A miserable Sunday afternoon, hailstones bounced off the single glazed windows like crystal bismuth, the house colder than a Cavan-man’s wallet. The coal supply exhausted mid month. We had burned the last of the orange crates taken from the supermarket we were working in. A week away from a payslip, in pecuniary despair, living on cornflakes, beans on toast and Lyons Tea. We stared at the rented TV screen as Alison Moyet empathised with us, emerging barefoot out of a
Bedouin tent in a black hijab singing about her empty life in Love Resurrection
What can I do to make light of this dull, dull day?
What switch can I pull to illuminate the way?
Show me one direction, I will not question again
For a warm injection is all I need to calm the pain
In the mid eighties I was living with a motley crew of nine other individuals in one of two jerry-built semi detached houses in Tallaght south Dublin. We were all trainee department store managers of around the same age but from diverse backgrounds. Some were from the city itself, others from the boglands of Ireland, the remainder from the north. My house, which was shared with four others became known as the dry house or rehab centre as the other was a grade below a veritable microbrewery. Some observers might have suggested that putting me in charge of a house was like having Dracula as the head of the Blood Transfusion Service having a previous incarnation as a feral, alcohol riven teenager growing up in a border town. But I had at that stage reinvented myself and was teetotal.
A few weeks earlier like a Middle Eastern hostage exchange we swapped two housemates as my pair didn’t like the imposed Presbyterian lifestyle. In any case the two lads in the microbrewery wanted to escape a life of debauchery. This trade off suited me as one of the new arrivals brought a television. We didn’t have one, principally because we couldn’t agree on who would sign the contract with Tele-Rents. In the mid eighties trading on a Sunday wasn’t in vogue therefore was always a day of leisure for all the trainees. We all spent most of Sunday afternoons watching the new phenomenon of MT-USA on the box. This was a three hour long music programme broadcast from the United States presented on RTE 2 by Vincent Hanley or Fab Vinnie as he was professionally and affectionately known.
I previously stated we all watched MT-USA but that’s a slight misrepresentation as there was one guy, who refused to watch it namely, Munster Michael or Meehaalll as he preferred to be called.
I was bewildered back then why all the nationalistic boney-arsed bogmen wanted to be called by the Irish pronunciation of their name yet they were uncomfortable in the company of all northerners either Protestant or Catholic. When I enquired about his self imposed ban, his eyes squinted closed as if being forced to eat a hedgehog, ‘dat boyo is a queer- a homo, I say, I say, he is, he is. I’d say he do have AIDS too, he do he do he do’. Strangely, I liked Meehaalll as he was well educated but not metaphorically up his own rectum like the other university graduates in the houses who were (in their own mindset) only in the current job until something better came up as they were over qualified. The boyo he was referring to was Fab Vinnie who at the time was rumoured to be homosexual (then a criminal offence in Ireland, but decriminalised in 1993). I was surprised at his outburst as he was normally as excitable as a comatose tortoise, but regardless I was still surprised, even more surprised, not that Fab Vinnie had a proclivity to his gender but that this erudite troglodyte Meehaalll from Munster had the previous year, graduated summa cum laude from Trinity College Dublin, ergo I thought his world view would be more expansive.
He always retired to the kitchen when the programme aired. On this occasion I joined him ostensibly empathising with his dogma, but in reality I knew he came from a well-heeled family who supplied him with an arsenal of goodies, secreted away in his locked cupboard. As the rest of the lads watched Dennis De Young singing about his Desert Moon or Alison Moyet playing with Bedouin goats in the desert, I feigned an interest in the Nazi right wing manifesto. I listened to this diffident solitudinarian describe how he would ‘round up all de queers like kittle and incinerate dim’ whilst polishing off his fresh trifle that his mammy delivered the day before. ‘All queers are kiddie fiddlers and Hitler had the measure of dim’, he proclaimed as he opened a packet of Jacob’s Mikado biscuits and proceeded to torpedo his mug of tea ‘I do be loving dim Jacob’s, jaysuus I love to dunk them Inda tae does you?’ Eventually my head was spinning faster than Jayne Torvill’s ankles. I excluded myself from his imaginary bunker, but not before I confiscated a handful of his biccies.
I went back in to the living room to find that a visitor from the other house had taken my beanbag. On the TV Alison Moyet had discarded her black hijab. Now in her new video All Cried
Out she carried a gold topped black teacup and saucer, coincidentally singing
You took your time to come back this time
The grass has grown under your feet
In your absence I changed my mind
And someone else is sitting in your seat
As Alison repeated she was all cried out I went back to the kitchen to get a seat to observe Meehaalll’s shoulders move up and down like a blacksmith’s bellows, his hands covering his now crimson face with the tears blinding him. He scurried away from me upstairs to his bedroom like a rodent up a spout, leaving behind his Mikados which I confiscated.
Shortly after his catharsis he left the company. About ten years later, I was sitting on a bench in St Stephen’s Green I espied him in the distance with another man walking a dog. As they approached we made eye contact. He couldn’t avoid me. His face changing colour the closer he got.
Initially a tinge of salmon, then rose, then scarlet, before full on incarnadine as he introduced me to George and his dog Bailey. George told me that they were partners now, living in Donnybrook for over three years. ‘Bailey likes biscuits! Don’t you Bailey?’. I smiled as they departed thinking
‘Hopefully not Jacob’s Mikados George, as it could get diabetes’.
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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