Rory & Ita by Roddy Doyle

  ‘In the generality of politics in Ireland, people like to feel that they are not just electoral fodder. People like to be listened to by the politicians they have elected, and come away from clinics feeling that they are regarded as important human beings. Michael Woods set up clinics and, in addition, he canvassed every area, even in places where Fianna Fáil would not have been held in high regard at that time, Sutton and Howth. People said that we were wasting our time, but Woods was determined to go in everywhere, and he did. The fact that he had a doctorate was helpful, and made him very acceptable to people who had no problems. In other areas, where there were social problems, Michael gave a lot of his time to helping individuals with their difficulties.

  ‘Election campaigns are highly emotional – soaring adrenaline and non-stop hard work. There was postering to organise, publicity to be distributed, and house-to-house canvassing. There was also the usual contingent of well-wishers, who’d waste your time talking of elections long ago, or people who thought that shouting “Up Dev!” or “Up the Republic!” was winning voters.

  ‘I remember the count. I was exhausted from the campaign and got tired of the election-count atmosphere, and came home to Kilbarrack. I was sitting, talking to Margo Woods, when the word came through that Michael had been elected. Then Michael arrived, and the whole place erupted. It was absolutely marvellous. Michael was subsequently appointed a Minister of State and Party Chief Whip. In 1979 he became a Cabinet Minister, and has held many such posts.

  ‘After that, I somehow became chairman of the constituency, and Director of Elections for the next election. And that was an even better elation, and result. Woods topped the poll, with over ten thousand votes. We won two seats out of four – we very nearly made it three. I think that was 1981;* time marches on and the years march into each other.’

  ‘My sister Breda was living in the old home in Tallaght with her husband, George, and three children. She was the nearest to me; she was hardly a year younger than me. And we were pretty close. She’d also worked in Juverna Press for a few years, before moving to the Stamping Department in Dublin Castle. When Breda got married, she moved to London with George, who was an aircraft engineer. When my mother died, she’d willed the house to Breda. They came back to Ireland, and George got a job in the Potez aircraft firm, near Baldonnell.

  ‘She smoked incessantly. She smoked so much she took to rolling her own cigarettes, and she could roll one faster than the average person would take to get a pack of cigarettes out of their pocket. And, inevitably, she got cancer. Cancer was endemic in the women of my family. My grandmother died of cancer, two of my aunts – so it was probable that the gene was there. So, Breda got the cancer, and died. She was fifty-seven, or so. It was devastatingly sad. She was a very lovable person.’

  ‘My generation first became aware of “abroad” as a destination, apart from emigration, when a few of our better-heeled and prosperous neighbours began talking about the Costa Brava; it was the done thing. I thought, Very nice, and forgot about it. In the course of my work as a teacher, I’d been to a few conventions in Britain and, later, with Anco, I managed to get to Germany and Britain, for exhibitions. But apart from that and the odd trip to Ballybunion – which wasn’t foreign travel, but probably should have been listed as such – we never went anywhere. And then, suddenly, we discovered that we now had the means to go on holidays. In fact, it was when Ita went back to work and the kids had finished school. So, off we went to Torremolinos, and enjoyed that no end. Then we went somewhere else in Spain; I think it was Benidorm. We went to Italy, to Rimini, and we saw Venice and Florence – and one of those events you can look back and laugh at – the bus turned a corner, high up in the mountains, and, right up on the hill, a man under a tree, with only the trunk of the tree behind him, making himself comfortable, trousers down around his ankles. All like a camera shot; I can still see him.

  ‘Over to France – we stayed in Cannes, and visited Nice and St-Tropez, and saw all the marvellous sights. We went to Italy again, up beyond Genoa, to Alassio. Then, another time, we went to the south of Italy; we started from Venice, down to Sorrento, and back up to Venice, and home – amazing, even apart from the fact that there were earth tremors, a palpable earthquake, when we were in Venice. When we were in Sorrento, we took a trip over to Capri. On the way back, a tornado or hurricane hit the Bay of Naples. We were tossed up and down by huge waves and we thought we were goners. However, we survived, with a lot of very frightened people.*

  ‘We went to Greece. We had intended going on a nine-day tour but, after a day, when we toured Corinth and Mycenae, the place where Agamemnon was born, and a wonderful open-air theatre, we sat down and said, “Look. If we go on a nine-day tour, it’ll be like the rock that St Paul is supposed to have stood on, day after day.” So, we said, “No, we won’t do that. We can imagine the rest.† So we went to a place, Rafina, about eighteen miles from Athens, a very pleasant place, and ferries coming in and ferries going out; you could spend all day looking at all the different kinds of people, and their attitudes, coming and going on the ferries. On the Sunday, we got Mass, as everybody else did – it was broadcast to the whole town, and it took about two or three hours. Women who were in the church would come scurrying out, probably to make sure the meat wasn’t being burnt at home, and they’d come back; they were coming to and fro. The clergy were all dressed up, in full dress; they really go about it in a marvellous way, and the music was very, very nice. There was no escaping the Mass, orthodox, Greek, whether you wanted it or not.

  ‘We went to Russia in 1982. We landed in Moscow and there was an almighty row because the Customs men found a bundle of Bibles and religious tracts in the baggage of a little get from Lurgan, who was actually a teacher. After a long delay, we were allowed to proceed, and we arrived at the hotel. I ordered some tea, and it arrived in a bucket-sized teapot and it remained in the room until we left. Cold tea is very pleasant. We went into the Kremlin, and saw all the wonderful sights,* but not Lenin’s tomb – there was a queue a mile long to visit him. I discovered the secret of how the ranks of Red Army soldiers marched in perfect step, in ranks of sixteen or more. There were lines painted on the road, across Red Square, and, between the lines, white spots, each about twenty-seven inches apart. If every soldier placed his boot on the spot – and he did – everybody was in line.† We inadvertently strolled into a construction site, all soldiers, but the lads with the shovels had Asian faces. We apologised but everybody just smiled.* And we visited the GUM, the famous department store, just off Red Square, where Mrs McCarthy from Kenmare bought a radio valve for her local parish priest. He’d given her the index number; it was, apparently, one of the few places in the world where a valve for an old radio could be bought. We walked along the banks of the Muskva River in the quiet evening. Men were busy, exercising their dogs by throwing sticks into the river for the dogs to retreive.

  ‘We flew to Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, in Central Asia. The flight was attended by large Russian women, built like Sumo wrestlers, and they had very hairy legs. One of the young girls on the trip with us asked Boris, our Russian guide, why Russian women had hairy legs. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘The winters in Russia are very cold, and hairy legs are a great comfort.’ The flight attendants handed out plastic cups of water to everybody, and said, “Trink,” and everybody “trank”.

  ‘Samarkand – another lovely hotel. We visited the observatory built by Tamerlaine, the grandson of Genghis Khan, and the Grand Mosque. We also saw Lenin’s bedroom. The guide had warned the women that we were in a Muslim country and to be careful in their dress. However, there were a couple of lassies from Cork who had no intention of being constrained. One of them was particularly well-endowed and was wearing a football jersey and little else. We were in the bazaar when we heard a strange sound, a buzzing noise. It grew louder, and a policeman tapped me on the shoulder and indicated that the young lady was giving great offence. I didn’t feel like getting into trouble for something I’d no c
ontrol over, so I said to the young lady that we’d better get out of the bazaar before there was trouble. “Feck them,” said she, but we got out of the bazaar. Later, in a bookshop, we spotted the two girls surrounded by a swarm of the local boys. They were now frightened, and I went to the boys and ordered them away. They just laughed and kept trying to maul the girls. I then had an inspiration, and reached into my shirt pocket and produced my Anco identity card. Why I had it in my pocket on holiday, I don’t know, but, when they saw the card, they all took to their heels. They probably thought I was one of the KGB.

  ‘Later, my Ronson lighter was stolen, I suspect by one of the waiters. I had to find matches. None to be had in the hotel. I was directed downtown. None to be had at the tobacco shops. I was waved further downtown. Finally, I discovered that selling matches was a different job and was separately licensed. I found an old chap who sold matches. He looked at me, and said, “Englaise”. I shook my head, and said, “Irelanda”. He looked puzzled, then said, “Ah! De Valera, Georgie Best.” He was delighted with himself and we had a long conversation, he in Uzbek, me in “English”. I got the matches, and then discovered that I’d been struck by the curse of Tamerlaine. We’d been warned not to drink the water, but I had; I’d added it to some of my John Powers whiskey – the damage was done. I was desperate to get to a toilet, and was eventually directed to the town jacks. It was built about a thousand years ago and, when I got in, I realised it hadn’t been cleaned out since it was built. The business end was star-shaped, with a short wall on each side of each cubicle – and a hole in the ground. The local cornerboys just hung about inside the building, smoking and, no doubt, commenting on my Western equipment. As I applied myself, swarms of metallic flies, gold, silver, green, blue and every other colour of the spectrum rose out of the hole in the ground. There were millions of them. They buzzed all over me. I survived the ordeal, and Boris prescribed a diet of boiled rice and hard-boiled eggs, with green tea. He said it was a three-day treatment. It worked.

  ‘We went by sleeper train to Tashkent, the capital of the region. The plain looked vast and the pervading odour was that of human faeces, the general fertiliser used in the area. In the morning, there was a babushka with a samovar of tea in the corridor.

  ‘Tashkent was newly restored after a dreadful earthquake. Among other things, we were shown the room where Lenin had slept. It had a small wooden table, with an ancient typewriter, small iron bed and a small rug on the floor. It looked very like the bedroom we’d seen in Samarkand, and I should mention that we’d seen the identical room in Moscow, and we’d see it again in Dushanbe and in Leningrad. We visited a junior school, since a lot of people on the tour with us were teachers. It was impressive. The children sang, and we noticed that the senior people were Russians and the attendants were Asian. Whenever women met on the street and stopped to talk, they immediately hunkered down and, when they were finished talking, they stood up and went about their business. We were taken on a tour of the countryside and saw a co-operative farm. It appeared to be very successful and popular, and allowed for individual farmers to sell some of their produce in the bazaars. We saw one old guy sitting beside a pile of watermelons being picked up by a very substantial limousine; a young lady in colourful robes got out of the car to assist him, displaying an elegantly clad silken leg and shoes that Ita said were the most expensive to be had in Europe. Our guide was a Hollywood-like wide-boy with a mouthful of gold teeth. The gold teeth were ubiquitous to the region.

  ‘We went up to a village tea house,* with large double beds on which everybody sat and talked, or lolled, and drank “choy,” the green tea. I did some sketching, and a woman came from a little house and joined us. She was a scientist and was recuperating at a dacha which had been provided for that purpose. She wrote a little note on the sketch, and I still have it. She said she was Tartar in origin,† and Ita and herself had an animated conversation, Ita in English and the woman in Russian, and Ita was able to tell me how many children the woman had and all about her business.

  ‘We flew to Dushanbe, in Tajikistan. We were given priority on boarding the plane, over American, British and German tourists, and, finally, the locals.‡ The locals were laden with kettles, teapots and every contrivance, presumably for use in the tea houses. The cabin soon stank with the odour of musk and what we afterwards learnt was hashish, which the men were smoking. The inside of the plane was dire – tattered wallpaper on the sides of the cabin. We shot up into the sky and Ita disappeared. I looked around and discovered that somebody had removed the bolts that fixed the seat to the floor and, on our descent, I had to grab Ita, because now the seat was sliding in the opposite direction.

  ‘Dushanbe was a nice city and we saw the usual sights, including Lenin’s bedroom. We weren’t encouraged to wander the town, because there was some local unrest as a consequence of the Russian war in Afghanistan, not too far away, and a lot of the local Tajiks had relatives across the border. One of the men on the tour told us that he’d been in the park the night before, and a demonstration started up; and police with dogs had made short work of the demonstration. We went for a picnic up in the mountains, the Hindu Kush. We were warned not to dally on the road, as there was a constant stream of lorries laden with soldiers on their way to Afghanistan, and we were told that the lorries would not swerve or stop if we got in the way. So, we didn’t dally on the road. We walked down from the pass and, on the way, we were greeted by a couple of Russian generals and their “wives,” all roaring drunk in a field off the road. I never saw so much gold braid in my life. They wanted us to join in the fun. We politely declined the invitation and carried on down to where our own picnic was being provided. I had finished my cure, after the curse of Tamerlaine, and I got lucky because a large number of the party were respectable teachers and didn’t drink alcohol. I had more than my fair share of the lovely Georgian wine and I started a singsong, to the mortification of some of our party but to the delight of a large group of Germans.

  ‘Then we flew to Leningrad, a very lovely city, and saw Lenin’s bedroom and a circus. The circus had the usual bear, and a large Russian lady in mesh tights controlled the bear.* Then home.’

  ‘My time for retirement came on the 8th of December, 1988, and I was glad to get out. I’d been very enthusiastic about the work and had enjoyed meeting all the people around the country. However, there were lots of new people coming in, as a consequence of the fusion of different agencies, including Anco, to form a new organisation, called FÁS. I began to feel that some of these people had a very hazy knowledge of what the job entailed, as I understood it. So, what’s new? They probably saw me as a dinosaur, and I was occupying an office, now in high demand. Subsequently, a new scheme of retraining for the unemployed, called Job Search, was introduced and, as a “very experienced” officer, I was asked to participate. I accepted the invitation, as I reckoned that my main task was complete and I knew I wouldn’t be given a serious assignment so close to retirement. I was now out of my office – out of sight, out of mind – and experienced the most stressful period of my working life. The scheme was to cater for long-term unemployed people. Unemployment figures were very high, and there was also a considerable number of people drawing the dole who were suspected of also working in the black economy. Many more were untrained for the new industrial processes that were gradually coming on stream towards the end of the 80s. Many of these people were very pleased with the new opportunities but quite a number were displeased – they were being discommoded. Essentially, the participants would be required to attend for interview and would then be assigned to training courses deemed suitable for their needs. I was assigned to do the interviewing in Swords and Coolock, and it was not a pleasant experience. At the end of a day, all the positive feelings of helping people could be swamped by the sheer negativity of the smaller numbers of objectors. The stress arose from the sheer predictability of the objections raised by some of the people who were antagonistic to the scheme. They argued and blustered
and produced the most amazing reasons for non-compliance and, of course, held me personally accountable for their plight. Others – most, in fact – were delighted with the opportunity. One particular character who was in the bad books with the Social Welfare Department was called to be interviewed, by me. He came to the office I was occupying and said that he wouldn’t be available for interview. I told him I’d no option but to set a date for the interview. That afternoon, as I was strolling down the main street in Swords during the lunch break, I met him face to face – High Noon. He threatened me in a very aggressive manner. I recommended a training course for him. The following Friday, when I was having my lunch in the local hotel with some of my colleagues, he came in, half-jarred, and he assailed me with a litany of bad names and descriptions, and he attempted to physically assault me. He didn’t succeed, and was ejected from the hotel by the staff and customers. The next week he declared to Social Welfare that he’d found a job, and he ceased drawing the dole.

  ‘The 8th of December rolled up, and I had completed forty-eight years working, as a printer, a teacher and an industrial-training advisor. I’d been particularly fortunate in my working life, and had moved seamlessly from one job to the next. I was never unemployed for a single day. I never made a fortune but I got my pension, which I’ve enjoyed, and I’ve no worries about the rise and fall of stocks and shares.’