Becoming Billy Dare (7 page)

‘Uncle, I don't have a vocation. I don't have the calling. The other boys, some of them, they know they can be priests because they know that they've been called. Maybe another boy wouldn't mind. But it's not like that for me. I don't feel anything in my heart. It would be wrong. It wouldn't be the truth, to be a priest if God isn't in your heart. If he hasn't spoken to you.'

‘Ah, he'll speak to you yet, boyo. You'll hear it if you keep to your studies. You can't be doubting yourself. It's what your mother wanted, and I promised her I'd see you through.'

‘But Mam's dead now.'

‘That doesn't change anything. You're promised. Promised from when you were a baby.'

‘I won't go back,' said Paddy, clenching his fists. ‘I want to go home to the Burren.'

Uncle Kevin grew redder in the face. He grabbed Paddy by both shoulders and shook him roughly.

‘Now you listen to me. There's nothing to go back for, boy. Your mam is dead and buried. Your sister's husband won't be wanting you underfoot. You're promised to the church.'

‘I can't and I won't and you can't make me,' shouted Paddy.

‘Mark my words, boy, if you dishonour this family, if you turn away from your vocation and disgrace your poor dead mother, there'll be no place for you in this house - no place for you in this family. You'll go the way of your father. He was the devil himself, the selfish lout. And you're the image of him, right down to your selfish, useless ways. You and your sister, there's no Cassidy in you - you're all Delaney.'

‘Don't you talk about my mother or my father. If you'd given him an ounce of kindness, he wouldn't have had to go to England and leave us behind. And you never even came yourself to tell me of Mam's death. You kept me from my mam and now you want to keep me from my sister.'

‘Your sister!' shouted Uncle Kevin. ‘I should wash my hands of the pair of you. She didn't want to see you, did she now? In the family way, she is, and no husband in sight. Mother of God, I don't know what to do with the pair of you. I told Liam O'Flaherty he could have the house and her with it if he'd give the child a name, and thank God he said yes. It was the two of you that killed your poor mother, drove her to her grave. You damned Delaneys!'

Paddy stared down at the ground. The whole world was changing shape around him.

‘I've done more than most men,' shouted Uncle Kevin. ‘I've brought you to Dublin, paid for your schooling, put up with watching your ugly face across from me on enough Sundays. You've eaten my food, taken my kindness!'

‘Kindness!' flung back Paddy. ‘Taken your beatings, you mean.' He was crying with rage now. He hit out wildly and punched his uncle in the belly. Uncle Kevin gasped, then slapped Paddy hard across the face. The blow sent him reeling into the street.

‘Get out of my sight. I'm finished with you Delaneys. Get yourself back to school. Either you go back to St Columcille's or you take yourself into the world and never darken my door again. Never again! Do you hear me?'

Paddy ran, his heart thumping and blood pounding at his temples. He could hear Uncle Kevin shouting after him. But if there was nothing else he was sure of, he was sure there was no turning back.

9
Come back early or never come

Paddy headed to Tyrone Street, counting his way along the houses, trying to remember which was the one he'd visited at Christmas. There were no lights on anywhere in the house and the hall smelt sour as he pushed the front door open and peered into the darkness. He felt his way up the stairs, counting the doorways along the hall by touch. Shyly, he scratched on Mammy Doherty's door. There was no answer and so he tapped again, this time more loudly. He heard anxious whispering on the other side and then the door opened a crack and a thin wedge of light slipped out into the hall. Mammy Doherty held up her candle and looked out anxiously.

‘Mercy, child. What are you doin' here at this hour, banging on our door?'

‘I'm looking for John Doherty, ma'am.'

‘Why, it's the little priest,' she said, holding the candle closer. ‘Did someone tell you about our John? You've come to pray for him, have you?' She peered into Paddy's face. ‘Are you in trouble, child? Come in from the cold.'

The big shutters on the outside of the window had been pulled shut against the night, and the room was dark but for the candlelight. Paddy could see the outline of the children's small bodies on one bed, cuddled together. On the other side of the window lay the shadowy shape of a man lying like a king on his tomb, very still in the darkness. Paddy could hear the rattle of his breath. He stared in disbelief. Was this shell of a man the same person who had shared so many poems and stories with Paddy?

‘He'd found work in the country, but he's come home to us for the end,' said Mammy Doherty. She took the candle over to the bed and stood there, stroking the hair away from John's face.

Paddy took off his cap and sat on a little stool between the bed and the fireplace. There was a small piece of turf and the remnants of an old shoe in the fire grate, smoking.

‘Will you pray for him, Patrick?' asked Mammy Doherty.

Paddy wanted to tell her he couldn't pray for anyone. He wanted to explain that his prayers were useless, that they hadn't saved his mam and they wouldn't save John Doherty either. But there was so much need and longing on the old woman's face that he knelt beside the bed and put his hands together. ‘Thy servant John for whom I implore thy mercy, health of mind and body, that loving thee with all his strength …'

‘No, no, Patrick. You can't be praying for his strength, you have to be praying for a happy death,' she said, her voice cracking. ‘There's no cure for him but to rest in the arms of Jesus. You pray to sweet Mary or Joseph or to St Barbara. They'll see to him.'

Paddy nodded mutely. ‘St Barbara, patron saint of the dying, obtain for John Doherty the grace to die, like thee, in the arms of Jesus and Mary. Amen.'

But even as the words left his mouth, Paddy felt empty. He stayed kneeling, his hands clasped together but his mind was full of roiling blackness. He knelt until his body was aching. Mammy Doherty put a hand on his shoulder.

‘You're shivering, child. Come.' She guided him over to the bed on the other side of the window, helped him off with his boots, and hung his wet socks on the smoky grate before sitting down in her chair again. Paddy curled up against the cluster of small children in the other bed. They smelt sour and unwashed tonight, but their breathing was soft.

When Paddy woke, thin rays of dawn light were seeping through the shutters. The small children slept on and Mammy Doherty snored in her chair by the fire. Paddy untangled himself from the children and went to stand by John Doherty's bed. John's breath moved in and out like the rattle of old bellows.

‘For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild, With a faery, hand in hand, From a world more full of weeping than he can understand,'
whispered Paddy.

John Doherty's lids fluttered and for a moment, Paddy thought he would come to consciousness, but then the cold grip of his illness drew the man down again. His body shuddered and the rattle of his breath resumed.

Paddy rested his forehead on the edge of the bed frame. He tried to make a prayer in his head - not to God but to his mother, so that she would know John Doherty when he crossed over - but the words wouldn't form.

Suddenly, Paddy couldn't think why he'd come. There was no place for him here. Without a word, he slipped out the door and downstairs into the street. It was still early, with the first grey light settling over the city. The milkman was out in his rattling cart, heading across town to deliver milk, and down the street a lamplighter was snuffing out the lamps.

It started to rain in thin, icy needles. Paddy stood under the statue of Dan O'Connell at the bottom of Sackville Street, sheltering from the rain. Across the road, raindrops pocked the surface of the Liffey. Paddy looked up at the sculpture, dark against the morning sky. He felt very small. For some reason, he thought of MacCrae. MacCrae would be a great man one day. Fitzgerald would be a gentleman. But what would become of him? Perhaps he'd be a carter, like John Doherty and fill his life with poetry and Guinness. But even John had a mother to nurse him at his death.

Paddy crossed the road and stared down at the Liffey's dark surface. He could faintly see the wavering outline of himself hanging over the edge of the bridge. He imagined himself sinking into the black water, imagined all the darkness of the river swirling around him as he disappeared beneath the surface. The river would draw him to it, down into the depths, and the black water would fill his dark heart. He leant further over the parapet and felt the medal in his pocket press against the stonework. He pulled it out and stared at it glinting on the palm of his hand. He'd worked so hard for the useless thing. He closed his hands around it tightly, so tightly that the edges of the medal cut into his palm. Then he drew his hand back and flung the medal as far as he could into the Liffey. It made a tiny plink as it hit the water. A Guinness barge was floating past, its deck stacked with barrels, blocking Paddy's view. The prize was sinking in the mud at the bottom of the river, with silt and slime closing over it, and Paddy knew it was lost forever.

10
The
Lapwing

Paddy followed the barge as it headed down river towards the docks, past the Custom House with its high dome and columns, down to Dublin Bay. The rain had stopped and the quay was alive with activity. As Paddy drew closer to where the great ocean-going ships were moored, the noise of the docks intensified. Iron steamships with anchors twice the size of a man were being loaded with cargo while crowds of small barefoot children played along the quay. Boys of all ages were working alongside the men. A sandy-headed boy stood crying out warnings in a shrill voice as the great loads of cargo swung on board. Men with their faces black from shovelling coal wiped their streaming eyes on their shirtsleeves, while smartly dressed gentlemen carrying fine leather bags alighted from carriages and strolled up the gangplanks of ships bound for ports all over the world. Paddy wandered up a side alleyway, dazed by all the noise and motion.

An old woman sitting in a doorway called out to Paddy. ‘Here, boy, I'll give you a penny if you'll fetch me a pint.'

‘Of milk?' asked Paddy.

‘No, boy, porter. Here's a jug for you to put it in and there'll be a penny for you to keep when you get back.'

She gave him directions and Paddy pushed his way through the crowd and handed the woman's jug across the counter of the pub.

‘Getting ale for your mam?' asked a man who was standing at the counter, drinking.

Paddy felt a lump in his throat at the thought of his mother. He shook his head.

The man turned back to his friends and laughed.

‘See, I was no more than a sprat, smaller than this lad here when I left Cardiff for the sea. And mind you, no one forced me to it. I stowed away on my first ship when I couldn't find a skipper who'd take me. I'd rather be sailing around the coast of Africa than stuck in the coal mines back home in Wales.'

Paddy wondered if the man had happily left his family behind or if perhaps grief and loss had driven him to sea. He took the jug back to the woman and watched as she held a hot poker in the porter to warm it. Then she reached into the folds of her skirt and drew out a penny from her purse. Paddy walked away, staring at the penny in his hand. Fetching porter for old ladies was not going to earn him a living, and if he wasn't returning to St Columcille's, he'd have to do something to earn his keep.

He stopped at a canteen next to one of the coal merchants and bought a cup of sweet tea and a rasher of hot, greasy bacon. As he sipped the tea, he watched ships setting out across the bay. The clippers were towed out of the harbour by steamers to where the sea breezes would send them across the world. In the distance, some were unfurling their sails, white against the dark grey sky. Paddy thought of the poem that had won him the Easter prize:

Run swiftly, O ship,
through the hollow sea,
breaking the waves
of the sea's pale swell
.

If he had stayed at St Columcille's and become a missionary, one day he would have sailed across the world. Paddy watched the last clipper become a tiny speck and then disappear over the horizon, his heart full of longing. If only he could be away from the grey skies and the graves of Ireland, in a place where no one would know of his disgrace and his grief. Suddenly, like an arrow of bright hope in the darkness, Paddy realised he didn't have to be a missionary to sail to Africa.

The first ship he tried was the largest ocean liner he could find. He asked an officer in a white uniform with gold braid who he should speak to, but the officer simply looked at him as if he was an annoying insect.

‘Where's your ticket?'

‘I don't have a ticket. I want to be a sailor,' he said.

‘I mean your seaman's ticket,' said the officer.

At the next ship he was asked even more questions.

‘Where's your discharge book? Who were you with last?'

Paddy was bewildered and it showed.

‘What? You never been to sea? We don't want first-trippers here.'

Other sailors laughed at him. ‘You're just a babby, go home to your mammy, little schoolboy.' Paddy felt furious. Most of them weren't much older than him anyway. Before he boarded the next ship, he tore off the jacket pocket that bore the St Columcille's emblem.

By the time he'd got to the tenth ship, he felt heavy with despair. A whistle blew for the ten o'clock break and the dockworkers headed towards the pubs and canteens. Paddy trudged up the gangplank of an iron barque called the
Lapwing
. It looked sleek and fast, just the sort of clipper to take him away from Ireland, away from the cold and the damp and the misery of the place.

‘We're sailing this morning and we don't take first-timers,' said the first mate.