A Goat's Song
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Also by Dermot Healy
Praise
Title Page
I
CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE
1 Waiting for Catherine
2 Walking the Triangle
3 A Taxi Through New York at Midnight
4 Shangrila
5 The Nomads
6 Christmas Morning
7 The Love Object
8 The Cockatiel
II
THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE
9The Death of Matti Bonner
10 The Fenian Ledger
11 The News at Six
12 The Summer Home
13 The Outsiders
14 As Gaelige
15 O’Muichin and the Cléirseach
16 The Salmon of Knowledge
III
THE HARES
17 The Mourners
18 The Greatest Man in Ballyconeely
19 Oh No, Don’t Stop the Carnival
20 The Illustrated Sons of Ireland
21 The Sea
22 Through the Downhill Tunnel
23 The Irishman
24 Madame George
25 What Did Shamey Coyle Do When He Left Prison?
IV
THE MUSICAL BRIDGE
26 Flying in Belfast
27 Crossing the Musical Bridge
28 Searching for Jack in Yeats’ County
29 Guilt–tripping
30 Corrloch
31 The Cuckoo Mocks the Corncrake
32 A Time of Big Seas
33 Popular Songs
34 Happiness
Copyright
About the Author
DERMOT HEALY was born in Finea, Co. Westmeath, in 1947. He is the author of the story collection Banished Misfortune (1982), which won two Hennessy Awards and the Tom Gallon Award, a novel, Fighting with Shadows (1984), and a poetry collection, The Ballyconnell Colours (1992). He wrote the screenplay for Cathal Black’s film about the Christian Brothers, Our Boys, and his plays include The Long Swim, On Broken Wings and Last Night’s Fun. He has edited two journals, The Drumlin and Force 10, which was singled out for praise as one of Ireland’s best community arts journals. A Goat’s Song won the 1994 Encore Award for the best second novel. His most recent book, The Bend for Home was published by Harvill in 1996. He is a member of Aosdána and lives near Sligo.
Also by Dermot Healy
Fiction
BANISHED MISFORTUNE
FIGHTING WITH SHADOWS
Non-Fiction
THE BEND FOR HOME
Poetry
THE BALLYCONNELL COLOURS
Praise for A Goat’s Song
“A Goat’s Song, the story of two savage break-ups, is a rare and powerful book . . . At the end, intellectually aroused, emotionally wrenched, stunned with the imagery of place and drink and crumpled hopes, I was literally shaking”
E. ANNIE PROULX
“It is in its scope that A Goat’s Song is most impressive. Healy interweaves a not quite documentary verisimilitude of landscape with the taut strands of the novel’s strident, yet cloistered romance. His portrayal of the myths of Belfast and the West coast pierces through the stereotypes, while helping us to see clearly the justification for their existence . . . This wonderful celebration and lament creates its own hunger, its own momentum”
TOM ADAIR, Independent
“Psychological acuteness and social immediacy, fresh responsiveness to the natural world and seasoned revulsion from a nightmarish political one all make A Goat’s Song well worth attending to”
PETER KEMP, Times Literary Supplement
“Intensity, passion, vivid characterization and a bold way with big themes”
JAN VALLEY, Independent on Sunday
“It is a beautiful piece of work; no doubt about it, the real stuff”
JAMES KELMAN
“I have read A Goat’s Song three times now and I am going back to read it again . . . It haunts my dreams”
PATRICK MCCABE, Sunday Tribune
“One of the most powerful Irish novels of recent times”
DERMOT BOLGER, Sunday Independent
A GOAT’S SONG
Dermot Healy
I
CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE
1
Waiting for Catherine
The bad times were over at last. He stood on the new bridge that opened onto the Mullet and waited for Catherine to appear. In the side pocket of his jacket, folded into a notebook, he had her letter. Just when he’d given up hope it had arrived. I love you and want to be with you, she had written. The last time he’d heard her speak, her voice was a crackle of disembodiment, a screech of static over the radio on the boat. Now her words were clear and purposeful. She was coming back to him.
If only he had known earlier he would never have been plunged into such despair, nor imagined such desperate revenges as those his wounded mind concocted in his dark cottage. But that was all finished with. When he’d lifted the letter off the floor of the wet hall in Corrloch he hadn’t known what to expect. The words were blurred and damp. His own name on the envelope had faded into a wash of blue ink. And even as he’d read the letter he had not taken it in.
The truth was that his first reaction was one of disbelief. He was ready for the worst as he tore open the envelope. He had steeled himself against hope. Over the time they’d been together hundreds of love letters, notes, scribbles, cards had come from Catherine and he had put them by after one reading. Only when her anger was raised to fever pitch by some argument he had started would he take note of what she had written. Only when he had forced her to admit to some disloyalty would her words leap off the page. His hunger for hurt was insatiable. But now he had to find new reserves within himself to deal with her declaration of love.
This letter was different. It was not what he had imagined. The brave words of tenderness and trust she’d written confounded him. He had expected the worst and couldn’t believe that it wasn’t going to happen. He even resented the fact that they could be starting over.
The letter he had been expecting would have told him the relationship was really over. Instead this brief, tender missal of love had arrived. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you. It was wonderful to hear you over the radio on the trawler. You sounded strange. We have a break this weekend and I’ll be down to see you. There are other people and we could be with them. But we know we want to be with each other. Let’s grow old and sober together. Meet me at the bridge some time Saturday afternoon. It took a great effort to separate his perspective from hers. And yet he had to enter her mind completely to believe what she’d written. Which came first he wondered: the words into which she poured her heart unashamedly, or the emotion that in a panic selected the words? She was letting go the addiction to self. She had done what they say you shouldn’t, she had given herself to another person.
I just want to be with you.
Behind him sheep smudged with blue walked a low field. Out beyond was a cold stretch of sea, and boats tied up for the winter. The storm of the night before had left the beach like a bed tossed in a nightmare. He walked through the town. The lads in Belmullet were kicking a football over the ESB wires on the square. It was a Saturday afternoon. A few women were sitting in The Appetizer eating cream buns. He watched a tractor pull a trailer-load of Christmas trees up Seán America Street in the eerie December light.
Jack Ferris had been up and down Belmullet town since early Saturday morning waiting for Catherine. His black hair was pinned to his head with salt. His boots were comic and sandy. He was talking to himself.
The previous night they had docked just before the storm started and he had stroll
ed from the pier to her summer home in Corrloch, pushed in the heavy door and on the wet mat in the hall found the letter waiting for him.
He tore it open – certain that it contained some final words of bitterness. He read it and felt blessed. He lit fires in every room, swept the floors and cooked a meal for her arrival. He was saved.
He sat in the Adams’ house, read from the Bible and studied a line her father had underlined in red – to give some form to that which cannot be uttered. He tidied the rooms. He washed the dishes she’d left behind. He swept away mouse droppings and poured disinfectant along the ledges. He sat on the small bed in Jonathan Adams’ old study and read a children’s Irish Grammar – tá me, tá tu. I am, you are. At three in the morning he walked back across the fields to his cold cottage in Aghadoon. He fed the animals in a wind that blew the milk out of the cat’s bowl. The roof groaned like the keel of a ship. The thump of waves went through the floor under his bed. He had not slept. He scribbled new lines onto the text of the play. He watched the sea, put on the tilley-lamp repeatedly, re-read the letter like you’d read a train timetable to find, yes, I still have time. Any bitterness that had accrued, he let it pass. Because the comfort of her commitment was there. Yes, she’d written, we were just denying love to ourselves. What we had wasn’t love, but nostalgia for love.
He could hear her say that word nostalgia. When she’d say it, his senses would rear back in alarm, then relax, for her inflexion carried all the meanings of the word – her woman’s past, her childhood, her jealousies, her other lovers, her private moments – everything that was herself. Nostalgia. Nostalgia. It was like breathing out after holding your breath for a long time.
Next morning, he turned at the new bridge that spanned a canal linking the two waters of Broad Haven and Blacksod Bay, then retraced his steps, his elderly dog, Daisy, awkwardly skelping elbow-high alongside him on the whitewashed wall. He looked at the scaffolding that had gone up round the water-tower at the hospital. He stopped, clasped his hands in front of his chest, then rubbed the heels of his palms vigorously together. He clapped his hands; his eyes closed, and his mouth veered into a grimace. He bent his head. He opened his eyes and stood with his arms straight down by his sides, shivering.
“Catherine,” he said.
Well, whatever happens, I can never live through this day again. It was the light that accompanied November into December, sheer light; with the full moon of the night before the tide had gone far out; the white sands shimmered, then grew heavy. Further sands were torched. These were short days. The black was rolling in across the sky. He greeted Joe Love, the postman, who was standing in green tweeds on Main Street. He was holding a white shopping bag. Daisy immediately began barking.
“You’re looking well,” said Jack.
“Sacred Heart, what’s the use of it now,” Joe Love replied, “since my partner’s dead and gone?” The man’s face breathed health and security. The brown eyes spoke lively. His head was covered with a shoal of gleaming white hair. Yet, he was saying he was alone. That encounter stayed in Jack’s mind throughout the day. It was the first time Joe Love had ever mentioned this bereavement. In the early morning he came to the Adams’ house, dropped the post through the letterbox in the porch door and slipped away into the mist. Spent few words. Now, in a few banal moments, dressed in his Sunday suit on a Saturday afternoon, he had told the story of his life.
“I’m waiting on Catherine,” explained Jack.
“That’s the thing,” Joe Love said. “It’s best not to be caught alone at Christmas.”
He lifted a massive brown hand and patted his forehead.
“Did you have some mail for me?” asked Jack.
“I had, but whenever I call you’ve not been at home. You should get yourself some kind of a postbox. You can’t put letters under a stone in that wild place.”
“I was off in the Blue.”
“So I dropped them into Bernie Burke’s,” he said.
“Now I know what’s wrong,” said Jack. “Bernie’s been in hospital.”
“Is he still away, the poor fellow?”
“Never mind, I’ll get them when he returns.”
“I hope it was nothing important,” said Joe Love.
“No,” said Jack, “no.”
They said goodbye. Daisy watched Joe’s dog rise off its arse and follow his master. Jack turned into the paper shop.
“How are you, Jack?” the woman asked.
“Oh, I’m waiting on Catherine,” he replied. “She’s due down today.”
“Give her my regards,” the woman said.
He immediately turned the Irish Times to the arts page. He entered the Erris Hotel and ordered a coffee and rang Eddie who was directing the play.
“Could I speak to Eddie?”
“Certainly. Who will I say is calling?”
“Jack Ferris,” he replied.
“Ha-ho,” said Eddie.
“You’ve started rehearsals?”
“We have.”
“And Catherine’s OK?”
“As I told you she would be.”
“That’s great. I’d love to have a look.”
“Ah, we’re just going to try and get a few days in before the Christmas.”
“I might go up for a day or two.”
“Well, that’s up to you.” Eddie’s hesitation unnerved Jack. “There’s really no need. We have your notes. It’s only a matter of running it through a few times.”
“I might have some changes.”
“Send them on then as soon as you can,” he said, reluctantly.
“I’ll give them to Catherine.”
“Catherine?”
“Yes, Catherine,” said Jack sharply. There was a long tantalizing silence. “She’s coming down today,”
“Is she?” Eddie replied with a disconcerting change of tone. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s the way. Good luck,” Jack said in an empty voice, and for fear of hearing anything that might destroy the illusion of happiness, he replaced the phone and stepped out quickly onto the street to greet a Lada which was not hers.
He hitched out to Corrloch for she might have got home without him seeing her on the road, but she was not there. He relit the fires in the Adams’ house and began sweeping out the rooms again. In the kitchen the hot water cylinder creaked wildly. He sat sober and correct at the kitchen table.
“It’s all right,” someone told him once, “when the loved one enters the subconscious. That’s fine. Let them stay there. It’s when they are alive and kicking in your every thought, that’s when it means trouble.”
He tried to put her by but she would not have it. She was as stubborn in his recreation of her as she was in real life. In her absence he felt her physical presence even more profoundly than the moment when she would actually be there in front of him. Everywhere he went he caught hints of her imminent return. He saw her expression in certain women as they approached him from a distance. Overheard her laugh on a street.
He rushed forward towards each disappointment with manic haste. His panic increased the more his expectations were confounded. This was always the way it was.
He lay on her bed and looked at the ceiling. There was a sour indoor smell of vegetables on the turn. He searched the house for the source of the smell but couldn’t find it. Presently he realized he was longing for a drink.
He walked the few miles through the falling dark to Belmullet and stood at the bridge. He ordered a coffee and sat in the sun lounge of the Erris Hotel. It looked out on the street where Catherine would arrive. A country couple and a brightly dressed, middle-aged American in check trousers entered. The countryman, who was wearing a baseball cap, disengaged himself from the others and sat down by Jack.
“You have any Yanks in your family?” he asked.
“No,” replied Jack.
“That’s a brother of mine gone in.” He nodded towards the bar.
“I see.”
“Are you staying here?�
��
“No.”
“You must have a girl,” he said after a while.
“I do,” Jack smiled.
“Well, then, she must be very beautiful,” the man nodded sagely. “I live up the pass with my sister. That’s her gone in with him. He’s just in for the Christmas holidays, God bless us. We’re going out for a bite tonight, but I’ll sit here with you.”
Jack turned to look at him, the schoolboy face, the simple hands, the brown eyes high in the sockets and the sockets high in the head, the marvelling forehead. Jack pointed at the baseball cap. “Have you been across the water?”
“Not at all.” He leaned closer and looked into Jack’s eyes.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Leitrim.”
“Holy God,” he said, “they have their problems there, too. Would you like a drink?”
“No thanks,” said Jack.
“You’re better off. They don’t tell you everything when you’re drunk,” and he tapped his skull.
Now, both men looked at the street through the lace curtains waiting for Catherine. Soon the man’s sister loomed in the lounge. She gestured over her shoulder sharply with her thumb in that condescending, familiar manner used with someone you consider touched. Her brother looked at her a long time. There was a mild rebellion in his failure to recognize her. Behind her, the American brother hovered uncertainly.
“I’ll have to go now,” he said, looking at his sister.
“Goodbye,” said Jack.
“Good luck, Leitrim,” he replied.
He saw her on the road to the west, foot to the ground in the Lada, African freedom songs playing on the car stereo. Or with her head firmly slanted as she held the car in first at some lights.
He did not want to think of the past; she had given herself to him – perhaps there was a note of hesitation, maybe it was not complete commitment, maybe some part of her was holding back – but there was hope.
What words he could conjure seemed trite and inconsequential. How extraordinary it was that he could describe what he saw – the contents of a sun lounge or what’s afoot on a village street – and yet not be able to articulate the chaotic events that had thrown their lives into turmoil. These, too, had a sequence. But where do you step into a life to say: Here it begins!?