‘Yahoo!’ He was delighted. He was like a real camper. He washed and dressed in ten minutes, slipped the brown package on to his back, took his carrier bag with all his stuff and made his way down the stairs towards the assembly point outside St Jarlath’s church with the rest of the adventurers. It was a beautiful fresh sunny day and Mark took long strides as he headed for St Jarlath’s. He arrived outside the church to complete bedlam. One group of boys were playing football up against the. side of the church while another group was fighting over God knows what. Two boys were sitting on the steps of the church taking big slugs of milk from pint bottles they had stolen from a doorstep on the way down.
Father Quinn emerged from the Sacristy and soon knocked some kind of semblance of order into the children. Then he lined them up in two rows and they marched down O‘Connell Street like an army. Mark felt like a soldier. At the bottom of O’Connell Street they boarded the Blessington bus, two by two. Father Quinn decided who sat beside whom and despite pleading with Father Quinn, Mark ended up sitting beside ‘Number Eleven’. Number Eleven was David Molloy, and he got his name from the continuous stream of mucus that flowed from his nose. He was only called Number Eleven in the summer - in the winter the children called him Bubbles, for obvious reasons. Mark eventually sat where he was told to sit, but he kept a close eye on Number Eleven and every time Eleven leaned to the right, Mark leaned away, as if Eleven had an infectious disease. The trip was two hours long and Mark had to concentrate the whole time.
Father Quinn knew one song only: ‘Where Have You Been All Day, Henry, My Son’ and the kids joined in with gusto. As they neared Blessington, he began the song for the eighth time and the children groaned. Finally, Father Quinn stood up and when he had got everyone’s attention, he began to speak: ’Now, children, we’re very nearly there and I will shortly be going around to give everybody sixpence to spend.‘ This was met with a huge cheer. The priest raised his hand and eventually got silence and continued: ’You may, if you wish, spend this on sweets, but please remember to make these sweets last, for, once we leave Blessington on our hike, we will not see civilisation again for three days.‘
Blessington was ill-prepared for what was about to descend upon it. Although a picturesque little village, Blessington was not a sleepy little village and the residents and traders were well aware of their tourist potential, and although the Main Square or Diamond was dotted only with small shops, they did provide for all the needs of tourists. Across the street from where the bus pulled in was a tiny general store. Each summer morning the shopkeeper would come out early and hang up all his colourful wares on meat-hooks around the doorway. There would be inflatable rings for children going bathing, brightly coloured buckets and spades, footballs of all colours and little windmills on sticks gently twirling in the wind. To anybody else stepping off the bus this shop would be picturesque. To Father Quinn’s little army from The Jarro, it was a shoplifter’s dream.
Twenty minutes later the troop marched up the mountain path from the village, each boy with his pockets full of sweets, postcards, biscuits, tins of salmon, firelighters and cigarettes. They were led proudly by Father Quinn, while back in the shop the shopkeeper was scratching his head and looking at the five shillings he had managed to drag out of the boys. Four miles into the mountains and three more puffing blasts of ‘Where Have You Been All Day, Henry, My Son’ from Father Quinn and the group came to a lake. Father Quinn turned to the boys, gestured with his arm proudly, and announced: ’Boys, I have led you to the land of milk and honey.‘ From somewhere in the group a tiny voice said, ’It looks like fuckin’ water to me,‘ and this was followed by a ripple of laughter.
The group marched into the field, then down to the edge of the lake. Father Quinn gathered the boys around and said: ‘Boys, put down your baggage and first things first - everybody must collect wood for the bonfire.’ There was a large cheer and the children scattered in every direction. ‘Make sure it’s dead wood,’ Father Quinn called after them and when the wood arrived back in dribs and drabs it was indeed dead - some of it dead so long that it had been turned into a door or picket fence! Two of the boys even arrived back with their wood in a wheelbarrow. When Father Quinn asked where they had got the wheelbarrow, they swore they had found it, just like the boys who brought the door and the fence. Father Quinn couldn’t shake off the feeling that they had taken the wheelbarrow from somebody’s garden and were able to get it out easily because the picket fence was missing! He was afraid even to imagine where the door had come from.
By eight o‘clock that evening the boys started to get tired and Father Quinn decided to let everybody put their tent up. He paced out sites five feet apart and ordered them to begin. Mark gleefully took his brown paper packet and began to undo the tape, while beside him Sean O’Hare was unpacking his. Sean O‘Hare’s tent was a standard army one-man tent bought in a second-hand shop in Dublin - khaki green with two short poles and a ground sheet. When Mark unfolded his package it had eight poles!
‘Sean!’ he shouted, ‘should a tent have eight poles?’
‘Only if you have four tents,’ said O‘Hare.
But Mark quickly grasped that the poles slotted into one another and instead of eight poles he had four long ones. Again he turned to O‘Hare for advice.
‘Sean! I have four poles - is that better?’
‘It is if you have two tents,’ said O‘Hare. ’Take out the tent and open it out, then you’ll see how many poles you need.‘
Mark opened the second brown bag. The first thing he noticed was the bright orange colour of his tent fabric. As he unfolded the fabric and spread it across the ground the next thing he saw was the red Indian markings that were painted on the outside.
O‘Hare scratched his head. ’What the fuck is that?‘
‘It’s me tent,’ said Mark.
‘Are yeh sure, it’s not a frock?’ O‘Hare said and laughed loudly. The bright orange colour of the tent was now attracting attention from boys within a twenty-yard radius and they converged on Mark to see what kind of tent he was erecting. It was Number Eleven who spotted it first.
‘It’s a bleedin’ wigwam,’ he screamed and all the boys laughed.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ said Mark, ‘it’s me tent!’
‘I’m tellin’ yeh,’ Number Eleven went on, ‘it’s a bleedin’ wigwam, I seen them in the toy shops.’
It took only seconds for Mark to realise that Number Eleven was right. It was indeed a wigwam. Bright orange with Indian paintings all around the sides. Agnes had bought her son a teepee. And so for the three nights they spent in the Wicklow Mountains Mark Browne slept in a sitting position, and got himself the name ‘Sitting Bull’. A casual passer-by would look down at the lake and see all the khaki tents laid out in military fashion with a priest marching up and down, and in the middle of them all a bright orange wigwam.
When Mark returned from his three-day adventure his mother’s advice was less welcome than it had ever been, and any thoughts she had of stopping him going to work and encouraging him back to school went out the door with the wigwam so t‘speak.
Chapter 15
THE OTHER BROWNE KIDS HAD THEIR SUMMER outings too, and thanks to the St Vincent de Paul charity they even managed to get themselves a holiday. They had a two-week stay at the ‘Sunshine Home’ in Skerries. Not for the first time did Agnes bless the Vincent de Paul.
Agnes herself spent the time without the children with Marion. The two drank, talked, walked, and even took a couple of coach trips down the country. Marion was more full of life than Agnes had ever seen her and they laughed themselves silly. However, when the sun began, to set a little earlier, and the scent of summer had got thinner in the air, Marion’s enthusiasm began to flag. By mid-autumn she was getting tired more easily. She became the victim of huge mood swings, the brunt of which were borne by an increasingly depressed Tommo. It was, Agnes reflected, as if Marion knew she had just had her last summer. Once again Agnes tried to get Marion to give the stall a break for a while and spend the time at home.
‘I’d die at home all day every day,’ Marion would say with a wry grin. Agnes wondered if she knew. She suspected that she did, for Marion began to do funny things - things that were out of character. For instance, she now held Tommo’s hand - in the pub, out shopping, all the time. And one chilly morning when Marion came over with the bovril for the morning break they had an unusual conversation.
When the fags were lit it was time for the ritual chat, but instead of the usual chatter, Marion opened with a question: ‘Have you any dreams, Agnes?’
‘Oh Jaysus, I have. I’d love to win the sweepstake and get the fuck outta here.’ The two laughed. Then came a pause.
‘Ah no, I mean
real
dreams,’ Marion asked again.
‘Like at night in bed?’
‘No ... How do I mean it? Yeh know, sometimes you feel that life is passin’ you by ... you’re doin’ nothin’, oh you’re busy all right, but your not
doin’
anythin‘. D’ye ever feel that?‘
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re bleedin’ talkin’ about.’
‘Ah yeh know...’
‘I don’t know, Marion, I don’t. Busy doin’ nothin’ -what the fuck is that supposed to mean?’
‘Cliff Richard!’ Marion exclaimed.
‘What about him?’
‘You told me once that you’d love to dance with Cliff Richard. Am I right?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Well, that’s what I mean! That’s a real dream. That’s something that
could
happen!’
‘Oh sure, Marion. Cliff will stroll down Moore Street to my stall and say: How yeh, Agnes, give us five red apples and, c’mere, will yeh dance with us?‘
‘Could happen. I’m not sure about the apples though!’
The two women laughed again, and Agnes was relieved that Marion wasn’t going off her rocker. But Marion wasn’t finished yet.
‘Do you know what I’d like to do before I die?’
Marion said this without looking at Agnes and likewise Agnes looked away, scratched her neck and tried to sound as casual as she possibly could. ‘What?’
‘I’d love to learn to drive!’ Marion answered, excited.
‘What? Drive? Drive what?’
‘A car, of course!’
‘But you haven’t got a car.’
‘So? People do learn Spanish.’
‘What’s that got to do with drivin’ a car?’
‘People learn Spanish and they don’t go to Spain, so why shouldn’t I learn how to drive?’
Agnes had no answer for this perverted logic. She just sat open-mouthed. Marion took this as a request for more information and went on.
‘There’s a drivin’ school in Talbot Street. I called in, and it costs nine pounds for fifteen lessons. That’s a savin’ of over two pound, cause it’s fifteen shillings a lesson. It’s a special pre-Christmas offer. What do yeh think?’
Agnes still did not change her expression. She was digesting all of this, slowly. She spoke slowly too. ‘You’re goin’ to pay out nine pounds ... to learn to drive something you haven’t got?’
‘It’s me dream ...’
‘Fuck the dream! Get a cheaper dream. You’re out of your mind, Marion, really, it’s ridiculous!’
Neither of the two women spoke for a while, well not to each other anyway. Agnes would take a sup of bovril and say, ‘Drive, me arse,’ to herself, and other than that all was silent. Marion stood and took the mugs, brushed down her apron and screwed the stopper back on the flask. She was just about to leave, but instead she put her hand on Agnes’s arm and said: ‘If you could dance with Cliff Richard for nine pounds you’d fuckin’ jump at it!’ And she walked back to her stall.
And it wasn’t over. That night after the Bingo, Marion brought up the subject again. The two were on their second round of pints, the post-mortem on the Bingo was finished and as usual both were taking in what was happening at the tables around them.
‘There’s Dermot Flynn,’ Marion pointed out.
‘Dermot Flynn? Where?’ Agnes strained her neck.
‘Over there, at the domino table.’
‘Oh I see him. He’s lookin’ well.’
‘Is he happy with his move out of town?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since they moved. You can be sure she’s happy. She has notions, that wan!’
‘Yeh, town wouldn’t be good enough for her.’ Marion confirmed that Dermot Flynn’s wife was a snob.
‘Mind you ...’ Marion continued, ‘when you can drive you can move where you like.’ She took a sip. Agnes saw the bait splashing in the water. She was tempted to change the subject and annoy Marion, but she had already given it some thought. Marion was right, Agnes would pay nine pounds to fulfil her dream and dance with Cliff - she’d pay ninety pounds if she had it! So, if Marion could fulfil her dream, stupid as it was, then why shouldn’t she? So she rose to the bait.
‘I was thinkin’ about that, Marion.’
‘About what, Agnes?’ Marion was milking it!
‘You learnin’ to drive, what you said today.’
‘Oh yeh! Janey, I forgot about that - what about it?’
‘You’re right!’
‘Am I? D’ye think so, Agnes?‘ Marion was excited now.
‘Yeh,-yeh are, do it!’
‘Ah I’m delighted you agree with it, Agnes. The man in the school said he could take us out next Tuesday night for the first one!’
‘Lovely. Wait a minute! What do yeh mean
us?’
‘Us. You and me. I’m not gettin’ into a car with a stranger on me own.’
‘Well, I’m not gettin’ in with yeh - who’ll be drivin’?‘
‘I will.’
‘Yeh can fuck off, Marion Monks, if you think I’m goin’ to be your first victim!’
‘Ah ye’ll be all right, Agnes. The car has controls on his side as well, it’s ... it’s bisexual, he can take over any time he likes. You just have to sit in the back - mortal support, that’s all!’
‘No.’
‘Agnes ... for yer pal.’
‘NO, NO, NO!’
‘I’ll get you a cider. PJ, when you’re ready?’
‘You can buy all the cider in China, the answer is NO. N.O. - NO!’
Chapter 16
MARION’S TINY GREY EYES SPARKLED with excitement as they gazed from the small, elongated rear-view mirror.