"The Warrior Carty" a short story by Eddie Stack

Today I am very proud to present on The Irish Corner of The Reading Life a short story by Eddie Stack. (there is an author biography at the end of the story).   This is a great story and I thank Eddie so much for allowing me to share this story with my readers.  Eddie Stack is a great writer in the wonderful tradition of the Irish Story Teller.

"The Warrior Carty" 

a story by

Eddie Stack

An Irish Quarter Special Event

The Universal Soldier becomes the Universal forgotten man.

The Warrior Carty                

 

The Warrior had enough of the Christmas fair and took cover in Looney's bar. It was empty, dark and cold, still waiting to be strobed by the solstice sun.

         "A harmless aul fair," sniffled Bridgey, totting up his bill on a brown paper bag. "Four shillins for the Powers an' three an' sixpence for the bottle a porter...what's that altogether?"

         "Seven an' six Bridgey," said the Warrior, leaving three half crowns on the red formica counter. He settled them into a small pile.

         "Thanks Bridgey, and good luck to you."

        "The same to yourself...ahh, they have the country ruined...and everythin' is so dear sure..."

         "They have this poor country shagged, Bridgey. That's about the size of it now."

         "'Tis true for you..."

         "And what's more, the crowd that's doin' it never fired a shaggin' shot in their life."

         "'Tis true for you."

         "Anyways," sighed the Warrior, flopping his arms in resignation, "give us another small whiskey."

         "Powers, wasn't it? "

         "'Twas...that's the way now Bridgey. What kind of a Christmas are ye havin' so far?"

         "Yarrah...'tis quiet. Don't you know yourself now. An' sure today is the big day an' can't you see the way it is. Quiet, sure. You might rise a stir in it yourself above in the Square later on."

         "Not today, Bridgey."

         "No?"

         "Not today, Bridgey," the Warrior repeated, shaking his head, "but anyways, this is the overcoat I was tellin' you about, the last day I here."

         She admired the dark crombie coat and listened to how he came upon it. And he was wearing the good blue suit, clean shirt, collar and tie. These he bought from the Pakistani hawker who came to Ennis every Saturday. That was another story, better left for another day, he said.

         "Is there anyone dead belongin' to you?" she asked.

         "No, not that I know of, Bridgey," he answered. "And I didn't hear anything up the town. But there was a funeral this morn beyond in Maheramore, I s'pose you heard that. That poor Mrs. Canney was buried. Her son is married to a daughter of Paraffin Hogan's."

         "Is that the boy that drives Blake's lorry."

         "Now you have it."

         "That's where Doran's hearse must have been. It passed up the road a while ago."

         "I got a lift to town with them. 'Twas my first time in a hearse and it won't be my last, Bridgey."

         "'Tis true for you."

         She smoked one of his cigarettes and put the pieces together. The Warrior was wearing his good clothes because of the funeral. He had a few drinks after filling the grave with Doran. That's why he wasn't going up to the Square­­ he had drink taken. He never drinks before going to the Square.

         "Are you alright now for a while? I have to put down the dinner."

         "Sound as a bell Bridgey ­­ but give us another half wan an' a packet of plain cigarettes so I wont be botherin' you."

         Bridgey peeled potatoes into a bowl by the kitchen fire.

         "That bar out there is freezin'," she sniffled. If it got any colder she would have to get an oil heater. She could hear him stamp his feet to keep the blood running to his toes.

         "Are you alright, Warrior?" she called, tapping on the bar window.

         "Sound as a bell, Bridgey. The circulation."

         "I hope he don't throw a turn," she mumbled. It would be the talk of the country -- The Warrior Carty to die in the only pub he was served in. The six other publicans in the town would not let his toe inside their doors but Bridgey saw no harm in him. He was persecuted by his own after he fought for them in the War of Independence and the Civil War. Later he went abroad and the misfortunate wretch got shell-shocked in some foreign war. That's where the strange behavior comes from, like the exhibition above in the Square.

         "God help us," she sighed and added an extra potato to the pot.

         The usual crowd gathered in the Square before midday and waited for the Warrior Carty. This was the highpoint of their fair ­­ to see and cheer this robust man lift a cartwheel, which was as big and as heavy as himself, and balance it on the hub of his chin while the Angelus bells rang out. It was an extraordinary feat and he performed it at every fair, hail, rain or snow. He did it to distract the fair from prayer and succeeded for the most part. The Warrior's act could be the making or the breaking of the day.

         When the church bells called for prayer in Looney's bar the Warrior blew a smoke ring for every peal. It was as defiant as he wanted to be that mid-winter's day. He knew the followers in the Square would be disappointed, but that was life ­­ nothing lasts for ever. He had retired. The decision had been made in his sleep and he was obeying. Orders from the management. Not God, just the Management.

         The crowd felt like fools. Cheated of their entertainment and their prayers, they dispersed sullenly and griped about the Warrior. Where was he? Had he not walked the town earlier in the day, showering everyone with Christmas greetings? It was not his form to ignore the call of duty ­­ especially today, The Small Fair of Christmas.

         A long lean farmer said he must have lost his nerves. His neighbour disagreed.

         "The Warrior was born without nerves," he claimed. It was his age. "He must be sixty-five or seventy years old if he's a day," he insisted, sliding into Peter Egan's bar.

         Inside, they joined a couple of cattle jobbers who were already discussing the Warrior.

         "Well sure, he started out first in Boland's Mill in 1916... then he lead the Faha column of the boys in 1920," declared a barrel shaped jobber in a once-white coat. "I know it. And he never surrendered after the Civil War. I know that, too. Carty never handed over the gun."

         "Tha's right sure. 'Don't give up the fight.' I often heard him say that," drawled his companion. "An' he went off to Spain with the Brigade too. Maybe that was to get another wallop at the Blueshirts."

         "Maybe, but I don't think so."

         "An' sure if they hadn't locked him up in the Curragh Camp durin' the last war he'd have been soldierin' somewhere."

         Bridgey left a plate with a piece of haddock and a potato on the counter.

         "Ate this," she said. "It'll do you good."

         "The Blessin's a God on you Bridgey," he said and picked at the meal. He felt like confiding in her. He wanted to explain why he didn't go to the Square and what he was doing in Sunday clothes. But it was a delicate matter and she might pick it up wrong.

        "Bridgey..." he asked, motioning for another whiskey and stout. "Do we soften with age?"

         "'Tis hard to say," she said slowly and pondered at her reflection in the mirror behind the whiskey bottles.

         "The aul fair'll be over early," she muttered, putting his drinks on the cold red-topped counter. He would be her only customer today.

         The money box was getting heavier and he was getting drunker, but in a quiet sort of a way. For a short while, a beam of evening sun warmed the bar and they traced about things of long ago like rekindled lovers. He reminisced about the great fairs, when you could walk on the backs of beasts from one end of the town to the other without stepping on the ground. Bridgey reminded him of the great dances that used be held before the Christmas years ago.

         "All that's gone now," she sighed.

        They recalled the big crowds arriving home from England and wondered where they all were now.

         "A sad day for Ireland, Bridgey," Warrior sighed and a cloud of silence darkened the bar. Bridgey fumbled under the counter and a string of Christmas lights blazed a trail around whiskey bottles. Tiny beads of yellow, green, red and blue blinked at the Warrior.

         "Jaysus, Bridgey..." he said slowly, "but I love Christmas, even though Christmas is not the same as it used to be."

         "Nothing stays the same sure," she said, almost in a whisper.

         Sipping a cup of tea, she peered at him from the dark kitchen. He was talking to himself and counting his money, cursing her blinking Christmas lights. The Warrior had enough drank for one day but she hated to ask him to leave. He tapped the counter with the heel of his glass and called her.

         "The same again, Bridgey...is that clock right?"

         "No...'tis slow...hurry up an' finish this like a good boy. Tonight's the night of the carol singin' above at the church an' I must get ready."

         "Sound Bridgey. An' Bridgey, before I forget it...give us a naggon of whiskey and a packet of Players for the morn."

         "Here," she said, wrapping the small bottle and cigarettes in a brown paper bag, "this is from me for Christmas."

        He pressed his chest against the counter and lowered his head as if to kiss her. But he clasped her cold hands instead and whispered, "You never forget the Warrior. The blessin's of God on you. Bridgey, you're the only wan in this town who has any breedin'."

         "You can't bate breedin' Warrior," she said. "How're you goin' home?"

         "Walkin'."

         She came outside the counter with a broom and peered out the front door.

         "There's no wind out. Take it aisey an' you'll be sound."

         "I'll be sound anyway...But Bridgey as the song goes -- 'Oh what matters when for Erin dear we fall.' I don't mind in the least fallin' for Erin...many's the good man an' woman have done so in the past. But Bridgey, what I do mind, is fallin' for some of the shaggers that live here."

         "Our Lord fell three times," she said quitely, sweeping his crushed cigarette butts into a heap.

         "And he rose again Bridgey. We're martyrs for punishment."

The Warrior drained his glass slowly and put Bridgey's Christmas present into his overcoat pocket. He wondered if he should try for another half one, but decided not to ­­ it would be bad form.

         "Bridgey... I'll hit away," he said. "Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to you astore."

         "The same to yourself and be as good as you can, Warrior. Happy Christmas to you now. Mind the step as you g' out."

        She bolted the door behind him and unplugged the Christmas lights.

         Main Street smelled like a farmyard in the wake of the fair. It was quiet apart from a few children who played in the light streaming from Callaghan's sweet shop. The town was winding down for the carol service and the Warrior numbed when he discovered the pubs were blacked out. He tried them all ­­ Tracy's, Egan's, Hogan's, Vaughan's, The Widow's and Dinn Joe's.

         "Shag 'em," he snorted. "An' shag 'em again."

He had hoped to breeze into the enemy camp in the quiet of the evening, just when the day's takings were counted and the publicans were happy. He would extend the olive branch and ask to be served again. He would keep the peace. There would be no more trouble, no more defiance. No more would he lure the Christians away from the Angelus prayer by balancing the cartwheel. He was retiring from all that.

         But his plan was foiled because he had tarried too long with Bridgey. And the church didn't help. The pubs would be closed until after the carol singing. Muttering about goodwill and room at the inn he plodded back down the street to wait in the the shadows until God relented.

         Passing Peter Egan's he had a sudden urge to lash his boot through the glass paneled door but was distracted when the new curate, Father Hannon, suddenly appeared like a host.

         "Hardy weather," the pale priest hailed, side-stepping him.

         "Say wan for me Fader," grunted the Warrior and wandered in the opposite direction.

         He slipped into Hogan's Alley to relieve himself in the darkness, but Gretta Greene saw him. The mad woman from Frohaul who had once done him a turn behind the town hall peered into the laneway and jeered, "The frost 'll kill et. The frost'll kill et an' make a small boy a you Warrior Carty you dirty scut you. I'll say a prayer that you'll go ta hell."

         With his back to the church he plodded on. Two women, pious as nuns, scurried past, arm in arm.

         "Peggy, is that the Warrior Carty?"

         "Tis. He's an awful nuisance."

         "He's in town since early today. I saw him when I was gettin' the paper. Was there a girl in that family?"

         "No. An only child that fella, an' spoiled an' young. He lives on his own. The mother died in the workhouse. Sure that fella couldn't take care of himself."

         "Never married?"

         "No. And he let a great farm of land go to wrack and ruin. Drank it."

         The Warrior felt the cold in his bones. Frost glistened the black tar road that separated the lines of shops. Stars above and stars below. He stood at the Square and gazed at the sky. A great black dome dotted with peep holes to heaven. Shocked by the thought, his head reeled.

         "Jaysus...I'm half drunk," he mumbled to the night. "I'd better sit down before I keel over."

         Outside Hogan's pub he flopped on an empty porter barrel. Hogan would be his first port of call with the olive branch, the whiskey would keep him warm till then. He uncorked the naggon and listened to the Christmas carols escaping from the church. Some he knew from long ago and crooned along between sips of whiskey. Memories paraded before him and he felt the town growing strange. It reminded him of a desolate railway station he saw from a train, one winter evening in war-torn Spain.

         "I'm only just passing through," he muttered.

         After the carol singing, the faithful passed the Warrior slouched over the empty barrels outside Hogan's.

         "He's in town all day," a man from the Vincent de Paul whispered to his wife.

         "Thank God you don't drink," she whispered back. "It's a terrible curse."

         Father Hannon shook his head and crossed to the other side of the street.

         "An awful disgrace," he muttered to Coyle the butcher.

         Nobody bothered the Warrior and hard frost crept over his crombie coat in a white fur. At closing time Frank Hogan tried to move him on, not out of sympathy or concern ­­ but out of fear that the old soldier might erupt during the night and cry him out. But the old soldier was dead. Twisted like a vine, white as ice. The Warrior was gone and only his burly body remained.

         His remains were brought to the church in a plain coffin paid for by Bridgey Looney and Ned Duffy. Laid out in his good blue suit he looked like a saint in death. After Mass on Christmas morning only a few mourners followed the tricolor-draped coffin through the streets. The Christmas morning capguns were silent, the children called a truce for the funeral.

         It was bitter cold in the graveyard above the town and Father Hannon rushed through the prayers. Ned Duffy fired four shots from an old revolver and children in the town below replied with a thousand rounds or more.

         "Home is the hero," Bridgey whispered. "May God be good to you, Warrior Cart

End of Guest Post 

Again my greatest thanks to Eddie Stack.

Author Bio

Eddie Stack has received several accolades for his fiction, including an American Small Press of the Year Award, and a Top 100 Irish American Award. Recognised as an outstanding short story writer, he is the author of four books —The West; Out of the Blue; HEADS and Simple Twist of Fate.


                                 


His work has appeared in literary reviews and anthologies worldwide, includingFiction, Confrontation, Whispers & Shouts, Southwords and Criterion; State of the Art: Stories from New Irish Writers; Irish Christmas Stories, The Clare Anthology andFiction in the Classroom.



A natural storyteller, Eddie has recorded spoken word versions of his work, with music by Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. In 2010, he integrated spoken word and printed work with art, music and song to produce an iPhone app of The West; this was the first iPhone app of Irish fiction.

You can read several samples of Eddie Stack's work on his very well done web page .

I am very happy to announce that Eddie Stack is allowing me to post four of the stories from this collection on The Reading Life.   They will begin appearing very soon.

Stack is a great story teller and artist.   I look forward to reading more of his work.


My post on his great collection of short stories, The West, can be found here.

Mel u

"The Strangest Feeling in Bernard's Bathroom" by Aidan Mathews

"The Strangest Feeling in Bernard's Bathroom" by Aidan Mathews  (1988, 15 pages)

The Irish Quarter

A Celebration of the Irish Short Story

March 11 to ?

I grow old … I grow old …         
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.  
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?  -T. S. Eliot

As I read "The Strangest Feeling in Bernard's Bathroom" by Aidan Mathews (1956, Dublin, Ireland) I also had a strange feeling that I was revisiting a poem I had not read or even thought about in decades, "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot.   The story is about Bernard, almost sixty, and his reaction to seeing his wife naked in the bathroom.   Here is his credo in life:

"I don't expect much,"  he said.  "That way I'm never disappointed".

His only vanity is he prides himself on telling people he is happy.  This is a very good story about getting older and realizing nothing big is ever going to happen for you.   The essential plot of the story revolves around the man's reaction to contemplating the aging body of his wife, who did not notice him looking at her.   He feels a deep sadness over the effects of the years on the body of his wife, not for the missed pleasure it might have brought him decades ago but for what it says about her life and the human condition.   He tries to talk his feelings over with his coworkers, he works in a store selling stuff over the counter, but they don't really have any interest in this and he knows it.  He even goes to confession over it, then he thinks how can I talk about this to a 21 year old priest who has never been married.   

I read this story in The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing and I am very glad I did.   

You can learn more about the career of the author here

Mel u

Today I am very pleased and honored to be able to publish an original short story by Gerry McDonnell.   There is an author biography at the close of the story.

"Angelina"

a short story by

Gerry McDonnell

An Irish Quarter Special Event

"ANGELINA"

 by Gerry Mc Donnell

In the house Angelina asked me did I eat here alone at this table every day? I was embarrassed that I did. She was referring to a bare formica table with just a rusted bread bin on it. We were drinking tea and I felt cornered by her question. She was twenty-one and I was a thirty-year-old, mature student at her college. Her parents were Italian and owned a local chipper. Her mother was a sensation when she came from Italy to marry Angelo, a dark, stubby, dynamic man. People said she looked like the movie star Sophia Loren. She smiled in the chipper with large autumn-coloured eyes and perfectly even, white teeth. Angelina has her mother’s looks.

 I suggested we go out to the garden. It was more a yard now since I had agreed with the next door neighbour, a builder, to concrete over it.

“It’ll tidy the place up”, he said.

It used to be a mature garden with yellow laburnum blossoms, and along the stone wall, there were blackberry and loganberry bushes. Mercifully a lilac tree at the end of garden was spared. It laid its blooms on the corrugated-iron roof of an old shed.

I told Angelina that my mother used to love the tree when she was alive; that I used to break off a branch for her. Suddenly she clambered up onto the wall and roof to snap a plume of perfumed, bluish petals. She was unabashed when her skirt lifted in the breeze. I noticed she had dark bruises on her thighs. I held her hand as she jumped down from the wall. She handed me the blossoms.

“For the table”, she said.

We went inside to put the lilac flowers in a vase but a jam jar had to suffice. We sat sipping tea and smelling the petals. In the silence I felt like touching her hand.  

Suddenly she became agitated.

“I had an abortion”.

 I didn’t know what to say. To console her could be interpreted that she had done something wrong. To say nothing would be to make little of it.

“I got a girlfriend pregnant once. She insisted that I pay for an abortion in England. None of us had any money in those days”.

What was I saying?

“I haven’t told anybody else”, she said.

We sat simmering. She had a seminar to attend in the college so she took her bike from the hall and cycled away looking back to smile.

That evening I went upstairs for something and found underwear neatly placed on by bed. I was dumfounded. It had to be Angelina’s. She must have gone upstairs when I was in the toilet. What kind of girl was she?

The next day I cycled up the avenue to the back of the college, the route she took. Often I had timed it to bump into her ‘by chance’. I wasn’t sure how I would broach the subject of the underwear. However, I didn’t see her, not during the entire day at college, or the next day, or the next week.  I asked her friends about her but they knew nothing. A month later I got a letter from her from Italy. She went to get away from an uncle who had been abusing her since she was twelve. She was staying with her grandmother until she decided what to do.  

One evening, when I was eating at the table, there was a hammering on the hall door. I opened it to find a swarthy man, not unlike Angelina’s father, in a state, sweating profusely. I guessed it was the uncle who had been abusing her.

“You know where is Angelina”?

He was aggressive. I tried to shut the door but he had his foot jammed in it.

“She with you”?

I threatened him with the Guards. He punched the door, cracking a wooden panel and turned to go. I slammed the door shut and went to the sitting room window to see him lift the front gate with great force. He left it broken, sticking in the air. A couple of months had passed when I got a letter from Angelina from Sweden. She said she was getting married, that she was pregnant! I felt robbed of a chance of happiness with her. I wanted to feel her belly with our child inside.

Her uncle paid me a few more, nasty visits. But things settled down. I saw him once, in a local park, walking, holding hands with a very young girl. Shortly after that, I read that a man had been badly beaten in that park and was in a coma. It was him. He recovered, I heard, but went back to Italy blind in one eye. He picked the wrong girl and messed with the wrong people!

One day in December the phone rang. It was Angelina. She was back in Dublin. “Could I call over?

“Of course”!

Standing at the hall door she looked as though a smile hadn’t alighted on her face for a very long time. Her hair was lank and she was wearing baggy tracksuit bottoms. She had her baby boy with her. We drank some tea and talked. She told me she was pregnant by her uncle when she left Dublin; that she couldn’t face another abortion and chose to have Michael. She had met a Swedish man in Italy and moved to Stockholm. He was kind and loving at first but he turned physically abusive referring to her as ‘damaged goods’. She left with her baby and came back home where she wasn’t welcome. Her parents, particularly her father, didn’t want to know her. He said she had besmirched the family’s good name by accusing his brother of abusing her.

 She was staying in a B and B, paid for by the government.  She had to be out of the accommodation early in the morning and couldn’t return until evening.

“I don’t know how much longer I can push a buggy around the city in this weather. We go into a MacDonald’s to get warm. I don’t want to burden you but I am desperate”.

I assured her that she was welcome to stay with me. She sobbed and thanked me.  

She stayed over Christmas. In spring I came home one day  and saw her sitting in the back garden with Michael who was absorbed with piling up coloured cubes.  I had made an attempt to recreate the garden, planting a laburnum tree and loganberry bushes. Daffodils lolled in the breeze around the sapling. I called her name but she didn’t answer. When I walked up to her she turned away and lowered her head. She was holding a letter. I hunched down beside her. When she looked up I was completely shocked. Her forehead was scratched with red lines, there were wipes of blood on her cheeks and she was shaking.

“I don’t know what happened.  I must have blacked out”!

The letter trembled in her hand. I helped her inside to the bathroom to wipe the blood off her face. The scratches looked like letters. She stood looking into the bathroom mirror. I could see the words I love you on her forehead. Who did she love? I picked the letter out of the sink. It was written in Italian but I recognised the heavy hand from the ugly notes her uncle had dropped in the letterbox from time to time.

She was mumbling as I led her to her bed to rest.

“Don’t call a doctor. I am too ashamed”.

Gradually she felt up to going out, wearing her hair in a fringe. Neighbours said hello, while trying to get their heads around this apparently, sudden, family. We walked out by the sea in the summer. I hadn’t appreciated before how close I lived to the sea. When the tide was out there was a pungent smell of mud and seaweed but if we walked far enough along the coast we came to a wooden bridge to an island which brought us closer to the sea. I pushed the buggy, with Michael asleep in it, over the warm, lumpy sand barbed with bunches of sun-dried seaweed and empty beer cans. After eating sandwiches in the afternoon sun, we would walk along the cool, dark strand. Sometimes her eyes would well up.

“It’s nothing really, just small things now, just small things”, she said.

As if to demonstrate her growing freedom, she slipped her feet gracefully from her sandals.  I was attentive as she balanced lightly on the hurting, hard-ribbed sand. She inhaled in surprise as the wind blew wavelets over her feet.

“Let’s go for a swim”, she said.

“But we’ve no togs or anything”.

“We can skinny dip. Look, there’s nobody around”.

Only a couple in the distance who were walking their dog.

“Come on”, she said.

She took off her dress and waded out. She swam about and floated silently with the tide, her breasts exposed to the evening sun.

“Come back, you’re going out too far”.

She stayed floating, her eyes closed before she turned and swam back with ease. She dried herself with a blanket and put her clothes back on. She was invigorated, spontaneous.

“I’m going back to Italy and I’d like you to come with me, with us”.

I felt dizzy and hunkered down. The incoming sea crept over my sandals. I looked at the sand shifting under the water.

“It’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? It’s a lot to take in”.

“I think it is the right thing to do. I want Michael to grow up in Italy, to feel the light and the sun and not end up drinking in gloomy pubs”!

The light was dimming turning the sea grey and the sand had lost its sparkle. I looked at her settling Michael for the walk home and wondered how much love she had against all the odds.

“Angelina, I want to go with you, I will try but will you forgive me if I fail”?

“Yes, but you won’t fail”!

We strolled back in silence, along the beach, back to the wooden bridge, under the jaded sky.                                                   END

End of Guest Post

Official Biography  of Gerry McDonnell

GERRY MC DONNELL was born in 1950 and lives in Dublin. He has had five collections

of poetry published. He has also written for stage, radio and television. His play Making It

Home, a two-hander father and son relationship, was first performed at the Crypt Theatre at

Dublin Castle in 2001. A radio adaptation of this play was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 in 2008

starring the acclaimed Irish actor David Kelly as the father and Mark Lambert as the son.

His play Whose Veins Ran Lightning, based on the life and work of the Irish poet James

Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), was performed at The New Theatre in Dublin in 2003. His

libretto for a chamber opera, The Poet and the Muse, (music by composer John Byrne) also

deals with Mangan. He has written for the Irish television series Fair City.

His interest in Irish Jewry has resulted in the chapbook; Jewish Influences in Ulysses

and a collection of monologues, Mud Island Elegy, in which Jews of 19th century Ireland

speak about their lives from beyond the grave. His stage play Song of Solomon, set on the

Royal canal in Dublin, has a Jewish theme. Mud Island Anthology, concerning ‘ordinary’

Dublin gentiles who lived in the latter half of the 20th century was published by Lapwing

Publications in 2009 and is a companion collection to the ‘Elegy’ poems. His latest collection

of poetry, Ragged Star, was published in 2011.

He is a member of the Irish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild and the Irish Writers’

Union.

Gerry, thanks again for allowing me to publish this great story.   Stay tuned for more stories from Gerry McDonnell.


Mel u

                                      

"Times Passes" a story by Eddie Stack

Today I am very proud to present on The Irish Corner of The Reading Life a short story by Eddie Stack. (there is an author biography at the end of the story).   This is a great story and I thank Eddie so much for allowing me to share this story with my readers.    Stack is a great writer in the wonderful tradition of the Irish Story Teller

"Time Passes" 

a story by

Eddie Stack

An Irish Quarter Special Event

"Time Passes"

We often threatened to take the Boat on those wintery mornings after Christmas while we waited for the dole office to open. Huddled in deep doorways, sheltering from the spray blown up from the river, we shook our heads in despair. We were sentenced to another year's penance in the wind and rain. Another year in a world of shuttered shops.

        There would be no market until the Saturday before Saint Patrick's Day and it was common knowledge that some shopkeepers­­ bored and bothered by the stillness, would take to their beds for weeks at a time, only surfacing for the funerals that always followed the rain. There would be people in town for the funerals. The funerals, the Mass and the dole brought us together to complain and spend the government's money on cold porter. And the more we drank, the more pitiful our situation seemed­­ grown men being paid by the government to remain on the census sheets and being despised for doing so.

         But yet we stayed. For some obscure patriotic reason we lingered on in that place where there was neither hope of work or lover. We passed the year threatening to leave for England and retelling tales we heard from the Lads. There was another world on the far side of the water and the Lads were in the thick of it. They were our heros in those days. Altar boys who went to Camden Town wearing scapulars and came home with blue tattoos. Seven days a week they worked in the midst of rogues and ruffians, ripping up roads and pouring concrete so they could spend Christmas in Ireland.

They arrived the evening before Christmas Eve on a special train that brought them from the Mail Boat, and from early afternoon, that seldom-seen station was the liveliest place in town. Stalls sold hot soup and toffee apples and two women from Barranna hawked naggons of poteen for half the price of shop whiskey. The school choir sang carols and Father White collected money for a new church from a dwindling congregation. For the first time in almost a year, laughter and song drowned the sound of the roaring brown river and months of gloom vanished like the night.

        Hours before the train was due, groups of young people walked up and down the windswept platform, cajoling with railway officials and shouting false alarms. The more anxious preferred to wait in the colder waiting room, or sit on icy grey platform benches. Cloaked in scarves and shawls, country women crunched clove sweets because they were too shy to smoke in public. Their husbands sucked pipes and looked up and down the rusty track, conferred with railway officials and reported home.

         By four o'clock the gas lanterns were lit and hackney drivers arrived, muffled in coats and scarves. These shrewd men noted what parties were in attendance, what fares to expect, who to solicit and who to avoid. They only left their warm cars when excitement peaked and everyone swarmed to the platform, peering up the line and listening to the harassed rumblings of the approaching Steamer.

        The Lads emerged from the dimly lit carriages to a rousing reception of cheers, waves and back slaps. Pink faced and closely shaven they looked angelic. Helpers and hackney drivers took their brown bulging suitcases and Father White's choir sang 'Come All Ye Faithful.' We all joined in. Parents shyly welcomed home their young with tears and we sang louder and marched around the platform. Gloria, Gloria, it was really Christmas.

         But there was always someone or other who failed to return, even through they had written to say they were coming. Bewildered relatives put a brave face on grief.

"They'll probably arrive for the New Year," they said.

 We nodded in agreement, even though we knew better.

 The Lads passed their first night at home and were brought up to date with the year's happenings, the weather, the state of the country, church collections and other burdens the plain people had to bear. Old and new news was exchanged until the travellers showed signs of fatigue. Then they were urged to go to bed with a glass of hot punch and a sprinkle of Knock water.

         On Christmas Eve they came to town with their parents and drank moderately in long-ago haunts while the old people did the shopping and attended confessions. There was no end to their money on that day, loans were offered freely and drinks were bought for everyone who wished them well, enquired about the sea crossing or asked ­­ "How're things Beyond the Pond?"

         And things beyond were always good.

 By Saint Stephen's Day all family dues and duties had been attended to and the Lads rambled to town after breakfast, packing the small bars and attracting hoards of hangers on. It was a day of banging doors, thirsty Paddys criss-crossing town in shoals of blue suits. Bars steamed with sweat, smoke and after-shave lotion. Floors were littered with charred Swan matches, Senior Service cigarette ends and bronze trupenny bits, left for late night sweepers. Pubs hummed every time the Queen's face decorated the counter -- no monarch had ever raised so many smiles in Ireland. And later when the Wrenboys descended on the town with flute, fiddle and tambourine, we jumped for joy. We had the best of all worlds then -- the Queen's money and plenty music, in our own backyard.

As time passed, old acquaintances were renewed and the Lads trusted us with tales about the parish's forgotten sons and daughters. These secrets were imparted in the strictest confidence and later retold with the same sentiments.

         Every second year Rufus Ryan, a man who had emigrated long before I was born, had another wife. Jim Flynn was either in or out of jail. One year we heard in detail why Pat Browne left the priesthood and took up the shovel. And why Mary Scully went on the game after a tempestuous marriage to a Welshman. Hatchet O'Day met her in a boarding house and she cried in his arms and begged him not to tell. But he did, and more.

        The Lads began to wither as more time was spent in the pubs than at home. By the fifth day of Christmas, the blue suits were creased and crumpled, white shirts were stout stained and London socks left unchanged. In the mornings, eyes were bloodshot and watery and the Lads resorted to drinking hot whiskey to line their stomaches. They were in topping form by the time faithful friends and professional listeners arrived.

         Their stories and antics brought Kilburn closer to us. We quickly became familiar with the 'Tube' and knew the stops on the Circle Line, the Picadilly and the Jubilee. We heard about their haunts and habits. Wild sprees in Camden Town and dicey nights in the Galtymore. Saturday sessions in the White Hart, Quirke Road Church for Sunday's Irish papers.

         Each year we discovered anew that there was little comparison between life at home and in London. The Lads pointed out that we had few comforts. No Soho. Or no Chinese caffs where waiters bowed and took your coat. And bowed again when they served you unidentifiable piles of food, at four shillings for two. We often had to sympathize with them for bothering to return home at all, and they always looked us in the eye and said --

        "If it weren't for d'aul lad and d'aul lady, I don't think I'd bother."

        And yet they spent little of their holiday at home. They preferred instead to entertain us with stories about subbies from Roscommon, granite hard gangers from Connemara and cute foremen from Cork. All tough men who were respected for their crookedness and cruelty to others.

 As the days trickled away our heroes became slovenly, sometimes unruly, often drunk. The sessions were lengthy and sometimes in the evenings, a brother or sister might be dispatched to town in an effort to coax them home for dinner. But they preferred to linger on in the smoke-filled bars and chew dry turkey sandwiches at the counter, turning around between mouthfuls to quip­­

        "You'll never go back, Scobie."

         They regularly fell asleep beside pub fires, waking unexpectedly to startle us with songs from London juke boxes. Some got awkward when they were refused more drink, publicans were insulted, glasses were broken.

         The last day or two of their holiday was spent at home with their families and on the Sixth of January they left again for London. Lonesome men with empty pockets and brave faces, seen off from the station by weeping women and stone eyed old men. There were no hackney cars, no helpers, no stalls, no hymns. The green train rolled into the rain and stole Christmas with it.

 Ivy and holly were taken from the walls, the Crib and decorations were stored away for another year and there was a hush in the countryside. We heard the wind and the river again and felt the grey drabness of January that paved the days for Lent. It was a lonely period when even clocks refused to pass the time and their hands lingered between hours for hours on end, or so it seemed. Again we threatened to take the Boat, lonely for company and the spirit that had been whisked away from us. Weeks passed before we got into step with the year and then Christmas became a legend, one to be compared with previous ones.

 But time passes, and when Christmas came around again the Lads dutifully returned home. They came every year until the government closed down the railway line, shuttered the station and sold the track to small farmers. Dublin turned its back on us and London slipped further and further away. Then the journey home became full of obstacles and hazards.

         After a few Christmasses the Lads gave up the ghost. When they did come home it was for family funerals and then they drank too much and cried too much. Angry tears for stolen years. In drink-stained whispers they promised to come home the following Christmas, for old time's sake.

         But we rarely saw them again. There was nothing left to return to and the Lads moved on. Life had set its course and school friends drifted away without warning. Time tricked us and it became too late to change, too late to take the Boat, too late to wake up.

      We are still on the census sheets and still drinking pints of cold porter for the government, when we meet for the dole, the Mass and the funerals. But there is little life in the public houses, now colder than the station waiting room. Only postmortems are held here in these ghost-ridden rooms where jackdaws block smokeless chimneys. And yet they are our only refuge. It is here we are forced to shelter before moving through the Winter.

         Time passes, but memories linger.

End of guest post.

Again my greatest thanks to Eddie Stack.

Author Bio

Eddie Stack has received several accolades for his fiction, including an American Small Press of the Year Award, and a Top 100 Irish American Award. Recognised as an outstanding short story writer, he is the author of four books —The West; Out of the Blue; HEADS and Simple Twist of Fate.

                                 

His work has appeared in literary reviews and anthologies worldwide, includingFiction, Confrontation, Whispers & Shouts, Southwords and Criterion; State of the Art: Stories from New Irish Writers; Irish Christmas Stories, The Clare Anthology andFiction in the Classroom.


A natural storyteller, Eddie has recorded spoken word versions of his work, with music by Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. In 2010, he integrated spoken word and printed work with art, music and song to produce an iPhone app of The West; this was the first iPhone app of Irish fiction.

You can read several samples of Eddie Stack's work on his very well done web page .

I am very happy to announce that Eddie Stack is allowing me to post four of the stories from this collection on The Reading Life.   They will begin appearing very soon.

Stack is a great story teller and artist.   I look forward to reading more of his work.

My post on his great collection of short stories, The West, can be found here.

Mel u