Call Me the Breeze (20 page)

‘It was great to see you again yesterday, Joseph,’ he said as he opened the front door to let me out. ‘And especially great to see you in such fine fettle! You look over those now and we’ll talk again in a week or so!’

‘Sure will, Father!’ I replied as I gave him a big thumbs-up and almost went skipping off down the road I was in such a hurry to show off what I’d learnt in prison. Knowing full well in my heart that there would be a lot of people in the community who would be expecting me to come back with all sorts of hang-ups, complexes and chips or whatever. No chance was that ever going to happen now, not with people like Merv and Fr C. on your side!

It was my job — or ‘Tops Responsibility’, if you like — to oversee the ‘Tops of the Town’ revue which Connolly had planned for a bit of a laugh and to go around the pubs to try and persuade people who might initially not be all that interested — and, as I soon began to realize, there were quite a few of those, let me tell you — to become involved. Yes, there was indeed a not insignificant number who hadn’t, they made it clear, the slightest intention of co-operating with Connolly — particularly after the disaster of the original peace rally and, of course, everything that had emerged since about clerical child abuse and so on. I remember going into the pub one day and hearing Oweny Casey saying: ‘There’s only one thing now for them sky pilots after what’s come out — castrate the whole lot of the fuckers!’

I have to admit I was embarrassed when I heard him saying that. Not on the priests’ behalf but because of a troubled sleep I’d had the night before and a repeat of the Jacy ‘funeral dream’, which really did have the effect of upsetting me. Because when I awoke it was still there, lingering, ushering in a familiar gloom which hadn’t visited me for a long time. I don’t know how you’d describe it. It was sort of heartbreaking, really. Like being told for sure that you’re free and then having thirty years added to your sentence.

All morning I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head, their faces as they stood around chatting while I hung up there on the cross with my face the spit of Charles Manson’s. So I suppose it came as no surprise that I was already pretty high when I got as far as Doc Oc’s. To the extent of being so busy concentrating on wiping my brow that I misjudged the papers — I had put everything, in the style of the later Bone-head, into a folder marked ‘Tops’ — and let them all fall on the floor.

‘Well, would you look who it is!’ says Hoss. ‘The Top Man! How are they hanging, Josie? Long time no see!’

‘Hey! What you do?’ laughed Sandy McGloin. ‘You home, Joey, old pal? Well then, welcome home!’

Just then, Austie appeared behind the bar, grinning. I was taken aback, as for some reason I had expected him to be gone too. But no, there he was, large as life and serving away like old times. Except now decked out in a striped shirt and dicky bow with an embossed name badge on his waistcoat. ‘Ah, would you look at him! Home is the hero!’ he laughed and flicked his dishcloth, humming along with Andy
Williams. Hoss and Sandy were looking good too, both dressed in expensive suits and exuding the air of men who had things to do. Things that couldn’t wait. Sandy owned the Texaco garage now, he told me, and Hoss had a few things going. ‘This and that,’ he laughed when I asked him. ‘Bottled spring water, video shops! You know yourself!’

‘Excellent,’ I said. I was happy for him.

There was an old fellow at the bar and he shot me this filthy look. I heard him muttering under his breath as he turned his back on me. But I didn’t mind — I had expected a little bit of that and, to be honest, there weren’t all
that
many who’d been hassling me during my trips around the pubs.

Anyway, regardless of that, I got chatting some more to Hoss and let him know of everything we’d got planned. I told him that most of the ideas were mine and that Fr Connolly was more of an adviser. Which was effectively true, for that was what the priest had wanted — someone with fresh new ideas, which someone of his advanced years simply wouldn’t have. ‘The more help I can get, the better,’ he’d said, ‘for I don’t have the energy any more!’

‘I’ll be pretty much in charge of drawing up the programme,’ I said.

‘You’re drawing up the programme then, are you?’ Hoss says. ‘Then by Christ it should be good! It should be good then all right! Would you say so, Sandy?’

‘Now you’re talking, Hoss! Connolly knows what he’s doing all right. He gets all the top men on his side.’

‘The Top Men! Do you get it, Barba? The top men! Ha ha now, it’s a good one!’

‘The men on the inside track!’ laughed Sandy, holding his pint aloft. He had softened a bit by now, clearly deciding to become more co-operative. ‘Sit up there out of that and join us, Joey, and I’ll get you a pint of porter,’ he said and clicked his fingers to catch the barman’s attention.

I did as he suggested and spread my papers, memos and what have you on the counter. As soon as I’d my first mouthful down, I began to feel considerably calmer and certain that, once I’d got their backing, a lot more support would be bound to follow. I rooted about in my briefcase and found it — the letter that the fan club had received from U2’s manager. I had already written to them in prison telling them what their music had meant to me, how what they said had meaning far beyond their wildest assumptions, and how, in my experience, poetry, art, film and music had the power to heal men’s souls.

And women’s! (I had made sure to — what’s the word? —
interpolate
that, having, on re-reading, realized that I’d foolishly gone and omitted it!)

As a letter, though, it was well put together and I was glad they were keeping it on file.

‘So you think there’s a possibility they might play here this summer?’ said Sandy, and I could see by the way he was looking at me that he didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe there was a chance. I had to choose my words carefully in case he might start going around badmouthing the idea and making it seem like —

‘No, Sandy, of course not! I’m not that stupid,’ I explained. ‘Obviously I am aware that they are a very busy group of people. A world supergroup, in fact. So, clearly, I’m taking a huge big risk. A gamble, certainly. But look, Sandy, anything is possible!’

‘Now you’re talkin’!’ laughed Sandy. ‘Anything is possible! Anything at all is possible!’

‘I’ll drink to that!’ declared Hoss Watson gamely.

I was sorry the old fellow sitting with them had felt the need to be so hostile. But I shrugged. ‘That’s life, I guess,’ I said to myself. Then I folded my arms and took a sip of my pint. I turned to Hoss and said: ‘We’re shooting for the moon here, Hoss!’

I remembered hearing Bono saying that one night in the recreation room when me and Bone were watching them playing Croke Park during the
Joshua Tree
tour. Shooting for the moon. Giving it everything, in other words.

‘All or nothing. That’s the Bono way,’ I felt like saying. ‘Sure, some of us might have done bad things in the past! But that can all be forgiven! If you go out and show what you’re made of! What you’re really all about — inside! Open your heart the way Bono does and sing out that truth the way that U2 do! And they know, more than most, just exactly what that truth is. Know, too, that if you want to find it — to go on that voyage of discovery, to travel to “the truth” itself — that you don’t have to go to
India
. What I mean — and what
they
mean — is that you don’t have to get behind the wheel of a beat-up van and tear off in a cloud of dust to some place you’ve never heard of.

‘And why not? Because the truth is
here
, right here beside you — the frog beside the pond, like The Seeker used to say. It’s in your local library, in the faces of your people. In
art
, in
film
and
music
. The truth
is you —
you
are the truth. And you will find who you are by
doing
. Not by excessive
thinking
, which was the way I’d once understood things to be …’

And it’s Fr Connolly
I
have to thank
, I thought,
for enabling me through what is essentially pro-active engagement to grasp this single essential maxim. That we
are
because we
do,
in a sense
.

I was in the middle of thinking all that and wondering should I say anything about it to the lads when I realized that a gentle hand was resting on my shoulder. It belonged to Sandy McGloin.

‘Well, if Hoss is getting involved in this Tops of the Town of yours, then that’s an entirely different story! I think I’ll change my mind and get stuck right in!’

‘Fantastic, Sandy!’ I said and gave him the soul-brother handclasp.

‘It’s great to have you home,’ said Hoss. ‘You must have great stories about your time in The Joy.’

I did, I told him, but they could wait. Right now the Tops must be given —

‘Top priority,’ laughed Hoss as a playful punch glanced off my shoulder. ‘
Boom boom
!’

I laughed and accepted the pint that had arrived. Then I lapsed once more into deep contemplation, making a private commitment to leaving once I’d finished that drink. I didn’t want to start getting into sloppy old habits and let Fr Connolly down. The more I kept thinking of it, the bigger in my mind the festival seemed to grow.

In a way I suppose I was hoping that the Tops could lay to rest for ever the memory of the first peace festival and all the other things associated with it. That it could act as a sort of cleansing agent, become a kind of purifier, really, and that that was why it deserved to be a really big success.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got home one evening — about a month or so later, the festival preparations in full swing — and opened the door of the caravan. I had been out since early morning, distributing leaflets, and who did I see shadow-boxing inside? The bold Bone-head, large as life. Completely plastered however, as I was soon to discover, falling around the caravan with a huge sombrero on his head
and in his hand a bottle of John Jameson whiskey. ‘There you are! There you are, Joesup!’ he says. ‘You’re the man!
You are de fucking man
!’ and then starts into this story about the children’s homes and how he can’t sleep because of forgiveness. ‘I can’t forgive!’ he kept repeating, with his fists up to his eyes. ‘Some of the things they did to me in there, I haven’t it in me to fucking forgive!’

The sombrero looked stupid and I told him to take it off. He got hostile then and said a friend had given it to him in a pub uptown. He’d met him by chance and they’d gone off together on a skite. ‘And I thought that you were my friend, Joesup!’ he said then and glowered. ‘If you were you wouldn’t say it was stupid. It isn’t fucking stupid and I won’t fucking take it off!’

He lowered another swig of the whiskey and shuddered as he sat in the chair. I had rarely heard him talk like that before — not as intense, at any rate — and I realized the more he went on how hard things were proving for him on the outside. He wasn’t fitting in the way I was. Already I was feeling — because of Connolly and the Tops and the faith he was showing in me — as though I’d never been away at all. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and glared at the streak of saliva.

‘They interfere with you there till you don’t know what’s what!’

He kept threatening to cut himself with a glass. ‘I’ll do it, I’ll fucking well do it, Joesup! Like I did to Ward that night we were robbing the lead! He asked for it! That’s why they put me away, but I don’t care! I’ll do it again!’ he says, and jumps up off the chair. I had no other option but to slap him across the face. Which wasn’t a good idea, for then he starts to cling to me and whimpers: ‘Every night she comes, Joesup, she comes to me. She’s a beautiful woman — I told you I’d meet her! Every night she comes to me and says: “I love you!” We can work this out between us! Maybe you could go to … what do you call it, Joesup? Councillors! She wants us to go to councillors! They can fix it! They’re brainy men!’

‘She means counselling, Bone!’ I said, and embraced him. I stroked his back to calm him down but he was still as stiff as a board.

Then he starts to mutter and mumble and make these leers into the glass. ‘It’s them that did it — came between her and me! I start seeing their faces the minute she touches me, every night! So I can’t forgive them, Joesup! Priests, Joesup! Ruiners! That’s what they are! Look at me, Joesup! I’m a disgrace to the Stokeses of Rathowen! Even my own father would turn in his grave if he could see me in the state I’m in
now! After all my plans when I got out of The Joy! What I was going to do — she’s going to leave me, Joey! For how can she stay? Fucking ruiners, destroyers! It’s them! She says I’m well bred, Joesup! She said I haven’t a drop of tinker blood in me! She says she could tell the first time she laid eyes on me!’

Then he starts weeping into his hands, and what I was worried most about was Connolly or someone appearing on the scene, for I could see how bad it would look and I didn’t want that any more, not now, not ever, and that was why I shook him, shook him and shook him. ‘No!’ I said. ‘No, Bonehead! Listen to me, please listen to me for Christ’s sake, listen!’ I told him I’d read about forgiveness. ‘Forgiveness is —’ I started to tell him. ‘Forgiveness is —’

But it was no good. He wasn’t listening. Then he got up and started walking around, like he didn’t know where he was going, sniffling and staring disdainfully at my books. He looked at me with these wild eyes. ‘It’s no good, Joesup! We told ourselves lies! Them books does nothing for you! T. S. Eliot is better off where he is — down there. Below! He’s better off there, I’m telling you, Joesup! For now he has no more worries!’

He spat.

‘Books!’ he hissed. ‘Filling up our heads with shite! Shite, Joesup! To distract ourselves from —’

He touched his forehead with his fingers and didn’t speak for a minute, then came over to me and held me firmly by the shoulders. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t what I wanted overheard.

‘No, Joesup! We’re just fooling ourselves, you and me! We try to forget but we’ll never be able to —
you’ll
never be able to, because you
love
her! Merv is a good man! He’s good, Joesup! But it’s lies, all of it! Not everything is possible! The past will always catch up with you! Just when you think you’ve left it behind you look up and it’s right there ahead of you! It’s the God’s honest truth and you know it, Joesup! No matter wh-’