IN THE RARE OUL’ TIMES
(2) The Cabbie
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I am ... the Celtic Tiger - panthera tigris hibernia.
I was born in 1995 and I lived for 13 years. My sire was a decent enough working man who liked a pint and liked a song and my dam was a woman of hard times forever haunted by the lingering memory of want. Want and cold bones. When I was spawned they ran out into the streets and danced.
I was always a lusty child. They fed me on their wild dreams, and I flourished and I bellowed and I strutted in those boulevards of sudden plenty. For a few moments I seriously impressed most of the goddam world.
But I died a shallow death, an ending that was unbecoming in the eyes of my loved ones, although the rest of them out there just said – well, what did you expect?
I was – and I remain – a mythical beast. The likes of me will never be seen again in these lands.
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They’re into Dublin airport by midday, and after the clatter and clamour of Heathrow it’s surprising how easily they slip through the formalities, like it’s no more than a domestic flight.
They front the guy with the stamp and he looks at Laura’s passport, then up to her, does a regulation smile and nod and says welcome to Ireland Mrs Beck. Laura blushes, just a touch, and thanks him in that young girl way of hers, and he comes alive. And why not. She may be forty-three but she’s still a dish.
David thinks he looks and sounds like that big copper from the movie ‘The Guard’ – someone Gleeson. Brendon Gleeson. Big and Irish and just a bit unpredictable. Face of a well explored life. He starts talking to her as if David isn’t even there.
“And how long will y’ be staying Mrs Beck?”
David waits at her side and knows his wife is enjoying the attention.
“Three weeks if you’ll have me...”, she says, and David knows she’s lighting up her dark eyes at him, “...but I promise we’ll go home after that.” She might’ve been educated by the nuns but she’s still a flirt at times. Not that he minds. She knows where the line is and he’s always been an envied man.
The guy breaks out his biggest smile, lays it on her.
“Ah not at all m’dear, you stay as long as you want...”, and he turns to a clear page and whacks his stamp down, “...as long as there’s a pound in y’ pocket, eh”, and she blushes some more, that same school-girl blush that pinned David to the wall thirty years ago, and the guy’s wink at him says ahhh you’re a lucky man.
“An’ welcome to you too Mr Beck...”, as he gives David’s passport a cursory look and whumps his stamp down one more time.
“Make sure you have a good look around our town now...”, and he’s already glancing over him to the next in line.
Outside, waiting in the cab queue, they squeeze each other’s hand as they suck up that unique airport smell of jet fuel, dust, fast food, carbon monoxide. And something else. Bodies. Bodies in transit. Same as Auckland. Same as Sydney, Changi, Heathrow. And all about them the white noise of airports anywhere - traffic, voices, car doors, trolley-clanking, distant wind-up of a jet turbine.
But somehow, here, it’s not the same as the Heathrow racket, more like a – bustle. An orchestrated bustle. And geez, it’s Ireland he’s telling himself, why wouldn’t it sound like some sort of music. In the air. How his grandma used to tell him. Grandma Deasy who never did get home to Clonakilty.
Several taxis peel off the rank in sequence, the usual array of late model cars, people and cases disappear, trolleys rattle away, they shuffle forward. Theirs pulls up.
It’s a fairly tired looking late ’70s Toyota Cressida, and a big fella gets out from behind the wheel, late-50’s, looks as though he might’ve once been a truck-driver or a brick-layer or a prize-fighter. He’s wedged into a suit that doesn’t look quite right on his shambly frame and David thinks he has the meatiest pair of hands he’s ever seen this side of Mike Tyson.
Now Laura is looking from him to the cabbie and back again, but he can’t quite read what she’s not saying. But can guess.
The big fella greets them breezily, throws open the car’s boot and grabs their bags, like he’s making sure they don’t step away. The boot has bits of scrap iron in it, and their bags go in with the junk. They open the back door and the seats have a loose brocade‑y cover on them that could’ve once been curtains at a picture theatre, and their backsides disappear down into some very tired seat springs.
A sign says wearing of seatbelts is compulsory, but the cabbie doesn’t put his on and they don’t have any. Laura catches David’s eye again and this time they’re saying – geez, you sure know how pick ‘em!
“An’ where to folks?”, over his shoulder, accent thick enough to cut into building blocks, and for some reason it makes David think of his brother-in-law from Invercargill. That same unpretentious rustic quality. Bucolic. A voice from an older time, and raised in unrestrained spaces. They pull out, and the Toyota’s carby hits a flat spot and lurches and David is thinking tune-up. Or scrap heap.
“Ah – the Royal Dublin thanks, in...”, but before he can get the O’Connell Street bit out the guy is all over it.
“An’ a fine hotel it is too. Me cousin Jerry is workin’ there, in the carvery. He’ll have his little badge thing on. You tell him his cousin Dan’l Hogan says he hasta look after ya. When y’ get down to breakfast.”
“Ah – thanks – that’s kind of...”
“Not a tall now, he’s a good man. An’ is Dooblin y’ first stop then?”
“No, we did a week in London, had a good wander about...”, but he jumps in again, gets into telling them about his early working days in ‘that moighty big town’, and how some of his sons are over there now, ‘two of ‘em, maybe t’ree’, as if he isn’t sure how many, all the while half turning to them, then back again to the busy highway.
“An’ where are y’ from then? Would it be Australia or is it Nyoo Zayland.”
“New Zealand – just out of Auckland – it’s our first time...”, and he feels Laura pull at his arm, probably trying to remind him about what her father said, about naïve travellers telling strangers ‘how fresh you are for the picking’.
“Ah, Nyoo Zayland now. I nearly emi-grated there meself as a young man, but when I was due to finalise it I found I had one them Justice of the Peace signature things missin’, an’ I put the papers on the mantleshelf till I could get it fixed.”
He stops and chuckles, glances back over his shoulder again.
“Me moother t’rew them pairpers in t’ foire!”, and puts on an accent thicker than his own. ‘Ah, son...’, she says, ‘...but Oi didn’t t’ink it wus anyt’ing you wus needin’, so Oi had a bit of a toidy oop!’ she says. She didn’t want me t’be goin’ a’course. Not a tall. An’ so I never went t’ Nyoo Zayland. Ain’t it funny how it works out now!”, and he laughs a big throaty laugh, at Luck and at Life.
They bundle down the highway and, like a tourist brochure, he starts drawing their attention to anything and everything as he goes, half turned towards them and driving one hand. He swipes the air off to his left.
“An’ this is goin’ t’be our big na-yoo industrial estate...”, but here he says ‘new’ like he’s being critical, maybe sarcastic, “...but they’ll be callin’ it a Business and Technology Park. Because they’re sayin’ it’ll be full of them there Silicon Valley comp’nies in no time, all lookin’ for those...”, and he puts a two finger quote around it, “...tax breaks”.
David can feel Laura’s grip on his arm getting tighter as the guy barrels on.
“An’ over there on the other side of them trees is Royal Oak, one of our flash na-yoo housing estates, startin’ to go up everywhere they are. Ev’ryone wants their own two-up-two-down semi dee-tached an’ they can’t t’row them up fast enough. Just hafta wonder where it’s goin’, eh. D’ya live in the city yourselves now.”
“No, we’re out in the suburbs, at Takapuna. Not far from Lake Pupuke, the volcano...”
“Ah, such grand names y’ have down there. I shoulda gone to Nyoo Zayland now, eh...”, and he gets into a long breezy story about his cousin Connor who went to live in Idaho and became a TV weatherman.
With the freeway behind them, they slow to a crawl in the suburban traffic squeeze.
“An’ this is Drumcondra Road. I used to live off here when I was a boy – down that lane there by McGrath’s Pub”, and he points, and David is starting to think this is probably just his standard tourist spiel, a tip-generator. Well polished. But strangely addictive.
“Grattan Parade it is, but that’s a bit of a grand name for it. Back then them row cottages and terrace houses was full of us hard-working fam’lies. But they’re all startin’ to go gentrified now, bein’ so close to the city. Gentra-bloody-fied an’ expensive...”, he murmurs, and shakes his head. “Do y’ know our Brendan Behan at all?”
Now Laura is looking out her window, trying not to think about his cavalier driving style, but David plays along.
“Sure - the playwright...”, and David waits for his claim to some sort of connection.
“Playwright an’ poet an’ all round hellraiser...”
“Yeah, I know some of his stuff. Bit of a rebel...”
“He was a good I.R.A. man he was, old I.R.A. that is, back when they had a callin’, weren’t just a mob of chancers and shyster heathens like now. Did y’ know he left school when he was barely a teenager? They was a workin’ family, but he joined the I.R.A. and got into a spot a bother in Liverpool and did some time in borstal...”, and David notes he doesn’t mention the bomb-making bit, “...went on t’ be one of our greatest writers. And drinkers. Said of himself...”, and David waits for it, “...‘I’m a drinker with a writing problem.’”, and again, that rough throaty chuckle.
“Yeah, good line...”
“He spent a lot of time in America y’ know...”, and he adds, as if he’s trying to put Dublin on the world stage, “...an’ they say one of his biggest fans was the young Bob Dylan.”
David is about to say Yeah, so I’ve read, but the guy is on a roll.
“He was only forty-something when he died, back in the sixties it was. Died of the drink. Drink and too much ex-zoo-berrant living. But he was given a big I.R.A. send-off...”, and he quickly turns around to them again. “I was there y’ know. It was a grand sight to see. An’ the best bit was when his coffin arrived at the gates of Glasnevin, a line of Dublin bin-men held up their bin lids to him would you believe. It was their own mark of respect like. An’ wouldn’t he a loved it!”
“Would’ve been right up his alley”, Davis says.
“Ah, Dooblin in the rare oul’ times...”
David nearly says ‘great song’, but pulls back, knows it’d feel like trying to push in, pissing on the man’s fire.
“He fell over me once y’ know. When I was a boy. Me and me mates, we used to play marbles on the footpath, down the side a McGraths back there. We was waitin’ for our fathers to finish up, an’ one day he comes out the side door, well oiled and talkin’ behind himself, an’ before we could scatter wham he went down on top of us. Ah, he gave us lads such a gobbin! Y’never heard words like it now!”
“Our local drama society tried to put on ‘The Quare Fellow’ once”, David says, but again, that sense of – intruding.
“Right now - an’ how did that go?”, and David can see him make half a smile.
“Bit of a fizzer actually, the lead just couldn’t nail the accent. Or the character.”
The guy nods, maybe not surprised, but then suddenly swings his attention to the front, waves his hand left and right.
“This here we’re goin’ over – it’s that Royal Canal - from the play - that jingle jangle bit...”, and David would love to recite the piece, as the guy adds, “...I heard there’s some talk of puttin’ up a statue to him, right there on the towpath.”
“And so they should.”
“Ahhh, good man yourself...”
Coming into the city proper he goes on talking as he dodges through the heavy morning traffic, pointing one large finger at the clamour each time he has a near miss, dismissing it with that lift of one shoulder.
“Ah, the old town is definitely busier these days, nothin’ like when I was a boy. I’ll take y’ down to the Liffey an’ along, if that’s all right, it’s easier t’ get in t’ that side of O’Connell Street.”
David has a rough idea of the town’s layout, can see plenty of one-way streets go past, but feels comfortable they’re not getting the cabbie run-around.
“Sure, no worries...”
They pull up at a set of lights and he waves one hand in the general direction of the skyline.
“Mother a God lookit all them cranes now! – city’s gone mad with the puttin’ up of buildin’s. Place has so much money they don’t know what to bust it on next. An’ the prices! Jaysus you wouldn’t believe the prices! They threw up seventy one-bed apartments down at Ballsbridge – that’s about three miles the other side of the Liffey – nice enough area in places but they had buyers linin’ up at sixty thousand pounds, an’ these workin’ people are averagin’ around eighteen thousand a year. One bed I tell ya.”
David does some quick maths, makes comparisons. “Geez, that’s about...”, but he’s clearly on a pet subject, and getting irritated with it, has to get it all out.
“An’ a tired oul dump of a place, on the Shrewsbury Road, lovely street an’ all, but they wanted over one an’ a half million for it! One an’ a half million now! Town’s gone mad.”
“Must be hard for the young...”
“Hard! One of me sons and his girl was married a couple of years back – ah, it was a right oul weddin’! She’s a cracker of a lass, from Bantry Bay, down in West Cork...”, and here his tone changes, goes more one-to-one, like David and him are chatting in a pub, “...made me a grandfather twice already now. Well, he’s got himself a job with one of these con-struction companies here in town – there’s hundreds of them, goin’ bee-zerk they are – so they’ve found a place here, got ‘emselves a two bedroom ee-partment. They call them an ee-partment but five years ago we woulda called it a pokey flat”, and he shakes his head.
“Would you believe our banks are offering them one hundred per cent mortgages – one hundred per cent! - an’ up to ten times their salary. Would you believe that?! Easy payments they all say. For the next hundred years I say.”
It’s only then that David “sees” the cranes, sees the clamour, sees the prospect of runaway prosperity that it represents. It’s everywhere. And he feels an odd sort of unease with it, not his own, but the cabbie’s.
“But they reckon they’re lucky to have it. Most of these shysters hold a waitin’ list y’know – anything up to three or four hundred they say - waiting in case of buyer drop-out. An’ then there’s that sealed bid thing, never know when y’ goin’ t’ get gazumped at the finish. But, they reckon they can’t go wrong, property prices are just goin’ t’ keep risin’ an’ risin’ they say and we’ll all make a killin’ in five years time they say but I kept sayin’ that’s just real estate SHYSTER talk, but they won’t have it...”, and his face has gone flushed and his shoulder is doing an agitated up-and-down, up-and-down.
“They was actually goin’ t’ go for no deposit, but me and the girl’s dad wouldn’t have it, so we chipped in, found them enough for a half decent deposit. The wife wasn’t happy, but you hafta look after y’ kids now – where y’ can, eh...”, and he turns right around and looks at Laura, as if she’d know how fathers are with their kids, and she’ll back him up. Soften his misgivings.
“Not always...”, she says, and the big fella looks at David as he swings back around, and he lifts that one shoulder again.
“Ah, some of us are fools f’sure, but y’ got t’ give the young ones their chance eh. So fulla life...”, and he jerks the cab on and off the clutch, willing a break in the traffic.
“I keep sayin’ that all this is too good to last but there’s no tellin’ young folk now is there. They all say they’re goin’ t’ make a million. An’ jaysus plenty of them have already.”
He looks ahead and gently bumps the steering wheel with one large palm, and Laura looks across at David, eyebrows arched a touch as she gently rummages under her bum, discreetly trying to get a seat spring comfortable.
“This country’s not used to bein’ rich...”, he quietly adds. “Brendan Behan once said that if it started rainin’ soup, the Irish would run out with forks...”, and his head is nodding again, but now his shoulders have slumped a little and become still, “...but they surely all have spoons now! At least this week...”
Laura is still looking at David, but now the corners of her mouth are nearly smiling, and David would bet quids that tonight she’ll be writing all this down in her little black book, and wouldn’t be at all surprised if she said, quietly – “Best cab ride I’ve ever had...” - and he’s thinking ‘God, I do so love this woman!’ just as she leans forward and says –
“Brendan Behan also said, Mr Hogan, that the most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink, and somebody to love you.”
He laughs now, and suddenly, a rich throaty rumble of a laugh, like he’s tickled pink, and he swivels around, one elbow over the back of his seat, takes in Laura with his pair of green traffic-light eyes.
“Ah now missus, an’ ain’t that the truth or it damn-well should be!”, and as he swings back he pauses to fix on David, and there, again, that look that says you’re a lucky man.
Still smiling, he looks to the front and shoves into the O’Connell St traffic and a red Audi noses down on its brakes and gives him a blast of the horn.
“An’ you too an’ all...”, he says, and pulls up to the Royal Dublin as the meter clicks up nine pounds eighty and David checks his wallet, realises he only has one tenner in Irish Pounds and the rest are fifties. He steps out and forages in his pocket, but already knows there’s only the handful of leftover English change.
Same as most Kiwis, he’s hopeless with tipping. Their hearts are always in the right place but they just don’t know how it works, and now he feels a small panic as the guy whips around the back, heaves their bags out from amongst his scrap iron and drops them on the footpath. Then he’s looking at the Irish tenner David’s holding and he’s clearly thinking ‘no fecken tip here’ and David’s feeling like a totally ungrateful turd, and in desperation hauls out the handful of coins.
“Is a bunch of Pommie quids any good to ya mate?”
His face breaks open as David drops all of it into his big open paw.
“Well now, an’ that’s no trubble a tall - an’ thank ya...”, and is about to move away when Laura holds out her hand to him. For half a second it doesn’t quite register, but then that big boyish grin lights up again, and he takes her hand and pumps it generously.
“An’ you have a grand holiday now my lovely...”, and he pumps it again, shakes David’s as well, turns and pauses a moment at the open cab door, looks out over the bright blue Dublin skyline, and nods his head.
© T.R.E. 2021
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