The Good Servants
Page 13
“Yeah, yeah, so we have to be quiet.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Sounds more like an upmarket doss-house than a hostel.”
“Which is exactly what it is.”
“Right lads, we’ve shown our drinking credentials, shown ourselves to be a bunch of fuckin’ eejits. Today we have to show them we can play, and show them that we can rock the shop as well,” said Brian giving an intense rally cry that could well have begun ‘I have a dream ...’ Though, in fairness, it had the desired effect and we resolved to give it a good lash that evening when we played. Then, not feeling the best from very sticky buns, heavy German coffee and a fierce feed o’ drink the night before, we went back to our beds and stayed there pretty much all day.
“Hey, what’s the pub called?”
“Rosie O’Grady’s.”
“Ah shit, that’s bloody corny.”
“You think that’s corny, wait until you see what we’re called.”
“What? What are we called?”
“You’ll see.”
“OK, boys, it’s Friday night ... tonight you vill play and NOT get so drunk like before ... I am not your fazer but I don’t vont to see you drunk like zat in ze baa ... if you vont to drink you can go into ze town, zer are a lot of uza baaz.”
Helmut had assembled us in our room to give us a bit of a talking to. Hung hungover heads all round. But then his tone lifted,
“So, let us forget zat. Now, ze plan last night, before your strong arrival, vos to go for somezing to eat, somezing German, ya? So vi try again tonight, OK? ... to say Velcome to Germany, do you vont?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure.”
“Great.”
“It’s not sour kraut, is it?”
“Ha Ha Ha, no, it is not sauerkraut.”
We got ourselves ready and Helmut led us through some lovely cobbled streets to this big rough n’ ready Viking canteen place with a high wooden ceiling and large windows. The place reeked of greasy food.
“Mmmm, smells great.”
“OK, boys, you can only have von beer, OK? ... Remember you are playing tonight.”
Helmut ordered and we let him, but we needn’t’ve worried. Yer one came back down with an armful of enormous pints, one for everyone in the audience, just what my hangover needed.
“Fuck me, now THAT’S a pint.”
“Actually, it is nearer to sree pints,” said Helmut and gave a big hearty Germanic laugh.
The grub was a huge platter of sausages and meats and cheese, mostly sausages. Top scran, these Germans had this food thing well under control.
We chatted with Helmut while we gorged ourselves. He seemed very focused on the business end of things, but I guess that’s what he was, a business man. He was very different on his holiday in Ireland.
Nice guy though.
He then fixed us up for the flights over that we’d paid for in advance and we’d get the rest at the end. We also had twelve beer-vouchers per night behind the bar.
“Each?”
“Ha Ha Ha, no, zat is sree beers each,” laughed Helmut not realising that Spud was serious.
Fair enough.
We filled up, then soaked it up with sausages and headed back to the pub.
We went and got our instruments sorted, rubbed, tuned, restrung ... found!
On the way out, we briefly met new neighbours coming in, two odd looking characters. They didn’t look like Helmut’s ‘business associates’. We nodded, they nodded back. Nice guys.
“The Shamrock Rovers???????, you must be joking!!!!” Spud had just seen the poster outside the pub.
“Nope, The Shamrock Rovers, that’s us. Great name, no? Apparently that’s what Brian said our name was in Galway.”
“Brian, ye dickhead, why didn’t you say ...”
“Wha? U4EA?”
“Cobh Ramblers.”
“Dublin City Ramblers.”
“That’s taken.”
“That’s a band.”
“I know.”
“Not a very good band.”
“Oh, I know.”
“Probably make a better football team.”
“Probably.”
“Maybe we should play them in a fuckin’ 5-a-side, c’mon, let’s go!”
“Did you hear about the Cork man who thought the Dublin City Ramblers was a football team?”
“That’s rubbish!”
The bar looked vaguely familiar and was fuller than I remembered but we had a space cordoned off for us with upended chairs. There were microphones loosely scattered around the ‘stage’ area, and with any form of soundcheck seeming to be superfluous things were looking dodgy.
Pints appeared from somewhere, and were eagerly tucked into. I was starting to feel nearly normal again but I was also starting to feel like I was never ... actually ... fully sober.
Then, being nearly ten, we decided to get it over with and got up to play.
We started with ‘The Jig of Slurs’ and ‘The Atholl Highlanders’, just to get the heart pumping and the levels checked. The crowd loved it but the sound was thinny and piercing. Brian had a bit of a twiddle as we played a second set without him and God bless him, it was much better.
Spud sang ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ and ‘The Mero’ and they went nuts, slow air, couple of hornpipes, Breton piece, jigs, slip jigs, reels, reels, more reels.
About eleven we played a fierce set of jigs and took a break with everyone clapping.
Straight away the barman puts on Bon Jovi.
Bloody typical!
The barman was Scott, he was English and was cool, well, sort of.
We knew this ‘cos Spud wasted no time in asking him about some gear ... and ... the signs were positive!!
We re-filled, took a piss, had a fag, ligged with some staff and/or customers, then got back up.
The second half was dynamite. I did a blistering ‘Beatrice Reel’, Brian kicked off ‘The Gravel Walks’ and Tony did ‘Whatisname’s Ferret’. Spud even did that cowboy tune with the silly name. Rockin’.
As time went on, people started leaving the bar. First they thinned out a little, but then gaping holes appeared. Pretty soon nearly everyone had a seat. At midnight the place was only half full. What a bunch of Cinderellas! The concert descended into a session. The beers came out from under the chairs, Brian stopped introducing the tunes and we spent the last few sets playing pretty much to ourselves. Background noise, as it should be.
As we sat there considering whether to continue or not, and with the consensus swinging towards ‘NOT’, this vision walked past us in a dress that rendered our imaginations obsolete, leaving every curve, nook and cranny visible to our searching stares. She glided towards the bar and a waft of beauty briefly, and all too fleetingly, entered our lives. A heavenly creature expensively adorned and impeccably kept. A right glamazon. She’d been standing stage-left with her boyfriend who was a big rich mean-looking kraut, both behind Spud who was sat facing centre-stage, and I’d been trying not to stare at her tits all night without much success. But she was only fucking gorgeous. The kind of woman you see in magazines and on TV but rarely in real life.
“Oh my word! What a thing of beauty ...”
“Indeed, I shall commit her to memory and use her later.”
“Jaysus Christ, did ye see that? Fuck’s sake, what did yer man say? I’d be on her and off her all night? I’ll tell ye what, lads, if I got hold of yer one tonight ...”
“She’d be shittin’ spunk for a week.”
“For fuck’s sake!!! ... away from the mic!!”
“HA HA! She fuckin’ would’n all, I’d stuff her like a Christmas turkey, HA HA!”
“What, you’d stick a fistful of bread-crumbs up her arse?”
“I fuckin’ would if she asked me, HA HA! Fuck’s sake lads, would I? Would I fuckin’ wha’? Holy Jaysus, I’ll tell yiz wha’ lads, I’d walk a hundred miles in me bare feet over broken glass just to wank in her shadow ...”
“... I wouldn’t eat chips out of her knickers, I’d eat the fuckin’ knickers themselves, then I’d fuckin’ go diving on her oul’ shrimp kebab and the fuckin’ sun would come up before I would, then I’d promptly give her the fuckin’ seeing to of a life-time, I’d shoot me muck so far up her she’d be garglin’ it ...”
At this point the boyfriend had had enough and made his move towards Spud. We stopped laughing and could foresee trouble. The guy bent over and put his hand on Spud’s shoulder, looked him square in the eyes and said “Are you finished?” Spud turned to see this colossus bent over him accompanied by the object of his fevered monologue and promptly turned white.
“Aw, fuck’s sake man, I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean any insult, I didn’t know you were there to be honest, I was just having a bit of craic with the lads, I didn’t mean any offence, eh, to you or your girlfriend, nothing personal like, they started laughing at me and I was just having a bit of craic, y’know whata mean? ...”
The guy just looked confused, he looked back at his girlfriend then back to Spud and said “no ... I mean ... are you finished playing?”
Spud recovered himself in a nano-second and goes “well, yeah, pretty much, eh, were only supposed to play until half-twelve and it’s already ... eh, twenty past, why were you looking for some music?”
I had to get up and leave the table to stop myself bursting out laughing. The three expressions on Spud’s face over the last two or three minutes were cracking me up and I could see Tony was having similar problems keeping his cool. Brian came back from the jax half-way through all this and was kinda missing the gist. I broke me bollix laughing in the jax for a bit then returned to the table where the lads were already in the middle of a set of jigs. The kraut and his girl were smiling, waving and gently rocking side to side totally out of time with the music. Spud was convinced he was going to get the shit kicked out of him. It was a good half hour before he could laugh about it. Me and Tony, on the other hand, couldn’t stop.
Having a bit of a laugh. No offence intended. I’m very sorry.
We finished up after a couple more sets and went to talk with Helmut, who was around the side with a group of croneys.
“Ah, don’t worry, it voz great!! Ze people, I don’t know, maybe zer is somezing on in ze ‘Flamingo’.”
The lads came over and chatted with Helmut’s buddies, which delighted Helmut no end.
They were like the local business mafia, guys who sat in private clubs drinking brandy and flouting anti-smoking laws with big cigars. I got the feeling that Helmut was hand-wringing a little bit, he wanted in and we were his entertaining novelty. His politics didn’t interest me but the guys were good lads. They told us about Heidelberg being one of the only German towns that was pre-war (“They mentioned it, not me!”) because it purposely wasn’t destroyed in the war. Apparently, the Americans had an interest in studying here, or something. Oh, and there was a big American army base on the outskirts of town. What?? yeah, a dirty big army base. Maybe that’s why the place had a slight American feel to it, Starbucks, stars and stripes and the odd drawl drifting on the wind.
The history lesson continued back in time. I lost interest about the start of the nineteenth century and went for another round. I had a word with Scott who told me that he finished at two and was off to a place called something-or-other, and if we wanted to go we were welcome.
That sounded great, we were watching ourselves a little here and trying to be nice and civilised. It didn’t suit.
“C’mon now, ladies and gentlemen, have you no late-night dingy bar to go to?” shouted Scott directly at us, as we were keeping the place from emptying.
We hung around for that pint then made our excuses and went to pack up the gear. We put the instruments in the rooms, thanking fuck that it was next door, and then slipped quietly away.
Scott had drawn up a quick map with the name of the bar, but despite this we still had to ask two people before we happened on the place.
If it had been daylight I might have mistaken it for a barber shop, but inside was a different story. Wooden tables, stone floor and a smell that told you they did greasy food. Purfick.
“Liquor in the Front! Poker in the Back!”
Ah Ha Ha!!
“Few nice women around,” said Brian as we settled in to a big benched table.
“Most of them taken.”
“There’s a couple of right tasty one’s over there,” chipped in Spud, “I’ll keep me eye on them, see if they get a big legless.”
“Forgotten our Rohypnol have we?”
Tony and Spud were getting a bit narky at each other again. I was starting to think that ten days in close confinement with these guys wasn’t going to be that easy, for any of us. In my experience it was best to just let it go. We were stuck together. It didn’t make much sense to be riling someone you’re stuck with. Evidently Spud didn’t feel the same way and Tony was just letting it get to him. But Tony had an air of propriety about him that was difficult to attack, his very countenance demanded respect, so they dealt in sly underhand digs muttered at each other.
“Spud,” I interpolated, “did Scott say anything about the how’s-your-father?”
“No, I’ll talk to him when he gets here.”
“Who’s this?” asked Brian settling four huge pints on the table.
“Scott, the barman.”
Brian looked around and hushed us in closer, “do you reckon he packs fudge?”
“Ye wha’?”
“Is he a batty-boy? does he have a Christian name for a surname? ... y’know? an ankle-grabber.”
“He means does he holiday on Brokeback Mountain?”
“Who? Scott? Naaaahhhhh.”
“I must admit to having had the same thoughts myself ... not only queerer than we suppose but queerer than we can suppose,” said Tony, who seemed to jump at every chance to disagree with Spud.
“Could be.”
“Well, as long as he knows I’m paying for the gear with cash!!”
We tucked into the beer and the free peanuts and chewed over the gig. We were all pretty pissed at this stage and were thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
We were getting ourselves known, being four loud drunken Irishmen. But this barber shop place was pretty lively anyhow. It was full all night, and with a nice diverse clientele which was very much young and single.
Scott came in with a few people after two.
“Hey, here comes the Lord of the Rings now,” announced Spud, luckily while Scott was still out of ears-reach.
“Hi guys, you look like you are enjoying yourselves, Ha Ha Ha.”
We were pretty shit-faced by now and were obviously starting to look it too.
“Hey, I brought some friends, I hope you don’t mind.”
Introductions were made and then names promptly forgotten.
“What do you think? Nice place huh?”
“Yeah, it’s great.”
Spud quickly established that Scott had a little bag of grass for him and joyous nods and winks were sent around the table.
It was round about here that things start getting hazy.
The lads joined us and more beer was ordered.
It seemed that the music got louder and we ended up ‘dancing’ for a bit, which I’m pretty sure was not at all pretty.
Then they took us to another bar. Some people have no sense. Though on reflection, I feel that it was probably one of us who suggested it and then another one of us who insisted on it.
I half remember it being nearly daylight. The next place was the last resort, probably the train station bar or som
ething. Bright lights, plastic furniture, tiled floor, garish colour scheme, people eating fast food, drunks ... oh wait, that was us.
Drinking in a place like that seemed to sober me up a little. “What the fuck am I doing here?”
“You gonna drink that?” enquired Spud close up.
There was a beer in front of me, “yeah.”
“Let him be, if he takes it upon himself to wake up then he will.”
I raised my head, and it was a very heavy head. I drank some beer and felt better straight away.
Tony and Spud were chatting with Scott, no doubt on some sort of competitive level.
Brian was concentrated fully on the one girl that was left.
His method was hypnotic. He’d chat away without pause using all his oul’ brogue, maintaining eye-contact all the way, transfixing her like the deer caught in headlights until her resistance waned, and then he’d go for the kill. She was wavering and looked like she was about to crumble. The bookies had stopped taking bets on whether Brian was getting his hole tonight. Though obviously, he had his beer-goggles on, as she was a hefty heifer of a one, with a big Germanic bone structure, not the Claudia Schiffer one mind, more in the line of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It wasn’t such a stretch for the imagination to picture her in leiter hosen and pig-tails carrying twenty litres of beer in each hand, and stretch it a little further and she’d be grazing in the alps with a bell around her neck and a bloody big purple ‘Milka’ painted on her back.
“I’d have had to have lost both me reason AND me eyesight to go near that fuckin’ thing,” remarked Spud a little later on, but you just knew he was mad jealous, as we all were. I hadn’t got my hole in months.
The next thing I remember I’m in my bed and bloody glad to be there. I lay there and tried to piece together the getting home. I still had my clothes on. I was starting not to notice the hangovers. I lay there listening to Tony’s heavy breathing and contemplated the next seven days. Surely they would be drunken ones and I wondered what would happen if I continued like this. I’m only carbon and water after all. Ethanol comes from further up the chemistry ladder than either of these two and I reckoned that it would easily own them both in a fair fight.