The Holy City

by Patrick McCabe

  But I sometimes think, even yet, and in spite of myself, I’ll often find myself thinking: If only she had been capable of understanding. It could have been so beautiful, almost as good as the way I’d dreamed it, with at long last the French windows of Thornton Manor slowly parting — and Lady Thornton approaching me with arms outspread, crying joyfully:

  — But of course you can enter your own house, my dear boy.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  I suppose it’s true to say that, at the ripe old age of sixty-seven, C.J. Pops, ancient husky relic of the good old sixties, has, if nothing else, succeeded at last in growing up. But not only that, has also discovered the secret of endurance and survival. That which comes of pledging fealty to but one single creed, that very same one which now like a cleansing fog spreads out across Western Europe, desultorily floating across the flagstones of the Plaza, where the pudding-faced families repose, as ever, beneath the patiently revolving screens. Attired in their loose-fitting leisurewear, mutely passing wine across the table as one turns, with a single head, smooth and round as a consecrated bread, now facing in my direction — bold escutcheon of this rational new epoch, ephemeral cipher, neat round rubric formed with a chilling, perfect artistry. Regarding me eerily, the starkest orb:

  As perfectly formed as a consecrated bread.

  I can’t say for sure just how long exactly I had been going with Dolores McCausland when I found myself waking up one night in the Nook, with — to my astonishment — the following words thrusting from my mouth:

  — Marcus Otoyo, hear this call. Appease for me the longings of my heart, will you?

  I didn’t sleep for the remainder of the night. Kept tossing and turning and experiencing perplexing, near-feverish visions. One of which in particular was most frightening in its realism. I could almost hear the clamour in the room: that same disjointed cacophony the soldiers might have made in their grim approach to Gethsemane. A detachment of guards — led by Marcus, all bearing lanterns and torches and weapons. I was standing there alone when I saw him at the gate.

  — We have crossed the Kedron Valley to come here, he said, and whispered:

  — The one that I shall kiss — that is he.

  Then he smiled with those gleaming eyes and I could feel a warm tear beginning to steal down my cheek.

  It was only a day later, the moment I saw him outside the Five Star supermarket, that jarringly, almost immediately, the same sentence entered my mind: The one that I shall kiss: that is he.

  I involuntarily flinched as it did so, edging into an alleyway as he passed.

  But, generally speaking, that episode would have proved an exception around then. Most of the time it was delightful, to be honest. To employ the period parlance, we were having ourselves an absolute ball. Dolly and I had never got along better, and we were the talk of the place as we zoomed around in my E-Type substitute. As we went vroom! in the town of Cullymore. Cue Bullitt, by Lalo Schifrin. You got it, Pops, it’s outasite. No, I jest. I may not really have been a sixties superstar like Ray Davies, or John Lennon, or Sean Connery, for that matter, but as far as anyone from Cullymore was concerned, Chris McCool, he sure was turning out to be a pretty ‘cool mover’. A regular up-to-the-minute outatown hep cat and no mistake.

  * * *

  Emboldened by Dolly’s continued encouragement, I worked on refining my image somewhat, to the extent that it wasn’t David Hemmings I resembled so much any longer, instead with my thick bushy moustache I looked every inch the twin of Peter Sarstedt, the medallion-sporting singer with shiny boots and crushed-velvet pants. And whose massive hit ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ was to be heard almost everywhere throughout that summer.

  Along with my impressive facial hair, I was sporting a nice blow-dry hairstyle now, set and styled in the fashion of the time, and tending, in dress, to favour ribbed polos in a variety of bright colours, along with high-waisted flared bell-bottoms. I couldn’t have been happier. Why not, for heaven’s sake? With Dolly now openly referring to me as ‘her hunk’. Her very own Mr Wonderful, she would proudly say.

  ‘Toot! Toot!’ would go the horn as I picked her up every evening at the house in Wattles Lane, to take her down for a drink in the Good Times. Sometimes I’d see Marcus sitting by the window of his bedroom, studying.

  As was my wont at that time, of course, and with no evidence, I remained convinced that it was A Portrait he was reading. And it affected me, obviously. Wrenched me, in fact. The emotions I experienced best described by its author within those very pages: Wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire.

  It was on account of those inexplicable surges of feeling that I would find myself, falteringly, beginning to make the most unnecessary, unconvincing excuses.

  — I don’t think I’ll be able to go down to Wattles Lane tonight, Dolly. I’m really sorry. I have accounts to do. I have three supermarkets to deliver eggs to tomorrow.

  But somehow she always succeeded, in the end, in persuading me. And before I knew it we’d be sitting there chatting away to Marcus’s mother, as he himself continued with his studies in the other room — preparing arduously for the forthcoming play, The Soul’s Ascent: Saints You May Not Know. Every time I went down now, he seemed to be there: ensconced in the same place — frowning intensely, wholly absorbed. Assimilating every possible scrap of knowledge about the saints of old, their magnificent visions and selfless sacrifices. I noticed a booklet lying on the table. The Blessed Martin de Porres Story, it was called. As I say, being of colour, Marcus had specifically been chosen for the part. The Soul’s Ascent: Saints You May Not Know in part examined the life of Martin de Porres.

  — I’m so lucky, I had overheard him saying to his mother, so lucky to have been chosen. For Blessed Martin is my favourite saint of all.

  I found myself charmed, utterly disarmed by his manner and by the spontaneity of this admission. There was something so open-hearted and all-embracing about his youthful tolerance, his belief in all peoples.

  In the beginning, of course, and which I understand now, what I ought to have done was to laugh dismissively whenever Dolly told her Marcus Otoyo stories.

  — He really does think he’s a saint, silly boy! Those daft old Catholic books, filling his head with nonsense! But he does make me howl, I have to say. You should have seen his face the day I was ironing my petticoat. The eyes, I swear, nearly popped out of his head. So amusing.

  Sometimes, very occasionally, I might have enjoyed her telling those stories. But other times I would resent it — finding it increasingly difficult to conceal my irritation.

  As she whinnied with laughter and primped her permed hair.

  — One day, just for a giggle, don’t you know, I read a little bit to him from Titbits magazine, Chris. You should have seen his innocent blushes!

  I couldn’t believe the sudden harshness of my voice. The chalk-white aspect of my expression, my clenched fists.

  — That’s disgusting! Do you really have to humiliate him in such a fashion? Is that the way all Protestants must behave? Is it absolutely necessary?

  Why had such thoughts even entered my head? I was flummoxed.

  I remember Dolly looking pale and quite shocked. She had actually left the Nook early that evening, even after I’d tried to placate her.

  — No, Chris, I have to go, Chris, she kept saying — appearing very disconcerted indeed.

  And the way she looked at me, just before she left. It was as if what she was thinking was: He’s a Catholic all right. Prone to bouts of shame and quite irrational, disturbing violence. A Catholic to his very bones. Vitiated, profligate — lacking sobriety and self-control. He simply doesn’t possess the neutrality of the Protestant — the coolness, the distance. Spiritually infirm, bereft of the capacity to subordinate emotion. Impartiality is alien to him.

  But I could have been imagining that. As Mossie used to say:

  — For certain souls of a more sensitive nature, the embrace of Catholicism can sometimes prove a
disaster — its excesses encouraging paranoia and delusions, often extreme and sharpened heights of perception. Over-sensitivity ought not, in certain cases, to be encouraged, for it can be potentially devastating. But only for certain unfortunates, you do understand.

  He’s right. But thankfully now, that’s all consigned to the dustbin of the past. Catholicism and everything to do with it removed now as though they never existed. As peace reigns supreme along the Plaza and in the Happy Club. C. J. Pops and his babe, Vesna Krapotnik.

  A time to be born, this balloon-headed time — a unique era of stability and opportunity. Where we all, with eager willingness, are dutiful zeros. With our life paths signposted upon a virtual highway. The bleached calm of the twenty-first century. Never has such harmony existed in history, or so the vox pops repeatedly tell us. Of course, as usual, not everyone is in accord with this appraisal. The media remain preoccupied with the debate and there is endless speculation about the disappearance of certain values and rules. The rise in suicide being attributed to the collapse of the well-tried framework of Western civilisation. Annihilation of consciousness appears now to be the norm, it is routinely suggested.

  And which, if it is true — and I’m inclined to think it is — then, believe me, is a development that causes me no discomfort at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Having willingly dispensed with my own ego some time ago. Enlisting in the ranks of the pudding-faces myself, or as Mike prefers, the good old Eggmen. The mute serried lines of ghostly coins. Knowing only too well that I might never have survived if I didn’t. Survived to become Old Pops’ here in the apartments — yep, C.J. McCool, Ambassador of the Void: retired swinger, former tenant of the salubrious White Room. Now as insignificant and untroubled as every other drained and grateful cipher. Which is amusing, of course, for back in the old days, quite coincidentally, they used to casually refer to me as ‘the Eggman’.

  Although, obviously, of course, for entirely different reasons.

  No, I’m a nouveau Eggman in this clean new century, this world of white wax — and which is exactly the way I desire it. In order that I might continue to remain anonymous, to abide in a world of weightless, floating orbs — pathologically incurious as to the welfare of one’s fellows. As we pass the wine across the table once more — unmoved, detached, attired in our shapeless, brightly coloured loungewear, our smooth round faces free of any blemish, with no end to the spoils now placed at our disposal. For all the world indeed, like rows of eggs neatly stacked in trays. Just as I used to arrange them when bringing them to the Five Star, one by one in their cardboard trays. For the most part dutiful and mute, perfectly formed little objects: until sometimes, for no reason, you’d get it into your head that, somehow, something was inexpressibly wrong — seeing them then as something quite different. Terrified mouths, frozen silence, crying out from the limbo’s maw.

  ‘They Are the Eggmen!’ Mike always starts to strum as soon as he sees me arriving into Mood Indigo. Then, after that, ‘No Milk Today’ by Herman’s Hermits, that hopelessly buoyant almost ludicrously happy melody which seems to encapsulate the very essence of the sixties. That cheeky, optimistic bubblegum whimsy which seems the definitive mood of that time.

  Although, sometimes, to be honest — whenever I’m feeling under the weather — I could get along just as well without Mike and his happy tunes. However, I’d never dream of saying that to him. He doesn’t need to know things like that. Or the reason I sometimes shiver whenever he plays ‘No Milk Today’ is that it happened to be playing on Evelyn’s transistor that day when I made my way to meet Marcus, at their little greenhouse, the Holy of Holies. Which is where I’d hoped to find him — in order to clear up our little misunderstanding, put it behind us once and for all.

  I had been hiding behind some bushes watching Evelyn. She was busying herself now, having been praying for some time. When I decided at last to make an appearance, she didn’t seem at all taken aback — just carried on arranging some flowers. My throat was dry and hoarse as I said:

  — I’m sorry, Evelyn: I thought I might find him here — Marcus Otoyo, I mean.

  — No, she replied, I’m afraid he won’t be coming out here any more. He said if I want I can throw his things away.

  — Throw them away?

  — His posters and that. His pictures. All his various bits and pieces.

  She seemed sad when she was saying it.

  There was a framed oleograph of Blessed Martin de Porres mounted directly above her head, with his two hands joined as he lifted his curly ebony head up to heaven. Just for a moment, it raised my spirits. When I thought of just how extraordinary his performance had been in the play, The Soul’s Ascent. But then I looked at Evelyn and, dismayed, instantly appreciated the situation: in fact, her downcast eyes told their own story. I knew now if I waited I would only be wasting my time.

  He wasn’t coming. He wouldn’t be coming.

  Which I ought to have known. The sharp exchange which had taken place between us only an hour or two before ought to have taught me that much.

  — He’s too grown-up now, she told me ruefully, before looking away. He says it’s just for kids, all this. It’s over. Whether it’s sad or not, it’s over. It’s done.

  * * *

  After she left, an all-pervasive gloominess began to descend on me and my limbs assumed the most terrible weight. Tucking Robert Louis Stevenson’s golden treasury under my arm, as I took a final look at the greenhouse before departing myself.

  All the way back into town I found myself utterly distraught and all I could think of were lines from mythology, commingling with those from the golden treasury: No, we cannot abide in the city of fallen hope. There will be no peace in that place where hope and love have been seen to die. It is a city unholy, and deserves to be destroyed, its gates torn down, its temples razed.

  It was a difficult and emotional time, and who in their right mind would want to revisit it? One is undoubtedly infinitely better off, in these, the white-world days. Where one is sustained by systematic, clean-washed numbness. A platinum anaesthesia.

  Not only reassuring — but also, as I have found recently, so convenient. I mean — consider that urchin to whom, only recently, I administered the beating — richly deserved, might I say. Once upon a time it would have been considered impossible, indeed hopelessly so, certainly in a small country like Ireland, for such an incident to occur with no significant investigation taking place, indeed with no seeming consequences at all ensuing. Which, as I say happily for me, proved to be the case. Why, the brat probably hadn’t even bothered to report the incident. Fearful, no doubt, that he might end up like that other little fool I once read about in the paper, another little Sambo who had been brought back to an apartment — only to find himself eaten by his host, the cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. Returned there, can you believe it, by the very same policemen to whom he had appealed for assistance.

  Yes, like everywhere else, from New York to LA, London to Dubai, it seems rootless strays just come and go now with the weather, as do refugees of all shapes and hues, littering the Plaza like so much human junk. And I cannot help but think that Henry Thornton would have approved: of its essential indifference to emotion but also its judicious self-control and order — empirical, non-spiritual, with all unessential emotion systematically siphoned.

  — Incurious, he’d have smiled, yes, an impartiality to which I give my blessing. For it seems to me that in the current times the ancien code has been rehabilitated. The mystery of Protestantism. The need for order never dies, and so they must deliver themselves into the infinitely more capable hands of their superiors. Who, by birth and instinct, are obviously sovereign, autonomous and self-contained.

  The best thing I could have done, I suppose, in the circumstances, would have been to finish with Dolores — and to do it resolutely: honestly and cleanly. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, seem to find the opportunity. In spite of our disagreement, she continued calling out to the Nook. I suppose the
reason for my hesitancy being the fact that I liked her so much — maybe in my own way even loved Dolly Mixtures. One thing for sure, I will never forget what her parting words were to me, that so sad day when we met for the final time.

  When I ran into her by accident in one of the aisles of the Five Star.

  — You’re devious, do you know that? she said to me coldly. I realise now that I haven’t known the first thing about you.

  That was what she had said — to me! When the truth was, in fact — as far as I was concerned — that it was the other way round.

  Like all excursions to Budin’s Holiday Camps in those more unassuming times, that day in 1969 bore all the prospects of being something close to a visit to some kind of replica heaven. Which was always, of course, how it had seemed in the brochures: as a kind of miniature paradise, full of bold and brash, startling wonders. A pocket universe glimpsed through a knothole. Our true intent is all for your delight, read the greeting arched regally above the camp entrance, flickering in pink and blue soft neon. You wanted to cry out, and proclaim the uniqueness of its marvels to all. But you couldn’t — you just gasped. And continued feasting your eyes upon the giant white cockerels strutting by the side of the boating lake and the glass-walled lounge that was lit in bright orange, as zebra-striped fish looped sleepily behind glass panels. With the monorail swooping and diving and the massive plants in acid greens adorning its shiny-squared mezzanines and terraces, what met our eyes might well have been a vision of the future.