A Little Bit on the Side Read Online Free PDF

company the four ended up getting together at least a couple of times a month, and in the course of their meetings with the Gillans, they learned a lot more of the background of their seemingly ill-assorted neighbours.
    Born in the twenties Jimmy was the third son in an Irish Catholic family swollen by the arrival of yet another young gift of God every couple of years. Home had been a cramped, narrow three-storied house just a few streets away from the docks on the east of the Mersey in the heart of a predominantly Catholic community, and he talked of his life there as one that fell rather disappointingly short of genteel poverty. The house would survive the war, but disappear soon after in the subsequent slum clearances.
    His father, the fourth child of seven, five of them boys, had left home and come over from Ireland in 1919 having fallen out with his brothers following a bitter argument over politics.
    ‘When do they ever argue about anything else in Ireland?’ said Jimmy, ‘And at that time it was particularly bad in the County Cork. Brother against brother, “with us or against us” in many cases, though I don’t think it was that bad for the old man. By the time I was aware of that sort of thing they were in touch again.’
    ‘Have you ever been over to meet the family?’ asked Jack.
    ‘Not as an adult, but when the two of them went over in the summer of ‘39 they took me with them. A couple of months earlier Dad got news that his father had died It was the only time I saw him cry. But he couldn’t get over in time for the funeral, and so we went a couple of months later, and met up with almost all of them.’
    ‘Was that back to the farm?’
    ‘No, not at first. By then most of them had moved to Dublin or Cork city for the work. It was just Michael left running the farm with his sons, and my grandfather living in Dublin with Seamus until he died. So that was where we went.’
    ‘Your grandmother was dead then?’
    ‘Gone before I was born. Worn out by hard work and ill health Dad said. We had a run down to see Michael though. Meant it to be just a day trip from Dublin, but when we got to Millstreet we were told that the train we arrived on would be the only one back in about an hour’s time. Michael insisted we stay over. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, and so one night eventually became three. No phones on the farm of course in those days, nor with Seamus in Dublin, but Michael managed to get a message back to Seamus via the guard on the train. It was a bit like that in Ireland in those years.’
    ‘Sounds rather attractively old-fashioned and informal,’ said Jack.
    ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen the rural poverty,’ said Jimmy. ‘But I won’t go into that…. Learned a little about an Irish family get-together though after Michael got the message out to a few cousins and neighbours. My God they put some stuff away during those three nights: got to sneak a drop or two myself: the first of many to follow.’ Before continuing he topped them up with some more of the Calvados.
    In Liverpool his father had met Kathleen, from another Irish family, and married her after a courtship that would have been thought indecently short in the old country, but occasioned no comment in Liverpool. Good Catholics that they were the union was soon blessed with a son, followed promptly by another: then a hiatus of almost three years before Jimmy arrived.
    Jimmy talked lovingly of his father as a sentimental, quiet and unassuming man seldom in really good health, but who managed nevertheless to hang on to his job when all around were losing theirs, and bring home enough to keep them off the breadline with just a little to spare. Of his mother he spoke with a total lack of affection.
    ‘She was the worst sort of canting hypocrite. Kept up all the Catholic appearances in church and with the neighbours, but was a hard-hearted, scolding bitch at home and a secret drinker. Boozed away what little spare Dad