As a nineteen year old trainee manager in Dublin in 1981, I never imagined I would end up in war torn Belfast four years later. I spent the next two years as deputy manager in the company’s biggest shop in Northern Ireland, but now the stabilisers were off. I was given my own branch. Now I had to paddle my own canoe. Take all the hits. One other positive aspect of this promotion was my new branch was situated in a holiday resort that never suffered the level of violence that tormented Belfast. The shop was bicameral in that it had a seasonal sales pattern. In the summer months the turnover doubled that of the winter but I had to manage the lift in sales with the same amount of staff and management.
I was travelling from my digs in Belfast daily which was tiring. Consequently, I rented a room in a brand new house locally. The landlady Sandi was only 23, two years younger than me. I asked her if she bought the house via the government co-ownership scheme, but seemingly offended she maintained she bought it using her savings as a deposit. ‘Your rent will pay the mortgage every month. I’m buying another one soon’. I didn’t know whether to give her a hug in admiration of her entrepreneurial spirit or choke her out of envy. Nah: it wasn’t admiration. It WAS envy. I did want to choke her. This was compounded further by the way she walked so confidently like a Chanel model on a catwalk in tandem with charging me the same rent as my Belfast digs. I expected a quiet town to be cheaper but the demand for holiday lets inflated the rent levels.
The shop was trading well in my first six months including Christmas but I was struggling to keep up with the demands of my employer with the resources they were giving me. I campaigned for new trainee manager to help me maintain the business. They told me they would revert before the busy period of the summer, more than likely Easter.
Around the same time Sandi announced the rent would be increasing. I immediately went to an estate agent to discuss buying my own house. Within two months I was living in my own new three bed semi detached house with a garage. It was mortgaged but it was mine. Never did I think when I boarded that bus from Clones I would own my own house at 25 years old. It’s fair to say Sandi didn’t have a valedictory party for me when I handed her my notice to vacate but I must admit in hindsight her enthusiasm at such a young age gave me the spur I needed to take the plunge.
Better news followed in that I was informed by the company I was getting a new trainee manager. Shortly after that I was approached by a young man in the shop who introduced himself as Chris. He was starting work with me the following Monday but he was in the town looking for accommodation. I told him to look no further as he could stay with me at a reasonable cost as long as we shared the utility bills. I showed him the house which was within walking distance of the shop. The next day he moved in. I was a landlord. I was a veritable Rigsby from the TV series Rising Damp.
Initially we got on well in the house but he didn’t see the line between boss and housemate. At work there was more movement from the slugs in the service yard. It was surprising he didn’t have ivy growing up his leg. The staff called him cordless as he only worked for two hours a day. He worked no hours on my day off. His only redeeming feature was, for himself —not for me, in that he was a girl magnet, especially girls from the shop that he was supposed to be managing. It got to the stage that I couldn’t use the bathroom in the morning as his latest conquest was using the shower. He didn’t realise that condoms didn’t flush either.
Cordless Chris crossed the rubicon when he announced at breakfast, during a break from coitus with a stunning employee Deidre ‘Houdi I don’t think I will go in today. I have a sore back and Deidre is going to give me a massage’. He said it without even the slightest soupçon of embarrassment or regret. To him I wasn’t his boss or his landlord. I was his mate. That’s what mates do. As I was eating my cereal I couldn’t hear a word Anne Diamond was saying on breakfast TV news with the moans of Deidre bouncing off my eardrums intermingled with Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin singing Je t’aime moi non plus from his ghetto blaster.
I hatched a plan in my head that cordless Chris would have to go. He was still within his probation period but I was faced with a dilemma in that the company might not replace him plus I would miss his contribution to the mortgage. Later that day as I was carting big deliveries in the freezing cold that he should have been doing I got a phone call from him asking could I ‘bring home bacon and eggs as he was hungry. Oh and Deidre wants face cream’. Mortgage or no mortgage, replacement or no replacement he had to go. End of. That evening his back was miraculously cured. After enquiring if the shop was busy and did WE sell many Easter eggs he announced he was just chilling out this evening listening to music on his new Sony Walkman. At that stage my patience was thinner than a cigarette paper. As I was about to throttle him my sister rang me. She was replacing her towed caravan soon. I could have her old one for free. I didn’t really need it or want it but she said she’d deliver it when she got her new one.
Two weeks later on a Sunday morning I stared at the empty caravan from my kitchen window, Cordless, who was on a 15min break from his latest carnal conquest asked ‘who’s going to live in that?’ You are! I have let the house out for the summer. We are moving in there in two days’. ‘You’re joking Houdi’. ‘No I’m not but don’t worry the rent won’t increase’. His Adam’s apple moved more vigorously than a turkey’s in December. His face drained to the colour of chalk.
Cordless was in charge of the shop on my day off as I moved all of our belongings into his new home. I had forgotten that we had no electricity in the caravan so I raced up to the builders providers to get a few extension leads and light bulb holders. I fed the electricity from the detached garage so it didn’t interfere with the holiday makers. Cordless landed home. ‘Houdi can you cook the tea this time as I’m having a shower?’ ‘Chris there is no shower. We can’t go into the house, the holiday people wouldn’t allow it’. He moved from scepticism, to nonplussed, to disbelief, then to incredulity before becoming apoplectic, shaking his fist at me. That was the first time I’d ever seen any emotion in him, well apart from the 75 orgasms I heard him having in the previous months.
‘Where can I wash then?’ I pointed to the tiny sink ‘but you’ll have to boil a kettle first’. ‘What about a toilet Houdi?’ ‘Oh there’s one in the garage. I’m getting a curtain fitted so they won’t see you’. His faced now contorted like Jimmy Swaggart the disgraced televangelist, suggested his impending tears assuaged the need of a kettle. Two hours later his parents called down to the caravan in the pitch black of night. His father gave me a look that would have blistered paint.
Without uttering a word they both gathered his belongings putting them into a metallic black estate
Mercedes car that cost more than my house and caravan, disappearing into the coal tar sky like the Batmobile in Gotham City.
There was no sign of him at work the next day. Or the next day. Or the day after. Head office called to say he had resigned stating the job didn’t fit his skillset or lifestyle. As I looked to delectable Deidre on the checkout I said ‘I’m surprised at that’. Later that night, wrapped in a blanket, in my freezing caravan, on my snow screen TV, I watched a young Celine Dion sing for Switzerland in the Eurovision. At the interval some young lads from Dublin I had never heard of, namely; Hothouse Flowers sang:
Don’t go
Don’t leave me now, now, now
While the sun smiles, stick around and laugh a while
Houdi originally told this story at the tenx9 Storytelling event in Belfast. You can also listen to stories on their podcast.
Originally from Clones Co. Monaghan, Houdi McCabe is a legend in his own mind. He worked as a Branch Manager with Dunnes Stores all over Northern Ireland for 42 years. Retired, he now writes and acts on a full time basis, with over thirty films/plays within his oeuvre. Some of his stories have been adapted for short films, by himself and with other collaborators. He is a regular performer at literary events TENX9, Soundwaves Portrush, Pub Poetry Causeway Coast, First Drams NI and Flash Fiction Armagh. Resident in Portrush Co. Antrim he is married to local girl Carole Robinson.
They have three adult children and one grandchild, Genevieve. Houdi doesn’t have any pets as he loves himself too much.
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