Future Popes of Ireland

Series I:

Baptism

(1979–1980)

1

Holy Water Bottle (1979)

It was September 1979 when Pope John Paul II brought sex to Ireland. Granny Doyle understood his secret message immediately. An unholy trinity of evils knocked on Ireland’s door (divorce! abortion! contraception!) so an army of bright-eyed young things with Miraculous Medals was required. Phoenix Park was already crammed with kids listening to the Pope’s speech – chubby legs dangling around the necks of daddys; tired heads drooping against mammys – but Granny Doyle knew that none of these sticky-handed Séans or yawning Eamons would be up for the task. No, the lad who would rise from the ranks of priests and bishops to assume the ultimate position in the Vatican would have to come from a new generation; the Popemobile had scarcely shut its doors before the race was on to conceive the first Irish Pope.

First in line was Granny Doyle, armed with a tiny bottle of papal-blessed holy water. The distance between Granny Doyle’s upheld bottle and the drops flying from the Pope’s aspergillum was no obstacle; this was not a day for doubt. Helicopters whirred above. The Popemobile cruised through the streets. A new papal cross stretched towards the sky, confident as any skyscraper, brilliantly white in the sun’s surprise rays. All of Dublin packed into Phoenix Park in the early hours, equipped with folding chairs and flasks of tea. Joy fizzed through the air before the Pope even spoke. When he did, it was a wonder half a million people didn’t levitate immediately from the pride. The Pope loved Ireland, the Pope loved the Irish, the Irish loved the Pope; this was a day when a drop of precious holy water could catapult across a million unworthy heads and plop into its destined receptacle.

Granny Doyle replaced the pale blue lid on the bottle and turned to her daughter-in-law.

‘Sprinkle a bit of this on the bed tonight, there’s a good girl.’

A version of this sentence had been delivered to Granny Doyle on her wedding night, by some fool of a priest who was walking proof of why Ireland had yet to produce a pope. Father Whatever had given her defective goods, clearly, for no miracle emerged from the tangled sheets of 7 Dunluce Crescent that night or for a good year after, despite all the staying still and praying she did on that mattress. Then, all she had for her troubles was Danny Doyle, an insult of an only child, when all the other houses on Dunluce Crescent bulged with buggies. Ah, but she loved him. Even if he wasn’t the type of son destined for greatness, the reserves of Shamrock Rovers as far as his ambitions roamed, he was good to her, especially since his father had passed. Nor was he the curious sort, so much the better for papal propagation; he didn’t bat an eyelid as Granny Doyle transferred the bottle of water to her daughter-in-law’s handbag. His wife was equally placid, offering Granny Doyle a benign smile, any questions about logistical challenges or theological precedent suppressed. Only Peg seemed to recognize the importance of the moment, that divil of a four-year-old with alert eyes that took in everything: Peg Doyle would need glasses soon, for all the staring she did, and Granny Doyle could summon few greater disappointments than a bespectacled grandchild.

In truth, it was her mother’s handbag that had Peg’s attention, not the bottle of holy water. After a long day of disappointment, when it became clearer that the Pope would not be throwing out free Lucky Dips into the crowd, Catherine Doyle’s handbag was Peg’s only hope. It might have a Curly Wurly hidden in its folds. Or Lego. Perhaps, if Peg was lucky, there might be a book with bright pictures, which her mother would read to her, squatted down on the grass while meaner mammys kept their kids focused on the tiny man on the tiny stage. Peg knew it definitely wouldn’t contain her copybook, which was the one treasure she really desired. Since she’d started school a few weeks ago, Peg had come to love her slim copybook, with its blank pages waiting for Peg’s precise illustrations to match her teacher’s instructions. My Home and My Mother and the gold star worthy My Street were lovingly rendered in crayon, letters carefully transcribed from the blackboard – Very Good, according to Peg’s teacher. It would be weird to take homework on a day out, Peg’s mother said, as if squishing into a field to squint at a man with a strange hat wasn’t weird at all.

Peg sighed: the holy water bottle disappeared into the handbag, one quick zip cruelly thwarting Peg’s happiness. Her mother didn’t notice her gaze, looking instead in the direction of the stage, like all the other grown-ups. That was the way of Peg’s parents: they looked where they were supposed to, straight ahead, at the green man, at the telly. Granny Doyle had different kinds of eyes, ones that explored all the angles of a room, eyes that glinted at her now. Peg avoided that gaze and focused on her new leather shoes, both consolation and source of deeper disappointment. On the one hand, the bright black school shoes were the nicest Peg had ever owned. She had endured multiple fittings in Clarks before they found a pair that were shiny enough to impress a pope and sensible enough not to suggest a toddler Jezebel. They were perfect. Except they would be better in the box. They looked so pretty there, Peg thought mournfully, remembering how nicely the tissue paper filled them, how brightly the shoes had shone, before the trek across tarmac and the muck of Phoenix Park had got to them. The morning had contained more walking than Peg could remember and not a bit of it had been pleasant: a blur of torsos that Peg was dragged through, the grass an obstacle course of dew and dirt. Only the thought of the shoebox – the smell of newness still clinging to the tissue, waiting for Peg’s nose once she ever got home – kept Peg’s spirits up; soon, she would be back in 4 Baldoyle Grove, in her room with its doll’s house and shoebox and soft carpet.

‘Come on, you come with me. We’ve a long drive ahead of us.’

The shoebox would have to wait; Granny Doyle had other plans for Peg. The grown-ups had been negotiating while Peg had been daydreaming and it suddenly became clear that Peg’s feet would not be taking her back to 4 Baldoyle Grove that night. Peg looked forlornly up at Granny Doyle’s handbag. She knew exactly what it contained: wooden rosary beads and bus timetables and certainly not a Curly Wurly; some musty old Macaroon bar, perhaps, which Peg would have to eat to prove she wasn’t a brat or some divil sent to break Granny Doyle’s heart, an organ that Peg had difficulty imagining. It’ll be a great adventure, Peg heard Granny Doyle say, the slightest touch of honey in her voice before briskness took over with Come on, now and Ah, don’t be acting strange. Acting strange was a popular pastime of Peg’s, never mind that most of the grown-ups paraded in front of her deserved such treatment. Peg looked up at her parents. They were useless, of course; they couldn’t refuse Granny Doyle anything.

‘Come on, now,’ Granny Doyle said, in a softer voice, feeling a stab of affection for her odd little grandchild. A calculating creature with far more brains than were good for her, perhaps, but Peg could be shaped into some Jane the Baptist for a future Pope. There was no doubt that such a child was coming – 29 September 1979 was not a day for doubt! – and Granny Doyle felt a similarly surprising wave of love for the crowds that only a few hours ago had been intolerable. Euphoria trailed in the air and Granny Doyle clung on, sure that this was the date when all the petty slights of her life could be shirked off, the superiority of Mrs Donnelly’s rockery nothing to the woman who would grandmother Ireland’s first Pope. Even the plod of the brainless crowd could be handled with tremendous patience, especially when she had her elbows at the ready.

‘We’re going to have a great weekend,’ Granny Doyle said, cheeks flushed.

Peg had no choice but to follow, a long line of grown-ups to be pulled through as her shoes sighed at the injustices of outside.

Later, when Peg scoured photos of the Pope’s visit to Phoenix Park, she found it difficult to remember the crowds or the stage or even the man. She had a nagging uncertainty about whether she could remember this moment at all; perhaps she had come to realize the significance of the event for her life and had furnished a memory shaped from fancy and photographs. Later, there would be the jolt that here was perhaps her first mistake; in her darker moments, Peg Doyle would wonder if everything might have uncoiled differently had she never taken her grandmother’s hand.

But Granny Doyle’s grip was not one to be resisted and Peg found herself pulled into the crowds before she could wish her parents goodbye. Something else that Peg would always wonder about: did she remember her parents extending their arms at the same time before she was whisked off? A gesture hard to read, halfway between a wave and an attempted grab, nothing that was strong enough to counteract the pull of Granny Doyle or the tug of the future.

2

Handbag (1979)

There is no record of what happened to the contents of the holy water bottle. As with many of the items in this history – the Blessed Shells of Erris; the Miraculous Condom; the Scarlet Communion Dress – no material evidence has remained.

Given the personalities involved, it seems likely that Catherine Doyle sprinkled the holy water on the bed-sheets as instructed. Both the angle of the holy water as it fell from the bottle and the arc of Catherine Doyle’s eyebrows as she poured it have been lost to history. Did she do it with great ceremony, like a woman from the Bible pouring water from a jar? Was there instead a rueful roll of the eyes, an ironic dance routine? Can a more erotic encounter be discounted? Elbows propped on strong shoulders, legs curved around a supple frame, a conspiratorial glance between the two. Fingers dipped into a bottle, tracing the contours of a body, travelling across thighs, honing in on the source, the pump of future Popes …

This history refrains from comment. It is enough to report that when Granny Doyle emptied her daughter-in-law’s handbag nine months later and donated all of Catherine Doyle’s things to the St Vincent de Paul, no bottle of holy water was found inside, empty or otherwise.

3

Folding Chairs (1979)

She could almost walk to Galway, Granny Doyle felt, still buzzing from seeing the Pope that morning. Even Dunluce Crescent felt fresh as she turned the corner, as if the glow from Phoenix Park was contagious, no part of Dublin untouched. The quiet cul-de-sac tingled with life, its unassuming brick houses suddenly resplendent in this papal-endorsed sunlight. Her house was the finest, Granny Doyle knew that: 7 Dunluce Crescent had a grand garden and a large porch extension that gleamed in the sharp sun. Granny Doyle felt a surge of pride for her son, for this was Danny’s greatest achievement. He could build things, had built the finest porch in Killester; who cared if that upstart Mrs Donnelly had added a water feature to her rockery?

The only emotion Peg felt at seeing Dunluce Crescent was relief – which was misplaced, as her little legs had barely flopped onto one of the porch’s folding chairs before Granny Doyle was making grand plans to leave again. ‘We’ll have to beat the traffic,’ she called out from the kitchen, as if any other Dubliners would be mad enough to chase the Pope around the country. ‘He’ll be well on his way,’ Granny Doyle added, keen to share her radio updates with her friends gathered in the porch. Glass was the great friend of gossip and the porch served as the de facto community centre for the other old biddies on the street. They had all moved into the crescent within a few years of each other in the late Fifties and here they were, families raised and husbands buried, their lives moving in synch, morning Masses in Killester Church and the excitement of Saturday’s Late Late Show and Sunday roasts shared with disappointing children and glowing grandchildren and every event unpicked in Granny Doyle’s porch, which contained a folding chair for each of the auld ones on Dublin’s own Widows’ Way.

Peg imagined Granny Doyle’s neighbours as the fairies from Sleeping Beauty. Mrs McGinty was the tall, stern one and she mostly ignored Peg, which was far from the worst thing an adult could do. The McGintys had never had children and with her husband long gone, Mrs McGinty’s life revolved around the Legion of Mary, the youth branch of which she chaired with zeal. Mrs McGinty stood poker-still in the porch, eager to get going, the boot of her car packed the night before.

Mrs Nugent was her opposite in almost every way. A tiny woman, full to the brim with mischief and gossip, Mrs Nugent had enough energy to power the road through a blackout. Hearing that Peg was joining them, Mrs Nugent unleashed a stream of chat – isn’t that brilliant, pet? and won’t we have a great adventure, love? – gabbling onwards as if she’d never met a silence she couldn’t fill. Worse, she’d decided to bring one of her many grandchildren along for the trip, some ball of fury and flying limbs whose name Peg declined to remember, but who might as well have been called Stop That! for the number of times Mrs Nugent directed the sentence towards her.

Mrs Fay was the only one of Granny Doyle’s neighbours who had the temperament of a Disney fairy. A large woman with a kind face and impeccably coiffed white hair, Mrs Fay’s shoulders could easily have accommodated wings. Mrs Fay kept a basket of proper chocolate bars by her door for Halloween, not cheap penny sweets like Mrs Nugent or hard nuts and apples like Mrs McGinty. All sorts of other delights awaited beyond the threshold of 1 Dunluce Crescent, Peg imagined: freshly baked biscuits, shelves filled with books, curtains with tassels she could spend an afternoon admiring. Mrs Fay still had a Mr around, so she wouldn’t be joining them – a shame, because Mrs Fay was the only one of them who had noticed her new shoes and Peg was sure she’d stash decent treats in her handbag.

‘He’s left Drogheda,’ Granny Doyle shouted from the kitchen, information that seemed to add urgency to her clattering, even though the Youth Mass they were planning to catch in Galway wasn’t until the next morning.

‘He’ll be lunching with the priests in Clonmacnoise next,’ Mrs McGinty said.

‘Isn’t it a crying shame that Father Shaughnessy gets to meet him,’ Mrs Nugent fumed. ‘And him a slave to the drink.’

Mrs McGinty tutted, a sophisticated sound that conveyed both that she would never criticize the clergy so openly and that Father Shaughnessy was not the sort who should be lunching with the Pope.

‘Oh dear!’ Mrs Fay said.

Long ago, Mrs Fay had decided that most events could be met with an oh dear! or a lovely! and thus she was always ready to temper the world’s delights or iniquities.

Meanwhile, Mrs Nugent had found a new topic to animate her.

‘Did I tell you that Anita’s Darren is going to be one of the altar boys at the Mass tomorrow?’

‘So you said,’ Mrs McGinty said in a thin tone.

‘Lovely!’ Mrs Fay offered.

Darren Nugent’s proximity to a pope was enough to summon Granny Doyle from the kitchen. Before her brilliant holy water idea, she’d been tired of Dunluce Crescent’s many connections to the Pope. Mrs McGinty had a fourth cousin who was concelebrating the Mass in Knock. Not only was Mrs Brennan’s brother-in-law due to sing at the choir in Galway, but didn’t he get his big break at her Fiona’s christening, so she was basically responsible for his career. Even pagan Mrs O’Shea who could only be glimpsed at the church at Christmas, Easter at a pinch, had a shafter of a son who had helped clean the Popemobile. Now Granny Doyle could bear it all with fortitude, convinced that no Darren would ever develop a posterior suitable for a papal chair.

‘I can get you all Darren’s autograph tomorrow if you want,’ Mrs Nugent offered.

‘He’ll have to learn how to write first,’ Mrs McGinty tutted.

Granny Doyle was more magnanimous.

‘That would be an honour,’ she said, locking the inside door and scooping Peg up off her chair. ‘And you’ll have to get me yours as well: didn’t you say that the Pope winked at you?’

This was a well-placed grenade, Mrs McGinty’s fury at the blasphemy involved in a winking Pope strong enough to get them all out of the porch before it shattered. ‘He did, looked at me right in the eye and winked,’ Mrs Nugent insisted, chortling all the way down the footpath, displeasure the lubricant that kept them all together because Mrs McGinty lived to judge and Mrs Nugent lived to incite judgement. Granny Doyle beamed, loving the chat and her neighbours and her street and her granddaughter and even Stop That!, who at least had the wisdom to raid Mrs Donnelly’s rockery when she was after missiles to launch at passing traffic.

Peg clambered into the back of Mrs McGinty’s battered Fiat, beside Stop That!, who had abandoned her rocks to investigate the weaponry potential of seat belts. Mrs Nugent shuffled in beside them, stop that! and are you all right, pet? and it was not a bit of dirt in his eye! launched between the last few precious puffs of a cigarette. Peg wriggled away from Stop That’s seat-belt attack to look out the back window. Mr Fay had joined his wife on the side of the road, the better to properly see off their car. Both Fays thought that attending the Pope’s Youth Mass would be lovely, so there was slim chance they’d rush forward to rescue Peg. They stood there, smiling and waving, on the side of the quiet street in the afternoon sun. Peg gazed at the porch behind them, enticingly empty, the perfect place to spend the day, if Mrs McGinty hadn’t pressed her shoe against the accelerator.

Dunluce Crescent was only a scrap of a street, so by the time Peg’s head bobbed up again, they had already turned the corner and the kind smiles and waves of the Fays had disappeared from view, replaced with rows of other red-brick houses, indifferent to the motion of their car, waiting instead for fresh coats of paint and attic conversions and tarmac paving over gardens, the fortunes of the Doyles nothing to them.

4

Roll of Film (1979)

The next morning, something of a holiday spirit remained. They slept in, skipped the Sunday Mass, left the sheets in a tangle around their limbs. Danny Doyle still had some film left in the camera from the day before, so of course he clicked.

‘You dirty pervert,’ she called.

He smiled and wound the film again.

‘You’ll never be able to develop this.’

She fixed her hair, posing now, legs twined around each other in the air, no hand outstretched. Lying naked on their bed. Something between a smile and a smirk. It was the last shot. The film started to rewind as he pressed down, making him worry that it might not come out.

5

Plastic Spade (1979)

Peg woke up to the Pope’s nose brushing her forehead.

‘Isn’t this brilliant? They were selling them two for a pound at Guineys.’

Mrs Nugent continued to wave the commemorative tea towel in her face while Mrs McGinty’s expression conveyed the blasphemy involved in drying dishes with the Pope’s face.

‘You’re not going to use that, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Nugent said.

Granny Doyle snorted to show her displeasure with the ornamental display of a potentially useful object. Mrs Nugent ignored the pair of them.

‘I’m going to get it autographed!’

‘By your Darren?’ Mrs McGinty asked slyly.

‘By her winking boyfriend,’ Granny Doyle said.

The titters that followed were too much for Mrs McGinty, who rounded on the slumbering Peg and Stop That!

‘We’ll never get anywhere if this lot don’t get a move on,’ she said.

Peg groaned. She’d hardly had a wink of sleep in the small folding bed she’d shared with Stop That!, who spent her dreams battling supernatural foes, limbs jagging towards Peg as she vanquished monsters. They’d arrived in Mayo late last night, the lot of them bundling into Granny Doyle’s childhood home in Clougheally, at the edge of the Atlantic. It wasn’t at all on the way to the Pope’s Mass in Galway but it was a place to rest their heads and a chance to pick up further flock for their mad pilgrimage. A clatter of second cousins were coming with them, as well as Nanny Nelligan, Granny Doyle’s mother. Peg couldn’t help staring at her great-grandmother, whose many wrinkles announced that she’d been born in the nineteenth century and whose constant sour expression suggested that she might have been happier staying there. It was a shock to Peg that anybody could be older than Granny Doyle, yet here was this ancient creature, clad in dark shawls and muttering in Irish, roaming around her creaky house at the edge of the sea.

The house was haunted, Peg was sure of it, another reason she had hardly slept. They could definitely hear ghosts, Stop That! had agreed, in a rare moment of interest in something Peg said. ‘That’s just the wind,’ Granny Doyle scolded, but Peg was sure she was lying; Peg caught the fear in Granny Doyle’s eyes too. Even if it was the wind, it wasn’t an earthly gust; Peg’s window at home never rattled like this. It was the house, with its black-and-white photographs of people who had died, and its doors, which creaked with the ache of being opened, and its air, thick with secrets and sadness. Besides, Clougheally would be glad of the ghost, there wasn’t much to the village otherwise: a few other houses, with scraps of farm; one newsagent’s; two pubs.