A Mad and Wonderful Thing Read online

  Scribe Publications

  A MAD AND WONDERFUL THING

  Mark Mulholland was born and raised in a town on the Irish border, where he left school at sixteen. He now lives with his wife, their four children, and a large library of second-hand books in a farmhouse in France. A Mad and Wonderful Thing is his first novel.

  Scribe Publications Pty Ltd

  18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

  50A Kingsway Place, Sans Walk, London, EC1R 0LU, United Kingdom

  First published by Scribe 2014

  Copyright © Mark Mulholland 2014

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

  A Mad and Wonderful Thing is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The story — though structured around historical events — is a product of the author’s imagination. None of the characters are based on real individuals.

  The lines from ‘On Raglan Road’ by Patrick Kavanagh are reprinted from Collected Poems, edited by Antoinette Quinn (Allen Lane, 2004), by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency.

  Other lines are from ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’ (Stephen Foster, 1854) and ‘The Holy Ground’ (traditional Irish folk song); ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ (W. B. Yeats, 1899); Patrick Henry Pearse’s graveside oration for Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1915); ‘Red Is the Rose’ (traditional Irish folk song) and ‘Il Penseroso’ (John Milton, 1645); and ‘Andrea del Sarto’ (Robert Browning, 1855).

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Mulholland, Mark, author.

  A Mad and Wonderful Thing / Mark Mulholland.

  9781922070876 (Australian edition)

  9781922247131 (UK edition)

  9781922072900 (e-book edition)

  A823.4

  scribepublications.com.au

  scribepublications.co.uk

  Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country’s cause.

  Homer, The Iliad

  We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realise that we know where it lives ... inside ourselves.

  Albert Camus, Notebooks

  Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

  Ernest Hemingway, introduction to Treasury for the Free World

  Principles

  I WAS SIX YEARS OLD WHEN I WATCHED THE GUN GO INTO DAD’S MOUTH. Another would think that was the beginning of the whole thing — like it has to have one. Another would think that’s what made me what I am. I’m not so sure. There were other incidents, too; another would call these pivotal events. Another would; I don’t. I just think some of us are made this way. I had it all worked out. Okay, maybe not all of it, but I knew what my role was, what sacrifices needed to be made, what needed to be done, what I needed to do. Another would wonder about my role, and about the how and the why. That’s fair enough — we are a curious animal. I don’t know if I could give an answer, like wrap it up in a there-you-go-sir bundle. War isn’t like that — not when you actually do it — but there is them and there is us and there is homeland, and that is the cause of the conflict. Anyhow, I had it all worked out. And then she came and everything is not where it was.

  Eight days. That’s how long I’ve known her. Mad, but that’s what girls do, they wreck your head. She just came out of nowhere — I mean, not really nowhere, but she wasn’t part of it, and now she is, like she was always there. Even when I’m thinking of something else, she is there, and that’s not good when you do what I do, when nothing must be in my head but the gun and the bullet and the kill. But she is in my head, like now, and just then as I left my room, and all morning, and before that when I woke early and there was nothing for it but to lie there with her — well, not physically with her — replaying those first conversations with her, extending the real here and there, redrafting, inventing. I am unable to think of anything else. Only the girl will do. And you know something? I’m happy with it.

  I hear her voice — as if her face and body were not torture enough — and I am thinking of her as I step from the house into the bright morning. I tidy the fall of my overcoat and pull at my blue scarf. The dog slides in alongside, and I am ruffling my hand across his head as I reach the end of the drive where the gate is closed, tied with an old shoelace. The gate is low, and with one hand on the top bar I’m stepping over it when I hear the porch door slide behind me.

  ‘Your mother asks if you will pick up the Sunday World on the way back?’

  I turn. It’s my dad. He is standing in the porch, with one hand holding the sliding door.

  I lob a protest over the low gate: ‘I’m not buying trashy newspapers.’ I shake my head at the dog, and he barks once as if he agrees.

  I look to the house where Dad, now retreated from the midday air, relays the refusal down the central hallway and then stands nodding with his big, dopey smile as he absorbs a long reply from the kitchen at the far end. I mean, the whole show is pure theatre.

  ‘She says you won’t be wanting dinner, then,’ he summarises, his head re-emerging into the sunshine. This is Dad all over — he finds the middle ground and plays for loose change.

  I look on a face that is held wide open to catch my answer. He knows he has me. ‘Fair enough,’ I say. ‘The Sunday World it is.’ Well, sometimes you just have to lose, and lose fast.

  ‘That’s great,’ he replies. ‘I love to see a man stick to his principles.’ And he laughs.

  ‘Will I get you anything?’ I ask him.

  ‘What are you getting, yourself?’

  ‘The Times and the Tribune.’

  ‘Pick us up the Indo, will you? And the People, if there’s any left?’

  ‘Sure, Dad. No bother.’

  ‘Right you are, Son. Right you are,’ he calls from the porch, as I set off on the short walk to the late-morning Mass. It is Sunday. It is April. It is 1990.

  The Mass

  I ENTER THE CHURCHYARD AS THE BELLS OF SAINT JOSEPH’S PITCH ON THE first arc of the Angelus.

  ‘Hi, Johnny.’

  I look up. Some local girls are perched in a single row on the church steps. Chatting and giggling, they are like unsettled starlings stretched out on a power line. Girls, they wreck your head.

  ‘Well, sisters. Are you all here for Jesus?’

  ‘For Jesus, Johnny?’ a girl I know answers. ‘I don’t think so. I’m only here for the talent. What about you?’

  ‘You’re a shameless hussy, Siobhán McCourt,’ I reply. ‘But fear not, you may be touched yet by the power of the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘The Holy Spirit, Johnny,’ she says, and laughs. ‘We don’t see much of him in Dundalk.’ She looks to me, a smirk on her pretty face. ‘And I won’t be touched by anyone unless you’re free yourself for half an hour?’

  ‘You are some lunatic,’ I answer. ‘And that’s a fine offer. But I’ve an appointment inside with the man himself.’

  The girls laugh as I bounce up the granite to the church doors. Girls do that to me — they make me feel as if I can run from here to China.

  ‘Another day, McC
ourt,’ I call, thinking it best to play safe and pop this one in the back of the wardrobe. You never know.

  ‘Another day, Donnelly,’ I hear as I push through.

  I step into the left aisle and find a space in the rear corner, and there I stand silently, apathetic about the imminent hour of murmur, shuffle, procession, and sermon. I look across the heads of the seated faithful and watch the last-minute arrivals quietly, apologetically, nursing themselves in at the ends of pews. It is an odd event — the Irish Catholic Mass. It is adoration by stealth: an unenthusiastic ritual where joy is a stranger and where emotion is as welcome as a Protestant. I see Aunt Hannah among the gathering, and she sees me. She has a hand raised and her mouth is moving, and I am lip-reading as I signal: she’s giving me jib for wearing ‘that old coat’ to the Mass. She would have been waiting just so she could give out — she constantly gives out about my old Dunn & Co coat — but that’s spinster aunties for you. They’re as bad as mothers. She’ll be happy now she has the complaint registered. She turns to face the altar as the Mass eases through the early gears, and I am again with the girl as my mind slips from the church and drifts the short journey west to town, to where it all began, to where I first met Cora Flannery.

  We were in a nightclub — we being the boys. We were camped at the bar when a group of girls approached and stopped nearby, their conversation busy as girls’ talk always is, busy and speckled with bursts of rapid comment and laughter — you know the way they go on. She stood among the girls, but she looked to me. I can admit something: I was surprised by her attention. I glanced around, but there was nobody else in her view. I lowered my gaze to the ground to put some order to my thoughts while random matter flew around my head like kids let loose at McDonald’s. I peeped, and could see that she was continuing to watch me. Girls bring out strange things in me, and suddenly the poet inside was busy working away and I was thinking that her eyes were the lightened green of an August meadow. Oh, sweet hallelujah. I mean, I just couldn’t think straight — just mad poetry stuff. Slowly, I lifted my useless head. She wore Dr Martens boots. They were red and they were tied in extravagant bows with green laces. (Green for Ireland, she says. Green for Ireland — like how good is that?) A long, beige skirt held to her slender frame and a white, knitted cardigan, unbuttoned, part covered a small white top. She had hair of gold, and long golden threads fell in soft waves over one side of her face, resting lightly on her pale skin. And I knew who she was. The town is too small for a girl as beautiful as Cora Flannery to go unaccounted.

  I looked to her. Why not? Well, there was nothing to lose. Or was there? She passed close as the girls moved on.

  ‘I like your boots,’ I said, surprising myself, though nearly choking as I spoke. Where did those words come from? I hadn’t meant to say anything.

  She didn’t respond, not really, but I saw her smile.

  The Mass reaches a high point with the reading of the Gospel, and everyone stands. I feel a hand on my ribs.

  ‘How’s the boy?’ my friend Éamon Gaughran whispers from behind.

  ‘Never better.’

  Éamon acknowledges with an upward flick of his head, and we both fall quiet.

  It was Thursday when I saw Cora again. I was in town after work and on my way to the bank. Cora stepped out of the post office. I know now that she waited for me — how mad is that?

  ‘Hi, Johnny.’

  She surprised me. She knew my name. ‘Ohh, well, eh, Cora. How’ye?’

  ‘Sorry about the other night. I was just, ehm, too shy, you know, in front of all the gang. Anyway …’ and she just kept talking.

  I stood silent. I had no idea what this girl was saying to me. Twice now in one week I had experienced shock, and both times were as I looked into the green eyes of Cora Flannery. My heart was racing, I could feel it, and — weirdly — I could hear it. I was conscious of blood rushing to my face. I was fighting for breath. The head was gone again, and now the ears and lungs, too. This girl was killing me.

  ‘Are you going again this week?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I might.’ I tried to remain calm.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s a date, then.’ And off she went.

  I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it, and I was halfway home when I realised that I’d forgotten to go to the bank.

  Saturday night arrived, and we gathered in town for the eager consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, stories, and lies. The Dubchoire Bar is our regular meeting place. There is a dusting of magic or something about the place — I’m not sure what exactly, although to an outsider it would look pretty crappy. Townsfolk say that, between the thick walls and below the music, intrigue and conspiracy simmer in dark pockets. I don’t know anything about that — I never hear any of it — but local heads have nicknamed it The Cooking Pot. Anyhow, back to Saturday. First in, as usual, was Big Robbie. Robbie is my friend from work and, to be honest, he’s a bit of a header. Johnny — Johnny being me — and Éamon Gaughran were next. Conor Rafferty and Frank Boyle followed up. That is pretty much our regular form, though, on any night, any number of others might attach themselves to our posse. Other than the chatter on football or work or college, we usually talk about girls, and play our game of ‘marks out of ten’. Eight-and-a-half is agreed to be the highest possible score to be found in the town; convinced as we are that faraway maidens just have to be fairer. I wasn’t saying a word about Cora — I mean, let’s be reasonable, I wasn’t too sure what was happening. Was it a date? Or was it not? But she did say … Well, I thought, if nothing happened and I fell on my arse, at least the boys didn’t have to know.

  ‘Big date tonight, Johnny, eh?’

  I looked up to see Frank Boyle smiling at me over a glass of beer.

  You see, these are the things that piss me off — and just when I had some sort of a plan together. ‘What, wha’, what makes you say that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well, Johnny-boy, Cora Flannery seems to believe that she’s meeting up with you later.’

  ‘Cora Flannery!’ was the cry around the table.

  ‘Cora Flannery,’ Conor Rafferty repeated softly, looking to me with his big brown eyes as he sat shaking his head.

  Oh, sweet hallelujah, so it is a date.

  ‘And how do you make that out?’ I threw out the stall to get some thoughts together.

  ‘That’s the news according to Clodagh Breen.’

  ‘Well, that’s Clodagh Breen for you,’ I said, looking to Frank and having no choice now but to reach down for the emergency supplies. ‘She tells stories, that one. Wasn’t it Clodagh who said that you popped Tootsie Roddy a fast one in the Friary Lane? That’s just all-out madness. You can’t believe a word she says.’ It was a low attack. A liaison with Tootsie could only be absolute need confused with desperate want, and it could happen to any man. I take no pride now in the retelling. But I was rattled.

  I saw Frank Boyle absorb the statement with panic, and his thoughts were all over his face. Does Johnny know? How does Johnny know? Bastard! For a moment, there was silence.

  ‘Oh, I think he doth protest too much,’ Big Robbie said, as he laughed. ‘You know, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Johnny D could score at a funeral.’

  I gave my best innocent grin. What else could I do?

  Big Robbie lifted a pint of porter off the table and drank half the measure in one slow, easy gulp. ‘Mother’s milk,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You are some pup, Donnelly. That’s all I’ll say. You are some pup. I have you trained well.’

  Big Robbie is an electrician who is one year ahead of me in our apprenticeships, and sometimes the seniority thing gets the better of him. I saluted him with my own glass and let his delusion stand.

  ‘But Cora Flannery?’ Conor continued, moving next to me and still shaking his head. ‘Unbelievable. Jesus,
Johnny, you have the luck of the Devil. How do you do it?’

  ‘You smarmy git,’ Éamon said from across the table. That would be Éamon: a bit off-time, a bit off-tone. It comes with trying too hard.

  ‘Now, don’t be jealous,’ I defended.

  ‘God-sakes, Johnny. Me, jealous? That’ll be the day, Sunshine.’ Poor Éamon. Nobody could believe that, not even himself.

  The banter and drinking continued until a yet-to-be-vetted girl caused immediate debate, scoring highest with Big Robbie’s declaration, ‘That’s class — definitely a seven-and-a-half.’

  ‘And what more shall I say …’ I am pulled back to the Mass, as the priest is lecturing us about heroes and conquered kingdoms and enforced justice and received promises and winning strength out of weakness and becoming mighty in war and putting foreign armies to flight. These guys know how to talk. But the thread has tangled and caught. Putting foreign armies to flight? Yes, that fighting talk is all very good in Saint Joseph’s, but how about a cold, wet ditch on the border? There would be few then so loud and brave. It’s all hell and thunder for Jesus. But for Ireland? Put foreign armies to flight? I don’t think so. Only the few take on that foreign army. Our foreign army. And as I think on that, I see their faces, like I see their faces through the scope of the gun, those foreign faces, those foreign soldiers in Ireland. And that’s not good, foreign soldiers. It never works out in the end. I know that not everyone thinks this way. Some don’t mind them being here. Some welcome them. Some don’t care. But that doesn’t work either, the not-caring. If you don’t care about who you are, then every day a little bit of you dies — a small bit, hardly noticeable, but day by day these bits add up, and before you know it you are completely dead. You are still living, of course, but you go through the rest of your life dead. That’s the price you pay for not caring about who you are, and for not fighting. But not me: I know the danger. I know who I am: Johnny Donnelly, Irish. And I do care, and I do fight.

  The priest continues his advice to the assembled heads, but my thoughts are gone again to Cora.