Tom’s mother’s genes may have bobbed on a Spanish Armada galleon blessed by Pope Sixtus V. Setting sail from Lisbon in 1588, the galleons were forced to sail around the north of Scotland towards the craggy coast of Donegal, then south past the towering cliffs of Clare, fighting to continue even further south while repeatedly being driven relentlessly north and east by the Gulf Stream. The ships had lost anchors in an earlier battle so were at the mercy of seventy foot waves. Cavalry horses were dragged from below decks, slithered and struggled on the salty wooden floor before being thrown into the tumultuous seas to lighten the load on board. Ships lurched into the air, balancing for a moment on the crests of gigantic waves before following the horses headlong into the depths of the Atlantic. Some of the ships couldn’t escape the pull and lure of the granite rocks off shore. The bellies of ships pierced by shards of rock. Tom’s DNA maybe struggled lacerated from the rocks, slipping the last few inches into shallow water, from where it was possible to stagger, fall and eventually collapse into the embrace of lugworms nesting in the sodden sand. Breathing air from the space between the worms, spitting and coughing blood and sea water, his lungs vigorously filtering the sweet sense of air, snivelling, almost lifeless, head pressed more deeply into the sand, as though wanting to return to a warm centre that was unmoving and solid. The wind whipping onto his back, forcing him to twist and burrow into the sand – yet making him almost smile at the sweet pain of being alive. He raised his eyes to see in the distance two misty shapes approaching through the driving rain struggling to carry a long plank of wood between them; their cloaks swirling into the air like flapping dragon’s wings. He soon felt the soft touch of a hand against his shoulder, rolling him onto his back. He looked into the Irishman’s eyes, as though into his father’s, as he was gently hoisted onto a rough wooden stretcher and carried to safety, hidden from the English.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada was one of those decisive moments of destiny, forever changing the course of Irish history. The Protestants believed that God was on their side because it was the winds sent from God that destroyed the Armada and not the English. Even Philip II of Spain, when he heard of the result of the expedition, declared, “I sent the Armada against men, not God’s winds and waves.”
During the days of the Great Depression, Tom’s mother would say, “Tom, go and see if you can find any money someone might have dropped on the pavement. If you find any buy three quarters a pound of cod for dinner. Ask Mr Fishy to skin and bone it.” Tom walked slowly down the Horseshoe bend towards Ardoyne, scouring the pavement for a miracle. As he reached the shops, there lying glittering in the gutter at the side of the road was a sparkling silvery half crown. He picked it up, felt the coldness of it in his hand, ran straight over to Mr Fishy to ask for his cod to be boned and skinned.
Elfie’s father used to sell horses and do a bit of painting and decorating for a living. For a while he also sold coal, driving it around in a cart pulled by one of his horses. The other horses galloped around the field beside the house, cutting up the turf with their sharpened hooves until a buyer could be found for them. Elfie planted potatoes in the turned up soil. He made a carousel of wooden horses, painted with outdoor gloss, mostly cream coloured with ochre manes and titan rose harnesses. He drove around North Belfast charging a halfpenny for a ride, allowing the children to go around only once, playing tinned music as the horses moved up and down. The children laughed, clung on for dear life, crying when it stopped. “Will you not give them another go?” the mothers asked. Tom’s father sometimes said “Yes”, eyeing the mother up and down to see if she was good looking.
Tom never understood why Elfie spent less time at home after his third child John died in childbirth.
After dinner on Friday evenings when Elfie was home, he asked for “the chocolate” to be brought to the table. Pushing the dinner plate to one side, he threw himself back in the chair, his legs splayed to the right and left and slowly peeled back the silvery foil. All six eyes watched him as he popped one, two, three squares into his mouth at once. He closed his eyes as he sucked, letting the chocolate slowly melt without looking even once at the children. Then Elfie found another way of finding pleasure in life. He found himself another woman.
Tom would escape into the field at the back of house after his evening meal and lay in the long grass with cowslips tickling his cheeks. He breathed in the smell of the damp clover, buttercups and dandelions and prayed for his father. He prayed his father would not die and go to hell but that God would change him, make a saint out of him and that when he died, he would go to heaven. Tom thought ‘that’s what we were put on earth for – to become saints – to be Divine instruments – holy flutes allowing God to whistle tunes through us’. It was hard for Tom to imagine his father becoming a saint but his mother gently reminded him, “For God nothing is impossible.”
One evening when Tom came back from daydreaming and praying in the garden, Elfie told him that he was putting his mother into Purdysburn mental hospital.
“She needs help.”
“What do you mean she needs help?”
“She’s not well. There’s nothing that we can do for her on our own.”
Tom worried that maybe his prayers weren’t good enough. Couldn’t God hear him? His mother tried to explain to him that he could pray to God by listening to Him rather than talking to Him. She told him that God knew every thought in his head.
“He knows your thoughts before you know them yourself – even the thoughts you don’t want to know.”
His mother accepted the fact that she had to go to Purdysburn, saying, “God’s ways are not our ways”. Tom didn’t know what that meant. Did it mean that Elfie was right and that his mother needed to go into Purdysburn or did it mean that she was going into Purdysburn like a martyr, helpless to resist Elfie and surrendering to the will of God?
Only the week before, Dickie who worked with Tom asked, “Do you want to see a picture of your father?” A photograph was thrust into Tom’s face, of his father with his arms around another woman with short straight hair cut in a bob, unlike his mother’s long wavy hair. He was dancing with her in the Plaza Ballroom. They were both smiling for the camera. The woman’s left hand caught in his father’s right hand was held close to his shoulder. His father’s cheek pressed against her cheek. They were intimately squashed together like pieces of putty settling into one another. Tom studied the photo as Dickie smirked. Tom handed it back. “You can keep the photo Dickie. Thanks.”
“I have another if you want of him lying face down in the cabbages?”
“No thanks Dickie. Keep it.”
Tom’s mother didn’t last long in Purdysburn. Within a month she was dead. The day before she died Tom visited her in hospital and she told him, “Tom, I have something for you.” She reached into the bedside cabinet and took out a small silver medal. On one side there was an image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel with the words ‘Virgo Carmel’. On the back there was an image of the Sacred Heart with Jesus pointing to his heart. It was the size of a large thumbnail. Tom placed it in his pocket. Later with a small safety pin he pinned it to the inside of his shirt. She also gave him a small book with curled up corners, smelling of mothballs. It had a picture on the front of a medieval man bent over a walking stick. He had a long beard and a tight fitting skull cap and rested his hand on the shoulder of a kneeling friend. The book was called ‘The Book of the Lover and the Beloved’ by Ramon Llull. Ramon’s name in gold leaf was sunk deep into the frayed edges of the purple hard cover.
The day before his mother died, Tom held her hand. He knew that she couldn’t have long to live. It was unbearable to think of her not existing. Her death, her ‘goneness’ was much more unbearable than the thought of dying himself. He looked away for a moment to the left, fixing his gaze on the white wall. It was as though in that simple head movement she had disappeared. She had gone. She was dead. The movement of his head was an echo of death. He should get used to it.
He tu
rned back to her, feeling the immense poignancy of her presence, all of her being here and yet soon to be gone. The deep love for her settled in his stomach, churning with the knowledge of what would come.
“Let me show you.” She took the book from him and carefully turned a few pages. “There is a short meditation for each day.” She opened the book at Verse 9.
“So the Beloved asked: “If I double your trials, will you still be patient?” The Lover answered: “Yes, so you may double also my love.”
His mother asked, “Why do trials double love?”
“They allow you to find patience – to know God’s heart beat,” Tom replied without hesitation.
His mother nodded. “Yes. That’s true. Patience, like love is tested and purified in the fires of suffering. Suffering becomes love if you know how to suffer.”
“How did you learn?”
“Life taught me. It will teach you too if you let it.”
He took the small book from his mother and put it into his jacket pocket with the medal to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. He threw his arms around his mother as she lay propped up on the pillows. Tears rolled down his face as he whispered, “I don’t want you to die.” Even as he said it, he knew it was a crazy thing to say. She had to die. Whatever is born has to die. His mother looked at him with a tangible gentleness, her head tilted to one side, smiling softly, with the kind of smile that wanted to tell Tom something more than could be told with words. She didn’t move her arms to hold him. Her arms stayed crossed on her lap. She then looked at him again quizzically as Tom pulled back, rubbing the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. She whispered, “You’re lucky. You can cry. I’ve never been able to cry.”
Tom threw his arms around her once more. Tom’s mother caressed his hair with soft even strokes.
“It’s my time Tom. You have to let me go.”
As Tom worked carving grooves in the leg of an oak chair, his thoughts were constantly of his mother and her approaching death. He didn’t know what he could do to help her. He could only think of her. By keeping images of her in his mind, he felt her presence filling him, wiping out any other reality. As he turned the back of the chair in his hands, the smoothness of the warm oak reminded him of her skin, the curve of the wood, her nose, the warmth of the sun shining on his back, her caress. His body flooded with a sweet sadness, a melancholy, a piercing poignancy. The image of his mother now seemed to sink from his head to his heart. He couldn’t clearly see her at all but felt her essence beating within his heart. At ten minutes past four he experienced a stabbing sensation above the groin on his right side. He sat still on the chair on which he had been carving.
Was it the beginning of appendicitis? He pressed his hand into his side and felt his body flood with a mingling of peace and joy. In the peace was the sinking sensation of silence. He felt as though he was dropping through clouds of feathers, breathing slowly and deeply. The accompanying feeling of joy was as though he was simultaneously being lifted back up again to the surface. The feeling was so extraordinary that he wanted to laugh out loud. He felt light, buoyant, bubbling with a sense of anticipation and pleasure as though he was waiting at a railway station for a long lost friend arriving on the approaching train. He found himself observing these unusual sensations in his body with confusion. His body was being playful – like a kitten bouncing up a tree in the garden, patting with its paw at a flower or like a lamb jumping high into the air. Why, he wondered, did he feel so sublimely happy with his mother dying? Later that evening, when he returned to the hospital to visit his mother, Nurse Anne rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Your mother passed away at ten past four. Would you like to see her?”
When Tom saw his mother, she was lying on her side. The bedspread with its tiny roses covered her shoulders. He approached her, slowly, cautiously, seeing first her open mouth, spidery red veins around her nose, closed eyes. Her long black hair spread over the pillow like an oil slick. Her body gurgled and he could have sworn it moved. For a moment Tom thought that she hadn’t died, that they had made a mistake and that she was only asleep. He touched her forehead. It was cold and hard. He looked at her closed eyes. They were solid, slightly open but he couldn’t see the eyes themselves which before had looked at him, sparkling like the twinkling surface of a summer sea, or on occasion pierced him like the thrust of a sword in fencing. No, her lashes were sealed as though with glue. He stroked her silky fine hair against the pillow case. He fingered her arm through the long cotton sleeve of her nightdress. It was still warm. He held her hand for the last time, her chipped nails, long fingers that wanted to play the piano but never did or would. He squeezed her hand tight, wanting to see her fingers flutter like a butterfly and settle once more onto the sheets.
When Tom left his mother, the world had changed. Everyone he now looked at, it seemed as though he was seeing through them – seeing into them. Their bodies were moving but the people themselves didn’t know what moved them or even that they were being moved. Tom knew. Tom didn’t see the world through his eyes anymore. It seemed as though he was looking at the world from no fixed point at all, although if he was asked, he would have tried to say that it now seemed as though he was seeing from his heart – not a fixed point in his physical heart but from his heart which was now everywhere. Tom had the sense that he was a part of everything that existed and that like an air plant, he was taking all the nourishment he needed from the air. Everything that he needed was in his breathing. When he breathed in, he breathed in the whole Universe and when he breathed out he breathed out the Universe. He didn’t really know whether he was breathing in and out the Universe or whether it was breathing in and out Tom. It didn’t matter which way it was. He was intimately connected with everything around him.
Sitting on the number 57 bus rolling along the Crumlin Road, it now seemed to Tom as though everyone was made up from part of someone else – Ena Martin had his mother’s lips, Roísin McKeever his mother’s hair, and Angela McFadden his mother’s feet. It went on like that until he felt that his mother hadn’t died but had only been redistributed around Belfast in the smiles, the laughter, the joy, the sorrow, the sadness of everyone he met. God the artist had painted everyone from the same palate of paint. Colours were dotted onto bodies like canvases. When he found himself filled with a sense of peace, he didn’t know whether he was at peace himself or whether it was his mother who was at peace within him.
He could feel her breathing inside of him. She was there in his nose, in the sensation of air moving along his nostrils into the back of his throat as he breathed in. She was there in the warm air he breathed out through his mouth. She was there in the beating of his heart, in the touch of his chisel against the cherry wood. He no longer felt that he was one person. Neither did he feel that he was two people but rather that he was one and two people at the same time.
When Tom went to daily Mass and received Communion he used to feel that the host dissolving on his tongue symbolised everything on earth that he needed to survive. To make the bread, someone needed to sow the wheat, it needed sun and water, it needed someone to harvest, someone to grind the wheat, someone to mix the wheat with water and to add salt. It needed another fire like the sun in miniature to cook the bread. It needed someone to cut the bread, a van to transport it, a priest to be present as mediator between God and man. When the bread dissolved on his tongue he felt he was receiving the whole Universe that had created it for him.
In those days after his mother died, Tom felt when he went to Mass that his body was the host on the tongue of God. That God was receiving him and giving thanks for Tom’s being – that he was dissolving, dying on the tongue of God. His death and his mother’s life and death were this – small appearings and disappearings on the tongue of God who received them into himself. It was God who was transformed by eating them. These thoughts and feelings didn’t last very long at all – maybe at most for three days, until he had a dream.
In the dream Tom saw h
is mother eagerly scrambling over smooth red rocks, jumping like a goat from rock to rock, and climbing the mountain at great speed and with great dexterity. He slowly followed behind, looking for foot holds, grasping at the rocks with his hands to pull himself forward. He was amazed at the progress his mother was making. As he looked up, he could see that she had reached the top of the mountain. He wanted to shout at her to be careful, not to go so fast and to remember that she had a weak heart. He didn’t shout. Instead he watched her sitting peacefully at the summit on smooth red rocks. Her hands were again on her lap. She stared straight ahead, into the distance, towards the horizon. She didn’t look at Tom at all. Her expression was serene, joyful with a mysterious ineffable quality – a look beyond emotion. Tom kept watching his mother. It seemed as though she was telling him something that he couldn’t really understand. It had something to do with her serenity – something to do with going beyond emotions. There was something important about the fact that she wasn’t looking at him but was looking straight ahead. She could have turned and smiled at him. Why didn’t she? She knew he was there right below her, looking up.
• • •
Elfie remarried within two months of Tom’s mother’s death and moved into a terraced house in Ardoyne. With his new wife, the woman in Dickie’s photograph, he started a second family.
It was only then that Elfie confided to Tom that he used to hide from his own father when he came home from work. His father would search the house, looking for him. Elfie hid in the glory hole under the stairs. He listened as his father drew closer. He heard him turn the knob on the glory hole door. He saw a hairy arm reach down towards him in the darkness and seconds later, Elfie’s father dragged him screaming into the sitting room. Elfie curled up on the floor, pulling his arms in around his head, withdrawing into himself like a snail into its shell. Elfie’s father removed his leather belt with its metal buckle and thrashed Elfie making sure the metal buckle cracked repeatedly onto his spine until he was too tired to hit him anymore. Elfie’s mother sat in the rocking chair crocheting a table cloth with white linen thread. Tom wondered if it was then that his father’s heart had turned to stone. He prayed that his father would be given a new heart of flesh like the one promised in Ezekiel. He wanted his father to receive a heart that knew how to suffer, a heart that could throb with a conscience and learn how to love.
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