First of summer, lovely sight!

Brian replaced the receiver with a smirk, as he turned to his wife.
"Well?" Eileen demanded, eyes wide as she looked at her husband's smug
expression.

"Well what?" he replied, enjoying teasing her.

"Fer the love of God, will ye tell me who that was on the phone, Brian
Skelly!" she piped, abandoning the polishing.

"It was Tommy Flynn, so it was. Asking if we're wanting to make up the
numbers" Brian told his wife. He walked towards her wearing an
I've-just-pulled-it-off expression. "So pet, how d'ye fancy the
Dordogne this summer?"

Eileen Skelly squealed with delight and raced into her husband's big,
brawny arms. There was no need to blether. They'd arrived! They'd been
invited on holiday with friends, London friends. Finally, after so long
in this indifferent city, they would have the holiday in France, and
the friends to match.

It had been ten years and counting since they'd left County Mayo for
Kilburn. That Irish encampment that stood between the shops of Oxford
Street and the M1, leading London away from bright lights and
multi-culturalism. Some back in the Old Country said that they were
crackers, going to England at a time like this. They'd be stopped and
searched each time they walked out the door, as sure a Hail Mary
follows Our Father.

But they didn't listen. Hadn't this brain drain always been a one-way
road from Mother Ireland? And now that they were "with child", didn't
that special little person to-be deserve the chances they'd never had?
The world on their doorstep. Culture. Shops. And high-brow newspapers
with colour supplements, read by people who spent the summer in France.
The kind of people that they would get to know if they left Ireland. It
had to be worth the risk, even if Paddy was scattering bombs like
confetti at a royal wedding and laying England's cities to waste,
incriminating every one of his countrymen who prayed facing Rome.

"Tommy says that the g?te's ours fer a whole two weeks!" Brian
effervesced. "And he'll be bringing his daughter Emerald, as well as
Tania and the kids, of course. And-" Brian stopped to draw breath "-the
Erlings are on the team, too."

What a four-leafed clover spot of luck this had turned to be! The
Flynns and the Erlings were a splendid couple of families, everything
that Brian and Eileen admired in the London bourgeoisie. Cultivated and
metropolitan, they were just the kind of left-of-centres that the
Skellys wished to emulate. Now that they'd moved up the food chain and
were home owners, in Acton.

Tommy Flynn was Brian's sort of Irishman. The son of immigrants from
County Kerry, Tommy was a self-educated scholar, who'd shunned his
superstitious upbringing in favour of the substance of Marx and Engels.
Likewise the Erlings were folk to live up to. Lawrence Erling was a
renowned art critic, whose books flew off the shelves, from the Tate to
the Metropolitan. He could build a young artist as high as the Tower of
Babel, or bring them smashing down to Earth, as God had done to Lucifer
at the beginning of time.

Eileen's height betrayed her western Irish roots, as did her husband's.
As couples wile away the years together, growing more settled in each
other's company, they often begin to look like each other. Which is
what had happened with these two. Their hair, once thick, dark and
curly, had salt and peppered in unison, and their eyes both shone with
the same Atlantic shade.

Brian's beard and rugged demeanour gave him the look of an Irish poet,
which he was keen to develop in this socialist backwater of London. He
looked at his excited wife; she was still a bonny woman. He'd always
thought her bonny, even through that rough patch in '77. Then he looked
around his adopted city and wondered if Eileen and his little daughter
were enough for him. Surely leaving your homeland is about experiencing
the new he thought, as he eyed the sleek, dark beauty of Sarah, a
teacher he'd met at a creative writing class at the City Lit. Sarah had
a penchant for all things Irish, but their friendship had never
progressed beyond post-class coffee. Brian knew that should he and
Sarah fail, he'd be on his own. He wasn't someone who could be alone
and besides, he did love his wife very much. Sometimes though, Eileen
would catch the twinkle in his eye as he looked over her shoulder, his
eyes resting on some far off point of the London skyline. One day she
confessed to her husband that she felt the same way too, that she often
wondered if they'd come all this way just to stay the same.

You just had to look at Tommy Flynn, to see how far you could
come!

He preferred to be called Thomas of course, in preparation for his
writing career. Thomas A. Flynn would be the first great word wizard of
the 1980s. He lived in a three-storey terrace with his wife Tania. Chez
Flynn, the badly lit lounge was strewn with toys, books on photography
and magazines about China, for which Tania had a subscription. The
white walls exuded lefty appeal. A large print of Picasso's Guernica
screamed from a huge clip frame, while rickety bookshelves were lined
with tomes on class struggle, modern art and Fenian poetry. Every now
and then a postcard of a Pollock or an Irish hero was spotted propped
up against a row of James Joyce and Dovtoevsky. Brian spotted a
laminated prayer card of Our Lady leant against a row of books, which
had been set upside down. Tommy had selected everything in this room
deliberately, in a bid to show what he was about - an intellectual,
London-Irish heretic, who nonetheless used his highly symbolic
upbringing as a conversation piece. Look what I've come from and what
my brilliant mind has rejected, screamed the postcards and prayer
cards. And look at my peers, the men, should they still be breathing,
with whom I could keep company.

Sometimes the Flynns would throw a party, which is where the Skellys
had met Lawrence Erling and his upper-crust wife, Abby le Chandon. She
was an art buyer, and she'd met Laurenz Ehrlich as he was then, when
they were both studying History of Art at ULU. Her long blonde hair was
parted in the middle, as it had been since university. They were never
friendly towards them like the Flynns were, but Brian put it down to
their being English. It would all work out at the g?te. Besides, Tommy
would get the party going! Even now he was in song, crooning 'Kevin
Barry'. Telling the world that I may be a Londoner, but there's green
sap in yon veins. I'm tapping into a power greater than the Holy Ghost,
a Fenian stream with pulse points from Boston to Ballybunnion.

Tommy's parties were grand. The brothers he was still talking to would
arrive with their ilk, and engage in some verbal freestyle, whilst the
intelligentsia enjoyed their little bit of blarney. Tommy with
supporting cast of brothers, who never distracted the viewers from his
own star billing. And trailed by his daughter Emerald, working her way
through teenage rebellion with a cerise crop, yet desperate for the
scraps of her father's attention. A nice kid, to be sure, maybe a bit
too old as a playmate for their eight year-old. Lawrence of course, in
the corner, his drollness setting off his host's tomfoolery.

When Tommy popped round to invite them to the party, the Skellys were
chuffed that he'd felt comfortable enough just to "pop round". It was a
good sign, one that said that their friendship was gathering pace. He
was dressed in an over-large suit jacket and faded jeans, an
omnipresent pencil stuck behind his ear. As he chatted with Brian,
accepting Eileen's offer of a strong cup of tea, his eyes fell on the
burnished copper flying ducks.

"My old mum had some just like them, in the kitchen" Tommy said, more
thinking aloud. Brian gave a baccy-stained grin. "Hmmmmm?" said Tommy,
furrowed of brow. It reminded him of the cakes that his late mother had
got in for his first wedding, to Gail. Emerald's mother.

"Oh Tommy, we'll be having some of those posh cakes at the reception"
Mrs. Flynn had enthused. You could still see them in the wedding
photos, French Fancies on a doily. Emerald had those photos now,
gathered together in a cream, leatherette album. Her parents'
short-lived match, made at Our Lady of Victories, High Street
Kensington. Her mother had flicked through them with her one day,
laughing at her ex-husband's adolescent spots and her own puppy fat.
Whilst bemoaning the Catholic Instruction classes which had eaten into
the morning sickness, her own Swinging London.

"You keep these now, Emerald" her mother had sparkled. Emerald took in
her mother's nonchalance, so utterly devoid of any connection to the
man she'd once loved, the father of her firstborn.

"And when are we off, big man?" asked Eileen.

"We'll be sitting pretty in the g?te by the tenth of August" he winked.
Eileen let out a squeal and jumped up and down on the spot. "It's
gaunna be a birthday fer you to remember, pet" he said, hugging
her.