1
Rosie chewed on her colouring pencil and looked out the window at Clougheally’s blustery beach.
‘I think when I grow up I want to be a swan.’
Peg gave the Rosie! sigh she’d been practising for several years. Even though she was almost five, it was clear that the boundaries of the world weren’t certain for Rosie Doyle. Happily, Peg, nine years old and a fount of wisdom, was always there to clarify matters.
‘Humans can’t turn into swans in real life.’
‘I’ll be like the Children of Lir,’ Rosie said, adding extra feathers to her doodle, as if this might help her point.
‘That’s just a story,’ Peg explained.
‘When I grow up I’m going to be a fireman!’ John Paul shouted, not listening. ‘Or … or Imma going to be a Transformer! And-and you can be a Transformer too, Dam’en, one of the bad ones, but-but then Imma save you and we’ll fight Optimus Prime together, yeah yeah!’
Colouring on a rainy day was not John Paul’s strong suit, so he was already hopping about the kitchen to demonstrate his firefighting and robotic abilities.
‘And-and we’ll have a BIG hose and we’ll point it at the bad guys and then-then they’ll be DOOMED!’
Damien nodded, content to play whatever role John Paul’s narrative required, as long as he ended up a Good Boy when he grew up, his primary ambition.
‘I think I’ll be a swan. Like the Children of Lir,’ Rosie said, as if Peg hadn’t spoken.
‘You want to be stuck here for hundreds of years?’ Peg said, in a less understanding voice.
‘Maybe,’ Rosie said, finishing her picture. ‘Then I won’t have to be dead like Nanny and when I’m tired I’ll just flap flap flap up to the sky.’
Peg shot Aunty Mary an adults among adults look: Nanny Nelligan’s death was at the heart of Rosie’s nonsense. Nanny Nelligan’s wake had left quite an impression on them all, especially the sight of the withered old woman in the coffin. Nanny Nelligan had a great fear of being trapped underground, so she’d been cremated, a shock to the village, mutterings that you wouldn’t want to be trapped inside a small urn either. The urn sat by the rattling window, the breeze coming in through the gap as if it was trying to upturn the lid and release a spirit. Peg felt a shiver down her spine, then remembered that she was practically a grown-up.
‘You don’t have to be scared of dying, Rosie.’
‘I’m not. I just want to fly.’
‘Fly’ was the spell that roused John Paul: he’d been quiet for a full minute, possibly a record.
‘Imma gonna FLY like a PILOT!’ John Paul shouted, accelerating around the room and tugging at Damien’s jumper. ‘Dam’en, you be Chewie and I’ll-I’ll be HAN SOLO! I’m so fast you’ll never catch me!’
‘We haven’t finished the story,’ Peg said, as Damien threatened to stand up.
John Paul was so frustrated that he stopped moving.
‘But-but I want to go OUTSIDE! C’mon DAM’EN! ROSIE!’
‘Ciúnas!’
For the first time, Peg heard the schoolteacher in Aunty Mary’s voice.
‘Sit down and draw, would you? We have to stay inside while it’s raining.’
‘But-but it’s ALWAYS raining HERE.’
John Paul had a point, Clougheally no threat to the Costa del Sol, but Peg shot Aunty Mary a pious this is what I have to deal with look. Granny Doyle and her dad were in Ballina for the day, so the balance had shifted. There was nobody there to praise John Paul’s every step with the fervent belief that one day such legs might walk on the moon; Damien and Rosie were up for grabs. This was the dance that Peg and John Paul performed, daily. I am a leader, they said, devising games or schemes, waiting for their docile siblings to follow. Usually, John Paul won the battle, Damien and Rosie happy to follow him on some inane dash up and down Dunluce Crescent, leaving Peg with disappointment jigsawed in front of her. Today, Peg might have a chance.
‘You can be Ardán,’ Peg said to John Paul.
‘I don’t want to be a swan, I want to be a PILOT!’
‘You can pretend to be a pilot tomorrow. Today, we’re performing my book!’
‘Book’ was a grand title for the few pieces of paper that Peg had bound together but she couldn’t have been prouder of her achievement. There had been lots of drizzly days while Granny Doyle and Aunty Mary had been busy with the stream of guests and the cleaning of the dusty old house, leaving Peg with plenty of time to work on her magnum opus. The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle was its full title, chronicle a word that had leapt off the sides of one of the old books and danced inside Peg’s head. After a few patchy years, when she missed large chunks of school, Peg was back on track. She’d been selected for the accelerated reading programme, so she could read about tractors that were crimson rather than plain red, allowing her to pick up the books from Nanny Nelligan’s mahogany bookshelf with great authority. Most of them held little interest for her – a good deal were in Irish and Peg had no grá for Gaeilge – but Peg loved the old bookshelf, with its mottled grain and friendly clumps of dust. There would be space for The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle on it, pride of place if she had her way: stories were for babbies, but chronicles demanded respect.
‘This is STUPID!’ John Paul said, rejecting the squiggles that Peg had placed in front of him.
Peg gave him a look of infinite patience; she could have played a saint in a school play.
‘Damien and Rosie can help you to read if you want. It’s very simple.’
John Paul’s cheeks flushed.
‘I-I don’t want to READ.’
John Paul hadn’t the patience for Peg’s generous tutoring sessions. A tornado of a boy, he couldn’t sit still long enough for Peg’s patient lectures, copybooks best transformed into paper aeroplanes. Damien and Rosie were more promising pupils. Rosie had the alarming attitude that the alphabet was arbitrary, but she at least sat still and listened. Damien actually showed signs of progress, concentrating hard on the puzzle of letters in front of him, ever eager to please. And both of them loved when Peg read to them, lapping up the voices she put on and her embellishments. Peg felt she had greatly improved upon the Children of Lir’s story in her chronicle, adding several storms and adventures to the swan’s three hundred years around Erris, with the eldest, Fionnuala, reliably capable of rescuing her siblings from whatever peril they found themselves in. Savvy about her audience, Peg added a section where one swan befriended a crab (for Rosie loved all animals) and another where one of the swans found a nice, warm cave (for Damien loved being cosy) and she even threw in a battle with pirates and Vikings, history’s rigour compromised by the need to keep John Paul still. Even John Paul had gobbled up the tale the night before, the triplets squished into the one bed, eyes agog until Peg storied them towards sleep. However, listening to a bedtime tale was different from wasting valuable daylight hours reading, a position that John Paul continued to make clear.
‘I don’t wanna read, I don’t wanna read!’ John Paul recited, scrunching up his lines.
‘Stop messing!’ Peg shouted, her saint-like composure somewhat compromised as she tugged the paper from his hands.
‘How about you lot have a look for some cardboard in the back bedroom? I need some children who might be brave enough to fight any monsters in the boxes …’
Aunty Mary had John Paul at ‘brave’ and once he had signed on to the mission, it was only a matter of time before the other triplets bounded upstairs after him.
Initially furious, Peg was mollified when Aunty Mary returned and sat down at the table beside her. Alone time with Aunty Mary was precious for its rarity, like chocolate released from its tin after Lent.
‘This is looking very professional.’
Peg beamed, the adjective better than any gold star.
‘Aunty Mary?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did the Children of Lir make their Holy Communions before they turned into swans?’
Aunty Mary considered this.
‘I’d say not. The world they grew up in was very different.’
‘And then when they turned back into adults after nine hundred years, Saint Patrick gave them their Communion?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But how were they allowed to take it if they hadn’t made their Communions?’
The rules regarding First Holy Communions were at the forefront of Peg’s brain as her own ceremony loomed. Peg’s patchy attendance at school meant that she had missed her Communion, which meant that she had to take it at a mortifying age when she had clearly already acquired reason. The problem was that reason did not help Peg solve the puzzle of what Communion might taste like. Somewhere between her friends’ helpful ‘It’s like dry paper, disgusting!’ and Granny Doyle’s ‘Like the pure love of our divine Lord Jesus Christ, now would you get away from under my feet’, lived various theological problems that Peg had no idea how to resolve. Peg seized her moment with Aunty Mary to push the matter further. What did baby Jesus’ body taste like? How did he have so much body to eat that churches never ran out? If Jesus was made of bread how had he ever been killed? Peg presented these problems very seriously, so Aunty Mary, who always treated Peg as an intellectual equal, suppressed a smile and asked ‘Do you know what a metaphor is?’
Peg turned her nod into a shake of the head, admitting ignorance as the price of knowledge.
‘Sometimes the truth of stories isn’t necessarily in the facts,’ Aunty Mary said, searching for inspiration. ‘We might think of the world starting with Adam and Eve eating an apple, because a story is easier to understand than science. Or we might say we are eating the body of Christ, but really it’s a special loaf of bread that’s been blessed. The metaphor helps us understand an important truth: that we should share with one another.’
Peg struggled with metaphor but nodded gamely nonetheless.
‘So is the story not really true?’
Aunty Mary checked for the bustle of Granny Doyle’s coat through the door.
‘I wouldn’t say that the story is not true,’ she said slowly. ‘But sometimes you have to be careful about what parts of stories you believe. You have to think about who is telling them and why they would want you to believe them.’
A door edged open in Peg’s brain.
‘Are the swans in this story a metaphor too?’
Aunty Mary smiled and tilted her head to the side, chewing on the thought.
‘Hmmm … you could say they represented the transition between a pagan and a Christian era and also the shift between childhood and adulthood and yes, it’s a good question …’
Peg focused on Aunty Mary’s mutterings intently, keen to display that she was not some child who believed in fairy tales; no, Peg Doyle poked at stories until they revealed their secrets. In fact, she’d just had a brainwave regarding the ending of The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle, an idea she kept folded up for herself, the better to be unveiled that evening.
*
The performance of The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle was an exclusive event. Chairs were set up for Granny Doyle, Aunty Mary, and Danny Doyle. Nanny Nelligan remained in her urn by the window, an eerie wind keeping her company. The triplets sported cardboard wings. Peg held her little book proudly, one eye on the bookshelf, where she had already cleared a space. Aunty Mary even arranged some popcorn and mood lighting, ignoring Granny Doyle’s cries of ‘what is all this cod-acting about?’; this was to be a special occasion.
It started well enough. Peg’s speaking voice shook the spiders from the ceiling. Aunty Mary smiled at Peg’s liberal use of the house’s dictionary, which helped hyperbolize the prologue, so that the children’s stepmother was vicious and their time in exile was horrendous. Peg had the triplets standing on a line of chairs in an arrangement as adorable as any Von Trapp chorus. Damien read his sentence perfectly (‘My Name is Fiachra’) and whispered Rosie’s sentence into her ear. The problem was, predictably, John Paul. All he had to do was say ‘My name is Ardán’ and flap his cardboard wings. He didn’t even have to read the sentence: both Damien and Rosie were whispering it to him. His mouth stayed shut, his eyes fixed on the swirl of symbols in front of him. Panic opened a hole in his chest. Red rushed to his cheeks. The blobs of ink remained resolutely unhelpful, YOU’RE STUPID spelt out in their taunting squiggle.
‘And one of the swans wasn’t good at reading and he was called Ardán,’ Peg said smoothly, eager to rush the story towards her exciting ending.
She flipped the page, ready to plunge into the narrative proper. She had learnt her lesson: never work with children was a maxim she was happy to adopt as an honorary adult. John Paul, however, had other plans.
‘My name is HAN SOLO SWAN and I can FLY!’
He didn’t look at Peg, only at his audience. Out went his wings, up went his feet and he was off, in his element, paper tossed to the ground as he whirled into the air in a death-defying leap. He was aiming for the windowsill, an impossible target to reach. Yet he did, his fingers at least, clinging to triumph, as the rest of his body clunked to the ground, his arms flailing and following, sweeping across the windowsill and crashing into—
Peg saw it happen: John Paul bashing into the urn on the windowsill, the urn tumbling over, the remains of Nanny Nelligan falling through the gap into the winds. Nothing she could do to stop it: her feet not fast enough, arms not long enough, brain not sharp enough. Disaster! Nanny Nelligan gone out the window, lost into the gulp of the wind.
Except that wasn’t what happened. The urn, mid-wobble, decided to fall the other way, onto John Paul, who caught it before the lid came off, and held it in the air like a trophy.
It was Granny Doyle who broke the silence.
‘A miracle!’
Gravity and stupidity were the forces at work, Peg knew, but Granny Doyle’s gall stole the voice from her: how could John Paul be praised for averting a catastrophe he created? Lavishly, that was how.
‘My little angel!’
Granny Doyle swooped over and picked up her beaming hero, who had just completed his First Unofficial Miracle: The Salvation of Nanny Nelligan’s Ashes. Jesus might have brought the dead to life but John Paul Doyle made sure the dead stayed in place. Granny Doyle was clear where the blame lay.
‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, keeping Mammy by the window.’
Aunty Mary didn’t stop her sister as the urn was whisked off to a safer location.
‘Thanks be to God John Paul has some wits about him,’ Granny Doyle continued. ‘Well, that’s enough theatrics for one evening! I don’t know what nonsense you’ve got them up to today but I’ve had a long one and it’s bedtime!’
‘Bedtime’ was not a negotiable noun for Granny Doyle; Peg knew resistance was futile. John Paul bounded upstairs, not a bother on him. Rosie drifted over to show their dad her swan drawings. Damien stood smiling, relieved that he had said his sentence correctly: the house might have tumbled around them and he’d still have been content.
‘Not to worry,’ Aunty Mary said, proof that she was an ordinary adult after all, well able to disappoint when she wanted to.
Peg threw her book to the ground and stomped up the stairs. She hadn’t even got close to her brilliant ending, where the swans decided not to turn back into sad withered humans and get Communion from St Patrick but stayed flapping about the bay, their wings light and lovely and probably metaphorical, Peg reckoned. Peg launched herself onto her bed. She hadn’t made her Communion yet so filling a pillow with bitter tears wasn’t a sin, an opportunity that Peg was ready to make the most of.
*
Some consolation came the next morning. Aunty Mary had given The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle pride of place on the mahogany bookshelf. Peg couldn’t help but gasp at how good it looked beside all the proper books. Then she remembered she was angry and tried to twist her face into a frown.
‘We’ll have to do another reading.’
This wasn’t good enough.
‘I had a look through last night: excellent work! I love what you did with the end. You’re a real chronicler, aren’t you?’
This was better.
‘And I wanted to ask you something. Do you think you might have space in your room for the bookshelf? I haven’t found a job or an apartment in Dublin yet, but I’m not sure if I’ll have space for everything from this house and … well, it’d be a terrible shame to get rid of this bookshelf, wouldn’t it?’
And this was enough for an ear-to-ear grin.
‘You’re moving to Dublin?’
Aunty Mary smiled, delighted that her move was the part that gave Peg the most pleasure.
‘Well, I’m not sure yet, but I’ve been here with Mammy for a while and –’ a sigh as she looked around the dusty old house: it had been a long year – ‘well, there’s not much for me here and instead of going back to Galway, well, I was thinking about moving back to Dublin. What do you think?’
‘Move to Dublin!’ Peg said immediately, the night’s disappointments forgotten, because she was to have a bookshelf and her book displayed and, most importantly, an ally.
Aunty Mary smiled, the future appearing in front of her brick by brick.
‘Well, maybe I will so!’
2
‘Did Aunty Mary move to Dublin?’ Rosie asked, shifting in the bed.
Peg stared at the ceiling: she was almost tired enough to drift into sleep.
‘No.’
Rosie didn’t need to ask ‘why?’ or ‘what happened?’; now that the door to the past had been prised open, out stories could creep, the magical stone obliging. Besides, even if the details were blurry – in her defence, she had only been four – she had a sense of who was to blame. Aunty Mary was a dangerous topic – they hadn’t mentioned her letter – but Rosie knew what she was doing.
‘Did you know about Aunty Mary then?’
The truth lived somewhere between yes and no. Hard to believe that Aunty Mary had been so important to Peg’s development – her fairy godmother! – yet at the time, Peg had never considered Aunty Mary’s life outside of her own. Peg made a noncommittal sound, something she hoped bore a resemblance to a yawn, not that that would be any use: Rosie showed no signs of ever needing sleep. She could stay up for hours when they were younger, demanding more and more stories from Peg, who obliged usually, even when there were slim chances of happy endings.
3
(1971)
Could something so small cause so much fuss?
Mary Nelligan looked down at the condoms in her handbag and suppressed a giggle; it was hard to imagine the men on the train slipping on something so like a balloon. Forty-one and she was as bad as the children in her class! Mary gathered her composure. This was a serious matter. All the meetings in Bewley’s and the dinners in Mrs Gaj’s restaurant on Baggot Street led to this direct action, a kind so direct that Mary wondered if she might explode with the tension. They – the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement – had decided to protest against the ban on contraception by smuggling in condoms from Belfast, some of which sat innocently in Mary’s bag as the train jostled along.
Were the other women as nervous? If they had any nerves they were hiding them well, chatting to each other or reading the newspaper. Mary looked out at the dreary towns passing by. She felt as if she had a bomb in her handbag. What if the customs guards arrested them on the train and carted them off to jail before they’d made their point? Mary’s shoulders tensed in imagined resistance; she was prepared to fight beside these women, most of whom were younger than her, but had already figured out that the only real way to change the world was to grab it by the scruff of its neck. She might have died for them if it came to it. A foolish thought, absurd in its intensity, yet that was what Mary felt, the train hurtling towards Dublin, her heart hammering along with it, condoms jostling on her lap.
She’d imagine the guards with condoms on their head if they tried to stop them. A laugh burst out of Mary’s chest, turned into a cough too late. Mary caught the eye of one of the other women: no judgement, a smile of solidarity. The train rushed past Drogheda: nearly there. Mary felt a rush of life, a blast so intense that she wondered it didn’t bowl her over. She’d never experienced anything like it before. Maybe when she had been young, when she had fervently believed in God and found herself carried away by the music at Mass, transported to a space so big that she couldn’t imagine a roof. This feeling was better, though: on that train, hurtling towards history, condoms on her lap, an army of women beside her, Mary Nelligan experienced the overwhelming potential that another world was possible, stops on the train she hadn’t even imagined.
Connolly Station.
Mary stood up, her legs managing to hold her, the customs officers in sight. Out the condoms came, a theatrical flourish, up in the air, down to the feet of the guards, slippery snakes returning to the Republic’s soil, refusing to be exiled again. Mary stood with her friends, the women she’d fight beside, and wondered how it was her feet stayed on the ground when she was so sure she was floating.
(1978)
‘What are you doing with this?’
Searching for a corkscrew, Stella was surprised.
‘Oh,’ Mary said, with a delighted little laugh; she’d forgotten it was there. The Condom Train protest had been seven years ago and she never could keep drawers in order.
‘That,’ Mary said, already a little drunk without another bottle opened, ‘that is a story.’
So Mary told the story, in the way that stories are often told when sex awaits, elaborations and embellishments expected, the details not as important as the eyes of the person listening. Mary didn’t need to worry about Stella. Wasn’t she here in her kitchen at 1 a.m. after all?
‘I could make a pretty penny off it, perhaps,’ Mary said, immediately regretting speaking, her accent too country, her words coming from an auld one – ‘pretty penny’, who said that? When had Mary, in fact, ever said that, and why should this be the time that she started, when the wine was still unopened, when that gorgeous mouth of Stella’s still hadn’t been kissed?
No matter; Stella was smiling, that lovely smile that had kept Mary at the conference. Mary had known that a Women and Lesbianism Conference held at Trinity College wasn’t for her: the workshop on how to find your cervix; the cobblestones trying to trip you up with classiness; the assured way strangers talked to one another; the circles in the sun; the singing. But then there was Stella, a good fifteen years younger than Mary, with red hair cropped like some pixie and men’s trousers fitting her perfectly and a smile that made everything okay: her accent, the way she was holding her wine glass, the fact that she was there at all.
‘Maybe you should take it to Moore Street and see what you make.’
There it was again, that smile in action as Stella found the corkscrew like a superhero, held out a glass for Mary, everything easy and elegant.
‘I should do,’ Mary said, but she wished she hadn’t said anything at all, because here they were, women for radical change, talking about condoms that they had no use for.
‘I like your T-shirt,’ Mary said, because she was getting chatty, which she never was, which was a blessing, because she was only ever saying the wrong thing.
‘Thanks.’
Another smile: maybe, after all, the words didn’t matter so much.
‘It’s sort of our armour,’ Stella said. ‘We are the “Lavender Menace” and all that.’
A different sort of smile, a twinkly one.
‘We’ll have to get one for you. If you’re going to be part of the group.’
‘Ah, I don’t know if you’d have my size.’
Mary ducked from Stella’s gaze: she was too clumsy for this life.
Another smile from Stella.
‘I’d say we could find something that would fit.’
And then Stella had her hand, and the wine was left on the table, and the condom too, and they didn’t find a T-shirt for her, the opposite, in fact, and it didn’t matter that Mary didn’t have the right words; what were words anyway when bodies could talk so beautifully?
(1985)
The porch of 7 Dunluce Crescent crackled with the news of the Health and Family Planning Amendment Act.
‘An absolute disgrace it is,’ Mrs McGinty said. ‘We don’t need Europeans poking their noses in. Charlie Haughey had it right before.’
‘“An Irish Solution to an Irish Problem”,’ Granny Doyle quoted.
‘This amendment says you won’t need a prescription. All sorts will be at it.’
‘Do you think they’ll be selling them in Brennan’s?’ Mrs Nugent asked, a certain thrill in her tone.
‘Not if she has any shred of Christian decency.’
‘That one would sell the nails that hung Jesus if it would make her a scrap of silver,’ Granny Doyle said. ‘I won’t be letting any of mine near the place, I can tell you that much.’
‘All sorts of perverts shopping there now,’ Mrs Nugent agreed. ‘Sneaking contraceptives between the soap and the toothpaste.’
Mrs McGinty crossed herself.
‘A disgrace it is, an absolute disgrace.’
*
Funny to think of it curled up quietly in a drawer. Could condoms curl? Mary Nelligan imagined so, thought of it jammed in alongside other knick-knacks, fancied that it twisted backwards to hug itself, a snake catching its tail in the mouth. Poor thing, it was probably lonely enough. Somehow it had survived the move from Dublin to Galway and here it was, a surprise as she finally packed up her things. Funny that she had kept it at all. A memento, she supposed, hard to throw away such a survivor.
It wasn’t curled at all when Mary opened the drawer: it lay flat, as if defeated by its situation. Well now, time for an adventure, she thought, unaware of the miracle waiting to trip her up.
*
John Paul stood outside the Dáil holding a ‘Children Against Condoms’ sign. There were a fair few other children there, as well as a robust showing from the Legion of Mary and Opus Dei. A similarly large crew of counter-protesters stood in support of the amendment: the types of people who’d be wanting to buy condoms without a prescription – gays, sex workers, women’s rights activists – the sorts that Granny Doyle was keen to shield John Paul from. She stood in a tight cluster with her neighbours, as if she could transport her porch’s protection to Kildare Street.
She couldn’t protect John Paul, though, not with a miracle to perform. Being stuck beside a boring building was a waste of outside time. The other children had been left at home, so nobody was there to suggest that taking a pram for a spin was a bad idea. One of Mrs Nugent’s grandchildren was tucked inside, Mrs Nugent temporarily distracted by her other crying grandchild, so off John Paul went, his tiny hands reaching up, brakes released, wheels and feet in happy motion …
By the time Granny Doyle noticed, it was too late. She didn’t even try to grab the air in front of her, her hands shot towards her mouth instead. The pram escaped from John Paul’s grip, careening towards the road, a car zooming towards it. Then, just as Mrs Nugent’s unfortunate grandchild was about to be annihilated, something – a gust of wind, the capricious flick of God’s finger – changed the course of the pram. The beep of the car roused the crowd, including John Paul, who dashed onto the road and gave the pram a mighty push towards the pavement.
‘Janey, he saved her!’ Mrs Nugent cried, clear on who was at fault. ‘Thanks be to Heavens for John Paul! Stop that crying, would you, your sister’s after nearly dying because of you!’
Granny Doyle was distracted by John Paul’s second miracle. Like his first, it relied on motion and gravity. This time, the results were more destructive: his Second Unoffical Miracle was the banishment of Aunty Mary. Aided by John Paul, the pram barrelled into one of the counter-protesters, an angry young man whose excessive stubble was proof enough of his moral lassitude. Over he tumbled, slipping on a condom (a detail to be savoured like lemon cake, delicious in its zesty ironies) down onto the ground with a break of his nose. Before the pram stopped, another two protesters skidded to the tarmac. Knees were grazed, egos wounded, flesh harmed. Granny Doyle was jubilant. She had got what she wanted: a battler on the front line against iniquity, a bruiser capable of breaking a nose when need be. She was wrestling the pram and John Paul away from some concerned counter-protesters when she recognized the shape of one of the faces.
Granny Doyle had always been suspicious of her sister’s ideas but she was enough of a Charlie Haughey disciple not to press the matter, silence the best Irish solution to most problems. This was too far, though: the brazen stance of her, holding condoms like confetti. Not to mention the thing stood beside her: hair far too short for a woman, a quare one altogether. Granny Doyle couldn’t have known the history of the condom that tripped the protester, but surely it was only getting its revenge for such neglect, leaping out of Mary’s hands as soon as it got a chance, happy to expose her for all her cheek. Mary’s face wasn’t as defiant as it had been facing the customs officers; it blanched as Granny Doyle’s hardened, quivered when faced with Granny Doyle’s stare.
Granny Doyle’s fierce gaze made her position clear. Aunty Mary had no business influencing her family. There would be no picking up Peg from school, no chats with fairies in the garden, no installation of any bookshelf. Mary felt winded, possibilities deflating in front of her; she might not move back to Dublin after all. Her strong voice, which rose above the chatter of schoolchildren and the drone of men and meetings, deserted her. She opened her mouth, in protest or plea, she wasn’t sure, but Granny Doyle had already turned her splendid back. John Paul gripped her hand, not a hair on his head ruffled, no blame on his shoulders, the smile of the victorious stretching across his face.
4
It was not supposed to be the occasion of John Paul’s Third Unofficial Miracle; the First Holy Communion of Peg Doyle should have been the moment when her family orbited around her for a change. John Paul would be sitting with the babies while she walked up to receive Holy Communion like a grown-up. She would develop a special connection to God that John Paul was years away from. And she would have a killer dress.
Shortly after her First Confession, Peg Doyle succumbed to the first sin that every Catholic girl commits once she reaches the age of reason: unbridled vanity in the face of one white Communion dress. Its powers were especially alluring to Peg, who had been denied both the fair-haired beauty of the Hennessys that Damien and Rosie had inherited and the rough dark-haired charm of the Doyles that John Paul had scraped together. Nine years old, with a shock of brown mousey hair, more pudge than she would want to be keeping, and a head that was more freckles than face, Peg was in desperate need of a Communion dress.
Surprisingly, the hand-me-down that Granny Doyle procured from Mrs Nugent did the trick, transforming her into a princess instantly. Peg paraded down the triplets’ bedroom, a miniature Princess Di. Damien and Rosie watched appreciatively; John Paul’s eyes flashed at the challenge.
‘Let’s go OUTSIDE and play!’
For a moment, Damien seemed genuinely torn. He did not need to be in constant motion like his brother and there was the gorgeous expanse of lace in front of him, fabric that begged to be admired.
‘Come on! I’m-I’m going to be Optimus Prime and BLOW you up!’
There was no choice for Damien; John Paul would always win.
Rosie hovered by the door.
‘Can I have a go of your bag, Peg?’
‘No,’ Peg snapped.
Rosie shrugged and trailed after her brothers. Peg was happy to see them all gone, the mirror a better audience than the triplets, her reflection as thrilled as she was to have something that the triplets couldn’t ruin.
*
‘It’s all right love, we’ll fix it.’
Danny Doyle opened his curtains and held the Communion dress up to the light. A zigzag pattern had been cut around the hem, whole chunks of the dress in scraps on the floor of the triplets’ room.
‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘It’ll be all right, love.’
‘How?’
Danny Doyle sat down on his bed, already tired from it all.
‘We’ll take it to your gran. She’ll know what to do.’
Peg should have known not to consult her dad; there was only one person who could help her.
‘I want to see Aunty Mary.’
A rub of the brow, very tired eyes squinting back at her.
‘You know you can’t, love, you know you can’t.’
‘Why not?’
A look out the window, his daughter still there when his eyes returned.
‘Because that’s how it is. Your Aunty Mary’s staying in the house in Clougheally.’
‘I want to visit her.’
A sigh that stretched the length of the country.
‘You can’t, love, you know that, so stop asking me about it, okay? We’ll take this to your gran and she’ll have it right as rain.’
*
Granny Doyle’s solution to the slashed Communion dress was the perfect fusion of thrift and fury.
‘I want a new dress,’ Peg sobbed.
‘You’ll be wearing this tomorrow.’
‘No way! I’ll wear my own clothes, I don’t care.’
Granny Doyle gripped Peg’s wrist.
‘You listen to me, Missy. If I tell you you’re wearing this dress, you’re wearing this dress. You’re a cute one. Thought you’d slash up this old thing and get your little brother into trouble? Well, you’d want to be getting up very early to pull one over on me: I know John Paul wouldn’t do that. You’ll get your lesson about staging a show, so you will.’
*
It wasn’t long before the slagging started, the older girls in the choir setting the tone.
‘Is that a new fashion?’
‘Look, Peg Doyle’s having her period!’
‘Janey, I’d be scarleh if I was wearing that dress!’
‘Move over, it’s Scarleh Doyle.’
‘It’s Scarleh O’Huareh.’
The strips of fabric that Granny Doyle had sewn onto Peg’s dress were bright red in colour, giving the alarming appearance of tongues of fire leaping upwards. It was not a fashion ever to be repeated in Killester Church.
Peg held her bag on her lap, wishing it were about ten times larger so it could have some hope of covering her dress. Nobody showed her a shred of sympathy. Her father stared ahead, all his energies expended in producing a smile. Granny Doyle stared at the altar piously, her shoulders radiating triumph. The triplets were no better. John Paul was busy poking everybody in the row in front of him, indifferent to the agony he had caused. Damien was practising praying like a Good Boy, face squeezed as if he was taking a giant shite. Rosie stared into mid-air, the way she often did, as if she could see into another world. Not for the first time, Peg longed for her mother, the kind woman whose face Peg could only just remember. She wouldn’t have stood for this nonsense. She might have plucked Peg up in her arms and carried her out of the church, into a different life. Peg almost said a prayer to her, hoping that Catherine Doyle might prove to be the patron saint of dramatic interventions, looking down at the scene and sending some candle to the ground, Peg’s dress forgotten in the blaze of the church. The words stayed in Peg’s head; there was no more point in prayer than in believing that children could turn into swans, she knew that. Tears too were futile, the slagging would be much worse. Peg imagined that she was wearing a different dress – one made of armour! – and steeled herself for the fray.
Time to receive Communion. Peg stood up, feeling none of the thrill she had anticipated when she brushed past the triplets to become a proper adult in training. At least Rosie and Damien had the decency to look down. John Paul caught her eye as she walked past and gave her a grin that might have been sponsored by the devil. He had banished Aunty Mary and ruined her Communion; he was winning.
Father O’Shaughnessy swallowed his face in shock when he saw Peg’s dress. He plopped the Communion wafer onto Peg’s tongue like a bomb. It sat underneath Peg’s tongue, hard as sin, unpalatable as ash. Peg returned to her seat, the rest of the pew indifferent to her mortification.
‘Mortification’ was the perfect word for what was happening to Peg, its medical definition particularly apt: localized necrosis of tissue. The spiritual cells of Peg Doyle, the ones that collectively organized to believe in a higher being, had become necrotic, digestion of Holy Communion thus impossible. Peg waited until nobody was watching, scooped the thin disc out of her mouth, and left it on the floor. The door that Aunty Mary had left ajar fell off its hinges.
Peg met John Paul’s gaze without flinching. He might have banished Aunty Mary but she had gone one better: Peg Doyle had exiled God.
5
‘Remember your Communion dress?’
Peg didn’t answer; it didn’t matter, Rosie would tell her anyway.
The fan whirred loudly through the heat of the New York spring; still, it was not loud enough.
‘I did it.’
‘What?’
Rosie gulped.
‘I cut up your dress.’
Rosie had imagined this moment many times, a weight being lifted from her shoulders. Instead, she felt the air becoming heavier, as if the room had shifted to a different atmosphere, breaths becoming harder to take.
‘Why?’
All Peg could manage. To admit that she had never considered this possibility was to admit that she had never considered Rosie capable of something so solid.
Peg’s question reverberated in Rosie’s ear: why? To get your attention? A thing she was incapable of, even now. Rosie swallowed. Any explanation was inadequate. She had thought that perhaps it was something they might have laughed about: Rosie had only been four, after all, she hadn’t forced Peg to wear the scarlet dress, which Rosie didn’t remember as quite so scarlet. Bits of fabric had been sewn on the bottom, yes, but hadn’t they been cream with a red trim? In Rosie’s mind, the incident had been on a spectrum of secret crimes she had committed during her anonymity at 7 Dunluce Crescent, similar to the Barbie scalpings that Peg had blamed John Paul for. No malice had been involved, only jealousy, and, if anything, a strange sort of love, the kind that kept her in New York even when she knew it would be better for both of them if she left.
The silence expanded in space and time, a black hole swallowing words before they could leave Rosie’s head. It would have been different with a lover. Rosie could have wrapped her arm around him, nuzzled his shoulders, forced his face to turn to hers. There was no moving Peg’s back, though.
‘I’m sorry.’
A very long silence; Peg was probably asleep.
6
Peg might have exiled God but she couldn’t stop the Fourth Unofficial Miracle of John Paul Doyle: the appearance of the Virgin Mary in Erris three years later.
Peg had only herself to blame. She’d convinced Granny Doyle to return to Clougheally, waging a campaign that capitalized upon Granny Doyle’s reliable concern for the happiness of John Paul Doyle. Wouldn’t it be great to search for pirates on a proper beach? Peg suggested, and can we go to Clougheally? John Paul asked and yes, Granny Doyle said, for after three years without a holiday, she was ready to endure anything, even her sister.
Peg might have been glad to see Aunty Mary but Granny Doyle’s reluctant truce didn’t mean that she was comfortable being around her. Mary had made the house her own and knocked everything out of its place. Gone the St Brigid’s cross and the old kettle and the leathery books in Irish that nobody read. Replaced with God knew what, all of Mary’s trinkets and technology: electric kettles and figurines carved out of soapstone and a bookshelf bristling with ideas. Not to mention Aunty Mary, properly settled in Clougheally now that she’d bought Granny Doyle’s share of the house (and didn’t she need it, with Danny not showing any signs of getting regular work), putting some bright throw over the couch as if she owned the place, which, Granny Doyle supposed with a sigh, she did.
So, the Blessed Shells of Erris washed up at precisely the right time.
‘Look, look, it’s Our Lady, isn’t it?’
Everybody squinted at the shell John Paul had found on the beach. It looked more like a meringue than a regular shell: white, round and very fragile.
‘It’s like the statue at the Grotto,’ John Paul said, his fingers following the cylindrical groove in the centre of the shell. ‘That’s her body and that round bit at the top’s her head.’
It could equally have been the outline of a cucumber.
‘Would you credit that?’ Granny Doyle said. ‘Our Lady of Erris.’
‘That’s the outline of an old sea slug,’ Aunty Mary scoffed. ‘Those things are all over the beach!’
‘I didn’t see any slugs,’ John Paul said, the truth, though he would have been well up for a lie.
‘This is as bad as all that Ballinspittle nonsense a few years back,’ Aunty Mary said. ‘You remember that mania that swept the country: fools thinking a statue of Mary could move! There was chat here about the statue in Pullathomas moving then – little wonder, with it right beside the pub!’
Nothing could have convinced Granny Doyle more than the disapproval of her sister.
‘No, this is Our Lady of Erris! A miracle, so it is! We’ll have to collect them. And we’d better hurry before anyone else catches wind. There’s a cute enough crowd around here and they’ll be dying for a piece of this.’
‘This is nonsense!’ Aunty Mary said, to no avail. She might have settled into their old house, but she hadn’t a hope of denting her sister’s self-belief and there was nothing she could do to stop John Paul Doyle, already bounding out the door to fetch the other triplets, a lieutenant marshalling his troops.
*
All other leisure activities were suspended in service of collecting as many Blessed Shells as possible. The triplets worked as a team: John Paul scouting, Damien cleaning the shells, Rosie embellishing Our Lady’s image with watercolours. Something for them all to enjoy: John Paul the adventurer, Damien the carer, Rosie the painter. Granny Doyle oversaw the operations, smiling as bucket upon bucket returned to the kitchen she grew up in. God was munificent (or the molluscs were promiscuous) and soon everything from the pots to the bathtub was full of the shells, Our Lady smiling serenely in blobs of blue and yellow paint. John Paul was inspired to search further afield, the other two running along beside him, leaping over rock pools, daring high tide together, the three of them as happy as froth in the sea, the elastic band tight between them in those days.
*
‘Get your Blessed Shells of Erris, two for a pound! I’ll do you a deal if you want, five for two quid, they’ll look brilliant on the mantelpiece, they will.’
Even at eight, John Paul had sharp business sense. He kept Rosie and Damien behind the table outside the church, the two of them suitably angelic and trustworthy. John Paul worked the crowd, charming the old ladies and bringing a bit of Moore Street to Mayo.
‘Today only: get your Blessed Shells of Erris, two for a pound! Special chipped range, only 20p each!’
Most of the parishioners assumed the money was going to charity, an assumption that John Paul did nothing to dispel. Granny Doyle’s mantra echoed in his head: charity begins at home. John Paul paid his workers in Fat Frogs, green slurp dripping into the sea each afternoon as they combed the beach for fresh miracles. He kept a cut for himself, saved the rest of the money for Granny Doyle, the profits reaching double digits.
This was life, John Paul thought, loving the attention and the cut and thrust of commerce. He hadn’t a head for school like Peg or Damien; he was always in trouble or confused, or getting into trouble because he was confused, when it was hardly his fault that none of it made sense or that all the teachers were out to get him. Faced with such persecution, it was no wonder that he concentrated his energies on bringing the whole system down with admirable invention, the football pitch filled with forks and the inter-class milk-carton missile war already legendary. Here, though, was a scheme that John Paul could get behind, charming coins out of purses something he was born for; outside the church, John Paul didn’t feel one bit stupid. Here, most likely, was the birth of Pope John Paul III, although it would take him years to grow into this identity, several stumbles from grace ahead.
He’d be doing even better without Damien and Rosie, not that he could fire them. Damien kept sneaking off and dropping money into the candle box in the church, even when John Paul promised to post some of the money to Ethiopia. Rosie was worse; she’d always been the only Doyle their father really cared about.
‘Thanks, love, I’ll drop it back to you later.’
John Paul flinched as his father swiped one of his hard-earned fivers from Rosie and tousled John Paul’s hair with his other hand. Who knew where the fiver would go – smokes or a couple of pints – but John Paul was sure that Granny Doyle wouldn’t see so much as a copper.
‘That’s my boy! Doing great business so you are, J.P! I’ll see you at the house.’
John Paul folded his arms and glared at Damien and Rosie in a way that he couldn’t at his father.
‘You’ll have to split a Fat Frog between the two of ’yis today.’
*
Damien dropped another fifty pence into the candle box and sat down on the empty wooden pew, his face shining as bright as the stained-glass windows. He didn’t know the old lady who’d spoken to him but he hugged her words to his heart: you’re a good boy, aren’t you?
He was a good boy, Damien felt, and it was nice to have somebody acknowledge this. Neither Granny Doyle nor his father had commented when he’d read more books than anybody else in his class in the Readathon for children with multiple sclerosis; they’d signed his form without remarking what a feat it had been for him to get through seventeen different stories. They hadn’t noticed that John Paul had copied his sheet without opening a book, Granny Doyle thrilling that she always knew John Paul had the brains of a Nelligan.
It didn’t matter. God and the Virgin Mary knew about the goodness of Damien Doyle, Damien reminded himself, looking up at the sparkling windows and swooning. God was like a radio channel that Damien could tune into and he loved hearing the soothing voice in the quiet of the church. God understood that even if Damien was picked last in football or had a head that was made to throw milk cartons at, he was a good boy who’d go far. So you will, the Virgin Mary seemed to say, smiling at him from stained glass.
The bobbing candle flames nodded in agreement, the one he’d lit for his mother particularly emphatic. Damien knew from the photo on her memorial card that Catherine Doyle would have been the kind of mammy to appreciate Damien; she would have noticed that Damien always picked up John Paul’s dirty clothes from the floor and never complained when Granny Doyle dished him out the least crispy roast potatoes. The nice smiling lady in the photographs would have loved her quiet son with the same sandy hair as her and noticed every Twix he forsook so he could send more pennies to starving babies in Africa. You are a good boy, aren’t you? Catherine Doyle would have said, or did say, for it was hard to say which channels crackled in the church and, for a moment, Damien heard his mother’s voice inside his ears.
‘Damo? What are you at?’
Damien turned around: typical John Paul to shout in a church.
‘Come on, we’ve a shiteload more shells to shift,’ John Paul said, swearing not beyond him either.
‘I’m coming.’
‘What are you like? Checking out the knockers on those angels, eh?’
John Paul was hanging out with some of their older second cousins in Clougheally, eager to prove that he had big talk in him, even as it strained in his mouth. Damien blushed; he wouldn’t defy his brother, not then. John Paul gave him a playful punch and led him outside.
‘Yer one there’s not bad, if she wasn’t stuck in that holy robe I’d say she’d have a decent pair of tits.’
*
Rosie smiled as she painted a big green line in the middle of one of the shells. One for Granny Doyle; one for her: a fair bargain. Rosie stretched out in the sun and added a pair of huge purple eyes: if the shells could contain the Virgin Mary, couldn’t they also be the home for sea slugs? Rosie added a purple smile and some pink polka dots; she would not be bound by convention and besides, these alternative shells weren’t for her, but decoration for the crabs and microscopic organisms that lived in Erris’s rock pools. Pleased, Rosie plopped the shell into the rock pool beside her, smiling at the thought of the little creatures cosying up to their friendly new neighbour. (Later, Rosie cringed at the thought of all the chemicals she’d inadvertently released into the sea.) She picked up another white shell and prepared to paint another blandly smiling Virgin Mary.
‘Here you go, love.’
It was Danny Doyle, jeans rolled up to the knee, returning from the sea with a few shells for her secret pile. He sat on the rocks and laughed at the sight of her sea-slug shell, already settling into his new rock-pool home.
‘He’s a friendly fella, isn’t he!’
Rosie nodded. She knew the trick was to get her father outside and keep him busy. Some days he was up for a stroll along the coast, 99 ice creams shared between the two of them; smiles, too. Other days leaving the bed was too much to ask. Rosie knew the happiness of Danny Doyle was a tightrope, you had to be careful how to tread.
‘Do you think the slugs mind their homes being turned into miracles?’
Another trick: keep him talking. Let him gaze out into the sea for too long and he could disappear into himself.
‘I’d say they’re not too fussed, love,’ Danny Doyle said.
He could do better; she was the only one of his children with a bit of heart, he could keep her happy, at least.
‘You know, actually, I’d say the slugs themselves are probably in on the whole business?’
‘You think sea slugs believe in God?’
‘Well, maybe not quite that. But if you think about what happens, how some slug at the bottom of the sea gets to make a home as beautiful as this, years and years it must take, and look at how detailed the yoke is … I’m no expert, mind, but you know, I suppose if you look at it one way, the fact that one slug can produce an incredible home, isn’t that a kind of miracle in itself?’
He wasn’t sure if he had the words right – he was never one for speeches – but from the smile spreading across his daughter’s face he figured he hadn’t cocked it up too badly.
‘Yeah,’ Rosie said, thrilled with the knowledge that miracles might have nothing to do with God, could just be another word for magic.
7
And what was Peg Doyle doing during this blessed summer? Staring at a milk bottle of inspiration. Not just any milk bottle, but a commemorative one, its bright red, yellow and blue crest announcing that this glass bottle had more important things to hold than milk. And hold more important things it did: perched atop scrunched-up newspaper, a variety of biros waited to compose Peg’s latest opus, A Children’s History of Viking Dublin. Peg hadn’t been pleased with the Viking exhibition their class had visited. Dublinia didn’t have one single story told by a child, Peg complained; in all the fuss with Dublin’s own millennium (one thousand years since the Vikings had arrived in 988), wasn’t there space for the histories of everyday children? A very good point, Aunty Mary said with a smile, letting Peg have the use of her desk (the one place in the house not covered with the infernal shells) to write her history. Dublin’s full of history, Aunty Mary said, ‘Dublin’ catching in her throat, as if the word gave her pain. ‘History’ also sounded different in Aunty Mary’s mouth, pain there too, though she smiled at Peg, telling her that she’d root out some books that might be useful.
Peg selected her favourite biro from the Millennium Milk Bottle, removing it with a flourish, as if the past were contained inside like ink. The pen itself contained four different inks, each one accessible by clicking a coloured rectangle at the pen’s top, an action Peg loved. With such a professional tool, she was able to write the title (24 May 988) in red, continue the history proper in black, and reserve blue for dialogue (the green ink had no place in a serious project; it was Rosie’s favourite). Peg hovered the black pen over her paper, ready for its satisfying scratch, as she plotted adventures for Ingrid, her heroine: a drudgy morning selling fish for her domineering grandmother and an exciting afternoon involving a smuggled manuscript awaited. Peg loved playing God, trawling through the books she’d got from Raheny Library to research the clothes she might have worn or the streets in Dublin whose names hadn’t changed, the current of the past rushing through her pen, connecting her to a woman who might have lived a thousand years ago, while another woman hovered, bringing her books or cups of hot chocolate or simply standing by the doorway and watching Peg work.
8
Peg might have moved beyond the Children of Lir but the triplets hadn’t; the Fifth Unofficial Miracle of John Paul Doyle took them up the swan’s boulder in search of heroic flight.
John Paul looked back at Damien and Rosie.
‘All right … you two count me in and then I’ll jump!’
Damien looked down at the drop and felt dizzy.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Of course,’ John Paul said, trying to stop the shake in his legs. He hadn’t jumped the other day, when some of the older second cousins he’d been palling around with had, leaving John Paul watching them like some poor sap in his bright Bermudas. Not today. John Paul had been double-dared and he had the triplets as witnesses.
‘Go on, count for me, I’m getting cold.’
Damien was transfixed by the waves crashing against the rocks below so Rosie started.
‘Three …’
John Paul steeled himself: it was only twenty feet or so, it was nothing.
‘Two …’
But the drop looked like something, the water stern and uninviting.
‘One …’
It was the moment to jump, John Paul knew it, but when he looked down he couldn’t do it, he needed another second or so, but then before his legs were ready he saw a blur rush past him and leap into air.
‘Rosie!’
Damien’s voice was caught between fear and amazement. John Paul was frozen, another second before he caught on what had happened.
‘It’s great!’ Rosie called up, head raised towards the sun like a seal. She’d bounded in, T-shirt and shorts and all. John Paul knew he should be furious but he couldn’t help feeling relieved: typical Rosie, whoever knew what she’d do, but if Rosie could manage the leap, John Paul Doyle sure as certain could.
‘All right, we have to do it now.’
Damien gulped.
‘I’ll mind the shells.’
‘Come on, Damo. Think of how many we’ll get down there. It’ll be like we’re scuba diving for shells.’
Damien had better sense than to believe John Paul but still he found himself taking off his T-shirt and shorts and folding them carefully beside the bucket of shells.
‘Come on, we’ll do it together.’
Damien nodded. He wasn’t sure if the wind or God was responsible for his goose pimples, but he felt a fire inside him pushing him towards the edge; he could do this!
‘Do you want me to count?’ Rosie called up.
‘No,’ John Paul hollered, smiling, because he knew that Rosie and Damien would never rat him out to the cousins and it was a great thing, to shake off fear.
John Paul turned to Damien and three two one raced between their eyes and then they were into the air together, Rosie whooping with them as they crashed into the sea, bobbing immediately up with the cold, so that for one miraculous half-second, John Paul might have walked on water.
Peg was engrossed in a book about Viking Ireland when the triplets made their leap, so she didn’t learn of this milestone in the triplets’ lives until they dripped their triumph across the kitchen and shared suppressed grins as Granny Doyle rattled off her you could have been killed! and would you look at that mess! That she had not seen the triplets jump from the boulder was not a detail that curbed Peg’s memory; she had a sharp sense of the moment, the three of them jumping into the water simultaneously in her imagination, never happier. Peg played with the memory in her head, allowing for an unlikely vantage point, where she was in the water, watching the triplets leap off the rock in unison. The sun was brighter in Peg’s memory of the day, the water warmer, the triplets remaining miraculously suspended in mid-air for a moment: side by side, knees curled, huge smiles on their faces, fearless.
9
While the triplets were collecting Blessed Shells and Peg was immersed in Viking Ireland, Danny Doyle found a passion of his own. It wasn’t just the outside that was bringing a smile to his face; he’d discovered the new National Lottery, which acted like a defibrillator to his broken heart, restoring focus to his life. He had his lucky six numbers, almost memorized by yer man down the shop in Clougheally. The shops in Rossport had no luck in them, Belmullet equally unfortunate, so he tried out different machines across Mayo; when his windfall came it would be enormous.
4.
The number of their house on Baldoyle Grove. He remembered the first moment he had carried her inside, her shriek as he attempted the stairs too, no carpet yet to catch the two of them as they tumbled, although their laughs were like shields, no bruises possible on that day.
*
Soon scratchcards accompanied his regular numbers, the better to beat the odds. As the weeks progressed, more and more of the children’s allowance siphoned into his Lotto fund, cheery pink slips crumpling onto the floor, as the numbers failed to come through.
12.
Her birthday. The first year, he’d got her a Stones record, and she’d arched her eyebrows – a signature move – and said there was no satisfaction to be got, though what more was there to be wanted, when her eyes were smiling all the same.
*
The itch got worse, more and more scratchcards keeping the pink slips company. Granny Doyle could sense them in the car on the way back to Dublin, competing with the Blessed Shells of Erris for space. She saw the scratchcards when she stuffed some shells in the glove compartment, knew that the reason they stopped for petrol six times was so the luck of different petrol stations could be tested. She massaged a Blessed Shell in her palms on the ride home, turning it over and over as a worry stone, the paint chipped by the time they reached Dunluce Crescent.
11.
This would be his number when he played for Shamrock Rovers, he assured her. That’s really your dream? she asked with an arch of her eyebrows. Aim big, you know? he’d said, then, and you? She’d smiled before she spoke: I’ve always wanted to cop off with a Liverpool player. You’re a terrible one. I am. She was.
*
The unveiling of the Blessed Shells of Erris to Dunluce Crescent was an event without precedent. Everything was scrubbed, even the dust. The dining room was opened up. The Blessed Shells were arrayed on the sitting-room table. Danny would pick up a nice bit of fish with the messages; it would be a spread like no other, the whole road invited. Mouths would drop open. Airs would be stripped off Mrs Donnelly next door. Granny Doyle would burst from the pride.
When Daniel Doyle returned from the post office, there wasn’t a shopping bag in his hand. Granny Doyle’s eyes flashed from the pink slips in his pockets to his face.
‘Daniel Doyle, don’t tell me you spent all the children’s allowance on that Lotto again.’
He didn’t tell her that; he didn’t have to.
‘Tell me there’s some left.’
She had that Irish Mammy face on, the face that cannot believe that her beloved child could be capable of letting her down.
‘We can have the do next week, Ma. Once this comes through I can get you a whole school of fish. Bound to be lucky, the Northside is due a big win. Buy a sailboat, eh, J.P., and we can get millions of those shells in your nets.’
John Paul looked away, hatred forming inside him, as clear as crystals.
19.
Their anniversary. She’d worn blue twice on their wedding day. Once in the austere necklace her mother had bequeathed; once, only for him, a secret to get the two of them through the day full of family, when there was the night waiting, all for them.
*
A surprise to Peg: Granny Doyle could look old. Peg was used to darting down the road to keep up with Granny Doyle’s brisk pace; she’d never seen Granny Doyle walk like she did after she was refused credit from both the man at the post office and the young one at Nolans, more wobble than walk, it was. Another surprise: Granny Doyle taking out a box of cigarettes, pulling one out of the packet and lighting up, not a word about it. Peg felt too sorry for her to say anything – a final surprise, to be capable of this feeling. They sat on the bench by the bus stop on the Coast Road for a long while, several buses gliding past into town before they walked home.
31.
The bus to their house. He wanted to write a little A beside it when he placed his bets, because she always claimed that it was superior to the B; even when facts proved the opposite, she delighted in these little disagreements, only a fraction of the alphabet between them.
*
‘Dad!’
Rosie rapped her knuckles against the door again.
‘Come on, Dad, everybody is downstairs!’
Rosie tried to keep her voice calm. He was definitely awake: she could smell the cigarette smoke coming from underneath the door.
Another soft knock, one that said it will all be okay! but the door remained locked; he couldn’t even face Rosie, that day.
29.
Her age, for ever. A cold number: harsh, indivisible, stuck, while he was up to 37, though he felt much older. He wished they could hit their prime together, but 29 wasn’t budging, no, that’s where she was now.
10
The Sixth Unofficial Miracle of John Paul Doyle: a revision of the loaves and the fishes, a trick he would repeat in later life for a considerably wider audience.
The trial run in 7 Dunluce Crescent was no small success. When Granny Doyle returned home from her walk to find her house full of guests, she feared the worst. And then she saw the triplets at work. Damien handed sandwiches to the guests. Rosie drifted around the room with a teapot. John Paul stood by the Blessed Shells of Erris, in his Communion suit, as confident as Jesus chatting away in the temple to his elders. The meal that John Paul had conjured was beside the shells: a pyramid of slightly charred fish fingers beside two mounds of white sliced pans, jagged triangles of hard butter atop each slice. Danny Doyle was safely upstairs: door closed, curtains shut.
Most of Dunluce Crescent came to the event and who could blame them, what else was there to be doing on the sleepy little side street? All of Granny Doyle’s porch friends were present. Mrs McGinty insisted that Damien bring in a hard-backed chair for her and eyed the Blessed Shells of Erris suspiciously, unsure if devotion or blasphemy were at work. Mrs Fay brought along her husband, who was as thin as she was large, though both were equally jovial, dispensing praise liberally, unaware of the impression Mrs Fay lodged in Rosie’s mind when she complimented her lovely drawings on the shells or the warm somersault of Damien’s tummy when Mr Fay told him he was a brilliant waiter. Mrs Nugent only had time for John Paul, who was well able to keep up with her, laughing along as she poked fun at her daughter’s diet and whispered that they’d want to keep the spirits well hidden from Mr Geoghan. Most of the families on the road came too, for they all knew each other’s business, had played handball and hopscotch on the road as children, but it was rare enough that anybody passed the threshold of Granny Doyle’s porch. Only the Brennans didn’t show, typical of a family who sold condoms in their pharmacy.
Granny Doyle surveyed the room and caught her breath.
‘Sorry, I’m late,’ she blustered, apologies not usually her thing. ‘I was …’
‘No matter,’ Mrs Nugent said. ‘John Paul has been entertaining us. Try one of these sandwiches, delicious they are, you’ll have to come over and cook for me some time, won’t you, John Paul?’
John Paul didn’t smile yet, even though Mrs Nugent was tittering as though she’d made a joke; he wouldn’t smile until Granny Doyle did.
‘He’s a better cook than me,’ Mr Fay said, picking up another sandwich. ‘Toast is about the extent of my expertise in the kitchen.’
‘And you still burn it,’ Mrs Fay said, a fond tone, the two of them still in love after forty years.
Mrs McGinty scraped some black breadcrumbs onto the side of her saucer but nobody minded about Mrs McGinty, the type of woman who would choose coffee creams first from a box of Roses. Equally, nobody minded about Mrs Brennan, who, this history must scrupulously report, knocked on the porch window the following day to report the theft of five sliced pans and four packets of fish fingers from her chest freezer.
Almost nobody minded about Mrs Brennan. Damien had a tough time with secrets, especially when sins were involved. Sins had a habit of multiplying: lying was added to theft, gluttony too, though Damien wasn’t sure if enjoyment were necessary for that one.
‘Relax,’ John Paul said, finding his brother fretting in the kitchen.
‘Maybe we should have left an IOU note,’ Damien said.
John Paul didn’t share his brother’s scruples about honesty.
‘I’ll make sure to put one there tomorrow.’
Damien’s forehead was still stuck on worried so John Paul found one of the half-drunk glasses of beer.
‘Here, have a sip of this.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s like red lemonade.’
Damien took a huge gulp and then coughed violently, beer fizzing out of his nose, somehow, sending John Paul into fits of laughter, which Damien copied.
‘See, you feel better now you’re drunk, don’t you, Damo?’ John Paul said. ‘Relax, it’s all going to be fine!’
Things were going to be more than fine, John Paul thought, heading back into the sitting room with another pyramid full of fish finger sandwiches. He’d cut off the crusts to make them extra fancy, knowing that Granny Doyle wasn’t in a state to complain that it was the crusts that gave you curly hair.
‘Ah, there’s the man of the house,’ Mr Geoghan shouted, a bit plastered.
John Paul felt his shoulders rise in his Communion suit to fill out the description. He was the man of the house, wasn’t he? More so than his Dad, that was certain. John Paul would have to get crafty. He’d forge his signature on the children’s allowance. Pour water onto the poor sap’s smokes. Punch some sense into him; in a few years, he might be up to that. He’d do anything to make sure he didn’t have to see Granny Doyle’s face in the shop when she realized there wasn’t enough money for all the messages and, despite the careful list she’d written out, the rashers and the biscuits had to do a shameful parade backwards across the cash register. He’d show Danny Doyle and the rest of Dunluce Crescent, especially Mrs Donnelly from next door, who, after one sherry too many, tugged at the side of his suit.
‘Mind you, you clean up smart enough when you want to, don’t you? This one is always dragging half of St Anne’s Park across my kitchen floor, aren’t you?’
John Paul made a mental note to stomp in mud before his next visit to Jason Donnelly’s.
‘Where did you get that suit? Dunnes, was it? Penneys? Mind you, they have some great bargains, don’t they! We had to go and get Jason’s in Louis Copeland, but isn’t it mad when you think about it, all that fuss for a Communion?’
Nobody was listening to Mrs Donnelly, though that never stopped her.
‘Mind you, quality is always worth the price tag, isn’t it?’
Mrs Donnelly’s face as she chewed on her charred fish finger made it clear that quality was not a noun one could associate with the Doyles. Behind her, Jason Donnelly rolled his eyes; it wasn’t his fault that his mother was a snob or that he had a Nintendo and an official Manchester United shirt, so John Paul only hated him sometimes.
Peg stayed in the corner of the room, watching. It was a miracle of sorts, the way the triplets had brought the street together. They worked the room, John Paul spinning the story of the Blessed Shells while Damien and Rosie cleared plates. Mr Geoghan had brought over some cans and Mrs Nugent had unearthed a bottle of brandy from her kitchen and everybody was getting more relaxed, cigarette smoke hovering across the sitting room, chat and craic filling the air and soon Mr Geoghan was getting ready to sing some old union songs and Mrs Nugent was insisting that she saw an outline of Our Lady on the cushion she’d just sat up from and everybody was laughing, even Granny Doyle. Peg stared across the room at her grandmother, who was digging into a fish finger sandwich as if it were a Sunday dinner at Clontarf Castle. Granny Doyle beamed at her man of the house, a great lad, she agreed, love having achieved what the cigarettes hadn’t: the regulation of her breathing, the relaxation of her shoulders, the sensation that everything, against all odds, might be just fine.
11
‘Have you seen Pope John Paul III’s loaves and fishes video?’ Peg asked, one night.
Rosie should have smiled. They could bond over the villainy of John Paul Doyle; her mission was working. She had seen the video, some awful neocolonial thing where John Paul grinned as cheap special effects made loaves and fishes abound around him, all in aid of getting people to send money to Ethiopia, and, incidentally, support whichever company was organizing this bread sale.
‘Yeah, it’s awful,’ Rosie said, although her heart wasn’t in it.
I buy a scratchcard every year on Dad’s anniversary, Rosie wanted to say, but the words stayed furled inside, because mentioning Danny Doyle would not be strategic for her mission. She did, though, scratching the card on his tombstone if she was in Dublin, promising to spend whatever winnings there were on fags and ice cream, stubbing her butt on the flowers that Granny Doyle left, because the bitch knew he hated chrysanthemums. Though at least Granny Doyle remembered the date. Rosie had bought a scratchcard the other day, some bright American thing, and had sat on Peg’s fire escape, waiting for her sister to mention the anniversary.
‘Did you see the video about the World Cup?’ Peg asked now.
Rosie had seen it, from last year, when Ireland had reverted to hopeless form, knocked out of the World Cup before it began and Pope John Paul III had to controversially bless Italy as the team to root for, Mamma Mia-ing his way through the video.
‘I did,’ Rosie said quietly, realizing where the talk was headed.
12
The mania began with the Holland match. The tension was unbearable: Holland a goal ahead, Ireland about to exit the World Cup in twenty minutes, despite all the pluck of them. Danny Doyle had already snapped the head off the Ciao keyring he was kneading in his hands, leaving a miniature soccer ball head stuck in the folds of his armchair. In desperation, he turned to his son.
‘Say a prayer, J.P., what?’
It is true that John Paul responded. This history cannot verify the exact nature of that mumbled response, whether it was a ‘Hail Mary’ or a ‘Fuck off, Da’. Relations between the pair had continued to sour: if John Paul had his way, fists would be involved soon. And yet, despite his feelings for his father, what happened next is undeniable. The ball sailed through the air, finding its way to Niall Quinn’s head. Velocity took over as Quinn lunged his lanky body forwards, the ball whizzing past the outstretched hand of the Dutch goalie and bouncing satisfactorily into the back of the net. The Seventh Unofficial Miracle of John Paul Doyle: the Irish saved from elimination.
‘You beauty!’ Danny Doyle screamed, hugging John Paul ferociously.
In the absence of support from Granny Doyle, who did not approve of such secular miracles, Mrs Nugent became John Paul’s chief evangelist. Her telly permanently ‘on the blink’, Mrs Nugent watched the game with the Doyles, recounted the prayer John Paul said, reported the goal that followed immediately afterwards, held out her arm to demonstrate the chills she had felt.
So, it was no surprise that Mrs Nugent turned up to watch the next Ireland match in an extra-large World Cup T-shirt.
‘They’re on special offer at Guineys at the minute, brilliant aren’t they?’
Granny Doyle snorted.
‘I think it’s a shame to focus on a foreign sport when people could be playing GAA,’ Mrs McGinty offered.
‘Ah, it’s only a bit of gas,’ Mrs Nugent said. ‘Anyways, I thought John Paul could sign it!’
Of course he could, John Paul was ever eager to please his fans. Granny Doyle didn’t even try to stop him, distracted by the betting slips poking out of her son’s jeans.
‘Danny, what are you at?’
‘Ah, Ma, everybody’s doing it. It’s only a bit of fun.’
‘Fun’ was something that Danny Doyle was learning to appreciate again. He hardly ever spent days in the box room and did the odd nixer for the neighbours; he strolled down the street with pride: the father of John Paul Doyle!
‘What do you reckon, J.P. – Ireland 2, Romania nil?’
A shrug from John Paul, his shoulders stiffening immediately afterwards.
‘What do you think, J.P., Houghton might get one this time?’
‘Maybe.’
John Paul would have been happier spending the afternoon on Jason Donnelly’s Nintendo. But there was no avoiding Ireland’s showdown with Romania, especially as Mrs Nugent had rallied most of the street into 7 Dunluce Crescent, the better to witness another miracle. Even Mrs Donnelly had to have a look, thrilled by the prospect of disappointment, which seemed to beckon, as the match trudged along in a scoreless draw.
‘Ah, they haven’t a hope, do they?’ Mrs Donnelly said, once the match dragged into extra time. ‘Mind you, you wouldn’t have thought they’d make it here in the first place, would you?’
‘Peg, keep it down!’
Danny Doyle couldn’t tell Mrs Donnelly to shut up, much as he would have liked to tell her and her lamentations of doom to fuck off home next door, where Mr Donnelly was having a quiet field day.
Peg shared an eye-roll with Denise Donnelly at the deficiencies of their parents. Best friends by proximity, Peg and Denise had finally found a shared interest: the legs of Italy’s best striker, Salvatore Schillaci. It was clear that ‘Nessun Dorma’ played only for Schillachi. He was the player that encapsulated all that operatic drama: the skid to the grass in despair, the leap to the stars in jubilation when he scored, which he did, often, an intoxicating joy as he ran around the pitch in celebration. Unfortunately, Schillaci hadn’t been drafted to the Irish squad yet, so Peg and Denise were left with disappointing specimens to admire, Peg responding to Denise’s whispered question of ‘which of those manky things would you ride?’ with her usual answer (Paul McGrath; Tony Cascarino) while she waited for Denise to extol the virtues of Steve Staunton, ‘if you had to, you know?’
Schillaci might have been a benefit to the Irish team for other reasons too; the minutes raced by and the ball trudged up and down but still no sign of a goal.
‘Will they not bring on yokeymepuss to save the day?’ Mrs Nugent said, pointing at the screen.
‘Jack Charlton’s the manager,’ Danny Doyle said, a sigh abandoned, for now was the time for action; he made it off his armchair and rubbed John Paul’s shoulders.
‘Come on, J.P., say another prayer, what?’
The seconds of extra time ticked away.
‘It’s going to be one of those sudden death penalty shoot-outs,’ Mrs Nugent shouted excitedly.
‘Now’d be the time for a miracle,’ Danny Doyle said.
‘It will be a penalty shoot-out,’ John Paul said, a pronouncement taken as prophecy.
When overtime ran into penalties there wasn’t a sound in the room. Even Mrs Donnelly suppressed her queries about how penalty shoot-outs worked and her conviction that Kevin Sheedy looked a bit old in the tooth to be taking the first one. John Paul had a knack for ceremony. He said the ‘Hail Mary’ before each Irish penalty, the room with him. If Ireland won the game, they would make it into the top eight teams of the World Cup for the first time. If Ireland won, there would be no more rain, no more recession. Or, if they won, the rain and the recession and the tedium of Live at 3 looping into the Angelus wouldn’t matter because for one moment a whole nation had walked among gods. Number 7 Dunluce Crescent wasn’t the only house to share some credit for Ireland’s fate; sitting rooms and pubs across the country shouldered the same responsibility. If ever the collective prayers of a nation convinced a god to intervene in a sporting event, this was the day.
Sheedy scored. Houghton scored. Townsend scored. Cascarino scored. So did all the Romanians. It was 4–4, the last Romanian penalty. Daniel Timofte stepped up to take it. John Paul broke out an unprecedented ‘Glory Be’. He had been silent for the previous Romanian penalties, but some instinct kicked in – cunning? luck? providence? – and he said a prayer.
‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son and the Holy Ghost, let this damn Romanian choke!’
Timofte ran forward. Packie Bonner dived to the ground, hand reached out. The ball thudded across the grass, the back of the net unruffled.
‘There you go, there you go! That’s my boy!’ Danny Doyle screamed in savage triumph.
Everybody else was looking at David O’Leary.
‘Who’s he now?’ asked Mrs Donnelly, who would have been pushed to name more than two of the squad. ‘Ah, God love him, he’s going to bottle it!’
‘No, he can do it, can’t he, son?’
John Paul didn’t respond, launched into the ‘Hail Mary’. The whole room responded, even Granny Doyle. David O’Leary stepped forward.
The rest is documented history, legs in sitting rooms around Ireland leaping up in delight at the Eighth Unofficial Miracle of John Paul Doyle.
Peg Doyle stayed on the floor, transfixed by the pictures of Daniel Timofte, the poor Romanian bugger who had missed. He had lovely eyes, a face that was made to brood, only more beautiful in defeat. He swapped shirts with one of the Irish players, the regular ritual. Peg was struck by the oddness of the sweat-soaked shirt of the defeated being used as a talisman of success but everybody else olé olé oléd away, Danny Doyle replacing olé with ‘J.P.’ Peg continued to stare at Daniel Timofte, whose gorgeous face crumpled while Peg recognized the darker side of miracles: misery.
13
No coroner would have blamed John Paul. The culprit in the death of Daniel Doyle was clearly one asphyxiation-inducing peanut (a final insult, that the object that ended his life was even more modest than his dreams. Of all the things people said would be the death of him – gambling, sadness, the children – peanuts were never mentioned; he wasn’t even allergic). But Peg knew better. Perhaps no prosecutor would have convicted John Paul of murder, but the death of two parents was evidence enough: aggravated assault in the first instance, criminal neglect in the second.
The decline of Danny Doyle began five days after the Romanian match, on the morning of Ireland’s fateful quarter-final showdown with Italy. The jersey he’d bought for John Paul, so clean it even smelled official, didn’t quite have the result he’d hoped for upon its unveiling.
‘Danny, where did you get the money for that?’
‘It’s grand, Ma. What do you think, J.P.? Thought you were due a new one.’
John Paul didn’t let his eyes meet his father’s.
‘Should get you on the pitch more, too, you’d be a grand little midfielder. Maybe I could come coach, what? I didn’t use to be half bad in my day, before I banjaxed this knee anyway, would have made the Rovers’ reserves otherwise. Played in Lansdowne the one time, though, didn’t I, Ma?’
‘You did.’
Granny Doyle’s mouth was tight, she could see sense the storm building. John Paul threw his new Ireland jersey on the back of the kitchen chair.
‘Football’s for losers. I’m going to play on Jason’s Nintendo.’
Danny Doyle held on to the back of the chair for support as the door slammed.
‘We’ll play with you, Dad,’ Rosie said.
‘That’s right, love, that’s right, all on board! Just you wait until we win the World Cup, I’ll get ones for you and Damo, I’ll get new jerseys for us all.’
He didn’t, of course. The rest of the day was spent brooding, cans shared with Mr Geoghan, as the match drew closer, and still John Paul stayed at the Donnellys’, his fondness for video games involving Italian plumbers further proof of treachery. John Paul came home for the match, along with half the street, but he was in some mood, a gleam of triumph in his eyes when Schillaci scored, Danny Doyle could have sworn on it. John Paul sat calm as Buddha for the rest of the game, no expression on his face when the final whistle blew.
Danny Doyle went into the dining room, needing to escape from the shots of Schillaci racing around the field in triumph, the cries of ‘Toto, Toto’ in the stadium, Italy bound to win the World Cup. He felt the neighbours’ judgement on the back of his neck, their eyes burning him: John Paul deficient, a fraud, a flop. Was it anger or sadness that got him in the end? Did his kicks and curses cause the peanut to go down the wrong way? Was it despair that kept him on the ground when he fell?
The sympathetic might have understood John Paul’s actions: the beleaguered child was only right to shake off the mantle of responsibility. He hadn’t asked to be the receptacle of his father’s hopes; the pressure was too much for anybody. Peg rejected this reading, convinced that the little shit knew what he was doing.
(Schillaci, too, bore some of the blame, for Danny Doyle would have been too busy cheering to bother with peanuts had Schillaci’s tears been ones of despair rather than joy. Later, Peg felt a squirm of guilt at her divided loyalties, aware that she had spent her father’s final moments on earth admiring the legs of the enemy.)
It was Rosie who found her father’s body, several minutes too late, his face a terrible colour.
‘Dad!’
Nobody heard through the ‘Nessun Dorma’ and the cheers.
‘Dad!’
The sighs of the commentators were equally indifferent to events in 7 Dunluce Crescent.
‘Daddy! Daddy, wake up! Daddy!’
This summoned a crowd. Granny Doyle’s hands rushed to her face. She’d seen enough dead bodies as a nurse to know. It was too late.
‘Daddy! Help him!’
The men talked about doing CPR but Granny Doyle’s arm stopped them: no point putting him through that, he hadn’t a pulse.
‘Daddy!’
Somebody called the ambulance (Mrs Fay?) Somebody put on the kettle (Mrs Nugent?) Somebody cleared the house (Mrs McGinty?) But even with the ambulance on its way and a fresh pot of tea made and the house nice and peaceful for once, Danny Doyle remained dead on the floor. He couldn’t hear her any more; still, Rosie called.
‘Dad!’
John Paul’s face twisted. He should go over and hold his sister, that’s what a man of the house would do. He felt his shoulders slump, his face twitch with guilt. He’d wished his father gone many a time – which of his friends hadn’t wished the same? – but he hadn’t wanted this, of course he hadn’t. He stayed still as Rosie wailed and Granny Doyle leant against the wall with her hands up in her face, while he was stuck watching, not able to do a thing.
‘Daddy!’
Damien needed to leave the house immediately. Come on, now, let’s leave space for the doctors to work. That’s what the voice was saying (Mrs Donnelly? Mrs Nugent? Some grown-up who knew what they were doing, at least) and Damien clung to this protocol. Chaos had entered the house; the best thing was to restore order. They needed to leave immediately, Rosie too, but she wouldn’t stop crying.
‘Daddy, wake up!’
Peg walked over to her sister and held her. She didn’t always understand her sister but here was something she could appreciate: pain. Somebody had turned off the television – they must have – but Peg was sure that ‘Nessun Dorma’ was still playing, for nothing else could capture the depth of Rosie’s grief. Peg saw its swell and storm on Rosie’s red face, as the poor child seemed to move in tune with the song, sinking to the ground with racking sobs, raising her head for an anguished wail, finding the strength to yell one more ‘Daddy!’ though the word was hard to make out. It was too much for the grown-ups, but Peg gripped onto her sister. She didn’t try to ssh her or say things would be okay. She couldn’t even say that she knew what she was feeling, for what Peg felt was detachment, an awareness that she should have the same well of grief inside her, even as she failed to find it.
I’m here, Peg hoped her grip said, as she held Rosie on the dining-room floor, while John Paul and Damien were ushered away and sirens flashed through the net curtains. I’m here, Peg’s hug said, as the stretcher arrived and Rosie’s wails softened to sobs. I’m here, Peg’s arm said, as Rosie leant into it, the room empty now, the television definitely switched off, though Peg could still hear the traces of ‘Nessun Dorma’ in the air, the silence after the crescendo, heavy with the feelings that had gone before.
They stayed there like that for a time, an hour or an eternity, Peg wasn’t sure, holding each other, like sisters.
14
Rosie was asleep. Peg could just make out her face in the dark; once, they had held each other like sisters. More than once, surely. Plenty of happy memories to choose from: the day of the Hula-Hoop Olympics in the garden in Clougheally or the night she’d finally added a dragon into one of her tales about the Children of Lir.
The day when she’d bought Rosie a hot chocolate with whipped cream in Bewley’s, that was a happy memory, wasn’t it? That day they’d met up with Aunty Mary and peeked into Áras an Uachtaráin, where they were sure they’d glimpsed Mary Robinson, no Granny Doyle or John Paul there to ruin things (though there was another figure in the shadows, tossing a book up and down, waiting for his cue to wreak havoc).
Peg turned back towards the ceiling. Who was she kidding? What was the point remembering? John Paul was always there, lurking, waiting for his last Unofficial Miracle: the disappearance of a sister.
15
The days following Italia ’90 were giddy with possibility, so perhaps it was no surprise that Mary Robinson grabbed the ball from the Irish squad and lobbed it through the walls of Áras an Uachtaráin, that grand home for presidents in Phoenix Park that had never housed a woman before. The first female President of Ireland! It didn’t matter that the role was mostly symbolic; Mary Robinson had sensed the euphoria that came with the World Cup and channelled it in a different direction, one where a new Ireland could be called into being. After a month’s work on a project about Mary Robinson for transition year, Peg had her favourite part of her inaugural speech off:
I was elected by men and women of all parties and none, by many with great moral courage who stepped out from the faded flag of the civil war and voted for a new Ireland, and above all by the women of Ireland, mná na hÉireann, who instead of rocking the cradle rocked the system, and who came out massively to make their mark on the ballot paper and on a new Ireland.
Walking around the periphery of Áras an Uachtaráin, Peg gave Rosie a smile, one future system-rocker to another. They’d trekked to Phoenix Park for a sight of their new president and even though they hadn’t spotted Mary Robinson, Peg could well imagine her, strolling down the grand corridors, clearing the cobwebs of history with her firm smile. They didn’t see the famous candle she’d left by the window either, but it was clear in Peg’s imagination, its beam flickering for all the exiled and the dispossessed, everybody welcome in her house of hope.
(Later, when Peg sat on a fire escape in New York, she wondered if the candle flickered for her. Probably not, she decided, resolving never to return; the problem with inspiring figures was that they traded in lies, showed you a place as it ought to be, not as it was.)
*
‘Can I have whipped cream with my cake?’
In the queue of Bewley’s Café, Rosie seemed to have forgotten the grandeur of Áras an Uachtaráin, where Peg suspected that Mary Robinson didn’t even eat, ideas enough to sustain her.
‘Of course,’ Peg said, giving Rosie a smile to show that this generosity was a pleasure.
She’d insisted on buying the drinks herself, eager to demonstrate the financial independence that her part-time job afforded.
‘Do you want to grab the spoons?’ Peg asked.
All part of Peg’s plan to sculpt her sister into something more solid: delegation of responsibilities. If she were lucky, one day Rosie might get an A for her project on feminist history or get her own part-time job at Nolans deli. Perhaps even more auspicious fates awaited: Celia Gallagher had a younger sister who declared with confidence that she would be the President of Ireland when she grew up! Rosie, unfortunately, had no such sense of purpose, drifting about and taking an eternity to pick up five spoons: Peg was sure that Mary Robinson had never drifted in her life. Worse, Rosie hadn’t seemed all that fussed about Mary Robinson, asking all the wrong questions as they’d stood outside Áras an Uachtaráin. Were the deer happy in Phoenix Park? Rosie wanted to know. Were there still horses pulling carriages in Áras an Uachtaráin? And if so, who looked after them? It didn’t matter who cleaned up the manure, Peg said, as long as it was a man, or an equal number of men and women being paid the same wage, as long as the women wanted the work. (Feminism was difficult to explain.) Perhaps Rosie could aspire to be a vet, Peg decided; she certainly hadn’t any hope of becoming a decent waitress.
‘Will we find the others upstairs?’
Rosie nodded, waiting for Peg to lead the way.
Peg strode up the stairs, eager for the second part of Rosie’s feminist education. They might not have found the President, but another Mary waited upstairs. Working on her project, Peg had gasped in shock at one of the newspaper clippings she’d unearthed: Aunty Mary, smiling alongside radical feminists, on the infamous Condom Train. She’d arranged an interview, bringing Rosie along with her other project partners, Denise Donnelly and Celia Gallagher. Celia Gallagher was more of a rival than an ally – she was the only girl in the year with a better Junior Cert than Peg – but Peg had suffered working on a history project with her; they had a better chance of success if they pooled their brilliance, especially as Denise was only interested in certain aspects of Mary Robinson’s story. Peg smiled at Aunty Mary as they sat down, Celia and Denise continuing their interrogation.
‘So what was Mary Robinson like back then?’ Celia Gallagher asked, pen hovering over a stack of index cards. ‘Did you really used to have your meetings in this café?’
‘Did she hold one of …’ Denise rolled her eyes at Rosie’s presence ‘… you know?’
Celia glared at Denise.
‘Did you have a sense that you were dealing with one of the country’s finest legal minds?’ Celia asked.
‘Did she have better hair back then?’
Aunty Mary sighed.
‘As I’ve explained, Mary Robinson wasn’t on the train with us.’
‘Yes, but she was part of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, right?’ Celia said, flipping through her notes. ‘And she defended the group on The Late Late Show, right?’
‘She did,’ Aunty Mary said. ‘But she kept her distance. She wasn’t going to get involved in any of our antics, wanted to make sure there was a respectable face to the movement, I suppose.’
Peg hoped that Rosie might be alert to the interesting debate within feminism between radical and moderate tactics but Rosie seemed preoccupied with slowly spooning off the cream from her cake.
‘What I want to know is if it’s a precondition of being a politician that you have to have horrible hair,’ Denise said. ‘Maggie Thatcher: horrible louse hair. Máire Geoghehan what’s her face: helmet hair. Barbara Bush: Coronation Street blue-rinse granny hair.’
‘Barbara Bush isn’t a politician,’ Celia sniped.
Aunty Mary touched her own grey bob, which had become frizzier over the years.
‘I suppose politicians have more important things to be doing than wondering about their hair,’ she said with a laugh.
‘Is yer one with the ginger hair a politician?’ Denise asked.
Aunty Mary froze.
‘Who?’
‘The one you were talking to when we arrived,’ Denise said. ‘With the bright red hair: looks like she dyes it, I’d say, looked all right though.’
‘She’s not a politician,’ Aunty Mary said. ‘Just an old friend.’
Of course she’d run into Stella; Dublin could be as tiny as Clougheally. It was as lovely and heartbreaking as ever to see Stella, alternative lives opening up in front of them, as they talked small with their mouths and big with their eyes. It was Stella the girls should be meeting, Mary thought; she was still deep in the activist world. Lobbying Mary Robinson, in fact, the decriminalization of homosexuality essential if Ireland were to become a truly modern country. Mary Robinson had been one of the lawyers courageous enough to take on gay rights cases back in the Seventies. Stella would have told them all that, Rosie too, because we can’t hide who we are for ever! Stella almost shouted, with every inch of her being. Meanwhile, Mary had run from the fight, back into the house in Clougheally, which might as well have been shaped like a closet, no space in its drawers for revolutionary condoms or lube or whips. Ah, but she was too old for it all, wasn’t she? She’d stepped into herself late, small wonder the skin hadn’t quite fitted. Past sixty now, she was best off leaving the revolutions to the young.
‘I brought you these,’ Aunty Mary said, placing a bag of books on the table for Peg.
‘Thanks,’ Peg said, examining the contents.
‘Are there any ones with pictures of the train in there?’ Denise asked, eager for a better glimpse at some condoms.
‘I’m afraid it’s mostly Greek texts,’ Aunty Mary said. ‘You’re still into that, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Peg said, though that had been last summer’s obsession. She pulled out a few of the dusty paperbacks and checked her disappointment that the Greeks hadn’t any more explicitly feminist works. Rosie was more interested in a bright paperback at the bottom of the pile.
‘Oh,’ Aunty Mary said. ‘That was more of a joke.’
Peg rolled her eyes. It was some fairy tale about the Children of Lir, which Rosie still liked, even though it wasn’t a very appropriate story: if Fionnuala had been a proper feminist she would have left her squawking brothers to clean up their own swan-shite and flown off somewhere more revolutionary, Cuba perhaps.
‘You keep that,’ Aunty Mary said, smiling at Rosie.
‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, thrilled to have a book of her own.
‘Rosie, do you want to ask Aunty Mary any questions about the President?’ Peg said, keen that Rosie not waste any of their time free from Granny Doyle’s shadow. ‘They used to sit here and meet and talk about important issues, you know?’
Rosie looked thoughtful.
‘Do you know who looks after the deer in Phoenix Park?’
Peg decided that she needed another coffee.
*
Peg had used the last of her change buying a second coffee when she saw Celia Gallagher charge down the stairs, flustered. Peg was sure that Rosie had caused some catastrophe but then she saw the source of Celia’s interest: the gang of teenage schoolboys sauntering through the door. The Gonzaga French Debating team, their main rivals in the tournament at Alliance Française. Celia was captain of the team and was certain that the sudden appearance of the Gonzaga team while she researched feminism (an upcoming debate topic) meant that they were spying on them. Celia stared at them too long, causing the Gonzaga captain to stroll over. So, what happened next was Celia’s fault; any historian would have concluded as much.
How to describe Ruadhan Kennedy-Carthy? A Grecian god for the twentieth century? One of the tricksier ones, Hermes or Dionysus. No, something more prosaic: Captain Wickham in a school uniform. History had seen his type plenty before, he’d cadded up to many a cailín, but Peg Doyle hadn’t a clue.
‘You’re on the Holy Faith debating team, aren’t you?’ Ruadhan asked, for he’d sussed out the competition too.
‘Yes,’ Peg said as Celia said, ‘Why are you asking?’
Ruadhan acted as if Celia Gallagher didn’t exist, reason enough for Peg to fall for him.
‘You’re studying Plato?’ he asked, eyeing the book on Peg’s tray.
‘Yeah,’ Peg lied.
‘No way!’
He swivelled his bag around and removed an identical paperback copy of The Symposium. Seconds later, he’d snatched Peg’s and had the two Platos flying up in the air, then in separate hands behind his back.
‘Know which is yours?’
‘Give her back her book,’ Celia Gallagher said.
Peg, however, was transfixed, pointing to his right arm, sure that static electricity clung to his school jumper.
‘Wrong choice,’ Ruadhan said, as Peg opened the book to find Ruadhan’s many notes inside. ‘You’ll have to play again …’
Ruadhan flipped to the cover of Peg’s book but no name greeted him.
‘Peg. Doyle.’
‘You should write your name on your possessions, Doyle. Otherwise you don’t know who might take them.’
‘And you should head back to your mates and leave us alone,’ Celia said. ‘You can keep your copy, I’m sure Peg will survive without your dazzling observations.’
Ruadhan put on a wounded look, followed by a grin as he leant closer to Peg.
‘Want to get a drink somewhere else, Doyle? This kip is a bit crowded.’
Mary Robinson would not have followed Ruadhan Kennedy-Carthy out the door. Mary Robinson would not have asked Celia Gallagher to bring Rosie home and to furnish some emergency excuse for the others. Mary Robinson certainly wouldn’t have left Rosie upstairs, like some forgotten umbrella. But not everybody could be a president, could they?
‘You ready, Doyle?’
Peg chugged her second cup of coffee as if it were a shot.
‘I am.’