Future Popes of Ireland

‘Will we have a quick trip to the strand before we head off?’

Aunty Mary, at least, knew that the only sensible thing to do in that house was to escape. Aunty Mary was Granny Doyle’s younger sister, though Peg called her Aunty, because she seemed to belong to a different generation to the hair-curling ladies of Dunluce Crescent. Aunty Mary kept her hair grey and styled into a severe bob. The trousers she wore matched the seen-it-all stride of her legs and say-what-you-like set of her chin. Peg was sure that the students in the Galway secondary school where she taught were terrified of Mary Nelligan. Not Peg, though: Peg never saw a trace of this Scary Mary. Aunty Mary was the one to show Peg the spider plant where scraps from Nanny Nelligan’s bone soup could be hidden, sure that thing’ll be glad of them, or the rock on the strand where notes could be left for fairies, we’ll see what they say, never a trace of harshness about her voice when she spoke to Peg.

Granny Doyle had gone off to get Nanny Nelligan ready for the day, so Aunty Mary seized her advantage.

‘It’d be a crime not to say hello to the sun on a day like this.’

She had Peg and Stop That! dressed and marching down the path to the beach before Mrs McGinty could object; Aunty Mary had a way of getting what she wanted.

Seeing the dawn on Clougheally strand was something that everybody should want, Peg was sure of it. The Atlantic rushed towards them, bringing the news from New York, went the saying – not that anybody in Clougheally paid any mind to the sea’s gossip, enough goings-on in Mayo to be busy with. Peg stared at the horizon, amazed at the sight of sky and sea for ever. A cluster of small fishing boats braved Broadhaven Bay and some bird swooped this way and that but otherwise the place was tremendously empty, a delight after all the bustle of Phoenix Park. Peg could easily imagine the Children of Lir soaring through a similar sky and settling on Clougheally’s boulder, its claim to fame and name: Cloch na n-ealaí, the Stone of the Swans (an English error, Aunty Mary tutted, for carraig would have been the appropriate word for a boulder, though Peg liked the smallness of stone, as if the place was sized for her).

Peg made Aunty Mary tell her the story of the Children of Lir every time they visited. King Lir had four children, Fionnuala and her three brothers, who were as good as could be. Too good for their wicked stepmother, in fact: she had them turned into swans and sentenced the poor creatures to nine hundred years of exile around the loneliest places of Ireland. They cried and suffered and huddled in each other’s wings but after nine hundred years they turned into wrinkly grown-ups, met Saint Patrick, and got baptized before they died. Clougheally appeared in the part with the suffering: three hundred of the Children of Lir’s years of exile were spent in Erris, the borough in County Mayo where Clougheally was located. Local legend had it that they huddled together on a special stone and looked out at the Atlantic. It still stood there, so the story went, the Stone of the Swans, a boulder on the other edge of the beach, treacherously perched on a mound of rocks: a scary place to spend centuries.

‘Stop that!’

Stop That! had a different interest in the Children of Lir’s boulder: it was the most dangerous item to climb on the beach, so she made a beeline towards it.

‘Would you not play a nice game or something?’ Mrs Nugent huffed, her feet finally on the beach.

Stop That!’s idea of a game was scouring the sand for the ideal missile to fling at whatever poor bird was flapping its wings in the distance. Peg left her to it, guarding the treasures on her own corner of the beach. Aunty Mary had given her a plastic spade and the beach was hers to explore. There were all sorts of brilliant things to find: pennies that might come from different countries and brightly coloured pieces of glass and so many shells that Peg could have spent the day cataloguing them. Peg didn’t rush, supremely content sifting sand from shells, arranging her little collection in order of size. She’d pick the prettiest to bring back to her windowsill in Dublin and she might even draw one in her copybook. Aunty Mary stood to the side, helping Peg spot a gem occasionally, mostly just watching her, quietly. Even Mrs Nugent kept her chat inside, enjoying her morning cigarette and cup of tea on the empty beach, that spectacular stretch of sand, where the flap of wings from across the bay could be heard on the right day. Organizing her collection of shells on the sand in the morning sun, Peg felt a surge of happiness.

But there was Granny Doyle, a cloud across the sky.

‘What are the lot of ye doing? Mammy’s waiting in the car and we’d want to get going if we’re to miss the crowds.’

Aunty Mary braced herself and shot Peg a such are the trials of life glance.

Mrs Nugent stubbed out her cigarette on one of Peg’s shells and turned towards her granddaughter.

‘For the love of God, stop that, would you: you have your dress wet through! We had better get going: I’d say the Pope is only dying to get my autograph!’

6

Toast Rack (1979)

Catherine was the one to venture downstairs, eventually. She’d have to check the clock and phone Peg and deal with the day, though not yet. First, breakfast. She smiled as she caught a glimpse of her body in the kitchen window. Her bare toes drummed against the lino as she eyed the steel toast rack suspiciously; she wished the toast would pop faster, afraid the spell would break if she stayed away too long.

They’d eat the toast in bed, she decided, not waiting until it cooled to butter it.

7

Vatican Flag (1979)

Even the rain couldn’t break the buzz in the air. Granny Doyle didn’t even bother with her brolly. Nobody in Galway racecourse would have their spirits broken by a bit of drizzle. Pope John Paul II wasn’t going to be dampened. If anything, he had more energy, as if Ireland had recharged him, not a problem for him to burst into song upon request. The crowd started it, tens of thousands of voices roaring out the song that had become his anthem.

He’s got the whole world in his hands,

He’s got the whole wide world in his hands.

Granny Doyle looked around the crowd and beamed. Galway racecourse was a sea of Vatican yellow flags, like an All Ireland where everybody was on the same team. Everybody was singing along: Mrs Nugent waving her tea towel and belting out the tune; Mrs McGinty thrilling in her best Church Lady voice designed to test stained glass; her mother bobbing her beshawled head in time with the beat; the Clougheally crowd of second cousins joining in, joyfully out of key.

The Pope stayed on the stage after the Mass, joy widening his face. When he spoke it was with the heart-heave of a teenage Romeo, a fallible and unscripted pronouncement, one all the more charming for it: ‘Young People of Ireland: I Love You.’

The crowd erupted into a cheer that travelled like a Mexican wave.

Mrs Nugent chuckled.

‘Didn’t I tell you he’s always talking to me?’

Even Mrs McGinty managed a laugh at this; it was impossible to frown. If she’d had a bottle large enough, Granny Doyle would have captured the happiness in the field and been a rich woman for years.

‘Quick now, we’ll take a photograph.’

Granny Doyle passed the camera to Mrs Nugent, scooped up Peg and marched over to her mother. Aunty Mary was left to the side; no harm, she’d only spoil it.

‘Big smile for the camera, like a good girl,’ Granny Doyle said to Peg.

Mrs Nugent fumbled for the button.

‘All right now, one … two … three … cheese and onion!’

The photograph was a remarkable coup, heralding never-again-seen skills from Mrs Nugent. Peg, Granny Doyle, and Nanny Nelligan squinted at the camera in the foreground, Pope John Paul II was flanked by Bishop Casey and Father Cleary in the background, heroes all three. A special effect of the morning sun gave the appearance of halos, the smiles of all three women stretching to meet the light.

Months later, Peg clutched the photograph, thrilled at a memento she was allowed to keep. Granny Doyle had given it to her for Christmas, pleased that her plan had worked and that it was only a matter of months before some John Paul Doyle arrived into the world. Peg loved the photograph, even though her shoes were outside the frame. It was evidence that she was somebody who mattered, somebody who had once shared the sunlight with a pope. For years she clung to the sanctity of this snapshot, even when she might better have torn it in two. It captured the moment precisely: an island united, crowds of the devoted, everybody as happy as Heaven.

8

Bloody Tea Towel (1980)

The first miracle of John Paul Doyle was survival.

In other circumstances, the tea towel might have been kept for posterity, a version of Veronica’s sweat-soaked shroud. A former nurse, Granny Doyle cleaned up the kitchen her son couldn’t face. She picked up the chair that had fallen and scrubbed it down. She returned the phone to its table on the hall. She mopped the blood from the floor, decided it was best not to keep the mop. She scooped out the half-eaten breakfast cereal into the bin, washed and dried the bowl, returned it to the cupboard.

The tea towel was put in its own plastic bag and sealed in another bin-bag before it was thrown away.

9

Catherine Doyle Memorial Card (1980)

Danny Doyle lit another cigarette. He’d had to blow the smoke out the window, back when he was a teenager. Now it didn’t matter if the little room filled with smoke, with his Da dead and Granny Doyle too worn out to shout at him. She was busy with the babbies, leaving Danny to his old box room and its sad yellow aura, the source of which it was hard to locate. It couldn’t be the amber on the window from his smoking; the curtains were always drawn, especially in the day. The yellow of the curtains had faded to a pale primrose, hardly enough to explain the aura. So, it might just be the jaundice about his heart; what else was sad and yellow?

Another fag. Something to keep his hands busy. He wished there were cigarettes for the brain, something that his thoughts could wrap around and find distraction in. Brain cigarettes? He was going mad, he had to be. Sure you’re not high? That’s what she would have said, with an arch of her eyebrow – he could hear her voice clear as anything in the room – and Danny Doyle felt a sharp pain in his chest at the thought that the only place Catherine Doyle was in the room was trapped in a tiny rectangle.

There she was, smiling at him from a plastic memorial card. Her name (Catherine Doyle), her dates (1951–1979), some prayers and platitudes (May She Rest in Peace; Oh My Jesus, Forgive Us Our Sins and Save Us From the Fires of Hell). He’d let Granny Doyle pick the photo for the memorial card, and the sensible photo she’d chosen would not have been out of place in a Legion of Mary newsletter: this was not a Catherine Doyle he recognized. Surrounded by prayers and a pastel background, this woman was not the type to let toast crumbs fall onto a bed or push her face into silly shapes when Peg was taking a bath; this was not a woman who could quack. Staring at the memorial card, it was hard to remember the tone that she had used to tell the stories that put Peg to sleep or to admonish him when he’d forgotten to pick up milk, harder to imagine how ‘Danny’ might have sounded from her mouth, what shades of affection and exasperation might have coloured it.

Danny picked up the roll of film instead of another cigarette. Where could you take it? Not Brennan’s chemist. Nowhere on the Northside. Maybe some shop in town, some alley off O’Connell Street. But then, the thought of it, a stranger staring at her naked body, looking at him like he was some sort of pervert: he couldn’t do it.

Danny Doyle turned the capsule over and over in his hand, the single bed in his old box room already sagging with sadness underneath him.

10

Statue of the Sacred Heart (1980)

Peg stared at the holy water font in the hallway. It was one of the many features of 7 Dunluce Crescent that did not appear in her doll’s house. It was a small ceramic thing, hanging precariously by a nail, a picture of the Virgin Mary on the front. Much too high for Peg to dip her finger into, which meant she relied upon Granny Doyle or her father to bless her as she passed the threshold. Neither was particularly diligent. Peg felt that she’d lost two parents for the price of one. Danny Doyle spent all his days in the box room with the curtains shut, all the Lego castles that they were going to build forgotten in Baldoyle, along with everything Peg had ever cared about (her doll’s house; her shoebox; her life!). Granny Doyle was too busy charging about the house after the triplets to worry about the fate of Peg’s soul. Peg almost felt as if she were becoming invisible.

‘In or out, child, are you coming in or out?’

Granny Doyle still had eyes for Peg when she got in the way. Peg retreated down the dark hallway and left Granny Doyle to her chorus of old ladies. The triplets were asleep at the same time, so the chance to tell everybody just how busy she was could not be missed by Granny Doyle. Peg heard Mrs Fay’s warm voice and suppressed the desire to rush into the porch and see if she’d brought any sweets in her handbag. It wasn’t worth the fuss. Peg couldn’t face Mrs Nugent telling her that you’re a brave girl, aren’t you, love? or Mrs McGinty trying to find some softness in her face or Granny Doyle losing patience and banishing her outside, where she hadn’t a single friend to hopscotch beside. Besides, it wasn’t sweets Peg was after; she’d lost her whole life, even a Curly Wurly wouldn’t cut it.

Peg made her way into the empty sitting room, an eerie space with the telly turned off. The room had rules, invisible lines that demarcated territory as sharply as barbed wire. Granny Doyle sat in the armchair by the window, its cushions shaping themselves around her body, even in her absence. Danny Doyle took his father’s spot in the armchair by the television, dinner tray propped on his knees when he watched the football. Guests took their pick of the chairs by the wall. Peg might have switched on the telly or clambered onto one of the forbidden armchairs but what would be the point? How could she care about cartoons? There hadn’t been a television in her stately doll’s house, only a library with walls of miniature books that Peg had arranged carefully. Peg squeezed her eyes shut and longed for some magic to make her small and safe and transported inside the doll’s house but no, she was stuck in her stupid-sized body, too small to escape and too big to disappear.

Peg ambled past the dining room, with its mantelpiece filled with forbidden figurines, photos of people who Granny Doyle never saw, and postcards from places she had never been to. It was the nicest room in 7 Dunluce Crescent: sun streaming through the curtains and catching the dust in the afternoon. People hardly ever went inside, much less dined there.

Peg meandered towards the kitchen, the heart of the house. But what was here for her? No bright gingham tablecloth like in her doll’s house, for starters, only some grubby thing splattered with stains. The smell of bone soup and burnt rashers clinging to the curtains. More pictures of the Virgin Mary than Peg could count, as if she were a family member. And Granny Doyle’s wireless, the radio she kept on all day, so the patter of indignant listeners and reassuring men filled the room, no space for any thoughts.

If Aunty Mary had been visiting, Peg might have been able to escape to the back garden. Here at least was some quiet, the hedge nice and big to hide behind, a large stone where fairies could leave presents, so Aunty Mary said, her face gleeful when they overturned the slab and uncovered an old sixpence beside the scurrying woodlice. Aunty Mary had the key to the shed, too, and here, beside the reek of petrol from the lawnmower and the jumble of abandoned possessions, were piles of books in cardboard boxes. Peg longed to put them on a shelf and move them about until they were arranged by colour or size or whatever took her fancy. She couldn’t read them yet, but Aunty Mary left her be. No aren’t you a brave girl? or you’ll be a good girl and help your gran, won’t you? Aunty Mary even gave Peg some books with pictures, to be getting on with, while Peg took ‘a little break’ from school to help out her granny with the triplets. But Aunty Mary was in Galway, teaching other children. The back door was locked and Peg didn’t have the key, even if she could have reached the handle.

Aunty Mary might have understood why Peg was so upset at the loss of her copybook, another victim of the move. Peg had cried for a solid day when she realized her copybook was gone, her tears intensifying when Granny Doyle came home with a new one, its lines all the wrong size and none of Peg’s pictures or attempts at the alphabet preserved inside.

‘I want my copybook,’ Peg dared to say, face red with the rage, fists clenched at such an unjust world.

‘Ah love,’ Danny Doyle sighed, patting her on the head and shuffling up the stairs, no use, as usual.

‘I went to Nolans special for that,’ Granny Doyle said, in a voice that was trying to be nice, even as she opened up the impostor copybook.

‘I want my copybook,’ Peg repeated, wishing that Aunty Mary or her mother or somebody sensible were there, but she only had Granny Doyle, who turned to the counter and started to chop onions. Granny Doyle had a formidable back, which tensed to show just how much she wasn’t listening, but Peg wouldn’t let her win this fight. ‘I want my copybook,’ she howled, hoping that the words might smash windows or send the house tumbling down or right the ways of this wrong world. But all they did was send Granny Doyle’s hands to her brow, onions abandoned as she turned around.

‘Be quiet or you’ll wake the triplets.’

This could not stop Peg, whose words had turned into wails.

‘I want my copybook!’

‘Listen, Missy, I won’t tolerate this carry-on …’

Peg would carry on crying until she exploded, I want my copybook and I want my old house and I want my mammy clear in every scream and sob.

‘Just shut up!’

‘I want my copybook! I want—’

The slap pulled the air from Peg’s lungs. A quick tap across the face, it only stung for a second, but Peg felt the air in the room shift in that instant. Granny Doyle’s face reddened. She turned back to her onions as if nothing had happened, leaving Peg stock-still in the middle of the kitchen, her face turning white from the shock of it. Something her mother had never done. A violation. Peg knew then that her tears would be of no use here. She swallowed them inside, thinking that this was revenge of sorts. Fury filled her instead, a colder kind that kept her face pale. Her composure remained, even as Granny Doyle turned around in frustration – ‘see, you’re after waking the triplets’ – Peg’s mask fixed as Granny Doyle made a great show of taking away the new copybook and bringing it to ‘somebody who’ll appreciate all I do for them’. Lines had been drawn that day: there would be no more need for slaps or tears. Peg understood there was no out-wailing a baby; if she wanted her way in 7 Dunluce Crescent, she’d have to be inventive.

‘Are you all right, love? Would you not want to go outside and get some fresh air?’

It was Mrs Nugent, in to heat up the kettle for a fresh round of tea. This was all grown-ups did: made tea and smoked and offered Peg things she didn’t want.

‘I can see if my Clare’s ones are about? Tracey might even let you play with her new Barbie, though you’re not allowed to give it a perm, the cheek of her, trying to make it out like me! Though, I says, you’d be paying a lot more for a doll with this quality hair, wouldn’t you!’

Peg looked longingly out at the back garden, where the books Aunty Mary had brought were locked up in the shed. There wasn’t a hope that Mrs Nugent would read her mind.

‘Staying here to look after the young ones, are you, pet? Aren’t you a brilliant help to your gran? Janey, I wish some of my lot were more like you!’

Peg left Mrs Nugent, who continued to chat to the radio, and trudged upstairs. She would look in on her siblings, cosied up in their cots in the biggest room in the house. They weren’t even cute, like Peg’s doll. All they did was sleep and cry and stare, the last action being apparently a great achievement. ‘Isn’t he a great one for looking at you?’ the ladies in the porch said. ‘Oh, he’s a sharp one,’ Granny Doyle agreed. He was John Paul Doyle, the only one of the triplets who warranted such attention. Granny Doyle had recognized her future Pope immediately in the runt of the litter, the one who had struggled to stay alive. Granny Doyle knew that cunning trumped primogeniture and here was the Jacob to Esau, a battler who could cut the queue to the head of the Vatican: Ireland’s first Pope, John Paul Doyle!

A great one for his poos: that was how Peg saw John Paul. Helping Granny Doyle with the endless parade of cloth nappies through the house, Peg had excellent insight into the triplets’ characters. While Damien produced nice little nuggets of poo that could be easily cleaned up, John Paul’s explosive shits were messy and unpredictable. A testament to the luxury of riches that Granny Doyle piled upon him – for he would be the first to have a scoop of mashed potato; the baby who’d get the extra bit of bottle – but Peg knew that there was more to it than nurture: it was John Paul’s nature to cause trouble, something he excelled at.

Any sensible person would have placed their bets for papal stardom on the other two babies, docile creatures who were happier sleeping than staring. Damien had the capacity to sit quietly in his high chair; unlike John Paul, he did not need to play ‘food or missile?’ with every object that crossed his path. He was as placid as could be; he was doomed from the get-go.

Rosie was a trickier character to get a handle on. The only one named by her father, Rosie somehow managed to wriggle away from the moniker of ‘Catherine Rose Doyle’ before she could talk. Even as a baby there was something vague and dreamy about Rosie Doyle; she had none of the solidity of a ‘Rose’ or a ‘Catherine’. Against the perversity of John Paul and the purity of Damien, Rosie was a perpetual hoverer, a swirl of characteristics, none of them fussed enough to dominate. For the record, her poos, those reliable auguries of the future, were hard to classify, trickles that were neither solid nor liquid, not quite committing themselves to any shade of the spectrum.

One thing Peg was sure of: they were all united against her. If there were any magic to be found in 7 Dunluce Crescent, it was all concentrated in the triplets’ room; eerie the ways in which they seemed to be connected, as if some elastic band that Peg could never see looped them together. How else to explain how they could all wake up at the same instant or wail as one? Or not quite as one, Peg realized, as she creaked open the door innocently and peered at her slumbering siblings. John Paul woke the second she looked at him; she was sure of it. His little face looked up at Peg, cunning glinting in his eyes before he opened his mouth. The elastic band snapped into place and there the three of them were, miraculously awake and immediately furious at the world. That was the way of the triplets: John Paul set the tune and the other two followed. ‘Ssssh,’ Peg tried but it was hopeless. She could hear the commotion in the porch below; she’d be murdered.