Reading in the Dark

by Seamus Deane

  But the curse continued. Every house belonging to a Grenaghan or Falkener was haunted. Some days, you couldn’t go up the stairs to the bedrooms, or you couldn’t get down the stairs from them. No one saw anything – there was just this force that blocked and stopped all movement, that made the house shudder, and left behind it a confused noise as of voices far off, wailing.

  People said no one from those families should ever get married. They should be allowed to die out. That was the only way to appease the ghost. Even if they didn’t marry, those that remained would always have the presence in their houses. They should emigrate. The boys should become monks, the girls nuns. Anything to stop the revenge. Anything.

  So, said Liam, you’re as well out of it. That one, Mackey, needs her head examined, staying with Grenaghan. If she stays. And no one who has any sense will get involved with him, as friend or enemy. He’s not really a tough – just a fright. Stay away. He has bad blood in him.

  ‘If you believe all that shite,’ he added.

  RETREAT

  March 1954

  ‘… denying the whole nature and function of the Retreat.’ These were the President’s words. He sat behind his desk, flanked on one side by the Dean and on the other by Father Nugent, the Spiritual Director. Moran and I stood before them, our hands behind our backs, surveying and being surveyed by the three priests, everybody somewhat perplexed about what was to come. The President had a clear, kind face; he believed in being forthright about everything, but was always at a loss when forthrightness was not quite what was needed. Father Nugent was distressed, but also mildly amused. I could see he was not too sorely exercised. Father McAuley was a different matter. He wanted a punishment. He was small, dark and uncertain of himself. When he occasionally took us for Latin or Greek, when the usual teacher was ill or away for some reason, he sometimes made grammatical mistakes which we were careful to point out to him in the politest, most diffident ways. Moran and I had been prominent in these episodes. Now he believed he had us.

  Moran and I had been seen leaving the school grounds during the Annual Spiritual Retreat and heading off for the Brandywell football ground to watch the Saturday cup tie with Linfield, a militantly Protestant team from Belfast. We were both sorry we had been seen, but not sorry we had done it, especially as our team had won in the last minute.

  The Dean declared that in his opinion physical punishment was not enough. It was over too quickly. Instead, we were to undergo something more enduring, more in key with the offence. It had been agreed, he told us, that we were to undertake a month-long course in Spiritual Reading. Moran was to be directed by Father Nugent; the Dean was to direct me. The text was to be selections from the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. We were both to stay in after class every day for the month to do this.

  Week two, the fourth day, Meditation on Two Standards, the one of Christ, our Commander-in-Chief and Lord; the other of Lucifer, mortal enemy of our human nature. The Dean’s method was simple. He chose passages, I learned them by heart, recited them to him, he told me to contemplate them and I went off to commit more to memory. The balanced rationality and fervour of the chosen passages was so exact that I found in them more consolation than the Dean could have wished, even though their clarity was also appalling.

  The first Point is to imagine as if the chief of all the enemy seated himself in that great field of Babylon, as in a great chair of fire and smoke, in shape horrible and terrifying.

  And against that,

  The first Point is to consider how Christ our Lord puts himself in a great field of that region of Jerusalem, in lowly place, beautiful and attractive.

  So Satan sends out his demons, Christ his apostles; Satan tempts us with riches, honour, pride; Christ redeems us with poverty, contumely against riches, humility The rules for making a good and sound election in this life; six points in the First Way and, in the Second Way, four rules and a note. The First Rule is to make the choice out of love of God. In the Second Rule, the exercise was

  to set before me a man whom I have never seen nor known, and I, desiring all his perfection, to consider what I would tell him to do and elect for the greater glory of God our Lord, and the greater perfection of his soul, and I, doing likewise, to keep the rule which I set for the other.

  The Third and Fourth Rules asked that we consider what choice we would make were we at the point of death, or, facing Christ at the Last Judgement, what choice we would then want to have made.

  I recited the passages to him, day in, day out, for a month, sitting in a straight chair in his room as he sat in an armchair, scanning the text as I spoke. He wearied of it long before I did. Loyola was equipped for difficulty and terror; the Dean was not. He nodded every so often at my recital but was concerned only I get the words perfect, not with what they might mean.

  The Exercises were clean and tonic. A man grew out of them, one whom I had never seen nor known, in all perfection, making choices in accord with that perfection. He was a star, sure and yet troubled, but always reducing his trouble gradually by accumulating certainty, by making decision after decision, knowing the more, the more trouble it took him to know. But when I imagined him so, then I would see myself again in a dither of light and dark, see my father again, see Eddie, re-recognise my mother, see them blur and fade, know that I too was blurred, was astray for not knowing how to choose. I lay awake at night, with the book open beside my pillow, my brothers sleeping in the dark, the roar of the football crowd humming in my ears as the final goal went in, the Dean reappearing in the classroom, and a nervous radar starting a scan inside me, sensing the incoming fire, the choices hurtling faster out of Loyola’s Babylon, Jerusalem, homing in.

  BROTHEL

  April 1954

  Right beside the boys’ entrance to the football ground, there was a house that always had the window blinds drawn and was reputed to be a brothel. Liam claimed that it certainly was, that he knew for a fact the names of the men who went there and the names of some of the women too. One man, in particular, a Post Office Inspector called Charlie McCabe, went there every Tuesday. McCabe was a prominent figure in diocesan work – collecting money for charities and forever, as Liam said, buttering up the ecclesiastics. A slime-bag. I didn’t believe him. He and I, Toner and Harkin had an argument about it. It finished with my agreeing, for a bet, to go to the house and ‘flush McCabe out’.

  I was to get two shillings if I went up to the door, knocked and asked for ‘my uncle’, Charlie McCabe, pretending he was wanted in an emergency. If I didn’t get McCabe to come to the door, Liam kept the money. He held the money out in his open palm to show me it was a real bet, and said, ‘Off you go.’ I went down the cul-de-sac to the last house on the left. The blinds were drawn on the two front windows that were separated by the door. I knocked. There was a long pause, and the door was opened by a young woman with tousled hair, wearing a blue blouse and skirt. Her mouth was scarlet with lipstick. When she asked me what I wanted I said I was calling for my uncle, Charlie McCabe, for he was needed in an emergency. His daughter had had an accident, I said. She looked at me half-smilingly and asked what sort of accident. Stupidly, I was not prepared for that one. His daughter’s sick, I said quickly. She might have to go to hospital. She left me at the door and vanished down the short hall and into the living room. I heard her talking and then laughing. A man’s head came round the door, looked at me and withdrew. More voices. Then another man appeared, short and burly, buckling – or was it unbuckling? – his belt. He wore a collarless, striped shirt and moleskin trousers. He stood about a foot away from me and asked who I was. I gave him a false name – Rory Harkin. Where was I from? Again, I lied. Rossville Street. There were no Harkins in Rossville Street, he said very casually, both hands still on the loose ends of his belt. I took a step back. And Charlie McCabe wasn’t in the house, he said. He was never in that house. And he had no daughter. At that, he and I moved together. His grasping hand ran down the front
of my shirt as I jumped back, the belt came whistling off him and I ran towards the street corner where the others were already turning to run. We didn’t stop until we were back within our own territory of the sloping streets. As we passed the top of Beechwood Street, we passed Larry, standing there, his hands in his pockets, staring up Bligh’s Lane as usual. Liam said a visit to the brothel would do Larry a world of good. All that stuff about the she-devil gave him a pain. The man was just scared of sex, like most of the older people. I stared at Larry. He was utterly immobile. I could understand someone being afraid of sex. It made me think of fire, glinting with greed and danger.

  ‘It was worth two bob, anyway,’ said Liam, hefting the coins in his hand. ‘We split it, a bob each. I organised it, you did it.’

  Was that house really a brothel? That’s what the whisper was. Was that McCabe? Liam wanted to know. He hadn’t stayed long enough to see; all he saw was the man coming out with the belt in one hand and his other hand out to grab me. No, it wasn’t McCabe, I answered. Someone else. All I could remember was his hands on the buckle of his belt. Nor did I know the young woman, but I remembered her, all of her: her sleepy air, her half-smile, her red, red, mouth. What would it be like with her? I couldn’t imagine. No. I could. But that was what I should not do. Look what had happened to Larry McLaughlin, standing at the foot of Bligh’s Lane and never speaking. For protection, I whispered St Ignatius to myself in the back bedroom:

  In the persons who go from mortal sin to mortal sin, the enemy is commonly used to propose to them apparent pleasures, making them imagine sensual delights and pleasures in order to hold them more and make them grow in their vices and sins.

  And still the vision of that young woman drifted there, vague one moment, the next vivid, reaching for me, unloosing the clasp of her skirt that rustled down as I leapt back and came forward, blurring inwardly, making my election.

  KATIE

  May 1954

  Katie had been in England, her first time away, because her daughter Maeve had married there. There had been great whispering and secrecy about it – why she wasn’t coming home to get married, as would have been usual; why only Katie went over, although all the rest of her brothers and sisters had been invited. ‘She married a black man,’ Liam told me, ‘and they say he’s not even a Christian, never mind a Catholic. So, everybody to the barricades and hide behind them. Katie’s great, though. She hates it, but she wouldn’t not go, even though she’s terrified of travelling on her own.’ The marriage was in Luton, a place we only knew of because it had a football team – of sorts.

  When she returned, Katie talked non-stop for a week about England, Luton, trains, ships, the wedding breakfast, Maeve and her husband, Marcus, the apartment they lived in, how happy they were – on and on. But her chatter was of no use. My mother disapproved, told Katie that she wished Maeve well, but it was not a Christian marriage, no good would come of it. They argued furiously. Finally, Katie declared she was never coming back to our house and left, slamming the door behind her.

  She stayed away for ages. But then the news came that Maeve was pregnant. Katie was thrown by the prospect of a grandchild. She fussed and worried, talked about nothing else. My mother caused another breach when she said she was worried that Marcus might now leave Maeve. History would repeat itself. As McIlhenny had ditched Katie, so Marcus would ditch Maeve. As I walked Katie home from our house late one night, she fumed about the notion. There was no comparison, she told me. For in her case, something sirange had happened. She wasn’t quite the fool my mother took her for. She wondered what that something was. Had I ever heard anything? Had my grandfather ever mentioned Mcllhenny to me in those days before he died? I told her no. Her father, she said, had been really nice to her after McIlhenny left, but for one thing. He wouldn’t hear of her going out to Chicago after him; said he was a no-good; said they couldn’t afford it; said she couldn’t travel when pregnant. That might have been true enough. But Katie had the impression more than money was the problem; he never once said Mcllhenny would come back, as if he knew there was no chance of that. But how did he know?

  I shook my head. I resolved to say nothing, to stay dumb. Katie snuffled into her handkerchief as we reached her door. It’s all coming out now, she announced, as she went out to the scullery to put on the kettle. She had never been forgiven, not by her father, not by her own sister – my mother – and, sorry though she was to have to tell me… but then who else could she talk to except her daughter, Maeve, and Maeve was away, and it was through her that she, Katie, was being punished again for something that was no fault of her own. For her sister to talk like that, about Maeve being left by her husband, as if it were some curse in the family, some punishment she had to bear for what her husband had done to her. And where, she asked me angrily, where was that same sister when my daughter was married? Where was my family when I had to travel to England alone for Maeve’s wedding? If that’s not punishment, I don’t know what is. And then still to be flinty when I come back, to be so flinty I can’t even tell her my daughter’s pregnant without having all those wounds re-opened with all this ‘like mother, like daughter’, ‘you were left behind, she’ll be left behind’.

  She paused for a moment. I made to go, but she went on even as she stood up to go to the door with me.

  It’s years of spite, that’s what it is, she said. Just because McIlhenny dropped her when she was twenty-six and married me when I was eighteen – that’s what it’s about. That’s why she’s so taken up with the idea of Maeve getting ditched the way I was. Because she was ditched herself. And me sympathising with her and promising never to tell your father about McIlhenny. That’s what I get. I wiped her eye with that man, though God knows I wish I hadn’t, and I kept my promise; I said nothing about him until this day, and there she is taking it out on me through Maeve, his daughter and my daughter. Don’t for Christ’s sake talk to me about religion. I’ll lay a bet that black man Marcus’ll be a lot better to Maeve than any of the religious gets she might have met here – or than the very religious white man I married, living out there in Chicago and going to Mass every Sunday of the year.

  ‘There now,’ she said, as she held the door open, ‘there’s the last story I’ll tell you or any of you children. I’m glad it was a true one for a change.’

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE

  September 1954

  ‘How long,’ asked the teacher of religious knowledge, ‘does it take a flea to crawl through a barrel of tar?’

  ‘Six weeks?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Wrong,’ he answered, striking me, not very hard, across the face with the back of his hand. ‘Try again.’

  ‘Six months?’

  ‘You don’t get the point, do you?’ He pulled on my hair, not hard, bringing my head towards the wood of the desk, then letting me go. He walked up the aisle to the blackboard.

  ‘I’ll write the answer on the board, so that you may all the better understand it.’ With what seemed like real weariness, he scrawled on the board the words ‘Amiens Street Station’.

  He faced us. We gazed at him. He pointed at me.

  ‘Confound me. Disagree with the answer.’

  ‘I can’t disagree with what I don’t understand, Father.’

  ‘Implying you can’t agree with it either?’

  ‘I can do neither.’

  ‘Good. This is a condition to be sought for. It is the condition of being educated. Let’s try again. How many angels can balance on the head of a pin? This, I warn you, is a traditional query and not at all eccentric.’

  ‘Balance, Father, is not a requirement of angels.’

  ‘No? You have seraphic access that I lack.’

  I remained quiet. I did not know what his last remark meant.

  ‘Once more. In steps this time. Do you agree that, when we speak of a ghost, we imply the preceding existence of something or someone corporeal? That is, something or someone having had a b
ody before that thing or person achieved ghostliness? Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Tell me, then, who or what was the Holy Ghost before he was a ghost?’

  I was silent. To the left of me, Alec McShane laughed. The teacher frowned.

  ‘We are dealing here with a theological conundrum, of signal importance. Hardly the occasion for another display of the idiocy of rural life. I would like an answer.’

  He pointed at me again.

  ‘I can’t say, Father. I don’t have an answer.’

  ‘Good. On the first question, you don’t understand the answer. On the second, you deny the validity of the question. On the third, you have no answer. I hope now you can see why religion is different. My chief desire is to let you see that there is that which is rational, that which is irrational and that which is non-rational – and to leave you weltering in that morass thereafter. I shall thereby do the State some service and the Church even more. Doctrine, dogma and decision – these you can live by so that you may avoid the disintegration of the mind. Not a serious threat, I have to say, for many in this or of this class of person ranked so monotonously before me.’