This should then dissolve to a vast whorled sky with a pale, anaemic moon hanging above a garden of the freshest green vegetation, so lush and full of … newness. He can recognize some of the people in it. They are from the town of Scotsfield, only dressed in ancient Christian robes. One of them, he should be seen to realize, is his mother. She is talking away to someone who also has her head bowed, but you can’t see properly because it is crowded. All you can hear is: ‘It’s what he deserves.’ Out of nowhere there is a terrific clamour and the next thing you know the Roman soldiers are climbing over the wall and coming in through the garden gate. The person you first thought was Christ is revealed not to be him at all. Not that it matters for they go right ahead and slice his ear. Then they hand it to her. ‘Well, well, well,’ she smiles, ‘an ear made of jelly. Because he wants to be a baby. He wants to be born twice! He wants Mona to give birth to him! Because his own mother doesn’t want him. But, of course, Mona is a Chivers jelly. So he must be a jellybaby, mustn’t you, Tallon?’
‘No, he’s not! He’s a fully grown jellyman now! Aren’t you, Joey?’ someone said.
She goes to him and makes him eat it. ‘Here then, Jellyman!’ she insists. ‘Eat your own ear.’
The Romans think this is great fun. They can barely contain themselves as they observe him in the throes of mastication. Then the centurion sheathes his sword and says: ‘Very well! That’s enough! This is serious business! Now we must proceed to finish it!’
The crucifixion is indeed a serious business. There are grim expressions all around. All the town is there. Quite a few reporters. ‘Have you anything to say?’ they ask him, but he hasn’t, for he still cannot speak, his mouth being filled with blushing plasma. ‘Barbapapa,’ remarks a bystander. ‘You’ll remember him, of course. He was pink too.’
His mother arrives over then and folds her arms, glaring at him for quite a while. After a bit she spits at him and says: ‘You’re just like him, your father that went off to China or wherever the fuck he went! After he rode that bitch in heat Mona Galligan! Who, if you’ll notice, is not here now. Why, you fool, where is she? Where’s that quivery whore? How they used to laugh at her in Austie’s when she’d try to hold the gin in her shaking paw! That’s how she turned when she had her abortion! When they ripped Jamesy Tallon’s bastard out of her above in Dublin!’
He shakes his head. The skies have begun to darken. It breaks his heart that Mona isn’t there. The assembly falls to its knees as one.
It took Jelly a long time to die. Seventy-two hours. And all the time his loved one was standing there, she too with folded arms. As she said: ‘These are precious moments to me now. His moans are music to my ears.’
Even as the tears of blood came rolling down his cheeks he couldn’t avert his eyes — her fine high cheekbones, olive skin and the way she tossed her fine blonde hair. He knew she would wince when he spoke the words, turn away in utter disgust. But just to say them made his journey easy. Those seven last words that he would ever speak upon the earth:
‘My one and only beautiful darling Jacy.’
The Acceptance of Doughboy a.k.a. Blobby McStink
Poring over these musings — or more accurately, perhaps, what are often nothing more than drug-fuelled discourses without any sense of form whatsoever, however sincerely expressed — what is hardest of all to accept — which blew my fucking head off, if you want to know the truth, and still does! — is the very idea of any of my memories ever having found a home. But they did, I assure you, the only sad thing being that the experience will never be repeated. Maybe what every ambitious author needs are situations in extremis, constant proximity to those knife-edge zones which seem guaranteed to keep the creative juices flowing. Maybe I should give Senator Henry a call. Tell him I’ve got writer’s block. Announce: ‘Your services are required once more, Mr Henry!’
Oh, and bring Sandy too! That’s bound to improve my style! Do you know what I’m saying, Boyle? You made me an artist, you really did! After all, when you know you could have died at any moment, there’s not much point in indulging in self-pity! No, it concentrates the mind just wonderfully and formerly procrastinating persons, although trembling like a leaf, find themselves saying: ‘Now you either write your book or you don’t, for it really is all you have left! Well, do you intend to write it, Joey?’
Which, to my amazement, I did. Where did it come from? Don’t ask me! All I know is, there’s no sign of a follow-up! No, sadly there won’t be any more letters winging their way from literary London, to the effect that I’m the most amazing young writer that’s ever arrived on their doorstep. What they said they liked about it most was the ‘voice’. I was over the moon about that, for up until then I didn’t think anyone would ever read books that were written in Scotsfield vernacular. And now, here they were saying this:
Kingfisher Publishers
27 Chatham Square
London EC1
Dear Mr Tallon
On behalf of our company I would like to thank you for submitting your manuscript to us. We found it very interesting indeed and would like to include it in our lists, with a view to publishing in the spring. Obviously there are some details which we would like to discuss with you, not least among them the proposed title — The Amazing Adventures of Blobby McStink — we are not quite sure whether this is intended to be ironic or tongue in cheek or what. Anyhow, that can be discussed at a later date. The advance we would be prepared to offer is one thousand pounds. In anticipation of your acceptance of this offer, may I take this opportunity to welcome you to our lists — and congratulations on a very fine novel.
Yours truly
Gail Marchant
Youth in Action Creative Arts Awareness Scheme
Such dramatic and unexpected notification of success was a very long way indeed from those barren old days after Johnston had taken his leave of the town, with the writing group more or less falling to pieces and a couple of attempts to ignite the old energies ending in dismal failure. I booked the hotel a couple of times myself but only a meagre scattering of people turned up, and when I tried to address them, starting off with a literary quotation the way Johnston used to, I found myself going red and my mouth becoming dry, with the result that everyone else got nervous too and in the end nobody wanted to read. I couldn’t stop thinking that it had been, in fact — despite my repeated denials to myself — my own headstrong behaviour that had led to his sudden departure. The reassurances of the other members, insisting that he had — yes, definitely! — been transferred to a bank in Kildare, however, went some way towards dispelling my anxieties. It emerged then — I forget who it was he had told — that he had received an offer for his thriller, and this would also have been instrumental in his decision. I couldn’t get this news out of my head when I heard it. Especially when, apparently, the book was set in Scotsfield! I felt quite proud, in fact, that someone would have bothered to set their story in our hometown, never suspecting for a moment that it might have been …
His near obsession with my ledgers just didn’t register with me at all. Or all the probing questions he’d ask. I was just pleased for him, and all I wanted was a chance to see him. Relive once more those uniquely rewarding days. Days that had been so full of energy and creative ideas that you feared you’d never experience their like again and that what you were facing now was a virtual wipe-out of all the exuberant and confident things that had become so much a part of your life, a return to the bad old seventies with none of the good things ever having happened.
It became more and more like that, from morning to night just sitting there in the caravan drinking, going through notebooks and trying to make sense of what might be generously called ‘handwriting’.
When all of a sudden, the door opens and who’s there? Only — guess who! — yes, the one and only Fr Connolly, shifting from foot to foot and looking a little bit nervous, in one hand this basket of groceries and twenty cigarettes in the other. Nervous, perhaps, because I was tipsy
, on the verge, in fact, of inquiring: ‘So, who the fuck is this — Little Red Riding Hood?’, but managing at the last minute to hold back so that good sense prevailed. He wanted to know if he could come in for a minute or two, that he had a ‘little bit of a proposition’ to put to me. I said of course he could, for to tell you the truth I was more than glad to have a visitor, the only other human being I’d set eyes on for months being Mangan, who was in a right-looking state since I’d got him the doll — I don’t think he was ever off her — so even a priest near seventy was a major improvement on that.
After a few cups of tea we had forgotten our old differences and, in fact, he told me that he had read the present I gave him — the T. S. Eliot poems — from cover to cover and had found it very interesting indeed. ‘I really appreciated your giving it to me, Joseph. I never meant to upset you. I was just trying to protect you. I know what they’re like around this town. Particularly in some of the pubs. You have to be careful what you say for they’ll … well, you know what they’re like. They’d eat you alive!’
I nodded. I understood now. I appreciated him talking like that. He reminded me of my father. Or what Jamesy Tallon might have been, if he hadn’t left us. In the same way, if things had been otherwise, Charlie Manson might have turned out fine. ‘Life is funny, Joseph,’ he went on, ‘and complex. And maybe that’s why we need the poets. To help us understand. Improve us.’
‘Maybe it is,’ I replied, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror — not at all unlike Charlie now, with my whiskers and hair! — and reflecting that whoever they were, the versifiers I was reading, they didn’t seem to be doing too much for me in that department. The understanding and improvement department, I mean. Fr Connolly was standing at the window now and talking about the town and its history. When he mentioned drugs, I thought at first he was trying to get at me, but it was just the regular raids that took place now in the new place — the ‘Fuck Me!’ hotel as they called the Lakeland Towers, a huge art-deco pile that rose up out of nowhere half a mile outside Scotsfield, everyone going ‘Fuck me!’ as their cars came around the corner, with kids as young as fourteen scattering on to the street with their tablets of ‘E’. Love stories weren’t beginning at Barbarella’s any more but there in Marco’s, as they called their nightclub, with its nonstop dance music and Sensurround video walls. It had been built by Boyle Henry and a consortium of businessmen, one of whom I’d heard was Sandy.
‘Practically every weekend now, Joseph, and say a word about it and they’ll laugh in your face,’ he informed me ruefully. ‘I have seen so many changes,’ he went on. ‘I remember myself and your father, just walking out to the reservoir. He had all his life before him then. So had I, Joseph. There’s things you dream will never happen. Father Gervais — I’m sure you read about him in the paper — that used to be chaplain in the children’s homes. Myself and him were in college together. I’d never have believed it either. Your father was a good man, son, and maybe things were swept under the carpet. I don’t know what happened to your mother, or Mona, God rest her, but life can be bitterly cruel, and nothing’s worse than malignant shame. It may be true that the times now are better. That there’s a clean wind abroad and the cobwebs are all blowing away. I hope so, anyway, Joseph. And that’s what I’ve come here to talk to you about. Do you remember the Peace People? All those long years ago? Well, I’m sure you’ve been listening to the radio lately with all these political developments. Well, the idea is, the Peace People have come up with a suggestion: there is so much money available from the European Union now to fund all sorts of initiatives whereby a deserving local youth or adult might be given a chance — particularly those who have been involved politically in the conflict, as they call it now, although I realize you don’t fall into this category —’
He broke off. Then resumed: ‘To get to the point, Joseph. In keeping with the changing spirit of the times, they are setting up a trust … no, more a sort of award — this was decided only last night — called the Scholarship of Hope, which will be advertised both nationally and in the Scotsfield Standard. It would provide someone who has, for whatever reason, become somewhat disadvantaged with an opportunity to rebuild his life, the manner in which this might be approached to be agreed with a selected committee — it could be through work experience in the community, travel, whatever. It would also bring with it a small but reasonable salary which would take that person out of the welfare system and help to give them back their dignity and enable them to be self-sufficient.’
He looked out of the window. There was an old tom cat staring back at him through the rusted window of a wreck. ‘Joseph,’ he began again, ‘I know we’ve had our differences and that both of us have said things that perhaps we shouldn’t, but I really do feel you have abilities and talents … well, to come straight to the point, a number of us on the parish committee, not a majority by any means, let me be quite candid about that — we’ve had plenty of opposition, let me tell you — but we definitely feel that someone like you … well, that you deserve and might benefit from an enlightened approach such as this and that it definitely should be given a tryout, a sort of pilot scheme, if you will…’
He coughed and said nothing for some time. ‘We are aware,’ he continued, ‘that for a man in your position securing employment — commensurate with your needs and talent, at any rate — might not be the easiest thing in the world. Consequently, myself and Mrs Carmody, the principal of the community college, were wondering if you might be interested in a little post we have been thinking of creating …’
He finished by saying: ‘Obviously it would be for a trial period. What I mean by that is, Joseph, considering your past not everyone was in full agreement with our suggestion, and you would have to give me your word that…’
‘Of course, Father,’ I said. ‘Anything you require in that department, absolutely anything at all! But, believe you me, you don’t even have to ask, and Mervin Recks will tell you that! I haven’t had much drink since I came home and, as for drugs, well, forget it! That was the seventies, man! It embarrasses me even to —’
He smiled then and that smile was so sunny it sent me right over the moon.
‘There is never such a thing as not starting again, Joseph. Like I said, I know we’ve had our differences. But, like they keep saying on the radio, there is nothing that dialogue can’t resolve as we’ve seen over the past year or so, with former enemies getting on, if not like a house on fire, well, at least not assassinating each other. Do you understand me, Joseph?’
I nodded.
‘I understand you, Father. I’m hearing you loud and clear.’
I felt like I’d just been talking to Merv. Look out for those midges, Mr Gogol! I thought to myself as my grin spread ever wider. Already I could see myself striding up to that college, my head chock-full of ideas. I made a private decision to tie my hair back in a ponytail so I’d look like one of these trendy New York businessmen you’d see going to work in Wall Street, swinging that old briefcase, maybe dropping into the Fuck Me hotel to sip a latte and rap with a few of the trendy young yuppies you saw coming and going out of there, barking down mobile phones, closing deals and shit. Yeah!
‘So I can take it that you’re interested in the position and that I have permission to put your name forward for the Scholarship of Hope?’
I extended my hand and then gave him a hug.
‘You absolutely have, Father,’ I said. ‘That you most certainly have.’
He was on his way out and about to close the door. I swung on my heel and, without thinking, shot him silently with my protruding gun-finger-
‘Oh, and Father …’ I said.
‘Yes?’ said Fr Connolly.
‘Thanks!’
So, there you have it, and in all fairness now you really had to hand it to Connolly. For whatever way it might have eventually worked out — between the principal Mrs Carmody and me — at the end of the day it was Fr Connolly who’d pulled out the stops. Who’d
gone out of his way to give a man a second chance and enable him to be reborn. Enabling me for the first time in my life to have a proper job, one you could be fucking proud of for a change. Not rotting in a factory or sweating in a fucking foundry ladling molten iron into a blast furnace and getting bugger-all money or respect for doing it. Not to mention hauling beer kegs and listening to the problems of every drunk in the town, whether in Doc Oc’s or anywhere else. No, this was a post where you held your head up high because you knew what what you were doing was useful. But not only that — important, as influencing young minds is always important. Merv was an example of that. You get the guy that gives you a hard time — you want to take his fucking head off, blow away him and his family. Then the guy comes along that treats you decent. And what are you like? You’re like a little lamb there, bleating. So I reckoned that experience would be pretty useful too. As well as the fact that I could relate to young teenagers in a way that came naturally, having been into draw and all that shit. All I kept thinking was, your life is following a crooked path and the roads seem covered in shards. Shards of the most lethal and jagged-edged glass. Then you look up one day and there’s not a single one in sight. The way ahead is uncluttered and clear. For a long time you think that it’s never going to happen. But you wake up one day and you know deep inside. You know you’re gonna open that window and that road will lie straight ahead.