“What the hell are you looking at?” he’d roar.
“Not bloody much,” I wanted to roar right back. But I never did. At fifteen years of age, I’d sat with him on one of these mornings. I watched as he tried to put a shakin’ cup to his lips. I’d said, “Can I hold it for you.” A mighty back hand slap had lifted me out of the chair. Retaliate first. A practical application.
At school, I hadn’t learned a whole lot. I was never tortured with “what was I going to be.” I had trouble enough with “what I was.” I remembered a word from French lessons. The sound of it hooked deep. It was the word of a nightmare. That night I had me one... a beauty of a “cauchemar.” My father and old Father Benedictus were walking behind my funeral. I was sitting up in the hearse trying to get their attention. “Be quiet,” they said. “Do one thing right in your life.” At the cemetery, my grave was lined with cabbages, and I was dressed in the Penney’s suit. “You didn’t drink half enough,” whispered Mr. Brady. “I’ll give him no Benediction,” said Father Benedictus. The band of thugs were kicking the coffin — “Come out — we know you have cigarettes...” I woke drenched in sweat. No Benediction. I looked on the bedside table. No cigarettes either.
“Benediction”
Never believed
in such as blessings
were
you threw
a make un-helped
upon the day... and
help available
was how you helped
yourself... a crying
down
to but a look in caution — stayed alert
reducing always towards
the basic front
in pain
— never
— never the once
to once admit
you floundering
had to be
such Gods as crost
your mind... if God
as such it could have been
you never took
to vital introspection
... He’d have an urgent set
of other obligations
such it was
from you
did know
the very first
in steps belief — form
framing
every reprimand
you ever force-full
gave.
The Traders funeral was huge. The store was closed for the day. A Friday! Phew-oh-d. A major trading one. Most of the mourners were dressed in Traders best. Less a mark of identification with the deceased as more the result of a late November sale.
I spotted some of the shop-lifters, and they looked appropriately grieved. He had been lax to prosecute offenders and was thus a huge loss to the thieving fraternity.
I hit the Square, and a rib must have broken in the devil. A shard of wintered sun. Cold of course but the illusion was sustaining. The bench there was vacant. I enjoyed the sight of the Bank clerks hurrying to their lunch. What an air of young gravity they worked for. A few more years, and they’d have the dead mackerel expression complete. Try getting them to a funeral. Their lives were geared to mutterings of grief on a daily basis.
A shadow fell. The head wino. I knew him as Padraig. The usual rumours beset him. He was supposedly from a good family. He was
a teacher
a lawyer
a brain surgeon
a lapsed genius
As long as I’d known him, he was in bits and fond of the literary allusion. Today, he was but semi-pist. “And greetings to you my young friend. Are we perchance pertaining of the late winter solstice...”
I smiled and gave him a cigarette. The tremoring of his hand we both ignored. He was about 5’5” in height, emaciated, with a mop of dirty white hair. The face was a riot of broken blood vessels, swollen now. The nose was broken, and more than once. Blue, the bluest eyes you’d ever get... underlined in red, of course. Ordinance surveyed. He mutilated the cigarette to get rid of the filter-tip. He smoked deeply of what remained.
“Well, young fellow, forgive me for the desecration of your cigarette.”
“No mind, my father did the same.”
“A man of subtlety and taste. Was he not?”
“He had his moments.”
“One deduces from the use of the past tense that he’s no longer with us — or worse — in England.”
“Dead... he’s dead.”
At the top of his lungs, Padraig began to sing. Startling the absolute wits out of me.
I looked furtively ’round, hoping he was through. He ate deep from the cigarette and in a cloud of nicotine... he bellowed:
He paused and I jumped in.
“Will you stop if I give you money?”
He laughed, showing two yellowed teeth, the rest, obviously, were casualties of combat.
“Indeed I will.”
I gave him a quid.
“Young man, you could have left, it would have been the wiser course in the financial fashion.”
“I like it here.”
“Pithy... you are not a man who gives away a lot... a lot, that is, in the knowledge department. What you have to say has the qualities of brevity and clarity.”
Before I could reply to this, briefly or clearly, he was assailed with a series of gut-wrenching coughs. Up came phlegm and various un-identifiable substances. I gave him a handkerchief. He used it to dry him steaming eyes.
“I am indebted to you, my young friend. It has been many the mile since I was offered a fellow pilgrim’s hanky. Might we indulge in a further spot of nicotine.”
We did... I said, “Your accent is hard to pin down.”
“Like a steady income, it has an elusive quality... not to mention effusive.”
There was no reply to this. I didn’t even try.
“At one dark era in my existence I was, I believe, from the countryside of Louth. Are you at all familiar with that barren territory?”
I had no intention of telling him of my mother. None! I said, “My mother is buried in it.”
“A burden for any crat-ure. May The Lord Bless Her. She’ll need all the comfort available in that forsaken land.”
My concentration was focused on not talking like him. It was highly contagious. He rooted deep in his coat, a heavy tweed battered number. Lightin’! Lightin’ with the dirt, as they say. Out came a brown bottle.
“A touch of biddy perhaps,” he said.
He wiped the neck with the clean end of my hanky and offered it. I took a cautious swig. Ar... gh... oh God. Red Biddy, meths, and sherry! My eyes felt reversed and a punch like bad luck side-swept my stomach. It got your attention... fast. He nigh on drained it when I passed it back with no apparent ill-effects... no iller than he habitually was at any rate. Relief being how you drink it mebbe. He said, “The only advice I remember is it’s better be lucky than good...”
“And are you?”
“What?”
“Lucky.” He laughed deep.