Cally Phillips' Another World is Possible
Episode Thirteen – TRUTH
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: 1964 Dublin – TOM
Swearwords: None.
Description: 1964 Dublin – TOM
It’s 1964. Nearly Christmas. I’m fifteen and a half. Still six months away from my first real test. Exams. Enjoying life. I haven’t got any clues what I’m going to do with it, of course, I just take life as it comes. I’ll go to University then get a job, but it’s all just passing the time. What I love is rugby. That’s my life. That’s why I’m here in Dublin. I’ve made it into the first XV. Even though I’m not in fourth year yet. The coach says I’m fast enough to make it worth the risk, and I need to be fast because there’s a load of boys a lot bigger than me just aching to stop me and they’re not too particular about how hard they tackle. It’s my first time away from home. Our school is on tour. Well, the tour has just finished and we’re on our way home. Won two, lost one; so we’re returning with honour, if not bodies, more or less intact. I scored a try. And I’ve got a cracker of a black eye coming on.
We’re hanging around the airport with a couple of hours till our plane goes and nothing much to do. My pal Stuart is trying not to be noticed by a gaggle of Irish schoolgirls who are singing carols. Trying so hard not to be noticed. I keep telling him there’s no point. What can he do in a couple of hours? That doesn’t stop Stuart.
We’re just living our lives, like you do before an accident, completely unaware of what’s going to happen next. It’s funny how when you think of moments that change your life, it’s hard to get back to the feeling of the moment before it happened, because of course that was just like all the other moments when nothing special happened.
Anyway, I remember turning round from Stuart, who threw me a rugby ball. This was one of his ways to ‘not’ get attention from the girls I suppose. I wasn’t expecting it and before I could catch it, the ball was snatched from behind me.
I turned round, expecting the wrath of an airport official but instead found this larger than life guy in khaki, surrounded by a bunch of what looked like soldiers. He had long hair and a deep, foreign voice and said something in Spanish. I didn’t know what it was, but he seemed to be laughing.
‘Jesus Christ, it’s Che Guevara,’ said Stuart.
At which point he, Che, handed the ball back to me, shook my hand and said something which I took to be a comment about brotherhood in rugby.
Stuart is about doing his nut, because he’s clearly more aware than I am of who Che Guevara is. I mean, I’ve heard of him, but I try to stay out of politics and so I’m more taken by the actuality of the man, rather than the reputation Stuart seems so entranced by.
But I’m not daft. I mean, I know an important event when I’m in one. So I ask him if he’ll sign the rugby ball for me. More in gestures than in words of course because I don’t speak Spanish and he doesn’t seem to speak English.
He smiles, laughs and agrees. He signs the ball with his trademark ‘Che’ and says something which I take to mean that it doesn’t matter if we speak the same language, that rugby and revolution are international languages.
I think that’s the end of it, convinced he’s about to move off. Certainly the guys around him are looking agitated and I’m guessing we’ve taken up enough of his time, a couple of Scottish schoolboys bearing the marks of a decent roughing up from the Irish. But he points to my blackening eye and says in broken English, ‘You win?’
‘Yes. We won two out of three,’ I say. That’s winning isn’t it? Best of three?
‘Good,’ he says. ‘You play, run?’
‘I’m a winger, yes,’ I reply.
‘Me, kick,’ he says.
‘Do you play rugby?’ I ask
We’re getting the hang of this conversation thing, even though most of the words are accompanied with gestures.
‘Si.’ He nods. Then adds something which I take to be about he doesn’t play now but did when he was my age and that he misses it. Now he fights for the revolution and maybe when I’m his age I will too. At least I think that’s the gist of what he said. He seemed to be using Spanish, French, English and sign language combined.
By this point Stuart has just about got over the fact that he’s in the presence of a famous man and asks Che to sign his plane ticket. He doesn’t have anything else that would take a signature. Che laughs, suggesting (and I agree) the idea of signing his ticket is perhaps a bit daft. Instead Che reaches into his pocket and brings out something written in Spanish and signs it and gives it to Stuart.
He says, ‘I write, you read.’
Or that’s what we think he says in Spanish. And we nod enthusiastically.
Then he’s off. That’s the end of the encounter. Or the beginning really. We pored over that document for months. We got a Spanish dictionary, we tried to find anyone who could read Spanish and somehow the document landed with me. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I took Spanish in my sixth year, in 1967, but that wasn’t a lot of help. That summer Stuart went into the army and I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t bothered to apply for University. No one in my family had done that. I got a job. Two things happened that autumn. The job ‘let me go’ because they didn’t like me coming in with the facial injuries I sustained playing for the F.P’s. And Che was killed. That turned my life around. Reminded me there was more to life. I went to college and took Higher Spanish. To make it worth it I took another couple of Highers. Maths and Economics. And I applied and got into University to study Politics and Economics. Where I discovered that the ‘document’ was a page from a speech Che gave to the United Nations.
To tell the truth, that meeting with Che Guevara changed my life. It was fitting that a rugby ball started it because that was the focus of my life at that time. But once I read the whole of Che’s speech to the United Nations, in the aftermath of his death, I realised the world held more to it than my small life and there was more to life than rugby.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy rugby. It took me a long way, rugby. Places I never expected. Opened up opportunities for me. But I’m here today, trying to set up export for Cuban coffee, precisely because of what I read about economic unfairness from Che’s own writing. And because we shared a moment with a rugby ball in Dublin. I’ve still got the rugby ball at home. And in fact I’ve got the document here. It’s in pretty good condition because it got stuck in the attic for a good long while, but I found it again after my last trip to Cuba.
Roisin asks to see the paper. How could she not?
And Tom takes out the document, complete with signature, from a plastic wallet and shows it to Roisin. Even more than in the mausoleum, this is the closest she’s ever come to Che. She’s finally able to touch something he touched. Maybe the trip to Cuba was worth it after all.
We’re hanging around the airport with a couple of hours till our plane goes and nothing much to do. My pal Stuart is trying not to be noticed by a gaggle of Irish schoolgirls who are singing carols. Trying so hard not to be noticed. I keep telling him there’s no point. What can he do in a couple of hours? That doesn’t stop Stuart.
We’re just living our lives, like you do before an accident, completely unaware of what’s going to happen next. It’s funny how when you think of moments that change your life, it’s hard to get back to the feeling of the moment before it happened, because of course that was just like all the other moments when nothing special happened.
Anyway, I remember turning round from Stuart, who threw me a rugby ball. This was one of his ways to ‘not’ get attention from the girls I suppose. I wasn’t expecting it and before I could catch it, the ball was snatched from behind me.
I turned round, expecting the wrath of an airport official but instead found this larger than life guy in khaki, surrounded by a bunch of what looked like soldiers. He had long hair and a deep, foreign voice and said something in Spanish. I didn’t know what it was, but he seemed to be laughing.
‘Jesus Christ, it’s Che Guevara,’ said Stuart.
At which point he, Che, handed the ball back to me, shook my hand and said something which I took to be a comment about brotherhood in rugby.
Stuart is about doing his nut, because he’s clearly more aware than I am of who Che Guevara is. I mean, I’ve heard of him, but I try to stay out of politics and so I’m more taken by the actuality of the man, rather than the reputation Stuart seems so entranced by.
But I’m not daft. I mean, I know an important event when I’m in one. So I ask him if he’ll sign the rugby ball for me. More in gestures than in words of course because I don’t speak Spanish and he doesn’t seem to speak English.
He smiles, laughs and agrees. He signs the ball with his trademark ‘Che’ and says something which I take to mean that it doesn’t matter if we speak the same language, that rugby and revolution are international languages.
I think that’s the end of it, convinced he’s about to move off. Certainly the guys around him are looking agitated and I’m guessing we’ve taken up enough of his time, a couple of Scottish schoolboys bearing the marks of a decent roughing up from the Irish. But he points to my blackening eye and says in broken English, ‘You win?’
‘Yes. We won two out of three,’ I say. That’s winning isn’t it? Best of three?
‘Good,’ he says. ‘You play, run?’
‘I’m a winger, yes,’ I reply.
‘Me, kick,’ he says.
‘Do you play rugby?’ I ask
We’re getting the hang of this conversation thing, even though most of the words are accompanied with gestures.
‘Si.’ He nods. Then adds something which I take to be about he doesn’t play now but did when he was my age and that he misses it. Now he fights for the revolution and maybe when I’m his age I will too. At least I think that’s the gist of what he said. He seemed to be using Spanish, French, English and sign language combined.
By this point Stuart has just about got over the fact that he’s in the presence of a famous man and asks Che to sign his plane ticket. He doesn’t have anything else that would take a signature. Che laughs, suggesting (and I agree) the idea of signing his ticket is perhaps a bit daft. Instead Che reaches into his pocket and brings out something written in Spanish and signs it and gives it to Stuart.
He says, ‘I write, you read.’
Or that’s what we think he says in Spanish. And we nod enthusiastically.
Then he’s off. That’s the end of the encounter. Or the beginning really. We pored over that document for months. We got a Spanish dictionary, we tried to find anyone who could read Spanish and somehow the document landed with me. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I took Spanish in my sixth year, in 1967, but that wasn’t a lot of help. That summer Stuart went into the army and I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t bothered to apply for University. No one in my family had done that. I got a job. Two things happened that autumn. The job ‘let me go’ because they didn’t like me coming in with the facial injuries I sustained playing for the F.P’s. And Che was killed. That turned my life around. Reminded me there was more to life. I went to college and took Higher Spanish. To make it worth it I took another couple of Highers. Maths and Economics. And I applied and got into University to study Politics and Economics. Where I discovered that the ‘document’ was a page from a speech Che gave to the United Nations.
To tell the truth, that meeting with Che Guevara changed my life. It was fitting that a rugby ball started it because that was the focus of my life at that time. But once I read the whole of Che’s speech to the United Nations, in the aftermath of his death, I realised the world held more to it than my small life and there was more to life than rugby.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy rugby. It took me a long way, rugby. Places I never expected. Opened up opportunities for me. But I’m here today, trying to set up export for Cuban coffee, precisely because of what I read about economic unfairness from Che’s own writing. And because we shared a moment with a rugby ball in Dublin. I’ve still got the rugby ball at home. And in fact I’ve got the document here. It’s in pretty good condition because it got stuck in the attic for a good long while, but I found it again after my last trip to Cuba.
Roisin asks to see the paper. How could she not?
And Tom takes out the document, complete with signature, from a plastic wallet and shows it to Roisin. Even more than in the mausoleum, this is the closest she’s ever come to Che. She’s finally able to touch something he touched. Maybe the trip to Cuba was worth it after all.
About the Author
Cally Phillips has written fiction and drama in English and Scots, much of which is published through HoAmPresst. She also currently works as editor for Ayton Publishing Limited and runs a number of online projects, including The Galloway Raiders, which is the online hub for Scots writer S. R. Crockett. Her latest project to hit the virtual shelves is the #tobelikeche serial, which started in October 2016.
For the archive of Cally’s fiction and drama, follow this link.
For the archive of Cally’s fiction and drama, follow this link.