Colm’s grandfather Seamus says he was a soldier back in the day. A real dirty one. Says he has a large collection of medals at home, hidden away in one of the cupboards. Most of them for bravery, he says. But a lot of them for violence.
Scalps.
Medals of honour just for being himself because “I never fucking backed down. I either took their face, or they took mine. Simple as that. Honest as basic mathematics and believe me when I tell you that a damn fuck of a monkey could do it.”
But that was the catch right there. It had to be the right type of monkey. Not just any old thing looking for instant gratification or the next banana. In granddaddy’s words, that was sure-fire way of finding yourself down “The Meeting Jesus
Highway.”
The man was old now. Definitely getting there. And in recent years, his idea of a wholesome Christmas was recounting to us kids all the men he saw killed before him. He’d sit us there, on his lap sometimes, discussing missing limbs and severed
heads.
The absolute horrors of war.
Spooning mashed potatoes onto his plate, he’d explain in gory detail just how quickly a man can die when he’s shot in the gut or right between the eyes. “One minute he’s there. Next he’s not.” he’d say. “All of a sudden, you feel quite alone. Nothing keeping you company save for the constant flurry of bombs and bullets going off around you. And what good is all of that when there’s no-one there
beside you to joke about with.”
Apparently, at one point in his life, he had a bounty on his head from the other side. He was, as he’ll say himself “Too much fuss for them.”
Tipping cold carrots and parsnips into his mouth, he’d be saying that they had wanted him dead for so long, and because they couldn’t get him, the bounty started to dilute itself. The joy he got from that story. Talking about the men who originally had wanted him dead, and the way he’d laugh when he realised once again that he had outlived them all. He said “The thing had been passed down so much that even they forgot who they were looking for. Isn’t that brilliant? All I had to do was grow a beard. Nobody recognised me. But I got every one of them.” he said. “I saw them take their last breath through my scope and boy how good it felt to sit there and say “I got you muthafucka.”
And for a man so brutal, and unforgiving, I always found it a bit odd…not the colourful nature of his background, that was a given – but rather his unrelenting, almost comic fucking obsession with Nigella Lawson and all things gardening.
“Begonias are my favourite.” he would often say to me. “Yes. Yes. Listen to me when I say that I do love me a good begonia.” And then he’d go, half laughing “I wouldn’t mind seeing her begonias either wha…”
