London A - Z: A Memoir (Hermit Crab Essay)

 

This essay was published in New Hibernia Review, Volume 27, Issue 3, 2023.  A previous, shorter version was published in Litro, UK. 

 For more of Áine's published writing and teaching information, visit her author website. 

© Under U.S. copyright laws, it is illegal to copy or re-use this text without the author's permission. 

***

London A - Z: A Memoir  

Alsation. That first night in London, you opened your bedroom door to find a dog lying on that landing, just beyond the threshold. Alsatian. As you stood there in your floral nightie, the doggie breed name dinged through your sleepy brain, conjuring those photos from your old school textbook chapters on Nazi-occupied Germany.

 
Bladder. This dog thing happened in autumn 1986, just after your twenty- fourth birthday. Even though you were in your nightie and your bladder was full, this wasn’t really your bedroom. Instead, that second-floor room with the pale pink walls came with your new barmaid job, and you had woken and stumbled across to that door because you needed to pee. Now, with this dog (see “A” above) lying there, you tiptoed back to your single bed, where you lay listening to the north London night traffic.
 
Country, n. The United Kingdom, where you had just landed, has four component countries. Though, according to Wikipedia, “the descriptive name one uses for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can be controversial, with the choice often revealing one’s political preferences.” Country, a. In your  native (southern) Ireland, teachers, college pals, and Dublin bus conductors heard your rural accent and tagged you as being and sounding “country.”
 
Donegal. Your pub boss man, who lived in an apartment at the other end of that upstairs landing, hailed from County Donegal. However, from his English accent, to his politician’s haircut, to his Anglo-only drinking friends, most folks could never detect his Irishness (see “P” below).
 
Emigrant. Sometimes an emigrant departs their own country in order to stay alive. Other emigrants leave because the leaving is less painful, less shameful than staying. Since the 1700s, the Irish have been particularly good at emigrating.  In your own family, two great-aunts and three great-uncles left for America. One great-aunt never came home again. One great-uncle got shipped back home to die. A whole generation later, your two uncles left for the United Kingdom. 

As a child in County Mayo, you heard many euphemisms for this act of leaving your own country.  Later, in the twenty-first century, you will know that none of the euphemisms did justice to the actual process of living a life overseas. Neither did the euphemisms—or the  Hollywood  movies—do  justice to the emotional firewall between those who left and those who stayed behind.
 
Fear. Since graduating from your Dublin college, a slow boil fear has thrummed inside—both while working your Irish government teacher’s job and while figuring out how to flee that job. After you fled, you moved back into your parents’ house down the country. There, in the daily newspaper, you spotted an advertisement for this London pub job. Live-in, free accommodation. These magic words (free accommodation) made you fantasize about future mornings when you could eat your breakfast without fearing or watching the disappointment, the disgust in your parents’ eyes.
 
Glasses. In your second-floor with the pale pink walls and the rosier pink corner hand basin, your night dreams were populated with falling and shattering pint glasses, G&T glasses, half-pint glasses, brandy glasses, whiskey glasses, et al. In those dreams, you were sloshing something into or over the wrong glass—all while the boss man watched from his barstool (see “F” above and “S” below). In real life, during your lunchtime and evening bar shifts, he often departed his barstool to come behind the bar to fix your latest mistake. Out of the bar cus- tomers’ earshot, he hissed: “You’re going to run me bloody bankrupt.”

Home. The morning cleaning woman, also Irish, tossed this word (home) around too much. Sometimes she meant your native land. Sometimes she meant the nearby flat where she and her (also immigrant) husband and kids lived. Over morning tea, you learned that their London-born kids were called “shandies,” as in, half beer and half lemonade, as in, first generation. Sometimes you silently begged this woman to ask: “Fancy coming home to ours for a bite of supper tonight?” 

PS: You didn’t know this in 1986, but after London, for the rest of your life,  you will always pause before you say that word, “home.”

Irish Republican Army. Two years earlier, in September 1984, the Pro- visional Irish Republican Army (IRA) had bombed the Brighton Hotel while then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her conservative party cab- inet were staying there. That bomb killed five people and injured thirty-one. Thatcher escaped. Back (pause) home, in southern Ireland, you had known or learned or cared very little about the sectarian war up north. Ditto for all previous, offshore IRA bombings.
 
Job. As well as the free bedroom, the agreed price for that London job included a breakfast and lunch of warmed-up sausage rolls or Scotch eggs—or whatever hadn’t sold at yesterday’s pub lunch. Some days, when you worked the lunch counter, you wondered if all the food got sold, what would you eat next morning? Thankfully, this never happened. Over and over, you told yourself that this job was infinitely better than your old job, teaching children in a freezing parochial school.
 
Kid. We kid ourselves about all kinds of things. Even in the worst of setups, we don’t interrogate our own fallacies and fantasies. “You’ve honestly got to be kid- ding.” Back then or now, who actually says that to themselves?
 
Lunge. After that first night with the Alsatian, you tried again. And again. But every night, that dog lay stretched out there, just beyond your bedroom thresh- old. Where was this dog during daylight hours? One Saturday night, you heard the tick-swish doggie sound on the back stairs. From your bed you pictured him (her?) down there, patrolling from pub window to window. Who had he (she?) been trained to look for, to lunge at? Another night, after the boss man let you and the live-out barmaid have an after-work drink, you were really, really burst- ing to pee. So you set your hand on the door jamb and arched your leg high to step over. The hackles rose and the Alsatian gave a low growl—the precursor to a doggie lunge? You didn’t wait to find out.

Mathematics. You have always been bad at maths. Still, you wonder if most of life can’t be reduced to a balance sheet of what you are now and what, someday, you hope to be or to acquire (see “E” above). Life could also be boiled down to a set of math puzzlers. For example, if a dog’s girth measures XYZ meters, just how many meters high would a girl need to arch her leg to climb across? Or: how many milliliters of urine can accumulate in a human bladder before it causes cystitis? Or: thanks to her country-girl skills at climbing up  and  hoisting  her- self over acres of dry stone walls would she be equally adept at, say, hoisting herself up onto that pink hand basin to pee?
 
Navvy. Early in this job, the seasoned, live-out barmaid issued the boss man’s no-serve rule: “No serving anyone in boots.” You asked. She clarified. Ah! Just as you’d suspected, this rule was not about footwear. Instead, it referred to Irish  navvies (construction workers). Daytimes, due to the size of that bar and the issues of distance and depth perception, this no-boots rule was hard to apply or enforce. Night times, you rehearsed the scene for that dreaded day when you would have to cite this rule to a navvy, a thirsty man who smelled or looked like  your father.
 
Object v. Years later, in your twenty-first-century woke-ness, you will wonder why you did not do this (object), or why you did not become a conscientious objector, n. Nope. Fear is not an alibi or an excuse here. But how about that free room with its pink walls and hand basin-turned-night-toilet?
 
Passing. Speaking of “wokeness,” you will learn that there is a term for what your boss man was doing. He was “passing” as English. Later, in a hateful part of your heart, you will also say that he was passing as human. Later too, you will do a little of this (passing) yourself, in America. Not because you don’t want to be Irish, but because some days, you will be too busy rushing from job to job to answer the “what-county-are-you-from?” question.
 
Quintessential. From its cottage-styled windows to its dark-wood bar and banquettes, the Rose & Crown pub, where you worked and lived, was quintessentially English, such as one might see in a tourist brochure or website.
 
Race, racism. On your afternoon rambles around north London, you saw how, in contrast to 1980s Ireland, there were many Black and brown faces. Why did none of these faces appear at the bar in the Rose & Crown? Oh, wait. Once, halfway through a busy lunch, a Black man appeared in that pub doorway. He glanced inside, then retreated back outside as if he’d seen enough to know.
 
Surveilled. Afternoons, when you walked to the corner shop for cigarettes and salty snacks, the lady shopkeeper watched your every move. When you asked for your brand of cigarettes, she made a grand pantomime of wincing at and retreating from your accent. Mornings, when you and the cleaning woman stood whispering, you listened for the boss man’s footstep on the back stairs. At night, when you tried to fill and tabulate someone’s drinks order, you knew he was watching from his barstool. Amid all these, the Alsatian kept watch—or surveilled—at your bedroom door.
 
Stiff. This is American slang for the act of not paying, as promised, for an agreed service or job. One morning the boss man summoned you to his office. There he said that, due to tanking pub sales, he could no longer afford a full-time, live-in   barmaid. You could keep your free room for two nights, and he would leave your final paycheck under the bar cash register or till. Next day, after a fitful, sleepless night, you checked for your money.
 
Terrorist. In that corner shop, where a stack of Evening Standards sat between you and the lady shopkeeper (the one who winced at your accent), you wanted to ask: “From my thick hair to my green eyes to my soft voice, who exactly do I really, really look or sound like to you?”
 
Ugly. There are plenty of ugly cities, but London is not one of them. Millions of folks travel to see its Trafalgar Square, its British Museum, et al. In fact, years later, you will fly from Boston’s Logan to London’s Heathrow Airport to join these tourists with their cameras and their A–Z guide maps. On that trip, Lon- don will feel cinematic, not real, as if you had never been there before (see “V” below).
 
Vantage point. How you experience a place depends on what parts you are allowed or have the leisure or the cash assets to see. It also depends on where you have flown (see “H” above) from. All cities look different when a tourist’s  hotel room key sits snug in your pocket.
 
Waste. Later, you will regret all of your wasted months and years and botched attempts at a grown-up life. You will want to erase or photoshop that girl standing there in her nightie, staring at an Alsatian dog.
 
Xenophobia. See “P” and “R” above. 
 
Yearn. There’s not much to say about “the ‘y’ word,” except that the Bible (“the greatest of these is love”) and the Beatles (“All You Need is Love”) were really,   really onto something—like, something basic but big. The truth is this: Much more than the spatial or architectural or geographical place, we all yearn for an existential home or home base. Or when we’re away from home, we all yearn for  an emotional blankie to keep out the cold.

Zonked. On your London departure day, your money hasn’t been left under that cash register or till (see “S” above). When you knocked (and knocked) on the boss man’s apartment and office doors, there was no response. Still, even without your paycheck, you splurged for a taxi (not the Tube) to the British Rail night train to take you to the night ferry to take you back across the Irish Sea and (pause) home. In that taxi, after a jittery, sleepless night in that pink room, you were bone-weary tired, aka, zonked. Tonight, would the Alsatian automatically sense that there was nobody behind that bedroom door—nobody to protect or protect against? Tomorrow, would that woman in the corner shop wonder where you were or if you’d just given up junk food and smoking? You didn’t bloody care. Neither did you care that, while your black cab nudged through the afternoon traffic, your middle-aged London cabbie kept gawking at you in his rearview (see “S” above). 

Outside Euston station, your gawking, middle-aged cabbie swiveled all the way around to face you. He said, “Look, I have to ask you this, love: Are you . . . are you all right?”
Zonked as you were, and although this cabbie with the kind eyes did not quite fulfill either the Bible’s or the Beatles’ love quotients, you managed to smile and push out four words: “I’m fine. Thank you.”
 
Yearn. There’s not much to say about “the ‘y’ word,” except that the Bible (“the greatest of these is love”) and the Beatles (“All You Need is Love”) were really,   really onto something—something basic but big. The truth is this: Much more than the spatial or architectural or geographical place, we all yearn for an existential home or home base. Or when we’re away from home, we all yearn for  an emotional blankie to keep out the cold.

Zonked. On your London departure day, your money hasn’t been left under   that cash register or till (see “S” above). When you knocked (and knocked) on the boss man’s apartment and office doors, there was no response. Still, even without your paycheck, you splurged for a taxi (not the Tube) to the British Rail night train to take you to the night ferry to take you back across the Irish Sea and (pause) home. In that taxi, after a jittery, sleepless night in that pink room, you were bone-weary tired, aka, zonked. Tonight, would the Alsatian automatically sense that there was nobody behind that bedroom door—nobody to protect or protect against? Tomorrow, would that woman in the corner shop wonder where you were or if you’d just given up junk food and smoking? You didn’t bloody care. Neither did you care that, while your black cab nudged through the afternoon traffic, your middle-aged London cabbie kept gawking at you in his rearview (see “S” above).
Outside Euston station, your gawking, middle-aged cabbie swiveled all the way around to face you. He said, “Look, I have to ask you this, love: Are you . . . are you all right?”
Zonked as you were, and although this cabbie with the kind eyes did not quite fulfill either the Bible’s or the Beatles’ love quotients, you managed to smile and push out four words: “I’m fine. Thank you.”
 
A native of County Mayo, Áine Greaney was part of the 1980s emigration wave, when an estimated 200,000 Irish left for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Since then, in addition to her published books, her writing  has appeared in New Hibernia Review, Books Ireland, the Boston Globe Magazine, the New York Times, Another Chicago Magazine, and many other publications, as well as on Salon and WBUR/NPR. Her fifth book, “Trespassers,” a collection of short fiction set in greater Boston and Ireland, is forthcoming. 

***