The Street and other stories (10 page)

“Fr Kelly, I’d love a wee word with you, so I would.” She rose slowly from her pew. “If you have the time, that is.”

“I’ve always time for you, my dear.”

He helped her to her feet.

“Come on and we’ll sit ourselves down over here.”

They made their way to a secluded row of seats at the side of the church. Fr Kelly sat quietly as Mrs McCarthy recounted the story of her disagreement with Fr Burns. When she was finished he remained silent for some moments, gazing quizzically over at the altar.

“Give up your politics or give up your religion, Mrs McCarthy? That’s the quandary, isn’t it?”

He spoke so quietly, for a minute she thought he was talking to himself. Then he straightened up in the seat, gave her a smile and asked, “Are you going to give up your politics?”

“No,” she replied a little nervously and then, more resolutely: “No! Not even for the Pope of Rome.”

He nodded in smiling assent and continued, “And are you going to give up your religion?”

“No,” she responded quickly, a little surprised at his question.

“Not even for the Pope of Rome?” he bantered her.

“No,” she smiled, catching his mood.

“Well then, I don’t know what you’re worrying about. We live in troubled times, and it’s not easy for any of us, including priests. We all have to make our own choices. That’s why God gives us the power to reason and our own free will. You’ve heard the Church’s teaching and you’ve made your decision. You’re not going to give up your religion nor your politics, and I don’t see why you should. All these other things will pass. And don’t bother yourself about seeing Fr Burns. I’ll have a wee word with him.”

He patted her gently on the back of her hand as he got to his feet.

“Don’t be worrying. And don’t let anyone put you out of the chapel! It’s God’s house. Hold on to all your beliefs, Mrs McCarthy, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“Thank you, Father.” Mrs McCarthy smiled in relief. “God bless you.”

“I hope He does,” Fr Kelly said, “I hope He does.” He turned and walked slowly up the aisle. When he got to the door he turned and looked down the chapel. Mrs McCarthy was back at her favourite seat beside the statue of Our Lady. Apart from her the silent church was empty. Fr Kelly stood reflecting pensively on that. For a moment he was absorbed by the irony of the imagery before him. Then he turned wearily, smiled to himself, and left.

St Patrick’s under-14 hurling team possessed three mentors. All had been accomplished hurlers in their own time and, like most sportsmen and old soldiers, they refused to die. Indeed, they refused even to fade away, and with a zeal which was as strong as it had been in their youth, they had successfully steered the Under-14s through club honours, and now their charges were poised to represent the county at the All-Ireland
Féile
tournament.

Mickey MacAteer, the team manager, was assisted by Leo Murphy and “wee” Eoin Rafferty. Leo was a Dubliner, and although he had never lost his love for that fair city, Ballymurphy, where he taught at the local school, had been his home for the last ten years. Wee Eoin and Mickey were both Falls Road men, unemployed building labourers who lived in Ballymurphy.

The lads in the Under-14 panel combined urban toughness (a quality for which St Patrick’s was renowned at all levels) with a fast, close style of hurling. They became the County Antrim
Féile
champions after a tough campaign, especially against clubs from the rural north of the county. Their rivals never gave an inch, and every game was a hard-fought contest. Parochial and other ancient rivalries played their parts and verbal abuse from the sidelines was commonplace; during one game youthful supporters of a team from the Glens even began to chant: “They eat dogs in Ballymurphy.” The older St Pat’s members and spectators were
affronted by such a smear tactic—especially the mothers present, who, mortified by the insult, replied with suitably descriptive disclaimers. The youngsters seemed not to care and went on to win the match. Later, when presented with the trophy the day they won the county final, big Charlie, the team captain, delighted his teammates and made their euphoric mentors wince when he exclaimed: “Up the Dog Eaters!
Tiocfaidh ár lá!
”
*

The delight of the young players was infectious, and that night Charlie’s acceptance speech raised a laugh among the adults in the bar at St Pat’s as they celebrated the junior team’s victory. It was a great night. None of the winning team were there, of course, as they were all under age, but Mickey, wee Eoin and Leo were their very capable, committed and experienced representatives. They knew exactly how to handle such an occasion: they got drunk.

The weeks after that were spent training for the national finals of the
Féile
. Three evenings each week the team got together after school and wee Eoin put them through their paces again and again and again. At weekends St Pat’s Under-16 team or the Minors gave them a practice game. The mentors were on hand throughout: they threatened, bullied, encouraged and begged their team into shape, and in between they discussed tactics and the ins-and-outs of different players playing in different positions. For some of the boys it was a worrying time. They had a panel of twenty and everyone was eager to win a place on the team. Some, like Big Burger, Charlie, Seamus, Patrick and Packy, Seanie and Jimmy were assured of their places. They were the core of the team, but the rest of the places were open to whoever was on form. For this reason there was a consistently full turnout at all the training sessions.

This involvement in the preparations wasn’t confined to the team and its trainers, or even to the Under-16 or Minor players. The entire club campaigned to take the All-Ireland
Féile
trophy
and bring it over the border and into the North, and more importantly into St Patrick’s in Ballymurphy. So it was that when the
Féile
weekend arrived two buses of supporters and the team, all bedecked in the club and county colours, gathered to make the journey to Kildare, and they left the club grounds to the cheers and best wishes of their clubmates and parents.

“That’s it,” Mickey said. “We’re off.”

And so they were. The drive down to the border was uneventful. They were stopped for a few minutes at the huge British army checkpoint outside Newry, and after that the journey to Dublin passed quickly. Many of the boys had never been so far across the border before, though most of them had been on sponsored holidays in Belgium and further afield. They stopped for a noisy meal in Swords, and then in Dublin the boys and their mentors spent an hour in O’Connell Street wandering between the GPO and an amusement arcade. It was late in the afternoon by the time they finally pulled into Naas. The boys were staying in the homes of members of a local club, and a representative met the bus and gave Mickey the accommodation arrangements for the weekend. He also gave him a list of fixtures. Mickey read through the list.

“Look at this.” He turned to Leo and wee Eoin, thrusting the
Féile
programme under their noses. “We’ve been drawn to play against a local club tonight. Bloody chancers! They’re trying to make sure their team has the advantage. It’s not right. They’re playing on their own pitch and we’ve come all the way from Belfast; our lads are bound to be tired after the journey. They should have put all the ones that have to travel together. That way it would have been fair. I’m going to complain!”

He did so but to no avail, and by the time the St Pat’s lads were in the dressing room an hour or so later, togged out and ready for their first encounter, Mickey was in a foul mood.

Leo and Eoin had finished their team talk. It was only a minute or so before the throw-in. Mickey, as befitted his status as manager, always had the last word. He looked around at the eager, anxious young faces gazing up at him.

“Right, boys. This is what we’ve all worked for. Youse know the score. Youse are good. Youse are the best in County Antrim. But we’re not in County Antrim now. We’re in the Free State. They must have heard how good youse are ’cos they’ve drawn us against the local team. The referee’s probably local also. They’re all well rested and we’re only after a long journey, but you know what? We can still beat them, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go out there and teach these uns how to play hurley.”

He looked around his team.

“Right?” he snapped at them.

“Right!”

“Right?” Mickey and Leo and wee Eoin shouted in chorus.

“Right!” the boys clamoured, banging their hurleys and their studded boots on the floor.

“Well, get out there and do it!” Mickey growled.

And so they did. It wasn’t a hard game, but even when it was clear that they were the superior team St Pat’s took no chances. They played at full stretch right up to the final whistle and finished twelve points ahead of the devastated opposition. In the dressing room afterwards the lads were jubilant. Mickey congratulated them, but he was grudging in his praise.

“All right, youse did well. But that’s only what we expected. Tonight was aisy. Wee buns! It wasn’t a real test for youse. That comes the morra. We have two games. That’s if youse play better than tonight. The third game’s the semi-final, but you have to beat two good teams to get there. So tonight I want youse all in bed early and back here in the morning at ten for a team talk. Okay?”

Within half an hour all the boys were piled into cars which distributed them to houses throughout the neighbourhood. There the “young lads from Belfast” were plied with good food and sympathetic questions about how they and their families were able to manage at home with “the troubles”. For the first time some of the boys saw the daily happenings of their native city through the eyes of sympathetic spectators, and for the first time some of them
wondered how indeed they and their families managed. As they slipped off to sleep they felt flattered that they did.

The three mentors had a similar experience over a meal and later a few pints as guests of the local club, but they kept the storytelling about the troubles to a minimum. Unlike their young players, they were naturally and instinctively cautious about declaring their political views to strangers, and although all three would probably have agreed generally on political matters, there were issues that Mickey and Eoin had never really discussed with Leo, and a pub in County Kildare wasn’t the place to start. Apart from all that, as Mickey observed only half jokingly, they had a
Féile
tournament to win and needed to return early to their boarding house to plan the next day’s team tactics.

By late afternoon on the following day it was obvious that these tactics were the right ones. The morning match against Louth was tough, but St Pat’s won through in the end. They were victorious also in their second game, against Kilkenny.

It was the same story early on Sunday morning at the semifinal. The St Pat’s supporters were nursing hangovers after a late-night session but were rewarded for their early morning sacrifices with a narrow, hard-won victory over Limerick. By now the Ballymurphy lads had won a sizable following from supporters of the other counties. They and the Belfast contingent were ecstatic. Mickey, Leo and wee Eoin were overjoyed also, but their main concern now was to rest the team. It had been a hard weekend, and the hardest part was still to come. They shepherded the boys off the pitch and into the bus.

“We’re going off somewhere for something light to eat after youse get a shower. We’re all staying together until the game,” Mickey told them.

The match was at half-three, but first there was open-air mass in the grounds of a local college and a parade from there along a route of a few hundred yards to the college pitch for the final. The parade was to be led by the finalists, so while the boys showered Leo sorted out the parade arrangements and loaded a clean set of
jerseys on to the bus. They spent the next few hours at a small hotel about ten miles outside the town. Every one of them was nervous, but as time passed there was a collective settling of tension and Mickey entertained them with stories, with punchlines which told mostly against himself. They talked about everything except the match until finally the time came for the team to tog out in their clean strips. Packy and Seamus were selected to carry the club banner. Before they boarded the bus again, a little subdued this time, Mickey, Leo and wee Eoin offered their last few words of encouragement. Mickey, as was the custom, had the last word.

“Youse know youse can win this match. I’m not going to talk too much about that. Youse are tired, but so’s the other team. I only want to say that win or lose youse have done us all proud.”

He looked around at the boys.

“Youse are the best squad I’ve ever coached, so just go out there and do your best and the three of us’ll be happy.”

Mickey’s team talks were usually fairly long, so this brevity caught everyone by surprise, and for a minute after he had finished the entire group stood in silence. It was big Charlie who broke the spell by grasping and shaking Mickey’s hand. Then as each boy boarded the bus, Leo, Mickey and wee Eoin embraced or shook hands with them. For years afterwards everyone who was there said that the few hours at the hotel was a special experience. After that the waiting seemed unbearably long, and even the honour of leading the parade seemed of less significance.

The parade itself was a colourful affair. There were about twenty-five teams resplendent in their colours and headed by their club banners, and about 2,000 local and visiting spectators and half a dozen bands. The president of Ireland was there waiting on the back of a huge covered lorry which had been transformed into an altar and a reviewing stand. Wee Eoin counted five bishops, each bedecked in purple robes. Before the mass started the president came down off the lorry to inspect an honour guard of soldiers in ceremonial uniform while the
Garda
band played martial airs. The St Patrick’s supporters were greatly impressed by the
pomp and ceremony of the occasion. Old Jimmy Conlon from Andersonstown, whose grandson was a St Pat’s sub, was moved to tears as he turned to wee Eoin and whispered, “It’s great to be free, Eoin, isn’t it?” Wee Eoin thought the scene was a bit like something out of Franco’s Spain but he said nothing. There was no harm in old Jimmy, and he would get endless satisfaction recounting the day to his cronies back in the club.

Eoin was only happy when he, Mickey and Leo were finally in the dressing room with the team. The dressing rooms were contained in a single-storeyed pavilion-type structure made of concrete blocks. The room allocated to St Pat’s was divided from their opponents’ quarters by a movable partition which was pulled across in sections on rollers on the floor and ceiling.

The boys were ready for action. They stood in a semi-circle around Leo, who repeated once again the instructions for play. Earlier he had watched their opponents playing; now he passed on the intelligence he had gathered, giving each of the players specific instructions for the match. When Leo was finished, Eoin said his few words, and Mickey concluded the briefing.

“This Waterford team is good but youse are better. Remember that. They can’t beat youse. Youse might be nervous of them. That’s all right. That’s natural. But don’t forget they’re even more nervous of youse. And youse know why! ’Cos youse are from the North. Nothing can beat youse. So get out there, get settled as quickly as possible and play hurley!”

The Waterford team was good. Within five minutes the St Pat’s lads knew they were in trouble. The Waterford squad, with a few exceptions, were bigger than them and they played to suit their height, a fast, mobile, hand-passing, high-fielding game. St Pat’s never gave an inch, but for all their efforts Waterford scored a goal after about twenty minutes. From then on the Waterford forwards hunted in packs so that for most of the remainder of the first half the
sliotar
†
was rarely out of their possession. Had it not been
for the dogged determination of the St Patrick’s back line, the score would have been in cricket figures. As it was, the half-time scoreboard read Waterford one goal and two points to Antrim nil.

Mickey, Leo and wee Eoin had spent the first half roaming endlessly up and down the sideline shouting and coaxing, cajoling and cursing. Now as they walked off the pitch to join the youngsters in the dressing room, they knew what was wrong. Their team was knackered. They had played their hearts out to get to the final and now they had nothing else to give. When the men reached the dressing room they were met with a depressed silence. The boys sat dejectedly on the benches, while from the Waterford side of the partition came a happy hum of noise and a buzz of laughter and high spirits.