Heaps of Trouble (22 page)

I was passing a local phone box on one particular evening when I noticed a lad hammering the daylights out of the pay machine in an attempt to get his money back, as it had obviously jammed before he could make his call. The next day I decided to experiment with one of the phone boxes just outside the rear entrance to the hospital, by the Rialto gates. My plan was relatively simple: using a pencil, a piece of fine thread and a nice bit of soft cardboard, I jammed the lump of cardboard as far up the refund slot as it would go, out of reach of curious fingers, assuming that the thin thread attached to it would pass unnoticed. The idea was that a person would put money into the slot to make their call and press button A, but if no one was home on the other end of the line, he or she would give up and press button B. No money would be refunded because my cardboard would have snagged the change halfway down the refund chute. After a while the person would give up and go away, blaming the phone company for its faulty box. I would return the following day, pull on the string, and pocket the take. It worked so well that I thought about franchising the idea, but then who could I trust? So I mapped out an area for myself, which was on my route home from school, and by the end of the week I was working up to ten phone boxes stuffed with cardboard. This little business was very lucrative while it lasted, but good ideas of this type have a time limit, because something or somebody always comes along and screws them up. In my case, I don't know if somebody reported a fault to the phone company and it discovered my little ploy, or if another person decided that they wanted to get into my business, but the end result was the same. One evening, doing my rounds, I found that all my bits of cardboard had been removed. Not wanting to push my luck, I didn't bother trying to replace them in case the boxes were being watched, and I decided to let that particular idea cool for a while.

My mother opened my mail with the excuse that since I was living under her roof she had a right to do so. This had always been common practice for her with any birthday or Christmas cards that I had received and until recently, when my communications with Gina had begun, I really hadn't had any problem with this. Now things were a little different. Unless I caught the postman in the mornings, I would find Gina's letters already opened on the mantelpiece. The other really annoying habit she had was searching my room, going through all of my clothing, sniffing and checking the pockets. She also began my sex education, as she was back nursing full-time. But instead of telling me about ‘the birds and the bees' (in which, by then, I was already well versed), she decided to indoctrinate me with the horrors of sexual diseases and the things I would likely catch if I ‘did it with loose women'.

During an enforced visit to her ward in St James' Hospital 3 she pointed out the poor unfortunates dying of syphilis, hopping around the place with their brains fried up. All she achieved was to put me off sex for years, because I now believed I would end up catching something fatal. The only advice my father ever gave me on the subject was ‘Son, always stay away from fast women, as you normally can't catch them, stick to the slow ones!'

For about a month I had been canvassing the owner of the Jet petrol station at Kilmainham Cross to give me a part-time job and at last he had an opening on the evening and weekend shifts. I started on the six o'clock to midnight shift at a pound a night, two pounds on Saturdays, and three on Sundays. Most of the people who called in were only looking for ten bob's worth of petrol – and expected me to carry out what amounted to a complete service of their car on top of that. This was especially frustrating on wet nights when they drove up to the pumps. There I would be, soaking wet because the garage had no canopy worth talking about, while they wound down their car windows about an inch, allowing a blast of hot air to escape and brush against my freezing face.

‘Jaysus you look wet, wha'? Here, shove ten bob into her, check the oil, water and tyres. Jaysus, it's bleeden' freezing out there,' and up would go the window.

Realising that, on my wages, I would be waiting a long time for my bike (which the owner was holding for me), I decided I needed to supplement my income a little bit. So on the wet and windy nights I began to get into the swing of things.

‘Sorry Mister, the air pump isn't working for the tyres, but she took two pints of oil; that will be another ten bob.' I would close his bonnet and throw the empty oil containers into the rubbish bin right in front of him.

‘Jaysus wha'? Two bleeden' pints? Fecking hell, she never burned a drop before.'

‘Look Mister, you asked me to check the oil. I told you, I put two pints into her, do you want to see the containers I've thrown away?'

Grumbling, he would hand over another ten bob note as if it was my fault that his car burned so much oil – and, actually, it was. For as soon as he drove away, I would retrieve the two full bottles of oil from the bin and return them to the stand, having added another ten shillings to my motor-bike fund.

Easter arrived and I was heading down to the farm again. When Gina and I met up again after all those months, it was as if we had just said goodbye the previous evening; the months washed away as if they had never existed. She took the opportunity to comment on my spelling and, amazingly, it seemed that she always understood exactly what I wrote. Apparently she had no worries in leaving any of my letters lying around, because nobody else had a hope of deciphering them. Every evening we met up and talked about everything under the sun – except about my home in Dublin. Perhaps her intuition told her that I did not want to talk about my parents, or perhaps she felt that I would speak about them when the time was right.

All too soon the holiday came to an end and I was on my way back home. By the time the train pulled into Kingsbridge Station, I had already scribed a note to Gina and my first task on alighting was to go in search of a post box. Having blown all of my motor-bike money on socialising during the holidays, it was back to the evening work in the petrol station. Once again I was faced with the dilemma of how to raise the money in the shortest possible time without ending up in Artane Correctional Centre. Puncture repair was one way to increase my nightly wage, since the owner let me keep half of the rate if I did the repairs after six or on the weekends. Charging a pound a time to fix the odd puncture in the evenings certainly helped, however there weren't enough cars getting flat tyres to make much difference to my fund, especially when I had to serve petrol at the same time. But the fellow who had hired me had never suggested that I couldn't subcontract the work.

Enter David. The plan was that I would share my portion of the puncture repair with him as long as he tended the cars. There was one slight problem: we now needed to increase the volume of repairs to make it worth our while. Lavan's hardware shop supplied the solution to that dilemma in the form of a couple of boxes of carpet tacks. Each evening we would ‘accidentally' drop a handful of tacks at various intersections in our immediate area. It worked marvellously, sales soared tenfold. The scheme had something in common with modern marketing campaigns, in that we were selling our customers something they hadn't realised they needed until ten minutes before they met us. And our service was impressive: we were always able to identify the cause of the puncture immediately and rectify it at speed. More importantly, we regained our tacks for recycling. Like many good ideas, we went overboard one weekend and achieved an all-time record of thirty-six repairs, which made the garage owner not only raise his eyebrows, but also accuse me outright of having a personal hand in these misfortunes. We had to curtail our operation somewhat after that, but I was over halfway towards getting my bike. Only one more good idea and I would have it within a few weeks – and that is what I told the owner of the bike.

It was quite by accident that the next brainwave hit me one evening as I was serving a customer who had called in with his usual ‘Hey Sonny, fill her up or put a pound into her, whatever comes first.' On opening the flap of his tank I noticed that his petrol cap was missing, which I pointed out to the driver, offering to see if one from our collection of spares would fit his car. Sure enough, I was able to oblige him, which delighted him so much that he gave me ten shillings for my thoughtfulness. It was like a light bulb going off in my head.

Most evenings I locked up at midnight and walked home: from then on I varied my route home in order to temporarily ‘borrow' petrol caps from the parked cars lining the empty streets. By the end of the week I had quite a collection in a nice big bag that I kept close by me at all times. Now all I had to do was wait for the owners to turn up for fuel and I would sell them back their petrol caps. The trick was never to give them back their own cap (many of them were painted the same colour as the car); instead, I would give them something similar, which kept them happy.

This little enterprise went so well that within a month I had £47 and was looking forward to collecting my machine on the weekend. I quit my cap borrowing on the day that a local garda dropped into the Jet station, requesting that I contact them immediately regarding an unscrupulous person (or persons) who may have tried to sell me petrol caps. During the past few weeks it had been brought to their attention that petty theft of these caps in our area was on the upturn. As soon as he left, I dumped my growing collection of caps into the nearest litterbin, thinking that I'd better relinquish that particular activity while I was ahead.

David came with me to collect the machine, which I bought for £38 pounds. She was a mighty machine: twin cylinders, four-stroke and went like the clappers. On our way home that Saturday I scared the living daylights out of myself, not to mention David, who was hanging onto the back for dear life. We returned to the Jet station, because I was going to store the bike there until I decided how to break the news of my new acquisition to the mother. David, when he got off, swore that it was the first and last time he would ever get on the back of a bike with me. And, true to his word, no matter how much I tried to convince him that it was dead safe, he never rode with me again – pointing out that it was the word ‘dead' that concerned him.

One evening the mother called into the station and caught me serving petrol; I thought she was going to blow a fuse right there on the spot. But, much to my amazement, she just looked at me, turned on her heels and walked away, saying that she would talk to me later when I got home. This was nearly worse than if she had lambasted me there on the spot, as I had to go through the rest of the shift holding imaginary conversations with her and pondering the outcome of this pending confrontation. By the time I got home I was so worked up that I was quite ready to tell her where she could stick her parenthood, the constant rows with the father, her orders, decrees – and anything else I could think of.

The mother must have sensed my potentially defiant attitude, because her reaction was not what I had expected. For the first time in years we sat down in the early hours of the morning, drinking tea and discussing my existence in general. When I told her why I was working in the garage and about the bike, her only comment was that I shouldn't kill myself and that, as the shop was now permanently closed, I could park it in there. We talked of school and many other topics that late-night chats tend to bring out in people. I felt it was the first time in my life that I had been able to sit down with either of my parents and discuss myself, adult to potential adult.

It was a coming of age for the mother as well. I think she finally realised that I wasn't a two-year-old any more; in fact I was a very streetwise sixteen-year-old who had spent most of the last six years practically fending for himself. During the periods when my mother had been in hospital or away, the father had practically moved into the Workman's Club and I had had to do all my own cooking and washing. Never ironing. I drew the line there, which meant that I spent most of my time going to school looking as if I had slept in my clothes. When the father was in hospital drying out, the mother always went the other way completely, attempting to impose a highly disciplined regime, which I balked against. It's amazing how three people can view the same subject and come up with three entirely different scenarios. The father saw me, at times, as a hindrance to his own activities, especially when it came to the drink and womanising. The mother (during the times she was embracing motherhood) saw me as an unruly child who required a lot of harsh discipline because, as she put it, ‘the father has that child ruined'. I saw myself as the person trapped in the middle, attempting to survive in an environment that I found, at best, difficult. And we all three believed we were correct.

Our conversation that evening cleared the air somewhat, but afterwards I was not able to feel that we had reached an understanding. The mother was now craving for the three of us to begin to act as a family unit, but, as far as I was concerned, too much water had passed under the bridge of life. I was just biding my time until I could move out and try to build a life of my own. As a matter of fact I couldn't wait for the opportunity to bolt, for I refused to believe for one second that a magic wand could be waved over us and that we could all live ‘happily ever after'. No sir, that only happened in books and films and I considered myself firmly entrenched in the real world, not fantasy land.

Whenever I was with Gina she made me believe it was just fine to be my own true self, with my own capabilities and in charge of my own destiny. She never once made me feel that, in her eyes, I was less than anybody else. I believe that she enjoyed my freethinking spirit, especially my ability to tell people exactly what I thought, which some others found intolerable. On our very first night by that lovely old bridge I think she had seen the ‘real' me. She saw through the exterior of bravado, the easy-going and devil-may-care attitude that I portrayed to the world in general; she saw the lost soul inside me craving understanding.

In her I saw exactly the same things. She was also an ‘orphan' in her own house, hoping for understanding from family who were too caught up with their own lives. Looking into her eyes as our hearts bonded, I felt that I had finally found the one person that I could ever really be happy with. Oh, sure, we had some small hurdles to canter over. Nothing that winning the Irish Prize Bonds couldn't sort out; and, since I was forever the optimist, well…*

I was seventeen years of age and I had finally done it. I had done my Leaving Certificate and, for the last time, I walked out of the school as if I were a prisoner released from a lengthy jail sentence without any parole conditions. Until the results came out I was able to enter the transitional period that only happens once in a person's lifetime. I became a working student, engaged in what would be considered a dead-end job at any other point in my life. I became a porter in St James' Hospital. Here the mother was proudly able to say, ‘That's my son, he's only working here for the summer, he's waiting for the results of his Leaving Cert. before he decides what he wants to study at university.' All very acceptable and commendable from the mother's point of view, especially when you are swapping stories with fellow nurses who are explaining to you that their sons and daughters opted to stay at home in bed until they got their results.

‘It's the way I brought him up, you know.'

‘Well he's a credit to you. Hasn't he turned out to be a fine young man? You must be very proud of him.'

‘It wasn't easy, you know. I had tragedy and…'

I got sick to death of listening to it, but it had been the parents' influence that got me the job, just like the other sons and daughters of Eastern Health Board executives who flooded the place. My role during those summer months was to take over the duties of any porter who was away on his two-week annual holiday, to become a sort of ‘stand-in porter-at-large'. The hours were long, but I was paid exactly the same amount as the full-timers were.

I couldn't believe my first pay cheque. I brought it back to the payroll office, thinking that they had made a mistake. Twenty-seven pounds fifty, it was almost as much as the nurses and doctors made; I was rich beyond belief. Of course I didn't tell the mother, as she would have wanted most of it.

I had learned that lesson the hard way the previous summer, when working for Monty, the old Jew in the cash and carry, who paid me five and a half quid a week for a twelve-hour day. The mother took the fiver and left me with the rest, consoling me with the words, ‘You may think this is hard, but that is what a son's role in life is all about; you have to look after your mother.' Then she dashed off across the street to show the neighbours what her son had handed over to her from his first week's wage packet.

The parents were in particularly good form one evening when I returned from the hospital. I was informed that they had sold our shop for ‘a hell of an amount of money' to the Eastern Health Board. Apparently the Board wanted to move the dispensary from its present location on the fringes of the old Keogh Square, because it was broken into so often these days that they might just as well not bother locking up in the evenings. Even though the Health Board didn't want to take possession of our building for about eight months, they were going to pay the parents the full amount as soon as the solicitors could conclude the transaction. So the parents could vacate the building and move into their new home on a modern housing estate that had just been built in the Malahide area of North Dublin.

I had taken no interest whatsoever in any of these proceedings, since they had been discussing this for over a year. My attitude was that I'd believe it when I saw it, for I had become hardened to hearing about so many plans that came to naught. Anyway, I wasn't thinking that far ahead, as my immediate concern was my latest placement at the hospital, which started the following Monday morning. Monday rolled around and at 7 a.m., still half asleep, I dragged myself into my new territory: for the next fortnight I was going to be the hospital's ‘spuds apprentice'.

I gazed with mounting concern at the equipment that produced the mountain of potatoes the hospital needed to feed the masses. The only thing between starvation and getting fed was me – and I had no idea how I was to prepare and present the product that the kitchen expected by eleven that day. The main piece of gadgetry, taking up most of the floor space, was the spud peeler. It had a large revolving drum, with hoppers, feeders and a maze of other bits and pieces that might have looked more suitable bolted on to a spaceship. Turning it on was no problem, as a large green knob mounted on the wall solved that issue, immediately transforming the room from peacefulness into vibrating chaos.

Humping a massive bag over to the machine, I dumped in about a quarter of a ton of large, filthy potatoes. I looked into the drum (feeling quite proud that I had got this far) and was dismayed to see that it resembled an unstable bog suffering an earthquake. It was nothing but a heaving mass of black soil, potato skins and black, oblong lumps being pushed up and down as they slowly rotated. I knew then that I had forgotten something. Water.

I rushed over to the taps and turned on the large valves. The tank was immediately flooded, but it was too late because the soil and peelings had already clogged up the drains. I should have had the water running from the start of the operation. Using a large, flat shovel, it took me about an hour to clean up the mess and, by the time I had finished, the potatoes had been filed down to the size of small eggs. When I presented my offerings to the chef, he just commented, ‘Jesus, you must be the new fellow, what?'

I had to join the union, or at least that's what Tommy (the union representative, also known as Brother Slim) told me when he called to sign me up and collect my subscription. I became a ‘brother' and had to listen for about an hour while he lectured me on all of the ‘don'ts' that I must heed in the course of my working day.

‘Right Sonny, now, those bastards will try and get you to do bleeden' work that we in the union have been struggling against for bluudy years.'

‘Like what?' I said, thinking it was a smart question, but it seemed to stump him.

‘Well, Jaysus, let me bleeden' think. Christ, youse put me off me stride there.'

‘Well,' I began, with my mind racing to come up quickly with the daftest question I could rustle up on the spot. ‘I was just wondering what sort of job I should refuse to do, you know. Suppose I am walking by, minding my own business, and the matron, in passing, asks me to walk her dog, like, should I tell her to fuck off and send her off to see you?'

‘Jaysus, are youse thick or wha'?' he said, while struggling to lift one of his short, fat legs so that he could rest it on top of a bag of spuds. ‘Take these bleeden' bags, wha'? How heavy do youse think they are?'

‘Well it's written on the bag under your foot, 100 cwt.'

‘Rite. Now youse have it. Here's an example of what we've been talking about.'

The man had obviously lost his marbles, but the good news was that nobody was going to interrupt this conversation and tell me to get back to work. That sort of attitude might result in an all-out strike.

‘For years, we in the union have been bleeden' struggling to stop this sort of exploitation of the worker. I mean, you shouldn't have to lift these on your own, you could put your bleeden' back out. Now we have been telling the man you have replaced, Spuds, that the union will back him if he doesn't get his helper and I will call an all-out strike.'

It seemed to me to be a wonder that the hospital functioned at all with the attitude the union had regarding work. Here was this fellow being absolutely serious about having an ‘assistant spud-bag lifter', whose only task would be to lift five or six bags a day. No wonder the Health Board was haemorrhaging money every year with the likes of those fellows dictating policy.

Promising Brother Slim that I would attend the next union meeting, I finally got rid of him. However over the following months I was to have many visits from him. All of them dealing with complaints from fellow ‘brother porters' about the amount of work I got through every day and the speed with which I carried out my various tasks. On one occasion, I was even chastised for carrying too many X-rays over to Outpatients in one go. They were bulky but light as a feather, and I was en route with about ten of them under each arm when I was apprehended by Brother Slim.

‘Now Jaysus, Sonny, haven't I been telling you about this, wha'? Jaysus, what will bleeden' happen when tosser Riley comes back off his holliers all fecking relaxed, right? These capitalist bastards will then expect him to carry the same amount, rite? Jaysus, what are you trying to do, feck up the whole system that Connolly died for, wha'?'

That was the day he became my mortal enemy. I told the fat slob to ‘go fuck yourself and shove your union up your own arse if you don't like it.' I couldn't see the logic in making three trips when I could do it in one, and it wasn't my fault if tosser Riley should have been sacked years ago for being the lazy git that he was. He kept away from me after that, but still constantly tried to get me into trouble with the matron. He needn't have bothered as I was managing to do that quite successfully all on my own.

After the two-week kitchen stint, I took over the porter's job at Hospital 3, the geriatrics unit where my mother was nursing. My main job was to haul out the soiled laundry in the morning and replace it with the newly washed. As most of the geriatrics never left their beds, the volume, weight and smell from the linen bags was terrible and it was a job best done without a hangover. There was a special lift designated for this task, which ran the three floors, but it was placed at the furthest end of the building. Every day I had to drag, carry, or hump these bags down the long corridors to this service lift. I then deposited them onto a loading bay where, once a day, they were collected by the laundry van, which returned later with the clean stuff.

I would then repeat the process all over again in reverse: but since the new bags were fresh smelling and relatively light this was the easy part. It was the weight of the soiled bags that caused me the problems. Obviously Brother Slim's attention had not been brought to bear on this situation, otherwise he probably would have issued a union warning to the patients: ‘Now Jaysus, wha'? One crap a day is all youse lot are entitled to, rite? Otherwise, it's an all-out bleeden' strike and youse can all go and wash yer own sheets.'

The plan I came up with was a lot simpler and quicker. Running down the length of the building along the corridors were old-fashioned, large, sash windows, which opened onto a well-manicured lawn. So, instead of lugging the bags along the corridors, I simply chucked them out of the windows onto the lawn. I had already spoken to the van driver and he didn't where he collected them from. After a few days I had it down to a fine art; the trick was to make sure nobody caught me. On removing a bag from the storage room, I would drag it over to the nearest window, check left and right to make sure that the coast was clear, open the window, toss out the bag, and then close the window again. The whole operation took less thatn five seconds. Then I'd move on to the next room and repeat the procedure. The geriatrics thought it was all great entertainment and some of them even applauded with glee when they heard the bags thumping off the lawn, especially the really heavy ones from the third floor, because they sounded like howitzer shells exploding on impact.

That was how I came to have my first interview with the matron. She just happened to be passing under a window one fine morning, walking her dog, when one of my missiles landed within a few feet of her. It scared the living daylights out of her and caused the woman to scream her head off in fright. When I heard the fracas I looked out of the window, thinking that one of the geriatrics had escaped on walk-about. So I bolted down the stairs with the intention of retrieving the escapee, but instead I ran headlong into the matron, now fully composed and intent on retribution.

Within hours of the incidentincident, the word had travelled throughout the place and I became something of a celebrity. With every tellingtelling, the events were exaggerated more and more and I was quickly dubbed ‘matron killer'. Brother Slim even came to see me to warn me that if I had any grievance in future, I must go through official union channels and was not to take matters into my own hands again. However, since I had had a problem with that ‘bitch of a matron', he would leave it go this time. My mother was definitely not amused.

As penance the matron gave me a week's work as night attendant in the morgue and I left her office to her flippant remark: ‘As the building has no windows, I fail to see how you can get yourself into trouble there.' I didn't like this new job one bit, as it scared the wits out of me and my fertile imagination worked overtime. It was a relatively small, purpose-built, single-storey building with an outer office; the dead bodies, or ‘stiffs', were held in refrigerated drawers in the main room at the back. My task was quite simple and straightforward and very similar to the role of a receptionist in a small hotel. The porter in attendance had to check in the arrivals and log out the departures; since none of this activity happened during the night when I was on duty, I just had to make sure that nobody tried to get in or out without proper approval. That is why I kept the door between the ‘stiffs' and me firmly locked, in case any of them took the notion to leave. Nearly all of the temporary residents in my care were elderly people who had died of old age. After the pubs closed in the evenings I could get quite a flurry of relatives pitching up to see ‘auld aunt June' who had passed away that day. ‘God bless her soul, may she rest in peace.' These would be the same relatives who had neglected to visit her while she was still alive; they would arrive smelling like the Guinness brewery, shedding crocodile tears and with one eye firmly fixed on the will.