Two Walls and a Roof (15 page)

The flames were following these two all their lives.  They had a business blasting stubborn trees and old hay barns for farmers.  Arthur had numerous boxes of gelignite and other explosives in his workshop in the centre of the town.  One evening he and the father were fixing some engine in the workshop with the gelignite stacked in boxes nearby. When suddenly the engine malfunctioned and it burst into
flames, not panicking this time
as they were sober, they got a crowbar and stuck it through the blazing engine and lifted it out to the back yard where it burnt out.  Little did the innocent people of Buttev
ant
realize
the escape they had
that day, or know the dangerous life they lived when those two maniacs were at work.

The father had many personal stories. He either had an attraction for trouble or he was prone to bad luck. Some things he told me about were so funny that I used to question if they actually happened, and in a strange way my own children have asked the same question of me in relation to my mad life.

One story stands out for me. It was at a time when my father was about 28 years old. He used to visit Gracie, his mother
,
each day, and even though he was married by then, he would stay with her till late at night helping and chatting
,
and I suppose trying to cadge the money for a pint.

Some distance down the street an actua
l certified lunatic was living. H
is name escapes me, but he took a great liking to the father. I’m sure my father liked him as well as he always spoke warmly of him even though it was often in jest. One night around midnight as the father left Gracie’s, it began to really lash down with rain. Lightning flashed and thunder rocked the town and everyone ran for shelter
,
especially the late pub drinkers. Everyone ran except the father. He never ran anywhere
. I
n all my life I never saw him run once. So he walk
ed briskly down the main street
without a coat or hat. As he walked home he passed pubs and closed shops and onlookers at the lightning. When he got to the lunatic
’
s door
,
who should be standing there
but
none other than the lunatic himself
,
gawking out as well. Seeing his good friend getting drowned, he shouted to the father, "Hey Cahillo
,
Cahillo
,
wait for me
.
I’ll give you a shelter with my new umbrella". The father
,
being polite and also being afraid of the lunatic who was a lot bigger than him, decided to humour him and stood in the rain. In seconds
,
out ran the lunatic dragging his umbrella behind him. Then in a real suave gesture he proceeded to open it out and raise it above their heads. Then with his arm wrapped around the father
’
s shoulder like bosom buddies, they proceeded to walk slowly down the stre
et. This would be normal enough
except for the fact that there was no cloth on the lunatic’s umbrell
a -
not a stitch, just a series of bent spikes sticking out in all directions. As they continued on down the town, the lunatic kept telling the father how lucky it was for him that he had his best umbrella handy. The lunatic continued to ignore the peals of laughter coming from the onlookers, and father used to say that he thought he would never get home. Father was too embarrassed or scared to say anything, and the lunatic refused to run, so on they went arm around arm with the lightning flashing, the rain lashing, and a whole town of b
owsies laughing their heads off
at the
‘
two
’
lunatics.

Father
told me that his last memory was of seeing the lunatic walking back up the town
,
umbrella up spikes out
,
and him impervious to all the jibes from Buttevant
’
s
revelers
. The scene is
,
for me
,
all the more funny because at that time the street was only lit on one side, and the lunatic was walking back on the darkened side. He would be almost invisible until a flash of lightning came along,  then suddenly he would appear from the gloom like in a horror film, only to disappear once again just as fast. He was supposed to have been certified as sane from the mental home, but he was most definitely insane, and for a time their walk of fame was the town’s big news. I believe from then on father came home earlier and crossed the street to avoid his friend.

He told me too of another actual event which he witnessed and which was sad and hilarious in a strange way. This was during his hackney days and he had been given the job of taking a fare to a local wedding. This fare was a poor man who had a terrible speech impediment and stuttered a lot. The man was travelling alone to the wedding and confided in the father that he hoped for a miracle by finding ‘a loose woman’ at the same wedding. His idea of
‘
loose
’
was simply a woman who was unattached
,
lest I give the modern impression of the term, and at an Irish wedding
,
a woman on her own would indeed be a miracle. The father was all encouragement as he liked him and tried to build up his courage and confidence. As it happened, by a total accident
,
there was indeed a single girl there also, and again by pure coincidence she too had an impediment almost as bad as the father’s friend. To make it even worse
,
the father actually knew her but his fare did not.  As the day wore on
,
Frank
the fare laid eyes on her early
and fell in love immediately
. S
he too spotted the similar loner to herself across the floor. Father could see a disaster looming and when Frank began describing his plans and looking for more encouragement, the father tried his best to persuade him against such a meeting. But it was no use and he told the father to
, “F
fffuuckk off
,” saying
maybe he
w
as just j
ea
lous and wanted
a go at her him
self. The dancing began and the lady was left standing by the wall. Off went Frank across the floor, all fired up from the drink
. H
e made a bee line for the woman
and
says to her
,
“
Woood youuuu likkke to to dddance
?”
With that she drew out her fist
,
gave him an unmerciful clatter ac
ross the face and say
s back to him
, “
Dddon
’t yoou ddaree mmooock mmock mme
you fufkkken baa baa bassstard
”
. All hell soon broke loose
and she burst into tears. Then
the more he tried to explain in his stutter, the worse it got. The father
,
initially seeing the humorous side
,
waited to see what would develop, but soon he felt sorry for both of them and he went across to explain the sad fact that they were both in a similar situation. I never knew if they hit it off later on in
the day, but hopefully they did
and had their own wedding
. T
he father wasn't invited if they did
,
as he would surely have remembered it.

My father could tell these stories for hours at a time and as a young lad I could listen as long as he told them. Our lives were so much simpler then and happy too, but this was usually in the middle of the week, when he had no money for the demon drink, and the weekend was far far away.

Even though he tried and tried to succeed in life, drama and misfortune seemed to follow my f
ather
. He
had saved some thousands of pounds from the dances he wa
s running and he ventured into the
hackney business
. H
e bought a big American
s
tation wagon
which was
to act as a band wagon, a hackney car, and a car for pleasure.  It really was a beautiful sight apparently and he only
got to use
it for a short time when
,
as usual, a fire disaster struck. He was taking May Sheehan, my butter woman, to Fermoy town, and just outside the village of Castletownroche the back wheel flew off.  I was told that the previous night Big Kyrl had been out with a woman and he had gotten a flat wheel. It was raining hard and he rushed the wheel changing business
,
leaving the nuts too loose.  So it was no surprise that when father rounded a bend at the Grotto
,
off flew one of the back wheels.  The car tilted down at the rear, and in typical form
,
this was on the side of the petrol tank. The car had no petrol cap and they were using an old rag stuffed into the tank’s opening as a cover. The axle began scraping the road and showering the back of the car with sparks. Sparks and petrol are a deadly mix and the inevitable happened. Father
,
seeing a fire coming from the back of the car, realized the danger quickly and screeched to a halt. He ran round the car and pulled May out quickly, just as the tank and the wooden car exploded in flames. They were very lucky to escape with their lives. The car rapidly burnt down to the chassis and as he had no insurance, he watched as his thousands were gone up in smoke. I really believe that my father never did fully recover financially from that disaster. He saw his livelihood go up in smoke before his very eyes, and considering the value of money then, it
’
s easy to see why he might never recover, but as was typical of my dad, he never blamed Big Kyrl
. H
e would only say
,
“Ahh sure twas an accident”
. F
or Nannie though, once again it confirmed her belief that fire definitely followed ‘them Cahills’.

Castlet
ownroche was also the scene for another more serious drama though
. His band was playing in Fermoy and it had been raining for days. The Awbeg River was in
full
flood and it passes through the little town. On the night of his gig, part of the bridge was after falling into the river and
they screeched to a halt just before crossing it. T
he band members objected
to crossing it
, not wan
ting to drown in the flood, an understandable fear and a bit of a row developed with Kyrl calling them all “A pack of ould women”
. The compromise was reached when father decided to drive across
the bridge by himself
first,
and if he was not swept away
then
they would trust the bridge and walk across
it later
. This took guts I believe and father
was terrified, but he used to say to me “John the show must go on, no matter what”. I think Kyrl had also indoctrinated my dad with his mantra of the end justifying the means. In any case father crossed it and so did his band but they
came
home by some other route. That bridge is only yards from where he burned his station wagon
car.
I often cross it myself
today, and I always think
of my
dear old
dad, every
single
time.

As we grew up I noticed that father would always try to find enough money for a pint or two by doing some handyman job. Mostly he succeeded
,
but not always.  On one occasion he was asked to fix a Hoover vacuum cleaner.  He knew nothing about them at all but the motor had stopped working and he did know about motors. Mother told me that he worked on it all day
,
such was his drive for a pint. Eventually he got it going after much poking, soldering and cleaning.  The father seemed to have got a brainwave during the job as to how to double his money.

He decided to offer to clean Nannie
’
s chimney using the repaired vacuum cleaner.  She was good for a 'fiver' at least, and he knew that she was always afraid of a chimney fire.

He arrived at Nannie
’
s house and started to describe just how dangerous the chimney was looking, and he put the wind up her so much that she was petrified of a conflagration and almost begged him to do something about it. Quick as a flash he arrived back in with his new chimney cleaning device and soon he began to stick pipes and hoses into the chimney breast
, then
turned on the machine. His head was buried in her chimney as he poked and sucked the soot with the hose. The noise was so loud that he could hear nothing and he was impervious to the drama being playing out just behind him.

Nannie had been sitting on her couch just behind his ‘Hoover
’
when he started up the motor.  By then she was getting feeble and moved slowly. Father had forgotten to put the cover properly on to the machine, which accounted for the noise
,
but he had not fitted a bag to it either. He had never seen a Hoover in his life and the customer had removed the original bag before she gave it to him for repair. Within seconds a whirl wind of black soot and dust covered Nannie. She looked like a black person from darkest Africa. He kept poking the hose up into the chimney and she kept being coated in soot, all th
e time roaring for him to stop
and trying to pull herself off the couch to escape.  But he couldn’t hear her over the noise and soon she was totally encased in soot. Poor Nannie just couldn’t get up fast from her couch due to her age, and every time she roared at my father
,
even more soot went down her throat
,
choking her as well as coating her.