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garryowen, Chapter 3This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by mick beville | |
| Tuesday, 12 August 2008 | |
I was playing in the street one day when Saint El grabbed my hand and hurried me inside. "I've got to wash your face. We're off to England," she said, and in what seemed like no time at all we were on a bus to Limerick railway station. My next memory was sitting in a square windowless waiting room in a Dublin railway station. Around its painted brick walls were wooden benches that could probably have seated a couple of dozen people but for tonight it was just the six of us. Oh yes, and an old woman whose husband had gone off to buy some fags. For some reason it hadn't dawned on me that Dad wasn't with us, and I certainly had no idea that I was starting out on a journey that would take 39 years before I returned. For as long as I can remember Saint El was the second parent. The concrete floor was cold but she did her best to cover us up with overcoats ‘Bye baby bunting, Daddy's gone a hunting. He's gone to get a rabbit skin to wrap his baby bunting in.' Saint El was always the one to sing us the lullabies. I'd thought she'd made them up. But for two years before Alec was born she was the only child and she would have been lavished with lullabies. For most of the night my head was a soup of the day's events. I remember mam taking off around Dublin with the old woman whose husband had gone to buy some fags and got himself lost. I remember thinking; ‘he's probably having a pint somewhere.' I guess, in Ireland, a man could disappear for twenty years and not be missed, just so long as he was having a pint somewhere. I can't remember if they ever found the man.
Morning came and we were on the Dublin dockside; or so I thought. People kept saying the word boat. I had half an idea what a boat was. I could see what I thought were two boats. It turned out we were on the one deck and the two boats I thought I saw were the bow and stern of just one really big boat. Pulling away from the dock, I remember seeing a hill in the distance; a scene like from the sound of music, where Julie Andrews runs gracefully towards the camera. But in my scene there were lots of people doing it. They were running up the hill, waving handkerchiefs, scarves and whatever else came to hand. They would have been waving goodbye to their loved ones and for many it would be a last goodbye. ‘Who was waving to us? Who was waving to me?' As the scene faded into the distant skyline; it felt both awesome and exciting and then a short while later Ireland would also disappear, leaving only water sky and yet to be born emotional memories. Only in retrospect, can I feel the crushing sadness of that moment. The only other remarkable memory of our trip across the Irish Sea was that Maria age two, did a **** right in the middle of the deck. Saint El picked it up on a bit of cardboard and threw it over the side.
HOLYHEAD
"This is foreign soil and shamrock can't grow here," said Saint El, whose knowledge on all things profound has never been questioned to this very day. We were all probably knackered by now. I kept hearing Bradford getting mentioned. "One adult and five kids, to Bradford - Do we have to change for Bradford? - How long does it take to get to Bradford? - At least we might get a seat on the train and possibly a sleep." I don't think any of us slept throughout the whole journey. A day and a night, a day and another night then someone finally said. ‘This is it...'
It was dark as we pulled into the station, but it didn't say Bradford. It said ‘Low Moor' and we were the only ones who got off. We stood on the platform and waited like lost souls until a voice with what seemed like the thickest and slowest accent in the whole world called out. "Tickets please?" Mam was the first to move. She picked up the two big suitcases and headed in the direction of the voice. Saint El was next carrying a brown cardboard box with string tied around it. The rest of us followed like ducklings. I remember the stationmaster appearing from out of the smog. Low Moor Station was on the outskirts of Bradford, a supposedly a good connection by bus to Ravenscliff, our final destination. Ravenscliff is a council housing estate on the edge of the city of Bradford near the border of Leeds. It turned out that Ravenscliff was miles away and the bus's had all gone to bed for the night. Somehow a taxi was conjured up. Sleep finally spared me the rest of the journey and when I woke I was being carried in the arms of the burly taxi driver into number 90 Roundwood Avenue Ravenscliff Bradford West Yorkshire England.
Number 90 was a three-bedroom two-storey semi detached; red brick on the first storey and pebbledash cement on the second, with a red tiled roof and a generous garden. The house was a perfect clone of several hundred others on the estate. The pavement was made out of ash, later to become cement flagstones. Gas lamps lit the concrete street. There was no gate or fence at this stage as the estate was still under construction. This would be home for the next twelve years, a period of time that would shape the rest of my life.
I woke next morning in a room filled with mattresses and bodies. The second storey bed- room was typical of the other two; nine feet-square with one window and one door. The bedroom door shared the same landing from the stairway as the other two bedroom doors and the solitary window looked out onto an overgrown back yard. It smelt a different kind of damp than Limerick, but damp no less. The sleeping arrangements were as follows.
Bedroom one - My self age six. I was to be known from now on as ‘Big Michael.' Tom aged four, Maria aged two, Saint El aged 12, Alec aged 9, and Granddad.
Bedroom two - Mam, Auntie Jo, Maureen aged six -cousin-, Little Alfred aged four -cousin-.
Bedroom three - Big Alfred, we had to call him Uncle and right from day one I didn't like him. Saint El said, ‘he's only a dick relation and that she was never going to call him uncle.' Sharing the only double bed in the house with him were eight month old twins ‘Little Michael' and Margaret; also my first cousins.
At the bottom of the stairs a door opened into a living room that was heated by a coal fire set in a tiled fire surround. On the opposite wall to the fire, a bare wooden table sat displaying a jar of jam and half a loaf of bread. An armchair sat in the corner nearest the fire, and a couple of wooden orange boxes sat on the otherwise bare floorboards. Towards the back of the house, through a door that never closed, was the kitchen. In the centre of its green gloss painted brick wall was a window that looked out onto the back yard. Below the window and mounted on two brick piers a rectangular white ceramic sink sat as a ‘silent witness' to all. To the right of the sink, on top of an upended orange box, a solitary gas ring was giving life to a large pan of porridge oats.
The solitary armchair in the living room was Uncle Alfred's and nobody else was allowed to sit in it except him. Saint El said. "He thinks he's King ****..." ‘King ****?' I liked the sound of it. That would be my secret name for him. There would be no porridge for ‘King ****;' he had to have two poached eggs on toast. He always had a pathetic excuse why he couldn't eat the same as us. This time it was his grumbling bowel. I really don't know what it had to grumble about. Copyright 2008 mick beville |
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