Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  27 November 1985

  All the way through Merv has been around, just in case anything might go wrong. He’s like an anchor. A rock. He has made it all so very easy. It has been plain sailing, a really terrific experience. Although of course I’m nervous, obviously.

  24 December 1985: A History of Mountjoy Prison!

  There was a huge crowd in tonight. The papers have picked up on the good work Merv’s doing and they sent some reporters in. The crowd was mostly social workers, relatives and people from the department. But it was fantastic! I was shitting myself all the way through. Some junkie your man turned out to be! His performance as the narrator was terrific. He also played one or two other parts. There wasn’t a sound as he delivered the speech: ‘your Petitioner thereby humbly prays Your Excellency will be graciously pleased to extend your clemency to Petitioner by remitting him to his family thereby enabling your Petitioner to spend his future life in loyalty to his queen.’

  It just shows you what can be done. It was basically the history of Mountjoy Prison from 1850 to the present day, with your man the junkie doing all the links. We took in the troubles of 1920 and the political stuff and then ended with the smackheads and all the rest of it. It was fantastic, even if I say so myself. Mountjoy — A History we’ve called it on the posters, all of which we printed ourselves in the workshop. There is even talk now of us starting a magazine. There is talk of all sorts of things.

  Jealousy

  I don’t know where it came out of but when our ‘Narrator’, i.e. the junkie, came up to me one day out of the blue and told me that he’d had a poem accepted for publication in the Irish Press — they run a page that prints short stories and poems — I am ashamed to say that instead of being proud — I mean, we in the literary association had been the first to encourage him — what I experienced was an undeniable twinge of jealousy. I couldn’t believe it as I felt it begin to assert itself and had to turn away from him, knowing I was on the verge of saying: ‘So, what do you expect me to do about it?’

  It was a dreadful thing to think for you could see he was over the moon.

  That was the first night in ages that the depression came back. It enveloped me from head to toe, becoming so bad that at times I literally couldn’t breathe. It was awful and I was mortified because I’d caused it myself with my attitude to the junkie earlier. I read his poem and it was really, really good.

  But that only made me worse.

  Diary of a Kip: 17 February 1986

  The young junkie is really coming into his own right now. He showed me some more stuff today and I really have to admit that he’s excellent. I have to laugh at the way Bonehead keeps going on about him. All you can hear now is: ‘He’s powerful, isn’t he, Joey? He can do some writin’, oh yes!’, which is fine for a while but after a bit begins to fucking wear, you know? In the end I had to tell him to shut up. Just to give it a rest for the love of fuck. Of course, he gives me his baleful look, but I’m sick of that too.

  Anyway, I have my own work to think of.

  28 February 1986

  I can’t stand it in here sometimes, it’s …

  Barry McGuigan did the business the other night, beating Cabrera really fucking well. And I bet you’ll never guess what? The junkie has another poem written! Bonehead is going around quoting it! ‘He’d bate T. S. Eliot any day, Joesup!’ he says.

  My, my, it’s hard not to think what a literary society we’ve created in here! One minute they can’t write their name and the next they’re going around quoting Four Quartets!

  I can’t get over the thought of Boyle Henry being at the McGuigan fight. I saw it in the paper. Beaming from ear to ear. Like he’s his fucking manager or something. He won in the election. He’s a senator now. My stomach turns —

  11 March 1986

  I can’t stand this fucking place! And I wish Bone-head would fucking shut up! He wants to start a film society now! ‘What the fuck would you know about films?’ I said to him. ‘There’s more to the cinema than fucking John Wayne!’ Another fucker he never shuts up about! ‘Did you ever see it, Joesup, did you? True Grit! Your man has the eyepatch the very same as you! Man but that’s some fillum!’

  ‘Would you shut the fuck up about John fucking Wayne!’ I said. ‘Give it a rest for the love and honour of Christ!’

  He went into a huff then and hasn’t spoken since. Good. For at times he drives me fuckingwell mad. Film society! The whole thing’s going to his fucking head!

  Although, when you think of it, it mightn’t be such a bad idea. I’ve been reading a lot of the reviews lately and there are quite a lot of good ones coming out. There are some really good books in the library too. I think I’ll check them out.

  Jesus, it can get you down in here. Rattling handcuffs, walkie-talkies, whistles and headcounts and then more whistles, and everything monitored by wall-mounted video cameras. Maybe we should make a movie with one of them. A Day in the Life of Bone-head and Joey, maybe!

  They get up they walk around the exercise yard they spend a while in the workshop then they go to the recreation room and when that’s over they go to the dining hall and then go out for some exercise then they get counted and wank in their bunks: THE END.

  Exciting, huh?

  24 March 1986

  I was in the middle of trying to write something again, just a couple of short lines about my feelings since the blues lifted — which you never should say for then they’re back in a flash — but it’s impossible. The problem is I just can’t get started. The whole cell’s filled with balls of screwed-up paper and even Bonehead started to complain, regardless of any potential ‘literary acumen’ which his cellmate might be in possession of.

  ‘Just write something and clane the place up after you, can’t you?’ he says and sits down then, grunting and reading. Reading, I might add, one of the books I procured on cinema. He even managed to find something about the Duke in that. ‘Ha! Look!’ he says then, back to himself. ‘There he is — the pilgrim cowpoke with the one fucking eye! Ha ha! Shoot the fuckers, Duke!’

  I was in the middle of cursing — the young junkie’s face kept appearing and going: ‘Well? And the problem with your writing is what exactly, Joey? You can’t get started? Here! Let me help you!’ — when the cell door opened and in walks Mervin. I rolled up the page and tossed it away in disgust.

  ‘So! Gentlemen! And what are you reading, Pat Joe?’

  I threw back my head and scoffed: ‘Why, he’s reading about the great directors, Governor. John Cassavetes, no doubt, or perhaps Fassbinder, who knows?’

  Mervin threw me a look that should have shamed me to the core. But I was feeling so bitter, it didn’t. Later, however, it did and I vowed to let Mervin know. But that wasn’t an awful lot of good, was it? I could just hear him saying: ‘Don’t display the hauteur of the autodidact, Joseph. It doesn’t become you.’ He’d said it to me on a few occasions previously. He could read you like a book, that Mervin.

  There were times — when the downers returned — that I wished that one day they’d just open the door and say it was no use trying with me any more — and fuck me into a hole — a proper one with a bolted trapdoor. While far away I’d hear them saying: ‘Well, that’s the end of him! That’s Mr fucking Writer gone! Mr Fat Fucker that thinks he can write! We’ll be having no more annoyance from him!’

  ‘I have a proposal to put to you,’ said Mervin, sitting down and popping in a Tic Tac.

  That was all he did, old Mervin. You sort of expected him to smoke a pipe the way a decent governor often did. But maybe that was probably only in the movies. As far as Merv was concerned it was Tic Tacs all the way. Pop! And then these big ideas.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the Christmas concert!’ he said.

  22 November 1986

  This is the first time in ages that I have opened this diary to put anything in it for, to tell you the truth, I have been so busy and exhausted with everything — getting ready for the concert — that I just hav
en’t had the time. Something which, to tell you the truth, I am actually really fucking pleased about for things have been going really, really well. I had a letter from Dixie (the junkie poet) and he says he’s had a really lucky break and may be having his first collection coming out next year! Can you believe it? Well done him! Obviously he has been a great loss to us with the concert coming up for we have no actor that can come anywhere near, so after a while not knowing what to do I decided to do it myself. It’s just a little one-act comedy so it’s no big deal. Bonehead is as nervous as a kitten and, to be honest about it, I am beginning to feel sorry that I put him in it at all. It was just an idea one of the prisoners came up with, of a pretend interview with some of the inmates, a sort of This Is Your Life-type thing. Which eventually became Oprah Winfrey Comes to Mountjoy! and resulted in Bonehead blacking himself up and running around the place with his clipboard. He brings the house down every time. ‘So tell me,’ he says, ‘did youse have an unhappy home life, did youse?’, getting them all to spill the beans and really immersing himself in it, in exactly the same way Oprah does, dropping her voice when she’s about to ask a grave, grave question. Except in a half-tinker/traveller accent, of course. I think it’s going to be the highlight of the concert. Which is going to be a variety show, really, with a couple of good surprise items thrown in. One of which will be Mervin reciting a couple of parodies by Service. Robert W. Service, that is, who wrote all these great poems about the American gold rush way back in the nineteenth century. I had never heard of him but loved his poems so much I headed off to the library — the whole day had gone before I knew where I was. You want to hear Mervin! He brings the house down with that accent of his. ‘Do you hear him, Joesup?’ said Bonehead. ‘Dangerous Dan Mc-fucking-Grew! This is going to be the best concert yet!’

  I don’t know about that. But I think that it’s going to be good all right. Mrs Recks is doing the piano accompaniment for us. She is also helping out with the directing. Her regular job entails music teaching in a convent school so she really knows her stuff. She’s playing a few short selections from an opera that I never heard of. It’s called The Mikado. Bonehead is in that one too — he’s the Lord High Executioner, going around with this axe and a hood on his head. You want to hear him singing — not bad at all. Before we got started just the other day Mrs Recks was telling me all about opera, in particular Gilbert and Sullivan. They really sound like two fantastic guys! Very witty! I must get all their records!

  25 December 1986

  Merry Christmas, everybody!

  For if this one isn’t I don’t know what one will be. All I know is Mr Joseph Mary Tallon right here in this cell with Bonehead ‘Oprah Winfrey’ snoring like a trooper is one very happy camper indeed with the concert having gone an absolute bomb! The Mikado was a massive hit, and if that wasn’t good enough, Bonehead had them all in stitches with his boot-blacked face and this great big rose on his boobs! ‘Did your father bate your mother black and blue?’ he says to one of the lads! Which just came out, apparently, completely unscripted!

  The governor looked great in his gold-rush gear, and I have to say my own performance as ‘Guard Mullanney’ seems to have gone down a treat. The little play was called Occurrence at Tullanapheeb and was written by one of the writing-group members. It is just a great bit of hokum about mixed-up identities and odd situations in a tiny Irish village in the fifties. I didn’t have all that much to do except every so often appear on the scene looking grave and booming: ‘What exactly is going on here then, lads?’ But I really enjoyed it, and everybody said they enjoyed the performance. Anotehr highlight was this old guy who had stabbed his wife thirty-seven times over an affair she was having putting on a short cabaret show based on Arthur Tracy, the street singer. Actually, that’s what he wanted to call it, he said. The Street Singer. That would be a good name for it. ‘Good and simple,’ he suggested. So I said fine. I can’t tell you the effect it had on me the first time he sang that fucking song. And even on the night of the actual concert it was hard for me not to start shaking. The goosepimples were crawling all over me. For you could see from the way he was delivering it just what it meant to him too. He even wrung his hands as if in pain as he sang: ‘I saw those harbour lights/they only told me we were parting …’

  I couldn’t wait for ‘Oprah’ Bonehead to come on, to tell you the truth, just to put it out of my head. I found the whole thing so fucking moving. He was close to tears himself when he came off.

  Anything Is Possible

  There were all sorts of things we got involved in after that, for I suppose you could say now that the handcuffs were off, if not in reality then definitely in your imagination. It was like Mervin had pushed open the doors of an old abandoned attic and thrown open all the windows. Had come stomping across those decrepit dusty floorboards and inhaled for himself a deep draught of air. ‘Smell that!’ you could hear him say. ‘Drink a draught of that fresh clean air! For don’t you know it, my men — the possibilities are limitless now!’

  And that was exactly how I felt. Which might seem strange to someone else with more education or experience, perhaps, but definitely was the case with me and Bone. Sometimes I’d find myself waking up and thinking: What? I directed a play? or I acted as Guard Mullanney in Occurrence at Tullinapheeb? Without making a complete prick of myself? It cannot be!

  And for a brief few seconds or so I’d be lost in this kind of no-man’s-land before at last feeling the warmth creeping over me as I realized — of course it was true! Yes, I had done all those things! With the help of Mervin Recks, of course, but nevertheless I’d done them!

  When I looked in the mirror now, all I did was smile!

  ‘Anything can be done,’ the governor said to us. ‘There are more strings to your bow than just artistic ones. You must always be prepared to extend your horizons.’

  That was the day he put us in charge of the garden. And, before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of rows and rows of peas and the crunchiest-looking cabbages that ever you seen, all neatly laid out in rows by the methodical Mr Bone. ‘Charlie the Gardener’ I called myself, and laughed. ‘I collect people, man, and I tend them like they’re flowers. I am the “People Gardener”, man, you dig?!’

  ‘No more of that chat of yours now, Joesup,’ blustered Bone, ‘we have these drillses to finish before the dinner!’, as I bent down and set to work, with his great big corduroy arse parked right in front of my nose.

  The Story of Me

  It was around that time I got the idea of starting up the U2 fan club (with Bonehead, of course, once again appointed my fastidious assistant) because, along with Mervin, they were the people who had convinced me that anything was, as the governor had said, possible. For a start the depressions had lifted — hard to believe as it might seem — on a permanent basis. Which made me feel absolutely fantastic. I hadn’t had to deal with one in almost two years now. And while Merv’s advice was essentially the reason for this really encouraging development, it wasn’t the only significant factor. I had been reading a lot of late about Bono and U2 and their attitude to things, and listening carefully to their amazing records and tapes. Their music just seemed to lift your heart and take you to places that before you didn’t think you’d be ever be capable of going. Bono was so like Mervin in many respects. He handed you a guitar and said: ‘Play it! Play that guitar!’, and when you hung your head and said: ‘No I can’t!’, he made you feel ridiculous for ever having said such a stupid thing. Then the next thing you knew you’d be out there in front of 80,000 people, pouring your heart out and sharing your thoughts with them. With The Edge, his guitar player, blasting a chord as you rolled around on the stage, going: ‘Yeah! I’m Joey! And this is the story of — me!’

  Mervin was still on at me about my life story. ‘You should tell it right from the beginning,’ he’d say, ‘and explain to people who mightn’t otherwise know what it is that leads the likes of yourself to end up in here.’ I have to admit that I gave it a lo
t of thought, starting any amount of would-be ‘Jail Journals’. But it took me a long time to pick up the courage. I suppose I was afraid that everyone would say: ‘I’m sorry, Joey, but this is a pile of horse’s cocky! It’s all spelt wrong for a start!’

  I have to admit it. If Johnston Farrell did anything, he taught me this: don’t worry about things like that. ‘Shakespeare himself couldn’t spell for nuts!’ he used to say.

  And it was later on in his writing classes that I really started putting pen to paper, with a view to writing something more substantial. So, whatever I’ve said about him, don’t get me wrong — I definitely do owe Johnston Farrell a debt, regardless of what he’s done. For, without his influence and guidance, no Story of Me would have ever got started. Never mind finished.

  But the problem was that all along Johnston had had his own agenda. Mervin was a totally different animal. I remember him talking to Bone one day. Bone trusted him with his life and poured his heart out as he told him all about his father. ‘He was just an old country fellow,’ he said, ‘with baling twine around his britches. But he wasn’t a traveller, Governor! We had a caravan all right! But we had a house too — in Rathowen village! We only travelled sometimes! Boys but he loved them western books! He could read and everything, my father! Cowboys! Nobody could do the book-reading at that time, Governor! There was no pome societies then!’