The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) (6 page)

“I can’t see Wilson or Callaghan or any of them over there doing anything,” said Margie. “And what sort of a name is that anyway? Did you ever hear of a prime minister being called captain? What is he the captain of? A cricket team? I remember reading one time he went to Eton. Cricket’s what they play there isn’t it?”

“He’s the captain of a sinking ship,” shouted Willie Henry. A clear case of withdrawal symptoms. Which I also was suffering from but at least I had the wit to keep quiet.

“This place is incurable,” said Margie. “Do you see all this stuff about one man one vote and fair housing and all? The only way this place can be reformed is to hand it over lock stock and barrel to the Free State.”

Bill was pulling distractedly at his waistcoat buttons and elaborate looking things they were too. “And what would the Free State as you call it do with the Orange Order and the Apprentice Boys and the million Protestants that are afraid of Rome rule?”

Willie Henry came out fighting. “What do you mean Rome rule?” he demanded.

“Aye, what do you mean Rome rule?” said Margie. “That’s the kind of language Carson used. And Craig and Basil Brooke and the whole rogues’ galley of them.”

“Gallery,” I said impulsively.

“What?” shouted Willie Henry, picking angrily at hardened phlegm from the inside corner of one eye and dislodging what looked to me like red clots.

“Gallery,” I repeated and then closed my eyes, sorry I’d spoken. The hard g at the start of the word had caused a sharp pain to shoot across my forehead twice in quick succession.

“Margie’s right,” said Seamus emphatically. “Rogue’s galley’s what they are. Because they’re all going to go down with the ship so they are.”

Bill shook his head reprovingly. “Tell me this now,” he said. “Just tell me this. How would you feel if you were a Protestant being handed over to the Republic of Ireland and wanting to marry a Catholic? Eh? You’d have to promise to change your religion and bring up any children you might have in the Catholic faith. Would you not think your religion was being forced into extinction?”

“And what’s wrong with that?” said Jim. “Weren’t the Planters brought in here by the English to keep the Catholics down? And aren’t these Prods living here now all from Planters? And didn’t their religion start in the first place from that goat Henry not getting a divorce from the pope?”

“The Protestants that are against the marchers didn’t come in with the Planters you know,” said Bill in a voice normally reserved for the backward row. “The Plantation of Ulster happened over three hundred years ago. What Protestants see now is their birthright being threatened. They know that a lot of the people out there marching are the children or grandchildren of migrants from over the border. There’s nothing black and white here. And if I may say so, a little bit of empathy wouldn’t go amiss.”

The looks on the faces opposite were thunder dark. Whatever empathy is it can go to hell, they said. And suddenly the air seemed to have got thinner. Whether this was to do with my state of mind and body or the heightened feelings in the room or the fact that the kitchen window couldn’t be opened because it had been painted so many times or maybe even all three of the aforementioned I’m not sure. I could always have gone and opened the back door I suppose but then the cold air might have knocked me out and anyway the two wandering black cats from Majella Doherty’s would have taken the open door as an invitation and I couldn’t have that. This was nothing to do with superstition because I’m not superstitious or it being in bad taste, there being a wake in progress, but because Milly and Molly, for those were their names, always had a sweet smell about them that brought decomposing rats to mind. Options being limited to sitting doing nothing therefore I sat doing nothing if you can call listening doing nothing.

“It was Michael Collins,” said Seamus, “that struck the first blow against the British Empire. Did you know that?”

I turned my head slowly to look at him feeling vaguely grateful. Disadvantaged by the whiskey though I was I could still sense what he was at. He was trying to steer the conversation away from the rocky road to Dublin. Or so it seemed to me anyway.

“Aye, that’s true,” nodded Jim. “And with a bit of luck this wee town of ours could finish them off.”

“What is it they say?” said Braddock carefully ignoring Jim’s comment. “The sun never sets on the British Empire?”

“That’s because it doesn’t trust them in the dark,” said Margie. This remark brought a smile to Big Bill’s face, a rare occurrence as he’s a forbidding sort of git most of the time, and loud laughter from all others present except myself for reasons that shouldn’t need explaining here.

“England’s nothing but a pup,” said Seamus. “A mongrel pup too.”

“A bastard pup,” added Willie Henry passionately. There was a look about him now that made me worry. This man was in need of a drink and there was no telling what he might end up saying or doing.

“Oh dear,” said Margie. “Maybe we shouldn’t be using language like that, showing disrespect for Maud that’s lying there.”

“Not at all,” Seamus reassured her. “Maud knows nothing that’s going on here now. Sure the soul only stays in the body three hours and then after that it’s in heaven.”

“Or the other place,” Willie Henry said clawing at his front of his trousers like there was something at him again or maybe it was the nerves. Ready for the hills anyway.

He looked up then for a reaction and, receiving none, held out his glass plaintively. Plaintiffly. This latter gesture was directed at me of course but I resolutely ignored it even though I had a strong idea how dire his state was. I felt sorry for him, as I did for myself, but there was no way the drink was coming out again till that bastard Braddock left.

Mister Abel Doak prosecuting stated that the defendant William Henry McGillycuddy, who had earlier made a submission to the court requesting that he be referred to as the plaintiff, had been intoxicated when he trashed and subsequently dismantled the wakehouse in Marlborough Terrace (the only items left intact being the softwood casket and its contents, viz., the earthly remains of one Maud Abilene Harrigan) yet by his own admission was not so intoxicated that he was unaware of what he was doing. Defending, Mister Jules Bernestock made the point that all the defendant William Henry McGillycuddy, hereinafter hopefully called ‘the plaintiff’, had been seeking was one miserly shot of Paddy, being still in a badly shaken state after having encountered what he took to be a corpse welcoming him to the wake. “To quote the plaintiff,” said Mr Bernestock consulting his notes,
“I was just after saying a Hail Holy Queeng in the corphouse standing looking down into the face of the poor dead woman when I turned round and there she was fornenst me saying ‘It was wile good of you to come Willie.’
[At this point Mister Justice Tickel van Rumpole showed commendable Dutch courage in facing down an unruly courtroom, threatening to have the have the place cleared forthwith if the merriment did not cease, on foot of which threat order incrementally returned to the proceedings.]
And all I got to bring me round were two nips of Paddy you could hardly see.”

Mister Justice van Rumpole, on occasion sipping from a hipflask which transparently contained water-colored liquid, then asked Mr Bernestock to clarify Mr McGillycuddy’s request to be dealt with as a plaintiff. Mr Bernestock thereupon came out with a whole load of stuff in Latin to support the legal argument that a defendant can in certain cases, one of which this clearly was, ask the court to declare him a plaintiff. Mr Justice van Rumpole accepted that as it had earlier been established that Mister Jeremiah Coffey the householder, hereinafter called ‘the possessor’, had been aware of Mr McGillicuddy’s distressed state and therefore (it could be argued) was partly culpable for the Marlborough Terrace premises being effectively removed from future ordnance survey maps. “Yet,” he concluded, “although it may well be that there was equal fault on both sides, the burden is always placed on the plaintiff, and the cause of the possessor is preferred. How and ever this is a matter for another court thank Christ. Next case please. Now where did that flask go?”

“Tell us this,” Willie Henry went on, lowering the glass glumly. “One of the masters would know the answer to this one. If Maud, God have mercy on her almighty soul, is in heaven this minute, do yeez think she would know what’s going to happen? Here in Derry like? Does she know how it’s all going to turn out does she? What I’m saying is, for an example now, could she tell you the date Ireland would be free could she?”

“That’s a good question,” said Margie thoughtfully. “I think there’s something in the Bible about that. Even somebody simple, God bless the mark, would know as much as Einstein once they got to heaven. I’m not sure about predicting the future though.”

“Or Shakespeare,” said Jim. “Maud’s there with God now and He’d be telling her everything.”

“Naw, that’s wrong,” said Seamus. “It’s like the barrel and the thimble. If you’re like a thimble in this world then you’ll be a thimble in the next one too. A thimble can only hold so much. That’s the thing you see.”

Willie Henry wasn’t having this. “No harm to you, Seamus, but you’re ignorant, if you don’t mind me saying, no harm to you. It was the masters here I was asking.”

“Did you hear that, Seamus?” said Margie, shoulders going. “You’re a thimble.”

“That’s an interesting point you’ve brought up,” responded Bill, blinking owlishly in Seamus’s direction while doggedly avoiding Willie Henry’s gaze, “about the relativity of knowledge.”

There then followed a partly political broadcast by and on behalf of Big Bill Braddock about happiness and knowledge and moderation and seeing through a glass darkly and seeing through a glass brightly and Daniel O’Connell the Liberator and Saints Gregory and Sylvester and the Little Flower and plenty more not to mention the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov or maybe the Venerable Sarov of Seraphim it was. What he seemed to be saying leaving aside the politics was:
Our Maud who art in heaven, hollow be thy brain. Thou will be dumb in heaven as you were on earth.
The broadcast went on for some time without so much as a heckle and partway through Willie Henry lost interest and returned to sleep. When it was as clear as the nose on your face that Bill had finished and wasn’t just drawing breath Jim shook himself with the air of a man about to come out for round two.

“You mentioned Daniel O’Connell there,” he said. “Great patriot and all. Do you want to know what a lot of the people away down in Kerry say about him?”

“What?” asked Bill guardedly.

“That when he was going round liberating Ireland you couldn’t throw a stick over the wall of a poorhouse without hitting one of his bastards.”

Bill winced but quickly rallied. “Protestant propaganda put about at the time and the Republicans got into bed with them so to speak.”

“I don’t think the Republicans were the ones getting into bed with housemaids now so to speak,” said Margie smiling sweetly.

“There’s no smoke without fire,” added Seamus darkly.

Bill took a deep breath and launched into a robust defence of the Liberator. “The fire in this case was lit by an unholy alliance of Planters and warmongers.” he explained. “The Planters hated him because he fought for Catholic emancipation and the Republicans hated him because he said violence was stupid and wrong.”

“Except when he was the one doing it himself,” shouted Willie Henry, the west having suddenly wakened up again. “Didn’t he shoot Fred Astaire didn’t he?”

A mystified silence followed while the rest of us pondered this claim, wondering just what to make of it, until it was clarified by Bill. “You may be thinking,” he said, “of John d’Esterre, a member of Dublin Corporation. O’Connell criticized the corporation for being anti-Catholic and this man d’Esterre challenged him to a gun duel. O’Connell won and d’Esterre died from his injuries.”

“Well there you are then,” said Seamus, stroking his stomach with satisfaction and sticking his thumbs inside the belt of his trousers. “Political violence. The very thing he was death on himself.”

“Aye,” seconded Willie Henry, “there you are, the very thing I was after saying. Except when he was doing it himself.”

“Stupid and wrong? Is that what the oul goat said is it? Well that’s a goodun,” cried Jim, eyeing Bill with mild venom. “So Michael Collins was stupid and wrong then? If it hadn’t a been for Michael Collins the British would still be here today so they would.”

“But they are still here,” returned Bill. “And what exactly was the result of all those killings he organized down south? A confessional state. A confessional state where the Irish army attends mass clicking their heels and armed to the teeth.”

The room was seething with insurrection now, the only ones out of it being me and Maud. My pressing need at that particular time was to empty my bladder but I had a feeling that if I stood up I would fall down so I sat tight if that’s the right word.

“So do nothing then?” demanded Seamus. “Is that what you’re saying? What are you anyway? An Ulster Unionist? A Paisleyite?”

Bill’s cheeks flapped like a flibbering jib and his waistcoat swelled fit to burst threatening to send buffalo hoof buttons, for that indeed was what they were made of — I had this from Bill himself at the last staff do in the Castle Inn — ricocheting round the room like shrapnel. It was at this parlous juncture that Father Hourigan chose to make his entrance. The Reverend Doctor Xavier Hourigan no less, cathedral administrator, chairman of three school boards — including mine God help me — and scourge of slacking teachers in the parish of Saint Eugene. I’m tempted to tell you that I was never as glad to see anybody in my life but since that would be a lie I’ll just say I was mighty relieved that a blazing row had been nipped in the bud. I jumped to my feet like a squaddie when the sergeant comes in and the room began to swim in front of me butterfly style. In an instinctive attempt to remain upright I used what is known in the States as the two-handed greeting — I’ve seen politicians in their presidential campaigns use it as a way of gaining support for their cause, Richard Nixon and George Wallace being two examples that come to mind at this minute in time.