Carn

  “No—what?”

  “Wee hard balls.”

  Then they stood looking at each other as if they had just overheard the announcement of world war three.

  As Sadie pulled on her dress, she caught a glimpse of a bin on two wheels coming around the corner. It was Blast Morgan—who else could it be?

  Regular as clockwork, the cap parked askew on his head and half an inch of ash dangling from his lips as he made his way through the morning blinking at the light. He took off the cap and leaned against a wall to relight his cigarette. Blast this, blast that, blast that cold, blast that heat. Then he donned his cap once more and set off again. After that they all did their turn, the minute hand of a clock pressing predictably onward. Sadie knew them, every one, their time and their place, where they were coming from and where they were going to.

  At the top of his garden, just beneath the window, Mr Galvin began his day’s work with the snip of a garden shears.

  The meat plant horn hooted.

  Lawn mowers began to whirr.

  Carpets were beaten in the lane.

  The churchbell went ding dong four times an hour.

  The chickenhouse fan hummed.

  On it goes, thought Sadie, on and on and on.

  The tick tock days of Carn, a market town half a mile from the border.

  She clipped on an earring and said to herself in the wardrobe mirror, “Wotcher, gel! Going down the Old Kent Road, then?”

  Through the markets of Portobello she sauntered and then home to the flat in Walm Lane Willesden, armed to the teeth with trinkets.

  “That’s wot I want, innit?” she said to The Infant Of Prague. “Oh, Carn’s okay, but I ’aven’t started living yet, ’ave I? Do you get my drift, Infant Of Prague?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and wiggled her toes. Sandie Shaw Sadie. Mr Galvin came into her head. “You’re all the modern girl,” he smiled, “that’s what you are young Rooney. All mad for the pop orchestras and the short skirts. What would the likes of us around here know about the like of that? We went out with the ark.”

  Sadie shook her head. “Well one way or another, I’m getting out Mr Galvin. I’m not staying here to spend my life waiting for Blast to come around the corner every morning.”

  “I don’t blame you one little bit,” he replied, “that Blast would drive anybody out.”

  Sadie tidied up her room and went downstairs where her mother put her breakfast brusquely in front of her villifying a guitar-playing priest she had heard talking about teenage parties on the radio the night before.

  “That’s what we’ve come to expect,” she said acidly. “But not in this house, I can tell you.”

  Sadie finished up her breakfast and set off for the packing shed of Carn Poultry Products where she was due to begin work at two.

  “They’re coming today.”

  Una Lacey put down the phone. “We’ll have some action now Sadie,” she said.

  So they were coming. All the way from London. There were two girls. Carol and Jane. And a boy. A fella. A bloke. All Una’s cousins. From redbus London, with tales by the score of mods and rockers and with-it princes in clubs and discoes that stayed open the whole night long. Sadie could not wait.

  They both lay on the fairgreen looking up at the blue glass of the sky. “You just want to see their clothes,” said Una. “They have everything they want. They get far more money that we ever see. But they’re good crack. At least the girls are. I don’t know what he’s like.”

  Sadie tried to imagine what he looked like. She thought of a thousand faces but could not choose any single one. “What does he work at?” she asked Una.

  “He doesn’t work. He goes to art college.”

  Art College. John Lennon had been to one. They lived a wild life in those places. There were girls there. Girls who were not afraid to speak their mind and live whatever way they wanted. He would be well used to girls.

  So that’s that, she said to herself resignedly.

  They lay there until it was time to go and meet them. Sadie’s spine tingled as they watched the vehicles from the distant towns and the more remote hamlets of the hinterland unload.

  Then Una stood on her tiptoes and waved. When Sadie saw them appear, she instantly felt as if she were dressed in rags. She wanted to rush into the public toilet and bar the door. They wore pearls and their slim wrists jangled with bracelets. Their lipstick was bright pink, their faces made up to the nines. Their London accents seemed to soar high above the rooftops and sit in the clouds like magic. Their perfume filled the air. A farmer on his way home stopped dead in the middle of the The Diamond and stood staring with his mouth open as if he were hallucinating. They set down their suitcases and lit cigarettes. “Oh girls—this is my pal Sadie.” They smiled broadly and shook hands. Then Sadie heard another voice, a male London voice. He had hair like George Harrison, a moptop cut above the ears. He wore a brown corduroy waistcoat and a striped shirt. She followed his bright hipster trousers all the way down to his elasticated suede boots. She was so overwhelmed she didn’t know what to say and was glad of the distraction when Una thrust a case into her hand.

  They set off down the road together, alive with chatter, and when Sadie Rooney set off for home, she felt as though she were cruising six inches above the road.

  Through the open door of the Golden Chip Bob Dylan shouted that he’d got no secrets to conceal, the girls from The Park draped across the shimmering chrome of the jukebox as if they were trying to climb inside his very words.

  Sadie tensed as she saw them come in. He was with them. “There you are Sadie,” called Una. “Here Dave, you sit down there beside Sadie.”

  He smiled and sat beside her. She reddened. They ordered coffees and after that the conversation wandered to where she had hoped it would, to the beaches of Brighton where a phalanx of motorcycles stood outside a hotel, leather-jacketed rockers fondling chains as they faced the oncoming mods in their knee-length parkas. “I love the Beatles,” he said. “I’ve got all their albums.”

  Albums he calls them, thought Sadie. Not records. Or long players. Or elpees. Albums.

  “Those rockers, they would really do for you,” said Carol, tapping ash into the tray.

  “What’s this about you being in a group?” Una said cheekily to him. “Are you?”

  He nodded. “The Trygons. We play The Stones. And The Who. And our own songs.”

  “They’re fab,” said Carol.

  Afterwards they set off for the carnival dance, linking each other, smoking cigarettes and singing. Reared in the teeming surburbs of London, they had more to worry them than sour old men and crotchetty women so for their benefit they wiggled their hips and sang even louder. Dave walked on ahead, trying to make sense of his new surroundings, the tiny shops and littered streets. Down at the carnival, mock screams carried upward into the navy blue sky, sparks from the dodgems fantailed above the cacophony, Frank Sinatra crooned from a hanging loudspeaker, his intimacy wrapping its arms around the town. The swingboats seemed to stop just short of the moon. They tossed pennies on to chequerboards, Dave picking out a bullseye on a target with one single shot.

  The dancers made their way in scattered knots to a marquee decked with coloured lights. “Dancing in a tent?” Dave cried incredulously.

  Inside, oil-slicked countrymen clustered together beside the mineral crates, hiding behind the smoke and stealing mouthfuls from hidden whiskey bottles. Girls fawned adoringly over the band. The singer kicked his instep and winked, pasting back his accordeon-pleated hair. Dave and the girls stared in wonder as if they had come upon a secret commune of Martians. They stared at the six poles supporting the canvas. They stared at the band’s blazers. They stared at the posters advertising treasure hunts and parish socials. They had tumbled back in time, lost in space at the Carn annual grand carnival. The locals eyed them viciously as they danced, narrowed their eyes and stood with their arms folded. When Dave went down on this hunkers to do the Woolly Bully
with Carol, they muttered under their breath, “Woolly bully—Woolly Ricky!”

  Carried along on the tidal wave of their confidence, Sadie came into her own. She danced for all she was worth, the canvas became the sky over London.

  Dave clicked his fingers and mouthed the words of the songs. They danced until the band stood upright with chins out and announced the national anthem. The jealous countrymen at the back hoped that Dave would give them an excuse to put an end to his cockiness but he didn’t, he stood like the rest and then they walked home, past the padlocked amusements and Sadie Rooney went rigid when she felt an arm slowly circle about her waist and heard his soft voice say, “Can I walk home with you?”

  Sadie looked at the stars above the town and kissed his lips as he said, “See you tomorrow then Sadie, okay?”

  She wanted to say tell me more about the band about the tubes about Trafalgar Square about Soho please tell me but she couldn’t. She just looked at him and played with a shirt button, then watched him walk down the lane and went inside to face her mother.

  But when she started into her tirade, for the first time Sadie heard none of it, it was as if she were floating in the vastness of a black sky, adrift like a spaceman from his craft and away from all that was grey in the town of Carn. Somehow a gap had opened and as her mother ranted, Sadie clutched at the new warmth she was feeling for all she was worth, the words “insolent” and “discipline” tiny irrelevant lights that winked somewhere miles below her on the earth.

  They spent all their time together after that. Carol and Jane fluttered their eyelashes when they appeared, cooing, “’Ere’s the two lovebirds. Where ’ave you been then?”

  Una Lacey took Sadie aside and whispered, “You know what Sadie? They’re all mad jealous in the factory. They say you’ve turned into a snob, that you won’t talk to them. What do you care about them Sadie?”

  Sadie shrugged her shoulders and smiled for she knew that she wouldn’t have to put up with the small, envious minds of Carn for much longer. As she lay on the fairgreen watching Dave Robinson from Islington fashion daisy chains, she silently embroidered their phrases into her own speech. “Clever clogs,” she said to herself, and “Innit?”

  In her mind she was a long way from the fair-green.

  And soon she would be further. The strobelights of the The River Club melting on her face. They lay by the lake and boys Sadie knew sidled up to Carol and Jane insisting, “I can swim out to the island. I can. Would you like me to show you?” They almost cried with frustration when they saw Dave lock his thumbs into the buckle of his hipsters. Such effortlessness was far beyond them.

  “This is ace,” said Dave, “really ace.”

  When the first stories reached her ears in the factory canteen, Sadie knew their jealously had got the better of them. They leaned over clandestinely to each other and threw mysterious expressions in her direction. They raised their voices slightly when they mentioned his name. At first Sadie paid no attention, well aware that any reaction on her part would only whet their appetites. They folded their arms on their chests and nodded knowingly. They talked behind cupped hands. When Sadie appeared they broke into excited laughter and then went back to their tasks suddenly.

  Resentment began to grow in Sadie. It gnawed at her all day long much as she tried to submerge it. She knew why they were jealous of her. They were jealous because she would not let herself be stuck in Carn for the rest of her life. They did not want to be shown up so they were turning on her.

  “They’re bitches,” she said to Una when the canteen had closed one Friday afternoon. “Imagine making up all those stories. How could they stoop so low?”

  Una said nothing, picked at her nail and looked away emptily.

  “Do you know what I heard one of them saying in the freezer when she knew I was coming? Why would he bother with the likes of her when he has Surgeon McDonagh’s daughter from Trinity College chasing him around the town? They’re jealous bitches so they are. Aren’t they Una?”

  Una shrugged her shoulders but did not reply.

  “They didn’t have to say that,” Sadie went on. “That’s an awful thing to say. I don’t care how jealous they are.”

  Una lit a cigarette. She blew out the match and stared at the dead black head for a moment, then said, “It’s true Sadie.”

  Sadie felt as if the canteen had suddenly tilted on its side. “What?” she said, her voice trembling. Una dragged on the cigarette and bit her lip. “He was with her after you left him on Friday night.”

  Sadie’s mouth dried up. The smoke seemed to swirl all about her. She felt the redness coming to her face. She awkwardly gathered up the delf and cutlery and tried to smile but she knew Una could see right into her mind and it froze.

  She went back to the factory floor feeling cold but with her face burning. Every exchange between her workmates, no matter how innocent made her want to be sick. She felt as if she had a vile skin disease she had brought upon herself.

  When she was collecting her pay packet in the office that evening, a group of girls behind her purposely knocked against her and said, “Look who’s in front of us—Lady Muck from London. I wonder where she’s bringing Mr Stuck-up tonight?”

  She pushed past them and when she was safely out of sight, she ran from their taunts and when she got home, she swore to herself that it wasn’t true, that somehow Una had got it wrong but she still couldn’t stop the tears, and when she waited for him on The Diamond that evening she felt as if the whole town was preparing itself for her meeting with Dave Robinson.

  A small rowing boat bobbed as Dave stared across the blue mirror of the lake in silence. Sadie tried to steady her voice. “I’ve made a fool of myself. You’ve made a show of me in front of everyone.”

  He did not reply for a long time, then suddenly he turned and said sharply, “I don’t have to listen to you going on like this Sadie. For Christ’s sake, we’re not married or anything. I only took a girl out a couple of times. Nothing more.”

  A fishing reel spun in the distance. Sadie tried to gather her thoughts. All the pictures she had built up in her mind since meeting him now winged away liked birds.

  “You take life too seriously anyway Sadie. It’s just a holiday. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  He held her by the arms and kissed her on the forehead but she did not feel it for her flesh was like marble and when they walked back to town, she left him when they came to The Diamond for she could not bear the thought of the eyes peering from the twitching curtains and the shadows of the shop doorways. He squeezed her hand and said goodbye. “Maybe someday you can come over and hear the Trygons,” he laughed. Sadie just stared blankly after him then turned and walked down the main street, the shadows of the hot summer day all around her.

  The first week after that was the hardest. She was hit on the neck by a flying gizzard and did not turn around when she heard one of them say, “He was with a different one on Saturday night. Talk about being led up the garden path. She’ll be damn glad of us yet.”

  Una Lacey consoled her on the way home. “What do you care about him Sadie? There’s plenty more fish in the sea. A fellow with a car, that’s what we want.”

  Sadie nodded but it meant nothing to her. When Una asked her if she would be going to the Golden Chip that night, she just shook her head. She felt that none of it was worth fighting any more.

  She would just drift with it and it could take her wherever it would.

  Her mother was the first to remark on the change in Sadie after that. She said to her neighbours, “I think Sadie is getting a bit of sense at last. She’s a great help to me about the house these days.” In the factory too, the change was evident. She did not now turn away when they spoke about a local boy who would be “a good catch”. Nor when they effusively described house interiors or baby clothes. She became afraid that any lack of interest on her part might prompt a return to the animosity they had harboured towards her in the past. When she visited the boutique, she no lon
ger automatically chose the brightest clothes but selected something she felt would attract less attention and closer to their taste. The English inflections in her speech disappeared. She dated boys from the factories and listened attentively as they spoke at length about motor car engines and farm work. When a glittering new engagement ring was proffered in the canteen, Sadie beamed with the rest in order that she might be drawn closer to them, eager for the protection and security of mundanity. She dreaded a return to the probing eyes and the whispers of “Look who’s come down in the world then”, to the sweat on her palms and the redness of her face.

  When it was announced that one of them was “tying the knot”, they all cheered and Sadie said nothing at all about the empty feeling inside her.

  And when she went home and the blackest of moods took her over, there was nothing she wanted to say, to anyone.

  When the first notices advertising Purple Pussycat—Ireland’s wildest rock group! were put up in The Sapphire Ballroom, Sadie Rooney paid them no attention. She had heard them speak derisively of it at work but it was of no consequence to her, until one evening on her way home from the factory Sadie was startled out of her daydream by a loud Dublin voice and looked up to find herself confronted by the headbanded figure of a six foot male and his female companion in a long print skirt. They smiled out at her from an assemblage of pots and pans roped to an orange haversack.

  “We’re looking for some place to camp,” they said. “We’re here for the Purple Pussycat gig. We’ve hitched from the city.”

  Sadie directed them to the Hairy Mountains and stared after them, a nervous excitement growing in her stomach. She could not sleep that night and no one was more surprised than Una Lacey when Sadie arrived at the Golden Chip that following night. “Are you going to The Sapphire Sadie?” asked Una. “I thought you’d given all that up.”