PART 1: (link to part II)
Last night I flew for the first time. It was my seventeenth birthday and I thought it was about time that I gave it a go.
You might think it's a little late for my first time this being the twenty first century and all. So many teenagers go on educational exchanges to different countries or family holidays to exotic resorts and the like that virtually all of my age group have been on a plane at least once in their lives. Indeed this has been my experience too.
So why do I say that last night was the first night that I've flown? Because I flew without wings, that's why! Without needing to sit in a steel tube with engines thundering on either side and hostesses with painted-on smiles patrolling the aisles. I simply climbed through one of the attic windows onto the fourth floor roof of our home, stepped off, sank a few feet� and then soared through the air.
I haven't had a chance to tell mam the news yet today but I know she'll be delighted that I really can fly. She's suspected as much for years. "This little one will take off some day, and we'll all be running through the courtyard jumping up in the air after her. Trying to catch her by the ankles and pull her back down to us".
Oh yeah, we have a courtyard as well, 'cos we live in a castle. It's not some humungous castle mind you, and we share it with another family (cousins of ours actually). We live in the east wing. It is four stories high and I suppose about 4 times as big as an ordinary semi-d. So it's not like we live like royalty or anything but I'll grant that it's spacious. I just thought you should know that.
Anyway, you see mam's always been going on about how I might have the gift of flight, especially if she's had a little too much to drink at Christmas or a Christening or some occasion like that.
"She has the sparkling eyes" mam goes " you only see them in the ones of our family who can fly".
Bright lime green eyes with silver flecks, and yes it's true, they really do seem to sparkle. Everyone's always been commenting on it since I was a teeny tot. If we go to Dublin for the day it surprises people in the street and they stop and gawk at me in that nakedly curious way that Irish people do.
"Your uncle Tommy had those same eyes in his head (God rest his soul) and he could fly like the wind. Just like my own poor auld father and his two uncles and his grandfather before him".
That's the only thing that bugged mam about it all. They'd always been men, the one or two in each generation that had the strange eyes and went flying around. No one had ever heard tell of a girl doing it before, not once. We even got my great-grand-aunt Mary-Josephine to trace God knows how many generations back without sight nor screed of a flying female. I think it's because I'm a lesbian.
All I know is that boys like me because I'm tall and curvy and I like getting dolled up. I like boys' attention but I like girls too, 'cos they're soft and fragrant and they've big languorous, dreamy eyes. Last week after we'd finished doing it I got all worried that I might be a lesbian but my girlfriend says to me "no, you're not one of them, we're what's known as bisexuals" .I don't know, that name 'bisexuals' sounds like something somebody invented in their head, like a washer/dryer all-in-one or some other time-saving device. The point of all this is that maybe that's why I'm the only girl to fly. I must have some extra bit of manliness in me or a masculine attitude. I'm just saying�I think that could be a reason.
It was �� and beautiful up there. Pitch-black at three a.m. and the stars twinkling on and off above and behind and all around me. There wasn't a cry or a whimper out of me after the initial fall of a few feet. Somehow I knew it would all be ok. I could feel the power flowing in, like my skin was a porous layer sieving it from the night air. I felt it radiate from my centre out to my finger- and toe-tips, flicking millions of tiny switches on the way, each the 'on-button' for millions more tiny pumps that flooded my body with energy, a freshness that I'd never felt before.
I had progressed in the most painfully inept fashion till now, and so arrived long overdue at the point of my destiny. My girlhood I spent bumbling clumsily, searching but meandering away and towards the destination, with only a series of lucky trips and falls bringing me upon the prize. Now I was no longer a child, a blind explorer in a strange land, but a woman returned to her natural element. I gave a sharp, joyous little flick of my hands and feet (for effect mostly) and soared up and away.
I wondered a little at the beginning if I shouldn't feel more surprised at how easy I found it, but really I was just being pedestrian in my thinking. From the start I had a full instinctual control of every aspect of flight. As I stressed before I was simply a creature returned to her natural element. No fear or doubt caused me to fly on in a slow, cautious straight line, only after a time pausing to question myself "but I wonder will I try turning this way or that?" Instead I sped left or right, accelerated or decelerated, eased into a curve or inscribed a series of loops in the night sky as I wished.
I decided to turn and cut towards the town centre, which I put at the St. Canice's bridge over the river Suir, which the northeast wall of the castle looked down upon. The pubs and nightclubs on either side would be littered with stragglers and noisy with the bleating of old songs at this time of a Friday or Saturday morning. This early in the week they slept locked in a lonely stillness. Through the quiet I spotted two old ghosts, linked arm-in-arm and ambling in a leisurely fashion along the waterfront promenade. They seemed to sense me and looked up in an absent minded fashion. One sneered and whispered to the other. I was afraid of them then and the smirks on them, despite flying metres above. For I've been raised with a fear of ghosts and know well the tale of these two old sisters, spinsters both who more than a hundred years ago had taken their own lives and not a Christian burial between the two of them in the end.
This was a dark, dead time of night. The day long forgotten and dawn not yet remembered. Loneliness seemed to creep up and then surround me and so to outstrip it I glided away from the river back towards High street, the main shopping thoroughfare in the town, but the same loneliness nestled there as well. Not a soul living or dead moved on it now, a shopper's haven that was all hustle and bustle on every occasion that I had seen it before.
I eased toward street level, noting on my descent the thousands of tiny insects (midgets we called them) that batted themselves off the nearest street lamp, lured there by its harsh glare. Hovering noiselessly a few metres from the ground I peered in the windows of O'Brien's antique shop and O'Donnell's newsagents. Both displays were illuminated by flashing pinpoints of light, strings of tiny bulbs of assorted gold and red hues. I felt a smile break out, cheered by their festive air, and was prodded into flight again by this tingle of excitement.
'Whoosh!' down the Butter-slip Alley I sped (so called because of the milkmaids who used to slip on its sloping shiny stones and spill the cargo in their pails over it). Turned sharply upwards at the end of it and vertically over the rooftops of the town again. I accelerated now and like a flash zoomed to the other side of the river away from the castle. From the corner of my eye buildings blurred one into the other. I felt my first bit of surprise then, at just how fast I could go, far faster than any motor car. Reaching the train station I dipped low again, ducking and weaving playfully between corrugated carts and long steel carriages. Then on a whim abruptly upwards again, till I could view the tracks where they ran to the edge of the town and were swallowed in the dark horizon. How fragile our little town looked from up here, the roofs pressing up in a great effort against the black sky to carve themselves a space under the endless void.
Heading for home I started over the station masters house and there spied two hollow eyed heroin addicts beneath the eves. One slumped against the wall, forehead bowed, chin against chest and a rivulet of snot on his upper lip. A girl of about my own age sat cross-legged a few feet away. Head bobbing and lank dirty hair swaying to whatever rhythm she was listening to on her walkman.
An idea formed in my head then. I'd offer to take her around the city in my arms. It'd be fun to have a companion to share the thrill with (and to show off to) and it might wake her up and stop her from bobbing up and down like a yo-yo. Wouldn't I be helping someone less fortunate than myself? My mother would go mad if she found out though; "what! Flying up and down the length of the town with drug addicts." So ? She was a drug addict, but what matter of it? She was a bony little thing, looked weak as a kitten and harmless enough to me I supposed. If she started carrying-on I'd tell her to stop or I'd let go, and that'd be the end of it. I wondered how I must look to them falling from the stars with my hair streaming behind me and my nightdress billowing in the wind. I imagined like a creature from heaven. I came towards earth till I felt the wet grass licking my feet, then stopped a few steps in front of her. Tried to catch her eye and hoping that my face looked kind said "would you like a ride in the sky with me girlie?"
"She won't here you with them headphones on." A mans' voice came from the darkness behind.
"I'm a friend of hers. I'm just saying that she can't hear you with the headphones. Jesus, there's no need to bite me head off."
"Well what do you think you're doing hiding in the dark and sneaking up on people like that? I'm sorry, but you gave me a fright"
"And what do you think you're doing at four o'clock in the morning coming up to people asking them if they want a ride in the sky with you?"
She's travelling already as it is.
What did he mean? I gave another look at her and she didn't appear to be going anywhere, just swaying around with her eyes shut like she had been before.
I mean she's had an E. You know when someone takes a few E and they're out of their head you say they've been travelling. Have you never heard that before?
"Oh yeah, I think I have alright." I couldn't remember. My eyes were adjusting to the light and I was beginning to make him out. A young man, he looked like �"Tommy Condon?" I couldn't believe it. Tommy was in my class last year but he stopped coming in after his dad left them.
That's right Angie. How's the going?
Good and yourself?
Grand. Was that you I saw flying around over the town tonight Angie.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ!
I know.
You know I remember my grandfather and all his old cronies used to say that your grandfather could�
I know. Everyone used to say it and 'twas true. He came out of the shadows now and I could see him clearly. He was taller than last year and he'd lost weight. It had always irked me a little the way adults would go "that fella's gone a bit plump" or 'so-and-so's looking thin lately" and I could never see it. I think Tommy was the first person I had ever noticed had lost weight. Handsome fella Tommy but he looked untidy; like someone needed to teach him how to shave. There was some kind of a smell from him.
What's it like?
It's brilliant! Oh God it's amazing�
Can I have a go?
Umm... The girl looked like a down-and-out. The whole lot of them looked a bit suss to me.
What? Shur there's no point taking that wan up, she couldn't tell her arse from her elbow at the moment. Do you think I'm too heavy is it?
Did you have an E as well Tommy?
Yeah, but it's worn off. I'm ok... What!? Jesus Angie you'd swear I'd AIDS or something.
Are you a drug-addict Tommy?
Ha, ha, ha... He started laughing his head off at that. Is that what's wrong with you? You think I might be a drug addict.
Well shur isn't this where all the druggies go at night, down behind the station masters house? Everybody knows that. That's the first thing I thought when I saw the three of ye, Oh look at the three addicts down there.
For fuck's sake Angie, the only ones out here at this time of night are people like me and Siobhan and yer man there cos our mam and dad don't know that we're out and they'd kill us if they knew we'd taken E. The heroin users are all at home in their own houses shooting up cos nobody gives a shit what they do.
Yeah, I suppose you're right. I felt stupid now, why hadn't I thought of that?
Tommy was babbling on and on with excitement at the start. We headed to the centre of town for even though I'd told him there was nothing going on there he wanted to be able to look down on it. He was mad to go down and look in the second and third storey windows but I told him it wasn't right, that people lived in those houses and that I preferred to stay above street level now as it was after four o'clock in the morning and you never knew who might be about. We visited the football field and the hurling pitch, two of Tommy's old hangouts and set down a few minutes to reminisce. He'd hurled here his whole life until his dad left and he said wasn't it amazing how you wouldn't see someone now even if you wanted to do a tackle on them.Then I flew him in my arms over the bar and pretended I'd scored a point and hooray for me.
We took to the southwest then. I noticed the dimmest of lights far, far off on the bottom of the horizon.
It'll be morning in another hour or two.
It's still pitch dark now though, why don't we hurry up and do something cool.
We could go to the Cathedral and sit up near the top of the spire. That's something you'd never do day or night here.
He was game for that and I sped up and had us there in a shot. There were two nice little ledges only about six feet down from the tip as if they were made for us to sit on. Tommy said they were probably made for bell ringers and I replied that'd be right except did he notice that there weren't any bells. We had a laugh then and that got us chatting back and forth like nobody's business. I told him about the two old spirits I'd seen down on the waterfront and he said had I ever seen the three that were supposed to hang around in the graveyard beside the Cathedral itself. I admitted that I hadn't but wasn't it amazing the amount of troubled souls in the world, what with the living and the dead. As the words came out of my mouth I thought of Tommy himself. He told me about the E's and the nightclub that they went to and I said he'd want to watch himself going there that I'd heard the gardai raided it at least once a week.
You're right but they'd hardly raid it on a Tuesday night. They probably don't even know it's open.
I suppose so.
God, I've really gone off the tracks haven't I?
What do you mean? I knew what he meant but I didn't want to talk about his troubles at half four in the morning.
I mean with taking E, and I don't even go to school anymore.
Right. I hoped that would be the end of it.
It's funny you should ask why ( I didn't remember asking) considering that we're here on top of a Cathedral seeing as it's due to the church.
The church? I thought you stopped coming to school 'cos your dad left.
That as well, actually my dad left due to the church too.
Why, did he want to be a priest?
Oh, for fuck's sake! Of course not, he said and then let me in on the whole story. We sat up there shivering, one arm each around the spire, as he told how he'd been abused by one of the priests in the town. It happened when he was in primary school but he'd only gotten the nerve to tell his dad last year, told everything; filthy, horrible things. He'd blamed Tommy's mother for it; always 'kow-towing to the blasted clergy and licking their arses'. She'd given them access to the child he said. She cried and wailed and said what was she supposed to do? Nobody'd ever guessed that they'd been carrying on with that kind of thing until recently. Why she pleaded, hadn't Tommy said something to her at the time and she'd have put a stop to it there and then. She'd have screamed blue bloody murder up and down the town and no priest would have done that to her child or any other child ever again. He'd said it was all well and good for her to talk like that now after the deed was done. He couldn't bear to look at her anymore after she'd countenanced such goings-on and he'd be out of that house at the first opportunity.
Is he still in Ireland?
Is he still in Ireland? Shur he's still here in Kilkenny, he only lives about three streets away from us. Where else would he go?
That's alright then isn't it? You can see him everyday.
He doesn't want to see me anymore. He says every time he sees my face he gets a picture of what happened in his mind. He reckons I'll probably turn out to be a gay.
That's awful. Are you?
A gay? No!! Jesus the things you say. Are you?
Father Lee above in ________.
No way!
Yep.
BASTARD!! Oh yuck, and he's so old and wrinkly. I hope he just �dies.
I hope something happens to him. You know what; we could get our own back on him tonight Angie. Just a little trick. Just a small little fright to pay he back some of what he's done.
And so it was that Father Lee was roused by his housekeeper at four thirty a.m. to find out what that tapping on her third floor bedroom window was. Father Lee drew the drapes to said window and had he been able to speak and felt not quite so light headed with fear would have informed her that a ghoulishly grinning Tommy Condon had been its' source. He would also have added that Tommy achieved this feat by somehow floating three storeys from the ground utterly unaided. The aged crone might have agreed had she not fainted on her first glimpse of the apparition.
Tommy floated away from the window, and then towards it. Tommy floated left; Tommy floated right. Tommy then bared his teeth, made animalistic gurgling sounds, floated to the other window at the far end of the room and began clawing it clumsily as if attempting to gain entry. He rounded off his performance by sinking slowly from sight while rolling his eyeballs back in his head.
Father Lee seized the opportunity and shook Mrs Hannigan ( the housekeeper) to consciousness, but not to her senses. On first sight of the priest she screamed uncontrollably and began to claw at his face. "Mrs. Hannigan, calm down" he pleaded, but to no avail as she seemed too frightened to recognise her own name. He gave her a good smack on the cheek and then she recognised it quite well. "Sorry father, oh my God such a shock. Did you ever in all your life see such a sight? God between us and all harm what was is Father? And the big black wings on him! What if he gets into the house? "I saw no such wings Mrs. Hannigan" "Didn't you? I wonder how is it you missed that detail Father? He had them all right; they must have been six feet out on either side of him". Despite the expression of grim certainty set in her saggy features Father Lee regarded this statement with the same scepticism as her alarmist assertions that 'there's six years olds in that school on drugs".
Father Lee was retired, an old man now. Seventy eight years and nearly fifty of them a priest in this parish. "Move on out of here Jack" his friends had said to him as a young priest, "you could find a far better spot than this". He supposed they were right but he was content to remain. This was where all his people were from and hadn't he spent his childhood here. He could study and think and pray in peace surrounded by families whose histories he could trace back for generation upon generation. Anyway, wasn't one place was as good as any other for carrying out the Lord's work.
He recognised the lad, a local youth. It was hard to put a face to the name but they were blow-ins he remembered. What feat of engineering was involved in suspending the boy from such a height and transporting him in various directions he couldn't fathom. Less still why one would go to such trouble to terrorise two old people at (he checked his watch): quarter to five on Tuesday morning? How degraded had this society become when people who it seemed neither worked nor studied could afford to expend so much energy in hooliganism? He hadn't time to answer this question as Mrs Hannigan began to tremble in his grip and sob quickly. "What is it? If he's come back just ignore him. He's a local boy playing a prank on us." "Oh no Father, 'tis worse, 'tis worse again than that". He spun round.
It appeared to be a spirit at the window now. A female this time. "Is it a Banshee Father?" It was certainly a good approximation of one. A long white gown flowed to her ankles, a short white veil hung over her face and both billowed and tossed in the breeze, the hint of Dawn added a vague luminosity to her appearance. Her head tilted to one side and her arms she extended beseechingly. Without warning she burst into flight (impressively realistic), far into the distance and then back again in the blink of an eye to resume her sorrowful, imploring posture. He knew who she was, and thus knew who the young lad was, or at least who he came from. The old priest felt like opening the window and telling young Ms. O'Connor what a stupid girl she was, and what a stupid, stupid decision she'd made but all of a sudden her attention was diverted and she sank downwards. Some occurrence had surprised her. There was a series of heavy thumps, as a body rammed into wood and then the crash of a heavy pane of glass breaking into shards and scattering across a floor (his kitchen floor he presumed). "They're breaking in Father; lock the door before they get up here to us". "That's a very good idea Mrs. Hannigan but I'll fetch the mobile phone first to get the gardai and you find an implement to defend yourself with. The young man who's just entered this house (is of a species) which wouldn't hesitate to harm us."