Some parents seemed to spend even more money on the boys ‘clothes than on the girls’. Ann saw one little freckled fellow with a mop of red curls in a russet-brown suit that must have cost the earth, with a green tie and tan leather shoes. But, in fairness, she thought it suited him down to the ground. She wasn’t so sure about the fair-haired boy in the cream suit and matching dicky bow. It was too pretty. They were making a bit of a cissy out of the child. And of course, there were always the stupid parents who let them wear long pants. Francis had mentioned it once, saying that some pal in his class was getting a suit with long pants, but Ann had cut him off in no uncertain terms and he hadn’t mentioned it again. One by one the children sat into the front pews that had been reserved for them, girls on the left, boys on the right. The hymn ended, everyone sat down and Fr Mullaly began. Ann was disappointed that Fr Tierney, the lovely curate who ran the parish bingo on Sunday nights, wasn’t doing the Mass. She had never warmed to Mullaly and he drove her mad, always going on and on about money for the church renovation, although now that it was done, she had to admit it was very bright and airy and this new Mass in English was a bit more cheerful than the old Latin one. Of course, that only might be because she always went to Fr Tierney’s mass. His sermons were very kind and he was always saying nice things about mothers. His own mother was probably very proud of him.
Finally the big moment arrived. Fr Mullaly spoke the words that changed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.
Transubstantiation. Francis thought of the word as the bell tinkled. Then they all said the Communion prayer good and loud just as Sister Goretti had told them. They got a signal from Fr Mullaly to stand up calmly and walk forward reverently to receive Jesus for the first time. The organ began and everyone sang:
‘Soul of my Saviour sanctify my breast
Body of Christ be thou my saving guest
Blood of my Saviour, bathe me in thy tide
Wash me in water streaming from your side.’
Fr Tierney was also giving out Communion, but Francis hoped Fr Mullaly would come to him because, on the day he had answered all those Catechism questions and said the Ten Commandments and the I Confess and the Our Father and the Apostles’ Creed, Francis had noticed a look on the priest’s face that made him feel very special. He wanted to see that look again when Fr Mullaly placed the Body of Christ on his lips. At the end of their conversation that day he had asked Francis if he understood what a vocation was. Francis said yes and then Fr Mullaly told him he should pray very hard and ask God if he had one.
‘Deep in thy wounds Lord, hide and shelter me
So shall I never ever part from thee.’
Fr Mullaly arrived to him and raised the Blessed Host. Francis opened his mouth, put out his tongue, lifted his head and looked past the Host to the priest, but his eyes weren’t on Francis as he said Corpus Christi. They were somewhere else. Father Mullaly was thinking of something else entirely and moved straight on to the next boy as Francis felt the dry host stick on his tongue. He closed his mouth, thinking of Sister Goretti’s repeated warnings not, on any account, to allow his teeth to touch Christ’s body. As he walked back to his pew he carefully chewed the host between his tongue and the top of his mouth until he could swallow it. Jesus was inside him.
Francis knelt down and closed his eyes. What would happen now? Did having Jesus inside him mean that he wouldn’t sin any more? He’d like that, because he wanted to be good, but also because he’d got a big shock the evening before when he discovered that he didn’t like confession. He wasn’t sure why. He knew from his Catechism it was a way of cleansing himself of his sins and becoming all pure again. That sounded nice and he’d been looking forward to his first Confession but last night he found out that he didn’t like kneeling in this dark box, and he didn’t like the way the Fr Mullaly sat, a black shadow on the other side of the grille, listening. He only got three Hail Marys for his penance, but after saying them he didn’t feel any different. It wasn’t like having a hot bath when, even though his mam had to chase him sometimes to get into it, he loved the feeling afterwards of being all dry and clean, sitting in front of the fire wrapped in a big towel. Confession wasn’t like that at all. There was something about it – Francis wished he knew the exact word to describe his feeling – something like ‘nasty’. Even the church had looked strange and red with the late-evening sunlight creeping in the new windows. Before making his first confession, Francis had knelt in a corner and made a thorough examination of his conscience. He went through each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Wrath. Sister Goretti told them that meant anger, but Francis preferred Wrath. It sounded like something bursting out that was so strong it could knock down a big skyscraper. He had never felt wrath, but he admitted to himself that he got angry all right: with Tommy Duggan when he wouldn’t pass the ball; when his sister Marian corrected him about his table manners or bossed him around, telling him to wash his hands; with his mam and dad and he answered them back. He got angry most of all with Martin and, even though often it was Martin’s fault for being a bully, he knew that sometimes, because of his anger, Francis was mean and sly and used words in a certain way to get Martin into trouble with Mam. He would confess all that. Sloth was laziness. Francis didn’t really think he was lazy, but he knew that sometimes he didn’t tidy things and his mam had to do it so that was probably a sin all right. Avarice, Sister Goretti said, was greed. Straight away his conscience put a picture in his mind of the morning he collected the bottle of milk from the doorstep and, instead of shaking it to mix up the cream with the rest, he sneaked into the scullery and poured the cream from the top into his Corn Flakes before anyone else came downstairs. That was stealing from the rest of the family, which was very bad. And, he had to admit, it wasn’t just once. He had done it a few times. Sometimes he even got up earlier than everyone else deliberately to do it. Francis wondered did that make it a mortaler? The Catechism said a mortal sin was committed ‘with full knowledge and full consent’. He felt very guilty about it.
Envy was a deadly sin that really confused him. He definitely felt it sometimes towards boys in class who got pocket money and were able to buy their own sweets and chocolate and lemonade. But he never did anything bad because of Envy. So was it a sin to have the feeling? He’d confess it anyway, just in case. After all, he had nearly seven years of his life to confess, so there had to be a lot of sins. Gluttony. The cream on the Corn Flakes was definitely gluttony. So was the day he got sick in his dad’s lorry. It was very soon after last Christmas. His mam was in bed with a headache so his dad took him out delivering coal. Everywhere they stopped people were really nice and gave him lemonade and biscuits. One man gave him a slab of Cleeve’s toffee and a nice old woman gave him a bag of Colleen assortment. As they drove around the countryside, every time his dad wasn’t looking, Francis ate another sweet. Next thing they were all gone. Suddenly there seemed to be loads of potholes in the roads and the lorry was bumping up and down a lot more. His dad looked at Francis’ face just before it happened and he stopped the lorry really fast and reached over to open the door. Francis barely got his head out as he vomited everything he’d eaten that day. Thinking about it now, the word gluttony was just like the way some of the dark liquoricy vomit had gone glob! against the door of the lorry and then started slowly going down. Glug… glug. His dad didn’t give out to him really, but he did shake his head when he saw the empty bag of Colleen and said, ‘Your eyes are bigger than your belly,’ and that was true. He would have to confess that, too. Sister Goretti told the class they didn’t need to worry about the next deadly sin at all: Lust. She was sure none of them had committed that sin. They didn’t even need to know what it was.
So he made his Confession and told plenty of sins, but now, kneeling with his eyes closed after his first Holy Communion, with Jesus inside him, Francis had to admit to himself that he had not confessed his biggest sin of all: Pride. He knew this was his biggest sin because it was the thing he was told
all time: ‘You’re so full of yourself.’ ‘Mr Know-it-all.’ ‘A big show-off, that’s all you are.’ ‘Why do you have to be such a notice box?’ ‘What makes you think you’re different to everyone else?’ Of course, not everyone said things like that. His sister Marian didn’t, nor his godmother and definitely not Sister Goretti, who praised him for knowing things. But still, it seemed to Francis he heard it all the time from loads of people. He tried to work it out. It wasn’t a sin to be clever, he was sure of that. So was it a sin to show you were clever? Did God make some people clever as a test, to see if they would commit the sin of Pride when, really, he wanted them to say nothing and pretend not to be different? Francis knew in his heart that sometimes he liked being the centre of attention, and showing off, and trying to be funny but really just being cheeky, and it would be better if he didn’t do that. He understood why sometimes people just got sick of listening to him and wanted him to shut up, but did that mean it was a sin of Pride to say the things that were in his head? Francis would have liked to ask these questions in Confession, but when the curtain whooshed back and he saw the black shape of Fr Mullaly’s head bent down and heard him say, ‘Tell me your sins, child,’ he knew from his voice that the priest didn’t want to hear any questions. So he did not speak about Pride. Did that mean he made a bad confession?
Today was much happier. He liked the feeling of kneeling here asking Jesus to help him think things out, listening to the echoey sounds of people shuffling along the aisle receiving Communion and the choir singing ‘Sweet Sacrament Divine’. Even the coughs were gentle. There were no babies wahhhling because they were all up in the new crying gallery. Francis knew that today it would be easy for Jesus to keep him free from sin because there were so many nice things happening. After Mass, Gussie would be waiting outside with his brand new 8mm ciné camera he’d brought home only two days ago. He was going to make a film of Francis on his big day. Then, as a special treat, Mam and Dad were taking him to a restaurant for the first time in his life: the Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant in William Street. Then his mam would bring him to visit everyone; his godmother Mary and godfather Mikey, all his aunts, Mona and Una and Bernadette and Marg. They would go to his granny and neighbours and other friends of the family. Everyone would be saying what a good boy he was and how nice he looked and they’d give him money. In class all week the boys were talking about how much they might get. Padraig Leddin said he was told that anyone who gave less than half a crown was really mean. David McCarthy said his brother collected twelve pounds and five shillings last year but no one believed that. Francis thought if he got even four pounds he’d be very very lucky.
The hymn ended and Father Mullaly’s voice broke the spell. Francis opened his eyes and sat down. ‘Mass is ended. Go forth in peace.’ ‘Thanks be to God.’ Everyone stood up for the final hymn. ‘Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above’. He looked around and could just see his mam and dad’s heads much further back. His dad was smiling and his mam had a huge smile and gave him a little wave with her fingers. Francis made a funny face as he waved back.
Sixteen: June 17th
‘People are waving, a h-Uachtarán.’
The President immediately lifted his hand and, with a tiny motion of his head, acknowledged the greetings.
‘We are just passing the new church of Saints Peter and Paul. It looks very impressive. There’s quite a crowd gathered outside.’
Éamon felt the Presidential Rolls swing right, so he knew they were now driving up Portlaoise Main Street. The car eased to a dignified processional pace as Colonel Seán continued to speak softly.
‘There are people gathered on both sides but most of them are on your left, sir.’
Éamon faced the left passenger window and waved at the moving blur. It was no longer possible for him to distinguish even the shapes of people at this remove, but he believed they were there. They still came out on the street to salute the President. He even heard a few ‘up Dev’ cries. Portlaoise in the constituency of Laois-Offaly. It had voted well for him this time.
The car began to speed up again. The blur changed form. Éamon felt Colonel Seán’s gentle staying hand on his shoulder.
‘We’re on Grattan Street, leaving the town now, a h-Uachtarán.’
Moving ever closer to his heartland. The county of his childhood and the beloved county he had represented for so many years, the counties that had stood by him once again when Dublin and so many other places had not. Two weeks since the election result and he could not dislodge the great boulder of shame that pressed down on him. To win, as he had, by less than one per cent, was no victory. To be returned to office in this humiliating way was to be handed a seven-year prison sentence.
At his own request, a whisper every few minutes informed him of some landmark along the route. This gentle aide-memoire, along with the relaxing motion of the Rolls, helped him to live the twists and turns of the journey. His labyrinthine knowledge of the Irish hinterland and his still precise memory allowed him to see everything. Approaching Mountrath he knew a sharp left turn would be followed by a straight run to the fine square where, in 1932, he had addressed a crowd of several thousand. When the car veered right again, he saw the little bridge that brought them to the outskirts of the town. A whisper of ‘Borris-on-Ossory’ and straight away he saw himself, forty-five years ago, slipping out the back of the Leix County Hotel in the middle of the night to evade capture.
Having left the flat plains of Laois, he knew that, ahead of them, the proud Silvermines Mountains were rising up behind the lush grasslands of the Golden Vale, dotted with milch cows. As he waved at the crowd that Colonel Seán assured him had gathered along MacDonagh Street in Nenagh, another town of pleasant memory in the constituency of Tipperary North, Éamon requested that they abandon the main road and continue instead along the narrow lakeside drive that wound its way down to sweet Killaloe, allowing him to enjoy again the calm beauty of Lough Derg. Though he never said this, not even to Sinéad, he suspected that the journey of his inner eye was a far lovelier thing than the Ireland he would encounter now if the blessing of sight was still on him. How many more cars and trucks cluttered the road? His ears told him of that change; he would hate to have to put his eyes on it. And building everywhere? He had heard so much about this great boom and the benefits it brought, but it had not been given to him to see any of its achievements. As far as Éamon was concerned, he was well spared the vulgarity of factory buildings and garish hotels where once there had been only the pleasing slow motion of grazing cattle or the natural beauty of hedgerow with fields of beet or cabbages beyond.
Why had he agreed to run again? So many times he had asked himself, even before the election. Sinéad had been as forceful as she had ever been in counselling against it. His own body told him no. He resented An Taoiseach for putting pressure on him. ‘Isn’t it time for someone younger?’ he had said to Seán, and then something he never expected to admit aloud: ‘I am eighty-four and there is a great tiredness on me.’
What Éamon wanted now was either to take a pleasant nap or enjoy, somewhere to his right, his mind’s eye view of Lough Derg, glorious in the June sunshine. But he could do neither, tormented as he was by the nagging anger. ‘You won’t even have to campaign, Chief.’ Seán had said to him, again and again. ‘It’s the Golden Jubilee and you’re the only 1916 leader still living. They’ll be glad of the chance to vote for you, this year of all years.’ Which, of course, turned out not to be the case. Half of them tried to vote him off the stage. He realised now that, far from being venerated as the living embodiment of the great Rising, a new generation blamed him for, as they saw it, evading the firing squad. In the end it did not matter how many graves he visited or wreaths he laid or monuments he unveiled or commemorative Masses he attended, there were those who could not forgive him for having survived when so many sanctified heroes had given their lives.
‘We’re just turning in to Scoil Íosagáin now, a h-Úachtarán. As you know, it’s an entirely
new primary-school building and the Christian Brothers are immensely proud of the modernity of the design. The architect chose this raised modular structure as a solution to the problem of building on a long but very narrow site. The theme of his design is building blocks, as in the first steps of education…’
Éamon had already commited these notes to memory but he appreciated Colonel Seán’s whispered reminders. Some day soon he really would need them. He resolved to shake off this melancholy mood. It had not been such a bad day so far. The journey had been pleasurable and the opening of a new school was truly a cause for celebration. There was nothing more important than the education of the nation’s children.
‘… Oh, and the Minister for Education will also be attending.’
Ah yes. Dom. He had finally achieved high office. Éamon was a little surprised that he had stayed the course, remembering how impatiently ambitious he had been when first elected. Arrogant, privileged; a Jesuit boy, of course, and written all over him, too. But he could always make Éamon laugh. It was his saving grace.
The air outside was warm and the light very bright. Was the new school building before or behind him? To his right or left? He would never see it and the modernity of the design meant he was unable to create a reliable image of it in his head. A dark shape appeared before him and was introduced as Brother Scully, the Superior. Because he greeted the President in Irish, Éamon was enthusiastic in his reply, congratulating the Brother warmly not only on this latest achievement but on the great work of the Christian Brothers for so many years. He expressed the hope that, in this fine new school, young boys would learn to be proud citizens of Ireland and bring honour to their native city. Brother Scully thanked the President for his sentiments and said it was indeed a privilege for the Order and the pupils and the city to have the nation’s greatest living hero present today. Then, one after another, a dozen or more black shapes stepped forward and were introduced by name. Éamon knew there was no point in trying to remember any of them. He could not see these Brothers and was unlikely to speak to them again. Finally Colonel Seán’s discreet hand guided him towards another looming shape:
Unspoken Page 24