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Authors: Niall Williams
Tags: Fiction
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to just do better.
And so that’s what he did.
It took years, but eventually Grandfather got Ashcroft House & Lands into a condition of Absolute Immaculacy, and sent his invitation to the Reverend.
I am alive. Come on over and visit , only in fancier English.
Then he waited.
The Reverend was already Old Testament ancient by now. In my mind he blends into Herbert Pocket’s father in Great Expectations , Old Gruffandgrim, banging with his stick on the floor for attention. The Reverend had already used up whatever life was in his body by putting up the big mileage of hurrying Elsewhere and so by this stage he was mostly parched paper over thin little struts. He couldn’t believe Our Lord hadn’t taken him Up yet. Honest to God. He was all prayed up and confessed, boarding pass printed, and waiting in the priority queue. Sweet Jesus come on , as Marty Finucane shouts in Cusack Park whenever the hurlers are feeling the effects of forbidden Saturday-night Guinness and firing the sliothers wide into the Tesco carpark.
But no Sweet Jesus showed up.
(If you went to the Tech, you’ll spot a theme.)
The Reverend lived on, thought a little more deeply about life being purgatory, and banged on the floor with his stick.
When at last he got the letter he lifted old Up-Jut and did some nostril-narrowing. It wasn’t attractive. He squinted through the snowy dust of his spectacles to read his son’s name and when he saw your son Abraham he had to squint harder.
There it was: your son Abraham.
He thought all this time his son was in Heaven interceding for him.
He thought Abraham had gone there in the first rank of Dead Heroes from The Great War and by now probably had the skintone of those creamy alabaster plaques they have in the big Protestant churches.
But no, he was in Ireland .
Sweet Jesus come on .
Now, I’m not going to say it was because the Reverend thought mucky Irish ground would give him foot rot, nor that it was because he couldn’t say the word Ireland without distaste, though both were probably true. Despite the efforts of the Tourist Board, Ireland in those days was not in Top Ten Countries to Visit, and for English people it was all but verboten as the Pope would say. Ireland? Catholics and murderers, the Reverend would have thought. Ungrateful blackguards, we had not the slightest appreciation for the eight hundred years of civilised rule of His Majesty and to show our true colours once the English had departed we’d set about killing each other with hatchets, slash hooks and hedge shears.
Ireland? Better that Abraham was in Hell.
Pursuing the image, the Reverend posted the letter through the grille of the fire and began some shallow breathing. The damp boggy idea, Ireland , sat on his chest.
Within a week he was dead.
Amen to him.
Awomen also, as Denis Fitz said half a second after the congregation at midnight Mass before in Faha we moved midnight to half nine.
Grandfather’s response to the Reverend’s refusal to visit and subsequent death took an original form; he stopped believing in God, and started believing in salmon. Plans in this world were pointless. Pointless to have imagined he could ever have fulfilled his father’s dreams or achieved the Impossible Standard.
Grandfather forsook the world for fishing.
In fairness, perhaps there was a deeper point; perhaps secretly it was to out-Christian the Reverend by going back to basics: to Peter the Fish, to Paul the Church, is that how it goes? I’m not great on the Bible, though we have a nice one (Book 1,001, King James Edition), black and soft with the kind of feather-light pages they only use in bibles, as if paper for bibles can only come from this one place, and the pages are thinned down to a fineness that feels holy somehow so that even turning them is kind of sanctifying. Either way, whatever the reason, the Salmon it was. Grandfather stopped all work on Ashcroft House & Lands, walked out the French doors, went down across the
And so that’s what he did.
It took years, but eventually Grandfather got Ashcroft House & Lands into a condition of Absolute Immaculacy, and sent his invitation to the Reverend.
I am alive. Come on over and visit , only in fancier English.
Then he waited.
The Reverend was already Old Testament ancient by now. In my mind he blends into Herbert Pocket’s father in Great Expectations , Old Gruffandgrim, banging with his stick on the floor for attention. The Reverend had already used up whatever life was in his body by putting up the big mileage of hurrying Elsewhere and so by this stage he was mostly parched paper over thin little struts. He couldn’t believe Our Lord hadn’t taken him Up yet. Honest to God. He was all prayed up and confessed, boarding pass printed, and waiting in the priority queue. Sweet Jesus come on , as Marty Finucane shouts in Cusack Park whenever the hurlers are feeling the effects of forbidden Saturday-night Guinness and firing the sliothers wide into the Tesco carpark.
But no Sweet Jesus showed up.
(If you went to the Tech, you’ll spot a theme.)
The Reverend lived on, thought a little more deeply about life being purgatory, and banged on the floor with his stick.
When at last he got the letter he lifted old Up-Jut and did some nostril-narrowing. It wasn’t attractive. He squinted through the snowy dust of his spectacles to read his son’s name and when he saw your son Abraham he had to squint harder.
There it was: your son Abraham.
He thought all this time his son was in Heaven interceding for him.
He thought Abraham had gone there in the first rank of Dead Heroes from The Great War and by now probably had the skintone of those creamy alabaster plaques they have in the big Protestant churches.
But no, he was in Ireland .
Sweet Jesus come on .
Now, I’m not going to say it was because the Reverend thought mucky Irish ground would give him foot rot, nor that it was because he couldn’t say the word Ireland without distaste, though both were probably true. Despite the efforts of the Tourist Board, Ireland in those days was not in Top Ten Countries to Visit, and for English people it was all but verboten as the Pope would say. Ireland? Catholics and murderers, the Reverend would have thought. Ungrateful blackguards, we had not the slightest appreciation for the eight hundred years of civilised rule of His Majesty and to show our true colours once the English had departed we’d set about killing each other with hatchets, slash hooks and hedge shears.
Ireland? Better that Abraham was in Hell.
Pursuing the image, the Reverend posted the letter through the grille of the fire and began some shallow breathing. The damp boggy idea, Ireland , sat on his chest.
Within a week he was dead.
Amen to him.
Awomen also, as Denis Fitz said half a second after the congregation at midnight Mass before in Faha we moved midnight to half nine.
Grandfather’s response to the Reverend’s refusal to visit and subsequent death took an original form; he stopped believing in God, and started believing in salmon. Plans in this world were pointless. Pointless to have imagined he could ever have fulfilled his father’s dreams or achieved the Impossible Standard.
Grandfather forsook the world for fishing.
In fairness, perhaps there was a deeper point; perhaps secretly it was to out-Christian the Reverend by going back to basics: to Peter the Fish, to Paul the Church, is that how it goes? I’m not great on the Bible, though we have a nice one (Book 1,001, King James Edition), black and soft with the kind of feather-light pages they only use in bibles, as if paper for bibles can only come from this one place, and the pages are thinned down to a fineness that feels holy somehow so that even turning them is kind of sanctifying. Either way, whatever the reason, the Salmon it was. Grandfather stopped all work on Ashcroft House & Lands, walked out the French doors, went down across the
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