OFF BROADWAY (2005)
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A Christmas Carol
A rich man’s joke is always funny – even if Sparkly does tell it at every Christmas party since the Three Wise Men are dumb and ignorant.
“These two polar bears,” he says, “a Daddy one and a baby, are standing at the North Pole, when the little one asks, ‘Hey, Pop, am I really a polar bear?’
“‘Course you are,’ says Pop.
“‘Are you sure?’ says Junior.
“‘Sure, I’m sure,’ says Pop – though he has lingering doubts about Offspring’s purity of lineage, given that Mrs Bear has more callers than a taxi on a wet night.
“‘Are you absolutely, positively sure?’ persists Junior.
“‘Absolutely and positively – and even definitely,’ says Pop, ‘but why do keep asking?’
“‘Well, it’s like this, Pop,’ says Junior. ‘I’m feckin’ freezing.’”
*
We all laugh – Shakes, myself and Sparkly.
Dessie ‘Sparkly’ Barkley, our host, makes some of his many crusts selling bottom-of-the-range cigar lighters and what is passed off as Ladies Toilet Water to the hawkers who operate under the city walls.
Once a year, to show what type of guy he is, Sparkly throws a no-expense-spared bash for his clients. Two complimentary glasses of sparkling wine, free crisps, sausage rolls, Battenburg – you name it, Sparkly lays it on. And today, we are at Sparkly’s own up-market American theme bar, The Jack Kennedy, which he has given over, no expense spared for the occasion.
I am here as guest of Charlie ‘Shakes’ Coyle, former street drunk and passer-by-frightener extraordinaire, who is for two years now, dried out and selling lighters three for a pound under Castle Gate. Shakes, in keeping with the festivities, is decked out in the traders’ seasonal uniform – red Santa suit, cotton wool beard and Noddy cap.
The reason for Shakes’ conversion to One Day at A Time, you will recall, is that Mrs Shakes ups and dumps him for a runaway priest she meets at an Al-Anon meeting. Indeed, Mrs S stops only long enough to leave their eight-year-old daughter, Dear Little Kylie, in Barkley’s off-licence, the one place she is sure Shakes will find her.
Dear Little Kylie is the apple of Shake’s blurred eye. And he knows that if he continues in his present career, she will be stuck in a shelter run by single men in their fifties, about whom we will say no more as cases are still pending. So, Shakes forswears the bottle on the spot. And six weeks of One Day at A Timing later, he returns to Barkley’s Off-Licence to ask Sparkly to set him up as managing director of his own market stall.
Sparkly, of course, is only too happy to help out an old friend, and no expense spared, gives Shakes a start-up loan. Sparkly doesn’t even look for a guarantor, though when your closest pal is Harry the Hurler, chief executive of the Civil Defenders – as is Sparkly’s, collection is rarely an issue.
Shakes takes to the lighter-selling business like a man reborn. He works night and day, day and night, only ever leaving his patch to go home to Dear Little Kylie. Business is so good that within a year, Shakes pays off the twelfth and final £500 instalment on his three grand loan.
Surprisingly, Shakes’ brain remains remarkably unpickled by the years of heavy drinking, and he works out all sorts of dodges to stay one step ahead of the lighter-selling pack. By keeping an eye on the tabloid press, Shakes discerns whichever stars are flavour of the month, and then gets his cousin to stencil their images onto his wares. This costs him five pence a time but lets him hike his prices by fifty.
Dear Little Kylie helps out on the stall at the weekend and, as she says herself, is proving a chip of the old blocked. For Kylie, it must be said, has a patter that can sell lighters to lung surgeons.
Moreover, despite her tender years, Kylie is not a lady upon whom very many flies will land, as those of you who do business with her know well. One day, it is reported, two young hoods decide to rob her while Shakes is on a break. They put their hands in their pockets like they have guns and demand all the takings. But quick as you can blink, Kylie tosses a cup of lighter fluid over them and then offers them a three second start, before she tests some new flame-adjusters.
“Indeed,” says Shakes when Sparkly shoots off to fetch another round of cocktail sausages, “things are starting to look up for myself and Dear Little Kylie. We are going to open up our own specialised shop in the New Year. There’s a guy up in Belfast, who can sell me lighters at half what Sparkly does. He’s the guy that Sparkly buys off – but he tells me he’s all for free trade. So I buy five grand of stock off him yesterday – to arrive later today.
“Then this morning, I put down a two G deposit on a little shop and store-room at the top of Waterloo Street. It’s all my savings but I’ll make it back in a couple of months. It’ll be a little competition for Sparkly, but as a fellow businessman, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
I am not so sure – though do not say so. Sparkly, for all his free sausage rolls, is a thief in a suit with a heart like a rotten apple.
Out of the crowd, another Santa suit veers towards us. And who is underneath it but Shake’s old pal and fellow stall-holder Lily ‘Rusty’ Gillespie. In a previous life, it is alleged that Rusty earns her living as a singer with a jazz band, before too many early morning gin parties take their toll. But now, like Shakes, she is taking each day at a time.
Rusty, herself, even saved and sober, is unaware of the damage the gin does to her pipes. Indeed, between ourselves, she gets her name, not from her dark red hair as she will tell you, but because it is commonly advised that her singing is deadlier than a rusty nail. Indeed, I personally know of several slaughterhouses which are more tuneful.
Nowadays, she generally confines her performances to her earrings’ and joss-sticks’ stall. If the weather’s right, you’ll hear a version of ‘Summertime’, which will bring tears to the eyes of any music-lover. And in the winter, her version of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ has to be heard to be believed.
No singing today, however, as Rusty, unlike her old supping-buddy Shakes, is in bad old form. It seems that Danny Boy Gillespie, her number one son and heir, is this morning awarded a two year sabbatical at St Mildred’s Shelter and Young Offenders Centre after he is photographed close to a Civil Defenders’ protest rally, with a bottle in his hand. Danny Boy, who’s 17 and still a bit wet, argues it’s Coca Cola. But six police witnesses and a resident magistrate agree that it identically resembles a lighted petrol bomb.
“I’m a good mother, I warn him all the time,” weeps Rusty, wiping her nose on the piping on her sleeve.
“Yes, yes, there, there,” says Shakes, patting her shoulder. But she only becomes more distressed.
“I warn him all the time,” she cries, her shoulders starting to go.
“Terrible, terrible,” murmurs Shakes, sympathetically and puts a protective arm around her. But it is no use.
“I warn him all the time,” she sobs wildly. “Always wear your bloody mask, you stupid fool.”
*
Shakes, who for a one-time passer-by-frightener is a very gentle soul, eventually settles Rusty with a chorus of “Don’t worrys” and “He’ll soon be homes”. And before long, she is smiling up at him and giving it the My Knight In Shining Armour eyes.
Thinking this is a convenient moment to hit the circuit, I drift over for a natter with Getemup Gormley. Getemup, I learn, is leaving behind the business of waving replica guns in bank clerks’ faces to the altogether more profitable dodge of flogging them to youngsters on Union Hall Street.
Within minutes, however, our chat is interrupted by some loud yelling from the direction of Shakes and Rusty, who, strangely, seem to be loudly questioning Sparkly Barkley’s parentage.Then, all of a sudden, two Barkleyguard security men are banging Shake’s head off the corner of the door on his way out of the building.
Rusty tries to intervene, and succeeds in landing Sparkly a particularly fine blow just below the money belt, before she too is dumped out into the back lane with yesterday’s rubbish.
*
It is one year and one week later before I see Shakes again. It is a freezing Christmas Eve morning and he is sleeping in a doorway on Waterloo Place; legs showered with snow and an empty Buckfast bottle in his hand. He is in poor fettle. He has no coat, and his ragged jacket and trousers are splattered in blood and grime. The drink-sweat on his blistered brow is frosting over, and his nose is the colour of a melted Union Jack.
I manage to rouse him and pull him up onto an iron bench which is quickly vacated. He tells me that I am his best friend in all the world, and that he wants me to take him on the bus to see Dear Little Kylie. Kylie, as you know, is in St Mildred’s Shelter in Belfast for ten months now, after the gendarmes spot Shakes back scaring city-centre pedestrians.
Like yourself, I hear bits and pieces about Shakes’ fall from grace – how he loses the shop-deal, his Belfast connection and even his trader’s licence, and then goes back to hitting the syrup harder than ever before. So I agree to listen to the full story, if he will only let me oxter him back to his flat in Sackville Court and hose him down a little.
“It all dates back to that party last year,” he tells me, in between me ducking his head under the cold tap.
“That motherless dog Sparkly Barkley knows all along I intend to branch out and is just waiting to put a pin in me. When I tell him at the party that I am setting up shop, he just laughs and laughs at me like I am an idiot child. ‘You poor fool, you poor fool,’ he keeps saying.
“When he finally settles himself, he says that both the dealer in Belfast that I give five grand to for supplies and the guy I buy the shop from, are his stooges. And that I am now seven Gs lighter than when I walk in the door.
“I tell him that’s against the law. But he just laughs again and says: ‘The magistrate might take a dim view of Dear Little Kylie if he hears she is selling fancy Ladies Toilet Water which Knuckles Doherty is nicking to order for her.’ He then declares that his good wife is terribly distressed to learn the Channel Numero Cinq she purchases from Dear Little Kylie is stolen goods. And Mrs B, it seems, is now actively considering doing her civic duty by revealing this to the peelers – good job she keeps the bottle.”
“What is Kylie doing with lowlifes like Knuckles?” I interrupt. “And anyway, isn’t he supposed to be out of commission. Word is the Civil Defenders are after busting his fingers in the Advice Centre door, for filching three kegs from The Jack Kennedy.”
“Children grow up so fast these days,” explains Shakes, tutting his head indulgently. “You can’t watch them all the time. So, Sparkly leaves me a choice: either I lose the business or I lose Dear Little Kylie. But I, being smart, lose both.”
Shakes then starts to sniff and before long he is off again, crying like Knuckles when he hears he’s for the Advice Centre door again.
After a while, I quieten him down by reminding him that we’re going to see Dear Little Kylie. Shakes even agrees to hoke out a fresh shirt but this proves to be an unreasonable demand, the only clean vestments in the flat being a red Santa suit, a cotton wool beard and a Noddy hat.
No-one comments much on Shake’s attire when we finally get on the Belfast Flier at Foyle Street – but only because there is already another passenger on the bus similarly bedecked. And most likely, people think there is a last minute Santa convention being held in the Big Smoke.The other Father Christmas on board, it transpires, is none other than Rusty Gillespie, also en route to St Mildred’s to visit her son, Danny Boy who’s still in the Secure Wing. Rusty you’ll remember is allowed to hold on to her stall, despite her bopping of Sparkly – and only has to pay him compensation totalling 20 per cent of her gross profits for the next five years.
Our 75-mile journey passes off peacefully, apart from a minor incident at Castledawson when a departing passenger of few apparent scruples entices Rusty to sign a few bars of ‘Little Drummer Boy’. But happily, we manage to persuade her to save her voice as a treat for Danny Boy before the driver makes good his threat to turn the bus round and go back to Derry.
We get to Belfast, and I hail a Black Hack to take the three of us to Mildred’s. I wait outside, chewing the fat with the driver, while Shakes and Rusty shuffle inside to pay their seasonal respects.
About an hour later, they reappear together. And judging by Shake’s straight back and broad smiles, he is a lot happier than when he goes in.
“Dear Little Kylie is so excited to see me that she nearly knocks me over,” laughs Shakes. “She tells me that the home isn’t so bad and the nuns are very good to her – even if they do shut down her bedroom stall after an Elvis lighter explodes in Fr Carlin’s trouser pocket. Though he is likely to make a full recovery and need only minor surgery.
“Kylie also says she is very glad to be getting my weekly letters telling her how well I’m doing. And while I immediately suspect that someone else must be penning these – given that I am barely able to shake out an ‘X’ on my Giro these days, I play along.”
Rusty blushes a little, but Shakes just smiles.
“Anyway,” he says, “I am just about to leave when I realise I have no present for her. ‘Whatever you want in the world,’ I promise her, ‘I will bring it for you on my next visit.’
“But she just smiles and tells me she is so proud that I am off the syrup for three months now. And all she asks is that I stay off it for good and take her back home.”
I cough, a little embarrassed at this surprise revelation and Rusty’s face lights up like a Sacred Heart Lamp. But Shakes is unbothered.
“So,” he continues, “I have a word with Sister Assumpta on the way out, and she tells me that as soon as I can produce a valid One Day At A Time certificate, I can have Dear Little Kylie back.”
Sister A, you’ll gather, knows well that Shakes is not with the programme just yet. For despite my best efforts and those of Mr and Mrs Minty-Mouth Mouthwash, there is still an unmistakable odour of 12 months street-drinking off his general environs. But she is a kind old doll and wants to give some Christmas hope to Dear Little Kylie, who is blind to the hum.
We pile back into the Black Hack – Rusty and Shakes on the back seat, and me in the front and get back to the station at Glengall Street. There, Shakes hits on the idea of celebrating our day out with a few cigars. And he buys a pack of King Edwards out of the ten-spot Sister A. slips into his pocket.
The inspector, however, tells us we are not allowed to smoke in the bus, not even celebration cigars, so we save them to when we dismount in Derry. And as soon as we arrive at Foyle Street, we stop a passer-by and ask him for a light.
But who is it only Sparkly Barkley, as drunk as three houses. Moreover, he is so juiced up that he has no idea who we are, though this is not altogether surprising given that two of us are Father Christmas.
“Shure, you can have a light,” he laughs, the gold from his rings and bracelets shining in the flame he holds to Shake’s cigar.
“In fact, you can keep the lighter – no expenshe shpared for a good pal like you, Shanta. I have more of them than I know what to do with, thanks to a stupid old wino who’s gonna be a big shot. I think he’s dead now. If not he should be – ’way he lets down his little girl.”
Sparkly then laughs so hard at his own wit and goes so red in the face that I think he is going to have a stroke. But God is a rich man, who looks after his own. And Sparkly recovers to stagger along happily to the Guildhall leaving a trail of broken faces in his wake for the second Christmas in succession.
*
Now given that this is real life and not a storybook, I do not expect it to be too long before I am picking my old chum Shakes out of doorways again. Though remarkably this is not the case. Indeed, he drops off the radar altogether – and whatever other occupations Shakes is pursuing, he is not presently passer-by-frightening.
Then, one full year after I leave him crying his sad heart out on Rusty’s shoulder at the bus station, Shakes calls into DaBorgia’s on Christmas Eve to wish me season’s greetings.
I have rarely seen a guy so changed. His stride is the stride of a guy with a big pile of folding money. And his suit alone would break the back of five hundred clams.
He sits down on the empty stool next to me, so allowing me to order another drink. But he shakes his head no when I ask him will he join me.
“Do not worry,” he laughs, “I will not be preachy. And I won’t try and save you too – even though by you demeanour and attire, I see you are a man who should consider a little One Day At A Timing.
“Myself, I am now not drinking exactly one year, ever since the day we meet up round the corner in Waterloo Place. I am tempted now and again, of course. But now I have my dear little wife and daughter to think about. And of course my new stepson. I am also so busy with the business that I have no time to waste shooting the breeze with deadbeats in gin palaces, present company excepted.”
“Good job you’re not being preachy,” I counter, a little miffed at my attire being one-lined by a guy who is wearing a cotton wool beard the last time I see him.
“I am sorry,” he says. “But it is hard sometimes not to spread the Good News. Ever since our last meeting, God in his grace is smiling down on me. Though I must admit that much of my good fortune is due to a dramatic conversion by another sinner, who sees the light. But that is also God’s influence, and I don’t doubt it.”
Shakes then tells me a tale which I would not believe if it is served up to me on the front page of the Derry Standard with a marker from both Bishops.
It appears, says Shakes, that the very Christmas night after we meet Sparkly at the bus station, he is badly smashed up in a car crash. And while he is lying in his coma, he sees this vision, who tells him what a bad guy he is being to Shakes and that he must not die with this on his conscience. So immediately after Sparkly comes round, he summons Shakes to his private hospital room at Ballykelly.
When Shakes arrives, Sparkly takes his hand with tears in his eyes and says to him, “Charles” – for that is Shake’s real name – “I am truly sorry for all the pain I cause you and Dear Little Kylie. Please accept my sincerest apologies, and if there is anything I can ever do for you, anybody giving you bother, you can call me, any time.”
He then hands Shakes a little packet. “I now realise, thanks to my near-death experience, the error of my bad old ways,” he says, “and I wish to make amends with you. This parcel contains the seven Gs I liberate from you, along with ten more for good faith.
“I am instructing my supplier in Belfast to sell you his stuff at the same rate he gives it to me. You can also take the 2,000 lighters I have in the store behind DaBorgia’s – but avoid the Elvis ones, as some dollar-an-hour flunky in the Taiwan plant hates him. And they tend to go bang in the pocket for no reason.”
Well, of course, Shakes is overcome. The two men hug one another, cry a lot and praise the Lord for their good fortune.
“This is the turning point in my life,” Shakes tells me. “Not only do I get my fortune back, but more importantly I now know there is hope for us all when a thoroughly rotten sinner like Sparkly Barkley can see the Light. And from that night to this, every day is better and better.
“Within three months, Dear Little Kylie is out of St Mildred’s. We immediately get a new shop on Waterloo Street. And in July, Rusty Gillespie consents to become my bride. Rusty’s son, Danny Boy, even gets out of Mildred’s Secure Wing a couple of days early for the event. And Sparkly, God be ever good to him, fixes Danny up with a job here in The Jack Kennedy, which so far keeps him out of trouble.
“It is exactly as if Sparkly is visited by the Christmas spirits and resolves to change his entire life for the good.”
And with that, Shakes, who is a busy man and has no time to waste shooting the breeze with deadbeats in gin-palaces, excuses himself and heads back to his shop for closing hour.
*
I sit alone for a while on my high stool, mulling over whether I should have another stout on my own or also enlist on the programme. But when I look up, as if by magic I see a full glass sitting on the counter in front of me. And who is standing grinning behind it but the new barhand, Danny Boy Gillespie.
“Praise the Lord,” he says, winking the wink of a total rapscallion.
“Seasons blessings to you too,” I grin, tipping the glass Thank You in his direction. “So are you enjoying your first Christmas at large for quite a while?”
“Well, yes,” he replies, a little coyly. “But it’s not entirely my first at large for quite a while.”
“But last year, you are in Mildred’s Secure Wing,” I remind him.
“Not entirely,” he answers, still holding back.
“Do enlighten me,” I say.
“Strictly between ourselves,” he whispers, looking over his shoulder for dramatic effect, “when Old Ma Rusty visits me last Christmas Eve, I become terribly homesick and sentimental. Particularly when she sings The Town I Love So Well. For there is no-one who can sing a sad song with more feeling that Old Ma.
“So after she leaves, I am feeling very low indeed. And on Christmas Day, I decide that I must go home to Derry to see all the Christmas lights and decorations and nippers playing on their new bikes. And when Father Carlin, who’s looking after the Secure Wing, is sleeping off his Creme de Menthe, I take his keys, let myself out and borrow his Merc...”
“Isn’t that place like Fort Knox?” I interrupt.
“No, no,” says Danny, “there are so many comings and goings that no-one knows who is who. People skip out all the time. It is as easy as falling in love with the wrong girl.
“Anyhow, I get into the Merc and don’t stop until I reach the new garage outside Dungiven, where I pull in for some smokes. As I’m about to get back into the car, this guy on the forecourt takes one look at me, sees what I’m driving and says: ‘Son, while I am not a man to give advice, I feel it might benefit you to know that the gendarmes are hosting road blocks a couple of miles out of here on the main Derry road. And again, while I am not a man to jump to conclusions, I feel that they could extend your journey home by several months.’
“I thank the guy politely, and agree that under the circumstances, it might be best to go into the city via the Claudy back-road. So I take the next turn left.”
“But here is the point,” says Danny, lowering his voice. “And you must not reveal this to anyone – particularly my mother and new father.
“I am about five miles along the back-road and am thinking that I am getting lost, when all of a sudden, I hit this patch of ice and start to career all over the place. I skid for about fifty feet, before ramming smack bang into a little sports car which is parked tight into a home-made lay-by.
“My initial reaction, as you’ll gather, is to engage in a quick spot of cross-country running. But then I hear these desperate shouts coming from the other car. And despite my better instincts, my conscience kicks in. So I go up to the window for a look. And who is stretching across the front seats in considerable pain and discomfort but Sparkly Barkley.
“And sitting in his lap, and also in some distress is a lady. And take it from me, this lady is not Sparkly’s better half. More strangely still, she bears an uncanny resemblance to Red Light Lorna, ever-loving wife of Harry the Hurler – the chief executive of the Civil Defenders.”
Danny and I guffaw quite considerably at this; first at Sparkly’s comeuppance and then at the deal which Danny Boy strikes for his help and his silence.
“The best part is,” chuckles Danny, “that both Rusty and Shakes are convinced the conversion is all down to the Christmas spirits. They are Praising the Lord and Blessing their Souls ever since.”
We both kee-hee at the irony and at the fact that guy like Danny Boy can all of a sudden own a guy like Sparkly Barkley.
“But I must confess,” says Danny, straightfaced, “that even a man like me – who is sceptical about this religious hocus-pocus – thinks it is more than co-incidental that I should bump into Sparkly in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Day like that. Especially, as we are both supposed to be in other places.
“In fact, I would say the chances of it happening are as remote as those of me getting found again with a lighted bottle of Coca Cola in my hand. Without wearing my mask.”