down the steps.
He says, Ring this bell again and I'll break your hand.
Jesuit brothers are not supposed to talk like that. They're supposed to be like Our Lord, not walking the world threatening people's hands.
I'm dizzy. I'll go home to bed. I hold on to railings along Barrington Street and keep to the wall going down the lane. Mam is by the fire smoking a Woodbine, my brothers upstairs in the bed. She says, That's a nice state to come home in.
It's hard to talk but I tell her I had my first pint with Uncle Pa. No father to get me the first pint.
Your Uncle Pa should know better.
I stagger to a chair and she says, Just like your father.
I try to control the way my tongue moves in my mouth. I'd rather be, I'd rather, rather be like my father than Laman Griffin.
She turns away from me and looks into the ashes in the range but I won't leave her alone because I had my pint, two pints, and I'm sixteen tomorrow, a man.
Did you hear me? I'd rather be like my father than Laman Griffin.
She stands up and faces me. Mind your tongue, she says.
Mind your own bloody tongue.
Don't talk to me like that. I'm your mother.
I'll talk to you any bloody way I like.
You have a mouth like a messenger boy.
Do I? Do I? Well, I'd rather be a messenger boy than the likes of Laman Griffin oul' drunkard with the snotty nose and his loft and people climbing up there with him.
She walks away from me and I follow her upstairs to the small room. She turns, Leave me alone, leave me alone, and I keep barking at her, Laman Griffin, Laman Griffin, till she pushes me, Get out of this room, and I slap her on the cheek so that tears jump in her eyes and there's a small whimpering sound from her, You'll never have the chance to do that again, and I back away from her because there's another sin on my long list and I'm ashamed of myself.
I fall into my bed, clothes and all, and wake up in the middle of the night puking on my pillow, my brothers complaining of the stink, telling me clean up, I'm a disgrace. I hear my mother crying and I want to tell her I'm sorry but why should I after what she did with Laman Griffin.
In the morning my small brothers are gone to school, Malachy is out looking for a job, Mam is at the fire drinking tea. I place my wages on the table by her elbow and turn to go. She says, Do you want a cup of tea?
No.
'Tis your birthday.
I don't care.
She calls up the lane after me, You should have something in your stomach, but I give her my back and turn the corner without answering. I still want to tell her I'm sorry but if I do I'll want to tell her she's the cause of it all, that she should not have climbed to the loft that night and I don't give a fiddler's fart anyway because I'm still writing threatening letters for Mrs. Finucane and saving to go to America.
I have the whole day before I go to Mrs. Finucane to write the threatening letters and I wander down Henry Street till the rain drives me into the Franciscan church where St. Francis stands with his birds and lambs. I look at him and wonder why I ever prayed to him. No, I didn't pray, I begged.
I begged him to intercede for Theresa Carmody but he never did a thing, stood up there on his pedestal with the little smile, the birds, the lambs, and didn't give a fiddler's fart about Theresa or me.
I'm finished with you, St. Francis. Moving on. Francis. I don't know why they ever gave me that name. I'd be better off if they called me Malachy, one a king, the other a great saint. Why didn't you heal Theresa? Why did you let her go to hell? You let my mother climb to the loft. You let me get into a state of doom. Little children's shoes scattered in concentration camps. I have the abscess again. It's in my chest and I'm hungry.
St. Francis is no help, he won't stop the tears bursting out of my two eyes, the sniffling and choking and the God oh Gods that have me on my knees with my head on the back of the pew before me and I'm so weak with the hunger and the crying I could fall on the floor and would you please help me God or St. Francis because I'm sixteen today and I hit my mother and sent Theresa to hell and wanked all over Limerick and the county beyond and I dread the millstone around my neck.
There is an arm around my shoulders, a brown robe, click of black rosary beads, a Franciscan priest.
My child, my child, my child.
I'm a child and I lean against him, little Frankie on his father's lap, tell me all about Cuchulain, Dad, my story that Malachy can't have or Freddie Leibowitz on the swings.
My child, sit here with me. Tell me what troubles you. Only if you want to. I am Father Gregory.
I'm sixteen today, Father.
Oh, lovely, lovely, and why should that be a trouble to you?
I drank my first pint last night.
Yes?
I hit my mother.
God help us, my child. But He will forgive you. Is there anything else?
I can't tell you, Father.
Would you like to go to confession?
I can't, Father. I did terrible things.
God forgives all who repent. He sent His only Beloved Son to die for us.
I can't tell, Father. I can't.
But you could tell St. Francis, couldn't you?
He doesn't help me anymore.
But you love him, don't you?
I do. My name is Francis.
Then tell him. We'll sit here and you'll tell him the things that trouble you. If I sit and listen it will only be a pair of ears for St. Francis and Our Lord. Won't that help?
I talk to St. Francis and tell him about Margaret, Oliver, Eugene, my father singing Roddy McCorley and bringing home no money, my father sending no money from England, Theresa and the green sofa, my terrible sins on Carrigogunnell, why couldn't they hang Hermann Goering for what he did to the little children with shoes scattered around concentration camps, the Christian Brother who closed the door in my face, the time they wouldn't let me be an altar boy, my small brother Michael walking up the lane with the broken shoe clacking, my bad eyes that I'm ashamed of, the Jesuit brother who closed the door in my face, the tears in Mam's eyes when I slapped her.
Father Gregory says, Would you like to sit and be silent, perhaps pray a few minutes?
His brown robe is rough against my cheek and there's a smell of soap. He looks at St. Francis and the tabernacle and nods and I suppose he's talking to God. Then he tells me kneel, gives me absolution, tells me say three Hail Marys, three Our Fathers, three Glory Bes. He tells me God forgives me and I must forgive myself, that God loves me and I must love myself for only when you love God in yourself can you love all God's creatures.
But I want to know about Theresa Carmody in hell, Father.
No, my child. She is surely in heaven. She suffered like the martyrs in olden times and God knows that's penance enough. You can be sure the sisters in the hospital didn't let her die without a priest.
Are you sure, Father?
I am, my child.
He blesses me again, asks me to pray for him, and I'm happy trotting through the rainy streets of Limerick knowing Theresa is in heaven with the cough gone.
Monday morning and it's dawn in the railway station. Newspapers and magazines are piled in bundles along the platform wall. Mr. McCaffrey is there with another boy, Willie Harold, cutting the twine on the bundles, counting, entering the count in a ledger. English newspapers and The Irish Times have to be delivered early, magazines later in the morning. We count out the papers and label them for delivery to shops around the city.
Mr. McCaffrey drives the van and stays at the wheel while Willie and I run into shops with bundles and take orders for the next day, add or drop in the ledger. After the papers are delivered we unload the magazines at the office and go home to breakfast for fifty minutes.
When I return to the office there are two other boys, Eamon and Peter, already sorting magazines, counting and stuffing them into newsagents' boxes along the wall. Small orders are delivered by Gerry Halvey on his messenger bicycle, big orders in the van. Mr. McCaffrey tells me stay in the office so that I can learn to count magazines and enter them in the ledger. The minute Mr. McCaffrey leaves Eamon and Peter pull out a drawer where they hide cigarette butts and light up. They can't believe I don't smoke. They want to know if there's something wrong with me, the bad eyes or the consumption maybe. How can you go out with a girl if you don't smoke? Peter says, Wouldn't you be a right eejit if you were going out the road with the girl and she asked you for a fag and you said you didn't smoke, wouldn't you be a right eejit then? How would you ever get her into a field for a bit of a feel? Eamon says, 'Tis what my father says about men who don't drink, they're not to be trusted. Peter says if you find a man that won't drink or smoke that's a man that's not even interested in girls and you'd want to keep your hand over the hole of your arse, that's what you'd want to be doing.
They laugh and that brings on the cough and the more they laugh the more they cough till they're holding on to one another banging one another between the shoulder blades and wiping tears from their cheeks. When the fit passes we pick out English and American magazines and look at the advertisements for women's underwear, brassieres and panties and long nylon stockings. Eamon is looking at an American magazine called See with pictures of Japanese girls who keep the soldiers happy so far away from home and Eamon says he has to go to the lavatory and when he does Peter gives me a wink, You know what he's up to in there, don't you? and sometimes Mr. McCaffrey gets into a state when boys linger in the lavatory interfering with themselves and wasting the valuable time for which Easons is paying them and on top of it putting their immortal souls in danger. Mr. McCaffrey won't come right out and say, Stop that wanking, because you can't accuse someone of a mortal sin unless you have proof. Sometimes he goes snooping in the lavatory when a boy comes out. He comes back himself with the threatening look and tells the boys, Ye are not to be looking at those dirty magazines from foreign parts. Ye are to count them and put them in the boxes and that's all.
Eamon comes back from the lavatory and Peter goes in with an American magazine, Collier's, that has pictures of girls in a beauty contest. Eamon says, Do you know what he's doing in there? At himself. Five times a day he goes in. Every time a new American magazine comes in with the women's underwear he goes in. Never done going at himself. Borrows magazines to take home unbeknownst to Mr. McCaffrey and God knows what he does with himself and the magazines all night. If he fell dead in there the jaws of hell would open wide.
I'd like to get into the lavatory myself when Peter comes out but I don't want them saying, There he goes, new boy, first day on the job, already at himself. Won't light up a fag oh no but wanks away like an oul' billygoat.
Mr. McCaffrey returns from van delivery and wants to know why all the magazines aren't counted out, bundled and ready to go. Peter tells him, We were busy teaching the new boy, McCourt. God help us, he was a bit slow with the bad eyes you know but we kept at him and now he's getting faster.
Gerry Halvey, the messenger boy, won't be in for a week because he's entitled to his holidays and he wants to spend the time with his girlfriend, Rose, who's coming back from England. I'm the new boy and I have to be messenger boy while he's gone, cycling around Limerick on the bicycle with the big metal basket in front. He shows me how to balance papers and magazines so that the bicycle won't tip over with me in the saddle and a lorry passing by that will run over me and leave me like a piece of salmon in the road. He saw a soldier once that was run over by an army lorry and that's what he looked like, salmon.
Gerry is making a last delivery at Easons kiosk at the railway station at noon on Saturday and that's handy because I can meet him there to get the bicycle and he can meet Rose off the train. We stand at the gate waiting and he tells me he hasn't seen Rose in a year. She's over there working in a pub in Bristol and he doesn't like that one bit because the English are forever pawing the Irish girls, hands up under the skirts and worse, and the Irish girls are afraid to say anything for fear of losing their jobs. Everyone knows Irish girls keep themselves pure especially Limerick girls known the world over for their purity who have a man to come back to like Gerry Halvey himself. He'll be able to tell if she was true to him by her walk. If a girl comes back after a year with a certain class of a walk that's different from the one she went away with then you know she was up to no good with the Englishmen dirty horny bastards that they are.
The train hoots into the station and Gerry waves and points to Rose coming toward us from the far end of the train, Rose smiling away with her white teeth and lovely in a green dress. Gerry stops waving and mutters under his breath, Look at the walk on her, bitch, hoor, streetwalker, flaghopper, trollop, and runs from the station. Rose walks up to me, Was that Gerry Halvey you were standing with?
'Twas.
Where is he?
Oh, he went out.
I know he went out. Where did he go?
I don't know. He didn't tell me. He just ran out.
Didn't say anything?
I didn't hear him say anything.
Do you work with him?
I do. I'm taking over the bike.
What bike?
The messenger bike.
Is he on a messenger bike?
He is.
He told me he worked in Basons office, clerk, inside job?
I feel desperate. I don't want to make a liar of Gerry Halvey, to get him into trouble with the lovely Rose. Oh, we all take turns on the messenger bike. An hour in the office, an hour on the bike. The manager says 'tis good to get out in the fresh air.
Well, I'll just go home and put my suitcase down and go to his house. I thought he'd carry this for me.
I have the bike here and you can stick the case in the basket and I'll walk you home.
We walk up to her house in Carey's Road and she tells me she's so excited about Gerry. She saved her money in England and now she wants to go back with him and get married even if he's only nineteen and she's only seventeen. What matter when you're in love. I lived like a nun in England and dreamt of him every night and thank you very much for carrying my case.
I turn away to jump on the bike and cycle back to Easons when Gerry comes at me from behind. His face is red and he's snorting like a bull. What were you doing with my girl, you little shite? Eh? What? If 'tis a thing I ever find out you did anything with my girl I'll kill you.
I didn't do anything. Carried her case because 'twas heavy.
Don't look at her again or you're dead.
I won't, Gerry. I don't want to look at her.
Oh, is that a fact? Is she ugly or what?
No, no, Gerry, she's yours and she loves you.
How do you know?
She told me.
She did?
She did, honest to God.
Jasus.
He bangs on her door, Rose, Rose, are you there? and she comes out, Of course, I'm here, and I ride away on the messenger bicycle with the sign on the basket that says Easons wondering about the way he's kissing her now and the terrible things he said about her in the station and wondering how Peter in the office could tell Mr. McCaffrey a barefaced lie about me and my eyes when all the time he and Eamon were looking at girls in their underwear and then going at themselves in the lavatory.
Mr. McCaffrey is in a terrible state in the office. Where were you? Great God above in heaven, does it take you all day to cycle from the railway station? We have an emergency here and we should have Halvey but he's gone off on his friggin' holidays, God forgive the language, and you'll have to cycle around as fast as you can, good thing you were a telegram boy that knows every inch of Limerick, and go to every bloody shop that's a customer and walk right in grab whatever copies you see of John O'London's Weekly tear out page sixteen and if anyone bothers you tell them 'tis government orders and they're not to interfere in government business and if they lay a finger on you they're liable to arrest, imprisonment and a large fine now go for God's sake and bring back every page sixteen you tear out so that we can burn them here in the fire.
Every shop, Mr. McCaffrey?
I'll do the big ones, you do the small ones all the way to Ballinacurra and out the Ennis Road and beyond, God help us. Go on, go.
I'm jumping on the bike and Eamon runs down the steps. Hey, McCourt, wait. Listen. Don't give him all the page sixteens when you come back.
Why?
We can sell 'em, me an' Peter.
Why?
'Tis all about birth control and that's banned in Ireland.
What's birth control?
Aw, Christ above, don't you know anything? 'Tis condoms, you know, rubbers, French letters, things like that to stop the girls from getting up the pole.
Up the pole?
Pregnant. Sixteen years of age an' you're pure ignorant. Hurry up an' get the pages before everybody starts runnin' to the shop for John O'London's Weekly.
I'm about to push away on the bike when Mr. McCaffrey runs down the steps. Hold on, McCourt, we'll go in the van. Eamon, you come with us.
What about Peter?
Leave him. He'll wind up with a magazine in the lavatory anyway.
Mr. McCaffrey talks to himself in the van. Nice bloody how do you do ringing down here from Dublin on a fine Saturday to send us tearing around Limerick ripping pages out of an English magazine when I could be at home with a cup of tea and a nice bun and a read of The Irish Press with my feet up on a box under the picture of the Sacred Heart nice bloody how do you do entirely.
Mr. McCaffrey runs into every shop with us behind him. He grabs the magazines, hands each of us a pile and tells us start tearing. Shop owners scream at him, What are ye doing? Jesus, Mary and Holy St. Joseph, is it pure mad ye are? Put back them magazines or I'll call the guards.
Mr. McCaffrey tells them, Government orders, ma'am. There is filth in John O'London this week that's not fit for any Irish eyes and we are here to do God's work.
What filth? What filth? Show me the filth before ye go mutilatin' the magazines. I won't pay Easons for these magazines, so I won't.
Ma'am, we don't care at Easons. We'd rather lose large amounts than have the people of Limerick and Ireland corrupted by this filth.
What filth?
Can't tell you. Come on, boys.
We throw the pages on the floor of the van and when Mr. McCaffrey is in a shop