A Mad and Wonderful Thing

by Mark Mulholland

  We had never been in the nightclub so early. Usually we would leave the pub late, and, via a side door and a damp alley, we would run the short distance across a back-street carpark into the side entrance of the main-street hotel. The empty interior was bizarre without the usual circus. For once we approached the bar in comfort, and had time to admire the decor and the light system.

  ‘I hear it cost a fortune doing the place,’ Big Robbie said, leading us to some high stools overlooking the dance floor.

  ‘Bastard can well afford it,’ Éamon replied, reaching into his shirt pocket and withdrawing a twenty-pack of Carroll’s No. 1. He flipped the box open with one hand, withdrew two cigarettes, and tossed one onto my lap.

  ‘Let’s hope Cora don’t mind you smoking, Johnny-boy,’ he commented with an upward flick of his head.

  As we settled into our seats, we watched a small man slip into the nightclub. He wore a tight cream suit, the suit’s bright sheen radiant in the club’s lighting. With an effeminate step he made a tour, stopping briefly to chat with each of the dark-suited bouncers. It was Éamon’s bastard — the hotel owner — and we watched as he inspected his troops. As he passed us he paused, and I could almost hear him chuckling.

  ‘Hello, Mister Fitzgerald,’ I called to him. ‘That’s a lovely suit.’

  Slowly, the crowd began to trickle in. Time passed, the nightclub filled, and I was feeling the first pangs of disappointment when …

  Suddenly, there is a lot of movement and everyone falls to the floor. We are at a moment in the Mass when we should all kneel down and check out the shoes of the person in front. I’m no spoil-sport; I get down on one knee. They are a pair of black loafers, low cut, and they expose bright white socks that disappear up a pair of blue jeans. Well, that’s a little sad. After sufficient time for reflection has elapsed, the priest gives a signal, and we all are allowed to resume our seat, or stand. In the resettlement, I have a quick look to those around me at the back of the church. It is the usual Sunday gathering of hung-over rogues. Survival can be that in an occupied state: an attendance granted, but collaboration withheld. To the left, annexed to the side wall of the church, there is a decorated shrine to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The statue within it has always intrigued me; I don’t know why. Above the electric ten-penny candles, a brightly robed man with a kind face looks down on the gathering. A small, vivid, pink heart glows from the centre of his chest, like some sort of suspended, chainless medallion. A tiny girl stands before the shrine. Under the watchful eye and arm’s-length grasp of her father, she caresses the rows of switches she knows will trigger the candles. She turns and notices me. She turns again and watches her father, and waits. The tempo of the Mass shifts, and the pious in the dark wooden pews shuffle into a kneeling position for the next prayer. In the disruption the girl flicks two of the switches, and within the candelabra in the shrine two red bulbs come to life. The girl looks to me with her face held open as if she is willing some reaction from me. With a wink and a slight nod of my head, I acknowledge my approval. The girl is delighted.

  She was standing with her friends on the other side of the nightclub. Unsure what to do, I held my ground. I can confess that I would have walked cold and naked over the Cooley Mountains to get to Cora Flannery. But to cross that dance floor and walk into an audience of curious girls was beyond me. My palms began to sweat and I stared at the floor. Should I go over? Could I go over? But when I looked up, she was there. She stood before me and, slowly, as she looked to me, she took my hand. And with that first touch my anxiety was dismissed with the force of the gods, and rushing into the void was joy.

  ‘Come on,’ she laughed, skipping towards the dance floor.

  At the end of the night, Cora’s friends came to take her, but she refused them.

  ‘Johnny is walking me home,’ she told them. ‘Aren’t you?’ she added, squeezing my fingers. And indeed I was. It would have taken the ancient armies of Ulster to take Cora from me that night, and they would have had to fight.

  ‘Okay, be good,’ they replied, and made to go. Abruptly, one of them — a tall and good-looking girl — came over to us.

  ‘So she finally got you, Johnny Donnelly,’ she said. ‘This one will never let you go now.’ She kissed Cora on her forehead before turning to me.

  ‘See you, handsome,’ she said, and was off.

  ‘Who is that?’ I asked, bewildered.

  ‘That’s our Aisling, my big sister, and my best friend. My best female friend, of course. Isn’t she beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, Cora, she sure is.’

  ‘She’s studying medicine, in college, in Dublin.’ She rushed the detail to me, the rush tripping her breath.

  ‘Beautiful and clever,’ I said. And then after a pause I added, ‘So who’s your best male friend then?’

  Cora looked to me as though I had just asked her if she knew the capital of Ireland. ‘You,’ she answered. And she answered with such sincerity that there wasn’t any doubt.

  I felt as if I’d been substituted into another life and that I was being mistaken for someone else. We were queuing at the cloakroom to get our coats when I thought of the boys. I searched for them, and saw that they were still sitting where I had left them hours before. They caught my enquiry and all gave me an exaggerated wave, and Éamon shouted something that raised a laugh from no one but himself.

  As we reached the exit I looked back into the club and caught a glimpse of Conor’s shaking head.

  We took our time on the walk home and stopped in the central Market Square for a snack from a late-night take-away stall.

  ‘I’m always starving after a disco,’ Cora said. ‘Do you fancy a bag of chips, Johnny?’

  ‘I’m that hungry, Cora, I could eat a small Protestant,’ I quipped, and we both laughed as we fought our way to the counter.

  ‘One bag of chips, Mademoiselle, and one large curry-chips and sausage, when you’re ready?’

  To eat the food, we sat on a bench opposite the stall, near the entrance to the county court-house — I insisted that it wouldn’t do the supper justice to eat on the move. When we’d finished I crumpled the wrappings into a ball, tossed it into the air, and volleyed it into a litter bin. I moved beside her.

  ‘So what’s the story with that coat and scarf, Johnny? Are you ever seen without them?’

  I take a lot of grief with the coat — people are unable not to comment. But that’s fashion: yesterday’s favourites are today’s oddities. It is a dark-tweed woollen overcoat — a 1960s Dunn & Co of London that I bought used — and in different light the tweed is green or grey or brown, like Ravensdale Forest on a wet day. The scarf is blue. I like the coat and I like the scarf, and that’s that. The world can think what it likes.

  ‘No story at all.’

  I removed the scarf. I put it around her and pulled her to me.

  ‘Do you know something, Cora Flannery?’

  ‘What, Johnny Donnelly?’

  ‘It’s time to go.’

  When we arrived at Cora’s house, we sat on a low wall that separates the small front and rear lawns. We watched a few other late-night travellers making their way home, some unsteady on their feet. We watched cars pass — some travelling too fast for the small road — as young men and women drove home from Dundalk to the outlying townlands in North Louth and South Armagh. I took the Dunn & Co off and put it over Cora’s shoulders, closing the coat tight and lifting the collar up. She rested on me and I held her easy in my arm. It was joy itself to hold her. She moved closer. I could feel her breath on my throat. I raised my hand and touched the side of her face, and I could hear my own heart as I kissed her. And under the fall of the blue scarf, she rested her fingers on my chest.

  ‘You are unbelievably wonderful, Cora,’ I whispered to her. ‘You are a mad and wonderful thing altogether.’

  ‘A mad and wond
erful thing,’ she whispered back. ‘Thank you. You are not too bad yourself, Mister Donnelly.’

  We reach the serving of communion, the climax of the Catholic Mass. Those who stand around me at the back of the church are on the move — one or two toward the great altar to consume the body of Christ, and the rest out and away. I hold my place. To pass the time I lift a copy of Parish Monthly from the magazine rack on the rear wall of the church. I read about arrangements for daily Mass, weekly confessions, novenas, devotions, and a holy triduum; and news of baptisms, marriages, new choir members, a cake-and-bun sale in the parish hall, and a scheduled bus trip down the country to see a moving statue. ‘I saw it sway a little,’ Dad had said after the latest trip. ‘It definitely moved all right. Didn’t it, Kathleen?’

  ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’ The priest brings the Mass to an end, and I skip down the front steps to where Éamon is waiting. We buy newspapers from the Sunday stall at the church gate and we walk together the short distance to the junction with the Ramparts Road. We both scan the headlines.

  ‘God-sakes,’ Éamon comments. ‘Listen to this, Johnny. IRA SNIPER WITH NEW DEADLY WEAPON AT WORK IN SOUTH ARMAGH.’ Éamon has the same habit as Dad of reading aloud from a newspaper. ‘Aren’t you glad we don’t live in the North, Johnny? Five miles away — it might as well be five hundred, it’s such a different place. Thank God we live in the Republic.’

  ‘Up the Republic,’ I say, and we both laugh.

  ‘So how’s it going with Cora?’

  ‘Great. She is a wonderful girl.’ The thing is out and said before I have time to consider it.

  Éamon flicks his head and gives me a look that carries both surprise and question. But he says nothing. Instead he produces a couple of cigarettes, and we stand and smoke and chat. We separate after the smoke and agree to meet up later, and as I walk away from my friend I consider the girl. That’s what they do to you, girls — they’re an unmanageable species. And once they make it into your thoughts, it can be impossible to think of anything else.

  ‘John.’

  I turn to the call. Behind me is a tall, elderly man buttoned up in a double-breasted charcoal-grey long coat. The man is Ignatius Delaney, and Delaney in the open is all John le Carré. Or so he thinks. The whole show is a bit Starsky & Hutch to me. Though the day is warm, he’s wearing gloves, and as he approaches he’s adjusting a gentleman’s trilby. Two dark eyes peer out below the trilby, and a thin sneer is held beneath a greying, trimmed moustache. A Burberry scarf, neatly knotted, is offered through the lapels of the coat. Delaney, if needs be, is pure Hollywood.

  ‘John, I thought that was you.’

  ‘Hello, Mister Delaney,’ I answer, playing along.

  He extends one leathered hand. With the other, he gestures behind him. ‘John, have you met my daughter Loreto? She’s home from California.’

  I am surprised — this is unusual. I look to the tall woman. She has a white powdered face and dark eyes. Her painted red lips roar against the pale background. She wears a long, black coat with a cranberry-red scarf draped across her shoulders like a shawl, and a cranberry-red velvet cloche hat. This woman, literally, is a doll.

  ‘Forty years teaching, Loreto,’ Ignatius Delaney says to her. ‘Forty years. So many boys, so little talent. But there was one. One who could fly higher. One light in the dark.’

  I ignore the story. I have heard it before.

  ‘And do you know, Loreto? Do you know what he chose to do with this talent? Which higher school of learning does he attend? Which university, do you think?’

  I look again to the dark eyes of the woman. She’s watching me.

  ‘What he chose, Loreto, was carpentry. Isn’t that right, John?’

  ‘Like I said before, Mister Delaney, I thought I might get a skill in when my hands are still young.’

  ‘Yes, well, never mind, John. You were always the incorrigible. Good to see you. God bless.’

  We part at the fire station where the road forks. What was that about? Why was she there? This is not the Chief’s form. But I’ve got the message — I will make a visit. I watch them as they walk away from me. I ponder on the woman below the velvet cloche hat. I know there is something there, but I let it fall from my thoughts as I walk home. Around me the air is bright and warm, the sunshine reflects off the ground, and I think again of Cora at the post office, at the nightclub, on the road home, and on the small wall in her garden. I skip along the footpath; secretly, I dance on the edge of joy. I bubble like milk on the stove just before the boil. I could break into a Michael Jackson routine at any second.

  My old friend Bob appears beside me, keeping pace and in step. We’re in great form altogether, he says. There’s no stopping us now.

  I pass an elderly neighbour I hardly know. She looks to me with a curious regard as I greet her.

  ‘Hello, Missus Byrne,’ and, unable to stop myself, add, ‘How’s the ould sex life this weather?’

  ‘Not as busy as yours, by the look of things,’ she shoots back.

  Damn, that was quick. I can’t think of a follow-up, so with a laugh and a wave I continue home. And I’m thinking things are looking up. Yes, indeed they are. Things are looking good for Johnny Donnelly.

  The dinner

  ‘WILL I POUR YOUR TEA?’

  ‘Are you going to the match, Son?’

  ‘Did you shift last night, Johnny?’

  I have joined Mam, Dad, and Anna at the kitchen table for Sunday dinner.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I might go up for the second half.’

  ‘I sure didn’t,’ I answer, moving my cup across the table to within Mam’s reach.

  ‘Thanks. Where’s the other fella?’

  ‘Declan was away early,’ Mam answers, pouring the tea. ‘Peter collected him. Off to the Mourne Mountains, if you don’t mind. Up at the crack of dawn, he was, making sandwiches. I had to hide the good ham.’

  I don’t say anything. My two brothers often take weekend mountain hikes. It’s a harmless-enough activity, I guess. But they can get puritanical about it — you’d want to listen to them going on and on about it, as if not doing it were the vice of the Devil himself. It’s the type of thing people do to help them feel better about themselves. I understand that.

  ‘They’ll be here later with yon one,’ Mam continues — yon one being Aunt Hannah. ‘I’m doing a pot of homemade soup.’ An old pot rattles on the cooker behind her.

  ‘Well, Johnny, spill the beans,’ Anna persists. ‘Did you?’

  ‘And I’ve brown bread in the oven,’ Mam says, continuing the account of her preparations for high tea.

  ‘It should be good,’ Dad insists. ‘Derry will bring a great crowd.’

  ‘I’d say you did. Who was she, Johnny-boy? Do I know her?’ Anna probes again.

  ‘Hey, nosey parker, eat up,’ Mam admonishes. ‘And eat them sprouts, they’re good for you. I don’t like them myself, but I eat them.’

  I look across to my sister. ‘Yes, Anna, come on, get them into you. There’s a good girl.’

  Anna Donnelly is twenty years old. She’s a good-looking girl; well, she is my sister. She has long, dark hair the colour of old oak, and green eyes — forest green fading to an edge of azure blue. She has the same eyes as her brother, the brother who’s sitting across the table from her. With the minimum of months between us, Anna and I had a shared childhood, and for all our young years we were often mistaken for twins. Through threads of her long hair, she gives me a warning.

  ‘I might take a walk up for the second half myself,’ Dad says with some finality, and rises. With his knife he pushes the scraps off his plate into a bowl set aside for the dog, and he carries the plate to the worktop.

  ‘I’ll wash them later for you, Kathleen,’ he says. ‘After a wee read of the papers.’


  I also rise.

  ‘I’ll throw on some eggs,’ Mam says to no one other than herself. ‘I could do a bit of a salad.’ She, too, rises and begins to clear the table.

  I follow Dad to the living room and sit on the couch, with a newspaper in hand. I can hear the opening lines of a familiar tune as Mam sings as she works. She is singing ‘Lizzie Lindsay’.

  ‘If she had ever got her hands on Danny Doyle, I’d have been given the door,’ Dad says from behind his newspaper.

  ‘I think we’d all have got the door,’ I say, laughing. I can’t remember a day when I have not heard Mam singing a Danny Doyle song.

  Kathleen Reynolds had already been working in the shoe factory for four years when she married Oliver Donnelly in the town’s Saint Nicholas’s Church in September 1959. She was just seventeen. Nine times she would feel the tightening of her belly and the nausea rush of early pregnancy. Those nine conceptions carried to just four births. I am the fourth-born of her four children. Mam was a bright student as a young girl: smart, capable, top of her class at reading and mathematics, and with the catechism. She had a sweet voice — the nuns had her to the front for visiting inspectors, priests, and bishops. In another time and in another place she could have been something. However, the end of primary school was the end of her education, and the end of her childhood.

  Mam grew up in a house of twelve children, the youngest of eight girls. Granddad was a tradesman in the brewery — a good job at any time — but he suffered the schizophrenia of the Irish: generous and magnanimous in the pub, cruel and spiteful in the home. Mam says that her mother fought an endless war just to keep them all fed and clothed. And so, as her sisters had done before her, Mam took her small body from the schoolyard to the shoe-factory floor. Only five of the twelve children were to remain in Ireland, and two of them are dead and buried. The other seven left for work in England. Mam never saw the two eldest boys — they had been and gone by the time she was born. They never came back.