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Crockery Classic
by John Keenan
The dishwasher broke down last week and so I’ve been back
to doing the dishes by hand to help Ma out; well it’s only
because I’m home from the University at the moment. I don’t
really mind, but there was a time you know when I really hated scrubbing
away at other peoples ‘leavings’. Yesterday I was standing
there in soapsuds up to my elbows looking out of the kitchen window,
with the radio on, and just daydreaming and in a flash it all came
back to me. Well it was my older brother Sean who brought it all
back really. He sneaked up behind me while my head was in the clouds
and plopped a finger full of soapsuds on the tip of my nose before
I knew it. When I tried to retaliate he grabbed me in a bear hug
and we ended up dancing around the kitchen to a ‘swoony’
pop song…Ma’s word for corny…and just laughing
ourselves sick. Sean has been much closer to me since…well
since I was fourteen and hated washing up.
It happened on the Cheltenham Gold Cup day. That was the first time
in my life Sean gave me a great big hug and said that he was really
proud of me. Going back to when I was only a tiddler, or a button
to his overcoat, as my old Nin used to say back in Ireland, he had
only ever been cruel and teased me, or ignored me completely.
How did that come about? Well first I need to tell you a bit about
myself and my family.
My name is Mary and we moved to Liverpool from Ireland when I was
still a baby. Da loved to tell us of the farm he used to work on
which bred racehorses. One of them placed in the Irish National
he was for ever telling us.
It’s a pity but the farm fell on bad times and Da brought
us all over to England and we landed in Liverpool where some of
our relatives had settled down.
Da tried hard to get work with horses again. He just loved the big
race days. He would take me to the Aintree racecourse on Grand National
day and stand me at the end of Melling road so that I was only a
few feet from all those huge horses as they thundered past just
after the start. It was such a mixture of fear and excitement that
I never tired of going back. Of course it is known locally as Smelling
road after the local kids persisted in adding a graffiti ‘S’
to the front and kept on doing it until the local council gave up
on the cleaning of it.
One of Da’s other things was gambling. He liked to have a
flutter on all the big races. Of course he never really won anything.
He used to laugh and point out that the bookies always had three
paying in windows and only one paying out.
I suppose with his liking of horses and gambling and his ideas of
how the bookies always win, it was inevitable that he would open
his own little bookies. A friend of the family died and left his
betting shop to his wife who had the ‘outsides’ phobia
and had never been through her front door for twenty years. She
was just so grateful to let Da take it off her hands. He gave her
a good price of course. I heard Sean say that our Da was an old
softie and could have got it for half the price, but that just isn’t
the way of things with Da.
When I was fourteen and in the senior classes at Our Lady of the
Mount Catholic school Ma went back to working. Sean, who had turned
eighteen, helped out in the betting shop and so after school I used
to have to go along there until Ma finished work and I could go
home.
I wasn’t allowed in the shop so I had to stay in the back
where the kitchen was. I didn’t mind too much. The door to
the shop was kept closed but it had a big crack in it
and I could see through and look at all the punters and get a sense
of the excitement as the races were broadcast and the results came
in.
The only problem was the washing up. Da made cups of tea and sometimes
coffee for all and sundry throughout the day which was fine, but
then he got into the habit of leaving all the day’s washing
up for me to do when I got in from school. The worst thing was his
big cast iron stew pot.
Da loved his Irish stew, or what us Liverpudlians call Scouse. Ma
used to make up a big pot every night and Da would take it to the
shop and put it on the stove and keep it bubbling; he and Sean and
quite of few of their regulars used to dip into it during the day.
By the time I got there it was cold, lumpy and stuck to the sides
and the bottom like glue. I hated that washing up.
I’d stand at the sink and clean up all the plates and cups
that had been used and then start on that big pot. There was no
door at the back, just this little window and I’d be gazing
through at an old slate roof which was all I could see, and singing
to myself all the old Irish songs, just like my Ma did when I was
little.
If Da wasn’t too busy he would usually come and tell me to
shut up in case I frightened the customers away. He claimed I made
a weird gargling sound when I was singing but I knew I sounded just
like Christina Aguilera.
On Sundays, when Father Murphy sometimes called around to see us,
Da would warn me that he would tape up my mouth if I broke into
song. He reckoned that if the Father ever heard me singing he would
insist on an exorcism. Da’s a bit of a comedian sometimes.
The day it happened it was the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the shop
was really busy all day. The washing up was monstrous when I got
there and Da even apologised for
it, which was a first. He’d come in to put most of his takings
in the big old safe he kept in the back and when he saw me looking
at the mound of dishes he laughed and then he gave me a cuddle and
said he’d ‘see me right’ at the weekend. I knew
he would too. One thing about Da, he always kept his word.
I’d finally done all the dishes and I was getting really fierce
with that big old pot when suddenly it went really quiet in the
shop; somehow I knew that something was badly wrong. Then I heard
a man shouting, his voice was really loud and threatening.
I went to the door and peeped through. At the far end of the shop
there was a skinny nervous looking lad holding a gun that looked
really big in his hand. He had closed the door to the street and
was stopping any of the customers from escaping. The man who was
shouting at my Da and Sean was much older and bigger, and looked
really mean and angry. He was holding a shotgun and pointing it
at Sean who was taking money out of the tills and putting it into
a bag.
The man snarled at Da, ‘okay, now the safe.’
‘The safe?’
Da tried to play the innocent but the man had obviously been studying
our shop. He knew, like most of the regulars, that Da kept his takings
in a safe in the back.
I felt the breath drain out of my lungs. In the back…where
I was standing at the sink!
‘If you know what is good for you, you won’t mess me
about.’ The man waved his gun in Da’s face, ‘I
know about the safe, in the kitchen, now come on!’ He took
hold of Da’s arm and pushed him in my direction.
I never thought about what I was doing; I just did it.
When Da came into the kitchen he started to say something…telling
me not to worry, but I didn’t hear him because I was standing
on a chair behind the door and bringing the big old stew pot right
down on that robber’s head.
His gun went off as he fell but it missed Da.
When Da came out of the kitchen holding the shotgun the skinny lad
took one look, dropped his fake gun, and scarpered . He didn’t
get far because most of the regulars chased him down.
That was when Sean gave me that lovely hug.
Afterwards when the police had been and everything was back to normal,
me and Da went back into the kitchen and then Da smiled and pointed
at the kitchen sink. The blast from the shotgun had reduced every
last dish to tiny fragments.
I remember, Da put his arm around me, squeezed, and said with a
chuckle, ‘you little scally, you’ll do anything to get
out of that washing up.’
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