On Blueberry Hill

by Sebastian Barry

  PJ

  But, we went out to the island, Peadar and I. I have either two memories of it, or else as it happened two separate things happened simultaneously, which I know is not possible. I know what I said at the time, and I know why I said it, but that’s not really the point now. If I could go back to the second before it happened, and choose another outcome, or even be sure of what exactly took place, I would, gladly.

  So I will try to say what took place, and perhaps by the very saying, see it again, and know for sure what happened.

  We took the little ferry, marvelling at the beauty of the sea between Rossaveal and Kilronan, the way the sea itself seemed to dive down beneath itself, resurfacing, resurfacing, as if the entire body of the water were a stupendous grey whale – took ourselves off at the little jetty, walked across the strand below the tattered village, heading for the other side of the bay, where our map showed a rough path that would take us to the cliffs at the back of the island. There might be remnants of antiquities there, not the famous Dun Aengus, but some lesser spot. Rarely seen and rarely visited, our guidebook said, which spurred Peadar’s curiosity. I was delighted to follow him.

  I say this and immediately wonder if it was so. Was I not also vaguely angry with him, wanting to take the more usual road to the tremendous cliffs at Dun Aengus, maybe hire a pony and trap, relishing the clop-clop of the hooves on the stony road? Was I not even a little impatient with him, his lengthening stride along the sand, his blissful youthfulness, a quality which though I was patently young myself I had never really possessed. Was there not also a deeper anger, born out of a hatred of myself, what I was, what he was? Could it even be said I despised him, though I was half of the equation now that made him up – myself almost ludicrous in my own eyes, a tubby man in clerical garb traipsing after a willowy figure in his own dark clothes, me sweating in my solemn coat, my body not trim and hard like his, but soft, flabby, slow. Or was I as I say delighted, maybe even transfigured by the day, the beautiful, chaotic, tumbling mix of wind and sunlight blowing us along our way, clouds intervening briefly, then light again, the sand darkening and lightening, the sea also, and also the side-view of his face, clean-shaven, his skin permanently darkened by previous sunlight, as if he had harvested the meagre rations of it all summer long, and stored it in his skin? Did I not grievously love him, or did I resent that love, as being sinful, indeed prohibited by the state, liable to all sorts of punishments, public opprobrium, deepest shame, prison sentences? Was the union of the wind and sun really able in those moments to calm my self-tormenting brain, and release me into simple love, simple desire? We had been going about for six months, creatures in love, of course we were, except, where was that love ultimately to exist, where was the damn chapel, the priest, to wed us, what were the words that would be said, what was the strange congregation that would come to celebrate us, well no one and nowhere, nothing, not ever, not for us …

  Was that what I was thinking, or all those things at once, as if our thoughts were another version of that sea, far out, diving deviously beneath itself, like Moby Dick himself?

  We got to the cliffs. The land was lower there, there was a modesty to the place. Because we were unobserved, we lay down in a hollow for a little while. Then it was back to the antiquities. Peadar was excited, because he could make out old stones on the ground, like a strange road, but more likely the foundations of a Celtic fort. And he said he was pleased that no archaeologists had come out to rebuild it, in the years since independence, as they had in other places. The old stones ended at the cliff, a drop of fifty feet to the water below. We watched a gannet fishing in the swell, disappearing as it went down for fish, reappearing then suddenly many yards from its original spot. Peadar was standing there, excited, passionate, on the edge of the cliff. I remember worrying about the ground beneath his feet, it might have been just a thin shelf of rock, how could we tell? A devious wind came up behind us, he was caught off guard, off balance, and he tottered forward an inch or two. And I reached out to steady him. That was my first intention. But suddenly something else gripped me. Assailed me. A queer little instinct to push him off. Help him on his way with a little push. Why in God’s name did I want to do that? I don’t know, I don’t know. When I look into my heart, I can see no answer, only a black little mark against my soul. Not an instinct much to do with anything, a strange little instinct like something from childhood, a sudden capricious wickedness, a piece of wretched divilment. And on this tiny moment turned my whole life.

  Over he went, inexorable as you like, Peadar, his face in profile to me, turning from gladness to horror, he uttered something, he said something to me, ‘PJ, PJ, catch me, catch me!’ and I am sure I tried to catch him then, I am sure I did. But the laws of gravity were against us, and you know, no one falls slowly, you are gone in a moment, a fraction of a moment. I don’t even know if I touched his jacket again, he was gone, over the edge, down down to the sea, Peadar, falling, falling, and me peering over after him, he fell like a wounded bird, plummeting, screaming, and bounced twice on rocks protruding, and struck the Atlantic with hardly a sound, far away below, and was gobbled, gobbled you would think, by the strange greed of the sea. And I was screaming myself.

  And just then, though I hadn’t spotted them, hadn’t noticed them at all even in that bare expanse of peat and rock, two older priests suddenly appeared at my side, and maybe, truth to tell, prevented me from throwing myself after him, for that is exactly what I wanted to do. ‘Oh, my God, your friend has fallen in,’ the first man said. ‘I pushed him, I pushed him,’ I cried, crying out like a confessing criminal broken on the rack of a long interrogation, but no, hadn’t he only just uttered his few words, and the other priest, a small bony chap, stepped back from me in that instant, as if, having killed one man, I might be of a mind to kill two.

  Christy

  What was I supposed to do? Is there no honour in the world? There is. My own father, that fought to the death with Con Daly, fought for his honour. It was all about honour, the tinker’s life, I tell you. And I was the son of a tinker man, and by Jesus going back to the time of Jesus Christ, tinkers all, father to father. We made the nails that went into His hands and feet, to hold the poor man up on the cross, and that’s why we were put to wandering, it was a punishment right enough, but it was honour too, to meet your fate like a man, OK, we done wrong, but here’s what we are now, fucking fine tinkerfolk of the finest sort, can do any job for you, any feat of strength, ‘Can you drive a crane?’ ‘I can.’ Go anywhere and live off the countryside, you know, in the old days, mend a bucket here, a basin there, and the women walking about, asking for butter and eggs at the farmhouse doors, this-and-that from the bean-an-tí. It is two thousand years since we made them nails, and holy bloody people we were always, my father’s people. Honour, honour, my boys.

  Was I to let it go by, as if it never happened?

  I know it’s a terrible thing, well I know it.

  And don’t think for a moment it was easily done, but fury brought me through it, the fury of a father.

  But not just at the start. At the start it was all very different. Because you know, you’re in shock. But there’s nothing like a trial in the Four Courts to cure you of shock. I was just listening to lies. Lies from dawn to dusk. You never heard such a palaver from a lawyer. Now, fair dues, he pleaded guilty, and he was definitely going down, but by God, we had to hear the four fucking gospels of St PJ first, God forgive me. What a great fucking chap he was, so out of character, blah blah blah. And ould priests coming up from Maynooth, crispy-looking lads dragged up in midlands shops no doubt, sliced pan and duck’s eggs, you know the sort, blathering about PJ, and the great vocation he had, like there were classes of fucking vocation, and his was at the top of the pile. Holy Jesus Christ he was going to be, apparently, probably Archbishop of Armagh at close of play, if not Bishop of fucking Rome, but for this small little matter of having killed my son.

  Killed my son. Did they not understand tha
t? That Peadar’s father was sitting in that room, listening to their gobbledygook lies? About his this and his that – his nature as the lawyer said, this fucking beer-keg of a creature in an oily black cloak, roly-poly fucking high-falutin talking on him, like he knew him or something, like he would ever have known him in a month of Sundays, how he had risen above his – what was the word he used? Ah, yes, his origin. His origin, and him the grandson of tinker royalty. How the fuck would he know, how the fuck would he know? Yes, I was quite calm and reasonable going in, Christine said as much, because she worried I would go fucking spare, but the blather out of them, the fucking talk of them, I mean, it would have tried the patience of Job.

  Peadar. I don’t know. Was there ever such a fine boy? He was a fine boy, so he was, even if he was going for the priesthood. I told him, I told him, Peadar, don’t go near that shower of knackers, just knackers they are, sell your feet for glue, come on to the buildings with me. Now maybe I’m as fond as the next man of a decent sermon, I like to feel that terror creeping o’er me, as the song says, but that’s not the point, that’s not the point. Christine told him too, she said, Peadar, don’t be moving away from your own people, no good can come of that, stick with your own. But Peadar, you see, was clever, I mean, he didn’t know a damn thing about anything, but he was book clever. He wrote a scholarship essay for the secondary school, and he was the first boy in the history of our lot to finish the long, great slog of school, so he was. I mean, he wasn’t like other boys in Monkstown Farm. He didn’t want to go see Finn Harps playing Bray Wanderers at the football, he didn’t give a fuck about Finn Harps and Bray Wanderers. He wanted to go into town with me to see the fucking dried-out elephants and very dead snakes in the museum in Merrion Square, with fucking half-puked-up globules of things, and stingrays and sharks poised to strike, but never to strike again, and what, the babies of marmosets in formaldehyde jars. I don’t know. And then it was the train to Connolly Station, the station of the bleeding Scotsman that died for Ireland, God help us, and then cross over Gardiner Street by Talbot Street, that wore the chains next-nigh anent his skin, into Marlborough Street, and up past the Pro Cathedral, where they laid out the murdered body of Michael Collins, to where, do you think? What hallowed spot of history and legend? Well? The shop where they sold clothes to the priests. You probably often wondered where they bought those horrible black trousers, and the skimpy sweaters with the arms missing, well, I know where they bought them, because there’s a shop up there on Marlborough Street, believe it or not Mr Ripley, where they sell such ravishing items of fashion. And if you want a nice black scarf, you can get one there too.

  So not like other boys. But like what then? His ‘nature’ as the fella called it. He was soft as a hot cross bun, you know, when you buy it early on Good Friday, and it’s still warm from the baker’s oven, the Monument Creameries indeed, and you break it open, and you’d want a gob of butter on it too, because it is soft, soft and wonderful, just like Peadar. He knew every girl in Monkstown Farm, and every girl liked him, he wasn’t trying to climb into their knickers, it was a break for them, it was a relief from the usual wrestling that went on. And he was happy to go to dances in the hall at Dunedin, of course, he was a better dancer than his mother, which is saying something, they all danced with him, they all liked him, I suppose, in all truth, he was one of them, in that he understood them better than anyone. I remember him saying once to his ma, I heard him say it, he didn’t know I could hear, I was settled there in the dark of the scullery, smoking a fag, and I heard him talking to Christine about how he thought women had the worst of it, and the admiration he had for her, can you imagine that? Listening to your son saying such wise fucking things, I was gobsmacked, the fag burned down to my fingers before I noticed. Because yeah, they do, woman have it rough, I know that, yesh, pushing out babies and all the trouble with their insides, and having to bring up kids regardless, and if there isn’t enough to go round, as may be, as happens now and then in all families, she’ll go without, and then you have fellas coming home with a skinful of beer, and beating the living Jesus out of them, and then at the shops the next day, trying to hide the bruises with a headscarf, they’ll dig out a headscarf of their mother’s or their granny’s, because no young one has worn a head scarf in Ireland for twenty years. So you can tell by this sudden going backwards of fashion that something is amiss. And then the fucking social worker making everything worse, I suppose, and every fucking month, every fucking month, in the grip of their period, God help the poor creatures, oh Jesus, Christine, you don’t want to be in hand’s distance of her when she’s going through that, she’s like a rattlesnake. And Peadar seemed to know all that, even though he was only a boy, wanting to be a priest. A priest, you know, and if ever a man was an ignoramus when it comes to women, it’s a priest, generally, if you ask me, not that she’d say that, but how-and-ever, in my opinion. He was going to be the best priest that ever Ireland saw. In fact in my opinion my son was a sort of saint.

  PJ

  There was a strange between-time, before they arrested me. I ran down to Kilronan to ask for help, and the lifeboat was called on the telephone and I was told it was putting out from Rossaveal immediately, and in the meantime, two men took me round in a curach, when I say took me round, you wouldn’t believe the size of the sea at the boot of the island, the waves were strange and solemn, thirty feet high, but wide and smooth, and the currach rode over them lightly, the two men with arms as thick as the legs of bulls, working the oars, bladeless oars I remember, that needed no feathering in the wind. But the sea behind the island under the cliff was glassy and basalt black, as if stricken by some ailment, and as we rowed along the rocks you could hear a seal barking, madra na mara, the dog of the sea, or is that the otter, I can’t remember, and the gulls went round in mad swoops, diving, shrieking, protesting, to try and put you off your journey, their loved chicks hidden in high niches, and those stout birds with the yellow beaks, and the fishermen were asking me what had happened, and I was trying with all my will to tell them, and be honest about it, but I was having difficulty, maybe my head was breaking asunder, I couldn’t remember and I could remember, I saw two things at once, it was like a true hallucination, and the men were so solicitous and kind in their questions, I was the friend bereaved, an imposter, and the lifeboat came near and shouted at the men to lay off, which they did, and up on the cliff top, risking their own lives, the two priests were pointing and shouting, and I saw from about a hundred yards distant three of the lifeboatmen in their yellow gabardines reach down into the water for something, and pull what looked like a sliver of the dark black sea itself up on to the deck. And that was my Peadar.