Maggie's Breakfast (11 page)

“Somethin’s gone wrong with ya.”

I don’t know why he didn’t fire me.

Danny had been repairing shoes and boots for so long he forgot his mouth had purposes other than holding nails. When I talked or asked him something he would shake his head and point to his
mouth with his hand. The first thing he did when he opened the shop in the morning was to put a handful of nails in his mouth.

I didn’t tell him I was thinking of Maureen Quinn all day long. One day I asked him if I could go and look for customers. Danny nodded yes.

The first house I went to was Maureen’s. I knocked on her door asking for shoes. Maureen’s mother opened the door.

“Who are you?”

“I work for Danny Dorgan.”

“Danny Dorgan? Who’s he?”

“Didn’t you get your shoes mended this year?”

“What?”

“You got any shoes to be mended?”

“No.”

“You don’t?”

“I said no.”

“What about Maureen?”

“Maureen? Me daughter?”

“Yis.”

“Maureen’s gone to Australia for God’s sake! What’s the matter with you?”

“Australia?”

“That’s what I said.”

“She’s gone?”

“Gone.”

“Australia?”

“Yeah. You know where that is?”

“It’s far.”

“Very far!”

“How far?”

“Farther than America.”

“Jesus!”

“What did you say?”

“I said I hope Jesus doesn’t go there.”

“To Australia? Jesus
is
in Australia. Don’t you know that?”

“When’s he comin’ back?”

“Who?”

“Jesus! I mean, Maureen.”

“Who are you workin’ for again?”

“Danny Dorgan.”

“What d’ya want to know about me daughter for?”

“She wanted somethin’ mended.”

“She did?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“She told me she had a pair of . . .” I didn’t know how to finish the conversation.

I walked away in pain. I felt depressed and abandoned. I had so many fantasies of sitting with Maureen Quinn and telling her everything about my feelings for her. I felt I loved her so much she
would have no choice but to love me back. I planned in my mind to marry her when I was eighteen. Now it was too late. I never got a chance to tell her anything. She didn’t know that she was
the last person I thought about before I went to sleep at night. She didn’t know that I walked up and down the street hoping I’d see her. She didn’t know I was hoping her shoes
would wear out fast.

Maureen never came back from Australia. Later on, a year or so maybe, somebody said she got married to a fella she met at work there.

After my painting brown shoes with black dye and black shoes with brown dye and doin’ everything else backwards Danny Dorgan decided to let me go. I didn’t blame him.

A few months later I was cycling by his shop and it was closed. He had swallowed a mouthful of nails and was taken to the hospital.

* * *

Mrs. Nolan was a frail little woman with wire glasses leaning on her strange flat nose. Someone said her husband came home one night and gave it to her when he couldn’t
wake her up from having one too many shots of whiskey. She was known in the street as ‘Whiskey Breath’. Mrs. Nolan said it was prescribed medicine that people smelled when they stopped
to talk to her. She kept a flask in the pocket of her apron and never took her hand off it. Whenever she had a sip too many Mrs. Nolan was always generous with handing out a few pennies. She
provided me with a bit of employment every Monday and Friday.

“You’re up early, boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How’s your poor mother? I see her pass every morning. On her way to Mass, I suppose. God love her. I’m sure He does too.”

I could smell the whiskey.

“Son,” she muttered again, “I want you to go to the pawnshop on James’s Street.” She stuck her tongue out as if to air it. Then her eyes came back to me. “Can
you go?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Bless you. My husband’s suit is there and I want you to go and release it before he gets up.”

She moved back into the front room to look for the ticket. I stepped inside and watched her.

“My son’s shoes are there too, but I can’t get them yet,” she said to herself, lifting everything that had a lid on it as she searched for the pawn ticket. She found a
batch of dockets and pulled one from the top of the bundle. “Here it is.” She handed it to me. Her hands were shaking and she looked nervously back into the house as she took some money
out of her apron pocket and told me to give it to the pawnbroker. She’d give me a few pence for myself when I came back safely with the suit.

Mr. Nolan was upstairs asleep in bed. It was Saturday and he would be sleeping late. He snored like my father. If he woke up and came down and wanted to put on his suit there’d be hell to
pay. The man had no idea his suit was resting peacefully in the pawnshop on James’s Street. After a week’s hard work at the foundry most of the men in the neighbourhood slept till noon.
On Saturdays the wives did their shopping and bought everything for the week. That included a bottle of whiskey that Mrs. Nolan hid away for herself. At the end of the Saturday shopping spree
there’d be no money left for anything. The families then coasted until the next payday, Friday. To get extra cash during the week the wives pawned everything and anything of value. For most,
the only valuable items they had were clothes or sometimes a clock or an iron or something brass. Anything of value was consigned to the pawnshop Monday morning after the men entered the factory
gates. Mrs. Nolan’s husband had a new suit, which he won in a church raffle and Mrs. Nolan made sure it remained new for as long as possible. He was only allowed to wear it to Mass on Sunday
and for his dinner after. After Sunday dinner Mrs. Nolan (and most other wives) stripped her husband of his suit. She covered it with brown paper and hung it up in the wardrobe behind some other
items. Mr. Nolan wouldn’t see it again until the following Sunday. He never knew his suit spent the week in the pawnshop. The pawnshop gave a loan on the suit and Mrs. Nolan was able to
replenish the small bottle of whiskey.

* * *

The pawnbroker stood up on the counter and held up the items.

“Murphy! Brass clock?”

“Here I am, sir. I want to redeem that before me oul’ fella passes away. We got it as a wedding present over twenty years ago.” A woman stretched her hand out with her pawn
ticket. The man handed down the clock and she passed along some money with the ticket. The man reached back on to the shelf and began taking down every conceivable item you could think of. Brass
buckets, stags’ heads, holy pictures, statues, cups and saucers. The women milled about, pushing each other aside. They all wanted to have the ornament at home for the weekend. Monday to
Friday didn’t matter just as long as they had something nice to put up for the weekend when the country relatives came to visit after Mass.

When the pawnbroker moved to the clothing department a wild rush followed him. The people in this bunch seemed more eager than the ornament seekers. He pulled out overcoats, trousers, blazers,
suits, and shirts. There was something about the smell of the packed clothing that made everybody rub their noses. When the man called out the name “Nolan” I let out a yell. The women
next to me looked to see where the voice had come from. I was lost between thirty fat women. When I raised my hand showing the ticket, the women pushed me up to the counter and a few of them
hoisted me up on it.

“Here it is! Your first pair of long pants!” the man said as he threw the suit over my head.

I gave him the ticket with the money. I couldn’t find room enough to get back onto the floor so I just stood there on the counter with Mr. Nolan’s suit. “Here y’are, son,
let me give ya a hand!” With that I was carried all the way across the women waiting for their familiar threads to appear.

I got out of the pawnshop as fast as I could. When I got back on the bus I was happy that my mother didn’t have any suits at home that were worth pawning.

* * *

By the time I turned fourteen half of the neighbourhood had emigrated to England, young women as well as young men. Money was as scarce as sun in Dublin. With nothing to do, a
pal of mine and I found a new world for ourselves.

Billy Whelan was considered by the neighbours to be in the same league as Biddy Sonics. Some even said he was as odd as Mrs. Mack. He might have been as odd as both of them put together but to
me Billy was a hero. He lived every minute of the day believing and behaving like he was somebody else. Had anybody in Inchicore taken Billy seriously they would have called him Mandrake the
Magician.

Billy was also the first to see every new film that opened in Dublin. Watching films was Billy’s idea of Heaven. He wouldn’t want to go to Heaven if it didn’t have a cinema. If
I didn’t have the money to go Billy would sit down and tell me the whole story from beginning to end. He acted out each part. I spent a lot of time with Billy. We saw nearly every movie that
played in Dublin. In the morning we’d start off at the Lyric on James’s Street, then we’d go to the Tivo (the Tivoli) on Francis Street. In the afternoon we’d walk across
town and go to the Mero (on Mary Street). Late at night we’d cross the Liffey Bridge and go to the last show at the Phoeno (the Phoenix). The next morning we’d be up early and be first
in line to get into the Cameo on Grafton Street to see foreign films. The cinemas of Dublin in the forties and fifties were as culturally important to the minds of the poor as the churches were to
their souls. I saw so many films and serials at the Tivo and the Mero I was in danger of losing touch with reality. Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers and Bud Abbot and Lou
Costello made me laugh and each laugh was like a new beginning. The American films of the fifties turned our damp days in Dublin into a world of Technicolor.

The Tivo was also one of Dublin’s dating arenas, a place where boys and girls met each other. The older boys would come in and look around for a girl who was sitting alone. When they
spotted the girl they’d do everything they could to sit in the seat next to her. When a girl came to the Tivo alone it was accepted she was looking for a fella. It was never questioned. The
ritual of sitting next to a stranger was part of the excitement of going to the Tivo. When the lights went down sex went up in the dark. Boys and girls felt each other up without taking their eyes
off the screen. A girl and boy sitting next to each other would touch and feel everything they had between their legs and not even see each other’s face. Both parties let their hands roam
without missing a moment of the film. When the film ended one or the other of them would just get up and leave. They would have sat through two films and felt every bodily part of each other
without ever looking in each other’s eyes. Billy and I did our fair share of feeling-up.

Although Keogh Square was famous for its roughness and danger it was also well known as the best place in Dublin to swap comic books. Visiting Keogh Square took more guts than living in it.
Billy Whelan had a different take on Keogh Square. He was able to put out of his mind any sense of danger in regard to the place. Billy was more than mad about comic books. He was a fanatic. Every
penny he ever had he spent on going to a film or buying a comic book. He had collected stacks and stacks:
Batman
,
Captain Marvel
,
Wonder Wo man
,
The Blackhawk
,
Mercury
(the man of speed with wings on his tin helmet),
The Green Hornet
,
Plastic Man
,
Super Boy
,
Batman meets Superman
. Fantasy was to Billy Whelan’s
blood as drink was to others. Billy Whelan was the comic-broker. He peddled and exchanged paper fantasies. I also had a passion for films and comic books but not nearly as intense. If Billy
didn’t have the latest edition he’d walk around Dublin looking for somebody who had. Hail, rain or snow Billy would be searching anywhere and everywhere for the latest comic book. When
he found an individual who had the comic book he wanted he’d barter and bargain and swap two old editions for the latest. I traipsed around Dublin at night with Billy. He knew who had what
comic book through a whole network of other boys. He knew not only where they lived but also at what hour they’d be in at night. Having comic books to swap was the same as having a passport
and safe passage in or out of Keogh Square. The boys in Keogh Square welcomed anybody in who came with comic books. And they admired the courage it took to go there.

The Tivo had more to offer than the fantasy on the screen. Getting the pennies for admission to the cinema was not always easy. When it couldn’t be had, we’d sneak in through the
back toilet windows. There was always a crowd waiting to climb in the window. We waited for the film to start then we’d climb up the wall and drop through the window to the bathroom floor.
When the men’s toilet was crowded, myself and others ran around to the other alley where the girls’ toilet was. It was even more crowded and the smell was just as bad. When the girls
saw us climbing through the window they’d scream and yell and run out. The whiff of the place was enough to knock a horse down. Management had to leave the windows open to let the fresh air
in. If they didn’t the entire movie house would be so smelly nobody would he able to watch the film. Often the toilet was so crowded some people didn’t bother getting up from their
cinema seats to go to it. They pissed under the seat in front of them and the urine would flow down the slanted floor towards the screen and end up in a puddle. Nobody wanted to sit in the front
row. When they did they ended up with wet shoes and stinky feet. My own trousers were stiff from the piss I had to let go of because I couldn’t get into the toilet and my mother would always
know where I had been hiding all day.

Billy favoured certain movie stars. He loved Jeff Chandler but he also especially liked Tyrone Power, Cornel Wilde and Robert Taylor. Something about their black hair slicked back appealed to
him. He’d argue with me over who was the best-looking and who made the best films. Billy said Errol Flynn was the best Robin Hood. I said John Derek was. The fight between John Wayne and
Randolph Scott in the film
The Spoilers
was the best fight ever because John Wayne hated Randolph Scott in real life, according to Billy. How he knew that I don’t know. To Billy, Jeff
Chandler was a real American Indian because of the way he played Cochise in the film
Broken Arrow
. He said Jeff Chandler’s grey hair was grey because he put white shoe polish in it to
make it look grey. Apparently he did this because there were too many movie stars with black hair and moustaches. Another thing about Billy: he didn’t like wearing shirts or jackets and
definitely not together. If he wore a jacket he wouldn’t wear a shirt. When he had to go to Mass or go outdoors he slung an old tweed jacket over his shoulder and stuck his chest out no
matter what the weather was. This was probably something to do with Jeff Chandler’s bare-chested role as Cochise.