Looking Under Stones

by Joe O'Toole

  At that time Christian Brothers would swap monasteries during the summer break, for a bit of variety in their lives, and naturally Uncle Thomas always opted for Dingle. The rest of his family, highly industrious as they were, found it odd that he could be ‘swanning around, with nothing to do’. He was the object of much good-natured teasing.

  ‘Thomas, what’s the price of a loaf of bread now?’

  ‘When did you last buy a pound of butter?’

  He was immune to the slagging. ‘The Lord provides for me,’ was always his answer.

  He went swimming every day of the summer. One glorious summer, when I was about nine or ten, he took me to Slaudeen day after day. The second little cove in Slaudeen was up against the cliff and when the tide came in it filled up to a depth of five or six feet. We called it The Pool and, enclosed as it was by straight rocks on both sides and the cliff at the rear, it formed a natural rectangular swimming pool until the tide ebbed.

  Uncle Thomas was a good and patient swimming instructor: ‘Lie out there flat on the water.’

  ‘But I’ll sink!’

  ‘No you won’t. I’ll hold you up. Stretch out there. Let your head back until your ears are just tipping over and under the surface of the water.’

  It was a strange sensation, to be looking up at the sky, moving gently with the tide, and not hearing much because my ears were filled with salt water. I could feel his reassuring hands under the small of my back.

  ‘Look,’ said Uncle Thomas. ‘I have only one hand under you now. The salt in the water keeps you afloat. Did you know that in the Dead Sea there is so much salt that you cannot sink?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being there.’

  Suddenly I could see both his hands; I stiffened in fright.

  ‘You’re all right. Don’t move. You’re floating on your own.’

  I was rigid with panic. But I didn’t sink. Brilliant. Delirious. Floating on my own under the warm sun. There was no stopping me then. I started with the dog’s paddle and graduated to the breaststroke. After that we experimented: sidestroke, backstroke, butterfly and the crawl. Like most of us in Dingle, I swam strongly enough but with an appalling technique. Usually I combined the overhand action of the freestyle with the frog-leg action of the breaststroke. I was a no-style swimmer, but I loved the salt water.

  Slaudeen also had what we called a bathing box. It was three-sided concrete structure, with the front open to the sea. There we could sit and change, deposit our clothes and dry off when we were finished swimming for the day. The view from the bathing box, as you gazed out through the mouth of the harbour, with the lighthouse to the east, Tuairín Bán to the west and the restless swell constantly bulging and rupturing in between, is the most evocative of scenes to any Dingle person; a catalyst to memories. Encouraged by the mesmeric effect of the waves, it was so easy to fall into a trance. Even now I can hear again the flocks of screaming gulls diving on the small, unsaleable or inedible fish being thrown out by the fishermen as they sorted their haul into fish boxes on the decks of the modern trawlers, or the smaller, slower nobbies as they swung around into the harbour from the west.

  That was nearly the last of the old nobbies, which had been the mainstay of Dingle fishing for about half a century. They were built in Peel in the Isle of Man around 1910, and even though I remember them as having engines, they were in fact originally designed as forty-to forty-five foot traditional sailing craft for the fishing industry. Sadly, their run was almost up. At one time I knew them all by name. The Angelus Bell and St John Anthony were owned by the Graham families; The Manx Girl retained her original name, but The Leo and The Brigid were rechristened in Dingle. As a child I always looked out for The Majestic, the nobby belonging to ‘Uncle’ Paguine Flaherty, who was married to my mother’s sister, Aunty Mollie. Paguine worked The Majestic until he injured his leg in a fall on board in the late 1950s. That injury meant an end to his fishing career, and of course there was no insurance to provide compensation.

  With no income and a young family to support, he and Aunty Molly had to make a new start. They took over the pub in the Holyground, and being a popular man, soft-humoured and even-tempered, people were drawn to him and to the pub. He gradually built up the business, turning it into Dingle’s first music pub. Paguine was also one of Ireland’s best bodhrán-makers, and Mollie was an accomplished pianist, which all helped. Although he must have missed the freedom of the sea and the lift of the swell rounding the harbour mouth, he put great enthusiasm into his new venture and made it a wonderful success. The pub became legendary; every Irish traditional and folk musician visited. It is still in the family today, being run by my cousin Fergus. Flaherty’s pub in the Holyground has an international reputation and is recommended by every worthwhile guidebook for the area. But the pub will never lose the connection with ships and the sea, because the two striking pillars supporting the beam in the middle of the bar are, in fact, made from the mast of a sailing ship, whose name no one can recall, that went aground outside Dingle harbour in the 1850s.

  As one of its first projects, the swimming club fundraised to purchase a raft, which was anchored and moored about fifty yards out from the beach, and fixed a basic diving board off the rocks. We would charge down the narrow concreted pathway to the diving board, bounce off it and belly-flop into the sea, to resurface after a few seconds with an ear-splitting roar provoked by the shock of the cold water. Then we would swim out to the raft, there to lie under the sun for a while before returning to the beach. Sometimes we swam out to the little point under the lighthouse. This was enjoyable until the last ten yards, when the fronds of the long, slimy seaweed growing beside the rocks slithered past your body and threatened to entangle your legs. It was always a relief to reach the solid safety of the rocks.

  About a mile further along the coast, and outside the harbour mouth, was Beenbawn strand. This was the social epicentre of Dingle bathing, where sunbathing in the coves or picnicking on the rocks were every bit as important as the swimming. Because Beenbawn was outside the harbour, the Atlantic breakers rolled unhindered through Dingle Bay and crashed on to its beach. The thrill was to wait in the shallow surf and then to dive into the wall of the wave just as the crest was curling over to break. If you got it wrong and the wave broke on top of you, the agitated surf would toss you around like a cork. If Slaudeen was for the serious swimming, then Beenbawn was for the craic.

  For us it was the place to meet the girls; to discuss pairing off and plan decidedly lewd activities, none of which, despite our firm resolve, ever happened. The girls would generally have been in our class in the convent until we went our separate ways after First Communion. For the following half-dozen years or so we hadn’t even noticed them. Now they were becoming the whole focus of our attention. At the beginning, we would stay on our own side of the beach, then just as the girls were heading down towards the water’s edge, we would, curiously enough, feel it was time for another swim. Coincidence that. There were any number of strategies to gain their attention and to guarantee reaction.

  Splash! ‘How do you like that, Celeste?’

  ‘Jesus, Lyney, if you do that again I’ll kill you. And you stop laughing, Kaneen. I’ll get you back.’

  Alternatively, there was the more polite approach.

  ‘Would you throw the ball back, Geraldine, please?’

  Sometimes cooperation worked.

  ‘Come on, girls, we’ll throw Ursula into the water.’

  This would be followed by false anger and outrage.

  ‘How dare you, Joseph O’Toole!’

  It was hardly From Here To Eternity and we were no Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, but running for the beach ball, splashing each other, climbing on to a rock to dive off, all led to unplanned but welcome casual touches and brushes of semi-naked bodies. Nobody was fooled as to what was going on, and back on the rocks or grassy areas the older and experienced lads had no difficulty interpreting our actions.

  ‘Ye’re starting to smell
around, lads.’

  Slight embarrassment on our part, but shoulders back a bit, too.

  ‘Ye’ll be looking for your iron next!’

  Guffaws all round at our puerile attempts sent us scuttling back into our shells … for another while anyway. But we were finally beginning to understand what the Brothers meant by ‘occasions of sin’, and we were mad for them.

  My first dance, well, it was a disco really, was the Swimming Club Gala Social. It was held in the schoolhouse in the Mall, just a hundred yards down the road from home. It was the only thing we talked about for weeks beforehand, especially at the beach. The lads checked that all the girls were going, and vice versa. Everyone was enthusiastic. Oh, we were manly; what we weren’t going to do! On the night, feeling very important but self-conscious, I made my way into the hall, showing the swimming club membership card at the door. Trying to look casual, like I had done this a million times before. Then suddenly I was in the open hall, unprotected and under the full glare of the flashing lights. Panic set in. But all was saved; there were the rest of the lads. I rushed up to greet them as though they were long-lost friends, when I had seen them not three hours before. But there was safety in numbers.

  Jimmy Flannery was doing DJ. The music was great but we just stood there, banded into a tight circle.

  ‘Go on, Lyney. You go first.’

  ‘Who’ll come with me?’

  Nobody moved. Wimps that we were, we didn’t have the courage to cross the floor and ask for a dance. The girls waited at the other side of the hall, disgusted at our lack of initiative after all the talk and the planning. Eventually, Jimmy called a Lady’s Choice. There was no messing; all the girls crossed the hall in a phalanx and hauled us out on to the floor. God, there was no stopping us after that. Well, until the slow set, when we actually had to hold a girl. I was all thumbs, elbows and feet. Which bit of her did you hold? And how did you avoid touching the interesting bits? Sometimes, people’s cheeks even touched. I wished I had paid more attention to Neligan’s mother when she was trying to teach me to waltz around her kitchen with a sweeping brush.

  But we got through it. By the time we all stood for Amhrán na bhFiann at eleven o’clock, the general consensus was that it had been the best night ever. We hung around outside the hall for a while, exaggerating the extent of our interaction with the girls, even though everyone had seen everything. And there was not much to see.

  Teresa was waiting up when I got home.

  ‘Who was there? Who did you dance with? … How can you forget who you danced with?’

  But I was giving nothing away.

  The swimming club also organised life-saving classes from which I eventually emerged with a life-saving certificate, albeit third class.

  Those early swimming lessons from Uncle Thomas, our adventures at Slaudeen and Beenbawn and my activities with the swimming club, gave me an abiding love of the sea. In later life I got involved in sub aqua and skin diving and would defy anyone to challenge the thrill, beauty and ambience of the clear Atlantic, viewed from one hundred feet down in the seabed, along Ireland’s west coast on a bright, bright sunny day.

  Why is it that youngsters are so interested in guns – wanting to own them, fire them, and be expert with them? Maybe it was the sixty-four-page comics, or the war-themed B movies we saw at the local cinema; whatever it was, they represented both danger and power.

  The FCA unit based in Dingle was ‘C’ company, 15th Battalion of the Southern Command. The FCA, or Forsaí Cosanta Áitiúla, was the Irish-language name for the Local Defence Forces, or the LDF, as it used to be known. Like all newly created acronyms, it was subject to the usual levels of abuse and ridicule. So, FCA was variously rendered as Fools Carrying Arms or Free Clothing Allowance; there were other, even less complimentary variations. It was a major attraction for us teenagers. The regulations required all members to be seventeen years or over on joining. But those were only rules. Thomas Lyne, Ronan Burke and myself presented ourselves as potential recruits to the quartermaster in the FCA hall in Gray’s lane. I was tall, if very skinny; Thomas was burly and mature-looking, but they knew right well that we were not the age. In fact, Thomas was not yet sixteen, and I was only coming up to my fifteenth birthday. Those minor details glossed over, we were accepted. I well remember the sense of shock on being presented with the Bible and having to take the oath of loyalty and allegiance in the dingy back office of the hall in Gray’s Lane. It was probably my first really serious adult act.

  We learned to march, we learned to drill and we learned how to carry arms. We spent endless hours on parade in the hall responding to the parade corporal’s shouted orders. From the basic ‘Aire!’ (Atten-shun!), we progressed to the much more complicated ‘Taispeáin Airm!’ (Present Arms!). We marched up and down that hall a million times, keeping in step: Clé, Deas, Clé, Deas.

  Standing to attention became second nature. No easy task that. ‘Bolg isteach, ucht amach, (Stomach in, chest out). We set our shoulders back, arms straight down, our fists closed, but with the index fingers feeling for the seams of the uniform trousers. Knees together, heels together; feet at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  The verdict was usually: ‘Not bad, we’ll do it one more time. Aire!’

  The salute took some getting used to. Holding your palm flat open, you brought your fingertips to touch the rim of your cap. And you had to remember to bring your arms the longest way up and the shortest way down. This was a vital instruction, because most of us were inclined to mimic the US army salute we had seen in the war movies. This involved bringing the arm the shortest way up. In other words, straight up, and then out from the cap and down.

  The drill sergeants, or corporals, tended to be regular, full-time soldiers. In answer to any question, they trotted out the stock army clichés.

  ‘Very simple, sonny, you’re a no-star private; salute everything. A free bit of advice to survive in the army: if it moves, salute it. If not, paint it. Okay. Any more questions?’

  And then we were introduced to the Enfield .303 rifle and taught to dismantle and clean it. Typical of the army, we were taught to dismantle the gun before we were taught to use it. When the time came to learn how to use the rifle, we lay down on the cold floor of the hall with the rifle held firmly against the shoulder, both elbows on the ground and legs stretched wide apart.

  But that was the problem; with my back raised up by my elbows and my legs apart, it meant that I was resting on my testicles. It was excruciating. Every time I tried to relieve the pressure, by shifting my legs closer, the sergeant would roar: ‘O’Toole, spread your legs.’ I finally found some bearable position.

  ‘Now, aim at the target. Look through the rear sight. Raise the front sight until the top of it is in direct line between the bottom of the Vee of the rear sight and the centre of the target. Now gently feel the pressure on the trigger, and FIRE.’

  The concentration was so intense that you imagined you heard the shot and felt the recoil.

  ‘When will we get real ammo, Sergeant?’

  ‘There is real ammunition in your guns.’

  ‘Jesus! You’re not serious.’

  ‘Now listen. I’m going to say this just once. Every gun is loaded. Even if you have just unloaded it yourself, remember it is still loaded. That’s the rule. Treat every gun as loaded. It’s a court martial offence to point a gun at anyone.’

  The functions, specifications and capabilities of the Mills 36 rifle and hand grenade were explained to us in detail. There was something about how the word MILLS was also a mnemonic for remembering its attributes. It has slipped my mind in the intervening period, except for the ‘S’, which I recall represented ‘Susceptible to mud’.

  We were given uniforms, and proud of them we were, completely ignoring how grossly uncomfortable the bullswool, as the hard, prickly material was called, felt against the skin. In my case the uniform was also extremely ill-fitting because of the gangly narrowness of my frame.

  But most im
portantly of all, we were allowed to take our rifles home. Without doubt we were bigger men as we carried them down Gray’s Lane and over Dykegate Street or up the Mall. Unfortunately, we hardly ever met any girls, so strutted our stuff to little avail. I might have thought I was John Wayne, but Teresa was not impressed. She was less than keen for me to be in the FCA in the first place, but arriving home with a gun was the absolute limit.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What are you doing bringing that thing in here? I am not having it here and that’s that.’

  Myko intervened, and after a while she stopped arguing, which was the usual signal of a change of attitude. She went out to the shop in a bit of a huff. Myko got the camera and took my photograph. I stood to attention, in full uniform, with the rifle sloped on my shoulder, four fingers taking the weight under the stock and the thumb hooked around the side edge. I showed him how to dismantle the rifle and he was interested in every part of it. He described the guns he had trained with in the Garda Depot as a recruit. This was real man’s stuff!

  I kept the rifle in the wardrobe of my bedroom and never was any gun maintained with such care and pride. In the stock of the rifle, behind the brass plate in the heel of the gun, was a compartment in which was stored a piece of cotton material, a tiny brass container of Rangoon oil and a rope ‘pull through’. A bit of the cotton would be soaked in the oil and then pulled through the barrel of the rifle to oil and clean it. This exercise was repeated a few times, using a clean piece of cotton each time, until all surplus oil was removed and the inside of the barrel was shining. The final inspection was to look up through the barrel and see the light sparkling through the rifling of the barrel. Weren’t they the simple times, when the State effectively gave out free rifles?

  We couldn’t wait to go to the rifle range. I remember the excitement as we climbed on to the green, canvas-covered army truck. But there was no support on the hard wooden benches, and that winding, pot-holed road from Dingle to Tralee was a torture. Whenever we hit a bump or a dip we banged our knees off the bench in front or hopped our arses off our own bench. Every bend and turn meant an elbow or back hammered off the side wall. And, of course, our army driver, Private Kelly, and the NCO, Sergeant Hennessy, were sitting in the upholstered comfort of the front cab, enjoying every moment of our discomfort. Our excitement had been battered out of us by the time we arrived.