Hairbrush

I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again
That lyric by David Gates’ Bread was from a song I first heard on Radio Èireann as I watched my
mother staring, practically catatonic, into the fire, after burying my 56 year old father. Not even ten
years old I was a sad boy then, especially as I had fallen out with him in a misunderstanding, just
before his sudden death. Fourteen years later listening to Ken Boothe singing his version on BBC
Radio Ulster I was a happy young man. Well into my second year as assistant manager in a huge
department store in Republican west Belfast. Despite the violence of the time I was oblivious to the
mayhem occurring daily in the city, being immersed in my work. The Holylands area of the city I
was living in was virtually free of violence excepting the Queen's University students going on a
drink binge.
But more importantly I had espied the girl of my dreams upstairs in the regional office. Well in
truth at our first encounter she rescued me fighting with a Canon photocopier the size of a British
Army Saracen. Carole was now the second in command in the directors office. The branch
managers called her the tout with the clout as she had the ear of the director, reporting back any
misdemeanours like bumping prices on the shop floor to enhance a positive stocktake result. She
was also one of themuns, the only non Catholic on the entire staff of 200.
On the day she rescued me as I was getting agitated, looking like a Welsh coal miner covered in
black ink dust. Assuming command, she took the machine apart, her sandglass torso moving in
rhythm with the strobe flashes bouncing off the chrome surround. I was salivating like a Mastiff dog
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watching her move around that machine with the dexterity of a pole dancer, her tanned arms buried
inside it like our butcher at a carcass. She pulled out a ream of paper waving it in the air as if a
Union Jack, then like Paisley, the previous month, outside Belfast City Hall with a copy of the
Anglo Irish Agreement, tore it into shreds, the floor littered with black and white butterflies. The
Canon spat out my new booklet which she perforated with a puncher that would have penetrated the
scrotum of a rhino. Handing it to me like an award she announced ‘you Irish boys have no sense
have yis?’ I didn’t know if it was a statement or a rhetorical question. She left the room smiling,
leaving an aroma of scones, cherry I think.
I was on the horns of a dilemma. Well in actual fact, two dilemmas or dilemmata if you want to
be pedantic. Management in the company were prohibited from having a romantic relationship with
any employee. I had watched young trainees in my previous store in Dublin being transferred to the
Irish equivalent of Siberia, namely Mullingar, after being discovered at a staff party. Plus, she was
one of themuns. But like robbing an orchard the chase is as rewarding as the apples. I decided to
pursue her. I’d see her at break in the canteen, usually ordering scones. Well that explained her
smell, but her graceful gait was bordering on presidential. The staff never used crude language in
her presence, or engaged in the usual back stabbing when someone left the table, labelling her the
holy one from upstairs.
I met her again in the photocopier room the day after the Christmas party where she looked at me
as if I was an exhibit in a museum or a Gothic Art gallery. It must have been because of my cheap
polyester suit which was the hygiene equivalent of wrapping yourself in cling film, the dry white
sweat stains under my arms like a a map of Alaska. The black suede shoes needed reheeled, my
shirt only ironed at the front. ‘How were you able to attract such a stunning girl? She must see
something in you that I can’t’. This was a reference to an old girlfriend from Dublin that I asked to
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accompany me to the party lest I broke the rules ending up in the Northern Ireland equivalent of
Siberia, namely Strabane, or worse, Larne. ‘I didn’t think you were the type to pull the prop from
the Coleraine Rugby Squad’ I cheekily replied. Her date was bigger than the Canon Saracen she
was leaning on. ‘Oh it’s nothing serious, he’s just a friend’. ‘Why are you called Houdi anyway?
‘It’s short for Houdini. I have the ability to wangle my way out of anything’. Now she was smirking
‘perhaps tact would prevent you from getting into those situations’. I felt her chestnut eyes staring
at me, this time only with more affection than pity. ‘Are you meeting her tonight?’ No she’s away
back to Dublin. I’m going for my first driving lesson’. ‘Don’t waste your money. I have a car. I’ll
teach you’.
The driving lesson was the embryo of a clandestine romance with our regular trysts in the car
park of our company’s branch on Annadale Embankment. During those lessons I learned she was
the only daughter of a tour bus operator from Portrush, who not even sixty years old, was forced,
due to illness, to sell his business to Ulsterbus. His wife was severely disabled with MS before she
was fifty years old. Her brother was in the RUC. Being a devout Christian, not once did I detect any
anger towards her creator about her situation. Eventually I would fall in love with the epitome of
what I envied growing up in the border town of Clones Co. Monaghan. A Protestant middle class
girl with links to the RUC. It was like a Ronald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected story

There was rumblings that I was next in line for managing my own branch. When I was suddenly
called up to the directors office I expected to be promoted, but instead was told there was a
temporary store manager’s position in Billingham, Cleveland, in north England. The manager was
out sick. I was the best person to manage the store until he came back. In our company when you
went on a temporary assignment it always became permanent. My antenna alarm bells were ringing
but when I was promised my own branch on my return I readily agreed.
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The store wasn’t trading that well despite the long opening hours. I didn’t mind the extended
workload as I didn’t know anyone over there to socialise with. The burden was eased in the fact I
was allowed to stay all expenses paid in a Trusthouse Forte hotel. One week became two, then a
month had passed. The store was starting to pick up with no sign of the original manager returning.
The whiff of ambition was beginning to bite. I was walking around the busy store on an internal
mobile phone as big as a brick. It rang. It was Carole, but I could hardly hear her with static as the
signal was out of range. ‘Mummy’s taken a stroke this morning’ ‘oh Carole I’m so sorry to hear
that, it must be a shock for you’. I noted a hesitation her voice as I continued ‘at least she’s in the
right place for treatment’. She retorted more clearly now ‘you can get a flight home from Teesside
International Airport at 4pm you should make it’. ‘But Carole, the store is busy. Is it really
necessary to have me there’. ‘Eugene (she never calls me HOUDI) she’s YOUR mother. It’s your
duty to come home. She could die’. ‘MY mother, MY mother. Oh no I thought it was your mother’.
I started to lose my breath before dropping the phone in despair, tears staining my puckered white
shirt. That evening I was boarding a plane to Belfast practically anaesthetised with fear.
After disembarking, Carole drove me straight to Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. All
my siblings were at my mother’s bedside. The left side of her face had collapsed, eyelids
permanently closed but paradoxically her eyes were constantly moving underneath. It was like a
scene from the movie Alien. My sister had found her at home lying beside her bed where she lay for
hours unaccompanied. The stroke was likely caused by diabetes. None of the family knew she was
diabetic. The medical team advised that the prognosis was not favourable. My mother could end up
permanently in a vegetative state. We visited her daily for weeks but there was no change in her
condition. Every day I noticed a woman called Iris, who burdened with a strong Louth accent
seemed to visit patients in the ward, a sort of health volunteer. She got familiar with us broadcasting
to all the family my mother’s daily progress which was practically zero.
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One evening in March I was late getting down to the hospital. Iris met me outside exclaiming
‘nugene, nugene, your mudder, your mudder, ah she’s in great form, your mudder, so she is, so she
is. She’s moving about in the bed like I’ve never seen her before. It’s great to see it nugene, so it is’.
I practically sprinted down in excitement toward the ward only to witness what can only be
described as gut wrenching cataclysmic horror. My mother on a bed, with not a soul anywhere near
her, sucking a hairbrush like a choc ice, loose black hairs hanging off her lips, as if her collapsed
mouth had been invaded by a rodent. In despair I pulled it away just as a nurse appeared, her face
red with embarrassment. I held my mother’s hand while I prayed into her ear, leaving soon after.
A week later I was carrying her coffin towards her grave. As I was lowering my poor mother into
the ground I looked over to witness Iris throwing Holy Water like she was officiating the funeral.
Later she embraced me saying ‘nugene your mudder, your mudder looked lovely in the coffin didn’t
she, so she did, so she did?’ I recoiled. If there was a lasting reminder of that sad occasion I didn’t
want it to be Iris. Carole hugged me tightly before she drove me back to Belfast, reminding me that
I had lost someone who loved me, but she loved me just as much. One life wilts. Another blooms.
Like her Jesus in John Chapter 11 verse 35. I wept. I wept even more later, as on the radio, I got
another reminder from Boy George singing his current No1 hit
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again
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