The Left-Handed Son

DEATH NOTICE, The Martlet, October 2

 

We record, with sincere regret, the deaths of Mr Peter Berrills, the respected auctioneer, and his wife Mrs Assumpta Berrills.  After a long battle with cancer, Assumpta passed away in her sleep on September the Twenty-First and she was followed closely into Heaven by her husband whose heart failed him on the Twenty-Fourth.

Can any of us forget Peter presiding at those fabulous auction evenings in the Town Hall where one might (if one were lucky) acquire a pretty plate set, or colour TV, or the finest linens known to man?  

Mr and Mrs Berrills were a good-natured and mostly private couple who spent their last years travelling in Asia before they were both brought down by sickness. They leave behind their unattached daughter Phyllis, 26, and left-handed son, Oran, 24.

 

For weeks if you stuck your ear outside you couldn’t say if it was people or seagulls.  But as time went on, that noise and hysteria fell away and the protestors redirected their concerns.  One day I was in the Costcutters and I saw Mary Deane (of the screaming Deanes) getting herself a breakfast roll at the deli counter and there was no trace of that righteous anger in her anymore.  Just hunger.  You’d think Lavery had given the Gilgans their demanded pound of flesh and whatever that amount happened to be it had indeed done the work of dulling their grief.  

The days were getting longer.  Sunnier.  So the people were on the whole happier.  But the humidity was worsening, and you could sense a spell of sweating was about to get underway.  With some of them, you could see it might take just one word and they’d be gulls again, screeching, swooping, pecking.  At any rate, a vigil was planned for Saturday where it was likely they’d get all fired up again.  And the pecking could resume.

I was working on the latest piece on shoplifters by Fitzy and I thought I’d run it by Oran Berrills, something I had done on one or two occasions in the past, but which was now becoming a habit.  I was confident in my own editing know-how, but had become so cowed by Fitzy’s defensiveness, him all aggrieved and combative when faced with my edits, that I had been asking for a second opinion, for revisions of my revisions.  I shouldn’t have required further ammo in dealing with the man, but felt more at ease after Oran had had a look at it.

 

Mr Nicholas Boland, who is regional representative of the Irish Retail Association (IRA) said: “When they are not busy shoplifting, they’re out your backs skulling bottles of barley wine.  It’s a terror, I swear to you, and we retailers have had enough.” 

 

Oran stalled.  I.R.A, hmm, he said.   Is it a joke – the acronym, I mean – or does this retailer body really go by that?

I’ve no idea.  I’ve never heard of them. 

That’s unfortunate.  I’d check with your reporter when you get back.  Only as you well know we have another organisation round these parts that generally operate under those initials.  It could mean some sticky business if one is mistaken for the other.  Or if one takes exception to the other claiming ownership of it. 

Yes, I thought that myself.  Good that you noticed it.  Fitzy tends to embellish so I wouldn’t be surprised if he added the acronym himself.   

Do you have anything else for me? he asked.  He looked itching for something to do – the look of ennui in his eyes from days and weeks and months in front of the TV palpable.

Nothing.  Well . . . there’s a film review I haven’t looked at yet . . . but I don’t need you doing my own job for me. 

It’s not looking like the Tout will be in business anymore, so I’m up for all the work I can get. 

You won’t be getting any of my dosh, I chuckled.  But the help’s appreciated.

What’s the film review?

A new Shelley Long comedy.  I think.  Can’t remember the title. 

My God, is she still going?

Still?  She hasn’t been going that long.

I’ll have a look at it if you have it.

I don’t.  It’s in the office.  The reviewer is a new fella.  I don’t think he fits the custard. 

If he’s no good, why don’t I do the reviews then?

Do you fancy getting up off your arse and going to the Pompadour to watch them?

What’s the Pompadour?

Used to be the Scala.   

Ah, the Scala.  Yes, I think I remember.  What about the Adolphi?  Is that still there?

Been abandoned for years.  Sits there in disuse, you’d think a bomb fell on it.  Kind of a tragedy.  And disgrace. 

A shame. 

The town’s gone to shit in general if you didn’t know. 

I did.  Sure I’m a Martlet reader, amn’t I? 

I suppose we only need one cinema house anyway, but it’s an eyesore, I swear.

I’ll miss the Adolphi.  It plays a crucial part in my romantic history.

Oh you have a romantic history, Oran, do you?

I sowed my wild oats at that place.  Round the back.  After an old film or two.  She had a thing for Tony Curtis, as I recall.  At any rate, I don’t think much of the idea now that I’ve dwelt on it.  I mean, going out to some place to review movies.  I won’t be suffering that thoroughfare anytime soon.  Now if I could watch them sitting here in my home, like one of my own DVDs, that would be a very pleasing thing.  Yes.  I probably wouldn’t make much of a film critic anyway.  Even if I always pictured myself making a fair go of the business.  In the end I’d be more of a Sarris than a Kael – a bloody sight more elitist, I can tell you.

She was a bit elitist too, wasn’t she?

Sure.  Everyone is.  With a pen in their hand.  Some more than others though. 

At the front door there was the squeaky noise of the key turning and when the door opened, in walked Adam, the Berrils only other contact with the outside world.  Possessing a third key, he was clearly more important to them than I was in retainer terms.  I rarely saw the chap myself, or he me, but we knew each other enough to nod out polite acknowledgements.  Normally when I saw him he was coming in with bags of groceries but today he had in his hand just a single white envelope.   

I have the money for you, he said.  Do you have the thing ready?

I do, said Oran.

Oran popped out of his TV seat and lumbered to the back of the room where he picked up a large cardboard box I had failed to notice before. 

How’s the buyer? he asked Adam. A responsible sort, I hope?

He had one of those big exercise bikes in the hallway, replied Adam. 

Ah.  The mark of a good member of the middle classes.  I’m happy to give him my business then.  And I suppose it makes sense him buying this from me if that’s the type of chap he is.

What are you selling?  I asked.

A brass vase from India.  Very beautiful.  Belonged to the mother. 

I was frankly astonished to witness him selling anything at all.  Until now I had only known him – the two of them, in fact – to be hoarders of some immensity.  I’d heard the father had been a well-respected auctioneer in town, but son and daughter seemed the complete opposite.  Neither of them keen on parting with anything.  Until now.  All it took was a brass vase from India for the spell to be broken and a family’s legacy restored.  Now if only they’d bin some of that mounting paper and plastic.    

Adam, who unlike myself never stayed long in the house, began to leave with the Indian vase but as he was going out the door he turned and said:  Oh, you should know, they were talking about the pair of you in town.

Who? asked Oran.

You and Phyllis.

I mean, who was talking about us?

Nobody in particular.  They were talking about you in O’Neill’s when I was there.  Something about the lad that was killed out in Europe.  I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, only caught them saying Berrills at the very end.  But they sounded rightly sore about something.

And with that there was not another word from Adam as he was out the door and away to be done with the next chore.

Why do they call him a boy all the time? Oran turned and asked me.  He was all grown up.

Ernest Gilgan? Well, yeah, he wasn’t long out of the college.

So he was a man then.  Be as it may a young one.

On the cusp.

Come on, what age was he – twenty-one?

Twenty.

You’d think he was still in communion loafers the way they go on about him. 

He was apparently small for his age. 

Everyone’s small for their age in this place. 

That’s not fair.  You and Phyllis are giants.

Don’t be so silly.  Anyway, how would they have found out?  You didn’t say it to someone, did you?    

I didn’t respond to him.  Kept to an oblivious – but troubled – silence.  Inside I sat alone with the knowledge that I had indeed shared the secret of the Scouring Tout.  I had probably fooled myself into trusting Caitriona Colreavy.  More than likely I had.  Poisoned the brain’s efficiency in my calamitous need to impress the woman.  I just couldn’t imagine her going and telling that wanker of a husband, but the thought had crossed my mind as she left Crumallys last week with that drunkenness about her.  I hadn’t revealed the Tout’s identity to anyone else, so it must have been her that blabbed.  After my own pitiful spill of the beans.   

 

 

Image: Wikipedia Commons