Tales From Tiger Bay

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: Historical Fiction; Humor & Satire; Short Stories

Synopsis

The people who inhabited the dockland area of Cardiff, know as Tiger Bay, have engraved their personalities on the very air of Bute Street and, under Alexander Cordell's vivid pen, the streets are crammed again with every creed and nationality; from priests and nuns to dockers and drunks; boxers, rugby fanatics, concubines and Bute Street ladies. The place comes alive in all its bawdy strength and colour.

Release date: August 21, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1

The Widow of Kildare

Father O’Brien’s the name, and I used to be the parish Priest down on Cardiff’s Dockland, ye know. There were about twenty pubs in Newtown at the turn of the century, and I knew every one, for you try being a teetotaller in an Irish town in Wales.

Indeed, the only true teetotaller I ever came across was Joby Sarsaparilla, who humped the flour bags on Atlantic Wharf: he sank a quart of it every night in The Duke of Edinburgh, Jim Driscoll’s pub – the landlord got it in especially.

A single man was Joby, and the women put years on themselves at the sight of him, smoothing down their hips and pushing up their busts, but he never spared them a glance: for there arrived from Kildare about then a shy, sweet widow called Beth O’Shea, and Joby took one look at her and smoke came out of his ears.

I was relieved at this, for if there’s anything likely to cause a commotion, it’s a stag in rut, and marital business claimed me special attention.

They were suited those two – Joby and Beth – for rumour had it that her first chap had drunk himself to death, so she was a’feared of anything to do wi’ hops and barmaid’s aprons.

 

‘D’ye think he’s the man for me, holy Father?’ she asked me one day after confessional.

‘Ach, sure,’ said I. ‘He’s a sarsaparilla man, isn’t he? After your first bad experience, what more do ye want?’ And we stood there together in the sea wind and sun, and I knew a stirring in my heart I’d never felt before. ‘I’ll personally guarantee your happiness, sweet child,’ I said to her, and she bowed to me and went off with a pretty swing of the hips.

She was a darling, delicate girl, and she turned once and waved to me, but I could not wave back. Never had I taken a shine to a woman till then, and I said to myself, ‘Treat her wrong, Joby Sarsaparilla, and I’ll see to ye, as God’s me judge.’

 

Well, I married ’em in St. Paul’s, and it was like a crucifixion, having to part with her, and a month later I was in The Duke of Edinburgh and Jim Driscoll himself was drawing me a quart o’ Guinness from the wood, which I took for medicinal purposes.

And who should be sitting at a table in there but Joby, with a glass of sarsaparilla in front of him and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

‘How’s ye doing, son? Is she treating you well?’ I asked him.

‘Aye, foine, foine, Father,’ says he. ‘She boils the best Irish stew between here and Kildare, so she does, and I’m away home to her now,’ and the moment he’d gone I realised he’d drunk me quart of Guinness and left me his quart of sarsaparilla.

‘What happened to that?’ I asked Jim, holding up me pewter. ‘Did he drink it or did it evaporate?’

Sober serious was the boxer – he rarely touched a drop. ‘Father,’ said he, ‘the devils of Gehenna are roamin’ in a man who doesn’t know the difference between Guinness and sarsaparilla.’

‘Ye can say that again,’ said I.

 

The devils were in young Joby after that, and I blamed meself for it, I did – putting strong drink in his path like that. Aye, the chap went from bad to worse once he’d got the taste for it – night after night he rode home on the back of a pig to that wee girl – and when I met her in Ellen Street one day with an eye filled up, I decided to take a hand in their matrimonial affairs.

Mind, I could have mentioned it to Jim – he was right handy with drunks who gave black eyes to wives – but I didn’t: I didn’t because within the hour I saw Joby staggering out of the Erin go bragh tavern with scarcely a leg beneath him, so I politely escorted him through the dark to his home; holding him up, I heaved him into the kitchen, and my wee Beth saw him, and sighed: she sighed, I say, as a man sighs when nails go through his hands.

‘Where d’ye want him, girl?’

‘On the bed upstairs, if you please,’ and in the half light from the street I saw her tears.

I did a fireman’s lift up the stairs and flung him on to the bed, and he lay on his back with snores comin’ from his belted belly more like a hog than a man.

 

We stood together, her and me, and I said, holding her hands:

‘Beth, this has got to change, ye know?’

‘Aye, Father, aye. Now leave us. What I have to do I must do alone.’

So I left her with him and went down the stairs, but, impelled by a sudden fear, I stopped and looked through the banisters into the room.

First, Beth sat on the bed beside him; taking off her shoes, she pulled up her dress and unfastened her stockings; these she draped over the bedrail – one at the head of the bed, one at the bottom. Then she knelt as if in prayer for a few seconds, and rose.

With one stocking she tied Joby’s feet to the bottom rail; with the other stocking she tied his hands to the top rail of the bed. Climbing on to the bed she then straddled his chest, as one rides a horse, and taking from her pocket a half bottle of whisky, she said at the ceiling:

‘Dear God, forgive me, but what can I do?’ and she added pulling out the cork, ‘Have this on me, Joby Sarsaparilla,’ and she opened his mouth and poured in the whisky, slammed his mouth shut and leaned upon his face.

Joby leaped on the bed like a bucking broncho. Gulping, gurgling, he arched his body and nearly threw her off, but she hung on. He was bawling now, but she got her forearm across his face and held his nose and poured in more. After a bit he subsided, did Joby, for three quarts o’ Guinness and half-a-bottle of rye would put to sleep the toss-pots of Jerusalem.

Still astride him, but with her hands over her face, she wept.

He missed six shifts on the Atlantic Wharf, did Joby. They heard him splutterin’ all the way up North William Street.

 

Being pay day, I was in The Duke of Edinburgh a fortnight later, and I’d just got me teeth into my complimentary Guinness when in comes young Joby. Very pale around the gills he was and walking on tin-tacks.

‘A quart o’ Guinness, Mr. Driscoll,’ says he. ‘It’s a hair o’ the bitch that bit me, in a manner of speaking.’

‘Have ye been off colour, then, you poor soul?’ I asked.

‘I have, holy Father. Ye see, I chased the Guinness with neat rye – six pints and half-a-bottle – and it upset me somethin’ terrible, so it did.’

‘Aye, that’s a dangerous thing to do, lad,’ said Jim Driscoll. ‘Do you recall that fella up in Kildare doing it, Father, and he died?’

‘I do. That was terrible sad,’ said I, and I took Joby’s quart from Jim and passed it on to the table.

‘What happened, then?’ asked Joby lifting his pewter.

I replied. ‘Well, this big oaf, he kept getting himself plastered and comin’ home to his missus wi’ his back teeth awash, see? She was a dear, sweet girl, but she got sick of it, with no money in the house and him blacking her eyes. So, one night she tied him to the bed-posts, and filled him up with whisky.’

‘Mark, Mary and Joseph!’ ejaculated Joby, and jumped, and he got more Guinness down the front of him than into his mouth. ‘Kildare, did ye say, for God’s sake?’

‘Aye. The Widow of Kildare, they called her in the newspapers. But she’s living round these parts somewhere now, they tell me.’

Very delicate looked Joby.

‘Mind you,’ explained Jim, ‘she didn’t mean to harm him, only cure him . . .’

‘Which is why she got away with it at the inquest,’ said I.

‘Well, sod me,’ said Joby.

‘Watch your language in front of the holy Father!’ interjected Jim.

Joby got up. With one hand over his mouth and the other on the door, very shaky he looked. ‘Draw me a glass o’ sarsaparilla, for God’s sake,’ cried he, ‘for I’m finished wi’ that filthy brew,’ and the moment he was through the door I sank his Guinness.

‘Which is right and fair,’ said Jim, ‘for he owed you a quart. But . . .’ and he put out his hand. ‘But you still owe me for that half-a-bottle of whisky.’

Chapter 10

Adam’s Sin

The general public don’t give a lot of thought to the man beneath the black cassock of the Priest. How. . .