The priest’s loud voice was directed at the crowd.
— I’ve a good one for you, Joe, listen to this…
McCann knew what to expect. When a Mass deserter ventured into the pub, the priest would welcome him with his glass raised, call him by his first name, tell him the joke of the day and then the reproaches would begin.
— So here it is: Joe McCann’s walking out of the church and bumps into Father Gibney. ‘Did you like my sermon?’ the priest asks him. ‘Oh yes, Father. Thanks to you, I learn about new sins every Sunday!’
The priest burst out laughing, and the room with him.
— Come on, Joe… have a seat.
McCann moved towards the bar and the priest’s open arms, ready to be chastised.
— I was worried, Joe, you know? You have to check in from time to time.
The priest reflected while miming the pulling of a pint to the barman.
— It must be, what? Two, three months since we’ve seen you at the office?
A cheerful voice piped up from a corner of the pub.
— Maybe even longer!
— Maybe even longer, Joe. Maybe even longer.
The priest laughed and handed Joe his pint of Guinness. Then he clinked glasses with him. The sinner with his pint of ink, the priest with his glass of gold.
— And if you were to come to Mass tomorrow? If you were to come along with Nelly and the children? Hmm? What do you say, Joe? Isn’t that a good idea? And of course you’ll sit up in the front row because of your ear, okay?
The arm on the shoulder, a sugary smile, a quick glance towards the ceiling.
— And you know, I believe He’s been missing you, too…
Joe nodded and smiled dolefully before bringing the glass to his lips. I lifted mine. It was almost empty and the barman filled the next one.
That’s when Father Gibney got down from his stool. He took a chair and sat opposite me.
— May I?
— You may.
He had brought his drink with him. He drank it down in one go.
— An old friend wants to see you.
He spoke in a murmur, his elbows on the table and his hands joined in front of his mouth. He stared at me strangely. I was tense.
— To see me?
— And also to hear you.
I took a slow swig, my lips dipped in the creamy head. I was searching for something hidden deep in his eyes.
— To hear me?
— If you wish it, yes.
Hear me? I didn’t like that kind of listening. I had admitted my guilt and there was nothing else to say. I slammed my pint down on the wet table. I had understood.
— Are you referring to Josh?
My words hung in the air, my rasping voice.
The priest winked at me.
— Yes, Josh. He’s a Franciscan, lives in a monastery in Athlone.
— Josh, I repeated, and my heart felt as though it was held between claws.
— We call him Father Joseph Byrne now. He’s back home for two days.
Joseph Byrne, Father Donoghue’s angel. The kid who used to sing for our ragged wee troupe in the bog. Josh the leprechaun, the pixie who used to say grace, who prayed for us, who had stood up to the Gormley brothers without ever rolling up his sleeves.
— He wants to meet you. He told me to pass on the message.
— He wants to meet me? But why? What does he want?
My tone was getting aggressive. That was the anxiety.
The priest left my table. A meeting at St Mary’s tomorrow? It was an order. The day after, Josh would leave for Belfast. I said yes, no problem, of course. To see him, not to be heard. To be completely certain that God wasn’t making a martyr of him.
7
Uncle Lawrence died on 17 March 1942, St Patrick’s Day. A roof had abruptly given way under his weight. He slid and fell backwards, his eyes staring up at the sky and his arms wide open. The day he was buried, I had the impression that the whole of Ireland had turned up. Behind the bagpipe player in his kilt, Mother led the procession, a flimsy wreath in her hands. Then came Róisín, Mary, Áine, wee Kevin, Brian, Niall and Seánie. I was carrying baby Sara in the first row of men.
Lawrence Finnegan was not a member of the IRA, but the movement had done him the honour of flying the flag at his funeral. It was carried by a Fianna and it curled in the wind. There were hundreds of us. Many of those faces had come from elsewhere. Seánie and Tom Williams helped carry the coffin, but not me. It was passed from shoulder to shoulder without anyone beckoning me. I was too young, or too small, only good for accompanying the dead. I wasn’t sad, although sadness, in Ireland, is the last thing to die. I walked with the neighbours, the friends, the former prisoners. I followed the IRA soldiers, three long, black columns stretched along the avenue. I was proud of that crowd, content to belong both to the Meehan and the Finnegan families. Proud also of walking in the steps of Tom Williams, my leader.
Local mothers used to whisper that Tom Williams carried too much grief inside. Fathers said that faced with those eyes, death would recoil. His brow was always furrowed, lined with pain. When an emotion choked him, he would become tense. He was pained. He’d find it hard to breathe — a childhood asthma that used to choke him. I made him laugh once. I knew that wee Tom was hiding behind that melancholy.
The evening of the funeral, he and I talked of all the death in our lives, the misery that engulfed us all. He told me of the death of his sister, Mary, struck by meningitis at the age of three, that of his mother, also Mary, who left the world at nineteen years of age, giving birth to a daughter who died in turn six weeks later.
— It’s misery’s fault, not life’s, Tom said.
Then we spoke of misery, of the Great Famine, of children standing in the muck with no shoes on. Of the mouldy bread, seeping from the corners of poorly fed mouths. Of my father who had frozen to death. We had a common rage. We had hatred, too. Like our family, Tom Williams had fled his home. A Loyalist bomb had been thrown at a group of children playing in a park. Some of them were killed. Yet it was Terry Williams, his uncle, who had been imprisoned for defending his street, and not the Protestant killers. It was unjust. Everything was unjust. We were alone in the world, our war brushed aside for a war that was not ours. The whole world had turned its back on us. The only people we could count on were ourselves. Tom was on the dole, like all the local men. Like Seánie and I would have been if Uncle Lawrence hadn’t left us his business, his stiff brooms, his trowels, his chimney sweep’s brushes. There would never be work for any of us in this country.
He lit a cigarette, handed me one between his two fingers and thumb, the first in my life. So I took it. To blink through the smoke as adults do. He was watching the street, sitting on a front step. Like him, I had loosened my black tie and opened my collar. He spoke to me about Easter, and he was uneasy. He was only two years older than me but I couldn’t see that youth in him. Tom Williams had the worn face and stare of a widow. I would never again hear so much hurt in another man’s voice.
The British had banned any gatherings on Easter Sunday 1942, but we’d decided to disobey. Nobody was going to prevent us from celebrating the 1916 Rising and honouring the heroes of the Republic.
The IRA had planned three illegal processions in Belfast, protected by uniformed Fianna. When I asked him what we were to do if the police intervened, Tom smiled.
— We’ll keep them busy enough, my leader replied.
My eyes widened. I wanted to know what was planned.
— Do you want our command structure, too?
I blushed and shook my head, inhaling a huge, burning lungful of smoke to shut myself up.