The Street and other stories (2 page)

“That’s what comes from your creeping-Jesus refusal to face up to the way things are. Bloody British soldiers shooting our people down like dogs, and all you can say is you’re sorry! What are you sorry for? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

He was on his feet, glowering at her. She looked up at him. Pain and disbelief were etched across her face. For a moment their gazes met, bewildered and hurt, an old man and an old woman in their own living room, brother and sister, spinster and bachelor, lifelong friends, and then slowly before his eyes she slumped from her chair with a little sigh and sprawled awkwardly at his feet.

She was buried on the same day as the dead of Bloody Sunday. Willie lived on, on his own after that. He retained his interest in politics. Indeed, despite his age he attended the litany of local protests all that spring and early summer, yet he himself knew that the fire inside him had died. His sense of outrage had gone. He was, as he acknowledged to himself, only marking time. He died in August in the Royal Victoria Hospital while being treated for pneumonia. The hospital chaplain anointed him just before he passed away. As he did so the priest thought he heard him whisper something.

“What’s that, Willie?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Catherine,” Willie sighed. “I’m sorry.”

A canopy of wire shrouds the squat, grey two-storey building. The entrance to the area between the wire and the building is a turnstile guarded by a security hut. Entry to the building itself—for there is no other reason to breach the wire—is by way of a double glass-panelled door which leads into a short hall watched over by two or three uniformed attendants. To the left are rows of dark plastic chairs; to the right another pair of glass-panelled doors opens into a large, empty room. Through here yet another set of doors brings you into a long, wide room. On one side is a counter topped to the high ceiling by protective glass. Behind the glass are low boxes of index cards thumbed through by mostly young men and women. They slip forms on request through openings in the glass shields to queues of mostly young, casually dressed men and women.

This is the dole, the “broo”. It is a Monday morning. On the grey plastic chairs sit a dozen people. Some wear the uniform of the casually unemployed: training shoes, jeans, zip-up jackets or sports tops. Other classes wear clothes like this, of course—occasionally. Many of the casually unemployed wear them all the time, at funerals and dances, at weddings and on street corners, in warm weather and wet. Some of the casually unemployed are women; more unwaged than unemployed, many are accompanied by small children. Prams are not permitted in the broo, though, so
the small children thus liberated, or denied a resting place, laugh or whinge the time away, crawling over and under the plastic chairs and across the cold floor. Occasionally an adult or juvenile will raise his eyes off the tiled floor to smile or glare at the infant malcontents; others doze fitfully, one or two read newspapers, some converse quietly together. All are bored. When an attendant arrives with a list of names, all look up expectantly.

“Grogan, McAteer, Russell.” The attendant calls, and the owners of the names signal their presence and are directed to small rooms or cubicles where they provide answers to the many questions asked to ascertain whether they can be permitted a loan or a small grant. Usually they wait for hours. Sometimes they wait for nothing.

In the big room with the long counter the signing-on is done. All signers-on go to a previously assigned, numbered part of the counter. They show a yellow card, a UB40, and pass over a white card which they have received in the post with their giro check—a new one with every payment. They are given a slip of paper in exchange. They sign this declaration which confirms that they have not worked since last they signed on, and that, usually, is that. At busy times a queue will form; at other times a signer-on may be challenged from behind the counter.

Occasionally there will be a spot check. Is the signer-on impersonating someone else or are they really the person they claim to be? The large signing-on room is less grim than the smaller one. Fewer people sit waiting there, and unless they are challenged or spot checked or waiting for a friend, most slip in and out as quickly as possible. Outside the building two streams of people moved urgently back and forth. Richard McCaughley, swept along in the human current, entered the building. A slightly built, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties, he wore jeans, denim jacket and training shoes. His attractive face was unshaven and his eyes were cheerful and alert. He whistled quietly to himself as he went to his box and presented his UB40. He was shaken from his musical reverie only when the man behind him in the queue nudged his arm.

“She wants you, mate.”

Richard looked up. The young woman behind the counter tapped the glass with her pen.

“Payment has been discontinued, Mr McCaughley,” she said. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to take a seat for a few minutes. Mr Bryson will see you.”

Richard nodded blankly. As he went to one of the plastic seats his mind raced ahead, panicking as the news sank in. “Your payment has been discontinued, Mr McCaughley. Your payment has been discontinued.”

He slouched into his seat. “What will I tell Jean?” he asked himself. He glanced anxiously up at the box. The clerk wasn’t there. When she returned she smiled brightly over at him. Reassured, his panic abated. “It’s just a mistake, some balls-up.” They couldn’t discontinue his payment. He had to live. He had a wife and two children to keep; they couldn’t be left to starve. Indignation replaced despondency. “Who do they think they are? Treating people like dirt.”

“Mr McCaughley.” A tall middle-aged man with glasses summoned him to the counter. He held a handful of forms as he leaned over towards Richard and spoke to him in a low, confidential tone which struggled to be heard above the babble of noise around them.

“Mr McCaughley, my name is Bryson. Your payment has been discontinued: your oldest child has passed the school attendance age. If he is going to stay at school you will have to make a fresh claim. In the meantime I have arranged for you to get a special benefit. You will have to take this form to the lady up at special benefits.

“I can help you to fill in a new claim for your income support, or if you wish you can fill it in yourself and leave it back here for me.” He looked quizzically over his glasses at Richard.

“What do you mean my son’s left school?” Richard asked.

“According to our forms he is school-leaving age. If he wishes to stay at school,”Mr Bryson spoke more slowly and deliberately
this time, “if he wishes to stay at school you will have to make a fresh claim. The claim for your wife and youngest child is being processed at present, so I have arranged a special benefit for…”

“My son is only a child,” Richard interrupted him.

Mr Bryson’s face wore the resigned look of a worn-out schoolteacher.

“That may be so, but at sixteen he is at school-leaving age.”

“Our Danny is sixteen months old, not sixteen years,” Richard said tersely.

“Are you sure?” Mr Bryson peered at him.

“Am I sure? Am I fucking sure? Of course, I’m sure. I’m his fucking da, amn’t I?”

“Well according to this form he is sixteen years of age and…”

“He’s sixteen months. He hasn’t even started school yet, never mind leaving it!”

“Well, obviously there has been some mistake. Can you give me the child’s full names and date of birth please, Mr McCaughley?”

Mr Bryson noted down Richard’s replies and went off with his handful of forms. He returned a few minutes later.

“Look, this is where the mistake is, Mr McCaughley; I’m very sorry. It’s the computer printout.”

He showed Richard the sheet of paper.

“I’ll get this sorted out for your next signing-on day. It has to go back to central office, you see,” he continued apologetically, “but you’ll get the payment as normal for yourself and the wife and one child, and if you go up to special benefits with this form you’ll get payment for the other child. I’m sorry,” he concluded sheepishly, “it’s the bloody computer.” He slipped the form through to Richard.

“It’s okay,” Richard said quietly. Suddenly he felt sorry for Mr Bryson. He picked up the form. “I’m sorry for cursing at you,” he said.

He turned and walked slowly out of the signing-on room towards the special benefits room. Mr Bryson stood immobile
behind his counter, blushing a little. Then he shuffled his handful of forms. He looked over to the middle-aged woman sitting opposite him.

“Spot check, please! Mrs Flannery?” he called brusquely.

The man sitting on the plastic chair beside Richard gurgled; that is, his stomach gurgled. He looked over at Richard.

“Was that you or me?” he smiled.

“What’s that?” Richard stammered. He wanted to avoid conversation.

It was almost half-past eleven and he had now been in the broo for two hours. He looked over towards the cubicle. Somewhere behind the door his benefits form was being processed. His neighbour’s stomach gurgled again. He nudged Richard.

“My guts think my throat’s cut. I’m starved. Here, d’you want a fag?” he asked.

“Thanks, mate,” Richard inhaled thankfully. He had smoked the last of his cigarettes for breakfast that morning. “I was dying for a smoke.”

“Aye, I know the
craic
myself. There’s nothing worse than having no smokes. Especially in a kip like this.” He glanced up as an attendant called out a list of names.

“Nope. No luck there. Ach, well, there’s no use complaining. No point in biting the hand that feeds you, that’s what I say.”

“Unless you’re starving,” Richard observed dryly.

“Ha,” his neighbour chortled, “that’s a good one. Well said. Oops, that’s me.” He nodded over towards the attendant. “See ya, son.”

“Thanks for the cigarette,” Richard called after him.

“No problem, son. No problem.”

Richard slouched into the chair and sucked his cigarette down to its filter. A slight nicotine-induced sickness turned his stomach and dampened his brow with sweat. He flicked the filter tip away from him and looked about the room for a toilet door. There wasn’t one.

“Excuse me, missus, do you know where the toilet is?”

“I do not, son. I do not indeed. I was just saying to myself, so I was, you’d think they’d have a toilet here. It’s desperate. There’s nothing here. Not even a place to get a cup of tea. I’m parched for a wee cup of tea.”

“McCaughley.”

Richard excused himself, stepped over two squabbling children and went, as directed by the attendant, into a small cubicle. He meant to ask the whereabouts of a toilet, but when a small grey-haired woman bustled into the cubicle, he decided to ignore his nagging bladder.

“Good morning, Mr McCaughley; I won’t delay you.”

Richard nodded in reply.

“You’re making a special benefits claim because your son has started work,” she noted, glancing up from the paperwork before her. “He left school last week, isn’t that right?”

“No, there’s been a mistake. The man at my signing-on box is sorting it out. I’m having a special allowance claim in the meantime.”

“What do you mean, a mistake?”

“The computer messed up my son’s age. He’s sixteen months; the computer put him down as sixteen years.”

“Oh, I see. Well, we can’t have that. I need a different form. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She rose and shoved back her chair.

“I’ve been here since a quarter-past nine,” Richard complained.

Her face clouded.

“I’m sorry, Mr McCaughley, but I’m doing my best.”

“I know,” Richard said sulkily, embarrassed by his tone. The door closed behind her.

“It’s not your fault,” Richard told the door. “It’s nobody’s fault. It never is.”

Half an hour later he left the cubicle. An attendant was telling the dozen or so on the black plastic chairs that they would have to leave and return after lunch. Richard hunched his shoulders
into his denim jacket and edged his way past them. He joined the stream of people bobbing their way via the glass-panelled doors towards the turnstile in the wire fence. The stream of people surged around and past him so that he was sluggishly towed in their wake on to the pavement outside. He went up the road and into the toilet in Daly’s bar. As he left the bar a light drizzling rain started. He walked his way slowly home, a small, slightly built dark-haired man in his mid-twenties. His attractive face was unshaven and his eyes were downcast.

Castle Street was quiet. Midmorning sunshine warmed the pavements and the shopfronts and created a pleasant, half-asleep, half-awake spring mood about the street. Sammy McArdle stood at the doorway of the bank. He had started as security man at the bank at the age of sixty; he was now in his second year in the job, the first regular, full-time employment he had ever had. He checked customers’ bags and parcels as they entered the bank; it wasn’t strenuous work and he enjoyed it.

Castle Street was a short, bustling street of high buildings, pubs, clothes shops, arcades, a bank, big stores and a fish-and-poultry shop, and most days street traders hawked their wares on the side of the street. By now the usual opening rush of early morning customers was over. Sammy hadn’t checked any of them: after all, they had been coming to the bank for years, since before he had ever graced its portals. On Wednesdays like this there were few strangers or new customers for him to scrutinise.

Jimmy from Eastwood’s bookies had given him a tip for the big race, and big Gillen had stood for a minute or two with his bags of loose change, chatting about his bad back and the poor trade. Since then no one else had come Sammy’s or the bank’s way. Not that he minded: it would have been difficult to mind anything, he mused, on such a fine day. Even the British army foot patrols didn’t bother him.

From the other side of the street Buster Traynor, the street-sweeper, shouted a greeting to him.

“What about ye?”

“Dead on,” Sammy replied, stepping out from the shade of the bank’s doorway. “It’s a great day, isn’t it?”

“Gorgeous,” Buster agreed, leaning, arms crossed, on his brush. “It’s well for you, nothing to do but to stand about all day enjoying the sunshine.”

“Aye,” Sammy laughed, “it’s desperate, isn’t it?”

“And you’re getting paid for it, too,” Buster continued. “Some people have all the luck.” He started brushing the street again.

“G’wan out of that with you,” Sammy chuckled. “You neither work nor want. A day’s work would kill you, so it would.”

“That’s all you know. You and Cloop have a lot in common.” Buster gestured down to the corner.

Sammy gave a wry smile: Cloop was the bane of his life. “You really know how to hurt me, don’t you?” he chided.

“See you later,” Buster smiled. “I can’t hang about here all day. I’ll send Cloop up to keep you company.”

“Well dare ya,” Sammy warned.

Buster continued on his way, pushing his brush and little pile of rubbish in front of him.

Sammy gazed down the street towards Cloop, who was sitting on the pavement at the corner of Chapel Lane. Basking in the sun, his back against the wall, face tilted towards the sky, he had one leg beneath him and the other stretched across the pavement so that pedestrians had to make a detour around him and his strategically placed cap. Cloop was a wino, and he and Sammy confronted one another whenever Cloop set up his pitch outside the bank. Sammy was under strict orders to shift all loiterers. Usually Cloop complied with his request to move along but occasionally he was abusive, especially if there was anyone watching or if he was egged on. Sammy had given him a few bob once to bribe him to leave: the next day a queue of winos had settled outside the bank. That was the day Sammy’s patience with Cloop ran out.

Sammy was a decent man. Life had not been good to him, but he tolerated its inadequacies. He was by temperament a patient, pleasant, easygoing Christian. He had learned through a lifetime of little indignities to be dignified, to turn the other cheek, to endure. But he had rarely been satisfied; that had come belatedly to him with his job at the bank. It wasn’t the wages: they were meagre, but his needs were humble enough anyway. No, he just liked being employed. He liked the responsibility, the company, the sense of well-being, of belonging; he liked having something to do. He liked Castle Street, especially on mornings like this. But he resented Cloop. And now Buster was going to wind Cloop up, and he was going to be tormented for the rest of the day.

Sammy glowered.

“Morning, Mr McArdle.” It was Mrs Murphy from the holy shop in Chapel Lane.

“Morning, Mrs Murphy.”

“You don’t look a bit well,” she observed.

“Aw, nawh, I’m grand,” he said quickly. “I was just thinking to myself about something. I’m great really.”

“That’s good,” she concluded. “Such a fine morning. It’s too good to be wasted worrying, Sammy. I’m glad you’re okay.” She went into the bank.

“Thanks, Mrs Murphy,” Sammy called after her. “She’s right, you know,” he muttered to himself. “Worrying is a waste of time.” He peered cautiously down the street.

Buster had gone round the corner without disturbing Cloop. Sammy brightened visibly, so much so that Mrs Murphy remarked on the change as she left the bank.

“I’m glad you’re back to yourself,” she saluted him. “Keep your chin up.”

“Right, Mrs Murphy. Good luck to you.”

“And to you, too, Sammy. Remember, there’s always somebody worse off. Look at poor oul’ Cloop.”

Sammy’s face darkened. He looked towards Cloop, who waved cheerfully back at him. Sammy gazed past him, then
averted his head and looked down Royal Avenue. When he looked up Castle Street again Cloop had shifted his position. He was moving slowly, still seated on one leg, edging himself labouriously down towards the bank. When he saw Sammy looking at him again he stopped and waved.

Sammy’s face remained impassive. “It’s almost lunchtime,” he thought to himself. “The worst possible time.” Lunchtime was when Mr Timmons, the manager, left the bank. He would be going out the door just as Cloop arrived. Sammy sighed. It was just his luck, he thought uncharacteristically; it was going to be one of those days. Such a lovely day, too. He glared again at Cloop, who was slowly pushing himself into an upright position. He gestured to Sammy, then resumed his slow passage towards the bank. Sammy clasped his hands together in exasperation; he scowled down at the pavement and swung his hands apart. “Ah well,” he thought, “nothing else for it. I’d better head him off.”

Cloop was now almost at the bank’s front window, but he stopped and leaned against the wall as Sammy walked slowly towards him.

“Mr McArdle,” Cloop greeted him. “Mr McArdle, I was just sitting down there enjoying the sun.”

Sammy glared sullenly at him.

“I was just relaxing there with not a care in the world.”

Sammy stopped before him.

“And I looked up here and here you were all on your own-i-oh. Now don’t worry,” he said, anticipating Sammy’s next move. “Don’t worry, Mr McArdle, you won’t have to move me today. Nawh, that’s not why I came up here. You just looked so alone and so worried lookin’.” Cloop shoved his hand into the pocket of his tattered coat. “So I just said to myself: it’s not fair me sitting here without a worry in the world and Mr McArdle up there like all belonging to him was dead. So I brought you up a wee smoke, so I did.” Cloop drew his hand from his pocket. His fingers clutched the butt of a cigarette and a whole one. He put the butt in his mouth and pointed the other one at Sammy.

“Here you are now. Give’s a light and I’ll leave you in peace.”

Sammy looked at him. He looked past the cigarettes and Cloop’s outstretched hand; he looked beyond his unshaved face. He looked along Castle Street and sighed. In the sunlight a shop window winked at him.

“Okay, Mr McArdle?” Cloop asked. “You really shouldn’t let things get you down. Especially on such a nice day. Here, have a smoke.”