Against all of this, we had the habit of prayer. We believed, but in a way that never demanded much thought, and when the Angelus bell rang out of an evening we all slipped to our knees and bowed our heads, and let the words come in murmurs as insistent as the stream in a roadside gully after an hour of torrential rain. My mother usually led us, and even my father joined in. He’d watch the rest of us kneeling, and after a moment’s hesitation would get down himself on the floor on one knee. He was not a devout man, I suppose because of the things he’d seen, done and suffered in his life, but he’d accepted long ago that there was always prayer, even for someone who hardly believed and even when hope was lost. And to everything a purpose under heaven because, looking back, even though those prayers went unanswered, I can see, or believe, that they did give us something, a certain sense of peace, at least for those few minutes each evening, and a chance to hear and listen to our own beating hearts. Maybe, also, an acceptance of our lot.
Because I wasn’t yet ten years old, my memories of the time tend to be snatches of detail, often without context; I was a sensitive child, tuned to tensions and emotional imbalances, but was too young to properly comprehend the notion of cause and effect, or to have an awareness of our lives’ inner workings, and I hadn’t yet learned to look beyond the borders of a picture. The day the Bishop came to confirm Jimmy, I was at home, having just come in from school. Even now I have no idea whether it was by arrangement of a teacher or the parish priest or at the request of my mother, though it seems that we’d been expecting him, because my mother had even borrowed a strip of carpet for him to walk on. It must have been the timing of the visit that caught us by surprise because the carpet was still standing in a tight roll in one corner of the room, all of the others were away at work, Jimmy was sleeping, and my mother, at the fireside, was peeling potatoes into a large pot of water.
‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she wailed, opening the door to him and throwing her hands to her mouth.
‘You poor woman,’ he said, struggling to suppress a grin, ‘you’ve called me everything now but Danny Boy.’
My mother stepped backwards, half genuflecting, begging his pardon, and after a second or two he followed her inside, shook her hand first and then mine, then glanced around and made for the fire, to stand in contentment with his back to the flames, gathering in and blocking all the heat. He was a big man, not particularly tall, not compared to my father, and not even all that fat, but large-seeming in girth, his broadness and scale emphasised by the loose, flowing wine-red cape and air of authority. I’d seen him before, though always from a distance, either leading the Eucharistic Procession or on occasion over at the church, usually in the company of some visiting missionary, and this close I couldn’t help staring at such a large oblong head, laden with jowls and with the fist of a face buried like a punch in its very centre. The shadowy heft of our living room intensified his pallor and that slight vacancy of those bred with the supernatural in mind, and he drew air in whistles through a piggish nose, and had a small womanly mouth with raw lips wetted every few words by a flash of tongue, as if setting himself to be kissed. But when he spoke to tell us how sorry he was for our family’s misfortune, his voice was unfussy and kind, with the melody of a West Cork accent used to smiling through hardship.
‘Does the lad understand?’ he asked, and my mother could only shrug.
‘You wouldn’t know with him,’ she said, glancing at me and then quickly away, deciding, I suppose, that it wouldn’t matter now what I heard because I’d realise soon enough, if I hadn’t already. ‘He wouldn’t say, he wouldn’t be that kind, but he’s cute as a fox after a hare. He must know.’
The Bishop nodded, and without adding anything else, crossed to the bedroom. My mother followed and I moved too, though I kept behind and made myself small in the doorway.
‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘you have a very special visitor. This is Bishop Cohalan. He’s come to see how you’ve been getting on.’
The Bishop arranged himself on the room’s only chair and stared at my mother until she felt compelled to retreat a couple of steps, though she stopped in the doorway, just ahead of me, and folded her arms across her chest, making clear her intention to stay.
‘So, Jimmy,’ he said, after picking up a book, leafing through it and setting it back down on the bed. ‘I heard you’d had a bit of a fall.’
Jimmy had to lean against the windowsill and strain hard so that he could see us. His eyes found me first, and I wanted to smile at him but couldn’t, even though I could see that he was afraid.
‘I did, Father,’ he whispered finally, and the Bishop had to sit forward to catch the words. ‘But it was an accident. Don’t be blaming Puck for it now, sure you won’t?’
‘Puck?’
‘The goat.’ My mother cleared her throat. ‘They’re great pals altogether, Your Grace. At the end of last summer they were picking ivy off the wall of the Protestant, of the graveyard over along the lane. That’s how it happened. He’d climbed up on the goat’s back.’
‘Oh, I see, yes. Well, don’t worry, Jimmy. We won’t bother with blame here. As you say, it was an accident.’
‘Thanks very much, Father.’
‘Tell me, lad. What age are you, at all, now?’
‘I’ll be twelve in two months.’
‘You’re a fine man altogether for twelve. And good as gold too, your mother was telling me. Well, most of the time, anyway.’
He paused then, and his expression grew serious, thoughtful. Jimmy watched, in his awkward, low-slung way, but sensing the shift in mood, didn’t interrupt.
‘The truth of it is, lad,’ the Bishop said, at last, ‘I’m after a bit of help.’ He hesitated again, started to say something else but seemed uncertain how best to continue. ‘You see, Jimmy, there’s this army I know of.’
‘An army?’ From where I stood, I could see Jimmy’s eyes widen, intrigued.
‘Yes. But the problem is, they’re in need of a captain to lead them.’ This time, the pause was pure theatre, and as much for our benefit as for Jimmy’s. ‘These last few years, I’ve been on the lookout for somebody of officer material. If they’re out there, then they’re mighty thin on the ground. And that’s why I’m here today. From what I’ve been told, I’m convinced that I could travel the length and breadth of Cork County and not find a better fighting man. But what do you think, yourself? Would you be up to the job?’
As if on cue, new light poured through the small window to flood the room. Jimmy, in the bed, pushed himself forward from the wall so that he was sitting to attention, and even with his head hanging towards his chest, and even though I couldn’t see his mouth, his smile reached me from across the length of the bed. And within seconds, I knew that he was crying.
‘Of course I would be, sir,’ he whispered when he could, his tone hiding everything but wetness. ‘I’d be the best captain that army ever had. Sure, I already know how to shoot.’
The Bishop settled back into the chair, as if this news had relieved him of a great burden. ‘Thanks be to God, Jimmy. To tell you the truth, and bishops are always meant to tell the whole truth and nothing less, I’m fierce relieved. It’s a big job, as you can imagine, and I was beginning to think I’d never find anyone suitable. But that’s grand, so. There’s just a few prayers we need to say, and I have to give you a special blessing, and then you’ll be all set to lead the angels. They’re in desperate need of a good brave man like yourself.’
They prayed then, Jimmy, hands knotted together in his lap, joining in with the words where he could, though he’d never been much for Mass, and mumbling through the rest, hoping I suppose that his mistakes would either go unnoticed or could be overlooked. The Bishop closed his eyes and performed a shortened Confirmation ceremony, and we stood in the bedroom doorway and looked on, wanting to look away.
When they’d finished, the Bishop reached out and shook Jimmy’s hand in congratulations.
‘You did fine, lad,’ he said.
‘Your mother’s right. As good as gold.’
‘Thanks, Father. It didn’t hurt a bit.’ Jimmy was grinning, too. ‘But about that army. When can I go, do you think?’
The Bishop looked at him. ‘It won’t be long now, lad. Soon enough, I’d say.’
My mother turned away then, the tears turning her steps already blind, and stood in the centre of the living room, too sick in her heart to sit, trying to smother the barking of her sobs with cradling hands. She was still that way when the Bishop rose to leave, and he shook hands with Jimmy again, lay a hand in blessing on his head, then came into the doorway, considered the scene, nodded to himself, and left.
Once he’d gone, I urged my mother into the chair beside the fire. She let herself be led, sat down in a forward lean that pressed her elbows into her knees and, chiding herself for never even having offered the man a cup of tea, continued to weep, but in a quiet way.
* * *
The morning of that last day started off grey and mild but by afternoon had thickened with mist, an icy fur that smoked the air and turned everything soft and silver. The cottage remained silent, apart from the muted shuffle of visitors. A couple of times, after morning Mass and then again just as dusk was closing in, the priest; but mainly relatives and neighbours, coming through the door and carrying the dampness on their backs, pressing cold hands into ours, even mine, young as I was, and saying how sorry they were for our trouble.
In the living room we all stood or sat around, May and Annie on the floor beside the settled fire, my mother in the armchair, numb with grief. Dixie and Mata held up the room’s corners, restless in their stretching, afraid to disturb the stillness too much, but not knowing quite what to do or where to put themselves. I remained a long time at the window, leaning into the draught just where the wooden frame had separated a crack from the stone and feeling its kiss on my cheek or, when I inclined my head just right, in some thrilling way against the corner of my mouth. The mist felt full of ghosts. Across the way, the forge was doing quiet business, so I only now and then caught the clap of an arriving or departing horse, that heavy yet somehow delicate sound of iron shoes laid down on packed dirt. It was weather for tears but we were all dry from weeks of that, and once the light washed finally from the day even the outline of the road was lost to me. The hedges dulled to silhouette and only the stubs of nearby daffodils remained distinct, their brightness odd now and somehow out of place.
Then the bedroom door opened, and my father appeared. His mouth had tightened to a slit and his eyes seemed fixed on distant things. My mother looked up, teeth clenched between wide-open lips, and it took me a second to understand what she was thinking, and my father even longer. When he did, he gasped, and said quickly: ‘He’s asleep again. But he’s fierce restless.’
All day, Jimmy had been lost in the depths of a bad sleep. The doctor had left medication, a brown syrup that reeked of hops and something like liquorice, and it was just about strong enough to keep him out but scarcely dulled the pain. He moaned and sometimes wept, sitting with his knees folded to his chest, his face even in that unconscious state so twisted with suffering that all trace of boyishness had been stripped back. From the doorway I chanced to look, and saw a monster, not a boy.
On better nights, when a wind was blowing hard in the chimney and we could persuade my mother to frighten us with a ghost story, she’d sometimes talk of the fairies, and how they were constantly watching for the opportunity to snatch an infant and replace it with one of their own, a changeling that by some terrible magic had been made to look identical to the stolen child. The changeling would grow into the family, spreading wickedness and misery, tearing them apart, until another little corner of the world was in ruins. Peering through the doorway now, past the crumbling tower of my father and the spindling, head-slung goat to the narrow bed, it was hard not to wonder whether such stories could have evolved from some raw fact, and whether the desperate, misshapen thing wrestling so viciously with sleep was still the brother I loved or actually something much more terrible.
My mother had told us that in rare cases, once it had achieved its mayhem, the changeling would allow the spell to slip so as to reveal its true form. Now that our family had been ripped to ribbons, I remember thinking, maybe it was finally showing itself to us. I didn’t say any of this aloud but, based on the little I’d seen in stealing my glimpse, it was one of the notions that passed through my mind and lingered. Because at ten years old, with night coming down and the easy redness of the fire providing the living room’s only light, nothing seemed impossible. And when, at six o’clock, the dusk was penetrated by the sombre clanging of the church bell, and we all got down on the floor on our knees and followed my mother’s prayers to a God who’d either forgotten us or didn’t care, the only question I asked myself was why such wicked things as fairies were allowed, even in stories, to exist, while so much good, and all too often the very best of us, had to suffer such bad endings.
We prayed, and the darkness took hold, and we all knew without having to be told that we were in the final hours. Jimmy’s breathing was increasingly laboured, rustling like old trees in a hard wind, and if there was terror and sorrow at the thought of that finally stopping, then there was also, to our shame, an undeniable sense of relief.
A couple of hours later he began to call out, in a voice so weak that at first none of us could make sense of the sound. The light of the paraffin lamp made his face a small knot of reefs and shadows, and his eyes were not just closed now but clenched. My mother sat at the bedside, with Puck’s chin resting on her knee, my father standing behind her, one hand holding itself in the air, its intent surely to settle on her shoulder in a gesture of support but for some reason unable to make the reach. Seeing this seemed to emphasise the distance that had come to lie not just between them but between us all, and from the other room, huddled among my brothers and sisters, I considered again the twisted figure in the bed, hardly recognisable now even as human, especially in the lamplight, and started to cry.
‘It’s Sally,’ said Mata, after some interminable stretch of time had passed, and he got up from where he’d been sitting and went through into the bedroom. ‘He’s calling for Sally, I think. That’s what it sounds like.’
My father looked at him, barely registering the words, but when Jimmy began to moan again, he leaned forward to make sense of the sound. And Mata was right.
Sally was my mother’s sister. She’d never married and lived with her three bachelor brothers in a small, crumbling terraced house a mile or so from us, along the Passage Road. She was a thickset woman in her early fifties, with a gusty and volatile nature, and we had all thrilled to the stories of her diehard actions during the War of Independence, about how she’d fed and sheltered men on the run. Even after the Black and Tans had gone, she continued to carry a loaded pistol, and would brandish it at the least cross word or opportunity to shock. Until Jimmy’s fall she’d often taken him with her up into the Heighty Hills or the fields around Moneygourney for a day of target practice, swearing him to secrecy so that my father wouldn’t find out. She doted on him, likely resonating to the feral strain in his nature, and she had been here all morning and for long stretches of the previous week, sitting at his bedside, holding his hand, telling him stories, listening while he could still talk sensibly as he explained about the army he was going to captain and the battles he’d soon be fighting.
‘Someone will have to go for her,’ my mother whispered, her voice sawdust after all the tears.
‘Tonight?’ Mata stepped back out of the bedroom. ‘It’s already late, and it’s an awful night out.’
‘He’ll get no peace until he has her here.’
‘I can go, I suppose,’ my father sighed. He was still standing, and had been for hours, but exhaustion had broken him. His face and limbs slackened, and he looked set to come apart.
My mother turned and took a fist of his shirtsleeve. ‘I need you here, Jer. I can’t be on my own.’
&n
bsp; In the living room, May bowed her head and began to sob, and nobody spoke. And as we sat there Jimmy began to cry out again, and this time, I suppose because we were looking for the shape of the name, we all clearly heard the call. He repeated the cry twice more, a slur of sorrow and pleading, and I felt a tightness across my chest.
‘I’ll do it,’ I murmured, so low that, at first, because nobody responded, I assumed they’d not heard. I cleared my throat. ‘I’ll go. It won’t take me long.’
In the firelight, I caught the sheen of Annie’s eyes. Her mouth was tight, but finally she nodded.
‘Take my coat. You’ll be drenched with that mist.’
No one said anything else. May continued to weep, and the boys kept to the room’s corners. From the bedroom my father watched me slip on the oversized coat, but his expression didn’t shift.
Outside, the night was colder than I’d expected. I pulled the door shut behind me but hesitated, fastening the buttons of the coat and then folding my arms to keep it tight across my chest. The silence felt immense, the road ahead a wash of drizzle. I braced myself, and strode forward.
My intention when volunteering to go for Sally had been to run, but something about the lack of sound killed that urge. I can’t explain it. In the dark, and with the mist obliterating distance and walling me in, I should have been afraid. I knew the road, but never this late and never on my own, and I’d never known it anything like this. It was a night for dead things and yet I felt only a sense of calm, as if there was something protective about the closeness.
The Boatman and Other Stories Page 17