Storytime with Houdi – Boots….

Fifty six….fifty six, he was only fifty six when he died son.

My mother was staring into the open coal fire she had lit earlier with the suet from the butchers, assisted by the double leaf page of the Irish Press to create a draught. Chewing cloves in a toothless mouth, her bare legs rested on the fireplace, crimson with phlebitis, reminiscent of a drawing I’d seen the day before of the Nile Delta on the geography class cork-board.

I told him to get help.

Dr Glass said he had brought men like him out the other side.

He wouldn’t listen.

But he’d listen to Johnny Turley propping up his bar with his Belfast stories.

Paying for Turley’s boys boarding above in St. Malachy’s.

He wrote songs you know.

Eileen Courtney recorded his best one.

Did the books for half the businesses in the town as well.

He was a smart man your da.

He costed the White Unicorn Hotel right down to the last building block.

She stared into the fire as if it was telling her fortune or hypnotically enchanting her.

What are we going to do now son?

What are we going to do?

I only have a widdahs pension to make everything last,

How are we going to cope?

Will you to round to O’Gormans for the messages?

The list in the red pass book on the table.

Make sure you get served by oul Joe.

The son makes the prices up as he goes along.

Make sure you both sign the book.

She started to dose off as the Roche Valium kicked in. I read: small tin of Waddles Pork Luncheon meat, three firm tomatoes, McCaldin’s sliced pan (not Peter Lyon’s) a quarter of red cheese, Jacob’s Marietta biscuits and 10 Sweet Afton. I left her in a trance heading down the overgrown back lane past the terraced houses all with outside toilets. A red setter dog licked his testicles on the porch. I shouted over

I wish I could do that Mr Armstrong!

Give him a bone and he might let you.

He laughed so loud at his own joke I could see his tonsils bouncing around like a ball bearing in the pinball machine in Goldrush amusements. The Polo Mint on his tongue a redundant lifebuoy as he collapsed in a heap on his wicker chair, shoulders heaving like an asthmatic hippopotamus.

The fascia above O’Gorman’s bearing the legend GENERAL GROCERY STORE was a complete misnomer. It was more like the trading posts in the cowboy films I’d see at the matinees in the Luxor cinema, with petrol pumps, coal, turf, slack, and animal feed for sale in the adjoining market yard. Mr O’Gorman reared his own pigs in the back sheds slaughtering them for sale. The main shop itself was divided into two areas. One for general groceries, the other for confectionary or luxury goods that catered for the people who didn’t live in terraces with outside toilets. His wife, the Materfamilias of the clan, managed her side like a separate company. There was no crossover to his side.

Your daddy was a smart man. He was tuk too soon cub.

Youse have suffered a severe blow.

Sympathetically, O’Gorman’s son twirled the three tomatoes in the air in a plastic wrap, like James Last conducting his orchestra. He laid them on the counter tied firm without the use of string. Using the ubiquitous pencil lodged behind his right ear he wrote the prices into the book with the skill of a surgeon. I was nervous at this stage as ma said he wasn’t to do it. Much to his chagrin I gave the book to his father for authorisation as we both signed it off. The son threw me a look that would have bubbled door paint as I put my provisions into the wicker basket to head back to the terrace known colloquially as The Gullet.

I landed back at the house as the Valium had almost worn off but she was still staring blankly into the fire which I reloaded with coal.

Go easy on that son, it has to last us until Friday – who served you?

Mr O Gorman ma. We both signed it.

She took the book off me inspecting it like a jeweller before sitting on it for safe keeping. Later she prepared the tea serving copious amounts of pork luncheon meat sandwiches, dismissing my suggestion of chips, declaring that chip pans burn houses down. She made a dish of stachie which was a concoction of Jacob’s Marietta biscuits lodged with milky tea in a big mug. It was eaten with a spoon as a surrogate after dinner dessert.

There’s nourishment in this son.

That’s why your teeth are so good.

Paradoxically, her teeth were gaping out of a beetroot jar on the windowsill.

About midday on the following Saturday I was halfway through the exploits of Bully Beef in The Dandy comic when I heard her talking conspiratorially in the hallway. I recognised one of the voices, as one of my teachers. The other one I couldn’t decipher. I heard her whisper,

 

If youse think it’s not much bother or if it’s not putting youse out it would be a great help to us.

She called me out to the hallway to introduce me to Mr Pritchard my aforementioned teacher. Accompanying him was the corpulent Mr Brady who was a headmaster in another school across the border. He had three beautiful daughters who didn’t speak to people with outside toilets. Prichard told my mother they’d be back in a couple of hours.

You seem to have got great wear out of those gutties!

How long do you have them Houdi?

About a year Mr. Pritchard.

We have to wear them in school as the black ones mark the floor.

That’s right Houdi.

Mr Brady smiled at me bending slightly, forming his waistline avoirdupois into a bellows like my da used in his lock up unit where he made headstones to supplement his income.

We’re going to get you a new pair of boots for after school so you can keep the gutties for inside only.

Prichard then stooped closing one eye. I felt his incarnadine jowl touch my ear as he whispered

 

you might get a new pair of plimsolls too Houdi.

I learned later that plimsolls were the fancy name given to gutties by people who had inside toilets. We traipsed up the towards the Diamond making smalltalk. I noticed several people staring at us like we were a visiting circus, me walking between two teachers, one of whom never set foot in my school. We entered a shop what would be described today as idiosyncratic. It was a fully licensed premises on one side, a shoe-shop on the other with the bartender serving customers on both sides. The three of them chatted privately while I looked around at what seemed like hundreds of boxes in their own pigeon holes with sizes exposed for handiness.

What can I do for you young man?

The bartender, looking out through glasses shaped from the bottoms of Jam Jars.

I’d like a pair of ankle boots like what you have in the window

Aha, they’re just new in and they are all the rage now.

You’ll have all the girls running after you when they you see in them.

He opened a new box which declared size five, loosened the laces, removed the tissue paper padding, put one boot on my right foot lacing it up, repeating the process with the left. He stood up forming the posture of a matador putting to death his bovine quarry. He told me to walk up and down the shop to see if they fitted neatly. To reassure himself he pressed his thumb into the front to check for a void.

Yes they are just the job.

They should last a few years if they’re looked after.

He put them back into the box. The same ceremony was performed on a new pair of plimsolls. They then asked me to wait outside. Through the window I noticed them filling in paper forms but no money exchanged hands.

 

They exited the shop to join me for the walk home. Me with a box in either arm feeling like I had won the Hospital Sweepstake. As we passed Friars General Drapers, Prichard asked

would you like a new gansey too Houdi?

I looked at him inquisitively as he explained further,

a sweater or a jumper

My heart was pumping with excitement but I didn’t want to be too selfish to say yes but they didn’t wait for an answer. Again they whispered to the assistant while they filled in forms as I waited outside. Shortly after that they dropped me off at the front door. My mother waved goodbye to them both, her eyes piercing the merchandise. She made me parade up and down the kitchen several times announcing

you’ll have to keep them good son?

They’ll have to last you the year.

A substantial portion of stachie was served as I watched the Late Late Show on a black and white TV with a reception picture like one of the shake a snowstorm ornaments her sister Lucy sent from America. On Monday I marched up to school in my new ankle boots taking great care not to score them. My geansy was checked for creases. Later I changed into my new plimsolls to head for English Literature. They were so comfortable. On the way home from school at lunchtime I met some sniggering pupils from the rival school which was adjacent to ours.

Hi Houdi you are well rigged out today.

I love the the pompotties you got from Murdock’s.

St Vincent de Paul were good to ya.

As ma served me Royco farmhouse vegetable soup with a spud as a centrepiece I asked her who St Vincent de Paul was.

He was a French Saint who was sold off as a slave.

I was still bewildered as to what this had to do with my ankle boots, or my plimsolls or my geansy. On going back to school I met a neighbour who like us also had the outside toilet facility in her abode.

Oh that’s a great rig out Prichard got you from St Vincent de Paul.

Aren’t they a very good charity, but sometimes thosins from the Park abuse it.

There’s never enough to go around.

A gossamer cloak of shame enveloped me all the way up to school as my mouth formed a vat of crushed cranberries for fear I would encounter the girls from the other school. I was sitting in Prichard’s class just after lunch-break. My hatred toward him was tangible. I felt beguiled by him, by Brady too with his three lovely daughters. Even my own mother had hoodwinked me. That’s why the forms were been filled in surreptitiously. That’s why I was made stand outside. That’s why no money changed hands. That’s why the girls were sniggering because I was a tramp from the gully.

After school on the way home the cloud of darkness did not disperse, In fact, it was more concentrated, as if I had swallowed a tin of Jeyes Fluid. I stormed in the door with ma still in a semi trance with President Kennedy behind her, Jesus Christ and his lamp above her as she stared into the fire.

Ma! Why didn’t you tell me ma.

Why didn’t you tell me about the free boots ma?

And the gutties and the geansy?

They all think we are tramps!

She looked at me half dazed like a new born myxomatosis infected rabbit.

 

Sometimes son you need a wee lift, just a wee lift.

That riposte didn’t assuage my anger as I looked at my tramp’s face in the mirror. On the way out I put my fist into it watching the pieces sprinkle on to the floor like the screen on our useless monochromatic TV. I ran around to the local newsagent Tommy Carroll to ask him for an after school job, any job.

No bother Houdi. When can you start?

How about now Tommy?