by John Lynch
‘Do whatever you need to,’ one of them said.
Two of them shadowed me for the rest of the night. I can remember them whispering to me, holding me upright. One of them rubbed the back of my neck as I threw up in the street on our way to another pub and said: ‘Go on, kid, get the fucker out.’
He then asked me if I’d had enough. I remember shaking my head, and putting my fists up and swaying there in the cold night air, my head pounding.
‘Okay, son. Okay.’
They told me that I drank for thirty-six hours straight that time. I stood there as night became day and then night again, the look in my eye hardening, my tongue wounding anyone who came near. Once or twice I was asked to step outside but my protectors ushered my challengers away explaining that my father had just died and that I was taking on what was left of the world.
The New Sun
After my father’s death my mother became the person she had hidden all the time that she was with him. A new energy seized her now that the storm she had faced for all those years had abated. Petey was there more often. At first my mother told him to stay away but he nibbled away at her resolve until she relented. She prayed more, and spoke of God at every opportunity. She no longer had to whisper His name. My father’s photographs were taken down and stored in the shed outside. His clothes were packed and given away or sold at a church jumble sale that took place on the outskirts of the town every second Sunday. I went with her and helped her set up the small stall and watched as people haggled over my dead father’s suits and jackets, his old shaving kit, and his books on hunting. I felt like saying something, but thought better of it. I knew that my mother was claiming back her life, wrenching it back from the dead fingers of a man who only saw the world for what it could give him. My sister refused to come, she said it was obscene to stand in full view of the town and barter off what was left of our dead father. My mother just looked at her and said, it’s time he left for good.
Some people who had known my father came and watched with displeasure as strangers rifled through his belongings. They were mainly drinking pals. A couple of them stood to one side and grunted or shook their heads every time someone asked the price of an item of clothing. My mother ignored them and told me to do the same.
Petey was a self-appointed bodyguard. He hovered by the stall and oversaw all transactions, keeping a watchful eye on any potential troublemakers.
‘This our new life…Blessed by God’s goodness,’ my mother said. ‘Now we move on under His guiding hand…’
Petey was careful around my sister and me because of what had happened in the bar in the town. The rest of the world he could face down, but he didn’t know the rest of the world as well as he knew us. My sister refused to speak to him, and she would leave the room whenever he entered it. He would look to my mother and she would nod her head as if to say give it time, Petey, give it time.
With me it was different. I felt removed from it all and took refuge in the numbness that had settled around my heart many years before. I listened to his stories and jokes and smiled and laughed when I thought it appropriate, but truth be told I never really heard anything he said. I did it for my mother, because I knew how important the new world she was building was to her.
It was difficult to believe my father had gone. His presence had been so total, so overpowering that for a long time the house still wore his energy. You could feel him in every room. I felt it most especially in my bedroom, his spirit seemed to seethe in every nook and cluttered corner. I would come home and find my mother kneeling in the centre of the living room, praying. I knew immediately what she was doing, she was asking her dead husband to go, once and for all to leave, that he was no longer wanted.
I had begun to drink. At first it brought me a rush of freedom. I liked the warm reassurance that a couple of beers in my gut brought me. I was solved, complete. Two beers though brought a roaring hunger with them and I craved more. I would cram myself with whatever I could find and my friends would laugh at my greed and my recklessness. A bloody-mindedness would rise in me and sit across my eyes.
My mother noticed the difference in me. She would stare at me as if a changeling was sitting in front of her, not the son she knew and loved. She told me that she had an idea to set up a healing school, one devoted to faith and prayer and the easing of people’s pain. I remember I laughed when she said it, and my sister slapped me on the arm, telling me not to be rude.
‘Fuck off,’ I said.
‘Don’t you dare talk like that in front of Mum,’ my sister said.
‘I’ll do what I please.’
‘Leave him. Let me talk to him,’ my mother said. ‘God is watching our every move, Gabriel. Remember that.’
‘Don’t I know it. He watches. But he does fuck all.’
‘Stop it this minute.’
‘Stop what?’
‘This blasphemy…’
‘It’s not blasphemy if you don’t believe.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘You heard.’
‘What do you mean you don’t believe?’
I remember how the colour drained from my mother’s face. My sister got up from the table, shaking her head and moved to the window, standing with her back to us. I looked down at the table and could feel my mother’s eyes on me.
‘Don’t do this to me, Gabriel…Don’t.’
I raised my head and looked at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘A lot has happened, son. Maybe you’re not thinking clearly.’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
I recall leaving the house, walking out into the damp evening air and looking at the trees that lined the fields. They looked so stark and threatening like men made ugly by life. I remember the loneliness that rose in me.
I knew that somewhere I missed him. I sensed that every man’s life needed an ogre, and that he had been mine.
The Healing School
Four months after my father’s death the healing school opened for business. My mother stood at her front door and welcomed her callers. They were mostly fellow believers from the church and prayer group she and Petey attended once or twice a month. She was so happy that she no longer had to hide her faith, and her whole being lit up as she greeted her friends.
They made their way to the living room that my mother and sister had cleared and sat on the small school chairs that Petey had found. They spoke to one another about their week and the love that they had for each other and of course for God. Then they would hold hands and concentrate, my mother telling them to feel the power of the Holy Spirit as it moved across their hearts. They would intone Hail Marys and Our Fathers, their voices rising in pitch until the whole room thrummed with sound.
I sat in a couple of times to begin with; I had no choice as my mother made it clear that it was expected of me. It was strange sitting there in the stripped room watching these people pray to something they couldn’t see. It made me want to laugh out loud in their faces and tell them how blind and stupid they were being. Most of them were there to see my mother do her act. I remember watching as she moved around the room stopping to place her hands on someone’s back or across their face, her head cocked, her forehead lined with concentration, then she would say things like, ‘There is sorrow across your heart…Give it to Jesus, He will take your burden…’
One woman began crying even before my mother touched her. She was an overweight lady with unruly brown hair. She ran the local sweetshop and had lost her husband Ned a couple of years before in a bomb blast that had ripped through a bar and butcher’s shop in the town. It was said that the ambulance crews and police had trouble distinguishing the animal meat from the human. The butcher’s shop reopened for business a few months later but closed quite quickly as no-one wanted what they had to offer anymore.
‘Hello, Geraldine.’
‘Hello, Theresa.’
‘Is your heart open, Geraldine?’
‘Yes, my heart is open…�
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My mother’s body seemed to slow as she approached her, as if she was a hunter approaching a dangerous beast.
‘I see Him, Geraldine…’
‘Do you, Theresa?’ she said through her tears.
‘Yes, He is standing beside you with a look of love on His face.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Don’t worry, darling, it’s alright…The Lord loves you…’
‘I know, Theresa…I know…’
‘The Lord says He is always with you…He is holding his arms over you…’
‘You mean it’s not Ned.’
‘No, it’s the Lord Himself.’
‘I thought it was Ned.’
‘No.’
‘Where’s Ned then?’
‘He’s with…’
‘Can you ask him where Ned is…?’
‘Please, Geraldine…It’s the Lord I’m speaking of…’
‘I don’t care. I thought it was Ned so I did.’
‘Take a deep breath…Breathe, Geraldine…Let the Lord’s love fill you…Let His radiance enchant your heart…That’s it…That’s it…’
I watched as Geraldine lowered her head as if she was falling into a deep sleep, her hands falling softly into her lap. Her hair tumbled across her forehead so that she looked like one of those nodding dogs you find in the back of cars.
‘Let Him in…He is knocking, can you hear Him?’
‘Yes, I can hear Him, Theresa…Thank you, Theresa.’
‘The Lord is telling me you’re hanging on to the past too tightly, Geraldine…That it’s time to let go…’
‘Yes. But I miss him so.’
‘Ned?’
‘Yes, my Ned…’
‘Everything happens for a reason…Every falling leaf has its purpose…’
‘No, I know. My faith is weak.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It is. It is. I want to punish those bastards who did this to us. Hurt them like they hurt me.’
‘I know…’
‘They took my life from me. They took a spear and put it through my heart.’
Her hands were now two fists and she held them in the air, shaking them at her imaginary foe. Her whole body was shuddering so much that I was afraid she might have a heart attack.
‘Please try and calm down, Geraldine,’ my mother said. ‘Give this pain to the Lord, He can take it. He is strong enough and big enough. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to see this pain as a gift…’
‘A gift?’
‘Yes, a gift and I want you to wrap it up in a nice big bow and hand it over to your loving God…’
‘Yes, Theresa…I’m sorry I don’t understand…’
‘Hand it to me…’
‘My pain…’
‘Yes…Hand it to me and I will give it to your loving God…’
I remember how my mother’s eyes locked on Geraldine’s. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, I felt trapped. Geraldine’s pain seemed to slip from her like an old skin, and a childish joy took hold of her as she gazed into my mother’s eyes. Then she slowly raised her hands as if a burden lay across them and offered them to my mother who nodded and took the bundle of grief from her, smiling as she did so. Then my mother’s lips began to move. Her arms rose above her shoulders as if they had a life of their own. Her head began to move from side to side; she reminded me of one of those wind-up toys I’d had as a child, a monkey that beat a small drum, a look of manic glee on its face.
I looked around the room at the fellow believers, one or two were crying, a young girl who was painfully thin was wringing her hands and moaning words like Jesus and Love. One man was on his knees asking God to forgive the sins of all gathered there and to wrap us in the web of his care. Petey was on his knees repeatedly making the sign of the cross and my sister was prostrate on the floor, her palms flat on the ground, her arms stretched out in front of her. The noise in the room built and built like the air raid siren they used to sound in the town when there was a bomb scare. I lowered my head and waited for the storm of praying to pass. I felt sorry for them, all this energy, all this belief hurled into the air like confetti at a wedding, what a waste of time.
Winter
I took my wife prisoner and held her back from life. I patrolled her sleeping body, watching for any signs of betrayal. I listened at her mouth for a name I didn’t recognise, or for a phrase from a secret life she was living. I was a December cloud bringing her short winter’s day to an end.
I banished everyone who came to her. I took apart every relationship she held dear. I watched with satisfaction as her sister fell away from her. I froze her out, until she was no more than a distant figure crossing the vast plain of my wife’s memory. Her mother and father were tougher; they took me on and waged a war against me. My mother-in law would look at me as if I carried every badness this world was capable of holding. I didn’t care, what she didn’t know was that I was used to the wilderness, I had spent my youth in its burnt landscape. One day she said something to me when my wife was out of earshot. She placed her long hands across her lap and tilted her head back slightly so that she was looking down at me.
‘Please stop,’ she said.
‘Stop what, Margaret?’
‘Hurting my daughter.’
I didn’t answer but looked away instead.
‘Did you hear me, Gabriel?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘This situation…The way you are…is so damaging to her.’
‘Margaret, please. Mind your own business.’
I replied without looking at her and was angry at the plea I heard in my voice as I said it.
‘My daughter is my business and so are you as long as you are with her.’
‘I don’t want your concern, Margaret, or your time.’
‘You have no choice.’
‘I think I do.’
‘You need help.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘You’re unwell. This drinking. This anger…’
‘Save your breath.’
‘There are people who can help.’
‘When I need advice from someone who hasn’t been fucked in a decade I’ll ask for it.’
I remember how her mouth dropped open and how she sat there trying to come back at me in some way. Fuck her; I thought the world was full of ‘Margarets’, with their daylight God of gossip and pearls. I knew what I was doing; I was being everything she despised. I was good at that, making people peer into the winter of my heart, and letting them know that in a fight to the death there would only be one winner, because one of us was already dead.
I knew that I wouldn’t be seeing her for a while. As she said a hurried goodbye to her daughter and left I knew that I should expect a visit from her husband at some point. He was a man who wanted to slip through the nets of this life unnoticed. He didn’t look for anything. He smiled when he should have cried; he knelt when he should have stood. I always dismissed him, but then I think a lot of people did. He was a tall man with a stoop to him as if the ceiling of this world constantly brushed the top of his back.
So a few days after Margaret fled from our house, I opened the door to find him standing there like a large bony bird that had just been blown down from the skies.
His eyes held mine for a second and then looked down at the ground. We had only just met and already he had conceded.
‘Is Cathy in, Gabriel?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
I know that he expected me to invite him in, that it was only proper, that it was the grown-up thing to do, but I was happy to disappoint him, holding the door half open as if he was a troublesome salesman who had just disturbed my day.
‘You see…I just wanted to…Margaret said you were quite rude to her.’
‘Margaret and I always clash, you know that, James.’
‘Yes, well. It’s not just that. It’s not just a question of personality.’
/> ‘Then what is it?’
‘You said something to her…that I didn’t like.’
I looked at him, at the small beads of sweat on his forehead and I felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough.
‘Well maybe I was a little too graphic.’
It wasn’t an apology and he knew it was nowhere near what he had been ordered to come and get from me, but for him it would do.
‘Right, well, I just thought that I would say it.’
‘Right.’
‘What time is Cathy coming back?’
‘I don’t know. Do you want her to call you?’
‘Maybe…No. No, don’t bother. Let’s keep this between us.’
As he walked away I did feel a pang of remorse for the way I had treated him but I had no choice. I was marked from day one, I was hostage to something that he and his wife could never begin to understand. I wanted to call after him to say that he deserved better, that he should expect and demand more from me but I knew somewhere that the fires I was lighting all around me would end up burning no-one but me.
Bring a Protestant
It is an open day at the school to coincide with the cessation of hostilities, as the official flyer for the event put it. I am in no mood for it; I called it Bring a Protestant. The idea was to get everyone at the school including myself to invite a person of the other persuasion to a fête to be held in honour of the new dawn in our little state. Farrell was particularly pleased with the idea, but that was no surprise to me, he was a Southerner, his lot had had seventy years where they sang themselves to sleep beneath peaceful skies. To him the North was just like one of his maths equations, add and/or subtract equals peace. I resented the jaunty grin he greeted me with when the news of the big day was released. We had met in the science corridor; I was on duty to make sure that pupils made their way to class without any fuss and to apprehend anyone who was shirking.