All of These People: A Memoir. Fergal Keane

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ comparatively fortunate. They were not inmates of one of the Church-run industrial schools where children were not only beaten but raped as well.

      It was in matters of sex that the Church really got to work and screwed up the minds of several generations. The physical and mental damage inflicted on children in the borstals has been well publicised. But the rest of the population was subjected to perverted brainwashing. Contemplate this extract from a booklet produced by the Catholic Truth Society, propagandists for the hierarchy:

      …the pleasure of sex is secondary, a means to an end and to make it an end in itself, or deliberately do this is a mortal sin…Let a tiger once taste blood and it becomes mad for more…the poor victim is swept off his feet by passion, and decides, for the time being at any rate that nothing matters except this violent spasm of pleasure…Happier a thousand times is the beggar shivering in his rags at the street corner if his heart be pure, than the millionaire rolling by in his car if he be impure…the boy and girl have to avoid whatever of its very nature is morally certain to excite sexual pleasure. That is why they are warned about late hours; about prolonged signs of their God-given affection which cheapen so easily, about wandering off alone to certain places where they are morally certain to succumb to temptation.

      The writer, in all likelihood a priest, went on to chastise girls who wore revealing clothing:

      So girls of all sorts, the short and the stocky, the fat and the scraggy, the pigeon-chested and the knock-kneed, insist on exposing their regrettable physical misfortunes to the ironic gaze of the easily amused world around them…

      His final blow is directed at morally suspect mothers. It is profoundly revealing of that twisted sensibility which governed the moral order in Ireland:

      How any mother can allow her small daughter to romp and play with her brothers without knickers on is incomprehensible and quite disgraceful.

      My father never talked about sex. That was not unusual for his Irish generation. Sex was the deed of darkness. But Éamonn was a romantic. He dreamed of loving the Protestant parson’s daughter. He went into the woods and wrote poems to her. But he kept these to himself. In Listowel, as in the rest of Ireland, love was something schoolboys sniggered about.

      And God help the boy whom Father Davy O’Connor or one of his type found walking with a girl. These princes of the Church roamed the lanes with blackthorn sticks in hand ready to beat any would-be lovers. I think of them when I hear the snivelling apologists for our Catholic past. Sure it wasn’t that bad at all.

      It was only a few years ago that I learned my father had suffered from a bad stammer when he was a boy. Fear had been the cause. Fear of Father Davy O’Connor. For my father who dreamed of being an actor the stammer might have been an impossible hurdle. But through force of will he overcame it. On his own in the woods or upstairs in Church Street he read the poems of Keats and Shelley over and over, training his voice until it was strong enough to leave the town and face the harsh judges of the Abbey School of Acting in Dublin. And when they heard him and accepted him it must have seemed to Éamonn that he could conquer the world.

      When he came back to Listowel as an adult, my father was one of Ireland’s most successful actors. Walking down the main street with him, hand in hand, could take an hour or more. People wanted to stop and talk with him. Some of them were tourists who recognised him from television or the stage. But mostly the people we chatted with were locals. They called him ‘The Joker’ or ‘Ned’, two nicknames from his childhood. For all the tension that existed between him and his mother, he felt proud on those streets and I remember most of all the firm, confident grip of his hand. In those days he was going places.

       CHAPTER FOUR Tippler

       The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection.

       ‘What are you doing there?’ he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.

       ‘I am drinking,’ replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air.

       ‘Why are you drinking?’ demanded the little prince.

       ‘So that I may forget,’ replied the tippler.

       ‘Forget what?’ inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.

       ‘Forget that I am ashamed’‘ the tippler confessed, hanging his head.

       ‘Ashamed of what?’ insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.

       ‘Ashamed of drinking!’

       The tippler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence. And the little prince went away, puzzled.

       ‘The grown ups are certainly very, very odd;’ he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.

      The Little Prince, ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

      One day we were crossing the bridge over the River Feale. My father stopped in the middle. ‘Do you see that there?’ he said.

      He pointed to a spot directly in the middle of the bridge.

      ‘That is where a distant relative of yours fell into the river. Do you know how it happened?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘He was drunk and he got up and sat there and he thought he was riding the winner in the Grand National. And you know what happened then?’

      ‘No, I don’t,’ I said.

      ‘He fell off into the river. That’s what drink does to us.’

      We laughed together.

      I had my first drink on the way home from the creamery. Willie Purtill sat beside me on the cart, the reins of the donkey wrapped loosely around his hands, and behind us the empty milk churns rattled as we plodded home towards the Purtill farm. I was a city child and entranced by that world of haystacks, milking parlours, trips to the creamery and all the pungent scents of the countryside.

      On this day, coming back from the crossroads, we stopped at a thatched pub. Willie pulled on the reins and brought the donkey to a stop. He went in and emerged a short while later with some lemonade and ‘porter’, a dark brew in a tin mug. (Porter was made by Arthur Guinness & Son.)

      I wanted to try the black beer. Given what alcohol was doing to my childhood it might seem a strange request. But the impulse had nothing to do with logic. I was only aware of this intense curiosity and of a strange excitement. Give me a try of it, Willie. Go on. Give me one try of it.

      Willie Purtill was my third cousin. He was a big, good-hearted farmer’s son. After a lot of pestering he relented. I drank the dark liquid slowly. It tasted bitter and I grimaced. Willie took the drink back and laughed. I didn’t like the taste, but I would later grow to love the feel of pubs and the smell of them – the peat from the fire, the tobacco, the faintly sweet aroma from the beer that had been spilled on the counter and floor and which had worked its way into the permanent СКАЧАТЬ