Tuesday, 17 January 2012

PHILIP MARLOWE IN WATERFORD by Eamonn Chandler

It became known some time back that Raymond Chandler had Waterford connections ... 

THERE WAS  a cold wind blowing that night.

It was the kind of wind that comes down the river  past the glass works and the fertiliser factory and makes your nose itch so you want to pick a fight with someone – even if  you don’t happen to be married to them.

But I wasn’t looking for a fight that first night in Waterford when I walked down these wet streets, past Reginald’s Tower gleaming in the moonlight like a bad tooth.

 I pushed open the doors of  a small hostelry. I was here to recharge the batteries after too many close calls and even closer women in Los Angeles.

I just wanted a quiet beer in a quiet corner,  but as soon as I sat down I knew this might not be about to happen. For  one thing the television was too loud.

Then the  door opened again and this blonde walked in.

When I say walked I mean she walked in the way Hitler’s army walked into Poland, only without the same grace and elegance.

“So this is where you’re hiding” she snarled. I could see she meant me, and several other men nearby looked pretty relieved at this. A silence fell on the bar like a sheet in a morgue. The proprietor had turned off the television set  where some kind of  sports game with sticks had been going on. Or maybe it was a local war, because there was more blood and bandages than you’d see on a good night in Madison Square Garden.

But this blonde and what she might be about to do to me looked like a better night’s entertainment: I could tell from the way the company settled back and steadied their drinks.

“Give us another large there, Paddy” shouted one man who looked like he’d spent the day throwing tractors just to keep in shape – if you could call it a shape. “And a large Paddy, too, Paddy”, he said. This Waterford was getting to be a very confusing place.

“I’m not hiding” I said, “just recuperating”

“So you thought you could vanish and leave me high and dry”, she snapped.

“High, maybe”, I said, “but you’ve never been dry”.

She started to cry then  and I knew I’d been too quick as usual with the slick wordplay.

I could see the crowd was getting uglier. And that’s saying something considering where they started.

“That’s no way to talk to a lady” said the tractor man.

“Who are you calling a lady?” snarled the female visitor . “Haven’t you heard of women’s lib in  this neck of the woods?”

The tractor man looked puzzled as though he’d swallowed some unidentified substance from the River Suir in his glass.

“But I’m on your side” he complained. “Do you want me to punch this no-good husband of yours for deserting you like that?

“He’s no husband” said the blonde. “He took my money to do a job and never finished it. Then he vanished for ten months and it took me this long to track him down.”

The tractor man suddenly looked at me with a new  interest.

“Oh!”, he said, “you must be a builder then? I have a few jobs need doing meself.”

I thought I’d better explain. “I’m not a builder, I’m a Private Eye.”

“But you took this woman’s money and ran”, said the man behind the bar.

“Wouldn’t you?’’ I said. “She wanted me to bump off her old man so she could inherit his oil wells.”

“Just a goddam minute” said the blonde. “I never asked you to bump him off. I just wanted you to scare him a bit.”

“Wouldn’t waking up beside you not do it?” I said, and bowed acknowledging the smattering of applause this had inspired. “Anyway I did scare him, and he dropped dead. That’s why I took off.”

“But he didn’t drop dead, that’s the trouble”, she said, “He went to hospital and got so healthy that he  ran off with a bimbo one third his age.”

“Well that should do it soon enough”, I said, “Why don’t you relax and join me in a drink?.”

“I’ll have a large” she said.

The tractor man beamed. “Boys!,”, he said, “she speaks our lingo.”

She cosied up to me then. “I’m going to be be rich soon”, she murmured, her breath rasping past my ear like a CIE diesel coming out of a tunnel.

I took a deep breath and a longer drink.

“By the way” she said, “That money I gave you must have run out faster than you did. What have you been living on since then?”

It was the question I’d been waiting for all evening.

“Welfare my lovely,” I said.

Copyright Éanna Brophy
_____________________________________________________ 



Sunday, 15 January 2012

THE FLYING ENTERPRISE SAGA - A sea story that gripped the world

by Éanna Brophy

IT BEGAN ON A CHRISTMAS DAY  – and for the next 14 days the sea saga off the south-west coast of Ireland was to grip the whole western world. It was the Apollo 13 of its time –  the dying days of 1951 and the first ten of  1952. Every day, the radio and newspaper reports became longer, more detailed and more excited as everyone -  from small boys to grandparents - kept watch to learn what might be the fate of the stricken freighter Flying Enterprise and its heroic skipper, Captain Kurt Carlsen.  

The Flying Enterprise listing in heavy Atlantic seas
 The ship that was to inspire such massive media coverage was an ordinary 6,700 ton cargo ship that would by now be long scrapped and forgotten had it not sailed into the worst storm to hit the Atlantic in 35 years. It was sailing from Hamburg in Germany bound for New York with a cargo of pig iron and furniture. On board were 40 crew and 9 passengers.

The Flying Enterprise was 300 miles off the southwest coast of Ireland on Christmas Day when it was hit by huge waves driven by a 100 mph gale. Crew and passengers were tossed violently from side to side. The ship battled on, but on December 27th the pounding of the seas took its toll: the freighter cracked right across the deckhouse and down one side. One of its holds filled with water and it began to list badly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy2m--YvOSg

The Enterprise had been driven by the force 12 winds well north of the traffic lanes. The captain, 37-year-old Danish-born Kurt Carlsen tried to steer it back to where other ships might be able to come to its assistance.  His requests for help were heard, and two U.S. Navy vessels – a destroyer and a transporter rushed to the area. The crew and passengers prepared to jump into the freezing sea: each passenger to be accompanied by a crewman. They were all safely picked up and taken aboard a ship bound for Rotterdam.

That left just one man on board – Captain Kurt Carlsen. He declared that he was staying with his ship – and that was when the world began to pay attention.

Reading about it in the old newspaper files of the time one can see how the story grew and grew. A few days after Christmas there is a one-paragraph mention of the Flying Enterprise – among several other ships that were in peril on the high seas in that awesome winter weather. Then it began to get individual attention as the headlines began to proclaim: “Lone Captain Stays With His Ship”.

Day by day the story grew as the New Year of 1952 dawned and the Enterprise remained afloat, though listing even more than 60 degrees. By now it was getting six-column front page treatment, with aerial pictures that showed Carlsen on the deck, the ship looking tiny amid the mountainous waves.

There was no television in those days, but the story could have been written for the newsreel companies, who supplied cinemas worldwide with news events. This one was probably better than the main features from Hollywood – and in Captain Kurt Carlsen it had  the very personification of  cool, calm hero.

There was hardly any accessible food or drink left on board the wallowing Enterprise. Its main engines had stopped and what light there was on board came from batteries. But Captain Carlsen reported by radio to the US transporter Golden Eagle (skippered by one William E. Donahue) that he was contentedly dining on currant buns, some beer and Rhine wine. He confessed to being “a little tired” but that otherwise everything was “fine and dandy”. He quipped that he had no alarm clock and would try not to disturb the US crew unduly. They later got a messenger line  to him and sent over coffee, cigarettes and magazines. Before that his only reading matter had been a book “The Seaman and the Law” (probably the driest material on board).

His mother, meanwhile, was now being interviewed, telling reporters that her son, who had emigrated to America in 1938, had always been “a very good boy, but very obstinate”.

The second chapter of the Flying Enterprise saga started on January 2nd when the tug Turmoil set off from Falmouth in England to try to rendezvous with Carlsen and tow his ship to safety. No other tug in the vicinity could take on this challenge: the 1,136 ton Turmoil was what we would now call a “state of the art” tug, the fastest and biggest on this side of the world. It had been unavailable until then because it was busy towing a storm-hit tanker into Falmouth. A new storm began to blow up as the Turmoil set out. Its skipper was Ted Parker – but it was the Turmoil’s first mate, Kenneth Dancy (27) who was to gain his own slice of fame in the next few days.

By January 4th the newspaper headlines were proclaiming “Tug Now Alongside”. By now no elaboration on those three words was necessary.  Everyone in Europe and America knew which tug it was and of what it was alongside. There were wars and rebellions and political developments going on elsewhere, but for some reason the eyes of the world were fixed on one small corner of the Atlantic and two small ships bobbing side by side.

The Turmoil made several attempts to get a line on board. Captain Carlsen leaned out precariously, holding the rail with one hand as he tried to grasp the line, but to no avail.

Then Kenneth Dancy made his epic leap.

The Turmoil had edged as close as possible to the other ship and First Mate Dancy (whose favourite hobby was knitting) jumped across the gap between them, bringing with him the tow line. The newspaper headline writers went wild – and the deed was later flashed on millions of cinema screens – where audiences would queue - not to see the main feature, but for the thrilling newsreel.

Now a hawser could be reeled aboard the Flying Enterprise and it could be towed to shore. But where? Falmouth was favoured, but Bantry Bay was closer. And Brest in France was also in range. The tug company and the Enterprise’s owners, opted for Falmouth. The two ships set out, followed by a flotilla of other craft, and shadowed overhead by ’planes. It was now ten days since the Enterprise had put to sea – but its story was not over yet.

For the next three days they inched closer to Cornwall. Each days’s mileage was reported and avidly read. “100 Miles To Go” … “36 Hours From Port” … “57 Miles Off Falmouth” ….

It was no longer a case of whether Captain Carlsen would heroically go down with his ship in the old tradition: he and Ken Dancy would probably be rescued if it sank – but by now everyone wanted the Flying Enterprise to survive. And it was listing at nearly 80 degrees.

Falmouth was filling up. Over 300 reporters and cameramen had taken up every available hotel and boarding house room in the seaside town. Irish newspapers joined in, no longer satisfied to simply print the daily agency reports. Kevin O’Kelly of the Irish Press (and later of RTE)  was among them, sending back colourful descriptions of a town keeping vigil. The seafront was swathed in flags and bunting, waiting to greet two storybook heroes.

Then on day 13 the towline snapped. The Flying Enterprise was once more adrift.
Could a new line be got to her in time? “Carlsen In Peril”, screamed one headline,
(forgetting about Kenneth Dancy) but the skipper himself commented laconically that it was “nothing very alarming” and said that they would both try to get some rest.

But the Flying Enterprise was doomed. It began to list further. Carlsen and Dancy donned their lifejackets and walked out along the sloping funnel and jumped into the angry waves. They were quickly hauled aboard the Turmoil just before the Enterprise slid below the waves. The saga had lasted 14 days. The ship had been 30 miles off land.

(Its sinking did not command the front pages of Ireland’s papers next day however: sadly the main news on January 11th 1952 was about the previous night’s crash of an Aer Lingus Dakota, the St Kevin, in Snowdonia, Wales, killing all 20 passengers and its crew of  three).

Kurt Carlsen became a world hero. He was feted in London, and went home to New York to be greeted with a ticker tape parade on 5th Avenue. (He lived in New Jersey with his wife Agnes and two young daughters.) 

He passed through Shannon Airport on the way and was presented with a lifebuoy from the city of Limerick by Lord Mayor Stevie Coughlan.

Captain Carlsen told the Irish reporters that Bantry had not been an option as a safe haven, because the weather dictated otherwise. He also joked that he was a little nervous facing into his first ever transatlantic flight. And he might well have had good reason – the plane had to turn back to Shannon because of ice on its wings. The New York ticker tape parade had to be postponed for a day – but then it rivalled the welcome given to the returning war hero General Douglas McArthur.

Kurt Carlsen was somewhat taken aback by it all. “I wasn’t able to sleep last night thinking about this”, he said “Now I realise just how much trouble I’ve stirred up.”



  • Questions were asked at the time about the reasons why Kurt Carlsen had decided to stay aboard the Enterprise. Had it been less a matter of heroics and more a business decision by his company, the Isbrandsen Line to prevent anyone else getting its estimated £1,400,000 salvage value?  A spokesman was quick to point out that even if he had abandoned ship, it would not have been deemed a derelict subject to salvage, as the company had commissioned the tug Turmoil and therefore still held possession.

  • A brief court of inquiry was held in New York, where one Enterprise officer questioned whether the cargo had been stowed properly, but Carlsen said that he had been happy with it, and would have stowed it the same way again. The court wished him well and congratulated him.

  • Carlsen turned down Hollywood offers for his story, and ignored all other commercial offers, but he was so famous for a while that a beer was named after him. He  went back to sea within months at the helm of  a new freighter called Flying Enterprise II, and went on sailing until he retired in 1976. He died in October 1989.

  • And what of Kenneth Dancy? He returned home to a hero’s welcome from a 20,000 crowd in his native Tunbridge Wells – and was presented with a cheque for 100 guineas by his former headmaster. He always played down his “dramatic leap”, saying that the two ships had been just a foot apart, and that he had “just stepped” onto the Enterprise. He later married a Dutch girl and when last heard of was living near Rotterdam.

  • British divers discovered the wreck of  the Flying Enterprise in 2001. It lies on its port side at a depth of 280ft in the western approaches to the English Channel.
                                   ========================================

Friday, 13 January 2012

THE BIZARRE CASE OF THE
DUBLIN BABY KIDNAPPINGS

WHEN BABY Patrick Berrigan was stolen from his pram in a Dublin street on December 18 1954 the incident triggered a bizarre sequence of events that became the biggest news story in years to hit two cities – Dublin and Belfast. It was to culminate not only in the recovery of  Patrick – but also in the finding in the same house of a little girl who had vanished four years earlier – also taken from a pram on a Dublin street.

A third baby was also missing. Pauline Ashmore was taken from her pram in Camden Street in October 1954. She had not been found when the Berrigan baby vanished. And she was still not found when he was tracked down in Belfast. It was to be some weeks before her disappearance would be solved in a dramatic media coup. That story would help change the face of Dublin’s evening newspaper market where, just 50 years ago, three papers were locked in a battle for readers: the venerable Mail, the dominant Herald and the brash new upstart Evening Press.

The taking of  little Patrick Berrigan from his pram outside a Henry Street shop just a week before Christmas provoked a huge nationwide search. And a fair degree of panic. Mothers in Dublin and elsewhere were panic-stricken. No baby was left unattended in a pram for even a split second. People wondered - where would the baby thieves strike next?

But the vigilance of one woman gave gardai the break they were looking for:  Mrs Louise Doherty was travelling to Belfast on the evening of December 18 and noticed a woman behaving oddly with the baby she was carrying. At one point, she was to tell a court later, the baby seemed to be carried upside down.  Mrs Doherty got talking to the other woman, who said the baby was distressed because it was hungry. No, she did not have a bottle to give it: her sister had given her one earlier but it got broken.

The RUC called to a house in Belfast a few days later and found Patrick Berrigan safe and well. He had been brought to Belfast by Mrs Margaret McGeehan. She had lost two babies of her own – the most recent being stillborn some six weeks earlier.

She soon admitted that she had taken Patrick, and he was quickly reunited with his delighted parents, who lived in Moore Street..

Then came a sensational twist to the story. One of the other children in the house caught the attention of the policemen. Bernadette McGeehan, aged 4 1/2, turned out to be another missing baby: she was in reality Elizabeth Browne, who had, at the age of 3 months, vanished from her pram in a crowded Henry Street where her mother was selling papers.

Mr and Mrs Browne travelled from their home in Ballyfermot and picked her out from a line-up of seven children. They had no doubts that she was their Elizabeth – and all doubts were removed by a birthmark.

Mrs McGeehan vehemently denied that she had taken this baby from Dublin. She maintained that she had been given the little girl four years earlier by a local woman called Ellen Brown (spelt differently) who had since died. In the court case afterwards she claimed that this Ellen Brown had been “keeping company” for some years with a Patrick McDonagh, whom she described as having “a stick leg” since the war.
Mr McDonagh (who indeed had a wooden leg as a result of wartime air-raid on Belfast)  turned up in court and said that he had lived with Ellen Brown in a rented house on Lonsdale Street.
 
In court he gave his occupation as “street vocalist” and said that Ellen had been his singing partner. They had had three children – all boys. She had never had a little girl. They knew Mrs McGeehan because she had rented the same house later.

A Dublin guesthouse owner produced evidence that Mrs McGeehan had been in Dublin coinciding with baby Elizabeth’s disappearance. Mrs McGeehan was later sentenced to two years imprisonment. Elizabeth, who had spent four years being called Bernadette, had been removed to a Belfast children’s home – and was returned to her real parents on 5th February 1955 after the completion of legal formalities.

All these developments had been watched by another Dublin couple, Christy and Margaret Ashmore
of  Cashel Road Crumlin. They went through highs and lows of hope and despair as the Belfast saga unfolded: they had hoped that their missing baby Pauline might also be found in Mrs McGeehan’s home – but it was not to be.

But perhaps it was the intense spotlight on the baby stories that  prompted a mystery man to phone the Evening Press newsroom on Tuesday, January 25th 1955. This man offered to sell the paper a story about what he called  “a medical wonder”. He knew where there was a woman who was about to give birth again – just three months after having had another baby. Pressed by the news editor about the birth date of this first baby, he said it was October 19th.  This was the day Pauline Ashmore had vanished.

The only picture of  the missing Pauline had been printed in papers all over Ireland, and shown on cinema screens. The Evening Press (then just four months old itself) sent a reporter and a photographer, Jim Flanagan and Harry Stevens, to the address at Oliver Bond Flats that had been given to them by the mystery caller (who insisted on remaining anonymous). There they talked to a Mrs Hughes, whose daughter Mrs Therese Fitzpatrick was then in the Coombe Hospital to have her baby. Mrs Hughes gave the pressmen permission to photograph the little baby girl she was minding for her daughter. Then they raced back to the office, printed the picture and compared it to the one they had of Pauline Ashmore.

It matched. They had already alerted the gardai, who now brought the picture to Mrs Ashmore. She had no doubts whatsoever: this was Pauline. The gardai brought her to Oliver Bond House and she was reunited with her baby. The new evening paper had the scoop of the decade, and the story of the Dublin baby kidnappings was at an end.

Medical evidence given in Dublin Circuit Court on Ferbruary 25th described Mrs Fitzpatrick as “unstable”at the time, and her own evidence was that she had not known what she was doing when she saw the baby and took it from its pram. Her husband told the court that when he came home and found her playing with this baby, he had jokingly asked her where she bought it. Therese Fitzpatrick was given a 12-month suspended sentence, and a kindly Mr Justice McLaughlin expressed the hope that the mothers of Dublin could now stop panicking.

ENDS

by Éanna Brophy (Published in Irish Times December 2004)
THE SNOWS OF TENERIFE

You’ve heard, I’m sure, of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, but let me tell you a tale of  the snows of Tenerife. Snow in Tenerife? Yes, it happens. This is the story of how we (my wife and I) together with Jimmy Barry Murphy (not his real name) and Hans and Heidi (not their real names either) along with sundry others, got stranded in the snow there one fine sunny morning a few Januaries ago.

The deckchairs around the pool were already filled with sunbathers, and on the nearby beach  the bronzed and the beautiful – and the rest – were lathering themselves with suntan lotions as we passed by on our way to catch the local bus to take us up Mount Teide, the island’s highest peak (and Spain’s highest too, at some 3,700 metres). We knew from a previous trip that the climate up there could be quite different from that of  Playa de Americas, so we had brought our light zippy jackets with us, just in case.

Nearing the bus stop we realised that the bus was already there and quickened our pace: there is only one bus up Mount Teide, and one down in the late afternoon. We arrived panting at front door of  the bus, to fnd it was being jammed open by a large Corkman wearing his county’s GAA strip of maroon and white. His face was of a similar colour to his jersey, and we realised that we had been laughing at him (to ourselves) a few days earlier when we saw him prostrate on the beach, his corpulent torso
bared to the hot sun and turning rapidly roaring red.

“I saw ye coming and told Pádraig here to hould his horses”, he beamed, ushering us on board. The driver, who clearly was not a Pádraig, scowled and took our money impatiently before gunning his engine and steering out into the morning traffic. We thanked our Corkonian ally and made our way down the aisle, to smiles from most of the motley band of passengers, many of whom, like ourselves, were prepared for the cooler climes aloft. There were no smiles from one couple who were attired as though for an assault on the North Face of the Eiger. Dressed identically in uniform dun-coloured heavy-duty trekking gear,  Hans and Heidi were like stage-Germans from a British war film. As we passed by their seat, he looked elaborately at his watch and made some aside to her in German about “the  lazy English”. I decided not to take umbrage on either score and sat down at the back of the bus.

The road up to the higher reaches of Teide winds steeply, almost vertical at times, and the landscape changes from bare rock and ribbon building to pine-clad slopes. We emerged at last on to the plateau-like moonscape near the summit, to view the spectacular cratered vista created here by volcanic activity over centuries.

At least that was the idea. But we could not see much of  anything. Because it was snowing. Not just a few picturesque snowflakes, but a mini-blizzard, sweeping across the road in front of us and covering the countryside in inches of the dreaded white stuff. The bus skidded as it pulled into the car park of the parador hotel and restaurant which is the main destination for day-trippers. We got out to be greeted by an icy blast that knifed through my pathetically light jacket. But at least we had full-length trousers on, unlike Jimmy from Cork, who been regaling us on the way up with detailed re-runs of the previous year’s achievements of  both Cork’s hurlers and footballers.

“Sure come on and we’ll get a brandy”, he said as we all huddled against the savage cold. All, that is, except Hans and Heidi, who stood to one side, snug  and smug in their mountaineering garb while they perused a map. They even had two pairs of those tall walking sticks you’d associate more with the Alps or the Himalayas.

We ignored them and followed Jimmy across the car park to the door of the restaurant. We were looking forward to some breakfast, having skipped it to catch the bus, as we knew this restaurant from our previous visit. Shock horror. It was closed. Surely some mistake. We tried pushing and pulling at the glass doors, to no avail. There was a dim light to be seen beyond the food counter. One of our party began to knock loudly on the door. Kicking it would have been next, but a small cross-looking woman appeared inside and began to shout and gesticulate at us. Someone who understood Spanish interpreted and then said. “They’ve no food delivered, and the staff can’t get up here from Puerto de la Cruz (on the north side of the island) because of icy roads. She wants us to go away.”

Petrified and hungry we turned to see our bus heading off. It would not be back until 4 pm. The departing bus was bad enough, but there was also the sight of Hans and Heidi, sheltered behind a rock and pouring themselves two steaming mugs of coffee from a large flask. Then from a rucksack they took out enough food to feed a small army. Did they offer us any? Nein! They finished their repast and then strode masterfully off into the swirling snow. Before they went, Hans smirked at us and waved goodbye, saying, “There is no such thing as bad weather. Only bad equipment”. He sounded like a parody of Dr Strangelove.

The rest of us bonded together and hid from the penetrating snow as best we could, either in the small porch of the restaurant or under the dramatic outcrops of rock that normally are such a scenic highlight. Swapping travellers’ tales, we made lots of new friends before we all froze to death. No, that didn’t happen. Instead, the snow began to stop and the sun began to shine … and a small bus appeared bearing the staff of the restaurant. Soon we were all inside, eating and drinking  and toasting our survival.
In no time after that, we were able to head off and explore as though the snow had never been.

That afternoon we assembled to await the bus. Jimmy and the rest of our new friends were there, but no sign of Hans and Heidi. We climbed aboard and the driver began to shut the doors. Just then two distant figures appeared, stumbling along a rocky track and waving at the bus. The driver didn’t seem aware of them as he prepared to drive off. Did Jimmy – or  any of us – jump up and call the driver’s attention to his missing passengers? Did we what?

Two days later on the beach, we noticed a familiar-looking couple, but couldn’t quite place them at first without their mountaineering clothes.
Then we noticed that the woman had her left foot encased in plaster from toe to ankle.

Did we feel guilty? To paraphrase a famous tribunal star: “Did we ….?”

ENDS


Copyright: Éanna Brophy (Published in Sunday Times September 2011)
SUCKERED IN ROME ... 
A cautionary tale for tourists

If we ever go back to Rome we’ll be hoping to meet Pierre Cardin again.

Well, not quite Pierre himself, but his Sales Manager from Milan. Well, not quite him either, but the man who purported to be that august personage and took us for a right pair of eejits.

You will, I’m sure, have read many articles or tips or tweets on the many ingenious ways in which people on holiday can be fooled by assorted conmen and conwomen. It’s when one’s guard is down that even the most alert among us can be caught out and relieved of our worldly goods or part thereof.

Which brings me to our brief encounter with “Pierre’s man in Rome”. The whole  business took perhaps all of two minutes, and in hindsight it was brilliantly done – while we were partly done. My wife and I were strolling on a bright, warm December afternoon across one of the Tiber’s many bridges when a car came around the corner and drew up beside us, causing other cars to brake, blare their horns and swerve past. A slightly distracted well-dressed man with rimless glasses was beckoning at us from the driver’s side of the car. He wound down the passenger-side window and waved a street map at us.

“Excuse me”, he said in perfect English, “Can you tell me if I am on the right bridge to bring me to the Vatican?”

We looked at the map and with all the experience of having spent two days in the city assured him he was indeed headed that way. He apologetically explained that he had just driven down from Milan, where he was Pierre Cardin’s Sales Manager. Then he interrupted himself to suddenly ask if we were English. No, Irish, we proudly declared.

He nearly dropped the map in excitement at this. “Irish?”, he echoed, “My wife is from Belfast! In fact I am going there for Christmas with her family!”

We were murmuring some exclamations about it being a small world when he interrupted, asking me abruptly: “What height are you?” While I was still trying to formulate an answer (and the cars continued to swerve by) he reached into the back of the car and produced a gold-coloured Pierre Cardin bag which he said contained a shirt just my size. He thrust it into my hands and gave my wife another similar bag which he said contained a top just right for her. Mere sales samples, he said, but a small token of his gratitude for our help.

We were still demurring about such unwonted benevolence when he took out his wallet and showed us some credit cards and such-like. “Now maybe you can help me in return”, said Pierre (as we have come to call him). “I am nearly running out of petrol", he sighed, "and the stations here will not accept my bank cards because they apply only in Milan.”

This was deplorable. I found myself reaching for my wallet. There was a €50 note sticking out slightly, but I tendered him a tenner to get by on. As I did so it was sinking in that there was something quite odd about the whole business.                                                                          

Pierre, looking disappointed, said he was hoping for the fifty.         

At that same moment my wife began to stuff our lovely golden plastic bags back through the car window and brusquely to inform Pierre we really wanted none of his samples.

This made him quite cross. “You’re upsetting me now”, he snapped, then nabbed the tenner from my retreating fingers, revved up the car and shot off across the bridge. We doubted if he was really heading for the Vatican to show Cardin to the cardinals. As the car receded, we noted for the first time that it was really a small-calibre Fiat, a bit of a banger at that, and hardly the kind of car a high representative of the real Pierre would be seen in, dead or alive.

We were left with mixed feelings. Foremost was one of embarrassment at having been taken in, followed closely by relief that at least we had donated only a €10 note to the conman’s coffers. I was relieved I still had the wallet.

But we must have stuck out like The Only Tourists In Town that Week in December ... Two days later, as we ambled along a tree-lined footpath wondering how on earth to cross the road to visit the Palatine hill, we heard the toot of a nearby car horn. Shading our eyes against the sun and peering across a line of parked cars, we saw that beyond them a car had stopped and the driver was beckoning us towards him. We looked at him. He looked at us. And Pierre (for indeed it was he) took off like the proverbial scalded feline.

We never saw him again that week, but we’ll be ready for him next time we visit Rome.

I want to ask him if his decent Belfast wife is not utterly ashamed of his carry-on.


ENDS

© Éanna Brophy (Published in Sunday Times Irish Edition August 2011)

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

THE NIGHT ELVIS SANG AT THE THEATRE ROYAL IN DUBLIN


THE INTRIGUING TALE BELOW WAS FOUND IN A BUILDER’S SKIP OUTSIDE AN OLD HOUSE UNDERGOING RENOVATIONS IN DUBLIN, IRELAND. IT WAS HANDWRITTEN IN PENCIL IN A BATTERED OLD SCHOOL COPYBOOK. CAN IT POSSIBLY BE TRUE? ELVIS PRESLEY, WE’RE TOLD,  NEVER PERFORMED IN PUBLIC OUTSIDE OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT … OR DID HE?

THE NIGHT ELVIS SANG AT THE THEATRE ROYAL IN DUBLIN

THIS is going to come as a shock to the wife. It’s something I haven’t been able to tell her in all the years we’ve been married. I hope she won’t be too cross with me. It will surprise a lot of other people too, but I suppose it’s all right to talk about it now that poor Jack – that’s the brother-in-law -  has passed on to his reward. He always made me keep quiet about it. I had to swear not to tell anybody, because he was afraid it might call attention to himself even years and years after that peculiar night. The night I proposed to the wife – and Elvis Presley sang in the Theatre Royal.

Fit for a king the old Royal was; gone a long time now, like the King himself, sure God be good to him.

I always used to tell Jack no-one would believe it happened, but he never stopped worrying that the American army would come lookin’ for him for being a deserter. Which he wasn’t of course. He just kind-of forgot to go back.

Jack lived on the same road as me in Cabra West. A working class area they called it, although most of the people were unemployed. Either that or the kids’ da’s were gone to look for jobs in England. Jack was the same age as me, a bit of a harum-scarum me mother always called him. When he couldn’t get a regular job as a mechanic in Dublin he emigrated to America. He wasn’t long over there before he signed up with the army, and in next to no time didn’t he find himself being sent back across the Atlantic – to be stationed with the American Forces in Germany, lookin’ after their transport. And that’s how he met Elvis, who was after being sent there, too, by the army.

Elvis was very shy behind it all, Jack told me. He just wanted a quiet life most of the time, away from the mobs of fans that always followed him everywhere he went. He never got a minute’s peace from them. It was the same even in Germany. Whenever he got leave from the army, he couldn’t step outside the barracks for fear of being chased by a gang of frauleins wanting to tear his clothes off. Or to pull his hair, what little he had left after the army barbers giving him the bowl cut.

And that’s how he came to stay with Jack’s family in Cabra West. Twice, I think it was. Himself and Jack had army leave at the same time, and Jack invited him to come home with him, promising him that nobody would bother him in Ireland. Hardly anyone here would recognise him anyway, he told him, especially since he got all the hair chopped off. Once he’d gone into the army, he more or less vanished. There was no new pictures of him in magazines, and there was no television like nowadays. People still thought of Elvis with the long sideburns and the greasy hair-oil.

Elvis wasn’t sure at first about coming over. He didn’t even know exactly where Ireland was, but he decided he might as well chance it; anything was better than hanging around the barracks all day. Jack never told the family it was Elvis. His ma and da were old anyway - nearly fifty, God bless the mark! So as far as they were concerned he was just another one of Jack’s Yankee pals, not the first one he’d brought home. And with better manners than some of them, his ma said.

I was doing a strong line with Mary at the time. Jack’s little sister: that’s what he called her even though there was only a few years between them. She was, of all things, a Cliff Richard fan. I thought he was brutal (apart from being English), but she had pictures of  Cliff all over her bedroom and wasn’t interested in Elvis at all. It was only years later that she came to appreciate him – when he was well past his best, I always said. So she hardly looked twice at this soldier with the crew cut that was sharing Jack’s bedroom.

I was the only one to recognise him. Even though he wore tinted glasses, I knew it was him, because I had every one of his records and I’d seen all his films. Some of them twice or three times, especially Jailhouse Rock. Jack tried at first to persuade me it wasn’t him. He said his name was Hank Something, but that just made me laugh, until he finally gave up and admitted it. But himself and Elvis made me swear on me mother’s grave to keep it secret, so I did. My mother was still alive at the time, but it still counted.

None of the neighbours recognised him either, even when him and Jack played a bit of soccer on the green near the houses. He would’ve made a good goalie for Bohemians, Jack always said.

Elvis always made sure not to wear his own fancy clothes when he went out. So there was no sign of his famous gold lamé suits! No, he’d borrow some of Jack’s clothes; they were roughly the same build, though of course poor ould Elvis got desperate fat later on. One or two of the mammies, mind you, asked Jack who’s the good-lookin’ young fella you have staying with you this time , but none of them would ever have imagined it was Elvis the Pelvis as he used to be called. So even though he’d been a bit nervous about coming to Dublin, he began to enjoy himself.  Him and Jack used to go to the pictures in town, and they went to Dalymount and even Croke Park.

And then they went to the Theatre Royal and I went with them. It was still going strong in those days, and you got great value for your half a crown, because they had a stage show and the pictures as well. But we always got in for free because Mary was an usherette and got complimentary tickets. Even if she didn’t get them, she’d let us sneak in anyway. So there we were on the Friday night, me and Jack and Elvis, sitting in the good seats near the front, when  the curtains went back for the variety show to start. But there was something wrong. The orchestra was up on stage all right, and the Royalette girls did one of their dances, but then the conductor, a man with a moustache called Jimmy Campbell, turned around and apologised that the show would have to be cut short that night because their vocalist – that’s what they called singers in them days – their vocalist, Mr Frankie Blowers, was indisposed.

Someone started booing, and fellas up in the gods were stamping their feet and shouting we want our money back. That was when Jack had the rush of blood to the head. Didn’t he stand up and roar, “Mr Campbell, Mr Campbell, I have someone here who can sing for you!” And with that, he starts to shove poor Elvis out into the aisle an up onto the stage. He was very embarrassed and mumbled something about not having his guitar. But the orchestra was just after getting its very first electric guitar a few weeks earlier, and someone put it into Elvis’s hands.

That was that; he couldn’t resist the urge, and started strumming it straight away, and even moving his hips a bit. A few girls down the back gave a scream, but Jimmy Campbell said “Hold on a minute, I have to introduce you. What’s your name?”  And while Elvis was still mumbling, Jack shouted “Seamus Murphy”.

That’s how he was introduced to the audience, and then he was off and you couldn’t stop him. He sang Hound Dog, and Don’t Be Cruel and a whole lot of  his other songs. When he did Jailhouse Rock it nearly brought the house down, but then Mr Campbell had to call a halt because the film had to start on time. I forget what they showed that night; it might have been The Magnificent Seven. All I can remember is the buzz of excitement after he sang. People were still whispering long after the film started and other people were telling them to “shush”.

But when Elvis got back to his seat he was ragin’ with Jack for shoving him up on the stage like that. He was very worried that the Colonel would get to hear about it. Not an army colonel, mind you, but his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Poor Elvis was afraid he’d  probably accuse him of  breach of contract or something. Anyway, he borrowed Jack’s woolly hat as a disguise when they were leaving the Royal, but it was lashing rain outside, so if anyone had been still wondering who the singer was, they didn’t hang around getting soaked trying to find out.


Elvis in his US army uniform

Elvis went back to Germany the very next day, a bit sudden, and never came back to Cabra. I think he probably met Priscilla then, so that was that.

Jack didn’t exactly desert from the American army. It was peacetime anyway, so when he met a nice-looking “mot” here in Dublin, he decided to stay here, and he figured sure the Yanks wouldn’t miss him all that much. But it meant that he could never go to America. Even years later, he was still afraid to chance it, although he regularly got cards in the post, inviting him to Las Vegas, or even to visit Gracelands. They were always signed Seamus Murphy.

But I nearly forgot to tell you the other important thing about that night. That was when I proposed to Mary, and we got married eight weeks later. But she’s going to be embarrassed now when I tell her who the singer really was. Maybe I won’t tell her at all. I had the ring in my pocket,  and after Elvis and Jack left I waited in the foyer to surprise her with it when she came off duty. Although it wasn’t really a surprise: sure she was after giving me a few broad hints that we’d been doing a line for over a year, and stopping and looking at the rings every time we passed McDowells the jewellers in O’Connell Street.

The hints had got very strong lately. In fact she’d nearly started cryin’ a few nights earlier when I said we should maybe wait until we could afford a house of our own. We nearly had a fight about it, but I gave in of course, and next day I sneaked out and bought the ring without telling her. I’d decided to bring her over to the Red Bank restaurant, across the road from the Royal – a very posh place I couldn’t really afford - and ask her to marry me. Which I did, and she said  yes straight away. But janey mack, she’ll be raging now when I tell her the truth about Elvis in the Royal, and remind her of what she said. Because before I took out the ring, I asked her what she thought of Jack’s pal’s performance. And do you know what she said? “Brutal!”

I had to bite me tongue. But I married her anyway! And in spite of  our musical differences we’ve had a good marriage compared to what you see these days. Sure I don’t know why they bother getting married at all, the way they jump into bed with each other!

Our own kids are all grown up and married now. Two boys and two girls. Good singers, too, by the way – except the first lad, who was born premature seven months after we got married. The funny thing is, I often thought he had a look of Elvis about him.

But he can’t sing a note!

ENDS
°Éanna Brophy
2008