Breakfast on Pluto

by Patrick McCabe

  And now, here you were, rudderless, out there, not knowing where your arms or legs began, as you floated in a cosmos with no end.

  ‘Why else did you run out that night?’ Terence asked me. ‘Was there something else she said?’

  That was why I was so heartbroken when Terence left without telling me. Because he knew my story inside out and understood why I broke down. As he did now. ‘Yes!’ I spluttered through the tears. ‘She said “Breakfast”. She said: “Please stay for breakfast” or something stupid like that!’

  I could see him looking at me so tenderly for a long time after that, then looking down at his notepad as he said softly: ‘You hate that word, don’t you?’

  And I nodded. As he moved closer to me and put his strong hand in mine. Some people might think – like with Brendan Cleeve later on – that I am sort of a sex maniac because I say things like that. Sex was the furthest thing from my mind when I thought of it, his hand being strong. It was like it was gripping me and saying: ‘You’re down here now – rock solid! And this is where you are going to be strong! For this is where you’re going to stay from now on, Patrick! And that’s the way it’s going to be!’

  It was as if I was looking through a skylight and out there in the stretched blackness there were thousands and thousands of weightless cigarette papers all going hither and thither except with one big difference this time – I wasn’t one of them!

  It was the most fantastic feeling I ever remember! Made even better by the fact that now Terence had his arm around me. Big oaken-armed Terence! Whose brown eyes twinkled as he said: ‘I want to hear about him, the man who gave you life! The bastard you hate who dumped you on the step or started proceedings that led to it! We’ve got to hear, you hear me? We’ve got to hear – so get out there – write write write and fucking write!’

  Can you imagine another doctor swearing? But that was Terence! He gripped me in them oaken arms and fixed me with those twinkly eyes: ‘Will you?’ he said. ‘Will you?’

  I thought I was skyward again!

  ‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ and nearly knocked him down in the rush to pen yet another of my famous masterpieces!

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Visitations in the Night

  by P. Braden, Ward 7

  How difficult it is for the young seminarian getting to sleep at night! Particularly if you have been out on the playing field most of the day doing endless laps of the playing field in the churning mud, not to mention God knows how many press-ups with Father Joe McGeaney shouting from the sideline like a madman: ‘Ah, will you for the love of God put your backs into it! How in under God do ye expect to face St Malachy’s Magherafelt if that’s the best performance ye can come up with! It’s like watching a pack of old women! Football! That’s not football! I could go down to Junior 1B right this very minute and pick a pair of young scabs that’d acquit themselves better than that! McAlinden! What do you call that! You call that a free kick? Fit you better you’d pack your bags this very minute and clear off home to your father on the farm, for mucking out the byres is all you’ll ever be any good for, as far as I can see!’ After which the team trainer would gather a ball of phlegm in his throat, roll it around in the nether regions of his tonsils for some seconds, then propel it with great force so that it spun in the air before landing randomly on either a hoof-hole or tuft of grass directly in front of him, as he allowed himself a little smile, moving forward with his fingers interlaced beneath his black soutane, his priestly duck-like bottom obtruding. Because he was joking, of course. Well, not exactly joking perhaps, but when he said that McAlinden was of little use for anything but cleaning out the abodes of animals – that most certainly he did not mean. For, as he well knew, Pat Joe McAlinden was, if not the best and most consistent performer on the school team, certainly the one he could least afford to do without. From the very start of the season, he had been an inspiration to the rest of the players. The man who had, almost single-handedly, been responsible for their passage into the semi-finals of the Leinster Cup. Which, of course, was to be played this very Saturday! Was it any wonder they were nervous? The miracle was that Father Joe didn’t shout louder at his star player! After all – you had to make sure they didn’t become too complacent, didn’t you? He had been training the seminary football team long enough to know the pitfalls young men like McAlinden could stumble into. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen young protégés of his undermine their brilliance through arrogance – refusing to pass the ball, attempting lyrical, complicated moves when all that was required was affirmative, unequivocal action. He wasn’t about to let that happen, and if being hard on the boy was what was required, then so be it. And thus far, his tactics had worked like a dream for McAlinden. As Father Joe passed the goalposts and shaded his eyes from the flashing sun to determine the position of the ball, he considered that if that student continued the way he was going, he might well yet be in line for a senior prefectship. As the thought entered his mind, a little ripple of pride ran through the clergyman, for in fact it was fair to say that such an achievement, were it to become a reality, would be due in no small measure to the firmness and far-sightedness of his tutelage. O, good man Donegan! Did you see that one? A high, lobbing ball that almost slipped out of the goalkeeper’s hands! What if they pulled off one like that on Saturday! It would be good to see the face of Father Jack McManus then! Father Jack was the trainer of St Malachy’s, or St Mal’s as they were known more or less for the duration of the competition. He’d have to shake Father Joe’s hand when it was all over but it would still kill him to say: ‘That high lobbing ball of young McDonagh’s was the one that did for us! Well done, Father Joe and the Seminary! But dang blast ye anyway for putting an end to our chances!’

  As he stood there beside the posts, Father Joe was atremble with excitement, lifting up his toes inside his mud-spotted black shoes and rocking back and forth on his heels at the same time. ‘Into the square!’ barked young Mike McQuillan as his voice rolled out across the field and the sodden ball came freefalling towards his outstretched arms. ‘What a powerful bunch of men!’ thought the priest to himself. ‘As solid a team of dedicated lads as ever this college has seen pass through its portals!’ Which must have been true, for exactly when a college team had made it so far in the Leinster championships, Father Joe certainly couldn’t remember. And had it worked wonders for seminary morale? It was amazing what success in the field of sport could do for contemplative young men in terms of comradeship and spirit. It was as if the entire building was emitting a spiritual electric light that radiated throughout the dormant, lassitudinous countryside. With each firm kick of the ball, a young man’s voice crying out: ‘We shall lead! We, the holy and dedicated young men of this seminary shall sally forth and show you, solid, labouring peasant folk of our little county, the way to peace and love in the fellowship of The Sacred Heart!’ It was a long time since Father Joe had been so content. As he stood there in the flapping wind, he whispered a silent prayer to St Joseph of Cupertino who, strictly speaking, was the patron saint of examinations, and did not concern himself with sport, but to whom the priest had always had a special devotion, that they might achieve victory by a substantial margin this coming Saturday in Borris-in-Ossory football ground.

  It was exactly this thought which was in the mind of nineteen-year-old-student and footballer Bernard McIvor of the townland of Drumaloon, Tyreelin, as he made his way towards the sideline now that the final whistle had been blown, so many permutations and possibilities of the forthcoming game being played out in his imagination that it was almost exhausting. But, as his friend, Dermot Faughnan observed in the showers as the spiky sprays of steam pelted all about them – leaping frantically off their gleaming flesh, ‘All we can do this Saturday, Bernard, is to give our best and play our hearts out, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is indeed, Dermot,’ replied the student priest as he applied the soap to the underside of his private parts, instinctively turning his face
away as he always did, lest somehow he might instigate once more that gathering movement within those regions, which, in his own mind, he was wont to call the ‘bad thing’. And which the sport of football was absolutely wonderful for, because when you were soaring high into the air to catch the laced-up leather orb which was often wet and soggy (but who cared!), you simply didn’t think of girls in diaphanous dresses or even mature women in foundation garments who came visiting nocturnally to part their lips and say those things to you. Things that you didn’t want to hear. Things that they pretended were quite innocent, of course. Like: ‘Hello, Bernard’ or ‘It’s quiet in here, isn’t it, Bernard? In this dormitory, I mean!’ Ever so foxily too, of course, delivering it in such a seemingly innocuous way that you would never be able to say back to them: ‘You’d better stop this now! I know what you’re trying to do to me! I know what you’re trying to do to me. Miss! Or Mrs!’ Turn around and put the blame on you, if you see what I mean! Insisting: ‘What? But I didn’t say anything! What I said was perfectly harmless, for heaven’s sake! You can’t turn around and blame me just because your tootle takes it upon itself to salute me the way it’s doing!’ Which wasn’t a nice thing to do – well, not so much ‘not nice’, maybe – but definitely not fair. It wasn’t fair to say those things to Bernard when he was all alone in bed and, what’s more, so utterly defenceless. It wasn’t as if it was the fullback of St Malachy’s he was facing or the so-called brilliant winger Matt McGlinchey! Them he could face no bother! Pluck the ball off their toes and with it run like the wind! But, when someone stood before you, just standing there and going: ‘Hello, Bernard!’, what were you supposed to do, particularly if a little breeze fluttered up the diaphanous material and made you see – oh God! Oh! no! God help me! Oh Jesus Christ!’

  *

  It was quite common for student priests to awake some minutes before the actual peal of the morning bell. It is a habit they acquire. It is a habit which is good, providing you as it does with some moments to reflect upon the day which is about to come. A short time in which to privately commune with your Saviour to whom you have effectively dedicated your life. None of which is relevant in this case, as Bernard has been awake not for some moments but since 3 a.m. And is in quite a state, I’m afraid. It is as if his life has entered a new, potentially deadly phase. For, if the nocturnal visitations of Foundation Garments and Diaphanous were a source of dread which he valiantly attempted to dispel with his multifarious bull-like charges into the wind on so many football fields, what new strategies could he employ to negotiate the wiles of the one in whose black and whirlpool eyes he had hopelessly swum, nay flailed. And who like a snake had svelte-slid from his bed with the words: ‘Same time tomorrow night, darling,’ to vanish then beneath the crucifix of the Saviour who from the blankness of the wall reproached him with huge sadness, before he could even utter the words he wished to say to her: ‘No! Not tomorrow night! Or any night! Go away! Go away for ever!’

  Was it any wonder his bedsheets were practically liquefied, what with the perspiration and other unnamable body fluids. Not least of which were of course those lachrymose emissions which streamed so long and hard they might well have had as their geneses the extirpations of entire continents. ‘Why! Why! Why!’ he chided himself as he dabbed those undryable eyes with a twisted little spear of the sodden bedsheet. ‘Because you failed!’ the Saviour replied, with a stony expression that would chill your blood, because of course you rarely saw it on that selfless face, ‘Because you fell!’ And no baby ever cried, in a lonely dormitory or anywhere else, as did that once dying-to-be-a-priest boy named Bernard McIvor. Who, from that day on, summoned all his resources to face those silkfloating apparitions which late in the nights came to blink their spectral pools again and whisper and who, ever after, to this end, devoted himself almost entirely to prayer and spiritual reading (Restraint And Denial – A Handbook For Clergymen).

  *

  None of which proved any good, did it, when one frosty unspectacular morning his new young housekeeper who resembled Mitzi Gaynor (he didn’t know it, of course, being completely unaware of the film star’s very existence! – Musicals? Occasions of sin!) leaned across the table to give him his breakfast (Ah! Yummy rashers! Eggs too! Powerful!) and set off an atomic explosion in those serge trunks once again, with the result that his spiritual reading had all come to nothing, a thought no doubt shared by the bubble-cut girl now pinned against the wall, wondering what exactly was going on down there in that place where only moments before she’d found herself but somehow now had floated far away!

  *

  When Terence came in I was screaming his name (Daddy’s – Bernard’s – whatever the fuck you want to call him) and was tearing the pages into pieces, crying: ‘I’ll fucking kill him! I’ll cut his fucking cock off and burn his church down with him in it!’

  The blood was pulsing in my head so fast I thought I’d get a haemorrhage. Only for old oaken-arms I probably would have! He gave me tea and calmed me down and told me what I’d have to learn.

  ‘You’ll have to learn to forgive,’ he said. ‘For if you don’t, you know what will happen?’

  ‘What, Doctor?’ I croaked, for my outburst had exhausted me.

  ‘It will destroy you,’ he said as he handed me the tea.

  A tear came into my eye when he said it for I knew it was true and I would have loved to be able to do it (not because of its destroying me but because it was right, and deep down I knew that) but I couldn’t and the more I thought of it the more the blood came coursing to my head so that whenever I’d write I’d find myself clutching the pencil so tight I broke the lead how many times I don’t know, hundreds.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A Long-Ago Night in November

  Mr and Mrs Johnny Bergin loved Saturday night. Especially in November when you could look out at the frost starching the beautiful countryside rigid, as you thought to yourself: ‘Isn’t it lovely to be in here now with a big fire on, listening to the wireless and not a thing to worry you now you’ve been to confession and the good Lord is looking down on you thinking: “Now there’s the Bergins – I’m pleased with them!”’

  Which was only right and proper, for in all of Tyreelin, you would not have found nicer, decenter people than the Bergin family. Mr Bergin’s eyelids were drooping a little bit as he sat in the armchair, partly because of the hypnotic motion of the flames in the grate but also because he had been working hard all day on the new estate of houses which was going up at the edge of the village. Mrs Bergin smiled as she looked over at him, then went back to reading her Sacred Heart Messenger. She was reading the thoughts of St Anthony. He was her favourite saint. How many prayers she had said to him over the years, only God Himself would have been able to say. And not one of them had she ever regretted, as she often remarked to her neighbours. ‘Any safety pin I ever lost, any shilling coin or prayerbook – good St Anthony always helped me find it.’ As she thought that again now, she rested her hands on her lap and whispered another little silent prayer. Outside, a dog barked and then all was quiet again throughout the village. She smiled to herself as she heard her only daughter moving about upstairs, and thought then of her little boy James, as he would have been, who had been born dead a year before Eileen. How wonderful it would have been to have watched them grow up together, James at his football and Eily (as everyone affectionately called her) at her music. For how she just loved music. As her husband Johnny had often said: ‘How it doesn’t put her astray in the head, I don’t know! For I couldn’t listen to it!’ But that was her life, wasn’t it? As soon as she had her books done – it was straight up the stairs to put on those records of hers that she bought for 1/6 in McKeon’s shop and leaf through the magazines – Picturegoer, Screen Parade, New Faces of the Fifties – God bless us, where did she get them all? But sure what harm did it do? Didn’t the nuns tell her if she kept at her work the way she was going, she might well end up at the university, and how many Tyreelin girls had e
ver been able to say that? Which was why, when she heard the floorboards above her head creak and the strains of Vic Damone singing ‘Stay With Me’, or ‘On the Street Where You Live’ coming down the stairs, Mrs Bergin just went on with her sewing and stitching and said to herself: ‘That’s Eily.’ Which is exactly what she said when the occasional neighbour remarked: ‘You don’t mind her going to these hops every Thursday, Mrs?’ ‘I do not,’ she says. ‘For that’s Eily.’ Who, from the day she had been able to walk, had never uttered a cross word to her mother. And who hadn’t the slightest hesitation in agreeing to help out Sister Lorcan when she told her of Mrs McGlynn’s (the priest’s housekeeper) mishap. ‘Wasn’t she coming down the hill from the presbytery – you know what the frost’s been like – and didn’t she go and slip outside Pat McCrudden’s gate!’ In fact, what she had said was that she would be more than glad to assist Father Bernard in Mrs McGlynn’s absence – especially when it was only a matter of making his breakfast, and doing one or two other chores.

  Which she now deeply regretted, of course. Except that her mother didn’t know it. Had noted, it is true, her daughter’s seeming lack of interest in record-buying over a period of months and her suspension of attendance at the hops for which she once would have truly died. And which to Eily herself seemed almost a thousand years ago now, although it was only a matter of months. Since she had strolled through the streets of the village with her housecoat on underneath her black coat and her check scarf tied around her head, thinking: ‘If I save up all the money Father Bernard gives me, I’ll be able to buy the top ten records in the hit parade.’ And who knew – perhaps even the long player of the film South Pacific!