Authors: Kevin Brennan
He had to call me again due to the lethargy of my depressed reactions.
“Four Sean.”
“Go ahead.”
“How’re you gettin’ on there, Sean?”
“Er…I think I went a bit wrong.” I cringed while admitting this to Aidan, waiting to hear a barrage of abuse.
“Okay, where are ye?”
I expected him to sound a bit more upset than he actually did, having seen how nasty he could be to couriers when I was in the base.
“I’m somewhere called James’ Walk.” The “somewhere” being put in to highlight the fact that I was lost in much the same way as a sulking child will highlight the fact that it’s miserable.
“That’s noh too bad. If you have the flats on yer left, look to your rie an’ ye’ll see the back o’ James hospital.”
I paused to acknowledge. “Roger”
“Rie, come all the way down til ye geh to the T an’ then take the illegal rie over the bridge. The road swings left but you go strai’ on through the lights an’ ye’ll see the back entrance to the hoppo on yer rie.”
Again the pause for acknowledgement, slightly longer this time because my brain, still pulling itself out of the quagmire of such intense negative emotions, took a moment to associate “hoppo” with hospital.
“Er…roger…yeah.”
“Strai’ down the steep narrow little hill in front of ye which takes ye to a T. That’s old Kilmainham. You turn rie an’ as ye go along look to your right, ye’ll see a huge place called Dublin Providers. The place you’re goin’ to is across the road from tha’.”
How the hell did he know which building I was going to? I
felt both grateful and impressed as I answered. “Roger, thanks a million, Aidan.”
Feeling so much better inside for a variety of reasons, foremost of which being the fact that I had help at hand. I was not as alone as I thought I was.
I was just about to move on when Aidan spoke again.
“Oh, and Four Sean.”
“Go ahead,” I answered, loud and happy into the radio.
“You will buy a map this afternoon.”
“Roger,” I said, properly subdued.
I followed the directions to the letter, finding myself at Dublin Providers without any more mishaps. The next problem to face me was one of ambiguity about which of the three unmarked doors into the red bricked office block was the desired one, but this was a small obstacle to overcome and I had soon succeeded in getting my second ever signature as a courier.
Upon radioing in I was told to “head for two” and to give him a call around Christchurch. By my reckoning, following old Kilmainham in the direction that I was facing would take me back along the course that I should have taken to get there, so I set off that way. All of my surroundings were still alien to me but with no delivery pressure on me and the assurance that I had a safety net on my shoulder, it was now a learning experience rather than a nightmare.
A little further in towards town I came across a petrol station on my left. Not needing petrol I careered past the entrance before it occurred to me to buy a map there. I braked hard, indicated and swung left into the exit without upsetting anybody or getting beeped at, although one lady pulling away from the pump appeared to get a slight start as I crossed her path. I bought myself a street finder- aka, “The Bible” in the courier world where location is everything, and sat on the little wall of the forecourt to see where I had gone wrong and how Aidan had corrected me, noting in the process how close this “alien” place was to a road so familiar to me - the N4. It all looked so logical and straightforward when looking at a map that I felt positively silly for my near breakdown at Fatima Mansions.
However, being lost is a truly horrible experience and under the pressure to get there quickly, the misery is magnified tenfold - and with my broken heart flooding me with waves of pain and despair…
My thoughts trailed off as heartache engulfed my consciousness once more, drowning all in its merciless sea of misery. At least I had enough on my mind to ward off the suffering for periods of time as I did this job, apart from moments like this one now when the full enormity of my loss invaded me. The word loss caused tears to well up in my eyes so I put my new map into my bag, put on my helmet and got onto my bike, intent on combating the morbid invasion with activity. It worked too, to an extent.
Accelerating away from the petrol station along Mount Brown towards Christchurch, I supposed to myself that that was the way of things; battle through the invasions of agony whatever way possible and have faith that with time, the universal healer, the invasions would become less intense and less frequent and would (hopefully) eventually transform into little bouts of harmless nostalgia.
A solitary tear escaped from my left eye, aided by the acceleration, as I consoled myself with two words accompanying this philosophy: some day!
I managed to do another five minis that afternoon - Aidan kept me around town to give me a chance to get the hang of things - and got one for Palmerstown and one for Lucan on my way home. I was told that nine jobs in total was a good score for my first afternoon ever at the job, but that the money was to be made doing mileage jobs. The six minis at £1.30 each, totalled £7.80. The Kilmainham was worth £1.90, Palmerstown £3.40 and Lucan £4.07 to give a grand total of £17.17 earned that afternoon.
Even before subtracting the fiver I spent on petrol on the way home and the £6.95 on the map, it was a crap afternoon’s wages - but it was a start.
Things were going to progress upwards for Four Sean from
here!
Eoin and Marie were both at home when I arrived back at quarter to seven, having taken a total of 45 minutes to locate my two mileage jobs of the day - even with the help of the map.
They were both equally amazed to see me sporting a bag and radio. I had deliberately neglected to tell them about my lunch-time appointment at lightning because I hadn’t been convinced that it would amount to anything. My entrance was greeted with a torrent of assorted energetic exclamations.
“My God, look at you!”
“Are you a courier now?”
“Well done, Sean. How long have you been planning this?”
“When did they hire you?”
“Today! After you only rang them yesterday?”
“You’re a dark horse!”
“What sort of qualifications do you need? Not many I imagine!”
“Eoin! I’m sure this will help you out of the rut that you were in, Sean. A change is as good as a rest, isn’t that what they say!”
“I’m sure it’ll do until you get something more suitable for
you. I don’t suppose many of your new workmates have degrees?”
“Judge not lest ye be judged. Don’t mind him, Sean, this will do you the power of good!”
“Is that black on your face?”
Eoin’s last question had me running to the mirror in the hall with more enthusiasm than you would expect from such a question, but I was immediately reminded of the black on some of the courier’s faces in the base that afternoon and the prospect of looking like one of them actually appealed to me.
There was no denying that this “pack of animals” (according to my first impression of them), had made an impact on me and that, despite being initially afraid of them, I was hugely eager to blend in with my new workmates.
This rough, tough bunch of men that spent their working lives on two wheels were going to teach me how to make money at this most demanding profession that I had this day adopted as my own.
Having spent a moment to myself determining to give courying my best shot while admiring how my face looked with the varying degrees of faint black traces on it, I returned to my friends to recant to them the many events that had shaped this day; the first of my new life as a courier.
I was up, dressed, fed and ready at twenty to nine the next day, eager to surpass myself on this, my first full day as a courier. The beep of the radio as I turned it on was decidedly less alien to me today.
“Four Sean.” following Aidan’s advice about radioing in before nine, hoping to get my 20 quid bonus.
Nothing. Not being answered on the radio was a much bigger disappointment than I would have imagined before experiencing it - something similar to an anti-climax but with a more deflatory effect on the spirit - a little bit like a watered down version of being ignored on purpose. I caught myself creating scenarios on the receiving end of my call explaining the silence in much the same way as somebody in the process of being stood up will create strings of events in which the absent one will appear very shortly and all will be well.
“Four Sean.”
Still nothing. I had been told to radio in by nine, which to me meant activity before nine. In my opinion there should have been somebody on the other end to be impressed by how eager I was. In a workplace where staff commenced at nine did man
agement not begin preparing at half eight or so?
After waiting an agonising 20 seconds or so, I decided to give it another go with plenty of lungs behind it. “Four Sean!”
“Who’s calling there? Four is it?” The voice wasn’t Aidan’s and this both startled and intrigued me, flooding my brain with several questions at once. Aidan was the only base controller that I had ever heard and the strange voice threw me off, I was most timid when replying.
“Yes, Four Sean.”
“Four Sean? What happened to Four Barry?”
I was being asked about the bloke that had been fired. I had totally forgotten about him, and there was me screaming his number all over the airwaves!
“I…er …I started yesterday…em…” Reluctant to blab to a stranger that Barry had been fired, the best I could do was to try to divert the attention away from the topic. The word feeble was stomping its way around the self-esteem area of my brain.
“Okay, Sean, where are you?”
I nearly replied that I was in the kitchen before getting a hold of myself. “I’m in Lucan.”
“Fine, you’re the first on the air today. I have a blue screen at the moment so why don’t you stand by there until we get something up west for you.”
I guessed that a blue screen meant that there was no work waiting to be despatched. What bothered me, though, was the “up west” part of it. I knew the road from town to Lucan, I knew that Tallaght was south of Lucan with Blanchardstown north and that Palmerstown was on the way in with Leixlip further out on the same road. Beyond that, “up west” was a mystery to me and I dreaded the prospect of having to find my way around it. I considered confessing this to the strange voice but opted to play along and see how the work came. I had really hoped to be brought into town to do minis and get to branch out from there, but remembering Vinno’s advice about the money being in the mileage jobs, I decided to say nothing and jump
in at the deep end; sure I always had the map in my bag to help me find my way.
“Roger, standing by.” In a rather firm tone that didn’t quite work as the confidence I was aiming for. It must have been as obvious to my unfamiliar base controller as it was to me that I was a total beginner, trying to sound as if I wasn’t shit scared of so many aspects of my new job.
After five minutes sitting to attention in the kitchen with all of my gear on, ready to run out and jump on the bike, whose engine had already been heated, I came to the conclusion that I could relax a bit, even though I was standing by. I slipped the radio off my shoulder, removed my jacket, put the kettle on and lit up a cigarette.
There’s something decidedly reminiscent about smoking a cigarette, perhaps because of the “time out” involved, perhaps because of memories of previous smokes or even because the act makes you breathe deeper, which is relaxing in itself which can trigger off memories.
This was not a good thing for me at this stage of my life. Even as I exhaled the first drag, I felt my spirit sink that sickening slide into the hurt and heartache that engulfed me every time I let my guard down; my emptied lungs mirroring metaphorically the loveless sack of a soul that remained within me.
Each drag deepened my depression as I smoked on; reluctant each time to breathe in again, indeed not doing so on occasion until the bodies defences kicked in and it happened involuntarily.
The click of the boiling kettle startled me out of my reverie and I dragged my sorry arse over to make a cup of tea.
“Go ahead, Mick.” The radio reminded me of its presence.
“Roger. First away on the north side.”
I made a mental note of the time - eight fifty three-and vowed never to radio in before that. I could have had a few minutes more sleep instead of feeling miserable.
“Activity is the key, Sean - keep as active as possible, mentally and physically, every waking moment.”
I sat back down, flicked my dangerously long ash into the ashtray and took my first hot sip of tea. The usual thoughts of Saoirse came to me: why had she forsaken me so easily? I would have crawled a mile on broken glass for her and she just dumped me because some prick she worked with said that I would get her sacked.
It had to be jealousy. That prick must have wanted her for himself.
“Yeah go ahead, Dolores.”
“Mick got in ahead of ye, chicken an’ it’s a quiet morning. D’ye want to start rollin’ in slowly an’ we’ll get ye a juicy run out of town?”