Ireland

  Dickie winked at Ronan and went back to the bar outside.

  Carmel called after him, “Bring us the same again.”

  She turned and looked Ronan up and down; Yvonne looked elsewhere; Ronan looked at Yvonne.

  “Where’s your tongue?” said Carmel.

  “Leave him alone,” said Yvonne.

  “Ah’m, where do you girls work?”

  “We’re machinists. Doyle’s Fabrics. We call it Purgatory. We’ll go straight to heaven, but she won’t, she’s a Protestant, they go to hell,” said Carmel, as though discussing plain facts.

  All three finished their drinks. Dickie reappeared with fresh supplies.

  “So what about my story? Didja like it?”

  “Very nice,” said Ronan. “Very enjoyable.”

  “Very nice, very enjoyable,” said Carmel.

  “Stop being bitter, you,” said Yvonne.

  Dickie left; silence; Ronan finished his drink.

  “Would you like another?”

  “I’d like another of anything,” said Carmel.

  Yvonne nodded; “Same goes for me. I’m a bit like that, a copy cat I am.” Ronan rose and walked through the curtain.

  Said Dickie, “The other half?”

  Ronan looked blank.

  “Like—d’you want another pint?”

  “Yes, please. And—” he pointed.

  “Them two? Hah! Their night’s going well—they found their soft touch.”

  As Dickie prepared the drinks, Ronan looked around the pub to try and orient himself. The lone, elderly woman stared ahead, her glass of sherry half empty. One of the two crows stabbed the other on the arm to make a point. Ronan gathered the full glasses from Dickie and brought them back to the inner room. He sat down and drank his pint glass dry.

  “Look at ya!” said Carmel. “You must have a giant’s thirst.”

  Yvonne stroked his arm and said, “Go on, get yourself another, it’ll do youse good.”

  Ronan rose again and waved at Dickie from the curtain, who put down the flashlight he was repairing.

  “Jaysus, is it a drain you’ve in there?”

  Ronan waited the long minutes and then lurched forward to get the drink.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  Dickie said, “Well, that’s the shortest slate I ever known. Not since jockeys used to come in here on their way home from the races. Jockeys. Short. D’ja get it?”

  Ronan paid him, took the big glass, and rushed into the back room, drinking as he walked. He skidded to a halt beside the girls and sat down, gulping the black drink.

  “Who’s following you?” said Carmel.

  He drained the glass and said, “Yvonne, may I ask you a great favor?”

  “For me to grant,” she laughed, mock-haughty.

  “Would you walk out on the street with me?”

  “Oh, Jaysus!” said Carmel. “Watch yourself.”

  Taking her arm, Ronan almost ran Yvonne through the bar and out on the street.

  “Over here, stand over here.” He strode to a streetlamp and stood, tall and nervy, in the circle of poor light; rain slanted in.

  “Here, here!”—so urgent.

  She walked over and stood in front of him; her head scarcely came to his chest.

  “Close your eyes.”

  He bent and kissed her on the mouth, and Yvonne pulled back.

  “Hey! Watcha!”

  “This is my first kiss.”

  “It is?” She softened. “And what makes you think you can practice on me?”

  “You have a nice face.”

  “You could call me beautiful, and it wouldn’t hurt neither of us.”

  “Yes, you are beautiful.”

  He bent down again; she put her arms around his neck and allowed him to kiss her.

  “That’s not kissin’,” she said when she drew away, “that’s eatin’.”

  “I didn’t know—” and he held out his hands in deep embarrassment.

  “S’all right!” she said.

  But Ronan turned on his heel, walked, and then ran.

  Behind Yvonne, Carmel materialized at the door.

  “Whassup?”

  “He’s very nice,” said Yvonne, looking down the dim street and listening to the fading, running steps. They shrugged and headed in the opposite direction, with fading giggles and clicking heels.

  Minutes later, Ronan came back and crashed into the pub. The woman with the hat looked straight ahead, the two crowlike men still stabbed the air with fingers—and Ronan said to Dickie, “May I borrow your coat?”

  He never slept that night. Nor did he go home to the apartment and Kate. Wrapped in a coat rigid with stains and age, he let no timeline enter his thinking—it could take ten days, ten years, before he ever returned to the places he called home. If ever.

  Mad in his mind, feeling thrilled and unclean, he walked some street somewhere as the bells of the New Year rang. Now and then his journey seemed haunted, as though stark white faces peeped from doors. The night had no reality, nothing but distant sound; sometimes a car whisked by; faraway cheering came in on the wind, and then, at last and alone, he heard the brisk sound of his own footsteps.

  His mouth felt the two kisses, and his lips still tingled inside. Sour tastes lit the back of his throat, and the liquor’s vague headache thumped. A yellow factory neon shone through the night; Lemons Pure Sweets. The street sign read “Drumcondra Road.” A man leaned on a bridge and flicked a cigarette butt in a sparked arc.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Yeah, howya?”

  “If someone sent you to Boyne Water—where would that be?”

  “No, head, this is the Tolka.”

  “The what?”

  “The Tolka River. The lifestream of north Dublin, pure and distilled.”

  Ronan looked over the parapet at the narrow dark trickle below.

  “But—Boyne Water, d’you think that’s the same as the Boyne River?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’d be up in Meath, head. The Boyne’s up that way. This is the Tolka.”

  “And that’s the same as—Boyne Water?”

  “The Tolka? No, head, the Boyne’s not the same as the Tolka.”

  “I mean, the river Boyne.”

  “The battle, like? Havta be, wouldn’t it?”

  The man began to swing his arms; he marked time and sang, “‘On the green grassy slopes of the Boyne. Where King Billy and his men fought and won.’ Are you by any chance familiar with the music of the late, great Glenn Miller and his timeless melody ‘American Patrol’? Same tune, head. ‘Where we fought for the glorious religion. On the green grassy slopes of the Boyne.’”

  “How far away is it?”

  The man considered. “Two hundred and seventy years. In fact, you just missed a most coincidental conjunction—sixteen-ninety to nineteen-sixty, how’s about that for arresting numerology?”

  Ronan wanted to say, “What on earth are you talking about?” but the man could not be interrupted; “Up the long ladder and down the short rope, to Hell with King Billy, and God bless the Pope.” And he marched off, his spine as straight as a martinet.

  The borrowed coat had lost its warmth years since, and Ronan began to shake with cold. Now the night’s heaviest and coldest air fell on him. No cars, little sound; a passing bicycle swished its tires on the wet streets, and with it came the jolt—he realized that he had no money, nothing but someone else’s coat, some half-wet clothes, strong shoes, and a growing desperation. His anger came flooding back.

  In the shelter of his childhood and adolescence, Ronan had never been taught how to recover from loss of control. As an only child he had grasped how his tantrums alarmed the adults, who had appeased him to prevent such outbursts and therefore had never taught him how to recover from them; no cures had been tried because none had been needed. Consequently he had no idea how long it would—or should—take him to cool down, and no measure of how dangerous an angry state could be.

  The world teac
hes swiftly. Walking toward him, talking and laughing, came three boys spread across the available space. Ronan marched straight at them and never yielded—he barged through them, jolting one.

  “Hey!” said the jolted one.

  “Hey yourself,” said Ronan over his shoulder, striding on as though in seven-league boots.

  Next he felt a fist on the back of his head, turned, and got another in the face. Then a harder punch, as though the hand held a rock, landed on the side of his head, and he reeled back. Two of the three attacked, while the third looked on and laughed. A boot kicked his hip; an open hand slapped his face.

  “Stop that, stop! You’re hurting me!” Until that moment he had never been struck in his life. They pounded him again; he had no self-defense of any kind; they grabbed his hair, shook him like a rat, pulled his nose, and, final indignity, kicked his behind so hard that he lurched forward. Then they all laughed; Ronan, turning away from them, began to cry.

  Within a hundred yards, his tears halted, gave way to anger again—but that dissolved, and he felt nothing but soreness, inside and out. Shock first, then shame, set in. He looked behind him cautiously; the three assailants had forgotten about him and were far away, although he could still hear them laughing. Now he realized fully his state—that his head hurt, that his face was probably bruised, that the coat he wore would damn him in the eyes of any reasonable human, and that, other than not returning to Kate, he had no idea what to do. With no precedent of any kind, no preparation for such circumstances, he walked faster to keep himself warm.

  Kate recovered quickly from Ronan’s tantrum and made as many repairs as she could to his chaos—ink stains, shards, debris. Then she took what she always considered a sensible step—a long bathtub soak. She determined that if she went to bed, she would avoid further confrontation; by eight o’-clock, still nervous of his imminent return, she locked her bedroom door and fell asleep.

  Two hours later she woke up and listened carefully. No sound. She checked the time, she surveyed the driving rain outside, she felt the cold. And she began to worry.

  At half past ten she telephoned David Mansfield. He arrived within half an hour and heard the story.

  “I’m not surprised. He needed to react. His father’s death, new at college, competitive peers, maybe—all of that. And now being squeezed in the nest, so to speak.”

  “I know, Father.”

  “And he—still doesn’t know?”

  “About me? Oh, no, Father. How can we tell him now? If this is what his reactions are like—my goodness, I’d be afraid to think what he might do.”

  “Practical steps are life’s cures. Where should I go looking for him? If you think hard, you’ll know where he’s gone.”

  In the small hours of New Year’s Day, 1961, the roads of Ireland were empty and black. After three in the morning, no transport of any kind passed Ronan by; not another human did he see, other than some late revelers crossing their neighbor’s fence to their own home with many echoing laughs.

  No lights in houses; no animals in the fields; the old year had truly died, and the new one not yet come alive.

  He walked faster and then slower, then faster again. His tumult waxed and waned; he tried to quell his disturbed thoughts by remembering dates of battles, names of kings, significant laws. Nothing worked; anger still dominated, plus, now, a pitying voice that began to list injustices. Dad shouldn’t have died. They should have told me about the illness—they’re always keeping secrets from me, they oughtn’t. Bartlett Ryle’s mark was unfair, he shouldn’t have done that. Should; shouldn’t; ought; oughtn’t—the enemies of contentment.

  At dawn, Ronan swung his arms in countryside brightening under a red sky. Deep in self-pity, he became aware of a car drawing up behind him and keeping pace. It stopped alongside, and the passenger door swung open.

  “Ronan?”

  The voice! And yes, the priest’s collar.

  “Dear boy. Have you ever seen such beautiful light? Though I fear that red sky. Rain, rain, go to Spain.”

  Without a word Ronan climbed in. The priest reached across with a handshake.

  “Happy New Year.” He looked more saintly than ever, the eyes calm as a cat’s. “Did you ring in the new?”

  Ronan said nothing. The priest looked in his mirrors, wheeled out onto the road, and began a soft patter.

  “Until I came to Dublin, I always tried to be asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve—it’s a melancholy night.” The car interior’s warmth began to reach Ronan. “But then I discovered the foghorns in Dublin Bay, and d’you know—last night, I remembered a fragment of a poem I wrote years ago. ‘The foghorns are booming down in the bay and I want to go to sea, And sail through those mists that are long, long twilights, And hope that my soul will be’—” The priest settled the car’s speed and sat back. “And either I forget the rest, or I never wrote beyond that point. By the way, I received your very courteous thank-you note for lunch—now how have you been?”

  “They never told me my father was dying—and they should have, shouldn’t they?”

  The priest looked straight ahead, considering his answer.

  “He was so dear to you. So dear. As you were to him. Goodness, what a blow to you. I’ve been thinking that since our lunch.”

  “They ought to have told me?”

  “I’m careful, Ronan, about ‘should’ and ‘ought’—people make errors. Often for very good reasons—perhaps to save us pain. We’re all very human.”

  “It gave me no chance to talk to him. And he was my father, not anyone else’s.”

  David Mansfield tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

  Ronan said, “I would have said all kinds of things to him.”

  “How old was he? Forty-eight, wasn’t he?”

  “Father, did you come looking for me? Were you talking to Kate?”

  “D’you remember our friend, Spenser? ‘Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly ease.’ Nineteen-twelve, he must have been born, I’m nineteenth-oh-seven. But forty-eight’s too young.”

  “Father, did you come looking for me? Kate knew I had to come up here.”

  The priest said, “Let’s not discuss that until later this morning.”

  “I don’t want to go back!”

  “Understood. It’s all right.” The priest drove on, braking hard at every turn, a juddering driver who stared at the road as intently as if expecting to meet an army.

  Ronan waited for questions—but they never came; nor did the comments on his disheveled clothing or the stale beer breath or his unshaven jaws or the bruises he felt certain had come up around his eyes. Instead—

  “Here’s a good question, Ronan. What would you say is the one gift your father gave you?”

  The car stopped on a junction as the priest looked at the signposts. Ronan opened the door.

  “Father, I’m getting out here. I don’t mean any bad manners—”

  “No, of course, of course.” The priest, yet again, seemed unsurprised. “Young men have things to do. But won’t you get wet? It’s going to rain hard. Look—there’s an umbrella in the back, priests always have large umbrellas.”

  Ronan wanted to refuse, but Father Mansfield insisted. Just as he was about to close the door, Ronan asked, “Father—did you know you were going to meet me this morning?”

  The priest smiled enigmatically, as only a Jesuit can. “Perhaps, dear boy, yours is ‘the face one would meet in every place,’ eh? Make sure you keep in touch. Bless you.”

  And he drove away, leaving the tall young man holding a black umbrella with its huge bell above his head on an empty country road beneath an overcast sky.

  Ronan had two options. One signpost led north to Balbriggan, and one west to Slane. He dithered—and then the decision was made for him. Across the road he saw a white house in need of paint; an ancient harvester blocked the yard; two old cars slouched near a barn, their wheels long gone. The nameplate on the
gatepost said in white plastic letters, “Boyne Water.”

  Though it was only half past eight in the morning, he had no hesitation in knocking; the door opened immediately.

  “Tom isn’t here,” said a blond young woman. “He’s over at Joe Cooney’s, I think they’ve an early lamb.”

  Ronan lowered the umbrella. “I was told to come to a place called Boyne Water, and—”

  “Yeah. I’m Marian Geraghty, come in. D’you know Joe Cooney?”

  Ronan had to concede ignorance.

  “Who wants Tom, anyway? I never heard him say he was expecting anyone.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for an old gentleman.”

  “Oh, are you the lad?” Light dawned in Marian Geraghty’s face. “Ahh, I see. The man with the stories. I heard Tom saying the old man was hoping to meet someone, would that have been you?”

  “Is he still in the district?”

  “Well, he’s around somewhere, he’s here three or four days now, I think he’s staying over in Slane. Anyone there’ll know.”

  In the kitchen a child lurched across the floor, grinning and wagging a toy.

  “That’s Gerard, he’s called after Saint Gerard Majella, the patron saint of birth; if he was a girl we’d have called him Majella, but you can’t do that to a boy, they’d laugh at him in school.”

  “Did he say where he was going next?”

  “He did.” Ronan’s heart leaped. “He said he didn’t know where he was going.” Ronan’s heart sank. “Are you sure you won’t wait for Tom, ’cause he’ll only be a while. Mind you, he broke his watch, it fell off his wrist, so he could be here any time.”

  Ronan thanked her—but as he left, she called from the door, “Come back, come back, there’s something here you’re supposed to read.”

  She foraged in a table drawer, hauling out coils of string, some clothespins, old letters.

  “This is it. We give it to everyone who asks about the Battle—the old man wrote it out for us a few years ago because we were sick and tired of being asked things we didn’t know about. But he said specially that you should get it, and he said you’re to walk the riverbank and read it. Oh, and everybody brings it back to us, we’d be lost without it.”