Future Popes of Ireland Read online

  Damien entered and placed the tray by Granny Doyle’s armchair, Winning Streak providing enough distraction to avoid opprobrium.

  ‘Thank you,’ Granny Doyle managed. ‘Nice to see you.’

  I have something to tell you hung in the air, giving Granny Doyle space for:

  ‘Though you really should ring before the next time. Give me the chance to get some dinner into you; I’ve a bit of lamb needs using up.’

  ‘I’m grand,’ Damien said, so Granny Doyle tutted and turned back to the television and Damien sighed for he saw the way the evening would go, all grands and would you not have a bit to eat? and did I tell you a Polish crowd moved into number 9, poor Mr Kehoe would turn in his grave and the chance of saying anything important would vanish, the thing is, Gran, I’m gay retreating back inside Damien, until he exploded.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Granny Doyle squinted across at him in the ad-break.

  ‘I wanted to …’

  He needed to turn on a light; he couldn’t do it like this, with ads for fizzy drinks flashing across Granny Doyle’s face.

  ‘Do you need the toilet?’

  ‘No. No.’

  The thing is …

  ‘Er, is Coronation Street on?’

  Granny Doyle snorted.

  ‘I don’t watch that any more. It got awful quare.’

  Damien tensed: in what sense was Granny Doyle using ‘queer’? Country-speak for something strange? Mark’s way of identifying himself, where the word contained both alternative politics and sexual identity? Or the derogatory term for a soap opera that had been contaminated by the appearance of flaming gay nurses? It was too late for Damien to ask: Granny Doyle had started a rant about the decline of television, dating back to Miley’s fumblings with Fidelma in the hay. Glenroe was no use to Damien: the gayest thing about it was Teasey’s hair, but he wasn’t sure that ‘the thing is, loads of drag queens I know emulate that hairstyle’ would be the best of openings.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  Winning Streak was back on but Damien felt the glare of Granny Doyle’s eyes.

  ‘I’m grand.’

  ‘Stop fidgeting so, would you!’

  Why did this house stammer him? Wasn’t he a proficient adult, capable of dealing with an array of irate Green Party members or prospective voters with impeccable patience? Hadn’t he, once, jumped off the side of the Children of Lir’s rock without looking down?

  ‘Actually … there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Granny Doyle’s shoulders tensed.

  ‘Right.’

  She kept her eyes on the television, suddenly immersed in whatever cash prize somebody was about to win.

  It can wait until the ads, Granny Doyle’s shoulders said.

  It can wait until never, Granny Doyle’s back said.

  Damien pretended to be enthralled by Winning Streak, a blur of bright colours in front of him. He’d forgotten why he needed to tell her. What if she knew? What if he was going to mess it all up by putting brash words around the already understood.

  The thing is, Gran, I’m queer as folk, gay as glitter, the fairy on top of Dunluce Crescent. What if he killed her? Murder by truth, another casualty of the closet’s swinging doors; he couldn’t even remember how to do CPR.

  The thing is, Gran, I’m in love with a man.

  He should have brought Mark, after all; Mark would find the words.

  The thing is, Gran, I’m in love with a man called Mark and I’d love for you to meet him.

  Mark had gone with him to the graveyard; a stupid idea, Damien had thought, but then he’d cried when he’d told them, the words whispered to tombstones, and Mark had been brilliant, holding and hugging him and not even minding when he wanted to say a decade of the rosary.

  The thing is, Gran, you reared me and even if we’ve had some rocky years and even if we’ve never got on, the thing is you mean something to me and so does Mark – the world, actually – and the thing is, I want to bring him here so we can all sit and watch whatever you want and eat stale biscuits and chat about nothing and the thing is that would mean so much to me that I might weep.

  ‘Well.’

  Damien blinked: the credits of Winning Streak flashed in front of his eyes.

  ‘Thanks for the visit.’

  It was too dark for her to see the water in his eyes, he hoped.

  ‘Right. I just wanted to …’

  She didn’t turn off the telly; she wasn’t ready for silence, yet.

  ‘I just wanted to tell you something.’

  ‘Right.’

  She turned to face him, ads flickering across her face.

  ‘The thing is …’

  ‘…’

  ‘The thing is, Gran …’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘What is it?’

  She stared at him in the dark. She couldn’t make out his eyes, he hoped. He was an independent adult. He didn’t need her blessing or her support. He hardly saw her any more. But then the thoughts of what she might say reared in front of him and Damien froze, terrified.

  ‘The thing is …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The thing is, Gran … I’m a vegetarian.’

  11

  Love Hearts (2007)

  ‘The thing is, if you’re going to be vegetarian, you might as well be vegan, right?’ Mark said, as he dug into a sausage bap. ‘Though that might have killed her, eh?’

  Damien blushed.

  ‘Ah, I’m only teasing.’

  Mark moved in for a kiss but Damien didn’t want a taste of beer and sausage.

  ‘You did great.’

  Mark put his arm around Damien, though this somehow made things worse too; Damien had been searching for pride and he’d found pity.

  Damien picked up his phone from the coffee table, ignoring the mug of mouldy tea that Mark had left there since the morning. This movement was enough to shrug away Mark’s arm, which swooped down to pick up his laptop. Damien clenched; he could tell Mark was about to play something on YouTube and he wanted to lose himself in his work. The election was only a few days away and Fianna Fáil were polling well. The Greens still had the chance to squeak into a coalition government but the window for change was closing and they needed to cling on; every blog post mattered. So of course Mark chose this moment to put on one of John Paul’s bloody videos.

  ‘You seen this one?’

  Mark was drunk, otherwise he wouldn’t have played the Pope video or teased Damien about his grand plant-based coming-out. Sober, he would have seen how tender and on edge Damien felt, the future precarious, because if the Greens didn’t get into government it would be five more years of shouting from the sidelines and writing press releases that nobody read and Damien might never emerge into his most promising self.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ Mark said, pressing play.

  Damien watched.

  The colours were too garish: the fake green grass too shiny; the blue-sky backdrop too bright; the rainbow straight out of a primary school classroom. Pope John Paul III didn’t notice, flashed a smile as blinding as the fake sun bobbing above his hat.

  ‘Everybody knows that rainbows can bring miracles,’ Pope John Paul III said. ‘And we’ve got something better than a pot of gold to give you.’

  The contents of a bright pot emptied into his hand: lots of brightly coloured heart-shaped sweets.

  ‘Love,’ the Irish Pope explained, because his videos left nothing to chance. ‘Fiannix supports equal rights for everybody. So they’re offering unlimited texts this month for all sweethearts: straight, L.G.T.B.Q, any other letter you can think of!’

  Damien looked away, certain his face was cycling through several shades of indignation. He didn’t want to look at his brother, so his eye strayed to the comments, where a stink was being kicked up, words thrown about that Damien didn’t want to read. Controversy was good for clicks, so Pope John Paul III didn’t mind; he was h
appy to put hand on hip and wink at the camera.

  ‘So pick up your phone and go get ’em, girl! Or guy! Or whatever!’

  Tiny terms and conditions whirled across the bottom of the screen, much smaller than the love hearts thrown upwards by an enthusiastic Pope.

  ‘Fair play!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it’s more than the current fucker in the Vatican would say, isn’t it? Good on him. And at least he’s not afraid to get people talking—’

  ‘That’s all he wants to do, as long as they’re paying Fiannix every month for the pleasure.’

  Mark would hate Fiannix, Damien was sure. It was one of many new phone-providers, unleashed since the telecommunications industry had been deregulated. Fiannix promised to be more than just a place to get cheap calls, however. Its name evoked old Ireland, and its logo – a cheeky bird chirping out of flames – appealed to young people. Pope John Paul III was only too happy to promote Fiannix; this was the new Ireland he believed in.

  ‘You know Fiannix is his girlfriend’s shitty phone start-up company?’

  ‘Fiancée’s.’

  How could Damien forget the gold-dusted wedding invitation? (Mark, unfortunately, hadn’t.)

  ‘Which makes it even more dodgy that he’s playing Rent-a-Cause for something that he has a stake in.’

  ‘Maybe so, but fair play to him for getting into something controversial: Fiannix support gay marriage too.’

  Damien wanted to scream; sometimes he felt Mark made up his politics on the spot.

  But, Damien thought, he’s only doing it because it’s fashionable.

  But, Damien thought, this is the very corporatization of queer culture that you’re always complaining about.

  But, Damien thought, he called me faggot and punched Rory O’Donoghue.

  But, Damien thought, it’s John Paul …

  This was what it came to: Damien could not support any endeavour of his brother. Nor could he ever tell Mark about why John Paul got at him so he tried to move the topic to safer ground.

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in gay marriage.’

  Mark shrugged.

  ‘I don’t! It’s a normalizing trap to straighten out queer culture and force us into fucking boxes and buy shite we don’t need. But it’s like the vegan thing, isn’t it – if you care about it you might as well go the whole fucking hog.’

  There was definitely an edge to this: the Greens were pushing for same-sex civil partnership in their manifesto after many debates and strategy sessions. Achievable, incremental aims could lead to greater change; this Damien believed with a quiet passion that would never make its way onto a YouTube video, but kept him going nonetheless. So it was galling to see Mark give John Paul credit for mincing about in a video, praise that seemed to say if your brother can do this in front of your granny (as if she knew how to get onto a computer) why can’t you?

  Damien tried a different tack.

  ‘I can try and get his number for you, if you want. He might be able to get you a ticket to the Galway Races.’

  Damien could count on Mark’s hatred of Fianna Fáil, at least, and the video that John Paul had made at the races was the epitome of everything that Mark’s dissertation was trying to attack. Mark had been on YouTube a lot for his ‘research’, which Damien felt increasingly prickly about; he wasn’t even watching the Green Party’s channel.

  ‘Ah, come here, you jealous wee thing.’

  Mark yanked Damien’s tie in for a kiss, sausage and beer breath be damned.

  ‘I’m not jealous, just embarrassed by your taste.’

  ‘Says the man with the Ronan Keating calendar in his office.’

  ‘That was left behind by the last occupant!’

  This was nice teasing, though, and had Mark put his arm out on the back of the couch, Damien would have leant into it. The last few weeks of the campaign had been difficult, with Damien canvassing every day after work, while Mark sat at home watching videos, despair steaming off his clothes, papers and mugs scattered around him, never dinner to come home to, only recriminations at his choice of takeaway, Damien responsible for the gentrification of the Liberties. So this tone was a welcome change; Damien would have leant into Mark’s arm if he’d extended it.

  Instead, the treacherous limb reached for the blasted wedding invitation.

  ‘Maybe Ronan Keating will be at this?’

  Damien rolled his eyes.

  ‘It’s going to be in VIP magazine, so I heard!’ Mark said.

  ‘I thought you hated weddings?’

  Mark screwed up his face.

  ‘There are worse things.’

  ‘I thought weddings were a “hetero-normative nightmare that have to be boycotted at every opportunity”?’

  Mark sighed.

  ‘This one might be interesting. The First Pope of Ireland tying the knot! Anthropological research. And I bet they’ll have some free Love Hearts; I’d murder a pack now.’

  Mark was pissed, otherwise he wouldn’t be going on about John Paul or craving sweets that he should probably be boycotting for some reason.

  ‘It might be a chance to talk to your brother.’

  Damien clenched: here they were pulling up to a familiar argument.

  ‘I’m not not talking to him. We just don’t see each other.’

  ‘This would be a chance, so. He invited you. Us, actually. And Rosie’s probably going.’

  Mark had met Rosie in the Rossport Solidarity Camp, because Ireland was actually the size of a stamp and whichever deity or geological force was responsible for its tininess clearly had a malicious intent to ruin Damien Doyle’s life. Mark and Rosie got on great, so Mark couldn’t understand why Damien and Rosie hardly ever talked. Damien definitely didn’t want to talk about Rosie because that would mean confronting Aunty Mary’s letter, a document he had postponed dealing with until after the election, when with any luck it might have disappeared.

  The bloody wedding invitation hadn’t disappeared, so Damien felt the need to banish it.

  ‘The whole wedding will be on YouTube. We can watch it there, save some money.’

  Mark dropped the invitation onto the table immediately, the mention of money an easy way to quiet him. He’d lost the funding for his PhD – which was fine, Mark said, because academia was a con, he was tired of acting like he was lucky to get some shite teaching gig that didn’t even give him benefits; he’d finish his dissertation, he’d pick something else up, so he said, although the only thing he was picking up was more cans.

  Mark stood up.

  ‘I’m going to hit the sack. Want me to kill the light and save us some cents?’

  Damien didn’t rise to this.

  ‘I’ll turn it off; I’ve a bit more work to get done.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Night.’

  Damien stared at his phone. He had a heap of work to get through – checking in with the canvassers and tweaking a press release about housing for tomorrow and finishing the bloody blog about the Greens’ plan for early education – but his eyes wouldn’t focus and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. After the election: he’d deal with everything then. Once the Greens had ousted Fianna Fáil and set up a new Rainbow Coalition with bright green stripes, then Mark would appreciate the work he’d been doing and they could find a shady spot in Phoenix Park and lie in each other’s arms and not talk about families or politics or anything really; just the whites of each other’s eyes, that would be enough for the day.

  12

  Ballot Box (2007)

  Could Damien feel proud about the election result? The Greens had only won six seats. There wasn’t going to be an alternative coalition government. The only hope they had of getting into any government was to join Fianna Fáil’s coalition, something their leader had deemed as improbable as flying pigs, creatures which were likely flapping over the Mansion House, as the whole of the Green Party had an emergency meeting to determine whether they should join Fianna Fáil in government.
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  Damien avoided the protesters as he brisked through the rain. He’d answered the phone in the Green Party headquarters enough times to know the objections: the Greens couldn’t enter government with a party that allowed US warplanes to refuel in Shannon; the Greens couldn’t enter government with a party that was going to build a motorway through Tara; the Greens couldn’t enter government with a party that cared about builders more than badgers. The Greens couldn’t enter government with Fianna Fáil, so the protesters shouted, as the Party prepared to stomach this prospect.

  There was one protester Damien couldn’t avoid.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘It’s not too late to stop this.’

  Damien sighed; they’d travelled over the tracks of this argument several times.

  They’re offering two ministries, Energy and Environment, Damien would say.

  Fianna Fáil won’t let you get anything done, Mark would say.

  Going into government gives us a chance to change as well as complain.

  Minority parties are always screwed by coalition governments.

  Think of the policies we can pass: climate change, planning laws, civil partnership!

  ‘You’re going to vote yes.’

  Damien shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I have to see where the room is.’

  Mark knew he was lying.

  ‘I have to go,’ Damien said, a convenient truth.

  ‘I don’t want to keep you from the corridors of power.’

  ‘That’s not fair. This is about the chance to act upon the promises we’ve been making …’

  It wasn’t Mark staring at him, but the Iraqi girl on his placard, Mark already walking back to the protest.

  *

  Damien knew that Mark was in the minority, he was confident they’d get the seal of approval from two thirds of the membership. There were dissenting voices: Patricia McKenna making a passionate speech against joining government; Mark, equally impassioned, using his vote even though he was already severing himself from the party. Then it was time to vote. The intimacy of the ballot booth surprised Damien, the paper in his hand so flimsy, given its significance. Damien did what 86 per cent of the assembled Green Party members did – weighed up his choices, assessed the risks and rewards, voted a resounding ‘yes’.