Catholic Carrickfergus,
like the town itself, held no surprises. Every week the families of the parish
took to the same pews they had taken to from time immemorial, when their
parents and grandparents sat a layer of paint or two closer to the cold naked
stone. It was impossible to lose friends in the healthy but dwindling crowd. Old Paddy
McGuire sat at the back casually and noisily clearing his throat and then
spitting the contents of his mouth behind the radiator below the eighth Station
of The Cross, Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem. With his walking cane, old
clothes, jar-bottom glasses and white hairs in odd places on his face he was
maybe too old and maybe too stubborn or maybe too set in his ways for the
tortured women of the parish - who did the work for the Lord in His house,
without thanks or payment or smiles for dirty-faced children - to
admonish.
We sat near the middle, in
the pews to the right, but only if Mum got the four of her children fed,
watered, washed, dressed and down the road in time: the mile walk down Woodburn
Avenue on to Woodburn Road and Ellis Street took us twenty minutes on a good
day. If we were late we took to the back seats - always on the right - far from
God and the splendour of the Tabernacle of The Holy Plaster Shower, and a long
walk to the communion rail, which we came to know as The Finish Line. Once
there it was all nearly over. If we were really late we had to stand in the
polished porch, disgraced and even further from Him, His treacherous tabernacle
and the communion rail.
Regardless of where we
stood or sat we knew where to see the Hall family on our left, or the Deignan
sisters - all as tall and quiet and dignified as the stained-glass windows
themselves - sitting a row or two in front of us, their youngest daughter’s
swarthy skin and tight black hair an indication of their dedication to the
cause of the poor: not every family could afford to adopt a Black Baby from a
famished country, but they had. The Deignan parents looked perpetually proud
and strong, but those are, perhaps, the only qualities a child can discern from
faces that remained unsmiling and tight-jawed and provincially Catholic. They
used the tight faces to maintain a certain serenity for themselves and an
unspoken rein over the girls, even if I thought oftentimes that it looked just
too good to be anywhere near to perfect, on either score. The Foley’s were
there every day we were, and Mr. Foley would sing and sing and sing to all the
hymns, until, one day, his hair turned pure white from the effort of his
praise, and he was elevated, thereupon, to lead singer with the band. I only
ever heard and saw him and him alone from then on. In saying that, one
particular woman was a touch too operatic of an occasion, poorly so, and I was
sure even the deaf noticed her.
With mass ended we could
go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Our parents would stop in the porch to
buy the Catholic magazines and booklets to which they subscribed, papers that
every good Irish Catholic family should have. Mrs. Armstrong smiled and laughed
heartily in the repository as she doled out The
Little Messenger or the Ireland’s Own
or The Universe, or when she would
sell your Mum a plastic water font from Lourdes or Knock, or a leather-bound
bible for a special occasion. Sometimes she would sell you a First Holy
Communion prayer book, decorated - seldom with variation - with a puffed-velvet
pair of hands joined in prayer, with - again without much variation - a ruche
of lace around the cuff if the prayer book was a gift for a girl. Two weeks
later, Mrs. Armstrong would be raffling the same bibles for 10p a ticket, or
five for 40p. Dad always bought raffle tickets, as did our Mum, because even
the poor felt compelled to give to the church in every way they could. The red
personal identification number emblazoned on the collection envelopes was
enough of an inducement to make the contents always somewhere near respectable,
and that meant that the envelope should never jingle with the sound of
lower-denomination coins, whether they be British, Irish or
just-been-to-Spain-on-holiday coins. We had to give what we had, whether we had
or not, like the woman in the bible who washed the feet of Jesus with ointment
because that was all she had. We had no jars of ointment at home worth more
than the speedier recovery of a skinned knee, so we gave nothing but the food
from our mouths.
In time, our house began
to look like the church, adorned as it was with pictures and fonts and Holy
Family shrines and memorabilia that Mum and Dad had bought or had won in the
weekly raffles. I thought often of selling some of it back to Mrs. Armstrong
because if Jesus ever returned and visited the good Irish Catholic people of
Carrickfergus he would go straight to our house, mistaking it for the church
and us as cousins because we had so many family snapshots of Him and His sacred
friends and family, all glowing and serene and looking skywards, like any one
of the Deignan sisters, with the exception of the black one because she was too
young and too unruly to obey the stern faces of her parents. We had pictures of
our holy mother, Mary; the earthly father of our lord Jesus, Saint Joseph, the
carpenter; the lick of flame that we knew as The Holy Spirit; dedications to
all the saints - and all the dead martyrs and holies that would be saints soon
enough, sure enough - above us and around us. We lived in the holiest place in
Carrickfergus outside of the church grounds. We lived in the Vatican, the
Vatican of The Hollies.
But if Jesus did visit
we could have chatted to Him over tea in the nice cups that Mum kept for
special occasions, and we could eat some nice biscuits bought special that day.
But Jesus, I was sure, would politely have eaten our yellow-pack Digestives,
Rich Tea or Ginger Nuts, perhaps a Custard Cream, and he would not, I was sure,
embarrass us by telling us that He came from a place awash with ice cream, the
finest biscuits and cakes, and every other kind of goodness known to God alone.
Jesus, I was sure, knew poverty, knew that a yellow-pack Digestive was as good
as a Wagon Wheel on any given day.
“Some rabbit, Lord? Or
maybe a nice piece of trout?”
“Don’t mind if I do
there, Annie. Thanks. Ah, I see you got yourselves nice haircuts there too,
lads.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Just killed one of my
rabbits then, eh?”
“Yes, Lord. Sorry.”
“His name was Alphonse,
did you know? And that fish last week?”
“Yes?”
“Mirabelle.”
“Sorry, Lord.”
“Oh, for fuck sake,
boys! I’m kidding! Jesus… Do you think I have time to name every fucking
rabbit? Holy sh… You two need to lighten up, you know that?”
“Yes, Lord.”
