Future Popes of Ireland
Page 33
*
Or, Peg never got on board the plane, because why would somebody like Peg do something like that?
*
Or, Peg found a plane that would leave and made her way across the Atlantic. She landed in Dublin Airport and managed her way through customs. She adjusted to Terminal 2 and to the look of euros and to the half-light of a Dublin morning, as if the sun itself had a hangover. She found herself a taxi. She got dropped off at the hospital and threw an array of euros to the driver as a tip and got out of the car and stood there, with her suitcase by her side, watching the glass doors open and close, watching other people walk in and out, the doors opening and closing, other people walking in and out, until she turned round and waited for another taxi.
*
Or, Peg walked through the hospital doors and up the stairs until she found the corridor. She walked into the room. She looked at Granny Doyle and slapped her across the face.
‘Peg!’
But Peg would not be sssssssh’d by John Paul.
‘You turned your back on me. You kicked me out when I needed you most. I’ll never forget that. That’s not something that can ever be forgiven,’ Peg said, walking out.
*
Or, she found the corridor but didn’t walk into the room because Rosie was standing outside.
It was too late, Peg could tell from Rosie’s face.
Rosie ran over and hugged her, sent tears streaming down the back of her cardigan, and, in the movement of their hands across each other’s backs they both knew that it wasn’t too late.
*
Or, she got on a plane and it touched down smoothly – a year later the skies were full of planes again and the President himself had made the journey only the day before. She got a taxi to a hotel. She slept for a few hours. She met the triplets in the afternoon, the four of them squeezing into the car that John Paul had rented and driving down the pier to the end of the Bull Wall, where they took out the urn and scattered the rest of its contents into the sea. It was a cold afternoon, but they stayed by the sea for some time. Peg imagined herself a great, feathered creature, swooping large wings around her siblings, shielding them from the wind with all its sorrows; this was what she imagined, as she stood behind them, watching.
*
She walked into the room and everybody turned to look at her.
Granny Doyle stirred.
She’s a stubborn one, the nurse would say later, she was waiting for you.
Granny Doyle looked at Peg.
Peg looked at Granny Doyle.
They could see each other, all of their hurt and history, all of their secrets and lies, and in that look, Peg understood everything, saw a whole life unfurling before her.
Peg walked over to the bed, held Granny Doyle’s hand. Rosie placed her hand on Peg’s shoulder and John Paul held Granny Doyle’s other hand and Damien held on to both Rosie and John Paul and in this way, they were all connected.
Granny Doyle died in the early morning, ash hovering outside the window, though you couldn’t see it.
Before she passed, her eyes roamed the room, looked at each of them, pulsed with love.
Then she died and the four of them held each other and cried by the side of her bed.
That was the history that Peg told, searching for the right-shaped lid to close a box. It was the way she wanted it to happen. In the space between what had happened and what might have happened, there was room for all sorts of things: truth, lies, histories, heresies, even, surely, those elusive, shimmering things, miracles.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everybody at 4th Estate and Harper Collins who helped bring this story to publication with pride and passion, including Jack Smyth, Mary Byrne, Matt Clacher, Paul Erdpresser, David Roth-Ey, Michelle Kane, Lottie Fyfe, and especially Anna Kelly, whose wise editing, sharp eye for detail, and brilliant ideas helped the book tremendously.
Thank you to everybody at The Bent Agency for guiding this story towards publication: to John Bowers and Victoria Cappello for believing in the story from the beginning; to the indomitable Louise Fury for representing me in the US; to the wonderful Nicola Barr for expertly guiding the book and me through publication in the UK.
Thank you to all my friends who read various rough drafts or sections of this project over the past six years. Thanks to Anisa, Ed, Chris, Mika, Ian, Daragh and Felix for their helpful encouragement and advice on everything from climate protests to correct archival procedure; to Hannah Fair and Juli for last minute advice on sentences and semi-colons; to Gillian, for being one of the first readers of everything I’ve written and giving me the confidence to write more; to Minou, for her brilliant advice and encouragement, reading multiple drafts, and being the best comrade through grad school that anybody could hope for; to Kevin, for believing in the project from the first time I nattered about it on a train to Montreal, being kind and supportive about the messy early drafts, and for being kind and supportive, always.
Thank you to all my friends and housemates who have listened to me talk about these ideas over the last six years and helped enormously by sharing advice on writing and the world. Special thanks to Sarah for embarking on an Erris trip; to Ed for the environmental politics chats; to Rachel Schragis for all the climate talk; to Hannah Temple for the Google alerts and conversations about Pride; to Jane for the local advice and being a fine friend across decades; to Peter, for the impromptu artistic residency in Melbourne and being a friend through procrastination; to Donncha and Giacomo for the pasta, friendship, and an Edinburgh room to finish a first draft; to Michael and Mary Carson for their inspiration and the room-with-a-view writing days in Milford; to Maggie Dear for the map mock-ups, emergency cake-tutorials and optimism.
Thank you to my family for all their support, fact-checking, and rooting out of old photographs. Mum, Dad, Aoife, Gillian, Caroline, Brendan, Yossa, Ryley, and Kyrah: you’re all brilliant and I hope you’ll believe that you’re not in the novel now! Thank you to my grandmothers, Ellen Martin and Tess Garvey, who were wonderful mentors to me when I was younger. Some of the superficial details of Granny Doyle’s life are drawn from observing my grandmothers but the character is very different from the warm and generous women I grew up with.
Thank you to the writing communities that helped make this novel possible: to the Blue Mountain Center for space to come up with ideas; to Michael Yates Crowley and the Hearthgods community for providing a place to test out words; to Pat and the LGBT’s the Word creative writing group at 56 Dean Street for making space for queer stories; to Free Word, Tipping Point, and Durham University for hosting the Weatherfronts Conference and providing a regular space for writers to think about climate change; to Lola and all the Climate Writing group who provided advice on excerpts of this novel; to the First Story group at Chelsea Academy for their inspiration and advice on covers; to Aaron, Christine, Rachel Waldholz and many others for the chats about writing and the encouragement to keep going.
Thank you to the librarians of the British Library, the New York Public Library, the State Library of Victoria, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Library, Columbia University Library, Walthamstow Library, and Raheny Library. The majority of this novel was researched and written in different public libraries – thank you to everybody who keeps them running and funded.
Thank you to the writers of the following books, which helped to provide context for this story: How Ireland Voted 2007: The Full Story of Ireland’s General Election; Without Power or Glory: The Green Party in Government in Ireland; A Deal with the Devil: The Green Party in Government; Our Story: The Rossport Five; Once Upon a Time in the West: The Corrib Gas Controversy; The Irish Journey: Women’s Stories of Abortion; Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland: Towards the Twenty-first Century; Fintan O’Toole’s Ship of Fools. I am indebted to the exhibitions, ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ and ‘A History of Ireland in 100 Objects,’ for the structure of this novel. I am a
lso particularly grateful to the Irish Queer Archive and the papers of Charles Kerrigan; Risteard O Domhnaill’s documentary The Pipe, Kathy Sheridan’s 2012 feature article in The Irish Times, ‘Stories of abortion: by people who have been through it’ and to Betty Schult and Terence Conway in Erris. I should note here that both Clougheally and Dunluce Crescent are imagined places that I have located within Mayo and Dublin.
Finally, thank you to all the campaigners advocating for a fairer Ireland. In the six years since I started this novel, I’ve been heartened to see major shifts in Ireland for some of the movements that the characters in this novel engage with, including fossil fuel divestment and the Referendum votes in favour of gay marriage and repealing the Eighth Amendment. I wouldn’t be able to write a story about fictional characters getting involved with campaigns for justice without the real people doing the work to make change happen; I’m grateful to them, especially.
About the Author
Darragh Martin has written several plays and one children’s book, The Keeper, which was shortlisted for an Irish Book of the Year Award in 2013. He grew up in Dublin and now lives in London. Future Popes of Ireland is his first adult novel.
About the Publisher
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