Future Popes of Ireland Read online

  ‘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

  Millennium Milk Bottle (1988)

  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

  Bermuda Shorts (1988)

  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

  Lottery Ticket (1988)

  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

  Box of Fish Fingers (1988)

  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.