He knows what we call him and he says,Yes, Iam Hoppy and Iall hop on you. He carries a long stick, a pointer, and if you donat pay attention or give a stupid answer he gives you three slaps on each hand or whacks you across the backs of your legs. He makes you learn everything by heart, everything, and that makes him the hardest master in the school.
He loves America and makes us know all the American states in alphabetical order.He makes charts of Irish grammar, Irish history and algebra at home, hangs them on an easel and we have to chant our way through the cases, conjugations and declensions of Irish, famous names and battles, proportions, ratios, equations.We have to know all the important dates in Irish history. He tells us what is important and why.
No master ever told us why before. If you asked why youad be hit on the head. Hoppy doesnat call us idiots and if you ask a question he doesnat go into a rage. Heas the only master who stops and says, Do ye understand what Iam talking about? Do ye want to ask a question?
Itas a shock to everyone when he says, the Battle of Kinsale in sixteen nought one was the saddest moment in Irish history, a close battle with cruelty and atrocities on both sides.
Cruelty on both sides? The Irish side? How could that be? All the other masters told us the Irish always fought n.o.bly, they always fought the fair fight. He recites and makes us remember, They went forth to battle, but they always fell, Their eyes were fixed above the sullen shields.
n.o.bly they fought and bravely, but not well, And sank heart-wounded by a subtle spell.
If they lost it was because of traitors and informers. But I want to know about these Irish atrocities.
Sir, did the Irish commit atrocities at the Battle of Kinsale?
207.
They did, indeed. It is recorded that they killed prisoners but they were no better nor worse than the English.
Mr. OaHalloran canat lie. Heas the headmaster. All these years we were told the Irish were always n.o.ble and they made brave speeches before the English hanged them.Now Hoppy OaHalloran is saying the Irish did bad things. Next thing heall be saying the English did good things. He says,You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you canat make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head.You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
He calls us one by one to the front of the room and looks at our shoes. He wants to know why theyare broken or why we have no shoes at all. He tells us this is a disgrace and heas going to have a raffle to raise money so that we can have strong warm boots for the winter. He gives us books of tickets and we swarm all over Limerick for Leamyas School boot fund, first prize five pounds, five prizes of a pound each. Eleven boys with no boots get new boots. Malachy and I donat get any because we have shoes on our feet even if the soles are worn away and we wonder why we ran all over Limerick selling tickets so that other boys could get boots. Fintan Slattery says we gain plenary Indulgences for works of charity and Paddy Clohessy says, Fintan,would you ever go and have a good s.h.i.t for yourself.
I know when Dad does the bad thing. I know when he drinks the dole money and Mam is desperate and has to beg at the St.Vincent de Paul Society and ask for credit at Kathleen OaConnellas shop but I donat want to back away from him and run to Mam. How can I do that when Iam up with him early every morning with the whole world asleep? He lights the fire and makes the tea and sings to himself or reads the paper to me in a whisper that wonat wake up the rest of the family. Mikey Molloy stole Cuchulain, the Angel on the Seventh Step is gone someplace else, but my father in the morning is still mine. He gets the Irish Press early and tells me about the world, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco. He 208.
says this war is none of our business because the English are up to their tricks again. He tells me about the great Roosevelt in Washington and the great De Valera in Dublin. In the morning we have the world to ourselves and he never tells me I should die for Ireland. He tells me about the old days in Ireland when the English wouldnat let the Catholics have schools because they wanted to keep the people ignorant, that the Catholic children met in hedge schools in the depths of the country and learned English, Irish, Latin and Greek. The people loved learning.They loved stories and poetry even if none of this was any good for getting a job. Men,women and children would gather in ditches to hear those great masters and everyone wondered at how much a man could carry in his head.The masters risked their lives going from ditch to ditch and hedge to hedge because if the English caught them teaching they might be transported to foreign parts or worse. He tells me school is easy now, you donat have to sit in a ditch learning your sums or the glorious history of Ireland. I should be good in school and some day Iall go back to America and get an inside job where Iall be sitting at a desk with two fountain pens in my pocket, one red and one blue, making decisions. Iall be in out of the rain and Iall have a suit and shoes and a warm place to live and what more could a man want? He says you can do anything in America, itas the land of opportunity.You can be a fisherman in Maine or a farmer in California.America is not like Limerick, a gray place with a river that kills.
When you have your father to yourself by the fire in the morning you donat need Cuchulain or the Angel on the Seventh Step or anything.
At night he helps us with our exercises.Mam says they call it homework in America but here itas exercises, the sums, the English, the Irish, the history. He canat help us with Irish because heas from the North and lacking in the native tongue.Malachy offers to teach him all the Irish words he knows but Dad says itas too late, you canat teach an old dog a new bark. Before bed we sit around the fire and if we say, Dad, tell us a story, he makes up one about someone in the lane and the story will take us all over the world, up in the air, under the sea and back to the lane. Everyone in the story is a different color and everything is upside down and backward. Motor cars and planes go under water and submarines fly through the air. Sharks sit in trees and giant salmon sport with kangaroos on the moon.Polar bears wrestle with elephants in Australia and penguins teach Zulus how to play bagpipes.After the story he 209.
takes us upstairs and kneels with us while we say our prayers.We say the Our Father, three Hail Marys,G.o.d bless the Pope.G.o.d bless Mam,G.o.d bless our dead sister and brothers, G.o.d bless Ireland, G.o.d bless De Valera, and G.o.d bless anyone who gives Dad a job. He says,Go to sleep, boys, because holy G.o.d is watching you and He always knows if youare not good.
I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.
I feel sad over the bad thing but I canat back away from him because the one in the morning is my real father and if I were in America I could say, I love you, Dad, the way they do in the films, but you canat say that in Limerick for fear you might be laughed at.Youare allowed to say you love G.o.d and babies and horses that win but anything else is a softness in the head.
Day and night weare tormented in that kitchen with people emptying their buckets. Mam says itas not the River Shannon that will kill us but the stink from that lavatory outside our door. Itas bad enough in the winter when everything flows over and seeps under our door but worse in the warm weather when there are flies and bluebottles and rats.
There is a stable next to the lavatory where they keep the big horse from Gabbettas coal yard. His name is Finn the Horse and we all love him but the stable man from the coal yard doesnat take proper care of the stable and the stink travels to our house.The stink from the lavatory and the stable attracts rats and we have to chase them with our new dog, Lucky.He loves to corner the rats and then we smash them to bits with rocks or sticks or stab them with the hay fork in the stable.The horse himself is frightened by the rats and we have to be careful when he rears up.He knows weare not rats because we bring him apples when we rob an orchard out the country.
Sometimes the rats escape and run into our house and into the coal hole under the stairs where itas pitch dark and you canat see them. Even when we bring in a candle we canat find them because they dig holes everywhere and we donat know where to look. If we have a fire we can boil water and pour it slowly in from the kettle spot and that will drive them out of the hole between our legs and out the door again unless 210.
Lucky is there to catch them in his teeth and shake the life out of them.
We expect him to eat the rats but heall leave them in the lane with their guts hanging out and run to my father for a piece of bread dipped in tea. People in the lane say thatas a peculiar way for a dog to behave but then what would you expect from a dog of the McCourts.
The minute thereas a sign of a rat or a mention of one Mam is out the door and up the lane. Shead rather walk the streets of Limerick forever than stay one minute in a house that has a rat in it and she can never rest because she knows that with the stable and the lavatory thereas always a rat nearby with his family waiting for their dinner.
We fight the rats and we fight the stink from that lavatory.Wead like to keep our door open in the warm weather but you canat when people are trotting down the lane to empty their br.i.m.m.i.n.g buckets. Some families are worse than others and Dad hates all of them even though Mam tells him itas not their fault if the builders a hundred years ago put up houses with no lavatories but this one outside our door. Dad says the people should empty their buckets in the middle of the night when we are asleep so that we wonat be disturbed by the stink.
The flies are nearly as bad as the rats. On warm days they swarm to the stable and when a bucket is emptied they swarm to the lavatory. If Mam cooks anything they swarm into the kitchen and Dad says itas disgusting to think the fly sitting there on the sugar bowl was on the toilet bowl, or whatas left of it, a minute ago. If you have an open sore they find it and torment you. By day you have the flies, by night you have the fleas. Mam says thereas one good thing about fleas, theyare clean, but flies are filthy, you never know where they came from and they carry diseases galore.
We can chase the rats and kill them.We can slap at the flies and the fleas and kill them but thereas nothing we can do about the neighbors and their buckets. If weare out in the lane playing and we see someone with a bucket we call to our own house,Bucket coming, close the door, close the door, and whoever is inside runs to the door. In warm weather we run to close the door all day because we know which families have the worst buckets.There are families whose fathers have jobs and if they get into the habit of cooking with curry we know their buckets will stink to the heavens and make us sick. Now with the war on and men sending money from England more and more families are cooking with curry and our house is filled with the stink day and night.We know the families with the curry, we know the ones with the cabbage. Mam is 211.
sick all the time, Dad takes longer and longer walks into the country, and we play outside as much as we can and far from the lavatory. Dad doesnat complain about the River Shannon anymore. He knows now the lavatory is worse and he takes me with him to the Town Hall to complain.The man there says,Mister, all I can tell you is you can move.
Dad says we canat afford to move and the man says thereas nothing he can do. Dad says,This is not India.This is a Christian country.The lane needs more lavatories.The man says, Do you expect Limerick to start building lavatories in houses that are falling down anyway, that will be demolished after the war? Dad says that lavatory could kill us all.The man says we live in dangerous times.
Mam says itas hard enough keeping a fire going to cook the Christmas dinner but if Iam going to Christmas dinner at the hospital Iall have to wash myself from top to bottom. She wouldnat give it to Sister Rita to say I was neglected or ripe for another disease. She boils a pot of water early in the morning before Ma.s.s and nearly scalds the scalp off me. She scours my ears and scrubs my skin so hard it tingles. She can afford tuppence for the bus out to the hospital but Iall have to walk back and that will be good for me because Iall be stuffed with food and now she has to get the fire going again for the pigas head and cabbage and floury white potatoes which she got once again through the kindness of the St.Vincent de Paul Society and sheas determined this will be the last time we celebrate the birth of Our Lord with pigas head. Next year weall have a goose or a nice ham and why wouldnat we, isnat Limerick famous the world over for the ham?
Sister Rita says,Now would you look at this, our little soldier looking so healthy. No meat on the bones but still.Now tell me, did you go to Ma.s.s this morning?
I did, Sister.
And did you receive?
I did, Sister.
She takes me into an empty ward and tells me sit there on that chair it wonat be long now till I get my dinner. She leaves and I wonder if Iall be eating with nuns and nurses or will I be in a ward with children having their Christmas dinner. In awhile my dinner is brought in by the girl in the blue dress who brought me the books. She places the tray on the side of a bed and I pull up a chair. She frowns at me and 212.
screws up her face.You, she says, thatas your dinner ana Iam not bringina you any books.
The dinner is delicious, turkey,mashed potatoes, peas, jelly and custard, and a pot of tea. The jelly and custard dish looks delicious and I canat resist it so Iall have it first thereas no one there to notice but when Iam eating it the girl in the blue dress comes in with bread and says, What are you doina?
Nothing.
Yes, you are. Youare atina the sweet before the dinner, and she runs out calling, Sister Rita, Sister Rita, come in quick, and the nun rushes in, Francis, are you all right?
I am, Sister.
Heas not all right, Sister. He do be atina his jelly an custard before his dinner.Thatas a sin, Sister.
Ah, now, dear, you run along and Iall talk to Francis about that.
Do, Sister, talk to him or all the childer in the hospital will be atina their sweet before their dinner ana then where will we be?
Indeed, indeed, where will we be? Run along now.
The girl leaves and Sister Rita smiles at me. G.o.d love her, she doesnat miss a thing even in her confusion.We have to be patient with her, Francis, the way sheas touched.
She leaves and itas quiet in that empty ward and when Iam finished I donat know what to do because youare not supposed to do anything till they tell you. Hospitals and schools always tell you what to do. I wait a long time till the girl in the blue dress comes in for the tray.Are you finished? she says.
I am.
Well, thatas all youare gettina ana now you can go home.
Surely girls who are not right in the head canat tell you go home and I wonder if I should wait for Sister Rita.A nurse in the hallway tells me Sister Rita is having her dinner and is not to be bothered.
Itas a long walk from Union Cross to Barrack Hill and when I get home my family are up in Italy and well into their pigas head and cabbage and floury white potatoes. I tell them about my Christmas dinner.
Mam wants to know if I had it with the nurses and nuns and she gets a bit angry when I tell her I ate alone in a ward and thatas no way to treat a child. She tells me sit down and have some pigas head and I force it into my mouth and Iam so stuffed I have to lie on the bed with my belly sticking out a mile.
213.
Itas early in the morning and thereas a motor car outside our door, the first one weave ever seen in the lane.There are men in suits looking in the door of the stable of Finn the Horse and there must be something wrong because you never see men with suits in the lane.
Itas Finn the Horse. Heas lying on the floor of the stable looking up the lane and thereas white stuff like milk around his mouth.The stable man who takes care of Finn the Horse says he found him like that this morning and itas strange because heas always up and ready for his feed.
The men are shaking their heads.My brother Michael says to one of the men, Mister, whatas up with Finn?
Sick horse, son. Go home.
The stable man who takes care of Finn has the whiskey smell on him. He says to Michael,That horse is a goner.We have to shoot him.
Michael pulls at my hand. Frank, theyare not to shoot him. Tell them.Youare big.
The stable man says, Go home, boy. Go home.
Michael attacks him, kicks him, scrawbs the back of his hand, and the man sends Michael flying. Hould that brother of yours, he tells me, hould him.
One of the other men takes something yellow and brown from a bag, goes to Finn, puts it to his head and thereas a sharp crack. Finn shivers.
Michael screams at the man and attacks him too but the man says, The horse was sick, son. Heas better off.
The men in suits drive away and the stable man says he has to wait for the lorry to take Finn away, he canat leave him alone or the rats will be at him. He wants to know if wead keep an eye on the horse with our dog Lucky while he goes to the pub, heas blue mouldy for a pint.
No rat has a chance to get near Finn the Horse the way Michael is there with a stick small as he is.The man comes back smelling of porter and then thereas the big lorry to take the horse away, a big lorry with three men and two great planks that slope from the back of the lorry to Finnas head.The three men and the stable man tie ropes around Finn and pull him up the planks and the people in the lane yell at the men because of the nails and broken wood in the planks that catch at Finn and tear out bits of his hide and streak the planks with bright pink horse blood.
Ye are destroyina that horse.
214.
Canat ye have respect for the dead?
Go easy with that poor horse.
The stable man says, For the love oa Jaysus what are ye squawkina about? aTis only a dead horse, and Michael runs at him again with his head down and his small fists flying till the stable man gives him a shove that sends him on his back and Mam goes at the stable man in such a rage he runs up the planks and over Finnas body to escape. He comes back drunk in the evening to sleep it off and after he leaves thereas a smoldering in the hay and the stable burns down the rats running up the lane with every boy and dog chasing them till they escape into the streets of respectable people.
IX.
Mam says, Alphie is enough. Iam worn out.Thatas the end of it. No more children.
Dad says, The good Catholic woman must perform her wifely duties and submit to her husband or face eternal d.a.m.nation.
Mam says, As long as there are no more children eternal d.a.m.nation sounds attractive enough to me.
What is Dad to do? Thereas a war on. English agents are recruiting Irishmen to work in their munitions factories, the pay is good, there are no jobs in Ireland, and if the wife turns her back to you thereas no shortage of women in England where the able men are off fighting Hitler and Mussolini and you can do anything you like as long as you remember youare Irish and lower cla.s.s and donat try to rise above your station.
Families up and down the lane are getting telegram money orders from their fathers in England.They rush to the post office to cash the money orders so they can shop and show the world their good fortune on Sat.u.r.day night and Sunday morning.The boys get their hair cut on Sat.u.r.days, the women curl their hair with iron tongs hot from the fire.
Theyare very grand now the way they pay sixpence or even a shilling for seats at the Savoy Cinema where youall meet a better cla.s.s of people than the lower cla.s.ses who fill the tuppenny seats in the G.o.ds at the Lyric Cinema and are never done shouting at the screen,the kind of people if you donat mind who are liable to cheer on the Africans when they 216.
throw spears at Tarzan or the Indians when theyare scalping the United States Cavalry.The new rich people go home after Ma.s.s on Sundays all airs and stuff themselves with meat and potatoes, sweets and cakes galore, and they think nothing of drinking their tea from delicate little cups which stand in saucers to catch the tea that overflows and when they lift the cups they stick out their little fingers to show how refined they are. Some stop going to fish and chip shops altogether because you see nothing in those places but drunken soldiers and night girls and men that drank their dole and their wives screeching at them to come home.The brave new rich will be seen at the Savoy Restaurant or the Stella drinking tea, eating little buns, patting their lips with serviettes if you donat mind,coming home on the bus and complaining the service is not what it used to be.They have electricity now so they can see things they never saw before and when darkness falls they turn on the new wireless to hear how the war is going.They thank G.o.d for Hitler because if he hadnat marched all over Europe the men of Ireland would still be at home scratching their a.r.s.es on the queue at the Labour Exchange.
Some families sing, Yip aye aidy aye ay aye oh Yip aye aidy aye ay, We donat care about England or France, All we want is the German advance.
If thereas a chill in the air theyall turn on the electric fire for the comfort thatas in it and sit in their kitchens listening to the news declaring how sorry they are for the English women and children dying under the German bombs but look what England did to us for eight hundred years.
The families with fathers in England are able to lord it over the families that donat. At dinnertime and teatime the new rich mothers stand at their doors and call to their children, Mikey, Kathleen, Paddy, come in for yeer dinner. Come in for the lovely leg oa lamb and the gorgeous green peas and the floury white potatoes.
Sean, Josie, Peggy, come in for yeer tea, come in at wanst for the fresh bread and b.u.t.ter and the gorgeous blue duck egg what no one else in the lane have.
Brendan,Annie, Patsy, come in for the fried black puddina, the sizzlina sausages and the lovely trifle soaked in the best of Spanish sherry.
217.
At times like this Mam tells us to stay inside.We have nothing but bread and tea and she doesnat want the tormenting neighbors to see us with our tongues hanging out, suffering over the lovely smells floating up and down the lane. She says atis easy to see theyare not used to having anything the way they brag about everything. aTis a real low-cla.s.s mind that will call out the door and tell the world what theyare having for the supper. She says atis their way of getting a rise out of us because Dad is a foreigner from the North and he wonat have anything to do with any of them. Dad says all that food comes from English money and no luck will come to those who took it but what could you expect from Limerick anyway, people who profit from Hitleras war, people who will work and fight for the English. He says heall never go over there and help England win a war. Mam says, No, youall stay here where thereas no work and hardly a lump of coal to boil water for the tea. No, youall stay here and drink the dole when the humor is on you.Youall watch your sons going around with broken shoes and their a.r.s.es hanging out of their trousers. Every house in the lane has electricity and weare lucky if we have a candle. G.o.d above, if I had the fare Iad be off to England myself for Iam sure they need women in the factories.
Dad says a factory is no place for a woman.
Mam says, Sitting on your a.r.s.e by the fire is no place for a man.
I say to him,Why canat you go to England, Dad, so we can have electricity and a wireless and Mam can stand at the door and tell the world what weare having at dinnertime?
He says, Donat you want to have your father here at home with you?
I do but you can come back at the end of the war and we can all go to America.
He sighs, Och, aye, och, aye. All right heall go to England after Christmas because America is in the war now and the cause must be just. Head never go if the Americans hadnat gone in. He tells me Iall have to be the man of the house, and he signs up with an agent to work in a factory in Coventry which, everyone says, is the most bombed city in England.The agent says,Thereas plenty of work for willing men.You can work overtime till you drop and if you save it up, mate, youall be Rockefeller at the end of the war.
Weare up early to see Dad off at the railway station. Kathleen OaConnell at the shop knows Dad is off to England and money will be 218.
flowing back so sheas happy to let Mam have credit for tea, milk, sugar, bread, b.u.t.ter and an egg.
An egg.
Mam says,This egg is for your father.He needs the nourishment for the long journey before him.
Itas a hard-boiled egg and Dad peels off the sh.e.l.l. He slices the egg five ways and gives each of us a bit to put on our bread.Mam says,Donat be such a fool. Dad says,What would a man be doing with a whole egg to himself? Mam has tears on her eyelashes. She pulls her chair over to the fireplace.We all eat our bread and egg and watch her cry till she says, What are ye gawkina at? and turns away to look into the ashes. Her bread and egg are still on the table and I wonder if she has any plans for them. They look delicious and Iam still hungry but Dad gets up and brings them to her with the tea. She shakes her head but he presses them on her and she eats and drinks, snuffling and crying. He sits opposite her a while, silent, till she looks up at the clock and says, aTis time to go.He puts on his cap and picks up his bag. Mam wraps Alphie in an old blanket and we set off through the streets of Limerick.
There are other families in the streets.The going-away fathers walk ahead, the mothers carry babies or push prams. A mother with a pram will say to other mothers, G.o.d above, missus, you must be f.a.gged out carrying that child. Sure, why donat you stick him into the pram here and rest your poor arms.