The Fields (9 page)

Does it mean the last ‘living’ American president, or just the last president?

Shut up, Donohue, and write the fecker down!

Watch it, Walsh, or I’ll book you in for ten of the best!

You, and your wife!

Next!

More gargle for Team Atrixo, we’re running dry.

No chance, O’Driscoll’s strictly on fumes till his big performance!

Were you referring to an official rebellion, or any local revolt?

What’s the difference?

The peasants are revolting!

Aren’t they always?

But at least I’ll be sober in the morning!

Sober me arse!

Sinead!

Is that Greece or the whole Greek empire?

Give us a break, Daly, fuck sake!

Language, Timothy!

If you must know, the full title is
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
, and not just
ET
!

The extra testicle!

Dream on, Bazzer.

You wouldn’t know what to do with it.

And you would?

Three balls is a lot of gear to carry around in your jocks!

Come on, lads, for the love of God, says O’Culigeen, finally snapping and crumpling a page in temper. Can we please keep it clean!!

The quiz goes dead quiet and serious after this, like school. Mozzo, who’s on Sinead’s team, sneaks over beside me and says that Saidhbh, who still hasn’t appeared since the prick outburst, wants to speak to me upstairs in her room.

What about you? I say, smelling a rat straightaway.

Mozzo shrugs, and says real sad, I dunno, I just think the better man won in the end. He then stands up and slinks out of the room, looking hurt as hell.

Over the next couple of rounds I think about it. And after each shouty question, it makes more and more sense.

Where was
The Quiet Man
filmed?

Just wants a chat.

What was Bing Crosby’s real name?

Like Fiona in the mornings, wants to talk about stuff.

How many brothers in the Kennedy clan?

Talk things through. Yes.

Who wrote the theme tune to
Wanderly Wagon
?

Has heard from Fiona that I’m a good chatter and wants to put me to the test.

What’s Mike Murphy’s wife’s maiden name?

Yes.

I squeeze my way out of the room during the final round, which is O’Culigeen’s very own made-up Biblical Characters questions round. He sees me darting for the door and, in front of everyone, gives me a right sneer.

I see you’re like the bishops, he says, pouting his slitty mouth like an old woman. They’ve heard it all before!

Some of the partygoers give a little polite laugh, to make him feel like he’s funny, but it doesn’t bother me. I don’t even go red. I’ve more important business going on than to be worrying about offending O’Culigeen’s big greasy head.

I get to the top of the stairs and stop at the open linen basket that smells of crunchy underwear and mansweat. I look left and right along the landing, hoping for signs of Saidhbh’s room. A girly sticker on the door, a fancy name-tag, a hunky muscly fella poster, anything. The toilet door on my right swings wide open and some ole codger with a big belly and red eyes comes out, fiddles with his fly, mumbles as he passes me and treads gingerly back down the stairs. For a moment everything from below is quiet. O’Culigeen must be loving the attention, asking the 64,000-dollar question about the name of the tax collector who fell out of the tree or the age of the fella who Jesus brought back from the dead.

I listen carefully in the silence and can clearly hear, coming from the end of the landing, the sound of Saidhbh crying her poor heart out. I follow the noise past the bathroom to the nearest bedroom door, where a postcard of a monkey asleep in the zoo says, My Get Up and Go Just Got Up and Went. I take a deep breath and tap the door gently with my fingertip, just below the postcard. I don’t want to storm in, but I want to let her know that I’m here for her. I give it another tap. Nothing. Just more whining. I give the door a light push and stick half my head, from
the top of my gelled hair right down to the middle of my nose, into the open crack.

The room is dark enough, with a tiny bit of light coming from a small bedside lamp. Even so, I can make out the bed, a chair, a desk, a mirror and a giant
Chicago
poster right next to one of Jesus lying dead in his mother Mary’s arms. But when my eyes get used to it, and when I look, really look, instead of seeing Saidhbh lying on the bed in tears, I see that she’s lying beside the bed and on the floor. And she’s sprawled out underneath Mozzo. He’s all over her, in black, like a vampire, and he’s got his hands rushing around her miniskirt and he’s rubbing her everywhere he can. And her, she’s whining away with her head tilted back like they do in the foreign films when they’re having intercourse.

Straight away, dead quiet, but like a robot, not thinking, I reverse the top half of my head gently out of the open door-crack and tiptoe downstairs again. Still not thinking, not feeling, barely breathing, I sit quietly back on the couch, re-taking my place on Taighdhg’s team. I stare ahead of me into space and try to stop my bottom lip from wobbling and my throat from going tight. O’Culigeen, who’s counting the scores in silence, gives me a dirty look, as if to say, You’re in big trouble, boyo!

I look right back at him, right into the eyes, real cheeky like, nothing to lose, nothing left for me, as if to say, Go on, try it, you bucko priest gobshite!

Mozzo and Saidhbh, smiley and spring-fresh, come prancing into the sitting room, casual as anything, just in time for the sing-song. Sinead Donohue sees them and tries to get a teasing chorus of ‘We know what you’re up to!’ going, but most of the partygoers are only interested in hoovering back John Players and guzzling down Harp with whiskey chasers in order to pluck up enough courage to sing a song in public. O’Culigeen, however,
sober as a judge, gives Saidhbh a real evil eye, as if to say that she’ll be telling him all about it the next time he sees her pretty face in confession. Saidhbh, not bothered, sits down beside me and ruffles my hair like I’m a shaggy dog, while Mozzo leans around her shoulders and gives me an evil wink.

The room has got dead hot since the excitement of the quiz, and all the windows are open to try and stop the sweating. Barry O’Driscoll, down to his shirtsleeves, has taken O’Culigeen’s place in the quizmaster chair, and is tuning Eaghdheanaghdh’s guitar like a real pro – head bowed, no nonsense. Since his team won
Quicksilver
, Taighdhg’s prize is that he gets to sing the first song of the night. Some of the teachers, still giddy from their victory, are shouting up suggestions like, ‘The Fields’! Give us ‘The Fields’! and, ‘Kevin Barry’! and, ‘Galway Bay’! but Taighdhg silences them all with a calm wave of his hand. He strokes his beard like a wise man and then whispers something into O’Driscoll’s ear, who nods and smiles and starts strumming the guitar real fast. Everyone claps or stamps in time to the beat and they’re all waiting with bated breath to see what song Taighdhg has in mind. He lifts his head up high, takes a deep breath and begins.

I’ll tell me Ma when I go home … He’s barely got the first word out when the whole place explodes with claps and cheers. This is a popular choice. I know this song, coz Mam has it on a Clancy Brothers record at home, and there’s a line that goes, ‘They pull me hair and stole me comb,’ and we think it’s dead funny to sing, ‘They pull me hair and pinch me bum!’ Most people join in on the chorus in a very shouty way, ‘She is handsome, she is pretty,’ but I just sit there and give my knee the odd tap. Mozzo and Saidhbh are loving it, and nudge each other when they sing, ‘She is a courting, one, two, three!’

Taighdhg gets a big cheer when he finishes and he does three more songs before it becomes party-piece time. This is where, one by one, each person in the room stands up and sings their own
party-piece. But even though you’re singing on your own everyone usually joins in to help you along, especially if your voice is crap.

Sinead does the first party-piece by singing ‘The Wild Rover’. We learnt this song in school and I know all the lyrics off by heart, but I don’t do anything, don’t join in, don’t clap in the right places or anything. No one notices coz they’re having such a good time, holding their cans of Harp in the air and bellowing, ‘And it’s no, nay, never! DRINK UP YOUR BEER!’ After Sinead, Janet Morrissey, well locked, finds the courage to sing a song I don’t recognise about whiskey. Then one of the old fellas gets everyone going mad with excitement by singing ‘McNamara’s Band’, which we have at home on Perry Como’s
Greatest Hits
.

The party-pieces are going clockwise around the room, and after eleven songs it’s Mozzo’s turn to sing. He makes a big deal about it and says that he’s lost his voice. Then, dramatically, he stands up and pretends to try three different songs in this mock hoarse voice that he’s really putting on, and everyone laughs at him and lets him away with it because he’s been a good sport and made a fool of himself. After Mozzo, Saidhbh gets up and sings ‘Danny Boy’ with her hands folded in the centre of her miniskirt, her silver crucifix shining, and her big brown eyes looking up to the ceiling as if she’s singing to someone upstairs on the floor of her bedroom. Taighdhg whispers that Saidhbh is head of the Mhuire ni Bheatha choir, and when she gets to the high bit in the middle she’s probably the only one in the room who hits the right note. Everyone else together sounds like a mouldy bag of cats getting electrocuted. ’Tis I’ll be heeeeeeeaaaarrrrrrrrrr!

When she finishes Saidhbh gets a massive round of applause, but without cheers because the mood has got a bit sad after such a brilliant performance. Taighdhg Donohue, with red bloodshot eyes and sweat pouring off his forehead, turns to me, deadly serious, and says, Come on, Master Finnegan, out with it. I freeze
for a second and, like a gobshite, I think about singing ‘Tainted Love’, but it wouldn’t suit the new mood. The only other song I know that’s as sad as ‘Danny Boy’ is called ‘The Fields of Athenry’, or ‘The Fields’ for short. But ‘The Fields’ is a Rebel Song, and I’m not sure if this is the right time to start singing Rebel Songs. I know this song word for word coz I’ve written it out, the whole thing, seven times in my jotter for making fun of it during civics. Me and Gary Connell kept singing, ‘You stole Trevelyn’s cornflakes’ instead of his ‘corn’ and our teacher Mr Graham said we were making a mockery of our sacred past.

I’m standing up, looking down at Saidhbh and Mozzo on the couch, their hands hidden and holding under the cushion, and, furious, I decide to give it a shot. I sing it as best I can and try not to go off-key like Paul Garvy in school whose voice has been breaking since he was ten. The song is about a fella and a girl in the old days singing to each other from different sides of a prison wall. He’s inside coz he stole corn, not cornflakes, from the landlord and he’s about to be sent to Australia for his troubles, and she’s outside saying what a mess everything is.

I can tell straight away that this is a good choice. Coz from the minute I sing, ‘By a lonely prison wall’ in my high Aled Jones voice, everyone goes all hushed and serious, like they’re in Mass. The song works a treat, with the whole place joining in the chorus and swaying from side to side like they’re at a real concert, moaning softly about how annoying it is when you’re madly in love with some youngfella and he gets taken away from you and you’re left down the bog with nothing but stoney mucky fields for company. I’m cruising my way through it, note perfect, and I get to the last verse. It’s the bit where the youngfella, getting angry now, sings back across the wall about how he actually did nothing wrong when you think about it, except fight the Brits and try and whip up some grub for his starving family, but because of that he’ll never be able to see his kid again, and that’s
some whopping injustice. And with that Kent Foster’s mam, Joy, stands up and walks right out of the room, and right out of the house altogether, not even stopping to get her coat or say her goodnights. This could be either because her husband was English and she didn’t like the bit about fighting the Brits, or because her son got skin cancer and died, and she too has to face the injustice of never being able to see him again, or it could be both. I’m not sure which, but I stop singing and look around at the door that Joy’s slammed behind her.

Don’t mind that! bellows one of the old fellas guzzling Powers over at the window sill. Don’t stop for that wan! says another. Get on with it!

I look at Taighdhg, who nods at me, and I finish the last verse and chorus. I don’t get much of a clap at the end, coz everyone’s kind of thinking about Joy Foster, but some of the women say that I did myself proud, as if I’ve just won a boxing match.

After that, it’s as if ‘The Fields of Athenry’ has opened up the Rebel Song floodgates. They all come pouring out. Now that Joy Foster’s gone and there’s no one with English relatives left in the room, it’s full steam ahead. Eaghdheanaghdh Donohue opens his mouth and whips the crowd up into a sweaty frenzy with ‘God save Ireland cry the heroes’, then everyone leaps to their feet in excitement when Taighdhg’s beardy teacher friend sings about the IRA making the Brits ‘run like hell away’. It’s totally mad, and everyone’s dropping their drinks and looking at each other with wild giddy faces, like they can’t believe what’s going on, can’t believe what they’re doing, like their own bodies are out of control, singing about the IRA burger-bombers as if they’re super heroes. And loving it too!

England prepare to fight or die, la da da da da, true Irish soldiers are here, la da dada da, poor weeping Ireland no more, la di da di da, our day will come again!

Now, during all this O’Culigeen has been hovering behind the couch, trying to get himself picked for his party-piece. Thing is, he was originally sitting over by the door that Joy Foster slammed, but the minute the party-pieces began going clockwise around the room he knew that he’d be last to sing, and by then we’d all be bored or worse, the party-pieces might’ve fizzled out altogether. Finally he gets so desperate that he muscles in through the crowd and perches on the couch armrest and gives Taighdhg the eye during one of the other teachers’ version of ‘Turn My Plough into a Rifle and the Brits Will Pay in Blood’. When the song finishes and we’re clapping and getting a bit bored, Taighdhg asks us all to pray silence and give a warm welcome to a man of the cloth, a quizmaster, and a bloody good gentleman – Fr Luke O’Culigeen!