Interring Youth

I’m fifteen years old, standing at the bar in a Castlebar pub, white knuckled hands gripping the edge of the counter, praying I’ll be served a pint of Smithwicks. 

It’s September 12, 1980, and the Inter Cert exam results came out this afternoon.  I rushed home after school to tell Da I got all A’s and B’s.

“Sure, the Inter is on’y a joke,” he says, throwing his head back. 

“'Tis the Leaving Cert every job wants now.  You’d be lucky to get a job as street sweeper today with an Inter Cert, no matter how good it ‘twas,” he gives his head a quick-shake, and goes back to reading the paper.

Freezing my disappointment at barely qualifying as a streetsweeper, I take the stairs in twos and threes, burst into the bedroom, fling the Manilla results envelope on the desk I’d studied so hard at all spring, and head for town.

Some of the lads are standing in front of Parsons Shoes window, pooling money and planning how to get a few six packs.  A few more got brave and are already below in the pub drinking. 

I’d drank plenty before, but I never drank in a pub.  

A pub is where men drink.

Young fellas like us go up the lake in the dark, hiding in the thick pine trees from the Gards with their big flashlights dancing around in the darkness.  Us in the darkness, slugging down bottles of beer that some older fella bought for us for a pound extra.  Sometimes one of the lads’d whip a bottle of vodka or whiskey from home.  We’d lace it Coke or Fanta, and in about a half hour flat we’d be as drunk as forty cats.

I look down the Main Street. 

Rubbish flits about in the gutter.  

I qualify now to sweep that, … maybe. 

Without saying anything to the lads that were too scared to try the pub, I drift off from in front of Parsons.

Me stomach is sick walking up to the pub door.  But sure me stomach’s always sick.  The slightest change from the world of yesterday and the day before, and the first thing to pack it in is me stomach.

I push in the pub door.

Inside the low-ceilinged room is dark, the bar barely lit with strips of creamy-white light, and only a steely-blue, neon Harp sign on the wall lighting the seats. 

First up on the right is a table full of Travellers; then the two lads huddling around a small, low table; then a group of fellas in after work playing cards under the Harp sign, and lorrying pints.

The jukebox blares “The Coward of the County.”

Me brain is going so fast I don’t notice if the lads had pints in front of them.  They might have already been refused and are just sitting there being thick.  I don’t go near them, ‘cause if they have been refused, then me going over to them would have been an automatic refusal. 

The ways to get served underage had gotten more studying amongst us than the Inter Cert exam itself.  Every Friday night up the lake, we’d be discussing it for hours.  All the lads that had been served said that it’s one of them things you have to do by yourself, and that there’s rules to follow:

Two underage lads standing at the counter have triple the chance of getting refused. 

If you act like your supposed to get served, then you will get served.

With this advice racing around in me brain, I swagger up to the counter, where the barmaid, a plump, dark-haired woman, probably around twenty five, is washing glasses in this thingamajig that looks like a small bucket with a black toilet brush upside-down inside in it; water and suds flying everywhere. 

She finally stops sloshing the glasses into this thingamajig for long enough that I say, all casual-confident:

“Eh, give me a pint of Smithwicks there.”

She pays no heed of me, just grabs another dirty pint glass and sticks it down over the toilet brush, more suds flying.

Not sure what to do, I freeze with desperation. 

If I get served, I’ll be a hero: If I get turfed out, I’ll be a right gobeshite.

I want to turn around and see if the lads have pints.  But if they do, then I’ll be so desperate, that I might make a mistake, and if they don’t, then I might give up too easy. 

As I watch her jamming the pint glasses into the toilet-brush-thingamajig and paying no heed to me, I start to get thick.  That’s always my way through this sort of situation.  I’ve seen Da do it a thousand times.

Fuck her anyway, I start to say to meself.  She should serve me or tell me to get the fuck out of here.  But this not paying attention to me, that’s not on! 

She puts a cleaned glass upside down on the shelf behind the counter; a once-upon-a-time white dishcloth spread out across the shelf starts to stain wet under the glass.  Without so much as a turn of her head, she reaches for another glass, splashes the dregs into the sink, and then plunges it into the glasswasher thingamajig.

That’s me breaking point.

“Hey!” I say, a bit louder than I expected it to come out.  “I’m waiting here for me pint.”

She stops, the cuff of her white cheesecloth blouse stuck to her arm with suds, and stares at me.

“Aragh, would you fuck off outta that,” she scoff-laughes.  “You’re probably on’y after gettin’ yer Inter results.”

I make my best angry-impatient face, and it’s well I know angry-impatient faces:  I’ve spent fifteen long years watching Da, and teachers, and every other grown up in my life.

“Would you give me me fucken’ pint,” I snap, forcing a fake weariness into my voice.  “I’m after a hard day’s work.”

I hear the words, and I know I’m saying them, but still I don’t recognize them as coming out of my mouth.

For effect, I let out a big sigh, and give an angry quick-shake of the head, me shoulders drawing up like I’m getting madder.

She pulls the glass, suds and all, out of the washer thingamajig.

Still looking at me through the corner of her eye, she dries off her wet arm with a dishcloth.

I feel the thrill of victory rush over me.  But like Da would do, I keep me angry-impatient-face until I have in me hand that which I wanted.

The pint glass clinks against the black plastic of the Smithwicks tap, and the beer flows with a quiet hiss, brown-yellow swirling bubbles flowing into the glass.

As I watch, a little fog of coolness settles on the glass while the beer fills up.

“Sixty p,” she says, setting the pint down on the counter in front of me, but looking away.

I hand her a pound note, and grab hold of the pint glass.

When she turns to the till, I take my first sip.

I drank plenty of warm and sudsy beer from bottles, but this pint of Smithwicks is cool and bitter, almost sharp.

She slaps four ten penny pieces on the counter, three salmons and one harp stare up at me. 

Immediately, she turns back to her glass washing.

I drop the coins into me Wranglers’ pocket, grab the pint and head for the lads. 

We’re giddy-grinning at one another, big pints on the little-low-table in front of us.  Still, we try to act like we’re just in for a regular Friday evening, after work pint.

“No problems,” I mumble to the lads.

“The boyos here,” one of the lads whispers, nodding toward the Travellers, “were hassling her.  She thought wan a them was barred, so she served us first and then dealt with them.”

I raise my eyebrows and glanced over at the Travellers.  There was a fair clatter of them, four or five, all leaning in over the table staring at their pints.

“You shoulda heard wan of them goin’ on about how it ‘‘twasn’t him, ‘twas he’s brether as smushed the telly’ in here last Easter.  Supposedly that brother’s up in the Joy now, and he broke the telly up there too.  He must fucken’ hate televisions.”

We all snigger.

“Is that them?” I nod at the jukebox.

The lads nod back.

“Jaysys, what’s next? ‘Who Shot J.R. Ewing?’  If I hear that fucken song played wan more time on the radio, me head’ll explode.”

I reach for a tenpenny piece in me Wrangler’s pocket.  

“Should we put on U2?  Even here must have ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’ by now, hey?  You know they played below in Ballina back in May!”

“No, no, no better to stay low key, not come to anyone’s attention.”

“I suppose,” I shake me head, and from behind a swig of me pint, glance over to the other side, towards the fellas playing cards. 

More fellas have come in, people who had actually done “a hard day’s work,” and were thirsty from it.  Well, some of them probably had worked hard, but they were all thirsty.

I keep an eye on me pint, trying not to drink too fast or too slow.

The game of poker next to us gets bigger; the stacks of ten pences and five pences on the table grow taller. 

One fella heads up to the bar to break a pound into five pences.

“Shag off outta that!” the barmaid snaps at him.  “Where d’ya think y’are, above in the bleddy Bank of Ireland?”

“Ah go on now, ya will, ya will.  An’ sure ye’re looking smashing yerself today,” he plawmasses her.  “Here, just give me fifty and ten fives.  That’ll do me fine.”

She gives in, turning to the till with his pound note.

We’re mad keen to play cards.  When no one has money for drink we play a lot of poker and blackjack ourselves, and fancy ourselves as card sharks.  But this is not the game to join.  If we won, they’d be pissed off at getting beaten by underages, and maybe tell the barmaid, or, more likely, bate the livin’ shite out of us. 

Still, in between big slugs of our pints, we watch them like hawks.  After a few minutes it’s clear that one of them is cheating, badly.  He kinda actually doesn’t even make a big-bones about it, which none of us can understand.  If he gets a hand that’s no good, he slips a few colored cards into the folds of a Wrangler jacket sitting on his knees. Then he throws the rest of his hand in on the table, being half-arsed careful to mix his cards in with all the other cards.  The other fellas had to know, but still they played on. 

It gets so bad that at one point, the cheater gets up to take a piss, and he very carefully picks up his jacket, keeping it in its folded position, looks the other players in the eyes and says: “Shake well before use, huh, huh?”

He gives the tightly folded jacket a little shake, laughs a cruel laugh, and heads for the jax.

Before I know it, me pint is finished, and I’m feeling extra good.  Me stomach is fine now.  It’ll only play up again when I need to go back out and deal with the regular world.

In fast whispers the lads argue that we should start a round.  But I wasn’t so sure about that.  What if someone went up to the bar and didn’t get served?  Then we’d all be fucked.  The lads say that’s how it’s done in pubs, and if we don’t do it, then we’ll stand out like underages. 

Still, I’ve been watching everyone, and only some people came back from the bar with rounds, more just go up and get their own pint.  We end up agreeing to be like Solomon, except we’re more extreme and we do cut the baby in two: We start a half round.  The oldest looking fella will go up and get two pints. Then a little bit later, one of us will mosey up and get another pint.  That way all of us would become familiar to the bar staff.

The poker players are back at it, everyone with their cards held up tight to their chests, peering over the top at the other players.  The cheater doesn’t seem to be the smartest card player, ‘cause for all his saving colored cards, he either can’t get them out of the jacket when he needs them, or he just fucks it up.  For one hand he backs himself on two pair of queens and jacks, only to lose to three fours. 

He gets fierce mad at that, glaring at the three fours winner, like he’s the one cheating.

Meanwhile, the Travellers are lashing into pints, still mostly leaning heavy on their table, but a couple of them now sprawling back across the taped-up, maroon pleather couches.

“Awright, I’ll drive out t’Breaffy Road tanight an’ tell de Cock ye’re on ta fight ‘im,” an older Traveller, with huge porkchop sideburns, says from his sprawl on the couch, staring hard at a pudgy-faced, nervous looking fella of about twentyish.

“Cock’s a big man,” another one of them says, nodding wiseman-like, before he takes a long slug of his pint. 

“An’ a strong man, an’ ….”

Another big gulp of beer, dampness all across his upper lip and moustache.

“An’ he ken fight like de divil, bu’, ….”

More beer, little rivers of it now running off the sides of his mouth.

“But ‘e’s too fond a dis stuff.”

He holds up his empty glass.

“I’ll drive out dere tanight, if an’ ya’ll fight,” the older one on the couch nods at the younger man.  “But if an’ I say fight ta de Cock, den it’s fight.  Dere’s no backin’ out.”

He turns to the fight advisor, but he’s gone for more pints.

I look over the shoulder of the card player next to me.  He has three sevens and two tens; and he’s having a hard time keeping it in.  It’s not even his turn to bet, and he keeps reaching for the stacks of coins in front of him, and then drawing back his hand. 

The cheater pushes a pound fifty in fives and tens into the pot; a bullying smile on his face; his cards held close to his chin. 

My fella’s hand stop moving, he peers over the top of his cards at the cheater, and then back to his three sevens and two tens. 

He folds, slowly placing his cards face down on the table.

The fight advisor is back with new pints.

“I’m telling ya, ya bitter git dis fight done afore de Cock starts ataken’ it serious.  I mane, he could astart trainin’.  He’s a trained man ya know, done a year’s boxin’ in a club over Kilburn.”

“’E could,” another older Traveller slurs damply, his head weaving from side to side.  “But what ya shud do, is ta challenge ‘im ta fight off a Chews-day night, after de dole.  He’ll have cash den, an’ as sure as brown shite comes outta my arsehole, he’ll drink de lot.   Dat’s de best time ta fight de Cock!”

He tries to nod, but mostly his head just weaves from side to side. 

The pudgy-faced young fella that’s going fighting, takes a deep breath, lifts up his pint and drinks heavy.

At the next table, the cheater lays down three kings; hearts, diamonds and spades.  He leans over the table to collect his heap of coins. 

My fella shakes his head, gathers up his money, slugs down his pint and leaves.

Our Solomon’s half-round arrives from the bar.

“That was great,” the round buyer says.  “She was nice and friendly to me this time.”

“We’re in now,” I answer, grabbing a hold of my pint, putting on the serious face of a fifteen-year-old man.