REBUILDING THE CROWN
by
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They drank to the dead of the morning and all found it hard to stand up to go to bed. Tom told Cait that he’d put on the turkey in the morning for her and to stay in bed. She made some incoherent comment something about eight o’clock. Tom’s clock blasted him out of an alcoholic haze at ten to eight and he staggered to the kitchen to put the beast into the oven. He headed back to bed not really having woken up at all. He got up again and went to the bathroom a couple of hours later and found Bertie in the bath with his face all scrapes and a dirty cut to his head. The hoooor had fallen into the bath during the night. As Tom tried to get him out he fell in on top of him. After a struggle he finally got him out and walked him to the kitchen where he tidied him up a bit before everyone got up. Tom started a bit of breakfast for the household as Cait was still hammered in bed. When he was half way through the fry Pa appeared around the door from the hallway in only his underpants which was hanging low from his skimpy arse saying “Fuck it I’m feeling awful queasy is there anything there for the stomach“. Bertie was laughing at his patriotic green face as he staggered across the kitchen. Pa seeing Tom at the breakfast decided to cut some bread. He asked Tom did he see the bread knife but he hadn’t so Pa went out to the hall and came back in with his saw, from his tool bag. He took off cutting the bread with the saw and did a fine job. As he was nearing the end of the loaf in walked Cait in her dressing gown and said “Oh Jesus Christ“ cutting the bread with a saw in your underpants and fell in an intoxicated heap with the laughing. They all ate a hearty breakfast and went off to twelve mass over in Kilburn. Pa said on the way over to keep away from the gas works in case they would ignite the place with the smell of drink. They all ate a fine Tralee Christmas dinner that day and drank out Cait by tea time. Pa and Tom went off later and arrived back with a pram full of liquor which took them all up to the 27th in a state of total inebriation. That Christmas would remain largely a blur for the rest of their unnatural lives.
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About the Book
It is the spring of 1952, Mick Joyce, Tom Sullivan and Kate Collins are leaving Ireland with a youthful exuberance in the hope of making their fortune. England is still in economic turmoil after the war but still fares much better than the Emerald Isle. In the Ireland of the nineteen fifties the cottages are still thatched and if there is money in the house it is slated. As a compromise between the rich and the not so rich you might see a corrugated iron roof. Either way Ireland is an empire a few centuries behind our closest neighbour. So it is common place to see the ferry boat the St. David full of Irish, after Christmas, heading to England to earn the King’s shilling. The tears flow each time Ireland’s sons and daughters depart. Hearts are heavy but this is Ireland of the nineteen fifties. The mothers and wives are left behind to keep the nest together from season to season with an ancient sadness that they never really spoke of. Over the next ten years their lives would intertwine intermittently. The story that ensues is one of love, laughter, drink, hard work and loss. The book also tells of their encounters with other emigrants, Irish, African, West Indians, a Russian woman who could fill a cement mixer faster than any Irish navvy and a Pole who little by little created a life for himself and his Irish lady from nothing. It was in one of London’s dingy bed sits that Tom and Mick first settled into. They grubbed hard, drank by the imperial gallon, fought in the pubs and on the streets of London as if re-enacting their modern version of the Irish War of Independence on foreign soil. By night they tore London asunder and were on site the next morning at 8a.m. to rebuild it from the ground up. This is the story of the life of Tom Sullivan now in his senior years having returned to his home town of Tralee. A man of wisdom self educated in the ways of the world, he tells his story with a wit and honesty that will bring both tears of laughter and sadness to the reader.
About the Author
The author grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Tralee in County Kerry, Ireland and also in,Reading, in Berkshire. He grew up until the age of nine as the sole child of Ted and Rose Murphy and was also frequently in the shadow, of his uncle Con. He experienced, as a child, the travelling to and fro between the south west of Ireland and the south of England. He was educated whether in England or in his native Ireland in Catholic schools ran by Nuns and Christian Brothers. He was later educated at Mount Melleray College near Cappaquin in County Waterford with the guidance of Cistercian Monks.