Heaps of Trouble

Emelyn Heaps

Copyright © 2014 Emelyn Heaps

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador
^®

Unit 9 Priory Business Park

Kibworth Beauchamp

Leicester LE8 0RX, UK

Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277

Email: [email protected]

Web:
www.troubador.co.uk/matador

ISBN 978 1784627 430

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador
^®
is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by
EasyEPUB

The house was freezing cold, considering it was only early September. The Eastern Health Board had turned off the gas and electricity supplies in their last desperate bid to get me to vacate the empty shop in Inchicore. Their ultimatum made no difference to me anyway, as I had decided it was time to face the hell of moving back in with my parents until I could get a decent job and pay for my own flat.

The previous Friday I had called to see them in their new semi-detached home in Artane. I had hoped that, somehow or other, things might have changed over the previous six months, particularly since the mother had returned to nursing again. I was greeted with the sight of a 3-foot statue of the Virgin Mary, buried head first in the freshly seeded front lawn. It looked like an unexploded bomb that had been dropped from a great height. Its place of origin and flight path seemed clear, judging by the broken glass of the upstairs bedroom window. Letting myself in by the front door I could hear the pair of them screaming at each other on the upstairs landing.

‘You nearly killed me with that bloody statue, you bitch.'

‘I was trying to, you bastard. How could you have forged my name on the cheques you stole from the back of the book? And you thought I would never find out, you thief,' she sneered through clenched teeth.

‘There would have been no need if you had not fucked up the court case, killed our daughter and miscarried every one of our babies,' he roared back at her.

Slamming the front door to announce my presence, I climbed the stairs sensing that both of them were roaring drunk again and wondering how the father had got his hands on the mother's cheque book, as she guarded it better than the Pope did his wine cellar.

‘Now here's your son back, let him see what sort of life I have with you, you bloody bitch. Come up here and see what your mother has done to me,' he bellowed down at me.

The mother had begun to cry. Every time I saw her in this state I could only feel pity for her, even though she had probably started the row in the first place. But after what seemed like a lifetime of watching the pair of them drink themselves stupid, then fight and argue into the early hours of the morning, I had now given up caring.

They were facing each other on the landing and when I reached the top I realised this was an argument like no other I had seen before. The father had a large gash on his forehead that was bleeding profusely, but held very steady in his right hand and aimed directly at the mother's head was his old First World War service revolver.

‘Take another move Son, and I'll blow her brains out. Look what she has done to me. I think this time the crazy bitch has cracked my skull.' He tentatively felt the wound on his forehead with his left hand and despite being completely paralytic his right hand never wavered.

‘Look what she did, she threw the bloody statue at me. If I hadn't ducked in time she would have brained me.'

The mother's temper had again flared into a kind of uncontrollable madness and, clenching her fists and screwing up her face in anger, she spat the words out at him: ‘You bloody bastard, you bastard, you killed Catherine, you bloody bastard.' She began to move towards him.

‘This is the last time I'll warn you, you fucking bitch,' the father spluttered, while cocking the hammer of the pistol with a sound of finality that brought the mother to an instant stop.

I caught the mother around the waist and squeezed past her on the narrow hallway, placing myself between the two of them.

‘Give me the gun Dad,' I pleaded.

‘I'm going to kill her…stand aside if you don't want to get shot…now stand aside, I say.'

‘Give me the gun Dad, you don't want to kill anybody,' I said in a trembling voice.

The mother tried to push me out of the way as alcohol rekindled her resolve, saying, ‘He won't shoot anybody, he hasn't got the guts, he's nothing but a killer of little children.'

That just what I need, I thought, one drunken, raving person behind me and another drunken, deranged person with a gun in front of me. For a split second I actually thought he was going to pull the trigger, and I had no idea if the gun was loaded or not. His eyes were bloodshot and he was trembling with temper. Suddenly, overcome with a sensation of calmness that bordered on indifference, I strode forward, reached out and took the gun from him, immediately replacing the hammer and opening the chamber, I began to shake as I found myself looking at the bases of six live shells.

That is precisely how the police found us a few minutes later, no doubt called in by a concerned neighbour. The father was bleeding from a sizeable head wound, I was holding a loaded pistol and the mother was still calling the father every name under the sun, none of them complimentary.

At first I thought they were going to lock me up, as I was the one holding the gun, but the father inadvertently took the attention away from me when he told the police officer to ‘fuck off' and mind his own business. If he wanted to shoot his bitch of a wife he should be able to do so without having some flat-footed culchie masquerading as a policeman invading his home. After confiscating the gun they arrested the father for causing what they called a ‘breach of the peace', and told the mother and me that we could, if we wanted, attend his court case the following morning at 10 a.m. in the Four Courts.

On the bus journey the next morning she cried and reminisced about how much the day's visit to the Four Courts would upset her, beginning with her usual sympathy-seeking statement: ‘You know, I've had tragedy.'

When she got into that sort of mood there was nothing else for it but to let her rant on and ignore it. Switch off and watch the world go by from the comfort of the bus seat while wondering if the judge would actually lock the father up.

The father and a guard appeared at ten on the dot in one of the courtrooms, out of a hole in the ground adjacent to the dock where he was instructed to stand by the court clerk while the charge was read out. The father looked the worse for wear after his night in a cell, with his rumpled suit, unshaven face, sunken hungover eyes and wearing a bandage on his forehead that one of Napoleon's
Grande Armée
soldiers would have been proud to display during the 1812 retreat from Moscow. Obviously the arresting sergeant had made sure that he received medical attention before they locked him up. But with the father you could never tell if he was play-acting or not. To me the bandage that was wrapped completely around his head looked far in excess of what the wound required. The mother, now she had sobered up, refused to press any charges, which dampened down the arresting sergeant's rendition of the previous evening's events.

‘Judge,' the sergeant began, while reading from his notebook, ‘we responded to a complaint about a disturbance that was taking place at…'

‘Stop, stop,' cried the judge. ‘Bailiff, what is this man being charged with?'

‘Breach of the peace, Judge.' The court bailiff read from a single sheet of paper: ‘Damaging private property, displaying threatening behaviour with a firearm, abusive conduct towards a member of the Garda and unlawful possession of a firearm under the Offences Against the State Act.'

‘How does he plead?' asked the judge in a voice that suggested he was completely fed up with the day already, even though it was only just beginning.

‘Not guilty,' roared the father, before the bailiff could respond, in his clear, strong, English public school voice, ‘I wish to represent myself and as a matter of fact, Ma Lud, I also wish enter a counter action against the sergeant for breaking and ent…'

‘Quiet,' thundered the judge, halting the father in mid-sentence, ‘you will have your turn to talk soon enough,' and slumped back in his chair. ‘Continue Sergeant.'

‘Myself and Garda Murphy, on arrival at the house of the accused, observed a large statue buried head first in the front lawn. It appeared to have been hurled from an upstairs room; we were able to ascertain that from the large hole in one of the windows…'

‘Objection,' shouted out the father. ‘Ma Lud, the sergeant has no proof that the statue was thrown from the…'

‘Will you be quiet,' said the judge in a voice that now bordered on pleading. ‘Please, Mr Heaps, for all our sakes, will you let the sergeant continue? Otherwise we will still be here at midnight.'

‘We found the front door ajar and, on hearing raised voices coming from the upstairs, we decided to investigate. From what we can gather, Judge, the accused attempted to kill his wife with a hand pistol that we have confiscated, and, as was stated by the accused's wife at the time, it was only the timely intervention of their son that averted a possible tragedy. However, Judge,' the sergeant concluded, ‘the wife of the accused has now refused to press charges.'

‘So then, Sergeant, what are we all doing here wasting the court's time if no formal complaint has been lodged?' enquired the judge tetchily.

‘Disturbing the peace, possession of a firearm and abusive behaviour towards a member of the Garda Siochána,' answered the sergeant, seeming amazed at having been asked the question.

‘Oh, very well, thank you Sergeant. Well, Mr Heaps, what have you got to say for yourself?'

He gazed straight at the father, who looked like he should have been in hospital instead of standing as the ‘accused'. I suspected that he had not been able to get his hands on any drink in the cells the night before and the DTs were probably setting in.

‘Your Worship, there appears to have been a great misunderstanding. My wife and I were cleaning the statue of the Virgin Mary when I accidentally fell against it and knocked it out through the window, thus the bump on my head.'

Wow, I thought, now that was good. But there was better to come as he continued, ‘As for the rest of the sergeant's allegations, I am at a complete loss, because, Ma Lud, my family and myself were rehearsing for a play when the gardaí broke into my home.'

The onlookers in the courtroom howled with laughter at that statement, as the father gazed at them with a face that implied complete innocence. Even the old judge smiled, as he picked up his hammer and smacked it down to silence the merriment, announcing: ‘Firearm to be confiscated. Bound over to the piece for a month and a ten-pound fine. Next case.'

‘Ma Lud, Ma Lud,' cried out the father. ‘I have not finished, I wish to prosecute the gardaí for breaking and entering into my home.'

‘Next case. Bailiffs, kindly escort Mr Heaps from the courtroom.' The father was led away to the sounds of laughter coming from the gallery and the judge shouting for order.

When the three of us met outside, the mother rushed over to the father and examined his head injury while admonishing me over her shoulder: ‘How could you do this to us, Emelyn? Bringing shame on us like that.'

‘What…what are you talking about?' I stammered. ‘I didn't do anything. When you lobbed the statue out of the bedroom window the neighbours probably thought you two were murdering each other again and called the guards.'

‘We have great neighbours and you shouldn't have called the police, am I right Ron?'

‘You're quite right, Emily.' The father glared at me as though I should have spent the night in prison instead of him. ‘Come on Emily, let's find a market pub that's open and I'll get you a drink; I definitely need one after spending a night with the dregs of Dublin society.'

And that was that. The two of them strolled off up the street, arm in arm, the best of friends until the next row, which, knowing them, would probably be later on that evening.

*

But that had been last week, and thankfully I hadn't seen them since. Nevertheless, this night was going to be the last that I would spend in what had been my home for the past seventeen years. The workmen had already begun the transformation of our well-known old toy and sports shop into Inchicore's new Health Centre. However, over the coming weekend at least, my old home would get a short reprieve. As I stared through what had once been our shop's display window, a very early memory of one of the worst hidings that my mother ever gave me came flooding back.

I remember clearly that I was sitting inside the shop, looking out of its large plate-glass window onto a busy street with a crowd staring back at me, laughing. Which encouraged me to make faces at them, which caused more merriment, and therefore motivated me all the more. My mother was across the road gossiping with Mrs Malloy when a customer entering
her
shop remarked upon the large gathering over the way. This galvanised my mother into racing back to our shop, to discover that I had chosen the front window, right in the middle of a display of toys, fishing-rods and reels, knives and air pistols, to squat down and relieve myself. She promptly interrupted the crowd's entertainment by hauling me out by the scruff of the neck and then laid into me with the cane that she stored under the counter, onto my very bare backside.

The mother was like that: a reactive, ‘here and now' and ‘be-damned-to-consequences' type of person. While my father was a more resourceful sort of man and taught me to make sure that I was prepared for any eventuality, which was to hold me in good stead through my teens. To instil this philosophy into me, one day when I was four he brought me to the dispensary where he worked as the Eastern Health Board's Home Assistance Officer for the area. He sat me on the sill of his office window, which was about 6 feet above the ground. Then, assuring me that he would catch me, he encouraged me to jump. Finally, mustering up the necessary courage, I launched myself into thin air and watched with horror as he stepped aside and let me crash to the ground. I lay there bawling my eyes out, nursing my bruised knees and heard him say, ‘Never trust anybody, Son, not even your own father.'

He believed in being prepared for any conceivable situation. This attitude had a lot to do with my mother, who was a very bombastic person and ruled the roost with an iron fist. Instead of standing up for himself against her, he would appear to capitulate and resort to quoting one of his favourite sayings: ‘Remember Son, there's more than one way of skinning a cat!' This sort of one-sided relationship between my parents had an overwhelming effect on my early childhood; to this day I still hold his attitude partly responsible for one of the major catastrophes that befell our family.