The Chisellers Read online

  43, Wolfe Tone Grove,

  Finglas West,

  Dublin 11.

  All homes are two-storey dwellings with three bedrooms, one reception room, bathroom, toilet and kitchen, front and back gardens.

  On behalf of the city manager and Dublin County Council, I wish you good fortune in your new home.

  Yours sincerely,

  James Jackson

  Housing Officer

  Dublin Corporation

  ‘Mother of Jesus!’ Agnes exclaimed.

  ‘What?’ Mark asked.

  ‘We’re bein’ turfed out.’

  ‘Turfed out? What d’yeh mean, turfed out?‘

  Shocked, Agnes looked at Mark. ‘They’re knockin’ down the buildin’s - and they’re sendin’ us down the country!’

  Chapter 2

  WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK BLARED at 4am the next morning Agnes stretched her arm out, and felt around on her bedside locker before landing on the clock to switch it off. She couldn’t open her eyes, the lids felt like they were glued together. She had had just three hours’ sleep, having waited up for Frankie until one o‘clock to try and talk to him. He hadn’t arrived by then, so she went to bed.

  Slowly she rose and reset the alarm for 6.30. On her way to the bathroom she tiptoed into the boys’ room and gently placed the ticking clock beside Mark. The boys now all had a mattress each, thanks to Mark. He had bought some planed deal and webbing from Mr Wise at wholesale prices, and the boys’ room now had six built-in bunks, three against each wall. All six boys were asleep. Agnes had to stretch up a little to look into Frankie’s bunk. He was there sleeping, and her nose tingled at the smell of stale cider. He was also fully clothed. She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes, and then she sighed deeply and left the room, shutting the door gently behind her.

  Agnes got stuck into her usual morning chores. She began by making the six packed lunches. Then, into the bathroom where she rinsed and wrung out the wash she had left soaking in the bath the night before. Then she hung all the washing on the clothes line out the back window. She wedged a pole between the line and the windowsill to make a triangular line. The only thing she had washed that did not go on the line was the beautiful pink cashmere jumper that Pierre had bought her the previous Christmas. For this she laid a towel flat on the ground, placed the jumper on top of the towel and then laid another towel on top of the jumper. She gathered up three pairs of trousers, one belonging to Dermot, one belonging to Rory and one belonging to Mark, along with her own gabardine coat; she would leave them into Marlowe’s cleaners in O‘Connell Street later. By 4.30am she was sitting having a cup of tea and a cigarette. Ten minutes later it was down the stairs, out with the pram and the two bread-boards and she headed out into the still-dark morning for her twenty-minute walk to the fruit markets. One and three quarter hours later Agnes was in Moore Street throwing up the canvas roof over her stall, while back in 92 James Larkin Court the alarm clock burst into life at Mark’s pillow.

  Mark switched it off and rose quickly, pulled on a pair of denim jeans, zipped up the fly and went to the kitchen. At the cooker he turned on all four gas rings - there was a little ‘putt, putt’ as each ring burst into life. He would leave them burning while he washed himself and brushed his teeth, and this would take the chill off the kitchen. He went to the bathroom and washed. On his way back to the bedroom he turned off the gas rings. The kitchen was nice and cosy. He then went to the bedroom and gently woke Dermot.

  ‘Dermo, Dermo - the papers, Dermo.’ He spoke in a hushed tone.

  Groggily Dermot muttered, ‘What?’

  ‘The papers. It’s twenty to seven. Come on, yeh’ll be late.’

  Since Mark had joined Wise‘s, Dermot had taken over his paper round. Dermot was not as willing a worker as Mark and found it really difficult each morning to whip up the enthusiasm for running around in the cold and rain, shoving newspapers through letterboxes.

  By the time Dermot had washed and dressed, Mark had a mug of tea ready for each of them, and some toast dripping in butter. They both tucked in.

  ‘What happened last night with Frankie?’ Dermot asked, wiping butter from his chin.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mark said, off-hand.

  ‘Did she kill him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anythin’ anyway.’

  ‘The school are going to expel him. I heard the master sayin’ it yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t blame them. He’s a wanker.’

  ‘He’s not, he’s just ... different,’ Dermot defended Frankie.

  ‘Ah, you’re too young to understand.’

  ‘What d’yeh mean? I’m only two and a half years younger than you.‘

  ‘Yeh, well, two and a half years is a long time. When you were born I was already walkin’, pal.‘ Mark emphasised his words by pointing a crust of toast at Dermot.

  Dermot looked at him for a moment and then very seriously said, ‘Are yeh walkin’ since you were two and a half?’

  ‘Yep,’ Mark answered.

  ‘Jaysus, yeh must be knackered.’

  The two boys howled with laughter and Mark dropped the crust onto the plate, picked up his cup and walked to the sink where he left the cup on the draining board.

  ‘Right, let’s go,’ he announced.

  He tossed Dermot his duffel coat and put on his own donkey jacket and the two boys headed off to work.

  Agnes took her break at 10am, leaving Fat Annie to mind the stall. It took her just five minutes to walk to Dublin Corporation’s Housing Section in Jervis Street. She was not prepared for the sight that met her when she arrived there. It was absolute bedlam. It seemed that every resident in Zone One had arrived simultaneously to protest. The hallways were chock-a-block with people, all chattering and grumbling. Halfway down the hall, standing beside a bench, was a tall man with silver-grey hair, in a suit, shirt and tie, and wearing bifocals. Most of the complaints and abuse seemed to be aimed at him.

  Agnes recognised Birdie Kerrigan from St Jarlath’s Street. The Kerrigans had lived in Dublin’s inner city for nigh on a hundred years. Birdie looked frightened and confused.

  ‘Mornin’, Birdie. This is bloody awful,‘ Agnes said to her.

  ‘Coolock, Agnes! Fuckin’ Coolock! Where the fuck is Coolock, Agnes?’ she exclaimed tearfully.

  ‘I know, luv, it’s dreadful,’ Agnes tried to console her.

  But Birdie went on, ‘The kids will never find their way home! I can’t even fuckin’ spell Coolock!’ Birdie was distraught.

  Agnes linked Birdie’s arm and patted her on the shoulder, knowing that Birdie couldn’t even spell ‘town’. But, no matter, she understood what Birdie meant. There must have been a hundred people there just like Birdie, panicking and worrying about their future. To the officials in the Corporation it was just relocation, but to these people who had been part of Dublin’s inner city all of their lives it was akin to deportation. Eventually the silver-haired man in the bifocals stood up on the bench and started stamping his heel. Then raising his arms in the air he cried, ‘Silence please! Will everybody please calm down.’

  Gradually the halls quietened and all heads turned to the Corporation man. He had a County Meath accent.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Benny Lynch. I am a placement officer in the housing executive.’

  ‘Fuck you and the housin’ executive — we’re not movin’,‘ a voice called from the middle of the crowd.

  This was met with a huge cheer. Again the silver-haired official raised his hands in the air. He was now perspiring, and he wanted to be anywhere but here. When he had silence again he went on.

  ‘The homes that are being built for you are ultra-modem first-class dwellings,’ he assured them.

  ‘Good. Then you move to fuckin’ Finglas and leave us alone,’ a woman’s voice cried.

  Again a huge cheer.

  The official didn’t raise his arms this time, but still silence fell over the crowd. He spoke again.

  ‘If y
ou will try to be orderly I will take all of your names and register your protest. However, I have to tell you that the decision has been made. Dublin Corporation is set on progress in the city and the decision is irrevocable.’

  A mumbling started around the crowd. He raised his voice slightly. ‘But let me say this!’ Dead silence came again. ‘The areas you are being moved out of will be rebuilt with homes - new homes, better homes, more modem homes - and all of you will be entitled to apply to be relocated back in the inner city if you wish.’

  This was a surprise announcement and seemed to calm everyone down a bit.

  ‘How long will that take?’ a man at the front of the crowd asked.

  The silver-haired man answered with authority. ‘We expect the houses in Zone One - your zone - to be ready for occupation in the summer of 1973.’

  ‘That’s three and a half years, for Christ’s sake!’ a woman cried out.

  ‘I know,’ the official shouted down to her. ‘But this is a huge project and these things take time. Let’s face it, you people cannot go on living the way you are at present. Now, these new homes in Cabra, Finglas and Coolock will have hot running water, gardens, three bedrooms!’

  There were mumblings of, ‘We’ll live the way we want to live,’ and ‘good enough for our parents good enough for us’. But deep in their heart of hearts they all knew he was right, and still they held on to the vague promise that they would eventually be moved back into the city centre. The silver-haired man saw he was winning. He should have quit while he was ahead, but instead he went for one more victory blow. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, progress is a huge machine. Me? I’m just a tool.’

  ‘Yeh can say that again,’ shouted a little old lady, and the hall burst into nervous laughter.

  The man’s face reddened and he vanished into an office. The crowd filed out onto the street and within a couple of minutes they had dispersed.

  Like it or not, come July, Agnes Browne and family were moving to Finglas.

  Chapter 3

  SEAN MCHUGH WAS SIXTY-EIGHT YEARS OF AGE, his wife Poppy sixty-seven. He had two children, Michael and Sheila, and both had emigrated long ago. Michael was a truck driver in Boston, Massachusetts, and Sheila was a supervisor in a plastics factory in Maidenstone in London. Sean had married Poppy in a hurry in 1921 in John’s Lane church, not because she was pregnant but because he thought for sure he was going to die. He fought on Michael Collins’s side in the Civil War, and nobody was more relieved than he when it ended in 1922. Sean was sad to see so many young Irishmen die at the hands of other Irishmen, particularly his Commander-in-Chief Michael Collins, after whom Sean had named his son. Sean had joined the Free State Army for a short time, but after four years had had enough of it and in 1927 he went on the dole. He picked up some part-time jobs here and there over the next six years, but in 1933 he went to work as a general factory help for a middle-aged Jewish Austrian man who had just come to Ireland.

  Benjamin Wisemann was thirty-three years of age when he landed in Dun Laoghaire in 1933 - he immediately shortened his name to Wise. It had been a long, tough journey, and his wife Anna had spent the three weeks that they’d travelled fussing over Manny, their son. Manny was just ten years old and treated Anna like a servant rather than his mother. Benjamin disliked the boy and was often dismayed that as a father he should feel this way about his son. But Manny just took and took and took, and Anna gave and gave until she had no more to give. In September 1944, two weeks before Manny’s twenty-first birthday, Anna passed away. Manny had been living in England for just under a year at that stage. He did not come home for the funeral. Manny was a schmuck.

  Sean McHugh remembered the boy and the efforts his father made to bring him into the trade, but Manny simply had no interest. It was not just that he had no interest in the furniture business, he had no interest in anything that involved work.

  Mr Wise was passionate about woodworking. He had such a depth of knowledge about it. This knowledge and training he gladly passed on to Sean McHugh, and Sean was a willing pupil. Sean McHugh rose to be Mr Benny Wise’s right-hand man. Mr Wise would go away for weeks at a time, selling furniture all over England, in the full knowledge that as long as Sean was there everything would be safe back in Ireland. He was right, for Sean had Wise & Co. running like a well-oiled Swiss watch.

  As Sean sat now in the foreman’s office in Wise’s he wondered to himself where the twenty-seven years had gone since he first walked in that door. He was also worried. Over the last five years, business at Wise’s had taken a nose-dive. Now Sean held in his hand a letter from Smyth & Blythe Distributors in England, Wise’s biggest customer. Gregory Smyth stated that he would be in Dublin this coming Monday and he would like to sit down and have a serious talk with Mr Wise. Sean knew what that meant. He had over the last five years seen similar letters from Coppinger of Manchester, McDonald’s of Glasgow and O‘Neill’s of Belfast. Smyth & Blythe were dropping their business with Wise’s. This would leave Wise & Co. with only its Irish customers - Cavendishes, Sloan’s, Amott’s and Brown Thomas in Dublin, Cash’s in Cork and Shaw’s in Limerick. Not enough, Sean knew, to keep Wise’s open. Mr Wise blamed this new-fangled plywood- and chipboard-framed furniture.

  ‘Nobody wants quality any more!’ Mr Wise would say, exasperated, and Sean would just nod his head. ‘Soon, Sean, I tell you for sure, there will be no carpenters — just assemblers.’

  Sean had dropped into Mr Wise on his way to work that day. Poor old Benny was not well, not well at all. He told Sean he wouldn’t be into work, so Sean didn’t inform him about the letter from Smyth & Blythe. Sean would go and meet them himself. Mr Wise’s ill-health was not helped by the fact that he knew that Wise’s was going down the tubes. The factory, which once had forty staff, now had barely twenty, and twelve of those were apprentices. Mr Wise, Sean thought, would die with the business.

  He placed the letter in the open ledger on his desk, looked at his watch and realised it was tea-break time. He stood and walked towards the door to the factory, picking up his whistle on the way. He stepped just outside the door and blew the whistle three times very loudly. The machines began to wind down and within thirty seconds the factory was quiet as the workers filed into the canteen to make tea and eat their sandwiches. As he was about to step back into his office, he heard in the distance the tap, tap, tap of somebody still working, down at the far right-hand comer of the factory. He smiled to himself. He knew who it was. He headed off down the factory floor, picking up odd pieces of wood here and there and putting them in a bin, until he rounded the corner and, behind a pile of hardwood, saw the back of Mark Browne’s head. He walked over to where the young man was working.

  ‘Didn’t yeh hear the whistle, Mark?’ He spoke to the back of Mark’s head.

  Mark turned and smiled at him. ‘I did, Mr McHugh. That’s okay, I have me sandwiches here. I’ll have them as I’m working. I’m not really a tea man, if yeh know what I mean.’

  Sean dug his large hands into the pockets of his dungarees. ‘Christ, Mark, if I had ten like you, I’d put this factory back on its feet!’

  ‘Thanks, Mr McHugh.’

  ‘That’s okay, son. I really mean it.’ Sean began to walk away, then stopped and turned back to the boy. He suddenly had a notion. ‘Mark?’

  Mark looked up. He had three pin-nails in his mouth but still managed to answer. ‘Yes, Mr McHugh?’

  ‘I’d like you to do something with me on Monday.’

  Sean McHugh spent the next twenty minutes telling Mark the situation at Wise’s. Explaining who Smyth & Blythe were, and how important they were to the future of the business, Sean told Mark he felt that if somebody young went along to this meeting then Smyth & Blythe might regain a bit of confidence in Wise‘s, seeing some new blood. He didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a try. ’So what do you think, Mark, will you do it?‘

  ‘Well yeh, sure, Mr McHugh, if you think it will help. But I’ve never been to a meetin’ before - what’ll
I wear?’

  Sean laughed and patted the boy on the back. ‘A shirt and tie will be fine, Mark.’

  ‘A shirt and tie. Okay, then.’

  Sean went back to his office a little lighter on his feet and for some reason that he couldn’t explain to himself, his heart a little happier! Mark slowly placed three more nails in his mouth, stooped down to the roll-top desk he was working on and said aloud to himself, ‘Where the fuck will I get a shirt and tie?’

  Agnes sat ashen-faced across the table from the principal of St Declan’s Technical School. She could not honestly defend Frankie. She wanted to think that this man was just a crabby old school principal who for some reason was picking on her son, but in her heart she knew this wasn’t true. Frankie, she had to admit to herself, but only in her mind, was a bad egg.

  ‘Frankly, Mrs Browne, we see the binman more often at the school than your son - and the binman comes only once a week. When Frankie does arrive he disrupts classes, he’s a bad influence on the other boys, and he bullies and terrorises not just his classmates but some of the teachers also. It just can’t go on. It simply can’t go on.’

  He looked over his glasses at this relatively young woman. She seemed a decent sort.

  Agnes felt that she should say something, and her bottom lip quivered as she tried to speak. ‘It’s ... it’s my fault ... I don’t spend enough time with him at home ... he’s, he’s just a ... a boy.‘

  The principal looked over the rim of his glasses again, and he felt sad for the woman.

  ‘I have no wish to correct you, Mrs Browne. But don’t forget I also have young Dermot as a pupil here and although, yes, he is a bit of a livewire, he’s a good student and a hard-working lad. I feel that he would be a better reflection of the love and care your children get at home. And, indeed, young Simon too - not the brightest, but a good solid lad.’