The Holy City (3 page)

— Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

It was in the late summer of 1969 that I myself was fated to perpetrate my own rather particular and individual transgression. Which is the reason I found myself standing alone at the counter of Bernie's Bar that evening — ominously regarded by a phalanx of glowering faces.

— Committer of blasphemy, I overheard one of them say, defiler.

— He's Thornton's bastard, all right — sure enough. At the end of the day, the Protestant in him came out. The cold-hearted bastard that he is shone through.

— Hell's not hot enough for him. Not for a bastard that'd do the like of that. Fuck Jerusalem and fuck all niggers.

— Fuck all niggers.

— Whatever he wrote that for.

— And him black himself — the black Protestant cunt. It just shows you, doesn't it? At the end of the day, they're all the same.

I was sure they'd say something about my visit to Ethel's. I was certain I had been seen going up to her house. But they made no reference to it, and gradually it became apparent that they knew nothing at all about it. Not yet at any rate.
Then they got on to the subject of young Evelyn Dooris. Implying darkly that I'd threatened her — which simply wasn't the case. I had better things to do than go upsetting thirteen-year-old girls. And I didn't blame Evelyn for any of what had happened, none of it. Indeed, I admired her — her childish sauciness, her individual ways.

She too lived in Wattles Lane, and had been associating with the Nigerian boy Marcus Otoyo for some years now — ever since both of them had attended primary school, in fact. Now they both attended Cullymore Secondary, and were in their second and first years respectively. Marcus Otoyo was well known in the town as an extremely promising, potentially brilliant scholar. I knew him well from visiting the house in Wattles Lane. A friend of mine, Dolores McCausland, had been lodging there, a Protestant lady who hailed from the North.

I suppose, right from the very beginning, I had always tended to feel a certain kinship with Marcus Otoyo, even though, in 1969, at twenty-four years of age, I was obviously much older. Partly, I suppose, on account of his equally ‘morally dubious' parentage. With the licentious miscreant in his case, reputedly, being an anonymous sailor from Middlesbrough. Who had disappeared for ever after a single night of illicit passion. Marcus was tall for his age, and slim, with glossy tight curls of jet-black hair. He carried himself in a refined, almost haughty manner.

I went to the house in Wattles Lane regularly. The lodger Dolores, being a Protestant, was never to be seen without an expensive string of pearls, in this particular habit being
exactly like my mother and her friend Ethel Baird. But in almost every other respect she tended to differ completely from them. Dolores, for example, was much more forthright in manner than they would ever have dared to be, and infinitely more audacious in her choice of attire. There were to be no green two-piece heavy tweeds for Miss Dolores McCausland.

Or Dolly Mixtures, as she came to be known.

— That Protestant doll, the strap, the brazen hussy.

Who not only drank gin and smoked slim panatellas — but actually sang and sometimes danced in public houses.

— Diana Dors, go back to Ballymena, sometimes you'd hear the younger women mutter.

But Dolly never noticed. Far too absorbed in her own loveliness to be bothered.

It was true that I had defaced the walls of the cathedral. It was a stupid thing to do, I had acknowledged that almost immediately — far too emotional and vulnerable by half, something Henry Thornton and his ilk would never have dreamed, in a million years, of doing. Something they would have despised. In fact, even the very thought of desecrating a Catholic church was an action to which they would never have given a moment's consideration. From their point of view it simply wouldn't be worth it. Absolute indifference being their preferred weapon of choice. And which would, as it had been throughout history, prove infinitely more powerful in the long run. But then Henry and his like — they didn't know people like Marcus Otoyo.
People to whom indifference simply wasn't an option, however regrettable that might prove to be.

Marcus and Evelyn, as children growing up together, had over the years devoted themselves to the conversion of a disused greenhouse, along the railway track — about a mile from the town. And, quite impressively, had succeeded in turning it into a little place of ‘retreat', I suppose you might call it. Viewing themselves as some kind of ‘chosen' couple: a pair of saints, a brace of angelic oblates — but in a disarmingly innocent kind of way.

They used to go there every day — had been doing so ever since their earliest days in primary school. Mooning about the streets with their prayer books, as if to say: Us? Why, I'm afraid we're not of this world.

The only reason I had bothered going out to the greenhouse that day was to sort out the stupid contretemps between Marcus and myself. A stupid, embarrassing misunderstanding that ought never to have happened. I just wanted to explain my side of the story.

Receiving quite a shock when I discovered he wasn't there.

It was well after midnight and I must have been sleeping for three or four hours in the Nook when, tossing and turning, I heard the visitors arriving outside. First someone stumbling, followed by a mutter and a half-muffled grunt. I heard twigs cracking and then saw a long white face
peering in the window — for all the world like melted wax in the gloom.

Canon Burgess had accompanied them, as it happened, providing, I suppose, the requisite moral authority. One of them struck me forcibly with a crooked stick. I don't know which one. All their faces remained a blur. When I looked again another priest had appeared: a small stooped fellow carrying a bible, muttering hesitant incantations. One of them was carrying a piece of the broken statue — I think it was Martin de Porres' ankle. Whatever he intended to do with that. Maybe because of saliva — I had spat a number of times into the saint's face — I guess they had assumed I had been ‘influenced', that there were demons within me, or some such nonsense. Inhabited by Lucifer himself, I shouldn't wonder.

The police arrived at eight o'clock the following morning, asking a variety of questions about Ethel Baird.

— Of course I knew her, I told them honestly, a beautiful lady, refined to the last. She used to come to the Nook with my mother. She was like a countess you might see in a book. Always wore this veiled pillbox hat.

— Never mind what she wore. What were you doing up at her house?

— I wanted her to sing me a hymn, I told them.

Which was the truth. As I further explained:

— ‘Abide With Me', as a matter of fact. And as soon as she did that, off I went about my business. I just took my book and said my goodbyes.

— You took your book?

— Yes, I took my book.

The detective went pale.

— You took your book and left the poor woman lying on the kitchen floor?

He turned to look at one of the officers. Who was suitably grim-faced as well.

— Are you aware you left her dying? That she almost died of a cardiac arrest? And that only for her neighbour, that's exactly what would have happened.

I said nothing, just stared over blankly at the fellow holding the piece of black ankle in his hand, who returned me an absolutely murderous glare.

It all seems so distant now, rendered even more remote by the quite extraordinary changes that have taken place in Ireland over the past number of decades. In so many ways, it's like a different country now. Why, even the Mood Indigo Club, in spite of its best efforts, can still never quite succeed in convincingly capturing the authentic feel of the sixties. Which was such a powerful decade culturally that it had even left its mark on poor old sleepy little Cullymore. With myself, now in my mid-twenties, doing my best to bag the prize, the honorary tide of what I guess you might call the ‘hippest mover' in Cullymore town. Yeah, Christopher J., dig him, chicks, for swingsville's where you'll find ‘that cat'.

I used to pass the converted greenhouse every day. Above the door Marcus had nailed a little painted wooden sign. It read:
Enter ye here the Holy of Holies.
There were stacks of lavender blooms piled up inside and stretched across the glass panes a montage of pictures of assorted saints and mystics: a rosary had been hung around the neck of a statue. They would often spend entire Saturdays there.

I suppose I had become fascinated by Marcus's
blackness
more than anything. He looked so —
extraordinary
! And yet
so calm and composed and self-reliant with it. So self-assured, or so it seemed. Exhibiting those very qualities which were supposed, exclusively, to define ‘the Protestant'.

How had a black boy succeeded in managing that, I would find myself wondering. It had come to fascinate me, really, and I can't tell you how I admired him for it. A boy you'd have expected to be even more consumed by shame than the worst Catholic. A nigger boy, for heaven's sake. Even lower than the dog. That was what you were told. That's what you read. That was the way it was supposed to be. And yet here he was — acting like he was Prince of the Town. What a wonder, I thought. A miracle, of sorts.

Their singular devoutness began to exert the most peculiar and powerful effect on me. It could make me feel so vulnerable — at times close to tears. Whenever I listened to the two of them praying, the last thing I found myself wanting to be now was a Protestant. I didn't care how refined Protestants were, how wealthy or rational or self-reliant or disciplined or anything else they were. This had begun to seem a far greater mystery. I could have listened all to the hum of their young voices: I was hypnotised.

— Let's be Catholics, I would imagine myself saying, in the drawing room, to Lady Thornton, for it's softer and kinder. Much more tender. Mother, do you think we can?

And then, happily, I'd see her — Lady Thornton, one's Catholic mother, who would now so gladly take me on to her lap, turning the pages of
A Child's Garden of Verses
as she read in whispers from Robert Louis Stevenson.

— Do you like them, Christopher, my precious little Catholic boy? Do you like the stars? Why, you're a hundred times better than Little Tristram, that silly boy. I only read to silly Tristram because you aren't there. I only kiss him because I haven't got you. It's you I want to abide with, Little Christopher. You, my boy, and no one else. Sit up here in my lap and give Mama a kiss. Give Lady Thornton, your loving mama, a Catholic kiss. Human and giving, not hard and cold.

— I'm a Catholic, Ma, I'd say, amn't I? I'd say ‘amn't I?' the way the Catholic children in Wattles Lane had always said it.

Before Lady Thornton would smile and sleepily nod, as the leaves of the volume turned and slowly fell.

Down in Mood Indigo, in these the heady days of the relentlessly advancing noughties, a lot of the faces you'll see are black. Once upon a time, and I freely admit it, I might have had certain problems with that. After all, when all's said and done, what was Chris McCool way back then, only an ordinary old Irish dairy farmer, a country Eggman, whatever grandiose claims he might make for himself. And in that I was just the same as everyone else. Hayseed hillbillies who scarcely knew where London was, not to mention Paris or NY.

But that's all changed. That era's vanished. Gone for ever like so much of the world to which such facile attitudes belonged. Utterly transformed. Yes, the world has come to our door with a roar. Now you can do pretty much as you please, even mope about with a head like a balloon.

— Like a fucking balloon, Vesna Krapotnik — look, don't you see? They're all around us!

I remember the first day I made that remark. Vesna, I swear, nearly choked on her salad. Not that it occurred to me there had been anything particularly amusing about the observation. Not as far as I was concerned. It was just an
aside, a throwaway statement. As far as I was concerned, all I was doing was stating the obvious.

— Let us welcome then, Vesna, the people without feelings. Who exist to consume, with their heads like ghostly moons, here in this twenty-first-century world of wax.

The first time I became aware of this extremely sly and subtle transformation of our surroundings occurred one otherwise perfectly ordinary day in September 2006 when I happened to be observing a few people eating dinner, as they say, al fresco, on the Plaza across from our apartment building. There was nothing, otherwise, unusual about this particular family I happened to be observing. They were simply relaxing, under an awning, consuming wine and eating pasta. An average family, complete with two or three children: all of them with perfectly rounded powder-white heads. Like puddings.

— The Balloon Family, I remarked to Vesna.

But not just ordinary ballons, I explained. Ones which were almost, without exception, utterly featureless — perfectly polished, smooth and dove-white.

There was a light wind blowing at the time and I remember thinking: I hope that little boy's head continues to remain upon his shoulders. I would just be afraid it might detach itself and drift away with abandon on the breeze.

Which it didn't, fortunately.

And when I looked again, they were all in exactly the same positions as they had been before. With the mother,
who was sporting an orange tan and a blue baseball cap, turning to her husband. I remember being struck: no eyes, no mouth. Moons
en famille.
Aesthetically quite pleasing, though, I have to say, in their uniformity, almost perfectly choreographed as they raised their disc-heads in unison, regarding the screens directly above the Plaza, steadily rotating with an eerie kind of poetry.