Angela's Ashes Read online

  The biggest customer for the magazine, Mr. Hutchinson, tells Mr. McCaffrey get to hell out of his shop or he'll brain him, get away from them magazines, and when Mr. McCaffrey keeps on tearing out pages Mr. Hutchinson throws him into the street, Mr. McCaffrey yelling that this is a Catholic country and just because Hutchinson is a Protestant that doesn't give him the right to sell filth in the holiest city in Ireland. Mr. Hutchinson says, Ah, kiss my arse, and Mr. McCaffrey says, See, boys? See what happens when you're not a member of the True Church?

  Some shops says they've already sold all their copies of John O'London and Mr. McCaffrey says, Oh, Mother o' God, what's going to become of us all? Who did ye sell them to?

  He demands the names and address of the customers who are in danger of losing their immortal souls from reading articles on birth control. He will go to their houses and rip out that filthy page but the shopkeepers say, 'Tis Saturday night, McCaffrey, and getting dark and would you ever take a good running jump for yourself.

  On the way back to the office Eamon whispers to me in the back of the van, I have twenty-one pages. How many do you have? I tell him fourteen but I have over forty and I'm not telling him because you never have to tell the truth to people who lie about your bad eyes. Mr. McCaffrey tells us bring in the pages from the van. We scoop up everything on the floor and he's happy sitting at his desk at the other end of the office ringing Dublin to tell them how he stormed through shops like God's avenger and saved Limerick from the horrors of birth control while he watches a dancing fire of pages that have nothing to do with John O'London's Weekly.

  Monday morning I cycle through the streets delivering magazines and people see the Easons sign on the bike and stop me to see if there's any chance they could get their hands on a copy of John O'London's Weekly. They're all rich-looking people, some in motor cars, men with hats, collars and ties, and two fountain pens in their pockets, women with hats and little bits of fur dangling from their shoulders, people who have tea at the Savoy or the Stella and stick out their little fingers to show how well bred they are and now want to read this page about birth control.

  Eamon told me early in the day, Don't sell the bloody page for less than five shillings. I asked him if he was joking. No, he wasn't. Everyone in Limerick is talking about this page and they're dying to get their hands on it.

  Five shillings or nothing, Frankie. If they're rich charge more but that's what I'm charging so don't be going around on your bicycle and puttin' me out of business with low prices. We have to give Peter something or he'll be running to McCaffrey and spilling the beans.

  Some people are willing to pay seven shillings and sixpence and I'm rich in two days with over ten pounds in my pocket minus one for Peter the snake, who would betray us to McCaffrey. I put eight pounds in the post office for my fare to America and that night we have a big supper of ham, tomatoes, bread, butter, jam. Mam wants to know if I won the sweepstakes and I tell her people give me tips. She's not happy I'm a messenger boy because that's the lowest you can drop in Limerick but if it brings in ham like this we should light a candle in gratitude. She doesn't know the money for my fare is growing in the post office and she'd die if she knew what I was earning from writing threatening letters.

  Malachy has a new job in the stockroom of a garage handing out parts to mechanics and Mam herself is taking care of an old man, Mr. Sliney, out in the South Circular Road while his two daughters go off to work every day. She tells me if I'm delivering papers out there to come to the house for tea and a sandwich. The daughters will never know and the old man won't mind because he's only half conscious most of the time worn out from all his years in the English army in India.

  She looks peaceful in the kitchen of this house in her spotless apron, everything clean and polished around her, flowers bobbing in the garden beyond, birds chirping away, music from Radio Eireann on the wireless. She sits at the table with a pot of tea, cups and saucers, plenty of bread, butter, cold meats of all kinds. I can have any class of a sandwich but all I know is ham and brawn. She doesn't have any brawn because that's the kind of thing you'd find people eating in lanes not in a house on the South Circular Road. She says the rich won't eat brawn because it's what they scoop off floors and counters in bacon factories and you never know what you're getting. The rich are very particular about what they stick between two slices of bread. Over in America brawn is called head cheese and she doesn't know why.

  She gives me a ham sandwich with juicy slices of tomato and tea in a cup with little pink angels flying around shooting arrows at other little flying angels who are blue and I wonder why they can't make teacups and chamber pots without all kinds of angels and maidens cavorting in the glen. Mam says that's the way the rich are, they love the bit of decoration and wouldn't we if we had the money. She'd give her two eyes to have a house like this with flowers and birds abroad in the garden and the wireless playing that lovely Warsaw Concerto or the Dream of Olwyn and no end of cups and saucers with angels shooting arrows.

  She says she has to look in on Mr. Sliney he's so old and feeble he forgets to call for the chamber pot.

  Chamber pot? You have to empty his chamber pot?

  Of course I do.

  There's a silence here because I think we're remembering the cause of all our troubles, Laman Griffin's chamber pot. But that was a long time ago and now it's Mr. Sliney's chamber pot, which is no harm because she's paid for this and he's harmless. When she comes back she tells me Mr. Sliney would like to see me, so come in while he's awake.

  He's lying in a bed in the front parlor, the window blocked with a black sheet, no sign of light. He tells my mother, Lift me up a bit, missus, and pull back that bloody thing off the window so I can see the boy.

  He has long white hair down to his shoulders. Mam whispers he won't let anyone cut it. He says, I have me own teeth, son. Would you credit that? Do you have your own teeth, son?

  I do, Mr. Sliney.

  Ah. I was in India you know. Me and Timoney up the road. Bunch of Limerick men in India. Do you know Timoney, son?

  I did, Mr. Sliney.

  He's dead, you know. Poor bugger went blind. I have me sight. I have me teeth. Keep your teeth, son.

  I will, Mr. Sliney.

  I'm getting tired, son, but there's one thing I want to tell you. Are you listening to me?

  I am, Mr. Sliney.

  Is he listening to me, missus?

  Oh, he is, Mr. Sliney.

  Good. Now here's what I want to tell you. Lean over here so I can whisper in your ear. What I want to tell you is, Never smoke another man's pipe.

  Halvey goes off to England with Rose and I have to stay on the messenger bike all through the winter. It's a bitter winter, ice everywhere, and I never know when the bike will go out from under me and send me flying into the street or onto the pavement, magazines and papers scattered. Shops complain to Mr. McCaffrey that The Irish Times is coming in decorated with bits of ice and dog shit and he mutters to us that's the way that paper should be delivered, Protestant rag that it is.

  Every day after my deliveries I take The Irish Times home and read it to see where the danger is. Mam says it's a good thing Dad isn't here. He'd say, Is this what the men of Ireland fought and died for that my own son is sitting there at the kitchen table reading the freemason paper?

  There are letters to the editor from people all over Ireland claiming they heard the first cuckoo of the year and you can read between the lines that people are calling each other liars. There are reports about Protestant weddings and pictures and the women always look lovelier than the ones we know in the lanes . You can see Protestant women have perfect teeth although Halvey's Rose had lovely teeth.

  I keep reading The Irish Times and wondering if it's an occasion of sin though I don't care. As long as Theresa Carmody is in heaven not coughing I don't go to confession anymore. I read The Irish Times and The Times of London because that tells me what the King is up to every day and what Elizabeth and Margaret are doing.
r />   I read English women's magazines for all the food articles and the answers to women's questions. Peter and Eamon put on English accents and pretend they're reading from English women's magazines.

  Peter says, Dear Miss Hope, I'm going out with a fellow from Ireland named McCaffrey and he has his hands all over me and his thing pushing against my belly button and I'm demented not knowing what to do. I remain, yours anxiously, Miss Lulu Smith, Yorkshire.

  Eamon says, Dear Lulu, If this McCaffrey is that tall that he's pushing his yoke against your belly button I suggest you find a smaller man who will slip it between your thighs. Surely you can find a decent short man in Yorkshire.

  Dear Miss Hope, I am thirteen years old with black hair and something terrible is happening and I can't tell anyone not even my mother. I'm bleeding every few weeks you know where and I'm afraid I'll be found out. Miss Agnes Tripple, Little Biddle-on-the-Twiddle, Devon.

  Dear Agnes, You are to be congratulated. You are now a woman and you can get your hair permed because you are having your monthlies. Do not fear your monthlies for all Englishwomen have them. They are a gift of God to purify us so that we can have stronger children for the empire, soldiers to keep the Irish in their place. In some parts of the world a woman with a monthly is unclean but we British cherish our women with the monthlies, oh we do indeed.

  In the springtime there's a new messenger boy and I'm back in the office. Peter and Eamon drift off to England. Peter is fed up with Limerick, no girls, and you're driven to yourself, wank wank wank, that's all we ever do in Limerick. There are new boys. I'm senior boy and the job is easier because I'm fast and when Mr. McCaffrey is out in the van and my work is done I read the English, Irish, American magazines and papers. Day and night I dream of America.

  Malachy goes to England to work in a rich Catholic boys' boarding school and he walks around cheerful and smiling as if he's the equal of any boy in the school and everyone knows when you work in an English boarding school you're supposed to hang your head and shuffle like a proper Irish servant. They fire him for his ways and Malachy tells them they can kiss his royal Irish arse and they say that's the kind of foul language and behavior you'd expect. He gets a job in the gas works in Coventry shoveling coal into the furnaces like Uncle Pa Keating, shoveling coal and waiting for the day he can go to America after me.

  XVIII

  I'm seventeen, eighteen, going on nineteen, working away at Easons, writing threatening letters for Mrs. Finucane, who says she's not long for this world and the more Masses said for her soul the better she'll feel. She puts money in envelopes and sends me to churches around the city to knock on priests' doors, hand in the envelopes with the request for Masses. She wants prayers from all the priests but the Jesuits. She says, They're useless, all head and no heart. That's what they should have over their door in Latin and I won't give them a penny because every penny you give a Jesuit goes to a fancy book or a bottle of wine.

  She sends the money, she hopes the Masses are said, but she's never sure and if she's not sure why should I be handing out all that money to priests when I need the money to go to America and if I keep back a few pounds for myself and put it in the post office who will ever know the difference and if I say a prayer for Mrs. Finucane and light candles for her soul when she dies won't God listen even if I'm a sinner long past my last confession.

  I'll be nineteen in a month. All I need is a few pounds to make up the fare and a few pounds in my pocket when I land in America.

  The Friday night before my nineteenth birthday Mrs. Finucane sends me for the sherry. When I return she is dead in the chair, her eyes wide open, and her purse on the floor wide open. I can't look at her but I help myself to a roll of money. Seventeen pounds. I take the key to the trunk upstairs. I take forty of the hundred pounds in the trunk and the ledger. I'll add this to what I have in the post office and I have enough to go to America. On my way out I take the sherry bottle to save it from being wasted.

  I sit by the River Shannon near the dry docks sipping Mrs. Finucane's sherry. Aunt Aggie's name is in the ledger. She owes nine pounds. It might have been the money she spent on my clothes a long time ago but now she'll never have to pay it because I heave the ledger into the river. I'm sorry I'll never be able to tell Aunt Aggie I saved her nine pounds. I'm sorry I wrote threatening letters to the poor people in the lanes of Limerick, my own people, but the ledger is gone, no one will ever know what they owe and they won't have to pay their balances. I wish I could tell them, I'm your Robin Hood.

  Another sip of the sherry. I'll spare a pound or two for a Mass for Mrs. Finucane's soul. Her ledger is well on its way down the Shannon and out to the Atlantic and I know I'll follow it someday soon.

  The man at O'Riordan's Travel Agency says he can't get me to America by air unless I travel to London first, which would cost a fortune. He can put me on a ship called the Irish Oak, which will be leaving Cork in a few weeks. He says, Nine days at sea, September October, best time of the year, your own cabin, thirteen passengers, best of food, bit of a holiday for yourself and that will cost fifty-five pounds, do you have it?

  I do.

  I tell Mam I'm going in a few weeks and she cries. Michael says, Will we all go some day?

  We will.

  Alphie says, Will you send me a cowboy hat and a thing you throw that comes back to you?

  Michael tells him that's a boomerang and you'd have to go all the way to Australia to get the likes of that, you can't get it in America.

  Alphie says you can get it in America yes you can and they argue about America and Australia and boomerangs till Mam says, For the love o'Jesus, yeer brother is leaving us and the two of ye are there squabbling over boomerangs. Will ye give over?

  Mam says we'll have to have a bit of party the night before I go. They used to have parties in the old days when anyone would go to America, which was so far away the parties were called American wakes because the family never expected to see the departing one again in this life. She says 'tis a great pity Malachy can't come back from England but we'll be together in America someday with the help of God and His Blessed Mother.

  On my days off from work I walk around Limerick and look at all the places we lived, the Windmill Street, Hartstonge Street, Roden Lane, Rosbrien Road, Little Barrington Street, which is really a lane. I stand looking at Theresa Carmody's house till her mother comes out and says, What do you want? I sit at the graves of Oliver and Eugene in the old St. Patrick's Burying Ground and cross the road to St. Lawrence's Cemetery where Theresa is buried. Wherever I go I hear voices of the dead and I wonder if they can follow you across the Atlantic Ocean.

  I want to get pictures of Limerick stuck in my head in case I never come back. I sit in St. Joseph's Church and the Redemptorist church and tell myself take a good look because I might never see this again. I walk down Henry Street to say good-bye to St. Francis though I'm sure I'll be able to talk to him in America.

  Now there are days I don't want to go to America. I'd like to go to O'Riordan's Travel Agency and get back my fifty-five pounds. I could wait till I'm twenty-one and Malachy can go with me so that I'll know at least one person in New York. I have strange feelings and sometimes when I'm sitting by the fire with Mam and my brothers I feel tears coming and I'm ashamed of myself for being weak. At first Mam laughs and tells me, Your bladder must be near your eye, but then Michael says, We'll all go to America, Dad will be there, Malachy will be there and we'll all be together, and she gets the tears herself and we sit there, the four of us, like weeping eejits.

  Mam says this is the first time we ever had a party and isn't it a sad thing altogether that you have it when your children are slipping away one by one, Malachy to England, Frank to America. She saves a few shillings from her wages taking care of Mr. Sliney to buy bread, ham, brawn, cheese, lemonade and a few bottles of stout. Uncle Pa Keating brings stout, whiskey and a little sherry for Aunt Aggie's delicate stomach and she brings a cake loaded with currants and raisins she baked hersel
f. The Abbot brings six bottles of stout and says, That's all right, Frankie, ye can all drink it as long as I have a bottle or two for meself to help me sing me song.

  He sings "The Road to Rasheen." He holds his stout, closes his eyes, and song comes out in a high whine. The words make no sense and everyone wonders why tears are seeping from his shut eyes. Alphie whispers to me, Why is he crying over a song that makes no sense?

  I don't know.

  The Abbot ends his song, opens his eyes, wipes his cheeks and tells us that was a sad song about an Irish boy that went to America and got shot by gangsters and died before a priest could reach his side and he tells me don't be gettin' shot if you're not near a priest.

  Uncle Pa says that's the saddest song he ever heard and is there any chance we could have something lively. He calls on Mam and she says, Ah, no, Pa, sure I don't have the wind.

  Come on, Angela, come on. One voice now, one voice and one voice only.

  All right. I'll try.

  We all join in the chorus of her sad song,

  A mother's love is a blessing

  No matter where you roam.

  Keep her while you have her,

  You'll miss her when she's gone.

  Uncle Pa says one song is worse than the one before and are we turning this night into a wake altogether, is there any chance someone would sing a song to liven up the proceedings or will he be driven to drink with the sadness.

  Oh, God, says Aunt Aggie, I forgot. The moon is having an eclipse abroad this minute.

  We stand out in the lane watching the moon disappear behind a round black shadow. Uncle Pa says, That's a very good sign for you going to America, Frankie.

  No, says Aunt Aggie, 'tis a bad sign. I read in the paper that the moon is practicing for the end of the world.

  Oh, end of the world my arse, says Uncle Pa. 'Tis the beginning for Frankie McCourt. He'll come back in a few years with a new suit and fat on his bones like any Yank and a lovely girl with white teeth hangin' from his arm.