The Fields (10 page)

Most people whoop and cheer. Sinead Donohue wolf-whistles. Mozzo’s got his arm fully round Saidhbh, in full view of the whole room now, so he just stamps a few times with his big black Docs. Saidhbh, drowsy from the booze, is silent, and stuck deep inside Mozzo’s armpit. I remain sitting on my own single couch cushion, clapping quietly but politely for the performance to come.

After the clapping stops, O’Culigeen stands up slowly and runs his hand through his greasy black hair-do. He puts his other hand, the clean one, softly on Barry’s shoulder and whispers the name of his party-piece. He then drops his head down like he does at Mass after the ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you’ bit. He doesn’t start for ages, and the silence is making us all nervous. You can’t even see if he’s breathing or not, but suddenly this deep deep voice, like a long foghorn, comes out of nowhere. O’Culigeen looks up and his eyes are already glassy with tears. ‘When boyhood’s fire was in my blood,’ he thunders, while O’Driscoll hammers away on the guitar, ‘I read of ancient freemen!’ I’ve never heard this song before, but already I like it. There’s no instant whoops or cheers this time. Just silence, and
eyes shut and mouths hanging open. Like we’re all getting communion.

O’Culigeen booms away about the Greeks and the Romans and how they fought for their freedom, and then he sings of how he prays that some day he’ll see our chains torn in two, but instead of ‘two’, he sings ‘Twain’. He uses this because it rhymes with the next line, which is the big one, ‘And Ireland, long a province, be a nation once again!’ He repeats this line again and again, with tears just about creeping out of his eyes.

A nation once again! A nation once again! And Ireland long a province be a nation once again!

We all love the sound of this, and tap along goodo. It’s like every history lesson in school rolled up into one brilliant song. We get the gist of the chorus straightaway and are quick enough to sing the last ‘Nation once again’. We love it. And we can’t wait for the next chorus. But O’Culigeen knows what he’s doing. He slows it down just enough when singing about special lights watching from overhead and the voices of angels. Then he really puts the boot down when he gets back to the good stuff – ‘And righteous men must make our land a nation once again!’

We do the chorus, all three ‘nation once again’s perfect. And this time with feeling too, shouting it out like we mean it, our eyes flashing with pride, reminding ourselves of all the poor youngfellas being killed every day in the North just coz they want the same jobs as the Proddy Brit-loving bastards. We love it, and we’re shifting around in our seats with excitement. Saidhbh has woken up and is kneeling on the couch beside Mozzo, who’s not trying to be cool any more, but instead is glued to the sight of O’Culigeen at work. Most of the rest of the room are on their feet anyway, but they’re lepping from side to side, in time with the music, holding their hands to their chests like they’re swearing an oath in court.

O’Culigeen does the last verse dead slow with his eyes shut
tight and pain on his forehead, like he’s dying inside. He sings that he’s not a boy any more, he’s a man. And he has a hope, but he hopes it’s not a hope in vain. And when we hear the word ‘vain’ we all know what’s coming. We’re nearly crying for the fever of it.

‘When my dear country will be made a nation once again!’

The final chorus is bedlam. We all, everyone, the whole room, from the old whiskey-drinking codgers in the corner to stumbling Sinead by the door to Taighdhg on the floor to the rowdy teachers to the giddy women at the back to Mozzo and Saidhbh on the couch, and to me, we all boom along together, with our voices cracking and our teeth on show. A nation once again! And we mean it, we really mean it. A nation once again! We want to run out in the streets and shout out A Nation Once Again and fight all the Brits who ever came over here and tied poor ole James Connolly to a chair before shooting him and all those bastards on the BBC who make jokes about the Irish and all those poshies singing ‘Rule Britannia’ every year in the big concert, and we want to knock down Joy Foster’s door and tell her to fuck off back to England and blow up every burger bar in London and tell them all to watch their fuckin mouths because the Irish are back in town and the Irish are fuckin magic!

The last line, ‘And Ireland long a province be …’ me, Mozzo and Saidhbh are standing up on the couch itself, interlocking our arms, I’ve got mine around Saidhbh and she’s got hers around Mozzo, whose arm is long enough to go round her shoulder and touch the back of my neck. ‘… A nation once again!!’ we all scream in triumph and jump up and down. It’s like New Year’s Eve, with everyone running around hugging each other and crying for Ireland. Mozzo reaches round and pulls me into a three-person hug with Saidhbh and him, and we jump up and down and go wooooowooowooo! Saidhbh gives me a little peck on the cheek and Mozzo looks at me and smiles a ‘no hard feelings’
smile. I jump off the couch and think that this is the best party in the best country in the world.

O’Culigeen is shattered. He’s sat himself down on Barry O’Driscoll’s
Quicksilver
chair and is rubbing the sweat from his forehead back into his black hair, like the fella in the snot joke. He wipes his cheeks with his arm, mushing the tears and sweat into his black sleeve. He breathes heavily like he’s just crossed the Dublin City Marathon finish line. We’re all queuing up to pat him on the back and tell him that it was the best party-piece we’ve ever heard.

I leave Mozzo and Saidhbh and walk right up to him, just like all the other adults. I touch him on the shoulder and I say, ‘That was really nice.’

He looks into my eyes with a real sadness about him and says calmly, ‘Glad you liked it, my child.’

There’s a few streaks of late-night light coming in from the street lamps on The Rise, but otherwise everything’s dark. I lie in bed with my arms sticking out over my Ernie and Bert turndown and tell Fiona everything about the party. Saidhbh’s mini, Sinead’s boobs, the Harp, the quiz, the songs, O’Culigeen, the works. Fiona says that there was murder when I left coz Susan went all hysterical and cried for two hours non-stop about being older than me but not being allowed to go anywhere.

She was so mad that she started kicking the sides of the baking press in temper. And when Mam tried to stop her, she threw a Sindy pencil case right at Mam’s head and told her that she hated her guts. She said she wished she had been born in Brenda Joyce’s house and not in this stinking place. Dad had to run in from the telly room, clear everyone out of the kitchen and sit Susan down at the table for a lecture. He told her that the rules were different for boys coz boys couldn’t get into as much ‘trouble’ as girls. Sarah, who was listening from the hall, went mad and burst into
the kitchen and said that it was men like Dad who were keeping Irish women in the Stone Age. A long all-night full-family argument followed about who was better, men or women.

Dad’s main point was that, at the end of the day, boys couldn’t get ‘into trouble’ so that’s why they got special treatment. Sarah said it was pathetic that he couldn’t even say the word ‘pregnant’. Mam told her to hush, and nodded towards Susan and Claire like they were little toddlers who still believed in Santy and fairies.

A boy’ll never come back into the house and shame you, said Dad, before angrily adding, He’ll never get PREGNANT!

Fiona says that Mam really threw the cat among the pigeons by asking Dad what he’d do if one of his five daughters came home pregnant. He said that from that moment on they would no longer be a daughter of his. Sarah screamed and said that she’d love to get pregnant just to put him to the test.

Off ye go, he says, put me to the test!

Fiona laughed out loud at this and everyone glared at her, especially Sarah.

During the whole argument, no matter what anyone said, no matter where the discussion went – to single mothers, or contraception, or sexism in schools and politics – Dad kept coming back to his original point. He said that he was not technically wrong because it was a fact of science that no one could deny that his son, meaning me, could never walk in the door pregnant! And therefore, because of this, plain as day, an extra bit of leeway is given to his son’s, my, activities.

Fiona says that all the girls were pulling their hair out at the end, telling him that he was completely missing the point.

Secretly, deep down inside, I like the idea of Dad standing up for me while the whole world is against him.

Gas, I say, and shut my eyes and sing the chorus of ‘A Nation Once Again’ five times in a row, until Fiona throws her pillow at me and tells me to shut my gob.

First day back is always a tough one. We trudge down to breakfast in our uniforms, like sad little soldiers. The table doesn’t have its wings out at breakfast time, so we have our food in shifts. We look out, up into the garden at the Swingball post glinting in the sun and we curse the fact that we’re going back to school when the weather still thinks it’s summer. We eat porridge from a huge steel pot that Mam has prepared the night before. And then we have Brennan’s bread toasted and covered in Chivers marmalade or homemade raspberry jam. Mam went through a phase of making us have a chunky vitamin C pill with our breakfast but the pills became too expensive so she stopped.

The relay shifts are always the same. Mam and Susan first. Mam pulls up the blinds and turns on all the knobs and switches, including the Gay Byrne radio show, or Gaybo for short – everyone calls him Gaybo, or Uncle Gaybo for a laugh, coz he’s like a good-looking uncle that you wish you had, and if you’re from down the bog you’d spend your life savings to get a ticket for his television show so you could go all nervous in front of the camera and read out a poem or sing a little ditty that you’d written that very day about being excited to be up in the big city, in a big television studio, just a matter of mere inches away from
Uncle Gaybo himself, who would laugh real hard all the way through your poem or your song, and look at you like you were a mentaller on day release and due back down the bog at any minute.

Mam sits down opposite Susan and asks her all about the school day ahead while they eat their grub. Susan normally has a small bowl of porridge, but eats diet Ryvita crackers instead of toast, on account of her weight. Next is Claire, followed closely by me. Claire is a bit of a brain box and is always giddy when it comes to school, no matter what time of the year, and usually has some scandal concerning this teacher and that pupil that’s got her all excited.

When I come down I’m expecting a right grilling over last night’s party, especially coz of the big argument they had over me going in the first place. But I walk into the room and the only thing that happens is Mam says casually that Gary Connell called for me last night and was annoyed that I hadn’t told him about the party. Otherwise, Claire ignores me and chats away about Sister Ursula’s bad breath while I fiddle with my super-stiff shirt collar and spoon out some porridge. I go to St Cormac’s Secondary School in Oakfield, and their uniform is black shoes, grey slacks, black jumper, blue-and-red tie, and white shirt. This year’s white shirt is new, bought from the back-to-school section in Dunnes Stores, and the collar is tight, rough and sharp, like rusty steel around my neck.

Susan’s standing over by the dishrack with her back to me drying up her porridge bowl. She says nothing but doodles around behind me, picking up letters and biros from the countertop as she makes her way around the room. She gets as far as the kitchen door and she finally has to say it.

So, how was last night?

I stop buttering my toast and look up at her, and her face seems really sad, hurt, ashamed and interested all at the same
time. I want to stand up from my place, run over and give her the biggest hug ever and tell her that I love her and that being a boy is rubbish too.

Yeah, I say, it wasn’t bad, lots of singing. And we did a quiz.

What type of quiz? she says, her sad eyes wide.

Quicksilver
, I say.

Stop the Lights! shouts Claire, then adds, Bunnnnnnny Carrrrrrrr! in a way that means she’s making fun of his name.

Oh, you could do a lot worse than Bunny Car, interrupts Mam. Poor man, with that wife of his. All the riches in the world can’t buy you health. I know neither the hour nor the day!

Fiona is the next to arrive. She’s doing her Leaving Cert this year, so that makes her top dog in school, which means she can bend the rules if she likes and be late for everything and wear a crappy version of The Sorrows uniform – black shoes, white socks, grey skirt, blue jumper, blue shirt, blue tie. This morning she’s not bothering with the tie. She walks silently through the kitchen, flicks me on the ear and says, Out of my seat, loverboy!

I laugh at this because it’s funny.

Dad’s office is only down the road in Kilcuman, so he’ll be the last of this shift to arrive at the table, if he can manage to fight the tiredness and pull himself out of bed. He used to be full of chat in the mornings, about the work ahead and the contracts that’ll be ‘signed, sealed, and delivered’ by the end of the day. He’d skip the porridge, have a mouthful of toast and then dash out the door looking all flash and manly in his navy suit, black tie and dead neat moustache. If he was in the mood he used to even do some machine-gun kissing. This is when he pretends his mouth is a machine gun and makes a ‘mu-mu-mu-mu-mu’ sound while running past us all, even the older ones, kissing us on the forehead or making us giggle by rubbing his moustache against our bare necks, and covering us in the sweet smell of aftershave. These days we’re lucky if he makes it down in time to grunt at us
gruffly before propping his sleepy head up on the table and trying to stop it from flopping forward, Laurel and Hardy style, into the steaming bowl below him.

God knows when the twins’ll appear. Without any interviews, they could be in bed till lunchtime.

When we’re all gone and the kitchen is nice and quiet, with only Uncle Gaybo murmuring away to himself in the background, Mam’ll sit down with two separate pieces of paper and make two lists – one, of all the jobs like hoovering and cooking and clothes-washing that she has to do over the course of the day, and two, of all the things like cream crackers and washing powder that she has to buy with Dad’s housekeeping money from Quinnsworth’s in Kilcuman shopping centre.

Then, after about an hour of making the beds and cleaning the kitchen, the other Mothers will come knocking for a coffee morning and a chat.

When I arrive into school I’m chirpier than normal for a first-day-backer. This is because I’m meeting Saidhbh and Mozzo after tea. Even though it’s a school day, we’re going to the canal at the back of The Sorrows and Mozzo’s going to show us both how and where they caught the queer biker on Saturday night. We’re already a small three-person gang. Like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

Gary ignores me in class. We normally sit together in our double-desk for everything except languages, coz he does German and I do French, but today he’s decided to sit down the back and leave an empty space beside me.

What’s wrong, says Martin Higgins, pucking me on the shoulder from behind, you two getting divorced?

Higgins is a big hairy fella with a prickly half-beard inching down from his ears. Him and all the GAA lads think that me and
Gary are right benders coz we always sit together, do our homework and don’t play hurling. The GAA lads, on the other hand, are real dossers and jokers. They love farting in class and flicking spit from the back of their biros, and they never do their homework coz they’re always out training or off on the bus to an away game on the Northside of the city. The teachers don’t mind that the GAA lads are messers, coz playing GAA is meant to be a very important thing that brings pride to the school and turns you into a man at one and the same time. The GAA lads all have showers together after training and flick each other with their towels on their nude arses and joke about each other’s mickeys.

There are two other types of non-GAA people in our class. These are the Mods, who get into trouble for wearing shiny slip-ons and scraping ‘The Specials’ into their desks with compass ends. And there’s the Benders, who are everyone else, including me, Steven Casey, Shitty-Pants Sweeny and Gary.

St Cormac’s is run by ‘brothers’, who are like monks or pretend priests, but the teachers themselves are actually half and half, ordinary men who love banging blackboards with their dusters and screaming their heads off at terrified young boys. There’s a couple of actual priests too, but these ones are just blow-ins, like Fr Jason, who’s good fun and a real brain box, but only swings by for special visits or when it’s time to run one of the yearly retreats. The school itself is an ancient old redbrick building that holds, on a good day with no mitching, around four hundred fellas.

It can be difficult growing up and living with five sisters and a mother and then being surrounded by four hundred fellas all day. In fact, sometimes, when the fellas are belching and farting and punching and being thick on purpose and smelling something rotten I feel like there’s been a terrible mistake and I’m in the wrong uniform and someone should slap a skirt on me and send me over to The Sorrows to be with all the girls who are clean
and interesting and kind. Fiona says that all babies are girls at first, when they’re in the mothers’ wombs. It’s just a cruel trick of fate when suddenly, after only three or four weeks of being a womb blob, some of them grow a mickey. She says that Sister Janine showed them a video all about it, but the video wasn’t only about babies with mickeys but was actually about how babies are real live human beings from the very moment they stop being an egg and get covered in sperm. The video said that there was no greater evil in this world than to kill a baby that was still inside its mother. And then Sister Janine added, after the show was over and the blinds ripped open, that anyone who kills a baby in the womb goes straight to hell when they die, but even before that they’ll spend their every remaining day on earth in an actual living hell of indescribable pain and torment. Enough to drive them completely insane and eventually into full-on suicide. Abortion, in short, was not a good thing.

Coz he’s an onlychild and doesn’t have any brothers either, Gary feels the same way about the St Cormac’s boys as I do. Which is why we’re such good friends and why the GAA lads call us benders. They call Gary a Proddy Bender if they really want to hurt him, coz he’s the only Prod in the class. Mam says the Connells could’ve sent Gary to any school they wanted, Proddy or Catholic, but they sent him to St Cormac’s coz it had such a good reputation. And because it was free. And Proddies are known to be good with their money.

I try to talk to Gary during our Eleven break, but he’s having none of it.

Sorry, he says, when I ask him how’s it going, but you must be mistaking me for the great Declan Morrissey.

At least fuckin sit beside me! I say, making sure to add the ‘fuckin’ bit to sound hard, in case Higgins is listening.

Sorry again, says Gary, flicking his soft blond hair out of his eyes, but no Mozzos here!

Mozzo goes to Kilcuman Tech to do metalwork and carpentry whenever he feels like it. Gary knows he’s hardly going to turn up here.

The classes themselves are dead easy. Each teacher says the same ole thing, even Mr King. First day back, blah, blah, time for a new beginning, blah, blah, your Inter Cert in two years, blah, blah, buckle under now and you’ll fly through it later, blah, blah, most important time of your lives, blah, blah, decide your future right here, right now.

The only one who gives a real class is Spits McGee, who jumps straight into a physics lesson on the easy-peasy parallax experiment we’ll be doing in the science lab on Friday. McGee is a little fella by any standards, but he used to be a boxer in his youth, before he went out to work for the priests in Africa, and so he still has to prove himself by beating up at least one youngfella every day of term. And so, halfway through the lesson, just as he’s at the board describing how we’ll be gently pushing our blocks of wood across an inclined platform, Spits swivels around on his heel, charges between the desks and gives Steven Casey a decent wallop on the ear. Casey’s good at art and has been drawing pictures of nude women on Shitty-Pants Sweeny’s copybook. His head makes a pop sound when Spits slaps. Open palm on the ear, deafen you for the day. Sweeny goes red and says nothing while Spits walks back up to the board saying, That’ll teach you, dirty brat.

I try to talk to Gary again at lunchbreak, but he just whizzes off past me on his bike, out the gates and towards the shopping centre with the rest of the benders.

By final bell Gary still hasn’t warmed up. He’s ignored me right through Maths and Civics, and now he’s slipped by me in the
cloakroom and straight out into the bike sheds. I’ve had enough, so I run across the yard after him screaming, Gary! Gary! while Higgins and the GAA lads do high-pitched imitations of me.

Gary! Gary! they squeak. You left your rubber johnnies in my bag!

When I finally catch up with him he’s about to whizz off again on his bike, so I have to grab his back carrier and pull with all my strength to stop him leaving.

Fuck off, he says, traitor!

What the fuck are you talking about? I say back to him.

Just fuck off, will ye? He lashes out at me, as if to hit me in the face, but making sure he doesn’t.

You fuck off! I say, being just as tough back to him.

I will if you fuckin let go! He tries to pedal, but my heels are dug into the ground and he’s not moving.

I will if you fuckin tell me! I say.

Fuckin traitor!

Fuckin what?

He gets off his saddle. You and fuckin Mozzo!

It was Saidhbh’s party, I explain, not Mozzo’s.

Big fuckin deal, he says, looking away.

And you weren’t invited! I add. I pause. And then, Sorry!

Gary’s still furious. I don’t give a shite about that fuckin party, he says. Or that fuckin Saidhbh slutbag Donohue!

I want to give him a belt for the slutbag thing, but I shake his bike instead, shouting, Then what’s your fucking problem?

He’s not interested. Just let me fuckin go!

Three of the GAA lads pass on their racers and shout out that Gary’s been having an affair with Spits McGee, and that’s why we’re fighting.

But I thought we were getting married! they squeak, before adding, in their real voices, Fuckin queers!

Let me go, says Gary, please!

I see that he’s starting to cry and I don’t know what to do.

Jesus, Gary, I say softly, I was only holding your bike. Sorry.

You and fuckin Mozzo, he says, on the edge of bawling, fuckin bastards!