Two Walls and a Roof (37 page)

Pretty soon I was so desperate that I had to wake up Anthony for help.  He refused
,
telling me that he was no friend of mine. I offered him money though I had no notion of giving it
to him. H
e must have suspected that
,
as he demanded it first.  I actually hadn't got much cash
,
and in trying to find my trousers I felt the first drops of wee squirt out.  Now it was time for real action.  I told him if he didn’t hold open the window I would actually piss on his bed and he would be blamed
. T
hat was a master stroke on my part and came from my Nannie
’
s days of threats to kill me if I wet her bed.  The new threat had the desired effect and he rushed to help
. B
etween us we managed to get
t
his big window open, where he held it for me to climb through.  I actually fell out the window in the end and pissed all over the place
;
myself included.  The relief was so wonderful I almost cried. Then I heard the window click shut.

Anthony
,
the little bastard
,
now had his revenge. He locked the bloody window and leered out at me.  Here I was
,
outside in a caravan park
,
stark naked
,
and a foot from the window where his parents were asleep.  I knew I was then in a fix for sure.  I thought if I go around to Etta’s window and I am caught I will be in real big trouble
,
as being naked outside the girlfriend
’
s window could lead to only one conclusion.  I started tapping the glass and calling to Anthony as quietly as I could, but he ignored me
,
having gone under the blankets p
retending to be asleep, but
I kept it up.  I was nice at first
,
definitely guaranteeing money and friendship for life.  When this didn’t work I resorted to threats.  I said I would actually kill him
,
that I was not joking, and I’d throw his body into the sea where the sharks would eat him.  Then I said I might just half kill him so he would be alive when they ate into him.  All this had no effect on him whatsoever.  I threatened to put snakes in his bed
,
thinking of Lill and the eel
,
and how I would really do it first chance I got, as there must be eels in a sea port.  This got him and he opens his window slightly and says, “You can’t do that
,
there are no snakes here”.  Well it was a start
. A
t least I had got his attention.  I laid on a good story full of flaws, telling him how I planned to get a snake to bite him, but he was always countering my plans with real good arguments
,
so I knew he was biting, no pun intended. I was freezing by then, so I begged to be let in.  He wouldn’t let me in until I said I was sorry for threat
ening to kill him.  Jesus, I say
s to myself
,
is that all he wants
. T
hen I swear I’ll be his friend for life.  With that he gives in and helps me in the window.   This was very difficult for me as I am small and I had to get a bucket to help me up to the right height
. T
hen I half jumped and half pulled myself up and tumbled into the room
, hurting my m
ickey on the catch as I did so.  Only for the pain of that I would have strangled the little rat in his bed.  I was clutching myself with the pain and swearing I was leaving the next day,
thinking
to Hell with Etta, her parents, and their son, I had had enough
. Then sleep
overcame me.

Next morning Etta’s mother says to us all
,
but looking directly at me
,
“What was the racket going on last night between you two?”  I tell her it’s a long story
,
and at that stage I didn’t give
a damn if she found out or not
as I was sick of the place by then.  She didn’t ask further and it was just as well.  When I told Etta what had happened, she wouldn’t believe me at first
.
Anthony denied it all saying I had imagine
d it all, but the bruise on my m
ickey was no imagination and the pain certainly wasn’t either.  We hitched back to Mallow
and home the next day as I had
had enough of the place.  It was to be the only time I went away on holidays with her family, and it took some years and a lot of work on my part to convince them that their daughter wasn’t dating a lunatic.  How wrong they were on that one though.

As happens to most people who date, we had a big falling out and broke up. We went our separate ways
,
but I was missing her and heard she was due back in Mallow on a Saturday night, so I planned a visit to the town on the off chance that we might meet up again.  Uncle Michael was reading meters for the Electricity Supply Board and he had bought himself a small Honda 50 motorbike as a means of transport.  I had ‘borrowed’ this machine some months earlier to take Nannie for a spin to Kanturk, and I never had any luck with it
. O
n that occasion we got punctured and walked ten miles home.  Michael was gone to a meeting and I again ‘borrowed’ his Honda for the trip to Mallow.  I met Fowler
,
who was dating his girlfriend in Mallow, and told him I’d give him a spin home when he was finished with his date.  I never saw Etta that night even though I called to her house
,
so I
decided to go pick Fowler up early and head back home.  I drove around the town looking for talent and trying to look real cool on my Honda 50
,
not caring a damn that it was taken without permission, or that I had neither license nor insurance.  I cruised around numerous times
,
making frequent sorties to St. Joseph
’s Convent
where I knew Fowler was hanging out, but I had no luck on the talent front.  It was time for food and after that I decided that if Fowler wasn’t ready
,
I was going home without him.  So back again to St. Joseph’s I went, and he was there in a bicycle shed snogging with the girlfriend.

While I was waiting for him I started to chat up one of the girls from the convent and we were getting along fine
. E
very so often I’d roar in at Fowler to come on as it was getting real late, and always the same reply came back, “Fuck off will you, I’ll be on in a minute”
. T
o be honest I wasn’t too pushed as I was making progress with ‘your wan’ and I began to think of new possibilities with this girl.

So we chatted on for a little while longer.  It was then getting really late and I wondered if there was enough petrol in the bike
,
as Michael was always running out of it, not wanting to over
f
ill it in case it ‘ever goes on fire’ as he used to say to me often. He wasn’t to be disappointed on that score, as I was about to prove shortly.

We were
in the driveway of the convent.
I was sitting on the bike and the girl was standing near to me chatting away, when I decided to check the fuel.  The stupid thing for me was that there was a pole with a light literally six feet away from us and it would have been directly over me and the petrol tank if I had just moved that distance.  But no, not me, I had to look into the tank in the dark. I couldn’t see any petrol, so I stuck in my finger and I couldn’t feel any petrol either. Now convinced that there wasn’t even enough petrol to get me to a pump, I decided to see just how little I had.  To this day it will remain the most stu
pid thing I ever did in my life;
I asked the girl for ‘a light’.  All I had to do was move the bike six feet. She gave me her matches
,
I lit one and held the flame over the petrol tank.  To my surpri
se initially, immediately followed by
shock, a flame erupted from the tank.  It wasn’t a huge flame, but I was awe-struck.  If I had put the cover back on quickly it might have gone out
,
but it wasn’t to be.  My potential new girlfriend started to scream and roar
,
and I became paralyzed. I am convinced that somehow I was sitting on the bike when all this happened
,
but I don’t know how that could be.  She ran screaming into the shed for Fowler, who was by then running out to meet her
. W
hen he saw his friend about to become a human torch, he dragged me away from the bike
,
and in so doing it fell over.  This caused all the petrol to spill out
. I
n seconds there was a real blaze going on with Michael’s bike bursting into orange and red flames mixed with black acrid smoke from his tyres. I ran across the road to a house for some water and they called the fire service, but it was all too late to save the bike.  In a matter of minutes it was all over
;
the bike was a smouldering black wreck and the road had actually been burned from the heat
. F
or years afterwards I’d see that patch of melted tar and remind myself of the stupidity of my act. I’ll not forget the feeling o
f loss that welled up inside me
as I looked on at the black mangled skeleton that once was a shiny new Honda 50. I was also black fro
m the smoke
and in a state of shock.  Fowler was trying to console me
,
but I was thinking of poor Michael’s mode of transport now gone, and how was he going to earn a living again. I had taken it without his permission and I felt so guilty that night.  I knew he would not give out to me as he was not at all like that, but I felt so ashamed that I had robbed him of the comfort of a bike that he loved so much.

We got to hitching a lift home, all the time Fowler saying
, “It’s
an accident Cac,
”
his nickname for me
. B
ut I knew it wasn’t an accident, it was utter stupidity on my part, and I was suppose
d to be the one who understood p
hysics
: p
hysics my arse.  It was the act of a lunatic and no two ways about it.  When I did get home eventually, I had a terrible sinking feeling in my heart.  Michael was writing away in Nannie
’
s kitchen when I
went in home.  He saw me black-
faced
,
covered in dirt and without his bike.  He quickly realized disaster had struck and I blurted out that it was burned and gone beyond repair.  His only reproach to me was that I shouldn’t h
ave taken it without asking him,
as he might have needed it that night.  I asked him with sadness
,
“What will you do now for the meter reading Mike
?” and all he said was, “Ahh tis all right C
hicken, sure I’ll just go back to me ould push bike”. Those words were like a knife going through me, as he was no longer a young man, and cycling miles and miles was going to be very hard on him. Michael went back to the push bike
,
and in later years I bought my motorbike and he used to use it, but he never recovered from the loss of his Ho
nda 50. I have become convinced
that it was all just destiny and it had its place in the story of all our lives, though its one event I’d prefer to have missed
. I
t made me again question Nannie
’s constant song
that ‘fire follows them Cahills’.

After some years
,
Etta qualified in the nursing business and she began working in Cork. After a major row at her home she left and got a little flat in the city. This was the first time I believe she was ever truly free to live her own life, as her parents were still terribly strict on her, even after she was qualified and
o
bviously an adult. We began to date seriously then
,
and it became a very happy time for both of us
. E
ven though we had little money
,
we seemed to be falling in love more and more as the months went by.

One Easter weekend Etta and I decided to go to Tralee in county Kerry for the long weekend.  I had my motorbike by then and I was still working in Mallow with Larry Andersen. We had
decided to meet at Mallow Railway S
tation and take the train to Tralee, with my bike travelling along with us in the goods wagon. Why we didn’t just drive the bike to Tralee beats me to this day, but that was the plan. I was also to book a bed and breakfast for an amorous weekend
,
and I was all set up for this as well.  Before I got to do the booking however, Kyrle rang me from Dublin for a chat. I
,
like a fool
,
told him what we were planning to do, and he says to me,  ”Don’t you do another thing, I’ll arrange it a
ll, I got good friends in Kerry”
. I knew he had, as he worked with some wild guys from ‘The Kingdom’ as it’s known.  I took him on his word and forgot all about booking any place.  After some hours he rang back to say it was all arranged.  I was to go to
Howlins'
Hotel where a room was arranged by a ‘Bobo Boyle’.  Being an innocent type
,
I never questioned this name as Kyrle always had crazies as friends, so I assumed Bobo was a genuine guy with an odd kind of name.  Nothing could be further from the truth as Bobo did not exist.

We arrived in Tralee fully kitted out for a biking weekend
,
all bedecked with fur
coats, helmets, gloves and food;
well prepared for the icy weather of a Kerry Easter.  We looked like people from another planet
,
or from Tibet at the very least.  I decided on these clothes as it was an early Easter that year and a motorbike is a cold way to travel in our weather, so we came prepared for all eventualities.  The train journey was uneventful
,
except all the time I kept getting this uneasy feeling about the hotel, not having booked it myself. When we drove the bike to the hotel I became even more uneasy. The car park was f
ull and I began to wonder what was
on in Tralee
. S
oon I realized that a huge car rally was on in Killarney and the overspill of people was also filling up every place in Tralee
,
twenty miles away.  But I assured Etta there was no need for worry as Bobo had our room arranged and it was free as well.  There was a queue for the reception desk and we had no choice but to join it and ask for Bobo, but it was obvious that rooms were really scarce that night
. S
till I was not too worried
;
ours was booked after all. As we stood in line, complete with our
Himalayan
garb
,
we began getting all kinds of condescending looks from the
well-
heeled customers who didn’t arrive on motorbikes carrying large
,
cheap helmets, furry coats and bags of food.  We were quite unconcerned at these scornful looks as Bobo had it all arranged for us, and I kept telling Etta that we were very lucky that Kyrle had such important friends.  We slowly moved ever closer to the reception desk, holding our helmets, gloves, and coats, while the rich and famous politely moved their expensive suitcases along as well.

Finally we arrived at the desk and I saw the receptionist staring at us, her eyes travelling up and down our bodies as her brain began registering disbelief at the sight before her. Then she looked directly at me and began a long purposeful silence….  After she had done her best at intimidating me with the long pause, she goes
, “Can I help you……. sir?”
with another long pause before she says the word
‘
sir
’
, and again she began staring me up and down. In my innocence I took this as possibly she had been told by Bobo to expect motorbike types as special guests, bu
t alarm bells were tinkling none
theless.   Then in my best ‘man of the world’ accent, remembering how James Bond did things, I says
,
“Yes
my dear, we have a reservation.
Cahill is the name, it was arranged by Bobo,.. Bobo Boyle”. As I started to speak
she began to check the registe
r
,
but the minute she heard the name Bobo her head shot up in amazement
. I became sure then we we
re in for special treatment, as according to Kyrle, Bobo was a special friend of the manager. She coldly says to me
,
“No, we have no reservation, we are booked out, nothing at all, not a room left
,
” and then she gives me another one of her special long pauses. Still it has not dawned on me that anything might be amiss.

I tell her that she’s mistaken, that it
’
s all been arranged by Bobo Boyle
,
a friend of the mana
ger, and we have to have a room
as we have no place else to stay.  She becomes adamant that she hasn’t got a room. The line of guests has now grown very long, and later I realized that we were quite the source of entertainment for all.  This initial argument soon develops into a row, with me getting mad at her for her inability to re
ad a register, and she threatening
to call the manager.  I tell her to go right ahead, as he will fix it being Bobo’s friend. She picks up the phone and makes the call.

Within two minutes he arrives out of an office. He was a big man, not one to take on lightly
,
especially when you are weighed down with motorbike gear and your girlfriend is now bright red and tugging at you to leave.  So I start to repeat the whole story again and as soon as I got to Bobo he roars out
,
“There’s no Bobo here, do you understand English
? N
o Bobo”.  His tone shocked me.  This was not funny and I tell hi
m so, then he says very firmly,
“Look, we have no reservation for you two
,
” giving us a rotten sneering look i
n the process and he continues,
“You better clear off now
and stop wasting our time or I’ll have to call the
G
uards”.  That was too much for me.  I then decided t
hat with their kind of attitude
I wasn’t staying there
no matter what they offered, s
o I say to Etta
,
“Let
’
s get the fuck out of here, they are all only fuckers anyway
. This place is full of em”.
I
f they felt we were tramps, we may as well speak like tramps. We gather our gear and slink out. By then I am raging, first in disbelief that Bobo let us down, then later Etta says rather quietly,
“Ma
ybe there is no Bobo, did you ever think of that
?”
  The penny drops finally
. W
e had been tricked, and I roar out
,
“That dirty rotten fucker, fuck him. He’s the greatest bastard alive, I’ll get him for this, no matter how long it takes”.

By that time it had become really late on a Saturday night
, and with every rat
hole full, we hadn't a chance of finding a place to stay
. I
t was now survival time.  We went from place to place asking the same question
, “Any rooms for the night?” getting the same answer, “N
o,
”
and I becoming more and more desperate while cursing Kyrle all the time.  We were eventually told of a woman called Mrs Kaner who was every person’s last resort. We fo
und her house, or should I say c
oven, in a narrow lane in the middle of Tralee town, and she arrived at the door as we knocked politely.  She was a small
,
thin woman who kept coughing up phlegm into a dirty old handkerchief.  I asked if she had a room for the night
,
and she looks us up and down slowly amid the coughing.  There is no doubt but we must have looked a bit dodgy with all the gear, but she says, “Well I have only the wan room with two beds
,
” and I say quickly
, “T
hat’s fine, we’ll take it
”
. She says, looking at Etta
, “Are ye
married
?
”  I wouldn’t lie about
such things on principle alone
and answer that we are not. Unknown to me
,
Etta was feverishly trying to change a ring to her married finger behind her back when it looked like I blew it.  Mrs Kaner says
, “O
h well sure
I don’t know about this at all.
I can’t have any of that ould carry
on in me h
ouse, I don’t go for it you see
,
”
while
spluttering and hacking again into her hanky as she talks.

It’s now tim
e for quick thinking on my part
and I resort to playing the religion card, having seen the many holy
pictures in her hallway. I says, “Ah that’s aw
right so, but would you know if it’
s too late for us to go to the m
idnight Mass
?
”  We have no notion whatsoever of going to any kind of Mass, but I thought it might swing her around, and she mutters
,
“Aahh sure yer not too bad so, ye go to Mass do ye, and it
’
s too late for the Mass now anyways, so come on in
. S
ure I’ll keep an eye on ye meself in the night”.  So we do go in, glad to be out of the biting cold, but feeling we were not going to have a good night after all.  I ask her if I can park my motorbike in her hallway, and she says okay but not to burn her house down.  Secr
etly I was wondering if she had
had a vision of my earlier bike burning incident in Mallow. After a short chat in her kitchen
,
complete with more coughing, she decides to show us the room. We make our way up a narrow little stairs along a creaking and creepy landing and arrive at the room with its two small iron beds. The room is freezing cold and we dare not ask for a heater. It was small and poky with a tiny window onto the street below.  Then she said that she was sleeping in the room next to us
,
and she repeated this too often for my liking.  With our room sorted for the night, things were looking a bit better and we ventured out for some food.  Mrs Kaner warned us to be back by midnight or she’d lock the door and that’s it
. S
he opened it for no one after the “clock struck”.  She wouldn’t give us a key either
,
and so we took off quickly trying to find a chipper before we fell down with the hunger.  We got our food and I wanted to get to bed and forget that awful day, so we made our way back quickly.  As we returned, we passed a pub on a corner where it had revellers literally falling out of it. It was also full of singers and dancers with a great buzz going on inside
. I
t would have been great to be able to stay, but Kaner
’
s curfew was close.  I thought too that it might be a good idea to bring old Kaner back a little drop of whiskey to ensure we got a good breakfast, not the stale cornflakes I was expecting, so I tell Etta this plan.  She agrees and we crush our way inside the pub. I eventually get to the bar and ask for whiskey in a bottle to take away. This must have been some kind of code word in Kerry because the burly barman looks at Etta a
nd gives me a knowing nod, then
he reaches under the counter, pulls out a large unmarked bottle and pours a clear liquid into another small bottle and tells me the price.  I was surprised at how cheap it was, but obviously if you
’
r
e
brewing your own spirits
,
your costs are lower. He had given me Ireland
’
s mountain dew
known as p
oteen
,
and even I knew that. I really wanted whiskey
,
but there was no arguing with him
,
so I paid and left.

Just before the clock struck midnight Kaner left us in and says we were just in time, or we would be left
on the street for the night, with
no deposit back either.  She keeps looking at Etta while we chat to her in her kitchen, making Etta feel uncomfortable because of the
looks
and the constant hacking into the dirty old cloth.  She says
, “Y
ou’re very thin aren’t you
?”
and pinches her
.
Etta is disgusted.  I gave her the ‘whiskey’ and she says
, “
And what’s this… is it the way yer tryin
g to knock me out for the night? W
ell it won’t work, coz I sleep light you see”.  I assure her that it’s just a gift and she looks at it again and says, “Tis a quare class of a gift
,
isn’t it
,
”
but she began to drink it none
theless.  I tell her it
’
s just whiskey
and I don’t care what she does with it, as I was then tired out, still mad at Kyrle
,
just sick of the whole day, and her ‘sleeping light’ remark was the final straw.