Memories of sawdust and cement

A recent consultation brought back to me a summer in London working on the sites

He was small and gnarled and unmistakably Irish. He had the typical look of ‘a lad back from England’, even if he hadn’t been a lad for decades. I took his blood pressure, noticing the faint smell of beer, the strong smell of smokes, and the scar on his face.

“Never did a day’s work in your life,” he muttered as I disentangled the cuff.

“What?”

“You heard me.” His eyes were bright as a terrier’s, beneath the tangle of grey eyebrows.

I let it go.

“Anyways. I’d never have hired you.”

“Why not?”

“You’re too big. I wanted little men. Lads who would go down a trench and dig all day. Where are you from?”

“Tipperary.”

“See? Bet ye played hurling.”

“We did, actually.”

“I knew it. Big fields. Rich land. Great big Protestant trees. I wanted lads from hungry counties. Roscommon, Mayo, Leitrim. Stone walls and snipe grass. The likes of you grew up sitting on yer hole on your father’s tractor. Those lads never saw a tractor. An ass and cart if they were lucky. They did it all without machinery. And you’re wearing a watch.”

“So?”

“Any man seen wearing a watch got fired. It’s my job to know the time. What paper do you read?”

“Irish Times.”

“I’d have fired you for that if I hadn’t fired you already. If I saw a man with a broadsheet he’d be shown the door. Redtops only on my site. A man who reads The Times or The Guardian thinks too much.”

“Were you over there for long?”

“Long enough. I had 104 men working for me and only one was paying tax. And I can tell you now, and I know it won’t go further, I signed on every week from when I landed to when I left. I only ever had five bosses: Mr Wilson, Mr Heath, Mr Callaghan, Mrs Thatcher, and Mr Major. If I ever set foot there again I’d be in jail.”

He continued on.

“See this scar? Walked into a digger bucket. The compo set up my business.”

He looked at me.

“No, you wouldn’t have lasted a day,” he said. He loped out, clutching his prescription.

I sat back and closed my eyes. I remembered clocking off and walking home through the financial district and over London Bridge. It was the 1980s, greed was good, and Yuppies in suits spilled out of the pubs onto the pavements. The sun shone on a summer of Lloyd Cole and Duran Duran, Dirty Den and Loadsamoney, and almost every pub I passed proclaimed ‘No boots or working clothes’. I had both, and a light dusting of sawdust and cement. I was a typical ‘Paddy Navvy’ and had no desire to join the young men braying in every posh boozer. As I headed down towards the East End, I felt the wonderful feeling of being young and strong and as fit as I would ever be after a summer on the site.

There were droves of us over from Galway, most in a transition period of our lives. We had got our degrees and fled Ireland for one reason or another. Some stayed in London, getting jobs as teachers or lawyers, or did postgrads. Some went back and carved out a living, and some got the fare together for the States.

But for now, the summer air was good, excitement was in the air, the girls had perms and the boys wore mascara – I had a few bob in my pocket and strode through London like I owned it.

It was easier for me to stay than to go back. When I thought of returning to Galway and cutting my hair, donning a tie and a white coat, and plodding around the wards after some pompous consultant, my heart sank. There were more bad manners on a teaching ward round than any building site. “Never work for an Irishman, they’re the worst,” said the broken old men to me in The Cock, The Crown, or The Prince of Wales where I would cash my cheque. They were the lifers, dreaming of stone walls and small farms, who had never worn a watch. A small man with a scar on his face stalked past them, heading for the young lads who had just done the Inter, with a smile on his face and the eyes of a born exploiter.