An Irish Heartbeat

Paul Ferris

Everything I Own

Lyrics by David Gates

Administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing

You Ain’t Seen Nothin Yet

Written by Randy Bachman

All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC,

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

Words & Music by Elton John & Bernie Taupin

All rights in Germany administered by Universal Music Publ. GmbH.

Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

Positively 4th Street

Lyrics by Bob Dylan

Administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

Annie's Song

Words and Music by John Denver

State One Songs America (ASCAP)/ FSMGI (IMRO)

All rights for FSMGI (IMRO) Administered by Chrysalis One Music Publishing Limited

Bright Blue Rose

Words by Jimmy MacCarthy

Used by permission of Jimmy MacCarthy.

Romeo And Juliet

Words & Music by Mark Knopfler

Universal Music Publishing Limited.

All rights in Germany administered by Universal Music Publ. GmbH.

Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

Kiss You All Over

Words & Music by Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman

BMG Music Publishing Limited.

Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

In My Life

Lyrics by John Lennon/Paul McCartney

All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

For Geraldine

‘.…My childhood days bring back sad reflections
Of happy times I spent so long ago
My boyhood friends and my own relations
Have all passed on now like melting snow.…’

(Carrickfergus)

Biography

Paul Ferris was born in 1965. He left his native Northern Ireland in 1981 to pursue a career as a Professional Footballer. He lives in Northumberland with his wife and three children.

1

He awoke on a bed he’d last slept in 22 years ago. As the morning sun stabbed its way through the defenceless curtains, the strange familiarity of the room unnerved him. Many times he had told himself he would never return. For too long, he had been afraid to come back. As he cast his eyes around the cramped and dusty room, he felt as though he had stepped into another lifetime.

Every part of the bedroom was as he remembered it. Yet everything was different. It was as if the entire colour had been sucked out of it over the years. It was a room no longer of its time. He lay in the silence and ran his hand along the faded blue wall he once helped his father to paint. He thought of the last time he lay in this bed. She was by his side then. He hoped she would be there forever, until he destroyed himself and abandoned her. No, it wasn’t his old bedroom that had changed, it was him. This was the room of his innocence. Today, he was looking at it through a distorted lens. He’d changed so much since he last called this place his home.

He reviewed the events of the last two days. The dreaded phone call from Tom, when he knew by the tone of his brother’s voice, the rest of the conversation would not be a good one. There were the deliberations about whether to return at all, and then the argument with Maggie on his arrival. What was the argument about? What was it Maggie said that irritated him so much? Why did even being in the same room as her make him feel so uncomfortable? He intended staying at Maggie’s, but left in a rush, and instead he and Annie had made their way here late last night. They moved between the tiny kitchen and the bedrooms. While he slept in his old room, Annie slept in his mother’s bed. Downstairs in the living room, his mother Mary lay dead in an open casket.

Cormac was 40 years old yesterday. He was born and grew up in the village of Killane, on the edge of Belfast, at the height of Northern Ireland’s bloody divisive conflict. He was raised by Catholic parents and educated by a combination of vicious priests and violent nuns. He was the youngest of three brothers and one sister.

His memories of childhood, although fading fast, were that he was essentially happy and loved. His brothers, Daniel and Tom, who were both much older than Cormac, loved him in a protective Irish way, because he was their ‘baby’ brother. Tom, the eldest, who’d never married, now ran a successful music store in West Belfast. He was one of the few people Cormac had kept in touch with over the last two decades. Daniel, a year younger than Tom, was the black sheep of the family until he died, aged 26, when Cormac was 10. He moved out of the family home at 17 but remained a regular visitor until his death. At the height of the ‘troubles’, he wandered drunkenly into the wrong place at the wrong time and was beaten to death with baseball bats and golf clubs in an alley in the warren of terraced houses that merged to form Belfast’s ‘peace line.’ Maggie was different. She was born 13 years before him, on the same day, and he sometimes felt that their birthday was all they had in common. His earliest memories were of his fear of being left alone with her when his parents would go on their weekly visit to the local pub. No matter how hard he tried to ‘be good,’ Maggie always found some reason to punish him. After years of trying to impress her, to gain some respect from her, to connect with her, it no longer mattered to him what she thought, said or did.

‘Dad, Dad, get up, Aunty Maggie and Uncle Jack will be here in a minute and we left the kitchen in a mess last night!’

Cormac looked up from the bed, and there before him stood his reason for living. With her red hair tumbling down her shoulders, bright blue eyes and a complexion as pale as snow, stood his one and only Annie. She never knew her mother. His wife Jill had died from the complications of Annie’s birth. From that moment, he devoted his life equally to Annie and his career.

Cormac shook himself from the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. He splashed the icy water against his face.

‘Christ, you look your age!’

He glanced in the bathroom mirror to see a smiling Annie hovering at the door. He stared at his reflection in the dimly lit mirror. His blue eyes, once his most attractive feature, were now sunken shells permanently framed by the black circles that appeared overnight in his late thirties. He was never sure whether this was the result of too much time spent in dingy rooms poring over ancient texts, or even more time spent in dingier pubs slumped over freshly poured drinks. He slapped some life into his pale and sagging cheeks.

‘You can say that that again.’

He reached for his beautiful girl. He pulled her tightly to him and wished he could fast forward today’s events. It took him by surprise when he felt the water trickle down his cheek and fall gently onto her hair.

‘What time’s Nan’s funeral, dad?’

‘11:30, I think.’

‘Oh shit, that’s in half an hour!’

He shook his head.

‘Annie.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve got a filthy mouth!’

‘Sorry, dad.’

‘Annie.’

‘What?’

‘Guess what?’

‘I know. You love me!’

After she’d had gone downstairs, Cormac walked wearily back to the bedroom. He opened the faded curtains. As the mid-morning sun illuminated the dull little bedroom, Cormac felt a shudder that began at his shoulders and made it all the way to his toes. On the wall to his right was every proud memento of his academic and sporting achievements. On the thin shelf that divided the wall in two, stood eight or nine dusty trophies, untouched since the day he left; an homage to a lost child. He studied the tired little space. This room, once the centre of his universe, felt like it belonged to someone else. So much had changed since he’d last slept here. His beloved father had long since passed on, and now his mother lay downstairs as silent as stone.

Annie snapped him from his melancholy.

‘Dad, you’ve really got to come downstairs, the house is a mess and Aunty Maggie will be here any minute. Besides, I found some eggs in the fridge and made some scrambled eggs.’

‘I didn’t know you could make scrambled eggs.’

‘I can’t. It started out as an omelette and just sort of became scrambled eggs!’

Cormac smiled and started towards the stairs.

‘How long is it since we’ve been in Ireland, Annie?’

‘Dad, I’ve never been in Ireland.’

He felt a surge of guilt. He had not set foot in Ireland since the day he scurried away as a terrified boy on a cold March night in 1987. How his life had changed. Today he sat in his childhood home as Cormac O’Reilly MP, junior minister at the Home Office. A former high-flying barrister, earmarked as a future prime minister. He’d achieved so much. Had he lost too much?

He pulled his chair up to the familiar kitchen table. He remembered the day his father had proudly brought it home, oblivious to the fact its presence in the narrow kitchen meant the back door would never fully open again. At this table he learned the art of eating with his elbows strapped tightly to his body, the only way he could get the food from the plate to his mouth without starting a war with Tom or Daniel. A war that, as the youngest, he knew he was certain to lose. He picked up his fork and scooped the egg to his mouth, elbow free and fully functioning.

‘Annie, these eggs are fantastic. When you go off to university, promise me you’ll look after yourself. I mean eat properly and try to cook fresh food,’

Annie pulled her chair next to his, reducing the effectiveness of his elbow in the process. She rested her head against his shoulder.

‘You’re definitely turning into the old fart you told me you would never be. Anyway, it’s still three months until I go to Edinburgh, so can we just live in the moment a little?’

Her absentmindedness brought a smile to his face. This was certainly not a moment in his life he wanted to savour.

Annie leaned away from him.

‘What’s so funny, dad?’

‘Well, much as I really enjoy your little moments of new-age spirituality and all that, I’m not exactly sure that this is a great time for living in the moment!’

The doorbell rang.

Annie got up and moved towards the door. Cormac was grateful for the space she created. He was also glad for the extra moment of peace before Maggie’s arrival. He turned to his eggs. Annie turned back from the door.

‘Dad, will you get it?’

Cormac pushed his eggs away.

‘I’m not getting it. You get it!’

‘She’s your sister.’

He stood and moved toward the back of the kitchen, the furthest point in the house from where Maggie was now irritatingly holding her finger on the door bell.

‘Annie, I know she is, but unfortunately she doesn’t like me very much, and also scares the shit out of me!’

Annie sat herself down in front of his half-eaten breakfast.

‘Dad, please just get the door … oh and by the way, you’ve got a filthy mouth!’

He could tell by her tone he was defeated and made his way down the narrow hall. He opened the door. Maggie’s finger remained on the bell for longer than was necessary. She stepped into the cramped hallway and hugged him in the awkward way she had always done. Why was it no matter which way he tilted his head in preparation, she always managed to turn the same way? Did she do it deliberately? Cormac was angry with himself for the thought. Maggie marched past him.

‘Where is she?’

‘She’s in the kitchen.’

Maggie spun towards him.

‘Mammy’s body’s in the kitchen?’

Cormac, stifled an inappropriate laugh at the thought of his mother’s body competing with the kitchen table.

‘Sorry, Maggie, I thought you meant Annie. Mum is in the living room.’

Maggie turned on her heels and pushed open the living room door, just enough so that Cormac could glimpse the bottom of the casket. She fell to her knees. He turned his head away. Maggie wailed as he closed the door.

2

Maggie eventually joined them in the cramped kitchen. Annie made coffee. Maggie didn’t drink it. Maggie made tea.

‘Doesn’t she look peaceful, Cormac?’

Cormac didn’t answer. He tried to count to ten.

‘Cormac, I was just saying, doesn’t Mammy look peaceful?’

Maggie was standing over him.

He told himself he didn’t need to answer. He couldn’t help himself.

‘I wouldn’t know, Maggie. Does she look peaceful?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means I don’t wish to see my mum as a corpse. I don’t wish to have a lasting memory of that, thanks!’

‘But that was Mammy’s wish, to have an open coffin, to have a Catholic burial, to have family around her.’

‘Maggie, please let’s not argue – not now, of all times. Just respect the fact I don’t wish to take part in that part, OK?’

‘Frankly, Cormac, it’s not OK! It’s not OK that you haven’t been home to see her for 22 years. It’s not OK she broke her heart every day for you. It’s not OK you’ve forgotten who you are. It’s not OK you’ve lost your soul. And it’s not OK to call her Mum. She always has been and always will be Mammy, OK?’

He rose to face her.

‘Listen you stupid….’

‘Cormac! Maggie! For Christ’s sake, stop it!’

Cormac turned to see his older brother Tom standing in the hall. He felt his eyes sting. He felt like a little boy again. He took comfort in his brother’s arms.

‘Now then, hotshot, how does it feel to be the talk of the town?’

Tom and Cormac sat at the kitchen table while Annie and Maggie produced endless cups of tea and sandwiches for a multitude of strangers who now seemed to have taken control of the house.

‘Hopefully I’m not.’

‘You’re far too modest, brother. Your arrival has been the talk of this shit-hole since Mum died.’

‘Don’t you mean Mammy, Tom?’

‘Don’t tell me Maggie is already giving you a hard time for selling out to your English ways. Ignore her, she’s grieving.’

‘She just winds me up, Tom.’

‘Listen, Cormac, there are things you don’t know about, things that happened a long time ago and Maggie hasn’t had it easy, just trust me on that and cut her a bit of slack.’

‘What things?’

Tom sighed and patted his shoulder.

‘I’m afraid today, my brother, isn’t the time for such talk, and we must instead bury our mother.’

Maggie arrived in a flurry of plates.

‘Father Mackie is here to say the rosary. Are you two coming into the living room?’

Cormac, who even as a child never understood the Catholic faith, with all of its rules and chanting, was about to have his second fight of the day with Maggie, when his big brother came to the rescue again.

‘Maggie, love, you go on in and me and Cormac will kneel in the hall.’

He mumbled his way through the prayers he hadn’t said for two decades and was astonished that he remembered every word, every pause, and every part of the ritual. He thought back to his childhood, to the many times his father made them kneel in the living room after dinner while they recited the rosary. He contemplated the endless nights he lay in bed and would be sprinkled with holy water when his father thought he was asleep. He cringed at the embarrassment of confession. Of turning from boy to man and telling the red-faced priest every detail. He thought of his mother, fiercely proud of her family and devoted to her Catholic God. The God he wished also to be devoted to. The God he prayed to every night in the small bedroom upstairs. The God that no matter how hard he tried, he’d never really believed in.

An Irish Heartbeat

Biography

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