Cally Phillips' Another World is Possible
Episode Five – ANSWERS
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: 1964 Dublin – MARY
Swearwords: None.
Description: 1964 Dublin – MARY
It’s 1964. Nearly Christmas. I’m seventeen and a half. Getting ready to leave school next summer. Thinking about what my life is going to be. I’m certain it’s not going to be the same as my mum’s. I want to do something with my life. Be someone.
My mum always says that everyone has their story. And I’m going to have my story and it’s going to be like you can’t imagine. I’ll tell you my story. My dream. The dream of a girl from Dublin. The dream of a girl who dreams that dreams come true.
I’m going to be an air hostess. I’m going to fly the world. I’m going to meet interesting people and have an interesting life and get out of Dublin. I’m not going to settle for what I have. I want more than that. I don’t want to be some farmer’s wife or some shop girl or…. And of course I’m going to marry some great man. A pilot or, well, who knows, but a man who has everything and can give me everything. The man of my dreams.
I suppose I’m very naïve but St Mary’s Convent School doesn’t encourage you to be worldly wise. I can’t wait to get out of that school. I know I should want to be a nun but I’ve never wanted to be a nun and I’m not going to start now. I don’t want to marry Jesus. I want to marry a real man, a man who will make me feel like a real woman.
So here I am, it’s the nineteenth of December 1964. Me and Niamh and Shauna and Margaret are out carol singing. For money. Not for Jesus, though don’t tell my mum that. The money won’t be going to the nuns, the money will be going into our pockets. We’re saving up for when we leave school and can be independent.
We’re quite good at carol singing and we can get a lot of money for it if we put in the hours. But the streets of Collinstown are cold and dreary today and we decide to go to the airport. It’s a brainwave. Mine actually, because I like going to the airport. I like thinking about being an air hostess and I like going there, to watch the planes take off and land and to imagine what it’s like going to other, far off places. And I like to watch the pilots and the air hostesses. To see how they walk and chat, quite the thing. They are sophisticated. It’s a world about as far away from the Convent School as I can imagine. It’s a world I want to be part of. I’ve learned French and Spanish and had a struggle to do it, just so I can be an air hostess, because they like you to know a language if you’re going to fly to other countries.
My mum couldn’t see the point. Why would I need to speak foreign languages when I’m going to spend my life in Collinstown? She can’t understand that I want to get away from here. Away from her and my dad and my brothers and sisters and everything, everything I’ve ever known. Far away.
But I fought. And they let me in the end. The sisters said ‘Mary is determined on it’ which I think was meant to be a criticism rather than a compliment, but my dad decided that if I was determined then I should do it.
He said, ‘That girl’s head is always in the air, so if she’s determined on something, she’s to do it. But see it through, mind. No stopping half way because it’s hard.’
I don’t remember him saying all those things at once. He never talks that much all at once, my dad, but what he does say, you listen to. And over the week or so that Mary ‘was determined on it’ he said all those things.
Then, when the school and my mum finally gave in and admitted defeat, he took me into the front room and said to me, ‘Mary, don’t let me down.’
And I promised him I wouldn’t. And I haven’t. Because even with nearly six months to go till the exams, I could have a conversation with any French or Spanish person and I’m sure they’d understand me fine and I’d understand them fine. Of course you don’t get many people to talk French or Spanish to in Collinstown. Not even on weekends.
That’s a joke of my dad’s. He thinks Collinstown is the pits. At least, I reckon he does. He doesn’t think Dublin is the life and soul of the world’s party right enough but he definitely thinks Collinstown is a poor relation when it comes to being a place to be. And his joke, usually about Collinstown but about anything that any of my brothers come back telling him about (cause I’ve got brothers all over, me). One’s in farming in Kerry and one’s in farming in Cork and one goes wherever he’s needed, shearing and clipping and the like. And they all come home and they say this and that about how great whatever they’ve been doing or wherever they’ve been is and my dad just looks at them and says, ‘It’s that good, is it? Even on weekends?’
I’m not sure anyone really gets my dad’s sense of humour. He’s quite tight my dad and my mum’s the last one to get him. I think the ‘even on weekends’ is his poke at her and the church. Because in Collinstown on the weekends (which is really Sunday because Saturday is working or my mum going to the shops in Dublin). On Sundays it’s all about Mass and the Priest. Everything revolves round Mass. My dad says it’s why he stayed a farmer, so he could have an excuse to be away from Mass. He doesn’t say that when my mum’s around, but the number of times he has something that just can’t wait on a Sunday is incredible.
‘The animals aren’t Christian but they’re God’s creatures,’ he tells my mum and off we all go to Mass – without my dad.
Anyway, I never let my dad down. But I never told him my dream either. When he said I had my head in the air he didn’t know how right he was. But that’s my dad’s story. You don’t want my dad’s story. You want my story. This is my story. My dream about to come true.
We’re at the airport. Singing. It’s crowded. Busy. Busier than usual because it’s foggy in Shannon and planes from Shannon are being diverted to Dublin. No doubt that’ll make a lot of folk annoyed but that’s the weather. You can’t do anything about it. You have to take life as it comes. And we’re pleased because it means more people who are down, whose spirits will be lifted by four beautiful voices singing carols for Christmas. Hopefully they’ll put their hands in their pockets and show us how good we make them feel.
Then, all of a sudden, there’s some kind of a commotion. Everyone is excited. Everyone wants to see what’s going on. They aren’t interested in the singing any more and they all rush over to the arrivals area. So we go with them.
At first I don’t know what’s going on. But something’s going on and that’s enough for me. Somehow along the way I lose Niamh and Margaret and Shauna and I’m on my own. It doesn’t bother me. I feel at home in Dublin airport. It’s my place. I’m looking around to see what’s happening and all I can see is a crowd of people. I look more closely.
Sister Jude always says that, ‘Look more closely, girls. More closely’
And for the first time in my life I follow a nun’s advice and look more closely.
And I see a group of boys. Young men, I suppose. A team anyway. Football or rugby or something and they are filling up the walkway. But it’s not them; it’s not them everyone’s interested in. It’s someone behind them. Someone in a big overcoat. A big man. A man wearing a strange kind of hat. A beret. A beret and a big khaki overcoat like the kind soldiers wear. And he’s got men around him, like bodyguards, trying to keep people away. But he looks nice.
Who’m I kidding? He looks incredible. He’s the most exciting person I’ve ever seen anyway. And I turn to someone next to me and say, ‘Who’s that man?’
And the woman, it is a woman and she’s about forty, looks at me in total disdain and says, ‘That’s Che Guevara.’
‘Who’s he?’ I ask.
She looks at me like I’m stupid. Which I probably am, but I don’t mean to be and I say, ‘Is he someone famous?’
‘He’s only the leader of the Cuban Revolution, here in Dublin,’ she replies.
And before I can ask her more, she’s off and away.
And Che Guevara is coming closer all the time, though not moving that fast because there’s a lot of people to get through and they all want to see him. They’re all crowding round.
I have to think fast, though. It’s a chance. I know it’s a once in a lifetime chance and I’m going to take it. Mary’s determined on it! And as he comes closer to me there’s a bit of a lull and a bit of space, and cause I’m not as big as a man, or as obvious as a man, I kind of sneak my way through what do they call it, his entourage, and I’m there, face to face with him.
So what do I do now? It’s hard to think what to do because he’s just breathtaking. He has long hair like I’ve never seen on a man before and a beard and beautiful eyes and a lovely, lovely smile. And in the second it takes me to realise that people around him are speaking Spanish, I realise that if I speak to him in Spanish I might get his autograph, or his attention, or something.
‘Hola, Senor Guevara. Soy Mary. Welcome to Dublin,’ because I can’t remember what Welcome is in Spanish but I give it my best shot. I get his attention anyway, because he stops in his tracks.
‘Hola, Mary,’ he replies. ‘¿Ablo Espanol?’
I can’t believe it. He’s speaking to me. The people around him look a bit confused, so I reply,
‘Si, poco.’
And he says, ‘Multa bene,’ or something like that.
And he seems relieved that someone can speak Spanish, even if it’s a schoolgirl and he takes me by the arm and leads me along to a place where we can talk out of the crowd. The bodyguards don’t look too pleased but he says something to them (too fast for me to catch), I only have schoolgirl Spanish, after all. And they sort of back off.
It turns out he’s about to do an interview for RTE but they can’t find an interpreter, so he’s kind of stuck waiting. He asks me if I can interpret but I say I can’t. I can’t imagine what trouble I’d be in if my mum saw me on the television. But while we’re waiting we talk. I’d say we chat but it’s much, much more than that. We actually talk. I ask him where he’s going and he says Algiers and he’s come from New York and it’s nice for him to have a break to speak to someone who isn’t a politician. And he tells me I’m beautiful, which I think is probably just flattery because I know I’m not that beautiful, and a man who travels the world must see many more beautiful women than me. But it’s the first time anyone has said that to me and he says it with such sincerity, even though his eyes are always laughing.
You know. I think I fell in love with him the first instant I saw him. And I don’t know how long we were talking, maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour but by the time he has to go, I know I’m in love with him. I know I’d do anything for him and I’m already feeling desperate that he’s about to walk out of my life and I might never see him again. How could I? Even as an air hostess the chances of me running into Commandante Che Guevara (to give him his full title) seem slim. And I know this is my once in a lifetime chance and I should take it. So I ask him, ‘Can I write to you?’ I ask in Spanish of course but I can’t remember the exact words now.
He laughs and asks me why I’d want to write to him. And I tell him I don’t have anyone to practice my Spanish with here in Dublin. He says I should come to live in Cuba and speak Spanish every day. And I say I wish I could. And the next thing I know, I’m giving him my address and saying, ‘If you get time to write to me, will you do it?’ In Spanish. And he looks at me, with those laughing eyes, but serious too and replies (in Spanish of course),‘Mary, I will write to you a postcard from every place I can, if you will do one thing for me.’
And when I say I’ll do anything for him, I really mean it.
And he pulls a postcard out of his pocket and says, ‘Will you post this for me. To my dad. In Argentina.’
I can’t believe he’s giving me his postcard but of course I say I will, that he can rely on me, he can trust me.
‘I know I can trust you, Mary,’ he says with those smiling eyes, ‘you are a true daughter of the revolution.’
And before I know what I’ve done, I’ve torn a piece out of my diary and given him my address, not thinking what would happen if I get a postcard from Commandante Che Guevara through the post, just knowing that somehow I have to have a way to keep in touch with him. And I put my telephone number on it too. I say, ‘If you are ever in Dublin again, call me.’
But I can’t imagine he will be and I can’t imagine what would happen if the phone rang and my mum picked it up and Che Guevara was on the line wanting to speak to me but it’s just a habit, cause we’ve only recently got a phone and I give everyone my number and no one ever calls me. And he takes the paper and places it in the breast pocket of his tunic jacket, tapping it and saying, ‘I’ll keep you here, close to my heart.’
And then he kisses me on both cheeks and hugs me and says, ‘We’ll meet again, Mary. Venceremos. Hasta la Victoria Siempre.’
And before I know what’s happening he’s being whisked off to the interview and that’s the last I think I’m ever going to see of Che Guevara. The man I love.
And that’s how I met your daddy, Roisin.
My mum always says that everyone has their story. And I’m going to have my story and it’s going to be like you can’t imagine. I’ll tell you my story. My dream. The dream of a girl from Dublin. The dream of a girl who dreams that dreams come true.
I’m going to be an air hostess. I’m going to fly the world. I’m going to meet interesting people and have an interesting life and get out of Dublin. I’m not going to settle for what I have. I want more than that. I don’t want to be some farmer’s wife or some shop girl or…. And of course I’m going to marry some great man. A pilot or, well, who knows, but a man who has everything and can give me everything. The man of my dreams.
I suppose I’m very naïve but St Mary’s Convent School doesn’t encourage you to be worldly wise. I can’t wait to get out of that school. I know I should want to be a nun but I’ve never wanted to be a nun and I’m not going to start now. I don’t want to marry Jesus. I want to marry a real man, a man who will make me feel like a real woman.
So here I am, it’s the nineteenth of December 1964. Me and Niamh and Shauna and Margaret are out carol singing. For money. Not for Jesus, though don’t tell my mum that. The money won’t be going to the nuns, the money will be going into our pockets. We’re saving up for when we leave school and can be independent.
We’re quite good at carol singing and we can get a lot of money for it if we put in the hours. But the streets of Collinstown are cold and dreary today and we decide to go to the airport. It’s a brainwave. Mine actually, because I like going to the airport. I like thinking about being an air hostess and I like going there, to watch the planes take off and land and to imagine what it’s like going to other, far off places. And I like to watch the pilots and the air hostesses. To see how they walk and chat, quite the thing. They are sophisticated. It’s a world about as far away from the Convent School as I can imagine. It’s a world I want to be part of. I’ve learned French and Spanish and had a struggle to do it, just so I can be an air hostess, because they like you to know a language if you’re going to fly to other countries.
My mum couldn’t see the point. Why would I need to speak foreign languages when I’m going to spend my life in Collinstown? She can’t understand that I want to get away from here. Away from her and my dad and my brothers and sisters and everything, everything I’ve ever known. Far away.
But I fought. And they let me in the end. The sisters said ‘Mary is determined on it’ which I think was meant to be a criticism rather than a compliment, but my dad decided that if I was determined then I should do it.
He said, ‘That girl’s head is always in the air, so if she’s determined on something, she’s to do it. But see it through, mind. No stopping half way because it’s hard.’
I don’t remember him saying all those things at once. He never talks that much all at once, my dad, but what he does say, you listen to. And over the week or so that Mary ‘was determined on it’ he said all those things.
Then, when the school and my mum finally gave in and admitted defeat, he took me into the front room and said to me, ‘Mary, don’t let me down.’
And I promised him I wouldn’t. And I haven’t. Because even with nearly six months to go till the exams, I could have a conversation with any French or Spanish person and I’m sure they’d understand me fine and I’d understand them fine. Of course you don’t get many people to talk French or Spanish to in Collinstown. Not even on weekends.
That’s a joke of my dad’s. He thinks Collinstown is the pits. At least, I reckon he does. He doesn’t think Dublin is the life and soul of the world’s party right enough but he definitely thinks Collinstown is a poor relation when it comes to being a place to be. And his joke, usually about Collinstown but about anything that any of my brothers come back telling him about (cause I’ve got brothers all over, me). One’s in farming in Kerry and one’s in farming in Cork and one goes wherever he’s needed, shearing and clipping and the like. And they all come home and they say this and that about how great whatever they’ve been doing or wherever they’ve been is and my dad just looks at them and says, ‘It’s that good, is it? Even on weekends?’
I’m not sure anyone really gets my dad’s sense of humour. He’s quite tight my dad and my mum’s the last one to get him. I think the ‘even on weekends’ is his poke at her and the church. Because in Collinstown on the weekends (which is really Sunday because Saturday is working or my mum going to the shops in Dublin). On Sundays it’s all about Mass and the Priest. Everything revolves round Mass. My dad says it’s why he stayed a farmer, so he could have an excuse to be away from Mass. He doesn’t say that when my mum’s around, but the number of times he has something that just can’t wait on a Sunday is incredible.
‘The animals aren’t Christian but they’re God’s creatures,’ he tells my mum and off we all go to Mass – without my dad.
Anyway, I never let my dad down. But I never told him my dream either. When he said I had my head in the air he didn’t know how right he was. But that’s my dad’s story. You don’t want my dad’s story. You want my story. This is my story. My dream about to come true.
We’re at the airport. Singing. It’s crowded. Busy. Busier than usual because it’s foggy in Shannon and planes from Shannon are being diverted to Dublin. No doubt that’ll make a lot of folk annoyed but that’s the weather. You can’t do anything about it. You have to take life as it comes. And we’re pleased because it means more people who are down, whose spirits will be lifted by four beautiful voices singing carols for Christmas. Hopefully they’ll put their hands in their pockets and show us how good we make them feel.
Then, all of a sudden, there’s some kind of a commotion. Everyone is excited. Everyone wants to see what’s going on. They aren’t interested in the singing any more and they all rush over to the arrivals area. So we go with them.
At first I don’t know what’s going on. But something’s going on and that’s enough for me. Somehow along the way I lose Niamh and Margaret and Shauna and I’m on my own. It doesn’t bother me. I feel at home in Dublin airport. It’s my place. I’m looking around to see what’s happening and all I can see is a crowd of people. I look more closely.
Sister Jude always says that, ‘Look more closely, girls. More closely’
And for the first time in my life I follow a nun’s advice and look more closely.
And I see a group of boys. Young men, I suppose. A team anyway. Football or rugby or something and they are filling up the walkway. But it’s not them; it’s not them everyone’s interested in. It’s someone behind them. Someone in a big overcoat. A big man. A man wearing a strange kind of hat. A beret. A beret and a big khaki overcoat like the kind soldiers wear. And he’s got men around him, like bodyguards, trying to keep people away. But he looks nice.
Who’m I kidding? He looks incredible. He’s the most exciting person I’ve ever seen anyway. And I turn to someone next to me and say, ‘Who’s that man?’
And the woman, it is a woman and she’s about forty, looks at me in total disdain and says, ‘That’s Che Guevara.’
‘Who’s he?’ I ask.
She looks at me like I’m stupid. Which I probably am, but I don’t mean to be and I say, ‘Is he someone famous?’
‘He’s only the leader of the Cuban Revolution, here in Dublin,’ she replies.
And before I can ask her more, she’s off and away.
And Che Guevara is coming closer all the time, though not moving that fast because there’s a lot of people to get through and they all want to see him. They’re all crowding round.
I have to think fast, though. It’s a chance. I know it’s a once in a lifetime chance and I’m going to take it. Mary’s determined on it! And as he comes closer to me there’s a bit of a lull and a bit of space, and cause I’m not as big as a man, or as obvious as a man, I kind of sneak my way through what do they call it, his entourage, and I’m there, face to face with him.
So what do I do now? It’s hard to think what to do because he’s just breathtaking. He has long hair like I’ve never seen on a man before and a beard and beautiful eyes and a lovely, lovely smile. And in the second it takes me to realise that people around him are speaking Spanish, I realise that if I speak to him in Spanish I might get his autograph, or his attention, or something.
‘Hola, Senor Guevara. Soy Mary. Welcome to Dublin,’ because I can’t remember what Welcome is in Spanish but I give it my best shot. I get his attention anyway, because he stops in his tracks.
‘Hola, Mary,’ he replies. ‘¿Ablo Espanol?’
I can’t believe it. He’s speaking to me. The people around him look a bit confused, so I reply,
‘Si, poco.’
And he says, ‘Multa bene,’ or something like that.
And he seems relieved that someone can speak Spanish, even if it’s a schoolgirl and he takes me by the arm and leads me along to a place where we can talk out of the crowd. The bodyguards don’t look too pleased but he says something to them (too fast for me to catch), I only have schoolgirl Spanish, after all. And they sort of back off.
It turns out he’s about to do an interview for RTE but they can’t find an interpreter, so he’s kind of stuck waiting. He asks me if I can interpret but I say I can’t. I can’t imagine what trouble I’d be in if my mum saw me on the television. But while we’re waiting we talk. I’d say we chat but it’s much, much more than that. We actually talk. I ask him where he’s going and he says Algiers and he’s come from New York and it’s nice for him to have a break to speak to someone who isn’t a politician. And he tells me I’m beautiful, which I think is probably just flattery because I know I’m not that beautiful, and a man who travels the world must see many more beautiful women than me. But it’s the first time anyone has said that to me and he says it with such sincerity, even though his eyes are always laughing.
You know. I think I fell in love with him the first instant I saw him. And I don’t know how long we were talking, maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour but by the time he has to go, I know I’m in love with him. I know I’d do anything for him and I’m already feeling desperate that he’s about to walk out of my life and I might never see him again. How could I? Even as an air hostess the chances of me running into Commandante Che Guevara (to give him his full title) seem slim. And I know this is my once in a lifetime chance and I should take it. So I ask him, ‘Can I write to you?’ I ask in Spanish of course but I can’t remember the exact words now.
He laughs and asks me why I’d want to write to him. And I tell him I don’t have anyone to practice my Spanish with here in Dublin. He says I should come to live in Cuba and speak Spanish every day. And I say I wish I could. And the next thing I know, I’m giving him my address and saying, ‘If you get time to write to me, will you do it?’ In Spanish. And he looks at me, with those laughing eyes, but serious too and replies (in Spanish of course),‘Mary, I will write to you a postcard from every place I can, if you will do one thing for me.’
And when I say I’ll do anything for him, I really mean it.
And he pulls a postcard out of his pocket and says, ‘Will you post this for me. To my dad. In Argentina.’
I can’t believe he’s giving me his postcard but of course I say I will, that he can rely on me, he can trust me.
‘I know I can trust you, Mary,’ he says with those smiling eyes, ‘you are a true daughter of the revolution.’
And before I know what I’ve done, I’ve torn a piece out of my diary and given him my address, not thinking what would happen if I get a postcard from Commandante Che Guevara through the post, just knowing that somehow I have to have a way to keep in touch with him. And I put my telephone number on it too. I say, ‘If you are ever in Dublin again, call me.’
But I can’t imagine he will be and I can’t imagine what would happen if the phone rang and my mum picked it up and Che Guevara was on the line wanting to speak to me but it’s just a habit, cause we’ve only recently got a phone and I give everyone my number and no one ever calls me. And he takes the paper and places it in the breast pocket of his tunic jacket, tapping it and saying, ‘I’ll keep you here, close to my heart.’
And then he kisses me on both cheeks and hugs me and says, ‘We’ll meet again, Mary. Venceremos. Hasta la Victoria Siempre.’
And before I know what’s happening he’s being whisked off to the interview and that’s the last I think I’m ever going to see of Che Guevara. The man I love.
And that’s how I met your daddy, Roisin.
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.