Shambles Corner Read online

  ‘Let me tell you this,’ he confided to the infant. ‘The Sacred Heart is not one to go fooling around with unless you’re serious.’

  Along with the Sacred Heart Messenger, which she read to him at night, his mother brought home The African Missions from the chapel gates. Frank sat on the floor and stared at page after page of blurred photographs, the white-robed priests flanked by smiling groups of black children. Yet when he heard his mother screaming about McCoy, calling him as black as the ace of spades, he knew this wasn’t what she meant. He had seen photographs of McCoy in the Irish News that his father brought home from the Shambles across the hill. Before he was a year old he could recognize McCoy, the bull neck bulging under the dog collar, the protruding eyes, the fixed stare of the fanatic. His father cut them out carefully and hung them on the nail in the privy behind the house, announcing to the neighbours his imminent intention of wiping his arse on the Orange hoor. ‘Black bastard,’ Frank said, speaking his first words.

  There’s a boy won’t be long till he’s putting us all in our place,’ laughed his father, tucking into a fry the better to get his bowels working. And his mother, breaking the habit of a lifetime, allowed herself a smile at his infant precocity.

  There were other paradoxes too in the tales his father brought home from the Shambles, paradoxes that puzzled his infant imagination and left him with the uneasy feeling that the world beyond the half door was a treacherous place. Schnozzle Durante was an American he sometimes heard his mother croon to when the wireless was working. But he knew that the Schnozzle Durante they argued about in the evenings was a darker force closer to home at whose every mention his mother crossed herself.

  ‘You’ll land yourself in the soup, talk like that!’ she insisted. His father would laugh at her when she did that.

  ‘What harm is there in a bit of a joke? If we can’t take a joke we must be in a bad way.’

  ‘We’ll see who’s laughing if the clergy hear you making fun of him, God bless the mark!’

  ‘The clergy never dare up this way. We have our hands full with the Christian Brothers as it is.’

  ‘Say what you like, but where would we be without them?’

  He remembered too the sudden curfews, when the siren atop the Brothers’ would start to wail, sending the women scurrying in from the fields. His father would be fretting indoors for the duration, pacing the floor, unwilling to risk the trip in to the Patriot Bar.

  ‘The Brothers have lost another one!’ he would repeat.

  ‘Keep your frigging voice down! And stand away from that window! Do you want us all in trouble?’

  ‘They’ve no interest in us. It’s the runaway they’re after.’

  ‘They’ll get him before dark,’ she repeated with tight-lipped satisfaction. ‘He deserves everything that’s coming to him, a young pup that would lift his hand to the Brothers.’

  ‘He’ll not be lifting much for a while,’ his father added darkly. Through a crack in the doorjamb, Frank could make out another posse of thick-set postulants, their soutanes tucked into Wellington boots, making their way up to the high ground.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ laughed his father, ‘would you look at the cut of the dog they’re taking up with them?’

  ‘What’s wrong with the dog?’ she snapped. In her book, criticism of even the lesser clergy extended to their dogs.

  ‘A fucking old Kerry Blue. It couldn’t catch vermin!’

  ‘The same boy would have the hand off you quick enough,’ she said later, still defending the dog.

  Before too long he was reading the deaths and condolences in the Irish News when he visited the lavatory, poring over the long lists of volunteers and victims who were dying daily in the national cause. And when he started to take an equal interest in the dogs and horses on the back pages his father knew that he had taught him all he could and that it was time to hand him over to the Brothers. But Teresa, his mother, was strangely reluctant.

  ‘He’s company for me at home,’ she said, ‘and you off gallivanting. Besides, the Brothers …’

  ‘Great men. Where would we be without them?’

  ‘There’s enough misery in the world without him going looking for it,’ she sighed. ‘Trouble will find him soon enough.’

  On his fourth birthday his mother put away the things of childhood, gave his face a lick and marched him over the hill to Brother Murphy.

  Seven is the age at which the philosophers deem a child to have reached the use of reason. Thereafter he lives in constant danger of mortal sin and its corollary, hellfire. Brother Murphy took the Fathers of the Church at their word. If Frank was to be saved from eternal damnation he had only three years to knock him into shape.

  ‘I’ve taught him his prayers, Brother,’ she said defensively.

  Brother Murphy picked Frank up by the ears and brought the boy’s face close to his own. ‘Name the First Commandment, boy,’ he ordered. Frank tried to wriggle around, to catch his mother’s eye, but she knew better than to interfere. ‘Well, boy, are you going to answer, or are you a complete amadán?’ Frank began to cry. The Brother dropped him and reached for his hand. He held it out, palm upwards before him. From his pocket he produced the leather strap that all Christian Brothers carry, and gave him three slaps. Then he turned to the boy’s mother. ‘He can stay if he pulls his socks up,’ he growled, dismissing her.

  ‘Thank you, Brother,’ she said.

  Brother Murphy cast a baleful eye round the hushed classroom, slowly choosing the morning’s victim. Up and down each row of desks he gazed, pausing for a few seconds to stare at each boy in turn. ‘We have a new boy with us this morning,’ he announced. ‘Francis Xavier Pacelli Feely! That’s a name and a half for a bucko from the backside of the hills!’ His mother had added the ‘Pacelli’ at the font, the maiden name of old Saint Pius, in the forlorn hope that some of the late pontiff’s good fortune would rub off on him.

  Brother Murphy let the syllables roll round his mouth before he spat the name out. ‘Pacelli… Pacelli,’ he mused. Encouraged by the nervous tittering of the class he repeated it. ‘There’s a boy here who calls himself Pacelli.’ He waited for them to snigger dutifully. ‘I suppose an honest-to-God Irish name wasn’t good enough for his parents: Patrick or Michael or Seamus. I suppose we haven’t enough Irish saints! We have to go running after Italian ones!’ The boys began to laugh. Heavy-handed irony was Brother Murphy’s stock in trade and they knew better than to scorn his efforts. With any luck Frank would be up on the podium all morning and they would be off the hook.

  ‘Let’s hear our Italian friend here say the Ár nAthair,’ demanded Brother Murphy. ‘The words our Saviour taught us, in the language of the Gael.’ The rest of the class began to breathe more easily. Once a week, with much dumb show of disbelief, the Brother discovered a boy who didn’t know the Lord’s Prayer. They might sit up half the night, rehearsing it with their mothers till they were word perfect, but under the third degree not one of them could be relied on to get beyond ‘go dtaga Do ríocht’ without corpsing. And once a week, do chum glóir Dé agus onóra na hEirinn, Brother Murphy would take the sacrificial victim through it syllable by syllable.

  ‘Here’s a corner boy who doesn’t know his prayers!’ proclaimed the Brother by way of an introit. ‘Hold out your hand, corner boy, and we’ll soon see if our friend here’ – he waved the strap aloft - ‘can’t refresh your memory.’ The strap came down with a crash, the force of the blow almost lifting him off his feet. Frank’s face was contorted with pain and terror, but he tried to hold back the hot tears that the blow forced into his eyes. To cry would be fatal. It would invite further ridicule, further humiliation.

  ‘Ár nAthair atá ar neamh,’ intoned Brother Murphy, ‘go naofar Do ainm; go dtaga Do ríocht; go ndéantar Do thoil ar an talamh mar a níthear ar neamh. Now let’s see if this young lout can tell us the next bit. Well, Feely, we’re all waiting.’

  The class could see Frank’s brow furrowed in fruitless conc
entration as he searched the confused spaces in his head for the next verse. ‘Ár n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniú,’ give us this day our daily bread. The words deserted him now.

  There was silence in the school save for the ominous swishing of the taws against the side of the Brother’s soutane. ‘Well, Mister Feely, we’re still waiting,’ he said after a while. His voice was quiet, almost reasonable. He was in no hurry. What better way was there to spend a morning than teaching the lads the Lord’s Prayer?

  ‘I don’t know,’ stuttered Frank after another pause.

  ‘I don’t know what?’ corrected the Brother gently.

  ‘I don’t know, sir!’

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, lifting the boy’s hand and giving him three, the statutory punishment for lapses in etiquette. ‘Now what don’t you know, Mister Feely?’

  ‘What comes next.’

  Again Brother Murphy took his hand and tenderly, almost lovingly, stretched out the curled palm till it was straight and flat and ready, and then slowly and methodically began to beat him, punctuating each blow with a verse of the prayer. ‘Now, boy, let’s see if we can remember what comes next.’ He was looking flushed from his exertions, like a man who needed to sit down, but there would be no resting from his labours till the job was done. Word by word the inquisition continued. Together they asked that their trespasses be forgiven (as we forgive those that trespass against us) and begged not to be led into temptation. At every halting, stuttering utterance the slaps rang out. They were winding up the oration with a plea for deliverance from evil when Brother Murphy, by way of climax, threw down the strap, seized from the wall a wooden blackboard compass, and administered a two-handed crack to Frank’s skull that sent him careering across the classroom with bells ringing ‘Papa Piccolino’ in his ears.

  His mother took the matter up cautiously with the Brother a week later. Would Brother Murphy maybe like to try beating back into the boy’s head some of the sense he had so successfully beaten out of it? Brother Murphy would have none of it.

  ‘Take your lad home with you, Missus Feely,’ he boomed. ‘We’ve done all we can for him here.’

  ‘Would there be no point in keeping him on a bit longer, Brother? Sure what good is he to me at home?’

  ‘And have him hold the rest of the class back? Have a bit of wit, woman dear!’

  ‘If you put it like that, Brother, I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right. The boy will never make a scholar, Missus Feely. The sooner he gets working with those pigs of your husband’s the better. Fatten him up a bit. Give him plenty of fresh air.’ He squeezed Frank’s puny forearm. That’s what boys need. That and plenty of the strap.’

  ‘Thank you, Brother,’ she said, retreating. She knew better than to argue the toss with the cloth.

  It wasn’t laziness or bad luck alone that kept Joe from completing the Nine Fridays. When it came to the delicate matter of Absolution he had a very real problem. Smuggling was a precarious vocation, liable at any moment to bring the wrath of the civil or clerical authorities down round your ears. A man in his line of trade couldn’t just walk into a confession box bold as brass and expect to conclude his business without the risk of a row. He had to pick his man and his moment with extreme care. The mendicant confessors who came round the doors in the depth of the winter, offering to hear confession in exchange for a free feed and a cup of tea, he avoided like the plague; those were the boys who would give you the third degree over as much as stealing an apple, thick buckoes from the south who knew the people expected a hard time to feel they were getting their money’s worth. He knew too the cathedral priests to avoid, having suffered humiliation at their hands when he first took up the business. But matters weren’t completely hopeless. Joe pinned his faith on the older men who by eleven o’clock at night were falling asleep on their feet. After a hard day, hearing nothing but Armagh people recalling their sins, they could think of only two things: the ball of malt and the warm bed. There were one or two who were half deaf into the bargain, and with luck you could mumble the details of your business as if it was the most natural thing in the world and they wouldn’t turn a hair. After a while Joe had it down to a fine art, slipping into the dark cathedral before closing, choosing his man carefully from the look of the waiting queue.

  A year before he had found himself on a roll. A persistent voice in his conscience told him it was all too good to last, but with each passing month his spirits rose. Could he dare hope that the Nine Fridays could be his at last? Six months, seven months, eight months came and went, with the same old curate nodding off in the box, his hand raised, even before Joe started whispering, in an automatic gesture of absolution.

  But the Sacred Heart is nobody’s fool. The gilt-edged guarantee of heaven is not earned through trickery. The ninth month came round and Joe cycled into Armagh in a state of heady anticipation. One more confession and he was home and dry! He had a drink and then another to steady his nerves. He crept into the darkened cathedral as the sexton was closing the door. Only a few penitents were left. He slipped in at the end of the queue, prepared himself as he had been taught, and shuffled forward in the line till it was his turn to enter the box. The shutter slid across. But instead of the dozing figure he had been anticipating, Cardinal Mac himself stared out at him from behind the grille, alert as a whippet. Joe had returned home that night with the Cardinal’s interrogation ringing in his ears. He knew now that if ever he got to heaven, it would be by the hard road.

  Though they never discussed anything so intimate, Teresa half guessed his guilty secret and the shame it was bringing on the house. She didn’t give him a minute’s peace till he promised he would try again. Driven out every Saturday night by her tongue, he would be seen parking his bike outside the Patriot Bar and popping in for a relaxer before the rigours of the sacrament. One would lead to another, and he would wobble home at midnight, querulous and unshriven.

  ‘You never went, you louse!’ she would shout.

  ‘What call have I to run telling my private affairs to a bunch of gobshites?’ he would call back, emboldened by the drink. Frank, feigning sleep in the settle bed by the fire, would hear them at it intermittently till dawn.

  At Mass, too, he was always among the latecorners, standing in the porch out of the rain or in the graveyard if the weather was fair, technically present as it was Church property, but fooling nobody, least of all the Man Above. With his cronies from the adjacent townland he would slouch there, rolling cigarettes and guffawing about the price of pigfeed. They smoked and joked and argued and commented on the women’s legs with the practised eyes of farmers judging livestock. They didn’t need telling when the congregation indoors rose to its feet for the Last Gospel and the rush for the back doors began. Before the crowd inside had straightened their rheumatic knees, dusted down their trousers and adjusted their caps, Joe and company were already across the Shambles. Positioned strategically outside the Patriot’s, they would comment on the emerging churchgoers as they rubbed their backsides against the window, rapping occasionally on the glass and requesting Eugene to open up for the love of fuck before they all died of thirst.

  ‘You’ve no respect,’ she would tell him when she got him home. ‘You haven’t heard Mass properly this year. Mark my words I’m not the only one talking about you. Didn’t Cardinal Maguire himself say as much from the altar last Sunday? Not that one of you lot would have heard him. Is it Christians or heathens the lot of you are? If the Brothers were half the men they used to be they’d soon wipe that smirk off your face and no mistake.’ Joe let her go on. He knew she was right to take an interest in his spiritual welfare. He saw it as essential women’s work, a ritualized nagging that, like all rituals, had its place in the complicated scheme of things.

  But when it came to the folklore of the faith, Joe Feely’s enthusiasm was second to none. His acquaintance with the holy places of Ireland was legendary. He knew who had the cure for a plethora of ailments b
oth human and animal. As a travelling man, with a range of goods and services that skated round the edge of the civil and canon law, his business had given him occasion to visit most of the shrines in the country. His was a deep if unconventional spirituality. He knew that when the wheel of our fortunes turned at last and the great change came, when the dark times came to an end, when a new leader emerged to redeem the people of Ireland, it would be through the old places that we would first learn of it. The rituals of the established Church he bore with equanimity, reserving his soul for the fringes where older, more magical forces sometimes stirred. ‘You’ll hardly get up off your arse to go to Holy Mass,’ Teresa would accuse him, ‘but you’ll run the length of the land after some statue or other.’ To Joe it was no more than the truth.

  So when it became clear as the years went by that the boy was making no progress, that his schooling days were over, and that the rosaries were getting them nowhere, his father decided that something stronger was called for. They tried a novena to the Sacred Heart and another to Saint Jude, but there was no appreciable change in his condition, and he still stared at the world through mute, impassive eyes.

  ‘The lad can knock around with me till he’s fit to fend for himself,’ Joe volunteered. ‘I’ll take him to the Shambles market tomorrow.’

  ‘He’ll get a real education and no mistake on the Shambles Corner,’ Teresa answered sharply. ‘Sitting all day in the Patriot Bar with eejits every bit as bad as yourself!’

  ‘He’s never too young to learn the ropes.’

  ‘You’ll fill his head with your foolish stories till he doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going!’

  ‘Those are the stories he’ll need to know if he’s going to survive around these parts,’ Joe argued.