But still, it was Easter.
A season of rejoicing for those born into sin. It was also one of the few occasions when Brigid Brennan took more than a solitary drink. She caused quite a stir in the corner house the first time she arrived at the bar with neither a shawl on her head or a husband on her arm. But they’d since got used to her infrequent public dalliances with drink and company. Plus, they enjoyed her craic and the annual after-party she laid on in her big living room. Phil brought the bottles of Powers smuggled up on the train from Dublin, the regulars brought their tobacco and their best stories and Bernadette brought Kate.
It was arriving to that part of the night when mouth organs were appearing miraculously out of top pockets and a tin whistle rolled from underneath the cushion on top of which Seanie Fitz was resting his arse. Someone in the corner began singing about how proud he was to have a rebel heart. The disjointed conversing and babble of disagreement and laughter was hushed and Patsy, one arm resting on the back of a free chair the other holding his half glass of smuggled Powers, allowed his eyelids to droop.
‘From rebel veins my life I drew,
In rebel arms I lay,
From rebel lips the lessons drew
That led me day by day.
And, rocked to rest on rebel breast
And nursed on rebel knee,
There woke and grew for weal or rue
A rebel heart in me.’
He had been dreaming wistfully of Bernadette’s rebel breasts but then, behind eyes serenely closed, he felt an anger rising in him. Bastards, he thought, dirty lowlife bastards. No respect for the living or the dead. The fury was becoming ever more raw, uncomfortably hot like the whisky gripped ever tighter in the sweating palm of his left hand. He urgently wanted to hit them for the coffin ships and every vomit smeared cholera victim locked below deck and every starved corpse thrown overboard. He wanted to get back at them for every vain step taken towards the landlord’s door in Mayo’s hungry trail of tears. He wanted revenge for every misfit emigrant huddling against themselves on bare floorboards, using cheap whiskey and old newspapers to heat their lonely bones. He needed to throw a dig, plant a bomb, fire a shot for the unmarked graves of the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania, for those who had lost all hope on Grosse Isle and Ellis Island, for every minute of Terence MacSwiney’s staunch suffering. He wanted vengeance for the bullet ridden corpses of the McMahons and McKinney. Respectable Papists to be made an example of. No uppity nonsense here.
And now the French were on the sea, the mouth organs were at full throttle with Seanie’s tin whistle and the Shean Bhean Bhocht was bracing herself for another bout of pangs, the intensity of which are the preserve of the dispossessed in the depths of their perpetual disappointment. And Patsy wanted to hit himself or the singer or someone close for Diarmait na nGall’s avarice and Hugh O’Neill’s cowardice. He wanted to rip out his tongue, chop off his ears and spoon out his eyes rather than dwell upon those who cooked the Spanish washed ashore from the wrecks of their Armada, those who stole their gold and pieces of silver and fled back to their grim bogs to hide and count their worthless loot. He wanted to tie a noose of the finest Belfast linen around his own taut neck and have done with the shame of it all… for decorating British warships and their flying bombers, a fine successor to those who had sold their souls for penny rolls and lumps of hairy bacon; he couldn’t bear himself for talking in English, thinking in English, sinning in English…
But then there was her. Sitting there looking at him, a glass of smuggled Powers in one hand, the other resting on her crossed, brown skirted knees, wrists fair and bare, and that faint smile on her lips. He wondered had his anger been palpable and in the same instant doubted it would have phased herself anyway. Play it cool, he thought. He returned what he measured to be a similarly faint smile, raised his glass graciously in her direction and took his packet of Park Drive and a box of matches from his shirt pocket. Humphrey Bogart back on the town. Still attempting amusement, he placed a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match. But as he took his first drag, he could feel flakes of tobacco on his tongue and paper clinging to his lips and saw her smile burst into a laugh. The bottom end of the cigarette was charred black and undoubtedly out. Drunker than I thought, fucking thing in the wrong way round. Not to worry – laugh carelessly, raise the butt in her direction as if you meant it. Aye, ever the clown. I like your cheeks when they’re stretched tight by your laugh. Laugher made by me… my laugher… our laughter. Conceived and shared together in luminous sin.
Undeterred, he produced a second Park Drive and three matches – bought with the not inconsiderable proceeds from his sin in the shipyard – thinking to compensate for the embarrassment with the magic of flame. Lure her into a primordial worship of the man who controls the heat and the light. Primordial flames giving way to primordial desires and shockingly pre-Christian behaviour. The flame was too big. He sniffed the unmistakable aroma of singed hair. His nose hurt. He’d set his nasal hairs on fire. Bernadette fell off the chair in a fit, keeping her whiskey from spilling by sheer force of Catholic will. Seanie Fitz was singing of Finnegan’s Wake from his cushion in the corner; the whistle, passed to another to fondle and finger tentatively, was struggling gamely to keep up with the pace of his chanting. Brigid Brennan was staring at Bernadette and then himself, quizzically. Bernadette was picking herself up and dusting herself off. John Thompson and Kate were in the centre of the living room floor, arm in arm, spinning like an out of control carousel.
‘Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head
When a noggin of whiskey flew at him.
It missed, and falling on the bed
The whiskey scattered over Tim.
Tim revives, see how he rises!
Timothy risin' from the bed!
Says' "Whirl your whiskey 'round like blazes,"
"D'ainm an diabhal! Do ye think I'm dead?"’
Patsy felt his head spinning in tandem with the carousers on their carousel. His guts heaved to Seanie’s words. He needed air and the night before he embarrassed himself beyond repair. He made for the scullery door – leisurely, leisurely, leisurely; brisk, brisk, brisk. They’re all too absorbed in Kate’s legs and Seanie’s singing and where John Thompson’s eyes are going. Nobody will notice. He unlocked the back door and stepped into the yard and comparative silence. Fucking whiskey. Fucking Free Staters. Fucking Jackeens and their fucking songs. His stomach seemed to settle. Got away with it without a scene. Only Brigid was really watching. And she was always watching. Bernadette’s figure came into view, leaning against the frame of the back door: ‘Are you okay Patsy?’
Faint smile, languorous, cool. Bogart’s back baby, ‘Aye, I’m fine. Are you alright? You came sliding off that chair in a hurry.’
She laughed and said nothing. Epitome of cool. No embarrassment, ‘Do you get nervous a lot Patsy?’
Embarrassed laugh, feigning surprise. Epitome of being found out. Shame laid bare. Humphrey my hole.
‘Me?’ he snorted, almost bringing the vomit back up again. ‘No, why?’ Why? Because you’re a fucking klutz that’s why Patsy.
Bernadette didn’t answer but picked up the slack left by the silence, eyes moving off Patsy skywards. Raised chin revealing her own taut neck, but one he imagined would be soft against wet lips. Not one for fine Belfast linen stretched tight. No shame to be stiffed from this one.
‘I used to love the black out.’
‘You used to love the black out? Are you a closet Nazi or something?’
‘You’d see more stars that way. I used to turn my lamp off and lift the black-out curtain and sit for ages staring at them… It must be like that all the time in Monaghan.’
Chuckle denoting wisdom beyond his years, a man of the world, ‘Aye. It’s a beautiful sight on a summer’s night. I’d sometimes lie out all night under them.’
The Monaghan cowboy. Altogether too wild to be tamed by the big smoke.
‘There’s still plenty out tonight though. Tell me some of their names.’
‘What?’
‘Of the stars. Don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping with them and still don’t know their names?’
‘Ah right, of course I do, aye.’
Move closer. Intimate moment of star gazing and bestowing knowledge. And maybe… ‘Well, there’s the Plough for a start.’ Patsy’s left arm arced above their bare heads. ‘See the seven stars that make the shape of one?’
‘That’s an easy one. Sure everyone knows that one. Tell me another.’
The Monaghan cowboy has come a cropper. It might well be time to be riding on out, ‘It’s difficult from here Bernadette. The sky has a different alignment in Monaghan. We see the stars in a different way.’
‘Really? I never knew that.’
There was that faint smile again.
‘Aye, that’s the beauty of the sky at night. Everyone sees it in a different light.’
‘That’s a beautiful way of looking at it.’
The Monaghan cowboy has pulled it from the fire. Go in for the kill, quickest to the draw wins, ‘Sure, if you want to come down to the home place sometime I’ll be able to tell you all the names from there.’
‘Aye, maybe. But I didn’t think you liked going home?’
‘When everything’s sorted out like.’
Things. A monster and a mad mother, ‘If we went in summer, we could sleep out under them.’
Not even a blush, ‘It’s a lovely idea Patsy… Are you going to come in? I’m starting to shiver.’
‘Here.’
Jacket off his back like Humphrey. Around the lady’s shoulders. Smooth.
‘Thanks.’
‘Fáilte.’
A polyglot into the bargain. Hand on the small of her back as he leads her in through the back door. The man in control. He goes red with the glances as they return to the living room. She keeps her cool.
‘Jesus, it’s getting cold outside,’ she says to no one in particular and retakes her chair, arms crossed around the front of Patsy’s black donkey jacket.
‘It’s lucky Patsy’s such a gentleman,’ Seanie Fitz, flushed from the stout and the singing, offers from his cushion.
‘Aye, he’d be the only one of those around here too.’
Redemption. Sweet suffering redemption. Singed nasal hairs, charred cigarette butts, heaving stomach and astronomical incompetence all consigned to the dustbin of history. He was Bernadette’s gentleman and she didn’t care who knew it. He felt like singing. He topped up his glass from the quarter-full bottle on the table and announced imperiously it was his turn for a chant.
‘Good man Patsy!’
‘Fair play yourself you big Monaghan whore ye!’
‘There was an old woman and she lived in the woods, weile weile waile.
There was an old woman and she lived in the woods, down by the river Saile.
She had a baby three months old, weile weile waile.
She had a baby three months old, down by the river Saile.
She had a penknife, long and sharp, weile weile waile.
She had a penknife, long and sharp, down by the river Saile.’
He groped for his cigarettes and noticed the ice-cream glass had fallen to the floor. Tar streaked water contaminated the front pages while cigarette butts lay soaked and abandoned, like dead soldiers on a French beach. He left the butts where they lay, grabbed the glass and his coat from where it had fallen from Bernadette’s shoulders, lay back in bed and lit a Park Drive.
When his slowed, he managed a laugh of sorts. Still, he’d felt her lips against his own. ‘Do you want to see the old newspapers I have upstairs about the blackout and the blitz?’ ‘Aye, why not,’ she’d answered before he could even believe he’d asked her to go up to his bedroom, Mrs Brennan’s spare room. And as they slunk out the sitting room door, he thought he saw a wry smile on Brigid’s lips. Bernadette laughed when she saw the papers were stuck to the carpet with rainwater and not neatly arranged in some scrapbook. And then they’d looked at each other like Ingrid and Bogart and Patsy dared stoke her arm with his paint-splattered fingers, their mouths met as the coat fell from Bernadette’s shoulders and Patsy could feel her hips knock against his own. Bernadette was biting his lower lip when he gagged. ‘Are you alright,’ she’d asked as she shrank back from him. And then she said ‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ and he didn’t even say ‘don’t go,’ before his eyes rose to the scarred ceiling and he collapsed onto his bed. Still, he’d felt her lips against his own.
Then the guilt seeped in and he again thought about Ma. Fear returned as he rifled through his coat for the letter and reassurance. Mad Ma. Doting Ma. Proud of her son, planning a wedding Ma. Maybe they’ve committed her. Maybe the letter’s to tell me to come and see her in the big living room of the mad house at St Davnet’s. Maybe she’s raving to the whole hospital about loch monsters and who knows what else. But when he saw the familiar handwriting and the bushy moustache, he became embarrassed at his own imagination. Patsy the Amadán. Foolish Patsy. Impressionable Patsy. He placed the letter on top of the quilt and looked at his watch. He closed his eyes and thought of her.
The fear returned with the ebbing of his Park Drive and he glanced down at the letter on his lap. He commenced a new butt collection in the ice-cream jar and lit a candle. Behind the flame were piled glasses from pubs and ice cream parlours, rubbed clean after smokies and half’uns of whiskey, and then secreted by Patsy for sometime. Sometime should’ve been tonight’s party but he was content to allow the late comers to quaff their stout from Brigid Brennan’s finest tea set instead. He opened the envelope hastily. Along with the customary folded sheet of paper – always ruled by his mother with impeccably straight pencil lines – there was a newspaper clipping which fell out of the envelope onto the blanket. Patsy picked this up first and held it above his head to examine it as if it was a pair of Seanie Fitzpatrick’s soiled underpants.
“Monaghan Lake Monster! Sensation. A STRANGE monster, estimated to be 15ft long and to dive with a rumbling noise, is disturbing the peace of Lake Dromate, near Newbliss in Co Monaghan, and may rival the fame of the Lough Ness monster. First noticed by some men fishing from the shore, it appeared as a black patch a few inches above the water. Local farmers, armed with shotguns, rowed out in search for it and to their astonishment it broke surface about 20 yards from the boat.”
Oh God, oh sweet mother fucking Jesus. Patsy was hyperventilating again. She’s went to the papers. She’s convinced Da it’s real. He’s got his mates out in a boat firing pot shots at what they probably think is a Brit submarine disguised as a dinosaur. Father Farrelly’ll have him thrown into the Curragh and her committed to St Davnet’s. He lit another cigarette with shaking hands and tried to calm himself by reading the story that was printed on the other side of the snippet,
“Germans flee as allies near Eiffel Tower. THE Battle of Normandy has been won. The Germans’ power effectively to resist the Allies in France has now gone. This was the assessment of a senior staff officer in General Montgomery’s HQ last night as reports streamed in of the havoc wrought among the disorganised German remnants fleeing from the Falaise pocket under one of the war’s greatest tactical onslaughts. German losses in Normandy – killed, prisoners and wounded – are estimated at 400,000.”
“Killed, prisoners and wounded.” He read these words again and remembered the jokes from home that his brother John, inspired by Eoin O’Duffy’s talk of the Reds and their gang raping of the nuns, had run off to join the German army, as if it was Father Farrelly’s blessed sister herself who’d been molested by two bearded drunken communists on the altar of their own wee chapel out by Dromate. He imagined John lying on a beach in Normandy with his stomach torn open by a hand grenade or his temple punctured by a sniper’s bullet. He pictured him in a Prisoner of War camp, losing blood rapidly from a wound yet to be treated, or being tortured by English soldiers angry at yet another example of Paddy’s untrustworthiness.
There was no escape. His mind was sagging under the weight of a mad mother and a missing brother. He arose to open the bedroom window, gulp in the night and gaze at anonymous stars. But then there was her. There was always her, even before her there was her – the promise of her, the prospect of her. She reminded him how to breathe. She took his mouth on hers, she made the rest bearable.
He fumbled for change and pulled out several Kings. Two rolled off the counter and clattered onto the stone floor, spinning furiously on their axes at first then wobbling to a stop among the sawdust. He bent to pick them up. Fuck, nerves, nerves, fuck. Big clumsy Patsy. Always nervous Patsy. Sweat on his palms and mad butterflies in his belly. Big bottle of plain and a half ’un to steady himself. He’d been the same in the paint shop that morning, getting green all over his boots and his hands and then on his nose when he tried to stop the snot escaping. Fool.
Tonight was her first night on since the party. Since their mouths met and she squeezed his left hand red with all the force of her contracting, delicate thighs. Phil always told him her shifts with a grin and a wink as he rubbed his glasses clean with his manky yellow cloth.
He steadied his hand around the solidity of the whiskey glass and thought furiously of things to say on her arrival. Tonight was not the night for shy grins and hair tousling. Their meeting of mouths had changed all that utterly. He’d broken the bonds of his inept past and moved into manhood. Tonight was the night for familiarity. Bogart asking his babe for a drink with a joke and a wink.
‘Ah, Bernadette. How’s your day been?’ Far too familiar, too husband and wife-like.
‘How’s things?’ Too aloof. Too distant.
‘I haven’t seen you since the other night. I was worried you’d gone and fallen down a rabbit hole. How’ve you been?’ Jackpot. Allusion to their shared secret. Concern for her welfare. Relaxed interest. Wee joke. All boxes ticked.
Quaff to celebrate. Thud on back. Choke on black stuff. Splutter, splutter. Fizzy bubbles up his nose. And there was Seanie Fitz’s arm around Patsy’s shoulders, his fat face looking down at him. All I need. Fuck sake. Seanie always made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. As if he’d be able to handle things better or appear in a different light to others if Seanie was absent. Tonight in particular, yet here he fucking was.
‘I take it you’re in for Bernadette?’
Play it cool. Laid back disinterest, ‘No, I’m in for a drink.’
‘Just as well. I wouldn’t waste my time on that one if I was you.’
Jealousy. Bound to be jealous. He’s found out about us. But what happened next was all blur and babble. Seanie said something about a soldier and Phil got angry and said Bernadette would never step out with a Brit and Seanie said, no, it wasn’t one of them, it was a Yank. And then Seanie came over all confidential and leaned over the bar and whispered it wasn’t just that, it was a dark Yank. And then Phil said fuck off, I don’t believe you and Seanie said on my mother’s freshly dug grave I’m telling the truth and if you don’t believe me I just passed them on the road and they were walking in this direction and him as black as coal, except for the green uniform of course.
And then Phil came over all philosophical and said something about Irish being nigger if nigger wasn’t nigger. And then Seanie said you know what they say about the black lads, don’t you? And then Patsy couldn’t control his shaking any longer and he felt his hands balling into fists and heard himself calling Seanie a lying cunt and then he was flying off the stool in Seanie’s direction, his arms flailing towards his head. But Seanie sidestepped too quickly and Patsy found himself rolling around among the sawdust and beer slops and spit. And then Seanie went to kick him in the stomach but thought better of it at the last second and called him a no-good Free State bastard instead. And Phil was lifting him and asking him had he lost his mind and telling him to go home and sleep it off, that they’d talk about it tomorrow.
But then there was her, standing in the narrow doorway, a carefully crafted look of defiance on her face as if to pre-empt any sly comments or stares of disapproval. And soldier boy was behind her but towering over her at the same time, all carefully pressed green and nervous eyes and delicate smile. And Patsy was lying back in Phil’s arms, dirt smearing his coat and snot in his nose. And the old boys in the corner were sniggering and muttering in their low familiar tongues into one another’s weather worn ears. Her look of defiance turned to one of puzzlement when she saw Patsy. He straightened his knees, shrugged off Phil’s back-to-front embrace and made for the door and the night, pushing her and soldier boy aside as he escaped.
She followed him out, asking the black lad, Private James Caulfield a Buffalo Soldier lately of the Massa, Naples and the Arno River in Italy and soon to be of the Ardennes offensive, to wait inside for a minute. Private Caulfield knew only too well what they said about the black lads, where he came from it was ‘coon’ and ‘rape’ and ‘lynch’, words which were only surmounted in their viciousness by the actions which not infrequently followed.
Lately, he’d heard some of these words spoken in this town – chiefly, but not solely, by others in uniform – so he looked around the room with a certain air of reticence. This was soon dampened by the old boys in flat caps calling him to them. Thinking he’d have a story or two to tell and hearing of the ready money these Yanks were said to have on their hips – admittedly, usually to spend on specimens younger and more shapely than themselves – they made a space for Private Caulfield and asked him what he was having.
Outside, Bernadette was asking Patsy what the hell was wrong with him and he was wiping his nose with the back of his hand and fixing his hair and fixed her with a stare fit for Mary Magdalen herself. And he parroted what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with me and there was fury and indignant questions and a demand for answers. Bernadette’s head stopped slightly.
‘I didn’t know you felt so strongly, like that, about me like, Patsy.’
And Patsy acted the parrot again, accused her of lying and insisted she be ashamed of herself. And then it was Bernadette’s turn to be angry, ‘How fucking dare you speak to me like that. What do you know about me anyway? You don’t know me.’
‘Obviously not, given your walking out with a…’
‘With a what? A soldier? Is that it? Patsy the Pacifist, is that it now? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s next stop Berlin for the things you’re painting with the green stuff you’ve got on your nose. And God help the kids underneath them. Or do you think they’re dropping food in those planes you’re colouring in?’
It was now Patsy’s head which fell, he shuffled his shoes and tried to kick off the sawdust that clung to them. There was no one around to tousle his hair. Bernadette’s tone softened.
‘Look Patsy, what happened the other night was nice and all, but doesn’t mean we’re a couple. Anyway, you don’t want me. Not really. You’re lost. And if it’s a nice wee wife you want to make you feel better about it, I’d advise you not to look for one around here. You’re too nice and the girls around here are too hard. Too rough at the edges, you know? You’d only get hurt.’
‘I’m hurt now.’
Bernadette bit her own lip, ‘Do you know why I spend my nights handing you lot bottles of stout?’
‘For the company?’
‘Because I can’t get a job in the mills, and do you know why?’
A head that shook. Patsy didn’t know.
‘Because they’re laying people off, never mind taking ones on. And why’s that, eh?’
Bernadette didn’t wait for an answer, ‘Because the skirts we’re wearing are getting a wee bit shorter and the knickers we’re wearing are that wee bit more skimpy, meaning they can make more of them with less girls.’
Bernadette let thoughts of her skimpy knickers sink into Patsy’s skull, ‘I like you Patsy, I do, but I’m going to be nobody’s wee wife, whatever people say about me… especially because of what people might say about me.’
She stroked his paint splattered arm and then made slowly for the door and soldier boy and a night serving bottles of stout. Patsy moved towards the middle of the deserted road and took the black wind face on. His eyes were fixed on the now invisible Divis Mountain, using row upon row of smoking chimney pots as a marker from there to there. His hair moved this way and that with the wants of the wind. His black poacher’s jacket allowed him to blend with the night.
In spite of the open bar door emitting light and the promise of a fire and warmth within, he was alone and terminally ill-equipped for the world, at least for this town of intimates and secrets, forsaken by Bernadette and all and everyone else.
But that was done with now… Over. He cleared his brain and instead observed how her hair had disguised the freckles on her otherwise pale shoulders. How her spine protruded faintly from her arched back. This time, he hadn’t gagged with nervousness and fearful expectancy, he knew what had to be done and he did so eagerly and with no little affection. Still, he wanted to be done with her and himself and the whiskey, this town and all who dwelt therein.
Instead, he traced her spine with his index finger and heard her mumble something that sounded like ‘Danny’. He shuffled closer on his hip, took his sustenance from her warmth, replied with a faint ‘I’m here,’ and kissed her shoulder. In this bed, on this night, Patsy was whoever he needed to be and Brigid was someone similar. Spines and thighs in the dark made it possible.
Eyelids lost in the murk made it inevitable.