Operation Transformation a short story

 Like everyone else, he had heard about the events in the rowing boat but unlike everyone else in the room, Sean didn’t believe a word of it. Nuala, the TV Director had taken them to one side after breakfast and with a Garda officer standing next to her, she broke the news to the group.

Looking around the room he believed the rest of the Operation Transformation team had swallowed the news delivered by Nuala without question. The two young women Mary and Aoife burst into tears and fell into each other’s arms. Fred and Pat, two very overweight middle-aged men from Galway looked shocked and seemed to be grappling to process the news. Henry, the Rock, one of the team’s coaches looked grimly straight at Nuala while the series producer, Trevor sat on a nearby table, swinging one leg back and forth whilst staring hard at something on the floor beneath him.

Outside the hostel, Sean spotted the emergency vehicles in the car park, lights flashing, the white ambulance parked with its rear doors swung wide open awaiting its load.

“Are you OK Sean?” asked Nuala interrupting his flow of thought and suddenly he found that everyone was looking at him.

“Yeah, I’m fine” he heard himself say but he knew he wasn’t.

Sean had been Franks bunk-buddy for the last two nights and they’d got on well enough. Frank snored loudly but Sean had come prepared and equipped with earbuds. Frank had given Sean a spare toothbrush and they’d shared their life histories over the past days. I suppose you could say they’d bonded, especially as they were on the same team for the weekend. Both were grossly overweight now but it hadn’t always been the way, at least for Sean. No, it took a hip broken in a car crash fifteen-year ago to turn him into a telly-tubby. He suspected for Frank it had been more of a one-way gradual yet steady decline. Frank had a gastric band and stomach reduction operation carried out ten years back yet the pounds continued to pile on and with the weight came the depression. Sean wasn’t sure Frank could ever have won his battle with food. Now we’ll never know.

Yesterday had been full-on. From the start the teams were walking miles, crawling through concrete pipes and building campfires in the forest, all captured by lythe able cameramen who accompanied them. It had been a subdued tired group that returned to the hostel that night. Darkness had fallen as they walked through the car park and into the lush reception area where they left a trail of muddy footsteps. After a shower and a change of clothes, Sean sat in the bar sipping a tall glass of water while Nuala explained what lay in store for tomorrow. The rest spread themselves about the lounge nippling on a tray of sliced carrots dunked in a vegan dip and sipping low-calorie soda drinks. Now that he thought of it, Sean hadn’t seen Frank at the meeting.

 Maybe he’d already gone? Gone where?

Sean returned to their room once the briefing was over and though he was knackered he had found it difficult to go to sleep with the empty bunk bed opposite. He stuck at it for a few hours and finally, he’d gotten up and had awoken Nuala. Together they’d searched the hostel and that’s when he began to get worried about Frank. The others were allowed to sleep on and he left Nuala on the phone when he just couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.

They’d all met up again at breakfast this morning and the consensus of opinion was that Frank might have split for home late last night. Just had enough, ordered a taxi and vamoosed, dropping out of the program.

“Feck it!” said Fred “He probably stopped for a Chinese takeaway, spring rolls, chicken balls, fried rice and a can of Coke on the way home.” They had salivated in unison at the image conjured up but Nuala had drained the humour from the room with the announcement that Frank had been found dead, in the last hour, on a boat floating in the middle of the lake with no oars and a paper bag full of uneaten custard cream doughnuts.

“It appears from CCTV footage,” said the Garda “that Frank had been recorded visiting his car and then heading on foot around to the rear of the hostel when he disappeared into the darkness only to reappear at the jetty, a wooden platform located at the edge of the lake. We were just able to make out a figure stepping into the boat carrying a bag of some sort.  No further sighting of Frank was found on the camera footage but it’s safe to assume Frank rowed out into the lake to consume his doughnuts. Subsequently, it appears he lost both oars and died of exposure. An autopsy will be required and the State pathologist is on his way to us as I speak.”

“It appears to have been a tragic accident,” said Nuala “and out of respect to Frank we are abandoning the shoot planned for today.

“How can you be so sure it was an accident?” piped up Sean.

“What do you mean?” said Nuala.

“Frank was terrified of water,” said Sean “He told me yesterday.”

“Maybe that’s why he stayed in the boat,” said the Garda “as many would have been tempted to swim for it rather than freeze to death as it transpired.I know I would have.”

“Then how do you explain that having rowed out there he didn’t eat the doughnuts before he died?” replied Sean.

“Something just doesn’t add up” said Sean with conviction.

Again everyone turned to Sean but this time all the team members nodded their agreement.

 

 

 

 

Dublin 1970 Streetwise

 It was just another day and now was just another afternoon in my teenage years. The school bell rang loudly from somewhere deep in the bowels of the building and three hundred uniformed kids poured out of St. Marys College. They ran along Military Road and up the Rathmines Road Lower at 3:30 pm one sunny May afternoon. The Marys boys were easily identifiable with their short peaked caps, blue badge encrusted jackets, grey slacks or shorts and grey socks. Bags weighed down by school books and empty lunch boxes hung from their backs or were dragged along the pavement behind them.

As the minutes passed they split up into smaller units of threes and fours and dissolved in amongst the everyday foot-traffic of the busy Dublin suburbia. Most off the boys were heading for Terenure, Rathgar or Templeogue, areas that at that time were much sought after with many new housing estates being constructed. The schools own past-pupils rugby clubhouse and grounds were in Templeogue but the school's pitches and dressing rooms were still in Kenilworth Square, only half a mile from the school.

I and my younger brother didn’t live in any of those local areas where Mary’s boys grew up playing together, schooling together and bonding together in friendships for life. We lived eight kilometres away, due south. This distance was normally bridged by a bus journey or a pick-up by my father when he was passing at 5:30 pm on his way home from work.

We crossed the Rathmines Road Lower and turned down a laneway walking past a laundrette where the large tumble dryers were noisily tossing clothing wildly about in the warm air. I remember that day we were both quiet and pensive as we passed the local national school which lay deserted and ominously quiet. It’s occupants always exited half an hour before us so they could be anywhere now.

We turned right at the end of the road and past a small shop that sold bags of broken biscuits and “Gur cake, my favourite treat. If I had a spare shilling I’d buy some and occasionally I bought it even when I hadn’t a shilling to spare. On those days I walked home.

Today we did a quick right and left and strode into Mount Pleasant Square, a Georgian area built in the eightieth century. It’s tree-lined streets enclosed a large private tennis club whose black metal fences secured the square itself and though its houses were of glass and brick with pillared ornate fan-shaped doorways and granite steps, we knew were entering an area of extreme danger.

Normally we had Decko, Brian, and Rodney with us. We’d cover this route in convoys of five or six boys at a time but today there we were just two. We had taken the chance and come this way as it cut ten minutes off the safer route and on a sunny day like this was the world seemed a benign place.

Further up the road, two local boys with a large German shepherd were to be seen walking briskly towards us. I thought about fleeing but we had been seen. No point in running as they knew the surrounding streets far better than we did.  If we stuck to this road someone, an adult, may stumble across us and them. There was no such chance on the other roads.

My brother, two years my younger, stood by my side as we got a better look at the pair now almost on top of us.  The dog, not on a lead, was held by the hair on the nape of his neck and was growling with intent. We stepped off the pavement in an effort to avoid head-on contact but they merely stepped onto the road in front of us. They stopped a foot ahead of us and I saw that they appeared to mirror our ages. This was to be a clash of the classes.

“Give us a fag mister” demanded the older of the two as he wrestled to restrain the dog who was snarling viciously at me. I stared hard at the boy, his dirty freckled face with eyes of unflinching coldness. He surveyed me with zero empathy.

“I don’t smoke” I replied.

“Me neither” piped up my brother.

“Then gimme a lend of a quid mister” the older one demanded, his left hand stretched out in a cupped palm.

“I don’t have a quid” I retorted, which happened to be true.

He didn’t bother demanding anything of my brother. He focused just on me and he froze me with his look. I felt powerless to look anywhere but into his dark menacing eyes.

“Empty your pockets misters – both of yea” he ordered and he now stuck the cupped hand closer and the snarling dog now moved in to within an inch of my trousers. Its flecks of foaming drool dripping from his mouth discoloured my light grey trousers and I could feel its breath warm on my leg. I could also see that my brother was shaking.

“We’ve only got our bus fare” I protested but it was cutting no ice with this pair.

“Fucking hand it over. All of it mind you! All of it or I’ll set the dog on yea!” He replied jerking the dog up by its hair and the animal let out a blood curling snarl. I glanced about the street desperately willing someone to wander up it but my luck was out. I reached into my pockets and dropped the half crown into the palm of his hand. My brother did likewise. I could see he still wasn’t happy.

“Michael – take the bags off this pair and go over there and go through them” and he pointed to the roadside kerb a few feet away. “Now fuckin dammit now!”

I sensed he was on a tight rein, perhaps missing his nicotine hit. Michael dutifully relieved us of our heavy leather satchels and took them over to the pavement where he opened them up and delved inside. He opened pencil cases, looked between copy books and unclipped side pockets. He was searching for something, anything that might be valuable, that they could flog. He picked out our plastic toy cowboys and Indians and stuffed a handful of them in his pockets.

Out of the corner of my eye, a bicycle and rider came into view behind the ragged pair of robbers. Slowly the young man, perhaps in his twenties progressed up the road towards us. He seemed a well-dressed man and it seemed to me that he correctly assessed what was going on.

“What are these boys demanding of you?” he asked of me as he dismounted his bike and came to join the group.

The older robber twirled around in surprise. Being streetwise, in a nanosecond he had sized up the newcomer and computed his options which were 1) abandon the robbery taking the cash in his hand 2) continue with a bluff greeting and brave it out. This situation has the potential to get better so he chose option two.

 “What the fuck has it got to do with you?” he delivered it loudly and aggressively and it stopped the Good Samaritan in his tracks.  “You stand over there” he pointed to a place next to me and the man walked over to my side.

 “Michael” he shouted “take them bags and put them on the bike and go to Spritzer’s gaff with the lot.”

“I say -” protested the well-bred do-gooder.

“No mister. You say nothing. I say what happens around here so shut the fuck up or I’ll set the dog on you” said the older robber said asserting his authority. Turning back to the newcomer he ordered: “Now you can empty your pockets mister.”

“Now!”

“I haven’t got all day and I need the money to buy the dog some food. He’s starving right now so don’t try anything funny. My hand is getting tired holding him back. One false move and he’ll pounce.”

The newcomer looked dejected as his bike disappeared around the corner. He reached deep into his pockets and emerged with a packet of chewing gums and five pounds which he deposited in the villain's palm.

Our captor allowed himself a smile. He stuffed the lot in his pocket and then spun around when he heard a voice from just over his shoulder say “Ciaran what the hell are you up to?”

“Oh – Hi ya Phil” answered our captor to an older man who’d just appeared, like out of nowhere. I never saw him coming but he knew our Ciaran all right.” Ciaran was no longer that confident streetwise kid. Phil had assumed control of the situation.

“Excuse us will you?” said Phil politely to the three of us as he led Ciaran firmly by the arm to the nearby kerb where a whispered conversation took place for a minute or two. When it was over Ciaran and the dog then set off up the road, slouching along looking at the pavement but not looking back.

Phil walked back over to us. “I must apologise to you for what happened just now. You two are free to go.” He didn’t have to say it twice.

“What about our bags mister?” said my brother and Phil answered “Go on now. Stand over there at the bus stop and you’re bags will be brought to you in a few minutes.”

A few minutes later our bags were brought to the bus stop and our bus fare returned to us. While we stood waiting for the 62 bus we saw the Good Samaritan cycling away in the opposite direction. “I wonder if he got his fiver back?” asked my brother.