The Street and other stories (12 page)

At any rate I have recorded the tradition as it now exists and before it is overtaken or replaced or amended. I do so for posterity. I trust that you, if you are not already numbered among the followers or exponents of this tradition, will now look with kinder
eyes at the processions of punters you see making their hurried way back and forth between public house and bookmaker’s shop. Cast a tolerant eye on them. For if they vanish we will never see the like of them again.

Paddy McGlade was as good and kind and as thoughtful a soul as you would ever care to meet. He was a quiet, shy little man. That’s when he was sober. He hadn’t been sober in a good while. Well, that’s not strictly true. He was frequently sober, but not for any significant period of time. Every few weeks he would be sober for a few days, and once after he fell down the stairs to the lounge in St John’s Gaelic Athletic Club, his few days lasted a full fortnight in hospital.

That was before he was saved. Now he doesn’t drink at all. He is back home living with his mother, and the two of them are as happy as can be. Well, Paddy is as happy as can be; his mother is just a lot happier than she used to be, and she won’t be completely happy until Paddy is married. She is offering the big novena in Clonard that Paddy will meet a decent girl now that he is settled down and off the drink. Paddy’s mother has great faith in the big novena in Clonard. She swears by it. If you ask her she will tell you that that’s what got Paddy off the drink, and maybe she’s right.

Every June thousands of people crowd into the grounds of Clonard Monastery, and the neighbouring streets are jammed tight with cars from early morning till late at night. And the singing: you would hear it miles away up the Shankill or down
the Falls, while the streets around the monastery are bedecked with blue-and-white bunting in honour of the Holy Mother. Local stewards also wear blue-and-white armbands, to distinguish them from impostors.

One year the Clonard novena almost caused an international incident when a British army patrol intercepted a bunch of Clonard stewards directing traffic on the Springfield Road. It was during the Falklands war. Blue and white are Argentina’s national colours, and the squaddies thought they had stumbled across an Argentinean roadblock. The stewards didn’t believe them. It took the intervention of the Clonard rector and a very senior British officer to sort things out, and eventually it was all resolved fairly amicably, though only just.

During the big novena at Clonard thousands and thousands of petitions are offered to Our Lady. The Redemptorist preachers read a sample of the petitions out at every novena: petitions for success in exams, for the safe return of a son, for a recovery from illness, for peace in Ireland, for a cure for alcoholism, for a baby, for the prisoners, for help with debt problems, for a decent house. Paddy McGlade’s mother’s petition was read out one day. The preacher, Fr Browne, made special mention of it. “That my son may return to a state of grace, and for the happy repose of his father and for all the holy souls in purgatory: from a mother.”

When Paddy’s mother heard Fr Browne reading that her heart leapt. She was sure that everyone knew that it was her petition, but of course they didn’t. Still and all, between the shock of hearing her words read aloud and the wave of emotion which swept over her as the huge congregation prayed for her son to return to a state of grace, Paddy’s mother knew that Our Lady was going to grant her petition.

That evening Paddy arrived at the Felons’ Club slightly inebriated after a good day at the bookies. His first mistake was to complain noisily when the barman didn’t serve him as quickly as Paddy thought he should. When the doorman arrived at the barman’s request to escort him off the premises, Paddy threw a punch
at him. That was his second mistake. The Felons’ is a very select establishment which prides itself on its quiet ambience and pleasant staff. Paddy’s exit was swift and undignified. The manner of his going attracted a small crowd of passers-by.

“You’ve shit in the nest now, me oul’ son,” one of them consoled Paddy, who was roaring his disapproval at the departing back of the doorman.

“You’d be better taking yourself off,” another advised him.

“I suppose so,” Paddy mumbled thickly. “They can stick their club!”

He crossed the road to Curley’s supermarket, where his transaction at the off-licence was more patient and successful. As he wandered back down the road again, he had a bottle of Jameson’s tucked snugly in a plastic bag in his coat pocket and a plan for the evening slowly fermenting in his head. He headed for the Sloan’s Club and he resolved to cut across the Falls Park and up through the cemetery; it was shorter that way. By now it was also dark, but this did not concern Paddy; not in the least. He leaned against a tree in the park and gazed down over the lights of Belfast. As he swigged at his bottle of whiskey his annoyance at the Felons’ debacle was replaced with a feeling of quiet contentment. The enveloping dusk cloaked him in anonymity, soothing him as he made his way in the direction of the cemetery.

Others also make their way towards the cemetery. Indeed, much to the incomprehension and outrage of most respectable citizens, the city cemetery was habitually frequented by a host of nocturnal socialites. Most of them were harmless creatures, young people who couldn’t afford to go to a bar or who wouldn’t be served if they did. They gathered after dark to drink carry-outs of cheap lager or cider and play ghetto-blasters loudly. The cemetery was occasionally subjected to the destructive actions of an unrepresentative minority of vandals, but the majority of cemetery users took no part in such actions. They drank their drink, annoyed or enjoyed each other and then left as they had entered, over the cemetery wall.

They weren’t all teenagers. Joe Cooke, who went to the cemetery for an hour or so every night, was at least thirty. He and his dog, Fred, enjoyed the walk, and if the night was fine they would sit and look down over the lights of the city and listen wistfully to its nighttime noises. The night that Paddy was making his way over the cemetery towards the Sloan’s, as fate or Our Lady would have it, Joe Cooke and Fred were having one of their walks. Joe was drunk but Fred was sober.

Paddy sat down for a rest at the grave known as the Angel’s grave. He didn’t know that that was what it’s called and he probably still doesn’t. He just knew that he wanted to sit down and reflect on the state of the nation. Whiskey gets you like that. The first swig explores you inside and prepares the foundation for the second one. It warms the heart and belly and loosens the tongue. The second swig is meditative and relaxing. It encourages the third and permits a heady flow of witty repartee. After the fourth or fifth come songs of love and patriotism. Now, almost halfway down the bottle, comes the gift for wise and knowledgeable conversation on even the most difficult and intricate issues. That’s the stage that Paddy was at as he seated himself at the Angel’s grave.

The stages after that are always difficult to gauge. Some sing a song that everyone knows and joins in on. Others become sad or melancholy. Some cry. Others become romantic and believe themselves to be irresistibly sexy or funny; or both at the same time. And others fight. In short, then, anything can happen.

Paddy seated himself at the edge of the grave. He held the whiskey bottle at arm’s length in brief and silent contemplation before taking a long, greedy swig which propelled him beyond the state of uncertainty. He had been drinking since morning. It had been, he reflected, a long day. He was moved to look upwards at the stars, and as he did so he keeled over backwards and fell, mouth towards the heavens. Here he lay snoring gently as Joe Cooke, unaware even of Paddy’s existence, made his slow, happy way towards his regular spot at the Angel’s grave.

Joe was a big man, not so much in height as in bulk. Sometimes
he didn’t shave for a while, and this seemed to add to his size. He had not one care in the whole world. He didn’t even have a mother to worry him about her worrying about him. Sometimes this lack of a mother or any other relative willing to associate with him was a source of sorrow to Joe. Most times he was happy enough with Fred, but tonight was one of those times. He seated himself slowly at his usual spot with his back to the tombstone. He had a full bottle of original fine-quality cream sherry inside him and another half-bottle uncorked in his pocket. He started to sing.

Joe sang in a deep bass but he didn’t know one song the whole way through. His repertoire was limited. He stopped. Fred was missing. That in itself didn’t worry Joe, though it did surprise him, for while Fred went off on his own quite often he never left when Joe was singing, but sat at his feet and offered accompaniment.

Fred, however, was trying to waken Paddy. A big soft lump of a dog, when he found Paddy’s sleeping form sprawled out on the grave behind Joe, he just instinctively tried to lick him awake.

Joe, oblivious to all that was going on behind him, sipped at his sherry and contemplated the beauty of the starry sky. He wasn’t a religious man, but he did know the odd hymn from schooldays and he loved singing and, unlike songs, he knew hymns the whole way through.

Thus it was that Paddy started to come slowly back to life. The first sensation he felt was of warm breath and wet panting in his face. As he slowly opened his eyes the panting stopped. Paddy peered cautiously from his marble bed. He trembled a little with the cold. Overhead, he could see that the starry sky was partially blotted out by a huge white angel which towered above him. As Paddy stared in disbelief the angel started singing.

As he listened in petrified silence a strange wailing howl started up in harmony with the angel’s voice.

Paddy slowly wet his trousers.

The angel spoke to him in a loud, good-humoured voice. “Ah, I’m glad to see you, old friend. Where have you been? Why didn’t you stay with me? You’ll have to mend your ways, won’t you? You’ve been a bad boy, a bad bad boy.”

Paddy nodded his head slowly. The angel started to sing again.

Quietly, almost silently, Paddy mouthed the words after him. As he did so he felt a sense of contentment envelope him. “Forgive me all my sins,” he whispered.

It was at that moment, Paddy reckoned afterwards, that he entered into a state of grace. He was never to forget that exact minute, and years later as he decried the evils of drink, Paddy could pinpoint the time of his conversion exactly.

Then, even as he savoured the change coming over him, the strange howling started up again. The angel fell silent. Paddy seized his opportunity: he leapt to his feet and dashed off into the bushes; and as he made his frantic escape towards the wall, he repeated over and over to himself a prayer his mother had taught him when he was a child.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist us in our last agony. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may we bring forth our souls in peace with you today.”

Later that night, after a bath, a shave and a good feed, he told his mother that he was taking the pledge.

“I knew you would,” she said.

Paddy was humbled at her faith in him. In all his forty-six years she had never deserted him. Not once.

“I’m sorry, Mother, for all the trouble I’ve caused you,” he told her as tears of contrition trickled down his face. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promised. And so he did.

His mother told Paddy nothing of her petition, but she resolved to make a special thanksgiving to Our Lady at the next day’s novena. She actually had to dissuade Paddy from going with her. Not that she didn’t want him to go, but she didn’t want anyone to realise that the petition Fr Browne had read out that day had been for her Paddy.

Meanwhile, back at the Angel’s grave, Joe and Fred had been quite unperturbed by Paddy’s flight from the cemetery. Fred had gone off to investigate the noise and had returned tugging a plastic bag with a three-quarters empty bottle of Jameson inside it. Joe sniffed the three or four inches of golden liquid tentatively.

“Aye, it’s whiskey all right! Good boy.”

He took an appreciative slug from the bottle.

“Ah, Fred; happy days. God is good. He works in wondrous ways.”

From her seat at the window Granny Harbinson could see right up to the corner of Balaclava Street. She sat there always when Seamus was using the back room. “You can’t be too careful,” she’d tell him when the last of his friends had slipped in through the backyard.

“I don’t want Minnie Clarke calling in when youse are here. Minnie’s a terrible ould one for lettin’ everybody know your business. She’s nivver happy till she knows your whole history. She couldn’t houl’ her own water.”

Seamus didn’t use the house too often. Only when they were stuck for a place to meet. His granny embarrassed him with her conspiratorial ways when the boys were in, telling them to keep their voices down and turning the wireless up and then, sitting in the corner at the window, saying the rosary while they were in the back room. Her nerves were away with it, he thought, the way she carried on. Still, with all that, it was a good house, and he was glad to sleep in it when the Brits were raiding up the road. His granny was sound enough.

He stayed after the meeting while she made him a cup of tea.

“Houl’ on, son, and I’ll run down to the corner for a bap for you. You can wait for a wee cup of tea in your hand, can’t you?”

Seamus flung himself into the seat by the fire.

“Yes, Granny, I’m not going out till eight o’clock. I need the key,” he added, “I don’t want to keep you waiting up on me.”

“Aye, all right, son,” Granny Harbinson replied as she bustled out the door. “Mind that kettle doesn’t boil over.”

Seamus sighed resignedly to himself as he went into the scullery. The way she had replied, he knew his granny wasn’t going to pay any heed to him. When he returned that night he would find her keeping her usual vigil at the window; then she’d bolt the front door behind him and splash holy water everywhere. He returned to his seat by the fire when he heard her passing by the front window again. Might as well have a bit of a rest anyway before he went out, he thought; it wouldn’t be long till eight o’clock.

That night Granny Harbinson sat by the window, the house in darkness. As the fire flickered shadows around the front room, in the distance she could hear the rattle of gunfire and, closer at hand, the whine of armoured pigs as they squealed their way up the Falls Road.

Times hadn’t changed much, she reflected, from the years of the twenties when they had to use kidney pavers to force the cage-cars out of the area. Thon was a terrible time. Curfews and martial law, and the Specials arresting all the young men. British soldiers there as well, she recalled, at Paddy Lavery’s corner, and sniping coming down from Conway Street. No life for anybody to live, but sure, God was good and they’d come through it all.

She glanced down the street again. The way Minnie Clarke was ducking out her window she wasn’t intending to remain long in this world, she thought to herself, as she watched Minnie poking her head out the bedroom window. She remembered Minnie the time Joe Devlin’s crowd had attacked Donnelly’s house. Minnie hadn’t been so brave then as the Hibernians smashed windows and splashed paint over Donnelly’s door. Poor Missus Donnelly, with her two republican sons in jail and that mob wrecking the only bit of comfort she’d had.

Granny Harbinson—not a granny then, of course—had had to
face them on her own. She had lost her job as a doffer over that. Her foreman, Ginty McStravick, had been a Hibernian. Ach, well, she sighed to herself, she’d outlasted the oul’ divil, God rest his soul.

An explosion jarred her thoughts back to Seamus. She wished he was home. Outside, the street fell again as quiet as a grave, the silence punctuated now only by the near-distant echo of pistol and rifle shots.

Forty years ago it had been the same during the Outdoor Relief riots. She smiled as she thought of the fix they’d been in. No money, and seven hungry children to feed. Only they had had unity then, of a sort, until the government had whipped up all the old bitterness and divided the working people.

Another explosion boomed and the windows rattled. She wished Seamus would hurry up. Ah, there he was now. She stirred herself as the key turned in the lock.

“Come in, Seamus son. I fell asleep there saying my prayers so I did. I’ve a wee mouthful of tea in the pot for you. Drink it up now before you go to bed.”

Two or three nights later Seamus asked his granny if he could use the front room. She fussed a little and then took herself off upstairs. She didn’t like him using the front. Anybody looking through the window would see them, and Minnie Clarke was liable to call at any time. She resolved to warn Seamus about it when his friends weren’t there. And they hadn’t the wireless turned up. Sure, the people next door would hear the whole commotion. She listened as a scraping noise below the staircase caught her attention. This would have to be the end of it. In future Seamus would have to stick to the back room. All that hammering in the coal-hole. The whole street would hear it. That Seamus one would waken the dead if she wasn’t there to keep him in order. The noise stopped. She heard Seamus coming to the foot of the stairs.

“We’re away on now, Granny; I’ll be in early tonight.”

“Wait, Seamus son…”

She sighed as she heard the door slamming. Downstairs everything was as normal. She pulled the curtain back from the coal-hole and peered into the space below the stairs. What had that wee lad been doing there?

Groping in the dark, her fingers explored the joists and battens which supported the stairs. A few minutes later, with the help of a breadknife she had the new piece of wood prised off.

“God take care of us,” she whispered to herself, “that wee lad needs his bake warmed.”

Her heart leapt then, as she heard voices at the door. Who was that now, at this time of the day? Ah, it was only Minnie Clarke. She pushed the wood back into place. She would see Seamus about this some other time.

It was the weekend before she had the chance to get talking to him. She shifted a little in her seat by the window and promised herself that she would have a word with him as soon as he came in. It was quiet tonight, thank God, and as soon as he’d arrive she’d make him a nice cup of tea and have it out with him. The noise of a Saracen in Cape Street made her heart jump. She heard the crashing of gears as it slammed to a halt and then, as another Saracen screamed round from Omar Street, she felt a dryness in the back of her throat.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she whispered, “they’re coming here.”

It was after midnight when Seamus arrived. He’d heard about the raid from Minnie Clarke. When he came in through the backyard to the scullery, his granny fussed about him in her usual fashion.

“Now, Seamus son, no need to worry, everything’s all right. Here, get this wee cup o’ tea into you. I think you’ll have to stay out tonight. Minnie Clarke says you can stay in her house. Now, won’t that be…”

Seamus swept past her and plunged into the coal-hole. His fingers searched among the joists. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach.

The dump was gone. His hidey-hole was empty. He pulled on the splintered wood and stepped into the front room. His granny had tidied it up a bit, but evidence of the raid was still obvious. The settee was ripped, the pictures hung askew and the china cabinet was out from the wall. His granny sat quietly in her usual place by the window. He slumped into a chair by the fire.

“Granny. I had stuff below the stairs and …and…”

“I know, son.”

He sat up as she tugged a package from below her apron. “I didn’t like you keeping it there, son. I found it the night you had the meeting in here. I never got around to telling you, so I just kept it beneath my corset, so I did. You can’t trust nobody nowadays. I kept it on me; it was far safer, son.”

Seamus sank back in his seat as his granny shuffled across the room.

“Here you are now.”

She handed him the heavy package.

“You’ll want to be more careful with that in future, so you will. Will you have your tea now?” She hobbled into the scullery. He heard her poking around the stove.

“God save us, Seamus, but Minnie Clarke nivver came near the house while the soldiers were here. Thon oul’ one will nivver change. And you should have seen the many soldiers there was. Peelers, too, Seamus, they were everywhere, and me an oul’ woman on my own. I gave as good as I took, mind you.”

She handed him his tea.

“Now Seamus, son, do you think it will be safe enough for you in Minnie Clarke’s?”