If the walls could speak – a short story by Louise Hall

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“Oh, the cranes, the cranes,” said the lighting technician, and he slipped his glasses over his nose and rubbed his hands together. Out, he would look through me. Through the sand and dirt, through the black metal bars in front of my window. Outside, above the flat felt roof of my garage, where the garbage of stray kittens was playing around, and the gaze’s eyes were on the foggy Dublin mountains. During the short winter days, just before he went home, he looked at the tangerine of the city lights and imagined the silhouette of the cranes that he knew were there.

But it wasn’t just cranes that he’d wanted in the beginning. The promise of a weekly rent would be enough. He would let me out upstairs. I felt like he could run his little business from my little office. He made sure that they placed the ad next to the sports page in the Evening Press. That way it wouldn’t go wrong. And it could cheer up the reader before he got the obituaries, he thought at the time. A new local tire shop and some rooms in Ballymun. That would be enough to keep him going for a while.

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Lodger One had a mattress and a coat in his name. That and the envelope that came across the water every month with a Royal Mail stamp. Perhaps a pension, thought the gaffer, to serve Her Majesty the Queen. But whatever it was, Lodger One had been shaken. The gaffer would only come to work in the morning and Lodger One would go out. To the early house not a few meters away. And he would put his flat cap on the top surface and then rub against the stubble of his chin. “I’ll take care of you at the end of the week, mister,” he said, “I promise.” And what could the gaffer do to tell him “that would be fine”?

He knew that it was none of his business what they did in their own rooms, but when the events of Lodger Two, the Lady of the Night, appeared on the radio controls and the Aul Fellas, they were all waiting in their pockets and looking like chisels who lined up to come to a peepshow. He had to tell her to go.

“This is a respectable neighborhood missus,” he said, “none of these gimmicks will take place in my building.” And he knew that he had probably shot himself in the foot because she always had the notes ready when he came to rent collect. But he had morals, he told himself, wasn’t that enough?

Lodger One left shortly after Lodger Two.

Do you think he was a little alone at night.

They had started building social housing on the street. Concrete blocks that flooded the skyline, and there wasn’t much demand for dinky bed seats anymore.

“Sure, I’m going to turn them into offices upstairs,” said the gaffer one day, walking up and down the forecourt, puffing away on the big cigar, and telling the young guys that they were sitting at the border wall. “Getuptheyard,” he would say, and the young guys would pull their dark hoods over their heads before putting two fingers in the air.

“Gaffer, Gaffer,” one of his stoppers called one day when he asked him to clear out the old pajamas. The torn mattress was flipped over, and what’s stuffed between the feathers and the down is just tons of crumpled pound notes. Lodger One had cashed each of these monthly checks and felt that they were safer in this mattress than in a bank vault. “Keep the mattress there,” said the lighting technician to this grafter, “there is a bit of luck behind it.”

Took a couple of weeks, but one day he found Lodger One outside the apartment. “You forgot something,” said the lighting technician as he handed over a paper bag with the notes. Lodger One removed the bag and slowly opened it before looking inside. Then he raised his eyes, closed the bag tightly with his fist, turned on his heels and said to the lighting technician: “Thank you, sir, I was wondering where that is.” He had gone around the corner and in that Block of flats disappeared before the last sentence came out of the gaping mouth: “What about the rent you owe me?”

The gaffer didn’t get stuck. There was work to be done. There was always something to do, even if it looked like there was nothing.

He had to call to see a man who was having trouble with some planes near the airport. Told him he would be there with his best grafter and they would watch it for him. And when he arrived, the gaffer stood there and puffed at that fat cigar. Dimensioning of this massive machine. They called them “Earthmovers”. Used to move the earth in the quarries where the stone was dug to make concrete for all buildings in the city.

“We have to change the tires,” said the foreman to the head lights technician, “but every tire company says it’s too big that they can’t.” And the gaffer just nodded and went around the big yellow machine. And he could have been standing in the rim of one of the wheels, it was so big. Then he turned to the foreman and said, “It’s no problem at all. We can do that for you.”

He came back to me in Ballymun and spoke to his fitters in my kitchen, telling them about the big yellow machine and what to do. And they all said, “But we can’t, we have never done that before.” And the gaffer just said to them, “There are no problems, only solutions. You can do it. I’ll show you how.” And so he did.

Construction site work started. “Oh, the cranes, the cranes.” And the dirt and the potholes and the nails and the steel bars and the drivers who jumped from curbs or drove over rocks and took out chunks of tires that needed to be repaired. “Because if you have a machine out of operation, you want it to not be left idle for long,” said the lighting technician. “Not when the job has to be done and done quickly.”

The head lighting technician told the foremen at every location he visited that he would get his fitters out quickly and that he would do a good job with the machines. They would strip the tire and repair the flat tire, insert a new tube or patch if necessary, and then reassemble the tire on the rim. He told them that they would not clog the tire to find a quick fix, as some do. They would fix it properly, and that way the wheel would not soften as quickly, and the foreman could go on with the work, and the foreman chief would be happy because the houses would be built faster.

The gaffer had brought the young boys fresh from school. Some of them came from near the apartments. They weren’t smart with schoolwork, they told him, but they could work well and they liked the idea of ​​being on construction sites that worked on rubber ducks, dumpers, and teleporters. Didn’t hear people talking about a Celtic tiger and wanted to hear a little bit of its roar. The gaffer showed them how to do the job, then set them up with vans and tools, and told them that he would pick up the customers and they should make them happy.

These guys climbed my stairs and walked my floors for years. Oh the mess! Steel toe boots and overalls covered with dirt. Up and down the stairs, and the girl who managed the phones and the two-way radio had the pockets open. They cursed and rowed together and then shared a beer at The Slipper Pub when they were finished on a Saturday afternoon. Back when you were allowed to have one or the other before the trip home. But not before they checked the amount of bills that were in the brown envelope that was given to them at the end of each week. And when they saw what was inside, they didn’t care about the overtime that made them tired.

The old Lodger One mattress stayed in my back room, even though the lighting technician had to put in a desk and some shelves and take an extra person in the office. He just leaned it against my wall as if it were a work of art. Nobody ever asked him to move it. He just left it there so he could remember the days when it was just him and his best Grafter and Lodger One and Lodger Two. That way, he wouldn’t lose the run of himself if he rode this Celtic tiger’s back.

He didn’t do too much to me, the old building. But I didn’t mind. I liked the humming and the chatter and the rows and the guys who didn’t say it often, but probably more about the gaffer and what he did for them than their own fathers.

This made it all the more difficult since the phones went quiet almost overnight.

Then the cranes became idle and finally started to shut down.

The vans were in the forecourt longer than normal.

And it took much longer for the checks to arrive in the mail.

For a few months they never came. And although the gaffer was trying to figure out where these checks were supposed to come from, he was faced with the same answer as everyone else: “We’re just waiting for a couple of bobs to come in and we’ll fix them by then. “

And what could the gaffer do to say “Thank you, that would be very grateful”.

Then wait.

And wait.

Even though he was told that he had been holding on to the wand for too long and had to cut deeply, the gaffer was certain that the phones would ring again. And even though he was ordered to relax and not put his own money in the business, he insisted that he would ride the storm. “It cannot take forever,” he said to himself, “the good times must come back.”

On some evenings, he stayed behind a long time trying to work on numbers to see where he could save more. Then he stared through the sand and dirt and black metal bars. Outside toward the tangerine lights that were still shimmering in the dark. And then he pulled that old mattress against my wall and put his body on it while puffing on a cigar in the dark.

One night, he dozed off and woke up and grabbed a drop of water. He rubbed his throat and thought he might come down with something because he had trouble swallowing. He felt that a lump had gotten there. And after some testing and research over the next few months, he was told that this was the case. But he went on, the gaffer did it. As long as he could.

As long as he was left.

Sure, it’s hard for me to talk about it now. About the last time he went down my stairs and through my door.

Even if brick and mortar should be exactly that.

Brick and mortar.

They came in hard and heavy the days after the funeral. Came through my doors to respect them, they said. They showed respect for the girl in the office who managed the phones and the radios. They show respect to his best grafter. They paid tribute to those who had to walk during the crash but came back when the cranes slowly reappeared in the city. They spoke in a roundabout way about the smell of cigars and the good times and the subtenants and the bed kits and the business and the “What would happen now?” Were the cranes and the locations and the quarries not operating? This Celtic tiger was out and about in the city again.

In my office there is now a suit on which the gaffer was sitting. He looks through me, through the sand and dirt, through the black metal bars. He doesn’t blow on cigars and may not have the snout of the gaff, but he looks at the tangerine of the city lights. It looks exactly like the top lighting technician always did. Curious about what is available out there and looking forward to it. And I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this stranger climbing my stairs and walking on my floors. I wonder if he’ll tear me down or rent it out. I wonder if things will ever be the same when the gaffer is gone because it is difficult to fill the boots of a certain type of man.

The suit gets up and rolls his shoulders back. He walks over my floors and moves from room to room, kicks my loose skirting boards and pecks at my peeling paint. And I do not know or like this man who is not the gaffer, because it is not easy when someone over 45 is with you and when familiarity never causes contempt. And the gaffer is still with me because I can feel it in my walls, in my glass, in my bars and in the pit of the black night when the air is so cold.

Bricks and mortar shouldn’t feel that way.

The suit takes off his blazer and throws it over a chair. He goes into the next room and sees the mattress leaning against my wall. He loosens his tie and pulls the mattress down so that it lies flat on my floor. He throws himself on it. I am still not sure and I feel the crack and the suit opens his eyes wide and then his chin and I am worried that I mourn so loudly for the gaffer and just want to crumble and fall.

And then he speaks.

Very slowly.

“Oh, the cranes, the cranes,” he says.

And maybe there is chaos again in Ballymun.

“Oh, the cranes.”

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