Heaps of Trouble (23 page)

Three days into the job a Mary Quigley was delivered into my care. She was an eighty-year-old lady who had passed away that morning. The nuns did the ‘laying out' of the bodies and they always tied the corpse's hands together above the chest in the universal position of prayer. At around midnight I was woken from my snoozing by the pounding of fists on the door and I nearly jumped out of my skin, thinking that it was one of the stiffs trying to break out. I rushed to the front door with the intention of bolting far away into the night, only to rush headlong into a large group standing outside who had been responsible for making the racket. Apparently they had been pounding on the door for over ten minutes trying to wake me up. White as a ghost and shaking like a leaf from the fright, I told them that, in fact, I had not been asleep, but engaged in my nightly round of the bodies.

‘Ha, Jesus, Mick, next he'll be telling us that he was playing cards with them,' one commented as I led them into the office. There were nine people in total, middle-aged and all polluted with the drink. Attempting to re-establish my authority over them, I pretended to check my list for the deceased's name. ‘Ah, here she is, a Mrs Mary Quigley, passed away this morning, are you all the next of kin?'

‘What?' said one of the group, who was slightly older and had elected himself the spokesperson; I retreated a few steps from the smell of undiluted Guinness that was wafting over me.

‘Are…all…of…you…relatives?'

‘Jesus, who the fock do you bleeding think we are, bleeding body snatchers? Ha, ha.' Which brought howls of drunken laughter from the rest of the mob crowded around me in the small office.

‘Right, follow me.' I unlocked the dividing door and led them into the morgue, strolling halfway down before stopping in front of a large, stainless-steel drawer bearing her name. I had been instructed to open the drawer slowly and then step back out of the way, allowing the relatives some sort of privacy. There was never any of the usual stuff that you see on TV, such as the attendant removing a sheet from face. That was not our job; if they wanted to view the body (which most of them didn't anyway), they could pull back the white sheet themselves. In this case three things happened simultaneously when I yanked open the drawer. (Perhaps, in retrospect, I used a bit more force than necessary.) There came a loud ripping noise, quite similar to that of a large sheet being ripped in half, a heavy thud –and an ear-piercing scream.

None of which encouraged me to hang around in search of an explanation. I was up and out of the room, through the office, and halfway across the grounds before I stopped to draw air into my heaving lungs – but I intended to keep going until I reached the safety of my own house. At that moment I was almost run down by the mob of relatives who were right on my heels and set on overtaking me. The ensuing row between us made such a commotion that we woke up half of the hospital, resulting in security being called. And that, of course, was how the matron found out about the whole sorry affair.

For the second time in so many days I stood in her office giving her an account of the previous night's happenings. By the time I had finished my account, she had developed a nervous tick in her right cheek muscle. When I finally left her office I could have sworn that I could hear her howling with laughter, convincing me that perhaps she had a sense of humour after all. But I felt it was all very well for her, as she hadn't been there. It would take me weeks to get over the shock.

For when I had opened the drawer back there in the morgue, old Mary had sprung to life. Of course she hadn't really, but it had appeared that way because the nuns had been a bit over-zealous in tying her hands together. As I pulled open the drawer, her hands must have caught on the top of the cabinet, causing the whole sheet to move violently as if she was about to jump up. The loud ripping noise was somebody in the group farting with fright. The heavy thud was another member of the group fainting, and the ear-piercing scream was self-explanatory. The violent row on the lawn had been because the relatives wanted me to go back in and retrieve the body of their fallen member. I argued that it was their responsibility, since that person was actually their own mother. We only calmed down somewhat when their fallen member staggered out to report that ‘Old Mary is still quite dead.' That little uproar made the rounds of the hospital even faster than the story that was now referred to as ‘the case of the mis-aimed laundry bag'.

Towards the end of the summer I was posted to Hospital 7, with responsibility for taking patients up to the various wards after they had been admitted, as well as collecting and delivering blood samples, X-rays and all the bits and pieces that the doctors fancied testing. Hospital 7 also housed the main records department of every person who had been admitted in the past few years. The fetching and delivering of records for patients who had been admitted into one of the other hospitals was another role of mine.

One evening, finding myself alone amongst the rows and rows of files, I decided to check if any of the records held details of my parent. There was, in fact, one slim file on my father, which had been compiled by the doctor in charge of the ward during his most recent visit to the hospital. I appropriated the two hand-written pages (ignoring all of the information relating to his medical condition) and later that evening I read them before setting them on fire. I had realised that he was more than qualified to act the maggot when he chose and (before reading those papers) had actually believed that I knew everything of which he was capable. However this new evidence took the overall medal and I can only assume that he must have been heavily on the bottle during that stay in the hospital.

The notes were basically an account of his actions with regard to the nursing staff. Most of the comments related to various occasions on which he had been found galloping around the wards, stark naked, proudly displaying his full erection while in hot pursuit of the nurses – and demanding that they come back and be administered to. Considering the position that he held in the establishment, I was at first embarrassed for him. And then the shame set in, causing me to blush bright red, when I thought about how many other people must have read these pages, knowing that I was his son. Well, I was going to make sure that nobody would ever read them again, because I was definitely not going to bear the sins of my father.

*

September finally arrived and with it, on the same day, came three letters, all bearing bad news in one form or another. I had been working the evening shift as a switchboard operator over in the Coombe Hospital, which must have been affiliated in some way with St James'. I had a tiny little office and a switchboard that must have been one of the oldest still operational in the country. This contraption took up a complete wall and all calls, in or out of the building, had to come through this monstrosity. When an incoming call arrived, or if somebody on the inside wanted to phone out, a small cup fell down to announce the line or extension that was seeking attention. I then made the connection using a bunch of spring-loaded plugs that pulled out of the tabletop at the base of the exchange. When the call ended the silver cup would fly back up, at which I had to unplug the connections between that extension and the outside line. When it was busy the table resembled a bird's nest, with criss-crossing wires plugged into the board every which way. Late in the evenings when all went quiet, I discovered that from my switchboard I could dial up two separate outside numbers and connect them to each other while still being able to listen in. My favourite joke was to connect two different police stations and then sit back to listen to the fruits of my work.

‘Hello, Kilmainham Garda Station.'

While, at exactly the same time, ‘Hello, Rathmines Garda Station, Sergeant Murphy speaking.' Short pause. Then, ‘Hello? Who is this?'

‘This is Kilmainham Garda station, you rang us, what do you want?'

‘What do you mean, we rang you? Now stop this nonsense, you rang us.'

‘Murphy is this is your idea of a joke? We're busy here, not like you. Apparently you have time to sit on your arses and make calls wasting our time.'

‘Who is this? Is that you McCarthy, you focker, you rang us you Cork hoorer.'

And so it would continue, with both of them getting madder and madder at each other, until I eventually pulled the plugs, allowing each to think that the other had hung up. After waiting about thirty minutes, I would repeat the process all over again. However, that evening after opening my mail, I couldn't even motivate myself to start annoying Garda stations. The first letter was the results of my Leaving Cert. exam. Out of the eight subjects I had sat, I had passed six, failing French and, of course, Irish. So no university for me.

The next letter was from the hospital thanking me for filling in over the summer months. What a great fellow I had been and all of that rubbish, but as all of the holidays had now been taken, they no longer required my services. Since they were sure positive I had done well in my Leaving, they wished me every success in joining the university of my choice and they looked forward to having me back for the following year's summer fill-in.

It was the last letter that bothered me the most and it was from Gina. I had written to say that I could meet with her on the following weekend. Her reply told me that that she couldn't make it, as her mother had grounded her. In a sense, while disappointing, the news didn't bother me much. It was the postscript at the bottom that instilled a feeling of complete loss, building in the pit of my stomach. Instead of her customary ‘with all of my love', this one just read, ‘lots of love'. And even before I had reached the end of the letter I sensed a change in her writing, suggesting that perhaps Gina was tiring of a friendship that took place courtesy of the post office. Or maybe she had found somebody else who was able to offer a bit more than badly spelt words on a piece of paper. Whatever the reason, I sensed a change in the air that was blowing an ill wind in my direction.

The only bit of good news around this time was that the parents were moving into their new house in Malahide. Two days later, with all of our furniture packed into the rear of a removals van, they departed to wreak havoc on their new and unsuspecting neighbors.

For one of the few times in my life I had stood up to the mother and refused, point-blank, to leave our house until I had to, because it would be at least another six months before the Health Board moved in. She seemed to think that if she left me only the bare necessities of life, in a few days I would (as she put it) ‘see sense and come running after us'. I was left a mattress, some bedclothes, an old two-drawer sideboard, one pot and pan, cup, knife and fork, and one plate. So, in essence, I didn't actually leave home, my parents did.

That first night, as I walked through the house with my footsteps echoing around the empty rooms, I felt a sense of peace and tranquillity, although I was looking at a very uncertain future. The house felt sad, as if it was mourning the departure of people it had sheltered within its walls for nearly twenty years; regardless of all of the rows, those walls must have remembered the good times as well.

Closing my eyes as I strolled along the entrance hallway, I visualised the grandparents' comings and goings, and it seemed as if it had been only yesterday that old Claus went out this way for his daily walk.

Catherine's first steps had also been taken along this hallway, although there were now bare boards where the carpet had once been laid. It was almost as if I could hear her laughter as she waited by the hall door for my return from school every day.

The wallpaper was still marked where Boy-o-Boy had knocked against it on his drunken way to the floor as I let him that very first night. Looking into the kitchen, now in darkness, I felt as if I had gone back in time and was once again that little boy rushing downstairs after counting the money on my first Christmas Eve assisting in the shop. I felt that the energies of all of the people who had helped out throughout the years had returned to bid a silent farewell to a shop that had been known as ‘Everybody's' of Inchicore.

I placed the mattress on the floor of what had been the parents' room, simply because it was smaller and, I imagined, would not be as cold as my own. When I finally crawled under the covers, I knew that, on this night, sleep would be a long time coming. Listening to the street noises filtering in through the window (comforting sounds, for they were the noises I had grown up with), I wondered what would become of me.

On the plus side, I had money, as I had been able to save quite a lot over the past few months. Enough at least for the immediate future. Just as well since, come next Thursday, I would have no job. I had failed my Leaving, so I had no qualifications worth talking about. I definitely had to scratch out looking for a white-collar job, as those companies wanted to train candidates who could produce a Leaving Certificate with a bunch of honours littering the page. No, I wouldn't waste my time there.

My grand idea of taking over the shop and developing it into a good business had come to nothing, and it was beginning to look as if the only woman I cared about was losing interest in me as well. I felt the hardness of the floor through the mattress as I waited for sleep and, over and over, experienced a desperate urge to simply hop on my bike and head down the country to see Gina. But then what would I do? The money would run out and I would have to throw myself on the mercy of Matty and his family. Not to mention the fact that I had considered this scenario in the past and had concluded that it could not possibly work. I searched my memory for some redeeming note in Gina's last letter. Something that suggested things might not be as bad as I feared. And then, finally, I drifted into a dream-filled slumber.

*

With a start I came back to the present and took in my surroundings. It was over now: even the last night here was over. And I was stiff with the cold because I had fallen asleep, propped against the back wall of our kitchen. Mice had been sampling my abandoned chips, now scattered in all directions. Stretching, I forced stiff limbs into movement. I was feeling a fair bit better after those night hours with the ghosts from my past – and calmer about everything that had happened. It was if I had put myself through an exorcism and had come out the far side stronger as a result. I could now accept most of the past, or at least Catherine's death and the court case. There was really no one to blame for her death. It had been an accident, pure and simple, brought on by a sequence of seemingly random events that had lead us irrevocably towards that fateful day back in 1966. Isn't that how accidents happen?