A Goat's Song Read online

It was raining. Jack was looking forward to his first sleep in days. He seemed to have spent days walking and walking. He put on the pyjamas he’d brought with him. They felt comfortable. It was raining. The rain will make you sleep, he was told.

  Beat death!

  Breathe in!

  Breathe out!

  That’s what one of the women patients told him.

  The rain will make you sleep.

  First he watched the programmes on TV with mindless dread. The TV was a couple of fields away. The Christmas programmes were long and sluggish and no one laughed. It was impossible to follow the story of any film. Pill time came but they gave him nothing to take for sleep. Not till the drink was out of his system. Then he knew he would not sleep.

  Pill time. A Catholic remedy for a Protestant problem. Or is it the other way round?

  To sleep for a thousand years. And to wake up and find it’s over.

  His loneliness made him rigid. His loneliness was mistaken for aggression. So, as yet, the nurses did not sit by him.

  But Jack had found a friend. A Bohola man paced up and down telling him he wouldn’t run out of fags. “You won’t run out of fags while I’m around, son,” he said. It’s eleven-fifteen. He has to go through with this. Possessed by all the bad memories and transfixed by the light above bed No. 7 on the wall opposite, his mind, becoming a persecutor, turned on him. On the hour, till dawn, the male nurse came. The few words he whispered to Jack brought a distant consolation. Then jack returned to the icon. Her voice and her image merged with his mind.

  Down the corridor on Christmas morning comes the sound of Perry Como and Dean Martin. In a little room a bald man is crouched over an old-fashioned gramophone. At meal times the same man does all the washing up. He is cheerful in the face of all that’s wrong with him – a garden in Greece with a bottle of gin buried at the root of every tree.

  When Mass came the place went quiet. Because of his sickness Jack missed all the Christmas dances down the wards. He sought solace thinking of Catherine. He shared his towel with the most sick man. As he towelled himself the sick man said: “They’re all Mayo men in here except for you and me. We’re the only Leitrim men that’s left in this part of the world. The rest are Mayo. Poor Mayo. And Roscommon. Watch out for Roscommon. They come on your blind side.” He towelled his jaw. “The madness started because of emigration. They only left the flawed behind.”

  “No,” said Jack. “It’s the cowards run, it’s the warriors stay behind.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I have to stop punishing myself. And I have to watch that I don’t go religious.”

  “It’s tricky, but then you’re an intelligent man.” They walked out onto the tarmac a little unsteady. They stood there in their pyjamas.

  “Christmas Day in the workhouse,” said Jack.

  “I often pondered the meaning of that,” the other replied.

  Since she had the strength to stay away from him, he should have the strength to stay away from her.

  The psychiatrist argues politics with Jack. The night Jack appeared on the doorstep of the hospital he had been about to turn him away. Then he relented. But now no matter how Jack tries to explain the quandary he’s in, the doctor returns the conversation to Belfast. Jack tells him that doctors drive home to the safe parts of Belfast. The only blood they see is on the operating table. It’s not spilt on their doorstep. The psychiatrist speaks of Wolfe Tone. Jack speaks of his fears.

  “You’ve had a nervous breakdown,” the psychiatrist says, “and you can find out for yourself if you’re an alcoholic. The only one who can tell you that is yourself.”

  There is an awkward silence.

  “Why did you go to live in Belfast?”

  “To live with Catherine.”

  “You could have found a more congenial home.”

  “I had no illusions about the North,” replies Jack, aware that he is answering a question that he has posed himself, “if that’s what you are insinuating.”

  “No?”

  “I thought maybe I could help.”

  The psychiatrist lets this go. “This play of yours,” he asks, “is it about the North?”

  “It used to be.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack answers painfully.

  “And I suppose it was about the Catholic unemployed?”

  “And the Protestant.”

  “Maybe that was your mistake. Trying to write ‘the scripture of the poor’, as Tom Kettle called it.”

  “I wasn’t aware it was a mistake.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’m heartbroken.”

  “Let’s leave that aside for a while, if you don’t mind.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I suppose you can’t. It’s always difficult with you arty types.”

  There’s another silence.

  “Do you object to the word ‘arty’?” he asks.

  “Yes,” said Jack.

  “Well what do you want me to call you? You’re not a scientist, are you?”

  “Hamlet was a psychiatric patient like us,” said the Leitrim man. It was Sunday morning. “Where are you for now?”

  “I’m going to an AA meeting.”

  “There’s always an awkward silence,” said Hamlet, “when a crowd of alcoholics are collected in one room.” The stories in the room are lucid accounts of fear and death and discovery of God. On the steps of the hospital the sick man told Jack he was finest man in the place.

  “One minute,” he said, “you’re the one thing, the next, the other thing. How do you explain that?”

  He gave Jack an apple.

  “How do you explain that?” he asked again. Then he offered a cigarette which Jack refused.

  One of the AA men picked Jack up outside the hospital by chance. Jack said he was on his way to have a cup of coffee with a girl in the outside world. Instead, the man – slight, fair-haired, freckled – took Jack up roads he didn’t know. He drove on, here and there, making phone calls.

  Jack said: “Where are we going?”

  “We are just driving,” he replied.

  He was kind and intelligent and he listened. Jack was ashamed of saying hurtful things about Catherine. “I don’t want to blame anyone,” said Jack. Then he’d over-compensate and praise her, then criticize her again. Or worse, criticize her to himself for being a hypocrite. “I distrusted her,” said Jack, “since I first trusted her. I disbelieved her. She considered me her ballast. I loved her humour.” The man drove on. They stopped a second for a view of Lough Conn from Pontoon Bridge. Then on again. Some time later, Jack was back sitting by Bohola in the waiting room of the hospital. Bohola broke wind violently, then suddenly jumped up, ran outside and started walking round and round the hospital while the others sat inside eating.

  Love was when she let him take care of her. When she ran to him for comfort. When she fell asleep first. When she fell on the path and ran past her mother and sister into his arms. But most of all when they stepped through the countryside together, two human beings, glad to be together.

  The day she did not come began the other life, the life without her. If he had stayed sober then they would be drunk together now. The argument emanates from his mind. She is not present. He cannot ask her to remain with him since she is not here. That is good. You are not present, whispered Jack.

  Now she can never return because they have misrepresented each other. He can never again exist as a possibility in her mind. That is good. He is not present where she is.

  The second love is different, but bearable, and sad, but bearable. The first love was stormy, astonishing and unfulfilled. It’s as if life selects two people to go through all the experiences of love so that they will know it is denied them. But they had to live through all this sordidness. He tries to imagine a world where his self-respect would be restored. But his psyche is not capable of such a journey alone.

  There are a few private m
oments of truth that can’t be said. That stay outside the reach of language. Yet the words persist somewhere at the back of his mind, and a hope of reconciliation with her, more distant each time, returns – but returns somehow heightened, because it will pass out of his consciousness once again.

  He once was merry and now cannot sleep. How many brain cells has he destroyed? He despises himself. The night nurse comes and goes. The light burns above the dreaming men.

  5

  The Nomads

  “Every time I look at you I see my son.”

  “What are you in for?” asked Jack.

  “Delusions,” Bohola answers. A long time passes. “And anxieties,” he adds.

  They sit on a while longer, troubled and untroubled by these intimacies, each trying wildly to keep his mind in the one direction.

  “You’d be fooling yourself,” Bohola continued, “if you ever said you were really happy.”

  Jack agrees. The hairdresser sits down. “I can call no one,” she complains. “The phone is closed down except for local calls. But I know no one here.” She places her hands on her knees. “I should not be here. My husband took away my car keys and had me put in here. I should be elsewhere.” She gives the men a quick sweep of her eyes so that they might understand she comes from another place altogether.

  “Sligo,” she says fretfully, aware that she should not be boasting, “Sligo is a superior hospital.” She tut-tuts. “Have you been to Sligo Hospital?” she asks Jack in a deliberately kind manner.

  “No,” he replies.

  “If I could have only got my sleep,” she thinks out loud, wistfully, “I could have got home for Christmas Day. But do you think could I get any sleep here? Never. I’ve just had a baby,” she explains. “She’s over the road in the General Hospital and I’m here. But my husband is a good man. He is a good man!” She looks askance at Jack. “They’ve promised to bring me over to see my baby tomorrow. I want you there to help me.”

  “I’ll be with you,” said Jack.

  “You are a good man too,” said the hairdresser.

  Over in the corner an argument starts about Val Doonican and Christmas and Christians. Like the wandering plots of the films, it cannot be unravelled. Jack suddenly wants something to do. To be useful. To be occupied. Like the sick man in pyjamas putting everything away – vases into vases, ashtrays into ashtrays.

  “Is Glenroe on tonight?” he asked.

  “I would not have taken you to be a fan,” said the nurse.

  Beside Jack the old fellow breathes sleep through his nostrils like a child humming in his cot.

  Jack stares at the same space. But her face is going. Dawn is coming in. Dawn light is washing her features away. On the hour he awaits the male nurse’s visit and his gentle enquiry. The rest wake into a world that he has not left. They sit in the ward on the side of their own beds, then moments later all move to one bed, and sit there smoking and talking in quiet voices. They are neighbours. Neighbours here, and neighbours at home. They might have just met on the street, crossed a field to the other fellow’s house. Then they walk the corridors with an air of quiet expectancy like you’d come down the stairs on Christmas morning wondering what had been left for you below during the night.

  They all gather together round the Christmas tree in the waiting room. They take their chairs. When the trolley comes they queue up like sleepwalkers. Instead of presents, they are given their pills. Jack is given his first measure of Librium. Then, with the others, he takes a chair. Everyone lights up.

  The first heavy cheerfulness reaches him.

  Jack was on the phone to wish everyone he knew a happy Christmas. The first person he rang was his mother.

  “Happy Christmas,” he said.

  He heard her turn aside and whisper to his father: “It’s Jack, he sounds quite sensible.”

  “Where are you?” his mother asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “in north Tipperary.”

  “Of all places,” she said. “What took you there?”

  “The want of wit,” said Jack.

  She handed him over to his father.

  “So you won’t be coming up to these parts?” asked his father.

  “I’m in a hospital. I didn’t want to tell her.”

  “Did someone put something into your drink?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, it happens to us all. If you want anything let us know.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  He handed the phone on to the next patient, and thought – it’s not so bad. It’s not so bad being crazy.

  “My woman said I had buried myself in drink,” he tells the night nurse.

  “You have to learn to love yourself first.”

  “How can I love someone who is not there?”

  “Clint Eastwood is Laurel Hardy’s son. Did you know that?” asked Leitrim.

  “No,” said Jack.

  “There’s not a word about it,” said the nurse, as he palmed tobacco out of a pouch. He had his legs stretched out so that his feet rested on a chair in front of him. He recrossed his legs and jiggled his feet.

  “Have you got UTV here?” asked Jack.

  “We have indeed.” He switched stations. Jack stared at the TV screen intently. The news was on. He watched every move and listened to every line with fascination.

  Then the ad for lager came on.

  “Jesus,” said Jack.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked the nurse.

  “I know someone in it,” answered Jack.

  The nurse burst out laughing.

  “Of course he does,” said Leitrim. “Jack knows everyone.”

  With trepidation Jack watched Princess Diana walk up a snowy lane in Scotland. Africans, laden with bundles, trooped towards a food distribution centre. An American announcer ran footage of a plane crash. Survivors of some catastrophe sat on a hillside in blankets. Then the break for advertisements came. Still, when the lager advertisement appeared the next time Jack was not ready for it. He held his hand palm upward in front of the TV to block his view. His eyes watered.

  “Do you want me to change the station?” asked a woman.

  “No,” he said, “it’s all right.”

  “What ails you, Jack?” the nurse asked.

  “It’s the sight of the beer,” the woman explained. “It’s making him thirsty.”

  “I know someone in it,” answered Jack.

  “Sure you do.”

  The nurse sat with him till the same advertisement appeared once more. Immediately Jack stiffened. He leaned forward with a demented look on his face. The swirl of familiar guitar music started.

  “Which one of them do you know?” asked the nurse.

  Jack pointed towards the blond girl who now entered the bar on the arm of a cowboy. With a demure look she laid a playful hand on the cowboy’s hand.

  “She’s very beautiful all right,” said the nurse helpfully.

  “That’s right,” said Jack.

  “That’s right,” agreed the woman. “Some have it.”

  Jack, as a correction against over-exposure to his self, read a book on Republican prisoners by Republican prisoners. Hugh brought him the book and also a bedside lamp. What were his thoughts as he read it? None could be read from his face or his general demeanour. What he was looking for was evidence that the prisoners were at odds with those Republicans living outside of jail. This, at the time, appeared to him to be an important theme. The book was a re-reading of Irish history. He read avidly their account of Wolfe Tone. Next morning he is prepared for the psychiatrist. But he cannot sustain another man’s argument.

  The psychiatrist presses him on his political ideology. Jack tries to be objective. He wants to speak of his broken heart. But the psychiatrist presses on, praising the much-maligned bourgeoisie of Ireland. Jack misses both supper and medication.

  “Why did you not marry this woman?” the psychiatrist asks. He is smoking a pipe.

  “She would view
marriage as a situation where a woman can be raped legally.”

  The psychiatrist condemns feminists. Jack defends them. He hears himself present a very ordered defence of Catherine’s ideas. The argument continues. Jack tells him that he drinks only the same amount as other people. Then he admits to telling lies. He drinks, he confesses, sometimes maybe too much.

  “I could not see my contribution, he tells the psychiatrist.”

  Immediately they are back talking of Wolfe Tone.

  At last, the two of them stand facing each other across the table. He is dismissed. Leitrim has kept him a plate of hot supper. The night nurse has his pills, and a few extras. “You must have him puzzled,” he grins. And then he adds: “You want to watch the news?” Again he leans forward in his chair to follow the programmes and sits white-faced as the break for advertisements comes on.

  Each man in the hospital sets up house for the night, and breaks camp the following morning. Next begins the arduous task of walking.

  Walking, along the same path if necessary, walking with eyes down and intent, walking without sympathy, walking in the scent of another creature with the head held arrogantly back, stalking feverishly, stopping to listen, stopping as if there was another following you as you followed someone who wasn’t there, walking, sometimes in slippers but mostly going back to the boots you wore the first day you came into the hospital. Then the walking stops. The motor has sensed the uselessness. The drugs have made the instinct paper-thin.

  Collapsed into a chair, the mind is frightened and tired. The sense of illusion makes the men and the women sorry. Though some, more highly charged than others, keep on. And others will never start out physically at all.

  Instead of their bodies, they’ve sent their minds out to roam. Going, if necessary, along the same path.

  At night time all collect tired by their beds. For the newcomers this is always the moment of dread. For the old-timers from Mayo, who have been walking like Job through the Land of Nod, this is the moment of heart’s desire. They pull back the sheets with perfect care. Then begins the little industry of going to bed. Now they prepare for the moment when sleep takes them off during the night.

  Sleep is the perfect wanderer – he carries nothing at all. All he needs is a mind to journey in and to rest in. They lie preparing for him.