Goodbye to the Hill Page 9

  I knew it even then and I hated myself for wallowing in self-pity, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. Why me? I used to ask my self. Why couldn’t I have been born in a decent house with a father who had a steady job, and so on! And when people rejected me I blamed it on the fact that they knew I was from The Hill. It never occurred to me that they mightn’t have liked me anyway. I was sick with it, like I said, and I knew it and whether I could or not, at that time, I didn’t try to do anything about it.

  I wanted to tell her, there and then, how much I loved her and I think I could have done. The silent painful bit was over, I knew that from the way I felt, but I was afraid I’d frighten her off. So I kept quiet and we walked up the road and she held onto my arm. After a minute I took a deep breath and I moved my arm so that her hand fell free.

  ‘What’s the matter, Paddy?’

  ‘I want to hold your hand.’

  She put her small white hand in mine and the touch of it was an electric shock and I loved her and I wanted to die on the spot.

  ‘You’re a nice fella, aren’t you?’ She smiled at me.

  ‘It isn’t difficult to be nice to you.’

  Well, we were talking, anyway, even if it was a bit strained. It was dark except where the street lights were, and when we turned into the lane that led up to Mount Drummond, it was like the inside of an ink bottle. And still I wouldn’t have been surprised if birds had started to chirp along the way.

  We stopped without a word being said by a deep garage doorway and I put the bike against the wall. Like a magnet she came against me and I kissed her with every bit of feeling and energy that was in me. Her hands went around the back of my neck and she held onto me and her breasts against me were hot pains in my miserable chest.

  When she pulled away she looked at me and despite the darkness I could see that she couldn’t believe what was happening and it was then that I knew she felt the way I did.

  ‘I’m crazy about you, Maureen? Will you come out with me?’

  She nodded without a word, and then pressing against me she tucked her head into my shoulder and I thought that I knew what it was like to be really happy for the first time in my life.

  ‘I haven’t had a single date since that first day you came into our office,’ she said. ‘I want to go with you.’

  ‘I’d like to go with you too, but I haven’t any money or anything like your man with the sport’s bike has.’

  There it was again. It wasn’t enough that this lovely girl wanted to be with me. I practically had to get it in writing.

  She touched my face with her soft gentle hand. ‘That doesn’t matter to me,’ she laughed. ‘I don’t like Knickerbocker Glories, anyway.’

  We both laughed at that and then suddenly, as if it had been cut with a knife, it stopped, and we were kissing again and I knew that I would love her forever and ever.

  Holding hands was different on the way up to where she lived. It was like we’d been doing it for years and all the barriers that I’d forced between us with my self-pity, were gone, and I knew that I’d never have any difficulty speaking to her now.

  She lived in a Corporation house with its own bathroom and I thought how great it would have been if we’d moved there from The Hill when the houses were built a few years before. I kissed her again, lightly on her soft lips by the gate.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered, and then she was gone up the short concrete path and she went into the house without looking back.

  That night The Hill, the flats hit me worse than ever. On the way home I thought I’d burst with how I was feeling. Then just halfway up the lane from Mount Pleasant Avenue, it drained out of me and I felt cheated.

  I got off the bike by the little Hucksters shop and I stood for a minute looking in at the stale snow-cake and the pink fruit cake that usually had the flies around it. A pot mender the size of a small saucer held the window together and I looked from that up the lane to the flats.

  It was still there, a sort of hopeless feeling, as if I was sucked into something that I couldn’t do anything about. I was choked with it. Even the way I felt about Maureen couldn’t protect me from it. Happy as I’d been only minutes before, I was now as low as lino. I burned with my hatred of the stinking place, hate for dirt and poverty and for pregnant paupers and for the Church that was the cause of the whole thing.

  The dustbin in the corner of our hallway was smoking. Some lazy bastard had thrown a heap of burning cinders on top of the rubbish and I had to bite my teeth not to yell out and wake the whole block. Those bins had always been a curse, the brain child of some prick in the Corporation. Very clever it was. An open bin in every hall, an open bin that stood where twenty five to thirty men, women and mostly children, had to pass in and out at all times. Mind you, I suppose the fact that there wasn’t a lid of any kind did make it easier for the kids to fish the core of an apple out of the rubbish. I boiled all the time about it and I wasted more energy than I could afford while the people in the block slept. They accepted it without question, my mother included. It had been put there by people in authority. That was enough.

  I went into the flat, putting the bike against the scullery wall. There wasn’t room for it, but you couldn’t leave it outside for ten minutes, unless you wanted to get rid of it in a hurry. I was tired and depressed. I thought about making a drink of cocoa, but Ma was asleep in the sofa bed in the kitchen with Josie, so I didn’t bother.

  Taking off my clothes in the dark of the bedroom, I realised that I would have to get away from The Hill. No matter how long it took me or how hard it might be on Ma, I was going to have to get up and go. I loved Ma most of all, but when the right time came, even that wouldn’t stop me. I could feel it as I got into bed with Billy, and that made me more miserable than I already was.

  Chapter 9

  From the night on I never got back to The Hill without hating it more and more. The need to go away from there was getting stronger and stronger. I’d stopped wondering how I’d feel if I left Ma and I couldn’t imagine my life without blue eyed Maureen, so as hard as I could, I tried not to think about it. Love them both as I might, I couldn’t lose the growing urge to get out. It was like a seed planted beneath concrete. It was there and it was pushing up out of the ground, and in time it would break through the crust that held it down.

  Meanwhile I was happy in my work at the office and I was learning something all the time. Insurance is a very interesting business with something new cropping up nearly every day, and I was keeping my ears open and just dying for a chance to get into the real business, something with a future. Business was on the increase and I had the feeling that it wouldn’t be long before I got promoted to Junior Clerk.

  Larry Deegan had an awful lot to do with the new business that was pouring in and he was making a bomb in commission. He was a natural-born salesman and he was lucky with it, always seeming to be in the right place at the right time. We were great pals now and with the way I was drinking with him and Redmond - never at the same time - I was building up a good head, becoming a fella that could hold his booze. Most of the time, I sipped Guinness, the price being right for my pocket. At seven pence for a bottle of stout, ten pence for a pint, you could go a long way on ten bob or a pound. Whenever I drank spirits it was usually Larry that was paying. I always enjoyed drinking with him. He was so different to Redmond but in his own way just as interesting. He was a real person too, whereas Harry was more of a character. My workmate got on and did things that my mentor told others to do. He took life by the horns and twisted its neck. Redmond, I’d started to realise, was running away from life, using sex and booze to escape from facing up to things.

  Nothing surprised Larry. He knew all about Maureen and Mrs. Kearney, and he howled at the idea of me doing all that loving in the house in Terenure. And the idea of me getting a dollar as a weekly gift really appealed to him. You didn�
��t have to be a choir boy for Larry to think you were okay. He cared about people, despite what was wrong with them, accepting or rejecting them because of how they were.

  He never said a word against Maureen but I knew that didn’t think it was a good idea for a fella of my age to be going steady. He was against it on principle, feeling that you should enjoy every second of your single life because, he said, once you slipped that little band of gold on a mot’s finger you were buying sex on the Hire Purchase for the rest of your life. And I agreed with him, believing he was dead right. Then I’d see Maureen and kiss her lips and no price seemed too high for the kick of just being with her.

  It was true. For Maureen I was willing to do things that I wouldn’t have done for anyone else. Like the Friday night we got to the Savoy Cinema in O’Connell Street. There was a queue a mile long and I gave it a very hard look. I always felt that anyone who was willing to stand at the end of a line like that just to see a picture must be a right ass. But Maureen wanted to see the film and I stood with her for forty-five minutes and I didn’t say one word against it. And I resented that, hating her for having that kind of power over me.

  Once we were inside and she was holding my hand I loved her and I forgot that I was annoyed with myself for being such a spineless bastard. And a few times when I turned to whisper something to her and my lips brushed the side of her face this electric thing would happen again and nothing would be further from my mind than the film we’d queue up to see. And I stopped fighting it. When I was with Maureen I didn’t care about anything or anybody else, not Guinness or Redmond or Larry, or even Ma.

  Yet when I was in a pub with Harry I hardly thought about her, and once or twice, to help Redmond out, I made up a foursome when he had a couple of softies lined up. It was odd, as if I had a split personality or something, because I enjoyed those times with the head, and there was no getting away from it, I loved a gargle and a bit of stray.

  I’d been going out steady with Maureen for months before I tried to get into her. Not that I didn’t want to, it was just that I was afraid of offending her or even losing her. Also, I was putting quite a bit down with Mrs. Kearney, which helped me to control myself, even though my girl was hot stuff when you got her going.

  One Friday night in midsummer we got off the bus at the top of Orwell Road, and without a word being said we were on our way down to the banks of The Dodder, Redmond’s very own chlorophyll couch. It was a warm silent evening and there weren’t a lot of people about for the time of year.

  I was trembling as we walked down the stony hill that led to the river. It wasn’t the weather and it wasn’t just passion of whatever you call it; it was like a fear of what might happen, and the lack of conversation between us made it even worse.

  At the bottom of the hill the ground changed beneath our feet. Tar and stones gave way to the earth path cut through the river bank and the water moved beside us and we walked and I hoped nobody would ever concrete or tarmac the walkway.

  Lying together on the grass, the darkness slipping down like smoke, I kissed he mouth, and from the way she back at me I knew she wanted me too. Kissing was no longer just kissing for its own sake - it was the build-up to having it off. There was no kidding about it, no trying to rub between the thighs with the back of the hand while you opened the fly buttons with the fingers at the same time. It was straightforward and honest and it was clean and beautiful. And afterwards I was afraid to move, afraid to smash the thing of being so close to her. And she held my face in her hands and she kept kissing my face and her lips were like velvet against my skin and I loved her to distraction.

  Yet somehow things had changed between us, something that I wasn’t quite sure of. It was just that with Mrs. Kearney I wanted a good ride and so did she. With Maureen I wanted it too, but for some stupid reason I wanted her to stop me at the moment. It was as if the way I felt about her depended on her purity, and the feeling was so strong that I must have gotten it across to her, although I didn’t open my mouth.

  ‘You’re upset?’

  I pushed my face into her neck and hair. Even in the dark I couldn’t lie to her and look at her at the same time.

  ‘No, I’m okay, honest, I am.’

  I loved her but I felt like crying. How did she know exactly what to do? I trembled and at the same time she read my mind.

  ‘That wasn’t the first time, Paddy.’ Her voice was like a little cool breeze and I knew she was talking about herself and not me.

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ I don’t know how I pushed the words beyond my lips. ‘I love you. That’s all I care about. Do you love me?’

  She laughed happily, tightening her grip on me. ‘Of course I do, silly. Would I be doing this with you if I didn’t?’

  I kissed her viciously in answer. I couldn’t have spoken. If she had to be in love to do it and she’d done if before, then she’d loved someone else before me. I felt as if my heart had been kicked around a field.

  ‘I’m older than you are, Paddy. I loved another boy before I even knew you. It was over and done with ages ago. Don’t let it come between us, it just isn’t important.’

  ‘I already told you, didn’t I? Doesn’t matter, it’s none of my business.’

  She kissed me on the mouth, her teeth biting into my lips and I tried to crush her beneath me in the grass. No matter what, I needed that Maureen. But I was hurt, bruised at the thought of her and somebody else, and when we made love again, I made her cry out with the force of my movement and I despised myself for being such a child.

  When it was over we lay there and the grass seemed long and very cold. I didn’t ever want to get up and go. She’d given herself with everything she’d had and with the way I felt about her I was afraid to break it. Nothing could ever be that good again.

  Walking up the hill to the main road I could feel the change between us. Even the touch of her hand seemed different. It was a kind of knowing touch, a secret thing of ours. It scared me a bit. I felt like a fella who’d spent all his money on a house and found out that the roof was useless. Her touch was like a responsibility on my skinny shoulders. And when we stopped under the tree by the bus stop she turned and kissed me and I knew I was right.

  The whole thing had changed. She was all passionate now and if I’d wanted I could have given her an upright there on the street. That’s how bad it was. Her tongue was like a whiplash in and out of my mouth, and though I loved it, it made me feel kind of sad. All our kisses in future would be like that, the lead in to the ride. It was as if innocence had died, dried right up in those few hours on the Dodder.

  I tried not to think about it. Stop being dramatic, Maguire, I kept on saying to myself as we kissed. Then she took my hand and put it up under her skirt and the soft part of her thighs above her stockings, and it was done so casually that I almost cried out. The same thing couldn’t have happened two hours before and my eyelids nearly melted into each other with the pressure that I used to keep the tears back. It wasn’t everyone who would understand a fella crying over a thing like that. It’s funny, really, how the illusion of what something would be like, if you could do it, is so much better than the thing itself, when you do manage it. I can tell you I was glad when the bus came along.

  We were quiet on the walk up Leinster Road, but I wasn’t happy about the way she was holding my arm. And I was bloody glad to be off the bus. I’d had to chat to her all the way down to Rathmines to stop her making an exhibition of both of us. She was rearing to go again, and mad as I felt I was I drew the line at having it off on the top deck of a bus.

  It was as if she owned my arm and that was a feeling that worried me, even though a few months before I would have given anything for her to hold onto me like that. We were passing the garage doorway where I’d first kissed her and there was a soldier and a mot wrapped around each other, and as we passed she said to him, ‘Kiss me darlin’, kiss
me again,’ in a voice that was straight from the arsehole of Kerry. And you could tell she was trying to do a take-off of the mot in the film at The Stella, reminding me of all the times I used a bit of George Raft or Bogey, and I burst out laughing. And I grabbed Maureen’s hand and we ran together up the lane and I laughed so much that she couldn’t help but join in, and when we stopped I felt relieved. She’d let go of my arm.

  It’s a funny thing about the soldiers of the Irish Republic. They get most of the country girls that come to Dublin to work as domestic servants. And it can’t be the uniform, rough green material with about as much cut to it as a lamp post, a small boat shaped hat on the side of the head, or a badly designed peat cap, blood red-boots with short leggings that give the wearer a deformed look. That uniform was enough to make a Dublin fella look like he came from the bogs, so you can imagine what it did for fellas from Cork and Kerry and ‘The Wesht’.

  Still, there was no doubt about it the country girls liked boys in uniform. The wearin’ of the green did more for those fellas than it ever did for the patriots and the fanatics who shot each other to pieces to the air of Napper Tandy. And the local whore-masters were very put out by the whole thing.

  Those girls who came to work in Dublin were one of the main sources of sexual pleasure to the ramrods of Rathmines and Rathgar, but the fact that the soldiers snaffled up most of the talent before it got its bags off the train meant that the demand was greater than the supply. A

  The locals would stand around in groups slagging the lucky green uniforms as they passed by with a girl on their arm, and the endless chat that went on didn’t produce any real reason why the girls preferred soldiers. It might have been because so many of the lads in uniform were country people, but I think it was more than that.

  The soldiers were willing to take the girls out and to be seen walking with them. The locals just wanted a quick jump or whatever else was going and good night, not caring in the least that the girls had feelings and wanted to be treated decently. And that poor cow in the doorway with her ‘Kiss me darlin’,’ head on her wasn’t anything to laugh at, but really I was laughing because I thought it funny that she was doing the same thing that I did all the time.