Two Walls and a Roof (21 page)

In total panic we all began to push open the doors and jump out into the raging flood. The minute I got out into the water it caught hold of me, and I could feel the current pulling and tearing at me as I had jumped out on the wrong side of the car. I felt no cold from the water, just a sheer terror and a desire to live come over me. The water was soon up to my waist, and to save myself from being swept away, I tried to hold onto the car door
. E
ven though all this drama was happening fast, it seemed to me to be going on in a kind of slow motion and I saw the others all around me moving real slowly.  I felt sure that my life was over, when Blac
k John grabbed hold of my jacket.
I grabbed hold of his hands
,
and both of us waded to safety clutching onto the car as we went. I know without doubt that he saved my life that night, and to my shame I don’t ever remember even thanking him because I was so frightened.

To this day I can recall that sinking feeling that we were all going to drown there and then
,
and that I was too young to die in that place.  I
think the trailer both saved us
and almost drowned us because the fast moving current just could not move the car while
the trailer was attached to it,
and by pure luck, the trailer was still on the road.

After the initial shock wore off, which in Kyrl’s case was after about five minutes, he says to Black John, “John, I think we need to take off the trailer and push the
bitch out of this water. W
hat do you think
?
”
Never as much as ‘t
hat was a close one lads’
or
‘
are ye all ok there
, a
nyone been drowned
’
for example
. N
o
, not Kyrl. H
e had a stone to erect, and by God he would do it that night
. F
ailure was not an option for him. As he saw it, no one had drowned and we couldn’t stay there all night, so we had to do something. This was always Kyrl’s
way of dealing with any crisis:
take immediate and decisive action
. I
t did not matter whether that action was right or wrong, as long as you did something
,
it was all ok.  I loved that way of thinking, as you always felt he would get you out of the situation somehow and he always did.

After a bit of a debate, it was decided that we had to risk being swept away once again, so we were going to have to go back into the water and push the car out from the front. As if to quell the obvious fear of the river, Kyrl kept saying, “Tis not a fucken riv
er, tis a flood across the road. U
nder the water is the road, and it’s as solid as a rock
,
so let’s get at it lads”. I believe he simply would not accept in his mind that there was a huge current of water crossing this road, and he just did not believe in danger of any kind. But I knew that I was not going back into that river no matter what he said.  We detached the trailer and saw that the car only moved another foot or two in the current, but at least it did not get swept away.  With Kyrl and Black John first in, despite misgivings
,
the rest of us followed and after a struggle, we pushed the car right back out of the flood. Kyrl then got at the engine and kept at i
t until it spluttered into life. Then with a big cheer we re-
attached the trailer and headed back the road to some pub he had passed earli
er. We went in
soaked, cold, and h
ungry, and in my case trembling and
still scared to death. There they gave us tea and drink as we told of our escape. Most of that part of the night is a blur to me now, as I think I was constantly shivering more with fright than from cold, and I kept thinking about what had happened earlier. They told us where the graveyard was and that it was nearer than we thought, so then at about eight o’clock at night, we arrived at the gates of the cemetery
. E
ven though still wringing water from our clothes
,
we had the stone erected by midnight. I think I was about sixteen years old then, and all they could talk about on the way home
was how I was so scared of fire
when it was really water I should have been scared of. Peals of laughter continued over and over with Black John and Buddo later arguing over the name of the river that had almost drowned us all. I believe it was the river Ma
i
gue
,
and I often pass over it these days with a shiver running up my spine.  When I eventually got home aroun
d two in the morning
Nannie was waiting and distracted with worry, having had a bad feeling all day as well. I just told her it was a
long day and that we got soaked.
I’d say she felt it better not to ask about the job, as her John was alive and home and gone to his bed exhausted.

Uncle Kyrl had no sense of danger whatsoever. D
uring the winter he used a home-
made gas heating system to heat his picture hall. It was plumbed like a water system, and he and Black John had done all that work in an afternoon. That plumbing was so bad that it was always leaking gas, and the joke in Buttevant was that Kyrl Cahill’s hall had the best pictures ever, because you got the ‘real experience’ in his hall.  If Kyrl was showing a film about the gas attacks of World War One, then you got actually gassed in his hall as you watched.  Even more likely though, and as if to add further realism to your experience, you also ran the risk of being blown to atom
s by an impending gas explosion
because of those leaks.

Kyrl saw it differently though
. H
e saw this gas leaking as a ‘complete waste’ of his gas, and it had to be sorted before the winter ended, so one Sunday he asked me if I had a ‘good nose’ on me
. W
hen I assured him that I did, he told me to join him in the hall for some gas fixin
g work. I was all for an extra few bob
until he and his cohort
,
Black John, told me their plan was to turn the gas full on from the huge tank out the back, and then go along the pipes with a lighting cigarette lighter, all the whil
e watching for
‘the little’ flame that would erupt at the gas leak. I thought they were joking at first, but no, that was their plan and I was supposed to go ahead with the ‘young nose’ and smell out the gas leaks before they arrived on with the lighter and the guaranteed explosion. I flatly refused that job, and a
fter much ribbing I compromised
and agreed to work the gas valve on the tank safely outside the building. With the back doors wide open
,
they agreed to shout out the
‘on-
off
’
commands to me and that was my compromise. They had to do without the ‘young nose’, as I intended keeping it on my head that day. They spent hours at this gas work, and actually did find all the leaks, or at least to a level that seemed to satisfy Kyrl regarding his losses
. M
y predicted explosion never happened either. Black John assured me again that
Michael had named me correctly
as a chicken, and as he was leaving
,
Kyrl says as if to comfort me
,
“Ahh don’t mind Black John, sure we might have blown up and then you’d have been right”, such was his wit a
nd seriousness at the same time.
I never knew which was real with him.

Father had numerous stories about Kyrl and his lack of any sense of danger too. One time when Kyrl had become quartermaster, or somehow was in charge of a small local defence force known as the LDF, he took his platoon out on
maneuvers
one night
. A
s they crossed a big field, a very dangerous and prize bull took offence at their intrusion. The bull charged and Kyrl shouted to his force
, “Stand yer ground I tell ye”
. It had no effect, as all the men began to run for the gate and
the ditches in overall panic.
Kyrl, who seemed unconcerned at this Pamplona event, kneeled down
,
pulled back the bolt on his 303
rifle
,
and as the bull turned on him and charged, he shot it dead within feet of where he was kneeling. There wa
s a big investigation of course
as it had been a prize bull, and the farmer was demanding compensation from the State and threatening legal action. Kyrl was brought before an investigating council and the judge concluded that he was on official business, had the right to bear arms with live ammunition, and as commander on the night, he took the correct decision to protect his men. All charges were dismissed and he became the talk of the town, being the man with the guns and no fear whatsoever.

I remember also that the attic part of his home was like an armoury. We used to play there among the rifles, bullets and Lugers. Big Kyrl didn’t l
ike it, but every chance we got
Kyrle and I would sneak up to his attic and became gangsters
.
I’m sure that the only reason we didn’t kill each other was that those guns were never loaded and we didn’t know how to load them yet.

Kyrl was also a musician. He played with the father in his band purely to make money. He had no love for music much, and saw it once again as a means to an end. Michael O’Callaghan
,
a great local musician and dear friend of Kyrl
’
s
,
told me one
time that my uncle Kyrl was a ‘m
echanical player’ unlike my dad, who was a true lover
of the notes. Michael said,
“Kyrl Cahill had taught himself how to read music by sheer determination, but only ever saw black dots on the page, not notes”
. As we chatted about his music
he told me that if Kyrl was playing and saw a fly move cross the page, it was quite likely that he would ‘play the
fly’, only ever seeing the dots;
and he was serious about it.

There was a logical progression from music and dancing to entering the entertainment business
, so that in later years
Big Kyrl somehow managed to either lease, or ultimately buy the Old British Legion Dance Hall. This hall then became his main source of income. Both K
yrle and I soon became his part-
time workers in the hall, and we had numerous adventures there over the coming years. Kyrle became his projectionist for the cinema and I was known as the ‘ticket man’, both collecting the tickets and ushering the punters to their seats with my flashlight.

After starting the cinema he
realize
d that he could charge more for comfort
,
and set about doing that. He converted the stage area into what he termed ‘The Balcony’ and there he installed some softer seats at a much higher price. The plebs in the cheap
section, known as ‘ninepennies’,
got to sit on rows of old hard wooden seats from a disused church. My job also entailed not allowing the plebs to sneak up to the balcony after the movie began. I was like a yoyo going from side to side all night long and rarely got to see any film myself, and all this for a miserly sum each week, as his theory was that we were family and didn’t deserve payment.

During the Buttevant Cahermee festival days when the town would have all kinds of revelry based around its famous horse fair, Kyrl would reconvert his picture hall back into the original dance hall. This would mean a total removal of all seats and the ‘Balcony’ would soon be turned into the stage area for the bands. He would hire out the hall to the local
c
ommittee for a share of their profits from the many dances they held there, and to add to his profits, one year he decided to open an ‘exclusive’ mineral bar as an added attraction.

Kyrle and I were going to be working in this ‘bar’, which turned out to be a huge hole he had blown through the side wall of the hall. It opened out into a small alleyway that he also owned, and he put a sheet of iron across the top of this alley to act as a ‘roof’. A large wide board was laid across the bottom of the hole to act as a counter, and in
side on the alley side we stood
on two but
ter boxes or old mineral crates
to give us ‘height’ as Kyrl called it. He said ye better be higher than the tinkers or they
will play ‘mockie bawn with ye’.
I had no idea what that even meant, but it sounded ominous to me even then.

Our mineral stock was stacked in the alley beside us, and it was just tough luck if it rained on us
. H
e said he didn’t care about ‘a sup of water’ landing on us as long as we made him the money.  On the face of it, it seemed easy enough as all we had to do was stand on our boxes and sell bottles of orange. I thought the first night went very well, but not so Kyrl. Accord
ing to him
we had sold no way near enough ‘drink’, and his answer was to nail all the windows shut before the next night
’
s dance.