Now that his father was near death, old teachers, soldiers, policemen called, downing sherries, laughing rhetorically, sitting beside the bed covered by a quilt that looked like twenty inflated balloons.
Sometimes Liam, Susan, Gerard sat with these people, exchanging remarks about the weather, the fringe of politics or the world economic state generally.
Mrs Fogarthy swept up a lot. She dusted and danced around with a cloth as though she’d been doing this all her life, fretting and fiddling with the house.
Cars went by. Geese went by, clanking terribly. Rain came and church bells sounded from a disparate steeple.
Liam’s father reminisced about 1916, recalling little incidents, fights with British soldiers, comrades dying in his arms, ladies fainting from hunger, escape to Mayo, later imprisonment in the Curragh during the Civil War. Liam said: ‘Do you ever connect it with now, men, women, children being blown up, the La Mon Hotel bombing, Bessbrook killings, Birmingham, Bloody Friday? Do you ever think that the legends and the brilliance built from your revolution created this, death justified for death’s sake, the stories in the classroom, the priests’ stories, this language, this celebration of blood?’
Although Liam’s father fought himself once, he belonged to those who deplored the present violence, seeing no connection. Liam saw the connection but disavowed both.
‘Hooligans! Murderers!’ Liam’s father said,
Liam said, ‘You were once a hooligan then.’
‘We fought to set a majority free.’
‘And created the spirit of violence in the new state. We were weaned on violence, me and others of my age. Not actual violence but always with a reference to violence. Violence was right, we were told in class. How can one blame those now who go out and plant bombs to kill old women when they were once told this was right?’
The dying man became angry. He didn’t look at Liam, looked beyond him to the street.
‘The men who fought in 1916 were heroes. Those who lay bombs in cafés are scum.’
Betrayed he was silent then, silent because his son accused him on his deathbed of unjustifiably resorting to bloodshed once. Now guns went off daily, in the far-off North. Where was the line between right and wrong? Who could say? An old man on his deathbed prayed that the guns he’d fired in 1916 had been for a right cause and in the words of his leader Patrick Pearse had not caused undue bloodshed.
On Christmas Eve the three young people and Mrs Fogarthy went to midnight mass in the local church. In fact it wasn’t to the main church but a smaller one, situated on the outskirts of the town, protruding like a headstone.
A bald middle-aged priest greeted a packed congregation. The cemetery lay nearby, but one was unaware of it. Christmas candles and Christmas trees glowed in bungalows.
‘O Come All Ye Faithful,’ a choir of matchstick boys sang. Their dress was scarlet, scarlet of joy.
Afterwards Mrs Fogarthy penetrated the crib with a whisper of prayer.
Christmas morning, clean, spare, Liam was aware of estrangement from his father, that his father was ruminating on his words about violence, wondering were he and his ilk, the teachers, police, clergy of Ireland responsible for what was happening now, in the first place by nurturing the cult of violence, contributing to the actuality of it as expressed by young men in Belfast and London.
Sitting up on Christmas morning Mr Fogarthy stared ahead. There was a curiosity about his forehead. Was he guilty? Were those in high places guilty like his son said?
Christmas dinner; Gerard joked, Susan smiled, Mrs Fogarthy had a sheaf of joy. Liam tidied and somehow sherry elicited a chuckle and a song from Mrs Fogarthy. ‘l Have Seen the Lark Soar High at Morn.’ The song rose to the bedroom where her husband who’d had dinner in bed heard it.
The street outside was bare.
Gerard fetched a guitar and brought all to completion, Christmas, birth, festive eating, by a rendition of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.’
Liam brought tea to his father. His father looked at him. ‘’Twas lovely music,’ his father said with a sudden brogue, ‘there was a Miss Hanratty who lived here before you were born who studied music at Heidelberg and could play Schumann in such a way as to bring tears to the cat’s eyes. Poor soul, she died young, a member of the ladies’ confraternity. Schumann was her favourite and Mendelssohn came after that. She played at our wedding, your mother’s and mine. She played Mozart and afterwards in the hotel sang a song, what was it, oh yes, “The Star of the County Down”.
‘Such a sweetness she had in her voice too.
‘But she was a bit of a loner and a bit lost here. Never too well really. She died maybe when you were a young lad.’
Reminiscences, names from the past. Catholic names, Protestant names, the names of boys in the rugby club, in the golf club. Protestant girls he’d danced with, nights at the October fair.
They came easily now, a simple jargon. Sometimes though the old man visibly stopped to consider his child’s rebuke.
Liam gauged the sadness, wished he hadn’t said anything, wanted to simplify it but knew it possessed all the simplicity it could have, a man on his deathbed in dreadful doubt.
Christmas night they visited the convent crib, Liam, Susan, Gerard, Mrs Fogtrthy, a place glowing with a red lamp.
Outside trees stood in silence, a mist thinking of enveloping them. The town lay in silence. At odd intervals one heard the gurgle of television but otherwise it could have been childhood, the fair green, space, emptiness, the rhythm, the dance of one’s childhood dreams.
Liam spoke to his father that evening.
‘Where I work we try to educate children differently from other places, teach them to develop and grow from within, try to direct them from the most natural point within them. There are many such schools now but ours, ours I think is special, run as a cooperative; we try to take children from all class backgrounds and begin at the beginning to redefine education.’
‘And do you honestly think they’ll be better educated children than you were, that the way we educated you was wrong?”
Liam paused.
‘Well, it’s an alternative.’
His father didn’t respond, thinking of nationalistic, comradely Irish schoolteachers long ago. Nothing could convince him that the discipline of the old style of education wasn’t better, grounding children in basic skills.
Silence somehow interrupted a conversation, darkness deep around them, the water of the floods shining, reflecting stars.
Liam said goodnight. Liam’s father grunted. Susan already lay in bed. Liam got in beside her. They heard a bird let out a scream in the sky like a baby and they went asleep.
Gerard woke them in the morning, strumming a guitar.
St Stephen’s Day, mummers stalked the street, children with blackened faces and a regalia of rags collecting for the wren. Music of a tin whistle came from a pub, the town coming to life. The river shone with sun.
Susan divined a child dressed like old King Cole, a crown on her head and her face blackened. Gerard was intrigued. They walked the town. Mrs Fogarthy had lunch ready. But Liam was worried, deeply worried. His father lay above, immersed in the past.
Liam had his past, too, always anxious in adolescence, running away to Dublin, eventually running away to England. The first times home had been odd; he noticed the solitariness of his parents. They’d needed him like they needed an ill-tended dog.
Susan and he had married in the local church. There’d been a contagion of aunts and uncles at the wedding. Mrs Fogarthy