Two Walls and a Roof (40 page)

The flat was a happy place in general
,
but I sa
w long term difficulties
as we had to go through our TV shop below to get upstairs to our home.  Taking shopping and coal up a steep stairs, as well as humping drums of gas
,
was very difficult, but all of this paled into insignificance compared to when our first baby, Adrian, arrived.  The very large rats were a problem for us too, and Etta was scared to death of them.  One day she was sitting on th
e toilet and on hearing a noise
she looked across to the side of the bath where Larry and I had nailed a wide board to keep the rats in. We neglected to tell her that we had seen a large rat come through the wall
there
some weeks earlier.  That rat had brazenly walked across the room right in front of
us, so we took the easy way out
and nailed an old board to the wall feeling that this would keep him a
t bay. As she sat on the toilet
she thought she saw a rat out of the corner of her eye, but dismissed it as sheer imagination
. A
fter all
,
we had assured her there were no rats at all in the place.  Then a rat
’
s head appeared from behind the board. It seems that in the intervening weeks he had eaten through our defences. As she stared in disbelief, the rat got braver and eventually leaped out from behind the board, landing beside her with a thump.  She took off out of the bathroom screaming, “Rat, rat, rat”, trying to keep her jeans on as she did so
. She
dashed into the kitchen
,
slamming the door behind her. Larry
’
s father, a man we called Kelly
, saw her fly past
and tried to console her
by saying in through the door, “
What’s wrong with you girl, sure tis only an ould rat”.  Etta was not impressed at all and when I came in she was like a wild woman.  She then demanded some solution, or she was moving again. My easy answer that time was to get a cat, but that solution turned out to be far worse than the rats ever were.  We got a small female cat.  Etta called the cat Kizzy after some character
in an American TV series
called Roots.  Kizzy was a kitten and had this bad habit of deliberately finding my clothes and pissing on them.  I am certain she liked my musk
,
as it was always my clothes she chose to piss on.  No amount of booting her in the ass did any good either and I was going wild at the smell.  She must have been pissing on the floor too because soon there was a constant smell of cat
’
s piss around the flat, and as time went by it got stronger and stronger.  Cat
’
s piss is an amazing thing as it’s impossib
le to get rid of it
. I used to think that there
was a definite invention in it
if I could only turn it into a perfume of some kind as it would last for days, but I never had the time to investigate that idea properly.

After months we actually got used to this smell, and soon I ignored it.  However
,
when our friends came to call they would almost get sick from the smell. Some were too polite to say anything,
but usually never called again. M
y aunt May was not so polite though, and told me straight out to get rid of ‘that stinking cat’.  I was coming to the same conclusion myself, as
it had pissed on my best jacket
and absolutely no amount of washing would get rid of the smell. I had to just dump my best jacket in the end and I was savage
,
cursing both the cat
and
Larry
’
s rats.  That bloody cat was no use as a ratter either, as I was still seeing the furry fellas but not telling Etta about it.  The cat never once caught a rat, and I used to say she was too busy eating, sleeping, and pissing on my clothes to be out catching rats.

One beautiful evening the cat began this violent wailing for no apparent reason.  It went on and on and sounded
to me like she was dying. We were so innocent then
that we didn’t know the cat was in heat.  I was certain she had some bad pain,
and as I believed b
randy was good for all ills, I decided to get her some as a cure.  I went across the road to the local bar which was crowded that evening.  As I entered I got a lot of odd looks as I don’t drink and most people knew me then, and knew this about me too. Mrs Duignan
,
the owner
,
looked very surprised also as she asked me what I wanted. I didn’t want to be wasting my hard earned money on a useless cat, so I started to explain that
I just wanted a half glass of b
randy.  She knew I didn’t drink too and said
,
“John when did yo
u start drinking the hard stuff?
I thought you don’t drink at all”.  I was quick to assure her that
I didn’t drink, and that this b
randy was just for our ca
t.  She exclaimed incredulously
and loudly for all to hear
, “
You mean to tell me you
’
r
e giving b
randy to you
r cat, are you coddin me John?”
I tell her I am serious
,
as our cat
’s in pain and b
randy will cure it. Immediately all heads turn on me and I then became an instant talking point, with all the locals saying he’s so crazy he’s g
iving b
randy to his cat
. W
hat a fool, wasting it.  There were peals of laughter in the bar where everyone thought this was the funniest and stupidest thing they ever heard. I was being quizzed on all sides as to the reasons for this waste, and Mrs Duignan see
med to take ages giving me the b
randy
,
hanging on every word that I spoke.  She was having great fun at my expense.  The more I recounted my reasons
,
the more laughter it caused.  I still had no idea why they all laughed so much. When I had paid for the
b
randy
,
Mrs Duignan says to me
,
“Maybe the cat
’
s in heat John, did you ever think of that boy
?
” More laughter came from the patrons and some even offered to help me hold the cat down,
just in case some got spilled.
I was the butt of numerous jokes for weeks after that incident
, and every time
I went to fix Duignans
’
TV
,
she always  asked me
with a smirk,
“And how’s the cat now John, still an alcoholic is she
?”

I returned red-faced with my bottle to Etta saying it was nothing and that the damn cat was just randy
, s
o I opened the back window to let her out for her fun
,
but she wouldn’t go out.  She was still screeching though with this awful moaning and after an hour of this I became convinced again that s
he was in pain and that the pub-
goers were all wrong.
I
t was time for action. Because it was so warm I had no shirt on when I grabbed hold of the cat
.
I told Etta to pour the brandy down her throat while I prized open her mouth.  The cat was scratching and tearing at me when I turned her upside down on my lap, and she bit me when I tried to open her mouth.  I persevered and Etta got the bottle ready.  I got her mouth open again and shouted at Etta
,
“Now
,
now, pour
,
pour
,
” and she did.  The brandy went into the cat and onto me
. T
he cat
’
s paws suddenly shot out, with her claws becoming razors tearing my belly apart.  I couldn’t hold her as she seemed to have developed super strength and she escaped.  She leaped up in the air and m
ade a drive for the open window
where she jumped clean out and we never saw her again. Now with no cat, plenty of rats, and Adrian a baby, Etta activated the doomsday scenario
. W
e would be on the move again, but this time to our new house which was being built at a snail
’
s pace in Avondale Park.

Before we could move in to our newly built house, we had to have the water main connected and this event was to set me off on a bad footing with the water section of the local authorities. I had been given a map which showed where the main water pipe for the whole estate was located. It was supposed to be about six feet outside our boundary wall on the road, and apparently it was my responsibility to dig to this pipe and have my house pipe brought out to it for connection by the official plumbers in the local council. I knew well that digging for this pipe by
mys
elf would be a terrible job,
so I enlisted the help of my brother Hugh who was around at the time. It was a Saturday and we began digging around nine in the morning. After about four hours and four holes
,
all about three feet deep, we still had not seen the main pipe and we retired for the dinner almost dead from the exertion.

Etta kept asking me if I was reading the map right and this was driving me mad, as I was suspecting the map was wrong and that was our problem. At two p
.
m
.
we got at it again, this time digging between the holes in case we had ‘missed it’,
and by about six in the evening
we had one huge hole in the road and still no sign of the main water pipe. At
that point Hugh decided he had
had enough and was leaving, and in rage I took a lace at the ground with my pickaxe and suddenly we struck water. There was a huge jet of water going up about fifteen feet into the air
,
and we both stood awestruck gazing at it. I had inadvertently broken into the main water pipe for the whole area. People started to stop and look
,
and soon the hole in the road became a swimming pool full of murky brown water
. I
f it had been a nice day we could easily have gone for a swim, but it was not. Quite quickly Hugh says to me
, “W
e better cover this over and you’ll have to call the council and tell them you
have broken the mains,
”
emphasiz
ing the word ‘you’, adding, “D
on’t dare mention me in any of this”. That sounded omin
ous and I didn’t like it at all. W
hat did he know that I didn’t know. To stop the geyser from turning Avondale Park into New York on a hot summer
’
s day, we got a sheet of iron from around the back and put it over the pipe
. Then we added more sheets, rocks and a tar barrel to mak
e a barrier around the ‘swimming pool’ and hoped for the best as the water continued t
o pour out from under our defens
es for the rest of the weekend. By Monday a lake had formed outside our house. I called the council on Monday morning and told them that I h
ad found the water pipe and had
had a little accident. “What kind of accident Mr Cahill
?
” “Well actually I think I burst your main pipe”.
“
What did you say.. you burst the mains is it
?
So you’re the cause of no one having water all weekend, or those who did have it were drinking mud
. Y
ou’ll be paying for this….”. I said
,
“If you had given me a proper fucking map I’d not have burst your bloody pipe
,
” and hung up on them. An army of workers arrived and by dinnertime they had us connected
,
the hole was filled in and to their credit they never charged me a penny. M
y belief always was
that anything outside my gate was their responsibility and so it was an accident with no one to blame, but Hugh was making sure he was not going to be tangled up in it.

Over the years that followed our move to Avondale Park
,
two more chi
ldren would arrive in our lives;
my daughter Lynda who I nicknamed early on as ‘Lyndi the scientist’, and our youngest son Kyrl named after my brother Kyrle. As the Cahills had already done before, we dropped the
‘
e
’
off the end of my son
’
s name to distinguish him from my brother Kyrle. I could not say that we were great parents
;
far from it, because from an early age our three children had to become totally independent in mind and body. Each of them learned how to
cook and survive by themselves
because I was always out working, and Etta would often have to help me as no one else would. In hindsight
,
this survivalist thinking has been of great benefit to them as they are all n
ow out in the world and
well able to fend for themselves. I also believe honestly that Etta was a far better mother than I was a father, and to my great regret I spent far too much time working for others as by then I was not alone working for Larry
,
but I was also working for pirate radio. I could easily be out half the night or on weekends when I should have been spending that time
with my most precious of gifts;
my children.