The Holy City

by Patrick McCabe

  — Last night I lay a-sleeping, there came a dream so fair,

  I stood in old Jerusalem beside the temple there.

  I heard the children singing and ever as they sang

  Methought the voice of angels —!

  — Shut up! I found myself involuntarily crying aloud, inexplicably waving my arms, and actually breaking into a run — before it dawned on me exactly what it was that I had just done.

  The statue now lay in pieces before me, with splinters and scattered chunks reaching as far as the side altar. More than anything now I regret what I had written. The words crudely smeared in ash across the walls. Obscenities they had called them — rightly, for I accept now that that is what they were. There really can be no other description. Much of it remains vague even yet, although I can still remember the figure of an old lady retreating silently into the shadows. As I stood there, with the words I had written as blurred now before me as the rain upon the French windows of my imagination.

  Fuck the holy city. Fuck all niggers.

  They say that the sixties ended when the Rolling Stones played Altamont in ’69. Well, for me that’s not true. For me they climaxed in the cathedral that day. But the inevitable collapse had begun before that. Budin’s of Mosney — laughably, perhaps, that was our Altamont. That night when we went to the Beachcomber Bar. Or, more specifically, after I left it.

  * * *

  Up until that moment, things they had really been going so good. The sixties were really taking hold in Cullymore. There was colour everywhere, great ads, lots of fun, with a never-ending stream of people wandering in and out of Green Shield Stamps. And there were terrific bands playing in the Mayflower every weekend. As well as that, myself and Dolores were getting on like a house on fire. The Good Times bar was packed to the door. Which was terrific. It was great to have a place now where, like London or Paris or Milan, you could ‘do your thing’, yeah, ‘get your kicks’. If, as they said, that happened to be ‘your bag’.

  The owner of the Good Times had done a great job — completely refurbishing the pub’s interior. With the result that now there were not only posters of pop stars and singers — there was a giant one of the Beatles with their guru and one of Julie Christie swinging a Union Jack shopping bag — but also adverts for Smirnoff and cigarettes, with mountain streams flowing in super-saturated colours, the night skylines of famous cities glowing like something out of a fairy tale. Smart cocktails now were being served and a starry sky had been painted, twinkling away on the blue-domed ceiling. New chairs had been brought in that were shaped like artists’ palettes and the fabulous chrome counter had — or so it was claimed — been imported from America. There was a cardboard effigy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with a glinting star leapfrogging off his pearly teeth.

  Maybe it was inevitable that it would all end the way it did — after Dolores arrived on the scene. Who knows, had she not appeared I might never have bothered going down to Wattles Lane again, no matter how many invitations Marcus’s mother extended. As a result, once more becoming prey to those old familiar confusing emotions whenever Marcus was in the vicinity. So consumed with wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire, as James Joyce had written in the book to which I had become so attached. C.J. McCool, only maybe not so cool, if you examined him closely. Anything but, in fact, truth to tell. C.J. Beatnik, C.J. Pops? Christopher Hot Jazz maybe more like, C.J. yes, extremely hot. Christopher anything but smooth and cool.

  I knew it was only a matter of time: as gradually all pretence of becoming like Henry Thornton or any of his haughty empirical associates began to vanish and I surrendered so hopelessly but willingly to the feelings so eloquently described in A Portrait. Like the central character — if a fever quickened my pulse, or my heart began slowly to fold and fade with fear like a withering flower, I would pray intensely and the glories of Mary would hold my soul captive. My heart then, at last, would once more become calm. As I thought: Marcus is holy and so am I. Marcus is a Catholic and so am I. We two are Catholics, impelled by ardour to cast sin from our beings.

  There were times when I would tremble, such was the singular enormity of the thought — that no one existed in the world, save us two: Marcus Otoyo and I, betrothed to Christ the King and his mother Mary.

  As he stood there by the window of his kitchen, with his glossy curls shining, thinking to himself, or so it seemed: I am the one who has been selected. Though I despise the rough tribes of the cottages, their dull piety and the sickly smell of cheap hair oil with which they anoint their heads, it is I above all others who have been selected from amongst them and am now fated to join the order of Melchizedek, to bring glory to my parents and to the town of Cullymore. I am the unique, the uplifted — the elected. I alone am the tabernacle of Christ.

  I could see him so clearly, pacing the floor of his room, head bent — hands clasped behind his back, deep in contemplation.

  — Forget about Protestants and their hard, ungiving hearts, his expression seemed to suggest, forget about Henry Thornton, his well-bred abstinence and studied incuriosity. It is your surrender to tenderness which will be your salvation. Thus do I bless you, Christopher, my friend.

  Sometimes I used to leave that cottage in a trance, scarcely hearing the words that Dolores addressed to me, as she took my arm and we negotiated the rainswept back lane, picking our way through the puddles and wet rubbish. Where Joyce’s ‘rough tribes’ abided, and where once upon a time he too might have seen himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity. But where now, as we proceeded through the hoarse riot of those dwellings, nothing, for me, could have been further from the truth.

  And for the first time in my life, I began to entertain the possibility of love. That night, for the first time writing, by the light of the moon, at my kitchen table:

  For many days I had travelled, mindful above all that my journey at its end might prove to be fruitless and heartbreaking. And that when, at List, I gained the walk of the holiest city: the one that is called love and is sacred above all others. That no answer might be made to my knocking upon the gates of the new Jerusalem. That the echo of my plea might die as so often before, a hollow appeal destined to be heard by no human ear. Let me in, I might cry, above all things please let me in. Lift up these gates, for more than anything I need to belong. Only to find, as my soul was about to commit itself to despair, that the massive wooden gates swung effortlessly open and I was almost blinded as I stood there in a shaft of desert sun. Only for the sight to be returned to my eyes as I beheld him before me, Marcus Otoyo, attired in a fine tunic after the manner of a prince, with a crown of olives upon his head, as he extended his hand and in a soft voice told me:

  — You are welcome, friend. To this holy place where we venerate and praise love. Come in. Now, Christopher Maximus, you are one for ever with us.

  My soul was exalted as, at last, approaching dawn, I began my ascent of the stairs towards sleep.

  12 Mr Wonderful

  The night Man. United won the European Cup, the town erupted with a fervour greater than anything experienced ever before — with the streets and the squares sinking beneath a wavering sea of red banners and flags. Yet another effigy had appeared — this time of Sir Matt Busby, the successful team’s manager, which had been erected outside the library.

  At the counter of the Good Times they were gathered around Dolores like a pride of tomcats. As she, mischievously, patted her perm, batting her eyelashes and puckering her nose.

  They asked her to sing another Peggy Lee.

  — Sing ‘I’m a Woman’! someone bawled.

  It had gone down a storm in the bar the night before.

  — Sing ‘Black Coffee’!

  — Let the dame sing whatever she likes.

  Now she was provoking them towards all sorts of bravado. The word ‘dame’ was rarely heard in the town before. Not outside the pages of the Mike Shayne magazine. But around Dolly Mixtures, as she was now called, almost anything seemed to be possible.
She might indeed have strolled out of that very publication, in semi-darkness lighting a cigarette with a tortoiseshell holder, circling crimson lips for men who went ‘plumb crazy’.

  Which was exactly what they did whenever she ascended the stage anew, to deliver a selection of sultry lounge ballads from what seemed to be an inexhaustible repertoire. Including Ruby Murray’s much requested ditty, which she parodied for all it was worth, popping imaginary ‘slices’ into her mouth as she hoisted her skirts, wiggling coquettishly up and down the stage:

  — Yummy delisch! It’s Miss O’Leary’s Irish fruit cake!

  Standing in the spotlight in her black cocktail dress, kissing the air, proceeding to raise the sequined material to just a quarter-inch directly above her knee. Before suddenly abandoning Ruby Murray and her succulent confections and launching into her other much asked-for party piece, ‘Dreamboat’ by Alma Cogan:

  — Yew luvvable dreem — boat!

  When you heard Alma singing that bright and upbeat swinging melody it was like she was reaching out of the record to pinch everyone’s cheeks individually. And that’s what it was like now as the perky number jollied along:

  — You luvvable dreem — boat!

  After that, there was no shortage of men who declared their willingness to ‘take on’ Dolly Mixtures. To heartily administer a ‘rub of the relic’ to ‘the Protestant’. Who, it was well known, were ‘mad for it’ in bed. Unlike Catholics, with whom you had to have a ‘wrestling match’, like Jackie Pallo or Billy Two Rivers. Thus it was extremely flattering and I would never dream of suggesting otherwise when it transpired that her affections, it appeared, were directed exclusively towards me. And to hear that she had privately confided in friends that she found me ‘charming’.

  — Chris McCool is my Mr Wonderful. My own special private Cullymore matinee idol. He’s my Terence Stamp, my David Hemmings. He’s Top of the Pops, he’s Ready Steady Go.

  As she crooned, clandestinely, to my absolute delight:

  — Why this trembling Mr Wonderful… !

  Who would have ever dreamed it would end the way it did?

  Such envy as we could excite in those days! The Happy Club, before its time. The Good Life Couple, in town tonitel at the Talk of the Town!

  — He thinks he’s all the pop star. He thinks he’s Ringo Starr. Going around dressed in women’s blouses and stripy slacks. What in God’s name does Dolly see in him? Anyway, Carberry rode his auld mother, so he did, so he’s a Fenian bastard, the very same as us.

  Meaning, of course, of similar degraded and inferior status — whether my mother was a Protestant or not.

  All of which was irrelevant to Dolores McCausland. Who now arrived regularly to visit me at the cottage.

  — C.J. Pops, my own dandy boy, she’d say, slipping her warm hand underneath my shirt.

  As the silver arm of the Bush hi-fi released Herman’s Hermits on to the turntable.

  And we’d snap our fingers and do the Watusi:

  — No milk today, my love has gone away!

  Except that she hadn’t. She was right there in the thrillsville, doing the twist in a kitchen in Cullymore.

  My problem, essentially — it wasn’t really all that much of a mystery, when you got down to it — was one of excessive sensitivity and feeling. Unsustainable levels of emotion, pure and simple. And if Mukti had been doing his job — had asked me properly, for a start, instead of trying to pull fast ones — he’d have known that.

  Stuh-stuh-stupid fucking Indian midget.

  What’s perhaps more regrettable than anything about the early days is that, in the beginning, it had been really terrific associating with Dolly. Without a doubt, she had been the most exciting thing to happen to me or the town for years. Thanks to that thickly lacquered blonde hair of hers and those long painted nails — not forgetting the exquisitely enticing, extremely shapely derrière. And the light chiffon scarves which she knotted around her neck, the manner in which she fingered her pearls as she spoke: in a husky, hypnotising Marlene Dietrich-style voice, the consequence of forty cigarettes a day. Sometimes, out of mischief, especially after a number of gins, she would cheekily say the most outrageous things, almost as if it were her entitlement as a Protestant, particularly where subjects of a ‘bluish’ nature were concerned. She told me privately that she wasn’t really religious — and that the only reason she sang hymns at all was to ‘watch the Catholics getting annoyed’.

  — They take it so seriously! she said. So insecure!

  — Giddy Dolly, she twinkled as she squeezed my hand.

  Sure enough, every Sunday morning in Wattles Lane you would hear her, impishly teasing the Catholics going to Mass. Standing in the lane as though rehearsing for a concert — a private recital of favourite Protestant hymns: Open the Gates of the Temple’, ‘All People That on Earth Do Dwell’ and, most notable of all, ‘Abide With Me’.

  But in the Nook late at night, it tended not to be hymns that we sang. No, the melodies Dolly crooned in the moonlight were different. As we drank whisky and she lay there beside me. Humming ‘Mr Wonderful’ — to me and no one else. If only it could have continued like that for always.

  — It’s a strange and tender magic you do …

  As we lay there, smoking, and she blew a tendril of smoke into my face, crooning away — until the first cock crew. And there she was again, looking longingly into my eyes. Or should I say the eyes which belonged to no one else but:

  — Mr Wonderful.

  It really was a magic time: in essence, like the stuff of all the great romantic songs. If unfortunately, again like many of them, ending badly. With its considerable quota of heartbreak, misunderstanding and bitterness.

  13 The New Philosophy

  I was chewing my nail in the White Room one day — thinking about Dolores, actually, as it happened — when, completely out of nowhere, this mad thumping starts — nearly putting the heart crossways in me, to tell the truth.

  I flung myself backwards.

  — Go to hell, do you hear?

  Receiving no reply, then screeching in falsetto:

  — I’m serious, friend!

  Before I remembered that I had been informed the day before that I was actually scheduled to vacate my spookily blanched accommodations. To be released under certain conditions. I would be allowed out now — but only daily, and not for more than an hour each time.

  I had become so accustomed to my new home, I soon realised, as we strode along the corridor towards the recreation area, that I was afraid that I might actually be rendered unhappy by ever having bothered to vacate it at all. When who should I see, only Mike Corcoran standing grinning there, waiting for me in the doorway. Puffing away with a roll-up between his fingers.

  — Put that fucking thing out! says the orderly. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to be smoking in here!

  But kind of affectionately for it’s always been hard to dislike old Mike Corcoran.

  I had forgotten, in fact, just how fond I actually was of the man myself until the two of us happened to be sitting there watching the telly when he starts laughing. He’s outrageous really, to be honest about it. I mean, all you can see is the Twin Towers falling in slow motion and all these poor unfortunate people leaping, literally plummeting there to their deaths, as Mike leans over and says:

  — Boys, but I love Twizzlers. Maybe you’d like a Twizzler, Pops?

  For a minute I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about — but then I see it in his hand, a little brown stem that he informs me is ‘beef jerky’.

  — Ah Twizzlers, he says, just the job.

  So there we are the two of us munching away as his jaws rotate and he says:

  — Mighty Twizzlers, I love them so much! with the poor New York victims still hurtling tragically to their deaths.

  But he’s still laughing, so much so that eventually it gets the better of me and I have to say stop it, Mike, it’s inappropriate and he says:

  — Auld cunts! Black
bastards! Look at them all there smashed up like jelly!

  And then what happens the two of us start arguing. Until the orderly appears, getting ready to fold the arms. Until he realises it’s not all that serious. Well, serious, maybe — but not enough for us to come to blows.

  All the same I had to acknowledge — even if I chose not to admit it — that there was a certain amount of sense in what Mike Corcoran had to say. After all, he insisted, if it can’t be changed — if there’s nothing at all you can do to alter the situation, what’s the use in going around moping about it?

  — You might as well laugh at the poor old jellymen, he says, and he stretches his legs, raising his eyebrow and saying:

  — Twizzler, perhaps?

  Big Brother was on for a while after that. But no surprises — it was the same old tiresome drivel trotted out: Four-twenty-five in the Big Brother household. Then some divorcee starts on about her ‘feelings’ and how the rest of the ‘inmates’ are abusing her and ‘having a go’. Before bursting into tears as the rest of the tenants trail across the floor to swamp her in ‘huggy love’ — an unctuous and patently insincere embrace. The Balloon People have arrived, I thought, with all features erased as if by a massive celestial thumb. I looked at the screen — and all I could see were their host-heads staring back.