Читать книгу Getting it in the Head - Mike McCormack - Страница 11

OLD MAN, MY SON

I have just returned from burying my son, I think. I say that not out of certainty but defiance. What is beyond doubt is that I have returned from burying someone and he was very small and a blood relation. To me and my wife he was our only child, our son Francis, nine and a half years old. But that is a minority opinion. To the greater world there seems no doubt but that he was my father, also named Francis, an aged hero of the War of Independence. The old men who came up to me on sticks as I stood by the graveside were in no doubt as to the identity of the corpse. Grabbing me by the arm with their claw-like hands they spoke fervently:

‘I’m sorry about your father, John. He was the last of a breed of heroes. It’s a shame the way time passes.’ Or a variation: ‘I remember him well, John. We all looked up at him. He was an inspiration.’

I stood there on the graveside as the rain fell steadily, darkening the soil which the grave diggers were heaping on the coffin. I continued to receive this doddery procession of old men who made their way cautiously over the slippery ground. They shook my hand and offered their sympathies and I shook theirs and nodded in acceptance. But in truth I had not a clue what was happening about me. Here was the world, present on the twenty-eighth of March 1991, at the funeral of my father while me and my wife could have sworn that three years previous to the day we had buried him and now we were here at the graveside of our only son Francis.

My wife, surrounded by the emotional scaffolding of her brothers and sisters, is in the next room grieving. She does not have a clue either, we seem to be all alone in this horror. And it is precisely because of this aloneness that some sense has to be made of the whole thing, some sense no matter how small. It is this lack of sense which has me here writing.

Let me be clear. When I have finished writing I do not expect to have achieved some all-explaining insight into the unique horror which has held sway in our home for the last six months. That onus of explanation seems to me an almost intolerable burden to place upon any writer. Even before I start, I know I will never be able to write an explanation and even if by some miracle I were to achieve one I do not think that any written one would satisfy my heart. A written explanation, lying on a page, bloodless and incapable of making itself felt in my heart – the only place where an explanation has any validity – is no explanation. Therefore my task in this writing is more modest. All I hope to do is lay down the facts so that in these at least there will be some clarity. From the whole debris of this horror salvaging the facts is the least I can do for my wife and myself.

I will start with my father. The relevant thing about my father is that he was a hero of the War of Independence and probably of the Civil War also although he rarely spoke of this second adventure. In one of the few Risings outside Dublin in 1916 my father, as a very young man, commanded a small company of volunteers based in the Mweelera mountains above Killary harbour. From this redoubt they attacked and occupied the police barracks on Westport. In an incident which has gone largely unchronicled my father then stood in the smashed bay window of the station and read out a self-penned version of the Proclamation of Independence to the bewildered township who had gathered in its square. The occupation of the barracks lasted till the weekend when military intelligence informed them that a Royal Irish Infantry detachment with artillery back-up was being deployed from Galway military barracks to lift the occupation. By this time word had come through of the almost total failure of the Rising outside Dublin. There was nothing for it but to withdraw. In the dead of night the volunteers stole westward along the Louisburgh road towards Killary harbour and refuge. Rounding a corner somewhere between Westport and Louisburgh they ran through a British Army checkpoint but not before Father, a front-seat passenger in the truck, stopped a .303 bullet with his chest. Somewhere in the Mweelera mountains a makeshift medical post was panicked by a wound classed somewhere between serious and critical. When the torrent of blood welling from his chest had been stanched it was quickly realized that there was not one among the volunteers with the skill needed to remove the bullet. It was decided to cleanse the wound as best they could, bind it and hope for the best. In nervous agitation, an effort to kindle some hope in those about him, a young volunteer recalled how he had heard stories of soldiers who’d carried bullets and shrapnel in their bodies for the whole of their lives with only minimal discomfort.

It was as if the telling of this story acted as a template for subsequent events because this was exactly what happened. After lying in a fever for ten days, during which time he was to rise in his bed several times, screaming and flailing his arms in the air, physically fending off death, the fever broke and my father lay on his back with steel-blue eyes gazing into the sky above Mweelera. His first words were, ‘So where am I?’ He carried that bullet in him the remaining seventy years of his life until on the two occasions of his death when my wife found him in the room lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, his eyes calmed like blue metal.

Up to the sudden change which took place in him six months before his death, nothing distinguished my son Francis. When he was born over nine years ago it seemed the right and symmetrical thing to do to name him after his grandfather. Now I ask myself was it here, in his naming, that the damage was done? As I have said, the child was ordinariness itself. Small, with his mother’s blond hair, he had the energy and cheer of any child his age. He was admired by visitors as a dote and spoke easily with them, never cheekily and even if so only to the extent which could be passed off as childish spiritedness. He was bright but not exceptional and his interests were similar to those of any child his own age and to the same degree: his bike, football, sweets and mischief. Up to those last six months he was a child like any other and we loved him as only a single child can be loved. I say that so no one can accuse us of having given our child reason to reject us. As you shall see – and remember I am putting down the facts – his change never consisted in a rejection of us. Never once did he accuse or express dissatisfaction. In fact, in a more world-weary way, he seemed as happy with us as he had ever been.

Lastly, before I speak of the change, I must talk of his relationship with his grandfather. It was quite simple. To Francis, Grandfather was a hero of some distant and, in his young mind, awesome conflict. He saw him as a solitary giant, a war hero who partook in great adventures, a treasure trove of great stories. Night after night he would sit at his feet and worry him with incessant questions till bedtime. In this he was the envy of his school friends. It also pleased my father. ‘He’s a good listener,’ he would say fondly. I ask myself again, was it here in the avidness with which he was listened to that my father found renewal? I do not know but as we shall see he did find a renewal of sorts.

About the change. Despite its surreal banality the incident itself is easily remembered. Six months ago we sat here in this kitchen eating. At this point I am tempted to speak of the weather, the time of day, the type of meal it was and so on in order to mark the incredible incident against a background of particular detail. But would that explain anything? I do not think so. It will suffice to say that the three of us were in the kitchen eating and Francis was carrying his mug from the table to the sink where my wife was preparing to wash up. As he approached the sink the cup slipped from his grasp – it will be the last time in this account that I will call him child with any certainty – fell to the floor and spun to a stop before the sink. My wife turned, on the verge of telling him to pick it up, but was struck silent by the intensity of the gaze with which Francis was looking at the mug. She would describe it later as a mixture of amazement and agony, the composite reaction of an old man who has seen many such troubled things in the past and the incomprehension of one to whom it was all totally new. My wife opened her mouth to speak but Francis took her forearm as one would a passing child and, in an unforgettably leaden voice, as if the memories and fatigue of a lifetime had come to rest upon him in that moment, he told her to ‘Bend down and pick that up like a good girl.’

In that moment and with those astonishing words he changed the whole complex of relationships in our house.

My wife, seconds before having been a mother on the verge of rebuking her child, was changed in an instant into a woman worried about the health of this old man. It is a measure of how complete and successful this reversal was for her because she picked up the mug in silent awe and handed it to him. After depositing it in the sink he returned to the table, and lowered himself gently into his chair, one hand on the table, groaning heavily, his bones apparently suffused with stiffness. A look of horror and astonishment passed between my wife and me. Despite ourselves we sensed some momentous change in our fortunes, some new beginning. Francis had resumed eating with a slow thoughtful relish far beyond his years. I decided to venture a question into the incredible silence which now reigned in the kitchen.

‘Are you feeling all right, Francis? You’re not sick or anything?’

‘A man of my age is always sick,’ he replied drily.

Again it is indicative of how completely he had changed that I did not dare rebuke what I thought might be left of the child on this now old man – one does not reprimand someone for saying something that is in all probability true. I had not a clue how to handle the situation. In fact it took all my powers of concentration to recognize exactly what was happening. The child Francis in outward appearance was still recognizable before me but his deeper identity had been supplanted entirely by the character of an old, jaded man. For a dread instant I toyed with the notion that there were actually two people before me. My wife stood at the sink, her mouth slung open and her eyes staring wide. Francis, or more correctly whoever it was that was now within Francis, sat spooning up the last of his meal, apparently heedless to the great change which he had brought about in his house. I realized instantly that for him there had been no change – one moment had been perfectly continuous with the previous one, there had been no slip sideways into someone else. It would therefore be ridiculous to start asking him what had happened. In any case he put an end to my thinking at that point by speaking grimly.

‘You’re right, I am tired. I’ll lie down for an hour. Wake me up when it’s time for the news.’ He walked stiffly from the room.

My wife broke immediately from her trance and began to sob hysterically. I went to her and held her in my arms.

‘What’s happened?’ she cried. ‘What has happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But he’s changed,’ she protested. ‘One minute he’s my son and the next I’m his daughter. What caused it? What do we do?’ Her voice was climbing higher, nearing a thin note of hysteria. Something frantic was moving within her like a current. I tightened my hold on her.

‘Let’s wait and see,’ I said. ‘Maybe when he wakes it will be all over.’ These words were solely for her benefit. I did not believe for an instant that something which had come upon us with such resoluteness and completion would not end in some disaster.

He woke from his nap a few hours later and entered the kitchen, his eyes glued over with sleep. He asked for tea and when it was brought to him he supped fervently at the table. Previous to this Francis never drank anything but milk.

‘Is the news over?’ he asked presently.

‘Yes, it’s over,’ I replied. ‘There wasn’t much on it.’

‘What did it say on the weather?’ He was seated by the window, looking out at the sheets of rain that hopped in the tarmacked yard.

‘It said there would be no change. It would be like this till the end of the week.’

‘I suppose there’s no use going for a walk then. I was going to go to town for fags.’

This was incredible. Could he really be so oblivious to the change that had taken place or to the silent turmoil which roiled about him? I could see my wife at the sink and the almost superhuman effort it was taking her to keep from breaking down was visibly marked on her face. Francis sat at the table, fair-haired and smooth-skinned, but with all the mannerisms and fatigue of an old man. He seemed to be the still centre of a small cyclone which was rampaging silently through the room. Now I was sure that he saw nothing different in himself. To him there had been no change: he was as he had always been. But to me he was my son turned in an instant into an old man. And there was the problem. I was already willing to admit that he was now an old man but who exactly was this old man? I decided to wheedle his identity from him gently, to proceed with caution. I feared that waking him suddenly to the change would plunge him also into a crisis. At that moment two crises in the one room was more than enough.

‘When did you take up smoking?’ I spoke very gently.

‘What do you mean, when did I take up smoking?’ he repeated testily. ‘You know very well that I’ve smoked since I was twelve, smoked all my life except for twice at Lent when I couldn’t go the distance and was back on them inside two weeks. Thirty Woodbine a day and nothing less.’ Looking out the window he changed tack slightly. ‘I can’t go anywhere in this rain.’

As I listened to these words a dim germ of horror and recognition began to flower within me. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Have one of mine.’ I proffered a red box with one fag extended towards him.

‘John,’ my wife hissed, ‘you can’t go giving the child cigarettes.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

This was brave talk indeed for in truth I hardly dared recognize what I was seeing come ever clearer into focus before me. Francis took the fag with gentle ease and raised it to his mouth. With one movement he bit off the filter and spat it into the fire. He took a light from me and angled his face backwards for the first drag, tipping the lighted end into the air. With his eyes closed he drew fearlessly on it as if he’d been doing it all his life.

‘That’ll do,’ he said, picking a scrap of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. ‘A bit weak but it’ll do.’ He sat and smoked the rest of the cigarette, sunk in such silent contentment that my wife rushed from the room choking back sobs.

‘So the weather’s going to stay like this. It’s just as well then we decided against planting spuds. They’d be washed out of the ground with this rain.’

He talked on like this into the evening, taking an avid interest in the news and most particularly a current affairs programme which dealt with the BSE scare which had affected so many cattle in the west.