TheTopsofthe Town

IREALLY didn’t know what to do or where to go, there wasn’t much room, about 50 or 60 people ran around backstage, all bigger than me. The trail of greasepaint was intoxicating, a scent that I had very little experience with, except for while playing a minor role in a school opera.

The Cowboy skit was nearly over, a makeshift yarn created to give a reason for the harmonica playing of Tommy Saddler – it was lovely I have to say. I knew the tune from some cowboy movie, can’t say what it was called, but Tommy really rung out the melody beautifully, caressing the instrument like a sandwich and closing his eyes as he swooned in rapture to the tune.

Unfortunately his performance also meant that I would be going on soon. I started to feel dizzy.

The adult evening suit that my mother had tailored to fit me was heavy and hot. Fuzzy dots appeared, the same ones that I had seen when I fainted in the clinic at the sight of a needle coming at me. This was different; fainting is never a good idea, especially when you fall in a heap on to a tiled floor, but my mother had been there to look after me then, now she was playing the piano, so there was no one.

I had not developed any kind of patriarchal relationship with the 30 men from the male choir. To the crowd of performers milling around backstage, I was just Molly Roche’s young fella with his hair greased back and dressed as a man.

Beginning to waver, I reached over to the small sink in the corner of the nearest dressing room and splashed cold water on my face. When I stood up, the room was spinning; about to be sick I ran to the toilet and was. There wasn’t much to purge, but it did the trick.

I could’ve counted the number of times I had been sick on one finger, the sensation was sobering in its horror. ‘Are you ok, young Turner?’ Mr Murphy, the tenor soloist from the choir, was standing at the doorway of the cubicle with the makeup lights defining his stout frame. I wished for some compassion, but he was too concerned with gathering me, everyone else was waiting in the wings to go on.

A gentle soft- spoken man, he was an old timer from the factory world, and probably started as an apprentice himself when he was a boy. I was 12 and a half and knew that he expected me to be a man, so I straightened myself up.

‘ Yeah, I’m grand, is it time to go on?’

‘ Yeah everyone is ready, your uncle Seamus is about to introduce us.’

It was my uncle Seamus who had began the whole thing when he came into the kitchen that day on the quay and confided ( he was a confider) his plans to me ma.

Seamus was my mother’s youngest brother, and they were the Roches, a fabled Wexford family known for their big personalities, enterprise, and love of music.

That Saturday he had more than the usual tea and chat on his mind though, he was going to touch my mother’s showbiz heart with an exciting proposition.

( To be continued)