Two Walls and a Roof (34 page)

Days later, and coming to the end of the season
, Georgie was relaxing at home and asks Monica
to pour him another glass
of ‘Lar’s b
randy’. He s
aid he would start his New Year
with one up on his brother. She does so, and after his initial swig, he spits the whole lot out into the fire, cursing and swearing at Larry.  By then
all of Monica’s strange stories
of drink refusals made perfect sense to him
. The b
randy was ‘doctored’. There and then Georgie realized what I had learned th
e hard way, that Larry Andersen
never once paid up on a bet. Georgie didn’t speak to either of us for days, as I was blamed just as much as Larry for doing ‘the dirt’ on him, and once again he planned more revenge on both of us.

I had been working for Larry for a few years when one day I got a call to go see a woman called Mary O’Mallory. She was the sister of a very nice woman who lived a few doors away from Gracie. Mary was married to John O’Mallory
,
known to friend
and f
oe alike as Johnno. The Mallory
s needed an engineer to fix televisions for their growing television rental business, and my reputation seemed to fit the bill. Mary asked me to go to a meeting in Charleville and see if we could agree a deal with her husba
nd Johnno.  My first impression
of
him was that he was a huge man
with
what seemed like a very gruff personality
. T
his unnerved me a bit at the meeting, but somehow I felt it was just a
n act. Later I was proven right
as we got to know each other better. He had a passion for fixing grandfather clocks and soon he and I were to become odd friends. I say friends, as I think in his entire life I was one of the few people who seemed to understand him, and we never had a cross word despite numerous disasters. He owned a TV shop like Larry, and was fast developing a growing business renting televisions to
the people of Charleville town
and the surrounding areas, which of course I knew well from my school days.

On the night of our first meetin
g, Mary struck the deal with me as Johnno kept out of it. I
n hind
sight
I
realize
that they were v
ery badly stuck for an engineer
as I’d guess Johnno had fought with the previous guy
.
Mary
had
probably
warned him not to interfere
in case his manner blew the new deal.  I clearly remember that deal. I was to get seven shillings and six pence for each set I fixed, no matter how difficult it was or how long it took me, and they provided the parts. My job was also to do ‘calls’, which meant I journeyed all over County Limerick and North Cork at all hours of the night, fixing like a mad man. Some jobs were easy
,
some hard, and Mary and I did a balancing act on exactly what I earned at the end of the week. It was an unwritten rule that she wouldn’t ever argue with my list of calls and repairs, and I would never ‘do the dog’ on what I charged her, and we both trusted each other. It worked perfectly, and I was soon earning real money as my Mallory wages were usually well over ten times what Larry paid me, but I was Larry’s apprentice, and he too was just starting out.

I used to work five nights a week without holidays
,
and I did this for years. It was h
ard going, but I was young then
and didn’t have to drive, as I was still only learning in Larry’s bomber.  The Mallorys used to provide a driver for me. I was being chauffeured around and treated like a king as well as being well paid for my skill
. L
ife couldn’t be better. As my finances improved
,
so did the allowance I gave to my Nannie. Her lot in life was also improving, yet I have no memory of helping my mother financially at that time, and that has troubled me ever since. I started to save money like mad. My goal was for me to buy a motorbike that
I had become determined to have
so as take me off ‘the thumb’ and make me independent, but that purchase was still a long way off.

I had numerous adventures in my Mallory days
,
or should I say nights. I would start at about seven o’clock, having hitched a lift home from Mallow at six o’clock. Then I would eat my inedible dinner, which Nannie would have prepared four hours earlier, and which she kept hot over a boiling pot on top of her old black range. The minute I arrived in, she would have poor Eunice waiting on me hand and foot. “Make tea for John, Eunice, and be quick about it, he is going out earning money for us, the great lad
. S
ure we’d be lost without him”. This would be a very pointed remark made to antagonise and belittle the one who really was providing for her, her son Michael
. S
he did this most vehemently if he was in the kitchen as well at the time. It’s amazing that Eunice or Micha
el didn’t hate me in later life
because of Nannie
’
s obvious favouritism and jibes, which I didn’t like or want either, but you dare not cross her.

Around seven, my chauffeur would
arrive with a toot of the horn
and I’d hop in, ready for another night
’
s fixing. My night would usually begin with one of Johnno’s sons acting as chauffeur, and proceeding to drive me at over ninety miles per hour to the Mallory workshop. This was located at the rear of their shop on the main street. It was guarded by about ten really dangerous Alsatian dogs, all vicious and all hat
ing me, especially their leader
and Johnno’s best friend, a dog called Rommel. No amount of roa
ring or shouting by the Mallory
s would quieten them when I arrived. Rommel, the fiercest, was nearly always chained or tied up, but sometimes he got loose and would make straight for me with jaws open. After this happened a few times I gave them an ultimatum, stating that unless the dog was chained up when I was around, I was not returning again. I told this to Mary and Johnno together after one awful scare, and they realized that I meant it as I was petrified of that dog.

From then on, I would be escort
ed by a Mallory to the workshop
and literally locked in for my own safety. There I tried to concentrate on fault
-
finding while the bloody dogs barked for the first half hour or so. I had diagrams and valves and resistors and a big black Avometer, which I adored. That was the entire test equipment we had then. An oscilloscope belonged in the realms of the super rich, so to find any kind of difficult fault, one relied primarily on a totally unscientific technique known as ‘intuition’. Larry and I had a saying about it. The saying went like this, “If in doubt cut it out”.

I would
be cutting away at the TVs while
the dogs would be chewing away at the workshop door, and this continued for months. The constant barking would be just getting to me when my chauffe
u
r would arrive to do the night
’
s calls to the country. After my ea
rlier frights with the dogs,
my ultimatum, and not trusting Rommel to be always chained, I deemed it necessary to have a weapon to save me from his vicious teeth. I found a small hatchet after an intensive search, and I felt secure at last, but I decided to do some practice swings in the safety of the workshop. I swung back and forth
,
all the time adjusting my
technique, and each night, just
to annoy the dogs
,
I did this ritual almost taunting the bastards to attack. I’m sure they saw the shadows moving in the windows and it drove them berserk, but no one knew what was going on, only me and the dogs. It became a kind of game between us and I think they enjoyed it as much as I did.

One night though
I be
came so engrossed with this fun
that I forgot what I was doing and got a bit carried away with the game. Like an Indian in Big Kyrl’s picture hall, I leapt about from place to place, lashing out here and there with my hatchet. The more I did this
,
the louder the barking became. Pretty soon all hell was breaking loose
. E
ven Rommel had pulled free from his rope and I saw him leaping and clawing outside at the window. This huge dog was now snarling and foaming at the mouth, hell
-
be
nt on eating my throat
if he could get at it. I lashed out at him in a kind of frenzy, and I don’t know how he didn’t come clean through the window, but I was ready for him if he did. Then I thought I saw a shadow move along the side window as well, and an attack from two sides seemed to be coming.  It was dark
,
and with my adrenaline pumping I jumped up onto a chair and prepared for battle, hatchet at the ready. Just then Johnno’s big head appeared in the window. He dragged Rommel off and came back inside.  He was a smart man, and I suppose he believed that the pressure of fixing so many TV’s without a break had finally got to me, as when he came inside, he asked me if I wanted a drop of the ‘hard stuff’. He looked genuinely concerned. Johnno offering me drink was a sure sign that he was worried about me, as he knew I didn’t drink at all. I tried to explain my ma
dness, but he just dismissed it
and asked if I needed
a break. I never took the break
as there was no one to replace me, and they would have been in a bad state coming up to Christmas.  From then on, I think a strange kind of friendship developed between us
. M
aybe he figured his dogs had finally got to me, as I complained about them often enough. From then on, the dogs were somehow quieter, and I too gave up my Indian ways.

Johnno Mallory had TV sets rented everywhere in the county, and in spite of his manner,
he was liked by almost everyone
as he had a descent streak in him
.
I’m sure he often overlooked many an outstanding repair or rent bill. Sometimes Johnno would have to drive me around. Initially I didn’t like this idea one bit, but later as we got more used to each other, I really began to like him, especially after the hatchet incident. We would discuss engines and mechanics and science as we drove along the winding roads of Limerick. He drove very slowly though in comparison to his sons, but I felt a lot safer with him. The down side for me was that I got very few of his sets fixed because he took too long getting me to them.

One night very late, as we arrived back at his shop, Johnno says to me
,
“Jo
hn, when are you going to learn
to drive
?” B
efore I could answer he said, “No time like the present
. H
ere take the car home, sure you know the basics”. Then he got out and went into his house, leaving me in control of his huge Z
ephyr car.  I was flabbergasted.
I had never driven such a huge car, nor did I want to eit
her, but he left me no choice, s
o o
ff I went. I had no licence, no
insurance, little or no experience, and as it turned out, no petrol either. I can still see m
yself passing the Garda station
very slowly, almost running over a drunk who staggered out in front of me.  Then as I got us
ed to the sheer size of the car
I became more confident
,
especially when I hit the open road. After about four miles I threw caution to the wind and gave her ‘the gas’. This beautiful and mighty car glided forward and floated as if travelling on a cushion of air. I was in heaven for about five or ten minutes, then the spluttering started and very soon I came to a jerking stop by the side of the road. It was obvious then why Johnno wanted me to drive home
. H
e knew for certain he wouldn’t get back if he took me because he had left it run out of petrol. I was back on the thumb again, but by then it was well after midnight and I was back on a road I knew well from my bicycle.

I began walking, not feeling very happy with Johnno or myself, when with about three miles to go along came a farmer driving a tractor with no lights. He stopped and I ended up arriving into Buttevant on top of a cock of hay. This was some comedown from the dizzy heights of my gliding Zephyr. Johnno seemed to be missing for the nex
t few nights, knowing full well
that I was unhappy with him. In the end he said he was sorry, but that I had gained val
uable experience for my own car
whenever I got one, and that was the end of it.

In the course of my life
there have been a number of times when
,
by all rights
, I should have been killed
in what would be called tragic accidents.  Big Kyrl’s driving us into the flood in County Limerick was one such incident
,
and yet another occurred also in County Limerick
during my days with the Mallory
s.  It was wintertime and the roads had become very dangerous with black ice. This was one of the few occasions when neither Johnno nor his sons drove me, and I have the feeling that my chauffeur that night was called Jimmy. I know that he seemed to be very tired and I did not like the mood in the van at all. In a place called Bruree we almost hit the old stone bridge, which would have sent us into the flooded river, but my roaring of warning snapped Jimmy out of his daze, and instead we spun round on the road. I am quite sure that the river in Bruree is the same river Maigue that also tried to drown me earlier with Big Kyrl. We escaped
,
but that was not the end of our frights that night. Some hours later
,
after numerous cups of tea and coffee,
Jimmy seemed to be more with it
and the mood had greatly improved. Our last call for the night was to a farmhouse out in the wilds. The people were very pleasant
,
and even though it was late when we called, they also offered us tea while I fixed the old set. We left and by then it was really freezing hard. The uneasy feeling that had come over me earlier then returned with a vengeance, and I felt sure that something bad was about to happen, but Jimmy was not driving fast and he seemed fully awake by then. For some reason I propped my legs up against the dashboard and pushed my seat way back. I pretended that I was tired, but the real reason was that something inside me told me to sit like that. About a quarter of a mile down the road we came to a very sharp bend. The road was covered with leaves
,
and the next thing I remember was Jimmy cursing as we skidded on the ice under the leaves. We suddenly went ca
reering across the road,
clean through a small ditch
and i
mmediately began a freefall through the air, down to yet an
other river. When the van hit the ground
it really gained speed, and even though this was all happening very fast, a
kind of euphoria came over me
and I felt like an observer, helpless and afraid, but not terrified. W
e then hit a tree stump so hard
that it actually warped the chassis on the van, as we discovered in the ‘post mortem’ later. On impact with the stump, one of the smaller televisions in the back came flying forward, hitting me hard on the shoulder before going right out through the windscreen with a huge bang. I think it also hit Jimmy on the head and he fe
ll forward. T
hen we hit the water with another bang and a big splash.  My body shot forward
,
hitting my head on the roof where the glass had been. I felt a sudden and very sharp pain on my forehead and then nothing. I think I must have blacked out
,
and when
I recovered
it seemed like a repeat of Big Kyrl
’
s headstone event. I again saw the steam, the front of the van under water, the eerie lights in the water, and felt our sharp incline as the van had nose dived into the river, but the river was just a very sm
all one
and was not in flood. I wanted so much to rest there, but I wanted us out of there too. My door had swung open on impact and I pulled myself out and went round the back of the van to Jimmy's side
to try
to pull him out as well. He was moaning and kept on saying
,
“Johnno will kill me
,
the new van, the van”. I got him out, and we began crawling and helping each other up the steep embankment to the road. I knew we were hurt, but I
didn’t think we were hurt badly
as we made our way up the slope. After a terrible struggle, we finally got onto the road and both of us laid down across it to rest. The next thing I remember was looking up at the crystal clear sky, noticing how beautiful the stars were and feeling no cold at all as I believed I was dead, and it did not seem to be bad at all. Then I heard Jimmy moan out again, and saw that he too was stretched out across the road. Obviously we both had collapsed from exhaustion, and we were now in real danger of being run over by an oncomi
ng car. The adrenalin kicked in
and I
hauled him to his feet saying
that we needed to go back to the farmhouse and get help.