When I'm finished delivering the telegrams there's enough time to go to the ancient monastery graveyard where my mother's relations are buried, the Guilfoyles and the Sheehans, where my mother wants to be buried. I can see from here the high ruins of Carrigogunnell Castle and there's plenty of time to cycle there, sit up on the highest wall, look at the Shannon flowing out to the Atlantic on its way to America and dream of the day I'll be sailing off myself.
The boys at the post office tell me I'm lucky to get the Carmody family telegram, a shilling tip, one of the biggest tips you'll ever get in Limerick. So why am I getting it? I'm the junior boy. They say, Well, sometimes Theresa Carmody answers the door. She has the consumption and they're afraid of catching it from her. She's seventeen, in and out of the sanatorium, and she'll never see eighteen. The boys at the post office say sick people like Theresa know there's little time left and that makes them mad for love and romance and everything. Everything. That's what the consumption does to you, say the boys at the post office.
I cycle through wet November streets thinking of that shilling tip, and as I turn into the Carmody street the bicycle slides out from under me and I skid along the ground scraping my face and tearing open the back of my hand. Theresa Carmody opens the door. She has red hair. She had green eyes like the fields beyond Limerick. Her cheeks are bright pink and her skin is a fierce white. She says, Oh, you're all wet and bleeding.
I skidded on my bike.
Come in and I'll put something on your cuts.
I wonder, Should I go in? I might get the consumption and that will be the end of me. I want to be alive when I'm fifteen and I want the shilling tip.
Come in. You'll perish standing there.
She puts on the kettle for the tea. Then she dabs iodine on my cuts and I try to be a man and not whimper. She says, Oh, you're a great bit of a man. Go into the parlor and dry yourself before the fire. Look, why don't you take off your pants and dry them on the screen of the fire?
Ah, no.
Ah, do.
I will.
I drape my pants over the screen. I sit there watching the steam rise and I watch myself rise and I worry she might come in and see me in my excitement.
There she is with a plate of bread and jam and two cups of tea. Lord, she says, you might be a scrawny bit of a fellow but that's a fine boyo you have there.
She puts the plate and the cups on a table by the fire and there they stay. With her thumb and forefinger she takes the tip of my excitement and leads me across the room to a green sofa against the wall and all the time my head is filled with sin and iodine and fear of consumption and the shilling tip and her green eyes and she's on the sofa don't stop or I'll die and she's crying and I'm crying for I don't know what's happening to me if I'm killing myself catching consumption from her mouth I'm riding to heaven I'm falling off a cliff and if this is a sin I don't give a fiddler's fart.
We take our ease on the sofa a while till she says, Don't you have more telegrams to deliver? and when we sit up she gives a little cry, Oh, I'm bleeding.
What's up with you?
I think it's because it's the first time.
I tell her, Wait a minute. I bring the bottle from the kitchen and splash the iodine on her injury. She leaps from the sofa, dances around the parlor like a wild one and runs into the kitchen to douse herself with water. After she dries herself she says, Lord, you're very innocent. You're not supposed to be pouring iodine on girls like that.
I thought you were cut.
For weeks after that I deliver the telegram. Sometimes we have the excitement on the sofa but there are other days she has the cough and you can see the weakness on her. She never tells me she has the weakness. She never tells me she has the consumption. The boys at the post office say I must have been having a great time with the shilling tip and Theresa Carmody. I never tell them I stopped taking the shilling tip. I never tell them about the green sofa and the excitement. I never tell them of the pain that comes when she opens the door and I can see the weakness on her and all I want to do then is make tea for her and sit with my arms around her on the green sofa.
One Saturday I'm told to deliver the telegram to Theresa's mother at her job in Woolworth's. I try to be casual. Mrs. Carmody, I always deliver the telegram to your, I think your daughter, Theresa?
Yes, she's in the hospital.
Is she in the sanatorium?
I said she's in the hospital.
She's like everyone else in Limerick, ashamed of the TB, and she doesn't give me a shilling or any kind of tip. I cycle out to the sanatorium to see Theresa. They say you have to be a relation and you have to be adult. I tell them I'm her cousin and I'll be fifteen in August. They tell me go away. I cycle to the Franciscan church to pray for Theresa. St. Francis, would you please talk to God. Tell Him it wasn't Theresa's fault. I could have refused that telegram Saturday after Saturday. Tell God Theresa was not responsible for the excitement on the sofa because that's what the consumption does to you. It doesn't matter anyway, St. Francis, because I love Theresa. I love her as much as you love any bird or beast or fish and will you tell God take the consumption away and I promise I'll never go near her again.
The next Saturday they give me the Carmody telegram. From halfway up the street I can see the blinds are drawn. I can see the black crepe wreath on the door. I can see the white purple-lined mourning card. I can see beyond the door and walls where Theresa and I tumbled naked and wild on the green sofa and I know now she is in hell and all because of me.
I slip the telegram under the door and cycle back down to the Franciscan church to beg for the repose of Theresa's soul. I pray to every statue, to the stained glass windows, the Stations of the Cross. I swear I'll lead a life of faith, hope and charity, poverty, chastity and obedience.
Next day, Sunday, I go to four Masses. I do the Stations of the Cross three times. I say rosaries all day. I go without food and drink and wherever I find a quiet place I cry and beg God and the Virgin Mary to have mercy on the soul of Theresa Carmody.
On Monday I follow the funeral to the graveyard on my post office bicycle. I stand behind a tree a distance from the grave. Mrs. Carmody weeps and moans. Mr. Carmody snuffles and looks puzzled. The priest recites the Latin prayers and sprinkles the coffin with holy water.
I want to go to the priest, to Mr. and Mrs. Carmody. I want to tell them how I'm the one who sent Theresa to hell. They can do whatever they like with me. Abuse me. Revile me. Throw grave dirt at me. But I stay behind the tree till the mourners leave and the grave diggers fill in the grave.
Frost is already whitening the fresh earth on the grave and I think of Theresa cold in the coffin, the red hair, the green eyes. I can't understand the feelings going through me but I know that with all the people who died in my family and all the people who died in the lanes around me and all the people who left I never had a pain like this in my heart and I hope I never will again.
It's getting dark. I walk my bicycle out of the graveyard. I have telegrams to deliver.
XVI
Mrs. O'Connell gives me telegrams to deliver to Mr. Harrington, the Englishman with the dead wife that was born and bred in Limerick. The boys at the post office say sympathy telegrams are a waste of time. People just cry and moan with the grief and they think they're excused from the tip. They'll ask you if you'd like to come in for a look at the departed and a prayer by the bed. That wouldn't be so bad if they offered you a drop of sherry and a ham sandwich. Oh, no, they're happy to get your prayer but you're only a telegram boy and you're lucky if you get a dry biscuit. Older boys at the post office say you have to play your cards right to get the grief tip. If you're asked in to say a prayer you have to kneel by the corpse, give a powerful sigh, bless yourself, drop your forehead to the bedclothes so they won't see your face, let your shoulders shake like one collapsing with sorrow, hold on to the bed with your two hands as if they're going to have to tear you away to deliver the rest of your telegrams, make sure your cheeks are gli
nting with tears or the spit you dabbed on, and if you don't get a tip after all that push the next batch of telegrams under the door or fire them over the transom and leave them to their grief.
This isn't my first time delivering telegrams to the Harrington house. Mr. Harrington is always away on business for the insurance company and Mrs. Harrington is generous with the tip. But she's gone and Mr. Harrington answers the doorbell. His eyes are red and he sniffles. He says, Are you Irish?
Irish? What else would I be standing there on his doorstep in Limerick with a batch of telegrams in my hand? I am, sir. He says, Come in. Put the telegrams on the hall stand. He shuts the hall door, locks it, puts the key in his pocket and I think, Aren't Englishmen very peculiar.
You'll want to see her, of course. You'll want to see what you people have done to her with your damn tuberculosis. Race of ghouls. Follow me.
He leads me first to the kitchen where he picks up a plate of ham sandwiches and two bottles, and then upstairs. Mrs. Harrington looks lovely in the bed, blond, pink, peaceful.
This is my wife. She may be Irish but she doesn't look it, thank God. Like you. Irish. You'll need a drink, of course. You Irish quaff at every turn. Barely weaned before you clamor for the whiskey bottle, the pint of stout. You'll have what, whiskey, sherry?
Ah, a lemonade will be lovely.
I am mourning my wife not celebrating the bloody citrus. You'll have a sherry. Swill from bloody Catholic fascist Spain.
I gulp the sherry. He refills my glass and goes to refill his own with whiskey. Damn. Whiskey all gone. Stay here. Do you hear me? I'm going to the pub for another bottle of whiskey. Stay till I come back. Don't move.
I'm confused, dizzy from the sherry. I don't know what you're supposed to do with grieving Englishmen. Mrs. Harrington, you look lovely in the bed. But you're a Protestant, already doomed, in hell, like Theresa. Priest said, Outside the Church there is no salvation. Wait, I might be able to save your soul. Baptize you Catholic. Make up for what I did to Theresa. I'll get some water. Oh, God, the door is locked. Why? Maybe you're not dead at all? Watching me. Are you dead, Mrs. Harrington? I'm not afraid. Your face is icy. Oh, you're dead all right. I'll baptize you with sherry from bloody Catholic fascist Spain. I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, the--
What the bloody hell are you doing? Get off my wife, you wretched Papist twit. What primitive Paddy ritual is this? Did you touch her? Did you? I'll wring your scrawny neck.
I--I,--
Oi, Oi, speak English, you scrap.
I was just, a little sherry to get her into heaven.
Heaven? We had heaven, Ann, I, our daughter, Emily. You'll never lay your pink piggy eyes on her. Oh, Christ, I can't stand it. Here, more sherry.
Ah, no, thanks.
Ah, no thanks. That puny Celtic whine. You people love your alcohol. Helps you crawl and whine better. Of course you want food. You have the collapsed look of a starving Paddy. Here. Ham. Eat.
Ah, no thanks.
Ah, no thanks. Say that again and I'll ram the ham up your arse.
He waves a ham sandwich at me, with the heel of his hand pushes it into my mouth.
He collapses into a chair. Oh, God, God, what am I to do? Must rest a moment.
My stomach heaves. I rush to the window, stick my head out and throw up. He leaps from the chair and charges me.
You, you, God blast you to hell, you vomited on my wife's rosebush.
He lunges at me, misses, falls to the floor. I climb out the window, hang on to the ledge. He's at the window, grabbing at my hands. I let go, drop to the rosebush, into the ham sandwich and sherry I've just thrown up. I'm pricked by rose thorns, stung, my ankle is twisted. He's at the window, barking, Come back here, you Irish runt. He'll report me to the post office. He hits me in the back with the whiskey bottle, pleads, Will you not watch one hour with me?
He pelts me with sherry glasses, whiskey glasses, assorted ham sandwiches, items from his wife's dressing table, powders, creams, brushes.
I climb on my bike and wobble through the streets of Limerick, dizzy with sherry and pain. Mrs. O'Connell attacks me, Seven telegrams, one address, and you're gone all day.
I was, I was,
You was. You was. Drunk is what you was. Drunk is what you are. Reeking. Oh, we heard. That nice man rang, Mr. Harrington, lovely Englishman that sounds like James Mason. Lets you in to say a prayer for his poor wife and next thing you're out the window with the sherry and the ham. Your poor mother. What she brought into the world.
He made me eat the ham, drink the sherry.
Made you? Jesus, that's a good one. Made you. Mr. Harrington is a refined Englishman and there is no reason for him to lie and we don't want your kind in this post office, people that can't keep their hands off the ham and sherry, so hand in your telegram pouch and bicycle for your days are done in this post office.
But I need the job. I have to save and go to America.
America. Sad day when America lets in the likes of you.
I hobble through the streets of Limerick. I'd like to go back and throw a brick through Mr. Harrington's window. No. Respect for the dead. I'll go across the Sarsfield Bridge and out the riverbank where I can lie down somewhere in the bushes. I don't know how I can go home and tell my mother I lost my job. Have to go home. Have to tell her. Can't stay out the riverbank all night. She'd be frantic.
Mam begs the post office to take me back. They say no. They never heard the likes. Telegram boy mauling corpse. Telegram boy fleeing scene with ham and sherry. He will never set foot in the post office again. No.
She gets a letter from the parish priest. Take the boy back, says the parish priest. Oh, yes, Father, indeed, says the post office. They'll let me stay till my sixteenth birthday, not a minute longer. Besides, says Mrs. O'Connell, when you think of what the English did to us for eight hundred years that man had no right to complain over a little ham and sherry. Compare a little ham and sherry to the Great Famine and where are you? If my poor husband was alive and I told him what you did he'd say you struck a blow, Frank McCourt, struck a blow.
Every Saturday morning I swear I'll go to confession and tell the priest of my impure acts at home, on lonely boreens around Limerick with cows and sheep gawking, on the heights of Carrigogunnell with the world looking up.
I'll tell him about Theresa Carmody and how I sent her to hell, and that will be the end of me, driven from the Church.
Theresa is a torment to me. Every time I deliver a telegram to her street, every time I pass the graveyard I feel the sin growing in me like an abscess and if I don't go to confession soon I'll be nothing but an abscess riding around on a bicycle with people pointing and telling each other, There he is, there's Frankie McCourt, the dirty thing that sent Theresa Carmody to hell.
I look at people going to Communion on Sundays, everyone in a state of grace, returning to their seats with God in their mouths, peaceful, easy, ready to die at any moment and go straight to heaven or go home to their rashers and eggs without a worry in the world.
I'm worn out from being the worst sinner in Limerick. I want to get rid of this sin and have rashers and eggs and no guilt, no torment. I want to be ordinary.
The priests tell us all the time that God's mercy is infinite but how can any priest give absolution to someone like me who delivers telegrams and winds up in a state of excitement on a green sofa with a girl dying of the galloping consumption.
I cycle all around Limerick with telegrams and stop at every church. I ride from Redemptorists to Jesuits to Augustinians to Dominicans to Franciscans. I kneel before the statue of St. Francis of Assisi and beg him to help me but I think he's too disgusted with me. I kneel with people in the pews next to confessionals but when my turn comes I can't breathe, my heart pounds, my forehead turns cold and clammy and I run from the church.
I swear I'll go to confession at Christmas. I can't. Easter. I can't. Weeks and months pass and it's a year since Theresa died. I'll go on her anniversary but I can
't. I'm fifteen now and I pass churches without stopping. I'll have to wait till I go to America where there are priests like Bing Crosby in Going My Way who won't kick me out of the confessional like Limerick priests.
I still have the sin in me, the abscess, and I hope it doesn't kill me entirely before I see the American priest.
There's a telegram for an old woman, Mrs. Brigid Finucane. She says, How old are you, by?
Fifteen and a half, Mrs. Finucane.
Young enough to make a fool of yourself and ould enough to know better. Are you shmart, by? Are you anyway intelligent?
I can read and write, Mrs. Finucane.
Arrah, there are people above in the lunatic asylum can read and write. Can you write a letter?
I can.
She wants me to write letters to her customers. If you need a suit or dress for your child you can go to her. She gives you a ticket to a shop and they give you the clothes. She gets a discount and charges you the full price and interest on top. You pay her back weekly. Some of her customers fall behind in their payments and they need threatening letters. She says, I'll give you threepence for every letter you write and another threepence if it brings a payment. If you want the job come here on Thursday and Friday nights, and bring your own paper and envelopes.
I'm desperate for that job. I want to go to America. But I have no money for paper and envelopes. Next day I'm delivering a telegram to Woolworth's and there is the answer, a whole section packed with paper and envelopes. I have no money so I have to help myself. But how? Two dogs save the day for me, two dogs at the door of Woolworth's stuck together after the excitement. They yelp and run in circles. Customers and sales clerks giggle and pretend to be looking someplace else and while they're busy pretending I slip paper and envelopes under my sweater, out the door and off on my bike far from stuck dogs.