Things That Happen 11: Journeys From Home

 

It’s surreal. I’m on the way to Dublin Port to get a ferry to Holyhead and on to London. Dad and I say little on the journey from Walkinstown in south Dublin to the boat. It’s raining lightly and we’re both a bit lost in our thoughts in the car. The two clowns together again, but this time the journey isn’t a holiday. There is no easy home-coming. There’s no trip to see the Space Shuttle or Chocolate Sundaes. There’s no fucking ice cream on this trip. I’m looking at the reflection of the Dublin City lights on the windscreen of dad’s car, a wine-coloured Volkswagen Golf. But I also see in those reflections the image of my mother, crying in the hallway, and then at the door as dad reverses out of the driveway. She waves goodbye in the darkness, and I am gone.

‘’Take this,’’ dad says.

He shoves an old brown wallet into my hand. It’s worn at the edges, but it has lasted time itself. You’ll need this for all the money you’ll earn in London. I recognised it.

‘’Your mam bought me this after we were married in the 1960s. It’s yours now. Look after it.’’

I tucked my passport into it, the last hundred pounds I had, another 50 pounds from dad, and pushed it into my jacket pocket. I’d packed only four changes of clothes into a duffle bag. But on that journey, it became my worldly possessions. There was no taking my library of books, my childhood collection of Lego and dinky cars, tucked away in a cupboard or given away at a community sale … that was all gone. I was on my own.

*******

‘’And where was it you say you were working?’’

I explained that I’d been on an AnCo course for more than a year for Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and that the company has given me a Fête Complète, form your own business at 19 years of age and work on contract for us. I was just out of training college and didn’t even have a driving licence.

‘’Oh, right. But this form says you were offered a job and refused.’’

The elderly lady in the Labour Exchange with blue, wire-rimmed glasses gets flustered. She potters off for ten minutes and returns saying she phoned my previous employer and my story is confirmed.

‘’Yeh, that’s okay. We’ll continue your unemployment payments, but you’ll have to attend a course on job interview skills from next Monday if we are to continue your payments.’’

I’d heard about this new FAS course that pretended to be a course on job hunting skills but was nothing more than a concocted government scheme to shift numbers off the unemployment statistics for six to eight weeks.

‘’Is this the banana course I’m doing next Monday?’’

‘’Excuse me,’’ says she.

‘’The one where the trainees do pretend phone calls to perspective employees using a banana as a phone because FAS doesn’t even have the resources to provide proper job application support.’’

This didn’t go down well. Blue-wired glass civil servant was most offended. I had breached the code of conduct.

‘’Attend the course or you will have your benefits cut.’’

After 15 minutes the queue behind me were rightly getting agitated. I’d already completed my journalist course in Mespil road and had a three-inch file of job applications at home. I delivered my final salvo to blue-rimmed glass lady.

‘’Do you see that queue behind me?’’

‘’Yeh, I do, and you have your instructions for next Monday and we will send a letter out.’’

‘’And you understand that some of the men standing in that queue have shot people dead, are involved in the current Dublin heroin trade. I recognise them because I stood in court and covered their cases.’’

At that point, she crumbled, burst into tears and ran into the back office.’’

I knew they were not getting the banana FAS treatment and it would be all, yes sir, no sir, there’s your money, see you next week.

I collected my last welfare payment that afternoon. I went home depressed and talked to my pal, Paul. That was it. We were done. I headed for the B&I office in Dame Street the following day and didn’t even tell my family. I don’t know what I was thinking. Twelve pounds I paid for that one-way ferry ticket. The later train journey cost me more to London! Two days apart, Thursday to the Saturday, Paul and I were on the ferry to England.

*******

Holyhead in the 1980s was an absolute shithole – a sort of last post and yet the beginning of something. I was dog-sick on the boat. I don’t do water, sea and boats well. I wandered around for an hour before finding out where I could pick up the train. It started to piss rain. We got in about 4 am but the first train didn’t leave until 6 am. I walked just to walk and wondered what in the name of Christ have I got myself into here.

I had some stupid idea that the train to London would be quiet. How quaint a thought. It was packed. Like it was rush-hour in Dublin, London or New York. I couldn’t get a seat. I settled in a carriage next to the toilets. People were standing and falling asleep on the journey. I found a corner and bedded down, clutching my only belongings under me and dad’s wallet. I heard the voices. So many Irish. Drifting to an unhappy sleep, I knew many had done this journey before.  How dare I pretend to be the first or that I was special. A point came when I just had to ignore the people stepping over me. They had things to do, maybe places to go. A purpose. I didn’t have that.

Finally, Euston Station and reunited with Paul after two hours and wandering and wondering if I should just go back home on the next train and ferry. It was a place to gather my thoughts and rest my head on a hard seat and the noise of a new awakening world. And in those dreams, I could see and hear my dad returning from the ferry port, that previous night, parking his car in the driveway of our family home, going inside, and consoling my mam with, ‘sure he’ll be back in a week or two.’