Read Online A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland - Free Book Online

long, slow breath out into the air as if halted by the need to reflect on the weighty significance my own words. Cora gives me a look of disbelief and turns away and laughs. ‘What about “The Rising of the Moon”?’ I ask.
    â€˜Nope.’
    â€˜Ahh, you’re only kidding. The whole country knows “The Rising of the Moon”. Good old Danny Doyle does a great version. A top man.’
    â€˜I’ve never heard of good old Danny Doyle.’
    â€˜Mad,’ I say, and we sit with two heads shaking in incredulity at each other. ‘Will we sing a song together?
    â€˜Okay. What will we sing?’
    â€˜How about “Dear Dundalk”?’
    â€˜Never heard of it. Is it any good?’
    â€˜Nah. Load of old shite. You know, Cora, when I lived down there as a child I was afraid of everything.’ I don’t know why I tell her things like this — they just come out when I’m with her.
    â€˜Afraid of what, Johnny?’
    â€˜School, the street, strangers, God, the Devil, Jesus, everything.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Don’t know why. No reason why.’
    â€˜Did it stop?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜When?’
    â€˜No idea. It left in little pieces.’
    â€˜Why Jesus?’ she asks, surprised.
    â€˜It was one of those Sacred Heart pictures with the little red lamp and the big-heart thing. That worked every time.’
    â€˜How?’
    â€˜It scared the hell out of me.’
    She laughs. ‘Are you afraid of things now, Johnny?’
    â€˜No. I never think about being afraid. It seems ridiculous now.’
    â€˜Well, children see the world differently.’
    â€˜I think we all see the world differently.’
    She takes the two broken branches we used as sticks, and places them side by side in the grass. We lie together on the overcoat. I am lying on my back, legs bent, knees raised. Cora is lying on her front, legs stretched, two red boots in the grass.
    â€˜I still can’t believe I met you,’ I say, looking up to the clouds. ‘It’s a small world.’
    â€˜Well, it’s only Dundalk, Johnny. It’s not that big.’
    Fair enough. I pull a face, still looking to the sky.
    â€˜I remember the first time I saw you,’ Cora says. She lies across me playing with the neck of my pullover. ‘But you didn’t notice me then.’
    I wonder how it could be possible that I would not notice Cora Flannery, but our whole happening is still a mystery to me, so I let it pass.
    â€˜So why a carpenter, Johnny? Do you like it?’ Cora asks.
    â€˜All my life, Cora, I was told to get a trade. My dad has a thing about trades. He has it up there with the rosary, the confession, and the annual weekend of starvation on Lough Derg. He sees it as a kind of salvation. Get a trade under your belt, son , he says. Then the world is your oyster. Whatever that means. And you won’t be counting piecework and be one week away from the poorhouse , my mother chips in. They consider anything else to be “highfalutin talk”. Just for a laugh, I suggested quitting the job and moving out to the Aran Islands to grow my own food and study philosophy. A load of codswallop , Mam called it. And she is probably right. Dad said it would be a waste of time — that you couldn’t grow anything out there, that it was all rock.’
    â€˜What is philosophy anyway, Johnny?’
    â€˜It’s the study of how we know what we know.’
    â€˜How we know what we know about what?’
    â€˜How we know what we know about who we are, about why we’re here, about what is here, about what it means to be human. Like those early guns in Plato’s Academy. Philosophical perplexity is the first step to knowledge … That’s what Plato said. Problem is he forgot to mention that it can also be the first step to a kind of folly, a world of baloney. Philosophers go on and on and on, adding ever-increasing