A Bed in the Sticks Read online

  I need hardly tell you that I felt like punching him in the head, and I have to confess that just seeing him as he gathered whatever hint of personal publicity he could from the media thing that made us seem like hero’s, well, it made me sick to my stomach and I had to work hard to restrain my need to simply whack him with a right-hander.

  He was a fine looking man, with the kind of prosperous good looks that were bound to help his congregation believe that he was a big man in the Jesus organisation. I basically avoided the guy but, at one stage, when he had a young newspaper guy in tow, camera at the ready, he zoomed in on me as though we were best friends and set about organising a picture of us, like someone that knew he was just doing me a favour.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said flatly, deliberately leaving out the word Father, since I didn’t consider him fit to be a Christian, let alone one of God’s chosen, or whatever they were calling Sky Pilots at that moment. The fact is that I had to turn away from the guy for fear that I would punch him right in the mouth, so taken was I by the memory of our last meeting.

  This happened as I remembered, yet again, his rejection of my request that my poor, lost and lovely wife, Pauline, would be buried in the Catholic grave yard of his town. This service which I had regarded as a formality, would not be provided, here I was, years later, feeling my face go red again, at the memory of his response to my simple request.

  ‘I have to inform you, sir that we cannot permit the remains to be buried in consecrated ground.’

  ‘Pauline was a Catholic.’

  ‘But one who found the ways of the church too hard to follow, Mister O’Neill. Your marriage was not a marriage in the eyes of the church.’

  He shook his head with the regret of a man that had just lost a trout from the end of his line. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in his final voice.

  ‘You don’t even know what she took her own life.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Mister O’Neill. The Church has laid down...’

  ‘I’ll tell you why she died.’

  ‘It won’t alter things, I’m sorry.’

  ‘She was a lesbian, a homosexual she was queer!’

  ‘I’m truly sorry, Mister O’Neill.’

  ‘You’re sorry. Well, Pauline was so sorry that she took her own life. She killed herself because she couldn’t live the way she was...she wanted to be normal, to be a wife to me, to have kids...she wanted to love, be loved...she was a virgin when she died...and all she wanted was to be normal, to love me and be loved by me, to be able to make love like a normal woman, the be able to fuck...’

  ‘Mister O’Neill!’ he curbed the violence in his voice. I can under you being distraught...’

  ‘She fought it...she didn’t want to be queer, but when she couldn’t make it with me she began to die...whiskey was taking too long so she used the bottle itself to end her misery...’

  I wiped away my tears and I could see him crossing himself.

  ‘Don’t pray for her, father, and don’t pray for me. I don’t want your prayers.’

  He looked at me without anger: ‘I wish I could help you.’

  ‘Well, if you do, tell me something. Tell me was she wrong, my Pauline? Was she wrong? Like, she was born the way she was, like you were born to be a priest or you wouldn’t be one...God decided that you would do his work, and your God decided that my wife should be a lesbian. He sent her into this world the way that way, so who’s fault is it that she died. Can you tell me that? Can you?’

  He looked at me for a few seconds and I hated him for the pity that his eyes poured on me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said turning then to walk into the church.

  I wanted to go after him, to punch him in the face because he was better than I was. I hated him for his belief, wanting to choke the life out of him, to deprive him of the security that his unquestioning faith gave him.

  ----------

  It was Jennie that suggested a Protestant burial and I found a clergyman who was a Christian first and a Prod second. He let me bury Pauline in the sacred ground of the little graveyard behind his church was for a moment or two I felt that I knew what the word Charity was all about. ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’

  I asked myself could it really be like still waters and soft green grass, pastures of peace and tranquillity. I didn’t think so but I prayed by her grave that Pauline had found some kind of rest, and though I was both heart sick and sad, I didn’t weep. Pauline was free, free from the guilt and the whiskey, and there was nothing to weep about, because the feeling I had for her was there as strong as ever it was, and besides, she would give me a grin and say, you have a woman that loves you, get on with it and just blow me the odd kiss.’

  -----------

  ‘Oh, Jenn, they’re fantastic, they just seem to get bigger, more beautiful, all the time.’

  Jennie put her brassiere on the bed and walked over to where I was tying my shoelaces. She put her arms around my neck and I kissed her nipples. When I looked up I could my face in her incredibly lovely blue eyes.

  ‘They’re getting ready for the baby.’

  I took her in my arms and held her close. Then I pulled my head back and heard myself say: ‘Baby, when?’

  She held onto me. ‘You’re not angry?’

  I pulled her head back roughly. ‘Angry? You nut. You stand there telling me we’re going to have a baby and you think I might be angry. You nut! What am I going to do with you?’

  She kissed me and we went together to the bed and I kissed her mouth and her breasts and, inevitably, I felt tears come, while she brushed them aside with gentle fingers.

  ‘The end of June,’ her eyes sparkled and I kissed her again and held het gently close, already going into the minding game because I felt this to be part of my role.

  ‘That makes you over four months?’

  ‘Yes, and I never felt better.

  I held her at arms length. ‘And you never said.’

  ‘I wanted to be sure, like, I’d no way to gauge how you’d feel about becoming a dad.’

  ‘Right now, I feel great about it. Just as long as you’re okay and you let me help out a bit more.’

  ‘Relax. Not much is going to change, and anyway, I can handle just about anything, thanks to you being with me.’

  ‘Which I really am, you know that now.’

  ‘I feel it, thank God, and I never felt better, and I have to confess, I’m feeling pretty hot at this minute.’

  I looked at her in some surprise. ‘But, don’t we have to ease off...’

  She pulled me onto the bed alongside her: ‘You let me worry about things like that. Right now, I want you so badly I need to yell. Only I’m afraid the land lady might call the Guards.’

  ‘Say no more,’ I said, kissing her from somewhere so deep inside me that it was like a gift from heaven or somewhere.’

  ------

  I was singing when I got to the hall. Jimmy had been waiting for me and he looked a bit put out.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said right away. ‘I just found out we’re having a baby.’

  He lit up and shook my hand, ‘Great news, and me here thinking you were having another ride before work.’

  I grinned and he said with a nod of the head: ‘I know, you were...having another ride before work.’

  ‘I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘When’s the baby due?’

  ‘By early June, so Jenny says.’

  ‘She’s a good woman, Tony.’

  ‘That’s just what I think.

  ‘Y’know, when her husband died, what three, four years now, she just switched off completely. Straight... I never saw anything like it, never thought she’d look at another guy.’ He grinned large: ‘Whatever you have you bastard, you certainly brought her back to life.’

  ‘Wha
t she’d done for me, I can never pay back.’

  ‘Baby’s coming at the right time...the whole summer to soak up the sun.’

  ‘Roll on, that’s all I can say.’

  Jimmy and I went to work then, checking out our booth which we had built ourselves and giving all out equipment and tools a good look-see to make sure all was in good nick. Just as well we battened down all the hatches because in the first week of February the snow came and when it did, it came fast and it came deep, and it was everywhere as far as the eye could see. Like billions of tons of salt, it sat, the king of everything. I hated the snow. Even as a kid I hadn’t liked it all that much - bare foot days that were tough enough already - but now it seemed to be sitting on its arse, in for the duration, laughing at us. We had to buy more heaters for the halls but the cold was a winner and it only followed that people were going to stay home with a bit of fire burning in the grate as opposed to sitting in the local hall freezing their arses off.

  The money situation was grin all round, like, I had fifteen pounds in my pocket, apart from the hundred I had given Jenny earlier towards the baby scenario.

  Even then she had protested: ‘I won’t need that, I have a few pounds.’

  ‘I want you to have it, and promise me you won’t say any thing about it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Look, it’s my money, fair and square, don’t worry on that score. I just don’t want it known that we have that much.’

  Her eyes were asking me why it had to be a secret.

  ‘Well, first of all, it isn’t anybody’s business, but, that’s not the point. The way things are going, we look like having a tough few weeks ahead. I’ll do all I can but the few pounds for the baby, that’s it. It doesn’t exist for anything else.

  I kissed her and we were passionate enough to dive into bed but I had work to do so the sex had to go sit on the back burner.

  Her eyes were soft with gratitude and I knew that I’d never known anybody ask so little from life. I took her face in my hands. ‘You don’t have to thank me. You’re my wife’

  Jenny stopped my words with her mouth, kissing me feverishly, her tears all over me as she held onto me. ‘Oh, darling, I love you, my darling Tony.’

  Later, I gave Jimmy a ten pound note. This was from my very personal stash, which I had never mentioned to anyone, not even Jenny, despite the wealth of my feeling for her. This was - to help pay Tom and Peter Hunter, and I was glad Jimmy had talked me out of hiring two other artistes to replace May and Maria Maguire. We just wouldn’t have been able to pay them at this time.

  Many times during that winter, I actually regretted burning Pauline’s trailer. Yet, despite having to pay for digs, I knew that I could never have lived in it and I couldn’t have asked Jenny to share the bed with me. I could have sold it, I suppose; it was mine as was Pauline’s car, but I didn’t want the money it would have brought into my life.

  It was a lovely trailer, but I could never look at it without bleeding a bit, and in the finish, while I was very drunk one night, I threw a can of petrol on it and set it alight. Jimmy was horrified and I doubt he ever quite forgave me for doing it, but then he had never failed to consummate a marriage on the barren bed.

  ----------

  When the thaw came, I wanted to sing with the swollen streams and the running streets. I felt so relieved that I didn’t mind the muck and the dirt, just as long as the bloody snow was gone. The weather was mild for a few days but people were too busy to be bothered about seeing the show. There was too much back-breaking work to be done, the snow had gone, but it had left a very severe mark on the countryside.

  We moved to Limerick, wanting to kiss the snow-free tarmac of the road, believing, because we had to go on doing just that, that the snow had purified everything, and that our long, stinking run of so little business was over, that all our ill luck had been sucked up when the thaw rode in like the Seventh Cavalry.

  We played a week in Lough Ville and we attracted some kind of business but, nothing to get excited about. Saturday, we decided to give it another week, throwing in Our Famous Talent Contest as bait. This was structured to run six nights, Monday through to Saturday, when the Grand Final took place.

  Admission as a performing artiste was free, but of course, each entrant, whether they realised it or not, had to pay to get into the venue, be it hall or tent - while the grand prize for the winner on Saturday night, was a five pound note, BUT, more importantly, a signed certificate from GAYTIME that the bearer was won the contest.

  The truth is that on the Monday we had so many entries for the contest that, after the first singer: -who was terrible and had at least fifteen verses in his offering - we had to put a limit of four verses on every entrant.

  Even then it was tough going since most of the performers were awfully lacking in anything approximating to talent, but, on they trooped, every one of the, apparently convinced they could win the first prize.

  It was like that all week. Idiots of every shape and size, flocking onto the stage to deliver their party piece, and when you consider that all this took place after Our Show, with some cuts in our variety section had ended, you will understand why it was usually one ‘o’clock in the morning by the time Jennie and I got back to bed.

  I left it to Jimmy to decide who should go forward to the final. I had no heart for the sham that the whole thing was, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise. But, as Jimmy said, it brought in a few more punters, many more would be more accurate, and after the winter we had endured, you couldn’t argue with that. But, all in all, with the demands it made on each and every one of us, I wondered if it was worth the bother.

  Jimmy asked me to judge the contestants with him on the Saturday night and I refused, point blank. He shrugged, knowing that my mind was made up and he sorted out the winner and the second and third placed performer.

  So, it left kind of a bad taste in most of our mouths but, it did serve a purpose, earning us full houses for at three week run in Lough Ville, giving the much needed bank accounts a shot in the arm.

  But, for me it was a bridge too far, the step into allowing people that were devoid of talent to believe they were entitled to a certificate, and some money, left a rotten taste in my mouth.

  And it made me look at Jimmy, and myself and the whole Fit-Up scenario, and though I had no idea how or when I was going to walk away from it al, I heard the discontent revving up to give me a boot up the trousers that might wake me up and remind me that there was a life out there waiting for me to go and live it.

  -----------

  Jenny was beside me in the car as I followed the big truck with Tom Hunter at the wheel. Jimmy was there behind my car, towing his trailer, and I had my fingers crossed that we wouldn’t get any punctures, or anything else that would make it necessary for us to stop. I was half afraid that if we did stop, we’d never get started again.

  Jenny was big with our child and she had to play all the character parts right now - we kept her condition hidden from our audience with a cloak, when it was needed. She had surprised me by the way she managed to get so much out of parts that Maria Maguire had screwed up again and again, and I was proud of her being such a trooper, especially since the mornings were getting tougher for her as the weeks went by, but through all the retching she never once moaned or pulled a face. If that was part of having a baby, she told me, women who wanted babies had no right to complain.

  Because Tom Hunter was so reliable, I thought I was imagining things when the truck started to go off the road, while it then, suddenly heeled over into the nearest ditch, even though the wheels found some purchase for a few moments, so that the truck was still moving, although it was almost on its side.

  When it stopped, I braked, hoping to God that Jimmy

  had his eyes wide open. Like, all I needed was for him to crash into the back of my mo
tor

  Telling Jenny to stay where she was, I ran up to the truck to find Tom somewhat dazed; he’d banged his head on the roof of the cabin; but he’d had the good sense to turn off the engine, which could well have caught fire. I climbed up and pulled the door open.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  He nodded his head and I helped him out, asking him what had happened. He shook his head: ‘I don’t know, Tony, she just went over on me.’

  I gave him a lighted cigarette and Jimmy was there: ‘Good divine Christ!’ he said, like someone vomiting words: ‘this is all we needed.

  The top of the truck had burst open and property baskets had shot out all over the place. There were blouses and bras and wigs hanging from bushes and trees, and the old drum was holed on both sides.

  ‘It’ll take a tractor to get her out,’ Jimmy said gloomily.

  I glanced at my watch. It was eleven o’clock and we were supposed to open in nine hours time. We had still about twelve miles to go and here was our main truck lying on inside in a ditch like a dying horse.

  ‘Try and gather up what’s lying around...there was a cop station a few miles back...they should be able to put us on to a tractor.’

  I ran back to the car and turned it around. Jennie didn’t talk. She knew when I wanted to be left alone, and I was very grateful to her for the silence. My head was busy. We were to start the show at a quarter to nine the same night, all of us having worked like slaves all day. Maybe we were kidding ourselves, with all that the show must go on jazz but it worked. And maybe, if the people of Milltown had known just what we had come through to open the doors of their miserable hall, they might have come to see us out of respect for our guts. But they didn’t know and they didn’t come.

  I had spent my own money to buy a couple of bottles of brandy, and I poured it into everybody to try and give them a lift for the show. The first night was the most important one, like it was the primary advert for the week and we had to be on top form if we were going to do business in this town. Also, I dropped quite a bit of cognac myself because I was carrying the play and I felt like somebody in need or some kind of surgery.