Future Popes of Ireland

‘You’re not going to use that, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Nugent said.

Granny Doyle snorted to show her displeasure with the ornamental display of a potentially useful object. Mrs Nugent ignored the pair of them.

‘I’m going to get it autographed!’

‘By your Darren?’ Mrs McGinty asked slyly.

‘By her winking boyfriend,’ Granny Doyle said.

The titters that followed were too much for Mrs McGinty, who rounded on the slumbering Peg and Stop That!

‘We’ll never get anywhere if this lot don’t get a move on,’ she said.

Peg groaned. She’d hardly had a wink of sleep in the small folding bed she’d shared with Stop That!, who spent her dreams battling supernatural foes, limbs jagging towards Peg as she vanquished monsters. They’d arrived in Mayo late last night, the lot of them bundling into Granny Doyle’s childhood home in Clougheally, at the edge of the Atlantic. It wasn’t at all on the way to the Pope’s Mass in Galway but it was a place to rest their heads and a chance to pick up further flock for their mad pilgrimage. A clatter of second cousins were coming with them, as well as Nanny Nelligan, Granny Doyle’s mother. Peg couldn’t help staring at her great-grandmother, whose many wrinkles announced that she’d been born in the nineteenth century and whose constant sour expression suggested that she might have been happier staying there. It was a shock to Peg that anybody could be older than Granny Doyle, yet here was this ancient creature, clad in dark shawls and muttering in Irish, roaming around her creaky house at the edge of the sea.

The house was haunted, Peg was sure of it, another reason she had hardly slept. They could definitely hear ghosts, Stop That! had agreed, in a rare moment of interest in something Peg said. ‘That’s just the wind,’ Granny Doyle scolded, but Peg was sure she was lying; Peg caught the fear in Granny Doyle’s eyes too. Even if it was the wind, it wasn’t an earthly gust; Peg’s window at home never rattled like this. It was the house, with its black-and-white photographs of people who had died, and its doors, which creaked with the ache of being opened, and its air, thick with secrets and sadness. Besides, Clougheally would be glad of the ghost, there wasn’t much to the village otherwise: a few other houses, with scraps of farm; one newsagent’s; two pubs.

‘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)