Two Walls and a Roof (32 page)

Then a
lmost in a trance
she became glued to the screen, gazing at the picture in silence as I tried to show her how to work it. It was like looking at a child receiving the ultimate gift from Santa. She was hearing me speak, but she only saw the pictures. I never saw anyone become so transfixed by a television picture before or since. It was amazing to see sheer and utter happiness and appreciation being displayed at something so ordinary. Suddenly, as if remembering her manners
,
she jumped up and offered me tea.  As I was going out
later that night with the lads
and I hadn’t much time, I politely said that I didn’t want any this time, and before I got a chance to say why, she added quickly
,
“I have sugar tonight”.

In spite of her poverty, in spite of her lack of money, somehow she had got me sugar. Who knows what she had to do, what she had to sacrifice just to buy that sugar, and she did it for m
e. It was her only way to say thanks. Obviously
I hadn’t fooled her one bit with my feigned hatred for the ‘deadly’ sugar.  Still I had to go, as I was already late. She said again that she had no way to pay for this new television set, and that I was so good to do this for her. I brushed it off saying my mother was taking care of it all and that I hoped she liked it.  Then as I was leaving for the door, a very strange thing happened. She stopped me and put her two hands gently on my shoulders, and standing there looki
ng deep into my eyes she said, “
God bless you, and may you always be blessed
,
” still not saying my name. As I looked back in embarrassment into her dark pools called eyes, I am sure I saw tears forming there, but I quickly looked away saying, “Thanks very much Mrs Flint, and now I must go”.

She had given me
all that
she could give me in this world:
a blessing truly meant from her heart and Soul, and though I
was very anti-
religious at the time, I
am convinced that I felt some h
igher goodness come from her blessing that night.  I left her saying
,
“Be sure and tell my mother if anything ever goes wrong with it, as it’s under guarantee”.

I never heard from her or saw her again. I drove away from her house cursing a system that allows such things to happen to goo
d people, and swearing as usual
that I’d be rich one day. My mother was really delighted when I told her about
the 'new' television. She said, “
Son be proud of what you did, tell
no one, and God will reward you”
. I left Buttevant that night with the lads, hell bent on adventure and feeling invincible.

In my years with Larry, I always wanted to rise above the mere fixing of television sets. Kyrle by then had m
oved into the b
roadcast side of things in Dublin, and I longed for that side of our business too. I felt that the real kings were those who made the television or radio signals, and sent them out to us viewers and listeners, and that’s where I wanted to be. Larry never cared for that side of things, but he was
ten years older than me with
a family to support, so he could not afford the luxury of
‘
idle dreams
’
as he called them. Yet those dreams were to become a reality for me in the not too distant future, but before that day dawned I would have many more adventures with Larry
,
and later still his brother George, who joined us from England.

I could write another book on my escapades with George Anderson
,
Larry’s brother. We got into numerous scrapes together, and every day with him was actually funnier than most days with Larry.
‘
Georgie
’,
as we called him
,
had no clue at all about science and lived every day just for the moment and the sheer fun of being alive. He was a very big man
,
well over six foot tall
,
extremely good looking and reminded me always of Roger Moore. In spite of his size
, I only ever saw
him get really mad once.  It so happened that we were to change an aerial for a farmer who lived out in the wilds of Mallow.  The farmer lived alone, and no sooner had we arr
ived into his yard
than he asked us
, “
Where are yer white coats lads”. Georgie looked at me as if to say ‘What’s his game’ and I had no idea either, so I said
,
“Why do we need them
?
” Our farmer replies,
“Yerra
no need at all, sure ye
’
ll be al
right I suppose”, and in he goes to his dingy kitchen leaving us to get up on his roof.  The house was a three stor
e
y affair with an old slate roof and I knew that getting onto that roof and chimney would stretch our ladders to the limit.  I personally didn’t want to do this job at all, and neither did Georgie, so we tossed a coin and he lost. Our extension ladder was out to the max and Georgie made off up it, pulling the roof ladder behind him with me helping.  Georgie reluctantly got onto the roof ladder and made his way up to the chimney, where his usual method of removing the old aerial was to literally break
it off, as he was as strong as ten horse
s. I was by then standing on the ladder at the guttering, ready to go up after him and help, but I got a feeling to stay where I was.  I saw
Georgie standing on the chimney
with his legs spread across either side of the chimneypot, trying to break off the old aerial. All of a sudden I also saw the first line of bees come out of the pot behind his back. I shouted, “Bees, bees Georgie
,
” and began my fast descent down the long ladder. As I’m heading down I hear a roar from on high and a thump, and I believed that I was going to see Georgie pass me out as he fell to his death. Thankfully
,
by the time I got to the bottom of the ladder his feet were crushing my fingers. As the bees had attacked him he had s
omehow got onto the roof ladder
and scaled down so fast that he almost passed me out, and I was really moving, being terrified of bees myself.  He leapt past me and we both ran into the house
,
slamming the door on the black cloud following us in. We beat at the bees with cloths and our hands
,
and the shouting and roaring soon brought the farmer out from inside his lair. He says
, “
What’s wrong with ye lads, what’s all the
fuss about, s
urely yer not afraid of a few tame bees”.  I think t
his became too much for Georgie
and the f
right and the stings got to him. H
e exploded in rage. He made a drive for the farmer
,
had him by the throat and was pushing him up against the wall with one hand while he still beat at the bees with the other. He began calling him every name under the sun, and all of them were real bad. I tried to pull him off the farmer, all the time getting stung on my neck as I d
id
so, and by then I’m also shouting out a string of curses as well. It was pure bedlam f
or a while.
By then the farmer was also in a panic thinking that Georgie might really clatter him, and he croaks out, “Ye should have had the coats, they don’t go near white coats. I told ye so”.
I thought I was hearing things. After a little while we killed the last of the bloody bees and tried to calm ourselves down. The old farmer had scuttled off again first chance he got, and Georgie and I stared out the window at the bees still flying in all directions outside. We agreed to make a dash for the car and escape
,
and this we did. Then I said to him
,
“What about the ladders”. Georgie
’
s answer was
,
“Fuck the ladders, I’m outa here, let Larry do it, and we wont tell him about the fucken bees either”. Of cou
rse when we got back
we
had to tell him, and in the end
he had t
o do that aerial job by himself
as both of us flatly refused to go back. When
he returned later that evening
he told us that the farmer had called us ‘townies’ and
‘
cowards
’
and Larry laid it on thick, trying to
make us feel like he was a hero
and we were useless. Years later when I was doing calls to the same house, I discovered that Larry had put the new aerial into the farmer
’
s attic where there were no bees, and I saw Georgie
’
s old aerial still hanging half way down the chimney. Larry was no hero either, but he pretended he was to us.

We played practical jokes on each other all the time in those days. It was a kind of tit for tat fun. Georgie had been tricking me into doing extra calls for a long time and I was planning some kind of revenge
,
but no oppor
tunity seemed to present itself
until one day we had to deliver a television to the badlands of County Limerick. This was a big sale for Larry. A farmer who apparently knew Larry
’s dad
had decided to enter the television age, and no expense was to be spared. He was after buying our largest Pye television set, and we were to install a new aerial in his attic as well.  The only problem was that we had no idea where he lived, and only knew that it was somewhere in the east Limerick direction. The deal had been done in a
pub with Larry’s dad, and
Georgie
and I
were to set off into the unknown, loaded down with the gear and the television.

Larry’s dad told us that the customer was ‘well known’, and that all we had to do was find any pub in the Kilmallock direction and ask for directions to his
farm,
so
we set off. Georgie was driving
as he insisted on using his car
newly imported from England. There was no way he would let me drive it, and so I began to feel that this might be the day of my revenge. He also had a very bad hangover
,
having been drinking all the previous night while attending the ‘Rose of Tralee Festival’. Still he insisted on driving and was as sober as a judge too.

We drove for hours, getting more and more directed up into the hills of east Limerick, and eventually we arrived in the yard. To say that this place was a farm was a gross exaggeration. The entire place felt like it had never come out of the dark a
ges.
I was surp
rised they even had electricity
because it was so remote and rundown. The farmhouse was a thatched two stor
e
y building that had seen whitewash paint about a hundred years previously. An old tractor acted as a prop for one of the walls, and hay was piled against another one. I thought we were in the wrong place and told Georgie so, but as he was about to turn to leave, a swarm of small children came running out to greet us. They were all smiles
,
laughing and as happy as can be, but they looked like they had never seen a bath or even water in their lives. Snotty noses and scabby
elbows as well as wild hair were
all the go on both the boys and girls. Yet it struck me as odd that they seemed incredibly happy children, and I filed that thought away in my mind for some reason.

The front door was open and the farmer’s wife, a quite portly but friendly woman
,
greeted us warmly and invited us in. There was no sign of the farmer. The inside of her home resembled the outside of the farm. It reminded me of Nannie
’
s home in Gortnabearna, but at least there it was clean and tidy, unlike this place. The front door opened into a huge kitchen area, where I believe they did all their living. It had a large table in the middle and half of the table was literally covered in unwashed dishes
,
books and cloths. I figured that they never used that half of the table at all. I did spot another table on the way in though, which had
two or three oily looking fish
spread out on an old newspaper. These may well have been there for a day, or a week, I did not know, but my plan for revenge began with their observation, and I was hoping that Georgie had also seen the same fish.

I said to him that we should do the aerial part first, and that he should do
the attic bit
while I did the wiring downstairs for the television
. H
e fell for it, but before he did he says to me real quietly
,
“Did you see them fish, the heads are still on em
.
I almost got sick passing em in, did you see em”. I said
,
“Yeah I did and I wonder who she’s going to feed them to”. Quick as a flash Georgie says
,
“The dogs of course boy, sure there’s no way she’d give them to the kids
,
” and he headed up the stairs with the aerial.