After signing the contract, which would pay about two hundred and fifteen thousand pounds throughout its duration, Father took a copy of it, as well as the letter of appointment, to our bank manager and requested a massive working capital loan. Mr. Frazer was delighted, Father said, and persuaded his head office in Belfast to approve it. Six weeks later, two brand-new lime green excavators with Japanese names and metal tracks, two trucks, and a rubber-wheeled JCB digger stood in our backyard. Father had the dump trucks sprayed royal blue and gray and the words “Harkin Construction Ltd, Knockburn” written in black lettering on all the cabin and excavator doors.
No more poverty-pleading farmers had to be dealt with; we were on our way. In our familial euphoria, it didn’t matter one iota that the power-sharing experiment brokered by the British government between the Protestants and Catholics was close to collapse. The hardline Protestant majority had called for a province-wide strike and they had the muscle to carry it out. They threatened to bring Ulster to her knees, closing ports and roads and disrupting the national power supply if Britain didn’t back down and kill the plan. But that didn’t matter to us. What mattered was our juicy British government contract.
Eighteen
Classroom six was large and had a matte white ceiling, six overhead sphere lights, and dark gray walls. Despite four windows, it remained dingy, even on sunny days, because a five-foot cypress hedge flanked an abutting narrow strip of paved yard. A blackboard ran the entire width of the front of the room. Just two steps away from it was the teacher’s desk. The only other furniture was thirty box desks arranged in three-row pairs running down its length. Plump Mr. Smith, whose sloe-black hair highlighted his acute dandruff, always sat during our lesson, rising only lethargically when obliged to write new French verbs on the blackboard. French was also the only class where Connor and I sat together at the back of the room.
“Do you know what I’m doing this weekend?” he asked, one Friday near the beginning of May.
“What?” I said.
“I’m getting the feel. Rosellen McKeever’s going to let me feel them.”
Connor, like Fergal, talked a great deal about sex and was prone to exaggeration. I looked up from my textbook and gave him a lingering, dubious glance before resuming my reading. It was a waste of time, because my cousin didn’t see it. He never looked at a person directly.
“I am. Honest to God.”
Connor was as unlike Martin as a brother could be. His heavy, dark eyebrows, sunken eyes, and very large nose put him on the poorer side of handsomeness. He also loved the IRA, said he knew some of the boys in town who were in it, and was forever telling Martin and I that he was going to join them.
I knew Rosellen (as youngsters, Martin and I had played mud-pie baking and tennis with her and her friends), and the idea he’d be feeling the tits of someone I knew intrigued me greatly. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and listened as he explained how she’d asked one of her friends to tell him she had a crush on him and wanted to meet at three o’clock Sunday in the plantation running behind Connor’s house.
“It doesn’t mean you’ll get to feel her,” I said.
“That’s where she took other boys to get the feel.”
That, and his specificity about time and place, convinced me it wasn’t a lie.
On Monday, just before lunch, we had French again and I could hardly wait. Connor had been playing matters close to his chest all morning. He’d smiled knowingly in math and English every time he noticed me looking in his direction, which made me determined not to ask and let him see how much I needed to know. Connor loved you to pry news from him because it allowed him to feel he was doing you a big favor when he did eventually get around to telling his story. I knew his game. If you pretended you didn’t care, he’d trip over himself to tell you. But it nearly killed me not to ask.
“Aren’t you going to ask about it?” he finally said in French class. Paddy Flanagan was ten minutes into murdering a translation of Madame Pompadour’s visit to the hairdresser.
I continued moving the pencil on each word of my own translation as Paddy haltingly advanced three words, reversed ten, and advanced two. It was sad to hear it.
“I got the feel,” Connor said.
“Oh, my.” I stole a look at Mr. Smith, who had his nose stuck in the textbook, his head shaking slowly.
“We went deep into the plantation and lay on a bed of pine needles.”
“Very comfy.”
“She lay back and made it obvious straight away I could undo her bra. God, Gabriel, I got so bloody stiff.” He paused for a moment. “Do you want to know the details?”
“Suit yourself.”
A little while into his description, Connor’s hand touched my thigh.
At first, I thought it was an accident. But it happened again, and then he stroked my leg. Every cell in my body pulsated. My thing rose instantly. While I didn’t pull my leg away, I knew I ought to make some kind of protest. I glanced up at Mr. Smith and scanned the room, though it was perfectly safe, because of the wide box desks and our position at the back of the class.
Connor’s stroking ceased. I made sure not to flinch as his hand moved to my fly. He rubbed and pressed tenuously for a moment and then began to unzip my trousers as he continued talking about Rosellen. I didn’t hear one more word of Paddy’s hideous French translation.
“You can touch me, as well,” he said, out of the side of his mouth.
I reached over hesitantly, our wrists crisscrossing. I tugged his fly down. As soon as I felt him, I was mortified—his seemed so much longer than mine.
A few minutes later, Mr. Smith’s chair scraped the floor as he rose and approached the blackboard. Our hands retreated and I fumbled crazily to put myself in order as the new verbs and nouns of the day appeared.
As soon as class ended, Connor told me to follow him. He took me into an end cubicle in the lavatory, where we masturbated as urinals flushed rhythmically in the background and boys rushed in and out. After we’d finished, I couldn’t wait to get away from him. For the rest of the day, guilt lingered like a bitter aftertaste. I remembered the promise I’d made to God. Now I’d broken my promise at the very first temptation. I’d committed the abomination again and enjoyed it. I loathed myself. In my bedroom that night, I sank to my knees and said a slow Act of Contrition and vowed never to do it again.
Next day, Connor and I pretended nothing had happened. But that night in bed, a thousand thoughts overwhelmed me. I relived the whole event, remembered Connor’s every squeeze and touch. No matter which way I turned in the bed, I couldn’t stop the fizzy excitement and finally surrendered. As soon as James started breathing deeply, I took tissues I’d already placed under my pillow and put them by my thigh, made a little tent under the bedclothes with one hand and stroked myself senseless with the other.
The guilt rushed back after I finished. Once more, I recited a slow Act of Contrition and promised Him I’d never do it again.
Two days later, in French class, Connor began talking about what he’d done to Rosellen and his hand moved to my fly. I raised no objection.
Later, when I spotted him as we were changing classes, I pulled him aside.
“Don’t you agree that it’s an abomination what we did?” I said.
“No.”
“Don’t you feel guilty and sinful because we’re boys?”
“I don’t think there’s any problem so long as we think about feeling girls up while we’re doing it.”
“Look me in the eye and say you truly believe there’s nothing wrong with it.”
He met my stare. “So long as we’re thinking about girls while we do it, it’s fine.”
His reasoning made a lot of sense. So I continued doing it with him. I told myself this wasn’t the same thing Noel and I had done, because Connor and I were thinking of girls as we touched each other. It was more difficult to push aside the mortal sin aspect, and the fact that I was also breaking my promise to God. But eventually, I managed to
reconcile the dilemma by concluding that everyone breaks a promise to God at some point. It’s a weakness of being human. That, together with my slow recital of the Act of Contrition, entitled me to unquestioned absolution.
Granny Harkin visited Auntie Celia every weekend and I started to go there with her. The purpose of my visits was now to see Connor as much as Martin, and he and I went upstairs to the bedroom on the pretext of discussing schoolwork.
One Sunday afternoon, I arrived to learn that Auntie Celia wouldn’t permit Martin to come out of his bedroom. In June, he was to sit his O levels (the “O” being an accepted abbreviation for “ordinary”) and he’d done extremely badly in the mock examinations.
O levels were a set of major exams given by the Northern Ireland examination board. The courses were of two-year duration and they were vital for two reasons. First, if passed, one could proceed into the sixth form to begin advanced level (A level) courses, successful completion of which guaranteed a place at a university. Second, the universities you applied to during the final year of school looked at your O level grades, together with the headmaster’s report, in deciding whether to accept or reject your application.
Connor and I were studying nine O levels apiece and had another year of preparation before taking them. Martin was studying five because he wasn’t as bright, and both he and Pani were lazy. They’d passed only three mocks each and Martin’s teachers were concerned. Apparently, at a parent-teacher meeting that week, they’d informed Auntie Celia he’d most likely fail, which was why she had confined him to his bedroom and warned him he’d have to make extra efforts at his studies if he wished to continue attending the Saturday night dances every week.
Her strategy was inconvenient for me, as Connor and I couldn’t do anything upstairs out of fear of Martin walking into the bedroom and discovering us. We had to go off to the forest where he’d first felt Rosellen.
On one trip there, Connor took me to the bank of the meandering stream, pulled a rock aside, and showed me a revolver and two black masks with penny-sized holes cut out for eyes.
“Don’t touch the gun or your fingerprints will be on it,” he said. “The IRA chaps use these when they do jobs—which are called operations, by the way.”
“How’d you know the IRA hides things in the woods?”
He laughed. “I know the right fellas, don’t I?” Connor’s eyes narrowed and he formed a gun with his forefinger and thumb, pointing it at my right knee. “They’ve got me keeping an eye out for police informers. It’s bye-bye to their fucking kneecaps after they’re caught.”
Shrieks erupted from a sycamore tree leaning over the stream and a crow flew out, its ragged wings beating furiously as it lifted into the air above my head.
“Me and the boys know how to treat informers,” Connor added.
After putting the rock back in place, we continued into the woods until we came to a tree with a massive trunk. I made sure never to initiate things between my cousin and me. I’d allow Connor to make the first move, which he always did by beginning a story about what he’d recently done with Rosellen. So long as he talked about her, everything was fine. We couldn’t possibly be poofs.
Uncle John came into our kitchen and Auntie Bernie, face as white as her bead necklace, followed behind him. Father Pascal, the head of the missions in Kenya, had called Uncle Tommy’s home to tell him Uncle Brendan had had a bit of a turn. Unfortunately, Uncle Tommy had been away and Auntie Bernie, phobic about medical problems and continually checking her raised facial mole, had panicked as soon as she’d heard the word “turn” and came to tell Uncle John.
“I told Bernie we ought to consult with you, because you’d know what to do,” Uncle John said.
Mammy pulled a chair from under the table. “Sit and calm yourself, John.”
“What’ll we do?” he asked. Uncle looked up at her like a little boy awaiting an answer while Auntie fingered her necklace, a thing she always did when she felt out of her depth.
“Exactly what kind of a turn, Bernie?” my mother asked.
“All I know is Father Pascal used that word.” Auntie Bernie tugged at her necklace. “You know what I’m like. My ears buzzed and I could hear nothing else. When I did come to my senses, he was saying Brendan was in Nairobi and the only thing I managed to glean is Brendan’s been acting strange. He ordered Father Pascal not to tell the family because he didn’t want to cause us any more trouble.” She paused. “Well, Father Pascal didn’t agree, which is why he tried to call Tommy.”
The emergent creases of displeasure in my mother’s forehead were faint, but unmistakable, as Auntie Bernie uttered these last words. Electricity and the telephone had arrived in Knockburn—we’d had the latter for six months now—and Mammy had called Uncle Brendan’s mission, as well as the Order’s main house in Nairobi, to give them our number as the primary contact.
Picking up the phone, Mammy dialed the Order’s house and demanded to speak with Father Pascal. It transpired that Uncle Brendan had been broody and withdrawn from the community for months, but started behaving erratically one morning when another priest caught him tossing the Bible and other religious paraphernalia about the sacristy of their little church. The community doctor diagnosed nervous strain and prescribed rest, and Uncle Brendan was advised to recuperate at the Order’s Nairobi home. Uncle had agreed, on condition the Order wouldn’t inform his family about the event or illness.
My mother insisted on talking with Uncle Brendan. When he came on the phone, their conversation was stilted. Replacing the receiver in its cradle after she’d finished and double-checking to make sure it was set down properly, as she was terrified the call might not have terminated and she’d incur huge charges, Mammy rolled her eyes.
“I’m sure you got the gist of that,” she said to Uncle John. “You’re not to tell your mother under any circumstances. He doesn’t want anyone flying out to see him, either.”
“Did he say what caused the breakdown?” asked Auntie Bernie.
“No.”
“These turns don’t happen to a body out of the blue, do they, Eileen? I mean normal people can’t just—”
“All he said was he’s been under pressure and flipped. That’s all I know. He made no attempt to elaborate on what caused the flipping.”
Nineteen
My parents and I stood in the display section of Auntie Celia’s grocery-cum-gift shop. Mammy wanted a wedding present for a neighbor’s daughter.
“It’s a lovely piece,” my mother said. “How much?”
“Thirty pounds. It is a lovely wee piece of Belleek china, isn’t it?” said Auntie Celia. She set the nine-inch Celtic cross down on the shelf again, rested the tip of her index finger on her lips, and smiled at the ornament glittering in the overhead light. “One of the nicest pieces I’ve seen for a long, long time.”
As she was showing her stuff, Auntie Celia informed my parents that she was allowing Connor to go with Martin to his first dance at the Fortress Inn. The dance hall was literally an old fort at the north end of Duncarlow Main Street, and the Indians, a popular band whose music I loved, were playing. Martin had told me all that at school, and we’d hatched a plan for me to bring my parents into the shop so he could get Auntie Celia to soften them up and let me go to the dance, too.
“And it’s such a bargain,” Auntie Celia said.
“I don’t know her so well to be buying a Belleek cross of such intricacy,” my mother said. Her eyes darted along the rows of ornaments. “What about that glass cat up there? How much for that?”
Auntie Celia glanced at Father before reaching for the item. “Harry, you were out at the dances when you were Gabriel’s age.”
“Aye.”
“That definitely means I should be allowed to go,” I said.
Auntie checked a price tag beneath the ornament before handing it to my mother. “Eight pounds and fifty-five pence?” She smiled. “Sure, let Gabriel go. After all, it is the Indians.”
“Eight pounds
and change for a glass cat.”
“He can go, as far as I’m concerned,” said Father. He winked at me.
“That’s not glass,” said Auntie Celia. “That’s best Irish crystal, that is.”
“Would those wee glass bubbles I see inside its head make it any cheaper, do you think?” Mammy asked.
“Bubbles?” Auntie Celia snatched the ornament from Mammy and began examining it.
“Gabriel’s too young for dances,” said Mammy. “Next year, maybe.”
A bell rang as the shop door opened and a short woman entered with a panting spaniel on a leash. Auntie Celia greeted her as she walked behind the shop counter. My mother picked up a china vase, squinted to read the tiny price tag on its base, and then vigorously shook her head as she laid it quickly down again.
“Harry, what do you think of that china toast holder with the red and yellow rose pattern?”
“Nice.”
“What do you mean ‘nice’? Will it suffice or not?”
“For God’s sake, woman, pick something.”
Recognizing Martin’s assistance was urgently required, I took advantage of their skirmish to walk quickly to the back of the shop and mount the narrow staircase leading to Auntie’s upstairs flat.
I found him blow-drying his hair in the bedroom. An opened bottle of peroxide stood upon the vanity beside a tortoiseshell comb. Scarcely before I sat on the edge of the bed, the hair dryer was whirling full blast on the carpet and Martin whipped the towel from around his neck and tossed it over the bottle. What’s more, his neck had turned splotchy pink, the way it always did when he was dead embarrassed. So, it wasn’t just lemon juice he used on his fringe to make it blonde, like he swore to us it was. Old Pani was right—he accused Martin of using bleach every time my cousin arrived at school with his bangs blonder than usual.
“You’re too early, Gabriel.”
I crinkled my nose. “What’s that chemical smell?”
“Has Mother asked Auntie Eileen if you can go?” he asked.
A Son Called Gabriel Page 18