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Message Received From: Captain Conn Lavery.
Dear Ann and Little Jimmy,
By the time you receive this transmission I will be dead. As I write this I am slowly suffocating. For the last hour I have been using my spacesuits reserve tank of oxygen, but even that now has begun to fail. The mother ship is ablaze, I can see it beyond, through my small porthole window, and it looks like a devil's eye, hot and fiery. All my comrades are aboard her, good strong men, with only one love in their lives: Ireland. It is strange to think that I will never see either of you again, that I will never hold you close and feel the full warmth of your bodies.
I hope you both remember me fondly, as a true Irish spaceman. We fought hard, my son, harder than you can ever know. We repelled the alien hordes three times before their greater militarystrength began to tell. We all die, son, we all die, and we must be grateful for the time we have had together. It is strange to think that space will be my grave; the huge black belly of space will be a mausoleum for my bones. Look after your mammy, my son. Let no one come between her and my memory. I love you both dearly, more than you can know. I have decided to leave my capsule, the oxygen has gone, and the little I have left in my spacesuit I'm hoping will sustain me on my walk to meet the face of God. I'm stepping clear of the capsule now … Air is going quicker than I thought. I love you both. Look for a new star tonight in the sky.
Love for as long as there is any, Captain Conn Lavery.
End Of Transmission.
5. The Rehearsal (#u5466422a-c85d-5157-850c-78efe48e5a9d)
He is following Mr Shannon, scrambling behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides, down High Street and across the Mall. The streets are full of schoolchildren scurrying for buses and with shoppers flitting in and out of stores.
‘Keep up, Lavery, keep up. You're letting the side down, old boy.’
Shannon seems to glide along on his own current of air, swaying to avoid a pack of schoolgirls, tipping his head in greeting to people he knows. James collides with a small dog, its body contracting into yelps as his foot finds its paw. Shannon comes to a halt and looks back at the dog, hopping around on three legs, and at James scurrying after it.
‘Hit it a boot in the hoop, Lavery, and look lively. Tempus fugit. Good day, Mrs O'Rourke.’
Mrs O'Rourke stares at James and pushes him away as he tries to make amends with her dog. ‘Clear off, you hooligan.’
‘I'm sorry,’ he whimpers.
‘Piss off before I take a lump out of you. Good afternoon, Mr Shannon, you're looking well this fine day.’
‘One can but try, Mrs O'Rourke, one can but try.’
He watches as Shannon struts away from him, delicately sidestepping a pushchair, full of fruit and groceries.
Mr A. G. S. Shannon is James's English teacher, ‘a force for literature’, as he likes to call himself. James can remember the first time Shannon had stood before him in classroom G14, seven years before, giving his new English lit charges the once-over. He wore moccasins and James can remember their slap on the floor as he paced, his heels making a small sucking noise as his feet travelled back and forth. His hair in those days was a Brylcreemed black with a kiss-curl that fell daintily across his wide forehead. It was his belly, though, that fascinated James: it was large; it seemed to begin at his sternum and end at his groin. James thought it looked as if it had been grafted on to his body for it seemed at odds with the relatively slender man that carried it.
‘My name is Mr A. G. S. Shannon and my business is literature, and your business is to make it your business.’ Then he had lifted his head and raised an index finger to his chin. ‘If you have knowledge of language, my boys, you have a shot at the truth. Without it you will remain in your Neanderthal twilight, grunting and pawing your way through life.’
Some boys had burst out laughing, some had let out a snort of protest, but James and a couple of others had held the thought he had given them as if it were fashioned from gold. He was different from the rest of the teachers. He didn't seem to have the same cranky dedication to authority, or the constant need to flex it. James would often hang around at the end of class, waiting to catch his eye, to be fed a small morsel of his attention. Sometimes he would put his arm across James's shoulders and walk him from the class. They would amble down the corridor, Mr Shannon's rich quotes from Shakespeare weaving seamlessly with the strong blades of sunlight streaming through the windows.
Rehearsals are in an old two-storeyed townhouse off Canal Street. The front door lies open, revealing a long, narrow hall lit only by a solitary lightbulb, with a wooden staircase at the end. They climb to the top floor, Shannon sometimes taking two, three steps at a time. Two men he has never seen before stand by a fireplace. Shannon guides him towards them, his hand delicately placed between the boy's shoulder-blades. The men look up from two tattered scripts; one wears a Paisley cravat.
‘Gentlemen, may I introduce you to young James La very? He is our Martini. La very, this is Cathal Murphy.’
The man wearing the Paisley cravat extends his hand, and James shakes it shyly.
‘And this reprobate, Lavery, is the inestimable Oisin “Chin Chin” Daly.’
Oisin “Chin Chin” Daly is at least six feet tall, with long, greasy, heavy hair. He has brown eyes that flicker watchfully from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Mr Lavery …’
‘Mr Chin Chin – sorry, Oisin.’
‘No, man, you scored the first time.’
Suddenly two women are in the doorway. One is small with red, short-cropped hair and a freckled face; on her shoulder is a green duffel bag with white trim. The other rummages furiously in one of two plastic shopping-bags. She is plump and short with greying brown hair.
Shannon eyes her imperiously, left eyebrow arched. ‘Ah, Nurse Ratshit at long last.’
‘Ratchet, Nurse Ratchet, you bollocks. Where the f—ing hell are my car keys?’ Suddenly she notices a set hanging from her friend's hand. ‘For Chrissakes, Patricia, why didn't you pipe up? And me making a complete arse of myself.’
‘You gave them to me not two minutes ago, Kerry, in case you lost them.’
The play they are there to rehearse is One Flew Overthe Cuckoo's Nest. James has been roped in to play Mr Martini, a paranoid character who spends most of the play talking with an imaginary friend. Mr Shannon had crept into the physics class the week before and asked permission from Mr Bennett to steal James for ten minutes.
‘Of course, Mr Shannon, have him for as long as you'd like.’
As they stood in the science corridor, Shannon had dug a thin book out of his briefcase, and held it skyward, an awkward grin of triumph spreading across his lips. ‘Do you know what this is, Lavery? Do you have any idea?’
‘No, sir.’
‘An American classic, Lavery, a modern classic from the New World.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want you to peruse it.’
‘Sir?’
‘Read it.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘Because you are going to be in it.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Your part is Martini. Rehearsals begin next Tuesday afternoon after school. Performance in the amateur drama festival at the Opera House, Belfast, one month from now.’
‘Why me, sir?’
‘Why not you, La very? Pray, why not you?’
James had watched as Shannon walked away from him, backside swaying, head held high. Just before he turned the corner he raised the fingers of his right hand and wiggled them.
Back in the physics class, he had turned the booklet over and over in his hands.
‘What's that?’ Seamus Byrne, the boy next to him, had asked, when Bennett wasn't looking.
‘A play.’
‘A what?’
‘A play.’
‘You poof.’
A week later, against his better judgement, there he is. With everyone now seated and settled, Mr Shannon calls for order, his briefcase resting on his knees. A curt businesslike smile announces that their evening's work is at hand. Behind them is the fireplace, full of debris, half-burnt parish circulars and cigarette packets. Barely at first, James sees the shape of something else lurking in it, blacker than shadow, a dead crow, its head wrenched and twisted back on itself, its beak frosted with ash.
‘Now, business of the first order … We have a new addition to our ranks, Master Lavery from Carrickburren. Lavery will be playing Martini.’
All faces are smiling at him. Cathal Murphy gives him a playful dig in the ribs, the two women whisper to each other and one blows him a kiss. Most excruciating of all, he can feel the doting beam of Mr Shannon's stare.
‘As you can probably surmise, we are a little short-staffed at the moment, due to teaching commitments, babysitter shortages … and downright laziness. But do not despair, all will be well – once I've broken a few heads.’
A siren wails outside. Shannon tries to speak but swallows his sentence, letting the noise bleed through and out of range. ‘Well, after that rather apt fanfare, let us get down to business. Mr Lavery, let us take a bold step. I would like us to begin this evening with the nightmare sequence involving your character, Mr Martini, and his brutal, painful memories of a particular airborne dogfight. Martini is sleepwalking, running, believing he is immersed in a very nasty gun battle alone, thousands of feet in the air and very, very frightened. You, of course, know the sequence I mean?’
James is confident that he does, despite the slow rush of blood he can feel building in his cheeks. He has read the play between homework assignments, sitting at the kitchen table as his mother fussed and cleaned.
‘What's that you're reading?’ his mother had asked.
‘Nothing.’
He had looked at her. He knew that mood, that brittle hung-over mood. She and Sully had been out until late the night before. They had woken him up when they got back. All day she had been in bad form, giving James that I'm-watching-you stare.
‘Don't give me that! What is it? You've been stuck in it for hours.’ She grabbed the play and began to read it. He made a lunge for it but she moved away. ‘Is this to do with your English studies?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Either it is or it isn't.’
‘Mr Shannon asked me to be in it.’
‘In what? In this?’
He nods. She hands back the play. ‘You mean appear in it?’
‘Yeah.’
She doesn't say anything, just looks at him. Then she says, ‘I'm not happy about it.’
‘Why?’
‘I'm not.’
‘Why, Mum?’
‘I'm your mother and I'm not happy. Mothers get to say things like that. OK?’
He had gathered up his books and stormed out of the kitchen. His mother had followed him to the doorway shouting after him: ‘I don't want you reading that thing. I don't like that Shannon one, I never did. He's far too smooth for my liking. Did you hear what I said?’
After that he had brought the text to bed with him and used a torch to pore over it in case his mother caught him. It was there that he had first glimpsed the world of the play. As the night had worn on he grew bored of the text and threw shadows on the wall by the bed. It was there that the characters had begun to live.
McMurphy, Shannon's character, had loomed before him, in hard dark lines. Chief Bowden had lurched across the wall, his arms and legs long timbers of shadow. Billy Babbit, the stuttering kid of the asylum, was a shake of the torch, so that its spilling light seemed to dance him into life. Then suddenly, with the force of a dark fist, his character Martini had come to life. It had thrust itself across the wall like a big black jigsaw bird, its beak James's trembling knuckles, its eyes two dark holes that seemed to drink the light.
‘When you are quite ready, Lav—’
Before Shannon can even complete his surname, James turns in his seat and, reaching into the fireplace, grabs the dead crow. In one movement he lifts it above him, raining ash all over Chin Chin's head. In his mind he sees his character perched in a helicopter gunship and the dead crow's wings its churning blades. With the bird now rotating above his head James runs round the rehearsal room shouting, ‘Bandits at three o'clock! Bandits at three o'clock! May Day! May Day!’
The two women scream.
‘Ratatat! Ratatat! Ratatat! I'm hit! I'm hit!’
The bird makes an eerie swishing sound in his hand. A hush falls across the room as he runs to and fro, the wings of the dead bird flapping above his head. Eventually exhausted he slumps to his knees. ‘May Day … This is Martini. May Day.’
The crow's glazed eye looks up at him, and feathers float down all around him. Slowly, he finds himself back in the room once more. He looks around him. He sees their stunned faces. He wants to tell them about the big jigsaw bird that had flown out of the shadows on to his bedroom wall the other night. He wants to say that it had seemed right to use the crow. He wants to say many things. He wants to understand the roar that had risen in him as he had run round the room, the hard bright anger that had bolted from his gut. He wants to tell them that his father had died for Ireland, and that Ireland didn't give a shit.
‘Sssh.’
That was what Teezy had said when she had secretly given him the photograph, her finger raised to her lips.
‘Here … your father died for Ireland … sssh …’
‘Sssh.’
He gets to his feet. The room is silent. Patricia peers from behind her fingers, Kerry's hands are over her mouth. Cathal Murphy's Paisley cravat is now hanging from his fingers. Chin Chin is nodding, a smile gleaming in his eye. Mr Shannon takes a deep breath, his eyes narrowing in concentration. ‘Hmmm … I think the accent needs a little work, La very, but full marks for the inventive use of available props.’
When the rehearsal is over Shannon asks James to stay behind. They sit in silence for a moment or two, James gazing fiercely at his shoes, not daring to meet Shannon's gaze.
‘I'm not going to bite, La very.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sean … Call me Sean.’
‘Sean.’
‘It was very imaginative, what you did earlier.’
‘Yes, sir … Sean.’
‘Don't be so hard on yourself, Lavery. You did nothing wrong, far from it. You used this.’ He taps his forehead and winks. ‘Now, off you go. See you on the morrow.’
‘Thank you, sir … Sean.’
‘No – thank yow, James.’
As he steps out into the night air, his chest swells with pride as he makes his way up Joseph Street. As he rounds the corner on to Hill Street he taps his forehead with his fingers in self-congratulation.
Death by Being Dropped into Ireland's Greedy Endless Mouth
The big black jigsaw bird has me. I can see the scuttling of the people below me, their small, scurrying shapes bumping and jostling each other. Above me I feel the heavy swoosh of wind from the bird's wing thrusts; I feel the steel bite of its claws along the run of my back. I can smell the stench of old carrion from its warm, sickly breath. Higher and higher I am lifted until the ground below is a distant memory. I think of the look of surprise on my mother's face when the bird swooped and gathered me in its vice-like grip, its large head cutting skywards. I remember how her scream broke the crisp morning air, and her hands flailed at the departing bird as if she was trying to deter a troublesome wasp. I heard my name fade on her lips, and I was sure I caught the glint of a falling tear.
