John the Revelator

by Peter Murphy

  At last we came to a deserted horseshoe-shaped inlet. There was a cave eaten into the cliff face, its jagged overbite about head height, the jaws crammed with rock deposits shaped like fangs, coated with moss and oddly shaped barnacles. Midges and flies buzzed about the beached starfish and stringy clumps of seaweed. My mother took the blanket from me and spread it under the arch of the cave mouth where there was shelter from the sun and wind.

  ‘What is this place?’ I said.

  ‘Blowhole Cove.’

  It was eerily quiet. My mother settled herself on the blanket and unpacked the basket. She unscrewed the cap off the flask and gazed out across St George’s Channel and watched birds shriek and dive-bomb the water. Herons and gulls prospected for lugworms, picking their steps prissily across the dun sandbars of the sloblands.

  ‘Y’know,’ she said, pouring tea into the cap, ‘when I was a girl, we came to see a turlhyde whale that washed up right here in this very spot.’

  She paused to blow on her tea.

  ‘The boss—that was what we called my father—the boss was usually very strict, but he allowed we’d never see a thing like that again, so he gave us the day off. I’ll never forget it.’

  My mother hardly ever mentioned her family. I wondered why she was bringing them up now.

  ‘How did the whale end up here?’

  ‘I suppose it strayed into the shallows. Maybe it came here to die.’

  Drops of brine blew in off the grey waves, freckling my face. The reek of rotten kelp flooded my nose and throat. My mother passed me a sandwich.

  ‘The old people used to say that anywhere there’s a cave near open water is a hell door or a passageway to purgatory. Or the faerie world. They’re all over the country. The Cave of Cruachan by Lough Derg is another one. I bet you don’t know how that place got its name.’

  I didn’t answer, so she went on.

  ‘Lough Derg means “red lake”. The story goes that when Fionn Mac Cumhaill was fleeing Ulster, he took his mother with him on his shoulders, but he ran so fast that by the time he reached Lough Derg there was nothing left except for her two legs, which he threw down on the ground. When some of the Fianna came looking for him, they found his mother’s shin bones and a worm in one of them. They flung the worm in the lake, and it turned into a huge sea monster. Years later St Patrick came and killed it, and the lake ran red with its blood.’

  She closed her eyes and let the cold sun bathe her face. Streaks of grey in her hair glittered like highlights.

  ‘I tell you lads,’ she said, sounding like she’d been placed in a trance, ‘I could fall asleep here.’

  The wind picked up, and from far back in the cave’s throat came a wailing sound, long-voweled and uncanny, like a banshee’s keening.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ I said.

  ‘Whisht.’

  We listened to that mournful drone until the wind died down and the sound subsided.

  ‘That’s the blowhole,’ she said.

  And nodded, agreeing with herself.

  The old crow wings high over the dreamscape, omnipotent yet impotent, a (doting god who can hear but not respond to the bleating of the afflicted and bereft and the bad luck saps venting at their maker, howling from hilltops at the void, shouting, If you made the world Lord, how could you allow this to happen, all the time overlooking the possibility that He may not be able to do anything about it, that maybe He is just some crow who got struck by lightning and lucked out and created the universe by cosmic fluke, some jammy big bang, and maybe, just maybe, He bailed when things got out of hand, this God-like crow, this crow-like God, perpetually stuck on the other side of things, capable only of observing, whispering hints to the ears of the living but doing nothing of import, omnipotent but impotent.

  Is God dead?

  Are the dead God?

  Don’t answer that.

  You’ll wake the worms.

  IX

  The year’s wheel turned, the weather with it. Cold winds came and stripped the trees of leaves and left the branches clawing at the cruel sky like the pincers of lobsters. Blackbirds and jackdaws cawed in the fields; swollen clouds gathered over the mountains; even the sun itself seemed to cast darkness and the sky was a tarpaulin hung so low you could almost reach up and touch it.

  It was my Junior Cert year. My mother said that was a good thing—all the extra work would keep me out of trouble. It was still dark when I left for school in the mornings. All day was spent in the fluorescent indoors and by going-home time the darkness had already begun to fall again. I missed Jamey’s letters almost as much as his presence.

  Sometimes I had imaginary conversations with him, but I couldn’t replicate his tone of voice or turn of phrase, and one day I was mildly shocked to realise that I could no longer conjure a clear picture of his face.

  I spent the long autumn evenings hatching the fire in our kitchen, a draught at my back, stirring out only to get more firewood from the yard. A patchy scrub of beard grew all over my face and hair crawled down my back. It seemed as though our house had become infested with the ghosts of unspoken things. Silence hung heavy between my mother and me. She shrank into her shadow until her shadow seemed like the most substantial part of her form. She grew paler and frailer and stopped taking her meals at the dinner table and stood over the draining board drinking cups of tea and eating only the odd cut of bread and smoking one cigarette off the last. Every night she was in bed by the nine o’clock news on the wireless, then eight, then straight after dinner.

  After she’d gone up I sat abstracted, listening to the rain lashing the windows, wind moaning down the chimney. The sacred-heart lamp cast its blood-red light. Haircut Charlie was bald now; neither of us had sown the seeds of his hair in years. I acknowledged the complaints of our old house, the groaning floorboards and creaking rafters, and looked out the windows at the emaciated limbs of dead trees.

  Sometimes I’d go to the cupboard where she kept bottles of spirits for cooking, and I’d siphon some of the liquid into a glass and slowly sip. I liked the effect, the way everything seemed slightly hazy around the edges, the way the drink dulled worry and transformed the world into a place that seemed more careless and full of possibility.

  That October my mother was stricken with some sort of bug and took to the bed. I did my best to look after her, but she was the world’s worst patient, insisted on trying to get up and go to work before she’d had a chance to recover properly. I told her she’d be better off letting me take charge of things while she recuperated, but she wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t even let me call her GP.

  ‘I’m not paying sixty quid for that doddery old sawbones to tell me to stay in bed and drink plenty of fluids,’ she said.

  But when a couple of weeks had passed and still no improvement she finally let me send for Dr Orpen. I came home from school one afternoon to find his car parked outside our gate, and I waited at the kitchen table, trying to decipher the murmurs coming from the bedroom.

  ‘The man of the house,’ he said when he finally came downstairs.

  ‘What’s the news?’

  ‘To tell you the god’s honest truth, John, I’m not entirely sure. I don’t think it’s any one thing. She seems very run down. Has she been eating properly?’

  ‘She was never a big feeder.’

  ‘Well, there isn’t a pick on her. She’s certainly in no fit state to work. Do you have any relatives that could help out while she’s off her feet?’

  It was hard to take this in. My mother wasn’t the sort of person who got sick for long. Even when she went into hospital for her operation, she recovered in no time.

  ‘I can take care of her,’ I said.

  Dr Orpen pushed fingers through his steel-wool hair.

  ‘With the best will in the world, John, I don’t think you can. She’s not a young woman, and she hasn’t been looking after herself. Not for a long time, by the looks of it. You’ll need help. For the duration anyway.’

  Somethin
g buzzed in his jacket. He unclipped a pager from his inside pocket, frowned at the display.

  ‘Can I use your phone?’

  He spoke for a few minutes and then hung up.

  ‘I have to run,’ he said. ‘Dan Patterson caught his hand in a mangler.’ He grabbed his bag and coat. ‘Make sure your mother stays in bed. See if she’ll eat something. And for heaven’s sake, get her to cut down on the fags.’

  I watched him drive away and sat on the front step a moment and lit up, but the smoke gave no succour, only reminded me of my mother’s sickness, so I doused it and brushed my teeth and went upstairs to her room. She was dozing, her arms by her side like the withered boughs on the trees surrounding our house. Her skin was grey, her hair lank on the pillow. She opened her eyes when she felt my weight on the edge of the bed.

  ‘How you feeling?’ I said.

  She tried to smile.

  ‘Weak as a kitten.’

  It felt awkward, almost embarrassing, her being sick, me trying to assume the role of carer. I patted her arm.

  ‘I’ll let you rest.’

  She nodded and closed her eyes.

  I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window at the darkness creeping across the pale winter sky.

  That afternoon the back door swung open and the tranquillity of the house was shattered by a voice as loud as a trumpet.

  ‘God save all here!’

  Mrs Nagle stood on the threshold like some wild woman of the woods in her furry boots and overcoat and woolly hat. She looked stronger and more robust than I’d ever seen her, like age had bolstered rather than sapped her strength, a powerful cut of a woman who wasn’t in the mood to brook any argument from a no-good little canat like me. She placed her bags inside the door.

  ‘I’m here to do my bit,’ she said, making herself at home in the kitchen, like it had only been a matter of days since her last visit.

  ‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘She’s above in the bed trying to sleep.’

  ‘We have work to do, John.’ Her version of a whisper was almost comical. ‘We’re going to have to pull together, you and me, for your mother’s sake.’

  She began by making herself a mug of tea and drinking the lot in one lusty gulp. Then she set about organising the place, issuing orders like a sergeant major: we may clean this; we may scrub that. She made out a shopping list in capital letters on the back on an envelope—a loaf of bread and a bag of spuds and two big boxes of Roses—and sent me into the village with a twenty-quid note. When I arrived back, every window in the house was open. I deposited the shopping bags on the kitchen table.

  ‘Change,’ she said, holding out her callused talon of a hand.

  I placed the coppers on the table and went upstairs. My mother was awake, propped up by pillows.

  ‘I see Willy Wonka’s back,’ she said.

  For a moment I thought she was romancing, or feverish.

  ‘Willy Wonka?’

  ‘The chocolate factory.’

  The curtains billowed in the breeze. I closed the window.

  ‘Is that all right by you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You could use the help. And Phyllis isn’t the worst. Just be warned. She’d live in your ear.’

  My mother insisted I go to Mass every Sunday. There was no point in upsetting her so I pretended to go, but I didn’t have the gall to show my face inside the chapel in case the holy-water font sizzled or I’d be struck by a lightning bolt, so I lurked around the chapel grounds until the service was over.

  When the doors opened and the congregation spilled out, I saw Jamey’s mother among the crowd. She’d changed her appearance since last time I’d seen her, hair cut into a chic bob, walking arm in arm with Ollie. The boy was getting big; you could tell he was going to grow up into a real bruiser. He spotted me and called out my name and drove his fist into his chest. Dee frowned, followed his pointing finger. Her eyes lit up. She hurried over and squeezed my hand.

  ‘John,’ she said. ‘How’ve you been? You look different.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Older.’

  She clasped my shoulders and held me at arms’ length, inspecting my face.

  ‘It’s the beard.’

  She tugged on the chin bristles.

  ‘Suits you.’

  Embarrassed, I blurted the first thing that came into my head.

  ‘Any word from Jamey?’ I said.

  She put her finger to her lips and tipped her head at Ollie, but it was too late.

  ‘Jamey’s on holidays,’ Ollie said, and his lower lip quivered.

  ‘We got a postcard,’ Dee said breezily. ‘And a present. Didn’t we, Ollie?’

  Ollie nodded and scratched his belly.

  ‘Beanie Babies,’ he said.

  Dee swept hair out of his eyes.

  ‘Go play.’

  Ollie legged it over to the grass. I thought it best to change the subject.

  ‘So what are you doing up here? I thought you’d moved back to Ballo.’

  ‘We did. I don’t like the church down there. It’s too big and impersonal. Besides...’ She fixed me with her green eyes. ‘I’m not afraid to show my face in there.’

  Ollie was rolling around in the grass like a dog. Dee gazed at him for a moment, turned to me.

  ‘I think he’s in Spain,’ she said. ‘And I think there’s a girl involved.’

  ‘Really? What makes you say that?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I’m his mother.’

  Whatever Dee wanted to believe was fine by me. Just so long as she didn’t start asking awkward questions. I didn’t like lying to her, not even for Jamey.

  ‘I miss the little smart alec,’ she said, and her expression turned fierce. ‘You know what though? I’m glad he got away from here. I never wanted him to go to that awful boys’ home. He’s a good kid. I wanted to give him every penny we had in the bank and tell him to skip the country. But his father wouldn’t hear of it.’

  Her face wrinkled with disgust, which gave way to a sly smile.

  ‘You must think I’m awful.’

  ‘I’m sure any mother would feel the same.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’ She hugged me, and her perfume made my head swim. She gave my arm a squeeze.

  ‘You take care, John.’

  And she cupped her hands against her mouth.

  ‘Ollie!’

  The boy came running. She held out her hand, but he ignored it and tugged on my shirt. I bent down to his head level and he put his mouth to my ear.

  ‘Cuckoo,’ he said into my ear. I could smell crisps on his breath.

  ‘What?’

  He grinned and tapped his nose.

  ‘Cuckoo.’

  Having Mrs Nagle around to keep an eye on my mother freed me up a bit, but the house was no longer ours. Everywhere reeked of her rotten fruit and fly-spray stench. Her big loud voice shook the dust from the rafters. She made the kitchen into her nest, hanging girdles and tights and all kinds of old lady garments on the clothes-horse by the fire. The fridge was permanently stocked with boxes of chocolates, but I was forbidden to touch them. Her dentures floated in a glass of water placed on the kitchen sink. Dinner was served on the dot of six every evening as the Angelus struck on the wireless. It still tasted burnt.

  The only time Mrs Nagle left the house was to get Mass. At night she sat by the fire and stuffed her face with sweets and complained bitterly about there being no television in the house. She slept in the armchair under a quilt, head thrown back, nose in the air, wind whistling through her sinuses, but after a while she complained of her back and took to slipping into bed beside my mother.

  ‘You wouldn’t have an old woman sleeping in an old armchair, would you, John?’ she said. ‘Hah?’

  I was exasperated. I’d never met such a bossy woman. It took all my effort to meet her flinty eyes when she spoke, and her voice set my teeth on edge. I couldn’t bear her eating noises, the way she chewed with her mouth open, the rasping s
ound as she scrunched up sweet wrappers and put them in her pocket. Sometimes I wished she’d choke on one of her chocolates, or have a heart attack mid-snore. I fantasised about stuffing a sock in her mouth while she slept and watching her face turn blue.

  My mother had rallied a bit by the end of October. She sat up in bed and began to eat a little. Rather than being pleased, Mrs Nagle was noticeably put out. She’d gotten used to running things her own way. The better my mother felt, the more Mrs Nagle fussed around her, keeping me at bay, as if determined to prove how indispensable she’d become to the upkeep of the household. Saucepans constantly boiled on the cooker and the presses were kept stocked, all out of her own pocket, she wouldn’t accept so much as the price of a box of teabags. And she had the legs run off me doing messages.

  When the weather suddenly turned stormy, blustery winds that rattled the windows and whistled through the eaves, it was with great reluctance that she left to check everything was battened down in her cottage. After she’d gone I sat by my mother’s bed, homework spread across my lap, but I’d barely gotten started when the power went out. My mother instructed me to get out the old paraffin-oil lamp from the cupboard under the stairs and showed me how to put a match to the wick without blowing us all up. I screwed the glass chimney in place and set it on the bedside locker and twiddled the knobs until the flame grew tall, creating a magic shadow show on the bedroom wall.

  My mother stared at those shadows, and the ghost of a smile played across her face.

  ‘I never told you about the time I saw a giant,’ she said quietly.

  I put my homework aside. I’d missed her stories.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You were still only a scut.’ Her voice was faint, but her eyes bright. ‘It was a getting dark one evening, I was coming home from work and I saw a shape coming up the road towards me. It was about ten or twelve feet tall, like one of the Tuatha De Danaan. The closer it came, the more anxious I got. My boots were stuck to the road; I was like a scared little rabbit. Then I saw what it was, and I felt like such a gom.’