Getting it in the Head

by Mike McCormack

  During the days of testimony I saw James leaning forward in his seat, chewing on his bottom lip which had blossomed out in cold sores under the stress. His eyes bored at me from the other end of the courtroom as I confined myself to the facts.

  U is for Unravel

  The thin bonds of our family unit sundered completely after the death of my mother. On some unspoken agreement my father and I commenced separate lives within the narrow scope of our house and small farm. I rose each day at mid-morning when I was sure he was about his business in the fields. I ate alone in the kitchen, staring in mild surprise at the creeping ruin which had taken possession of the house. Now that we seldom bothered to light any fires, paint had begun to peel from several damp patches on the walls. A light fur like a shroud clung to the effigies and icons all about and the windows scaled over.

  Yet neither of us would lift a hand to do anything. We were now caught in a game of nerves, each staring the other down, waiting for him to crack. But neither of us did: we were too far gone in stubbornness and pride. The dishes piled up in the sink and cartons and bottles collected everywhere. The house now reeked of decay.

  I came down from my room one evening and he was at the table, drinking a bottle by the neck. I stopped dead inside the door and continued to stare at him. We spoke at the same time.

  ‘This place has gone to hell.’

  And still neither of us made a move.

  V is for Visit

  Now that I have all my records and the last of my books I have begun to sense a distance opening up between myself and James. It gets worse with every visit, a widening fissure into which our words tumble without reaching each other. Most of the last few visits have been spent sitting in silence, staring at the blank table-top. We have made sudden despairing raids on old memories, seeking frenziedly among old battles and fantasies for warm, common ground. But it is hopeless, it is as if we were re-telling the plot of some book only one of us has read, and not a very good book at that. I am surprised at the different ways we have come to remember things. I tell him of one of his heroic interventions on my behalf and he grimaces and speaks dismissively of a rush of blood to the head. He tells me a bitter incident of crushed youth and violent temper and I wonder who he is talking about. We are different men now and we hold different memories.

  This week he had a real surprise. He sat across from me with his eyes lowered on his hands, the curious air of a lover about to confess some long and ongoing infidelity.

  ‘This is the last time I’ll be here, Gerard,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m going away. America.’ He had developed a twitch along his jawbone since his last visit and I noticed that his nails bled.

  ‘When did you decide?’

  ‘A few months back, seeing you in here and all that. Everything’s changed, it’s all different now. I’ve got the medical and a job set up in New York. It’s all set up,’ he repeated. He continued to stare at his hands.

  I was obscurely glad that it was going to end like this. James’ days as my protector were at an end and my incarceration was his loss also. I knew our friendship had exhausted itself – consummated might be a better word – and I knew that I was looking at a young man whose mission in life had been completed.

  ‘I hope it goes well for you over there. Make big money and meet lots of women. American women go mad for paddies, I’m told. It’s the dirt under the fingernails. Tell them you live in a thatched cottage, I hear it never fails.’

  He smiled quietly. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. Probably work for a while and save a bit of money. I’d like to go to college.’

  ‘That’s good. It’s good to have a plan if only to have something to diverge from.’ I rose from my chair and held out my hand. ‘Best of luck, James, I hope it goes well for you.’

  ‘So do I. And thanks, Gerard. You were the only real friend I ever had.’

  ‘It goes both ways.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  I watched him leave and I tried to remember a time when I had ever seen him walking away before. I couldn’t.

  W is for Wisdom

  My father made it clear to me that life wasn’t easy. It was his favourite theme, particularly in those drink-sodden days after my mother died. He would fall upon me roaring, snatching the headphones from my ears.

  ‘I suppose you think that it will be easy from now on, ya useless cunt,’ he’d roar. ‘I suppose you think that it’s all there now under your feet and all you have to do is bend down and pick it up. Well, let me tell you here and now that it won’t be like that, it won’t be like that at all, at all. No son of mine is going to be molly-coddled and pampered and I’ll tell you why. Because you’ll work for it, like I did when I was your age and every other man of my generation. Because, and make no mistake about it, you young cur, it’s work and nothing else that makes a man of you, a real man, not like those fucking long-haired gits I see you hanging around town with.’

  He was well into his stride now, pacing the floor and breathing heavily.

  ‘Started work after national school we did, every man jack of us, footing turf at two shillings a floor, nearly a hundred square yards. And damn the bit of harm it did us. It made men out of us, real men who knew the value of money. Now all this country has is young fuckers like you spending all day on your frigging arses, cunts who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, eating and drinking the quarter session with no thought of tomorrow. I’m sick of the fucking sight of you.’

  He would grab a hank of my hair then and lift my face up, his whiskey breath burning my skin.

  ‘But if your mother was alive there’d be a different tune out of you, I’ll bet. She’d have put skates under you and not have you sitting here all day like a frigging imbecile.’

  This was the inevitable point of breakdown, the moment at which all his vehemence would drain away, rendering him mawkish and pathetic. He would collapse by the stove, weeping and snuffling into his hands.

  ‘Oh Mary, Mary my love.’

  I did not know which was the most terrifying, the honest and direct terror from which there was no escape or this genuine grief which was his alone.

  X is for Xenophobe

  We watched the interview on television the following evening. A study in western gothic, it showed the three of us standing in the doorway, my mother staring into her hands, plainly abashed by the attention, my father square-jawed and sullen, glowering darkly at the camera. At their backs I rose up between them, a halfwit’s leer covering my face. The bright young interviewer, all smiles and bonhomie, waved a microphone in my father’s face.

  ‘Mr Quirke, you are the latest Lotto millionaire, the biggest in its history, it must have come as a complete shock to you.’

  Father avoided the bait skilfully.

  ‘No,’ he said drily, barely hiding his contempt. ‘When you have lived as long as I have it takes more than a few pounds to surprise you.’

  ‘How did you find out that you’d won?’

  ‘I just checked my numbers on the nine o’clock news and when I found out that I’d won I went and had a few pints in my local like I always do.’

  ‘You didn’t throw a party or buy a drink for the pub?’

  ‘I bought my round as I always do, I’ve always had money to buy my own drink, anyone will tell you that.’

  ‘Now that you have all this money, surely it will bring some changes to your lives, a new car or a holiday perhaps?’

  ‘The car we have is perfectly good,’ he answered bluntly. ‘It gets us from A to B and back again. If we wanted to live somewhere else we wouldn’t be living here. There’ll be no changes.’

  The interviewer hurriedly thrust the microphone to my face.

  ‘Gerard, you are the only child of this new millionaire, no doubt you have high hopes of getting your hands on a sizeable share of it,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘My father has a sound head on his shoulders, he’ll not do anything foolish with it,’ I
said simply, barely able to keep from laughing.

  The interview ended in freeze-frame, catching my father with his jaw struck forward in absurd defiance and the halfwit’s leer spread back to my ears. In the news coverage of my trial it was this image which defined the tone of all articles. The national press barely managed to suppress a tone of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God righteousness. Their articles were snide exercises in anguished hand-wringing and between-the-lines sneering at their dim, western cousins. Some day soon I expect to read accounts of sheep shagging and incest purely for tone.

  Y is for Yes

  Yes, I have my remorse. All that night I sat over my father’s corpse and watched the blood drain from his skull over the floor. I was experiencing a lesson in how death diminishes and destroys not just life, but memories also. All that night I had trouble with my recollection. I could not square this overweight, middle-aged corpse with the towering ogre who had terrorized and destroyed my teenage years. That was a creature from a different era, a prehistory of myth and violent legend. It had nothing to do with this small, west-of-Ireland farmer, this lord of forty acres with his fondness for whiskey and cowboy songs.

  There was a clear and horrible disparity in that room, a terrible and universal lack of proportion.

  Z is for Zenith

  On the first morning of my detention a small deputation of prisoners greeted me in the exercise yard. I was amazed to see that they bore several gifts for me – a ten spot of hash, a quart of whiskey and a list of warders who could be bought off for privileges. I stood bemusedly trying to conceal these gifts in my baggy overalls, watching the bearers retreat diffidently across the yard. Evidently my reputation had preceded me, elevating me on arrival into that elite category of prisoner who were not to be fucked with. I had a secret laugh about that. This of course is on account of the axe. There is no doubt but that the nature of my crime has made it a transgression of a different order, even in here, where there are men doing time for crimes that are barely speakable. Knives or guns are understandable – they are the instruments of run-of the-mill savageries. But an axe is something else again. It is the stuff of myth, the instrument of the truly sick of soul.

  From the beginning I have received fan mail, curious and vaguely imploring missives from faceless well-wishers. Dear Gerard Quirke, Not a day passes when I do not think of you alone in the isolation of your cell. You are in my thoughts every day and I pray for the deliverance of your wounded soul. Today I received my first proposal of marriage.

  I have begun to think again of my future and I have made some tentative plans. Yesterday I signed for an Open University degree in English Literature and History; it will take me four years. Now my days are full, neatly ordered within the precise routine of the penal system, meals and exercise alternating between longer periods of study and my record collection. At night I lie in this bed, plugged into my stereo and smoking the good quality dope that is so plentiful here. The lights go down and peace and quiet reigns all about. I spend the hours before sleep remembering back to the final day of my trial and I acknowledge now without irony the wisdom of that judge when he handed me this life sentence.

  I have just returned from burying my son, I think. I say that not out of certainty but defiance. What is beyond doubt is that I have returned from burying someone and he was very small and a blood relation. To me and my wife he was our only child, our son Francis, nine and a half years old. But that is a minority opinion. To the greater world there seems no doubt but that he was my father, also named Francis, an aged hero of the War of Independence. The old men who came up to me on sticks as I stood by the graveside were in no doubt as to the identity of the corpse. Grabbing me by the arm with their claw-like hands they spoke fervently:

  ‘I’m sorry about your father, John. He was the last of a breed of heroes. It’s a shame the way time passes.’ Or a variation: ‘I remember him well, John. We all looked up at him. He was an inspiration.’

  I stood there on the graveside as the rain fell steadily, darkening the soil which the grave diggers were heaping on the coffin. I continued to receive this doddery procession of old men who made their way cautiously over the slippery ground. They shook my hand and offered their sympathies and I shook theirs and nodded in acceptance. But in truth I had not a clue what was happening about me. Here was the world, present on the twenty-eighth of March 1991, at the funeral of my father while me and my wife could have sworn that three years previous to the day we had buried him and now we were here at the graveside of our only son Francis.

  My wife, surrounded by the emotional scaffolding of her brothers and sisters, is in the next room grieving. She does not have a clue either, we seem to be all alone in this horror. And it is precisely because of this aloneness that some sense has to be made of the whole thing, some sense no matter how small. It is this lack of sense which has me here writing.

  Let me be clear. When I have finished writing I do not expect to have achieved some all-explaining insight into the unique horror which has held sway in our home for the last six months. That onus of explanation seems to me an almost intolerable burden to place upon any writer. Even before I start, I know I will never be able to write an explanation and even if by some miracle I were to achieve one I do not think that any written one would satisfy my heart. A written explanation, lying on a page, bloodless and incapable of making itself felt in my heart – the only place where an explanation has any validity – is no explanation. Therefore my task in this writing is more modest. All I hope to do is lay down the facts so that in these at least there will be some clarity. From the whole debris of this horror salvaging the facts is the least I can do for my wife and myself.

  I will start with my father. The relevant thing about my father is that he was a hero of the War of Independence and probably of the Civil War also although he rarely spoke of this second adventure. In one of the few Risings outside Dublin in 1916 my father, as a very young man, commanded a small company of volunteers based in the Mweelera mountains above Killary harbour. From this redoubt they attacked and occupied the police barracks on Westport. In an incident which has gone largely unchronicled my father then stood in the smashed bay window of the station and read out a self-penned version of the Proclamation of Independence to the bewildered township who had gathered in its square. The occupation of the barracks lasted till the weekend when military intelligence informed them that a Royal Irish Infantry detachment with artillery back-up was being deployed from Galway military barracks to lift the occupation. By this time word had come through of the almost total failure of the Rising outside Dublin. There was nothing for it but to withdraw. In the dead of night the volunteers stole westward along the Louisburgh road towards Killary harbour and refuge. Rounding a corner somewhere between Westport and Louisburgh they ran through a British Army checkpoint but not before Father, a front-seat passenger in the truck, stopped a .303 bullet with his chest. Somewhere in the Mweelera mountains a makeshift medical post was panicked by a wound classed somewhere between serious and critical. When the torrent of blood welling from his chest had been stanched it was quickly realized that there was not one among the volunteers with the skill needed to remove the bullet. It was decided to cleanse the wound as best they could, bind it and hope for the best. In nervous agitation, an effort to kindle some hope in those about him, a young volunteer recalled how he had heard stories of soldiers who’d carried bullets and shrapnel in their bodies for the whole of their lives with only minimal discomfort.

  It was as if the telling of this story acted as a template for subsequent events because this was exactly what happened. After lying in a fever for ten days, during which time he was to rise in his bed several times, screaming and flailing his arms in the air, physically fending off death, the fever broke and my father lay on his back with steel-blue eyes gazing into the sky above Mweelera. His first words were, ‘So where am I?’ He carried that bullet in him the remaining seventy years of his life until on the two occasions of his death
when my wife found him in the room lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, his eyes calmed like blue metal.

  Up to the sudden change which took place in him six months before his death, nothing distinguished my son Francis. When he was born over nine years ago it seemed the right and symmetrical thing to do to name him after his grandfather. Now I ask myself was it here, in his naming, that the damage was done? As I have said, the child was ordinariness itself. Small, with his mother’s blond hair, he had the energy and cheer of any child his age. He was admired by visitors as a dote and spoke easily with them, never cheekily and even if so only to the extent which could be passed off as childish spiritedness. He was bright but not exceptional and his interests were similar to those of any child his own age and to the same degree: his bike, football, sweets and mischief. Up to those last six months he was a child like any other and we loved him as only a single child can be loved. I say that so no one can accuse us of having given our child reason to reject us. As you shall see – and remember I am putting down the facts – his change never consisted in a rejection of us. Never once did he accuse or express dissatisfaction. In fact, in a more world-weary way, he seemed as happy with us as he had ever been.

  Lastly, before I speak of the change, I must talk of his relationship with his grandfather. It was quite simple. To Francis, Grandfather was a hero of some distant and, in his young mind, awesome conflict. He saw him as a solitary giant, a war hero who partook in great adventures, a treasure trove of great stories. Night after night he would sit at his feet and worry him with incessant questions till bedtime. In this he was the envy of his school friends. It also pleased my father. ‘He’s a good listener,’ he would say fondly. I ask myself again, was it here in the avidness with which he was listened to that my father found renewal? I do not know but as we shall see he did find a renewal of sorts.