by John Lynch
‘La very.’
‘Yes, sir … Sean.’
‘You acquitted yourself well tonight … quite – quite well.’
‘Thank you, Sean … sir.’
‘I, of course, was only marvellous.’
The four of them drive the forty-odd miles back to the border; Patricia sits in the front with Murphy, who is driving, James in the back with Shannon. During the journey Shannon sings and quips, plucking the ghosts of quotations and show tunes from the air, sipping hungrily from the large glass of crème de menthe he has smuggled from the club. Once or twice Shannon nudges him playfully in the ribs and performs a soliloquy directly into his startled face. They drop him off at the edge of his estate, Shannon squeezing the back of his neck playfully before he leaves the car. ‘Keep fighting, Master La very, keep fighting.’
He waves goodbye as the car drive off to rejoin the main Dublin road, then turns towards his house. He lets himself in through the back door. He stands for a moment on its threshold, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Then he feels his way towards the living room, wincing as his leg catches the edge of the kitchen table.
He is almost in the centre of the living room when he sees Sully's silhouette sitting by the large window. He looks like a condemned man, his head drooping into his chest, his shoulders hunched. He doesn't look up or acknowledge that he has seen James. Then he says quietly, ‘She's been saying his name in her sleep again.’
James stands watching as Sully folds his arms, then turns and looks James in the face. ‘Ghosts, son, ghosts.’
James looks deep into the man's face. ‘I'm going to bed,’ he says.
‘Be my friend, son.’ Sully rises, his hands opened hopefully, his head moving in and out of night shadow as he edges forward.
‘I said I'm going to bed.’ James leaves the broken man in his capsule of grief and shadows, and slowly climbs the stairs to bed, calling in for a moment to look at the woman whose lips are parted in readiness for the ghost of a kiss.
Are You Receiving Me?
The Dream Bank
West of Pluto
In the Outer Solar System
Date: Not Applicable
Time: Even More Not Applicable
My son James,
This is a dream letter so the reception may be a little wonky. It is the only place I can seem to reach you these days. I am hurt. I have been hurt for a long time, but I‘m not referring to that. I mean I am hurt because you have spent the last while trying to kill your dreams. When a man does that he truly begins to die. Look at Sully: he has no dreams – he thinks he has, but he killed them a long time ago, long before he met your mother. So, you see, he has nothing to offer her. All he can do is feed off her.
This is the only way I can seem to reach you now, and it is a bit shaky as a method, because the thing about dreams is that we rarely remember all of them. So I hope you remember the important parts. You have closed your heart to me. You are the expert on death: what does that say to you? It is a form of death, that's what it is, a form of murder, and probably the worst kind.
The thing about dreams, and the thoughts that make them up, is that we must accept them all, every single one of them. That's what makes us who we are. Well, I say (‘we’, what I mean is you. Obviously I am different now: my dreams are more real, where I am. Damn, I hate these things, dream letters. Some bright spark angel came up with them way back. I don't know how much of this you will remember – well, I suppose anything's better than nothing.
One more thing. If you kill your dreams, when you die they all come back at once and there are so many of them, and they are so angry at having been stopped that they reappear as nightmares. I should know. My allotted reception time is going. I love you. Please keep dreaming.
Dad
21. The Reward
They are only minutes out of the harbour, the small ferryboat chugging throatily out towards the island. The boys are huddled in small gangs on its deck, buttoned against the rising wind. James's hand rides the water, knuckle deep, little cuts and spits of waves tumbling up and down his arm. Plug hangs over the side of the boat beside him, his face the colour of white leather, his elbows hunched up, his head lolling in time to the swell of the boat. They have just left Burtonport, James thinks, and already there are casualties.
There are many boys on the boat who he has never seen before, boys from all over the North. Some had joined the coach on its journey that morning from Ne wry to the western tip of Donegal. Some had come on a separate coach, the ones, according to Plug, who were from Belfast. They number twelve or thirteen and move as a pack, their fists thrust into their green and black bomber jackets. Their leader is a tall boy, his head bone-shaved, and the rest of the gang take their promptings from him, shooting him nervous looks, like fidgety housewives.
Plug begins to vomit. James turns to look at him, biting back his own nausea as he watches chunks of vomit hit the sea, sitting on it like dense rice pudding before falling away into the depths.
‘Are you all right?’ James asks.
‘Oh … eff …’
He sounds comical and pathetic. James laughs, bringing his hand up to his mouth to hide it from Plug.
‘Up yours, Lavery.’ He vomits again. There's less of it this time. After a while he rests his forehead on the rail, breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling.
‘Is everything OK?’ A young woman teacher has walked over to the boys and stands on the other side of Plug. She glances at James, then places her hand on Plug's back.
‘He was sick, Miss.’
‘Yes, I can see that. What's your name?’
‘Mine?’
‘Yes, yours.’
‘James Lavery, Miss.’
‘Maureen. My name is Maureen. You're not at school now. These are your holidays.’
‘Yes … Maureen.’
She leans down to Plug's face and brings her hand up from his leather jacket to knead the back of his head with the tips of her fingers, James can see broken lines of fading varnish on her nails mingled with small calcium specks. ‘Don't worry, we're almost there.’ She looks at James once more, a smile on her lips, her hands joined as she tries to breathe some warmth on them. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Carrickburren, just outside Newry.’
‘A border man.’
‘Aye.’
James looks round at the Belfast boys who stand at the stern of the boat, their thin mouths tugging on cigarettes. A few blow kisses his way; one, a dark-eyed boy, just stares at him. James looks away, a chill spreading through his limbs.
The small harbour of Aranmore bustles with expectancy; children swirl round the pier like wind-tugged leaves. Fishermen wait for the ferry-boat to dock, some sitting on bollards, their legs thrust out, thin roll-ups dangling from their lips. Seagulls wheel in the air, their cries ringing off the harbour concrete.
A large café sits on the rise behind the harbour. James can see the wink of slot and pinball machines as the evening light fades. They disembark, testing their legs on the studded concrete. Old guy-ropes litter the quay like frayed snakes. They are herded towards an old school-house that sits about a quarter of a mile from the café. A few of the Belfast boys try to sneak in unnoticed, only to be retrieved by the largest of the supervisors, an impressive individual called Manus McManus.
James looks back at the harbour, at the people swarming round the ferry-boat, at the provisions being hurled from arm to arm, the fishermen's shouts competing with the harsh peal of the seagulls' cries.
Plug shuffles along beside him, the colour slowly returning to his cheeks. A line of girl students walk just ahead, giggling and pointing at Plug's sour-looking face.
‘Oh, pee off, you horrible bunch.’
‘They're only messin', Plug, only having a bit of fun.’
One of the girls, not much older than James, runs back and offers Plug her hankie. He doesn't take it but glares at her. James takes it and smiles, and for a moment they
stay that way, smiling, not knowing when to look away. Then she turns and runs back to join her friends, her flouncing pigtails swallowed by a sea of bobbing heads. James shoves the hankie into Plug's hands. ‘Here, you'd better take it.’ He looks back but he can longer see her or her friends. Plug grabs the hankie and puts it to his mouth.
As they enter the school-house James thinks back to earlier that day when he had stood with his mother and Sully as, all around him, boys had said goodbye to their parents.
‘Call me, do you hear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tonight, do you hear?’
‘Yes.’
‘That's a promise that me and God have both heard. OK?’
He hates it when his mother cries in public, like she had that morning as he stood waiting to board the coach, Sully standing discreetly to one side, his face turned away from them, pointedly giving them privacy.
‘Muuuum!’
‘Listen to your mother.’ Sully had sounded as if he was in church, his voice thick with reverence, his eyes downcast as James's mother had delivered her sermon.
‘Do you hear?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
He had thanked God quietly that he was leaving when he was, and felt grateful to Teezy for finding the money for his holiday. After all, he had behaved, just as she had asked him to. He had pretended to himself and to the world that all was well, that God was in his heaven, that Sully was the model intruder, and that he hardly noticed that his world had ended. Yes, he had behaved. He had been the best he could have been because he knew a holiday lay at the end of the long road of his restraint, and with a holiday came escape.
Shortly after Sully's ghost episode, his mother had made a real effort, going dry for almost two months. James knew she was doing it only to soothe Sully, to stay in the land of the living with him and not disappear into the dark world that had so frightened him. It was in her eyes that James had noticed the greatest change. It was as if day after day a fine film of muddiness had been lifted from them. Sometimes he had stood and watched her as she sat by the window in the evenings as the light was fading, and was struck by how lonely she seemed, how small and vulnerable. She had begun drinking again two days before he was due to leave. He knew as soon as he had seen her. He had recognised it before he had smelt it. It was her eyes that had given her away.
In his first evening in the Gaelteacht he lies in bed and thinks of these things, and tries to quash the guilt he feels as he relishes his first day of freedom. At the school-house a few hours earlier they had been allocated their houses for the duration of their stay. Plug and he were to share one with four other boys from their school: Bubbles, a podgy boy who was in the year above them; Tom McAfee, a fuzzy-haired boy of their own age; Chink, an Asiatic-looking boy two years below them; and Alistair Geoghan, a small effeminate boy who was in the same year as Chink.
The next morning after breakfast the six walk the short distance along the coastline to the small school-house. Plug and James linger behind, watching the sea as it teems towards land, exploding in towers of spray. James loves the moment when the water is suspended, like a huge arced hand, before it crashes to the rocks.
Suddenly he stops and faces the horizon. He feels his face sheeted with a sudden spat of salt water. He closes his eyes and draws the sea to him, feeling it rush up like the ground on a ride at the fair. It is some moments before Plug realises he's been walking alone. Looking back he sees his friend standing on the point of the headland, his head tilted as if he were an orchestra conductor about to lead a symphony.
‘Hey! Hey, head the effin' ball.’
Although he is only feet from James he has to lean into his shout. James ignores him. He raises his arms slowly so that they are perpendicular to his sides. Plug tries again: ‘Hey, Lavery! We'll be scalped – we're late.’
‘Close your eyes.’
‘What?’
‘It's fucking brilliant! Close your eyes.’ He takes a step forward, feeling his plimsolls catch on a tuft of grass, and screws his eyes more tightly closed. He wonders how far he can go, how close he can get to the fall. He hears Plug screaming for him to stop, but he ignores him. He feels the wind tug at his armpits, as if it is saying it will lift him, that it will give him wings. He smiles. He knows he is being sent a message, from the lights that circle heaven's gates.
As he takes his final step his legs buckle, as if they are shooting through a trapdoor, and his heart catapults into his mouth. Then he feels himself lifted, by two hands, clear of the drop. He is swung high in the air and dropped in a heap on the grass. ‘What the fuck do you think you were doing, young man?’
He looks up into the eyes of Manus McManus. Then he sees how close he was to the drop.
‘I'm waiting.’ This time McManus prods his shoulder with a fist.
James looks up into the craggy face of his Irish teacher. ‘What?’
‘Don't fucking “what” me or I'll feed you to those bloody rocks. What's your name?’
‘James.’
‘James what?’
‘La very.’
‘Well, listen to me, James Lavery, and listen to me good.’
James notices Chink, Tom McAfee, Alistair Geoghan and Bubbles standing a small distance away, behind McManus, the hoods of their anoraks flapping in the wind like loosened tongues.
‘Young man, have the common decency to look at me when I'm talking to you.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘If these lads here hadn't come and told me what was going on, by now we'd have been scraping you off those rocks down there with a long-handled shovel. Do you understand?’
James nods nervously. He looks at McManus's eyes: they seem to have softened.
‘Get out of my sight, La very. And mark my words – I'll have my eye on you from now on.’
Word gets round his class. He is the boy who had tried to fly home, the seagull from South Armagh. Some of the girls make wing motions with their arms and squawk noises whenever he enters the classroom. One in particular, the young girl from the quayside the day before, comes up to him a couple of times and looks deep into his eyes. On one occasion he is standing with Plug in the garden outside the schoolhouse when she appears at his elbow. They stand quietly beside each other for some moments, before he dares himself to meet her upturned gaze.
‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Wow.’
The Wow Letter
The Gaelteacht
Arranmore
Off the West Coast
Of Ireland
Hi, Dad,
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Wow.’ Did you hear her? Did the word climb through the clouds and reach you, just like the light from a torch that is shone at the moon? We did it in physics. The light reaches the moon, even though it is so far away, or at least some part of it. I remember standing in the back garden shining Mum's torch up into the faraway face of the moon. I believed I was feeding light to you to keep your strength up. Is it the same with words? Do they all reach the ear of God at some point? Every word that has ever been spoken?
I dreamed very strange things the other night, pieces of dreams like a broadcast from a very distant planet. It was you, wasn't it, trying to reach me? I woke the next morning and it felt like someone had been singing me a soft, soft song in my sleep. I'm sorry I'm so confused. I know you shouldn't really be talking to me, and that sometimes God is angry with you. Dreams make things live, don't they?
‘Wow.’ No one has ever said that to me before. Is it a real word? I think it's in between, a dream-real word. I don't even know her name, but I suppose I have lots of time to find out. It is beautiful here, so wild and so free. Is that what heaven is like? I stood on the headland the other day and I knew you were there, far, far out in the hearts of the clouds, and in the beginning of the rain, I saw you, I saw your face. Everyone thinks I'm a bit crazy, but I don't mind.
Wow. Wow. Wow.
James
22. Her Name
Each day Manus McManus would send him for cigarette
s. He would climb the long hill leading from the school-house to the grocer's shop on the main road, shooing the packs of farm dogs that patrolled the beaches and the roads. The shopkeeper, an old man with a drooping head, would hand over the Player's Navy Cut and speak Irish to him, watching with warm amusement as he struggled to reply. Eventually after three or four visits they talked in English, and James looked forward to his time with the old man, to the warm glow he would feel when he stepped into the shop.
One day the old man asks him to stay for a cup of tea. James hesitates, until the man says, ‘There's time enough for everything, son.’
The tea is served by his wife, a small woman, who bows in and out of the parlour in little scuttles of deference.
‘What's the rule about speaking Gaelic these days?’ the old man asks.
‘Er, what do you mean?’
‘At the Scolaiste. Don't they have a three-strike rule?’
‘Oh … yeah, if you're caught three times speaking English …’
‘… you're sent home.’
‘Yeah.’
As he leaves, the old man pats his arm, saying that they will see him the same time tomorrow, God willing. He thanks them for the tea, a blush warming his cheeks, and runs back to the school, the pack of farm dogs streaming behind him.
In the afternoons their time is their own, and they are free to wander the island, to explore its headlands and hidden beaches. Once or twice a week, though, there are some compulsory activities, that involve the whole of the island's students. These range from boat trips to nearby Tory island, or ping-pong and chess championships, or Ceilidh dancing lessons, in the grounds of one of the two school-houses.
It is at the chess and ping-pong championships that the Belfast boys make their reappearance. Rumours had been circulating for days at James's school about them. It had been said that one had cornered a girl, the one with the pigtails, the girl who had said ‘Wow’ to James a few days earlier, and made lewd suggestions to her, then laughed as she ran away. It had also been said that the smallest of the gang, a weasel-faced boy named Paddy, was beaten by the rest of them every evening, and treated with the same disdain as a boxing-club punchbag. Girls in James's class had attested to the sight of Paddy's broken skin and his plum-coloured bruises.