Though the Heavens Fall

by Anne Emery

“Really?”

  “Here’s how it happened. Warning: Paddy Healey and his pal Father Burke do not come out of this story looking like angels. Or even grownups.”

  “Tell me!” Patsy leaned forward in his seat, as wide-eyed as the little boy he had been when these events occurred.

  “Well, your aunt Noreen was getting married at the Pro on a Friday evening in June, 1972. I was a young priest at the time. Your grandmother thought it would be nice if I would perform the ceremony, and she got in touch with me in New York. I would love to have accepted but I had obligations at the home parish that I couldn’t weasel out of. I could fly over on the Friday and attend the wedding, but I didn’t feel I should officiate if I hadn’t had time to meet with the bride and groom. And what if something came up and I couldn’t make my flight? So, I regretfully turned down the invitation but said I’d try my best to be there as a guest. Great opportunity to see all the family. The regular parish priest would perform the sacrament. Father Egan.”

  “I remember him! A long streak of misery, he was. Still is, I expect.”

  “A stern man, as I recall.”

  “Officious prick.”

  Brennan laughed. “That, too. So anyway, I had an overnight flight and landed here early in the morning. Your da collected me at the airport and dropped me off at my uncle Finn’s place to catch a few hours of sleep. Paddy and I were delighted to be together again and made a plan to meet that afternoon at Finn’s other premises: Christy Burke’s bar, which Finn had taken over after old Christy’s death. And this is the fork in the road where if Paddy had gone right and done what he was supposed to do, everything would have gone as planned. But he went left, neglected his brotherly duties, and joined me in lifting a few jars at Christy’s.”

  “What was he supposed to do that day?”

  “He had undertaken the responsibility of getting the wedding program printed up. You know, a little brochure setting out the music, words to the hymns, the names of the people doing readings. Photo of Noreen and Aidan on the cover, that sort of thing. Paddy was supposed to have got this done well in advance of the wedding day but somehow he hadn’t managed it.”

  “That sounds like him! I can remember my ma pestering him to get this or that done. He had a tendency to put things off.”

  “He did. And that came back to bite him in the arse on the day of his sister’s wedding.”

  Patsy took a good long pull of his Guinness and said, “Let’s hear it.”

  “Noreen had done up the program and had it on five sheets of paper. The printing company would put it together, make a little booklet of it, and run off eighty copies. So Paddy had the sheets of paper on him, and he had lent his car to someone in the family, so he caught a bus here in Rathmines to go over to the north side to Christy’s. Another thing: it was bucketing rain that afternoon and windy as hell. So, Paddy takes the bus and gets off wherever the closest stop was to Mountjoy Street. He’s standing in the street and he pulls out his wallet, to make sure he has enough for a couple of pints, and with the wallet out come the pages of the wedding program.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. The wind catches the pages, all but page one, and whips them out of Paddy’s hand and into the street.”

  “Jesus! Noreen’s going to murder him.”

  “Oh, yeah, he’s in the soup and he knows it. There’s water running in the street and one of the pages goes off and down a drain. Two attach themselves to one of the wheels of the bus, and they go off out of sight. He doesn’t know what happened to the last one. Yer man is well and truly fucked.”

  “Christ, I feel as if I’m standing there in the pissing rain watching that bus go off!”

  “So, as the story goes, a man walks into a bar. Poor Paddy comes into the pub looking like something that was left off Noah’s Ark in the flood, and he rattles the story off for me and Finn, and Finn pours him a pint of consolation, and we sit at the bar and try to figure out what in the hell we can do to salvage the situation. And there’s another complication in this. The missing pages contained the names of the hymns, and the words, so everyone could sing along. Problem was, Father Egan was a bit prissy about what could, and what could not, be sung at a Catholic wedding. Noreen and Aidan had decided on two songs in addition to the liturgical pieces, and that’s where you come in.”

  “Me? Wait . . . yeah, I got stuck singing at the wedding. I couldn’t carry a tune, still can’t. But I don’t remember the details of that little bit of hell. Must have blocked the memory of it!”

  “You and your brother and sister were going to sing a little pop song, ‘Chapel of Love,’ with two or three of your older cousins. It was a song by a girl group called the Dixie Cups. Noreen had taught it to you, and you had rehearsed it. Reluctantly, as you say. But then Father Egan decreed that a pop song and the haunting old love song, ‘Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair,’ were not appropriate, and he substituted ‘Immaculate Mary’ and ‘On This Day O Beautiful Mother.’”

  Patsy rolled his eyes.

  “So there we were in the bar and we had our pints and shots of whiskey, and Finn gave us pens and sheets of paper, and we sat there trying to reconstruct the program. And Paddy’s got the janglers, knowing he has to get it right and have it printed by the end of the afternoon. And he’s scribbling things down, and we’re drinking, and we start going into fits of laughter over the whole thing.

  “Finn has an old typewriter back in his little office but of course he’s the classic two-finger typist, and so are we, which means the thing will take hours to type up. And will be filled with errors. No personal computers in those days. So he calls in somebody he knows, a retired secretary. And gently she asks, ‘Did your sister not make a carbon copy?’ And your da says she didn’t. Presumably because the printing shop was going to make the copies. ‘Could you not just ring your sister and ask her what to put in it?’ the woman says then.

  “And Paddy looks down and mumbles, ‘Em, no. You see, she thinks I have it all done. I sort of told her that it’s already in the print shop, and that I’ll be collecting it today.’

  “So Paddy is sitting there, downing the Guinness and the whiskey at a furious pace, and I’m trying to get him to ease off the stuff. I’m having a few myself, of course, but . . .”

  “I didn’t know Da was a man for the drink. But maybe everyone played that down, you know, after he died and all.”

  “No, he really wasn’t. It was just the nerves going on him that day. Which of course made it worse, him not being used to skulling pints at such a rate. ‘She’ll have me bollocks for this,’ he’s saying. Noreen, he means. He sits there in a funk for a bit, then his face brightens like the morning sun. ‘No, she won’t! She’ll be covering me with glory!’

  “‘How’s that now, Paddy?’

  “‘The music! I’ll give them back the tunes they want!’

  “And he starts in on Father Egan, how crabbed he’s being about the music, and why can’t Noreen and Aidan have the songs they picked? ‘What do you think as a sagart yourself, Brennan?’

  “And I say, ‘Let them have the music they want. It’s their day. It’s not going to negate the sacrament to have a beautiful, haunting old love song in Irish and a, well, sugary little pop song.’ Now I’m a stickler about music myself, Patsy. For me it’s Gregorian chant and the great Latin hymns. ‘Chapel of Love’ would not have been my choice, but they were a very young couple, and why not? Finn picks up the phone and rings a musician who appears frequently in trad music sessions in the pub, to try and get the words to the Irish language song. We know we’re making a hash of the spelling, but it’s the best we can do. Then we get on to ‘Chapel of Love,’ and we start singing it to make sure we have the lyrics. And other punters join in and a couple of young women stand up and do a little dance. It’s great gas.”

  “Jesus, wouldn’t I give anything to be there right now seeing my father in such a fix!
”

  “Oh, you’ll have your moment, when we get to the church.” Brennan drained the last of his pint and went up to the bar for two more. He resumed his tale. “So yer one is there with the typewriter, a good-natured lady anxious to help us out, and Paddy dictates the names of the people doing the readings as best he can. Of course he’s lost when he comes to the chapter and verse of the scripture selections, so he settles for ‘Readings from Holy Scripture.’ He remembers that there were a couple of standard hymns in there but can’t for the life of him recall what they were, so I come up with substitutes. We finally get the thing finished, and we thank Finn and the typist and we bolt from Christy’s with the new program in a brown envelope and we make a joke or two about that. We get to the printing shop, and Paddy pleads with the fellow to do this right away, and the man laughs and agrees to drop everything else and print the thing up. So we have the programs, and Paddy runs off home to get changed and ready for the wedding.”

  “And they all lived happily ever after.”

  “I’m sure they did, eventually. I of course wasn’t on the scene when Paddy presented the family with the new edition of the program. But I was in the church for the wedding, and it was lovely for the most part. Father Egan had a puss on him when ‘Coinleach Glas an Fhómhair’ was sung, beautifully, by the groom’s sister. And I thought he was going to bust a vessel when you little ones got up to do ‘Chapel of Love.’ His expression was matched only by your own, Patsy. You glowered out at the congregation and barked out the lyrics in a less than romantic tone of voice. There was chuckling in the pews over that. So you made a hit in spite of yourself.

  “Then, when it was all done, and everyone was gathered on the steps of the Pro for photographs, Father Egan lit into your poor father over the changes to the program. So I stepped up in his defence and made the argument that the sacrament was in no way diminished by the songs. I wasn’t wearing my collar. I was just in civvies, so the priest whirled on me. ‘And who are you, may I ask?’ So I told him my name without adding ‘Father.’ He said, ‘Is that liquor I’m smelling off you, Burke?’ He cast his eyes on Paddy then and jerked his thumb in my direction. ‘So this is the bastún who had you out in the shebeens on the afternoon of your sister’s marriage! Inserting rock music into a wedding!’ Imagine classifying ‘Chapel of Love’ as rock. You’d think it was Black Sabbath, not the Dixie Cups. Anyway, he told us we were a disgrace, the pair of us.

  “And then you got in on it. You understood that your father and I were responsible for your having to sing. You’d obviously learned your Catechism that week. You gave out yards to me about the dangers to my immortal soul.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You did. You glared daggers at me and condemned me in a loud, clear voice that all could hear. ‘You have great dirty spots on your soul! You aren’t going to heaven when you die. You are going to purgatory and you’re not going to like it! And I’ll not be saying any prayers for your soul to get out of there!’ You turned to your oul fella and said, ‘Da, don’t be mates with him. He’ll have you on the drink and singing bad songs!’ Oh, you were full of fire and brimstone that day, my boy.”

  Patsy stared at Brennan, astonished. “I can’t believe it. I can’t remember ever thinking that way!”

  “It was priceless, this little lad of eight years togged out in his little suit, with the authority of the One True Church to back him up. Everybody loved it. But then you extended your loving mercy to poor old Paddy. He was standing there, mortified, and you saw that and said something like, ‘Da, it’s not your fault.’ You pointed a finger at me and said to Paddy, ‘Stay away from him and you’ll be grand. He’s a bad —’ you wanted to say influence but you weren’t sure of the word and it came out as effluent. So that sobriquet stuck to me, so to speak, for the duration of the weekend.”

  Brennan and Patsy enjoyed a laugh and finished their pints. They walked out of Slattery’s, and Patsy shook Brennan’s hand. “You know, Brennan, that may be my favourite story about my father. It’s the only one anyone ever told me that didn’t portray him as a man of saintly perfection. It makes me even more . . .” His voice faltered and he turned away.

  And that’s when Brennan threw caution under the bus. “Patsy, if there is one sentence in the English language that has the opposite of its intended effect, it is ‘Don’t get your hopes up.’ But I can tell you in confidence that there may be a chance of a breakthrough in the bombing case.” The young man turned and stared at Brennan. “It’s far from a sure thing. But someone in my family has uncovered evidence that a certain man was in one of the bomb cars coming into Dublin that day; there is a witness who can identify him.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “And the man in the car has documents stating that he was out of the country on May the seventeenth but we know those papers were forged.”

  “Jesus, Brennan. After all these years! Who is the fucker?”

  “I don’t know his name,” Brennan lied. “But the evidence has been passed on to the police on both sides of the border. And if this man is charged, he may well give up some of the others in order to get a better deal for himself. But, given the history so far, it’s very possible that nothing will come of this, Patsy. Please understand that.”

  “I do.” But of course he didn’t.

  * * *

  It was another attack that had Finn Burke scowling from his place behind the bar and behind the lenses of his dark glasses. Brennan had arrived at Christy Burke’s and had given his uncle an update on the situation with Ronan. If it were up to Finn — and, Brennan suspected, if he were able to cross and re-cross the border without being detected — the fuckers who had tried to kill his nephew would be sent kicking and screaming to the everlasting flames of hell. Brennan had no desire to get his uncle started on the connection between the assassination attempt and the car bombs in Monaghan and here in Dublin. He did not reveal that one of the best-known preachers of God’s word in the North of Ireland, John the Baptist Geddes, had known of the bomb plot in advance.

  But there was something he hoped to find and it was related to those bombings. “Finn, there used to be some photos in here, showing the lot of us as kids before our midnight departure from these shores all those years ago. There were a few of me and my brothers and sister, the crop of us born in Ireland, and there was one was of me and some other lads in our football jerseys. I would have been nine or ten at the time.”

  “Go back there into my office, and you’ll see a stack of the old pictures. You’re not about to rob them off me, I hope, Father.”

  “No, I just thought I’d bring some of them to a photography shop and get copies made.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Brennan went behind the bar and into the office. He found the pile of photos and picked out a few for copying. He took a couple of his family as it was constituted the year they left Ireland: his mother, father, Molly, Brennan, Patrick, Francis, and Terry. Their youngest, Brigid, was born in New York after their hasty emigration. And he took the one showing his Gaelic football team, with him standing flank to flank with Paddy Healey. He waved the pictures at Finn and set off walking until he found a photography studio in Dorset Street. He asked for copies and was told they would be ready the following morning. He walked back to the cream-coloured building bearing the name Christy Burke and stood at the bar savouring a lovely, rich pint of Guinness.

  His sister and brothers arrived soon afterwards. It was made clear by Patrick and Terry, newly arrived from New York, that their old man Declan was in a fury over the attempt on his nephew’s life. He groused that he should “sign up again” and take up arms in Belfast. Brother Patrick, psychiatrist and smoother of roiling family waters whenever those waters were a-roil, offered his love and healing power at any time, any place. He said, “All you have to do is ask, Brennan. And if you don’t ask, I may interpret that as a cry for help!”

  But brother Terry dec
lared that Brennan had come through it all in his usual imperturbable manner. “He’d walk through flames and all you’d hear from him would be ‘Would you ever be turning the heat down, lads?’”

  “You’re not a man to be rattled yourself, Ter,” Brennan told him, “keeping jumbo jets aloft through all weathers, fair and foul.”

  “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night keeps our man Terry from his duties,” said Molly.

  “You’ll find that inscribed on the New York post office building, not my aircraft. I don’t have to get my brogues wet when I go to work.”

  “The New York post office and Herodotus speaking of the Persians in 500 B.C.”

  “Leave it to you to know that, Bren,” his sister said.

  “Ah, now,” Brennan replied with modesty.

  “What Father Brennan Xavier Burke — licentiate, Gregorian University, doctorate, Angelicum — doesn’t know could be written on a tiny piece of paper this big,” she said, her fingers delineating a small scrap of paper.

  “A bar coaster,” suggested Terry.

  “In old ogham script.”

  And it went on like that.

  The next morning, he collected his photos and took care not to crease them. He would keep the picture of himself and Paddy in view in his room, as a talisman of sorts to bring on the prosecution of one of the many men responsible for the slaughter of his friend and all the other victims twenty-one years before.

  After completing that errand Brennan spent a relaxing day with his siblings before he returned to Mount Melleray, and they took themselves off to Belfast.

  * * *

  Brennan reflected on the fact that he had been away from Belfast for just over three weeks by the time he turned his mind to a departure date. He was anxious to see how Ronan and Gráinne were doing, though he felt they had probably benefitted from having their house to themselves for a while. And he would have a few pints with Monty before he headed back to the law courts of Halifax; he knew Monty had planned to finish his work on the tractor case and fly home to take up the local end of the job in early or mid-May. Brennan also wanted to make up for the time he had lost from the Holy Cross girls’ choir. The girls had had Easter holidays and then they were preparing for a play to be staged later in the spring, but now it was time to see how they were progressing with Palestrina, Byrd, Handel, and Mozart. That would inspire him for his next adventure, which would begin in September: the gig as choirmaster at Sancta Maria Regina Coeli in Rome. He told himself he would enjoy another week of quiet and contemplation, then pack his bags for the North.