Two Walls and a Roof (10 page)

It was no secret that the ghost of Johnnie
’
s wife Lill was
often seen in that same room. S
he was seen there leaning on the mantelpiece smiling down at my sister Lill. No one was ever afraid of her, but I never saw her myself. Maybe she was the angel who saved father from his ‘assassination’ and mother from a jail sentence, as what j
udge would believe such a story
was simply a tragic accident.

The back kitchen
,
as we called it
,
was a tiny little room about eight feet by six fe
et. It had a metal roof and
a cardboard ceiling much the same as Nannie
’
s one
,
and just like hers it too, was a fire hazard
. F
or all I know
, f
ather may have made both of them. For many years
,
the toilet was also located inside in this little back kitchen.
It was a walled-
off section, once again made out of hardboard a
nd
painted blue. Mother hated this toilet with a vengeance, and constantly wanted a toilet outside her cooking area. Eventually she did succeed, and when father was building it he swore that she made yet another assassination attempt on him. The back kitchen had a cooker and an old stone sink for washing. There was a big window above the sink facing the river and Sheahens field, as well as looking down into our little back yard. Our back yard was about thirty feet long and about ten feet wide. It was surrounded by high walls on both sides and a shed belonging to Eily Paddy sealed off the bottom of the yard. On the left side was another shed owned by the priest, and it had a big aerial pole attached to its roof. We were to put this pole to good use later, and at a young age both Kyrle and I began climbing these
walls just for the fun of it. S
oon we were like cats with no fear of heights at all. Every time mother
saw us on high, she would be fa
inting with fright and go complaining to the father. His words w
ere always the same, “
Belenda, will you have sense, sure if they got up they will get down”. Then off in he would go and sit on his throne.

After constant pleadings, rows, and threats, father eventually built on an even smaller shed and attached this to our back kitchen, extending the roof and putting in a plastic sheet to allow light onto his throne. Here he located our ‘new’ toilet and mother
’
s sunken bath. She had always wanted a sunken bath, the forerunner of a Jacuzzi, and after she finally got father to make it, we all discovered that it was alm
ost impossible to get out of it once you got in
because father had not added a rail to cling onto, and you literally had to roll over on your knees and crawl out onto the floor. It was such a disaster that it never got used.

The addition of the bathroom sealed off the East wind and finally made our little living room into the cosiest room in the house. Mother had a fantastic collage of family pictures hanging on E
i
ly’s wall. Father had tried hanging this collage originally with a six inch nail, and the na
il went right through into Eily
Paddy
’
s house next door. She came running out complaining
,
and after father pulled the nail back he became convinced that we would never again have a secret, because Eily could hear everything we said. He became paranoid about filling the hole and later hung the pictu
re on what was a rarity for him -
a much smaller nail. The collage had amazing photos in it, and I loved to look at it. Across from this picture hung a huge wooden mirror and it seemed to be held up by a mantelpiece resting over the fire grate. The mirror and mantelpiece held all of mother
’
s little knick knacks, ornaments, and post cards. As she rose to a television set, we put it in under the stairs
,
which by then father had redirected to the front shop.  She had a little cabinet under the stairs as well as the television set
,
and that completed our two walls and a roof home.

My brother Kyrle took up fishing when he was about twelve and tried to get me interested in it
,
but that was a complete waste of time. I had no patience for it at all and never caught a single thing, and as far as I know he didn’t have much luck either because I never saw him arrive home with an actual fish
. A
lot of fish talk was heard, but never an actual fish was seen by me.

Our sister Lill
,
who was a few years younger than us
,
was always a potential victim for our practical jokes, and we would play one of our best jokes on her using the one thing Kyrle did actually catch. On one fishing expedition to the river
, Kyrle caught an eel:
not a fish in my view
,
just an eel. It looked like a small snake and even I was unwilling to touch it as it wriggled on the li
ne. We didn’t have the heart or the courage to kill
it
,
unless it suffocated from being out in the air
,
and
it did seem to be alive all the time. We did not know what to do with it
either
, and I’m sure it was Kyrle
’
s idea to put it in Lill
’
s bed and scare her. I admit to concocting the story we used as we walked back home from the river.
Our story would hinge around a z
oo truck transporting a load of dangerous snakes thr
ough Buttevant on the way to a z
oo.  Then after an accident
,
a crate of the snakes would have burst open and they all escape
d. Where else would this happen
but just up the street from our house of course. As we walked home with our eel well hidden, we worked out every detail and how it was to be played out. We would nonchalantly ask mother
(
in the presence of Lill
)
if she had heard anything about the crash up the street
,
and then drop the subject completely. Then later the crash was to be resurrected again with a detailed descr
iption of the deadly snakes and
a lot of questions being thrown at father to add validity to our story. The snakes were deadly Black Mambas obviously, and using my ‘
Knowledge
books’ we would
,
if necessary
,
prove how deadly a bite might be. Our knowledge of antidotes was going to be used
(
and of course the lack of them
),
and details of how slow and painful death would be if bitten. I was in Heaven playing out this scene in my head with Kyrle. Lill would inevitably go to the father and start asking about these snakes on the quiet, if our plan was working.

I checked out the lie of the land while Kyrle snuck the eel in
to the house
in an old bag with his fishing gear. No sign of anyone
,
so he took the eel up to her room and placed it under the covers at the end of the bed. He told me that it was still wriggling away as he left it there. After a long time Lill and mother arrived
,
and after the tea I says to Kyrle
,
“I wonder if they found em all”. Mother says
, “F
ound w
hat?”
Kyrle
,
feigning disinterest says, “The snakes, didn’t you hear of the crash
?
”
Mother seemed
not
to
hear
,
but Lill did and goes
,
“What snakes, I hate snakes, I’m scared of them”
.
I say to her in my older brother voice, “Don’t be worried Lill I'm sure they got them all”.
“What do you mean all?
H
ow many
snakes, how did they get there?
Where did it happen?”
S
he flooded us with questions
,
now looking really concerned. I said I had to go home to Nannie
’
s for my dinner and left Kyrle to handle her questions. We didn’t want to over do it.

He played a blinder so that when I came back later that night she was in a state. Father had arrived in and Kyrle was asking him about Mambas, and which type were the worst. I piped up that I knew already which were real bad, as I had just been reading about them in my
‘
Knowledge books
’
. I knowingly explained that the black type were the most vicious and deadly.  I also confirmed that they don’t like cold and would seek out warmth always, even at the cost of being discovered. Poor Lill was beside herself with impending terror. Then once again we chan
ged the subject and began playing
chess. Lill could not get it out of her head though
. S
he kept asking about the mambas and I kept telling her the
y were well gone, and that the z
oo people just do not allow deadly snakes to escape. Kyrle says
,
“But they did escape”
.
Mother told him to shut up and not to be frightening his sister. This only made Lill even more scared, as by then she felt that something was definitely up and we were trying to play it down.

I
’
d say she was about eight years old then and used to be sent to bed early, and as it neared her bedtime, I was having difficulty holding in the impending laughter. I knew that one look at Kyrle would blow it all, so I said I had to go out the back to the toilet. Lill clings on to the mother and begs her to make sure the door is closed after me in case the snakes come in. I arrived back in trying to look shaken but deliberately doing a bad job of hiding it. Kyrle asks what’s the matter
,
and I say
,
“Nothing, nothing at all”
. He keeps hounding me, and Lill i
s listening intently as I get real close to him and whisper out loud that I thought I saw a mamba out the back. She shrieks out and clings onto mother again. At this stage she is refusing to go to bed unless father checks the room
, which
he does. I was sure it was blown, but he only gave a cursory look
,
probably suspecting we were just playing tricks on her.

He takes her up to bed and again checks the room for her
. S
he got in bed, and still there is no sign of the ‘snake’. He had hardly got down the stairs when w
e heard this unmerciful scream. “
Ma… ma….. I’m bit
….
the snake, the snake, I’m bit I’m going to die ahhhhh ma maaaa
!”
Lill came tearing down the stairs screaming in terror and crying her eyes out
,
clutching her mother
while
all the time pointing to her foot. I fell off the chair laughing
.
Kyrle almost collap
sed with the laughter as well. F
ather jumped up and ran to her, telling her to stop, that ther
e were
no snakes in Ireland. She kept screaming and pointing at her foot. She seemed so sure that she was bit in the foot that father takes a look and saw some kind of mark. At that stage I thought I would be sick from the laughing. He quickly gave her to mother and ran upstairs, and found the eel. He got real mad and I hightailed it home to Nannie
’
s fast. I do think in hindsight that Lill might have been bitten
. S
he swore that she was, and I suppose it may have left a scar on her mind ever since, fearing snakes still, but Kyrle and I laughed at it for weeks and weeks. I was not welcome over there for weeks either, as I believe Kyrle convinced the mot
her that it was all my idea, and
that it was I who put the eel in the bed. Eventually all was forgiven but not forgotten. Lill was saved from further jokes for years after that as I think she did get a terrible fright and we felt sorry for her
. B
esides
,
soon after that we had Eunice and Hugh as new victims.

Lill was close in age to Kyrle and me
,
and as such, when we were all small she felt like ‘one of us’ though we usually just used her for testing out our practical jokes. We all began to grow older together and soon we three became teenagers.

My two other sisters were many years apart, with Eunice being born in such hard times that she was gladly handed over to Nannie to rear
, unlike me
who was stolen by the Nan. Eunice became a virtual slave to Nannie and ultimately became her great confidante in later years. She loved her Nan in a way that my mother love
d her:
selfless, forgiving and everlasting. In Eunice’s schooldays she was a bright girl
,
being constantly harassed by Nannie to be even better than she was, and no matter how well she did, it was never good enough. Michael loved Eunice and called her ‘Wally’
.
I have no idea where he got that name from. Years after I was well gone they would both be in cahoots against the Nan as she got older and crankier and fought the two of them daily. The Nan
’
s house then was almost as dramatic as my mother
’
s place.

As I got older and became addicted to Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon
I needed a sound system that did justice to that amazing album, so I built my own version because I had no money to buy a professional one.

This strange extravaganza was built into a wooden box
,
and for effect I added a lot of red indicator lamps which gave off a good red glow in the dark. I had placed my system under my bed for extra effect and the Nan believed it was just a matter of time before I became incinerated. She would not have liked that, but she was vehemently against joining me in the conflagration. My room was very small and was directly below the Nan’s bedroom, and she had to pass through it to go upstairs. Every night she had this ritual of looking under my bed, expecting to see flames and threatening to have me out the next day if my system was not gone out before me.

With the sound system under my bed I could easily reach down and turn up the volume or change the tape without getting out of bed, and this was the ultimate in pleasure for me.  She was constantly hassling me about the volume and the red glow under the bed, and no matter how much I tried to assure her of its safety, she would say
,
“You’re a Cahill and fire follows that crowd, and I’m not burning for you, so turn that thing off, now”.  In her mind
,
useless Michael would probably escape because he would be writing late into the night bel
ow in the kitchen
, but not her and Eunice. It was a constant battle and the Floyd had to win.  When she got really mad though, I would simply pull the plug to the light in her room above,
as I had originally wired it. What she didn’t know
was that her light was far more likely to set the pla
ce on fire than my sound system
due to my poor wiring skills.

My sound came out of two old car speakers that I had mounted on either side of my bed on the wall, and this sound
,
coupled with the red glow in the dark
,
was amazing to me. I used to come in late from an outing with my friends and immediately start up the
Dark Side
. For those who know that music, the ‘Heart Beat’ at the start would be vibrating the wall
, and about then
the Nan would be shouting down to me to turn it off
, “O
r
y
ou
’
r
e
out, you
’
r
e
out in the morning, I tell you”. This was her usual meaningless threat and I would be waiting in suspense for the ‘alarm clocks’ part of the music to go off and drive h
er totally demented. I loved it. E
ach time it happened the result was almost predictable. Nannie would then demand that Eunice go down and
, “Tell him
tomorrow he’s out, tell him Eunice
.
I said he is out for sure, tell him that I said it, that I have spoken”.  Then she would exhort poor Eunice to
, “Turn that thing off
so we can get some sleep in the name of God”.  This ritual happened quite often and Nannie would always lose out in the
end
because after the whole album played out, it would automatically switch off leaving only the red glow lighting my room, and by then
I would be sound asleep myself while the others higher up
would still be seeing the imaginary flames coming up the stairs to cremate them. I was a bastard I have to admit, as I was addicted to that music and didn’t care a bit how they felt about it. Eunice was so brainwashed by the Floyd that she can still remember the words of some of their songs. Oftentimes Nannie would become so convinced that the place was ‘on fire’ that no matter how cold it was, or how late, she would make Eunice get up and go down and check out my room, which was ‘haunted’
. No one ever told me that
till I had a very frightening experience there some years later, and even then they denied that it was haunted, but Nannie would never sleep there herself.