The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next)

by Colm Herron

  If Seamus was well-dressed, which he was, he was put in the shade by the man facing him. Bill’s nickname in the school is Waistcoat Willy for he is never seen out of doors without his three-piece on. Come winter wind or summer sun it’s always the same, the only difference being in extremely sub zero times when he partly covers it with his three-quarter length sheepskin.

  “I heard the sound of more trouble when I was on my way here,” he said shaking his head. “It’s disgraceful what’s happening.”

  “Terrible,” I said. Silence from those opposite.

  “I blame the parents,” he went on. “They ought to know what their children are up to. It’s a dereliction of responsibility Jeremiah.”

  “What do you mean?” said Seamus. “Sure some of the parents are down there pegging stones as well.”

  Big Bill stared at him wondering if he was serious and then turned to speak to me. “Well if that’s the case then all I can say is there’s not much hope left for this town.”

  “What’s this Martin Luther King said Master?” Jim said addressing me. “Do you remember what Martin Luther King said? About rioting I’m talking about.”

  “Rioting is the voice of the unheard,” said Margie. “Is that what you’re thinking of?”

  “That’s it,” said Jim. “Rioting is the voice of the unheard.”

  “More like the voice of the unrared,” boomed Bill puffing out his waistcoat.

  Jim’s nostrils flared. “You trying to say the boys out fighting for us weren’t rared proper?”

  “I’m saying,” said Bill exaggerating weary patience, “that far too many mothers in this town are out playing Bingo at night when they should be at home watching their families. That’s what I’m saying. And by the way, they’re not fighting for me. ”

  “And what about the fathers?” demanded Margie.

  “The fathers?” said Bill. “I don’t know. You’d need to ask them. Although maybe I can guess.”

  A line of dilated pupils eyeballed Bill. Count me out here. My eyes were on the floor.

  Dangerous silence fell and you had the feeling then that the only thing saving Waistcoat Willy from serious insult was a sense of Catholic decorum. Although some kind of retribution seemed to be at hand wake or no wake. And then, out of the blue, Jim with his fondness for quoting moved the discussion along and so threw Bill an unintended lifeline.

  “There’s nobody as dangerous,” he said, “as the man that has nothing to lose.”

  Which Bill immediately tossed back into the boat, countering “What about the people who have everything to lose? Or think they have? The ones we’re backing into a corner?”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Margie.

  I was trying to remember three things at the one time. Where was my whiskey glass, when had I left it out of my hand and was there any in it the time I put it down? In the middle of the frozen silence that followed Margie’s question I went out to the scullery and spied my glass with the bottle sitting beside it. I poured a generous glug on top of the thumbnail of whiskey I’d left and put the glass to my head. The heat filled my chest and made up my mind that this was the way to be. I don’t know how long I spent out there but whatever length of time it was I still had enough wits about me to leave bottle and glass behind when I went back to the kitchen where Bill was in the middle of advocating a return of the anti-treating league in Ireland as a means of stopping people standing rounds.

  “You see,” he said, “if there are three in the company then each person ends up taking three, maybe even six, drinks. And let’s say you have four people together.”

  “Got you,” said Jim. “Two threes is six and two fours is eight.”

  “And two fives is ten,” added Willie Henry wiping a tear from his cheek. “Jesus that sounds all right to me. And speaking of drink Master.” I was the master he was addressing here though of course I wisely ignored him.

  “I thought,” said Margie, “that the anti-treating league was to stop people standing drinks to spongers. After all, if you’re taking your turn to buy your round you’re not treating anybody, are you? You’re only treating somebody if you buy them a drink without expecting them to buy you one back.”

  “It’s a whatdoyoucall it, a misnomer,” agreed Seamus. “Is that what you call it, Margie?”

  “The very word,” said Margie. “A misnomer. Misnomer’s the word.”

  Bill was now giving me his full attention, determined I think not to let the Greek chorus sidetrack him. It was almost admirable the way he handled the situation but then he’s been dealing with unruly classes for more than thirty years. If you can’t beat them then pretend they’re not there.

  “Drink has been the curse of this country, Jeremiah, did you know that?” he said.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. This hasty movement caused the room to spin a little and there and then I made up my mind to keep the head still.

  “I really think,” he continued, “that the time is ripe for a return to some kind of crusade. They used to have musical evenings away back you know and they’d have young women going round with temperance beverages and cream buns and pastry and the like. Tell me, did you ever hear of the blue ribbon badge? ”

  I looked straight ahead while he told me about its origins. It was created, he said, by a man called Francis Murphy who took a verse from the Bible as his inspiration. “I can’t remember the exact wording,” he said, “but I think it went something along the lines of ‘Speak to the children of Israel and bid them wear a ribbon of blue as an outward sign of their moderation.’ ”

  “I wonder would he be anything to the Frank Murphy from Buncrana that played for Derry City?” asked Seamus.

  “Your man Murphy that played on the left wing you mean?” queried Jim. “Sure he wasn’t Frank. He was Stan was he not?”

  “It’s actually the first instance of the pledge being taken, back around the turn of the century, and it was the only known predecessor of the pioneer pin.”

  “Aw Jesus, was it that long ago?” said Seamus. “Well it couldn’t have been Frank Murphy then.”

  “Stan,” corrected Jim. “Or wait a minute. I tell a lie. I’m thinking of Stan Murphy played the snooker down in the Ancient Order of Hibernians.” He waved an arm in the air. “But sure it doesn’t matter two damns anyway. The boy your man’s on about lived away back.”

  Your man as Jim impertinently described him then proceeded to tell me about the Catholic Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness, long defunct, and Father Theobald Mathew with one t the great temperance champion and also the reformed drunkard the Venerable Matthew Talbot, Matthew with two ts, who would have been anonymous had it not been for the cords and chains discovered on his body after he collapsed and died in a Dublin street in 1925.

  “Self-mortification,” Bill explained. At several points during this latest discourse he eyed the mourners opposite with some irritation as all of them except for Willie Henry who was now asleep had become embroiled in a what seemed like a heated argument concerning a brother of Frank Murphy, Mick by name, who at one time had been the best high jumper in the northwest having won money at sports meetings for years from Muff to Malin Head and who after retiring from athletics became known in Buncrana as Mick the taxi or possibly Mick the ambulance. It was this nickname that was the bone of contention, Seamus going with the first named moniker and Margie and Jim, especially Jim, with the second. I could have told them of course that Mick went by both names, the first when he drove a taxi for Buncrana Taxis and the second when he was employed by Carndonagh hospital as an ambulance driver during which time he sometimes still got Mick the taxi even though he hadn’t driven a taxi for years. I decided not to do this for two reasons, firstly because Bill was demanding my full attention in an effort obviously to keep his mind off the rabblement opposite and secondly because I wasn’t sure how my voice would come out. On that particular matter I had some minutes before decided that I’d be making a beeline for the b
ottle again the minute Bill left because, although I wasn’t in favor of going back to Irish wakes and funerals of old where it was not unknown for mourners to drink all night and then be stretched out in a paralytic state sometimes next to the grave even while interment was taking place, I could see no good reason not to get slaughtered that night and then sleep it off. For this was a wake without bereaved, unique in that regard, and if you couldn’t get slaughtered at this one then what one could you get slaughtered at?

  “You’re wrong,” said Seamus to Margie. “It was Mick the taxi. Sure didn’t he tell me himself the Sunday he was driving me and Packie and them from the Keg o’ Poteen back up to Derry after we missed the last bus when we were down playing the friendly against Clonmany Trojans. And by the way, the anti-treaty league you were asking me about there a minute ago Margie had nothing to do with the other thing. It just so happened some people that were in one were in the other as well. It’s like a Venn diagram. Did you ever hear tell of a Venn diagram did you?”

  “What’s that you’re saying?” asked Bill who should have known better.

  “It’s got two parts that cross over each other,” explained Seamus with a trace of condescension. “Like circles. What’s the word? Intersect. I did it in Maths at Saint Columb’s. Maybe they didn’t do it in your day.”

  “No no,” said Bill impatiently. “Not the Venn Diagram. I know all about that of course. I passed Mathematics with distinction. What were you saying about the anti-treaty league?”

  “There was actually no such thing in point of fact,” continued Seamus. “It wasn’t a league as such.”

  “A misnomer,” said Margie.

  “Misnomer’s the word,” agreed Seamus. “The crowd that were against the treaty with England were the Republicans, not the anti-treaty league. And that wasn’t actually the name at all in point of fact. What’s this now it was?”

  The kitchen door opened and a woman from two doors below Aisling’s came in. I decided to lie low, figuring she knew where the coffin was. She knelt down and stayed down for ages and then I heard the sobs starting as she was getting up. Margie put the empty glass that was in her hand sitting under the chair and went over to comfort her, rubbing away at her back as if she was trying to bring her wind up.

  “You and Maud were very close, weren’t you, Kate?” she said.

  Kate. That’s who it was, Kate Breslin. Never out of the cathedral, never done bowing and scraping to the priests and putting fresh flowers on the altar, her and Maud and these others ones. I met her a couple of times when I was coming out of Aisling’s and from the look on her face at the cut of me I always had the feeling she knew something was going on that wasn’t Christian. Well she wouldn’t be seeing me again that way.

  Between sobs Kate told Margie that she’d been to the Long Tower carnival in the Brandywell showgrounds with Maud last July, just three months ago nearly to the day it was, and the two of them had gone to this fortune teller Madam Esmerelda just for the fun of it and she’d told Maud that she, Maud, would come into an inheritance before the year was out. Margie said “Well maybe the fortune teller was right, Kate, because sure you and I know that Maud’s in heaven right now and if that’s not coming into her inheritance I don’t know what is.” I couldn’t hear everything Kate said back with all the snivelling but I picked up the not exactly useful information that Madam Esmerelda was actually Sadie Walker from up Creggan Heights and she was in hospital at the minute with a broken hip from the time she got hit by a trailer carrying bricks at the end of Nailor’s Row.

  “She never seen that one coming,” said Jim to nobody in particular. Seamus shook with silent merriment but straightened his face as Kate turned to leave the kitchen. When she was gone Bill returned to the question of the anti-treaty league.

  “I think you may be right about that,” he said to Seamus. “I don’t remember ever reading of any such body. They were known only as the Republicans although of course they later became Fianna Fáil.”

  A groan from Willie Henry getting geared up, trying to open sleepstuck eyes, slapping his knee. And hark! a voice like thunder spake, the west’s awake! the west’s awake! “And Fianna failed us!” he shouted. “Dirty scuts!”

  “Foiled us,” said Seamus nodding. “Fianna foiled us.”

  “Filed us,” added Margie between laughing and serious. “They’re supposed to be the Republican party and they filed us away for another day.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Bill. “I think there are certain moves being made behind the scenes from Dublin. I think you might soon see Captain O’Neill being summoned to the headmaster’s office in Downing Street and given some lines to say.”

  Willie Henry didn’t seem ready to accept this bit of surmising. Looking fiercely into his glass he said: “Dublin? I wouldn’t trust that crowd a wankers as far as I’d throw them. Fianna foul!”

  “I can’t see Wilson or Callaghan or any of them over there doing anything,” said Margie. “And what sort of a name is that anyway? Did you ever hear of a prime minister being called captain? What is he the captain of? A cricket team? I remember reading one time he went to Eton. Cricket’s what they play there isn’t it?”

  “He’s the captain of a sinking ship,” shouted Willie Henry. A clear case of withdrawal symptoms. Which I also was suffering from but at least I had the wit to keep quiet.

  “This place is incurable,” said Margie. “Do you see all this stuff about one man one vote and fair housing and all? The only way this place can be reformed is to hand it over lock stock and barrel to the Free State.”

  Bill was pulling distractedly at his waistcoat buttons and elaborate looking things they were too. “And what would the Free State as you call it do with the Orange Order and the Apprentice Boys and the million Protestants that are afraid of Rome rule?”

  Willie Henry came out fighting. “What do you mean Rome rule?” he demanded.

  “Aye, what do you mean Rome rule?” said Margie. “That’s the kind of language Carson used. And Craig and Basil Brooke and the whole rogues’ galley of them.”

  “Gallery,” I said impulsively.

  “What?” shouted Willie Henry, picking angrily at hardened phlegm from the inside corner of one eye and dislodging what looked to me like red clots.

  “Gallery,” I repeated and then closed my eyes, sorry I’d spoken. The hard g at the start of the word had caused a sharp pain to shoot across my forehead twice in quick succession.

  “Margie’s right,” said Seamus emphatically. “Rogue’s galley’s what they are. Because they’re all going to go down with the ship so they are.”

  Bill shook his head reprovingly. “Tell me this now,” he said. “Just tell me this. How would you feel if you were a Protestant being handed over to the Republic of Ireland and wanting to marry a Catholic? Eh? You’d have to promise to change your religion and bring up any children you might have in the Catholic faith. Would you not think your religion was being forced into extinction?”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” said Jim. “Weren’t the Planters brought in here by the English to keep the Catholics down? And aren’t these Prods living here now all from Planters? And didn’t their religion start in the first place from that goat Henry not getting a divorce from the pope?”

  “The Protestants that are against the marchers didn’t come in with the Planters you know,” said Bill in a voice normally reserved for the backward row. “The Plantation of Ulster happened over three hundred years ago. What Protestants see now is their birthright being threatened. They know that a lot of the people out there marching are the children or grandchildren of migrants from over the border. There’s nothing black and white here. And if I may say so, a little bit of empathy wouldn’t go amiss.”

  The looks on the faces opposite were thunder dark. Whatever empathy is it can go to hell, they said. And suddenly the air seemed to have got thinner. Whether this was to do with my state of mind and body or the heightened feelings in the room or the fact that th
e kitchen window couldn’t be opened because it had been painted so many times or maybe even all three of the aforementioned I’m not sure. I could always have gone and opened the back door I suppose but then the cold air might have knocked me out and anyway the two wandering black cats from Majella Doherty’s would have taken the open door as an invitation and I couldn’t have that. This was nothing to do with superstition because I’m not superstitious or it being in bad taste, there being a wake in progress, but because Milly and Molly, for those were their names, always had a sweet smell about them that brought decomposing rats to mind. Options being limited to sitting doing nothing therefore I sat doing nothing if you can call listening doing nothing.

  “It was Michael Collins,” said Seamus, “that struck the first blow against the British Empire. Did you know that?”

  I turned my head slowly to look at him feeling vaguely grateful. Disadvantaged by the whiskey though I was I could still sense what he was at. He was trying to steer the conversation away from the rocky road to Dublin. Or so it seemed to me anyway.

  “Aye, that’s true,” nodded Jim. “And with a bit of luck this wee town of ours could finish them off.”

  “What is it they say?” said Braddock carefully ignoring Jim’s comment. “The sun never sets on the British Empire?”

  “That’s because it doesn’t trust them in the dark,” said Margie. This remark brought a smile to Big Bill’s face, a rare occurrence as he’s a forbidding sort of git most of the time, and loud laughter from all others present except myself for reasons that shouldn’t need explaining here.