Heaps of Trouble (5 page)

Entering Hector Grays on Liffey Street was akin to entering Aladdin's Cave, since the two storeys were filled to the brim with every sort of toy you could imagine. I was welcomed by old Hector himself and told that, since it was my first visit, I could choose a present for myself. I had such a huge choice that I could settle on none, for as soon as I spotted some toy of tremendous interest I would find something else and run off to look at that, until another would catch my eye.

The father was engrossed in haggling prices with Hector when a very tall old gentleman with a mop of white hair and a long white beard, who had been sitting quietly in a chair in a corner of the shop, called me over and enticed me to sit with him. If I had still believed in Santa, well this would have him; he was just short of the red coat and black boots. Introducing himself as Noel and sitting me on his knee, he told me a story about a whale called Moby Dick. In a rich Dublin accent he entranced me with his tale of a sea captain who spent a lifetime in search of a white killer whale that had eaten his leg. It was some years later that I first associated my memory of the storyteller with the well-known actor Noel Purcell, recalling also that he featured in the film
Moby Dick
, which was made in Youghal, County Cork, in the late 1950s.

That week leading up to Christmas was the most exciting of my young life to date, as we had to make frequent trips to the wholesalers. Owing to the fact that we had a large shop and a small car that could only hold a little at a time, despite my father's attempts to jam in as much as he possibly could. There was many a trip home that found me sitting on top of boxes stacked on the front seat, my head jammed up against the roof. I would be given strict instructions to watch the boot, as this too would have been overfilled and tied down with string. Hector's shop was always the last port of call, being the one place that doled out generous quantities of alcohol to all its customers.

By the time we had completed the ordering and loading, nearly everyone in the shop was well on their way towards complete inebriation, both staff and customers. I could always tell when the father was reaching his limit of consumption, as his ordering slowed right down and he concentrated more and more on the booze table. Until eventually Hector or Enda presented the full bill, which was haggled over; once they came to an agreement the father would reach into his back pocket and extract a bundle of five- and ten-pound notes. To me the notes appeared to be as large as newspapers and he would make a great show of counting out the tally. However, nobody really wanted to leave with plenty of half-empty bottles of booze still lying around like magnets (especially magnetic to the father), so the customers would encourage Hector to tell one of his stories about his start in business. Hector, if he had made a lot of money that particular day, would refill their glasses and reminisce about what he described as ‘the good old days before the taxman found me'.

‘Every Sunday', Hector would begin, launching into one of his favourites, ‘I took a patch down on Moore Street, where I set up my stall and flogged to the masses anything cheap that I could get my hands on. In those days the multitude descended on the street around noon, with their wives and girlfriends attached to their arms.' At this point all work in the shop would stop and the staff would angle over to hear the rest of the tale. ‘Well, this particular time, I got my hands on a gross of some very cheap “magic Japanese soap” that was supposed to remove every conceivable stain from any type of clothing…it didn't work of course, but since I was stuck with it, well, I had to sell it on.' Turning around in mock modesty he would raise his arms in the air and say, ‘Well isn't that what all good Jew boys are taught to do by their fathers?', which brought roars of approval from the gathering.

‘Knowing that it would barely remove fly shit from a black shirt, I had to be a small bit creative and sort of “invent” my own dirt that the soap could remove, otherwise I would have been eating the bars for my Christmas dinner.' At which one of the group would remind Hector that, as he was a Jew, he shouldn't be celebrating Christmas anyway – which brought more laughter, but Hector would continue unabated.

‘Old Bob who had his stand alongside mine flogged rags that he passed off as cloths, and which he bought from the Jew boys on the North side…and he always arrived early with his horse and cart and parked his wagon next to my patch. Experimenting at home with the bloody stuff, I realised that if I mixed soot with ground-up soap bars it looked like grease and, mixing it into a paste, I could apply it to any piece of cloth…and lo and behold the “magic Japanese soap” would remove the stain. The next Sunday I arrived early to coincide with Bob's arrival and, after carefully removing all of the grease from the back axle of his cart wheel, I reapplied my own invention, then set up my stand and awaited the arrival of the punters.'

You could have heard a pin drop at this stage and the arrival of a last-minute customer was met with frantic hand signals telling him to be quiet and to come over and join the company.

‘Well, before long', continued Hector, after acknowledging the new arrival with a nod of his head, ‘I had a crowd circling me and, after describing the amazing magic quality of the Japanese soap, the moment of truth arrived and, stepping off my box, I cried out that it would even remove axle grease. Reaching down to Bob's wagon I removed a handful of my special paste, smeared it on the front of my white shirt and, to everyone's amazement, the bar of soap removed the stain before their very eyes. With the crowd expanding, I got carried away and started to smear the “grease” onto some of the male onlookers' shirts, which first brought cries of indignation from their lady friends…but as soon as the stain was removed, gasps of amazement. Making me, there and then, on the spot, decide that I was not charging enough for the stuff and I should double the price of it.'

Cries of ‘shame, Hector that's not like you' came from the gathering, which was at this stage liberally helping itself to his booze. Hector, grinning from ear to ear, informed them that he could not take the money from the punters quickly enough and, holding his hands up for silence, he added that he was not quite at the end of the story yet.

‘The next Sunday morning, arriving early again and loaded down with the remaining boxes of the soap mix, I repeated the stunt with Bob's wagon. It was raining slightly, so I decided to take shelter in Milligan's pub until it cleared and to await the arrival of the normal Sunday punters there.

‘Afternoon, with the streets filling, I ambled back to my stand and, as on the previous week, before long I had a large group gathered around me. This time, to create a bigger impact, I picked out of the crowd the biggest and ugliest docker that I could find. Calling him up to the stand, I once again ducked under Bob's cart and, with a handful of my special grease, smeared it onto the front of his starched white shirt, his Sunday best. With the size of the man, it was like applying it to the side of a ship and his little woman nearly fainting with the shock of what I was doing.'

Here Hector paused and hung his head, as if he was reliving the moment, and everybody else held their breath in case he would not finish. But after a few seconds he again raised his head, smiled that huge grin of his at the assembly and, to the sound of sighs of relief being expelled all around him, he continued.

‘Climbing back on top of my box, for the bastard was so tall…even on my box I only came up to his chin…his face was getting redder and redder, and me grinning up at him like the village idiot. At the same time at the top of my voice telling him and the crowd not to worry, and fighting off his missus who was tugging at my arm demanding to know how she was going to wash it off and who was going to pay for a new shirt? I proceeded to apply the “magic Japanese soap” to his barrel chest, whilst anticipating the cries of amazement from the masses and, more importantly, the animal in front of me. Well, to my great astonishment, nothing happened – and the more I rubbed with the soap, the more I spread the black crud around his chest area. Finally, it dawned on me that I was, in fact, spreading real axle grease all over the chest of one of the largest gorillas in Dublin.

‘Dropping the bar of soap in fright, I was just in time to duck out from under the two large, shovel-size hands that were reaching out in my direction…and leaping off the box, I fled in terror down Moore Street. The yells of the docker filled my ears, claiming that if he ever caught up with me he would tear me limb from limb.'

With howls of laughter reverberating around the shop, Hector finished his story by informing us that he was not able to go back to Moore Street for quite a while, as every Sunday the docker came in search of him. It was only months later, when he finally met up with Bob again, that Bob was able to explain to him that on that famous Sunday morning somebody had borrowed his wagon and, with the space vacant, another person had parked theirs next to Hector's pitch.

The story was still ringing in my ears as we finally left Hector's shop, the father staggering out to the now fully loaded and trussed-up car. We began our journey home through the thickening fog, past the Four Courts, Kingsbridge Station, up to Kilmainham, and finally into Emmett Road. The shop was lit up like a lighthouse, with the yellow gleam from the windows piercing through the fog. Adding to the glow and illuminating the wide footpath outside the shop entrance were the flickering, multi-coloured fairy lights that surrounded both windows and appeared to blend into the orange luminescence of the streetlights, emitting a welcoming aura of safety and warmth.

The two shop doors were flung open and the contents of the car stacked in the middle of the shop floor. This was to be my first introduction to the art of ‘creative' pricing, rather than the more boring method of applying a standard profit mark-up across the board. The mother would hold up an item for the father to consider, while she read out the cost price from the wholesale price-list in her other hand. Together they then debated what they could get for it. Once decided, the mother used a heavy black marker to write the sale price on all the boxes before storing them on the shelves and placing one aside for display in the shop window.

The morning of Christmas Eve finally dawned and for the first time I was going to be allowed to take part in the shop's activities: I was to be the fetcher and carrier of the items to be wrapped for the customers. By ten in the morning, the kitchen was cleared of all furniture except the table (which was dragged out into the middle of the room) and the sideboard (loaded with bottles of booze, including a special bottle of orange for me). Large rolls of brown paper were stacked by the table, along with boxes of sellotape and, for the customer who wanted to pay extra, special sheets of Christmas wrapping paper that cost three pence more.

Every shelf in the shop was overflowing with toys and rows of two-wheel bikes, three-wheel trikes, teddy bears of all sizes, toy prams and plastic pedal cars were suspended from hooks in the ceiling. Whirling under them, attached by pieces of string, were large cardboard signs displaying their prices.

By eleven o'clock, as I looked out at the street beginning to fill up with pedestrians, I could almost see the excitement shimmering in the air. It was intensified by the greetings that the women called out to each other as they passed, fuelling the atmosphere with their exhilaration. At first thoughts of the Christmas dinner were foremost in the shoppers' minds, and the line of turkeys, hanging in the butcher's window across the street, started to diminish. Then, like a changing tide, the emphasis on food subsided and the masses began to move over to our side of the street to commence the first flurry of present buying. This first wave, led by the women, receded around lunchtime; it was then as if the street were drawing breath for the main event that would not begin until about four in the afternoon, when the menfolk returned home from work.

By early afternoon our ‘helpers' began to arrive, in the form of the father's friends, complete with wives and girlfriends. The women took up station in the kitchen area and began to lay out the materials required for wrapping presents, almost as if they were surgeons awaiting the first casualties to arrive from a war zone. The father, having assessed their sales skills, positioned each of the men carefully around the shop floor. He himself took a slightly elevated position on the step between the shop and the kitchen, just like a general overseeing the battlefield. Here he was ready to rush to the assistance of any area that looked like it was about to be breached by frantic shoppers.

Shady Steven, posted down by the sporting section, had a proficient knowledge of fishing and shooting, and could (according to the father) ‘sell condoms to the bloody nuns'. Not-My-Round-Jim was set up halfway along the toy shelves, as he had a gentle face that would overpower even the most hardened shopper. Considering all of his family were long grown up and Jim hadn't a clue about toys (or if he had at one time, it was now only a distant memory), he could sell any toy to any person, regardless of what they had originally come in to purchase.

Klepto Joe was out in the middle of the shop floor ready to take down any item attached to the ceiling and pass it in for wrapping. The father needed to keep him as far away as possible from behind the counter, as Joe had two problems that had manifested themselves over previous Christmas Eves in the shop. One, he was a compulsive gambler, which to a certain extent did not interfere with Joe's assistance in the shop; but the other problem did, as he was a kleptomaniac. He could not help ‘storing' any item that would fit into his pockets and the father was not going to give him the opportunity to feck any of our stock if he could help it. As Christmas Eves at ‘Everybody'sNobody's' were by now a ritual that went back to the shop's beginnings, the father could not refuse his assistance without explaining the reason; and since Joe was also his boss, well…