have any arms. Poor Georgie was so relieved he almost hugged me. It was pointless describing this fun to Larry as he wouldn’t have known the Venus de Milo either, so I let it drop. Some time later, on a return call, I did tell the woman what I had done because I had a suspicion that she saw me hide the statue originally, and maybe thought I was going to steal it. She fell around the place laughing, and said that I should have let her in on it. Then she would have really made it worse for poor Georgie, before we left him off the hook of course. He took it well though and threatened revenge as usual.

  Larry was no saint either, especially when it came to playing tricks on his brother. Every year at Christmas the Mitsubishi television company gave each of us a large bottle of Cognac brandy. At that time both Larry and Georgie were big into playing squash, and during a game both of them betted each other their bottle of brandy. Larry lost, and in typical form did not want to pay up, but Georgie basically took the bottle from him and left with it for his home, telling his wife Monica of his ‘great triumph’ over Larry. Next morning Larry told me of the game and his loss, and once again we felt Georgie should suffer at our hands, so we came up with a plan to get Larry’s bottle back. As I didn’t drink at all, I still had the dregs of the previous year’s bottle in our cabinet at home and that was to act as the basis for our plan. Larry told me to fill it up with old tea or anything of the right colour, then seal it with the cork and covering from my new bottle. Then when I got the chance, I was to swap bottles when I was next in Georgie’s house. Larry felt that Georgie was always getting up late in the morning, and that would be the best time for me to call and do the dirty deed. He even arranged for an aerial job to make sure it happened for me.

  I had an old thermos flask half full of tea from a trip to the mountain, but it was about six months old, yet it looked perfect in colour, so I poured that into my bottle, added a bit of sugar, and felt that it would pass a cursory glance as brandy. Then I did a great job sealing the bottle, and all was then ready. I showed it to Larry, and even he was fooled, it looked so new. Next morning, as predicted, when I called for Georgie to do yet another aerial job, he was still in bed, and I exchanged bottles before he arrived downstairs. Later I gave Larry back his bottle and forgot about it all.

  On Christmas Eve Georgie went to the pub and got sozzled. Arriving back home, he felt that a drop from Larry’s ill gotten bottle would add to his Christmas cheer, and half pissed he opened the bottle and took a good swig. “That brandy is poor this year Monica, I’ll have to complain. Then again twas Lar’s, and I suppose I couldn’t have luck,” as he laughs out loud in triumph. Over the Christmas period the next door neighbour arrives, and true to tradition, Monica offers her a glass of the brandy. Oddly enough the neighbour woman didn’t finish it either, and after taking just a small sip she beat a hasty retreat to her home. A few days later the coal delivery man arrives, and he too is offered a large glass of the brandy. He says, “Be God maam tis cold out there, and sure I’d love a drop just to keep the heat in me bones”. Again Monica poured a large glass, which he gulped down in one big swig, and then immediately she noticed him turn pale. He too beat a fast retreat for the door. As he’s leaving, Monica shouts after him, “And what about your helper, would he like a drop?” The coal man was already rushing up the pathway, waving his hand in some wild gesture of refusal while holding his other hand across his mouth. Still it did not dawn on Monica that anything might be amiss with the brandy.

  Days later, and coming to the end of the season, Georgie was relaxing at home and asks Monica to pour him another glass of ‘Lar’s brandy’. He said he would start his New Year with one up on his brother. She does so, and after his initial swig, he spits the whole lot out into the fire, cursing and swearing at Larry. By then all of Monica’s strange stories of drink refusals made perfect sense to him. The brandy was ‘doctored’. There and then Georgie realized what I had learned the hard way, that Larry Andersen never once paid up on a bet. Georgie didn’t speak to either of us for days, as I was blamed just as much as Larry for doing ‘the dirt’ on him, and once again he planned more revenge on both of us.

  My Mallory days

  I had been working for Larry for a few years when one day I got a call to go see a woman called Mary O’Mallory. She was the sister of a very nice woman who lived a few doors away from Gracie. Mary was married to John O’Mallory, known to friend and foe alike as Johnno. The Mallorys needed an engineer to fix televisions for their growing television rental business, and my reputation seemed to fit the bill. Mary asked me to go to a meeting in Charleville and see if we could agree a deal with her husband Johnno. My first impression of him was that he was a huge man with what seemed like a very gruff personality. This unnerved me a bit at the meeting, but somehow I felt it was just an act. Later I was proven right as we got to know each other better. He had a passion for fixing grandfather clocks and soon he and I were to become odd friends. I say friends, as I think in his entire life I was one of the few people who seemed to understand him, and we never had a cross word despite numerous disasters. He owned a TV shop like Larry, and was fast developing a growing business renting televisions to the people of Charleville town and the surrounding areas, which of course I knew well from my school days.

  On the night of our first meeting, Mary s
truck the deal with me as Johnno kept out of it. In hindsight I realize that they were very badly stuck for an engineer as I’d guess Johnno had fought with the previous guy. Mary had probably warned him not to interfere in case his manner blew the new deal. I clearly remember that deal. I was to get seven shillings and six pence for each set I fixed, no matter how difficult it was or how long it took me, and they provided the parts. My job was also to do ‘calls’, which meant I journeyed all over County Limerick and North Cork at all hours of the night, fixing like a mad man. Some jobs were easy, some hard, and Mary and I did a balancing act on exactly what I earned at the end of the week. It was an unwritten rule that she wouldn’t ever argue with my list of calls and repairs, and I would never ‘do the dog’ on what I charged her, and we both trusted each other. It worked perfectly, and I was soon earning real money as my Mallory wages were usually well over ten times what Larry paid me, but I was Larry’s apprentice, and he too was just starting out.

  I used to work five nights a week without holidays, and I did this for years. It was hard going, but I was young then and didn’t have to drive, as I was still only learning in Larry’s bomber. The Mallorys used to provide a driver for me. I was being chauffeured around and treated like a king as well as being well paid for my skill. Life couldn’t be better. As my finances improved, so did the allowance I gave to my Nannie. Her lot in life was also improving, yet I have no memory of helping my mother financially at that time, and that has troubled me ever since. I started to save money like mad. My goal was for me to buy a motorbike that I had become determined to have so as take me off ‘the thumb’ and make me independent, but that purchase was still a long way off.

  I had numerous adventures in my Mallory days, or should I say nights. I would start at about seven o’clock, having hitched a lift home from Mallow at six o’clock. Then I would eat my inedible dinner, which Nannie would have prepared four hours earlier, and which she kept hot over a boiling pot on top of her old black range. The minute I arrived in, she would have poor Eunice waiting on me hand and foot. “Make tea for John, Eunice, and be quick about it, he is going out earning money for us, the great lad. Sure we’d be lost without him”. This would be a very pointed remark made to antagonise and belittle the one who really was providing for her, her son Michael. She did this most vehemently if he was in the kitchen as well at the time. It’s amazing that Eunice or Michael didn’t hate me in later life because of Nannie’s obvious favouritism and jibes, which I didn’t like or want either, but you dare not cross her.

  Around seven, my chauffeur would arrive with a toot of the horn and I’d hop in, ready for another night’s fixing. My night would usually begin with one of Johnno’s sons acting as chauffeur, and proceeding to drive me at over ninety miles per hour to the Mallory workshop. This was located at the rear of their shop on the main street. It was guarded by about ten really dangerous Alsatian dogs, all vicious and all hating me, especially their leader and Johnno’s best friend, a dog called Rommel. No amount of roaring or shouting by the Mallorys would quieten them when I arrived. Rommel, the fiercest, was nearly always chained or tied up, but sometimes he got loose and would make straight for me with jaws open. After this happened a few times I gave them an ultimatum, stating that unless the dog was chained up when I was around, I was not returning again. I told this to Mary and Johnno together after one awful scare, and they realized that I meant it as I was petrified of that dog.

  From then on, I would be escorted by a Mallory to the workshop and literally locked in for my own safety. There I tried to concentrate on fault-finding while the bloody dogs barked for the first half hour or so. I had diagrams and valves and resistors and a big black Avometer, which I adored. That was the entire test equipment we had then. An oscilloscope belonged in the realms of the super rich, so to find any kind of difficult fault, one relied primarily on a totally unscientific technique known as ‘intuition’. Larry and I had a saying about it. The saying went like this, “If in doubt cut it out”.

  I would be cutting away at the TVs while the dogs would be chewing away at the workshop door, and this continued for months. The constant barking would be just getting to me when my chauffeur would arrive to do the night’s calls to the country. After my earlier frights with the dogs, my ultimatum, and not trusting Rommel to be always chained, I deemed it necessary to have a weapon to save me from his vicious teeth. I found a small hatchet after an intensive search, and I felt secure at last, but I decided to do some practice swings in the safety of the workshop. I swung back and forth, all the time adjusting my technique, and each night, just to annoy the dogs, I did this ritual almost taunting the bastards to attack. I’m sure they saw the shadows moving in the windows and it drove them berserk, but no one knew what was going on, only me and the dogs. It became a kind of game between us and I think they enjoyed it as much as I did.

  One night though I became so engrossed with this fun that I forgot what I was doing and got a bit carried away with the game. Like an Indian in Big Kyrl’s picture hall, I leapt about from place to place, lashing out here and there with my hatchet. The more I did this, the louder the barking became. Pretty soon all hell was breaking loose. Even Rommel had pulled free from his rope and I saw him leaping and clawing outside at the window. This huge dog was now snarling and foaming at the mouth, hell-bent on eating my throat if he could get at it. I lashed out at him in a kind of frenzy, and I don’t know how he didn’t come clean through the window, but I was ready for him if he did. Then I thought I saw a shadow move along the side window as well, and an attack from two sides seemed to be coming. It was dark, and with my adrenaline pumping I jumped up onto a chair and prepared for battle, hatchet at the ready. Just then Johnno’s big head appeared in the window. He dragged Rommel off and came back inside. He was a smart man, and I suppose he believed that the pressure of fixing so many TV’s without a break had finally got to me, as when he came inside, he asked me if I wanted a drop of the ‘hard stuff’. He looked genuinely concerned. Johnno offering me drink was a sure sign that he was worried about me, as he knew I didn’t drink at all. I tried to explain my madness, but he just dismissed it and asked if I needed a break. I never took the break as there was no one to replace me, and they would have been in a bad state coming up to Christmas. From then on, I think a strange kind of friendship developed between us. Maybe he figured his dogs had finally got to me, as I complained about them often enough. From then on, the dogs were somehow quieter, and I too gave up my Indian ways.

  Johnno Mallory had TV sets rented everywhere in the county, and in spite of his manner, he was liked by almost everyone as he had a descent streak in him. I’m sure he often overlooked many an outstanding repair or rent bill. Sometimes Johnno would have to drive me around. Initially I didn’t like this idea one bit, but later as we got more used to each other, I really began to like him, especially after the hatchet incident. We would discuss engines and mechanics and science as we drove along the winding roads of Limerick. He drove very slowly though in comparison to his sons, but I felt a lot safer with him. The down side for me was that I got very few of his sets fixed because he took too long getting me to them.

  One night very late, as we arrived back at his shop, Johnno says to me, “John, when are you going to learn to drive?” Before I could answer he said, “No time like the present. Here take the car home, sure you know the basics”. Then he got out and went into his house, leaving me in control of his huge Zephyr car. I was flabbergasted. I had never driven such a huge car, nor did I want to either, but he left me no choice, so off I went. I had no licence, no insurance, little or no experience, and as it turned out, no petrol either. I can still see myself passing the Garda station very slowly, almost running over a drunk who staggered out in front of me. Then as I got used to the sheer size of the car I became more confident, especially when I hit the open road. After about four miles I threw caution to the wind and gave her ‘the gas’. This beautiful and mighty car glided forward and floated as if travellin
g on a cushion of air. I was in heaven for about five or ten minutes, then the spluttering started and very soon I came to a jerking stop by the side of the road. It was obvious then why Johnno wanted me to drive home. He knew for certain he wouldn’t get back if he took me because he had left it run out of petrol. I was back on the thumb again, but by then it was well after midnight and I was back on a road I knew well from my bicycle.

  I began walking, not feeling very happy with Johnno or myself, when with about three miles to go along came a farmer driving a tractor with no lights. He stopped and I ended up arriving into Buttevant on top of a cock of hay. This was some comedown from the dizzy heights of my gliding Zephyr. Johnno seemed to be missing for the next few nights, knowing full well that I was unhappy with him. In the end he said he was sorry, but that I had gained valuable experience for my own car whenever I got one, and that was the end of it.