Mondo Desperado

by Patrick McCabe

As he filled the pipe which he produced from the inside pocket of his tweed coat, my scholarly companion continued: ‘This may be very difficult to believe, and if at times you find my story too much for you to bear, I implore you, please – do not hesitate to stop me. But, John Joe, rest assured that every word I speak here tonight is true. Do you understand me?’

  I nodded as best I could, such was my emotional and physical fatigue after all I had been through. A sizeable lump of tobacco was once again packed into the bowl of his fluted briar as he began anew in a barely audible voice, which seemed with every syllable to grow ever more tremulous and agitated. Nevertheless, the pattern of his most extraordinary narrative began to take shape, in that lonely copse on all sides bounded by mountains, the flames of our little fire moving this way and that as though instinctively providing a lyrical counterpoint to the twists and turns of the tale.

  ‘You may have seen pictures of my grandfather, also Fortescue Hastings-Parkes, who was a noted Victorian biologist, biochemist and physician. In his time, he was responsible for many of the major developments in science and medicine. To this day, many of his learned tomes and papers are to be found in museums and libraries and universities all over the world. But, John Joe—’

  I paled as Fortescue leaned closer to me and I felt his hot breath on my cheek.

  ‘Very few,’ he went on, ‘very few of his admirers know or realize that for every one of his experiments and investigations, which seemed, admirably, to advance the cause of science, there was invariably one that went most horribly wrong!’

  I gasped, and was instinctively withdrawing from the disquieting information that was being offered to me when, quite unexpectedly, this erudite weaver of words proceeded to produce from his pocket what initially I took to be a scroll but which, it transpired, was an oil painting, bearing some signs of wear and tear but in an otherwise perfectly acceptable state, and which, to my complete and utter astonishment, depicted, in my companion’s words: ‘A Man With No Face!’

  I was rendered completely and utterly speechless as I gazed upon the image and recognized instantly the figure from my dream of that first night in the hotel – the figure of what could only be my relative Fortescue Hastings-Parkes – without his face! I longed for the tale to reach its conclusion. How I prayed that it would! But we Parkeses are not known for limp and lacklustre narratives, thus onward he proceeded, my by now almost fevered storytelling relative. ‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘such as this one! An experiment which, in theory, was to revolutionize medicine, a form of cosmetic surgery, if you like, known only to him, and which was to result in the complete realignment and astonishing improvement of his features – but succeeded only in the complete and utter removal of his face!’

  I gasped as he uttered the words.

  ‘But that, my dear relative,’ he went on, ‘is as nothing to the hideous transgression for which you and I, generations later, are still paying the penalty!’

  ‘Generations? Penalty?’ I stammered, as I felt his hand on my arm.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said softly.

  So lightheaded and confused did I find myself, it was all I could do to follow him across that nocturnal plain and up the side of the mountain until we attained a plateau, whereupon we rested a moment and gathered our strength before he said: ‘What you are about to see has not been witnessed by any of our family since those dark Labashaca days when the noble efforts of Fortescue Hastings-Parkes on behalf of his community resulted in a disaster so unimaginably vast, so unutterably repellent that mere words, to this day, cannot begin to describe it.’

  ‘Words? Describe?’ I cried, hoarsely.

  ‘Yes!’ he snapped. ‘Yes, JJ! Yes! Come!’

  I stumbled after him as he strode decisively towards the edge of the plateau. Within seconds, I found myself looking down into the valley, my eyes meeting a scene which to this day fills me with such horror and revulsion that I can hardly bear to describe it. For there, shadowed against the blunt vastness of the table mountain (it seemed like some enormous cardboard cutout), were creatures so pathetic in their aspect that no diabolic hand or claw could possibly, I reflected, have fashioned them. Not only that but, along with their vile physicality, they seemed to possess no natural intelligence whatsoever, charging wildly in all directions, flying upside down and generally ululating sounds which were neither identifiably equine nor aviatory. One of the sad creations even flew close to my face, crying, ‘Nngyeaagh! Cheep!’ in a manner that was, whilst infuriatingly irritating, in its own peculiar way, shot through with the oddest of melancholies. After some minutes of their mindless, patternless and wholly illogical behaviour – one of them relentlessly pounded a whin bush with its back legs until nothing remained but a tattered, broken mess and then flew off into the clouds – backways, of course – as though with a sense of incontestable triumph – I could take no more, stumbling awkwardly across the plateau with my hand covering my eyes. ‘Yes,’ my companion said, resting his hand gently on my shoulder, ‘now you know the truth. That is why the people of Labashaca hate us and why for successive generations nothing but bad fortune has befallen us. For those . . . creatures, if you can call them such, John Joe, my friend, were once as you and me. The ancestors of some law-abiding, good-natured Labashaca folk who perhaps were too trusting in their dealings with my grandfather. Naive, credulous innocents whose good nature led them to – that! Whose hunger for immortality, perhaps, induced them to risk everything. Everything, John Joe!’

  I lowered my head in shame as he proceeded. ‘You see, John Joe, he assured them he could transform them into angels. That they would live for all eternity. In fairness, part of his promise he did in fact fulfill – the wings you have just seen are proof of that! But he had not accounted for a local animal – a jennet, of course! – which had rambled up the north face of the mountain at the very moment whilst the experiment was being conducted! In any case, to make a long story short – for I can see you are both physically and mentally exhausted, John Joe, and I do not blame you! – as I am sure you are aware, all radiated energy has a dual nature. Not only does it emanate as waves, but also in short bursts it is measured in quanta. However, to measure both speed and position simultaneously involves a large degree of possible error. This is known, after its discoverer, as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and has much bearing upon the tragic error of our tale: the breakage of chromosomes, in effect, so that their characteristics are not passed on in reproduction – mutations, in a word – hastened by the appearance, at a critical moment in the experiment, of the hapless creature which lumbered into view, my grandfather having already activated the ultraviolet radiation ionizer which was to effect the transformation of human flesh into celestial epidermis – and having actually seen the foolish beast, but a fraction of a second too late! A cry of despair issued from his lips and, instantaneously, the valley was filled with a blinding light and the screech of the most unintelligent animal ever visited upon this earth. With a poignant falling of feathers from the sky, all within seconds was over, and what you have witnessed in the valley below is the heartbreaking, devastating result. Now do you understand, my dear, dear relative, how it is that the house of Hastings-Parkes has been afflicted for all these years?’

  I felt tears well up in my eyes as a neighing, chirruping jennet ascended the lip of the plateau and sailed close by my shoulder. Within minutes, we were both weeping copiously, whilst below in the valley, the raucous cacophony – an absurd tournament of jousting whistles and snorts (as though some form of rudimentary phonetic mockery) – became more than we could endure and at once we began our journey back to the town of Labashaca.

  *

  I took my leave of the town very soon afterwards and to this day have not laid eyes upon my learned, misfortunate blood relative. Thus, I have no means of substantiating this tale for those readers who might be of a sceptical nature, surreptitiously adverting to ‘lassitudinous days in Trinity’, perhaps, or ‘excessive consumption of white powders and opium
tablets’.

  Even were he to present himself for those purposes, I fear I could not find it within myself to prevail upon him to relate anew the horrors experienced by us that night upon the plateau. No, I have laid the facts before my readers for them to make of them what they will. I realize that in these days of ‘information superhighways’, exotic bottled beers and video disc players, tales involving lost valleys, vanished relatives and ludicrous equine-angel hybrids will most likely be dismissed as nonsense. If that is indeed the case, then so be it. In response, all I can say is that, to this day, not one of the Parkes family is fortunate to live in a decent house, or bear a dignified name (shame has decreed that we shall all be appelled ‘Bunty’, ‘Mickey’, ‘Bridie’, and – most loathsome of all – ‘John Joe!’), for my own part, my residence, since I resigned my practice, being a derelict shack on the outskirts of Barntrosna, my sanity preserved only by the occasional indulgence in a little cigarette or perhaps a tablet or two. The image of Fortescue Hastings-Parkes still resides proudly upon my mantelpiece, praying – no doubt! – that I will not one day turn to find its visage completely blank and obliterated, just as I do that I will not one day innocently gaze outside my window and there locate a dead-eyed, obstinate creature, complete with haplessly flapping, entirely unlaundered wings, staring back at me as though some thoroughly redundant, sympathy-craving, bargain-bin Pegasus. For that, dear reader, would be, I assure you, more than I, John Joe Parkes MD (retd.), would be humanly capable – and here, please, I implore you, do not judge me too harshly – Puff! Puff! Choke! Choke! – of enduring.

  The Forbidden Love of Noreen Tiernan

  Mrs Tiernan, Noreen’s mother, was well known in Barntrosna as a woman who could ‘turn her hand to anything’ and was on more committees and boards than anyone could begin to remember. But it still came as a shock when she immersed herself in what later became known as ‘The Noreen Tiernan Affair’ with an obsessive fury. There were those who said that if her husband, Oweny James, had still been alive it would never have happened. But how can we possibly know? Who is to say that he too, on discovering the truth about his beloved daughter, would not also have abandoned everything and caught the next available flight to London? Love is no bedfellow of reason.

  And Noreen Tiernan was loved, and loved deeply – let there be no mistake about that. Ever since her days as a young girl strolling about the streets and byways and butterfly-populated lanes of Barntrosna, her gap-toothed smile had been the delight of all the hard-working farmers, who would cry as she passed: ‘There you are now, Noreen! Lovely day, thank God! How’s your father?’

  ‘He’s very well, thank you,’ Noreen would shyly reply. Sometimes they would lean on their hayforks and marvel after her: ‘God, but isn’t she growing up to be the powerful young girl, all the same! Oweny James Tiernan should be a proud man this day!’

  As indeed he was, and in the years before he passed away tragically after misjudging his footing while negotiating McCracken’s drain late one night on his way home from the Bridge Bar, it was not uncommon to hear him, as he fixed a single, determined eye on the invariably considerable length of ash that extended precariously from his Player’s cigarette, remark: ‘You won’t get a better girl in this world than our wee Noreen, eh? What do you say, men?’

  Whereupon his fellow parishioners, as with one voice, would cry: ‘Now you’re talking, Oweny James. You’re talking now and no mistake!’

  Beneath the sign for Capstan Plug in the half-light of those summer evenings the consensus would be absolute. Noreen was truly incomparable, as with each day that passed she assumed the features of nothing less now than a world-famous beauty queen. As one Thomas Hartigan, a neighbour of hers and something of a poet, observed one day, there were times when the light slanted across her face that you wouldn’t think you were looking at eyes at all but two precious stones set in a head carved from finest ivory.

  By the time she reached sixteen years of age, the beauty of Noreen Tiernan had become so striking that whenever she walked down the main street of Barntrosna all the men who lined the corner would stare after her in stunned silence. As Jackie Burdon said on one occasion, shaking his head: ‘If young Tiernan doesn’t turn out to be an international model, I’ll eat all my winter silage.’

  *

  But Noreen Tiernan didn’t have the slightest intention of becoming a model of any kind, international or otherwise. As anyone who had bothered to take the time to ask her would have learnt. This was because she had known from a very early age when her father – ironically, under the impression he was immersed in a thrilling Western story (his one passion – he made it his business to read at least a half-dozen per week) entitled Forty Guns to Apache Pass somehow managed to read aloud to her a significant section of the life of Florence Nightingale, filling her with the deepest admiration for the English nurse whose selflessness throughout the Crimean War was legendary. As her father continued reading in the firelight, rocking back and forth on his chair and punctuating the narrative with anachronistic and wholly illogical snippets of frontier vernacular along the lines of ‘ornery’ and ‘critters’, Noreen could see herself standing, in her crisply starched uniform, over any number of broken, helpless men, briskly administering tonics and medicines as they reached out to her – futilely, for all in Noreen’s eyes were equal – courting preferential treatment in frail, hoarse voices. As she sat there in the shadows, she thought of herself sometime in the future, clapping her hands smartly and chirping to the other nurses, ‘Come along, staff! There’s work to be done here!’ rigid and unshakeable as a Doric column as her subordinates filed past her with eyes downcast, but with hearts full of affection – and, most of all, respect.

  There were times too when she would envisage herself on the remote, baked plains of the Australian outback, landing the rickety craft that was the flying doctor plane and dashing through the dust with her medicine bag flapping as a plaintive cry echoed somewhere in the bush.

  And often, too, it cannot be denied, in the arms of a close-shaven, handsome young doctor, who as they danced to the music of Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett would touch the soft lobes of her ears with his lips and gently whisper: ‘How I love you, Queen of the Ward! My sweet and wonderful, wonderful Noreen Tiernan.’

  No, that was why, Noreen knew, she would never be a top model. Not for her the vulgar assault of flashing bulbs and prying lenses, the facile, ill-informed and essentially exploitative interrogations of supercilious chatshow hosts. For her, she knew only too well, the catwalks of Europe would be but as highways to nowhere.

  To appear, however unostentatiously, within the pages of Nursing Times was her sole ambition.

  Which was why when, at the age of seventeen years, she learned that she had been accepted as a trainee nurse into St Bartholomew’s General Hospital, Chiswick, London, she was absolutely over the moon! She stood in the middle of the floor in the kitchen of the Tiernans’ simple four-room cottage and cried: ‘I got it! I got it, Mammy! I’ve been accepted into St Barty’s!’

  Her mother smiled and thought to herself how pleased Oweny James (ten years dead that very week – the anniversary Mass was due to take place, as usual, close by McCracken’s drain where they had placed the wooden cross which read: I. M. Oweny James – tragically drowned on this spot Sept. 7 1970) would have been if he had been there to see it. To witness all his children, Ta and Willie and Wee Patty, clustered about the skirts of his eldest daughter, as if about to burst with pride. Which they were indeed entitled to do, having had it hard throughout the dark ‘post-Daddy’ years with every penny counting and each scrap of bread and bit of fish gathered up to go into the next day’s dinner. But they had managed. With the help of the most wonderful neighbours a family had ever known and the strength that God had given them, they had endured, thought Mrs Tiernan. And now her daughter was to be a nurse! Small tears came into her eyes as she thought of her eldest daughter, resplendent now in her spanking new uniform, standing in a vast, polished
ward, surrounded by awe-stricken colleagues. Her fist closed as, unbidden, vague folk memories of coffin ships and starving wretches pawing the stench-ridden dark came to her, and suddenly she felt limitlessly empowered. It was all she could do not to cry out, ‘My daughter’s going to be a nurse! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!’, clutch the sweeping brush, which was very close to hand, and proceed around the kitchen with triumphant, almost girlish glee.

  But she didn’t. Dignity and restraint won the day and all she did as she reposed in a single funnel of dusty sunlight was bite her lower lip and softly intone the words: ‘God be praised for sending us, his loyal servants, the Tiernans of Barntrosna village, such happiness true and bountiful.’

  Rarely in her life had Mrs Tiernan known such feelings. Or her daughter Noreen now as she took her seat in the neat and tidy compartment of the British Rail train which was about to make its way steadily all the way from Holyhead to Euston Station, London. Outside, fields and hills sped by. Fields and hills and sheep – English sheep! The first, she reflected, she had ever seen. There were butterflies in Noreen’s tummy as she thought now of all the exciting days that lay ahead of her. The moment she arrived, she would write home and tell them all about it. She had promised Ta that she would send him a special postcard. How she was going to miss him! And Bimbo! But, as she had told them, she would be back at Christmas when the fields were covered in a white eiderdown of snow – and the tales she would have for them then!

  Of course, it had been especially hard saying goodbye to Pobs (her pet name for her boyfriend) – how would it not be when she loved him so dearly? As he did her, revealing the true depth of his feeling when he broke down in tears in the dance hall, crying: ‘No! No! Don’t go to England! They’ll take you away from me just like they took everything else!’

  He was such a good sort, Pobs. Emotional, yes, but as kind and considerate a boy as any girl could ever wish for. She had promised she would write every day. ‘You promise?’ Pobs had implored, wiping his eyes with the large white handkerchief which he seemed to bring everywhere with him. ‘I promise,’ Noreen had replied, and despite the fact that things did not quite turn out like that, her sincerity at the time was unquestionable.