Holy Disharmony

I’m run-walking towards t’Assembly Hall dead late for Father O’Malley’s choir audition cause Brother Ailbe interrogated me outside his office over the big fight at playtime between Johnny Bronx and the Travellers.  Father O’Malley – Bart me an’ the lads do call him; we’ll go ta hell for that – can be even crankier than Ailbe but at least he doesn’t have a leather for ta give you a walloping. 

The Assembly Hall’s door swings open with an irony rattle from them new metal bars they just put on so we can’t never all be locked inta this huge-tall room with windows too high up ta climb out.  The Assembly Hall fits everyone in the school but has a wooden stage with long-hangy-dusty purple curtains that could go up on fire and the lot of us’d be kilt.

At the piano, Sister Cecilia turns her red face to stare at me: Her chubby brown-stockinged legs and black nun-shoes dangle off the stool above the floor. She recognizes me and makes a nun’s-this-doesn’t-mean-I’m-happy-smile.  Somehow Cecilia knows our family; maybe she went ta school with Ma or maybe she’s just from Leitrim like Ma.  She does come down sitting in Ma’s armchair drinking mugs a tea, Da sitting in his armchair staring silently across the kitchen at her, the Irish Press he wants to read lying on his lap.  On and on she rattles about the strokes and cancer for people that no one in our house knows now cause Ma died.

Bart’s leaning heavy against the piano, a bunch of probly important papers in his hand.  He’s got a fierce cross look on his face.

I freeze in the door not sure if I’m still allowed in. At very least I’ll have ta keep saying I’m so sorry for being late.  I think about telling Bart that Ailbe made me late with all his twisty-turny questions trying to catch me out for saying I knew nuthin about the playtime fight.  See, Ailbe doesn’t know I’m a good lier cause Da is always interrogating for doing things I didn’t know were bad.  But if Ailbe ever found out from Bart that I blamed him to a priest, he’d find some different reason ta whip the leather outta his black dress and give me a ferocious walloping.

Bart’s reddish-orange hair is combed back kinda-sidewards in a big wave: His huge, white flabby throat – that flabbiness is what makes him the best singer in Castlebar – sags from his chin down to the bottom of his neck. When he’s saying mass, he sings nearly all of it except for the what-Jesus-done-next stories.  Bart’s singing mass is worse than trying to follow Father Ludden’s head-down-half-whispering mass; at least if you hear what Father Ludden’s says you can understand the words.  The only good thing about the singing mass is knowing that when the singing stops the Jesus stories start.  Then I stop daydreaming so I can listen and tell Da when he interrogates me about the Gospel making sure I did go ta mass.

“Sorry, I…eh,” I start and stop saying, hoping that me looking sad is enough ta make Bart still let me do this audition thing.

“Do you … think,” Bart says in a low voice, “that my time is less … precious?”

His pink lips seem to move a lot cause his big throat and face is so white. 

I never expected a question: Is hard questions a part of an audition?  I don’t even really understand what is an audition.

“THAN SOME SIXTH CLASS BRAT,” he suddenly half yells, “who takes longer to get here than it takes me to fail the two lads ahead of him?”

I’m don’t even understand the question, but I know that a priest’s loud voice means you say sorry a heap of times.

“Oh, sorry, I was … I got … sorry, see, I’m so sorry, sorry, so … so.”

Bart’s cross face is back – burning at me; Cecilia, her eyes down on the piano keys, doesn’t know me anymore.

I’m afraid to look the priest in the eye in case he thinks on the inside I’m angry at him –that’d for sure mean a battering. Instead I look down at the wooden floor we used to have so much fun sliding around on as Baby Roomers and High Infants when the rain was so bad playtime was in t’Assembly Hall.

After a bit, I hear Bart’s important papers waving

“Come-in-come-in,” he snaps impatiently, “you can’t sing standing in a doorway, this isn’t the West End, … more’s the pity.”

Now Cecilia, with her nun-smile and fast little come-in-come-in hand waves, knows me again.  I know them nun-smiles from when me and Ma are up the town shopping, and we’d meet two nuns, arms linked, walking slow as hedgehogs down Main Street. The nuns give Ma the nun-smile that kinda says; ‘poor you, busy shopping; we never have to do that.’  Ma does say, in the not-holy voice she uses when she complains about bossy priests, that “nuns don’t need any money, so they just shuffle around the town, staring in shop windows.”

Ta let Bart knows how sorry I am, I slow-walk inta the Assembly Hall, arms tight by my sides, like how t’IRA men on the telly do march behind the hearse in a funeral.  But Bart’s not even looking.  Instead, he’s staring at his important papers. He whips a biro from behind his ear and fast marks something on the paper.

“Now, young … Farrell, this should be …” he looks up, lines forming on his forehead, the reddish-orange hair wave kinda jumping forward.  “Well, your sister’s a fine singer, let’s see if you got, … in any case, come, come, come.”

His pink lips flap and points the papers a rake of times at a place in front of him on the floor.

In my head I get ready like I’m getting caught out in a lie by Da and I have to be fierce careful with every thought, checking it against everything I’ve said to him in the last few days, so my story stays exactly the same.  If one little thing changes, he’ll use that to keep up the interrogation which could easily, even if I do a good job keeping the lie, end up in a battering.  With cranky adults, mostly teachers, Brothers and Fathers, I use that same readiness, kind of pretending when I have talk to them is like a battle I have to fight, keeping myself ready to make sure I don’t say anything that might make it look like I don’t agree with them.  That’s how you can sometimes avoid getting a battering. 

As I stand facing the piano, the sides of Cecilia’s mouth drop down a bit; the white plastic-cardboardy edge of the black shawl kinda thing that covers her hair inches down her red forehead; she scrunches up her shoulders, hands hovering above the black and white piano keys.  

See, this is all kinda crazy, cause me and all the lads is already in the choir.  We go every Sunday ta half nine mass and sing. Cecilia plays an electric organ; that’s really just a piano that plugs in so it sounds like an organ.  Then on the Sundays in December, we get to up to the choir loft.  I love that, cause you have to climb up a twisty stone stair case with tiny windows, just like in a castle.  They have a real organ up there, like the one that makes music in the Dracula film: Big pipes as tall as a house within in a cabinet in the wall.  That’s how big a church is: You can fit a house into a church cabinet! We all sing like mad cause the Christmas hymns is fun to sing not like regular boring hymns.

We were having so much fun that Bart made a rule that everyone has to audition to be in his choir.  None of us even knew what “audition” meant until he kinda-sorta explained it.  But he used too many long words, talkin’ about goin’ ta Dublin or London and how we shouldn’t be afraid; which just made us afraid; cause before we didn’t even think “audition” was a hard thing.  Afterwards, thinking about what he said and making up meanings for some of the long words, auditions began to sound to me like not getting picked for any team. 

I hate team picking cause it’s just lads acting like they’re the boss.  At playtime the good soccer players do all the picking. I usually get picked last or not even picked atallatall cause the good soccer players just want to start showing how good they are and so they say; “Here we’ll take this half, you take that half of them.”

“Them” is lads like me whose feet don’t do what they’re told. 

Now, I don’t even go near team things.

“So, Jo…seph or is it Joe, your father’s Joe of course, in any case, you’ve been with us,” Bart waves the papers at Cecilia, “a while now, … why don’t you give me the first few stanzas of ‘How Great Thou Art.’”

Immediately my face burns red hot; over my whole body oozes a prickly sweat. 

See, I don’t know any hymns atallatall except the Christmas ones: I don’t sing hymns when I’m in the choir.  I’m only there for the messing with the lads.  When everyone’s mouth is open belting out a hymn, I just have to open mine too and no one can tell I’m not singing.

Feeling a big drop of sweat run down my back, I realize I have ta say something that somehow makes Bart not know that I don’t know the hymns I’ve supposedly been singing for two years. With Da or Scratchy, our teacher, when I have to lie, I don’t say much, but just enough that they can’t say I’m not answering. Then I stick with whatever I said, not changing it one little bit, even if they get mad and give me a walloping. Once you tell a lie, they’ll hurt you much-much more and for much longer if you admit it afterwards – I seen it happen with weak lads who give in.  If you don’t give in, then when they’re done walloping you, and you’re all red welts and crying and pulling away from them no matter how hard they hold; they have to feel at least a little bit sad that they might’ve battered you for no reason. 

But I can’t think of a lie to cover not knowing a hymn that a priest and a nun want me to start singing this very minute.  I’ve lied to priests before, but only small lies.  Tangling with a priest, a nun and a hymn might even get God involved; with Him making every day even harder.

“Eh, I don’…  I’m not su…,” I mutter-mumble, hoping they’ll get tired of me and somehow fix the problem.

“Ahhh!” Cecilia says, looking up, her shoulders unscrunching; her hands probly tired from being held over the piano keys. “He’s nervous, the poor little peteen. Sure we all know each other here, didn’t I see your sister Rita an’ a gang a them out at Father Michael’s a few weeks back.”

Father Michael is Bart’s brother and he’s a holy priest like Father Ludden. I’d say he does be talking to God a fierce amount cause he always says the right thing and makes you feel like you should do the right thing cause that’s what God wants.  He’s got white hair and a real soft voice, but he can’t sing like a lark the way Bart does.  My oldest sister, Rita, who’s goes to uni all the way down in Limerick, is a friend of Father Michael’s. They’re real friends, not just the way people have priests in for tea and then are happy when they get them out the door, so they don’t have to be pretending they’re holier than they really are.  Rita and a bunch of her friends do friend things with Father Michael, like going for walks out the country, even going ta the cinema.  

“Give him …,” Bart’s pink lips bunch up together into a sticky-out shape like a dead salmon’s mouth on the floor of Da’s boat.

He waves the papers a bunch: I don’t know what that means but I hear nun-shoe’s hard heels hitting the Assembly Hall’s wooden floor. Cecilia’s off the piano stool and rummaging around in the kinda bulging shopping bag a country woman does have hanging from her handlebars going home from town.  A few seconds later she doink-doink-doinks around the piano, waving a paper in her hand for me to walk to her.

“There ya are now,” she gives me a fierce busy sheet of paper with hymn words, a rake of straight parallel lines, and little black musical note symbols splattered all over the place. I can’t read the words properly cause they’re broken up into little bits, with a bunch of letters dangling at the end of the line like they might fall off.

By the time I look up from the sheet of paper, Cecilia’s back on her stool and Bart’s elbow is propping him up on the piano, eyes looking down on his paper again.  I’m wondering if I should just start singing.  I can kinda make out the first few words but I don’t know how the hymn goes. 

Cecilia hides my not-knowingness by starting up the piano.

As the music starts, Bart stands up straight; lips bunching up into dead-salmon-mouth; arms shooting up into the air; his papers turning into a conductor’s stick.

He flaps the papers furiously in front of my face for me ta start the words.

“OhLordmyGodwhenI,”,” I sing fast trying ta catch up ta the piano.

I slow down, breaking up the words the way they’re written on the paper:

“in awe…some wond…er … con…sid…her,” but now I’m falling behind so I speed up, “alltheworks.”

The piano stops.

Silence.

With so much air in the big Assembly Hall, the whizz of Bart’s paper flashing over and back through the air sounds really clear.

Flicking my eyes up from the hard-ta-follow-the-words hymn sheet, I see Bart’s puffy cheeks blown up like balloons:

“NO-NO-NO-NO, … NO!” his NO’s are big enough to fill the Assembly Hall. 

“Our Lord God is above in heaven weeping, … weeee…ping I tell you that we humans would offer him such dri…, such … can’t you see that a hymn is meant to add…ore God!”

He whizzes the papers in front of me making wind across my face.

“It’s not something to be, to be … be slogged through like you’re pouring calf nuts into buckets.”

He closes his eyes.

Silence fills the Assembly Hall.

My shoulders creep up and my neck scrunches down ta protect my ears as they get ready for a battering.

Maybe he’ll only hit me with his sheets of paper.

Nothing happens.

“Sorry, sor…,” I hear my voice mutter mumbling.

I know my voice is way too small for the Assembly Hall, but I don’t know what else ta do.  I’m sure it happens, but I never heard of a lad getting battered by a priest. Bart’d probably send for Ailbe who’d give me a ferocious leathering for being mean ta God.

“Listen … listen, it’s an, …,” Bart kinda bends his knees a wee bit, holds his hand up in front of his face; his eyes squint but look a bit sad, “an, ad…ore…ate…shun, by creating something beautiful, we’re trying to adore God who had his son to die on the cross for us.”

He unbends his knees, his arms shoot down and backwards like a bird’s wings just as its about to fly; his chest bulges out over his big tummy; his huge fish mouth fully open:

“OHHH … Lord my Goddddd!”

His flabby white throat shivers as he fills the whole Assembly Hall with the sound of good singing.

“When I … in awe…some wonnnn…der considdd…er all theworksThy hands have made.”

His throat stops shivering.

A sudden heavy silence in the big room makes me nervous. 

Immediately Bart’s back ta being a regular priest again; just a tired-looking man in a shiny black suit and bulging black shirt, his throat sagging down over his kinda-sorta white collar.

“Now, …,” he looks down at his sheet of paper, “Joe…seph ….”

His lips go dead-salmon-mouth but just for a second.

“Mister … Farrell, let’s here you adore God with your God given voice.”

A ball of spit jams in my throat.

I move my jaw a lot, trying ta swallow the spit.

This is worse than a battering.