Eerie streets and little Frank

I was meandering through the off-the-beat areas of town, when led towards an alleyway. As I stepped into it, the feeling arose that were this a trap, to rob, attack or kill someone in an ambush, this would be a fitting place. A long hidden enclosure, surrounded by walls and locked houses, not a sound to be heard, badly lit, with neighbourhood-watch signs instilling awareness of the potential dangers looming here rather than offering any form of consolation or hope of aid and rescue.

A little child tagged along as I made my way into the narrow alley. At first, he trailed behind me, but soon I heard his feet as he sprinted past me, heading for a door on the left, well out of my reach. Using his keys, he swung the door open, went inside, and promptly locked it behind him.

As I saw him running past me, I was reminded of Frank McCourt. When I first read his memoir “Angela’s Ashes” around the age of fourteen, I was astonished and mesmerised by the vivid portrayal of his childhood, surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, dependency and the combination of dire outer circumstances, the rats and the cold, the lack of food, with utter emotional abandonment. At the time, it seemed unfathomable to me that he survived at all, but I remember rooting for the kid. The little moments of joy he found in the otherwise hopeless dearth of his existence. As little Frank ran past me in the alleyway, I could not help but think of him.

There are old tenements in Scotland and Ireland (and perhaps elsewhere) that have been turned into museums open to the public. Traditionally there was an open fire stove in the middle of the kitchen, and this was the only room that was kept warm. In the one I visited there was an area in the corner covered by a thick curtain. Behind it was a narrow bunk bead, in which the whole family would huddle together to prevent themselves, as good as they could, from pneumonia or hypothermia. When you walk through some areas today and knowing the past you can still see it in today’s landscape. Many buildings have been done-up, windows are being changed, missing insulations are being added, attics and basements are being fixed, but the structural basis and the brick-laden exterior bear the visible memory of the past. Whether these days are truly long gone, I cannot say. There are places that remain run-down and rotten, and on a rainy day — and there are many of those — when the fog doesn’t lift and the pouring won’t stop, the old narratives run closer to home.

It was this sense of persistent decay and dreary days that overcame me in the alley. What was a child doing this late on the streets alone? There was no park, no playground, and nobody else around. I was beginning to think of what secret adventures little Frank gets up to, having the opportunity to sneak out of the house, unseen and unnoticed. Where does he hide in the night and create his better world? As the saying goes: “An té a bhíonn siúlach, bíonn scéalach” (He who travels has stories to tell). What mischief may overcome that boy, and what maladies may befall him? Perhaps he shall tell us in the history of the future.