Bend for Home, The (10 page)

The steps to Cavan Cathedral rise to a great height. My father, with his asthma turning to emphysema, found it a difficult climb. On Mass days we left home before anyone else. My job was to proffer a shoulder for him to lean on. Every few steps we stopped so that he could catch his breath.

We stopped at the Farnham Hotel. We stopped at the top of Ashe Street. We stopped outside the Protestant hall where in autumn chestnuts rain down. We stopped at the foot of the cathedral outside the old presbytery, beneath which closed-up underground tunnels converged. He’d look ahead towards the final climb. We’d take a few steps at a time, halt, take cognizance, then go on. His breath whistled overhead. When at last we stood amongst the pillars he’d lean a minute on me and survey the town.

The glands in the left side of his neck had swollen. One was the size of a billiard ball, and sometimes it burst and a trickle of blood would run down his neck onto his crisp shirt. Today it ran. He dabbed the sore throughout Mass, and stared unblinking at the altar. Wind blew up the central aisle. It announced a latecomer. The huge doors bounced closed. Mrs Reilly, who lived nearest the cathedral, was always the last to arrive. Everyone watched her head up the left aisle, slowly, oblivious to the eyes on her; a bag propped on her right arm, a huge missal with a red tag in her left hand, she advanced in a green woollen beret festooned with an array of colourful hatpins.

A line of people in the second row from the front moved over. She sat down.

Now we were all here.

The coughing began.

Before he knelt, my father pulled each of his wide trouser legs up a fraction. He wore white socks. He held the crucifix of his old brown rosary beads by the butt, spread his elbows on the back of the pew in front of him and watched Father A. B. McGrath, who used come round to the Milseanacht Breifne to play poker, ascend the altar.

The golden door clicked open. The priest reached in.

My father liked Reverend A. B.’s talks from the pulpit. Once, the priest devoted an entire sermon to Beckett’s
Waiting
for
Godot;
he’d gone to see a performance in London. We all wait for the messenger, he said. We wait, despite the fact that no one comes. We sat back, our knees high and candles blowing. A tenor, who worked in the post office, sang Jerusalem. Money rattled into long-handled collection boxes. The altar boys studied their joined hands. My father opened a child’s prayer book.

The host went up. The heads went down. We studied the open mouths of the communicants. White tongues shot out, a sliver of a tongue slipped between heavily lipsticked lips. Some offered their mouths like fledgling birds, others gulped the wafer. Charlie McGriskin, manager of the Magnet Cinema, stamped the organ. A. B., who was also musical director of the choir, looked up quizzically at the loft as a loud abrasive chord shook the church.

My mother, in an artificial black fur coat, went by.

When we stood at the end my father’s breathing was back to itself. He reached into the holy water font and scattered holy water on himself and then on me.

We were in a crowd as we went through the door. I saw two young fellows pointing at the bleeding gland on my father’s neck and laughing. I felt anger, shame, terror and pride, and a sort of violent loyalty.

What are you looking at? I said.

Never mind them, I think he said.

Above the steps of the cathedral we stood a moment and he lit a cigarette and we surveyed the town of Cavan again, a place that neither of us came from – the Protestant church behind its elms, the dignified Victorian houses in Farnham Street, the Cock Hill, the Gallows Hill where rebels from the prison were hanged. We stood among the huge pillars of the vast cathedral looking down till he was ready for the journey home.

He threw away the butt of the John Player’s and we made our way to the Ulster Arms, stopping at the same places for him to catch his breath on the way back. Frank Brady was behind the bar. He was reading the
Sunday
Express.
My father laughed at Frankie and ordered
a bottle of Guinness and a Power’s whiskey. He ducked his head, thought about it a moment, then drank the whiskey in one go.

Good luck, said Frank.

In one of my dreams I’d fly right out of bed and wing my way over Cavan town. I’d fly directly over Cavan Cathedral. It was a wonderful feeling going by the high granite top piece that held the spire aloft – swooping, arching up, gliding.

I’d fly back and forth over the silent green grounds of the cathedral while inside the worshippers were celebrating eleven-thirty Mass. When the first of them would appear after Mass was ended I’d swoop down from a turret and fly inches over their heads, turn at the Protestant church, and back again. Over and back I’d go above their heads.

Then it always happened. I’d get so happy that I’d forget and not see that the ability to fly was leaving me. Instead of staying there I should have immediately flown back across the town and into the safety of my room. Instead, I’d make one long final dive over the last of the worshippers and then find I could not pull away.

It was a terrible sensation to feel my wings were suddenly powerless. To know that I could not fly anymore. The air that held me so buoyantly a moment before now was letting me plummet to earth. Then just as the ground met me I’d find myself in bed, face-down, with my arms by my side. With relief I’d find I was just a wretched human being, safe in wakefulness, exhausted and sorry.

Behind my closed lids I could still see the whole vista below me from my perch on the turret. I could smell the Protestant firs. I could smell the pines above the bishops’ graves. I saw the congregation spilling out of the church beneath me. Next time, next time I’d remember to fly home before I fell, I thought. But I never did. I always stayed up too long.

In Lent you woke to an alien world at seven-thirty. My mother would call me and go below to make tea. The linoleum under your feet was freezing. The windows were frosted. Una sat very pale by the kitchen table in her blue Poor Clare outfit. My father stayed in bed. The streets were piled with snow. Before eight we were in the cathedral.

Lenten masses were quiet, hypnotic affairs – cars when they came to a stop dropped turds of grey ice at the main gates; no one spoke on the white slippery ascent; the snow-laden trees in the grounds of the Protestant church winked across at us; dogs leapt into the air to catch the flakes; money landed on the tables inside the front doors; vases of daffodils were placed on the side altars; people stamped the snow off their feet, shook their umbrellas and patted their hair; the holy water font grew murky and the green tiles in the freezing vestibule were covered in slush; confession doors opened and shut like cuckoo clocks; the whispers of the strange missioners, when they handed out penance, made you want to go to the toilet; as sinners prayed, their breath rose like incense; old women did the Stations with whispered supplications, then sat near the radiators; the fasting congregation ghosted up the aisles; echoes died; there was a distant disturbance, then the freshly shaven priest, with a deliberate look around him, stepped out of the sacristy in black shoes; with a swish of his stern purple vestments he kissed the cold altar and we went onto our knees; snot dripped down the noses of the sleepy altar boys; coughing racked the silence; people dreamt of what they’d given up, others grew insanely guilty over sins they’d withheld from telling, some still fretted over venal offences; you could smell the actual wine at the back of the cathedral as the priest rose the chalice to his lips; all the memories of awkward coupling were muffled by prayer; that day’s gospel spoke of the necessity of purging oneself; a bird trapped in the organ loft sang a frightened trill; certain women gave off an intense erotic aura; there was a sense of dark violence suspended, of impossible promises being guaranteed; wide-eyed nurses, with white uniforms showing under their gabardines, sat in a dream; we were preparing to gather round Calvary on Good Friday for three and a half indeterminate hours of Latin
sean
nos
; we could already hear the procession on Palm Sunday come singing up Church Street; we saw the tricolours on certain doors on Easter Sunday; Biblical place names, like the Garden of Gethsemane or the Mount of Olives, filled us with a sense of tragic poetry; the Loreto girls, delirious from secret cravings, corrected their berets; the pews reeked of Palmolive soap, Pond’s cold cream and Johnson’s baby powder; those off chocolate chewed cloves; those with vocations soared aloft; the walls wept; a girl, sick with hunger,
crumpled in her seat; adolescents with crew cuts knelt with their heads cradled in their hands; make-up was eschewed; there were cracked lips, bits of newspaper on shaving cuts, hair was oiled with brilliantine; hallucinations burned bright in the eyes of sober men; pregnant women sat throughout Mass in a daze; children with painful styes knelt like small prizefighters in the front rows; when three missioners came to help the priest distribute the host they eyed him critically as he prepared communion; they were from a more austere world, their bare feet in leather sandals, their hands covered in orange hair, their eyes luminous and strangely Gaelic; they lifted the wafer aloft like a toreador his sword and plunged it deep into our miserable beings; their prayers were loud, their genuflections theatrical, and beads rattled in their skirts; shop girls received communion and guiltily avoided the eyes of the men from the
Anglo-Celt
as they came back to their seats; three rows of shy communicants formed by the altar rails; the disabled slowly returned; with a deep bow the missioners left us; the masturbators cringed; meat-eaters turned holy; a young woman stood with a man’s handkerchief thrown over her hair in lieu of a hat; in the church the brisk smell of sex was astonishingly present now that the act itself had been forsworn; whole families bowed their heads; mothers rocked yelling babies; those shamed by recent controversies kept their dignity; the bearded missioners in their grey hoods stood like sentinels at the doors and distributed pamphlets on the foreign missions into the frozen hands of the worshippers; dogs waited on the steps outside for their masters, the boys from St Pat’s got up on their bikes, Woolworth’s opened its doors.

Meanwhile, fish appeared in the butcher’s, on the streets the townsfolk, with a cross of ash on their foreheads, avoided the slides the lads had made on the frozen footpaths in Bridge Street; the Poor Clare nuns flocked across the convent yard; orphans ran along the corridors in grey skirts. Dancing finished and whist drives began. Bad Catholics attended do’s in Orange halls out Farnham way. Missioners walked down side streets in flat sandals.

Our abstinences made us feel blessèd.

Around the time I started at Saint Patrick’s Secondary College my father became bedridden. It can’t have happened all at once. One day he was up in the bakery shovelling coke into the furnace, or on Sundays sitting in the bakery with his newspapers, then his lungs gave out. He took to his bed. I’d cycle in the mile to town at twelve-thirty and have my dinner in his room, then before going back to school I’d bring his bets across to the bookies.

His bets were intricate multiple affairs, called credit bets. You put a shilling on a horse, and if it won, from the winnings was extracted a further bet that went onto another horse or group of horses, and if the second bet won, from those winnings another bet was struck and so on. For a shilling his bet could involve as many as eight horses. If the first horse went down all was lost. When I’d come home at half past four I’d write down the list of winners in the bookies, and we’d go over his wagers.

That cursed Piggott, he’d say.

He’d hold his reading glasses a fraction from his nose.

Joe Sime, he’d say.

I’d sit on his bed and do my homework. We grew so close it was painful. While I did Greek he read the
Anglo-Celt.
Sometimes I’d look up from the Spartan wars to find him eyeing me. The right arm of his glasses was fastened with a plaster. There was another plaster on his neck. He’d lower his eyes and go back to the paper.

The mother would be wringing out sheets in the bathroom. Soon she’d pass down the corridor in a blue housecoat carrying a tray of washing. She’d knock on the door and hand the tray on to me. I took it up to the line. We hung out sheets, socks, brown stiff bras, drying cloths, corsets, hankies, shirts, Maisie’s blue blouses, pillow slips made of flour bags and sometimes gold cushion covers.

Then I brought his tea upstairs. Cold ham with mustard, brown bread and sliced tomatoes. On winter nights he wore a scarf round his neck and his nose glowed. On warm evenings he undid the buttons on
his pyjama top. His chest was hooped. We said little. I led him to the toilet and back again. I did Latin. He’d doze and wake with a shudder.

Blessed God, he’d whisper.

He’d sit forward and slap the sheets each side of him with the palms of his hands. For a moment we were strangers. He’d hold the newspaper tight. His breath would race. He’d look at me. Then with relief he’d find where he was.

Dermot! he’d exclaim.

Daddy, I’d answer.

You’re there.

I am.

He’d lie back and brush his lips with the handkerchief. His breath would subside. He’d fold his hands.

Did you answer all the questions?

Most of them.

Good lad.

Sometimes we didn’t bother putting the light on but sat there in the long evenings under the growing shadow of Burke’s roof. I was reluctant to leave him. When I finished my homework he played his transistor. We listened to long plays about strange happenings. We listened to Perry Mason. The jackdaws shrieked over Leo McDonald’s. Miss Reilly pulled the curtain aside and looked towards the Cock Hill. The bell in the convent rang nine. On her way to the throne room with her po, Maisie would look in.

It’s very peaceful here, she’d say.

She’d drop a small bag of Jelly Babies on his bedside chair, and we’d all have one. Chewing with pursed lips she’d absent-mindedly right some ornaments on the dressing table then stand a while in the doorway before slipping away.

He began having nightmares about Finea. In the middle of the night I’d hear my mother shout, Jack, Jack, you’re here, here in Cavan.

Get the sergeant, he’d shout.

Jack! Jack! It’s me, Winnie.

Where’s Sergeant Ruane?

He’s dead.

Get the sergeant, he demanded. There’s a man here who is not well.

You’re in the Breifne, Jack.

Get Sergeant Ruane.

Jack! Can’t you hear me?

Where’s Maurice Moran?

He’s in the seminary.

The seminary?

Yes. He’s in the seminary. He’s going on to be priest.

I have to go up the village. And he leapt out of bed.

No, Jack.

Where’s the door?

Stay where you are.

I have to tell the men. The men must know.

He’d step out onto the landing in his pyjamas. My mother would click on the landing light.

Where’s my uniform? he’d demand. Where’s my cap?

Jack, said my mother.

He’d open his eyes and breathe hoarsely. She’d lead him back to bed. I’d stand at the door watching. He’d signal me with his finger.

I was dreaming, he said.

Your father was dreaming, agreed my mother.

I started mitching again. I found a barn out at Drumalee. I’d hide my bike under a bed of straw and climb up through a hole in the ceiling into a loft where hay was stored. I read my books and looked over the countryside.

Mice scuttled across the floor. I wrote love letters to a girl in Loreto. One day I cycled home as usual at half past four. When I came into the shop Maisie looked up from the till and said, You’re in trouble.

Why? I said, terrified.

Your mother wants to see you.

I looked into the private dining room but she wasn’t there. I headed upstairs to my father’s room. As I was going along the landing my mother suddenly appeared with a broom. She brought it down on my back.

You
! she shouted.

I ducked.

What have you been doing?! she shouted.

Nothing, I said.

You scoundrel. Scoundrel! You have not been at college in two months.

Of course I have.

Don’t lie to me. The priest was here. We are scourged –
scourged
!– do you hear. Do you hear me?

Yes.

Where have you been every day?

In a barn.

In a barn, in a barn, she repeated. For two solid months, she lamented. What’s to become of us.

My father hearing the commotion appeared on the corridor. He leaned one hand on the handle of the door and the other on the doorframe.

Look what you’ve done to your father! my mother said.

I’m sorry.

Deceiving us every day.

I’m sorry.

You speak to him, Jack. He has my heart broken. I have nothing further to say.

She withdrew. He looked at me as if I were a peer of his. I tried to hide my tears.

Do you not want to go to college?

No, I said.

Well look at it this way, go as far as the Intermediate, and if you want to leave, leave then.

I got a shock to hear it put so straightforwardly.

Is that all right? he asked me.

Yes, I said.

He made his way back to the bed.

You’re hurting your mother, he said.
Don’t
hurt your mother.

I won’t, I said. I sat on his bed. I sat at his bedside for two years with my books propped against my knees.