True Irish Stories for Haiti

God did not make the same promise to Charlie Porter that He made to Abraham: his descendents would be like grains of sands on the beach. There were no blaring trumpets, or angels’ calling, just snotty noses and the promise of a Council House in Linnvale. But Josie had two gentle hands for mothering and a soft lilting voice that could woo any child back from the abyss. Charlie’s voice was of a rougher grain, sandpaper on open ears. It came from the depths of rural Ireland and flung out enough rrrrrrs to start a tractor and when that didn’t work, moved up another gear and RRRRed enough to make me fidget and float away, to collect bumble bees in a jar, because I only spoke the idiot English.

Later, when I’d mastered the language of the Woodbine Full Strength, the half of whisky and the half of beer, Charlie was working for a fellow Irishman. Only Spratt could have seen that a triangle of land between the Ging-Gang-Gooley Scout Hall, with a railway at its back and a garage on the other side, full of ground elder and bindweed, was good for nothing, but making money. Spratt planted a two-bob caravan and four men from Letterkenny bloomed into being. Some men might have called him an entrepreneur, for if there were contracts to be won and holes to be dug in the road, there was no need for expensive equipment; all he needed was Letterkenny men to fill them. And if God in his foresight didn’t give them enough light, then Spartt made sure the tick of the diesel generator would eke out enough fumes to fill a light bulb.

Charlie got on his bike and migrated north out of Linnvale and found himself in the same hole as the Letterkenny men. But he soon showed them a clean pair of heels, for although he was small, he skipped and danced through any kind of navvy work he tackled, like Celtic’s great Jimmy Johnstone on the wing.

Later, when I met Charlie at a funeral of his old comrade he’d one hand holding the cuff of his black jacket and his left foot was trailing behind him, marking his shiny shoes. He still talked out of the side of his mouth, like a penny- whistle gangster, but complained that he’d had a stroke; life had slowed him down and it had taken him two days to paint the whole house.

Sadly, he said, he couldn’t smoke Woodbine any more and had to settle for some Silk Cut spectre of a cigarette with a tip. After a few jars we always returned to the subject of Spratt and the glory days. Charlie would always be in the front of the wagon. The Goat would be in the back, for as Charlie said, ‘the Goat might have been the gaffer, but even if you shat in both his Wellington boots he couldn’t have smelt any worse. You couldn’t have such a man sitting beside you. That would be indecent.’

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, always at the top of his game.