Future Popes of Ireland Read online

  Tourists ambled past and snapped pictures of the stones. Peg hid behind her sunglasses. On a different day, she would have consulted every stone carefully, cataloguing each of the different counties that people had fled from. She would have read the informational panels and the poems. Aura would not be a word that crossed her consciousness.

  Cracking location for a video, John Paul might have said, whipping out the pope hat and recording a special message for the Irish diaspora. The Irish had suffered through their Famine. It had made them a generous people. So donate now to fight world hunger and keep the Pope’s saviouring in business—

  All this romanticism about the Famine is misplaced, Peg might have interrupted. Everybody acts as if they’re descended from the victims, a historical impossibility. The survivors did desperate things to get through. Stole clothes from the dead. Stepped over the bodies of babies. Ate seaweed, worms, worse. You don’t know what people did to survive, Peg said, in her conversation with an imaginary John Paul, while the real one waited in a bar not ten blocks away. (She’d go in a minute, once her legs permitted.)

  Peg felt the buzz of her phone and resisted the urge to fling it into the Atlantic. Or, rather, the Hudson: she had explained this distinction to Rosie, many times, but Rosie remained impervious to facts, Ireland visible in every direction once she reached a bit of water. Peg was as bad, though, wasn’t she, standing on some bit of transplanted grass and weeping like a fool (she was glad of the sunglasses) and staring out across the water and picking imaginary fights with her brother because she had to blame him for something.

  I’m sorry, Damien might have said and it’s okay got stuck in Peg’s brain. In a different life, she might have marched ten blocks and had it out with him in a blazing bar-fight, the little shit, for she’d taught him to read and watched him cycle with his stabilizers and he had repaid her by ratting her out. In a different life, Peg would have screamed and shouted and hugged and forgiven and held the three of them in her arms in some drunken embrace, while sports played on different screens and a bartender from Queens carved out foam shamrocks.

  Peg stood, watching the water. A clock chimed, somewhere: an hour late. The sun slanted across the stone in front of her, another timepiece to torment her. The three of them were waiting in a bar for her. She could see them, didn’t she long for that? She could call Dev and he would come and smooth things over, delighted, and they could eat buffalo wings and talk about baseball.

  Peg felt the tick of a clock in her chest and started to walk.

  4

  Three Pint Glasses (2007)

  Damien took his time at the bar, checking his phone for a good minute or two before he attempted to get the barman’s attention, which took another few minutes, because he was ‘polite to a fault’ as Mark used to say, in an endeared tone, at least initially. He resisted the urge to text Mark. Mark had tried to get him to email Peg, as part of his grand project, Damien Doyle Confronts His Past! Look at me now, Damien longed to text: see how I have grown, ready to have a drink with my long-lost sister. Who was an hour late, Damien noted, sneaking a sip of his pint before he returned to the table.

  He didn’t need to feel guilty, he reminded himself. He had only been twelve. ‘Not your fault,’ Mark had said, when he’d coaxed the story out of Damien, when he was being tender (‘you suck on guilt like a fucking lollipop,’ a later, less consoling, assessment). Damien took another sip, a bigger one. He could leave, he realized. Dash out the door. Head to the hotel. Hail a cab to JFK. Damien didn’t leave. He couldn’t shirk his duty, even if it meant delivering pints to two people he’d rather not talk to.

  John Paul and Rosie were both on their phones, probably texting Peg, a thought that made him nervous, so he grasped at wedding chat.

  ‘So are any of the Mayo lot coming? What about Colm?’

  ‘I hope so; he’s great craic,’ John Paul said immediately, treating the comment like a life-jacket. ‘Remember when he got wasted on poitín at his sixtieth?’

  Rosie didn’t say whether or not she remembered, said instead: ‘I don’t know if he’ll be able to make it. He’s worried about what’s happening in Clougheally.’

  When John Paul didn’t ask either, Rosie continued.

  ‘You heard there was trouble down on the Pullathomas pier in June?’

  Damien looked at the time on his phone. Five past. Peg was more than an hour late; perhaps she might not come. Damien gulped, unsure if this was the outcome he wanted. He took another sip, forgetting his resolutions about pacing himself as Rosie went on about the installation of a Shell portaloo on a farmer’s land without his permission as if it were the greatest crisis since the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Another sup, longer. To be a Good Boy: that was his desired outcome, always. He could convince Rosie of this, surely.

  ‘Eamon is working on an announcement soon,’ Damien said, once she broke for air; perhaps Rosie had not heard the rumours.

  ‘Look at you, on first-name terms with the Minister for Energy,’ John Paul said, raising his pint as if in salute. ‘You’ll be running the country next.’

  ‘He’s my boss,’ Damien said, suppressing a small smile.

  ‘It’s a cop-out.’

  Rosie’s voice was hard; so, she had heard.

  ‘It’s a big deal. An additional resource tax on the oil and gas sector for all new licences.’

  ‘Good old Greens and their taxes,’ John Paul said.

  Damien focused on Rosie.

  ‘It’s making sure that what happened with Corrib Gas won’t happen again; from next January, Irish resources will benefit Irish people.’

  He sounded like a press release, he realized, an occupational hazard: half the job of being in government was convincing people that you were doing the right thing.

  Rosie leant forward; she’d been waiting for this moment.

  ‘The resource tax is a PR move so he can wriggle out of launching a new independent review.’

  Damien sighed.

  ‘There’s already been a review of the pipe.’

  ‘By a company that works for Shell!’

  ‘Maybe we should change the topic? Did I mention I’m getting married?’

  Damien and Rosie glared at John Paul; in that instant, at least, they were united.

  Damien leant forward, ready to explain the principle; they couldn’t protect the forest if they got stuck worrying about the fate of every tree. He would articulate the Green Party’s programme for government slowly and clearly and Rosie would understand the compromises that were necessary to achieve legislative success, although he would have to wait until she came back because, once he got a couple of sentences out, Rosie chugged her pint and declared it was her round.

  5

  Blinds (2007)

  Peg sat on the mattress on the floor of Matt’s downtown apartment and let out the wrong kind of sigh. Matt had gone to the bathroom to check out his chest or overdose or wait for her to leave; she could still make it to the Blarney Stone, if she really tried.

  What do you want to do? Matt had asked and Alyssa had said whatever, happy to try any pills from Matt’s goody bag. (Younger men might not be able to afford hotels, but at least they had access to better drugs.)

  Then, what do you want me to do? Matt had asked, and I want you to know! Peg had sighed as Alyssa said whatever.

  Peg picked up her phone, wondering if it was too late to find an older man in a hotel. Sex was like take-out: sometimes it was great and sometimes it was unsatisfying and she had nothing to feel guilty about.

  Where are you? a variety of messages asked, in different words, from John Paul and Rosie and Dev. None from Damien, though Peg knew he was asking the question too, waiting to say ‘sorry’ while she searched for ‘it’s okay’. She couldn’t face any of them. She’d stay on this mattress on the floor, for ever, behind her new best friends, Matt’s light-cancelling blinds, which obligingly erased all traces of the outside world, the flicker of digits on Matt’s games console the only indi
cation that time was moving at all.

  6

  Three Pint Glasses (2007)

  Rosie sloshed three pints onto the table, with a barb of satisfaction as Damien removed his phone with a yelp. She was pissed and pissed off, not a brilliant combination. The problem was that Rosie got drunk very easily – a pint was enough to make her tipsy – and she was annoyed at her brothers for putting her in this situation. She was annoyed at herself, because she was drinking through far too many rounds, partaking in a competition where there could only be a loser, whose name would always be Rosie. She should have ordered herbal tea for this round – the sixth! – but she hadn’t even considered the possibility at the bar.

  Nine o’clock. Peg had got the better of John Paul, again. Rosie might have felt a twinge of sympathy for her brothers, if they hadn’t been shiteing on about Fiannix when she returned, something she couldn’t listen to.

  ‘I thought you’d given up!’ John Paul said as Rosie snatched his fags.

  ‘When in Manhattan …’

  ‘I knew you hadn’t,’ John Paul said, seeming thrilled by this fact, momentarily abandoning his pitch to Damien; it seemed unlikely, anyway, that the Green Party would want a Fiannix account, although who knew what they might get up to next – a skyscraper on the Hill of Tara that shot missiles to Iraq would not be out of the question, in Rosie’s current opinion.

  They didn’t even ask if Damien wanted to join them outside; he was grand with his phone.

  John Paul lit up in solidarity.

  ‘You used to always steal mine, when you’d run out of that filthy pouch of yours.’

  ‘Two words: Marley Lights.’

  ‘Okay, I borrowed Clo’s stash sometimes—’

  ‘Just like James Bond.’

  John Paul coughed and smiled; the opposite of Damien, he accepted slags like gifts, grew fuller with the knowledge that people were talking about him. Rosie couldn’t help smiling back and for a moment it was nice, the two of them puffing together outside while Damien checked out how to bomb Iraq on his phone, probably. But why did it need to be like this? Why was it always two of them united against the other? Even when they had been a tight trio – the days when they had collected the Blessed Shells of Erris on the beach or the time they had toddlered through the Big Snow and made their own epic Snowbear – there had always been some sort of conspiracy between them, a desire to keep others out: Peg; their father; Granny Doyle.

  ‘Does she know you’re smoking again?’

  It took a moment for his face to recover from the shock; the same face as when she’d mentioned Peg, like she’d punched him. Good.

  ‘She probably wouldn’t believe it, anyway,’ Rosie said, answering the question. ‘Or, she’d say it was medicinal.’

  ‘Ah, yeah,’ John Paul said, recovering. ‘What she doesn’t know …’

  His motto all through childhood, bolstered by Granny Doyle’s excellent capacity for not knowing things when she wished.

  ‘Does she know you contacted Peg?’

  Again, John Paul looked shocked at her ability to be direct and for a moment she hated the lot of them, because she was an adult, and still none of them could see her.

  John Paul searched for his catchphrase but he couldn’t manage it.

  ‘I really need to give up,’ he said, stubbing out the cigarette and heading back to Damien.

  Rosie clung to her fag. She should go home. Not to Peg’s apartment: she’d been ignored enough for one trip. She should pick up her rucksack and toss everything in and hail the swiftest flight she could to Shannon: I’ll hitch a warplane, she thought about joking to Damien, except it wasn’t funny.

  When she got inside, John Paul was still shiteing on about Fiannix.

  ‘The clusters on Fiannix might be good for your group, too, Rosie – you can send blasts of text messages at no extra cost if you register the group. What is the group called again? Shell to Sea? Or is there another one?’

  ‘There are four distinct protest groups,’ Damien said.

  Damien’s voice was wry; so, he was following what was going on in Erris.

  ‘It’s not as if the Green Party is a united front,’ Rosie said. ‘Patricia McKenna will probably stand as an independent in the next European elections.’

  Damien grimaced.

  ‘Patricia has always been very difficult.’

  Rosie’s turn for a grimace.

  ‘That’s just a word that men use about women who have an opinion.’

  ‘No, what men say when women have an opinion is “time of the month”.’

  Rosie glared at John Paul.

  ‘You’re not on camera; there’s no need to share your shit jokes.’

  A crack in John Paul’s composure; she had managed that.

  Damien, meanwhile, had only just recovered the ability to talk.

  ‘No! No! I say that about men! Men are difficult all the time.’

  ‘Who? Mark?’ Rosie said.

  This was something she regretted later; it wasn’t nice to see Damien’s face empty of all life, no matter how smug it had been. Mark was not the point, though; she wasn’t going to get distracted, spoke over the awkwardness, aware that she was being difficult, embracing it.

  ‘Difficult is what the guards say – “don’t be difficult” – when they’re the ones with the batons pushing us into ditches. I think more people – more women – should be difficult because we’re living in a world that is difficult, where companies can walk all over little people and their land, or guards can joke that they want to rape you if you look at them the wrong way, or they’ll look at you like you deserve it, because you’re a tease, going out to shout about justice when you should be lying in bed waiting for—’

  ‘Hey, Rosie, why don’t you calm—’

  ‘I don’t want to be fucking calm!’

  ‘How about I buy us all a shot? Or some chips, maybe, some food to line the booze?’

  ‘I don’t want you to buy me anything,’ Rosie snapped, secure in the knowledge that had John Paul sat in Solomon’s chair and eyed the two women fighting over the one baby, he would simply have bought another baby, one for everybody in the audience.

  ‘I should go.’

  ‘Ah, Rosie, wait—’ John Paul started.

  ‘For what? She’s not coming.’

  Damien looked up. She couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

  ‘Stay,’ John Paul said. ‘She’s just …’

  ‘Three hours late! She’s not coming. And –’

  Rosie was drunk enough to say it.

  ‘And she’s not selling the house either.’

  John Paul sighed: here was the conversation he wanted to duck. She wouldn’t let him.

  ‘I know what you’re at and it’s not going to work: she’ll never do it.’

  ‘She already has.’

  Rosie stared at John Paul.

  ‘What?’

  He looked right at her, he gave her that.

  ‘She’s already sold the house.’

  She couldn’t have.

  ‘What?’

  The words remained the same, meaningless, impossible. Rosie shook her head but John Paul continued to look at her, like he was very sorry about it, while Damien pondered his beer mat, his face reddening, until she realized he knew, which meant it wasn’t bullshit, after all.

  ‘Who to?’

  Shell, he was going to say ‘Shell’ and she needed her things in a rucksack, immediately.

  John Paul gave a smile before he provided a carefully moderated answer, not too triumphant, though he couldn’t hide it: he was pleased.

  ‘Me. Peg sold the house in Clougheally to me.’

  7

  Swimming Goggles (2007)

  Sometimes, Peg felt that she was only truly herself immersed in water. Lapping the pool in the 92nd Street Y, life was reduced to the essential: the sideways gulp of air, the quick kick of limbs, the space just in front of her the only thing to reach for.

  Peg liked
to imagine that there were many histories one could carve through a life; surely there was another story she could swim through, with no sex or siblings or popes, where she was a woman whose only exceptional quality was an above-average breaststroke.

  8

  Cuneiform Stone (2007)

  A Manual of Archive Administration, while clear about the necessity of cleaning hands after eating food, remained silent about what to do after giving an undergrad a hand-job in the stacks. It hadn’t been worth the ethical compromises or wasted processing time. The student had let nerves get the better of him, leaving Peg with an unsatisfied mind and sticky hands.

  Peg imagined that immediately starting to process correspondence would not be the best course of action, so she’d made her way to the bathroom, where she stared at her reflection in the small mirror, the water continuing to run, even after her hands were clean. She might have splashed some water on her face – that seemed like an appropriate wake up, Peg Doyle! action – but she knew from experience that such an action would leave her wet but unrepentant.

  She knew she should go home, but she couldn’t face her empty apartment. Rosie had crammed her stuff into a rucksack and headed out the door in minutes. Dev had followed; Peg had told him about the house in Clougheally and Gina and Gloria and Alyssa and now she was left with a quiet apartment which she couldn’t bear to clean. The thoughts of collecting Rosie’s scarves or shelving Dev’s dog-eared books made her long to disappear under a duvet; she couldn’t even close the browser on her laptop, because Dev had left open a Wikipedia tab about the numbering of Star Wars episodes.

  She couldn’t face work either, so Peg walked to the section where they kept the library’s oldest treasures, the material they pulled out to woo undergrads. Here was the cuneiform stone that Dev loved, the oldest form of writing, though all it contained was a statement of accounts. A small grey thing that could fit inside a palm, its inscriptions etched out the purest form of history: records of the transfer of assets.