The God Squad (10 page)

The kitchen door opened and Mother Paul signalled to me. I went towards her and we walked to a room in the convent where my uncle was waiting.

‘And you thought he was never going to come?’ she said, smiling at my uncle. Three years had passed since I had last seen him.

‘Are you not going to greet your uncle?’ she asked.

‘Hello,’ I said.

He stretched out his hand and took mine. His grip was loose and nervous. His face was tanned, weathered, and deeply wrinkled while his hands looked rough though his skin was soft. Every few seconds, he rubbed his almost bald head with his right hand, and as he did, I noticed it was pitted with tiny black marks.

‘We’ll go and have something to eat, Mr Furlong,’ Mother Paul said. ‘You must be hungry. I know one little man who certainly is.’ She walked between us along polished corridors to the dining room, opened its oak door and invited my uncle to go in. He stood aside and insisted that she go in first. She gave both of us a chair at the circular table covered in a white cloth. I noticed the delicate china cups and saucers that Mr O’Rourke had referred to. There were silver knives and forks and spoons. A small round straw basket in the centre of the table contained fruit which was stacked in a pyramid and decorated at the edges with green and black grapes.

‘I’m just going to leave you for a second,’ Mother Paul said. ‘I want to get some of the other nuns to join us.’ During the short time I was alone with my uncle neither of us spoke. Mother Paul returned with two other nuns which she introduced to him but not to me. They sat down and made polite conversation with my uncle who seemed distinctly ill at ease, never sure of what to say. Before eating the nuns said grace. I joined in but my uncle just kept his
head bowed. We had soup first, the adults taking theirs from a bowl while I was given a half-filled cup. For dinner there was bacon and cabbage with potatoes.

‘Eat up, Pat,’ Mother Paul kept saying to me, and though I was hungry it was hard to eat. The system I had become used to was gone and I was tense and nervous without it. When the nuns spoke about the weather my uncle answered them, otherwise he said very little but listened intently as Mother Paul spoke of how I was getting on in school.

‘He is a very bright child and I can say that he is a credit to us.’ She did not say anything else about me and I was relieved. After dinner she asked my uncle if he would like to wash his hands while she took me to the toilet. The toilet was spotless and the air laden with the scent of disinfectant. The walls were tiled up to the ceiling and there was white tissue hanging from a chrome toilet roll holder. I undid my trousers and sat up on the toilet bowl. Mother Paul stood in front of me urging me to make sure I ‘went’.

‘You have a long journey ahead and you can’t expect to be stopping every few miles just because you want to go to the toilet.’ I sat there, my hands firmly gripping the seat. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth as I willed my bowels to empty. After much forcing I succeeded and then stood up to refasten my trousers.

‘Wipe yourself,’ Mother Paul snapped before she realized that I had no idea of what she meant. She took a small piece of tissue from the roll and folded it in two. ‘Every time you go to the toilet, you must wipe your backside. Don’t forget that.’ In my time in St Michael’s I never used toilet paper but just pulled my trousers up when finished.

We returned to the dining room and Mother Paul’s face beamed.

‘I think he’s ready for the journey now, Mr Furlong,’ she said, looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I’m sure
you’ll want to be getting away.’ My uncle thanked her and the other nuns for the dinner, before she accompanied us to a black Morris Minor waiting outside the convent. There was a man sitting in the driver’s seat.

‘You should have come in and had something to eat,’ Mother Paul said.

‘Not at all, Mother,’ he said. I had never heard an adult use the word ‘mother’ to address a nun before.

‘Are you sure you won’t come in and have just a cup of tea?’

‘No, Mother, no. Thanks very much all the same, but I won’t.’ I got into the back of the car and my uncle sat in the front passenger seat. The engine started and slowly the car moved away. Mother Paul waved and as I looked back at her, I saw her lips mime ‘be good’.

We gradually gathered speed along the road I had so often walked. I sat silently, looking through the windows at people out for their Sunday walks. The sun was getting lower in the sky. Both the driver and my uncle pulled their peaked caps down so as to shade their eyes. The towns and villages we drove through were strangely quiet. Mothers watched from their front doors, shouting occasionally at any of the children who were in danger of getting their Sunday clothes soiled.

‘How are ye doing?’ my uncle asked.

‘Fine,’ I answered. ‘What time will we get there?’

‘It’s about three hours journey,’ he said, and the driver nodded to confirm that. My uncle spoke to him.

‘We might get to stop somewhere along the way.’

‘Aye,’ the driver said. Then they both got into conversation about farming and horses, cows and milking, and then hurling and football.

During that journey my uncle must have remembered the last time we had travelled along the same road. He could
never have forgotten my pitiful cries and my attempts to break free of the person holding on to me in the back seat. He must have remembered my kicking at the interior panels of the car, hysterical at being taken away from where I had spent the early part of my life. Looking back now, my presence must have brought back many frightening and nightmarish things to him. How he had discovered my father hanging and his own incapacity to console me as I roamed around the farm screaming, with my face marked from rubbing and my clothes dirty and wet. The young girl who happened to be passing the gate of the farmyard whom he had pleaded with to go and get help without telling what he needed it for. The guards, the doctor and the priest. The coroner’s court where he had to relive the sordid business over again before the coroner pronounced that Patrick Doyle had died from asphyxiation due to hanging.

The car stopped and my uncle suggested we get out for something to drink and ‘maybe a bit to eat’. We went into a public house, filled with men having their Sunday evening drink. A dense pall of cigarette smoke hung in the air. The chattering of the various groups fused into one cacophonous sound. Both men ordered their drinks at the bar while I took a seat at a small wooden table. My uncle brought me down a large bottle of lemonade and a bag of potato crisps before joining his friend at the bar.

After a few drinks the two men went to the toilet and I followed them. The stench of stale urine was choking, ammonia catching my breath. I was unsure of how to use the toilets so I waited for my uncle to start. As he undid his buttons, so did I. I copied his movements as he shuffled nearer the urinal and thought it unusual that he made no effort to prevent me from seeing his penis. I watched him hold it and withdraw the foreskin. At first I had difficulty in passing any water at all and it was only when I heard the
sound next to me that I relaxed enough to be able to go to the toilet. When he was finished he shook his penis vigorously before replacing it in his trousers and buttoning his flies.

I watched as the two men poured black porter from brown bottles into sparkling clean glasses. A dirty-looking yellowish froth formed on top and when this reached the top of the glass they stopped pouring. They sat looking at their drinks like two priests about to offer wine up to God during Mass. My uncle nodded to me. I drank the lemonade slowly, its tingling sensation a new experience for me. He walked down from the counter and handed me a large bar of chocolate. I took it and thanked him. The two men lifted their glasses slowly, their mouths hugging the rims as they poured the porter down. They had four drinks and I finished the large bottle of Taylor Keith before we all went to the toilet and resumed our journey. By the time we reached Wexford town it was getting dark. Lights shone from houses where people had not yet drawn the curtains. The narrowness of the streets amazed me and I told my uncle so. ‘What time is it when two cars meet on the main street in Wexford?’ he asked, as the driver and himself laughed.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered.

‘Tin to tin.’

The car turned into a sleepy cul-de-sac and came to a halt outside a whitewashed, pebble-dashed, semi-detached house. There were brass fittings on the red hall door with the number six above the letter box. White lace curtains hung partially open on the windows. My uncle got out of the car, opened the little iron gate and walked up the narrow concrete path to the front door. I watched as he waited for an answer to his knock. An old woman opened the door and shook his hand. They chatted for a while
before he came back to the car and let me out. I didn’t like the look of the woman, there was something about the entire situation that made me desperately want to be back in St Michael’s.

In the neat parlour, she offered my uncle a cup of tea which she poured from a decorative silver teapot. She gave me a glass of milk and a plain biscuit. They chatted to one another while I looked around the room at the various statues that sat in every available space. My aunt looked at me and remarked to my uncle that I didn’t have much to say. ‘He’s a quiet lad anyway and it’ll take him a few days to settle in,’ he replied.

My aunt had long grey hair which she kept tied up in a neat bun at the back of her head. I watched her fingers tremble as she lifted the cup to her thin lips. The purple veins in her hands showed through her wrinkled flesh. They were prominent and lumpy looking. Her knuckles where white and swollen. She had difficulty in pouring tea and in lifting her own cup to drink. On the finger of her left hand a shining gold wedding ring had embedded itself into her aging skin. Instead of shoes, she had pink slippers on her feet. She moved slowly as she gathered the cups and saucers to bring them to the kitchen. My uncle rose from his chair and told her that he would call some day and take me to the shops. Then he wished me good luck and left. She walked to the hall door with him and waved as he drove away from the front of the house.

‘Now,’ she said as she came back into the room, ‘I think it is time for bed, but before that we will say our night prayers. I’m sure you say yours every night in the School.’

‘I do,’ I answered. She opened the drawer of one of the cabinets and took out a black Rosary beads. She held the crucifix in her hand, looked at it and blessed herself, pressing it to her forehead, her breast and each of her
shoulders. She moved a chair from under the table and used it for support as she knelt on the carpeted floor. Once I was kneeling she began the Rosary.

‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Thou, O Lord, will open my lips.’ She looked crossly at me when I didn’t answer.

‘Do you know the Rosary at all?’ she snapped.

‘I know the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory be to the Father,’ I replied.

‘And my tongue shall announce His praise,’ she answered herself before starting into the Five Joyful Mysteries – the Resurrection, the Ascension and so on. Ten Hail Marys for each, sandwiched between an Our Father and a Glory be to the Father. She said the first half of each prayer and I the second. At first I was nervous and my voice trembled but I became more confident as I went along.

After the Rosary she led me up the softly-carpeted stairs to the bedroom. It was spotlessly clean and sparsely furnished with just a single bed and a two-drawer wooden dresser. There was a silver-framed picture of the Blessed Virgin on the wall.

‘You better go to the bathroom,’ she said, pushing open one of the doors that led off the small landing.

‘Wash yourself and be sure to go to the toilet.’ When I came out she was waiting in my room. There was a man’s shirt on my bed which she told me to wear to bed. I began to undress by taking off my jumper and shirt. I was just going to drop my trousers when she said: ‘Wait! Put on this first.’ She held the shirt over my head and told me I must be modest always. I got into bed, immediately noticing the softness of the mattress and the freshness of the sheets and pillow cover. My aunt left the door open, and the landing light on. In the next room I heard her moving about, opening and shutting presses and drawers. When I heard
her door open I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. She stood looking into my room before turning to go to the bathroom, leaving the door open after her. I could see her long grey hair brushed straight down almost to her waist. Her back was stooped and her pale skin contrasted sharply with the dark colour of her dressing gown. When she emerged from the bathroom she was carrying a glass of water with her false teeth in it. Her appearance frightened me, particularly her sunken cheeks, and I prayed that I could go back to the other boys. I slept fitfully that night, aware that the person I was staying with fitted my idea of a banshee. As I tried to sleep I had the very real feeling that I had been in the house before and that this woman had been a part of my earlier life.

Outside the rain beat against the window. I looked towards the curtains and watched them swell slightly in the breeze that pierced the gaps in the window. My aunt coughed, a feeble rattling cough. I turned around in my bed, then turned the pillow. Its coolness relaxed me and I drifted into sleep.

The morning sun shone into the room through a gap in the curtains. Birds whistled and chirped. I wanted to get up but I felt it would be the wrong thing to do. I was used to being told when to get up so I decided to stay in bed until I was called. Eventually she called my name from the bottom of the stairs. As I dressed, strange smells and sounds attracted my attention. Sizzling and a kind of spitting. It was only when I got down to the kitchen that I discovered what the smells were. My aunt’s hair was neatly pinned in a bun again as she cooked breakfast. I stood beside her for a moment and watched.