Two Walls and a Roof (39 page)

By then I am almost in tears with the potential laughter, as she has fallen for this beyond all my expectat
ions.  She decided that she would
go to bed and I say I’ll follow later as I’m reading. I have my head down in a book to hide myself from exploding
.  She put on her nightclothes
and pulled back the sheets, and then suddenly she sees the lizard trembling in the bed.  She let out this huge wail and leaps clean into the air, totally terrified and stretched out against the back wall.  She had literally jumped about four feet in shock and fell back against a cabinet on Jennings
’
wall, knocking it over with a huge crash.  As things began to fall and Etta continues to scream, in burst Mick Jennings waiving a sweeping brush and shouting
, “Where is he, where is he?
I’ll kill him, I’ll kill the fucker”.  Etta is glued to the wall in
terror and pointing to the bed
where the monster had moved a foot or so. Then Mick starts to beat at the bed with the brush.
As he beat at the bed
the lizard leapt up in the air
,
and the more he beat it, the more it leapt. This was just awesome to see and my lizard looked really alive. I saw all this happen as I leaned against the wall trying to keep the laughter in but pretending I was petrified
,
just so that I could see all the fun.

Etta began running around the flat screaming as Mick flails away at the lizard
. T
hen losing all control, I fall on the floor with the laughter.  I literal
ly collapsed; I was almost sick
it was so funny, and even as I write I c
an still remember thinking that
that was the best joke I had ever played on anyone.  While still on the ground I looked up and there was Mrs Jennings p
eeping in around our front door
while her husband
,
half in terror and rage
,
was still trying to kill the un-killable.  After some minutes Mick noticed me laughing and realized it had to be a joke.  I just couldn’t speak I was so sick with the laughing and Etta was still shaking with terror. We all calmed down but she wouldn’t speak to me for days over it and probably never forgave me for it either.

A few days later I happened to go into our local shop and was st
anding behind the upstairs busy
body
,
Mrs Franklin, who had heard all the commotion that night. She was telling the cashier her version of events.  She said she saw it all. Poor Mrs Cahill had been bitten
by some class of foreign beast
and had to be rushed to the hospital. She said that Mick Jenning
s had to kill it and rescue her
as her no good
,
useless husband just fell on the ground in fright
. Then she added quietly,
“I never liked him anyways
,
he was always a bit strange if you ask me”.  All I could do was
to
pretend I hadn’t he
ard her, and as she was leaving
I said
,
“Oh hello Mrs Franklen, how are you today
?
”
“
Oh grand Mr Cahill, it’s a great day
isn’t it”, and as she’s leaving
she gives me a big smile heading out the door. The cashier, who knew Etta well, deserved an explanation, so I told her that it was just a practical joke and I described the events.  We both laughed all over again, with her saying it was one of the best jokes she had ever heard in her life, and if I was her husband she
would
probably never speak to me again after such a shock.

The lizard met with an untimely end though.  I played a good few jokes with him on other people, but when I took him to Mrs Connolly’s butcher shop in Buttevant he finally succumbed to her son’s meat cleaver. The shop was crow
ded and when no one was looking
I placed him near a big lump of meat on the chopping block, and I started to chat to Mrs Connolly. Suddenly there was a scream from a woman customer who was near the block, and John Connolly, with the speed of a Samurai warrior
,
drew a massive swipe at my lizard with his clever, chopping the head clean off. The head flew into the air
,
land
ing on top of the woman’s boobs
and she immediately f
a
inted
. C
onsternation soon reigned, with customers fleeing out the door in panic.  I had the d
evil of a job explaining to all
that it was just a joke gone wrong, and that I was really sorry for making her faint. That ended the lizard’s life, but he gave good service and travelled many a mile with me, giving me hours of laughter while he lived.

We lived on the Lower Road in Cork for quite some time, but in the end I succumbed to Etta’s consta
nt nagging
that we should leave and find a nicer place. She found us another flat overlooking Cork city, and we began to move our stuff in dribs and drabs. By then I had bought the bomber off Larry for 20 pounds and it had got even more unique under my ownership. As a start it had a modified steering wheel which was now the size of a dinner plate. Hayes had convinced me that it gave better ‘control’ when driving fast, and by then he had infected me with his speed madness to the point of insanity. Next the doors were held in place by
six inch nails acting as hinges,
(
I was keeping the father
’
s nails tradition alive
)
and its brakes constantly leaked brake fluid, again nothing unusual in that as the Cahills
’
cars rarely had good brakes, and early on I learned to pump the brakes like someone stomping out a fire.

To add to its uniqueness, the starter key switch was also broken. This meant that the only way to start the car was to go out to the front and raise the bonnet a little
,
then carefully stick your hand in under the bonnet
,
press the manual starter switch, then rush back in before the car rolled off, as it had no handbrake either since Larry had broken it years earlier while
teaching me to drive. This car-
starting was Etta’s usual job, and we just got used to people pointing and laughing at ou
r
novel way of starting the car. The car had num
erous other idiosyncrasies
such as no wipers, no locks on the doors, but it did have a ‘racing’ engine
. A
t least it was built for speed. Its most endearing character
istic for me though
was that I could just lift the seats right out onto the road if I liked, because they were never bolted to the floor
. T
his was real handy for transporting our stuff.

On one particular Saturday I had made numerous transporting trips to our ‘new flat’ and I was completely s
ick of it in the end, so I say
to Etta
, “Look lets try and do it all i
n one last go this time”.  She wasn’t for it at all and we get into a heated argument on the street in front of our old flat.  I took out the seats and had them on the footpath
, then
filled the car to bursting point. I cr
ammed in everything I could see;
books, a small dresser, cups, plates, and clothes.  Then I put a mattress on the roof
, and then another on top of it. B
y then I was seeing the end in sight, so I persuaded Etta to help me load a wardrobe on top of the two mattresses. She did help, and then encouraged
,
I put all the cutlery, records and tapes into a drawer in the wardrobe. Finally I managed to string a bit of a rope all the way round this stuff on the roof.  The plan was to pull the rope through my window and tie it to my seat before Etta got in to her side.  My weight would then act as an anchor
,
and with the rope around the wardrobe
,
it would come in Etta’s window where she would keep a strain on it. I believed th
at she could hold it all easily
if I drove slowly. I had forg
otten about the big hill though and the basic laws of p
hysics. As we left we looked like a moving version of Leaning Tower of Pizza.

We took off down the road slowly with cars beeping me and making signs to get going faster, as we were holding up the traffic. Initially I ignored all of this, but then the hooting and shoutin
g became worse, and then the on-
lookers on the street began pointing as well.  I was getting madder and more embarrassed at this and was blaming Etta for always being on the move
,
swearing she was secretly a gypsy.  She was pulling hard on the rope and I had no choice but to speed up, as I couldn’t take this racket to my rear any longer.  We got to the place where the steep hill
began and tempers were now high
as I made a run at the hill.  Suddenly she starts shouting
,
“Slow down, slow down will you for God
’
s sake, I can’t hold this rope”
. H
er pride wouldn’t let her say it earlier.  “I can’t hold on, tis gonna go, ahhhhhh”.  All I could now see was the wardrobe and mattresses begin to slide off the back of the car
and hit the ground.
Then I see all the spoons, forks
,
knives books, and records go flying in all directions as well.  I screech to a halt.  Etta’s seat now topples over and she has fallen backwards into the clothes
,
becoming buried and cursing like a sailor.  I jump out just in time to see a car roll over my favourite
Pink Floyd album
T
he Dark Side of the Moon
, and then I become like a lunatic.  I ran onto the road and start
ed
jumping up and down
,
screaming and roaring at the fucker who just drove over my pride and joy
. B
y then there are cars whizzing around me in all directions
,
trying to avoid me and our stuff. It’s a wonder the cops weren’t called.

Etta is also raging by then, calling me stupid for ever thinking that she could hold that rope, and we became worse than any tramps at each other
’s throat.  All the passers-
by either make off quickly
to avoid
us, or fall around laughing at us.  It took two further runs to recover our household goods.  The wardrobe never recovered
. W
e just left it by the side of the street in bits, and I was swearing I’d never again help her to move. The disaster was so bad that we didn’t speak to each other for a few days.  It made no difference to Etta though, as it wasn’t long before she got the itch to begin the final exodus to our next flat in Mallow, and subsequently our new home in that town.

We finally left Cork for a flat over Larr
y Andersen’s TV shop in O’Brien
Street
. B
y then Larry had bought another shop across the street and this also had a flat over it like his original one.  T
his newest move was Etta’s idea
as I was quite happy living in Cork, but in reality I didn’t care where we lived as long as we were happy.  She fortunately saw that the money we spent on rent could be put to better use in saving for a deposit on a house.  I think she and Larry concocted a scheme together whereby h
e would let us live in the flat
in lieu of no increase in my wages.  The plan was that when we finally decided to move out
,
he would return every cent of the imaginary wages I was to get.  Basically he was doing
us the greatest favour possible
and true to his word, when the time came to put a deposit on a house, he returned every penny, but that was still some years away in the future.

Our flat over the shop was something else.  It had a tiny bathroom and toilet, which was shared.  The bath was so old and rusty that I used to hate having baths in it.  We had no shower so we just had to make do with the odd bath.  The living room
,
which was on the first floor, looked out onto the street.  It had two
huge windows and I made a shelf
unit to divide the room from the kitchen.  The kitchen section had a counter top covered with linoleum for effect.  It was n
ever finished.  The wiring
was
also
never finished.  A lot of the wires were left sticking out of th
e wall with no sockets attached.
I was continuing in the well known Cahill tradition of ‘doing it tomorrow’.  We had started with a kitchen in the top of the building
,
but this soon came to a halt as I needed to have my own space for inventing things. We had our bedroom on the top floor facing the street
,
and in the night we used to hear cracks happening in the front wall. Etta began telling me that the wall would collapse one day and we would be killed
. A
ll of this I dismissed as her usual nonsense. She was far closer to the truth than she knew though, because while Larry and I were refurbishing the shop beneath us we sawed through a support beam
that we were advised not to cut. W
hen the building didn’t collapse on top of us then, Larry pronounced it safe. Fortunately for us, one Sunday while we were out walking, the front wall did partially collapse bringing down the ceilings and filling the shop front with rocks from the wall. Larry had to have steel girders installed in the wall to prevent a total collapse, so Etta was right and once again we escaped an early demise. The building still stands to this day and seems to have changed little in t
hirty years;
a tribute to steel girders and amateur builders.