Two Walls and a Roof (20 page)

Unknown to us they were zeroing in on our transmission, and by the luck of God Kyr
le spotted one of them
slowly driving up the main street as he got fags for the mother. He ran in and tore upstairs shouting all the time, “Turn off
,
turn off
!”
He was as red as a tomato as he pulled out all the plugs
,
shaking like a leaf. “We’re caught, we’re caught, the van, the van
’s on the street…
tracking” I ran over
and looked out the attic window
and there it was, stopped right outside Batt
’
s shop where we can see Batt chatting to the engineer about some match, or his lack of a radio service.

Of course that ended our silencing days. What we did not know at the time,
but heard much later, was that
our little oscillator on its very big aerial had not just silenced Batt
’
s radio, but it had in fact also wiped out every
radio for about a mile around. B
asically the whole of Buttevant had no radio service when we were ‘
on the air’. Fortunately for us
we were never actually caught, as the father would have been taken to court and fined. We were too young to be prosecuted, but after a while the word leaked o
ut that it was ‘them mad Cahill
s’ that had wiped out the radio
s in the town. Many years later
that local story was to be rem
embered by one of four businessmen
who were starting a pirate radio station in Mallow, and who
were having no luck technically:
until they called on me
. T
hat call would change my life, but first I had a lot of
living still to do
.

Even though I loved e
lectronics, it was not my only pastime. I also loved films, playing hurling and handball, but from an early age I think I loved playing practical jokes on people, and hated being the butt of such jokes played back on me. I almost always got into some kind of trouble over these jokes as well, but it never stopped me from taking an opportunity when it arose. On one occasion while on a visit to my Aunt May’s house in Waterford, and being about fourteen years old then, my practical joking got a bit out of hand. That incident was the cause of me being violently thrown out of the cinema in Waterford city.  I think it was called the Ritz and I’m sure it is now probably long gone.  It happened to be showing a horror film about some kind of a hand that was choking people to death. I can’t remember the name of it right now, but this was supposed to be a great horror film and I wanted to see it for weeks.  I got to go see it on a Sunday
m
atinee, but I h
ad the great misfortune of
sitting behind two girls who never stopped talking all through the film.  I was sick of telling them to shut up, but I was getting nowhere with them.
Worse still for me
was the fact that one of them had already seen the film, and she kept telling her friend of all the good scary parts coming up.  I was livid by the time the intermission came round, and so I decided action was needed.  I went out to th
e shop
and bought two ‘iced lollypops’ and held them in my hands so as to freeze my hands and turn them into iced claws. Even though in pain, I was waiting patiently for an appropriate ‘good
part’ to arrive. It was summer
time and the girls were wearing d
resses with low cut backs:
sitting ducks for my master plan.  During a scene where the hero was driving through a forest in a thunderstorm, and where the claw was making its way across
the seat and about to choke him;
I suddenly dropped my lollies and ‘clawed’ both of the girls on the back of the neck.  Th
e shock they got was incredible. O
ne of them literally leaped about two foot clean out of her seat and into the air. The other girl almost fainted.  Then the screaming started
. I
t was way beyond what I cou
ld have expected. A
panic took over the crowd, and it got so bad that all the lights soon came on.  The girls were shaking and clutching each other
,
trembling all the time
. T
hey were so scared that those beside them became frightened too. Some people were trying to console them and some were leaving the cinema in terror
. I
t was mayhem and I had caused all of this.  By then it was damage limitation time for me, and as I was trying to look innocent
.
I kept trying to kick the damn lollies down under the sea
ts in front;
hiding the evidence so to speak. At the same time some fucker kept pointing at me and shouting
,
“He did it, he did it, I saw him”.  The bouncers were very mad and roughly dragged me by the scruff of the neck clean out of my seat and kicked my arse all the way out to the front door. There they literally threw me out onto the street. As I pulled myself up from the pavement I was cheeky enough to
go back into the ticket office
and demand a refund, saying I had only seen half the film.  The ticket seller shouted back in to the bouncers
,
“He
’
s back, he
’
s back
,
” and when they made a drive for me, I felt I’d forget the refund and took off running. I could see from the expression on their faces that I was in for a real hiding if they caught me, as by then l
oads of people were leaving
and demanding their money back. I had managed to ruin the film for all concerned, but I still blame the girls for it.

It was also during one of my many trips to Aunt May
’
s in Waterford that I had another one of my many near death escapes. Aunt May lived in Sallypark
,
a housing ar
ea on the northern side of the River Suir
. The main road into Waterford ran along in front of the houses and then crossed over a railway bridge going into Waterford’s railway station. This bridge was very dangerous as it was very steep and the road made a sharp zig zag as it crossed over it. Each Sunday my cousin Michael and I would be despatched off to Mass
,
crossing this bridge via the narrow footpath. On this particular Sunday
,
Michael and I were walking alone to Mass and had got to the middle of
the zig zag part of the bridge when an old-
style milk tanker came rapidly around behind us. It was closely followed by a small car full of Mass goers. The tanker had its tanks arranged in rows
,
unlike how it’s done today, and the speed of the truck and the zig zag pattern of the road caused the rear tank to roll off the back of the truck
. It missed
me by literally a foot and then it squashed four of the five people in the car travelling close behind it. They were probably killed instantly
,
and the milk and blood washed over my legs as I was that close to it all. I
’
ll never forget the screams of agony of the old lady I saw crushed before me that day.  In
shock, we just continued on to M
ass and thought no more about it until later that day at dinner tim
e when
Aunt May said, ”Did you lads hear of the terrible accident on the bridge
?
” I piped up and said
,
“Yeah sure we were there right when it happened, we saw it all happen
,
” and I went back to eating my dinner. Silence descended on Aunt May and her husband Barry. My Aunt May then looked across at Barry and then slowly and gently they began to ask us about it, but they did not pursue it too much. Later that day Barry said he would take Michael and me for a drive, and as he did so
,
in a very gentle way
,
he wormed out of us all that had happened. I believe Barry is the reason I don’t have nightmares from that terrible tragedy, as I was only about fourteen years old then and I had seen four people die violently just feet from me. I never forgot the scene as I glanced back at it
. A
lmost all the car was squashed flat and was under the tank with milk still pouring out and running down the road under my feet. Fortunately
,
to my knowledge at least, that incident never affected me traumatically and shows that we are all surely protected throughout our lives. It was one of my early escapes from passing over, but by no means my last, and my next one would be caused by my Uncle Kyrl.

Both Kyrle and I worked for him for long periods at various times in our early years, and on one
occasion
his work was almost the death of me.

He was in his monumental works phase and had been given the job of removing a huge headstone to have it sanded down, re
-
lettered and new names added. This idea of removing a stone was very unusual for him, as most of the times he would letter a new headstone in the workshop, or have it lettered locally in the graveyard using the fat
her as letterer ‘on contract’. P
ayment would amount to a few pints for my dad.

On this particular occasion though, we were taking the stone back to some isolated cemetery deep in County Limerick
and it was winter
time.

I know that it had been raining for days because we were supposed to return the stone some time earlier, and he could not do it because of the rain.  Kyrl had a lot of
handy
men available as casual labourers and one incredibly good friend of his called John O’Brien, affectionately known to us all as ‘Black John’. He got this name because he had jet black hair, looked scruffy always, and was as strong as a black stallion. On the day in questi
on, Kyrl called in all his crew;
myself included, though Kyrle was not around for some reason. Black John was there
, as were two other men;
one called Buddo Reilly and I think his son also
,
or it might have been Black John
’
s son. So in the rapidly failing light
,
we five set off for the wilds of Limerick.

Kyrl
drove a big horse of an old car
which
was attached to a huge trailer
by a makeshift hitch. The massive stone and all our tools
,
plus a few bags of cement had filled the trailer to bursting point, and I had a bad feeling about the whole trip. We set off heading north to Charleville. I was in the back
,
wedged tightly between Buddo and the other lad
,
and both of them were smoking like chimneys. According to Kyrl
,
my job was to keep the World War Two jerrycan, which was filled to the brim
with petrol, from spilling out
and
being ‘wasted’
. He did not
seem to feel a cover was needed
because he had me acting as a human cork, with my hand permanently jammed across the top of th
e jerry
can. The fumes were almost making me giddy, but I was scared to death that a st
r
ay spark from a cigarette or ‘fag’  would set us all alight. Every so often Nannie
’
s words about
‘
fire follo
wing them Cahills’ would surface
and scare me to death. This almost happened when Buddo
’
s companion
,
trying to look cool, flicked his cigarette butt at the open window
. E
ven though I saw it go out, it flew back in again and landed o
n his lap. He started panicking
and began kicking at the can
,
trying to prevent
his m
ickey from burning
.
I too began panicking and screaming tha
t he was going to knock it over
if we didn’t stop. Of course Kyrl just kept on driving
,
and both he and Black John exploded laughing at my panic. Black John then says, “Hey lad, your uncle Michael named you well, sure your notten but an ould chicken, bawk bawk
,
” and more laughter ensued from all the gang. I got so red in the face that I almost set the damn petrol on fire by myself, and I still have no idea where the flying cigarette went. Kyrl never slowed down either, or seemed
to care that we might all burn;
me being the first.

The journey went downhill fast from then on, and we soon got totally lost. Kyrl ne
ver once used a map in his life.
I don’t think he could read one, and we drove round in circles
,
by then in the pitch black of a November evening. No one seemed to care about time though, as we were set on the idea that the stone had to be erected before more rain hit.

On we went
,
all the time discussing where we might be.  Suddenly, out of the foggy gloom
,
I saw what looked
like an old castle on our left
with our road travelling on up over a large steep humpy bridge.  I remember seeing the headlights shine like two searchlights going straight up into the fog as Kyrle drove on up the bridge. Almost immediately, and with total shock, I saw the lights dip right down into a huge fast flowing river straight in front of us
. W
e were going to drown for sure. “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck
,
” shouts Kyrl as he slams on the brakes, but the sheer weight of the big stone pushed us forward into the river, and with a huge splash
,
the front of the
car went completely underwater
with the lights remaining on.  The whole scene felt very eerie as I could see steam
mix with the lights in the fast-
flowing muddy water which was fast entering the front of the car.  In total panic we all scrambled to escape our impending death while Kyrl kept shouting
,
“
O
ut
,
out will ye”.