A Bed in the Sticks Read online

  By Curtain Call we had we had an audience of twenty, mostly men that had paid one and sixpence and stood at the back. Even when I told them they could sit up the front without paying extra, they smiled shyly and made it clear that they would prefer to stay where they were.

  I think this was the best show we ever gave, and whether it was the brandy or show people’s pride in having made it, I don’t know. And we sent our small band of patrons away laughing merrily, asking them to tell their friends all about us, and promising them just as good a show every night for the rest of the week.

  ‘You were fantastic today,’ Jenny said when we were in bed.’

  ‘Only because you were there supporting me.’

  ‘I was very proud of you. And then you sparkled on stage.’

  I gave her a grin that left nothing to her imagination, and I said, ‘I only hope I sparkle in the second house!’

  ‘Oh my darling, do you want to? I thought you’d be worn out after the day you’ve had.’

  ‘I felt quite dead, until I lay into your lovely behind.’

  She turned to lie on her back saying: I love you.’

  I kissed her face and her eyes and her lips, with a long sweet kiss to her glorious mouth which became gradually more passionate and even fierce as we turned each other into hungry, demanding people.

  ‘Now, my darling,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘You’re sure, that it’s alright?’

  ‘I’m sure, I promise.’ She gasped in response to my next move and then she was crooning to me. ‘Oh God, how I want you, want you always buried there inside me. Let me move onto my side, my bump is getting in the way.’

  I moved into her, loving her with every breath, my lips on her neck and shoulders, my right hand holding her breast as she began to lunge ahead of me.

  ‘I love you, Tony, oh my love, love, love...’

  My hand on her breasts, moving lower to hold her even more tightly to me, knowing that she was right there with me all the way, so that I felt it begin to break in her feet, while I fought for breath, wanting, above all, to make it the best time ever for her.

  ‘Jenn, Jenn, I love you...I love you.’

  She shuddered as my orgasm found her, threshing quickly, violently against me, slithering then as her tortured breathing became a sigh that turned to a shout of sheer release. She cried then, turning on her back, so that I could lick her tears, while she now held my face in her hands and told me: ‘I never dreamed you would ever love me...it was too much to hope for.’

  I kissed her mouth and moved so that I could suck at her breasts. ‘You’re a foolish lady, a beautiful silly lady, and I love you forever and ever, now stop the tears and go to sleep.’

  Thank God for that night, for those moment so crammed with love and goodness and charity, wonderful fractions of time that help give you the strength to go on no matter what a cruel day might send your way.

  The feeling was there still as I got out of the bed in the morning. Jenny was sleeping still; it was only seven o’clock, and I stood looking down at her, grateful beyond belief for what had happened to me. I loved her. And I was in love with her and I didn’t want anybody else, and I could hardly believe that this immense feeling of gratitude could come my way.

  Even while I was wooing Pauline, I had been crazily sexual with May, and I’d had a few lassies that May knew nothing about, since our sex was outdoors in summer nights. In hay barns too, sheds of golden grass proving sweet smelling mattresses that were made for illicit love.

  With Jennie, I couldn’t even think of climbing into bed with anybody else as I bent down to touch her face with gentle fingers, while I wished it was possible for her to sleep into the summer and the booth life, and the baby at her breast.

  I left the digs to buy a newspaper, spitting in disgust as the return of the enemy, snow. Damn it and blast it, for as far as I could see, the bloody stuff was two feet deep.

  Like glue, the snow remained stuck to the earth, and the price to us was a high one. The countryside was dead, muted by knee-deep drifts covering it and the bare trees were godforsakin’ creatures holding their arms out to Heaven as they seemed to beg for relief.

  We weren’t the only ones to undergo hardship. Farmers, shopkeepers, bus and lorry drivers, just about everybody got their share of the misery that the seemingly endless snow brought with it.

  People died because of it, animals also, murdered by the hundred by the cruelness of nature, and of course, we died a death since nobody left the fireside unless it was do tend to an animal or gather fuel, while workers fought their way to and from the job, the whole country, apparently, doing novenas that some god somewhere would give us all a break and let the sun out of jail, that we all might not need a coffin.

  I need hardly mention that the weather was actually like a serious judgment on our Fit Up Company, and others like us who were trudging all over the land in the hope of gathering an audience that might help them survive until the Spring found its courage and returned to kick winter into its position far away from where we were dying the death.

  ----------

  ‘I can’t remember seeing snow in March,’ said the man that bought my car from me. He was civil enough, but I didn’t have much to offer in the small talk department because I was feeling beyond shitty with myself, and generally very down in the mouth, since it was the car that Pauline had left me that was going to pay my rent for the next few weeks.

  In one way I was lucky, like, I didn’t have a trailer - Jenny and I stayed in digs all the time - so I didn’t need a car per se, to haul my mobile home around. Jimmy, of course, had his own trailer to move, while Patricia had held onto the mobile home she had shared with her mother, so she needed her own wheels to get moving, which, though it nailed down the fact that I was the poorer of the trio, helped me feel I was better off while the weather was like a punishment to anybody fortunate enough to own a half-way decent set of wheels.

  Jimmy had booked the hall in a village called Ladagh, and the eighteen mile journey was the toughest, most nerve racking experience I had known up to that time in my life. We had to use chains on our wheels every foot of the way and still we spent too much time pushing and shoving, and digging to get to what would probably be another week where we died the death once more with feeling. And a lot of swear words!

  The village sat down in a valley and the last four hundred yards, a steep downhill slide, was the kind of nightmare nobody would ever want to repeat. I drove the truck - though it was more a case of I fought the truck every foot of the way, spinning the wheel right and left, trying to use the outer edge of the front wheels to stop it running away on me altogether. Mostly, I had the handbrake closed tight, so that the back wheels were locked, the chains digging, gaining some slight purchase that helped me to finally ease the great weight of the yoke to a slithering hall outside the village hall.

  I sat there in my own sweat, my hands locked to the wheel, my stomach in such a knot that it hurt bad, and I had a burning pain across my neck and shoulders. Jimmy had to allow his car to slide into the back of the truck, his brakes simply not able to contain the weight of his trailer.

  Jennie and Pat were walking down the hill while we went in to inspect the hall. It was small compared to most but it was alright if you ignored the fact that it didn’t have electricity laid on.

  ‘You’re not serious,’ I said, really feeling that I had now been shafted by life in a major way.

  ‘I know,’ Jimmy said, without any excuse in his tone. ‘It was there, all that there was - a bare hall and we could have it for very low rent - and I hadn’t the juice to go any further.’

  ‘Sorry, Jimmy, that was out of order,’ I said, remembering that he had been out trying to find a venue while I was trying to get a halfway decent offer for my car.

  ‘It won’t be too
bad,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should have told you there was no electricity, but, well, I thought you had enough on your mind.’

  I nodded and as he was relaxing, I said: ‘Don’t mind me. I’m still crapping after that skid patch.’

  The hall did have a stage, which was something, and we got the Fit-Up organised in a couple of hours. By which time, Pat and Jenny had created a two gallon pot of stew, and the six of us got ourselves crammed into Pat’s trailer, murdering the hot food, and taking a couple of snorts each, from a bottle of whiskey I bought in the village pub while I was giving out some of our leaflets and posters.

  In all honesty, Ladagh wasn’t so much a village as a forty yard street in what looked like the middle of nowhere, but we were stuck with it - stuck being the operative word - and there was no point in sitting around moaning about it when we had enough ingenuity between the lot of us to give the kiss of life to what looked like a very dead situation.

  As the hot foot and the whiskey warmed everybody up, we began to sound quite positive, with, predictably, Jimmy being the one that amazed the rest of us by saying, very suddenly, in a loud, positive voice: ‘Tilley Lamps!’

  Now, rather then bore you with the history of how to light up your life in a backward country hamlet - well, you could barely call Ladagh a village - we move ahead to our opening night and, believe it or not, our first full house in god alone knows how long.

  To me, the word serendipity means ‘an accidental good happening’ and I’m happy to record that this blessing dropped on us because Jimmy had gone scouring, just walking around waiting for some thing to stand up and present itself in time to service a need that seemed to be in one almighty hole.

  We would learn later than a wild show-band- company - a new phenomenon in Ireland - had passed through Ladagh just a couple of weeks before. This new phenomenon had brought its own supply of booze, and god knows what else. They gave this a very quick death, demolishing them selves in an all night orgy,

  Before departing on the following noon, while leaving behind all their unwanted rubbish, this including four, empty, one-gallon-cans of some foreign beer that none of us had ever heard of. And, god bless him, Jimmy had found the cans, and in his own flash of genius, had solved the problem of how we were going to light our show so that an audience could see what was going on.

  Before this happened, we had to make do with flopping as best we could on that first night in Ladagh. Jennie went sleeping with Pat in her caravan, Jimmy and I and the others, wrapped up in anything we could find, slept on the stage.

  In the morning, Jenny found a double bed available in the extended cottage of a widow who would make us very welcome even as she rented a room to us for next to nothing. At the same time, Jimmy and I got lucky with a decent skin of a farmer who said little more than ‘call me Sean’ and refused to take money from us for what he gave us.

  And what he gave us were a number of huge beer cans that the show-band had dumped in the village on their way out of there. He also loaned us five or six Tilley lamps - which produce a spitting glow of fairly decent light - refusing to take even a complimentary seat, though he made no bones about being ready to see a good show.

  Jimmy split this large can down the middle to make shades, and by attaching these between the lamps and our curtains, we protected the material while shedding light out onto the hall. When we were about to begin the show, we reversed the shades so that whatever light there was, fell inward onto the stage.

  I couldn’t help smiling when it was all set up, thinking that all we needed was straw lying about and we would have a great set for The Murder in the Red Barn, a very famous melodrama in which my late pal Gary had hammed it up as William as William Corder, who was anything but a nice man.

  We took seven pounds on the door that first night, which was like a miracle when you considered how the weather had been, and if I was bothered by the spitting noise that the Tilly Lamps made, our audience clearly never gave them a thought.

  They applauded everything we did, delighted, and very grateful for anything that would take their minds off the problems that the snow had brought into their lives.

  As for ourselves, we were freezing, wearing as much as we could bear to combat the way the cold really got into our bones and, god bless Tom Hunter, one very handy chap, who had found an ailing generator in a shed behind the hall, he and Jimmy falling on it like it was a gift from heaven.

  To me it looked just like a rusty old engine of some kind, but they went to work on it and in two days they had it working as though it was brand new. I was able to help them lift it into the back of the truck; it had to be under cover with the snow being so reliable about arriving, and we bolted it to a six by six timber frame that made it pretty secure.

  I know this was pretty crude but it was a real godsend and when we added a lead from it along the side wall, we managed to run it across the floor of the single dressing-room to the stage.

  When Jimmy gave me the word, I turned the engine with an ordinary starting handle and a few seconds later, we had our own electricity.

  I was surprised to the point of being amazed, but while Jimmy was delighted that the generator performed at all, Tom Hunter was apprehensive about how reliable it was likely to be, and on his say-so, we held onto the lamps. ‘It’ll probably be alright,’ he said, ‘but it’s been out of action for a good while.’

  Tom Hunter’s misgiving were justified in the middle of our first all electric show, when, halfway through the play I heard some kind of explosion at the side of the hall even as the lights went out.

  Tom and Jimmy left the stage and rushed out to check what had happened, and while Peter Hunter organised the tilly lamps once again, Jennie and myself sang ballads, some of the audience, to my amazement, joining up is a sing-song.

  Jenny looked wonderful, blooming, even though she could still manage to hide her bump, this not so obvious because of her magnificent breasts, but my guess would have been that most people would have gathered she was with child, and I have to say, I felt a certain sense of pride that she was carrying my child.

  After the first couple of numbers I apologised to the audience for the break in the play, and they were marvellous about it. From somewhere near the back of the hall, a man called out, ‘Begob, sir, ye can’t whack the ould tilly, so ye can’t.’

  This remark was greeted by laughter that swept through the hall, helping the atmosphere more than all the ballads that Jennie and I could have sung in a fortnight.

  ‘Can do nothing with it tonight,’ Jimmy said when he and Tom returned. Let’s finish the play.’

  Later, while I was removing my make-up, he told me what had happened. ‘I couldn’t tell you then or you’d have had a fit. There was just nothing we could do.’

  I guess I should have been grateful that nobody was burned in the explosion of the generator and the truck that was housing it. But, I was sick to my stomach when I thought of all my books, Gary’s books, and my marriage lines, all precious possessions, the loss of which, was like losing a serious part of myself.’

  ‘It spewed all over everything,’ Jimmy said quietly. ‘Tom nor me, we couldn’t get near it. All we did was finally put it out, and try to feel grateful that nobody killed or injured by it.’

  He was right, of course, and I allowed him see that I accepted this, but my books, they were my wealth in this world, and the loss of my marriage lines, well, I wouldn’t have had that happen even if it meant saving everything else.

  When Jenny and I got into bed she held me gently for a while and then she said quietly: ‘I’m sorry about your marriage lines.’

  ‘Oh, Jenny, don’t, for God’s sake.’

  She was hurt. ‘Oh darling, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  I took her face in my hands. ‘You haven’t...you wouldn’t know how to hurt anybody...and I feel ashamed, that’s all.
I’m such a bloody baby.’

  She kissed my mouth, ‘my baby?’

  I pressed her to me, ‘your baby.’

  She undid the buttons of her nightdress and put her hands under her swollen breasts. ‘Let me give you a present.’ She pressed them to my mouth. ‘I love you, Tony.’

  I kissed her breasts and her hands were on the back of my head, pressing me tight against the balls of milk. And I went to sleep, cuddled warm and close, safe and sound, in the bounty of Jenny’s love.

  16

  The snow began to look bruised before turning to slush. Now March was at an end and it took the pale face or our enemy away with it. The slush became water running before the anaemic sun in the early days of April.

  The earth was swollen, wet-black in the fields and the green hills around us had a shine like a polished mirror, and the main street of Ladagh was cracked right down the centre.

  I was thinking that now the bloody winter had to be over while my mind suggested I shouldn’t go counting chickens just yet, since Irish weather can do a cart-wheel in ten minutes.

  Looking at the sky, I thought it’s got to be over the snow has gone for this year. This became a kind of prayer, and I added another to back it up

  In fairness, suddenly, the weather was beginning to come in real good, even a tad ahead of schedule, and right away, the booth, our own home-made theatre, loomed larger in my mind, as the days passed without any sleeveen snow creeping back in to make mockery of pleasant dreams while we slept the night away.

  Within days, I was itching to get the booth up and earning, its colourful exterior walls attracting attention just by being there. But, I didn’t push for our mobile theatre, after all, Jimmy had created Gaytime though I was a full partner, he was always the main man.

  I created a feeling of belief that this summer would make up for all the disappointments of the winter season, and I told myself that things would be better, especially for Jenny and me and the baby.