His Father's Son

Chapter 2

Joey sometimes wondered, had Australia been a good move? God yes, had it ever. Sure wasn’t it all blue skies and sunny days, he thought, and weren’t the people just the best of craic, even the bosses. There were no bosses in Ireland would give you the steam off their piss, but sure Macca there was all right. Hadn’t Macca been the greatest lately, even after all the bother with Shauna? Wasn’t Macca the first to say, “Take some time, Joey. Get her right.” No, Australia was the Lucky Country all right, and wasn’t it the best of places to be raising young Marti. It was a million miles from Ireland and talk of Banshees and little old women with shawls and wispy beards who would only be scaring the b’Jaysus out the boy.

Joey took the trailer to be washed before the afternoon smoko with Macca and the men from the transport section. The cab was hot inside and the wheel felt like it would scorch his palms if he didn’t spin it quickly enough. Driving a trailer filled up with iron ore day after day mightn’t be the best job in the world, he thought, but it was a regular wage and there was a lot to be said for a regular wage in this day and age, was there not?

Driving the trailer mightn’t be the highlight of his thirty-four years, but it had bought them a grand enough house and it had kept Shauna from sitting at a checkout or behind some counter or other. The family was looked after, Marti especially wanted for nothing, money was being set aside for his education and Joey was proud enough. The boy had a brain on him and if he were raised right and there was money enough for an education then there would be a fine job waiting for him when he was ready. Who could want more than that?

When the water from the hose hit the trailer there was hissing and steam raised off as the splashes evaporated. It was a blinder of a day – even the corellas that flew in from the bush were too hot to scratch about for a feed and sat hidden under branches and leaves in the gum trees for a bit of shade. The air seemed to hum when it was this hot. It was as thick as soup to walk through and the light played tricks on your eyes, making the road and the paddocks and the trees quiver like they were about to disappear in a shimmering mist.

On days like this Joey sometimes thought how different his life had become since he left Ireland on that wet May morning in 1968. He remembered his first job at Gleesons Bakery in Kilmora and the days spent carrying the flour in and the bread out. The faces and the air as white as a maggot, the men opening the windows and hacking out floury spit to the street, the pigeons below pecking away at it. He’d felt grand the day Gleeson had shown him the door – wasn’t the job only a favour to his father, the mighty hurling player Emmet Driscol. He felt glad to be turning his back on the pair of them.

Bitterness was all he felt for his own father. Bitterness and hatred was what he’d been made to feel. It could never be that way for Marti, he’d make sure of it. Joey had nothing but a pile of desperate memories left over from his own childhood, which in darker moments would come back to haunt him. It was always the way of it. The darker things looked, the more he remembered. It was at the core of him. He could still see his father now, the whole family living in fear and awe of him, meal times held in silence in case a noise tipped him into rage.

Joey could only have been about the age of Marti himself when he brought the whole family close to despair. His sister, Megan, younger still, had appeared at the dinner table in tears. She was covered head to toe in muck and carried a stench that made the room seem suddenly emptied of air. Emmet stamped his fist on the table, swearing before God he had been pushed beyond the beyonds this time.

“What is this ye are bringing to my house?” he said. His voice was trembling so much that it seemed his next word might hurl the plates and dishes to the floor. No one would look at him. All six children kept their heads down, even the babe Clancy buried himself deeper into his mother’s arms and scarcely dared breathe.

“I was looking for the fairies,” said Megan. She was crying and blurting out her words. “Tis a fairy rath we have in the yard. Joey showed me.”

When Megan pointed at Joey all the eyes shifted on him. He was the eldest and used to being looked on, but he could only see his father’s gaze racing towards him as he was lifted from his chair by one great hand. He knew he was in for trouble as his father dragged him by the hair into the yard. The fairy rath was the midden, he understood that now, but then he had been told about it by grown-ups and thought he was doing no wrong. His own mother had laughed about the midden being a fairy rath when he told Megan, but he knew this would have to be their secret now. He was glad it was him and not his mother or Megan being dragged out.

“Do ye see them?” said Emmet. He grabbed Joey’s head – his whole hand fitted round it – and he pushed him face down in the midden. There was the sound of his brothers and sisters shuffling into place to see what happened next, and then there was his father’s roaring. “Do ye see them yet? I’ll put ye through it, I will,” he said as Joey’s mouth filled with muck and potato skins. “I’ll put ye through it,” said Emmet again and again. Joey tasted the muck and the rotting waste. His nostrils and his eyes filled with thick black soil that stuck to him and then the earth was frozen and hard where the midden ended.

He cowered from his father where he lay. Grown men had flinched from Emmet Driscol on the hurling field, but to a mere boy he was a terrifying sight when the rage was on him. His father looked lost in his fury, then a mouse scurried out from the midden and he shouted, “Vermin.” Even with his eyes full of muck, Joey could see his mother and his brothers and sisters watching as Emmet’s great boot was stamped, catching the creature’s head. The children screamed at the sight and his mother gathered the little ones around her and led them back to the house. They had seen too much already. Joey was left alone with the sight of his father bringing down his boot again. He could still remember the way the mouse’s little legs kept going, it wasn’t dead yet. Then his father brought down his boot again and again, until the mouse was no more than a bloodied tangle of flesh and tiny white bones.

The whistle shook Joey out of his memory and he saw Macca come out, smiling and waving for the men from the transport section to follow. “G’day, Bluey,” he shouted.

Joey flicked the hose in a salute and Macca tapped twice on the packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket to show it was time for smoko. “Come on, Bluey,” shouted Macca. “What’s the story today, mate?”

Joey knew he had become a bit of a legend for his stories. The men who took the ore out and the men who moved it about never tired of hearing his stories. Joey thought the stories were nothing special, just the way people talked all the time in Ireland. He knew nobody back there would think they were anything special.

When the men had their afternoon smoko they were forever saying what a rare treat it was to see Bluey Driscol jumping down from the rig, a grin on his face, saying the words, “Fellas, ye’ll never believe this one …” He felt more at home with Macca and the men from the transport section than anywhere else in the world, and when they looked at him for a story at afternoon smoko he always felt it was his duty to think of something.

“So there I was, five minutes off the boat from Ireland,” he said, “and I swear to you fellas, I’d never had the shits like it before.”

There was laughter and back slapping. Some men sat back to savour Joey’s story like it was a fine wine he was serving them, and others sat forward with big expectant grins on their faces, waiting for the next line to follow.

“So, I’m running and taking off my belt at the same time, and my dukes are dropping,” he said.

“Your what?” said Pando the Greek, scrunching up his eyes.

“My dukes, trousers … pants, man. Anyway, I find the dunny in the terminal and I dive in there – I swear before the Holy Mother I was about to explode, so I was – and I plank myself down on the lavatory.”

pants“And?” said the men together.

And? “And nothing … well, not quite nothing. No sooner had my arse touched the rim of the porcelain but this bright green, slithering mass of thorns and teeth and horns and a forkey little tongue runs right under the door … and then the bugger spits at me.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” broke the men.

“What a welcome, mate,” said Macca.

“I swear, I thought it was some mickey biting bog lizard and it was gonna have my old fella away in those teeth of his. I froze. I swear, I b****y froze, and do you know what the little bleeder did? From nowhere it opens up this bright red umbrella thing around its neck and starts the spitting again and snarling too. By God, I thought I was a goner.”

Pando the Greek had tears in his eyes with the laughing and Macca and the other men were grabbing each other for support. It was a good story, the Lizard Story, thought Joey. Didn’t it always get a laugh? Sure, they liked a laugh, the fellas, and wasn’t there no harm in that. It would be a long day, the working day, without a bit of a laugh and a joke. Wasn’t laughter the greatest medicine on earth?

Joey laughed with the men but he knew his heart wasn’t in it. Truth be told, he hadn’t felt like laughing for a long time. Wouldn’t you know it, b****y Shauna’s tricks were creeping up on him. He thought the sun would do her the power of good, and it did sure, for a while there. For ten years they had been in Australia, but a fresh start cannot last forever, that was the fact of it. You could leave the old troubles behind and start again but sooner or later they’d catch up and scare the b’Jaysus out of you.

“Bluey, you’re not yourself, mate,” said Macca.

Joey Driscol hated hearing the obvious. Of course he wasn’t himself, who would be? If he wasn’t himself it was because he didn’t particularly want to be himself right now.

“Is it the television you’re in training for, Macca?” he said.

“What?”

“The television … some game show or other. It’s mental gymnastics you’re at, giving the old brain a workout, no?”

Macca closed his mouth and gave a little shake of his head, and Joey felt a sudden pang of guilt. It wasn’t Macca’s fault. It wasn’t his fault either, he knew that well enough, but it was the way of things, so it was. People bark when they feel like dogs.

his“Macca, mate … I’m sorry,” he said. “I have my fair share of problems at the minute.”

“Mate, we’ve all got them,” said Macca. He was staring to the front. Joey felt he didn’t even want to look at him.

“Macca, I know it, but sure mine are bad, real bad. Look, can you spare a hour for a few beers tonight?”

“Bluey, you’re supposed to be keeping off the grog.”

Joey knew he had sworn himself off the grog again. Couldn’t he spend weeks off it, months even. It wasn’t a problem, wasn’t it only a little vice he had. He leaned into Macca’s shoulder and directed his words carefully. “It’s my wife.”

Macca looked Joey squarely in the eye and Joey at once knew there was an understanding passed between them. He didn’t like talking to Macca about his problems – they should stay his own, surely – but if Macca took a drink with him tonight then maybe he could forget about the problems for a little while. It was getting all messy again, he thought. Shauna had been the grandest catch of them all, with the face in a million, the black hair and half of Kilmora chasing after her. She was a beauty; they all said it. But weren’t her lot known for the wildness, far and wide, as well. None of it mattered now though. Ireland was past, Marti was the future and Joey knew he had better start pulling himself together, for the sake of the boy. He checked himself suddenly. There was pity in him and that would never do.

“Fellas, ye’ll never believe this one …” he said, and there were eyes dried around the table.

“You know the first day I got the trailer was the first day I ever sat behind the wheel of any vehicle.”

“Nah, it is not possible,” said Pando the Greek.

“I swear to you, I had never so much as honked a horn in my life. I had my driving test in the morning and my interview at the top office in the afternoon, and if I hadn’t passed my test, I wouldn’t be standing here beside this trailer today. Sure wasn’t it a stroke of luck entirely. You see, the fella doing the test was from County Kerry and recognised my brogue. He came over with a wife and five chisellers and landed the job the day he got off the boat. Isn’t this a marvellous country?”

“Oh yeah, it’s the best country in the world, mate,” said Macca. “We know.”

“I won’t fault you there. I won’t. I won’t.” Joey leaned forward and the men followed. “Sure the Kerry man told me the test consisted of five questions on general road safety and if I got the majority of them right I could drive a car that day with a new licence in my back pocket. Now, I tell you not a word of a lie here, I got three of them wrong … but didn’t he pass me anyway!”

The men laughed at Joey’s story, and Macca said, “You Irish, b****y mongrels.”

Joey laughed too. “Sure, we are, we are, but I think the Kerry men are the worst. But now, maybe I’m lying there because couldn’t I still never drive a car in my life, and when I got the job with the trailer that afternoon I had to ask the Kerry man to drive it home for me. I didn’t know another soul in the whole country. He did as well, and do you know what he told me?”

“I wouldn’t like to guess, mate?” said Macca, his face was the colour red with all the laughing he’d done.

“He said, ‘Set out in the early hours when there’s no traffic about, to get a bit of practice.’ So I did. For the first couple of weeks I drove into work at five in the morning and arrived for the job two hours early. Christ, they must’ve thought I was keen, or retarded, I don’t know which.”

Macca laughed so hard his face was wet with tears and sweat and he had to take off his hat and scratch his head. The whistle blew again for the end of the afternoon smoko and Joey found himself with a wide smile sitting on his face as he watched the men from the transport section head back to work. They were a grand bunch of fellas to have around, he thought. They were mostly gone when Macca put on his hat and turned to Joey. “Bluey Driscol, you are a b****y rouge, but a man after my own heart,” he said. “You have no need to be going on the grog when you can laugh like that.”

“Don’t I know it,” said Joey, his smile fading.

His work was done for the day and he went back to the trailer and parked it in the shade of the depot to save the paintwork and keep the fuel tank out of the sun, then he punched his time card and headed for home.

The house looked deserted when he approached it from the road. The curtains were drawn and the front door and the mozzie screen were both closed tight. He looked up and down the street. All the other houses had windows open and doors jammed with gumboots and shovels and crates to let the rare and blessed breeze pass through whenever it could. Joey put his key in the door and turned the handle, but there was no sound.

“Marti, are ye here, son?” he called out.

There was no answer and then Shauna showed herself in the hallway. “Oh, you’re home,” she said.

“I am. Where’s the boy?”

“I don’t … I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? It’s gone five o’clock.” Joey slammed down his keys and felt his teeth clench tightly. “He should have been home hours ago.”

“Well, I heard him come in. I told him to feed himself. He must be playing.”

“Jaysus, Shauna, you should be feeding him. You’re his mother.” Joey shook his head. He could barely bring himself to look at his wife, standing there in her nightclothes. “Has this been you for the day, ye haven’t even dressed?”

“Oh feck off, will ye.”

“The boy needs looking after. He needs his mother.”

“He can mind himself.”

“Isn’t he only eight years old … Christ Almighty, will ye ever take a look at yeerself, woman.” He grabbed Shauna by the arm and forced her to stare into the mirror hanging in the hallway. “Look … look, would ye?”

“I won’t, I won’t look,” she said and struggled to free her arm from Joey’s grip.

“Look, look at what you’re doing to yourself.”

“No. I won’t. Leave me. Leave me.”

Leave meJoey watched Shauna in the mirror, her face contorted, and then he threw her arm aside. “Gladly,” he said and snatched up his keys, showing her his back as he walked for the door he had just come through.