He came to fix the dishwasher; that was the first job. Dishwashers were still a mystery in those years. The first one I encountered was in The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in 1984. Even then the literary classes and leading artists of the nation would cluster around it after supper in the evenings reading the instructions and directives about how to use it.
“Don’t put dirty dishes in, until the clean ones have been taken out,” one laminated note above the machine proclaimed.
So it wasn’t unusual even in the mid-90s for me to be standing in the kitchen gazing at a big white machine and wondering how to get water into it or out of it and how to install it under the sink. The builder said I should contact my neighbour, a skilled tradesman who lived further up the hill.
He would accept a mug of tea at midmorning but he never dallied long away from the work, and he always went home for an hour at lunchtime
So he came, and I opened the back door and saw him for the first time; a tall thin figure with greying hair and a firm gaze that held two large ice-blue eyes.
He shook my hand and said:
“You’re welcome to this part of the world.”
That was more than 30 years ago. Since then he helped with an endless amount of alterations to the house, laying bricks for extensions, building an entire patio and laying all the foundations for a fully kitted studio space in the garden.
He was a neat craftsman who took his time cleaning up every evening when he finished work. One summer day I saw him dance across the roof to replace a hood on the chimney. I saw him hop along planks of wood on the scaffolding to plaster cracks. And he always held a cigarette between his lips.
He would accept a mug of tea at midmorning but he never dallied long away from the work, and he always went home for an hour at lunchtime. He endured winter rain and sweltering heat in July with only the smoke of his cigarette to ward off midges. He became a friend, and drank a few beers now and again on summer evenings, sitting on the patio that he had built, admiring the splendid studio space that he had created block by block.
He rode a small Honda which he was barely able to sit on because of his long legs, so his knees were bent sideways and when he passed up the road in the evenings he appeared to be riding side saddle. And if he saw me scraping ivy off a tree or mowing the grass he’d reach his arm in the air and give me an enormous wave.
My mother lived alone for many years, more reliant on her tradesman than on any doctor or therapist
Such tradesmen in rural Ireland held communities together by constructing extensions, fixing pipes, replacing roof tiles, and hanging new doors on old houses. They appeared at many a back door when old widows had a leak in the roof, or a blocked toilet, or no water because some pipe had burst. They were a silent presence around every country house, chatting about whatever was the news of the day, or bringing information from one end of the parish to the other.
My mother lived alone for many years, more reliant on her tradesman than on any doctor or therapist.
And at times when old pensioners worried, not that the roof was leaking, but that they might not have the cash to pay for fixing it, such rural tradesmen were never as ruthless as the solicitors or doctors when it came to payments. That may sound sentimental but I have lived my life in rural Ireland and have never known it to be otherwise.
In recent years we seldom met, although I crossed his path about a year ago at the funeral of another neighbour. We sat together for a meal in a restaurant after the burial and agreed that the deceased was a grand woman and we noted that the men in the parish were thinning out fast in recent years. At one stage he observed that “no one can tell who will be the next to go”.
I certainly didn’t think it would be him. No one knows when death will knock on any door and even when I saw the ambulance heading up the hill a few weeks ago I didn’t think it could possibly be for another good neighbour, or that within a week the ground would open up again for another burial. But like all those quiet and gentle tradesmen who kept rural Ireland functioning for decades, he will be missed.