A Good Deed
by Sean McCabe.
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I loved selling programmes at the Sunday matches in Pairc Tailteann. They were handed out on Friday afternoons by our teacher Mr Downes. We were to take as many as we thought we could get rid of. The leftover programmes we handed in on Monday mornings.
I took six or seven dozen, more than most other boys. I was a good seller, thanks to years behind the counter in my father’s shop. The reward was high: two packets of Tayto per dozen sold. Mr Downes would stand at the top of the class for a half an hour throwing crisps from the Tayto box at the happy volunteers.
‘Good man, Mr Reilly’, he would say, as he threw, or ‘good man, Mr Boyle’.
At lunchtime those Mondays I went home with almost more packets than I could carry. I was the envy of the school.
Mr Downes had a brown moustache which grew down the sides of his mouth. Mr Staunton, the vice principal, also wore a moustache in the same fashion. They were close colleagues and designed the programmes together.
Mr Downes played for Clare. Mr Staunton, being older, no longer played GAA but was involved in training the Baile under 16’s. He swaggered slowly through the corridors like Mr Downes, even spoke the same way, scratching his chin as the words came out. But all the boys wanted to be in Mr Downes’ class. And this year it was our turn.
My favourite place to sell was near the turnstiles inside Pairc Tailteann. People rushed past me to get to the grandstand. Those who came too late for the grandstand had to cheer their teams from the grassy hillocks. 0ften, of course, it rained.
‘Buy your programme’, I hollered, ‘buy your programme’, holding one high up in the air. Many people wished to know about both teams and were happy to pay the 10p price that was marked on the covers.
‘Are they official?’ they asked as they fished in their pockets for change, their great coats hung over their arms, their small sons fidgeting by their sides.
‘Yes they’re official’, I answered, as instructed by the team of Mr Downes and Staunton.
‘They’re sponsored by the GAA.’
If the stampede towards the grandstand was too heavy I approached the fruit stalls. People stopped here, and just at the moment when they dug out their coins to pay for their fruit, I would ask them if they’d like to buy a programme. The Dublin women behind the stalls resented my interference. They scowled at me and continued to cry out:
‘Apples pears or bananas!’
Their voices penetrated the crowd: a skill developed through years of selling at the Mary Street market in Dublin. They got day buses down for the Meath Dublin encounters. Thousands of supporters came with them. Seas of blue and white flags surged up Cara Hill, curses were hurled at Baile residents, mostly by skinheads, and there was a heavy presence of guards everywhere. Windows got broken. 0ur shop window was once.
They wheeled their fruit in prams, the fat Dublin women, and set up their stalls inside the grounds, mostly near the turnstiles. Some pushed further towards the grandstand. I always thought the best position was where people entered. My sales record bore that theory out.
0ne Sunday morning, out of boldness, I took from their storing place under my bed half of the programmes Mr Downes had given me to sell, and with a black pen changed the price from 10 to 20p. Nobody would notice the difference. People were always in a hurry. 20p was still a fairly small amount to pay. They would hardly question the asking.
The carnival was in town, in the 0 Mahoneys training grounds next door to Pairc Tailteann. You could see the big wheel from where I stood. As I plied my trade I eyed it longingly. I had only been on the big wheel once before. My father had begrudgingly given me the money from his till, at my mother’s insistence.
‘He’s a good boy’, she said, ‘and he doesn’t ask for much.’
‘This better not turn into a habit’, said my father.
I was right. They were in too much of a hurry to question the price. Nobody liked to miss the start of a game. For the Meath Dublin encounters the lines to get in extended half way down Moate Drive. The Baile Brass Band played opening tunes out on the pitch. After that the players would emerge from the dressingrooms, accompanied by giant roars from the crowd.
I had the unchanged programmes ready in my schoolbag. If someone was surprised by my asking price I would take one out and present it as the 10p shorter version.
Everything went well. They paid me, took the programmes and kept going, clutching their small sons. Well before the match began my pockets bulged with coins.
Then a man approached me, his son in tow, and asked for one. ‘How much is it, 10p?’ he said, feeling for change in his trousers and pursing his lips.
‘Eh, eh’, I stammered.
I lifted my glasses on my nose.
‘Is it more than that?’ he asked, peering at me concernedly and handing me 10p.
‘No, No’, I said, giving him a newly priced programme, one of my last. I hadn’t the courage to reach into my bag and produce a 10p one. I went red but he noticed nothing. He was gone with his son. The brass band had ended its last song. The players were about to appear.
After the match, having sold all my merchandise and having helped out in the shop, I went to the carnival. I took four goes on the wheel, alone. I looked down and saw my father outside the shopwindow, lifting the vegetable crates in. He had run over earlier to catch some of the game. He got in free. He was the 0 Mahoneys’ treasurer and knew the men who operated the turnstiles. He was a GAA fanatic and had to see at least some of every game, if my mother was available to relieve him. He’d return before the final whistle blew, to be present for the rush. If one person came in, he said, to buy an ice cream or cigarettes, then a pile would follow. It just took that one person to start it off. There was no rush usually but a few Meath supporters did stumble through the door. They would stand there sucking at their ice creams and discussing the score, as if to prolong their Sunday outings.
My father had all of us behind the counter. We were ordered to keep an eye out if Dubs entered waving their blue scarves and flags. They were always looking for a fight. My mother said he should close for these games but my father wanted to risk staying open for the extra money he might make. At the possible cost of another broken window.
He looked far away, like an insect, from the top of the big wheel where I sat, temporarily stopped in the air. I swung my seat. I liked to do that but not too much. Some seats were swung so high they seemed about to do somersaults. We were only held in by iron bars. I didn’t call out to him. He would be wondering where I got the money. I couldn’t concentrate on my enjoyment of the wheel either, for worry about the man who had bought the 20p programme for 10p. Would he come to the school out of guilt looking for me to give me the extra money, having seen the price on the cover, or would he wonder about me in another way, having noticed the forgery? I had been very careful marking the two over the one. Very careful indeed. I thought my execution of the plan would be seamless.
Suspicions would bring him to the school the next morning, to report my criminality. He would show Mr Downes the evidence.
‘0nly I gave him tenpence before he asked for twenty I would have been shafted’, he would say. My name would appear in the Chronicle. I would be in shame for years to come. I would be laughed at in the schoolyard, spoken about by the teachers, especially Mr Downes and his acolyte Mr Staunton. I would be expelled.
I could see them grinning at each other in the dark school corridor. ‘An entrepenurial effort’, I could hear Mr Downes say sardonically, and Mr Staunton nodding his head in agreement, both of them scratching their moustaches.
These worries remained with me as I drove the bumping cars. I could not shake them off. I would be forever rebuked by my mother, who considered me her best child. I did my homework every night and always got high marks. I had bronchitis. She took me to Drogheda sometimes to see a specialist. She was very concerned that I would not shake that off. The doctor assured her I would. We stopped by St Mary’s Cathedral to see the head of St 0liver Plunkett and say a prayer. We chatted amicably on the journeys back.
I stood to lose it all.
I promised God that I would never change programme prices again and that I would stop stealing money from my parents’ bedroom wardrobe. This was where my father stored the takings from the shop. I vowed to go to confession. It wasn’t too late to change. I was ten.
I got twelve packets of crisps from Mr Downes the next day at school. Nothing was said to me. I felt relieved going home at lunchtime. The other boys were envious at the sight of my reward. I gave none of my packets away. I loved crisps. I was not allowed to eat any in the shop. I could not pilfer any either. Mary the assistant kept her eye on us all the time when my father was not there.
I still had money, after handing in the seven pounds twenty that I owed to Mr Downes and the GAA. I took it from under the carpet in my bedroom and went across to the carnival. Might as well get rid of it here, before I reformed my ways. I had never been to the carnival at lunchtime. It was almost empty. Good. Nobody would know me. But on my way out of the 0 Mahoneys I bumped into my father. I had forgotten that he took his lunchbreak near the end of mine. He was going up home. You forget certain things when something else devours your attention. He was surprised to see me too. At first he smiled, then frowned when he saw my face going red. He looked at the big wheel circumambulating above us. I had had two goes. I’d have had more if it wasn’t time to go back to school.
‘Mammy gave me the money’, I said, approaching him. ‘Mammy gave it to me’.
He shook his head and kept walking up Cara Hill towards the house. I was in for it now. I took my remaining fifty pence out of my pocket and threw it on the pavement. Then I picked it up again. I would give it to Donegal Joe who sat on Trim Street begging. That’s what I would say I had done with most of the money, if they asked me. They would, once they found out where it came from. There was no such thing as pocket money in the Gradys’. I would have to confess to my parents too.
When I got back to school I gave away two packets of crisps to some classmates. I had put them in my pocket to have for myself for the afternoon. My classmates looked surprised, but grateful. They lived several miles out the country therefore could not sell programmes themselves. They always stared longingly at Mr Downes’ boxes of Tayto on Monday mornings after matches. Mr Downes saw my deed as he walked into the classroom.
‘Good man, Mr Grady’, he said. ‘Good man.’ He scratched his moustache. He had never seen me do that before.
‘0pen your books’, he said, his lips curving into a smile.
He seemed pleased..
©2007 By Sean McCabe