THE BURL IVES’ Concert in Dublin will always remain one of the most exciting days of my life. It all came about in an unusual way. Among Dr. Collis’s queer family, of which I am now too a member, is a small Hungarian-Slovak whom the doctor adopted in Belsen. He is a dark-haired, dark-skinned kid with dancing eyes. He was very ill when the doctor found him, and recently the old place in his lung got bad again and he had to have a big operation in the Chest Hospital in London. Burl Ives had met him in Dublin before and taken a great liking to him. So now he used to visit him quite often in the Chest Hospital where he would sing folk-songs for the kid and the other men in the ward.
One afternoon Dr. Collis was in London consulting with Sir Clement Price Thomas about the boy who was now convalescent, having had half his left lung removed. They came into the ward and found a regular concert in full swing. Burl Ives had everybody laughing and singing. Suddenly Dr. Collis got an idea and asked him if he would give a concert in Dublin in aid of cerebral palsy. Burl Ives agreed immediately.
On returning to Dublin the doctor came out to see me and told me what had happened.
“The idea is,” he said, “that Burl Ives will sing and I shall make an appeal for cerebral palsy. But I think it would be much more to the point if you did.”
“Me,” I said, “How …?”
“With your foot,” he said.
“My foot,” I said.
He grinned, “You’ve finished your first chapter, about the letter A and your mother,” he said. “If I were to read them that they’d know much more about cerebral palsy from the inside than if I was to talk to them for an hour. But you must come along with me and sit beside me so that they’ll know its your work not mine.”
I thought a moment. I had visions of sitting before a large audience and seeing hundreds of faces looking up at me, unknown faces, questioning faces with peering eyes, noting my queer movements, my twisting hands and crooked mouth. I hesitated. He put his head slightly on one side. He read my thoughts.
“You can take it?” he said.
“O.K.” I said, “I can, of course—”
But I felt scared enough.
Arrangements went ahead at great speed. The occasion was to be sponsored by the Ireland-America Society and many distinguished people were invited. The Aberdeen Hall in Gresham Hotel, a huge lovely room seating over five hundred people, was taken, tickets were issued, notices were put in the press, interviews were obtained with well-known columnists. The whole city knew about it, but in no quarter more than in our house. All the family said they must come to hear Burl Ives. Mother also said she wanted to hear Dr. Collis read my chapter. But it seemed to me that if the whole family and friends got free tickets they could easily fill the whole hall and there wouldn’t be much left for cerebral palsy! Fierce arguments raged for days. Of course, mother and father had to come. Then Peggy said she was determined to sit beside me. That got her in. Mona and her husband Tom said they’d buy tickets. Tony, Peter, Paddy, Jim, Eamonn, Seàn, Francis, Danny said they wouldn’t buy tickets not to hear me! Lily and Ann didn’t get a chance to express their views, but it was assumed that they were coming anyway. Then there was the question of how we were all to get from Crumlin to O’Connell Street in the centre of the city on a Sunday afternoon and how I was to be got into the Gresham Hotel, which has a large open lounge inside the front door always full of people. Mona said, “We better hire a Córas Iompair Éireann bus.”
However, in the end a friend of the family, Sid Mac-Keogh, who owns an immense American-type taxi, volunteered to bring the Browns in force.
Robbie Collis, the doctor’s tall fair-haired, powerful, medical-student son said he would steer me in through a door at the back of the hotel and get me into my seat before the show started.
The day arrived. All that morning our house looked like a public house on Saturday night with everyone bumping into one another and all talking at the same time. Mother got a loan of a fur coat from a friend and tried it on. “What do I look like?” she asked, taking up different poses as she stood in the centre of the kitchen.
There was a hush in the conversation at the table as we turned round to view our model. Nobody spoke. None of us wanted to commit ourselves on such a difficult question. At last Peter picked up his newspaper again and said casually, his eyes intent on the page:
“I see a bear escaped from the zoo last night. …”
Mother did not condescend to hear this remark, and, getting out her London hat, put it on in front of the mirror. Mona tried to persuade her to put on some lipstick and powder, but mother said she didn’t want to be poisoned.
Father too broke out. He had bought a new suit and a funny sort of hat that seemed to be a cross between a trilby and a bowler. He now appeared looking extremely smart. The hat fitted his head perfectly.
They then started to dress me up in a dinner jacket which they’d got out on hire between them without telling me anything about it. Despite my protests I was squeezed into it grimly by Peter and Tony. “Have to look proper,” they said.
The taxi arrived punctually and we set out like a royal family in a carriage and pair. Only half a dozen of us could be crammed into it, so the others went by bus: brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces—about a dozen and a half or so, not to mention a whole retinue of friends and other relatives who followed after. It was like a regiment on the march when they all set off down the street together, linking arms.
We drove to Dr. Collis’s house where Robbie squeezed in along with us by either sitting on somebody’s knee or somebody sitting on his, I forget which.
At last we reached the hotel. The others disembarked at the front entrance first, and then the car drove me round to the back. I imagined I was quite a heavyweight, but Robbie Collis just bent down, picked me up in his arms, and carried me in without even a grunt. The show hadn’t started yet and the curtain hadn’t gone up, so I was put sitting in a chair beside mother, father, Peggy, Tony and his wife, Sheila. From the other side of the curtain I could hear the people talking and shuffling as they settled into their seats. I knew there was a huge crowd in the hall and that the curtain would rise any second now. I felt awful. A lot more people had turned up than had had tickets and many of these were crammed in at the back of the stage behind us. I looked round and saw that I had been placed on the right of the stage, the centre being left vacant except for three or four chairs which were now being occupied by the President of the Ireland-America Society, Mr. John Huston, the film producer, and Dr. Collis. There was a dazzling looking lady I felt must be a film star just behind and crowds of people I didn’t know.
Then I caught sight of something very remarkable through the small door at the side of the stage. It was a man, but all I could see at first was a huge expanse of gold waistcoat and green trousers. Then the rest of their owner came into view. I thought I had never seen anything so enormous and resplendent before. For not only had the man bulk but he had height, too. He must have stood over six feet high and weighed over twenty stone. He had a smiling moon-like face, small eyes and a pointed beard. He carried a guitar across one shoulder. He seemed to me fantastic, like a giant out of a fairy-story, amidst the crowd of ordinary mortals. This was Burl Ives.
The next moment the curtain went up and the show was on. I gripped the sides of the chair and tried to hold myself rigid. All I could see was a huge white blur of faces staring up at me. I felt myself go hot and cold in turn. I was conscious of every involuntary movement I made, no matter how slight, and my own awareness of them magnified them into painful conspicuousness. It seemed as if I was alone on the stage with a fierce, bright light beating down an me, as if I was under the lens of a microscope so that not one movement I made could escape detection. I felt I was being watched by a thousand eyes, and I felt the old panic rising within me.
Then Burl Ives began to sing. He had a wonderful, soft, mellow voice with a humorous twist in it and his style of singing was artful and droll. I just shut my eyes and listened to his singing and half forgot my stage fright.
Soon I was laughing like everyone else as he sang ‘The Blue-tailed Fly’, ‘Mr. Frog Went A’Courting’, ‘The House Where Grandmother Dwells’. Finally he had everyone singing with him.
“There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.
Now I don’t know why she swallowed a fly—
Perhaps she’ll die.…”
I found myself singing like everyone else in the hall.
I’d laughed so much that I’d quite forgotten everything else. Then suddenly he stopped and walked off stage, after several encores he finally withdrew. Then the President of the Ireland-America Society announced that Dr. Collis would address the audience on behalf of the Cerebral Palsy Association.
The doctor got up and went to the microphone. The crowd before him were still in a jovial mood laughing and talking. It wasn’t going to be easy to interest them.
He took my manuscript from his pocket and placed it on the stand in front of him.
“I’m not going to make a speech,” he said. “I’m not even going to make an appeal. I’m just going to read you something that will give you an inside view of a person crippled with cerebral palsy. The first chapter of Christy Brown’s autobiography here—” he held out his hand towards me—“written with his left foot.”
Then he began to read. For the first few minutes there was still a good deal of noise in the audience, people shuffling their feet, and coughing. I saw one man reading a morning paper. Obviously he had come to enjoy a concert, not to be made listen to a lecture on cripples.
Gradually, however, as the doctor read on, movement and noise ceased; there was silence, complete stillness. I looked down at the faces before me, but now they were no longer just questioning faces with peering eyes, but intent friendly faces full of interest, no longer seeming to look at me, but fixed on the doctor as he went on reading my chapter. They were listening…!
I was still tense, still taut as a telegraph wire, sitting on the stage in full view. But after a while I too began to listen, and as I did so my tension left me. I forgot my queer hands twisting and twining in my lap. I forgot my crooked mouth and shaking head. I listened … was this true, me sitting on a stage with mother and father before a huge audience, listening to a description of my own childhood? Had I really written all that stuff? Did all that really come out of my mind? It seemed as if I was dreaming.
I listened.… I remembered the day, that December day, when I had first drawn the letter ‘A’ with a bit of yellow chalk in my left foot with mother kneeling beside me on the wooden kitchen floor, urging me not to give in. … I remembered my brothers, the day Tony stripped me behind a bush, put Jim’s enormous togs on me, and swung me into the canal, while poor Jim stood by and cried, “He’ll drown … I tell yer.” I remembered the awful day when I found out about myself, the horror I felt knowing I would be a cripple all my life, and the painting days and the lonely nights in bed, Peter snoring silently in the dark.… I remembered Lourdes and the candles flickering before the Grotto … and Sheila coming into the Clinic on December mornings, her fair hair scattered by the wind and the rain on her face. …
Suddenly I became aware that the doctor had stopped speaking. There was complete silence in the big hall. I saw somebody in the front row crying. I looked aside at mother, sitting upright, her eyes glistening. I looked at father, he was twisting his hat in his hands, he looked at me in a new way. Still there wasn’t a sound. Now Dr. Collis walked across the stage, laid his hand on my shoulder and helped me to my feet. Then the cheering broke out.… It went on and on and seemed to cover us like waves of the sea.
Suddenly somebody from the audience brought forward a huge bouquet of roses. The doctor stooped and took them. He walked over to where mother was standing. He held up his hand. The cheering stopped.
“I think you will agree,” he said to the audience, “that there is only one thing to be done—Red Roses for Mrs. Brown! For you, Ma’am!” he said, handing the bouquet to mother with a bow. The cheering started again. I could see a group of my brothers away at the back of the hall—Jim, Francis, Paddy, Peter and Seàn—cheering and yelling like hell.
Mother took the bouquet looking like a Queen Mother, as if she was quite used to roses every day of her life. I thought her face was rather red, but I didn’t know if it was the roses or the fur coat. Standing beside her was father, his shoulders drooping and his bald head bent forward. As mother laid the flowers across her arm I heard her say in a loud whisper out of the corner of her mouth:
“Straighten up, Paddy, can’t yer!” Father stiffened but dropped his hat. Peggy picked it up. Then Burl Ives came on again. He began to sing our own Irish folk-songs. ‘She Moved Through the Fair’, a version of his own of ‘The Spanish Lady’.
Now I could relax and enjoy it completely. I was at peace, happy. I lay back in my chair while my old left foot beat time to the rhythm of the tune.