Future Popes of Ireland Read online

  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

  Blarney Stone (2007)

  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

  Áras an Uachtaráin Candle (1991)

  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.’

  Series IV:

  Confirmation

  (1992)

  1

  Fallons French Regular and Irregular Verb Book (1992)

  The courtship of Peg Doyle and Ruadhan Kennedy-Carthy was inextricable from the French Debates at the Alliance Française that threw them together and was best charted through the irregular verbs that Ruadhan spent so much time practising.

  savoir (to know)

  Peg kept an index of facts about Ruadhan Kennedy-Carthy in her head, as if he were a card she was collecting.

  Height: 5 ft 11

  Age: 17

  Eyes: glacier Blue

  Hair: blond

  School: Gonzaga

  Address: ‘Glendale’, 13 Eglinton Grove, Donnybrook, Dublin 4, Ireland.

  Interests: Rugby, debating, travel, Peg Doyle (?!)

  connaître (to know)

  Ruadhan helped Peg understand the need for two verbs for ‘to know’. Peg knew facts; Ruadhan knew how to live. Ruadhan knew the varieties of cheese beyond ‘shredded’ and the types of wine beyond ‘red’ or ‘white’; ‘Bordeaux’ and ‘Gorgonzola’ as familiar as friends. Ruadhan had parents who dined with the Attorney General and a sister who had gone on a date with The Edge. He had been to almost every country in Europe, even the new ones that kept cropping up; Slovenia was news to Peg, ‘the most amazing kayaking’ to Ruadhan.

  gésir (to lie helplessly or dead)

  Competing for attention with Ruadhan’s eight Leaving Certificate subjects, Peg dangled the strange facts she had accumulated before him, titbits that might give him the edge in essays. Ruadhan was determined to beat his older brother’s score of 580 points, a car in it for him if he reached 600. So, defective verbs, irregular verbs that could only be conjugated in certain tenses, impossible due to the strict policing of the Académie Française to use pleuvoir in the first person singular or gésir in the conditional or future tense.

  ‘Why would you want to, Doyle? Why would anybody want to use that verb ever? How could you be “lying helplessly or dead”? Christ, you’d think they could find another verb: don’t know if this bugger is gisant helplessly or gisant dead, guess we’d better bung him in the coffin!’

  Not the point: it was the bizarre precision of the grammar that attracted Peg, the urge that it compelled in her to break the rules, because why couldn’t multiple skies rain or why couldn’t one lie
helplessly or dead in some conditional future? Ruadhan, at least, was intrigued enough to keep listening.

  sortir (to go out; go out with)

  There was some linguistic uncertainty to the arrangement, a lack of clarity as to what their explorations of mouths and minds constituted, exactly. Peg felt that she was balanced on a tightrope, perilously close to happiness or despair, desperate to secure Ruadhan’s attentions, aware that defective verbs alone were not sufficient.

  lire (to read)

  A book about love had brought them together, but Peg wasn’t sure if Plato was the best person for advice. The Symposium was about transcending the material, Ruadhan said, the sensory world merely a rung towards the appreciation of abstract forms.

  ‘So the ideal kind of love is platonic?’

  Ruadhan’s blue eyes flashed (surely no form could be more perfect?)

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that, Doyle.’

  prédire (to foretell)

  ‘It won’t end well,’ Celia Gallagher warned. ‘I’ve always found that the cockiness of the male involved is in inverse proportion to his addendum. I think you should break up. Unless he’s sharing any debate strategy with you? Peg, come back, I haven’t given you your index cards yet …’

  médire (to slander)

  Celia Gallagher was not impressed with Ruadhan’s debating style.

  ‘All style and no substance, no index cards, and what a terrible opening: there’s no way a team that opens a serious debate with “J’accuse!” can be rewarded.’