The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll by Brian Beacom Read Free Book Online Page A

pack. You are going home today.”
    ‘There was an almighty cheer in the room. Tears streamed from my face as I ran across the football pitch to the dorm to pack. I was going home. I had learned my lesson. I vowed there and then never ever again to get caught. I’d never put myself in that sort of position again.
    ‘And the lesson according to my mother? “If you do something and it turns out good, you stand on the rooftops, and you tell the world. But you’ve got to do the same if it goes pear-shaped.”’
    He adds, looking uncomfortable, ‘Me mammy used to boast that she had eleven children but had never stood in a courtroom with any of them. And then I let her down.’
    Brendan didn’t suffer too much in reform school. And he didn’t dwell on the bicycle locks and Sellotape experience. As always, he was set to move onto the next challenge.
    But what?

The Frog Chorus
    ST GAYBO’S was full of dead-end kids and no-hope teachers desperate just to get through the day. Brendan was taught by many uninterested supply teachers.
    ‘We had a teacher once called Mr Muldoon. He made a point of telling me I would always be a loser.’
    Regular teachers simply didn’t last too long in an old, worn-out school filled with unruly kids that sucked the energy out of their very being. Brendan, at the time, saw it as the normal way of things. He got on with his life, which at this time involved being a part-time pigeon-fancier.
    But the sky suddenly darkened the day Brendan was taken to see his dad in hospital. Gerry O’Carroll’s breathing had worsened.
    ‘Just as it was time to go my daddy held before me two florins. Four shillings. “Happy Birthday, young man,” he smiled, and I took the shiny coins with the leaping salmon on them.
    ‘“Thanks, Daddy,” and I meant it. This was big money.
    ‘“So what will you do with all this money, Brendan?”
    ‘“I’m going to buy two more pigeons. Tumblers,” I said gleefully. I already had three birds, and I loved keeping pigeons.
    ‘“Yes, Mammy tells me you have pigeons. Where do you keep them?”
    ‘“I made a kinda box from two pop-soda wooden crates. I keep them there,” I was proud to say.
    ‘Daddy leaned down, picked me up in his arms and whispered into my ear, “When I get out of here son, I will make you the best pigeon loft in Finglas.”
    ‘I was thrilled. My daddy, it was well known to all, was probably the finest cabinet-maker in Dublin. I knew he could make the best loft. I knew it. I floated from the hospital that day.’
    Gerard O’Carroll never got the chance. Eight days after he gave Brendan his two shiny coins, he died from asbestos poisoning, contracted on one of the many jobs he’d taken on that had involved working with asbestos sheeting.
    ‘He died in the same hospital where they took him when he had been shot as a kid.
    ‘Mammy told me in the best way she could. “Brendan, Daddy is gone to heaven son.” Then, holding me close, she wept. I looked at her with widened eyes.
    ‘“But, what about my pigeon loft?” I asked.
    ‘I guess I was sort of used to seeing my father go into hospital. So I didn’t miss him as much as I would have. And I somehow knew life would be all about me and my mammy. I hadn’t had the chance to really get to know my dad. I guess I felt like I was the man of the house now. I was the one responsible for my mammy.
    ‘And, as strange and as sad a time as it should have been, my abiding memory of the week of the funeral was one of excitement. You see, a lot of my brothers and sisters had emigrated. Now, suddenly, they were all coming home, from Canada, America and England. And I spent the days at the arrivals gate at Dublin Airport. To this day, my favourite place to be is at arrivals in any airport meeting someone. Sometimes, I still pop into arrivals around Christmas time to witness the joy of people reuniting as they emerge from those sliding doors, arms outstretched and engulfing family or friends they have