Future Popes of Ireland

by Darragh Martin

  Rosie loved climbing up the boulder at full moon, its friendly light a guide for feet and minds, for alone on the rock in the moonlight, Rosie felt the world’s tingle, the pulse in the air that connected her to the other creatures of the night, bats swooping and beetles testing the night air with antennae and blades of grass gently growing and so many stars and oh the rush of life! The interconnectedness of living things! Rosie didn’t need anything or anyone on that rock in the moonlight; there, she felt full.

  5

  ‘Free the Ogoni Nine’ Amnesty International Urgent Action (1995)

  Rosie felt the currents of the world connect her to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine, who only wanted their rivers to be clean. They hadn’t asked for oil to clog up their streams and creeks. Environmental activist was an alien term to Rosie, but when she saw the photographs of dead fish and oil spills and gas flares spewing smoke towards the sky, she knew in her gut that nobody should be jailed for trying to protect their homes.

  And if Shell continued to cooperate with a Nigerian government who planned to execute the Ogoni Nine, well, she would show them how she felt. Rosie had already responded to the Urgent Action letter that Amnesty had sent; it was time for escalation. Dunluce Crescent was, unfortunately, not the best place to launch a boycott of Shell. Mr Fay agreed that the situation was terrible, but was puzzled because people had to fill their cars somewhere, didn’t they? Mrs Nugent was happy to add her autograph to Rosie’s petition, but didn’t seem to fully grasp the boycott concept, waving at Rosie as she emerged from the Shell garage with a packet of Monster Munch, ‘Ah, it was only an emergency; I’d be dead from the hunger, otherwise!’ John Paul’s signature was equally meaningless, for he wondered immediately if Rosie might start a petition against his persecution by vindictive teachers.

  Not that it mattered. The Ogoni Nine were executed despite the efforts of Rosie Doyle. A new petition was circulated, calling for ‘Justice for the Ogoni Nine’, justice the saddest word Rosie knew, only voiced in its absence. Petitions and boycotts weren’t enough and Rosie felt her tininess in the world, all her imagined actions absurd, for she suspected that the last thing the Ogoni protesters needed was a fifteen-year-old white girl from Dublin rocking up with some half-baked plan to smash Shell’s equipment.

  Rosie lit nine sticks of incense for the men instead, this action equally absurd in the face of injustice, though it seemed important to Rosie.

  6

  Spice Girls Calendar (1996)

  No, Rosie told Mrs McGinty, they weren’t really her thing.

  Yes, Rosie told Mrs Fay, it was brilliant that her Grace knew all the words to the rap.

  Ha!, Rosie told Mrs Nugent, no, she didn’t want to be Goth Spice and ha!, yes, Mrs Nugent was a shoo-in if they ever needed an Irish Baby Spice, and help! Rosie thought, as nothings continued to bounce around the porch, 7 Dunluce Crescent possibly the furthest point in the world from anything relevant; Rosie’s mind had long fled, it was only a matter of time before her body caught up.

  7

  Wooden Dreamcatcher (1997)

  Rosie turned over on their tree-house floor and held out the drawing of her next tattoo for Conor to admire.

  ‘What do you think?’

  It was the oak tree they were lying in, the finest in Wicklow.

  ‘Sweet. Though there’s somebody important missing.’

  ‘Fidelma’s there, she’s scampering across one of the branches,’ Rosie said, with a smile to torment him.

  Conor shook his head.

  ‘You know your squirrel-friend is a he?’

  ‘You’ve asked Fidelma, have you?’

  ‘Hard to argue with a pair of nuts!’

  ‘You’re jealous.’

  ‘And you’re not a Disney princess entertaining your animal kingdom; you know you shouldn’t waste food on … Fidelma.’

  He wasn’t really mad; he wrapped his arms around her. There was the slight patter of rain on leaves, a lovely sound.

  ‘Anyway, the thing you forgot is the person who built the tree house.’

  ‘I thought it was a collaborative effort.’

  ‘Of course it is – you’ll have to add a pink-haired girl next to those bits of twig that … what does it do again?’

  ‘Catches your dreams!’

  ‘Oh that’s where they’ve been going! Anyway, you’d want to be adding in the guy who made the best tree house in the camp.’

  ‘You want to hang out on my arse for ever?’

  ‘I thought the tree was going on your back?’

  ‘The tree is, yeah, but not the arrogant eejit I pushed out for making fun of my friends.’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’

  A gentle push, a kiss to pull him back in, giggles, as they lay in each other’s arms, the rain soft outside.

  It was the best tree house in the camp: Conor knew what he was doing and it would hold up through the winter, the two of them snuggled in sleeping bags like cuddling caterpillars. It was the best room she’d ever had, even if rain dripped through the roof. Her first proper home! She’d been glad to escape 7 Dunluce Crescent, where every effort she made to push against the sadness of the box room, from purple walls to wind chimes, was defeated by the house; it wasn’t a structure where joy was possible. She hadn’t hesitated when Conor had told her he was heading to the Glen of the Downs Camp. She’d packed a satchel that night and left a note on the kitchen table for the battleaxe, who might not have noticed otherwise.

  She hadn’t looked back. They weren’t just protecting the Glen of the Downs woods from a road expansion, they were creating an alternative world; Rosie couldn’t have found a better place to escape to. It was incredible, to lie in an oak as generations of leaves greened and reddened and wrinkled. To get away from the cars was to hear the hush of ancient woods, to stand barefoot in a clear spring over stones that had felt the rush of water for thousands of years. She’d barely thought about the Doyles once.

  Until that morning.

  ‘Is that somebody knocking?’

  Rosie was in no mood to get up.

  ‘It’s Fidelma; she’s pissed off with you for calling her a fella, that’s all.’

  Conor stirred.

  ‘That’s definitely someone.’

  They could have snuggled for the morning but Conor found his clothes, the traitor.

  ‘Sorry about that … hiya!’

  ‘Is Rosie there?’

  No, Rosie thought, recognizing the voice but failing to become invisible in time.

  *

  ‘Thanks,’ Damien said, peering at the dandelion tea as if it might be poisoned.

  ‘No bother,’ Conor said, handing a tin mug full of tea to Rosie too.

  It was strange to see them side by side in the camp’s makeshift kitchen. Damien, out of place in his corduroys and tucked-in shirt (he might as well have brought a Legion of Mary handbook!), taking in Conor’s tattoo and piercings.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Conor said, taking off before she could stop him.

  Rosie clocked Damien taking in Conor’s arse too, and thought about all the things she might say to him, incredible that they were technically the same age, when Rosie had grown into herself and found a world beyond Dunluce Crescent.

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ was what she said, though.

  ‘Sure,’ Damien said, startled by her directness.

  ‘Did she send you here?’

  ‘No!’

  Damien looked up from his tea.

  ‘It’s …’

  He had to work up to what he’d come to say.

  ‘It’s amazing here.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Really! It’s so organized.’

  Trust Damien to find the most boring part of the camp to admire. It was a feat though, the logistics required to have thirty people live in trees for months, the meetings that stretched on into the night, which Rosie didn’t mind, because she loved the care that went into every collective decision, from where they should compost
to what time the fiddle players should stop.

  ‘I like this installation.’

  Damien pointed to the jars of spices, arranged by colour – Rosie’s doing, so she allowed him a smile.

  ‘Seems like you’re well stocked.’

  ‘We’ve had a bunch of donations.’

  ‘That’s good that local people are supporting you.’

  ‘Of course they are!’

  Some of them, at least. Some were keen for the dual carriageway to be finished, an ancient oak forest no competition to convenience. That was all Fianna Fáil cared about, building roads and houses and shopping centres; it was enough to make her cry.

  ‘You’re not missing the Cookeen too much, then?’

  This warranted another smile; they always had the shared enemy of Granny Doyle, at least.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Damien smiled and even took an experimental sip of dandelion tea.

  ‘She’s okay, is she?’ Rosie found herself asking, against her best instincts.

  ‘Yeah.’

  It’s …

  But Damien had a great interest in examining his mug.

  The conversation trundled on in fits and starts for a while, Damien expressing amazement at every facet of the camp, while his tea grew cold and his resolve faltered. Finally, he found the words.

  I’m not coming back, she thought, whatever it is.

  ‘It’s John Paul.’

  And …

  ‘He’s … not great.’

  Rosie couldn’t be annoyed at Damien’s prevarications because she sensed the crisis coming, felt some triplet-twist of her insides, knew a tear was forming in her eye in sympathy with Damien’s.

  ‘Rosie, you have to come home …’

  8

  Box of John Player Blue Cigarettes (1997)

  Rosie fumbled for change in the hospital gift shop. After months of living in the woods, she was disarmed by the gaudy parade of commerce, the multiple options of fags available, when her pouch of tobacco was fine. The picky git wanted his John Players, though, so Rosie obliged, secretly glad of the mission, because she wasn’t sure how much longer she could have stayed by the hospital bed, while John Paul stared into space and Damien reached for small talk.

  At least his pickiness showed some signs of life. Otherwise, Rosie might have been hard placed to connect the boy in the bed to her brother. Things had been tense before she left – John Paul and Damien had been fighting about something or other – but she couldn’t believe that John Paul was capable of such silence.

  She hadn’t a clue what to say. Not when she saw the bandages, which were covering the scars, which were where he’d slashed a razor blade into his wrists. Impossible that such an action could occur in the bathtub she’d once stained with henna. It had though, not that John Paul or Damien talked about it. Or that she had anything to say either, in fairness, directness disappearing when she copped sight of John Paul. She needed a smoke herself. One on her own before they shared one together; they’d talk, then.

  She wasn’t alone in the depressing smoking area, however. Some poor cancer patient puffed defiantly away and a couple of nurses shared fags and gossip and, leaning against the brick wall, there she was.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ Rosie blurted out.

  Damien had promised.

  ‘Where else would I be?’ Granny Doyle said.

  Rosie had never seen Granny Doyle smoke before, though she knew she had a secret stash. She’d aged too, in the few short months Rosie had been away. Though she hadn’t lost her capacity for indignation, taking in Rosie and managing a snort. Rosie steeled herself, rolling her own fag for support, eager to be on equal ground, an adult, now.

  ‘Have you been to see John Paul?’

  Something softer in Granny Doyle’s voice as she approached her favourite noun; of course they weren’t going to talk about what Rosie had been up to.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s okay, is he?’

  Rosie gave a shrug: how could she begin to communicate how far from okay he was?

  ‘They’re not feeding him right,’ Granny Doyle said, glad of a pair of ears. ‘Of course he won’t eat with that muck they serve here! I’ve told them, he needs a good cut of meat and fresh spuds, not some slop they call soup, but they won’t let me into the kitchen!’

  Her eyes caught sight of the box in Rosie’s hand.

  ‘They’re not for him, are they? You’re not helping, he’s to stop all that, not healthy for him at all,’ she said, incredibly, as she let out a puff of smoke. ‘Fresh air is what he needs. Up out of the bed and back into school, or some job; out of the bed, that’s what I tell them – if they’ll only let him home, we’ll have him back on his feet, but I might as well be speaking in tongues.’

  Rosie squirmed at the ‘we’, wondering if it included her; panic seized her body and this fag wasn’t strong enough to calm her. She had to leave.

  Perhaps Granny Doyle sensed this resistance; she squinted at her and sighed.

  ‘What are you after doing to your hair?’

  She had to leave, now.

  ‘The nuns will never take you back, looking like some flamingo-floozy. There’s a reason God didn’t gift us with pink hair and as soon as you meet a mirror again you’ll be discovering it!’

  ‘I can do what I want,’ Rosie said, hating how suddenly seventeen she sounded.

  Granny Doyle snorted.

  ‘So you’ve made clear.’

  Granny Doyle stubbed out her cigarette.

  They were going to talk about what Rosie had done, after all.

  ‘John Paul was worried sick about you.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’ve no right to be gallivanting around in trees while your poor brother is sick—’

  ‘I’m not gallivanting—’

  ‘A load of codswallop, so it is, chaining yourself to trees when there are good men only glad of the work, having to twiddle their thumbs while you eejits drum and dance about—’

  ‘It’s a protest, not a party—’

  ‘What would your father say about this? He would have been glad of that work – he spent his life building things, roads too, do you not remember when he had that Corporation job? He’d turn in his grave, so he would.’

  Rage boiled inside Rosie – how dare she mention Danny Doyle! – but she waited until it cooled before she spoke.

  ‘I don’t think he’d be too happy with what you’ve done to John Paul, either.’

  Granny Doyle looked like she needed another cigarette, but she leant against the wall instead, catching her breath, not dignifying Rosie with a response. Rosie wouldn’t regret the words. Granny Doyle had ruined the lot of them; love or neglect, the effect was the same. (‘Peg’ hung in the air, unsaid.) She deserved to hear the truth; Rosie wouldn’t regret the words, even as her hands shook.

  Granny Doyle composed herself, snatching for control of the conversation.

  ‘Your bed is still there for you. And the room’s had a good clean. The number of candles and smelly sticks you had in there, it was a wonder you didn’t burn the house down! And I had to throw out some of that tofu stuff from the fridge – you’re not to be at any of that nonsense this Christmas, you’ll be glad of the turkey, I won’t be having you under my feet and taking up all the pots and pans with your beans—’

  ‘I’m not coming back.’

  ‘Don’t be daft! You’re not spending Christmas in a tree. I’ve enough on my plate without worrying about you.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  She had to leave. Immediately.

  ‘Give these to John Paul. I won’t ask anything else of you again. I’ve my own family now.’

  Rosie walked away before Granny Doyle could guilt her into staying. She should say goodbye to John Paul and Damien, of course, but her legs headed towards the bus stop, beyond it, she’d walk to the next one; it was too much to ask of her, she couldn’t look after the lot of them.

  Rosie managed to
light a cigarette and find her rhythm, her heart returning to normal, the closer she got to Wicklow. It was a question of priorities. John Paul could sort himself out. Her being back wouldn’t help. And somebody needed to protect the Glen of the Downs from the pickaxes and the guards and the chainsaws. It wasn’t just the glen Rosie was protecting, it was a whole way of life, the right to say slow down, stop! She had found a new family, a group of people who felt the same pull of the world that Rosie felt, the sense that there was no need to sit in front of a television and fill cupboards with clothes and get a good job and buy a big house and switch the channel if it looked like the world was falling apart; in a world of the dead, Rosie had found other forms of life.

  Rosie picked up her pace. She had to get back to Conor and Fidelma the squirrel and the spindly branches she could climb, as guards and chainsaws waited below, futilely, for Rosie Doyle would not come down. The Glen of the Downs was where she belonged, where she could hear the hum of the trees and the swish of squirrels’ tails and the drums played by campfires; she would stay there, for ever.

  9

  Tattoo Gun (2007)

  ‘They kicked you out of the trees eventually, right?’

  There was no malice in Peg’s question, merely a desire for accurate history.

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie said.

  There was no denying it: the camp had been demolished; the trees felled; the road widened (oh, but the Glen of the Downs campaign had seeded something, a moment, a movement, the idea that stop! might be possible to sound.)

  A shame, Peg’s sigh said.

  Then, to be expected, though, wasn’t it?, communicated through a shrug of her shoulders and a dip of her head back to her book, the Glen of the Downs already history to her.