The Gatekeeper
The first time I was 17 and living in a caravan beside the petrol pumps - working shifts in a chipper called The Pirates Den and battling my way through a fog of Impulse and Harmony hairspray daily.
There were 3 girls living in the caravan, Paulette and I sharing the twin couches at the front and a madwoman called Cassandra living in a madder room at the back, filled from pillar to post with burger boxes and empty cans.
It was permanently locked, as was she.
There was no lock on the caravan door though, and we lay at night listening to the keys rapping on the windows as the boys left the pub, shrieking up and down the roads on motorbikes, praying toChrist that they would not try the door handle and come in on top of us.
The most exciting thing that ever happened in the Den was someone left their duty free behind one night in a gale and we divvied up the fags and brandy between the alcoholics and the smokers.
Some of us were both.
A village like the Harbour has always had an insular attitude to strangers, a mentality fostered by the fact that they are overrun by them on a daily basis. Ships are berthing and sailing, trains and buses collecting and depositing the flotsam and jetsam of humanity hourly, while the whole business of living and eating and sleeping plays out in front of an audience of quiet country people, who rapidly became innured to the crowds of maniacs that presented at doors looking for things, like food and beds and buses.
"Somebody left that curse a 'Jasus gate open and you got in" says Charlie Farley to me in the Club as he laughed over his large bottle. He is remarking on the fact that I am back in the Harbour again, this time wearing the uniform of the Irish Tourist Board, with a knotted silk scarf and a waistcoat and telling lies as fast as a horse would trot to tourists.
"Michelle, please don't be asking the clients for lifts home and then bringing them out to the pub with you" says my supervisor before she left the office.
Her car is not gone out the gate 30 seconds before I am standing on the opposite side of the road in Kilrane, hitching the big rigs to get home to the man who looked and sounded like Luke Kelly's twin, the man who called me Babby.
"Sure, she's no bigger than a babby" he would inform before he led the crowd into a rousing chorus of Raglan Road, bursting the strings off the guitar with gusto.
A powder blue VW camper with flowers painted on the side, pulls lazily into the side of the road and I brought the stoned Frenchman named Thierry home to Luke Kelly. He parked on the Quay outside our flat in The Wrens Nest, and rang the bell next morning to invite us down for cafe au lait and french toast.
In the van.
With the door open onto the busy quay, while we sat knee to knee, I threw the milky coffee over the woodenworks when he was faffing about with sugar - (neither of which I take) - and brazened out the stares of the rubber- neckers who looked in at the trio of us breakfasting, in disbelief.
"That "Mahon" one is living in a van below on the quay with 2 men" the old lads with the terriers nodded sagely to each other.
I had to ask him to go after a week.
There was only so much Luke Kelly could stand.
He would hang out the window smoking roll ups, listening to the cowbells on the mussel dredgers with the bacon and cabbage on a plate of hot water, and my blouse hanging up in the steam.
I was reversing down the 6 steps of the high cab of the 18 wheeler that had brought me home, while the driver slammed the door and honked his way off up the N25.
Luke, would run away with a young one he met while he was painting his Mothers gates, then party like it was 1999 at a barndance so that he collapsed and was rushed to hospital. I stood at the bedside and listened to him telling me that he was sorry, never knowing she was waiting in another room.
Dear reader, he married her.
Back in the harbour, Clive was alive and well and running The Anchor and charging people £2.50 whether they had a full Irish or a purple snack.
I think he used to get flustered at the till. I was capable of talking the hind leg off a horse and would have him baffled with bullshit, so that he would stroke his moustache and wipe the sweat off his forehead, and sigh ".....em, two fifty, thanks."
I took over as the hostel warden in the 90's and watched in disbelief as the Boat-Train waited till the smoking funnels of the ship rounded Tuskar,the whistle blew, the doors slammed, and it took off like a shot.
"How do we get to Cark" the back packers asked the porter before heaving themselves and their packs up the hundred steps to the village in search of sustenance.
Beep Beep Beep
An Oige Hostel Rosslare, Good Evening...................
Beep Beep Beep
press button A..............
Beep Beep Beep............
PRESS BUTTON A ...........
Hey, is that the Hos- Tell?
It is.
Do you have a bid available for too- noight?
Kiwi's right?
Hey, how'd you giss?
The Hostel was an old CIE dormitory that had not been renovated for years.
I begged and borrowed furniture, throws, cushions, new bedding, and a pool table.
I breasted the Coke rep on his way into Murphys and sourced a vending machine and tables and umbrellas for the courtyard.
I bought 2 Springer Spaniel bitches from the boot of a Wickow woman's car and called them Ren & Stimpy and added a furry Collie called Zubie into the mix.
"My name is Zubie, I sleep on the hostel floor" I sang as I mopped the shower rooms.
I stood on the cliff in gales and looked at the lighted ship bobbing on the storm tossed seas.
A few years later, I would stand on the deck of the rocking ship and look longingly at the lights of land.
I rang a man who left a hundred gleaming silver bikes and padlocks in the yard, and never once charged anyone to cycle them up hill and down dale.
The place was packed with people from all over the world and at Christmas in a power cut, I brought them ALL into my Mother for the dinner, ringing first to say you may peel more spuds. Recently, in an old photo album, someone asked me who the strangers were standing at the back of the wedding and I told them it was the Australians who came for 6 weeks in Ireland, and spent the whole time in the Harbour, having the craic, and drinking their heads off.
"That Mahon one running the hostel is mental, and she never wears shoes, even in the bank, and she is down there now dragging driftwood up the cliffs with a pack of wild dogs behind her" say the locals to each other, complaining that the gate was left open, again.
Yesterday, I walked across the green and stood at the hostel and remembered -
the night the manhole in the living room came up through the carpet as the drains burst when the tour of Italian schoolgirls blocked the toilets and I had to stay in a B&B for a week,
the night the 97 year old woman checked in because it was too cold to pitch her tent on the beach, again.
the night the man tied a belt around his neck and jumped from the stairs.
Now it is abandoned and bereft, and there is a pin number on the small wooden door where the dogs played and the Canadians sat in the sun reading about Dingle and waiting for the pasta to boil.
Someone left the gate open again, and I came back as the Duty Manager in the Hotel, but this time I had to wear shoes, and a suit.
"That Mahon one is after barring one of the lads she drank with from the hotel" say the boys to each other, and they shake their heads in disbelief.
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