A Mad and Wonderful Thing (9 page)

Liam graduated to a quiet rural posting and twenty years of bachelor life until a local priest intervened and arranged a marriage with the solidly built Annie Watson.

I assume Annie was uncomfortable with the notion of sex. I don't know this for sure; but then, somehow, I do. Éamon's mother has an aversion to affection — an embrace can put her off her whole day. Liam was forty-seven, and Annie forty-six, when the priest intervened again and suggested an adoption. This, I only know from observations, mathematics, investigation, and a little help from Delaney. I guess — with their ages — that rules were broken, but that might happen when it suits. Liam's poor health led to the offer of a transfer to desk-sergeant in the bigger town on the coast, and so it was man, woman, and boy that set up home in Dundalk. The matter of the adoption, once done, was never again discussed. The boy is Éamon, and he was never told. It was a matter left for another day, and that day never came.

Liam and Annie are too shy to be sociable. Having arrived as middle-aged strangers in a strange town, they exist on the edge of everything. For a peephole into the life that surrounds them, they cling to a daily ritual of Mass in Saint Joseph's — the Mass being part devotion, part habit, and part social outing.

But Éamon had a lonely childhood. With no brother or sister, and no relatives in town, I guess he was seen by other children as something of an oddity in the way that children mechanically see anything other than what is standard as an oddity, and ridicule it. I guess the faculty to be an occasional arsehole must be built into our DNA. Anyhow, Éamon retreated to places of his own construction, and without reference it passed Liam's and Annie's notice that some of these places were dark. How could they have known? And to Éamon it was normal; every childhood is normal to the child.

All this changed one day. It was a school day, and the morning lessons had just started when a knock at the door brought a new boy — me — to class. I was given the empty space next to Éamon on the double bench. I sat down, turned to Éamon, and smiled, and followed Éamon as we left the classroom for the morning break. Reaching the corridor, we walked side by side and, turning for the yard, I placed a hand on Éamon's shoulder and again smiled to him. ‘Hello,' I said. ‘I'm Johnny Donnelly.' Éamon smiled and, suddenly, life for us both sat lighter.

Although I was as shy then as Éamon was odd, our inhibitions were abandoned once we were free of the school. There was never enough time to do all we wanted to do. I insisted that we join the football team together. I planned the cycling adventures and fishing trips. I showed Éamon how to build forts and jumps, and how to play tennis and snooker. I brought Éamon to music and reading — passing records, comics, and books to my friend. And what did Éamon do? He stuck by my side, and I don't know how to explain it, but he gave me a kind of strength. And when I was figuring out what I was going to be and what I was going to do, I took a great comfort in Éamon being there. I decided early that I would never involve him; that Ireland's war was my war, and not Éamon's.

For the remainder of our primary schooling, we travelled together on the bus and remained side by side throughout the day. No longer did Éamon worry about the bullying of the schoolyard or the ridicule on the street. Although I was shy, I was never bullied. I'm not sure why, but maybe I carried some shadow of the incident with McCusker and the cliff, and bullies gave me distance. Or it may be like Éamon says: that I seem to be able to defuse a difficulty before the difficulty has time to form in others' minds. I don't know about that.

The primary-school bully was Tom Kinch, a big, unintelligent boy who only saw things in the immediate and the simple. Kinch's principal torture was to grab a boy's head under one of his big arms and knock the top of the trapped boy's head with his knuckles. I had just started at the school, and Kinch failed to notice the alliance of Éamon and the new boy. He failed to value the weight of our friendship; he did not know of the bravery of boys bonded. As we stood together in the morning line, Kinch — coming from behind — grabbed us both and held each of us by the head, crossing his forearms to rap each of us with his knuckles. The rest of the class laughed. The hurt was in the humiliation, and it was then that a silent oath was shared, a vow born of neither but of the union. We held back as the class removed their coats in the small cloakroom and filed into the classroom. Kinch was directing abuse from the rear of the line. Kinch was big, but Ruán had taught Éamon how to handle livestock, and he hit Kinch hard and drove the breath from his body. Kinch was smashed into the corner. He was trapped as I approached, and I saw he carried the same surprised look as McCusker had on the cliff height. And in his surprise I saw again the same confusion and fear. I was learning the power of those three weapons: surprise, confusion, and fear. I was learning that if a boy can bring those three into battle, he can beat anyone. I drove my arm through the face of Kinch. The class was seated and ready when the teacher noticed one missing. He found Kinch in the cloakroom with blood falling from his broken nose and running down over his mouth. I watched that bully glance back as the teacher led him past the open door. Kinch was afraid.

When we graduated to secondary school we formed new friendships with Conor Rafferty and Frank Boyle. And it was together as this group of four that we explored life further: the familiar worlds of school, sport, and adventure, and the fresh worlds of music, philosophy, poetry, and girls. I told them that, as fate would have it, we were meant for one apiece: Frank for the music, Conor for the big questions, Éamon for the poetry, and me for the girls. Those were just the hands we were dealt, I told them, and it was up to each of us to make the best job of it.

Éamon was fifteen when Ruán and Claire died. She died in September as the ash tree faded to a pale yellow, and Ruán followed in October as the leaves fell. It was typical of Ruán that he allowed Claire to pass first and then did not keep her waiting. At the funeral masses, all gave thanks for the long and happy existence they had both enjoyed and for the joy to have had them in our lives. Éamon didn't want to know any of it; he didn't want to give thanks. He had wanted them to live forever.

Éamon always knew that his future was certain and that it was in the police force. As he reached his mid-teens, however, he remained short, and everyone knew that he was never going to grow to the height required. And so the promises and expectations were dropped. Although the blow came slowly, it was crushing, and Éamon, his lifetime in preparation and certainty, was thrown on to unstable ground. Annie, seeing opportunity in a crisis, took the notion that Éamon's future could lie elsewhere in the law. In her dreams, she now saw him not in the dark uniform of a policeman but in the finely cut suit of a solicitor, with cuff-links and a pressed collar. She saw an office and a practice in town, a brass plaque at the door. She saw trips home to advise on serious matters. Perhaps he'd become a barrister? Perhaps a judge? And those dreams became plans. And those plans became expectations.

Éamon was a good student, but he was not brilliant, and he had to work hard on his schoolwork. I never had to do that. But we never cared about who got what in test results; there was never a competition between us. This wasn't so with Annie. She surveyed all of Éamon's results with the meticulous scrutiny of a beggar counting his coins, and after every careful reading she asked him the same question: ‘And what did Donnelly get?' Such behaviour is an act of cruelty; parents can be bastards sometimes. But Éamon kept working. And as the exams got tougher, Éamon worked harder. He still does. His release is me. My job is to be dependable, solid, and happy. I tell Éamon not to worry about things that don't matter, and Éamon says that for me that must include nearly everything. I try to persuade Éamon to go easy. ‘Does it really matter?' I ask him. If the answer is yes, I assure him that a solution will be found. If the answer is no, I take Éamon by the shoulder and say, ‘Well, we won't give a flying flute about that then.' And that is that; we move on to the next thing, the matter resolved. But it never really is resolved, not really, and from me Éamon has never learned that which he wishes for most. And try as I do try to teach, there are things in life that cannot be taught, and for those without the preconstruction, cannot be learned. What Éamon wishes for most is my certainty about my place on the Earth.

We climb the garden wall, and from there we pull ourselves onto the flat felt-rolled roof of a single-storey extension. Éamon takes a pack of Carroll's No. 1 from his shirt pocket and we take one each, smoking in silence, sitting on the warm felt, leaning against the side wall of the house. We don't speak, and allow our silent gaze to follow pedestrians and traffic on the street below. I rest an arm on my friend's shoulder.

‘Do you ever wonder what it's all about, Éamon? I mean, gravity, electro-magnetism, strong and weak forces, anti-matter, dark matter, dark energy, and all that mathematic conjecture are very reasonable, but, when you think about it, the whole construction is just things whizzing around other things. You see, these quarks and particles and protons and neutrons and electrons and neutrinos all whiz around each other to make atoms, and atoms get together to make molecules. And from that, well, it all gets big, and we get gas and solids and rock and planets and stars. And they are all surrounded by other whizzing things. And on it goes, with things whizzing around other things to make solar systems, star clusters, galaxies, galaxy clusters, super clusters, filaments, on and on with mad stuff altogether, on and on and on, well past the other side of the impossible. The stuff you see through one of those big telescopes is beauty mixed with a spoon of madness. You'd need a degree in complexity just to put a handle on it. And who's to say there aren't countless universes out there? But, I mean, once you get into the multiplicity of universes and dimensions, and how that all might look, well, it's very difficult to get some sort of a shape on; it's all very difficult to get it into some sort of a bundle so you can carry it in your head. And even if you could gather it all together, even if you could know it and understand it, it still wouldn't explain it all, it still wouldn't explain us.'

‘God, would you look at that?' Éamon says, as a girl passes below.

‘The belle Lucy Lennon,' I comment, blowing smoke high into the evening air. ‘A very fine particle indeed.'

‘I wouldn't mind whizzing around that thing.'

‘Good man, Gaughran,' I tell him. ‘Now you have it.'

‘I'm telling you, Johnny, that arse has me tortured. I think about it morning, noon, and night.'

‘You could ask her out.'

‘What? God-sakes, Johnny. Would you feck off?'

After the smoke, we climb down from the roof. I fix the Dunn & Co, tidy the scarf, and mount the bicycle.

‘Right, the snooker hall at half-eight,' I say, and Éamon sees me off with a flick of his head.

As I cycle, I am thinking again of things whizzing around other things, and I think that people, too, behave in that whizzing-around fashion: families, gangs, groups, organisations, societies, religions, nations, federations. It's all the same thing, isn't it? We love a bit of a get-together. We love belonging to an ‘us'. It's only the peculiar who step out from the whole thing.

Bob cycles alongside, sitting straight and unhurried in the green overalls, with the red rag hanging loosely by his side. There's a touch of joy about the shape of him on the bicycle.
Isn't this what it's all about?
he says.

Reading for Rosie

I AM IN THE LIBRARY. IT'S NOT A GREAT LIBRARY, IT'S TOO SMALL, AND
I cannot wait for the new one to open. But I love it anyway, and I am thinking and wondering why anyone with time on their hands wouldn't spend it in a library. I have never understood how anyone could ever be bored with all the books in the world that need reading.

I have always read. Well, not always — I wasn't born with a book or anything. But I learned young. Some people are born with a talent for things: some can pick out a tune and know it from hearing it once or twice; some have a voice for song; some can draw or paint or sculpt; some can write; and others can kick a football or swing a club or a bat with ease, grace, and accuracy. Me, I can read. It's nothing to shout about, really. It's not a spectator sport — it would be hard to sell tickets. And there are few prizes. But people do notice, and they use words like ‘avid', ‘keen', ‘learned', and ‘precocious'. Being well read is universally approved as a good thing. I don't remember how I got started; I guess I came to it myself. But I did have help and support, I do remember that, and that encouragement came from Granny Reynolds and Aunt Rosie.

Aunt Rosie, who's dead now, was my mam's sister, and she lived in Liverpool. She used to visit us for two weeks every summer, and every time she visited she brought a big bag of English sweets. English sweets are much the same as Irish sweets, and a child of any nation would find it difficult to see or taste a difference; but every year in advance of her arrival, Anna and I would think about those confections in blissful anticipation. For weeks we'd talk about what might be in Rosie's bag, what our favourites were, and what swaps we were prepared to offer and what we were not. And when the day came and Aunt Rosie arrived, and the contents of that glorious bag were allocated among us, we savoured those English sweets as though they were rarities from some far-flung jungle, or delicacies from another world.