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Garryowen, Chapter 2This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by mick beville | |
| Monday, 11 August 2008 | |
Granddad was the first man in my life to impress me. He had an honesty of attitude. If he didn't like someone, regardless of right or wrong, big or small, he would tell them. Soon after Granddad had been invested as my first and to this day my only hero, we were saying goodbye to him at Limerick railway station. We stood on the platform as the engine hissed and billowed like a giant mechanical monster. When the whistle blew and train started to roll it was surprisingly gentle and graceful. I could hear Granddad calling back through the intoxicating mixture of smoke and steam that had now filled the whole station. "I love you Micheal, I love you." "I love you to Granddad" I called back, as he disappeared to become yet another one way ticket out of Ireland.
With Dad doing God's work, the stretch marks had been expanded on once more and baby Tom was on his way; followed two years later by Maria. There must be something in that two years between kids thing like "Oh sweet Jesus never again" that only lasts for twelve months.
By the time Tom and Maria were born we had moved onto a new housing estate in Limerick called Ballynanty Beg and life was great. We had a fairy fort opposite our house. I was always looking for fairies. Our fairy fort was a rough circle of briars and small dense bushes, in the middle of a piece of common land.
Some people are afraid of the fairies. I would dream about being taken away by the fairies. I would ask in my prayers for god to let them take me to their magical world, a world where everything was possible, everything was fun. Not a goody clean fun but a mischievous fun. I would love to have met a real fairy on the grey damp side of dreams door but it wasn't to be. They say fairies only appear to people who are troubled in some way.
"Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping Than you can understand" W.B.Yeats
The Banshee - a wispy haggard female form- is a dark reminder of impending death. With a howling wail, she would announce her intention to remove a soul from this earthly world. Some nights we would be sat around the paraffin lamp and mam would say: "Oh Jesus...! Can you hear that? Shush.... Listen..." Then her voice would drop to a whisper. "Can you hear the Banshee calling? She's coming - oh mother of god she's coming this very night to take some poor soul away." "I can hear it mam, I can hear it," I would say. I could to. It would sound like a wailing dog. "For gods sake hush... Michael! Oh mother of mercy! Can you hear it? It's there again. That's the Banshee for sure. Listen for the knocks. If she's coming tonight, there will be three knocks on the wall." We would all listen intensely to the wall, and then me man would secretly knock three times underneath the table, wait a moment for dramatic effect, and then whisper in a wicked tone. "Sure I'm only joking".
It wasn't a joke for me. As I lay in bed I would listen intensely for the Banshee. Not out of fear, I hadn't discovered that emotion yet. I was always, as Dad would say, ‘away with the fairies.' I would listen and crave to be with them. Everything was possible in fairy world. I would look out the bedroom window into the darkness and imagine them at the bottom of our garden, playing tricks on each other, fooling around, wrestling and generally having lots of fun. If I listened really hard, I felt sure I could hear them laughing and singing. I would look for evidence in the cold light of day. But they never left me any. The closest I came to actually seeing a fairy was something that resembled a cross between a rat and a cat. It was brown and fat with really big grey whiskers. I chased it hopefully around the fairy fort before it finally disappeared in amongst the blackberries.
Another thing we used to do a lot was to hit a hoop with a stick. The hoop was usually an old bike wheel with no spokes. A skill now believed to be lost to mankind forever. I had a pal called Paul Power and he could climb a telegraph pole like a cat. I have never seen anyone to this day that could do it as well. It was Paul Power that hit me on the ear with a stick when I was three. It would have been an accident and what started out as a small sore on my ear; spread rapidly and before I knew it I was in the Limerick fever hospital. I was kept in an isolation ward where food and water had to be passed into me through a small glass-sliding window. Impetigo was the name they gave my untouchable disease. I had a beard of ***** scabs, from my ear down to my chest, and they were spreading at a rate of knots. Dad climbed the drainpipe and looked in through my window. He looked very sad as his breath fogged the window.
Dad worked on the lighter ship ‘Garryowen.' Its purpose in life was to steam down to the estuary of the Shannon and take cargo from the bigger ships, so as to let them continue their journey up to the Port of Shannon. ‘Garryowen' the name, has a life of its own, reinventing itself through the years, from an address on my birth certificate, to a lighter ship, a rebel song, to a cavalry charge, and not to forget Ireland's premier rugby club. The Garryowen was owned by the Rank organization. ‘It's a grand job,' Dad would say. Mam reckoned the real job was getting hold of the wages before the publican. Stern faced mothers would bring the children to the dock-side each pay day. I was always fascinated with the unloading of the cargo usually grain or beans and all from some exotic land. It was fascinating to see thousand tons of beans in the hold of ship.
When Dad wasn't on the drink, he'd sometimes take us up the creek fishing for trout. Oh god, I loved it! A line, a hook and a sally branch, no fancy stuff, ‘that was for the English toffs' as Dad called them. The water was teeming with trout, appearing and disappearing in magical dark clouds through the crystal water. Dad would impale a worm on the hook, suspend it with a catgut line on the surface of the water and in no time at all, you would see a trout rise and take the worm. One strike of the sally, a silver splash a swish and the fish was on the bank. Only about a pound in weight, but the small size was compensated for by the large amount we caught. Dad said that Irish worms tasted so good that the trout couldn't help themselves.
Sometimes Dad would catch eels. He'd wade through the creek turning over rock after rock until he found their hiding place. With speed and skill, he'd pin the eels to the creek bed with a toasting fork. They were about the thickness of his finger and over a foot long and we'd keep them alive in a bucket of water. I'd stick my hand in and try to hold them. They felt so slippery and weird. Alec was terrified. "They'll bite you," he said. But they never did.
Out of the bucket and into the sink they'd go, maybe two or three of them wriggling and squirming, their fresh smell filling the whole house. When Dad was ready to cook them, he'd chop them into inch or so pieces and fry them skin and all. Oh man! I can smell them now, their skins caramelising with the butter.
One of the few other times we all did something special together as a family, was when we took a picnic along the Shannon. The picnic spot was only a walking distance; I remember all seven of us setting off in a caravan of prams and boxes. Mam and Dad out the front pushing baby Maria in the Silver Cross. Saint El aged ten following with an old wreck of a pram that contained Tom age, two and a cardboard box full of bread, tea, and cups. I was four and already fighting with Alec aged seven. This time it was over whose turn it was to help push the pram. The picnic spot was a green grassy outcrop that was speckled with buttercups and daisies near where a small creek joined the mighty Shannon. It was a beautiful summer's day; mam was dishing out bread and jam sandwiches, maybe some homemade buns with icing on. Dad was boiling a pan of water on a fire and singing. ‘Come and sit by my side if you love me. Do not hasten to bid me ado, just remember the red river valley, and the cowboy who loved you so true.' I loved to hear Dad singing; we were so happy. "Pass me the packet of tea Micheal a stoir." I watched, as he scalded the teapot and then mashed the tea. "Ah tea." he continued. "The only good thing the English ever gave us was a nice pot of tea." We were having a whale of a time and for a magical moment mam gave Dad a look like she was actually proud of him. Copyright 2008 mick beville |
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