In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  We went for a couple of drinks in The Stag’s Head before crossing the river by The Ha’Penny Bridge and making our way down Bachelor’s Walk towards O’Connell Street and The Carlton. The city was alive with the clamour and chatter of hundreds, thousands of Rory Gallagher fans as we made our way to the venue. With Ellie’s hand clasped firmly in mine, I handed our tickets to the porter at the door and stepped back in time. Nothing in that building had changed in the intervening years. The smell, the décor, the lighting, all of it, the exact same as it was on that day when a happy group of children in a Parish Cinema Club walked through the doors in April, 1965.

  Rory Gallagher played to two thousand people that night in The Carlton Cinema. Two thousand young and happy people with their whole lives ahead of them, myself and Ellie included. As the great man rattled and rolled through his set, my mind kept turning to Peter, my childhood friend. My dead, childhood friend. This is where it happened, nine years before. In this very building. Try as I did I couldn’t fully enjoy the show, Peter’s ghost stood over my shoulder haunting me with a whisper.

  ‘You left it too long, Gabriel. You were too late!’

  ‘You were very quiet tonight. Is everything okay? Did you not enjoy the concert?

  We were walking along Eden Quay heading towards our bus stop, I had my arm draped over Ellie’s shoulder. I pulled her closer to me as a cold wind whistled along the Liffey.

  ‘No, yeah, I did, it was great. It really was.’

  ‘What’s at you then? Is it… the other thing? You know…?’

  ‘God no, not at all. I was just thinking of a friend I had when we were kids, that’s all. That place reminded me of him. We went there when we were younger.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all it is?’

  ‘It is, I promise.’

  ‘Good,’ she said as she snuggled closer to me.

  It was a crisp and clear winter’s evening. January 2nd 1974. Exactly two years later, to the very day, it would all end. Ellie would be gone, and down on the Barrow Pier, I would be fighting for my life.

  19

  Even from beneath the sullen grey of the washed out sky on that Good Friday afternoon, O’Connell Street was a bazar of the extraordinary to me. Its retinue of neon signs would pale pitifully to those of Paris or New York, but to us kids, stepping down off the coach, it was akin to taking our first steps into a wonderland, one we had only ever dreamed of. So many cars, I had never seen so many all at once, and buses too, dozens of them.

  Filing us into a long line at the front of the cinema, Jessop made a role call to ensure that he still had sight of all those in his charge. As he called out our names, I took in this new and exciting world in which I had found myself. The neon, the cars, all of the buses rolling in from all over the city and the county beyond, fascinating as they were, it was the people who interested me the most. There were hundreds of them, thousands even, and as I watched them scurry up and down the street I couldn’t help but think of the anthill Peter and I had found out in Steemson’s Field two summers previous. We had sat and watched them go about their anty business for over an hour, oblivious to the hulking giants who observed them from above.

  Standing in the drizzle that Friday afternoon and watching the thousands of people stream past me I wondered if people were just like ants to God. My mind was wrapped up in this juvenile pondering when I saw him. I had seen black men on television and at the cinema of course, but not in real life, not in the flesh. He was a young man, no older than twenty and as he walked towards us a hush fell over the group as we followed him with our eyes, our heads turning in sync as he passed us by. He had just cleared the end of the line when the shout rang out.

  ‘Hey, look at the Gollywog!’

  To this day I don’t know who said it, but I do know that it was poor Peter to whom the blame was assigned. The black man shot us a glance over his shoulder without missing a stride. I had expected to see anger on his face but only a pained and weathered reproach revealed itself to us.

  ‘I do apologise,’ Jessop called after him. ‘They’re just kids, you know how it is.’ He shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands, palms out, toward the man. The black man said nothing, he just flipped our curate his middle finger and went on his way. That’s when the first crack appeared in Jessop’s mask.

  ‘Damn nigger runt,’ I heard him mutter as he turned his back on the man and surveyed our ranks. Peter Donnelly found himself smack bang in the middle of the crosshairs.

  ‘You!’ said Jessop as he pulled him from the line with a pinch of the ear. ‘What’s your game, well? ‘

  ‘I didn’t say it, Father,’ Peter said as he squirmed beneath Jessop’s touch. ‘Honestly, Father, it wasn’t me, it was somebody else!’

  ‘Who was it then?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. Please, Father, let me go, you’re hurting me.’

  ‘Tell me who it was!’ Jessop yanked harder on Peter’s ear and my friend began to cry. ‘Sure, it had to have been you, there’s no one else here whose mother ran off with one, now is there?’ A cruel taunt I thought. Far below the belt and unbecoming of a man of God to go after a young boy like that.

  ‘I don’t know, Father, really, I don’t!’ he said through his tears.

  ‘Well then, if you can’t identify who it was I’ll just have to assume it was you. You can spend your time in the toilets while everyone else enjoys the film, unless of course, you might suddenly remember who said it!’

  Peter looked along the line of his friends, his school mates, but he couldn’t bring himself to point any of them out, even the boys he didn’t know so well. He just couldn’t do it.

  ‘It was me, Father,’ I said as I stepped out from the line. Jessop’s face contorted in a look of surprise and then anger. I couldn’t have known it then, but I was compromising his plans.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gabriel. It wasn’t you and well you know it! I could tell your voice with my eyes closed. Now get back in line and don’t be meddling in affairs that don’t concern you!’

  ‘Well, Donnelly?’ Jessop resumed as he pinched on Peter’s ear with greater force. ‘Last chance. Tell me now or we all go home. No film, no treats, nothing!’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Peter whimpered.

  ‘What’s that now?’ Jessop asked as he stooped down pressing his face into Peter’s.’

  ‘You were right, Father,’ said Peter through his sobs. ‘It was me.’

  ‘I thought as much. Of course it was you, who else would have a grudge against a black man save for the little boy whose mother took off with one,’ Jessop said as a grin crinkled his mouth. ‘Right, all of you, back into line and follow me. Best behaviour now! Donnelly here has almost ruined it for all of you! Any more shenanigans out of any of you and we’ll be back home before you know it! Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ came the chorus reply.

  The Curate dragged Peter by the arm to the front of the group and threw him violently into the line. With a beaming smile brightening his face he fixed his hair, adjusted his collar, his cassock too. Jessop transformed into a man of saintly goodness as he glided up the steps to the cinema door, all smiles and banter. That he could swing from one mood to another so very easily frightened me. Who was the real Jessop? The rousing sermoniser or the cruel man who had pinched a child to tears? It was another crack in his mask and it set me to wondering. Had he been mean to Peter like that before? Was that the reason why Peter didn’t like him? With these questions rattling in my mind I walked up the steps and into the lobby of The Carlton Cinema.

  Jessop stood Peter in a far corner of the cavernous lobby as he set about presenting tickets and getting all of us children into groups corresponding to our rows. As we filed into the auditorium I took one final glance back at Peter. He was stood in the corner, his hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets, big tears streaming down his face. I wanted to run to him, to tell him that I really meant it when I said that I had shouted that terrible thing at the black man. I did
n’t want him to be in any trouble , especially not with Jessop. The line of kids pushed forward and I was swept along with them into the darkness of the Carlton’s largest theatre leaving Peter Donnelly alone in the lobby.

  Sick of Bible films as we were, ‘The Greatest Story’ was a sumptuous marvel of colour, exotic locations, sheer spectacle and, for someone whom I had never heard of, Max Von Sydow made for a cracking Jesus. Each and every one of us was soon caught up in the marvel of it all. Despite the fact that we knew the story, knew it inside out and backwards in fact, every one of us had our eyes glued to the screen for a full three and three quarter hours. I’m ashamed to say that all thoughts of Peter were soon edged out of my mind as the movie progressed. The hypnosis was broken only when Charlton Heston popped up on screen as John the Baptist and someone two rows in front of me shouted;

  ‘Hey look, Ben Hur’s double-jobbing!’

  I laughed along with the rest of them, but fearful as I was of a pinch to the ear from Jessop, I stifled my titters by clamping my hand over my mouth. I waited for Jessop’s hissed and whispered reprimand to ring out in the semi dark. It didn’t. There wasn’t a peep from him. Turning to look at him I saw an empty seat.

  After the darkness of the theatre, the lobby was a bright and silent bubble of light which hurt my eyes. It took me a few moments to adapt to it as I looked around for Peter and Fr Jessop. The place was empty save for some ushers hanging around by the concession stand away over in the far reaches of the room. Outside, the rain had grown heavier and the traffic crawled down O’Connell Street in a lazy procession. I walked to the exit and pushed through the doors hoping to find my friend out on the porch. No sign. I went back inside and asked the ushers if they had seen either of them. None of them had, they’d been too busy to notice they said. Turning back to the theatre door, the sign pointing to the toilets caught my eye and as I was not missing much, like I said, I knew the story back to front, I thought I’d check down there as well before heading back in. Surely Jessop hadn’t followed through on his threat to leave Peter in the toilets for the duration of the film, or had he?

  The outer door closed silently behind me. I was in the tiny lobby of the entrance to the gent’s toilets when I heard Jessop, his voice muffled but sharp enough for me to hear what he was saying.

  ‘Now, Donnelly, I think you can re-join the rest of the children now. You’ve been a good lad, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ came Peter’s muted response. He was crying, I could hear it in his voice.

  ‘Well then, boy, get yourself together and get upstairs and take your seat.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘And, Donnelly…’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘Remember, God shows his love in many, many ways. You needed confession and penance for the terrible thing you called that man earlier.’

  ‘I know, Father,’ Peter sobbed.

  ‘Well then, you’ve served your penance. Run along now, and remember, confession and penance are things we do not discuss, not ever, not with anyone. They are private between me, you and the Holy Spirit. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Right then, away with you now. Go on, boy, don’t dawdle.’

  I fell twice as I stumbled back up the staircase to the lobby. My heart racing, tears in my eyes. Now I knew, knew for certain. Child I may have been but I wasn’t so dumb as to not then fully understand exactly why Peter despised the man. I hadn’t seen anything, nor had I heard anything untoward, but I understood the context of Jessop’s little speech. I was desperate to get away from it, I wanted to protect Peter and the only way I could do that was to be back in my seat before he could see me. He couldn’t know that I knew, I honestly believed that the embarrassment alone would kill him. I would report Jessop to the police, a phone call made from the public box by the village green would be enough. I was certain Jessop would get his comeuppance. I’d make sure of it.

  A wedge of yellow light spilled onto the aisle floor as Peter slipped into the theatre. The murky and flickering light could not hide his face. His eyes were puffed and red, his cheeks were stained with tears. Jessop followed a moment or two afterwards. His cheeks flushed, a despicable grin cracking his jubilant face. Bastard. I wanted to kill him there and then. I hated him with such an intensity. I’d never known myself to be capable of such feelings. I was so angry, so very angry. I was angry with Jessop, but more so I was angry with myself and the entire Parish too. He had duped all of us. With his powerful sermons, his piety, everything about him had been an act, and we had lapped up his performance like thirsty dogs. Peter had been right all along and it was no wonder he was hesitant to share the reasons why. Who would want someone else to know these terrible things which had been done to them? I should have listened to my friend from the outset, I should have trusted my instincts. They were screaming the obvious to me that evening after the school bazar and I had brushed them under the carpet once Jessop began his sermon that fine Whit Sunday morning.

  I had known it! It had screamed out to me after the night in the teacher’s room. I had wrestled with it for weeks, I had been wary of him for months. But I hadn’t wanted it to be true, I didn’t want to accept that such a thing could be possible, not in our little town, not in our church, our parish. That sermon had been nothing more than a sales pitch for the benefit of no one else bar me. And it had worked, worked like a charm. I was sucked in along with the rest of them, so desperate were we to have someone to shepherd us, to look out for us. The devil does indeed present himself as that which you desire so much. No horns and forked tongue here, just a sermonising cleric filled with the piety of the almighty.

  It was almost two weeks since I’d seen Jessop for what he truly was and once more I found myself standing in the telephone box by the green at the centre of town. It was late in the evening, the sun was gone. Long shadows were creeping up main street. The first stars were out, strewn across the sky like chips of ice. I had a penny pinched between my thumb and forefinger, I had practiced my lines over and over, I had my fake voice down to a tee. All it would take was a phone call to the desk sergeant at the Police Station and Jessop’s hold over Peter and God knows how many other boys would be over. One simple phone call. Nothing could have been easier.

  It was far more difficult than I ever could have imagined. In tattling on Jessop I was outing Peter, exposing him to sneers and jeers, ribbing and ridicule. I would ruin his life, by action or inaction, no matter what, I would destroy him and for that reason it had taken many, many trips to the phone box. I knew in my heart that it had to be done, but when I thought of what Peter would face once it was done I couldn’t bring myself to let that penny drop, I could never dial the number.

  That day was different. I marched down to town hell bent on making the call. I had just slipped the penny into the slot and had begun to dial. A loud thump on the glass of the phone box startled me. Peter’s Father was standing outside in the murkiness of the gloaming.

  ‘Hello, Mr Donnelly.’

  ‘There you are, young Gabriel. Have you seen Peter today?’

  ‘No, Sir. I haven’t. Not at all.’

  ‘Strange. He set off this morning and said that he was heading over to you.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him, Mr Donnelly, honest. I haven’t seen him since…’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Well, since that day when… since we went to the cinema, Sir.’ I could have told him there and then, I should have told him. But I couldn’t do that to the man. It would kill him, he would kill Jessop and land himself in a whole world of trouble with the law. It would be best to tell the police. They would take Jessop into custody and Mr Donnelly wouldn’t be able to get near him to do anything stupid.

  ‘Gabriel, are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, I was trying to think of where he might be.’

  ‘Perhaps he went down to his aunt’s. I’ll give her a call to see… are you finished in there?’

  ‘Yes, yes,
sir, I was just… I was just messing around. I’m bored.’

  ‘You’d better be getting yourself home, it’ll be full dark before long and the last thing we need is your father worrying about you now as well, isn’t that right?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Go on, son. Get along home now. And if you see Peter will you tell him I’m looking for him.’

  ‘I will, I hope you find him, Mr Donnelly. I wouldn’t like to think that he’s out in the dark all by himself.’

  ‘Ah, I’m sure he’ll be down in his Aunt’s. In fact, I’m certain of it. He asked me for half a crown this morning and I told him to sing for it. He knows my sister has a soft spot for him, no doubt he went down there all charm and smiles to tap her up for it.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘There’s no doubting it now that I think of it, son. That woman is his personal piggy bank and he withdraws on demand. Go on, home with you now.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Donnelly.’

  ‘Goodnight, Gabriel.’

  I walked home beneath a vault of stars, the Milky Way a dusty stain on the cold azure of the sky. Birds chirped in the hedgerows while bats swooped down the laneway. I was worried about Peter so I took a detour on the way home and passed by the rectory. Jessop was seated at his desk by the window, his gaunt figure silhouetted by the ghoulish green light of his banker’s lamp. The picture of the Scared Heart was off the wall and his safe door hung open. There was no sign of Peter and for that I was thankful. He was most certainly at his aunts, if there was half a crown to be gotten, a four mile trek wouldn’t stand between Peter and a half pound of apple drops and a Peggy’s leg or two. Climbing into my bed that night I could never have known that Peter was in his personal Gethsemane, enduring his own agony in the garden, our garden, The Dell.