‘Wooooe na beh-hee,’ Uncle Johnny would intone, taking slow strides with his thin legs, the soles of his boots scraping musically off the dried-muck surface of the lane.
And the animals would mosey along, their hooves drumming, their tails swishing ineffectually at the flies that buzzed around them. Sometimes, to the children’s amusement, one of the cows would release – as it moved – a dripping of shit, some of which would stick to the rear shanks or hind legs, depending on how the line of its fall intersected with the swaying walking movement.
And the progress of the procession would be far too slow for the children. They were running on ahead and doubling back, getting involved in side issues, pestering Uncle Johnny with endless questions, which he benevolently ignored, or answered tersely after long pauses, as though he didn’t speak the language, which he didn’t in so far as it was their language.
When they finally got to the farmhouse, the animals would turn undirected up the lane and head into the yard. It delighted Alexander that such brutes could know the way.
‘If they got lost, Uncle Johnny, would they be able to make it back home?’ he asked, thinking of Lassie and carrier pigeons. ‘Like, if somebody took them in a truck and dropped them in Athlone, would they know how to get back?’
‘Sure, why would a person do that?’
Uncle Johnny milked the two Friesians by hand in the barn. Helena wasn’t interested in this, but Alexander liked to watch.
The two cows were secured in their places with heavy old chains that had been mortared into the wall, probably when the building itself was erected. It surprised Alexander that this would be necessary, since the animals were apparently so docile.
Johnny used a three-legged stool to support himself. He didn’t sit on it exactly. He wedged one leg of it into the uneven earthen floor, and pressed his bony backside against the seat. Leaning forward, he grabbed two of the cow’s teats and began pulling on them rapidly, rhythmically. The practised speed of these movements was astonishing when first witnessed, because Johnny was so phlegmatic in everything else he did. In milking, he slipped back into the hurry of youth.
The wires of milk shot out from the teats at different angles, depending on the precise direction of the pull; made a thin ping sound off the base and sides of the galvanised-iron bucket. As the body of warm frothy milk accumulated, the pitch of the ping sound dropped; the available surface area of metal declined, till soon all the impacts were milk on milk, and Alexander had to concentrate to hear the sound at all, with the competing creaking of the stool and the animal’s heavy breathing. She turned and looked back at him with her big olive eyes, examining this new feature in her environment. And the fleas circled her face like crazy electrons.
A piece of dried shit fell from the animal’s hind leg into the milk. Johnny reached in and picked it out, tossed it away. Alexander noticed that tiny particles of this dingleberry had broken off and remained in the foam, floating, like a sprinkling of cinnamon powder on a mug of hot bedtime milk.
‘Can I have a go milking the cow, Uncle Johnny?’
Johnny laughed.
‘Get in there,’ he said, staying in position on the stool, but making way for the boy to come between him and the cow. ‘Grab on and pull hard.’
Alexander tentatively closed his fingers around one of the teats and pulled on it. Nothing happened, which surprised him: he expected the milk to come flowing out the way water issues from a tap that has been turned.
‘You have to squeeze and pull,’ said Johnny. ‘Give her a good squeeze.’
But Alexander was afraid to squeeze the tit, afraid he might offend the animal and that she would kick him in retaliation.
Without further conversation, Johnny shoved him out of the way to continue the work. Alexander was not used to such gruffness from an adult. He didn’t question or criticise the behaviour at the point when it occurred, but years later, from a more grown-up perspective, he thought that he ought on that occasion to have been given more time and better instruction.
The christening is already underway when Alexander arrives at the church. He deliberately arrives late for this sort of thing, and for other sorts of things, in order to minimise his exposure to free-form mingling and small talk. He would gladly visit the dentist for a filling rather than submit to ten minutes of unstructured standing around before a christening or wedding. In fact, he quite enjoys the dentist (although he almost never goes) because the attention is concentrated on him and the opportunities for chat are strictly limited.
His footsteps are loud on the church’s tiled floor. He leans forward, shifting the weight from his heels to the balls of his feet, and does the crouching walk of a person arriving late for a ceremony and wishing not to disturb, or signalling a wish not to disturb. Not that anyone is looking at him. They are all facing the other way, focused vaguely on the priest, an inoffensive middle-aged man in his ritual frock, standing in front of the altar being informal and intimate, 1970s’ modern.
‘And it is right and important,’ he says gently, ‘that we welcome these new souls into our families and communities, into the Church.’
There are evidently two christenings taking place, with each group occupying a few pews on either side.
As he proceeds along the centre aisle, Alexander notices Danny’s dignified profile in the front pew on the right-hand side, then Aoife’s bright hair, then other familiar figures. He slips into the last occupied pew, where there is space on the outside. He finds that he is next to Vladimir Foster, whom he did not recognise at first glance because Vlad’s head is entirely shaved, a new look for him.
Vlad gives him a wink.
‘Good to see you, man,’ Alexander whispers. Vlad is someone he is always genuinely pleased to see, although it helps that the doses he gets of Vlad’s company tend to be small and well separated. Vlad is refreshingly implausible. ‘Did you come across especially for this?’ Alexander continues.
‘No, we’re back for Christmas,’ Vlad replies, ‘which I’m taking very seriously this year. Say hi to Mary-Lou.’
Vlad sits back in the seat, which, given his large size, in fact doesn’t make much of a difference to Alexander’s visibility of the young woman on Vlad’s other side. Alexander leans forward to have a look at her, reaching out for a handshake.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t shake hands,’ she says in a delicious Scottish accent.
Mary-Lou is a plum, ripe. He wants to fuck her immediately. Her skin is luminous, her hair peach-coloured, her cheeks full, her lips large and finely drawn, protruding. She is wearing ripped jeans and a couple of strapped tops, plus a black bra.
‘I don’t have any communicable diseases,’ Alexander points out. ‘At least, none that I’m aware of.’
‘It’s more of a religious thing,’ Vlad explains with a smirk.
Alexander nods in understanding and refocuses his efforts on the proceedings, switching into church mode, which he recalls automatically from his childhood: the outward aspect of devoted attention, masking complete indifference.
The people on the other side of the church are salt-of-the-earth types, the men scrubbed and besuited, red-faced, respectful, the women all flowery and frilly. These – Alexander thinks – are the kinds of people who still go to mass every Sunday, if there remains anyone in Dublin under forty who falls into that category, excluding Poles.
It is difficult for him to generalise in a similar way about Danny’s crowd, which he clearly belongs to in some sense, although it doesn’t feel like that from the inside. There are fewer people Alexander recognises in this group than there would have been at a similar event five years ago. Not having seen most of them for a while, he picks them out now in their church condition and finds them altered, like variations on familiar themes: grave, vacant, dressed-up, older, different in their faces and bodies, accomplished, insecure.
He imagines them on the whole to be a more inter
esting lot than those across the aisle, hitting higher peaks of education, wealth, income, cultural refinement, but also lower depths of alcoholism, depression, vanity, interpersonal cruelty. If he had to go on a mission to Mars with one of the groups, which would he choose? Danny’s group. Not simply because he knows them. On the contrary, that would be a negative point. Perhaps because Vlad’s new girlfriend might defect to him and take his cock into her beautiful mouth. Would that be a good enough reason? Yes. Why not? What would be a better reason? Although it must be a bit of a long shot.
The priest is calling on the parents and godparents to come forward to the dipping bowl with the relevant offspring. In the front pew, Danny and Aoife, still seated, are exchanging aggressive whispers.
Pimply, bespectacled Jasper tugs on his mother’s arm. His
shoulder length hair is greasy. He is wearing a crumpled suit and shirt, but no tie.
‘Is Hugo not coming?’ he audibly asks his mother. ‘The sonofabitch. I knew he’d spoil my christening.’
‘Shssh,’ says Aoife. ‘The best thing you can do now is shut up.’
This exchange gives rise to gasps and murmuring on both sides of the church. The priest is serenely looking the other way.
Danny glances back anxiously at the front door, then scans the rows of his supporters behind him. He rises gracefully, steps out of the pew with his back to the altar, and walks purposefully down the aisle, fiddling with his mobile as he goes. He stops next to Alexander, drops to his hunkers and leans in confidentially, one arm wrapping itself around Alexander’s shoulders, the other resting on the back of the next pew. Alexander finds that he doesn’t wish to be embraced in affectation right now.
‘We’ve got a problem on the Hugo front,’ Danny says in church whisper.
‘I can see that. He’s not here.’
‘His plane was delayed in Heathrow. He’s on his way in a taxi now, but we can’t wait.’
Vlad leans in from the other side.
‘Mary-Lou and I will do it for fifty euro, so long as there are no actual long-term duties or expenses involved.’
‘Piss off, Vlad; this is serious. Alex, I need you to step into the breach here. Kitty is doing godmother in any case. Will you do godfather?’
This is unexpected. Like a suddenly wounded animal, Alexander looks around for an explanation. He spots Kitty in the front row, looking back at him with her toothy grin. Kitty is Aoife’s friend. She has always been very pleasant to Alexander, although he feels he hardly knows her. She is perpetually, ridiculously cheerful. Perhaps because she has buck teeth. It occurs to him that the reason Danny has singled him out is that he is sitting in a convenient place.
‘In your own time,’ Danny says rather snidely.
Alexander winces in discomfort, angrily shrugs off Danny’s arm. His body expresses fury, but he doesn’t immediately trust the appropriateness of the reaction, which puts him in a state of confusion. In his mind an image forms of tiny kittens lifted by a human hand into a hessian sack, for dropping into the river. Alexander has malfunctioned. He stares blindly ahead, smarting with pain.
‘You just have to dip their heads in the water,’ Mary-Lou says kindly.
‘Yeah,’ adds Vlad. ‘And if Jasper starts to struggle, it’s time to let him up.’
‘I’ll take this as a yes,’ Danny concludes.
The godparents and parents from both sides stand in a large semi-circle around the bowl, with the priest positioned magnanimously at the centre.
Little Merlin is howling, apparently agonised. Kitty continues to grin, as genetically predetermined, but anxiety is apparent in her eyes and in the jerky movements with which she attempts to settle the infant. She makes a high-pitched shssshing sound, which Alexander finds excruciating. He has been taught never to shsssh a horse, because it drives them crazy. One must say wooooe instead. They like that low-pitched wooooe, as did Uncle Johnny’s two cows. Alexander – recovered now – thinks that one should say wooooe to the baby, but doesn’t feel this is the moment to introduce the idea.
Jasper does not howl. He is composed, cool even.
In the pew, Alexander hadn’t been able to see Julia, but from his position now at the front of the church, facing the congregation, he has a good perspective on her, sitting in the third row. He discreetly avoids eye contact, which allows him to study her.
‘Do you reject Satan and all his evil works?’ asks the priest.
‘Yes,’ says the congregation, half-heartedly.
Alexander moves his lips, but emits no sound. He thinks: Why pick on Satan? Why not reject something really odious, like Brown Thomas’ department store or Sky Sports.
With a creak, followed by a screech as it jams against the floor tiles, the main door of the church swings open and Hugo Strongboy strides in at a good pace, coat-tails flying.
‘Hold the water,’ he commands, as he marches up the centre aisle. ‘The godfather is here. Sorry for the delay. The traffic was outrageous.’
The priest turns quickly to the Carter group. ‘This isn’t a fucking barbecue,’ he whispers in Danny’s ear.
Danny smiles lamely, shrugging as if to say that all this has nothing to do with him.
Alexander leans across Aoife and whispers in Danny’s other ear.
‘If you so much as even think of replacing me with Hugo, I will personally kick your lights in right here and now in the middle of the show.’
‘Why are people always threatening me with violence?’ Danny asks.
‘Remember that I paid for the abortion,’ Alexander reminds him in a low mutter.
‘So did Hugo.’
‘Well, I was first.’
Hugo is almost upon them now. Danny walks toward him to intercept, his carriage ridiculously good: back straight, shoulders squared, chin upright. This is a clear sign that he is under pressure or pretending not to be drunk. He holds his two arms out to Hugo as if for a hug, but instead manfully clasps him at the upper arms.
‘Hugo, I’m sorry. I thought you weren’t going to make it. We had to ask Alex to stand in.’
‘My word is my bond,’ Hugo says. ‘I told you I’d be here. I’ve flown in specially.’
‘Can we please continue with the ceremony?’ the priest calls out.
‘It’s scandalous,’ an old dear among the Catholics complains loudly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Well, if it hasn’t happened yet . . . ,’ says Hugo, signalling that he wants to switch places with Alexander.
Danny is blocking the way.
‘Let’s just finish what we’re doing here and work it out later,’ Danny suggests winningly, with the implication that the mere details of the ceremony are unimportant.
Hugo’s large jockish head jerks back in shock, but he evaluates the situation quickly and nods. With an upward flourish of the arms, he indicates that he is retiring from the pitch, and moves to sit in the precise place Alexander previously occupied, beside Vlad.
Danny returns to the altar, his posture even more erect than on the outward leg of the journey.
‘As I was saying,’ continues the priest with fresh equanimity. ‘Do you reject Satan and all his works?’
‘You bet we do,’ says Alexander.
In the kitchen at Danny’s place, in a loose uneasy conversational group, Alexander is drinking too much red wine. He has nothing to say to anyone in these sort of setting. Usually, he falls into sullen muteness, or forces himself to become involved by making boring comments and asking searching questions. Whichever the emerging pattern, Alexander expects that the pleasure of his company will send others fleeing at the earliest opportunity. In fact, if he could, he would gladly flee his own company, which essentially is what he accomplishes through getting shitfaced.
‘Pretty good grub,’ says Vlad in a surprised tone, or perhaps just sounding surprised because his mouth is
full of chicken and rice and he has to contort his voice to get the words out through the food. He gives Alexander a perfect view of the chewing process, the mush of crushed rice grains, the strands of chicken sticking to his darkly filled teeth, the traces of yellow curry sauce on the wet red granulated surface of his tongue.
How does Vlad do it? Alexander ponders. How does he always end up with a beautiful young woman at his side?
‘It was a good idea to use paper plates,’ says Hugo.
‘That’s only because they’re too lazy to wash the dishes,’ Paul interjects, nodding venomously to the far end of the kitchen where Danny and Aoife, with a group around them, are working together in remarkable harmony, ladling out the food.
Paul’s comment elicits a weak laugh from the others.
‘I’m not joking,’ he continues, a rising tone of indignation entering his voice. ‘I was out here a couple of weeks ago and the place was stinking, absolutely disgusting. Things were so bad, they were running out of places to put the dirty dishes, so they had started to put them back into the presses, still filthy.’
Alexander wonders: How filthy can dishes be? A bit of furry mould. A few crusty smears of gravy. Why does Paul get so worked up about these things? Alexander himself doesn’t put dirty dishes back into the cupboards, but it strikes him as an innovative solution.
‘What harm is a little congealed tomato ketchup?’ he asks, but the timing and confidence of his delivery are poor, and the comment – even to himself – sounds odd rather than witty.
‘That won’t do,’ says Vlad, clear in the mouth at this moment. ‘You’re part of the family now. You’ll have to intervene to ensure that your godsons’ living conditions meet hygiene standards.’
‘Hugo’s the godfather,’ Alexander responds decisively, with a deferential nod to the man in question, who is maintaining a regal silence as he concentrates on his food. ‘I was just standing in, in loco godparentis.’
Hugo looks at him shrewdly. ‘You signed the book,’ he says.
‘Even if I am the godfather,’ Alexander continues, ‘I’m responsible only for the spiritual well-being. They can live in dirt, once their souls are clean.’
Being Alexander Page 16
