The Chisellers Page 2
The bingo ball machine began to whirl again and as the audience prepared themselves, Mr Muldoon called. ‘Here we go for the full house, and the Snowball. Eyes down and your first number is ... ’
Every pen in the hall hovered and the electricity of anticipation was so strong you could almost hear it hum.
‘Two fat ladies - eighty-eight.’
After a further eight numbers, Agnes was able to mark off seven. Nelly, noticing the constant moving of Agnes’s pen half-whispered to her, ‘Jaysus, Agnes, you’re flyin’.‘
‘I know. Shut up, you’ll put the mockers on me!’
‘It’s well for yeh. I haven’t a fuckin’ mark at all,’ piped in Bunnie.
‘Shush,’ said Agnes as Mr Muldoon called out the next number.
‘Was she worth it? Two and six - twenty-six.’
Agnes didn’t have twenty-six - and she didn’t have the next six numbers either. But over the next fifteen calls she steadily marked off a couple of twos and threes called in a row, until she suddenly realised her card was starting to fill up, and with just four calls to go she had only one number left. The number seven.
Jaysus — I have a wait!‘ Agnes said to nobody in particular.
‘Agnes has a wait,’ echoed Carmel, passing on the news.
‘Oh Mammy, me nerves!’ mumbled Splish, picking up the sudden tension.
‘Come on - number seven,’ said Agnes fervently, as if she were in prayer.
‘Two little ducks - twenty-two.’
‘Number seven, number seven — come on, number seven,’ Agnes was intoning now.
‘Pull it, mister ... Pull it! ... Oh Jaysus, Agnes.’ This was Carmel.
‘Shut up, shut up! Come on, number seven.’
‘There’s only two calls to go,’ says Bunnie, ‘and I’m still waiting on three more numbers. I’m out of the runnin’.‘
‘Top of the house - ninety.’
Agnes held her hand up to her now-perspiring forehead. ‘Ah what’s wrong with yeh, mister! Come on, number seven.’
‘And this is the Final call for the Snowball ...’
‘On its own, number seven, please God. On its own, number seven,’ Agnes groaned.
‘On its own ...’
‘Yes! Yes! Call it - seven!
‘ — number four.’
There was momentary silence and a collective intake of breath in the hall as everybody waited for the inevitable call of ‘Check’. But it didn’t come. Hardly anybody except those in her company heard Agnes’s groan. The non-event was met with a mixture of sighs, moans and then giggles in the knowledge that the big Snowball would be there yet again this coming Friday - only even bigger, and with the calls moving up to fifty-four, it had to be won!
Mr Muldoon moved on, wondering at the back of his mind where he was going to get the extra chairs he would need for Fridays session.
‘Unlucky for some - thirteen.’
Still no call. Although the Snowball was now gone, the full house would still be worth fifty pounds. Not to be sneezed at, not to be sneezed at at all.
‘One little duck - number two.’
Bunnie Morrissey’s attempt to jump straight up was thwarted. The pushing of his full weight onto the back of the chair in his effort to spring up split the cross member of the chair and as it splintered and collapsed he fell backwards. His right leg shot up like the blade of a flick-knife, sending his lucky slipper flying across the room, where it caught an elderly woman full in the face, mashing her Woodbine against her heavily lipsticked mouth and sending sparks in all directions. As the back of Bunnie’s head hit the ground a barely audible gurgle of ‘Check’ came from him.
Mr Muldoon, not realising what was happening and thinking there was just a slight commotion, exclaimed, ‘Keep it quiet there, please.’
To which Bunnie, now spread-eagled on his back, his bingo pen lying ten feet from him and his right arm stretched upright, perpendicular to his body and clasping the bingo board, screamed, ‘Check! For fuck’s sake, check.’
‘We have a check down the middle of the hall.’
Agnes looked over at Bunnie and stood up. For a moment Bunnie thought she was going to give him a hand up, but instead she put her hands on her hips and exclaimed, ‘Bunnie Morrissey, yeh auld bollix!’
In the three years since the untimely death of Redser Browne, his widow Agnes and her seven children had flourished. Mark, the eldest boy, continued his training as a carpenter. Frankie was a handsome sixteen-year-old, though it was difficult to see it sometimes, for he’d had his head completely shaved, wore a tartan shirt and wide parallel denims which were cut between the knee and the ankle to reveal tartan socks over which he wore a pair of blood-red Doc Marten bower boots. This was the fashion for ‘skinheads’. The fad had begun in Britain with groups of white youths who spent their evenings drinking cider, dancing to reggae music, and then, like packs of wolves, would hunt down and beat Pakistanis, Indians, West Indians, and homosexuals of any creed or colour. Frankie and the gang of thugs he hung out with were starved for targets. Dublin did not have a population of Indians, West Indians or coloureds in general, so the homosexuals took the full brunt. Failing an encounter with a homosexual, these gangs would use anyone that looked weak — at least weaker than they were. He didn’t even realise it himself, but Frankie Browne was a neo-Nazi.
This posed some problems for his younger brother Rory. As soon as he reached the working age of fourteen, Rory quit school, and was now one year into a hairdressing apprenticeship. Monday after Monday, Rory would see his working colleagues and friends bruised and scarred from the weekend attacks by skinhead gangs - to a skinhead, all male hairdressers were ‘queers’. Rory kept his mind on his work, which he loved, and trod home carefully each evening. Rory spoke little to Frankie and trusted him less.
Dermot Browne, on the other hand, was everybody’s friend - bursting with energy, full of laughter and always up to some mischief or other. His golden hair would glisten in the sunlight as he dashed about the football field displaying his talents. He was popular too with the girls. His fair skin and smiling blue eyes made him the heart throb of most of his sister Cathy’s friends.
Unfortunately, such was not the case with Dermot’s twin brother Simon. Although he stammered less as he got older, the cast in his left eye was still there and still obvious. This gained him the nickname ‘Giddy Eye’. Like Dermot, Simon was in his first year at St Declan’s Technical School. But unlike Dermot, who seemed to excel at everything he touched, Simon had yet to find his particular talent in life. It was not carpentry. He seemed to have an inability to draw a straight line, and on one occasion nearly sawed off his left arm. It was not metalwork. He was no longer allowed to use the welding torch in class after welding a piece of angle-iron to the vice. The one thing he was good at was religious knowledge. He loved praying, and felt secure in the silence of the church, where he would sit for hours alone. His religious knowledge teacher thought that he might even have a vocation. Another of his talents was finding things. Agnes would call Simon her little St Anthony, and whenever anything was lost or misplaced Agnes would simply say, ‘Wait till Simon comes home, he’ll find it.’ Right enough, within minutes of coming home Simon would find the errant object.
Cathy Browne, at thirteen years of age, was in sixth class, her final year, in the Mother of Divine Providence Girls’ School. Since her battle with Sister Mary Magdalen three years previously, Cathy was more or less left alone, and began to flourish in school, so much so that she now had thoughts of going on to secondary school, something never before achieved by any Browne.
Trevor, at six, was doing a second year at first class. He had also had two years of ‘high babies’. Trevor was called ‘a slow child’, a term Agnes didn’t really understand. Trevor’s teacher, Miss Thomas, once asked Agnes if there was any history of dyslexia in the family, and Agnes, thinking it was some kind of tropical disease, emphatically answered No - ‘Sure they’ve never been out of the country.’
That’s just what Agnes was thinking as she ran the brush slowly through her raven-black hair. She smiled at herself in the mirror. She was thinking of Bunnie Morrissey and how funny it had been the night before seeing him lying on his back screaming ‘Check’. She giggled to herself. Outside in the hall she heard the letterbox clatter and the ‘pflap’ of the post as it landed on the doormat. She placed the hairbrush down on her dressing-table, went out to the hall and picked up the mail. She tucked it under her arm, went to the steaming kettle and made herself a mug of tea. She carried the mug to the kitchen table, lit up a cigarette and began to open the letters.
There were three letters in the post this morning. The light blue envelope edged in red and navy stripes and with the Canadian stamp on it was easily recognisable as a letter from Agnes’s sister Dolly. No, not Dolly now, now it’s Dolores, Mrs Dolores Gowland. Agnes smiled to herself. Dolly had emigrated to Toronto fifteen years previously in 1955, and for the first two or three years signed all her letters ‘Dolly’. In 1957 she began to go out with Larry Gowland, who worked ‘in a bank, no less’, and after a courtship of three years she had married the poor chap. So it was, from 1960 onwards, Dolly Redden signed all her letters Dolores Gowland.
Once Agnes had opened the envelope and unfolded the letter, the two crisp $20 bills that always accompanied one of Dolly’s letters fell to the table. ‘God bless yeh, Dolly,’ Agnes said aloud. The letter was full of the usual news about how Dolly’s two children, Jason and Melissa, were doing at school and the latest news of Larry’s upward climb in the bank. Agnes wondered what ailment Dolly had this month - Dolly was a hypochondriac. It came in the third paragraph: dermatitis. Agnes read the word and said it a couple of times to herself, ‘Dermatitis, der-ma-ti-tis.’ She looked up from the letter at Mark and Dermot who were sitting sideways on the couch facing each other.
‘Mark!’ she called.
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘What’s dermatitis?’
Instead it was Dermot who answered. ‘It’s a thing that foreigners do get ’cause they don’t wipe their arse proper.‘ Both Mark and Dermot howled with laughter.
Agnes said, ‘Don’t be so disgusting you, yeh brat,’ but she smiled too.
‘It is, I swear,’ said Dermot, who would swear to anything at the drop of a hat.
‘Is it, Mark?’ asked Agnes.
Mark shook his head, still chuckling. ‘Honestly, Ma, I don’t know.’
Agnes went back to her letter, a frown now creasing her forehead as she wondered what kind of filthy habits her sister had picked up since she had emigrated to Canada.
The reason Mark and Dermot were sitting on the couch facing each other was because of the ‘test’. The test was Mark’s final exam in technical college. Now seventeen, Mark had spent his last three years attending carpentry college on a part-time basis, while still doing his apprenticeship with Wise & Co., Furniture Manufacturers since 1940. Since joining Wise’s over two and a half years ago, Mark had worked hard and applied himself to the trade. He loved his job. He whistled on his way to work each morning, and devoted himself to each task Mr Wise set him. As he worked on bentwood backs for chairs or claw-and-ball legs, his enthusiasm was that of the dedicated artist to his piece. Indeed, some of the work he turned out, even with just two and a half years’ training, had Mr Wise glowing with pride in his young prodigy. Though Mark still had a year and a half of practical work to go through before he qualified, Mr Wise told Agnes on many occasions that Mark was as good as some of the fully trained men who were a long time in the business, and bigger and stronger than most. At only seventeen years of age, Mark was already a half-inch over six feet and as he started to fill out, he definitely had the potential of being a young bullock.
Young Dermot, on the other hand, had got his growth hormones from Agnes’s side of the family. Compared with other boys of fourteen years of age, Dermot was slight and short. When describing him to strangers, Agnes would say, ‘There wouldn’t be enough elastic in his underpants to make a pair of garters for a budgie.’ Having said that, she would also add that whatever he might lack in physical stature, he well made up for in sheer cunning, ingenuity and inventiveness. For Dermot Browne was so streetwise one would think he had invented the term.
For a moment Agnes stared at the two boys. There was a bond between them that ignored the thirty-one months’ age difference. She saw it in Dermot’s eyes - they sparkled in admiration as he listened to every word uttered by his older brother, as if each one were a never-to-be-forgotten gem of wisdom. She saw it in the beam of Mark’s smile each time Dermot entered the room, and she felt it in the shared laughter as they each recalled the day’s happenings, Mark in Wise’s and Dermot in St Declan’s Technical School for Boys. The tales were elongated and exaggerated, but that didn’t matter because the fun was in the telling and not in the truth.
Turning her attention back to the post, Agnes first folded the two $20 bills and tucked them carefully away in her purse. She would exchange them later that day in the post office for £32. The second letter Agnes opened was from Mr Cartwright, the principal of St Declan’s Technical School, where Frankie, Dermot and Simon were pupils. The letter was about Frankie and his attendance - or lack of it. Mr Cartwright indicated that he was now at the end of his tether with Frankie, and he suggested that Agnes pay him a visit as soon as possible to discuss the boy. Agnes rested her head on her hand and sighed deeply. She just couldn’t understand what was wrong with Frankie. Of all her six boys she was easiest on him. Yet he never seemed to be happy. Time and time again Agnes gave in to Frankie’s rebellious ways. Yet the easier she was on him it seemed, the worse he became. There was great friction between Mark and Frankie, although the boys, particularly Mark, went to great lengths to avoid any displays of open hostility in front of Agnes. Frankie came and went as he wished, and Mark rarely spoke to him or about him.
Mark looked up from his instruction manual and saw the jaded look on Agnes’s face. ‘What is it, Ma?’
‘Frankie’s been missin’ school again,’ she replied, her heart heavy.
‘Again?’
‘Yes, luv - again.’
Dermot got up and quietly left the room, mumbling that he was heading for the toilet. He had no urge nor need to go to the toilet, but had a sneaking feeling that if he remained in the room he would be called upon as a witness. Brownes don’t snitch.
Mark closed the book and slowly walked over to the kitchen table and sat facing his mother.
‘Ma, I don’t want to snitch, but you must know he spends his bleedin’ time hangin’ around with those scumbag friends of his, roamin’ around the streets all day in and out of bookie’s shops.’
‘Bookie’s! Sure where would he get the money?‘ asked Agnes.
Mark looked away from her. ‘You tell me, Ma.’
They both knew where he got the money. Most mornings Agnes’s purse would be a little bit lighter than the night before. With seven children, it was hard to accuse one - all children are a little light-fingered - but in her heart Agnes knew that the odd half-crown or two shillings that vanished each day was going into Frankie’s pocket. She didn’t dare accuse Frankie openly or even voice her suspicion, for she knew full well that Mark would set upon him and she recalled from her own childhood days that nothin
g was more vicious than family fights.
‘D’yeh want me to talk to him?‘ asked Mark, knowing the answer before Agnes’s reply.
‘No. God no. I’ll speak to him myself,’ she replied quickly — too quickly.
‘Well, yeh’d better, Ma, ’cause I’ve just about had enough of him! I don’t mind handin’ up me money, but it’s for the flat, and the younger ones, not for the bookie‘s, or cider.’
Mark rose as he said this and went back to the couch where he picked up his instruction manual and began to study again.
It was a direct accusation, but Agnes let it go. She really couldn’t defend Frankie. Agnes made a mental note to call up the next day to St Declan’s and speak to the principal. She folded the letter and put it into her apron pocket and turned her attention to the final letter that had arrived that morning.
This one had a crest on the envelope: the three castles of Dublin. She knew it came from the Corporation, though she was a little bit puzzled. The only time she received a letter from Dublin Corporation was when her rent was in arrears. But she was up-to-date now and had been for the last year. She ripped open the flap and extracted a very official-looking letter. It read:
Dear Tenant,
Dublin Corporation is pleased to announce the implementation of its Inner City Renewal Plan. The long-term plan is to eradicate the inner city tenement situation.
The plan will be implemented over the next five years and will be carried out on a zone-by-zone basis. (A map of the zones is available at the Dublin Corporation Housing Offices for viewing.)
The area encompassing Lower Gardiner Street, Sean McDermott Street West, St Jarlath’s Street, James Larkin Court and James Larkin Road is Zone One.
Demolition on this zone will begin July 1970. Residents will be re-housed in new ultra-modem suburban housing estates to be built in Cabra, Dublin 7; Finglas, Dublin 11; and Coolock, Dublin 5. Houses and areas have been drawn for families on a lottery basis and you have drawn: