Bed in the Sticks

Lee Dunne

Description

A Bed in the sticks, Lee Dunne's sequel to Goodbye to the Hill opens with the hero, Paddy Maguire returning to Ireland after a short and dismal sojourn to England. He is bowed but undeaten and with his usual optimism embarks on an exploration of stage craft with a touring theatrical company as it winds its way through the small towns of 1950s rural Ireland. Paddy's theatrics on and off the stage, make for a warm, funny and insightful perspective on the times and the growing pains of a man/boy.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 03 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783330423
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
A BED IN THE STICKS
by
Lee Dunne



Publisher Information
Published in 2013 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Lee Dunne to be identified as the Authors of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2013 Lee Dunne
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.



1
Liverpool was an alright place but, I was more than glad that it was only twelve hours to boat time. Roll on, I thought; just let me get out of here. Just let me get back to Dublin and I’ll kiss the ground the minute I set foot on it.
I pushed the hamburger streak away from me; the stench of it alone was enough to turn my stomach; but I sipped the coffee. Hot or cold, weak or strong, coffee always went down very well.
The café was crowded with me. Some of them fresh-eyed on their way to work, others, grey lipped with grime on their faces. Just off the night shift. Night shift! God, the very thought of it send shivers down my heart.
The normal heavy haul of everyday life could be bad enough, but, to have to work when most people were in their bed, to have to sleep through the hours when the sun was shining, seemed to me to be the end altogether.
We sat on long, hard, narrow benches, and not one of the men seemed to mind that the rough, wooden table surfaces needed a good scrub down with hot water and carbolic. They ate the much that was served to them and I don’t think there was a miserable face in the place apart from my own. Not that I could see my face. I just knew that if I looked half as fed up as I was feeling, I was hardly a sight for sore eyes.
It was a noisy place. Men yelling their breakfast orders in accents familiar and strange. You got a lot of swearing and coughing, through cigarette smoke that hovered like an umbrella over the tables. Talk spinning about my ears like the wind, fierce, wild and irrational, full of colour.
The Liverpool accent was very like my own, adenoidal. Others, Welsh, and Scottish and Irish and a few English ones that I couldn’t put a name to, talking at the same time, trying to shout each other down. Jokes, lies, soccer, dogs, rugby league, whatever that might be. Not forgetting holidays at Butlin’s, the butt of many a bad joke, as in one that didn’t make you laugh, though miscarriages, piles and the clap were fairly popular. I sipped my coffee, shaking my head, amazed at the promiscuous range of topics that were under discussion at the same time.
‘Hey Pat, if Ireland’s such a wonderful place, what you doing over ‘ere then?’ The Scouser had wicked eyes, but his face didn’t give a thing away.
‘Hey Taff, you’re the nearest. Would you grab that bacon butty and shove it down that bastard’s trote?’
The Irishman pretended to be annoyed: ‘Did y’ever hear such cheek in all your born days...I’ll tell you one thing, boyo, if it wasn’t for the land of saints and scholars, by which I mean that Jewel in a Silver Sea called Ireland, this town would be empty except for the rats.’
‘Shure ‘tis maybe someday...’ The Scouser began to sing in a rich Irish brogue.
The woman who waited on tables slammed his breakfast down in front of him. ‘Turn it up, Wilson, I ain’t got a bleedin’ music ‘all licence.’
‘Some bleedin’ right-comedians though,’ Scouse said as he slapped her rump. ‘Are we right tonight, Mevanwyn?’
‘Don’t you Mevanwn me,Tydfill, or I’ll slap a patch on your leak for you!’
‘Thank God, I’m away to ma bed.’
Scouse, already eating, gave his attention to the Scot who had spoken.
‘Dinna forget to have a slice off the haggis afore ye go to kip, Jock. If you dinna do it, the wee wifey’ll be handin’ it to the milkman again.’
They all ganged up on the Scot now, laughing at Scouse’s ridiculous take-off. He sat through it for a minute, his face, leather textured, stern, his eyes twinkling as he stubbed his dog-end into the saucer that served as an ashtray.
‘ As much sense as a lad of two !’ he sighed to the man beside him, ‘What can you expect from an illegitimate Scouse?’
‘Ere, watch it, Thistle Head ! I ain’t illegit! I’ve been reading and writin’ since I was six years old!’
‘Oh, lovely eyes, Jock’s missus has, did ye know that, Scouse?’
‘Dead right, Pat, lovely, ‘specially the two on the left!’
‘It’d take a wee faggot like you Scouse, to notice!’
Scouse wasn’t listening. He was already putting someone else in his place: ‘Oh yeh! They’ll win the league alright. The bleedin’ Schoolboys League!
This man swore and Scouse laughed, his weasel face flushed from the smoke and the heat and the force of his own amusement. He looked at least thirty but he wore an Edwardian type-suit and his hair was all brushed into a duck’s arse which was the current rage in the city.
‘Butlins,’ a man at the end of the huge table was saying, ‘Always go to Butlins.’
‘Gerron! Clickey-Click! Sixty Six, Number One, Kelly’s Eye! Holidays begin and end in Jersey, with yer cheap fags and booze, millions of birds, and all of them gasping for a length!’
‘We’d a bull one time was always hopin’ for a tight, Jersey!’
‘That was your old dad, Pat! That’s how me made such a bollix of you!’
My mind reeled under it all and I’ve only remembered a portion of what was said. It was impossible to take it all in though I certainly tried, knowing that some day I was going to write it down.
I can see them still, those men, happy as I was miserable, sitting there eating and having a good dirty laugh in that steam filled room, the sweat smell of old working clothes and the soiled bodies of men somehow filling the place with life. And I have to admit that I felt good for being there. Better anyway than I had been an hour earlier.
For forty eight hours, I’d been trying to kick the homesickness, but it was still there, nagging away while it held me fast, and I was seriously miserable. I hated being like this. It was contrary to my nature, yet, so far I hadn’t been able to give it the elbow, get rid of it.
Of course, it was stupid, and it was childish, and it was all the other things, so easy to call to mind afterwards, but in the present I was choked with myself that I couldn’t shake it off.
Come on smart aleck!
You can do it! You can do anything! You can’t have run out of guts. Not you! If you’re in such a hurry to get back to Dublin, there must be a good reason. Finding no answer to this, I tried as hard as I could to make myself stop and think the whole thing through but, it was no use. All I wanted to do was take a deep breath and not let go until I got off the boat back in Dublin. It was like I just didn’t want another lungful of England inside me.
I knew all about England. It was a crocodile, a long hungry bastard that ate up the lives of men. It was a teeming, seething mass of factories and office blocks a mile wide and I bled a bit for every Irishman that had to spend his life in it. Everything about the place was wrong. Anyone could see that. I mean, I could see it and I’d only been in it three days.
Three days. When you’re eighteen it doesn’t take you long to weigh up a place. And you know that you know it all. What? At eighteen! Of course you do. The lot! You know it all and you can see things for what they are. You wouldn’t just make something out to be what it wasn’t just because you didn’t have the courage to face things fair and square. It’s just that I want to be in Ireland, I belong there.
Ireland. Eire, the Free State, the Republic, Kathleen Ni Houlihan - call her what you like. Abuse her how you will. Say all the terrible, truthful things you like. It doesn’t matter. Not now, least of all on that morning in Nineteen-Fifty. To a Paddy, be he a bum or a bricklayer, whether in London, New York or Sydney, Ireland continues to be the home of your heart, even after you have turned your back on her.
I spent the endless day wandering the streets, smiling a bit to myself every time I thought about getting on the boat. I must have noticed this and that, but hardly anything registered. I had just shut my mind off except for thinking about the boat. I wanted, so badly, to go home. I wanted to go home so badly that
I had no interest in thinking about anything else. Ireland had me
by the short and curly hairs and I didn’t fight her at all. She was my mistress and I wanted to give in to her.
Finally, somewhere in that slut-warm city of Liverpool, I did switch on for a minute or two. I stopped and looked into a shop window. It was a hairdressing salon and I could see my face in the perpendicular strips of the mirror that faced the street.
Under the rick of dark hair was the face of a youth, eighteen years old, who was tired and devoid of self-esteem, a big drinker for his age and a great merchant for a slice off the legs. As a general rule, sharp as a tack but, often stupid with it, emotional enough for five people and, at times, capable of being very stupid because of being too quick to jump the gun.
He was too often ready to act without taking time to stop and think. And a born bullshit artist with it, moved too often and too fast, by his emotions - this thing of blaming England because he couldn’t handle being away from home - shameful, he knew, reminding him that without the few quid that had landed during the war from the Granny in Enfield, Middlesex, he and the family in their Du