A Month of Sundays

  Immediately, the crowd took on a new definition and those in front began to shuffle dutifully towards the stage. O’Driscoll looked round but Karen was gone, leaving a tantalizing memory of that final expression her eyes had worn as the lights had gone up. Was it regret... or relief... or something else? O’Driscoll couldn’t be sure and, not for the first time, he was forced to concede that, although he had a relatively wide knowledge of books and literature, when it came to reading the eyes of women, he was functionally illiterate.

  He was later unable to say what the catalyst was for the unfortunate incident that then occurred. Perhaps it was the emotional trauma caused by his near miss with Karen as he saw her leaving the hall a few minutes later, or perhaps it was the truly colossal volume of strong lager that he then took on board to moderate that disappointment, but a scant two hours after he had gazed longingly into the eyes of Karen Black, John O’Driscoll found himself occupying exactly the same spot on the dance floor, only this time with a very different figure dancing opposite him.

  Some thought the four girls who joined the party at nine-thirty in a whirl of noise and laughter were friends of Sue in the kitchen, while others believed they were connected in some way to Tracey Reeves, but it turned out that they were known to no one and had actually been heading towards a different venue when they mistakenly entered a likely-looking doorway. The largest of the girls wore her hair in a style known as the “Rachel” haircut from by the TV series Friends, and she wore it with confidence and élan, but even her best friend would have had to admit any resemblance between her and Rachel ended there. The second girl was wearing a top that consisted of a Madonna-style coned bra and little else, while the third was clad in garishly-coloured knee socks and clogs. The fourth, distinguished only by a curly perm at one end and platform shoes at the other, seemed tame by comparison to her friends. Within moments, the four girls made their way to the bar and were demanding to be served by Mr. D’Souza, the middle-aged church deacon acting as barman for the evening.

  “Oi, four Diamond Whites over ‘ere, Gunga Din, jeldi, jeldi!” shouted the one in the knee socks and clogs as the four took up position at the bar. At that moment, Father Kennedy passed by wearing his usual forbidding expression and the one with the Rachel hair said, “Fuck me, Tray, I didn’t know it was a vicar and tarts do.”

  “I’m not going down on me knees to that ugly old bugger for no one,” said the one with the knee socks and there were screams of laughter from her friends.

  “Might put a smile on his face if you did, miserable-looking old sod,” said the one with the curly perm. “I bet his crucifix hasn’t seen any action for years.”

  O’Driscoll could not later recall the precise sequence of events that culminated in him and the one with the curly perm gyrating and cavorting madly on the dance floor while a cheering crowd egged them on. He could only remember a mad, frenetic hour in which beer had followed beer and whiskey had followed whiskey as he determined to put the disappointment of the near miss with Karen behind him. It was when Chuck Berry’s ‘C’est La Vie’ song, the one John Travolta and Uma Thurman had danced to in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, began to play that O’Driscoll leapt to his feet and started imitating the Travolta half of the dance.

  The one with the curly perm jumped up and within moments the two were out on the dance floor, doing their best to imitate the sinuous, sexy moves that the two stars had acted out in the film. When O’Driscoll kicked off his shoes, a la Travolta, a large white toe could be seen protruding from the end of not one but both of his black socks, and one of the socks also contained a second hole so large that Duffy’s subsequent description of the garment as being “more hole than sock” could not be disputed. Concentrating all his attention on mirroring the movements of his partner, O’Driscoll followed as, Uma Thurman-style, the one with the curly perm drew her nicotine-stained fingers backwards and forwards across her face.

  The performance moved into territories that would have confirmed the worst fears of any watching Scottish Presbyterian as both dancers began to gyrate and make thrusting movements with their groins. A future generation would invent a word “twerking” to represent these actions, but in 1995 there was no language to describe them other than some variation on the generic term “making a cunt of yourself”, which Micky Quinn employed to cover a multitude of sins.

  “C’mon, Tray, hitch your skirt up a bit higher!” called out the one with the Rachel hair.

  “Any higher and they’ll be able to see me kebab!”

  Abandoning himself to the moment, O’Driscoll began to fondle his own genitalia in an ostentatious manner, whilst grinding his backside into the receptive lap of his partner. He had just thrust his groin for the third or fourth time in the direction of the crowd when it parted as if by magic and he suddenly saw Karen, standing a few feet away and taking in the whole scene. In another second, the gap had closed and she was lost to view but O’Driscoll would recall forever that frozen moment, when he had looked into Karen Black’s eyes and seen... Afterwards, he couldn’t be sure what he had seen but for this once, he was glad of his inability to read meaning in women’s eyes. A moment later, the music stopped and O’Driscoll was swept away as part of the drunken scrum that moved towards the bar area and, although he looked around for Karen, she was nowhere to be seen and seemed to have left as suddenly as she had arrived.

  Before long, the lights were going up and few moments later, still with the four girls in tow, the lads assembled outside on Ealing Broadway. The one in the curly perm was being sick to a noisy accompaniment of “Hoick it up, Tray!” and “Better out than in, babes!” while a trickling sound from further down the alley suggested the one with the Rachel hair was evacuating another part of her anatomy.

  At that moment, while no one was looking, O’Driscoll took the opportunity to slip away - he wouldn’t be missed in all the confusion and anyway, he wanted to be alone with his shame.

  Sunday

  It was a much-chastened John O’Driscoll who awoke the next morning and as he contemplated the hours ahead, he cursed his past Catholic upbringing and current Catholic employment for ruining yet another Sunday. The staff concert was to take place at four o’clock and with Father Kennedy expected to be busy getting made up and into costume, a few members of staff, among them O’Driscoll and Duffy, had been nominated to entertain the American delegation and generally keep an eye on things. Upon arrival at the sacristy they knocked on the well-remembered oaken door, and a few moments later, dragging footsteps signaled the approach of Mrs. O’Reilly, Father Kennedy’s elderly and irascible housekeeper. She studied O’Driscoll’s face with a look in which disfavour and dementia were represented in roughly equal parts, until memory triumphed and she recognized him as the young man who had been behaving strangely in the hall a couple of weeks before.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. O’Reilly,” he said brightly, before adding sotto voce, for it was well-known that the old lady was three-parts deaf, “you mad old biddy.”

  Mrs. O’Reilly looked at him suspiciously. “What did you say?” she asked sharply, twiddling the dial on what was evidently a new hearing aid, for its surface was as yet uncontaminated by dust or furniture polish.

  “Er... I said those flowers look pretty,” answered O’Driscoll, pointing to a vase of tired-looking daffodils. “I’ve come to help with the concert,” he went on, speaking slowly and with exaggerated care.

  “You don’t have to shout, I’m not deaf,” she snapped and opened the door to let them in. “Father Kennedy is preparing his performance,” she continued, enunciating the last word with the reverence which Laurence Olivier’s dresser might have referred to his Hamlet, “but I’ll take you into the dining room.” They entered the room to find that the visiting delegation had already arrived and Duffy, and asked if there was anything with which they could help.

  “Thank you, young man,” answered Mr. Donnelly, who had clearl
y taken upon himself the role of spokesman for the group. There followed a few minutes of desultory conversation before one of the group noticed a large map of Ireland on the wall and Mr. Donnelly asked whether one of their hosts would like to give them an interpretation of The Troubles from a UK perspective. O’Driscoll took up a position in front of the wall and indicated the large expanse of green which comprised the greater part of the map.

  “This is free Ireland,” he began, and was rewarded with several nods of recognition from his audience.

  “And these,” he continued, pointing to the area coloured red, “are the occupied territories...”

  He was about to continue when he noticed Sister Bernadette had entered and was directing a warning look at him. The nun was looking a little flustered and, knowing how important it was to her that the visit was a success, O’Driscoll resolved to desist from further pissing about in front of the Americans. Sister Bernadette greeted the visitors warmly, enquired as to whether they had been given everything they needed and informed them that Father Kennedy would join them for a few minutes before completing his preparations for the performance. The visitors would then be escorted to the school hall where they could watch final preparations for the show and then the performance itself. The nun also informed the delegation that if anyone wanted to have a drink or use the toilet facilities, they would have to get the key from Father Kennedy, since the kitchen was kept locked after it had been broken into during a recent function.

  At this point, Father Kennedy entered the room, and it was immediately evident that he had begun the process of preparing for the performance because, although he was still wearing a cassock, his face bore evidence of the application of stage make-up, and he carried with him the small pencil case in which he kept his face paints. His entrance created something of a stir among the American delegation for though Father Kennedy scrubbed and polished and at his best was no oil painting, with the application of layers of heavily-tinted make-up, his face had assumed an aspect that almost defied description.

  O’Driscoll could hardly blame the Americans for their reaction. As a child, the filmed version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Charles Laughton had caused him to have recurring nightmares and as he looked at the priest, it was as if the faces of Laughton’s Quasimodo and John Hurt’s Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant had morphed together in some terrible act of transmutation. As Kennedy moved towards the centre of the room, one of the delegates took an involuntary step backwards, and from the rear of the group, there came something that sounded like a gasp. There was a discernible air of relief among the visitors when the priest left, reminding Sister Bernadette as he did so that the key to the kitchen would remain in the bag containing his face paints. Sister Bernadette too departed almost immediately on some unknown mission, leaving O’Driscoll and Duffy with the visitors.

  There was a short, charged silence before a visibly nervous delegate asked, “Does Father Kennedy often wear... er... make-up?” The obvious response would have been for O’Driscoll or Duffy to explain Father Kennedy’s role in the concert but some mischievous instinct prevented either of them from taking this step, with each discerning the same thought process in the other by some unholy act of osmosis.

  “Make-up?” replied O’Driscoll while at the same moment Duffy said with feigned embarrassment, “Er... I didn’t really notice.”

  There was no chance to explore the matter further, for Sister Bernadette re-entered the room and asked the delegates if they had everything they wanted, at which point Duffy and O’Driscoll took the opportunity to slip out. As they did so, one of the female delegates professed herself to be feeling faint and asked if she could have a hot drink.

  “Certainly,” replied Sister Bernadette, “I’ll arrange that for you right away. We’ll just put the kettle on in the kitchen.” Noticing an air of unease among the Americans, she thought she might diffuse the tension with an act of cultural exchange by using a piece of their vocabulary, and she trawled her memory for one of the new transatlantic expressions that she had recently learned. Eventually, her face cleared and with a tiny smile of triumph, she said, “I’m afraid it will take a couple of minutes because we need to get the key from Father Kennedy. He keeps it in his douche bag.”

  Into the silence which greeted this remark, the dropping of a single pin would have sounded like the thunder of a hundred cannons. After what seemed like a lifetime, a tiny, trembling voice broke the silence. “I’m sorry but did you say Father Kennedy has a... douche bag?”

  “Yes,” answered Sister Bernadette brightly. “Although,” she went on quickly, after all, she didn’t want the Americans to think there was anything “sissy” about Father Kennedy, “of course he doesn’t use it all the time, only when he’s going on stage.”

  The silence which greeted this remark was, if possible, longer and more charged than the previous one as the delegates struggled to make sense of what they had been told. A child entered carrying the key and there was another interminable pause before a figure who was evidently the most junior of the delegates shuffled forward and gingerly accepted it, returning to his place with the offending instrument hanging precariously between thumb and forefinger.

  Having performed her errand of mercy, Sister Bernadette hurried off on another of her mysterious errands, leaving behind a stunned silence which rapidly turned into a seething cauldron of debate. Mr. Donnelly appointed himself chief inquisitor and was not slow to express his disapproval of Father Kennedy’s conduct. For the priest to flaunt oneself like a painted jezebel was bad enough, but the possession of the article which Sister Bernadette had identified by name hinted at physiological manifestations of the priest’s wickedness so horrible that they didn’t bear thinking of.

  One of the delegates suggested rather diffidently that what went on in a man’s private life was surely his own business but Mr. Donnelly swatted this argument away with disdain. He didn’t know what form of Catholicism they practiced here, he said, but he hadn’t come all this way to see men of the cloth disporting themselves like... a Vietnamese lady boy, and the whole thing didn’t sit with any of the tenets of the Catholic Church that he knew.

  There was mild unease among Saint Catherine’s staff when the American delegation failed to arrive at the school hall for the performance, and it soon became apparent that something had happened to disturb the carefully cultivated atmosphere of harmony. Mrs. Goodwin appointed herself chief investigator and bustled backwards and forwards between the two delegations. Returning from one such visit and finding a group of Saint Catherine’s staff chatting in the corridor, she approached them and in a loud voice said, “Could someone tell me what a douche bag is?”

  There was a brief pause before Tracey Reeves, one of the young teaching assistants began tentatively, “It’s something that they use in America...”

  “Yes, go on!” demanded Mrs. Goodwin impatiently. Tracey moved towards her, lowered her voice and whispered in her ear. An expression of incredulity dawned on Mrs. Goodwin’s face and she said, “What do they want to do that for?” In the end, it had taken several hours for the confusion to be resolved, with recrimination eventually giving way to reconciliation as the narrative of the misunderstanding had unfolded.

  Duffy and O’Driscoll, engaged in the tidying away of scenery and stacking of chairs, were blissfully unaware that there was a problem and even when word finally did reach them, they listened at first with only half an ear, their minds focusing on the icy globules surrounding the first, well-deserved pint awaiting them in The North Star. Slowly, however, an antenna in O’Driscoll’s mind began to oscillate, at first mildly but then with increasing urgency and he sent Duffy ahead so he could find out what had happened.

  It was Mrs. Goodwin, of course, who brought him up to speed. A major incident had been resolved, she said, thanks in no small part to her own diplomatic activity, but the authorities had laid the blame for the
misunderstanding squarely at the door of John O’Driscoll, who according to Father Kennedy, had played a really shabby trick on Sister Bernadette. When asked by a mystified O’Driscoll to furnish him with details of this trick, the school secretary said, with a toss of the head that he (John O’Driscoll) had deliberately misled her (Sister Bernadette) as to the function of an item which she (Mrs. Goodwin) would not dignify with a name.

  With another toss of the head, she retired, leaving O’Driscoll alone in the sacristy with only Parnell, the church cat, for company. “They’re going to blame me again,” he said wildly as Parnell fixed an insolent eye on him from his vantage point on the arm of the sofa. “They’re going to bloody well blame me again!” Parnell gave him a look of infinite contempt, spat silently and then, sticking his tail in the air, wandered haughtily off in the direction of the kitchen. It was for O’Driscoll, the final confirmation that his hopes for the future lay in ruins around him - even the cat despised him! He heard a voice saying, “Father Kennedy’s coming this way and he doesn’t look very happy,” and O’Driscoll felt that unmistakable and familiar sensation as, for the third consecutive Sunday, his bowels began the boiling and churning process that would shortly reduce them to liquid form.

  Week Four

  Monday

  Duffy had found the whole thing highly amusing, and O’Driscoll was forced to concede that, however well-intentioned his motives had been, he had misled Sister Bernadette about the nature of the item in question and in that respect, had been the architect of his own downfall. The next morning, he resolved to go and see the nun to offer his apologies, and when he found her in her office, she received him kindly and listened attentively as he explained that, while he hadn’t been sure of the precise nature of the article that had caused all the confusion, he had genuinely believed the definition he had given had been an accurate one.