A Mad and Wonderful Thing

by Mark Mulholland

  I look again on that face. ‘I am thinking of you, Cora.’

  El Cant dels Ocells

  IT IS A WET DAY IN JUNE, AND CORA AND I SIT IN THE FLANNERY KITCHEN and drink tea. Gerry Flannery enters and stands and looks at us in the way he does — half questioning and half laughing.

  ‘So, has she told you yet how we all first heard of Johnny Donnelly?’ he asks.

  ‘Heard of me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cora says. ‘I heard of you, then I went to look. It was a story Daddy told us about a friend of his who is a musician, and this friend has a friend in the national orchestra in Dublin — a friend who plays the cello. That was a wonderful thing you did.’

  ‘My friend still talks about it, Johnny,’ Gerry says.

  So now I know. ‘Yeah, well …’ I say, remembering Bob’s last day at the factory.

  I’d been at the engineering works for two years when the day came for Bob Hanratty to retire. Bob never enjoyed factory life, and took comfort in the refuge of the oil store and the radio he kept there on a high shelf. One day, as I entered the oil store, Bob signalled for me to be quiet. I watched as he stood still, his head cocked to the radio on the high shelf. A piece of music played through the single round speaker, and when it ended Bob waved me in. ‘Eh, what was that, old-timer?’ I asked. ‘That, my friend, was Pau Casals: “El Cant dels Ocells”.’ The old man looked at me. ‘ “The Song of the Birds.” Such a beautiful thing. And who is Pau Casals?’ Bob tested me.

  ‘Spanish,’ I guessed.

  ‘Catalan,’ Bob corrected me. ‘And a Catalan is Catalan first, and he is Catalan second.’ I sat down at the workbench and asked no more about it, but I took note.

  On his last day at work, Bob carried out his duties as normal. At the end of the day, he cleaned his workbench, tidied his trolley and oil-cans, removed and folded his green overalls, and took the radio down from the high shelf. He took a screwdriver and removed the brass plaque from the door. He put the overalls, the radio, and the plaque into a knapsack, and locked the oil store for the last time. He crossed the yard and entered the machine workshop to punch out. All the workers had already left, and the large workshop was silent but for the echo of his own footsteps.

  He paused to look around. He had worked there for forty-nine years. I could see he was disappointed no one had waited. He was disappointed I had not waited. But, of course, I had — he just couldn’t see me. Bob reached the time-clock, took his card from a rack, and punched out. The heavy clunk of the machine reverberated around the silence. Bob looked up to follow the sound, and only then did he notice the chair and the cello in the middle of the central intersection. Another set of footsteps echoed loudly in the workshop, and a man with long, wavy hair approached from the main external doors. The visitor wore a black formal suit and carried a dark-wooded bow in his right hand. He walked to Bob, and stopped and bowed before taking hold of the cello and sitting in the chair. He acknowledged Bob once more with a single nod. He rested the cello against his left shoulder and then, looking only at the floor some distance in front of him, he began to play. The bow, held in his right hand with four fingers showing, crossed the cello with slow, graceful movements. The fingers of his left hand punched and then nursed the four strings. Music floated through the building; vibrations carried around the machines and workstations, bouncing off the whitewashed walls and the high roof. Bob stood with his raised punch-card in shocked silence. He looked to nowhere as the workshop filled to ‘El Cant dels Ocells’.

  ‘He’d spent most of his life in that place,’ I say to Cora and Gerry, ‘so I called in a favour. He deserved one happy memory.’

  ‘Well, you certainly achieved that,’ Cora says. She leans into me, and I put my arm around her and hold her. ‘ “El Cant dels Ocells” ’ she calls the title out into the room. ‘We will have it played at our wedding, won’t we, Johnny?’

  Wedding? This girl is more crazy than me. I look to Gerry Flannery, but he just stands there, watching me with that look of his, as if Cora’s mention of our wedding was normal and only to be expected. I look back to Cora.

  ‘Yes, Cora,’ I tell her. ‘We sure will.’

  A box of tricks

  I WALK THROUGH EMPTY STREETS. THE TOWN IS DESERTED, AT REST, IN those few peaceful hours between late night and early morning. It is midsummer, and the advancing light of day begins to diffuse a night that never fully blackened. I take my time; I love the fade of the blue-black to a new day. I consider the girl. From the age of twelve I have decided my own fate. There was no question of what — just a finding of how. And I found it. Discipline, I learned from Delaney; conviction came with me. Each step along the way has been careful, meticulous, determined. This long war has fallen time and again on the rocks of indiscipline, recklessness, and treachery. On these, I will not be caught. And then, into all this, she comes.

  The birds are busy at this hour: pigeons, crows, and gulls scavenge for scraps on the roads and pavements, and their hungry cries cut through the quiet. The air is mild. The sky above is showing grey, but it is high enough to offer hope.

  I arrive at the engineering works, where all is quiet. The security guard in the small redbrick building by the entrance barely looks up from his novel as I pass through the pedestrian gate. I give a salute which the guard returns with a wave. At least once every month I make an exceptionally early arrival at the works, and at least once every month I stay exceptionally late. Familiarity as a disguise, the Chief has taught me, is as deadly as the greatest camouflage, and as I walk through the entrance and away from the guard I am already thinking of the gun.

  I began with a .303. It was an old gun — an old Lee Enfield. It needed a lot of oiling and looking after, but it shot straight. Delaney kept me on that gun for three years. Then, one at a time, he brought me through the Armalite, the Kalashnikov, and the Heckler & Koch. I spent a year on each, and I have taken them all into action. I keep a Glock 17 as well, but it is a different gun for a different kind of action. It was only a year ago when, at last, I got what I was waiting for.

  I move on between the tall buildings of the works, and I enter the machine workshop through double doors. The building is wide and long, and its high walls support a multi-pitched roof. Around me are relics of a former purpose: overhead are pulleys and apparatus for belt-driven machinery, and rail-tracks are buried in the floor. I cross the workshop, passing the time-clock near the clerk’s office. I am careful not to punch in or out other than standard hours. I walk to the south-east corner, where a large, separate unit is contained behind high, block walls that offer no windows to the rest of the machine shop. This former store for components is now the carpentry workshop — ‘Carpentry Corner’, the men of the factory call it. I take a set of keys from the pocket of the Dunn & Co, and I open the lock of the steel door. I enter the workshop, trigger the switch for the low lights over the workbenches, and relock the door behind me. I settle at my workstation.

  Only two workers are employed in the carpentry workshop — Jack Quigley and me. Jack is in his fifties, and has worked here for thirty years. He is a gentle soul. Jack isn’t a carpenter at all; he trained as a fitter, and worked across the yard in the assembly plant. But fifteen years ago the carpenter died and the position needed filling. Jack enjoyed woodwork as a hobby, and built bird tables and dog kennels in his back shed at home. This was common knowledge — Jack supplied dog kennels to half of Dundalk. So when the vacancy arose, Jack was moved. Jack refers to it as the day of his great promotion, though technically that isn’t so. Carpentry is incidental to the product of the engineering works — the demand for woodwork is restricted to odd jobs, and the making of frames and packing cases for shipping. Much of our labour in the workshop involves doing odd-jobs and making nixers for management and fellow workers. Mostly, we remain unbothered. It is perfect.

  With just the two of us employed in the large workshop, each has an expansi
ve space. I built my own in the first six months of my first year, and I took the whole south wall. I built a new dry-wall against the whitewashed brick, and on this I created shelves, racks, and tool-boards. Against this wall I built a large, square table, and two heavy benches. It took me six months. In the second six months I built my tool-chest. In fact, I built two, making one as a gift for Jack. The tool-chests are impressive pieces of work — over one metre in length, and half-a-metre high and wide. I modified an American design I’d found in a textbook, making the chests in oak and using complex and precise joints to ensure strength and durability. The chests have a deep space under a top-hinged lid, with various-sized drawers accessible behind a front panel. All the hinges, handles, and fittings are brass, and I fitted each chest with a secure lock. I lined all the internal spaces and drawers with a rich royal-blue felt cloth, and I finished the chests with a hand-rubbed Danish oil. So the chests could be pulled along like a trolley, I fitted each with a double-axle carriage and oversized wheels, and I attached a long foldaway handle at one end.

  The tool-chests are a familiar sight around the plant as Jack and I pull them about on our various jobs. The men appreciate the craftsmanship — Jack says the chests are a work of art — and many ask me to help them build their own. I don’t mind, and I am happy to help. In a way, it all adds to the deceit. All the tradesmen buy and maintain their own tools, so the bringing and the taking of tools to and from the premises is a common thing.

  Once every two weeks I take the tool-chest home, taking a lift in Big Robbie’s van. I make a point of stopping near the security office to open the chest and show off a new tool or some recent piece of work. Here, too, the tool-chest is a familiar sight: ‘There he goes with his box of tricks’, the men say as I pass. And they are right: built into the dry-wall of my station is a secret space, and in that space is a third chest.

  I take a large, folded felt cloth down from a high shelf. Slowly, I spread it out smoothly on the table I’ve built for this purpose. I take the third chest from the wall. I gather the lubricants, polish, and cloths required from the shelving. I have hidden them here in full view amid the fundamental supplements of an engineering workshop. Maintenance and care, the American taught me, are as essential as both bullet and gun. Before I open the chest, I walk to the steel door and check that it is locked.

  Is this what you choose for your life? To be a killer?

  I turn. Bob sits on the end of my bench, a red rag hanging loosely from a pocket in his green overalls.

  Johnny?

  I ignore him. I return to the table, open the top lid, and set to work.

  Soldiers’ Point

  IN THE EARLY MORNING OF A JULY DAY, I WALK EAST ALONG THE embankment on the southern shore of the estuary. Che runs on ahead, stopping at intervals to check on me before running on again. The tide is ebbing, and the river is low as it empties into the wide bay. Below me the broad grey mudflats stretch and glimmer north to Bellurgan, Jenkinstown, Rockmarshall, and on east along the mountain peninsula. Herons hunt in the low tide and pools. The rivulets are populated with prowling oystercatchers, plovers, egrets, and grebes, and islands of green marsh are highlighted yellow before the rising sun.

  I stop at the end of the embankment, at Soldiers’ Point. I pull at the collar of the Dunn & Co and then push my hands into the deep side pockets. Inland, there is a terraced crescent of coastguard houses. There is no movement around the houses, and there is no one along the river — it is too early for early-morning walkers. I am alone.

  Bob sits on a boulder that once belonged to a small jetty. Hello, soldier, he greets me.

  I remember a day we sat at his oil-store workbench. It was summer, the door was open to allow a warm breeze in, and the bright light of the yard was framed in the doorway of the dark store.

  Bob gestured to the doorway. ‘Out there, life — it’s just one impossible mountain.’

  ‘A mountain, Bob?’

  ‘Yes, son, a mountain. We all get born at the foot of the mountain, uncontaminated and ignorant. Our goal, young man, is to try and climb the mountain.’

  ‘Why? What’s on the top of the mountain?’

  ‘Who knows? The meaning of life? Answers? Happiness? Maybe … maybe nothing,’ he laughed. ‘Who knows? Nobody knows anybody who has made it to the top and come back down. Anyway, it’s the climb that counts.’

  ‘Do many make it, Bob?’

  ‘No, not many. It’s a vicious mountain. Deadly. A person has to climb over all of existence just to keep moving up. The worst of humanity must be crossed: debauchery, savagery, greed. The relentless struggle slows you down, drags you back, stops you, swallows you up. Most settle for survival, and make camp wherever they can. The climb to the top gets lost.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound good.’ I commented. ‘Is there any hope at all?’

  ‘Some have no chance. Some find a rope to help pull them up.’

  ‘Hope on a rope, Bob. That’s great.’

  The old man took a drink from the teacup he held in one hand, and with his other hand he waved a slow finger to me.

  ‘So where do we find these ropes?’ I asked.

  ‘Every man must find his own rope. They are found all around us, in the simple truths of life. But they are found, too, in our hopes and fears, and those need great care.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Without great care, a rope becomes a whip. The flesh of humanity is gouged deeply with the scars of those whips. Take care, my young friend, with what rope you take hold of in this life.’

  I had no idea what the old man was talking about. ‘So what’s the secret, Bob? How do we get to the top of this impossible mountain?’

  ‘You and your secrets, Johnny.’ The old man looked to me. ‘There are no secrets.’

  ‘At a mad guess, then?’ I pushed.

  ‘Well, at a mad guess, I’d say it’s a pure heart.’

  After our lunch, I walked out into the sunlight of the afternoon. Across the yard the large steel doors of the workshop were open, and from the shadow Grimes and McArdle along with O’Connell and Cooney — two other buffoons — stepped boldly into the light, their work coats and shirts removed and tied around their waists. The four amigos approached the empty yard in broad steps, like out-of-town gunslingers looking for trouble. I laughed as I watched them.

  ‘I know a problem we meet on that mountain climb of yours, Bob,’ I said, popping back into the oil store.

  ‘Yes, son, what is it?’

  I pointed to the workshop. ‘It’s an avalanche of arseholes.’

  On Bob’s next birthday, I surprised him, replacing the ‘Oil Store’ sign with an engraved brass plaque I had made in the workshop. It read:

  THE PHRONTISTERY

  ROBERT J HANRATTY

  PURVEYOR OF LUBRICANTS AND OTHER MATTERS

  The old man polished it every day. He polished it every day until the day he retired. And Bob Hanratty was retired for only one week when he dropped down dead.

  I stand looking out into the estuary. ‘This is where they left from,’ I tell him, ‘the starving Irish. They went from here to Liverpool and then on to God-knows-where. That’s what they did to us, the English: starved us or ran us out of our own land. They brought hell itself onto Ireland. And they had no right to be here in the first place.’

  That’s a long time ago now.

  ‘Not really, Bob. And they are still here, still a pain in the arse. The partition they insist on is an open wound on this island. As long as it’s there, it will fester and infect.’

  But you’ll make them pay, Johnny-boy. You’ll see justice done. And who’ll be next? The Vikings landed along this shore, and ransacked and plundered all before them. And the Normans sailed this very water, and what did they bring? Will you be off to Copenhagen and Oslo and Pembroke and London and Cherbourg next with that reve
ngeful gun of yours? Don’t you see, son? Once you start, where do you stop?

  ‘It’s not about revenge. Anyhow, they are gone; the English are still here.’

  But that’s just it, Johnny-boy, they are not gone. They, too, are still here. They are part of you; they were part of me. And the English? To many, England has been a refuge. To many, England has been a bright light on a dark shore. And to many, they are welcome here.

  ‘They are not welcome,’ I tell him, and the conversation ends as if it has dropped and fallen down the embankment and into the mud.

  I find a stick on the shore and throw it far for Che to chase. I look out into the bay, where a boat sits at anchor and waits for the next tide.

  You won’t change anything, Bob says. And you cannot win.

  ‘Maybe. But we didn’t start this. A people who allow themselves to be occupied are taken as suckers. They will exist only in the shallows.’

  Occupation is a slanted view.

  ‘Slanted? We do not have an army over there, but they have one here. And by that, they force the Irish to be fighters or cowards. There is no other way; there is no middle way. Only the gutless apology of a politician.’

  That doesn’t mean anything. Do you think that you, Johnny Donnelly, can make a difference?

  ‘So should I do nothing? Like a coward? If we do nothing, they win and we lose. If we don’t fight, no other outcome is possible. But if we fight, we may win and they may lose; and the worst that can happen is that we both lose. It’s the Irish dilemma. But fighting will produce the most favourable result: once we fight, they cannot win.’

  That’s the spirit, Johnny. There’s nothing like a bit of warped positivity.

  I look out to the mud, the water, and the mountains. ‘By coming here, they started this whole thing. By bringing the gun into Ireland, they forced us, too, into lifting the gun. And by staying here, they take us all to hell.’