The Holy City Read online

  One thing for which I remain in her debt — she taught me all there was to know about rustic living. With the result that, by the time I was twelve years old — and it’s amusing when you think about it, considering the cosmopolitan lifestyle I ended up embracing — there was very little about chickens and cow shit that C.J. Pops didn’t know. As the two of us whacked the fat arses of Friesians, whistling as we trod the churned mud of the estate, Dimpie fingering her beads as she implored God for yet another batch of favours, before wielding her ashplant and bawling at the livestock:

  — Will youse shoo outa dat, youse eejity bastards!

  The Nook was nice and warm and cosy and it could have been a worse arrangement, I suppose. And one which, surprisingly without a doubt, had been facilitated, in a quite extraordinarily uncharacteristic burst of largesse, by Henry Thornton himself. Primarily, of course, to prevent the impending nervous collapse of my mother. The conditions he outlined were as follows:

  — McCool can look after him down in the Nook. Just make sure he never darkens the door of this house, never once sets his foot across our threshold. Don’t ever even dare bring him inside the gates. For, if you do, if you even consider it, my dear: be assured of this, you’ll lose everything, all entitlements, everything that might be due to you. I’ll see you walk the roads of this county for the humiliation that bastard Carberry has visited upon me.

  After the passing of Wee Dimpie, God rest her soul — she died of cancer when I was in my late teens — I was subsequently informed by a solicitor that my tenancy of the house remained valid until I had attained the age of twenty-one. After which I would be expected to vacate the premises in order that ownership might succeed to the Thornton family. But, as it happened, poor old Henry went and passed away himself, not so very long after my mother in fact, and quite suddenly, precipitating some complicated wranglings in the family over the will. So in the event, to my surprise but immense pleasure, no one ever did expel me from the Nook. And, as they say, between hopping and trotting, I was eventually informed that my tenancy was secure, provided I paid a nominal rent. With the result that, by the time adulthood had come around, lo and behold I was still lord of my little manor. King of my cottage and three acres of scrubland, with a dozen sprightly bronze chickens standing guard.

  As I say, chiefly as a result of Wee Dimpie’s tutelage, I by no means disgraced myself in the world of rustic authenticity. Indeed proved every bit as competent a yokel as any of them. And became well integrated, setting myself up in a dairy business. Purchasing a nice little tractor and trailer, now to be seen jangling about with my porringers and churns, dispensing my milk to the thirsty of the province.

  — There he goes, Cullymore’s very own Eggman! Young McCool there. How are they hanging? Will you leave me in a dozen of your turnips? And I think I’ll have a porringer of crame! they’d call out good-naturedly as I came phut-phutting by, in my sturdy Massey Ferguson 35 tractor and trailer.

  — There he goes! they’d cry. Cullymore’s finest Eggman! For the most part, I have to say, my neighbours tended to be genial fellows. Carrying on with their lives like their fathers and mothers before them.

  — Howya, Eggman! A grand day now! Sure it’s great to see it and thank the Lord for it! they would call good-naturedly after my tractor as I passed.

  But deep in my heart I knew that even if I wanted it to be the case I could never be like them. Knew instinctively from the furtive nocturnal visits I had received of old and from Dimpie’s veiled intimations and general behaviour towards me that I was ‘different’. And that part of me would always be Protestant. Which was why I continued to be fascinated by Thornton Manor. That once breathtaking eighteenth-century edifice, clad in ivy and set in beautiful woodland, which was now on its way to becoming a ruin. So many times I made it my business to go up there just to gaze fondly at its crumbling towers, its grim Gothic dourness already becoming history, like the hegemonie ascendancy world of Dr Henry Thornton, esteemed literary critic, landowner and espouser of the traditional ‘values of empire’.

  And there I’d stand, in absolute silence, mesmerised, staring through the high French windows. Thinking about ‘Protestants’, their traditions and their values. And how, once upon a time, if things had been different, I might have ended up being one of them. Now, however, being just an impotent witness, to a world now fast fading, if not already gone.

  So that was hardly going to happen, was it?

  I thought about it nearly all the time — not just occasionally, or maybe now and then. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to tell you the truth. About the mysterious, fragrant night-time lady who came with parcels of food for Dimpie, who arrived with Ethel Baird her companion like a strange figure from a book. But what a beautiful book, it seemed to me now: a storybook of dreams that made you feel good.

  And I would see myself there then, standing outside the high French windows of Thornton Manor, with Lady Thornton kind of blurred inside — as she sang ‘All People That on Earth Do Dwell’, turning the pages of the dreambook she was perusing. Before smoothing her hair and leaving down the book, moving sideways to look out at me. Before saying:

  — It’s you that I’ll always love the most, not Tristram. Not Little Tristram, C.J.

  I had imagined Little Tristram — of course there was no son in existence named Tristram Thornton, ‘little’ or otherwise.

  But he would always seem so real to me when I stood there thinking about him that at times I could scarcely bear to look through those windows. For I’d see him so vividly — Little Tristram sucking his thumb behind the rain-speckled glass as she whispered them softly into his ear, those beautiful words of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Escape at Bedtime’, taken from A Child’s Garden of Verses:

  The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out

  Through the blinds and the windows and bars;

  And high overhead and all moving about,

  There were thousands of millions of stars.

  Dr Thornton’s works were all available in the local library. He was a commentator, historian, literary critic and essayist: there was no end to his intellectual talents. One of his works was on the cultural antagonisms of Catholics and Protestants. And in which he attested, again baldly and confidently, that Catholics were by far the weaker species and that Protestants were innately superior. Always remaining impartial and neutral, self-controlled, dignified at all times.

  I would think of them at evening gathered around the fire in the drawing room of Thornton Manor, arranged in a circle with their hymnals open, Little Tristram’s voice soaring like a lark’s above all the others, lovingly appreciated by all:

  — Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

  The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.

  When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,

  Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

  As the soothing shadows of the evening fire flickered.

  — The Protestant mind is indifferent, I would hear the good doctor say, self-controlled and sober. Judicious and equable, it tends towards abstinence. The Catholic temperament, however, is quite the opposite. It is vitiated, debauched, and quite degraded. Essentially of inferior status, I’m afraid.

  Even as a fully grown adult now, seeing myself standing once more on the porch beneath the dripping willow trees, shivering and trembling — outside those blurred high French windows, with rain coursing down my face as I tonelessly repeated, chafing my palm remorselessly with the tractor keys:

  — Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

  3 Jerusalem

  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.

  4 A Child’s Garden of Verses

  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 ha
d 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.