The Kilkenny Observer Newspaper is delighted to present our ‘2025 Christmas short story series’. We invited five Kilkenny based writers to submit a short story or poems each week, which we hope you will enjoy. This is the Observers fifth year promoting creative writing in the community. We welcome Dr Joseph Kearney to week one
By Dr Joseph Kearney
I’ll bet that there is an entire generation who have never heard the distinctive rumbling sound of coins dropping into the guts of a public payphone when button A has been pressed. The closest comparable sound I can conjure is that of a win on the penny cascades in Tramore amusements and even saying that I am dating myself.
On a Christmas afternoon in 1971, making my way along London’s Cricklewood Broadway, I carried so many coins in my pocket, I was a veritable walking jingle bell. In an age before Skype, FaceTime and WhatsApp, updates from home arrived in blue Basildon Bond envelopes. Most people in our town bought their writing supplies from one source, Kerwick’s newsagents at the bottom of Green Street in Callan, and accordingly letters from home seemed to carry a somewhat standard appearance.
Slow dance
On one particular Saturday night, under the dimmed lights of the Parochial Hall, I slow-danced to The Seeker’s The Carnival is Over. In my inside pocket I held a one way ticket to London and in my arms I held Penny, my childhood sweetheart. Outside the dancehall in a shady corner of Chapel Lane our bicycles leaned into each other in an intimate tangle of pedals, spokes and handlebars. Inside the hall we’d just danced the last waltz but in a much more chaste embrace. We held on tightly even through the fading notes of the National Anthem. It was a night neither of us wished to end.
Penny was a great one for extended goodbyes. We finally parted company and wheeled our bicycles in opposite directions. Every few yards I’d stop to look back and there she’d be standing in a pool of streetlight outside the Big Chapel waving like she was being pestered by a swarm of wasps. The plan was to write regularly and mostly we did. Her Basildon Bond epistles covered local events, births, deaths and in somewhat greater detail, marriages. In return, I passed on all the news from the big smoke. The flat I was sharing, the craic and the music I’d discovered, Jimi Hendrix, Taste, Van Morrison. Penny wrote how she was still attending and enjoying the Parochial Hall dances. She was a girl who was both loyal and faithful, a girl reluctant to say goodbye even to the ageing show band stars. Our musical tastes seemed to be diverging but in the larger scheme of things that hardly mattered. We still wrote and sealed our envelopes with loving kisses. SWALK
Dyslexia
I have a small confession to make, I’m not great with numbers, some sort of dyslexia. Phone numbers, car registrations, passwords are all a bit of a tangle to me. But back then I tended to cover up my inadequacy. I was good at my deceit, few suspected even though I was then working in a bank!
1971 saw the introduction of currency decimalisation in Great Britain and Ireland. For me it was a nightmare. Still employed by the bank. I juggled new coinage, avoided mental arithmetic and just hoped no-one was short changing me or asking me too many questions.
Because I was not returning home for Christmas, it was Penny’s idea that we arrange a phone call on the day itself. The dilemma was that neither one of us had a phone. Not to be beaten, Penny jotted down the number of the public phone box on Green Street and sent me the details together with a pre-appointed time for our long distance call. 2 o’clock she wrote, in time for her to get back for the family dinner. I was looking forward to the chat. Over time I’d noticed that her missives were becoming somewhat shorter and less frequent, but the call would surely put all that to right.
The phone box on Cricklewood Broadway was located opposite the Galtymore Ballroom, just up from the Crown public house.
Memory
I was scrupulous in collecting change for the call. At that time both old and new currency remained in circulation. I collected one and two shilling pieces, 5p and 10p coins as well as the odd six-penny bit. I accumulated a pocketful of appropriate coinage. The only penny needed would be the one on the other end of the phone line.
In a somewhat reckless test of our love I believed I could commit the Green Street phone number to memory. On that Christmas afternoon, I opened the door to the red phone box.
Regrettably, its proximity to the two social establishments caused it to be mistakenly used as another type of public facility. The door refused to close properly but perhaps that was a blessing under the circumstances.
I stacked my coins. I fed them into the top slot, lifted the receiver and listened for a dial tone. I checked my watch, 2 o’clock on the dot. I took my time and dialled each digit with exact care and waited in that no-mans-land of white noise for the phone to ring in that phone box at the top of Green Street. For a couple of heartbeats nothing happened and then suddenly it connected, a miracle, from London all the way across the Irish Sea it clearly rang…and rang…and rang… and rang. Very puzzled, I hung up and tried again. Still nothing. Just as I was about to push button B and get my money back there was a distant but sharp “Hello”. I pushed button A. The coins cascaded. We were connected. My “Hello Penny, Happy Christmas,” was answered by a suspicious male voice. I’d dialled the wrong number. I’d lost the tanners, the shillings, the 10p pieces, but worse of all in my heart of hearts I knew I’d lost my Penny.
Joseph Kearney is originally a Callan native and a regular voice on RTÉ’s Sunday Miscellany where he features in their latest anthology. He is a multi-award winning documentary maker and holds a PhD in creative writing from UCD.
