A Mad and Wonderful Thing (25 page)

‘Johnny,' I say. ‘Your father is the only one who calls me John.'

‘Broke from the same stone you two are, though you both hide it well, for some reason.'

I don't say anything. Loreto Delaney had already moved to America when I first started visiting the Delaney home, and I only met her there once.

‘Yes, John, Mother tells me everything. His star pupil, you were, Mother says. He had high hopes for you.'

‘Sorry to disappoint you all.'

‘You don't disappoint me, darling.' And she sits down across from me and unbuttons her coat. I am remembering the one time we met. The dark coat she wore then has been replaced with one of a new design
.
Her black hair is cut to a neat bob, and surrounds her powdered white face. Her fiery-red lipstick assaults me with her every word. There is a fragrance in the air, a sweet mix of carnation and vanilla.

‘What is that perfume?' I ask.

‘Bold, aren't you?' she answers. ‘It is
L'Heure Bleue
. By Guerlain. French, of course.'

‘How's California treating you?'

‘I'm getting divorced. Infidelity, it's a messy business, John. I just need a break, so I've come home to Mother.'

‘I'm sorry for your troubles.'

‘No trouble, really. The pleasure was all mine. The trouble is all his.'

‘So how is Mother?'

‘Absent, to tell the truth, John. The two of them are away in Tipperary for a few days. Left me all alone, the selfish buggers. Isn't it just fine that I have you now to mind me?'

And she gives me that look, that same look she gave me all those years ago when I met her as I walked home from Mass in Saint Joseph's.

We have lunch together in the hotel restaurant where we drink Margaux — her insistence — and she tells me about California.

‘I'd love to go to California sometime,' I confess.

‘You must, darling. You simply must come to visit me.'

After lunch we move to the hotel bar, where we order another bottle of Margaux from the restaurant, and the dark evening has already rolled in when she suggests that I walk her home. Arm in arm, we walk the short journey to the redbrick house near the town centre. She leaves the curtains open, so the street light filters through the window blind, and she shows in yellowed tones above me, naked, as she pushes down on me.

‘Just to walk me home, you were,' she says, as she drives her fingernails into my chest. ‘Just to walk me home, you bad boy,' she continues, as she pumps with intent becoming fury, her hips crashing down on me, her black bob flying,
L'Heure Bleue
in the air — French, of course. ‘Just to walk me home, John Donnelly. You are a bad, bad, bad boy.'

It is Sunday evening. I am in the dark alley across from the snooker hall. I have a black woollen cap rolled back on my head. I have a half-full wine bottle in the pocket of an old coat I got in a charity store. In the other pocket I have the Glock.

I know they will meet. People are susceptible to habit — it helps to keep things simple and tidy, but it can also help to get you killed. I wait. Just before ten o'clock, he leaves the snooker hall and walks to the carpark at the rear of the hotel. I hear a car door open and close. After five minutes, I hear another door open and close. I pull my black woollen cap down low on my head, and I move. I walk into the side street and quickly walk to the carpark. I reach into my side pocket and remove the bottle of wine. I enter the carpark staggering, and drift towards the far corner. I see two people in the car. I think I recognise the shape in the passenger seat. It's that fucker, Sloane. I approach the car. I drop an empty can of Coke that I'm carrying, and start to kick it around the carpark. I sing the song of a drunken man — all long, whiny notes, and joined and incomprehensible words. I drift nearer and nearer to the back of the car as I kick the Coke can through the carpark. I see that he watches me in his rear mirror. I drop the wine. It crashes on the ground. I raise my left arm and cheer. The driver door opens, and the Englishman steps out.

‘Fuck off, mate.'

I turn with the Glock raised, and I hold my arm straight and level as I shoot into the centre of his chest. He falls back into the angle of the open door and the car frame. He is holding on to both, his mouth is moving, but he is falling. I put another round into his chest, and walking to him I put another through his head.

I walk quickly to the passenger door. Sloane is rigid with fright. He stares straight forward. He does not look at the dead Englishman, and he does not turn to me. I pull the door open with my left hand and raise the gun quickly to Sloane's head. He pisses himself on the passenger seat. I have to get a look at the bastard's face one last time. Countless good Irishmen have died or have been imprisoned because of touting bastards like him. Sloane was always going to try to sell too much. It ends now. I drop my head as I shoot.

After, as I walk away, I see him again and again and again. He was trembling with panic and fear, staring blindly forward and calling for his mammy, my mammy. It wasn't Sloane. It was Declan Donnelly, my brother.

Three cheers for Johnny Donnelly

IT IS THE END OF DECEMBER, AND I AM IN CROSSMAGLEN. AS I WAIT, I TRY
to put Declan's head out of my mind, so I try to remember the words of the songs I wrote with the boys, and I am singing ‘Crossmaglen Maggie' as a guardsman walks into the scope.

It is New Year's Eve, and I am at home in Dundalk. In the early afternoon I walk to Seatown, where I sit at a bar. After two beers I move to another bar, and after more beer I move on to another.
You wouldn't do a bad thing, would you?
I hear those words again as clear as I heard them on the walk over the mountain, as clear as I heard them when I stepped out of the alley and walked towards the hotel carpark, as clear as I heard them in Keady, Newry, Newtownhamilton, Forkhill, and Crossmaglen.
No Cora,
I told her on the mountain,
I
wouldn't do a bad thing
. I have killed eight with the big black gun, and where are we? Where am I? I have almost done what I set out to do. And what now? I have no fucking idea what now.

I move on to town and sit in another bar, and then another. The Chief says there is a push for peace. But we both know a ceasefire will finish it; there will be no way back for a generation. A ceasefire will suit them more than it will suit us. It always does. They will reclaim the roads, and from there they will infest the communities. The war will be cut off at the throat; it will suffocate. Republican leaders are pushing for a political settlement. Bastards. It's more of the same — another turn of the wheel. They grow old and they tire of the struggle. They'll settle into the administration of the very thing they fought against all their young lives. The only fight left in them is the one among themselves in the rush for office. The wisdom of maturity, they will package it, their self-delusion. But wisdom is earned only by the very few, and it has nothing to do with maturity. Their kind of wisdom is just the absence of battle; it is the loss of the will to fight.

I order another beer. Two girls approach the bar, and I sneer thickly to the nearest. She tells me to get lost.

‘How perfectly ironic,' I say to her. ‘I couldn't get more lost.'

Both girls look at me.
Yes, have a good look now; roll up, roll up, and take your fucking tickets.
They move off to the other end of the bar. I call to the barman for that beer. There is chaos at home: Mam is hysterical. Dad is distraught. Declan mugged and shot dead along with some poor Englishman — shot dead for a few pound, shot dead by a drunk looking for cash. The police wouldn't let them see the body. They asked me and Peter to identify him. How mad and cruel is that? Mam says she will never get over it, that she just wants to die with the shock of it. ‘Why would a drunk have a gun?' Dad asks. ‘What in the name of God is the world coming to?'
Anna has been crying ever since. People came from everywhere to sympathise; I didn't know most of them. They all shook my hand — the same hand that held the Glock, the same hand that shot Declan.

I hear a voice:
Pissed his fucking pants, mate. Pissed his fucking pants
. I look across to bottles of whiskey on the back shelf of the bar, and I see Bob watching me from the glass between the Powers and the Black Bush. He doesn't speak. He just stares at me.
You think you know something, Bob? You know nothing. You think you have answers? Who the fuck are you, anyhow? What did you ever do to make a difference? You're not real, you're nothing but a gobshite, a total fucking gobshite.
Where's that beer? Cora wanted to teach Irish, to marry and have children, and to picnic at Cúchulainn's Castle; Declan wanted money and a move to Blackrock. Well, that's what Blackrock can do to a man. It was never a good idea. The English have always been able to buy a few Irish — that transaction defines us all. Mila wanted me to love her. It shouldn't have been difficult; she is a beautiful girl. But I fucked it up. Only a fool would let a girl like that go. She offered all; I gave her next to nothing. Aisling wants me to see her in Dublin. I don't think that I can go there — that would be just too fucked-up a thing, wouldn't it? Funny-boy Frank wants a new car; he's not so funny anymore. Éamon is still trying to find Éamon; it could be a long search. Big Robbie wants a drink, and then another. And Conor just wants someone to love, someone to go home to. Good old Conor, the only one to step through it all and come out the far side still himself.

I leave the pub and walk home. I pass Saint Patrick's Cathedral. I stop under the arch of the sandstone gateway, and I piss on the wall. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

Good man, Johnny
.

I step into the churchyard to see Bob standing above me on the plinth of the cathedral, his two arms held wide in the green overalls, the red rag hanging loose from the pocket.

Well done, Johnny Donnelly. You did it. You showed them. There's a holy exodus of the British from Ireland — the great army of her majesty is in full retreat. Many are dead from your hand alone. You killed them. You killed them all. Well done, Johnny, you have saved Ireland. You are up there now with Cúchulainn the mighty. Fair dues to you. Three cheers to you, Johnny; three cheers for Johnny Donnelly. Hip Hip Hooray, Hip Hip … No, wait. Hold the bus. The British are still here. Everything is as it was. Nothing has changed; nothing at all. Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.

I walk on. I pass the Georgian townhouses in Roden Place, the railed steps and brass nameplates of doctors, dentists, and solicitors. I approach the junction with Chapel Street, where the Home Bakery sits on the corner, where Mam still queues on a Saturday morning for two French loaves and an almond ring, and, every so often, a chocolate or pineapple cake. I change my mind and decide to return to Seatown for more beer. I walk out on the road. I don't look. I don't want to look. I don't see the car. Well, maybe I do.

The pure in heart

IT IS NOT A TOTAL BLACKNESS, BUT A DENSE AND DARK FOG. THE FUNNEL
of light is remote and distant; but, though the light is weak, I know she is with me.

‘Easy, Johnny, do not worry, I am here.'

I hear her voice, a clear voice, like music — every word a note. And that voice? Cora? But Cora is in heaven. I can't be in heaven, can I? Maybe purgatory? Maybe Mam's rosaries have won an indulgence? Good old Mam. A shadow crosses through the fog. I reach out. I touch her arm. Her arm moves, gently, slowly, and her hand takes my own arm, and I feel it as it moves down to my hand, stopping to cradle my fingers and thumb.

‘I did a bad thing.'

‘Do not worry, Johnny. I shall stay with you.'

But I cannot stop. I have to let it all out. And I do. I keep talking, and the hand that holds keeps holding.

There is only silence when I finish. Her touch leaves me, and I am not sure if she is still there. Then I feel her again as she touches my arm and as her hand moves down to take my hand.

I try to look up to her. But as she stands over me, I can only see her shape and not her detail. ‘Are we in heaven?'

‘Maybe, I don't know. Maybe Ireland is heaven?'

‘I hope not,' I say with a heavy effort. ‘If it is, we are all doomed.'
And I feel a kind of falling away as if I have stepped onto non-ground.

‘Tell me something,' I say, as I fall. ‘Have you ever met Sister Josephine up here?'

‘Sister Josephine?' she answers. ‘A right funny nun she is.'

‘God help him.'

I hear Aunt Hannah.

‘God help us all,' I hear Mam reply. ‘Of all the things to do in the world, you'd think the one thing he wouldn't do is step out in front of a car.'

‘Was he drinking?'

‘No, I don't think so. Still, you never know. Who could blame anyone for turning to drink after what happened to Declan.'

‘Did he … ' Hannah hesitated. ‘You know … do it on purpose?'

‘I don't know, Hannah. I never did know what that boy was thinking.'

‘Who knows what anyone is thinking, when the truth be told. Is Mister Delaney still waiting outside?'