Fall 2007
Browny Goldin
My name is Browny Goldin and so is my brother’s.
It’s a bit mad really, when someone calls to the house looking for
either of us, “Howya Missus Goldin? Is Browny in?”“Which one, Dominic or Eddie, son?” she says.
“Jaysus, I don’t know, Missus Goldin. Just Browny!”
See, none of our pals know our real names. Nobody ever says, “How’s it going, Eddie?” Or, “What’s the craic, Dominic?” Or, “There’s Dominic and Eddie Goldin, the Goldin brothers.” No, all we ever get is “The Browny Goldins.”
Where did we get the name you ask? From our Da. Ma says he used to be a punk, she was a punk too, but only ‘cause Da was one. Not a punk like in the cop programmes on telly, where they call robbers and muggers “good for nothin’ punks.” No, a Punk Rocker. Ma said punks listened to punk music and used to wear torn clothes and had safety pins jammed in their ears and called themselves names like Rat and Flea and Scabs. The more disgusting the name the better, Ma said.
She told us that they used to have mad haircuts too. Things like two foot high pink Mohicans and blue spikes and orange quiffs and all sorts of things. They used to put flour mixed with water in their hair to make it stand up off their heads, that’s what Ma said. She said the clothes were bananas as well.
“Ye should have seen your Da,” she said, “your Da used to wear red tartan trousers with no arse in it and you could see his bum when he walked down the street.” She said old women used to nearly faint when they saw his arse.
She said he was gorgeous though, he looked like Gary Numan (whoever he was). Some punk band called The Stranglers, Da’s favourite band, had a song called “Golden Brown.” Ma said he was over the moon when his mates started calling him Browny Goldin. Browny was a good punk name, Ma said.
Ma went up into the attic and got a Black Magic box full of photographs. She found a picture of herself and our Da when they were about nineteen. Dominic is the spit of our Da. Well he would be if he had spiky blue hair and a string of razor blades hanging on a chain around his neck. Ma looked lovely though. She was wearing a black leather jacket and a pair of torn Levi’s. She wasn’t fat then. Not that she’s fat now or anything. She had spiky hair too and black lipstick on. She did, she looked lovely, I swear. There was two other lads in the picture as well. Ma said one of them was Danger Delaney and the other one was a lad called Shitty or Shatty or Shanty, she couldn’t remember. Anyway, she said he was killed in a car crash when he was only about twenty. They all looked mad, except for Ma. I asked her what they used to do at the weekends. Ma said they used to hang around a lot. Me and Dominic went spare. We told her she gives out to us for hanging around, but she said it was a different kind of hanging around back then. I didn’t understand her. She said nobody had a job so there was nothing else to do except hang around. Ma said that The Stranglers even had a song called “Hangin’ Around.”
The Stranglers is a stupid name for a band. Ma said they used to go to a club in Dublin and do a dance called the pogo. She said that you just stood in the same place and jumped up and down, like on a pogo stick. Sounds mad to me. She said if the band were really deadly, the punks used to spit at them. Imagine that! A load of spiky haired gurriers gobbin’ at you on stage. She said it was great craic though. She said herself and Da went to see some famous band or other (she couldn’t remember the name), and Da caught the drummer’s stick when he threw it into the crowd. Ma said there was murder on the dance floor with lads killing each other trying to get the drum stick. But Da got it in the end and hid it down the front of his trousers. Ma said he had to walk like a lad with a wooden leg until he got outside, but he was dead pleased with himself.
Dominic asked Ma if things were real cheap back then, Ma laughed. She said that things were about a million times cheaper than they are now, but that nobody had any money so it didn’t matter. She said that a pint of milk was only about ten cents or maybe fifteen cents at the most; it took her ages to work that out. Ma said that she and Da had to sign on the dole two mornings every week. Ma hated Tuesdays and Thursdays, the “free” dole days, that’s what she called them, she said it was horrible. She said the dole was what you called the money you got from the Government when you couldn’t find a job. In our town, she said, nearly everyone was on the dole, except for the lads in the factory.
“I hope you two never have to go on the dole,” she said. I hope so too, Ma. Ma used to hate standing in the queue, she said. She said everyone driving past could see that you were on the dole, that you had no job. There was always a group of women who would be looking out the windows of their big cars on the way out to the golf club, or off to drink coffee in some other snobby bitch’s house, sneering at you, that’s what Ma said.
Dominic gave Ma a Rolo to cheer her up. On Thursday mornings you got paid, Ma said, but it was gone by dinner time, paying for the flat and the food and a couple of bottles of cider for the weekend, and all that. Da and herself used to live in a bedsit beside the river. Ma said it was as damp as a field, and once she saw a rat in the toilet. I would have lost my mind, I told her. She joked that sometimes she thinks I did lose my mind. She said even though herself and Da never had a shilling, they were always happy. Dominic looked at Ma as if she was mad.
Ma found another picture in the Black Magic box and showed it to us. It was Da, but he looked normal. He had a grey suit on and was standing outside a big building with loads of pillars. There’s a load of pigeons flying away in the picture and one of them looks like it’s flying out of the side of Da’s head. “Civil Service exams,” Ma said.
She said that the two of them went to Dublin together and she waited for four hours outside the hall, waiting for Da to come out. She said she brought the camera in case they met anyone famous in Dublin. I asked her who, but she couldn’t think of anyone famous now. The second Da came out of the exam, Ma said, he ripped off his tie. He hated ties, she said. “Your Da got the job though.” She looked real proud when she said that. “He came fourteenth in the whole country. He was dead clever,” Ma said. “That’s where you two got your brains.”
Da did so well in the exams he could choose where he wanted to work, so they didn’t have to move. “But that was the only good thing,” Ma said. Da hated his job, well not really hated it, she said. He hated not being a punk anymore, not hanging around with the lads, having to wear a stupid tie to work every day. He loved the money though, Ma said. They got a lovely flat near the park. Ma said it was like a mansion towards the other bedsit. It had hot water all the time and a washing machine so she didn’t have to go to the launderette. “And best of all,” Ma said, “there were no rats in the bathroom. Ever!”
Ma said that Da was the business. He got loads of promotions in work and was able to buy this house after only three years. Ma loves this house, although sometimes she says she’d like a bigger garden, where she could have an orchard and a hammock hanging between two big chestnut trees. She had one when she was young she told us. Dominic said that when he has a house he’s going to plant two chestnut trees for Ma. I told him he was nuts, it’d take years for the chestnut trees to be big enough to put a hammock on. Dominic doesn’t care though; that’s what’s going to happen. Around here everyone knows if Dominic puts his mind to something... well... there’s no talking him out of it. Da was the very same, Ma said. “Your Da was a very special Da,” said Ma. “He gave up a lot of things for us.”
“Did he give up the fags?” I asked Ma.
“Unfortunately not,” she said, “but he gave up lots of things we’ll never know about.”
I thought that was mad. How does she know he gave them up if she doesn’t know what they are? But Ma is always right. If she said it, it’s true. Ma put the pictures back in the Black Magic box and asked if we wanted chips for tea. Me and Dominic love chips, she knows that, but we usually only get them on the odd Sunday or special occasions. Me, Dominic and Ma went up the road together to the Golden Grill.
“That’s mad,” said Dominic, “everything is Golden around here, isn’t it Ma?”
Brendan Harding