Future Popes of Ireland Read online

  Peg saw it happen: John Paul bashing into the urn on the windowsill, the urn tumbling over, the remains of Nanny Nelligan falling through the gap into the winds. Nothing she could do to stop it: her feet not fast enough, arms not long enough, brain not sharp enough. Disaster! Nanny Nelligan gone out the window, lost into the gulp of the wind.

  Except that wasn’t what happened. The urn, mid-wobble, decided to fall the other way, onto John Paul, who caught it before the lid came off, and held it in the air like a trophy.

  It was Granny Doyle who broke the silence.

  ‘A miracle!’

  Gravity and stupidity were the forces at work, Peg knew, but Granny Doyle’s gall stole the voice from her: how could John Paul be praised for averting a catastrophe he created? Lavishly, that was how.

  ‘My little angel!’

  Granny Doyle swooped over and picked up her beaming hero, who had just completed his First Unofficial Miracle: The Salvation of Nanny Nelligan’s Ashes. Jesus might have brought the dead to life but John Paul Doyle made sure the dead stayed in place. Granny Doyle was clear where the blame lay.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, keeping Mammy by the window.’

  Aunty Mary didn’t stop her sister as the urn was whisked off to a safer location.

  ‘Thanks be to God John Paul has some wits about him,’ Granny Doyle continued. ‘Well, that’s enough theatrics for one evening! I don’t know what nonsense you’ve got them up to today but I’ve had a long one and it’s bedtime!’

  ‘Bedtime’ was not a negotiable noun for Granny Doyle; Peg knew resistance was futile. John Paul bounded upstairs, not a bother on him. Rosie drifted over to show their dad her swan drawings. Damien stood smiling, relieved that he had said his sentence correctly: the house might have tumbled around them and he’d still have been content.

  ‘Not to worry,’ Aunty Mary said, proof that she was an ordinary adult after all, well able to disappoint when she wanted to.

  Peg threw her book to the ground and stomped up the stairs. She hadn’t even got close to her brilliant ending, where the swans decided not to turn back into sad withered humans and get Communion from St Patrick but stayed flapping about the bay, their wings light and lovely and probably metaphorical, Peg reckoned. Peg launched herself onto her bed. She hadn’t made her Communion yet so filling a pillow with bitter tears wasn’t a sin, an opportunity that Peg was ready to make the most of.

  *

  Some consolation came the next morning. Aunty Mary had given The Chronicle of the Children of Lir by Peg Doyle pride of place on the mahogany bookshelf. Peg couldn’t help but gasp at how good it looked beside all the proper books. Then she remembered she was angry and tried to twist her face into a frown.

  ‘We’ll have to do another reading.’

  This wasn’t good enough.

  ‘I had a look through last night: excellent work! I love what you did with the end. You’re a real chronicler, aren’t you?’

  This was better.

  ‘And I wanted to ask you something. Do you think you might have space in your room for the bookshelf? I haven’t found a job or an apartment in Dublin yet, but I’m not sure if I’ll have space for everything from this house and … well, it’d be a terrible shame to get rid of this bookshelf, wouldn’t it?’

  And this was enough for an ear-to-ear grin.

  ‘You’re moving to Dublin?’

  Aunty Mary smiled, delighted that her move was the part that gave Peg the most pleasure.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure yet, but I’ve been here with Mammy for a while and –’ a sigh as she looked around the dusty old house: it had been a long year – ‘well, there’s not much for me here and instead of going back to Galway, well, I was thinking about moving back to Dublin. What do you think?’

  ‘Move to Dublin!’ Peg said immediately, the night’s disappointments forgotten, because she was to have a bookshelf and her book displayed and, most importantly, an ally.

  Aunty Mary smiled, the future appearing in front of her brick by brick.

  ‘Well, maybe I will so!’

  2

  Blarney Stone (2007)

  ‘Did Aunty Mary move to Dublin?’ Rosie asked, shifting in the bed.

  Peg stared at the ceiling: she was almost tired enough to drift into sleep.

  ‘No.’

  Rosie didn’t need to ask ‘why?’ or ‘what happened?’; now that the door to the past had been prised open, out stories could creep, the magical stone obliging. Besides, even if the details were blurry – in her defence, she had only been four – she had a sense of who was to blame. Aunty Mary was a dangerous topic – they hadn’t mentioned her letter – but Rosie knew what she was doing.

  ‘Did you know about Aunty Mary then?’

  The truth lived somewhere between yes and no. Hard to believe that Aunty Mary had been so important to Peg’s development – her fairy godmother! – yet at the time, Peg had never considered Aunty Mary’s life outside of her own. Peg made a noncommittal sound, something she hoped bore a resemblance to a yawn, not that that would be any use: Rosie showed no signs of ever needing sleep. She could stay up for hours when they were younger, demanding more and more stories from Peg, who obliged usually, even when there were slim chances of happy endings.

  3

  Condom (1971–1985)

  (1971)

  Could something so small cause so much fuss?

  Mary Nelligan looked down at the condoms in her handbag and suppressed a giggle; it was hard to imagine the men on the train slipping on something so like a balloon. Forty-one and she was as bad as the children in her class! Mary gathered her composure. This was a serious matter. All the meetings in Bewley’s and the dinners in Mrs Gaj’s restaurant on Baggot Street led to this direct action, a kind so direct that Mary wondered if she might explode with the tension. They – the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement – had decided to protest against the ban on contraception by smuggling in condoms from Belfast, some of which sat innocently in Mary’s bag as the train jostled along.

  Were the other women as nervous? If they had any nerves they were hiding them well, chatting to each other or reading the newspaper. Mary looked out at the dreary towns passing by. She felt as if she had a bomb in her handbag. What if the customs guards arrested them on the train and carted them off to jail before they’d made their point? Mary’s shoulders tensed in imagined resistance; she was prepared to fight beside these women, most of whom were younger than her, but had already figured out that the only real way to change the world was to grab it by the scruff of its neck. She might have died for them if it came to it. A foolish thought, absurd in its intensity, yet that was what Mary felt, the train hurtling towards Dublin, her heart hammering along with it, condoms jostling on her lap.

  She’d imagine the guards with condoms on their head if they tried to stop them. A laugh burst out of Mary’s chest, turned into a cough too late. Mary caught the eye of one of the other women: no judgement, a smile of solidarity. The train rushed past Drogheda: nearly there. Mary felt a rush of life, a blast so intense that she wondered it didn’t bowl her over. She’d never experienced anything like it before. Maybe when she had been young, when she had fervently believed in God and found herself carried away by the music at Mass, transported to a space so big that she couldn’t imagine a roof. This feeling was better, though: on that train, hurtling towards history, condoms on her lap, an army of women beside her, Mary Nelligan experienced the overwhelming potential that another world was possible, stops on the train she hadn’t even imagined.

  Connolly Station.

  Mary stood up, her legs managing to hold her, the customs officers in sight. Out the condoms came, a theatrical flourish, up in the air, down to the feet of the guards, slippery snakes returning to the Republic’s soil, refusing to be exiled again. Mary stood with her friends, the women she’d fight beside, and wondered how it was her feet stayed on the ground when she was so sure she was floating.

  (1978)


  ‘What are you doing with this?’

  Searching for a corkscrew, Stella was surprised.

  ‘Oh,’ Mary said, with a delighted little laugh; she’d forgotten it was there. The Condom Train protest had been seven years ago and she never could keep drawers in order.

  ‘That,’ Mary said, already a little drunk without another bottle opened, ‘that is a story.’

  So Mary told the story, in the way that stories are often told when sex awaits, elaborations and embellishments expected, the details not as important as the eyes of the person listening. Mary didn’t need to worry about Stella. Wasn’t she here in her kitchen at 1 a.m. after all?

  ‘I could make a pretty penny off it, perhaps,’ Mary said, immediately regretting speaking, her accent too country, her words coming from an auld one – ‘pretty penny’, who said that? When had Mary, in fact, ever said that, and why should this be the time that she started, when the wine was still unopened, when that gorgeous mouth of Stella’s still hadn’t been kissed?

  No matter; Stella was smiling, that lovely smile that had kept Mary at the conference. Mary had known that a Women and Lesbianism Conference held at Trinity College wasn’t for her: the workshop on how to find your cervix; the cobblestones trying to trip you up with classiness; the assured way strangers talked to one another; the circles in the sun; the singing. But then there was Stella, a good fifteen years younger than Mary, with red hair cropped like some pixie and men’s trousers fitting her perfectly and a smile that made everything okay: her accent, the way she was holding her wine glass, the fact that she was there at all.

  ‘Maybe you should take it to Moore Street and see what you make.’

  There it was again, that smile in action as Stella found the corkscrew like a superhero, held out a glass for Mary, everything easy and elegant.

  ‘I should do,’ Mary said, but she wished she hadn’t said anything at all, because here they were, women for radical change, talking about condoms that they had no use for.

  ‘I like your T-shirt,’ Mary said, because she was getting chatty, which she never was, which was a blessing, because she was only ever saying the wrong thing.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Another smile: maybe, after all, the words didn’t matter so much.

  ‘It’s sort of our armour,’ Stella said. ‘We are the “Lavender Menace” and all that.’

  A different sort of smile, a twinkly one.

  ‘We’ll have to get one for you. If you’re going to be part of the group.’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know if you’d have my size.’

  Mary ducked from Stella’s gaze: she was too clumsy for this life.

  Another smile from Stella.

  ‘I’d say we could find something that would fit.’

  And then Stella had her hand, and the wine was left on the table, and the condom too, and they didn’t find a T-shirt for her, the opposite, in fact, and it didn’t matter that Mary didn’t have the right words; what were words anyway when bodies could talk so beautifully?

  (1985)

  The porch of 7 Dunluce Crescent crackled with the news of the Health and Family Planning Amendment Act.

  ‘An absolute disgrace it is,’ Mrs McGinty said. ‘We don’t need Europeans poking their noses in. Charlie Haughey had it right before.’

  ‘“An Irish Solution to an Irish Problem”,’ Granny Doyle quoted.

  ‘This amendment says you won’t need a prescription. All sorts will be at it.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll be selling them in Brennan’s?’ Mrs Nugent asked, a certain thrill in her tone.

  ‘Not if she has any shred of Christian decency.’

  ‘That one would sell the nails that hung Jesus if it would make her a scrap of silver,’ Granny Doyle said. ‘I won’t be letting any of mine near the place, I can tell you that much.’

  ‘All sorts of perverts shopping there now,’ Mrs Nugent agreed. ‘Sneaking contraceptives between the soap and the toothpaste.’

  Mrs McGinty crossed herself.

  ‘A disgrace it is, an absolute disgrace.’

  *

  Funny to think of it curled up quietly in a drawer. Could condoms curl? Mary Nelligan imagined so, thought of it jammed in alongside other knick-knacks, fancied that it twisted backwards to hug itself, a snake catching its tail in the mouth. Poor thing, it was probably lonely enough. Somehow it had survived the move from Dublin to Galway and here it was, a surprise as she finally packed up her things. Funny that she had kept it at all. A memento, she supposed, hard to throw away such a survivor.

  It wasn’t curled at all when Mary opened the drawer: it lay flat, as if defeated by its situation. Well now, time for an adventure, she thought, unaware of the miracle waiting to trip her up.

  *

  John Paul stood outside the Dáil holding a ‘Children Against Condoms’ sign. There were a fair few other children there, as well as a robust showing from the Legion of Mary and Opus Dei. A similarly large crew of counter-protesters stood in support of the amendment: the types of people who’d be wanting to buy condoms without a prescription – gays, sex workers, women’s rights activists – the sorts that Granny Doyle was keen to shield John Paul from. She stood in a tight cluster with her neighbours, as if she could transport her porch’s protection to Kildare Street.

  She couldn’t protect John Paul, though, not with a miracle to perform. Being stuck beside a boring building was a waste of outside time. The other children had been left at home, so nobody was there to suggest that taking a pram for a spin was a bad idea. One of Mrs Nugent’s grandchildren was tucked inside, Mrs Nugent temporarily distracted by her other crying grandchild, so off John Paul went, his tiny hands reaching up, brakes released, wheels and feet in happy motion …

  By the time Granny Doyle noticed, it was too late. She didn’t even try to grab the air in front of her, her hands shot towards her mouth instead. The pram escaped from John Paul’s grip, careening towards the road, a car zooming towards it. Then, just as Mrs Nugent’s unfortunate grandchild was about to be annihilated, something – a gust of wind, the capricious flick of God’s finger – changed the course of the pram. The beep of the car roused the crowd, including John Paul, who dashed onto the road and gave the pram a mighty push towards the pavement.

  ‘Janey, he saved her!’ Mrs Nugent cried, clear on who was at fault. ‘Thanks be to Heavens for John Paul! Stop that crying, would you, your sister’s after nearly dying because of you!’

  Granny Doyle was distracted by John Paul’s second miracle. Like his first, it relied on motion and gravity. This time, the results were more destructive: his Second Unoffical Miracle was the banishment of Aunty Mary. Aided by John Paul, the pram barrelled into one of the counter-protesters, an angry young man whose excessive stubble was proof enough of his moral lassitude. Over he tumbled, slipping on a condom (a detail to be savoured like lemon cake, delicious in its zesty ironies) down onto the ground with a break of his nose. Before the pram stopped, another two protesters skidded to the tarmac. Knees were grazed, egos wounded, flesh harmed. Granny Doyle was jubilant. She had got what she wanted: a battler on the front line against iniquity, a bruiser capable of breaking a nose when need be. She was wrestling the pram and John Paul away from some concerned counter-protesters when she recognized the shape of one of the faces.

  Granny Doyle had always been suspicious of her sister’s ideas but she was enough of a Charlie Haughey disciple not to press the matter, silence the best Irish solution to most problems. This was too far, though: the brazen stance of her, holding condoms like confetti. Not to mention the thing stood beside her: hair far too short for a woman, a quare one altogether. Granny Doyle couldn’t have known the history of the condom that tripped the protester, but surely it was only getting its revenge for such neglect, leaping out of Mary’s hands as soon as it got a chance, happy to expose her for all her cheek. Mary’s face wasn’t as defiant as it had been facing the customs officers; it blanched as Granny Doyle’s hardened, quivered when faced
with Granny Doyle’s stare.

  Granny Doyle’s fierce gaze made her position clear. Aunty Mary had no business influencing her family. There would be no picking up Peg from school, no chats with fairies in the garden, no installation of any bookshelf. Mary felt winded, possibilities deflating in front of her; she might not move back to Dublin after all. Her strong voice, which rose above the chatter of schoolchildren and the drone of men and meetings, deserted her. She opened her mouth, in protest or plea, she wasn’t sure, but Granny Doyle had already turned her splendid back. John Paul gripped her hand, not a hair on his head ruffled, no blame on his shoulders, the smile of the victorious stretching across his face.

  4

  Scarlet Communion Dress (1985)

  It was not supposed to be the occasion of John Paul’s Third Unofficial Miracle; the First Holy Communion of Peg Doyle should have been the moment when her family orbited around her for a change. John Paul would be sitting with the babies while she walked up to receive Holy Communion like a grown-up. She would develop a special connection to God that John Paul was years away from. And she would have a killer dress.

  Shortly after her First Confession, Peg Doyle succumbed to the first sin that every Catholic girl commits once she reaches the age of reason: unbridled vanity in the face of one white Communion dress. Its powers were especially alluring to Peg, who had been denied both the fair-haired beauty of the Hennessys that Damien and Rosie had inherited and the rough dark-haired charm of the Doyles that John Paul had scraped together. Nine years old, with a shock of brown mousey hair, more pudge than she would want to be keeping, and a head that was more freckles than face, Peg was in desperate need of a Communion dress.