Counting Stars

  “One million,” I whispered. “Two million . . .”

  Sometimes, from his bed three feet away from mine, my brother Colin would whisper and complain.

  “What the hell you doing?”

  “Nothing. Just counting. Three million. Four million . . .”

  It exasperated him. He had dismissed such childish nonsense years ago while I experienced each time the thrill of my transgression. My voice was steady and bold in the small room. I knew by now that it was the smallness of our brains, rather than the wrath of God, that kept our understanding in thrall.

  I was fourteen when it was my oldest sister Catherine’s turn to leave St. John’s. At the end of her last day I made sure I was at the garden gate to greet her.

  “O’Mahoney’s been blathering about the stars,” I said.

  “Father O’Mahoney,” she said.

  I laughed at the word.

  “Father! Anyway, don’t believe him. I bet he warned you about counting.”

  She shrugged.

  “It’s nonsense. I’ll show you tonight.”

  That night I waited for the long summer dusk to end and for true darkness to fall. I tiptoed to her room. I shuffled past Mary and Margaret’s bed. I woke her and we knelt on her bed and leaned on the windowsill and pressed our faces close to the pane. We heard the gentle breathing of our parents as they slept next door. I began in the lowest corner of the sky, pointing down over the rooftops of our neighborhood to the sky above St. Patrick’s steeple, and began to count. My finger ticked off the amounts above our small town, leaving untouched the huge expanse of universe beyond. She began to tremble as the numbers mounted.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  I held her as she began to pull away. I grinned as I counted more quickly and ran the numbers together in a blur.

  “Hundred,” I said at last. “Hundred and one, hundred and two, hundred and three. See?”

  I saw the stars reflected in her eyes, how they shone among her tears. We heard Mary and Margaret stirring. I leaned down and touched the young girls’ heads.

  “It’s nothing,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  I touched Catherine’s head, too.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  She didn’t answer.

  I told her she was too young now, but one day she’d understand.

  I tiptoed back to my room.

  I lay looking out into the night. I cursed myself.

  “Forgive me,” I said into the silence, before descending into my rationalist’s dreams.

  Soon afterward, our father became ill. He stayed in his bed. He had time off work. There was trouble in his groin, then in his back, his chest. In the night we heard his baffled exclamations of pain. He was taken to hospital, where the speed of his decline simply accelerated. He lay pale-faced on the white bed and stared astonished at us and our mother. He licked his dried-out lips. His voice faded to a whisper: What the hell’s going on?

  They opened him to see what was inside and they quickly closed him again. He was sent back to us with a piece of his lung removed. He told us the worst was over. Their bed was put in the front living room downstairs. Now the house was filled with the rasping of his breath, Mam’s desperately comforting whispers.

  “What’s wrong?” we asked her.

  She shook her head. An infection. Not what had been expected. Nothing. He would get better now.

  “What had it been?” we asked.

  She shook her head again. Nothing. A mystery. She turned her eyes away.

  In the evenings he sat among us in his dressing gown. Often he asked me to rub his back with ointments. The room filled with the scents of Ralgex or Deep Heat while I ran my fingers over his flesh, his ribs and spine, feeling each time how the skin was gathered closer to the bone, and learning how the source of pain each time was more elusive.

  He yelped and stiffened and sighed with gratitude.

  “That’s better, son,” he whispered. “Rub it all away.”

  When nothing worked and it became unbearable, Mam would send Colin or me running down to the Bay Horse for brandy and we knew moments of joy those nights when he was tipsy enough to go beyond the pain and tell us of how it would be once he was well again. We complied in this comforting fiction. We sat in a circle around him and kept our eyes from those of our mother, from the truth that was so dark and deep and obvious beneath the bright surface of her smiles.

  The year darkened. All autumn, Mary and Margaret kept being sent away to stay with our grandparents. The doctor and the priest became familiar visitors in the house. Father O’Mahoney would rest his great hand on my head.

  “You must pray very hard,” he would tell me, and I would answer, “Yes, Father,” as he stepped out into the night.

  Christmas approached, with sleet and huge dull clouds hanging over everything. Mary and Margaret dropped notes behind the gas fire, requests for presents and for Daddy to be well again. They prepared a card for him: vivid blue night, single perfect five-pointed star shining on the Holy Family. In deeper ignorance than any of us, they scanned the sky and lamented the gloom up there.

  “How will he see through that?” they asked. “How will he ever find his way to us?”

  All of us were asked to go to our grandparents for Christmas Day. We sat around Dad’s bed eating chocolate and taking sips of his sherry and pulling presents from stockings; then he and Mam kissed us all in turn as we went out.

  Colin kept us in order as we took the short walk through the quiet streets. “They need this special day together,” he explained as we followed him. “A day of rest to keep him getting better.” We admired the girls’ new shoes, the brilliant patent shine on them. We heard distant carols pouring from radios. We smelt Christmas dinners, saw the families behind the windows. Catherine showed us the beautiful long silvery clouds, the moon still shining alongside the sun even though it was day. We entered the other house to huge embraces, pillowcases filled with gifts.

  We returned at dusk, when frost glittered like starlight on the pavements. He was sleeping, Mam drowsed in the chair by the bed. The steel sick bowl lay by his pillow. He was pallid, gray-yellow; the pajama top hung loosely over his bones. He woke up for a moment as Mam whispered about their day together, how joyous he’d been, how he’d loved the food, how he’d asked what time we’d return. He stared at us in amazement, then touched Mam on her arm and asked us, “Do you understand you’re in the presence of one of God’s chosen angels?”

  Then Boxing Day, and the doctor, and Mary and Margaret sent away again, and Father O’Mahoney as the light failed, blacker than ever in his suit and with the black-fringed stole hanging over his shoulders and the white host in his pocket and the darkness in his eyes. From the front living room we heard the insistent murmur of Latin, we caught the scent of the anointing oil.

  When the priest left, he spanned my head with his hand again, and could say nothing, and I pressed upward to him, searching for the strength and comfort in him.

  Then just Dad’s breathing, his groans, Mam’s eternal comforting.

  It was Catherine who heard him die. She was in her bedroom above him. I was somewhere in the house, head ringing with prayers and appeals to God, to Jesus, His mother and all the Saints, to anything that might make things as they were again. She told me years later that she heard the final gasping of his breath below, then silence, nothing, and she knew it was over.

  Their bed was removed and his coffin brought in and all the days he lay there I was unable to make myself go in to him. The house teemed with visitors: our boundless relatives; the Legion of Mary; the Knights of St. Columba; the Women’s League. Father O’Mahoney came time and again. The Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul gathered in the garden, then poured in from the dark, and the house shuddered at their chanting of the rosary. All week Mam sat white-faced, gracious, miraculously calm. Then he was taken away and Colin and I served at the funeral in white robes and we all splashed holy water into the earth after him an
d chanted the prayers and threw handfuls of dirt and wafted the smoke of incense over him. Afterward in the crowded house tender words were repeated and repeated. He was at peace now. He would be looking down on us with love. A day would come when all of us would meet again. Aunties tended to us, two of Dad’s sisters, the dark-haired identical twins. Mary and Margaret in bright new dresses and their shining new shoes squeezed in at Mam’s sides. There were many tears, and some laughter as my father’s sisters and brothers talked of his childhood. Then dusk deepened, and one by one and group by group the guests began to take their leave of us.

  I was at the back step as the priest came out. The stars had begun to thicken above our town. I felt his great hand on my shoulder.

  “Sometimes there can seem to be no light,” he whispered. “There can seem no sense in it.”

  He squeezed me.

  “You must pray very hard, my son.”

  When he’d gone Colin moved past me into the deeper darkness of the lawn. I went to stand beside him. Soon Catherine came through the threshold behind us. Our faces reflected the light from the house, and we were silvery like moons. We looked over this small place: the house with Mam and her youngest daughters visible in it, the twins moving across the window with trays of food in their hands, the lights and rooftops of this small town, St. Patrick’s steeple, the lights of the great city beyond and the sky above.

  “Why did he die?” asked Catherine.

  No answer, silence, nothing.

  The world plunged unstoppably through the wilderness.

  Ice began to form on our clothes and hair.

  I knew from school that we would journey through a meteor storm that night. We waited, close together, until the first of the falling stars appeared. We gasped and pointed and whispered the numbers, but we lost count as the storm intensified and stars cascaded out of the diminishing night.

  Beating the Bounds

  WE HEARD THE TRUMPET as we walked from church toward the Heather Hills. It was Ascension Day. We were nibbling biscuits to break our fast. I had a tin of hard-boiled eggs and bread and butter. Catherine carried the water. Colin had the kettle, the packet of tea, the milk, the mugs, the matches.

  Margaret made us pause and listen on Felling Bank. It came from the east, from Springwell way. It was squeaky, tuneless, determined. It came with the subdued ringing of a bell, the screeching of children.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Just kids,” said Colin. “Nothing. Come on. Keep moving.”

  We shrugged, and continued walking. It didn’t stop.

  “How do we know it was Thursday?” said Mary.

  We looked at her.

  “The priest said it was a day just like today and it was Thursday. How do we know that?”

  “It’s in the Bible,” said Catherine. “It was on a Thursday on Mount Olivet. He was attended by angels as he rose. The souls of those who had been in Limbo entered Heaven at his side.”

  “Hell’s teeth,” said Colin.

  “And we can follow them if we’re worthy,” said Catherine.

  Mary contemplated this, then started giggling.

  “Mrs. Minto!” she said. “Mrs. Minto!” And we laughed together at the memory: the entranced woman walking to the altar during the elevation of the Host; her moans of ecstasy or pain; the way she’d prostrated herself on the altar steps; Father O’Mahoney getting redder and redder as he tugged her coat and whispered at her to get up; her battered hat and her face all wet and wild as he returned her to her seat. Then her deep sobbing, her jabbered prayers, Maureen McNulty from the Legion of Mary sitting comfortingly at her side.

  “Maybe she saw something,” said Margaret.

  “Or was touched by the Holy Spirit or something,” said Catherine.

  “Like the apostles in that picture,” said Mary. “The dove and the tongues of fire.”

  Colin clicked his tongue.

  “That’s Pentecost,” he said. “It hasn’t happened yet. Come on. Keep moving.”

  We moved through the streets and lanes and past the allotments on Windy Ridge and on to the high playing fields. Margaret said she felt weak, she couldn’t wait to eat the eggs and the bread. We were starving: nothing but Communion and the biscuits since yesterday.

  “How far is it?” she said.

  “Won’t be long,” said Catherine, taking her hand. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long.”

  Brilliant light. A few high wispy clouds. A gentle breeze, the scent of grass and woodsmoke. A noise of larks, of dogs barking, of the trumpet, getting louder.

  In the Heather Hills we followed a rough track through heather and gorse, past the many caves and excavations made by children. We gathered twigs for the fire as we walked. I ripped brittle branches from a dead hawthorn and snapped them across my thigh. We chose a bank of turf above one of the clay ponds near the crest. We could see westward into the hills of County Durham, eastward to the North Sea. Felling sloped away below us: the fields, the rooftops, the steeple, the black river. Nearby were the roofs and tall chimneys of the hospital. Then the city, filling the land to the north.

  We made our fire in one of the many rings of stones where earlier fires had been. We rested the kettle full of water in the flames. We cracked the shells of our eggs on stones. We sighed and smiled as we ate.

  “They used to build beacons here,” said Colin. “Times of disaster and celebration. Could be seen for miles around.”

  There were voices now, laughter, children’s voices howling and giggling, the trumpet, the bell, and at last the procession appeared, coming through the hills. In front were the town clerk, Mr. Dobbs, in his suit and tie and his chain of office; the Reverend Carr in his tweeds; Miss Fowler, the head teacher of Falla Park Junior; the policeman Sergeant Fox; Colonel Gibson from the Salvation Army. Then a straggle of adults and children and yapping dogs behind. The trumpeter was a fat boy in shorts who danced and swayed as he blew. A little girl rang the bell, holding it shyly at her side.

  Mary squeaked with laughter, pointed into the little crowd, named the faces she knew.

  Mr. Dobbs had a map in one hand and a long cane in the other. After a few yards he brought the procession to a halt, flourished the map in the air and beat the earth with the cane.

  “This is the boundary!” he called. “This is the boundary!”

  Boys ran from the mob toward him. He chose one, and pretended to beat the boy as severely as he had beaten the earth.

  “This is the boundary!” he called again. “This is the boundary!”

  The boy squealed and the procession laughed. The trumpeter blew more loudly, the girl rang her bell more shyly, they all moved on.

  Mr. Dobbs saw us and he waved. He spoke to the vicar, then waded through the bracken toward us. His plump face was flushed, his golden chain glittered in the sunlight.

  “Now then!” he called, hurrying past the pond. “Now then!”

  He bent double, breathless and giggling. He held up the map and struck the turf with his stick.

  “Know what this lot is?” he said.

  We shook our heads and he giggled.

  “Beating the bounds,” he said.

  He showed the boundary of Felling marked in red on the map.

  He said, “Once upon a time when there were no true maps, we marked the earth to show where one place ended and another place began. We thumped the earth to mark it. We thumped the children to fix it in their brains.” He giggled. “The children grew up, did their thumping in turn, passed it on from generation to generation. Hard times, eh? How’s Mam?”

  “In hospital again,” said Margaret.

  “Visiting this afternoon,” said Mary.

  “She’s had some stick, eh?” said Mr. Dobbs. He smiled. “Give her my best.”

  He looked at the fire and the steaming kettle and the eggs in our fists.

  “Having a wild day, then? That’s the style.”

  He thumped the turf by our fire, looked back toward the procession, giggled.
br />   “Did it on Ascension Day, on the day Our Lord entered Heaven, to remind ourselves of our earthly state.”

  He tousled Margaret’s and Mary’s hair.

  “Thought we’d revive it,” he said. “A bit of history. A bit of fun.”

  He fumbled in his pocket and took a handful of jelly babies out.

  “There you are now,” he said, giving them to the girls. “Go on, get them down.”

  The vicar and Miss Gibson were smoking cigarettes. The Colonel was kicking a dog from his heels. Sergeant Fox strolled through the stragglers with his hands clasped behind his back. The trumpeter swayed and the trumpet squealed.

  “Now then,” said Mr. Dobbs, “must get on. Like to join us now?”

  “No thank you,” said Colin.

  We looked at him but he shook his head.

  “Ah, well,” said Mr. Dobbs.

  He stood there beaming, then turned away.

  “Give her my best, now, eh?” he called from past the pond.

  He waved the procession forward. He peered at the map. He struck the earth.

  “This is the boundary! This is the boundary!”

  “Why not?” said Mary.

  “We can’t,” said Colin.

  “Why not, though?”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t know. But there was no priest there, was there?”

  We stared after the procession, which was making its way through the rough tracks of the Heather Hills and would soon be out of sight. A few stragglers brought up the rear: a knot of fighting boys, an old man with a Jack Russell on a string, a couple of little girls heaving a great shining pram with a bawling baby over the awkward ground.

  “Maybe we’re not interested in where we are on Earth,” said Colin. “Maybe on Ascension Day we just think of when we’ll be in Heaven.”

  We looked at him. He clicked his tongue and lit a cigarette.

  “Hell’s teeth!” he said. “Maybe anything. I don’t know, do I?”

  Catherine put the tea in the mugs and poured boiling water on the tea.