Goodbye to the Hill Read online

  She kept looking too at the paper with the address on it, and then quietly, rocking her grey head backwards and forwards, she began, silently, to weep. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there with my hand on her shoulder. God knows, if ever a woman was entitled to shed tears, she was. Without feeling the least bit sorry for herself, she was entitled to cry for all the things that might have been.

  I suppose she must have loved my father at some time in her life, and I honestly think that if he’d come through the door at that moment he’d have got a kiss and a hug. As I stood there beside Ma I swore to myself, that no matter how long it took me, I’d pay him back for sending that fiver when it was so badly needed. Then I tried to ignore the guilt that I felt for all the times I’d called him an oul’ bastard in my mind.

  **********

  The suit was tweed, and it was the colour of the heather on the Dublin Mountains. It didn’t have much of a cut to it but, it was the best suit I’d ever seen. Ma paid two pounds five for it, and you could see the happiness in her, just to be able to do so. I got a new pair of shoes as well, brown brogues they were, and a shirt and tie to go with the suit.

  Billy went black with jealousy when he saw me all dressed up and I nearly drove him mad from looking at myself in the big mirror on the sideboard. So much so that he gave me a punch in the thigh that really hurt me, but I let on I wasn’t bothered about it and kept on admiring myself. Ma told me off for being so vicious and she explained to Billy that I had to have the suit to start work on Monday. You could see he understood that, but he still hated me for having it, and I suppose that I’d have felt the same if it had been the other way round, except I’d have hated him twice as much.

  About nine o’clock that Saturday evening I walked up through Gulistan Terrace and the cottages and on up into the laneway that led to Rathmines, and I felt like a film star. My skin was tingling with excitement and I had springs in my heels, and I was as tall as the Town Hall clock. I was also sorry it was fairly dark because it cut down my chances of being seen in the new gear.

  When I got as far as The Stella cinema, I stood around for a good ten minutes hoping that someone I knew would see me. I wanted to be told how good I looked, and I thought that I might even get off with a bird. No such luck, it just got bloody chilly standing there. I was shivering by the time I decided to go and have a drink.

  Outside Campion’s I came to a full stop. I just couldn’t seem to find the courage to go in. I felt that everyone would be looking at me the minute I stepped inside, and only a few minutes before I’d been standing outside The Stella, hoping that people would notice me. Talk about being mixed up.

  Just then one of the regulars came along and as he went in I took a deep breath and followed on his heels. Redmond was there and I was more than glad to see him. He looked up but I don’t think it registered that it was me standing there. Then his eyes popped a bit and his twisted mouth went even more crooked in disbelief. I knew then that I looked alright. Harry Redmond wasn’t easily impressed.

  I gave him a wink with the left eye and I ordered two pints of Guinness in my best movie voice. The barman didn’t give me a second look, which was okay from the point of view of me getting served with the gargle and me under age, but I was a bit let down that he didn’t throw another glance at the suit.

  When I carried the drinks over to the table Redmond still looked more than surprised. But, as you might expect, he soon adopted his ‘couldn’t care less’ face, and when he didn’t even remark on the suit I could willingly have poured the pint, my very first pint of Guinness, all over him.

  ‘Pints now, is it Maguire?’

  ‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘I got you one as well.’

  ‘I should feckin’ well think so and me sitting here nursin’ a dead glass.’

  He lifted the tumbler and swallowed half the pint. He put it down again and when I lifted mine he was watching me with both eyes. It wasn’t easy to look casual. Drinking your first pint, with a past master like Redmond looking at you, took a bit of doing. I took a big mouthful and it went down all right.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said.

  ‘It’s an acquired taste, ‘he said, pulling out another of his filthy butts and lighting it. ‘A few weeks on that stuff and you’ll never want to drink anything else as long as you live.’

  Right there and then I didn’t agree with him, but as it turned out he wasn’t far wrong. Honestly, that Redmond knew so much about everything that he could have gone places if he hadn’t been such a shagging layabout. He could even have made a living showing people how easy it was to put away twenty or thirty pints of stout.

  By Monday morning, Saturday’s drinking was just about out of my head and I was moving bright and early with the paper rounds. It was a fine morning for early March. Not cold and mean like it often was, just bright and clear like the start of a good day. I was glad it was. It was as if it would be a good day to start work and I wondered what it would be like to be employed in an insurance office.

  I couldn’t remember what the office was like. I’d been so excited before the interview, so busy trying to remember all that Redmond had pumped into me that I didn’t take it in. Not that it mattered. It was just that it was a thrill to even think of going there. And it wasn’t just the thirty bob a week. It was being old enough to start a decent job, and my first real suit, and a sort of looking forward to doing something new, something, as Harry Redmond said, that could lead to better things and a life away from The Hill.

  Even when I got home for my breakfast I felt it was a big day in my life. And I was glad to be doing all this thinking about it because then it wouldn’t just pass by like any other day. Not that it was my first big day. When I’d gotten the box cart with the one and sixpenny shafts, when Mrs. Kearney had given me my first pair of long trousers, they were big days. And the day I’d had the cake all to my self. I think that was the biggest day of them all up to my going to work in the office.

  It was rare for any of us in the family to get more than a slice of cake at a time. There had been so many of us at home that there was only ever one slice each. Ma used to share it out as best she could, and I can’t remember seeing her have so much as half a slice herself. So it became a big thing with me. I used to spend ages looking at the cakes in the window of the Monument Creamery on Rathmines Road, dreaming of getting one all to myself.

  When I got the box of flags to sell I had no intention of keeping any of the money, like the other kids were doing, not even when I saw some of them juggling a knife into the slit on the top of the box. I didn’t think it was right. And I didn’t do it because it seemed like a lousy thing to do. Until one day, I knew as I passed the Monument Creamery, I knew that if I didn’t have a whole cake to myself just once, I’d go mad for thinking about it.

  I ran all the way home, pushing the guilty feeling into the back of my mind. and I took the box from where I’d hidden it under the bed. Then I climbed out through the window into the drying yards behind our flat. Making sure nobody was able to see what I was doing, I put the on the ground and I smashed it to pieces with the hammer Da used to mend shoes.

  Then, as fast I could, I picked up the coins and I put them in my pocket. Then I slipped the hammer back into the bedroom - I’d put it back in Da’s tool box later - and I picked up the bits of wood that used to be the box, and on the way down to the bus stop on Ranelagh Road I dropped them, one bit at a time, into one shore after another, and then I took the number 12 bus into the city centre.

  Twenty-seven shillings!

  I had counted the coins again and again on the way into O’Connell Street on the bus. It was a lot of dough and I was so excited that it never even occurred to me to be scared of what I’d just done.

  Near the Carlton Cinema there was a big cake shop that I knew well because I had drooled every time I passed it, just like I did in Rathmines. As I stood looking in the windo
w, I saw a beauty of a cake that was so stupendous it made me drool by just looking at it.

  I went in and asked to buy it and the old biddy behind the counter gave me a funny look. Not that you could blame her. I mean I couldn’t have been much to look at.

  She put it into a box and she took my five and sixpence. This was more than Nellie Rafter had paid me for delivering fourteen milk rounds a week - and when I walked out of the shop that cake had me drooling already.

  I paid for a one and eight penny seat and went up to the balcony in the Carlton cinema and I sat there in the dark and I ate every single crumb of that amazing cake, and I didn’t so much as belch. Eating it, all to myself, had been the most wonderful thing that had happened to me, and I felt so good that I didn’t even begin to look at the film until I’d thrown the empty box on the floor and kicked it under the seat in front of me.

  I sat back then to enjoy the picture. It was called Step Lively and Frank Sinatra and George Murphy and Gloria de Haven were in it. It was a musical and I loved all the songs and the dancing, and I thought that George Murphy had the most Irish face that I’d ever seen on a man, even as I became an instant fan of the greatest crooner that ever lived.

  Well, that was a big day, but at the time I didn’t think about it, so it just passed like all the others. But starting work, well that was different.

  Ma was excited too. Hopping about the kitchen and, after I’d had my porridge, she gave me an egg to myself. I can tell you I felt very important that morning.

  By ten minutes to nine I was standing outside the office door, and even though I wasn’t really nervous, I couldn’t wait to get inside and start my job. Just before nine o’clock a fella of about eighteen came along and opened up. I told him who I was and that I was to start work, and he shook my hand and made me welcome, and he told me that his name was Jack Sloane.

  We went into the office and he opened the inside of the post box and took out the letters. Then using the counter as a desk, he began to open the post and he told me that he had been promoted, which was why the firm needed a new office boy, which was what I was, even though my title was Junior Clerk.

  Jack was a decent skin and without being a mind reader you could tell that he was pleased at being promoted, but he was nice with it, and I liked him, and we never had so much as a cross word between us during the time I worked alongside him.

  He was only my height, but he was well built with it, and from the way he spoke you could tell he’d been to a Christian Brothers school. Even Dublin blokes that went to those schools ended up with a touch of the brogue in their voices. It must have been due to the fact that most of the brothers came from rural Ireland.

  By the time Jack had sorted out the letters other people were beginning to arrive. There were several girls and Jack blushed when he said good morning to them. I felt a bit sorry for him, being shy like, but in another way I was glad. It made up a bit for the difference in our ages and I didn’t feel such a kid.

  He showed me a table with a single long drawer in it and he said this would be my desk. There was a hard backed foolscap sized book, and I was to register the name and address from every letter before I took it to the Post Office in College Green, five evenings a week, and at lunch time on Saturday.

  That was all right by me. I loved writing and I had a new six bob pen in my pocket that I was just dying to use. There was also a bundle of economy labels that I was to use on old envelopes for the morning hand delivery.

  That first morning Jack came with me and showed me all the offices within reasonable distance our own to which I would deliver letters. He seemed to enjoy the walk, saying that it was a break from the office. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking that I did enough shagging walking with the papers while he was still in bed. Also, I thought he probably felt that way because he didn’t have to do it anymore.

  The third office on the route was a filthy place, a small firm of brokers with all kinds of girls running about everywhere. You could tell that Jack thought it was the greatest place in town, and when one or two of the girls had a bit of crack with him he blushed.

  There was one girl that I thought was a real smasher, and once again it was the tight sweater across big breasts that got me going.

  She was blonde and very pretty and she had a pair of wicked blue eyes, but it was her yellow sweater and what was inside it that made the biggest impression on me. Jack told me her name was Maureen Murphy, and all through the rest of the delivery I couldn’t stop from dreaming about her breasts and what it would be like to get my hand on them.

  Back in our office I took a quick look around. There were five typists and a switch board operator. She caught my eye first thing because she looked so fast and common, but when she talked on the phone she put on a posh voice and it was a scream to listen to her. Later on I used to hear her talking to guys on the phone and the office manager, Cahill, was always on at her to cut it out. She used to smile at him as though she was putting him on a promise, and he never made much of a scene about it. I liked her for that. She had sex appeal to burn, she knew it, and she used it when it was likely to be a help to her.

  The first morning Cahill didn’t say a word to me. I was a bit surprised, because Jack had warned me to expect something. He said that Cahill liked to get stuck into people from the off, knowing that in future they would be ready to run whenever he called.

  About three in the afternoon someone stopped by my table and when I looked up it was Cahill. I got to my feet as per the instruction of Harry Redmond. who had pumped it into me about being at a psychological disadvantage when you had a fella looking down on you.

  I was as tall as Cahill was, although he must have been forty years of age.

  ‘Can you write, Maguire?’ he sneered at me with a mouth like a bowl of dripping.

  Jack had told me Cahill was married, and just then I wondered to myself how his wife, any woman, could stand that sneer every day of her life.

  ‘Yes sir, I can,’ I said.

  ‘Good, good.’ He was grinning now, showing me his off white teeth. ‘I want you to make copies of those.’

  He handed me two long forms. They were motor insurance proposal forms, but he didn’t tell me this. Jack Sloane had done so as he had described what would be the general shape of my working day.

  Cahill then walked back to his desk without another word, not even a word of welcome, I thought. I knew then that Jack Sloane had granted me a favour by warning me what to expect from this guy who was the general office manager. Truth was, I was hurt by feeling so totally anonymous during the first hour of being in the job, where I had expected to be happy from the word go.

  Coming into town that morning I’d thought that everything would be great in the office. I’d felt so good, like a bird bursting to sing in the spring morning, but as I took the proposal forms up to Jack’s desk to ask his advice I realised that there would always be a Cahill about, and more often than not, more than one.

  Jack Sloane had a gift for explaining things and I listened carefully to what he said, and he never had to tell me anything more than once. He was a good fella, and when I’d finished the copying of the forms I showed them to him, and he approved my work before I took them back to Cahill.

  Then Jack showed me how to use the franking machine. I had never even seen one before, and I thought that it was the greatest thing ever. You didn’t have to lick one single stamp!

  Late afternoon, the post began to get signed, and I was on my own in folding the letters, after double-checking to make sure that the right one went into the right envelope, before stamping them with the franking machine and entering them into the post book.

  Responsibility!

  Only the post, I know, but it was great to be completely in charge of something.

  Jack had warned me to keep the post trays clear and this meant doing a sort of round.
Cahill’s tray came first, then into Mr. Hayes’s office, and finally into Mr. D.J. Henley, the Managing Director, who turned out to be a fine man, big and happy, that I took to him straight away. He never made me feel that I was just an office boy, and in all the time I worked in his firm, he never said a cross word to me.

  During that first post I was expecting Mr. Hayes to speak to me every time I went into his office to get the letters, but he was so busy he never even looked up.

  I could see right away that he held the firm together. He was cool in his every movement and he made decisions with the ease of a man who was born to be a boss. And yet, somehow, he was always decent with it, he could be bothered to treat even the Office Boy with respect at all times.

  The staff knocked off at five o’clock and, in my innocence, I thought that meant me too. Fine, I thought, I’ll have time to get out of town to do the evening paper round without having to kill myself rushing. Was I ever kidding myself!

  Cahill, in the middle of signing a batch of letters, rang up one of his pals on my first evening, and he had a great bit of crack with him.

  Finally, that first day, I got away about a quarter past six. so that by the time I reached the paper shop it was almost twenty minutes to seven.

  The oul’ cow never gave me a chance to explain what had happened. She attacked me with her ugly mouth the minute I stepped inside the door. This, along with the humour I was in after getting messed about by Cahill, was just too much. Sure, I needed the little paper job, but I just couldn’t swallow all the things that the old bitch said, so I told her to get stuffed and shove the shop, and the newspapers, right up her arse! Then, I walked out without even asking her to pay me for the morning delivery. She ran to the door after me, threatening to tell the Parish Priest that I’d sworn at her, but I didn’t even look back at her bacon face. If there was one man in Rathmines that I couldn’t have cared less about it was Father Fleming, who, to my mind was out of his mind and known to me and my pals as Little Jesus.