The Fields (34 page)

So, I’m bricking it as I shuffle up towards him. I’m pretty sure that he’s not with the ‘RA, if only because they’d never let themselves go like that, and he’d never fit all that hair into a balaclava without looking like a big dirty terrorist lollipop and being a laughing stock of The Movement. And even if he was in the ‘RA, and this was just a brilliant half-man, half-monkey disguise, he’d never do anything here, in broad daylight, on a Saturday afternoon, in front of a load of drunken women with rubber mickeys in their hands.

Still, I’m wondering what he’s going to say to me, and hoping that he’s not going to shout me down, and call me the worst busboy in the history of London restaurants, and then demand to speak to Trevor and get me fired on the spot. It’s only when I get to the table itself, close enough to touch him, that I clock him properly.

We’re supposed to touch the customers whenever possible. Trevor told us all about it, and even gave the entire floor staff an afternoon of lessons. It’s a trick that’s come straight from America, and it makes the customers think that you’re brilliant and makes them want to buy more from you and give you a big tip at the end of the night. Billy disagrees totally with it, and says it’s not the way he learnt to work – and he learnt from all the old Soho pros – and it’s fake and phony and a bit creepy. It’s dead simple though, and no big secret, and the Americans swear by it. It’s a little move that you do whenever a customer wants to talk to you – which, over a whole meal, can be many times. Basically the whole sequence involves you walking towards them and, just as you reach their table, you suddenly drop down to your hunkers, slide up beside them and touch them on the arm. In this one super-smooth move, by dropping down below their eye-level you make the customer bigger than you and more in charge, and yet because you’re touching them at the same time you get all connected and almost boyfriendy girlfriendy.

So, there I am, sliding down beside this big beardy bollix, looking up at him in the sweet smiley boyfriendy way, and touching him on the arm, when I see properly through the mad browny beard and the long stringy hair for the first time, and I realise, with something close to a full-blown heart attack, that it’s none other than Fr Fecking O’Culigeen himself! In the flesh! And in my face!

Together again.

At last.

I stay frozen on my hunkers for ages. He grabs a right vicious hold of my hand, which was already squeezing his arm for the mock connection. He tells me not to speak, and then just blabs away in a big roller-coaster ride of words that is part confession, part apology but all lovey-dovey cuddle-up.

He promises that he’s not a rapist any more. He says that he’s a lover, not a fighter. Just like Jackson on
Thriller
, during the talky bits of ‘The Girl is Mine’. He tells me that five months in Papua New Guinea would change anyone, and they’ve changed him totally. From tip to toe he says, pointing to his new hairy molly look, before adding that it’s obvious for anyone to see that he’s a new man. Yes, he did terrible things in the past, and yes he was once a rapist priest, and for that he is truly sorry. But life in Papua, and particularly the love of a native boy called Buassi, changed all that. Loving Buassi, he says, openly, and in full view of the other natives, showed him that there was a greater love to be had in life than loving God. Loving Buassi out loud, in front of his parents, and the village elders, showed him that the priesthood had it all wrong. Raping behind closed doors was evil. Loving out in the open was heavenly.

He says that things with Buassi ended badly when he discovered that the little liar had a girlfriend, and was only using O’Culigeen to get the fast track out of the jungle and a chance to
live and work in Ireland instead. But it had been enough of an experience to show him that he could never go back to the old ways. He realised on the night of the big split with Buassi that he’d been living a lie, and that he’d never go back to the priesthood. And he realised too that, when he was totally honest with himself, on those cold nights alone in front of the mirror, Buassi was just a substitute for someone even closer to his heart. Meaning me.

I whip my hand out of his grasp and run into the kitchen. Billy says I look pale as a sheet, and wants to know what’s the matter, but I can’t really speak. I lean against the tray stand, face down, and Billy rubs my shoulders. He asks me, softly, if it was the beardy fella. I nod a yes. He then leans even lower, with his chin just over my shoulder and whispers, Was he the one? I nod another yes. Billy turns me around and guides me gently into his arms, where he gives me the biggest, warmest, life-saving hug that a body could ever want.

O’Culigeen leaves, but scribbles a note on a Border Town napkin before he does. It says that he’ll come back here every day if he has to, until I accept his apology, and until we both get on with our lives. He signs it LOC. Because the Father is gone, and he is finally Luke once more.

I don’t get sad when I think of home any more. One of the fellas behind the Border Town bar is from Dublin too. He’s called Fergus, and he’s been in London for years, so he speaks all funny, with a half-English half-Irish accent. Doesn’t quite say his Ts. But also has real Dub expressions mixed in. Talks a lot about getting ‘To’ally bah’erd’ every night on the booze. Or for fellas that he likes, he says that he’s ‘Goh’ a loh’ a time for that owl bollix!’ Fergus has been like a tour guide for me since I got here. He says that he knows all the cool places to visit in the city, and when I show him my copy of
The Ladybird Book of London
he says that it’s rubbish, and that he knows more than any owl book. And so every weekend he never lets me leave without giving me a list of must-dos to get through in between healing practice and Grace’s Angels, and before the following Friday.

So far, I’ve seen lots of old stones in glass cases, a giant statue of a nude fella with a sling on his shoulder and a tiny mickey, and a huge dinosaur skeleton that takes up nearly the whole inside of this posh old building. That was almost my favourite, and reminded me of
The Valley of Gwangi
, and lying awake in bed at night in Dublin, long before this all began, with the boombox on my chest and my own crackling recording of the film itself – done
straight off the telly – playing away. And me, imagining all the roaring dinosaur bits, even as I could hear Dad’s voice talking to Mam in the background, about the point of buying new school books when the second-hand ones are just as good. The music to the film comes tripping into my head the moment I see the big thing, the brontosaurus, standing there in the hall, looking all huge and couldn’t care less. I remember the cowboys on horseback, and how they chase a tiny tiny horse made of special effects, and how that chase suddenly goes bonkers when they get greedy and go from a tiny horse to a tiny dinosaur to a huge fella, the star of the show, Gwangi himself.

The music is all pulsey. And it goes, Denuhnenuh-denuhne-huh-denu! Nenunu, nenunu, nenunu! I’m humming that madly to myself as I’m walking around the brontosaurus, imagining all sorts of crazy scrapes that would happen if it suddenly came to life. I look around at the kids with their mams, and the kids on school trips, and I wonder if they’re having a hoot. I wonder too if Gary would like it here. Or Saidhbh. Fiona’s already been, and when I try to tell her about it she does a big pretend yawn, and tells me that I’m being a bit obvious. I don’t know what she means, but it must be bad, because Aunty Grace slaps Fiona lightly across the head, and Fiona apologises to me, and asks me some more questions about my day.

Aunty Grace lets me go on these trips on my own. She gets me all the right bus numbers from a timetable in the office, and says that London is safe as houses because there’s so many people watching you. And that the real dangerous places are tiny Irish villages down the country where no one gives a feck if you’re forced to have a baby in a field, or chucked down a well for being a mentaller. She says that all old Irish stories about fairies and banshees are just excuses for a whole lot of baby-killing and murdering that went on when the culchies drank too much poteen and woke up the next morning surrounded by dead bodies and
had to blame it on something. Aunty Grace does a brilliant joke, where she describes a bogman going, Ah Jaysus, I’ve just killed me sister’s illegitimate baby with a pitchfork! It was the fairy-folk that made me do it!

I go to this enormous church too, right next door to the dinosaur skeleton. It’s one of Fergus’s favourite places in London. He says that he goes there to pray, and to be close to God. Whenever the city’s getting him down, he makes a beeline, goes inside, slaps the holy water on his forehead, finds an empty row and just flops down on to his knees. He talks to God, he says, like a long-lost friend. They chat, he says. He tells God about life in Border Town, and how much money he’s making on tips, and how quickly he can make a Singapore Sling. And God just listens, and seems to be very happy with it all. Then Fergus lights a candle, looks at some of the amazing multicoloured windows, and heads back into the world, supercharged, and full of God-glow.

It’s packed when I go. And they’re doing a Latin Mass. I sit right up at the front, and know all the responses, and test the altar boys on their timings during the prayers of the faithful. I say altar boys, but they’re actually altar men. Which is strange to look at, but probably very wise. If anyone made a move on these fellas back in the sacristy, they’d get a right punch in the goolies for their troubles. I wonder if LOC has been here since he arrived in London. Although now that he’s gone all anti-Church and beardy, he probably thinks that God is rubbish and only mini-boyfriends matter. He’s true to his word, though, and comes into work every day during the weekend, and every day of the week too, even when I’m not on. He eats one of two things off the menu – beef chimichanga or salmon fajitas – sits quietly throughout the meal service, in his favourite four-man booth, and then leaves.

Billy kicks up a huge stink on my behalf, and tells Trevor that
he simply must chuck LOC out. But Trevor says that LOC, despite the beard and the dirty trousers, is an ideal customer, and wishes they were all like him, and since Billy won’t explain exactly what it is that he’s got against him, then LOC stays. Every day, or all day, if he likes. This makes Billy furious. He warns Trevor that he might just take matters into his own hands.

My favourite place in London so far is the zoo. And my favourite animals are the chickens in zoo corner. All the other bigger cages are dead busy. And everyone else goes, Wow, look over there at that big gorilla across the big concrete moat!

He’s sitting totally still in the lashing rain, and looking like he’s about to burst out crying or strangle himself with the rope that’s holding up the rubber tyre. Whereas the chickens are part of the petting zoo, which means you can get up close and personal, every day between 11.30 a.m. and 2 p.m.

I’m normally the oldest on the petting tours, but that doesn’t bother me, and usually means that I get the chickens all to myself. You’re supposed to dunk your hand into a load of seedy stuff and let the chickens munch away exclusively from your outstretched hand, but none of the little toddlers with mams beside them want to try. And those few who do usually end up bawling the minute they get an accidental peck on the thumb. So mostly I have them all. I come back three days in a row, and feed them solidly for the whole two and a half hours. There’s no one watching, so I just help myself, again and again, to fistfuls of seedy stuff.

By the third day the chickens are all over me. They go all giddy when they see me walking towards them and start pecking around my laces, hoping that seedy stuff is going to pour freely from me, out of my trousers and my ears, if you peck the right spot. I clock straightaway, however, and before I’ve barely got my first fistful out of the bucket, that one of them’s looking and
acting a bit poorly. She’s a big red fella who’s normally the first in line, but this time she just sits by the wire, tries to stand, takes a step or two, and then falls forward, almost on to her beak, before pushing herself, with a few chickeny gurgles, back into a seated slump. Her head keeps flopping sideways on to her body, and it looks like it takes a lot of effort just to yank it back up into regular chicken position.

I go over to her and she doesn’t move. She doesn’t even peck at me either. I’m at the end of Helen’s crammer course so I seize my chance. There’s a group of toddlers and three smoking mams crowded around the sheep, but otherwise the petting zoo’s pretty much deserted. I crouch down and, with no one looking, my legs slightly apart, I plug my Hara line into the earth and take some fecking huge breaths. I hold my hands far away from Big Red, as I call her, and move them slowly in close to measure her auric field. It’s tiny. She’s very weak. I can feel too her chakras, blurry in outline, and they’re a mess. Some of them not spinning at all. Others turning in the complete wrong direction. I do the final check, which is Third Eye Seeing, which involves another breath and, at the same time, staring at Big Red with my spiritual eye, and reading her field. In this, I decide that her root chakra is damaged, that she’s been frightened almost to death, literally, by some other zoo animal, probably a tiger roaring, and in the process she’s fled from her physical body, hence the root damage, and her inability to move along the Earth, and to exist on the physical plane.

I hold one hand above her head, and the other just below her tail feathers, and I begin to give my first healing to a real-life being. Keeping my Third Eye open, I channel the Earth’s energy and start spinning her chakras again. She’s so small that it’s hard to make out individual chakras, so I just use my will to spin whatever my Third Eye sees, and spin it in the right, clockwise, direction. This is the central act of healing, Helen tells us. We
make it happen by wanting it to happen, believing it can happen, and by harnessing the power of the cosmos to ensure that it happens. As a last ditch, and a safety, she has also taught me how to speak to the healee’s spiritual essence. You have to call your own guides and they address the healee’s spirit for you, but in your words. So, it’s usually Goddy things like, Oh sacred spirit of the soul, I command you, by the powers of the cosmos that flow within me, to bring your chakras back into alignment. I command you to turn. I command you to heal. Only you say them in a deep Goddy voice, like you’ve come from the bible times, or like you’re in the film where the fella who’s playing Moses splits the sea down the middle just long enough for everyone who’s not on horseback to get through.

With these orders, combined with your hands holding the field in place, combined with your ability to will the chakras to turn again, combined with your faith in the goodness of the universe, you can’t lose. And sure enough, within seconds of my last command, Big Red leaps up on to her feet, gives a great big cluck, and charges toward the seed bucket. I shoot to my own feet in disbelief and, dizzy from the sudden head rush, and from the thought that I’m clearly at the height of my powers, I know that I am ready. The time is right. I scatter the seeds all over the ground and head straight for the exit. There’s no time to waste. Saidhbh is next.