Eamonn Furey is a short story writer from Lisburn who resides in Dublin city. He has previously been published in All your stories magazine, the Argyle literary magazine and in Flash Fiction magazine under the pen name Joseph Gatz. Recently he was long listed in the short story category for the 2025 Write by the sea festival.

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The Ballad of Billy Beads by Eamonn Furey 

By Eamonn Furey

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‘What to hell is that?’  My mother asked as I entered the kitchen. 

‘What’s what?’ I replied acting surprised. 

‘That there in the fruit bowl. What’s that?’  

The previous day my mother had sent me into town to get a few balls of wool, so that she could knit my sister a back-to-school cardigan. Tradition, as most of us know, is quite important to many people in this part of the world.    

‘Three balls of wool, just like you asked for.’ 

‘I specifically asked for that nice Spanish wool, not any old shite.’ 

‘Wool is wool, Ma.’  

Even though we could barely make ends meet, my mother found some comfort in believing that somewhere in the hierarchy of working-class poverty, we weren’t yet on the bottom rung. Using anything other than quality wool, would open up an avenue for ridicule, not only for my sister but my mother also. 

‘Wool is wool?  Wool is not wool. That’s thon English stuff.’ 

‘The wee woman in the shop said that its grand for knitting cardigans.’  

‘Grand is it? Its grand if you want your sister to go back to school looking like a wee gypsy.’   

My mother walked into the hall and began to shout up the stairs. 

 ‘Danny, come down here a wee minute.’ 

Above us the sound of a metal razor hitting porcelain and the flush of the toilet, indicated that my father had abandoned his morning routine.  

‘What is it now, Love?’  He sighed as he entered the room.  

 ‘Look what that wee turncoat has brought into this house.’ She said pointing towards the table. 

‘What?’ 

‘That there in the fruit bowl. He wants his wee sister to go back to school in a cardigan knitted with that shite.’ 

‘Is that thon English stuff?’ My father asked. 

My mother nodded before lifting a ball of wool and throwing it towards me. 

‘It’s just wool Da. Wool is wool.’ 

My father placed both of his hands on the edge of the table and leaned towards me.   

‘You want … your little sister … to wear a cardigan made from English wool. People have been tarred and feathered around here for less.’  

‘But the woman in the shop said there’s a shortage.’ 

‘A shortage of common sense by the look of it,’ my mother quipped. 

‘A shortage of that Spanish wool, the decent wool. There’s none to be got anywhere.’ 

My father sat down opposite me in a brief moment of realisation. 

‘Mary, I think the boy might actually be right. I was reading about that in the Andersonstown News a while back. There is some sort of wool shortage. It’s thon Italian fella. You know that one who was wearing the gloves the whole time.’   

‘Dino Zoff?’ I joked, eliciting a frown from my father.  

‘What fella Danny?’ My mother probed. 

‘You know thon dead monk, the one with the blood pissing out of his hands.’ 

‘Padre Pio? What to hell has this to do with Padre Pio?’ My mother asked making the sign of the cross.   

‘There’s that much of his merchandise going around there’s bound to be a knock-on effect somewhere.’ 

‘Merchandise, Da?’ I smirked. 

‘Padre Pio Relics. They’re everywhere.’ 

‘Balls Danny. The man’s dead near twenty years. There can’t be any relics left.’ 

‘Exactly Mary, they must be fake.’   

‘What are you on about?’ My mother asked him. 

‘All I know is there’s a shortage of that nice wool and there’s more Padre Pio relics than Rubik’s cubes knocking about the place these days.’ 

My mother looked incredulous.  

‘Pour me another drop of that tea, Danny,’ she spluttered. 

 I waited for a moment of silence and cleared my throat.  

‘It’s syphilis,’ I proffered. 

My father stared towards me with his mouth agape, as if I had just revealed the 3rd secret of Fatima. 

‘He didn’t have fucking syphilis Jimmy, he had stigmata, everyone knows that.’ 

‘No, you daft eejit. There’s an outbreak of syphilis among the sheep, it’s rampant.’ 

‘Are you smoking that shit again, Son?’ 

‘No, Da. That aul one in the knitting shop told me that there’s a shortage of Spanish wool, because the sheep are all dying with the syphilis.’ 

‘My God!’ My mother said in amazement as my father’s head shook incredulously. 

‘Hold on a wee minute,’ he said dipping a digestive into his tea. 

 ‘How did syphilis manage to get from humans to sheep?’  

‘I don’t want to know how,’ my mother said rolling her eyes. 

‘It jumped species, Da.’ 

‘It jumped species? Somebody jumped a sheep more like it.’ 

‘Syphilis didn’t originate in humans Da, it originated in sheep. Then it jumped species, then humans spread it among themselves.’ 

‘But obviously some dirt bird had to interfere with a sheep at some point for it to spread to humans?’ 

‘I suppose so, Da,’ I sighed. 

‘That’s all I’m trying to say Son.’ 

My mother had heard enough.  

‘All I want is few balls of wool so I can knit your wee sister a bloody cardigan for going back to school. Is that that too much to ask for?’ And with that she slammed the kitchen door shut and stomped off up the stairs. 

My da sat staring at me in silence for a moment.  

‘Syphilis, Jim? Are you wise in the head, saying that in front of your mother? We both know that this is because of thon Padre Pio fella. And, that wee English friend of yours has enough contacts among the altar kissers, to get your ma a few bloody balls of wool. If he can’t, life won’t be worth living for anyone in this house.’  

Billy McKenna was the first English person that I had met who wasn’t wearing boot polish on his cheeks. Although he was born in Northampton, his mother was from Belfast. If Billy knew who his father was, it wasn’t information that he ever shared, and most of us found it easier to speculate behind his back, than to ask him about it anyway. Billy arrived in Belfast to live with his grandmother in the early 1980’s, when his mother left him to join the women protesting for nuclear disarmament at Greenham Common. In Belfast, nuclear Armageddon was the last thing on anyone’s list of things to worry about at that time.  

   After Billy left school he helped to run his granny’s stall down at Smithfield market. They sold what you might call catholic paraphernalia such as holy pictures, prayer booksand oversized statues of the Virgin Mary. It’s hard to explain nowadays how popular religion was, back before social media and consumerism had become the new opium of the masses, but the stall made more money than our local chippy sold fish suppers on any given Friday. Billy’s ability to flog rosary beads from Hong Kong to people who couldn’t locateComber on a map, earned him the name Billy Beads, but most of us just called him Beads. 

 Although Padro Pio relics were more common at the time, than a bomb scare outside the Europa hotel, neither a dead monk nor a virulent strain of an STD was responsible formy inability to locate a decent ball of wool around the city of Belfast. 

‘Balaclavas,’ Beads announced as he unpacked a box of Saint Anthony prayer cards beside his stall. 

‘What about them?’ I asked.           

‘There’s a shortage of decent wool in Belfast because of the demand for balaclavas.’ 

‘Balls, Beads.’  

‘Think about it Jim. How many organisations in this country do you know of, that their members need to hide their identity in?’ 

‘Three or four not including the freemasons,’ I offered in puzzlement. 

‘There’s a few more than that Jimmy. For a start there’s the Provos, the Wombles, the INLA, the UVF, the LVF, the ILPO, the YCV, the UDF, the UFF, the Red Hand Commandos and now the Ulster Resistance.’ 

‘Jesus Beads, there’s more paramilitaries than fucking boy scouts around here.’ 

‘Exactly. And you can’t walk into your local boutique and pick up a balaclava now can you?’ Beads continued. ‘Also, you can’t use just any old wool to knit balaclavas, Jim.’ 

‘Spanish’ or to give it it’s correct name Merino wool, was the wool of choice for the more decerning  paramilitary, due it’s hypo allergic properties. Unlike other wool, such as the three balls I had brought home, Merino wool didn’t cause a gunman’s face to itch after they wore it. This lessened the likelihood of the security forces identifying suspects after they committed an offence alerted by their big red faces.  

‘Jesus Christ Beads, all I need is a few balls of decent wool, so my sister can go back to school in a nice cardigan, without my Ma throwing another wobbler.’   

‘I might have an idea,’ said Beads. 

The following day the parochial house smelt of tobacco and steamed fish. Billy Beads and I sat patiently on a well-worn green sofa beside a bookshelf in the reception room, waiting for the parish priest. I’d stopped going to chapel sometime between finding out that Sant Claus didn’t exist, and the pubs starting to open at the same time as half twelve mass on Sundays. 

‘Father Mac doesn’t like being interrupted during his evening bath,’ Maggie his housekeeper had snapped. ‘And don’t be keeping him long, he needs to be down at the youth club for the disco in a bit.’  

Soon after, Father Mac entered the room followed by a waft of Old Spice wearing a grin that wouldn’t look out of place on a butchers dog. He sat opposite us behind an aging mahogany desk and began combing his wet hair like Humphry Bogart in one of those old movies. My Da and Father Mac had gone to school together  and I smiled to myself remembering what he had always said about him. 

‘How could you ever trust a priest with a perm?’  

‘Well lads,’ he began as he leaned back into the comfort of his chair. ‘What has you pair calling at my door of a Friday evening when there’s better things for the young men of the parish to be at?’  

‘We’re not here for the chit-chat Mac. We’re here in regard to that cross-community group you set up with that minister from Sandy Row.’ Beads said pointedly.  

‘What group’s that now Master McKenna?’ 

‘That interdenominational knitting group, Mac.’ 

‘Oh yes,’ he said in realisation. ‘The one that knits gloves and scarves for the pensioners from across the religious divide?’ 

‘What about the balaclavas?’ Beads asked. 

Father Mac sat silently for a moment before again combing his hair and placing the comb in an inside pocket. 

‘The what?’ 

‘The balaclavas Mac; you know the hoods they knit for the boys you preach down to every weekend.’ 

‘I think you’d need to be careful about what you say son,’ Father Mac said, shifting slightly in his seat. ‘That tongue of yours might get you into trouble, and if you keep going you might find your own name on one of those cheap mass cards you and your granny sell down there at Smithfield quicker than you think.’  

‘We just need a few balls of that Spanish wool, the stuff you smuggle in from the Capuchins, the same crowd who are supplying all the fake Padre Pio relics,’ Beads continued unperturbed. 

‘That’s not possible, and if I were you pair, I’d leave here and never mention this matter again if you know what’s good for you.’ 

‘That sounds like a threat Mac, and you meant to be setting a good example for the community and all. Seems like you’re up to your neck in what you preach against,’ Beads said forcefully.  

‘My life in the church is an open book son. I’m afraid of nothing you can throw at me.’  

Beads placed his hand into the pocket of his combat jacket and took out a small envelope, then sat briefly staring at it, before standing up and handing it to Father Mac.  

‘I found this in my mother’s old jewellery box before I moved over here,’ he said without emotion. 

Father Mac opened the envelope pensively, then stared at the small square photograph now in his hands. In the moments that followed he seemed to shrink in his chair, his air of confident infallibility wilting like a punctured balloon. Whatever it was that Beads had presented him with, had created an unease in the room, and I was glad when the silence was broken when he spoke again. 

‘All we want is three balls of wool so his mother can knit his sister a cardigan. It’s not too high a price to pay for my silence, wouldn’t you say Mac?’ 

The ash faced Father Mac stood silently for a moment and pulled awkwardly at his Roman collar before leaving the room. In the room beside us we could hear drawers being opened and closed and the odd profanity being uttered. A few moments later he returned, slightly breathless and pale, then handed me a brown paper bag and took a green tobacco tin from his breast pocket. Maybe he was about to offer us both a smoke but thought the better of it and paused as if contemplating what to say next. Before he found his voice again Beads walked towards him and stared into his  eyes.  

 ‘Spare me any of your pontificating bullshit Mac. My mother left this town because of the shame you placed upon her when you abandoned her. Then you bribed my grandmother into silence, paid from the collection plates of the parish. You may be a father to your flock, but your no father to me.’ 

And with that we left. As I followed Beads down the path clutching the bag of wool to my chest and out through the rusted iron gates, my head was filled with admiration and at the same time pity for my friend. We didn’t speak on the bus ride home; I had nothing to say. In time I would regret that.  

For a while life rumbled on as before, but Beads began to become withdrawn as if he had been cut off from a part of himself or maybe he had become estranged from who he once was. Down at the market he lost his vibrancy, and spent most of his time in silence on a wooden stool reading Kropotkin or Thomas Aquinas.  Then he was gone. 

 His grandmother told me he had returned to Northampton to work in a shoe factory, but in reality he had headed to Central America to join the Sandinista’s after reading Father John Metcalf’s Letters from Nicaragua . He never returned. Father Mac left too, but I never cared enough to listen to the stories anyone ever told about him. These days my sister knits cardigans for her own kids and mine, and when back to school time comes around and the evenings draw in I always raise a glass and toast the memory of Billy Beads McKenna.