After the Lockout

by Darran McCann

  ‘Ah, Stanislaus, ’tis great to see you, boy. It must be twenty years.’

  ‘Neither of us was in purple, at any rate. You haven’t come all the way from Killarney in the motorcar, have you?’

  ‘God Almighty no, that would have killed me. We were met at the station by that contraption.’

  ‘Long old journey.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Stanislaus, the doctor said I was mad to come at all. But when the boss calls, you have to come running, don’t you? What’s it all about anyway? I felt sure you’d be the man would know.’

  ‘I haven’t been in the know for a long time now, Johnny.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ He paused. ‘It’s fine and well you’re looking now though. You’re well off out of it. Heading up a Diocese, it’s all politics.’

  ‘It is nice to have time to spend with my books.’

  ‘That last paper of yours was something else. You always know how to stick it into the liberals.’

  They went in the massive mahogany doors of the Synod Hall. The insistent rumble of talk and chatter tumbled from the Synod chamber down the vast, sweeping staircase, and Stanislaus and Johnny started up the mountain of stairs towards it. ‘Take my arm, Your Grace,’ said Johnny’s young curate. Stanislaus informed Father Daly with a scowl that he needed no help in ascending this staircase that he had ascended a thousand times before, and started to move up, passing beneath the portraits of the archbishops. St Patrick himself. St Malachy half a millennium later. The Penal-era martyrs another half-millennium after that. They stopped on the landing halfway up for a breather, Johnny needed to sit down on the stairs a moment, beneath the bust of Blessed Oliver Plunkett. Stanislaus recalled once tearing strips off a young priest who had joked that it was a funny thing to commemorate someone who had been beheaded with a bust. Below, two men deep in conversation were starting up the stairs. Though he had not met either personally, Stanislaus recognised them as the new Bishop of Clogher, Patrick McKenna, and Edward Mulhern, recently installed as Bishop of Dromore. They were impossibly young-looking, neither man looked fifty, and they bounded up the stairs. Johnny greeted them as they arrived on the landing. ‘You know Ned and Pat, don’t you, Stanislaus?’ he said.

  ‘Bishop Benedict, isn’t it? Pleasure to meet you,’ said Mulhern, offering his hand.

  ‘Congratulations on your elevation. If you do half as well as Henry O’Neill, Dromore will be in good hands,’ Stanislaus said.

  Dromore was a proper Diocese, not a titular, semi-mythical one. Not like Stanislaus’s well-known Episcopal See of Parthenia. Parthenia. A fifth-century outpost in pre-Islamic Algeria from which Christendom had been driven, not by the Mohammedans but the sands of the Sahara. Mick Logue had recommended it to Stanislaus, and Stanislaus had often wondered if it had been his intention to mock. He wondered if young Mulhern – Ned, apparently – knew that Henry O’Neill had been a surprise appointment to Dromore, that everyone had said Stanislaus’s name was carved on it. He probably did. Stanislaus had a mortifying memory of taking a day trip to Newry Cathedral, just to acquaint himself with his new surroundings. But Henry O’Neill had been given the nod because Henry O’Neill was younger. That was the Cardinal’s explanation. Now young Henry O’Neill was dead.

  ‘You’ve come a long way, Bishop Mangan,’ said McKenna.

  ‘Two days. Seven changes, sixty-one stops, and I still don’t know what this is all about,’ Johnny replied.

  ‘I heard that it might be something to do with …’ Ned began, but stopped when he saw Pat O’Donnell and Charlie McHugh, Bishops of Raphoe and Derry respectively, coming up the stairs behind them.

  ‘Lads, you can’t block the landing like this. Let’s get a move on here. You’re the last to arrive and the Cardinal will be here in a minute,’ said O’Donnell. O’Donnell was Logue’s favourite, it was no secret he was being groomed for the big job. Everyone ascended in silence like scolded schoolboys. At the top of the stairs Stanislaus noticed Johnny Mangan was looking unwell. He put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder. ‘Are you feeling all right there, Johnny?’

  ‘A hundred per cent, boy,’ he said, but his creaking and wheezing gave the lie to the brave face.

  ‘Hurry up there, we can’t keep the Cardinal waiting,’ said O’Donnell.

  ‘You know, there was a time in this country when priests were expected to show a bit of courtesy and compassion,’ Stanislaus snapped. O’Donnell’s first reaction seemed to be irritation, but he buttoned his lip and relented. Stanislaus and Johnny went inside when they were good and ready.

  The wide spaces, stained-glass windows and high, baroque ceiling of the great Synod Hall reverberated with the sound of important men used to hearing their own voices and unused to being challenged for attention. Perhaps a hundred old acquaintances, friends and colleagues greeted one another with excitement and curiosity. Chairs were set out in neat rows but no-one was sitting down yet. Deans, canons and monsignors were present, but only bishops wore purple sashes around their waists and Stanislaus had worn his for the occasion. Ireland had forty-nine bishops, from archbishops to ordinaries, auxiliaries, co-adjutors, titulars and bishops emeritus, and it seemed a great many of them were present. Stanislaus was disturbed to see several men in purple that he didn’t know. Once, it had been his business to know men such as these inside-out.

  Everyone sat as the Cardinal entered. He wore full scarlet regalia, even his galero, and nodded here and there to familiar faces as he made his way forward. He did not see Stanislaus as he passed. The Cathedra had been removed from the sanctuary to the Synod Hall, and he sat in it now, facing towards the assembly. The ranks of black and purple sat in hushed deference for the only man in Ireland entitled to wear red.

  ‘I thank God to see so many old friends and brothers in Christ. I thank you all for gathering here today,’ he began. ‘Recently I joined with the other cardinals and the Holy Father in Rome to discuss the crisis in Russia, of which you will all be aware. Bolshevist victory there now seems certain, and therefore Russian withdrawal from the war is inevitable. But worse: the Bolshevists propose to make Russia atheist. They aim to wreak holocaust on the Faith, and they would seek to spread this evil message worldwide. It is the view of the Holy Father that this represents a threat to mankind’s very spiritual essence. This evil ideology is the most grave threat the Faith has faced since Luther. Furthermore, it is the opinion of the Holy Father and the College of Cardinals that this country, Ireland, is the most likely to be next.’

  Around the room a hubbub grew up and took a moment or two to die down. Mick could play an audience like a fiddle, and he knew it. Even in the Conclave Mick Logue probably regarded himself as the smartest man in the room. He might even have been right. He continued in a sonorous register spiced with the right amount of piquancy.

  ‘The Holy Father wants to know what is going on in Ireland. The country is overrun with subversive groups. Some are openly revolutionist, others like the so-called trade unions or the Gaelic Athletic Association operate under more benign guises. Men like Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev are merely the Russian answer to James Larkin and James Connolly – of whom people speak blasphemously as a martyr. Everywhere in our country, dangerous men meet in shadows and plan our destruction. We are the front line in a war for the souls of man.’

  The Cardinal signalled to O’Donnell, who handed him a newspaper which he held up for all to see. The blood drained from Stanislaus’s face. It was the Armagh Guardian.

  ‘Here is a story about a parish very near here. A criminal using Church property to deliver a blasphemous oration. This is a self-confessed communist and atheist, yet the people of his parish revere him because he took up arms against the English. Now, our day of reckoning with England will come soon, and whether it brings Home Rule or something else, men of the worst calibre are readying themselves to seize the spoils. In every parish of every Diocese lurk men as dangerous as this fellow, men who will attempt to cause ferment, to corrupt the people and turn Ireland into a colo
ny of Moscow. They will prey on weak opponents such as lazy or careless priests.’

  The Cardinal was staring straight at Stanislaus, and he felt the stares of others bore holes in him. He wanted to run away as fast as his aged legs would carry him, but he held up his head and tried not to flinch from the Cardinal’s stare. If Mick was going to knife him in the guts, Stanislaus would make him look him in the eye as he did so.

  ‘This shabby episode,’ the Cardinal said, slapping his hand disgustedly against the newspaper, ‘shows that even the finest can fail in his duty.’

  As soon as the Cardinal had finished his oration, Stanislaus fled, speaking to no-one as he left. He was glad Father Daly had the wit not to speak throughout the entire journey home. Peers and colleagues throughout the country would swap stories of this humiliation. He cursed Father Daly’s softness in allowing the use of the Parochial Hall in the first place. But the ultimate responsibility was his. Who had allowed the event to go ahead? Stanislaus Benedict. Because people would have been annoyed if he hadn’t. Because it would have been unpopular. Weakness borne of vanity. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again. What people wanted, their daily, petty desires, their transient emotions, would not be his concern ever again.

  You have a pocket full of money when you arrive. Your brothers’ guilt in pounds, shillings and pence. It’s enough to pay for digs at a nice south-side boarding house for a few weeks. You only cross to the north side on Sunday mornings to attend mass at Marlborough Street. That’s the mass the respectable Dublin Catholics go to. The businessmen, the professionals, the Irish Party fellows. You try to fall in with some of them. Maybe someone will offer you a nice office job or something like that.

  Soon the money runs out. You take a tiny room in a tenement in Monto and get a job shovelling coal off the boat for three measly shillings a day. You step over men lying dead drunk in the street while youngsters with no shoes steal from their pockets. Women hang out of windows with their bosoms hanging out of their blouses. Soldiers liquored up and looking for something to rut or to kill or both run amok every night. You didn’t know Christian people could live like this. You still go to mass at Marlborough Street and hold off as long as you can before you pawn the good suit. Your last hope of a ticket out of here. But eventually it goes too. Hunger will make a man forgo even pride.

  What’s so special about these hateful rich bastards anyway? They talk about working people like a sub-species in need of extermination. One fat, obnoxious fellow says the Monto prostitutes should be flogged on a weekly basis. ‘That’ll keep them off their backs.’ They all laugh. In Monto they’ll knife you in the guts for a shilling, but only because they want the shilling. They’re not like these people with their tailored suits and their fancy ways. These people hate like you’ve never seen.

  Pius always did have an aptitude for business. He’s distilling poteen by the drum-load because, he says, it’s as easy to make a gallon as a pint, so why not make a gallon? He sells it because people want to buy it and it’d be unneighbourly to say no. He’s not interested in making money, since this is not a business but a long-drawn-out suicide, and his prices reflect that fact. Now it’s not economic for anyone else in Madden to even bother distilling their own, so they don’t. Without even trying, he has built up a poteen trust, and though he only wants to drink himself to oblivion, he has made a stack of money. Some people just have the knack, I suppose. And because he spends virtually nothing, he has a bag full of cash under his bed, not so much saved as taken out of circulation. All this on top of the fact that he was a rich man to begin with.

  The work starts with him. Get him shaved and bathed, get his clothes washed and his boots repaired, so he’s looking something like a human being again. We give the house a rudimentary clean-up, and after I’ve been home a few days, we take a fistful of cash down to Quinn’s General Stores in the village. Charlie is leaning across the counter studying a ledger with pencil in hand. He greets us with a cheerful shop face. His hair is centred and slicked with a severity that attests to the seriousness of the man. Crisp shirt, starched white collar, middling-expensive watch hanging from his waistcoat pocket. Every inch the prosperous businessman. He could be a Presbyterian. It’s strange to think that the shop is Charlie’s, though apparently he’s owned it a few years now, since his old man, always a corpulent ball of stuffed arteries, keeled over and died of an exhausted heart. Charlie was left with the handsome property, the well-stocked shop, the thriving business. A handy, bourgeois living for the rest of his days. I explain that Pius and I are trying to get our property back to the way it was before. He takes a ring-bound notebook from the counter and the pencil from behind his ear, licks the lead and tells us we’ll need scythes, yard brushes, paint brushes, paint, tar, hammers, hatchets, tin for the new byre roof, mops, saws, nails, sanders, planks and beams, turpentine and soap and bleach and whitewash and a lot more besides. ‘That should be enough to get you started anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll do you a deal.’

  Pius and I push two new wheelbarrows full of items we’ve bought, up the road home, and I think about the article in the paper about me. Not a bad article. The compelling political arguments shone through, despite TP McGahan’s best efforts to stitch me up. I wonder has Maggie read it yet. I wonder what she thinks. I’m not ready to face Maggie yet, not after what I did. And God forbid I should see Ida.

  Over the next while Pius and I fall into the habit of rising with the sun and working long days. There’s a lot of work to be done and there’s nothing else for it but to get stuck in. We start indoors, scrubbing the walls and repairing beds, chairs, dressers and tables. Room by room, the old place starts to look halfway presentable. Pius mostly sticks to our agreement to wait for nightfall before starting to drink, or at least makes an effort to hide his daylight drinking from me. Some days he’s violently distressed by the thirst and asks the time incessantly, as if willing the sun to go down. On those days I turn a blind eye though I can see the hipflask in his trousers and the redness in his eyes. Other days he’s fine and needs only to be kept busy. You can’t stop a man from drinking, you can only help him to function regardless. So we only talk about the jobs in hand, nothing else. Certainly not the past, thank God. I think we’re both relieved about that.

  We hire Turlough and Sean to help out, and they’re glad of the work. They whitewash the walls of the house and the outbuildings while we weed and sweep out the yard. We trim the laneway while they mend the fences, or replace the ones that can’t be mended. They take some of Pius’s cash into Armagh on market day and buy two dozen head of cattle while we nurse the few remaining cattle back to health with regular milking, feeding and grazing. The herd lows curiously from the field as they watch us transform their dingy dungeon into a proper cowshed. Sean and Turlough repair the trap, rescuing it from rust and ruin, and negotiate the purchase of a horse for us. They hire in lots of lads from across the parish to work on the outlying acres of our land. I don’t know how they’re out of work. They’re strong and doughty as horses and are able to do any job that needs doing. It’s a treat to watch them work. There’s plenty of money in farming. With all the young, able-bodied men in trenches or graves, the farmers of Ireland are feeding the Empire. That’s why the British haven’t imposed conscription here yet. But Sean just says: ‘We’re no farmers.’

  ‘What about the factories across the water then? They’re full of women. They’re crying out for men. Would you go over to England?’

  ‘They’d conscript us if we went across, and we’re not going to France to fight for that syphilitic fucking king and his butcher’s apron,’ says Turlough. ‘Not after what you lads did in Easter Week. Faugh-a-Ballagh my arse.’ He hawks up and spits.

  ‘Somewhere else?’

  ‘They won’t let men of military age emigrate for the duration so we’re stuck here, us and thousands like us, scrabbling around for the same few jobs.’

  ‘The slim pickings of the rural proletariat,’ I say.

  ‘But as
soon as the war’s over, America here we come.’

  ‘There’s still the land, though. There’s work to be had in Ireland on the land,’ I persist.

  ‘Like he says …’

  ‘We’re no farmers.’

  It’s a pity to see two men with the muscles of Clydesdale stallions but the sense of thick-skulled mules. They’ll do what they’re told, and they’ll do it better than anyone, but they have no independent thought beyond stubbornness. Turlough has a bit of shrewdness, I suppose, and he sometimes asks about politics, but all Sean’s interested in is football, and whether I’ll turn out for Madden in the county final. Still, they seem willing to do whatever I tell them. They finish the day felling a copse of small trees and helping Pius and I chop up wood for the winter.

  Later, Pius sips from a large glass as we roast ourselves by the hearth. ‘All the Moriartys were always great workers. Their father, God rest him, could work with anything, wood, tin, thatch, you name it,’ he says.

  I hold a piece of bread on the end of a toasting fork and look to the roof. There’s more work there. All the whitewash in the world can’t hide the dampness in the walls: the ridges, the gables and all around the chimney is decayed past the point where local repairs will suffice. There are tarry brown stains at the top of the walls, proof that our problem is that there is water in the dunnish, long-past-useful thatch. The roof rafters are sitting in pools of water atop the walls, and the whole thing will collapse if left indefinitely. Pius must know this, but I don’t suppose he has cared before now. I watch his head lurch forward, asleep, and see in his slumbering face spots of scarlet ruddiness materialising there. Chopping the wood earlier reminded me of how, as a child, I used to watch him work the axe. He seemed a gigantic figure then, wreaking violence on the huge logs and splintering them with a power and technique that, to my childish eyes, was indistinguishable from the superhuman. Despite all the drinking, he’s still a strong man and I think he’s getting stronger every day. Our labour is doing for Pius what the roaring fire before us is doing for the house, what God’s breath did for Adam in that old bedtime story.