The Holy City (8 page)

The whole episode turned out to be a complete disaster. I heard later that the poor man had sustained horrendous burns. As they led me away, down the corridor to the White Room, who should I see, only Pandit passing by the window, breezing along in her Birkenstocks with her folder. As they turned the key and roughly pushed me inside.

Yes, the unfortunate ‘boiling water' episode really did prove to be the most lamentable affair in almost every conceivable respect and I was still doing my best to erase all trace of its memory as I crouched there in the corner of the White Room, chewing my nail and hugging my knees, thinking: Why is my mind so soggy and dull? Then what happened — it started again. The noise, I mean. A kind of furtive scratching behind the grid. I braced myself, tentatively,
for a reappearance. By the Indian Tom Thumb, I suppose you might call him.

In Wattles Lane in Cullymore long ago there lived a carpenter by the name of Half-inch Lynch, and it was him I was thinking of now as I found myself staring directly at the ventilation grid. The familiar sensation — that vaguely pleasurable tingling — had resumed as I felt my shoulders begin to elevate and already sensed the words as they formed on my lips. Well, well, I could hear myself saying, if it isn't Mukti the Indian giant! Only to find my arrogance disappearing — almost immediately draining away, and with it all trace of self-composure and defiance.

For what emerged through that serrated brick-sized oblong was not in fact Mukti — or anyone else.

But, bewilderingly, the injured visitor's unfortunate brother, the alcoholic — the man who, out of the goodness of his heart, he had travelled a long distance to come and see. I received quite a shock when I realised who it was — not because I recognised him straight away, having descried him from time to time meandering dazedly through the grounds — but because of his disarming, dishevelled appearance.

You could see he was a man who had genuinely been through the mill.

— To hell and back, as Mike Corcoran used to say.

As he stood there, pleadingly, in his shabby plaid dressing gown, his eyes said: Help me! with his lower lip quivering.

It was clear from his manner that it required a massive effort on his part even to think of speaking.

— You might think you know what you're doing, he said, raising an accusatory, tremulous finger, but you don't, Christopher. You don't know how good a man my brother is. He goes out of his way to come here every week. He listens so attentively, keeps returning, even when I disappoint him. And, God knows, many times have I done that. Only for him I'd never have known happiness. What comfort I ever knew is entirely because of him. In his efforts to protect me he has run the risk of his own life being ruined. His wife has pleaded with him to disown me altogether. But he never will. He says it's his duty to protect me from myself.

I covered my eyes and when I looked up he had gone, with the ventilation grid now seeming as dull and unremarkable and as ordinary as ever.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that I didn't let it get to me completely after that. For more than anything I had to stay strong, no matter how attractive at times it might appear just to collapse, capitulate entirely. To submit to the desire to call him back and tell him — to explain that more than anybody I
did
understand. Understand more than he'd ever know.

For I'd nearly gone under myself for the very same reasons: when the tide of emotion becomes literally a tsunami — takes over and becomes completely unmanageable. An all-engulfing wave that consumes, defeating sense, it seems, for ever.

Which was the reason I had found myself going up to Ethel Baird's. Nothing had been rational about that decision.
I just couldn't stop thinking: Ethel will know. Ethel will understand. She'll explain all the mysteries to me. I had those lovely memories of her too, but I couldn't ascertain, not for certain, whether they were imagined or real.

Back in the Nook, when she knew Lady Thornton and Ethel were coming to visit, Dimpie would get so excited that she'd be dressing herself up for three or four days. To do her best to make herself ‘respectable' for the Protestants, she said. Although, to be honest, what they must have made of the near-scarecrow that admitted them into the Nook can only be imagined. Wee Dimpie with her hairnets and her aprons and fishermen's sweaters and floppy old wellington boots, well, she was never going to be confused with Viscountess Rothermere or Dowager Fforbes-Maitland. But, being who they were, our visitors would never pass comment on such things. They would never draw attention to anything so vulgar. And the reason for that was — because they had access to the mystery of ‘class'. There would always be tears in Dimpie's eyes as she waved ‘the ladies' goodbye. She told me she loved them more than any Catholic.

— Catholics are liars, so they are, she would insist. Our ones is all twisters from birth. Let you down a bagful every time. Protestants bes odd — ignore you by times. But they'll always keep their word. Full of mysteries, they bes. You never know what goes on in their heads, they're up there so far and you can't get at them. Mysteries is what they be full of, Christy. But your mother, Lady Thornton. She's the best, the bestest quality of all.

All of those thoughts had been uppermost in my mind that day I'd had the disagreement with Marcus. As I wandered confusedly about the town, trying to make sense of what had just happened — doing my best to comprehend his hostile reaction. I was deeply cast down — to be honest, hopelessly perplexed. Which was why I went out to the greenhouse, of course — in the hope of seeing Evelyn Dooris. Who knew Otoyo better than anyone.

After that incident — I could still see his cold, disdainful expression — I would have given anything to be able to behave like Henry Thornton. To be capable of completely sublimating my feelings — my only hope of survival now. I couldn't, however — discovering, crushingly, that it was to prove quite beyond me. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Carberry's spiritually infirm genes were still in me.

I lacked the discipline, the reason and rigour.

You can't be hard if your nature is soft.

You can't be strong if your nature is weak.

Goodbye, Henry Thornton. I failed you, I'm afraid, I told myself. I'm one of them. I'm lower than the dog. Incapable of muscular detachment, alien to the concept of indifference, I am subordinated entirely by the forces of iniquitous, dissolute emotion. I haven't been chosen. I'm beyond the gates. Fated to remain outside the high windows for ever.

— It's a mystery, then, I heard Henry Thornton say triumphantly, and one to which you'll never find the key. And why you will always be vitiated, degenerate.

That was why I found myself, in a misty haze, making my
way up Ethel's driveway. Hoping against hope that she herself might open the door. That those high French windows at last would admit me and as she warmly opened them, I'd finally hear someone say:

— It's Christopher Thornton, our own Protestant kind!

And that is exactly what I wanted to feel as I sat there that day in Ethel Baird's neat and tidy suburban parlour — impossibly organised in that domestic, near-perfect Protestant way. But in point of fact was actually feeling quite desolate, still gripping
A Child's Garden of Verses
in my hand, asking Ethel would she mind playing the tune.

— Please will you play it, Ethel — ‘Abide With Me'.

— What's wrong with you, Christopher? I can still remember her saying. You seem so pale, quite out of sorts. Do you want me, perhaps, to get you a drink of water?

I don't know why I did it, what it might have been that made me say it. I continued to be too emotional and did not exercise enough reason in the circumstances. That's the only defence I can make. My eagerness was excessive — I ought to have seen that it frightened the poor lady.

— Juh-juh-just play it, Ethel! Will you puh-please play the hymn! For kuh-kuh-Christ's sake!

I had no right whatever to address her in such a fashion. It was shameful, really, when I look back on it now. Ironically, I could feel Henry Thornton's presence so strongly as I stood there. His picture was in a gilded frame on the mantelpiece — an old sepia photo, I thought, from the
forties. He was standing in the grounds of the Manor, attired, as always, formally, in his worsted tweed suit. Holding my mother's hand and looking out as if to say: He thinks that this will change things. He thinks coming up to Ethel's will do it. He's a fool, of course. The mystery is much much deeper than that. As of course it has to be. Otherwise riff-raff like that would routinely be admitted to spoil everything.

My mother was wearing a tweed costume too. Standing there, impassively, beside him, with a cluster of cherries on her lapel. I think that might have been what gave me the idea. The idea, I mean, of asking Ethel to put on the pillbox.

— The one, I mean, that you used to wear to Dimpie's. Do you still have it?

As it turned out, she did. And now, she might have been at any Sabbath service as she sat there on the piano stool wearing it, the milky notes of the plaintive melody lilting out into the evening, as Ethel sang and played, with pale trembling hands:

All I could see, as I sat there listening in that beeswax-heavy drawing room with its small china ornaments and pictures of soldiers from the First World War, was Henry Thornton — explaining, ‘for the very last time', why he
would never allow me to cross the threshold of the Manor.

— The only thing you're good at, and that much I will acknowledge, McCool, is being a bastard. You are quite excellent at that. And for that very reason, you will never gain entrance.

— Ethel Baird, I said, will you hold me?

— What? said Ethel, obsessively twisting the buttons on her lambswool cardigan. Her face was white.

— Puh-please, I implored her. I could think of nothing else.

She continued agitatedly plying the buttons, tugging the hem of her tweed skirt down below her knees.

My voice was shaking as, exhausted, I took her hand and, as gently as I could, said:

— It's going to be OK, Ethel, it is really. This is the way it always should have been.

As, ever so gently, I climbed on to her lap. In a world of my own then as I held her hand and she turned the pages. And I gazed at the illustration over which the poem was printed, a boy with wide eyes sucking his thumb as he viewed the cosmos:

— Oh Ethel, I said, as soothingly, reassuringly, my heavy eyelids began to fall, and I rested my head on her shoulder, bathed in the soothing glow of the fire. Thinking of Henry Thornton as he stood behind the French windows, indifferently staring out. Unmoved by my plea:

— Please let me in, Father.

Just sitting there with Ethel beneath the heaventree of stars, repeating the lines of the poem with her. Before all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly, she jerked, the book slipping from her grasp. And the next thing I knew she was lying on the floor.

What's perhaps most regrettable, even arguably unforgivable about the whole thing is that I left Ethel's without telephoning an ambulance. I ought to have — what had happened was that she'd sustained a coronary but all I kept thinking of was why I'd made a fool of myself with Marcus Otoyo. I've gone and made a fool of myself with him — there seemed to be nothing else in my mind. And I have no doubt whatsoever that that was what impelled me, whether I was aware of it or not, towards the cathedral in the first place. Of course it was childish — childish and stupid. For nothing could now possibly alter the way that things had happened. I was considered a fool by Marcus Otoyo. Not just a fool — worse than that.

Just as soon as I had pushed open the door of the cathedral I had seen the statue standing right in front of me — in the same place, before the high altar, where it
had been specially positioned for the play,
The Soul's Ascent: Saints You May Not Know.
Yes, there he was, Blessed Martin de Porres, the dark-skinned Hispanic devotee of Christ. Who, as played by Marcus Otoyo, by unchallenged consensus, had been the unquestioned star of the show. As I stood there staring at the statue in the aisle, it exerted a powerful effect on me, the vivid memory — of Marcus as he read out the narrative:

— And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

His enunciation had been almost perfect. I recalled it vividly, exulting in its precision and passion. And it was then that I heard them: those resonant, poignant lyrics of ‘The Holy City', the hymn that he had sung, and which had taken the breath of the congregation away. As I remained there, right in the middle of the centre aisle facing the altar, I found myself in an ancient marbled city, through whose streets I could see him proudly move as crusaders bent the knee outside its gates, and beheld in rapture that hilltop place, as beautiful to them as the vanished molten sunsets of childhood. Those gorgeous crimson piles of glory in the west, where clouds floated beyond the western heavens, from beyond whose pink magnificence now sounded the blast of martial trumpets. As, like a seraph's wing, in its flaming beauty, the singing voice of Marcus Otoyo now filled the cathedral, the abject devout proudly striking their breasts and, like the soldiers of old, weeping before the sight of that shining city: