Future Popes of Ireland

Pause to banish all conversation about the past.

‘Pope John Paul III!’

Wine to wash away lies.

‘I hadn’t seen.’

‘More than just a stub too, lots of links to YouTube and some interviews and …’

Move to the counter to banish all possibility of conversation about John Paul Doyle.

Pause to drain pasta and bitterness.

‘So you’re going to become a godfather?’

‘I know, it’s silly … I definitely can’t provide spiritual guidance …’

Bite of lip to suppress knowledge of upcoming joke.

‘Or any guidance, ha! And I don’t want to be in the middle of one of Ashima’s and Gabriel’s fights. It’s just, Sara is a great kid, you know? And it’s nice to have that kind of official connection to a kid, especially if we’re not …’

Pause to imagine children in subjunctive tenses.

Kiss to acknowledge vulnerability.

‘You’d be a brilliant godparent.’

Tiny pause to say farewell to children in subjunctive tenses.

‘Well, it’s not like I have to do it: you don’t even remember yours.’

Wine to wash down a lie.

‘No.’

What was there to say about Aunty Mary? Fairy godmothers were for children, you couldn’t ask them to stick around.

‘I’m still her uncle.’

Irish women disappeared from time to time and that was how it went.

‘I’ll still be part of her life.’

That was the path of the Doyle women (Aunty Mary; her mother; Rosie; Peg): the only way to survive exile was to forget.

‘Peg?’

Wine to wash away the past.

‘You okay?’

Kiss to wash away lies.

‘Yeah.’

2

Box of Memorial Cards (2007)

Would the Pope be getting one too? Surely, he would, with the millions who’d want to be remembering him, and who could keep track of everybody who’d passed without the handy rectangles that memorialized people? Not Granny Doyle. The balance had tilted, so that she knew more who were dead than alive; she’d be lost without her little box of laminated lives. She sat in her porch and flicked through her box of memorial cards and wondered if the Vatican had ever made a memorial card for Pope John Paul II: he was two years gone, after all, they’d plenty of time. There might even be a special memorial card now that he was bound to be beatified: some poor crater cured of Parkinson’s, already. She might have to start a new box; maybe she’d set up a special one for celebrities. Daft thoughts, she didn’t know any celebrities and, in any case, there wouldn’t be a special memorial card for the Pope – she had just checked, she hadn’t any for poor John Paul I – and Granny Doyle would have to wait for somebody else to die before she’d start a new box.

‘Daft,’ Granny Doyle said, though the radio on the chair opposite her didn’t respond. Some new yoke that John Paul had got her: Granny Doyle could swear that the news had got worse because of it. No mention of the Pope’s miracle, never any good news, only some eejit jingling on about the upcoming election (as if she’d ever betray Fianna Fáil) and the nurses on strike (never in her day) and people killing each other from Mogadishu to Kabul while ads jittered on about things she didn’t want: it was enough to send her to bed.

‘It’s a terrible world we live in,’ Granny Doyle said, although the folding chairs were silent. Poor Mrs Nugent had settled into her box of memorial cards a long time ago and her daughters hadn’t picked well at all; Mrs Nugent would have died a second death at the sight of the blotches and wrinkles in the photo. Mrs Fay hadn’t been the same since Mr Fay passed a year ago, though she at least had done well enough to pick a picture where he still had a healthy batch of hair. Mrs McGinty was still going (she’d live to a hundred; indignation would power her that far) but they weren’t talking to each other after the Pope John Paul III business. A shame, because the car outside Irene Hunter’s had been parked there all night and the Polish crowd renting Mr Kehoe’s house had received three packages in the space of an hour and all of that would have been enough to sustain the conversation for the morning.

‘Daft,’ Granny Doyle said, but the only occupants of her folding chairs were bits of plastic. Some new phone that John Paul had got her, with a camera on it, as if she wanted to be documenting her wrinkles. The new radio. And the Furby he’d got her, years ago, when she wanted company in the house but didn’t want some yappy dog or cat conning her out of cream. A daft thing it was, gibberish spouting out of its beak most days, but she had let John Paul keep it stocked on batteries, had bought them herself when he forgot. It was nice to have a voice in the house, even if all it said was ‘weeeeeee!’ or ‘me dance’ or ‘Furby sleep’. Nice to have some intelligent conversation, Granny Doyle would say, a joke between her and John Paul, something to be treasured, the thought that he was worried about her being lonely. And yet, if he were really worried about her being lonely, wouldn’t he stay over some nights like she asked?

‘Ah, well,’ Granny Doyle said, looking over at the blob of purple and yellow plastic.

You can teach it to talk, John Paul had said, back when he visited.

That thing looks like a demon, Mrs McGinty said, back when they were still talking.

Isn’t it lovely? Mrs Fay said, back when she still had some semblance of wits about her.

The Furby sat on the chair and slept. It spent most of the day sleeping, a sign of its intelligence. Granny Doyle stroked its fur but its eyes didn’t open; probably for the best – it could scare the wits out of you with its laugh. She might have forgotten to put the batteries in. She could ask John Paul to get her some, but he’d just get them delivered, along with all her messages, which was a shame when the truth of it was she didn’t mind about the milk – most of it ended up down the sink – it was her family she was starved of. Her fingers found her son’s memorial card: a fine man he looked, there. Funny how photographs couldn’t capture the size of a person. Mrs Nugent was diminished; no rectangle could capture the gossipy-eyed glory of the woman. Danny Doyle, on the other hand, looked bigger. A man who could build an empire, you might have thought. Well. She moved to the next one and there was Catherine Doyle, the dutiful daughter-in-law who’d left Granny Doyle three squalling terrors to rear instead of the one. And where were they now? Not in her box, thanks be to God, but the triplets had left her in an empty house, again. Not to mention Peg, a name like a paper-cut. Granny Doyle stiffened in her chair: no need to be remembering any of them. People made their beds; they lay in them. Except people never did make their beds properly any more, not the way her mother had taught her, not the way she had when she was a nurse, and this was a strange thing to be missing, to feel a pang for the house with all its perfectly made beds and nobody to lie in them.

‘Daft thoughts,’ Granny Doyle said, though the Furby stayed asleep.

She put the box of memorial cards under her folding chair; she couldn’t remember why she’d picked it up in the first place. A dangerous thing to be doing, the past waiting to ambush you with each turn of the card, and the threat of tears too, daft, when Granny Doyle had never been a crier. Still, now she was, tears surprising her at strange times; it struck her that there might be a medical solution, some sort of hip replacement for the heart, or at least the eyes. In the meantime, she had banned onions from the kitchen.

The Pope! That was why she had fished out the box. Two years dead, the poor man, and her knees couldn’t make it to the church to light a candle for him. She could have asked John Paul to drive her to the church, in a different life, where he hadn’t torn the heart out of her. Would Pope John Paul II be getting a card? She couldn’t remember what she had decided and she couldn’t ask Mrs McGinty. She decided instead to root out the old photos from Phoenix Park; she’d battle the stairs if she had to.

Or, she could ask John Paul to bring down a box of old photos for her; he couldn’t hire a company to do that. He was a good lad, despite everything that he’d done. He’d come if she called, if she could ever figure out which buttons on the phone to press. John Paul Doyle at least had turned out … well caught in her mind, impossible to add, because whatever successes John Paul Doyle had achieved, she couldn’t say that any of it had turned out as she’d planned, that giddy day when she’d practically conjured him into being. He might visit that weekend, yet, and the intensity of this desire – that John Paul sit beside her in the church for everybody to see – bowled her over, and she felt a hot liquid prick her eyes, and then somehow she was thinking about her other grandchildren, Damien and Rosie and Peg, taboo subjects, all of them.

The Furby opened its bright yellow eyes. Sometimes Granny Doyle wondered if Mrs McGinty was right: perhaps the creature was diabolical. Some dark nights, Granny Doyle wondered if the contraption had the voices of the disappeared trapped inside: perhaps it was on this earth to judge her. Daft thoughts – John Paul had only bought it as a joke. Still, she kept the batteries in it. Still, she was glad of its gabble, happy to have any sound in the house. Still, she chanced the name.

‘Peg?’

The sly old thing went back to sleep; if it had the voices of the disappeared inside, it wasn’t sharing them.

3

Clerys Clock (2007)

You’re a dirty pervert, Damien Doyle imagined Mark saying, once he arrived, feeling flushed at the thought of just how excited this sentence made him feel. He covered his blush with the Irish Times, sure that the O’Connell Street crowds were judging him, though they kept on walking. Damien stole another glance up at Clerys Clock, that grand structure that jutted out from the side of the department store and portioned out the city’s time. The minute hand was closer to a quarter past; Mark was late. Mark was always late but Damien couldn’t help his own punctuality; even the thought of turning up a few minutes late caused him distress. Besides, he didn’t mind the wait; this was still novel, having somebody to wait for. A lover. Only lovers met under Clerys Clock, so the story went. Damien conjured visions of smartly dressed men waiting outside the grand department store, their hearts lifting at the sight of some pretty girl in a smock, rushing from some country train, stopping her step to a stroll, as Clerys’ clockwork took over, sweethearts confidently tick-tocking towards each other for decades. Sweethearts who probably didn’t call each other dirty perverts, Damien imagined, blushing again at this subversive meeting place: it was just possible that Clerys Clock might crash to the ground in protest.

Damien flicked through the Irish Times for distraction. He was the only eejit waiting under the clock – everybody had mobiles now, sure – and he wanted to project the impression of an upright citizen and not the kind of man waiting for the touch of his boyfriend’s tongue in his ear. So, the news. More of the same: trouble in hospitals and protests against Shell in Mayo and the election in the air. The Greens had managed to nab a small piece about their education manifesto on page 4 but it was dwarfed by a story about the government’s new climate change strategy, irritating when the Greens could use better coverage if they were going to gain seats, which they were: they had to! Damien skimmed the rest of the paper, only stopping once he found a picture of Brangelina, which sent his brain on a worried spiral about whether ‘Marmien’ was a worse couple name than ‘Dark’ until—