The Tay Is Wet (4 page)

Andy was dumbstruck. Ivor started a shrill rendition of “The Whistling Gypsy” as he went about his work. Ivor was a skilled block-layer and it only took him half an hour or so to rebuild the crude wall which Oilly had thrown up the previous evening. He plastered Oilly’s side of the wall and whistled away as he stepped back and admired his handiwork. Then he went outside and around to Andy’s house, whistling as usual. The door was open so he went straight in.

‘I was wondering if you want your side plastered up, Andy?, it’d finish it off nice and neat.’

‘Oh do whatever you like, Ivor, my life is finished here,’ said Andy mournfully.

‘Ah, things are never as bad as they seem, they always get sorted out in the end. You’ll see Andy, auld pal, keep your chin up.’

That evening Ivor had another job to do fixing up an old wall for the Deery’s. As he worked and Sonny and Timmy assisted by carrying blocks they talked about the worsening situation in
the feud between the two elderly brothers.

Sonny said, ‘The best way to bring those two together is to throw a bucket of water over them or even a bag of flour.’

Timmy said nothing, but Sonny’s observation about the bag of flour stuck in his mind. That night he had a brainwave. He had always seen Andy and Oilly going to the village church every Saturday afternoon to confessions. They had done this for about sixty years and generally walked in together. Timmy was used to getting bags of flour from Rattlestown Mill for Henrietta to bake bread. So on Saturday after his lunch he put the white cloth flour bag in the basket of his green bike and headed for the mill. He got two stone weight of the whitest flour and hid himself behind a bush near the church door. But things did not work out as he expected. Oilly arrived on his own and he still looked angry. As he passed the bush and went into the church Timmy observed Andy trudging along to the church about two hundred yards behind his brother. Andy then went inside and
Timmy followed him still carrying the bag of flour. As Andy
reached the seat beside the confession box who comes out of the box right beside him only Oilly. The two of them froze and Timmy seized his chance. He upturned the bag of flour over the two men. Some of the flour fell into the confession box on top of Father Muldoon and he leaped out to see what was going on. Mrs O’Gorman who was arranging flowers on the altar, screamed and then when she saw who was involved rushed forward and started berating Timmy.

‘I saw this lout spilling flour over these poor men and all over the church, he’s ruined the whole place,’ she shrieked.

The two brothers looked like two white ghosts with flour covering them from head to toe. Fr Muldoon said nothing for a few seconds, as he quickly sized up the situation. Then he started roaring with laughter. On seeing the priest laugh Oilly began to laugh and Andy then began to laugh. Then Timmy himself joined in the laughter. Mrs O’Gorman still looked like thunder. ‘Is everyone here gone stark raving mad?’ she yelped.

The priest put his arms around the two brothers. ‘Come with me, lads, and you too, Timmy, this calls for a celebratory drink,
now only a little one mind. We’ll leave Mrs O’Gorman in peace. No use crying over spilt flour, Haw, haw, haw.’

Ivor Nale got another job that day, knocking down the blocked up doorway and refitting the original wooden door for the, now reconciled, Andy and Oilly.

Ivor’s belle, lovely Rosie, was worried

His forty year courtship unhurried

She feared that herself

Would be left on the shelf

And as an old maid she’d be buried

Buddy Bryson was known as the “J. Arthur Rank” of Roggart. He had started his cinema in the 1940’s in an old galvanized tin shed which his father owned just off Main Street. The shed, which was used during the day to store a hay slide, a corn winnowing machine, and some horse harness, was christened “The Grand.” For each performance the hay slide had to be removed from the shed and replaced by seating and Buddy always had willing helpers to do this as there would be free admission for his “assistants.” One of his assistants was Timmy Deery, who delightedly did any heavy work, such as moving equipment in and out and arranging the seating. The seating mostly consisted of wooden planks placed on old cement blocks with about a dozen old tubular chairs. Jem Bryce took the money at the door and Buddy himself worked the projector from the top of the winnowing machine which provided a solid foundation. Frequently the film would break down, if the reels had not been rewound properly by the previous user. The early films were always made
in black and white and when the first colour film arrived the excitement was unbelievable. This was “The Great Caruso” with Mario Lanza and Ann Blyth. The film ran for three weeks and many went to see it several times. Everyone in town was singing operatic arias for months afterwards.

Timmy Deery was fifteen years old when he first visited Roggart on his own. He had heard about the new “Grand” picture house from Ivor Nale and the first film he saw was a horror piece called “Invasion of the Worms.” His favourite western was “Canadian Pacific” starring Randolph Scott. It was the story of the building of the railway across Canada and Timmy was so smitten that he was hooked on western films from that time onwards. He was given a special seat in the middle back row with his back leaning against the winnowing machine and nobody dared take that seat, or there would be the mother and father of a row. Many young couples who were going out together frequented the “Grand” and, much to Timmy’s annoy
ance, they always crowded into the back row and he seemed to
be squashed in the middle of them. Also, they did not always pay much attention to the action on the screen, but kissed and cuddled, ate sweets and talked in whispers.

One evening Timmy was standing outside waiting for the programme to start, and Ivor Nale, who was in his late fifties, and many years older than Timmy, came along with a lady called Rosie, whom Timmy knew as Ivor’s girl friend. They had been going out together for the best part of forty years and the ladies of the village sewing circle had long since given up on seeing them walk down the aisle.

‘Poor Rosie,’ they would say, ‘imagine being strung along by that lug of a Nale fellow, sure he’ll never propose to her, wasted the best years of her life waiting on that miserable wretch.’

Sonny, one day, commented that Rosie herself had recently said to Ivor, ‘I think we should get married,’ and Ivor replied, ‘Sure who in their right mind would have either of us.’ Sonny thought this was a great joke and roared laughing. Timmy did not understand what he was laughing at.

Anyway, on this occasion, there was a third person accompa
nying the older couple. It was Rosie’s niece, a pleasant looking girl of about seventeen and she smiled at Timmy, who blushed and looked upwards at the night sky, pretending he was interested in the stars.

‘That’s Jupiter up there,’ he said to Ivor.

‘Really,’ said the girl, in a posh English sounding accent, ‘I thought Jupiter was only visible from the southern hemisphere.’

Timmy glared at Ivor who seemed intent on prolonging the conversation. Putting one arm around the girl’s shoulders and the other around Timmy’s he pushed the two of them so close together that Timmy’s nose touched the girl’s forehead.

‘Timmy, this is Wendy, here on holiday from England, Wendy this is Timmy,’ he said cheerily, ‘Now you two go in there together and discuss the stars. This is my treat. Here, Timmy, here’s a bag of sweets.’

There was no use arguing with Ivor. Rosie murmured for him
to leave them alone and that maybe they did not want to discuss
the planets. But Wendy was glad to have someone nearer to her own age to talk to. She had been staying with her Aunt Rosie for a week now and was a bit bored.

She followed Timmy in and sat down beside him. The first film was a Roy Rogers cowboy, which did not really interest her. However, as soon as it began, Timmy became totally immersed in it. He forgot completely about the young English girl sitting beside him. He opened the bag of sweets which Ivor had given him and began eating them and at the same time being transfixed by the action on screen. Wendy waited patiently to be offered one, but in a few minutes Timmy had emptied the whole bag of marshmallows. He burped as the last one went down. One of Timmy’s jobs at the cinema was to switch on the lights for the interval but on this night he forgot to switch them on. As the first film ended Buddy waited for a few seconds and when nothing happened he leaned down from the top of the winnowing machine to see where Timmy was and the reel of film which he was holding in his hand caught on a protruding part of the machine and flew forward in an arc and landed on
the tray of ice-cream which the usherette held in readiness to sell to the patrons.

Needless to say, the reel fell out of its box, as Buddy had opened the catch. There was much cursing and swearing by Buddy and his friends as they attempted to rewind the reel of film. The crowd was good-humoured and was used to diversionary interruptions although this one was a more exciting sideshow than usual. Eventually the show got going again but several times the screen filled with strange flashing shapes and the story was out of sequence.

Timmy got a tongue-lashing from Buddy and was in a huff at the end of the show. Sonny had arranged to give Ivor a lift home and so himself, Rosie, Wendy and Timmy all piled into Sonny’s old Hillman Minx for the lift. Rosie lived at the end of a mile-long narrow lane, which was in bad repair. It was a fine summer’s night and, as he pulled up at the entrance to Rosie’s lane Sonny said, ‘It’s a lovely night for a walk in the moonlight,
the old car would get lost in those potholes, so it would.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rosie, ‘The road-men are always going to fix them.’

Sonny switched off the engine and as nobody moved he began whistling to himself.

‘Well, lads,’ he said, looking ‘round at Ivor and Timmy.

‘Well, what?’ said Ivor.

‘Are yez going to escort these girls down the lane?’

‘Well, now, a fellow would have to think about that.’

At this remark Rosie brusquely opened the door and got out.

‘Come on Wendy, good night, Sonny, and thanks for the lift.’

As the two girls set off, Ivor wound down the side window and called after them, ‘goodnight to yez,’ while Timmy muttered ‘g’night.’

Sonny turned to Ivor and Timmy.

‘Yez are a grand pair, letting those poor girls find their own way down that dark lane at night.’

‘Well, Rosie is long enough walking that lane to know her own way by now,’ said Ivor as he settled into his seat. ‘Anyway, they have a flash lamp.’

Oilly’s hair they cut off at the root,

But he got a new hat which looked cute

This made the girls dizzy

And all in a tizzy.

The scoffers it caused to be mute.

Andy and Oilly Malooney had become friends again. Oilly, however, still held bald men in low esteem.

‘There’s just something lacking in them,’ he confided to Timmy one day as they wound hay ropes to tie down the four large pikes of hay which stood in the corner of the Deery’s haggard. The hay ropes were manoeuvred across the tops of the hay pikes by Timmy climbing up the ladder and lifting the ropes with his pitchfork. He was on the last rope when his fork caught in a piece of wire which was attached to a high branch of a large tree.

‘Drat,’ said Timmy, as the wire fell to the ground. ‘That’s the radio banjaxed.’

The aerial for the Deery’s radio consisted of about fifty yards of woven copper wire attached to a socket on the back of the radio. This was fed out through the back parlour window and attached to a high branch on an old elm tree.

‘We’ll have to leave it for now or I’ll be late for the pictures, I’ll fix it tomorrow.’

Timmy jumped up on his green bicycle and pedalled off furiously, leaving Oilly to tidy up the haggard.

‘Ah, the young people nowadays, always rushing for everything. Bedad in my day things were different.’ Oilly’s mutterings were suddenly interrupted by a woman’s voice and an angry woman’s voice at that.

‘Did you dimwits knock down the radio aerial?’ demanded Mrs Deery. ‘Well you better get it up again and quickly because Din-Joe is on in ten minutes time and that’s one program that I’m not going to miss.’

‘Oh, bedad, mam, you could never afford to miss Din-Joe. He plays only lovely music so he does. He had a fella playin’ the fiddle last—’

‘You’ll be playing the harp if that aerial is not fixed now, at once, immediately,’ Mrs Deery interrupted.

‘Don’t worry, Mam, I won’t be a minute putting it up again,’
said Oilly.

Oilly picked up the end of the wire and looked up at the tree. There was a lowish branch which he decided would do to hook the wire on to and as luck would have it a tar barrel stood underneath the branch. Oilly clambered onto the barrel and managed to attach the aerial to the tree.

‘Now, Mrs Deery, you can listen to all the Din-Joes you like,’ he muttered to himself. ‘There was none of these modern “Din-Joes” squawking out of radios in my day.’