I was on fire as she raked my roots. I French-kissed her deeply while unbuttoning her blouse, slipping my hand inside and cupping her sheathed, full breast. Its corseted firmness was immediately off-putting. Perfume wafted from her exposed cleavage, its sweetness stronger than I’d ever noticed before. It evoked a memory of Auntie Bernie’s perfumed stink from childhood.
Suddenly, Lizzie’s body felt delicate and weak beneath me. I felt every quiver of her soft limbs, felt the restrained thrusts of her urgency. I needed to get away. I wanted to rise and run, but couldn’t. I was the man, with the man’s duty to see things through. All about me, her sweet stink, which repelled even the gnats because they no longer swarmed; all about me, her sweet stink that was at once of flowers and not of flowers. I wanted to rise and run, and yet my fingers reached behind her back and fumbled to release her bra as she arched her back.
Lizzie’s eyes opened slightly. “Easy, you randy sod.”
I tried again and still couldn’t undo the catches. Her arms were thin as a heron’s legs. Moans drifted over from Rosellen and Connor. Lizzie’s painted lips stretched to coyness. Her rouged cheeks and over-curled eyelashes clotted with mascara looked bizarre now. My spongy thing wouldn’t stir or rise. Not even a tiny bit.
“I think we should go back to Martin and Sabina.”
Her hand froze on my back.
“We must go back.”
“What’s the matter, Gabriel?”
“I don’t want to lose control.”
Her mouth gathered for an instant and then she rose.
“We’re going back to the dance,” I said to Connor and Rosellen, as Lizzie brushed her skirt.
They didn’t respond.
In bed later, as soon as Connor discussed his sexual exploits by the river, my thing stiffened faster than a flat bicycle tube pumped up with air. Its impertinence stunned me. After Connor and I finished and I’d recited my customary Act of Contrition, I lay with my eyes wide open, listening to the calm rise and fall of Connor’s sleeping breath. I lay bewildered. Utterly bewildered.
Twenty
Almost from the beginning of the new term, circumstances improved for me at school. I was now a fifth-year and the taunting in the bus stopped because Mickey and Pearse had left and Willie, Mickey’s aggressive younger brother, focused on other boys and didn’t confront me now that his protector was gone.
As their teachers had predicted, Pani and Martin failed their O levels, though Father Rafferty allowed them to come back and repeat the year. This was an added bonus for me—it was terrific to have them in some of my classes.
Early one Sunday afternoon, a few weeks into the term, Father came home from second Mass and announced at the lunch table that an IRA man was coming to stay with us for a few weeks.
“I don’t want an IRA volunteer staying under my roof,” my mother said. She slammed the gravy boat down in front of Father. “It’s far too dangerous. Besides, the house renovations aren’t finished yet, so where would we put him?”
Her excuse was weak. The construction was done, giving us a larger living room, another bedroom and bathroom and large kitchen with the latest German equipment. Only a few weeks of decorating remained.
“The fellas asked me at the chapel gate and I couldn’t refuse,” said Father. He sliced his thick T-bone steak and red blood and oily water oozed and pooled beside the boiled cabbage.
“I support the cause as much as the next person, but we have our children to think about, Harry. What if the army launches a raid in the middle of the night and finds an IRA man here? They’ll intern you in Long Kesh. What’ll happen to the business? What’ll happen to us?”
“Luksee, they won’t raid our house precisely because we’ve children in the house.” Father looked at each of us in turn as he chewed his meat. “They’re our cover.”
“I don’t want a strange man under my roof.” Mammy paused and stared at her dinner plate. “Just when we’re making a bit of money and beginning to have a life, along comes this business. We don’t know what terrible things this man might have done. He could be one of those men who blew up the soldiers a few weeks ago, for all we know.”
A month previously, the IRA had placed a bomb under a road culvert in lower Knockburn that blew five British soldiers to bits. The Protestant customer at the Hamilton’s supermarket delicatessen had been dead right when she’d said Knockburn was nationalist, but dead wrong when she’d accused most men of being IRA volunteers. Knockburn people were decent and didn’t support the use of violence in the main, but they were also angered by the Protestant hardliners’ refusal to give Catholics any say in the running of the province’s affairs.
Some young men were so frustrated, they had turned to the Provos, a group which had split from the more peaceful Official IRA, as a last resort. The Provos believed violence was justified to banish British rule and, in addition to bombings and shootings in the largest towns and cities, had stepped up their campaign in rural areas. Because of this, many IRA volunteers were on the run, and there was an unspoken code that every home in Knockburn was expected to provide refuge for volunteers if asked.
“Harry, I don’t want anyone ruthless sleeping under my roof,” Mammy said quickly, the rapidity of her speech underscoring her panic. “He’ll be a bad influence on Gabriel and James. He might try to recruit them into that way of life. And Gabriel needs peace to study for his O levels. As it is, he’s had to contend with all the noise generated by the renovations.”
“I wouldn’t worry about him getting recruited for the cause,” Father said. “James, maybe.” He looked at my brother and winked. “Aye, definitely not Gabriel.”
“What about those English people you sometimes bring here to discuss business?” Mammy said. “If he hears their accents, he’ll spread the word, maybe arrange to have them kidnapped . . . or even worse.” She shivered.
“Luksee, a fella by the name of Seamus Regan’s coming to stay, end of discussion. He’ll be here in a few weeks’ time and I don’t want to hear another chirp from anyone.”
“He can sleep in the damned outhouse,” Mammy said, clearly stung that such a major decision had already been made without discussion.
“’Deed by Jasus, he’ll not. He’s out fighting for his country, so he can sleep with Gabriel or James.”
I was looking forward to having my own room after the decorating was done and had no desire to share my bed with a strange man. The thought of his legs and arms touching any part of my body during sleep made me wince.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” I said. “He can share with James. I don’t care if my room’s not painted yet. I’m moving a cot in there tonight.”
“I’m almost as big as you,” James said. His face darkened, like it always did when he was put upon. “I’ll take the cot and sleep in your unfinished room.”
“I don’t want a stranger in my house,” Caroline said.
Now in the mid-throes of puberty, Caroline was self-conscious about a new spurt of growth that had left her gangly in appearance. She had the full breasts and hips of a woman and the forehead pimples and greasy skin of a girl.
“Gabriel shouldn’t have to sleep with him,” Nuala said. My little sister took my side in everything, even when I was wrong.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” said Father. “You should be proud to help a man who’s fighting so you’ll have decent jobs in a free Ireland.”
“A fat lot of good the fighting has done us thus far,” said my mother. “The Protestants just dig in their heels and it’s we who suffer.”
“I don’t agree with the IRA’s bombing and shooting,” I said. “They’re killing innocent people, as well as the soldiers. They give Catholics a bad name. As it is, most Protestants think we’re all a bunch of savages and murderers.”
“The Provos are very bad and Gabriel shouldn’t have to sleep with one of them,” Nuala said.
Mother looked at her absentmindedly. “A body can’t go into a shop in Belfast or De
rry without the army and police pawing at us, searching our bags for incendiary devices.”
“We shouldn’t really invite him here, Daddy,” I said, pushing the word “Daddy” out of my mouth. “Let them find him another safe house.”
“Shut your mouth,” Father snapped. “Sure, you’re no Irishman. You’d rather have English rule than a free Ireland.”
His rabid speech wasn’t even slightly true. I wanted justice and equality, too. Justice and equality were as important in life as eating and breathing. I just didn’t see the sense of hating every Protestant in order to obtain it. Father and James believed Protestants who didn’t want to live in a united Ireland should leave, but that was absurd. The Protestants were now every bit as entitled to live in Ireland as we were. They’d been living there since 1690.
“You don’t want a united Ireland,” Father continued. “You’re the enemy every bit as much as them.”
Father was right and wrong. Certainly, I didn’t want a united Ireland.
I said, “How dare you accuse me of being the enemy? That’s below the belt, that is. The Southern Irish government can’t look after their own people properly, so how the hell could they manage us? They’d make a sow’s ear of the North. They can’t even build motorways, or provide free university education for their citizens. And the Catholic Church controls everything down there. I hate Paisley every bit as much as you, but you have to realize that other, decent Protestants can’t accept an Ireland where the Catholic Church pokes its nose into political affairs.”
“That’s enough, Gabriel,” said Mammy. “Your Uncle Brendan’s a priest.”
“Don’t dare say anything bad about the Irish Republic,” James said.
“It’s ridiculous that we can’t criticize what’s rotten and useless down there out of fear we’re acting disloyal,” I said. “That makes no sense to me, and—”
“You’re too fucking English,” Father said. “Always backing them when all they’ve done is rob us of our land and kill us. Why can’t you be a real Irishman?”
“I agree,” said James. “Always sitting beside that Protestant Nigel in the bus every morning and talking a load of shite with him, and him as black as the ace of spades.”
“He’s not a bigot.”
“His mother’s very nice,” Mammy said. “A very decent woman.”
James had three deep furrows in his forehead, exactly like Father’s when he was angry.
“Daddy’s right,” James said to me. “You are a disgrace.”
“Aye, you tell him, son,” said Father. “You’re the sort of Irishman this country needs.”
Banging down my fork and knife, I leaped from my chair and stomped outside, where I stood sulking and cursing against the side of the house. I knew I was behaving like a loser, but there was nothing else to do. Half an hour later, Nuala came out and persuaded me to return inside, where things had calmed down. James and Caroline were arguing about whether or not Marc Bolan from T. Rex was effeminate because he wore eyeliner and Father was reading the News of the World, getting his fix of sex and scandal from an English newspaper that Mammy had to stuff under the couch when Father McAtamney paid us a visit.
My mother and I were traveling in the car and had just finished saying a rosary. We’d been visiting Granny Neeson, who’d been having dizzy spells. The visit had been awkward, because Aunt Peggy was in Scotland visiting Colin, now her fiancé, who was doing a company audit there, and my grandmother, despite her dizziness, had perked up enough to complain to Mammy that Aunt Peggy was wasting her time.
“Taking a vacation to visit the lovely highlands, my backside,” she’d said, “as if I’m dying here inside a bubble. What incentive does he have to marry her, I ask you? Two years, she’s engaged now. The man’s happy enough to stay engaged. She’ll never get him to marry her now, as she’s over in Scotland already doing her wifely duty, anyway.”
An awkward pause had followed, during which my mother, thinking I couldn’t see her because I was reading a book, tried frantically to tell Granny Neeson to drop the subject by vigorously shaking her head, though I’d known exactly what she’d meant by “wifely duty.”
Granny did indeed drop the subject, by remarking that she was definitely on her deathbed. To ensure that the conversation track had been permanently changed, Mammy began to lament the arrival of the IRA man, which Granny countered by telling her not to bother her with trifles while she was dying. Finally, the two sat in brooding silence until it was time for us to leave.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, but it always slips my mind,” Mammy said, as the too-close car that had unnerved her finally swung out into the road and passed. “I don’t hear you talking too much about the girl you meet up with at the dances. What’s this her name is?”
She never forgot names. “Lizzie,” I replied.
“That’s right.”
“She’s out of the picture.”
I hadn’t mentioned Lizzie to my mother until Caroline, angry I wouldn’t ask if she could attend another dance, huffed and told Mammy I had a steady girlfriend. In all honesty, I’d dumped Lizzie because she’d outlived her convenience. With her, I didn’t have to walk up the wall of women and risk rejection. In addition, Lizzie helped end the horrible taunting on the school bus, albeit unknowingly. As a result of having a girlfriend, my reputation had improved markedly among the boys, more so when they found out she was older than me.
But Lizzie had grown more and more troublesome. It was nerve-wracking being with her. I felt nothing. My thing never stirred on those rare occasions when I couldn’t make any more excuses and Lizzie and I went outside to the back of the Fortress Inn to court in the dark. It remained relentlessly shriveled in her presence. Yet it turned hard as oak whenever Connor touched me. That preyed on my mind. I could fool myself that I was thinking about girls when Connor and I were doing things, but my flaccidness when I was alone with Lizzie let me know exactly how things stood.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” my mother said.
“Why?”
“You’re too young to be going steady with girls.”
I listened to the low hiss of the car tires on the wet road. Outside, the fields were full of darkness. Rhododendrons shone blackish-green when the headlights struck them as my mother negotiated the curves in the road. At one point, a hare darted from the hedge and stopped abruptly, transfixed by the bright lights until Mother lowered them.
“Are you still thinking about the priesthood?” she asked.
My body stiffened. “I don’t know.” The tires hissed. I stared out at the pitch-dark fields. “Do you really want me to be a priest?”
She chuckled, the way she always did when she was about to say the exact opposite of what she was thinking. “If you feel it’s not for you, then so be it.” A pause, and a prickly one. “There’s always James, I suppose,” she said. “Maybe he’ll be the one.”
“Why is it so important?”
“It’s the most wonderful thing for a mother to have a son entering the priesthood. I can think of no greater honor. Think how very proud your Granny is of Brendan.”
“Seeing as you mention that . . . ” I thought fast and spoke slowly, to make sure nothing I said would set her off. “Granny told me quite a while back that it was Granda far more than she who wanted Brendan to be a priest.” I recalled the afternoon I’d visited and came upon her crying sore as she sat on Granda’s chair. She called me to her and held me tightly. So tightly, I could hardly breathe. “She said Granda pushed from the first day Uncle Brendan set foot in Saint Malachy’s. He wanted a son to become a priest real bad.”
Mammy gave me a sidelong glance. “When did she tell you all this?”
“Once, after Uncle Brendan went back to Kenya.” I paused. “She also told me I was Uncle’s special nephew.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this back then?”
“She didn’t want me to and made me swear on my future grave not to tell a soul I’d seen her crying about
Uncle Brendan.” I glanced at Mammy’s profile and cleared my throat. “What happened between Uncle Brendan and Granda?”
“Brendan was a young man, like you and James . . .” Mammy stopped talking and I hardly dared breathe, lest the moment be killed.
“No, he was far older than you at the time. There was an argument about something which threatened his becoming a priest, and your grandfather was livid, and—” She fell silent for a moment, then continued, “They were both so headstrong. It happened so long ago, I can’t remember the exact details.”
“Try.”
“It had something to do with his going steady with a girl for a wee while. Your granda felt very threatened by that.”
“Was Uncle Brendan serious about her?”
Another short pause ensued. “I don’t know.”
“Was she nice?”
She cleared her throat, then coughed. “I never met her.”
“He became a priest in the end, so why didn’t Granda speak to him?”
“People have arguments and stupid pride won’t let them back down, I suppose. Now, it’s too late for them to make up.”
“That seems extreme for a little thing that didn’t matter in the end. There must be something else. There has to be.”
“Extreme behavior or not, that’s what happened. That’s all there is to it.” Again, she peered sidelong at me. “Are you thinking I’m lying or something?”
The directness of her question threw me.
“No.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“It all seems so petty, that’s what I mean. Uncle Brendan should have come home to see him when he was dying. That was wrong of him, wasn’t it?”
She sighed. “People can be so headstrong . . . pig-stubborn . . . even when it’s to their detriment.” She looked at me intently now. “Promise me you’ll always think well of your father and me. Promise you’ll never act so pig-stubborn if something should ever happen and we have a terrible argument one day.”
A Son Called Gabriel Page 20