The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) (17 page)

The other side of the house lapped it up of course but plenty of our own crowd as well. He’s Juan too, some of the vulgar ones said, takes Juan to know Juan, cheap shots like that, but I’ll bet you anything even the holiest of the holiest on our side had a good sniff of satisfaction to themselves when they were going over their rosary beads. It’s the News of the World gene in everybody, that’s what it is, this craving for the gossip. Next to love it’s what makes life worth living I suppose.

When I think back, John Pius Allbright was a pillar of the church from ever I remember. Actually when I was about ten I used to think he owned the cathedral gates, the ones at the bottom of Creggan Hill I’m talking about. You’d see him there every Sunday in his three piece suit with his big buck teeth like Horatius at the bridge stopping drivers getting into the cathedral grounds if they didn’t have a pass.

I remember the time I got a car first I applied for a pass because Mammy was acting up about her legs and said she couldn’t walk the two hundred yards to the cathedral but no, John Pius wouldn’t give me one, said there were a limited number of parking places in the grounds and our case wasn’t deserving enough but I could park round by Great James’ Street and bring Mammy in through the sacristy if I wanted. I didn’t really care because that way was just as handy but she said Maud told her John Pius only gave passes to his friends so I challenged him one day, on principle you understand, and he’s blanked me ever since. I’m not even sorry for his wife because she’s a prick too. At least there’s no children. But you want to see the cathedral grounds now since he’s gone. Things have gone to pot, who gets parking seems to be down to natural selection, the survival of the thickest you could say.

+++++

I got a letter from Pearse last week.

Tell us this, did you ever wonder how in hell Ireland turned out so many great writers? Well that’s it. I’ve just said it, they turned them out. On their ear. Bloody well chased them. I don’t think there’s another place in the world celebrates mediocrity the way Ireland does.

Anyway I’m on the wagon again, back with AA and all. I’m going to whack it this time. You know what else is wrong with the ones in old Oireland Jerry? They’re hooked on the colonial yoke, that’s what, it’s the serf thing, minds frozen in aspic. I’m not counting you and the other dreamers I saw taking on the cops that day I was leaving, absolutely not, you and them are deemed extremists by the high and wise, but sure you know that anyway don’t you?

Even the ones over the border in the so-called Republic of Oireland that are supposed to be shot of the Brits can’t get enough of the queen and of course their excuse for a parliament in Dublin is nothing but old wine in new bottles, did you ever hear them talking? The rubbish? And you know what it is? Their minds were that long in jail they’re like a man when he’s let out after whatever number of years gets all jittery and goes and starts rattling at the prison gate to be let back in.

Or you know what it’s like? It’s like those sad cases that would do anything nearly to get the shite beaten out of them by some dominatrix. God knows who our fellow countrymen would get to abuse them if the miracle ever happened and they got browned off with Queen Lizzie and Holy Mother Church.

You’ll have to excuse the rant Jerry boy but it’s only when you get out of that place that you really begin to see it for what it is and then the anger wells up. By the way I take it you escaped the attentions of the Stormont delegates at scenic Burntollet? Somehow I couldn’t see you letting yourself get a second dose after Duke Street. More important, are you getting ass? Because nobody deserves it more than you. What about that mad Marxist that got you batoned? She’s probably the only thing that’ll save you from Rome. Then hand in your notice and get her to come to Manchester with you. No security of employment here as far as I can see but sure security is the enemy of progress.

Take it easy,

Pearse

No address. How does he expect me to write back?

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So we’re living here in sin next to Mickey MacTamm’s shacked up in the shadow of Saint Eugene’s. And the clergy are on to me, I can see it in their eyes, how their eyes avoid mine. At the time of writing they haven’t made a move but I suppose they’d be within their rights to sack me for giving scandal, Catholic teacher in Saint Ignatius’s Primary School dragging their name in the mud and so on. Maybe when the bishop holds his next monthly meeting of the parish priests of the diocese over there in the parochial house and they’re shooting the crap about this and that, maybe then the subject of Jeremiah Coffey will come up.

Even if they decide to keep me on rather than airing Ignatius Loyola’s smear-ridden linen in public I know I’m never going to get promotion but I’ve got Aisling which is more than all the heads and deputy heads in the world put together could ever even fantasize about in a million years. Or the priests and bishops in their finery and fancy cars. Or the pope and his cardinals with their vassals and serfs running round tending them hand and foot.

And Mammy? Mammy will just have to lump it. I know she’s down on her knees half the day and night and she’s never out of the cathedral lighting candles to Saint Monica that her son will do an Augustine. No chance of that, not for now anyway Lord. Maybe if I get a sickener, pick up some kind of infection from Frances, I’ll turn out to be Augustine Mark 2 but somehow I doubt it. She should be grateful actually, Mammy that is, she’s got Majella McAllister staying with her now. Remember her? The Majella that French-kissed me at Maud’s wake? The same girl would have stayed for nothing because she’s been lusting after me since we were about nine and she’d do anything for me. I’m talking literally here.

“Five pounds a week all right Majella?” I asked her.

“That’s too much Jeremiah. You’re far too generous.” Her big brown heifer’s eyes were eating me up the two minutes I was standing at her door making the offer. Invited me in and all but the last time I was in there she pulled my trousers down and I ran home crying. So I wasn’t going to take the chance. She’s a very strong girl, muscles on her like, who do you call her, Boudicca, be all right maybe if you were desperate.

“When could you start?”

“Anytime you want Jeremiah. I’m on my own now since Daddy died and I’ll be glad of the company. I’d start tonight if you wanted.”

I’ll say she would. She knows the score about me and Aisling but her attitude is she’s prepared to wait. In the meantime she’s keeping my bed warm. Mammy put her in the back room but she only stayed there the first night because the bed was too lumpy she said. So now she’s in my room. It occurred to me as soon as I walked away from her door actually that she looked like one of those ones that would be right and thorough with the cleaning and dusting and all and it wouldn’t take her long to ferret out the black plastic bags with God knows how many pairs of dreamspattered underpants and three pajama bottoms if not more in them. And the Woolworth’s bag behind the bath. And I don’t think I ever got rid of the pair of corduroy trousers I ruined with that girl from Bishop Street. Wherever they are, too late now. The whole thing’s sort of embarrassing but no doubt she’ll put them to good use.

So for now anyway, routine. Aisling won’t get married but we do everything a married couple does near enough — except for the Malone Road and the cat of many tales that is, both of which look as if they’re going to go on awhile yet — plus I’ve turned into a bit of a community activist, out there trying to get the rioters to go home, real do-gooder, scared I’m going to get my head in my hand some day if I look at them sideways though.

And then there’s the other kind of fear which is far worse. Juan Antonio’s spirit is still there but it struggles sometimes and I’m asking myself how much longer I can go on believing there’s no such thing as that kind of mortal sin as long as it’s done for love. The fear comes out of the dark when I waken up in the middle of the night certain times and think, What if I died before the morning, where would I go, does every penny of this not have to be paid back? And then I touch the brown scapular I’ve been wearing since the Carmelites gave the retreat in May and I feel better. Aisling’s okay about it, amazingly okay actually, but she says I shouldn’t wear it in bed, it would serve me right if I got strangled making love with it on. And where would you be then? she says.

I wish I had her certainty about hell not being there. How is it people are so different? I can hardly stand the sight of some of the priests now but I still need their rites and their penances. I take the partial indulgence granted by Pope Benedict the fifteenth to those who devoutly kiss the scapular with a pinch of salt but I believe the virgin Mary’s promise to Saint Simon that whosoever dies wearing it shall not suffer eternal fire and also her revelation to Pope John the twenty-second that all who wear it will be released from purgatory on the first Saturday after death. And then sometimes I’m thinking, wise up, there are no Saturdays in purgatory (only Mondays Aisling says), these things should have gone out with Santa Claus, you’re a grown man for Christ sake.

But old fears die hard and this is going to take me awhile. In the meantime I say to myself that life without Aisling would be a worse hell than anything the devil could serve up. And if there’s such a thing as heaven on earth then this is it. Happy daze.

About two weeks after the first edition of
The Wake (and What Jeremiah Did Next)
was published a very good friend called me on the phone and said “Colm, why didn’t you just tell it the way it was? I was there for most of it and you’ve played about with the truth.” When I protested that I had more or less told the truth he persisted. “The best writing is supposed to be about truth,” he told me. “Not more, not less, but the exact truth.”

I felt like doing a Pontius Pilate on him and saying “What is truth?” but that wouldn’t have been fair. So instead I quoted the philosopher Francis Bacon (without mentioning his name of course) and said “You know what I think? Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.” There was a pause before he replied “OK. Maybe there’s something in that.”

More than something. Everything that’s important in writing fiction is there in Bacon’s words. Non-fiction tries to use fact to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.

One more quote before I go. In an essay titled
Witness: the Inward testimony
the great South African author Nadine Gordimer wrote in reference to the tragic events of 11 September 2001: “Terror pounced from the sky and the world made witness to it.” She contemplated the media coverage of the felling of the twin towers, the difference between the reporter’s job, the pundit’s job and that of the writer. She continued: “Meaning is what cannot be reached by the immediacy of the image, the description of the sequence of events, the methodologies of expert analysis. The writer sees among the ruins different (and more) things than others. (S)he sees what is really taking place.” I, Colm Herron, have tried hard to see.

I suppose I should end by reiterating what I wrote in my introduction: namely, that I am Jeremiah and all of the other characters in the book are real people. I may have taken liberties with one or two of them and for that I ask their forgiveness. My only defence is that truth sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next)
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