scenes from a childhood

I was 14 years old.

My best friend Mugs Baines had asked his mother Drusilla to drive us home from school.

It was a wet November evening.

Dark early.

Cheerless Irelandia.

Out of the mist came that famous battered Ford Cortina.

It screeched to a halt at the gates of Newbridge College.

Drusilla Baines had come directly to pick us up from some charity where she was a volunteer counsellor.

She was a birdlike woman who spoke with an exagerrrratedly clear voice.

Every word perfectly pronounced.

A musical voice heavy with dangerously repressed emotions.

The worst vulgarism I ever heard her utter was "sugar."

Boy did she say it with venom.

In polite conversation, she insisted on calling me Jamesie for some reason.

She could get an astonishing array of inflections into the single word Jamesie.

A woman with a strong conventional streak, I always feared she was on the verge of throwing off all conventions and shooting the lot of us.

And I dreaded to think what sort of people were coming to Drusilla for counselling.

You know what folks.

Even at this tender age it was difficult for me to hide my emotions.

My big rubbery red face spoke volumes more than I wanted it to.

Every time she looked at me I felt sure she knew exactly what I thought of her.

So on this rain filled evening in the dawn of years, when Drusilla began to tell me about a potential suicide victim she'd been advising, it was a battle royal for me, a shy and sensitive soul, to prevent myself from guffawing hysterically in her face.

I was in the passenger seat right beside her.

Mugs was in the back.

"Oh Jamesie," she murmured as she drove. "It was awful. The poor man had been so depressed... He had been so depressed.... So, so, depressed... So, so, so depressed..."

With difficulty I resisted the urge to ask her: "So how depressed was he?"

The car swerved around a bend.

"He was so depressed," continued Drusilla, "that he'd been on the point of walking into a meat freezer and closing the door."

I stared straight ahead of me.

If I opened my mouth at all now, it would be to say: "Wah, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee."

And so on ad infinitum.

The moment passed.

Feeling more confident in my self control, I ventured a question.

"So how did you help that guy?" I asked.

At this point Drusilla's angelic son, the immortal Mugs, from the rear of the car leaned forward and whispered in my ear:

"They pulled the plug out of the meat freezer."

And I said:

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaah, haaaaaaaaaah, haah, haaa, haaaa, hoooo, haaaa, haa, heee, heee, ho, ho, ho, waaaaaaaaaaah, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaah, hee, hee, hee, wheee, heee, heee, heeee, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho."

I don't know how long I laughed.

It is to date one of the best laughs I ever had.

And devil take the consequences.

When the dust cleared Drusilla murmured more in sadness than in anger:

"Oh Jamesie."