The Holy City

by Patrick McCabe

  The songs of that kind for which he retained a special affection, she claimed, included ‘Soul of My Saviour’, ‘To Jesus’ Heart All Burning’ and, of course, ‘Faith of Our Fathers’, with its stirring lines concerning blood and martyrology. Wherein a tender youth found himself done to death at the point of a sword.

  — His last end, Marcus would sigh, almost lovingly, she told me.

  — He writes too, you know. About the most wonderful things. Once he composed a little story about himself. He often does that. He’s made up a character. He calls himself Marcus Minor in them. And me, his Ariadne.

  — Does he now, I said, through thinning, defensive lips.

  He had told her many such stories, she further elaborated a number of weeks later. I was confused by my feelings, finding myself hot and bothered as she continued. He would see certain people, she explained, standing numbed by his graveside: Dolores McCausland among them, clad in a black mantilla, erupting into fits of sobbing as she declared how his love for her had enabled her to see the light, to embrace what she called the ‘Catholic mystery’ — and become converted, to the amazement of all — to the code of Catholicism. Which she once would have regarded as uncivilised, indeed heathen.

  — He loved me so much he gave his life, she would say. For me, Dolly Mixtures, he gave himself up and died.

  After a while I began to laugh whenever she would tell me such stories. Which essentially were innocent, I succeeded in persuading myself, and had little or nothing to do with me. But still I shivered when I’d think of him as Marcus Minor, girdled in a loincloth, watching him slump lifelessly from a cold marble pillar, mourned by Dolly, tear-stained and helpless. But ultimately triumphant in the security of their love.

  He told her once he dreamed he had died with her name upon his lips. They had been listening to Hospitals’ Requests at the time, she said.

  — You were holding my hand as I expired, he had told her.

  And had actually taken her hand as he spoke, she laughed.

  — The Church’s gain is some unfortunate woman’s loss, she joked. I could see that boy as a heartbreaker, believe me. I joke with him, you know, about his being Stevie Wonder.

  Stevie Wonder was a young black prodigy, a popular vocalist at the time, and whose song ‘My Cherie Amour’ was the hit of the summer.

  — I even let him try on my sunglasses. Stevie Wonder! I say and we laugh. Oh how we laugh!

  They never missed the agony aunt programme A Woman’s World on Saturdays, she told me.

  — Dear Frankie, she had chuckled.

  — Dear Frankie, my boyfriend is a very puritanical man and basically does not like attractive women. He disapproves of make-up, sheer tights, jewellery, tight sweaters and jeans. He’s had a number of girlfriends before me, but he gave them up because he said they were too pretty and flamboyant.

  — Would you give me up because I was too pretty and flamboyant, Marcus Minor? she had asked him.

  — Never, my Ariadne, he had pledged, to the death I would defend you: and the holy love that we share together. Here in this private, radiant place. The holy city — the chambers of the heart.

  Stroking my cheek as she lay there beside me.

  — He takes it so seriously. He really is the most extraordinary boy. Such a dreamboat for some lucky girl!

  How I hated her using that word. As I listened — my heart scourged with jealousy — I could see them crouched over the wooden cabinet: bathed in the electricity of the female mysteries that were being transmitted over the airwaves.

  Most especially, of course, Protestant women, as Dolly Mixtures sighed by his side, her stiff glistening hair like some mythical, unbreachable tower. As she gazed down the valley to where he stood in his tunic in the midday haze, before the wooden gates and the ramparts of the city walls. Calling:

  — And I John saw the holy city!

  Marcus Minor Otoyo, courageous envoy, bracing himself to defend her honour.

  — ‘Love’s City’, he called that story, she told me, when, quite unexpectedly, I had snapped:

  — Oh for Christ’s sake, Dolores, forget it!

  Which had prompted her to reply:

  — Why, baby is upset! I do believe my Christopher is jealous! Come on, hon, it’s just a bit of maj!

  We made a laugh of it after that and right up until the time — some weeks later — when I discovered the envelope in her handbag, the whole thing had become more or less forgotten.

  But I’d still smart whenever I thought of it, as she attended to her hair in the compact mirror.

  — Imagine that, Christopher. And in one so young!

  How foolish I had been. And all that one can say is — if there was innocence abroad in that irresponsible age that was the sixties, then it was I, Christopher McCool, one’s hedonistic affectations notwithstanding, who best represented its embodiment.

  Even to this day it still rings in my ears, the mocking muffled laughter I had heard that night. As they stood there together in the moonlit serenity of the holiday-camp chalet. That shocking night in Butlin’s, after I had quit the Beachcomber Bar. To my horror, for even yet I can find no other word for it, finding myself witnessing, through the window of that modest, wind-whipped cabin, Dolores McCausland ever so confidently and proprietorially taking Marcus Otoyo by the hand, as she pressed it to her cheek, laughing now in that beguiling, crushing way. As she crooned a soft melody, gazing into his eyes as she continued with it:

  — My Cherie Amour, distant as the Milky Way!

  Desultorily, but with a steely inner conviction, lightly kissing each of his fingers. Singly, with great attention — before leading him patiently towards the small bed.

  Leaving behind her a city in ruins.

  15 My Friends the Stars

  A city now which is almost as ancient as the old Cullymore, as we approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. I have to say, though, that it’s wonderful to have returned here after all this time, to have come back once more to the place of one’s birth, one’s own hometown, where, effectively, one was formed. Not that you’d recognise it — not in a million years. At least not at first. For, considering the speed of the changes that have taken place over the past two decades, it makes that of the sixties seem little more than a sluggish crawl.

  It really all began with the advent of the prosperous nineties. Why, it might even be said that it’s inaccurate to describe the place as a town any more, for what it is, more than anything now, is a satellite suburb of the city of Dublin. With people who, in my time, years ago, would have gone and had themselves a brain haemorrhage if you had dared to suggest that they travel more than twenty miles beyond their home to work now thinking nothing of a four-hour round trip daily. To toil in the many new basilicas of the future, the numerous financial hubs, call centres and silicon-chip compounds which have sprung up in the last decade or so — the brash fortresses of the prosperous new century.

  Yes, ‘the good times’ of old, they seem so remote — so down at heel and dowdy as to be almost downright embarrassing for many people — now about as welcome as my daddy, Stan Carberry, turning up drunk at a Thornton society wedding. I have to say, though, in all honesty, with some small measure of wisdom at my disposal, the sagacity of age, call it what you will — that I largely tend to concur with this view. Even the Beatles seem to me somehow manufactured, their public image laughably contrived. With those incorrigibly gormless beaming smiles and semi-idiotic playground antics.

  No, if you want ‘the good times’, there is no better period in which to be alive. Nobody will bother you — you can more or less do whatever you like. Because the great thing is that — no one will care. You can rest assured there will be no intervention. It makes the assertions of sixties freedom look so childish. Why, you don’t even have to leave your room. It’s all right there before you on your computer screen, a virtual highway replete with infinite, intoxicating possibilities. Even for someone of my advanced years. Of course ther
e are the usual complaints, most notably by members of my own generation. The — ha ha! — trendsetters of yesteryear.

  Since moving to the Cottages I have heard nothing from them but a succession of dreary whines. Yes, since time immemorial, you can always rely on the over-sixty-fives. If you paid any serious attention to them, you’d probably be too afraid ever to bother even getting out of bed. For fear of being murdered or stabbed — by the hordes of drug addicts and ex-mental-hospital crazies who purportedly roam the streets of our towns and cities.

  All of it, as always, paranoid nonsense, of course.

  By my reckoning, in fact, in my experience, I would have to say that never in its history has Ireland been a safer place. Or, for that matter, more contented with its lot. It’s just age, I guess, as it always tends to be, and I daresay that, if I hadn’t been so lucky in my life, I would probably have ended up the very same way.

  If I hadn’t been more fortunate than the great majority of the residents in these apartment buildings. The Cottages, as the complex is called, is a gated community of flats located near Barnageera village — not far from the Co. Dublin town of Rush, where St Catherine’s Hospital is, in fact, situated — and which contains, unknown to the majority of the residents, a number of people similar to myself. Former patients of the hospital, that is, who, in the very same way as I, have been cured — but are still monitored, from time to time.

  Although, to be honest, I am not aware of being watched or spied upon. There have been no prying eyes that I have identified, and I’m as happy and contented here as I think I really could possibly be. And for that, thanks I think, mainly, are due to another old friend from my hospital years — Mossie Phelan, great old trouper that he is. But who has been through his own share of trouble too, believe me. His own quota of social ostracism. He was accused of being a paedophile, you see — vilified and slandered to a quite appalling degree, really. And yes, it’s him I have to thank for my recent good fortune. For it was he, my old friend Mossie, who eventually made the scales disappear. Made them consummately fall from my eyes. To the point of embarrassment, actually, to be honest.

  Which is ironic when you think that for that whole first year after he came to St Catherine’s I had stubbornly refused to engage with the man, even to acknowledge his presence on the corridor. Disgusting paedo, I used to think, in exactly the same way as everyone else. Hanging’s too good etc. etc. It was only when I got to know him and he began to tell me all about his experiences as a Catholic priest that I began to sit up and pay serious attention to the unfortunate man. With it soon becoming very plain indeed that Mossie Phelan was most certainly not a disgusting paedo and a damaged human being worthy of hanging but was extremely sincere and genuine in what he was saying.

  And not only that — but also knew what he was talking about. And as far as he was concerned, I remember him telling me, it was not untrammelled hedonism or selfishness that was at the heart of the malaise of the modern world.

  — No, he said, it’s not that at all. It’s religion, Christopher.

  He went on then to describe himself as a born-again fundamentalist. But a fundamentalist atheist, not a Christian. Subsequently plying me with various tomes on the subject. Notably The God Delusion by one Richard Dawkins.

  The great thing about it all, though, was that Mossie wasn’t pushy. The way that he saw it — you could take them or leave them, his views on the subject. But he left you in no doubt as to his distaste for Christian dogma — that of Catholicism in particular. He was invigorated, he told me, by the Church’s recent troubles, and derived great satisfaction from watching it teetering along helplessly as it went, pawing its way through this fast-altering epoch like some burlesque, bleary-eyed drunk.

  — Collapsing, now a pathetic superannuated colossus, as we enter the new world.

  It was this man and he alone who facilitated my entry into this ‘new time’, enabled me to find a place in this bewilderingly changing world, side by side with my fellow human beings. Indeed who knows, without the assistance of Mossie Phelan, I might never have been in a position to vacate that old White Room, and find myself here in this fine apartment of bliss rediscovered. Lying here beside the charming Vesna Krapotnik every night, enjoying our own ‘good times’ here in our very own little club, our lounge — womb of ecstasy, where I peruse my treasury nightly, and together we recite Stevenson’s ‘Escape at Bedtime’. Ably assisted in our continued pursuit of ecstasy by the voice of Tony Bennett, a tasty daiquiri and, as always, a little puff on a Peter Stuyvesant {the international passport to smoking pleasure). Not forgetting, of course, my old friends the stars. Who, reliable as ever, twinkle beyond the blue-domed ceiling. As the pages of A Child’s Garden of Verses rise and slowly fall and I gaze into the eyes of my dearly beloved Vesna.

  I will always remain eternally grateful to Mossie Phelan for all of his moral support in the past. For showing me things and never harbouring resentment for my offhand treatment of him in the beginning. Quite simply, without him, I don’t think I would ever have survived. Most certainly, would never have reached the place where I am now — having a wife like Vesna and a love-nest quite as sumptuous as this.

  I mean, who, back then, would ever have dreamed of owning not one but two state-of-the-art Bravia flatscreen plasmas. Not to mention the state-of-the-art paper-thin Macintosh computer that the authorities have generously donated to me. Which provide me with endless hours of compelling entertainment.

  The young instructor — complete with tufty sixties beatnik beard — was even good enough to spend a long time giving me a Mac demonstration. So now I literally spend hours on the machine. For my generation, I would be inclined to suggest, I think it has taken the place of the old-time steam radio. Gone now are Dear Frankie, Hospitals’ Requests, Down the Country and Intermediate Girls’ Hockey, and in their place Big Brother and Oprah and Celebrity Love Island and Makeover Special. Happy Househunters in the Sun is a particular favourite of mine. As well, of course, as the many new websites one tends to discover almost daily. Perfidia.com is the one I continue to access on a regular basis, communicating with others who happen to be online for the same reason as myself. People who’ve been hurt in a similar way, who’ve been on the receiving end of treachery in love, with people they have formerly adored — the very same as I had Vesna.

  It used to pleasure me greatly, back in St Catherine’s, joining with Mossie in denouncing Catholicism. I think it was only after meeting him (Fucking God! Fucking Martin de Porres! Fucking love! Fucking Jerusalem!) that I began to realise I was approaching a time when my emotional troubles would at last be behind me. In other words that, at last, I would be cured. Not only that but completely so.

  Just as, later on, I came to see vividly that the very same conclusion could now be applied to the feelings I’d once harboured for a certain young fellow called Marcus Otoyo. It had been stupid of me, I now realised, ever to have dwelt for so long on the so-called ‘otherness’ of his personality. To have ascribed all sorts of exceptional qualities to Marcus’s nature, purportedly intense spiritual feelings which had existed nowhere except within the confines of my own suggestible imagination. What I came, more than anything, to conclude was that, in fact, what had been taking place with that seventeen-year-old boy was that I had been projecting my own needs and desires on to him. And was using both him and the textures and colours and beliefs of Catholicism to try and find a place, I suppose, a home for my own particular ‘excitable passions’.

  For which, up until that point, I had found no parallel apart from the pages of James Joyce’s novel. And which now, when I think of, tends only to make me laugh. So adolescent does it seem, I mean. Especially when you consider that its author — who was the last word in vehemence — had eventually renounced that very faith, with some theatricality quite publicly disdaining it, after all his talk of ‘absolution’, ‘restitution’, of ‘tremblings’ etc., of ‘myrde’ and ‘lavender’.

  Not to mention the ubiquitous ‘
swooning souls’!

  What’s great about age is that you at last see things clearly. You review your life and what you see is the comedy. As you flush at the things you believed when you were young. When so replete are you with possibility that you’ll tend to believe in almost anything that’s available, and the more romantically impossible the better.

  Appraising it now, in retrospect, it seems clear that the only reason Marcus Otoyo had been reading A Portrait, in fact, had had it in his possession at all, was because he had no choice — it being a prescribed text on his examination course at school.

  After a few little chats in the hospital, it didn’t take Mossie long to spot the problem.

  — You’re certainly more a natural Catholic than you would be a Protestant, Christopher, I would have to say, he told me, for a Protestant would have planned the whole thing rationally — as they always do, as it is in their make-up to do. You, on the other hand, capitulated almost entirely to your emotions. To longings, in fact, plainly evident in your unrealistic, would-be Joycean elevation of a mildly interesting and reasonably intelligent but otherwise unremarkable adolescent. He was just an ordinary growing boy, C.J. You mythologised him: imagined him out of all existence, that’s all. You’re a hopeless romantic, to a ludicrous degree. There was nothing special about Marcus Otoyo, as you subsequently discovered. He was merely a diligent scholar with an admittedly fine singing voice but a very ordinary intelligence, even if he did display a certain facility with words in his letters and other writings. But you over-valued that too, I think, Christopher. Yes, you did. It too was no more remarkable than a lot of the musings of the average spiritually inclined youth. Disappointing, perhaps, but those are the facts. Which, of course, you understand now.