O’Keefe and the Aliens
I don’t know what I had expected on my visit home, but I certainly felt disconcerted. I hadn’t lived in Dublin for over 20 years, hadn’t even visited for 10. But the unfolding unfamiliarity was hitting me in waves.
Jim had picked me up from Dublin airport at 11 0’clock the previous evening – the drive had been spent chatting, catching up and as a result I didn’t really notice the new landmarks lurking in the dark. Although I did see the Millennium Spire, a council funded folly, smack in the middle of O’Connell Street; a pointed and pointless edifice, already affectionately known as “The Stiletto in the Ghetto”.
This morning had started in an all too familiar fashion as I woke up in Jim’s mums. The “Genius at work” sign on brother Andy’s door, the gouged plaster on the landing still bore testimony to Jim and my poor furniture moving skills from a previous era, the coats hung over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. It all felt right.
As I walked into the kitchen I had another brush with nostalgia as Jim’s mum began scolding me, I was fierce pale and too thin altogether. “Sure do they ration the food and sunshine in Liverpool now?” I found myself instantly reverting to type, feeling like a ten year old again, my eyes downcast as if my shoes were the most interesting thing in the world, while I mumbled “Yer right there Mrs. Lynch, sorry Mrs. Lynch, I’ll look after myself better in future Mrs. Lynch.”. All the while yer man Jim is standing behind her smirking and mimicking, glad to be out of the firing line for once. The rogue left me in my discomfiture longer than I would have thought polite, before suggesting we go for a smoke. I took the proffered cup of tea, excused myself, and we set off for the front doorstep.
In the light of day I was sheer dumbstruck by how much Clanbrassil Street had changed. Surely the house had been lifted and placed in this new world? The noise and visual impact of this apartment block flanked dual carriageway nearly sent me sideways. Gone the serpentine road, the 2 and 3 storey tenements, the ground floor shop fronts, gone too, the people. The area had been suffering the effects of industrial decline during my childhood and youth, but I could never have anticipated the genocide committed against the character of the place. If the leaning and staggered rooftops of the old buildings were like a familiar gap-toothed smile, what appeared before me that morning was like the sterile, insincere veneers of an American newsreader’s grin.
It seemed that Jim sensed my shock, (maybe the jaw hanging to my chest gave it away), but he was ever sensitive to people’s moods. “Bit of a change.” he observed, “Do you remember the ould antiques place was on that corner?”
I followed his pointing finger as I thought back, trying to find some bearings. “O’Keefe’s place, now there’s a blast from the past” I replied, “Jaysus, that ould codger could have jumped straight out of a Scooby Doo cartoon”. “Old man O’Keefe hey…” said he, “…and we were those damn pesky kids!” was Jim’s next observation, followed by “But he was a fast ould fecker when he wanted to be!” And that he was, despite his appearance.
There were about 5 and a half feet of O’Keefe between his hob-nailed boots and flat cap. He must have been whippet thin, for even with the layers of shirt, jumper, waistcoat, cardigan, jacket and coverall there wasn’t a whole lot of him. He had a complexion that looked like he had been pummelled rather than chiselled out of rock. In our eyes he was defying the very laws of nature by living to be so ancient. He had a glare on him that would give poor Medusa and her snakes a run for their money. His left eye bulged unnaturally as if it would leap out and bite you, the right peeping through the curtains of its eyelids – as if it were ashamed of the embarrassment its neighbour was causing now. To us, O’Keefe was as malevolent a figure as the Child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Despite those clomping boots he could appear like a wraith. Despite his age he could strike like a cobra and if he ever got a hold of you, oh Begorrah, you were done for. No amount of wriggling could free you, nor could you plea clemency. The man was inured of any sense of humanity, a lad’s pleadings and tears would count for naught. That death grip would only be released when you were handed into your parents’ custody.
Talk about from frying pan to fire! Jim and I had both suffered this ignoble procession on more than one occasion. Seeing the bowed heads of our pals as we walked to our doom; feeling their silent pleadings not to name them too. At the time I imagined, this must be like a chap feels on his way to the gallows, and me so young, with so much still to live for! But we weren’t hanged. Instead, suitably flaked and chastised, and having promised not to torment that “poor old man” again, we would be given our parole. Sure enough we would keep our promises faithfully, for a few days, until necessity would force us back into conflict with O’Keefe again. “The Slack” was that necessity. Regrettably, The Slack, our hideout, was in the derelict upper floors of O’Keefe’s antique shop.
Now at that time, in late 70’s Dublin, any self-respecting group of kids needed a hideout, a place to conduct our pre-pubescent parliament and discuss the major issues of the day. Who would win in a race, Starsky & Hutch or The Dukes of Hazard? Which was better, VHS or Betamax? During the long summer holidays it also paid to be out of sight, parents being the fierce crafty creatures they are, seeing kids just gives them bad ideas! God forbid you made the mistake of saying you were bored!! Sure you would have a basket of washing or a mop thrust upon you before you had drawn your breath to try and suck the words back in! Now I ask you, did chores ever cure boredom? In my experience they just compounded boredom with a deep sense of injustice. Hence, a hideout was essential. The Slack was perilous to access, sneak into the alley, onto and along the wall, climb up onto a flat roof then prise back the corrugated iron over the first floor window, before creeping into the gloomy derelict rooms. On a sunny day the shafts of light through the damaged roof and windows would criss-cross like laser beams, illuminating the swirling and floating dust motes. After a time our eyes would adjust and we would establish that the door from the antique shop was locked, and would then take stock of our surroundings. We always did our best to furnish the place, chiefly with old car seats that we liberated from Byrne’s Breakers yard. It was always hit & miss as to what we would find. Periodically, O’Keefe would heave the furniture back to Byrne’s place, until our next foray to recover it. And so it went, the Slack like a beach, our furniture was the flotsam and jetsam either deposited or carried away on the whimsy of the tides.
We kids each had our skills. Jim became the scout and planner, charged with O’Keefe evasion. He set up strings tied to cans and bottles that were connected to the doors and stairs. He has a roster for who kept sketch. He even had a system where each of us was allocated an individual escape route, rather than each of us clambering to get out the same way. Declan was our test pilot. The kind of kid whose body would instinctively go anywhere his head would fit. If we were to ask, “could we make the jump from here to….?” Declan would be airborne before you had finished. Unsurprisingly, Declan knew all the Doctors and Nurses at Harcourt Street Hospital, he knew his way around the treatment rooms better than most of them! One time Declan broke his leg, which was brilliant. His Mum had a steady supply of Ice cream and Coca Cola for any of us that would sit with him and keep him company. The lad was never more popular. But even the broken leg, added to all the other injuries did nothing to dampen his reckless and carefree attitude. If you asked Declan what the chances of anything working were, you would get a reply of “Fifty-fifty, either it will work or it won’t.”
The day that we encountered the aliens began like any other. All I can remember is that it was a Sunday towards September. We weren’t long for going back to school and there was little or no car traffic around. O’Keefe’s place would have been closed so we would have been slightly less apprehensive about our defence status. I remember how the mood took a more sinister turn when we all started talking about the Saturday night movie we had watched, “The Fog”. Needless to say there was already an uneasy feeling amongst us, for we suspected that the movie was based on truth. Being 9 and 10 year olds we knew about the giant Black Panther that roamed the streets, one or two of us had even seen its glowing eyes on dark nights. We had all been warned about the Bogeyman. We had heard the Banshee’s haunting wail on occasion, a sound that meant she was calling some poor soul to their grave, and even had the account of an eye-witness, Pat Williams. Pat was in his early twenties and a rock and roller in the style of a Thin Lizzy groupie, complete with leather coat, jeans and Doc Marten boots. He had a shock of wavy brown hair that hung to well past his shoulder blades. The most striking feature was a pure white streak of hair that grew about an inch wide from the hairline of his forehead. He had told us it was a result of the Banshee throwing her comb at him. Had the comb touched him he would have been struck dead instantly, however, he had ducked (luckily), and the comb had just missed him, but it had grazed his hair and turned it shocking white.
Suffice to say that we were all on edge, and the thought of a group of zombie pirates wrecking revenge under cover of a menacing fog did not seem too farfetched. In a rare moment of silent contemplation we heard an unnerving noise. It was a keening, warbling, whistling, whooshing, honking affair from above. The group’s reaction was a simultaneous tilting of heads; we must have looked like a herd of impala when one of their numbers gets a whiff of a lion. None of us moved, none breathed, the silence was vacuous and then we heard the noise again, only this time it was louder, we were certain that the source was over our heads. Time seemed to slow down as we looked at each other, I could swear that the dust motes stopped their swirling dance, everything seemed to be suspended in oil. I don’t know who made the connection first, but one of our gang uttered a word, ‘Aliens’. That word was enough to break the spell. ‘ALIENS!’ the cry was taken up by the rest of us – and only then did we see O’Keefe standing in the open doorway. Surely we were doomed now! Caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea, but O’Keefe was obviously as scared of the aliens as we were, for he never moved, he just shouted “Run for your lives boys! Run from the aliens! I’ll buy you some time!”
We needed neither clarification nor explanation nor confirmation. We were off. O’Keefe was stood in the doorway so we legged it for the windows. Within seconds I was letting go of the windowsill and dropping the few feet to the street, with Jim bailing beside me. The other lads were lining up to do the same. I was just getting back to my feet when I temporarily forgot my fear as I was mesmerized by a supreme act of self-defenestration. Declan decided against queuing for his place and launched himself from the window above us. He was aiming to land on the phone box on the path outside. I can still picture the look on the dear old girl’s face in the phone box as we all started dropping from the sky and Declan walloped into the side of the phone box. The poor old bird must have thought it was D-Day all over again. Poor Declan was winded, pale and still trying to cling to the sides of the phone box, with gravity employing a more sedate approach to reclaiming him. Sure, he looked as dazed and confused as a bird that has flown into a pane of glass, then slides down the outside, wondering when the sky froze over.
Aliens or no aliens, we weren’t going to leave a man behind, so James and I did the honourable thing. We scooped Declan up by the armpits and dragged him away with us as we ran for our lives. We had no time for explanations, so when we got to Declan’s house, (come on for God’s sake, we were under attack from Aliens!) we followed standard operating procedures. We dropped him on the step, I knocked hard twice while Jim rang the bell (in our defence, this was a fairly regular occurrence for Declan’s Mum), our duties fulfilled, self-preservation was the order of the day, so we split and made our way home. I remember my Mum wasn’t too worried about the aliens. Dad was decidedly unimpressed. After a couple of days, when we started venturing out again, the other lads said the same, none of the grown-ups were bothered. We figured it had been an expeditionary force. All the grown-ups would be sorry when the invasion came! We even considered that our parents had been possessed by the aliens, but they remembered punishments that we had been owed from before the alien event, we reasoned that as their memories hadn’t been wiped, they were not possessed.
When we saw that O’Keefe was un-abducted and un-hurt, we assumed he was in league with the aliens. That would be his style alright. But he was back in his shop, business as usual. We gave him a wide berth just in case.
Within a couple of weeks school started again, the weather got worse and The Slack was far from a priority to us. By the following summer our interests turned more towards video games, the year after that was summer jobs, after that it was girls. The Slack was a thing of the past, we had outgrown it like bedtime stories.
I actually savoured the delicious irony of my situation. I had come home seeking some familiarity, some comfort – yet I felt like the alien invader on unfamiliar ground. So the sense of belonging, the succour that the regeneration of my old stomping grounds was denying me seemed somehow less ominous. My comfort was to be found in the flesh and blood of people, and in the warmth of my memories.
So, on this morning James and I finished our brews and went back to the kitchen. Mrs. Lynch must have caught something in our smiles and asked what the mischief was. We sat down over breakfast and told her about O’Keefe, the aliens and the whole shebang. It was only after a while she asked the pertinent question, “Did ye ever find out what the noise was?”
We did to be sure. About 8 years after ‘The Invasion’, Jim and I had been in Stephen’s Green Park, stretched out on the grass enjoying the late August sunshine when we heard the aliens. Jim’s wide eyed, slack jawed look must have been mirrored in my own face. We looked up into the Dublin Summer sky to see a large, ominous V shape in the sky above us. Feckin Geese!
