Nelson's Pillar

Nelson's Pillar

I was awakened abruptly from a deep sleep. All hell seemed to have
broken loose. Michael, my newly acquired friend, was dancing a jig
around the linoleum-covered floor of our shared London bed-sit and
roaring like a man possessed.

"They've blown up the pillar" he shouted triumphantly, his ear pressed
firmly to his old transistor radio. "That'll show the bastards," he
added, kicking a pillow for emphasis from one end of the room to the
other. I had only known Michael for a week or two, but that morning I
discovered that I didn't really know him at all.

I was in London that bleak winter of 1966. My first post as a young
Hotel Manager in the New Forest had expired the previous week and my
next assignment wasn't due to start for another month. My amorous
designs on a certain blond student nurse had attracted me to the
metropolis like a moth to the lamp. However I needed a place to stay
and a mutual acquaintance suggested I contact Michael.

'I can put you up for a few weeks', the soft Irish voice came
hesitantly down the line.

Michael was as good as his word. Not only did he provide me a roof over
my head but he also organised a job through a pal at Walls Ice cream.
It wasn't much, but it paid my digs and kept me in beer, cigarettes and
tube fares while I worked on future plans. Selling ice-cream from a van
in London's Hyde Park wasn't easy during that cold winter of 1966, but
that's a story for another day&;#8230;

Michael hailed originally from the West of Ireland. He had worked as a
sales assistant in the same high street shoe-shop since his arrival in
London some twenty years earlier. He was a softly spoken, mild mannered
man of some forty years or so. Gentle pale blue eyes twinkled behind
thick-lensed glasses. Straight, light brown hair, combed in an old
fashioned centre parting style was plastered into place with the aid of
Brylcream. Leather elbow patches on a well-worn tweed suit did nothing
to detract from the air of quiet dignity that he wore around him like a
glove. Braces supported his trousers and a large green tie bearing a
harp emblem completed the ensemble.

Michael lived on the second floor of a small row of red bricked,
terrace houses in West Croydon. A two bar electric fire provided the
only form of heating in the high-ceilinged room. The Circle &;
District Tube line ran directly below the house and cups and saucers on
the dresser rattled in protest each time a train passed underneath.
Still at twenty-two years of age one adapted quickly and within a short
while I became oblivious to the rumbling sounds from far below. We had
the use of a communal bathroom on the landing. By inserting a
two-shilling piece in the meter of a sputtering gas boiler one was
rewarded with a plentiful supply of steaming hot bath water - if one
managed to get there early enough in the day that is.

Michael's flat left one in no doubt as to his strong identification
with all things Irish. On the wall immediately over his bed was a
framed copy of the Proclamation of Independence, bearing the signatures
of the seven doomed leaders of the 1916 Easter rising. As if to give
greater emphasis a large tricolour was draped from the ceiling
overhead. Inside the door hung a holy water font made from delicate
Beleek china and on the opposite wall a little red lamp flickered under
a plastic coated image of the Sacred Heart. A photograph of Pope John
the 23rd shared pride of place over the mantel with a faded black and
white newspaper photograph of President John F.Kennedy.

Each week in the post Michael received a copy of the 'Connacht Tribune'
which he read voraciously from cover to cover. His other source of news
from the old country was by means of his ancient transistor radio.
Despite the crackly reception it was permanently tuned to Radio
Eireann. I would often arrive home to find him dancing a "Siege of
Ennis" all on his own up and down the bedroom floor to the stirring
beat of Donal Ring's Ceili Band. Not until that memorable morning of
Nelson's dramatic demise did I ever suspect that deep within Michael's
gentle breast beat the heart of a true Irish rebel.

I have often thought of him over the years and wondered what ever
became of him; that gentle soft- spoken shoe salesman ploughing a
lonely furrow in the heart of Victorian England and awaiting the day of
his country's final liberation from the clutches of the old
enemy&;#8230;

The End