When I first went out to work I spent some of my lunch hours savouring the pleasures of roaming streets broad and narrow for I had been recently incarcerated for two years in a boarding school situated some sixty miles from Cork and one hundred from civilisation. One such break I visited Eason’s beside the GPO and picked up the monthly United Irishman which reported and supported the IRA campaign in the North ,and took it to the counter to pay for it.
I heard a growl to my right – “I wouldn’t bother with that, son; why don’t yeh get a dacent paper – like the Daily Express.” I turned round to behold Brendan Behan, who was ACTUALLY BUYING the said philistine, lying, imperialist rag. Though he looked a bit like a ruin Cromwell had knocked about a bit, there was no mistaking the intelligence radiating from his face, nor the fact that he was essentially handsome.
I was not then a master of banter or badinage. Besides, I was wearing a clean shirt and my only suit and feared for them if I got into a barney with a man of his wild reputation. His first published piece had been in the United Irishman, and I imagine his advice was to save me from Borstal or a worse fate.
I thought that, like many Dubliners with his political sentiments, he bought Beaverbrook’s rag for its racing tips.
But he was a writer and all writing was grist to his mill.
Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis
Never exchanged words with Brendan Behan, DK, but did catch sight of him once up in the Azoo aka the Zoological Gardens, and him to have an ice cream cone in his eloquent gob.
Did, however, manage to meet the scholars on the way home, one of whom was once a doyen of the press photographers in Dublin sur Liffey. A lovely man who was awash with engrossing anecdotes two of which involved swimming togs, one to do with Brendan B, the other to do with a dabbler in the Sock Exchange..
Back in the Fabulous Fifties when in the employ of the Irish Press at the time, and on a slow news day, his editor was given to pressing the Plan B button – B for Behan, Brendan. On this particular day the photographer duly headed out to the baths at Blackrock where the Quare Fella was known to have a regular dip.
There, sure enough, he found the dramatist dog-paddling as was his wont on his own in the pool. Just as he arrived a group of local middle-class, middle-ass gals were emerging en masse (as ladies do) from the changing-room marked Mna.
Which was the cue for the dramatically-aware solo swimmer to dip below the surface, where he remained till the last woman-Jill of the ladies had entered the water. Little did they know they were, erm, Hostages to fortune for at that imprecise moment the submerged former Borstal Boy suddenly broke the surface with his swimming togs in his hand.
With a blood-curdling rendition of the old rosc catha / war cry
-Fag an Bealach !
the buoyant Behan twirled his togs above his dripping hair and toothless grin before flinging it flamboyantly on to the side of the swimming pool. Where it landed with a sloppy squelch.
Exit, missuses en masse, in mortal fear that they would be pursued by a barely modest behemoth.
The second anecdote occurred many years later, when the former press photographer had now set up his own photo agency. On this particular occasion he found himself sunbathing on the side of another swimming pool. Not in exotic Blackrock this time, but rather in mundane Cairo.
The pool was attached to a Sheraton Hotel, which accommodating chain had commissioned him to do a tour of its Middle-Eastern hotels. For the purpose of taking photographs for the following year’s glossy brochure.
It was the photographer’s final day and he was relaxing after a fortnight’s work well done, and, erm, well remunerated . Next thing, a tall athletic black dude appeared at poolside, bemoaning the fact that he had forgotten to pack his swimming togs.
Instantly recognising the black dude the photographer was on his feet quicker than one could say ‘Muhammad Ali’ (for it was he!) offering the Greatest the use of his own swimming togs.
Not only was the offer gratefully accepted but after the Greatest enjoyed his swim in borrowed dipping duds invited the photographer to join his entourage as the in-house snapper. The Greatest was on his first day of a week long tour of Egypt to visit with his brother Muslims and other hoods.
It was the photographer’s turn to do the grateful speech of acceptance.
Why, oh why, did one opt to mitch from school on the very day that the Career Avoidance Counsellor was discussing Press Photography as a possibility?
Si non e vero, e ben trovato, as we used say in the Summit Inn, ar Mhullach
Bhinn Eadair.
Sounds to me Perkin, like tales from a Great Pretender.
Behan, coming starkers from the Atlantic on one of the Aran Islands beheld many
of the Abbey Theatre company, and greeted them quite naturally,Some of yez are
men and the rest actresses so you’re not seeing things you haven’t seen before.
What shocks me is that he was reported using the Second Official Language, polluting
the pure Gaeltacht air.