The Fields (22 page)

I tell Saidhbh that I have thirty five pounds saved in my post office account, and that could easily get us to London and back, if we got a cheap ferry. She goes bonkers, and bursts into floods, and tells me never to say what I’ve just said again, and asks God to forgive me for what I just said. And then she cups her stomach even tighter and cries some more, and says sorry to the baby inside her, and curls up into her own baby position, and tries to
pull her own hair out in frustration at the fact that two days ago everything was perfect – she was in the middle of her Leaving Cert, and perhaps only inches away from becoming a happily married teacher, and now the boy she once loved is talking about using his life savings to pay to have her baby killed.

She mentions God about ten more times and I roll my eyes with frustration, and tell her that God has already done his bit in this crisis. Saidhbh sneers back at me and says that ‘He’ said I’d be like this, and ‘He’ said that I’d try and persuade her to take care of it, and, most of all, ‘He’ said that she’d have to be strong, and keep the baby no matter what.

And ‘He’ is? God?

No, she says, calling me a smart arse, and adds, casual as anything, that ‘He’ is Fr O’Culigeen. Yes, she says, that’s why it’s all kicked off today. She did the test on Friday, and has known since then, but couldn’t think straight about it until she went to confession this morning after Mass. She says that O’Culigeen was brilliant, and closed up shop just for her, and took her into the sacristy, and gave her a one-on-one session, and said that I was a bad penny, and that she must keep the baby at all costs, but end the relationship with me at once. Hence the crying and the confusion.

I tell her that O’Culigeen is full of shite, and she asks me to leave. And not by the front door either, she says, pointing to the window. She tells me that her dad wants to kill me with his bare hands, because I hit his only daughter right across the face during an argument after Mass. I give her the ‘What?!!!’ face, and she tells me that her dad came up with that one all by himself, when he saw her falling in the door in tears. And because she was still in pregnancy-shock, and couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say in my defence, and ran upstairs into a heap instead, the story just kind of stuck. Him shouting, He hit ye, didn’t he? He hit ye? The little bollix! He hit ye!!

I climb down from Saidhbh’s window, monkey style, by holding on to the heavy metal drainpipe and scraping my knuckles, both hands, against the hard yellow pebbledash of the paint job. I run home, up the long grey arch of The Rise, with my fingers scraped and bleeding, and my head cocked around my shoulder, just in case mad Taighdhg Donohue has revealed his true face and already sent an active IRA flying column in hot pursuit to kidnap me and teach me how to behave around women by blowing off my kneecaps and knocking out my teeth. And all the time I say words like feck and shit and bugger to myself, and I can’t quite believe just what in shit’s name has happened to my life.

I think about Fr Jason’s own story, and wonder is it too late to take a detour to an inner city church and fling myself on to the hard marble altar, and wait for the glowy man from heaven to appear from nowhere and take away all my troubles with a magic abortion-tipped thunderbolt from the palm of his hand. I feel sick at the very idea of me and Saidhbh heading off, some manky Monday morning soon, to catch the ferry at Dun Laoghaire with my life savings in my pocket, and Saidhbh looking like the living dead beside me, and all the stories and all the lies that we’ll have to tell, just so we can both ruin our lives, our minds and our souls for all eternity, without anybody finding out.

I’m thinking about all this, and about how right Mam is, and all the coffee morning mams, when they tell you with serious faces that life changes in the blink of an eye. One minute you’ve got your fur coat on, and you’re crossing the road from Castle Mount Church, the next you’ve paused to wave at Margaret McDonald from number 40, and you’ve tripped on your own heels and fallen smack against the approaching kerb, and split your head in two right down the middle, dead. The fur coat. Totally useless now, they’d say. Because you can’t bring it with you. No, you can’t bring it with you.

I’m thinking that I wish I had smashed my own head against
the kerb instead of ruining the life of my only love and becoming enemy number one on the hitlist of a known IRA big shot – and it’s not as if I can say, No, Taighdhg, I didn’t hit her across the face, I got her pregnant instead! And that’s not even mentioning Mam and Dad. The news will definitely send Dad to his grave for good. The last few healthy cells will just shrivel up and die of embarrassment when they hear. The girls will go bonkers, Gary will flip, and I’ll probably get expelled from school for unnatural animal behaviour.

So, as I say, I’m thinking about all this as I put my key in the garage door and clock, straight away, what is by then an extremely unusual sound coming from the sitting room. Yes, it’s the thum thum thum of
Hooked on Classics
. For a moment I get a flush of happiness, and dart inside the house, instantly giddy in the knowledge that Dad, for the first time in for ever, is feeling well enough to crank up the record player and fill our home with the loud, consistent and strangely clappy electric beats of Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Mendelssohn.

I even picture Dad in his suit, clean shaven, armchair back against the wall, elbows out, paper folded in his lap, feeling good enough and smart enough to crack jokes at Mam’s expense. And the girls, Sarah and Siobhan, back from the flat for the day, and feeling happy enough and homey enough to tell Dad, with a smile and a giggle, that
Hooked on Classics
is rubbish. I whizz through the empty kitchen, and straight into the sitting room, expecting nothing less than the no-holds-barred restoration of familial bliss as it once so briefly was, but what do I get?

Fr O’Culigeen himself, sitting on the couch like an evil vision in black, clutching a cuppa and a German apple slice, with his feet tapping to the music, and a big broad beamy smile on his face that he instantly flashes to me, as if to say, You, my friend, are a fucking dead man!

Of course, what he actually says is, Hello there, stranger! And gives me a big wink and a smile. He’s sitting alone with Mam. The girls have been sent upstairs to play with their Sindys. Dad is asleep. Mam, who is also clutching a German apple slice, has put on the record especially for O’Culigeen, so that the ‘Dance of the Swans’ with a beefed-up drumbeat can provide the perfect bash-bang background music for their Sunday morning heart to heart.

O’Culigeen, Mam says, right in front of his face, is here for the family. Here to see how Dad’s doing and everything. She says that he’s very encouraged by Dad’s progress and hopes to see the whole lot of us back together for the 10.30 family Mass very soon. She adds that O’Culigeen even blessed Dad while he slept. Leaned over him and asked the Holy Spirit to come down from heaven through his body, along his right arm and into Dad’s body, and to finish off the last bit of medical work that was needed there, and to bring Dad finally back to the land of the living. And do you know what? Mam says, leaning forward with a giddy grin on her face. Your father woke up at that very moment and said that he felt hot!

And feeling hot, O’Culigeen told her, is a sign that the Holy Spirit is fully entering the body and working its magic. Mam
opened the bedroom window for some air, and Dad fell back to sleep again, but Mam was sure he looked more peaceful this time, because he had the power of God inside him. And then she says, Thanks to the Father here!

O’Culigeen puts on a holier than thou expression and nods solemnly, like he’s the best priesty in all Ireland but doesn’t want to admit it. I say nothing. I just look at the two of them, blankly, and wait for the famous O’Culigeen trap to spring. And then it does.

Oh, and the Father has a surprise for you! Mam says, half spitting out a few pastry flakes with nervous excitement. He is bringing yourself and a whole rake of young boys up to Three Rock Mountain for a camping weekend, next Friday. And before I can say a word about how completely mad this is on every possible level, she tells me not to bother, that O’Culigeen has told her everything about us, and about how I had become too friendly with him, and too close, and started treating him like an older brother in my time of need, and not like the respected pillar of the community that he is. And because of what was happening at home, with Dad, O’Culigeen didn’t want to come down too hard on me, so he indulged my obsession with him, and said nothing when I stole some pennies from his wallet, disrespected him when he was going live, on the altar, and drank a half-pint of communion wine in the sacristy. No, she said, O’Culigeen was prepared to wipe the entire slate clean, forget all past indiscretions, and to start off anew, with a bit of healthy bonding all weekend long, out in the midst of mother nature.

O’Culigeen smiles. A real greasy one. Game over, it says. You’re a dead man, it says. The moment I get my hands on you.

We look at each other, me and him, for what seems like an age. He’s got a seriously demented look in his eyes, and a light covering of sweat on his forehead. It’s like that short ten minutes with Saidhbh in the confessional this morning, and the news that she is preggers with my baby, has totally pushed him over the
edge. Like it’s driven him instantly out of the sacristy and into his car and right up to our front door, with a head full of impulses and a rashly hatched plan, just because he can’t stand it any longer and wants to make some sort of angry point. He wants to show me who’s boss, and what I’m missing by not being by his side, in his life, in his dreams and in Papua New Guinea, holding hands in the bush, spotting rare species of monkeys, dodging flesh-eating tribesmen, and then kissing and screwing together all night long under the South Sea skies.

I don’t know what my eyes say back to him, but Saidhbh’s news, and the baby in her stomach, and the world that’s warping all around, has changed me too. Changed me utterly, as Spits McGee would say. Because in my heart, and for the first time ever, perhaps the first time in my entire life, I tell myself, No!

I have five days to sort this fecker out. If not for me, for the sake of my unborn and soon to be dead child.

The journey all the way up to Three Rock Mountain passes in near total silence. Neil Hennessy, a little blond ten-year-old twerp from Kilcuman scouts whose mam died last year, is the only one who says anything. He’s never been away from home ever, so this is a really big deal and, for a while, he can’t stop asking stupid questions. Are there going to be bears on Three Rock Mountain? Will there be wolves? How do we go to the toilet in the dark? Will there be potties in the tents? How will we keep the sheep away from our food? And so on. No one answers him anyway. And otherwise, in the back of the rented HiAce, it’s total silence. The other three boys, all hard-bitten altar-boy stock from the church, have nothing to add. I’m guessing they’ve each already had a taste of O’Culigeen at his worst, and so are either dreading what sort of unimaginable and perverted nature-hell might be facing them over the next three days, or are just numbed into wordless silence by the very prospect.

O’Culigeen, meanwhile, in his black leather
Knight Rider
gloves and painfully sour-puss grimace, is gripping the steering wheel and fuming himself into a simmering angry silence. His jaw nearly hit the floor when he saw Fr Jason toddling towards the van beside me, with a huge blue rucksack on his back. Fr Jason played it dead cool, though, and said that he’d be no bother to the gang of us, and that he had his own tent and everything, but that he was dying for a bit of company, and thought it would be a hoot to tag along with us lads and do nothing but men things for the few days.

O’Culigeen could barely get a word out. He opened the back doors of the van, and as we all climbed inside, single file, passing him dutifully, one by one, he grabbed hold of my arm roughly, and gave it a right yank, as if to say, This is your doing! And, I want my two hundred pounds back! I say nothing and squeeze right through, and find my place on the floor next to Hennessy. We sit cross-legged on a false plywood bottom, without seats, seatbelts, or anything. The van has been inherited from O’Culigeen’s dead brother, Padraig, and it is, according to its new owner, very useful indeed. You can only imagine.

The two hundred pounds in question is delivered directly to my door the day before. It was technically a bribe. I say bribe, but it was more sort of a teasing kind of flirty threat. The note I left in the sacristy simply read, ‘All is forgiven. For £200. Cash. In this envelope. By Friday. Or I’m not coming. Deliver it by hand. Your pup. Xxx.’

The cash is for the abortion. Turns out the buggers are a lot pricier than I thought. Fiona’s done all the research from Aunty Grace’s office, and after giving me a major bollocking over the phone about the fecking scandal of getting someone pregnant when I’m only barely out of nappies myself, she tells me that the B&I Line ferry tickets, return to Holyhead, will be thirty pounds each! The train fare to London, on top of that, will be a fiver
each, and then there’s the abortion itself, which won’t be cheap, but will have to be sorted out with the good people of the Marie Stopes Clinic in the West End of London. Two hundred, she says, off the top of her head, should probably cover the lot.

Persuading Saidhbh to even think about it is a nightmare. I barely see her the whole week, because the Leaving Cert is now in full swing, with written French, parts one and two, and oral French, and both Maths papers and all three Irish papers all crashing in on top of each other in the space of four days. When she does eventually agree to see me, for a private emergency meeting by the lake in Belfield, I kind of ruin it by spending all my efforts trying to calm her down while, at the same time, working up the courage to tell her that I’ve got the entire abortion trip sorted, and that all she has to do is say the word, and we’re on the Monday morning ferry to Holyhead, straight after my weekend of camping hell with Fr Feck Face.

She goes completely mental the first time I say it, and starts shaking all over and everything, and says, as serious as she’s ever been in her life, that she’s going to throw herself into the lake and end it all now if I keep going on with that. She looks over the concrete ledge and into the water and I can see by her sad, tired, red-rimmed eyes that she’s not joking. She pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and tells me that she’s been writing poetry. It’s about a depressed grizzly bear that she once saw in Dublin Zoo, she says. And it’s called, Insanity Follows.

Setting the perfect trap for a filthy evil rapist priest is, it turns out, easier than convincing the love of your life to go to London for an abortion. All it takes is a bit of shaping outside the monastery after school, and a game of long-distance donkey with Gary – it’s like normal donkey, where you spell the word D.O.N.K.E.Y with every drop of the ball, but you do it over a huge distance, like eighty yards, or, the whole length of the driveway up to the
monastery front door. Anyway, I’m catching the ball really loudly on the grass outside the two front prayer rooms, and the next thing I know Fr Jason appears and starts patting me and shaking my shoulders and telling me that he hasn’t seen me in ages and what’s going on in my life, and how’s me dad and how am I getting on with the theory of the multiverse and so on.

I tell him nothing much, and I show him that Gary’s there, and I have to go. But I tell him just enough, mainly that I’m going to spend the weekend camping up Three Rock Mountain with Fr O’Culigeen and a rake of boys, and was wondering if Fr Jason had ever done anything like that. At first he doesn’t get it, and just tells me that he hasn’t gone camping in years, since his wild and crazy pre-priest days, and he hopes that I have a blast, and isn’t O’Culigeen a great man to be taking on such a challenge. I tell him that he is, and I say his name again, this time banging out the word ‘Father’ louder for emphasis in the hope that it’ll trigger Fr Jason’s usually laser-sharp brain. But nothing.

Gary does the ‘what’s going on?’ gesture with his upturned hands from eighty yards away, which tells me that we either need to continue playing long-distance donkey or go home for the day. And so, with no time for niceties I pretty much spell it out for Fr Jason and tell him that O’Culigeen is the big ‘Father’ in my life at the moment, and that it would be great if Fr Jason himself could pop along to Three Rock this weekend for a bit of gas and a laugh with the boys. I don’t even wait to hear his reply, and just run off and pelt the tennis ball in a massive swinging arc that sends Gary flying backwards over the bicycle racks and right into ‘donkey’. I know that Fr Jason has twigged. He gave a sudden sharp insuck of air as I was speaking, and I could almost hear him whisper the words, Oh God no, as the O’Culigeen penny dropped. It is enough for me. I know he’ll be there. Because, in my heart, he is a hero to me.