David had always felt a little closer to God than to his friends. The move to the Patrician College brought about his introduction to the Patrician Brothers, men who had vowed celibacy and dedicated their lives to God and to the education of youth. This had a profound effect on David and after only his first year in the college he announced secretly to Brother Francis, his religious knowledge instructor, that he felt he might have a vocation. Brother Francis had been very calm and understanding with the young boy — vocations from the pupils of Patrician colleges throughout Ireland were not a rare thing, but neither were false vocations or perceived vocations. Brother Francis told David that he was very young to make such a bold decision, that he should dwell upon the thought and pray to God for guidance. He should also in the meantime live the life of a normal young boy as much as possible, and as Brother Francis put it, ‘Put your vocation to the test.’ This David Molloy had faithfully done for the last year. Little was he to know that this night, the night of his second date with a pretty girl from Wolfe Tone Grove named Cathy Dowdall, his vocation was about to undergo its greatest test yet.
The two of them sat in the balcony seats of the Casino cinema in Finglas village. There was a double bill, the first movie,
Imitation of Life,
had brought sniffles from every comer of the theatre. Now, midway through the second film,
MadameX,
the audience cried openly as Lana Turner opened the bedroom door to bid her child a silent farewell. David sat sniffling. Cathy, her arm linked into his left arm and her head resting on his shoulder, was not sniffling - instead, she was beginning to panic. Halfway through the second film and he hasn’t even fuckin’ kissed me yet, she thought to herself. She looked up into his face; a thin rivulet was running down his cheek and his eyes were locked on the silver screen. Cathy realised that if she was going to make any progress this night with her ‘feel’ she would have to get the ball rolling herself.
‘I’ll be back in a minute, I have to go to the jacks,’ she whispered into David’s ear.
He smiled at her with tear-filled eyes and nodded his head. Half-crouching, she made her way past the eight people between her seat and the end of the row, and headed for the ladies‘. There were two other girls there, one standing at the sink smoking, the other busy at the mirror applying the ’war paint‘. Cathy went into one of the cubicles and locked the door.
Quickly she removed her knickers, white cotton airtex, and rolling them into a tight ball held them in her fist. She flushed the chain in the toilet and exited from the cubicle in time to leave the ladies’ with the other two girls. When she was back seated beside David she snuggled into him once again.
The movie still commanded his full attention. Lana Turner was now roaming the snowy streets mistaking every young boy for her own lost child. It was all very moving. Cathy nudged David and grudgingly he took his eyes from the screen and looked at her.
‘Look what I have!’ Cathy said in a hushed voice as she held out her hand containing the knickers. She opened her fist and the knickers seemed to bloom like a posy on a sunny morning. David looked at them, puzzled for a moment.
‘I took me knickers off for yeh,’ Cathy smiled.
David smiled too. He took the knickers from her hand and began to mop his tears. As Cathy stared at him incredulously, he then blew his nose.
‘How thoughtful of you, Cathy,’ he said half-sobbing.
Cathy thumped him in the gut and snatched the knickers back. ‘Yeh filthy bastard, filling me knickers with your snots, what’ll I tell me Ma? I took them off so you could do it!’ she explained, still in a hushed voice - although it brought a couple of ‘shushes’ from the surrounding audience.
‘Do what
?
’ David whispered.
‘Feel it!’
‘Feel what?’
‘So you could feel me cherry!’
For a moment David said nothing. ‘But ... I don’t want to feel your cherry,’ he said finally.
‘I do!’ a voice from behind him announced.
‘Fuck off, you,’ Cathy snapped back to the voice in the dark.
She sat in silence for a moment. David returned his attention to Lana Turner. Cathy’s thoughts drifted away. She had read somewhere that some men are slow to respond to sexual advances by women and in these cases a little bit of coaxing would be required. Fearing the film would end soon, and her chance would be gone, Cathy got straight down to the coaxing. She leaned across David’s lap with both hands and slowly undid the zip on the fly of his charcoal grey Patrician College trousers. When she looked up into David’s face she had on a leering smile. David, on the other hand, had his eyes wide open in shock. She began to rummage around the snow-white jockey Y-fronts until she found the little opening and carefully slipped her hand in. She again looked up at David’s face. He now had his eyes tightly closed and his lips were barely moving. At last her hand found its target. Pulling the flap of his Y-fronts to one side, she extracted his now erect pecker.
‘Ooh! Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with Thee ...’ David began to pray aloud.
Suddenly there were shushes all around. A girl’s voice yelled, ‘Shut the fuck up.’ By now David had a tremor in his voice and his knuckles were going white on the arm rests.
Cathy was stunned for a moment, then she noticed the usherette arriving down the steps with the flashing torch, the beam going in all directions. Quickly Cathy sat back into her seat as the torch began to move along the row. It first passed, then quickly returned to settle on David’s fly. Cathy took a sideways glance at the point of attention of the light. David Molloy looked a sight, his eyes tightly closed, perspiration running from his brow, and gripping the arms of the seat like he was about to take off. His little penis was protruding from the grey trousers and when the light settled upon it, it looked like a little cabaret singer - one expected it to break into ‘My, My, My Delila’ any moment.
Cathy Browne was in tears the next day as Cathy Dowdall told how David Molloy was taken from the cinema by the scruff of the neck up the aisle with his pecker hanging out. Undeterred over the next few years, Cathy Dowdall went on to better and bigger things. David Molloy remained traumatised for some time, yet the night did one good thing for him, it confirmed his vocation.
As the years went on, Cathy Browne would fondly recall the adventures that Cathy Dowdall brought into her life and would live each one by proxy. We should all have a Cathy Dowdall in our lives.
The Browne family spent the following couple of years settling into their new home and finding their feet once again. Despite her earlier reservations, Agnes began to enjoy Finglas. The air was clearer here and every day there was a growing sense of community spirit. For the time being, all was well with the Brownes.
PART 2
Chapter 11
LONDON 1975
MANNY WISE COULDN’T BELIEVE HIS LUCK. He had found him. He had found him quite by accident in a kebab shop right across the road from the entrance to King’s Cross station a year ago. Manny was down at the station browsing through the latest batch of young ne‘er-do-wells for some fresh recruits, and having had no luck decided to treat himself to a donor kebab. Manny sat in one of the cubicles, with his kebab and a paper cup of coffee, his back to the door and looking down the counter at the line of people waiting to be served.
He knew the minute he saw the young man that he was different. Although a bit dirty, obviously from some months on the street, he was handsome and had a good physique. This boy, Manny thought, looks after himself. He watched the young man take his place in the line and noted how his eyes drifted from customer to customer. The young man eventually chose his prey. It wasn’t what he did that impressed Manny, but the way he did it. What ends the career of most thieves is that they are consumed by their own greed. This lad was not greedy. The target was a young lady in a leather miniskirt and wool jacket. She was accompanied by a handsome, tall, middle-aged man. They had had a few drinks and seemed happy in each other’s company. The young homeless man’s removal of the girl’s purse from her handbag was pure poetry in motion - fast, smooth and professional. But it was what happened next that most impressed Manny. He watched the young man closely. He very quickly opened the purse, removed some notes, but not all of them, from the wallet section, closed the purse and stuffed the notes into his pocket, then he waited. The happy couple paid for their take-away meal and as they moved towards the door the young man called after them in a Dublin accent, ‘Excuse me, missus?’
The girl turned on her heel. ‘Yes.’
‘You dropped this.’ The young man proffered the purse.
The girl slapped the side of her handbag and opened it as if not believing it was her purse. She then gave him a broad smile. ‘Why, thank you very much, that’s very kind of you.’
‘Nice one, mate, appreciate that!’ the girl’s escort added and winked.
The young man smiled shyly and said, ‘Don’t mention it,’ and returned to his place in the line.
Manny was very impressed. He rose from his seat and went to the counter, skipping the queue, and asked the young lady for another coffee. As the girl was making the coffee up for him he drifted down the line, leaned over to the young man and spoke very softly. ‘I saw that, mate, - work of art, different class ...’
Manny then returned to the top of the line, collected his coffee and sat back down in his cubicle. As the line moved up the young man stared at Manny. When he came abreast of where Manny was seated, Manny invited him over. ‘Get your stuff and sit down here, mate. You and me should have a talk.’
‘Are you fuzz?’ the young man asked.
This elicited a howl from Manny. ‘If I were fuzz, mate, I’d have ’ad the bracelets on you and you’d be in the back of a fuckin’ squad car ten minutes ago! Get your stuff and sit down ‘ere.’
They sat talking and drinking coffee for two hours. The young man gave his name as Ben Daly, although Manny suspected that this was not his real name. Manny didn’t care, he liked him, a lot!
‘You’re not greedy, son, I like that!’ Manny said.
‘I do okay,’ the young man answered.
‘Well, how would you like to do a whole lot better than okay?’
‘What would I have to do?’
‘A little bit of this, a little bit of that.’
‘For you?’
‘Yeh! For me, my son. What you do now is Mickey Mouse stuff. I’ll put you in the big league. You’ll be my right-hand man.’
‘So that’s what you want me to do for you - what can you do for me?’
‘Get you out of those shitty clothes for a start, sonny boy. Take yeh down to Saville Row, get yeh a bit of decent gear. My right-hand man has to look a bit of spiv. And, of course, put a few bob in your pocket. Life can be flash when you’ve got a bit of cash! Know what I mean?’
Ben Daly’s cold blue eyes never left those of Manny Wise.
Manny figured he’d done enough. He’d made his pitch; he’d made the man a decent offer. He began to stir his coffee and waited for his answer.
After a few moments Ben Daly’s face cracked into a smile. ‘Mr Wise, looks like you’ve got yourself a right-hand man.’ Ben extended his hand and the two shook hands warmly.
Over the next few weeks, Ben Daly, or whatever his name was, began working for Manny. He was quick to learn, intelligent, and at times very, very funny. Manny would often muse that in essence Ben was a typical Dubliner. Unlike the other kids that Manny had recruited in the past, Ben did not jump straight onto the drugs trail, in fact it took some months before Manny convinced the young man to try a snort of cocaine. But once he got into it, Ben loved it, and Manny and Ben would have a couple of drinks and a snort and a good laugh most weekends. As the famous tobacco manufacturer John Player once said, ‘If you’re hooked, you’re hooked!’
Over the following months Manny managed the young man very carefully. He would pose little tests for the lad, giving Ben opportunities here and there to skim a little cash for himself or to stash some coke for himself. But Ben never did, seeming to be content to walk in Manny’s shadow and nibble on the crumbs of the ‘good life’. Manny was ecstatic. He had at last found his right-hand man. Little by little, Manny began to trust the young man further and further, until eventually he trusted Ben to go and meet the Amsterdam connection himself.
Ben lived in a small bedsit over a TV rental shop in Harlesden, a predominantly black area. But he never seemed to have any trouble, and built up a nice little cocaine and heroin outlet for himself. Manny Wise began to relax and depended on Ben more and more as time went on. For his part, Ben Daly never let Manny Wise down. They were, it seemed, of like mind and like kind.
Chapter 12
DUBLIN 1974
‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR MA-ARK, happy birthday to you.’
There followed a communal cheer. Mark was embarrassed and looked every inch of it. He stole a sideways glance at Agnes. Tears welled in her eyes but she looked very proud.
‘Blow out the candles, Mark!’ Betty shrieked.
Mark was holding Betty’s hand as he leaned forward towards the cake, which was shaped like a big twenty-one, and with one large puff extinguished all the candles. This again was met with a huge cheer, and to Agnes’s delight the DJ blasted out Cliff Richard singing ‘Congratulations’.
Agnes was pleased she had decided to have Mark’s twenty-first birthday party at home. The back garden was certainly big enough for the marquee, which Mark had paid eighty pounds to rent. What had formerly been the coal shed was now the bar. It was manned by Dermot and Buster Brady. They had managed to procure a cooler and some kegs of Guinness from - God knows where! The cooler was actually on loan from the Carrick Inn, the local pub, and the kegs were courtesy of Guinness and the CIE freight train service.
This was a sort of black-market income for Dermot and Buster. They would go down to the canal at Ratoath Road where the train line ran parallel to the canal. On leaving Dublin, the train would build up speed, and as it got to Glasnevin, because it was now going through a housing area at night, the driver would kill the engine and coast along that stretch of track. The driver would not accelerate again until he reached Blanchardstown. Buster and Dermot had devised a plan. As the train slowly coasted along past Glasnevin cemetery they would jump aboard. The train was made up of forty to fifty carriages, all stacked with Guinness kegs. The trick then was to lean on the middle kegs and with both feet push one of the outside kegs off the train onto the bank. The boys would push one each, then jump off the train before it had time to accelerate, and walk back along the track, collecting the two kegs and rolling them home across the fields.