Future Popes of Ireland Read online

  9

  Blarney Stone (2007)

  ‘Do you remember my christening?’

  Rosie shifted in the bed, pulling the sheet towards her. Dev was away for spring break so Rosie was staying in their apartment for a bit, no questions asked about why Dev preferred his friends for camping company. The fan in the living room was broken, so here Rosie was, in the same double bed as her older sister, who hadn’t lost her knack for pretending to be asleep.

  Rosie focused on the stones arranged on Peg’s windowsill, summoning their auras. She couldn’t tell if they came from American beaches. It was certainly fanciful to imagine that Peg had carried one from Clougheally across the Atlantic (and yet, hadn’t she loved to collect trinkets on the beach, their old bedroom filled with them until the St Vincent de Paul bags swept in?). Nonetheless, in the absence of Rubik’s Cubes or carefully preserved rooms, the stones would have to do. Rosie focused on their aura, not minding about the detail – the feeling was important, not the fact! – and imagining magical properties contained therein. Why not? If stones could contain the oldest writing in the world or support the webbed feet of mythological swans, then couldn’t they have the power to induce speech?

  Rosie focused on one of the small stones; in the dark of Peg’s room, it could have been the Blarney Stone, or at least a replica. It didn’t matter that nobody in Ireland had ever kissed the thing. It was a coincidence that the Blarney Stone had been the site of one of John Paul’s terrible Pope videos, where the Irish Pope puckered up alongside an elderly American tourist, who was induced to test his gift of the gab, shouting ‘Póg mo thóin!’ and beaming as he mispronounced everything, even the spaces between words. It didn’t matter that the stone on Peg’s windowsill might well have been purchased at Pottery Barn. Rosie had a mission to complete and so she plucked a stone from the mist of myth; it would have to do.

  ‘Did we really get christened in coats?’

  This broke Peg.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I remember being hot in that coat.’

  ‘How could you remember? You weren’t even one.’

  ‘Babies have brains.’

  ‘Not ones that can store long-term memories.’

  ‘Well, not according to Western medicine—’

  ‘You all had your own robes. There’s no way you and Damien were christened in a coat.’

  ‘That’s what Dad told me.’

  Peg sighed.

  ‘They didn’t have enough money for three christening robes, so John Paul got the nice one and Damien and I were shoved into some old white coat or a blanket, I can’t remember—’

  ‘My old robe, you wore my old robe—’

  ‘And then Father Shaughnessy screamed when he saw the two of us in the same coat, like a two-headed demon. We were shocked so we started to cry—’

  ‘All babies cry when they’re christened.’

  ‘And we were screaming and screaming until they took us away from the font and John Paul was christened and then we stopped like magic and the nuns started singing—’

  ‘It wasn’t The Sound of Music.’

  ‘The nuns burst into song, all sorts of impossible harmonies, that’s what I heard.’

  Rosie followed scripture to the end.

  ‘Some of them couldn’t even sing. But they had beautiful voices that day, like angels.’

  Peg stared at the ceiling, knowing what was coming.

  ‘It was a miracle.’

  Here they were, at the edge of Rosie’s mission, the reason she had returned to New York, against her better judgement: the Unofficial Miracles of Pope John Paul III. Rosie stared at her imagined Blarney Stone; she could just make it out in the dark. Peg would take the bait, Rosie knew she would, letting the silence stretch, a task that years of sharing a bedroom had prepared her for.

  ‘That’s not what happened,’ Peg said eventually.

  Rosie waited a moment.

  ‘What did happen, then?’

  Peg sighed; it was too late to feign sleep. Part of her longed to, wishing she could kick Rosie and her sheet-hogging back into the living room. Another part of her liked this, though, the two of them in the same room, talking in the dark, they way they’d used to back in 7 Dunluce Crescent, Peg’s snores never fooling Rosie, even then.

  Peg shifted around. She could just make out Rosie’s eyes in the dark. Here they were, at the edge of the Unofficial Miracles of John Paul Doyle. Peg had them all in her head.

  Remember the Scarlet Communion Dress?

  Remember the Blessed Shells of Erris?

  Remember the Fish Fingers that Fed the Fifty?

  Other historians might have picked a different miraculous origin (the bloody tea towel; the singing nuns at the christening) but Peg knew enough about alternative histories to select a miracle where she had a central role.

  ‘Do you remember The Chronicle of the Children of Lir?’

  Series III:

  Communion

  (1985–1991)

  1

  The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle (1985)

  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 ke
pt 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—