ANCHORS It was always a mystery to me how anyone as rational as myself came of parents so befuddled. Sometimes it was as if I lived on a mountain-peak away up in the sunlight while they fumbled and squabbled in a valley below. Except for a tendency to quarrel violently about politics, Father was not so bad. At least, there were things I could talk to him about, but Mother was a constant source of irritation to me as well as to him. She was a tall, thin, mournful woman, with beautiful blue eyes and a clear complexion, but harassed by hard work and piety. She had lost her second child in childbirth, and, having married late so that she was incapable of having further children, she tended to brood over it. She had no method, and was always losing a few shillings on the horses, borrowing to make it up so that Father wouldn’t know, and then taking sips of whiskey on the side to nerve her for the ordeal of confessing it to him. She was in and out of churches all day, trying to pump the sly ones who had friends in the priesthood for inside information about saints who were free of their favours. At any time a few pounds would have made her solvent again, and a favour like that would be nothing to a saint. If she worried over the souls of Father and me, that was pure kindness of heart, because she had quite enough to do, worrying about herself. Her brand of religion really got under my skin. As I say, I was a natural rationalist. Even as a young fellow, all my sympathies were with the labour movement, and I had nothing but amused contempt for the sort of faction-fighting that Father and his contemporaries mistook for politics. I had an intensely orderly mind, and had no difficulty in working out a technique to keep myself near the head of the class in school. But nothing would convince Mother but that you passed examinations by the aid of the Infant Jesus of Prague and St Rose of Lima. She was a plain woman who regarded Heaven as a glorified extension of the Cork County Council and the saints as elected representatives whose duty it was to attend to the interests of the constituents and relatives. In religion, education, and business the principle of the open competitive examination simply did not exist for Mother. People might say what they liked, but ‘pull’ was the thing. Naturally, in the manner of elected representatives the world over, the saints were a mixed lot. Some were smarter or more conscientious than others; some promised more than they could perform, while others had never been any good to anyone, and it was folly to rely on them. You had to study form as though they were horses, and, apart from the racing column, the only thing that interested Mother in the evening paper was the chain of acknowledgements of ‘favours received on promise of publication’. From this, anyone could see that the Infant Jesus of Prague and St Rose of Lima left the rest of the field behind. Hard work might be all right in its own place; brilliance might do some good if it didn’t get you into trouble; but examinations were passed by faith rather than good works. It was a subtle sort of insult to which I was particularly sensitive, though, of course, I never let on. I had trained myself with the foolish people in school to be silent, and the most I ever permitted myself when I was riled was a sniff or a smile. I had discovered that this made them much madder. ‘You’d never imagine the saints would be so keen to get into the papers,’ I said one evening when she insisted on reading it aloud. ‘Musha, why wouldn’t they?’ she asked, showing her teeth in a smile. ‘I suppose they're as glad to be told they’re appreciated as the rest of us.’ ‘Oh, I dare say,’ I said lightly, ‘but you wouldn't think they'd be so mad on publicity,’ ‘And how would people know?’ she asked timidly. ‘Look at this young fellow, for instance. He passed an examination the fourth time after praying to St Rose.’ ‘Maybe he’d have passed it the first time without praying to anybody if he did his work,’ I suggested. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘everybody can’t be smart.’ ‘But why worry to be smart?’ I asked, getting more supercilious than ever. ‘Why worry to do anything? You ought to try out your method on someone else.’ ‘How do you mean, on someone else?’ ‘Well, working on me, you're never going to find out the truth about it. You should try it on someone who needs it. There’s a fellow in my class called Mahony who could do with someone’s prayers.’ ‘Why then, indeed, I'll pray for the poor boy if you want me to,’ ‘Do,’ I said encouragingly. ‘We'll see how it works out. But you'll have to leave me out of your prayers, or we'll never get it straight.’ ‘Why, then, what a thing I'd do!’ she retorted with real indignation. My father never interfered in these discussions, except for an occasional snort of amusement at some impertinence of mine, and, for all the apparent interest he took in them, might as well not have been listening. He was a tall, gaunt man with a haunted look, and it seemed to me that he was haunted by the revolutionary politics of his generation, In so far as the Church had opposed the revolution and distorted its aims, he was violently anti-clerical, particularly when it was a question of Father Dempsey, the parish priest. Dempsey was a fat, coarse, jolly man, and he had made fun of Father when Father had called on him to arrange for Masses for the souls of some revolutionary friends of his. I did not think much of Father's generation or of revolutionists who didn’t see that before you dealt with the British Empire you had first to put the Dempseys in their place. By the time I went to the university I hadn’t a shred of belief left in St Rose of Lima or Cathleen ni Houlihan. I thought them both fetishes of the older generation, and was seriously considering severing my relations with the Church. I was restrained partly by fear of the effect that this would have on my parents, particularly my father, and partly because I could see nothing to put in its place. I didn’t have to look far to see that man was prone to evil. I knew well that for all my reasonableness I had a violent temper and brutal appetites. I knew that there was a streak of positive cruelty in me. I could not even walk through the main street without averting my eyes from the shop windows that displayed women’s underclothing, and sometimes it drove me mad with rage because I knew that the owners and their staffs were supposed to be pious Catholics. I had begun walking out with a girl called Babiche, which made it even worse, because she was interested in underclothing. She thought I was a queer coon, and no wonder. Little did she know of the passions that raged in me. But in the battle between fear of the evil in myself and sheer boredom with the superstitions of people like Mother, boredom had it, and I knew I must express this in action. It was not enough to believe something; I had to show that I believed it. Now there was nothing between myself and avowed agnosticism but fear of the effect it would have on my parents. Father and I usually went to Mass together, not to the parish church where he might be submitted to the ordeal of listening to Father Dempsey, but to the Franciscan church in Sheares Street, where he had gone to get his Masses said and where they hadn’t laughed at him. Father was not a man to forget a kindness. After Mass we usually took a walk up the tree-lined Mardyke, over Wellington Bridge, and back through the expensive suburb of Sunday’s Well. There were beautiful houses along the way, and Father knew who had built them and never tired of admiring them. I enjoyed those walks, the hillside of Sunday’s Well seen under the trees of the Dyke, the river by the tramstop, and the great view of the city from the top of Wyse's Hill, but mainly Father's company because these were the only occasions when we were alone together and I could talk to him. One Sunday in spring as we went up the Dyke I decided to break the bad news to him. ‘You know, Dad, there's something I wanted to tell you,’ I said, and realized the moment I had said it that I had begun badly. Father started and frowned. If you wanted to get at Father you had to prepare him beforehand, as you prepare an audience in the theatre for the hero’s death. Mother never prepared him for anything, seeing that she never told him anything until she had herself broken down, and as a result she nearly always provoked the wrong reaction. ‘What’s that?’ he snapped suspiciously. ‘Oh, just that I don’t think I can come to Mass with you any more,’ I said, trying to make myself sound casual. ‘Why not?’ he asked angrily. ‘Well,’ I said deliberately, trying to make it sound as though I were full of grief about it, I don’t know that I believe in God any more.’ ‘You what?’ he asked, stopping dead and looking at me out of the corner of his eye. It was the reaction I had feared, the spontaneous reaction of a man who has been told that his wife is betting again. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I said reasonably. ‘I was afraid it would upset you, but at the same time I felt you ought to be told.’ Father drew a deep breath through his nose as though to indicate that I had a very lighthearted attitude to his feelings, gave me another look out of the corner of his eye and reached for his pipe. He went behind a tree to light it and walked on again, puffing at it. Then he sucked his lips in a funny way he had and grinned at me. ‘I was afraid you were going to tell me something serious,’ he said. I smiled. At the same time I was surprised and suspicious. I knew he was lacking in Mother's brand of religiosity, but I had not expected this particular tone and had no confidence in it. ‘It seems serious enough to me,’ I said. ‘You're sure ’tis God you don’t believe in?’ he asked roguishly. ‘Not Dempsey by any chance?’ ‘I can’t very well pretend I don’t believe in the existence of Dempsey,’ I said with a smile. ‘It’s a very important distinction,’ he said gravely. ‘One is anti-clericalism, a view taken only by the most religious people—myself, for instance. The other is atheism, a view held by—ah, a lot of people who are also deeply religious. You'd want to be sure you don’t get in the wrong camp.’ ‘You think the anti-clerical camp would be good enough for me?’ I asked. ‘I wouldn’t get things mixed up if I were you,’ he said, growing serious again. ‘People are only what society makes them, you know. You might think you were against religion when all you were against was a lot of scared old women. Country towns are bad that way. Religion is something more than that.’ ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean by religion,’ I said, trying to steer him into one of my favourite arguments, but he wasn’t having any. ‘Ah, ’tisn’t what I mean by religion, boy,’ he replied testily. ‘The best brains in the world are at that for thousands of years, and you talk as I was just after making it up.’ ‘Well, I’ve only been at it for six months,’ I said reasonably, ‘so I have time enough. What do you think I ought to do?’ ‘I think you ought to make sure what you're giving up before you do it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you coming to me in six months’ time and telling me about some astounding discovery you could have made in a penny catechism. You know, of course, a thing like that will come against you if you're looking for a job.’ ‘You think it would?’ I asked in some surprise. There were still a lot of things I did not know about life. ‘I’m damn sure it would,’ he said with a little snarl of amusement. ‘If you think I'm ever likely to get a church to build you're mistaken. But that’s neither here nor there. If you felt like that about it I wouldn’t try to stop you.’ ‘I know that,’ I said affectionately. ‘That's why I didn’t want to do anything without asking your advice.’ ‘Oh, my advice! he sniffed. ‘I'm not a proper person to advise you. Get hold of some intelligent young priest of about your own age and get him to advise you. And there's a few books you could read.’ Now, this was the first I had heard of religious books in the home, apart from some detestable tracts that Mother had bought. Father searched them out from a pile of old papers in the lumber-room; newspapers, pamphlets, election hand-bills, and broadsheet ballads—Father's wild oats. He squatted on the floor, sucking his pipe and enthusing over them. ‘Begor, I never knew I had this. This would be valuable. Look! An account of poor Jim Tracy’s trial—he was shot in Cork barrack after. You ought to read that.’ He had lost all interest in the books by the time he found them—a couple of volumes of Newman, a handbook of dogmatic theology and a study of Thomas Aquinas. It was a side of Father I’d never known. It was a side that didn’t seem too familiar to Father himself, either, for he raised his brows over pages he had underlined and scored along the margins. As he read the marked passages he nodded a couple of times, but it was a puzzled sort of nod. He seemed uneasy and anxious to get back to more familiar surroundings. However, it was all I needed, and it quieted the tumult in my mind. I had fancied myself so much alone, and it was a relief to know that others I could respect had shared my doubts. Church services that had left me boréd took on a new interest for me. It was pleasant to be able to explain details of the rubrics to Babiche, who knew as little of them as I had known. The result was a new wave of fervour, different from any I had known as a kid. I had always been a bit of a busybody and enjoyed helping and protecting other people, but because I had been afraid of being thought a sissy, I had concealed it. Now that I had found another source of strength outside myself, I was able to dispense with my fears. I need no longer be ashamed of coming up the road with one raggy kid riding my neck and another swinging from my arm. And because Mother had always been such a sore trial to me, I felt I must be especially kind to her, even to the point of taking her side against Father. I rose at seven each morning, lit the fire, and brought herself and Father their tea in bed. I stayed around the house in my free hours to keep her company and do the odd jobs that Father could never be induced to do for her. I had never realized before what a tough life she had had of it; how awkward was the kitchen where she had to work, and how few comforts there were for her. I even went to the point of making an armchair for her, since when Father was in she had none of her own. Now, anyone would assume that a pious woman like Mother would have been delighted to see her godless son turn suddenly into a walking saint. Not a bit of it. The more virtuous I became, the gloomier she got. Only gradually did it dawn on me that she did not approve of men saving their own souls, since, like cooking and laundry, this was something that could only be done for them by their womenfolk. A man who tried to do if for himself was no man at all. ‘Is there anything I can get you in town?’ I would ask, and she would smile mournfully at me with her fine set of false teeth. ‘Ah, no, child. What would you get?’ ‘Oh, I just wondered if there were any messages.’ ‘And if there are, can’t I do them myself? I’m not too old for that, am I?’ I was studying for my final at the time and she was in a frenzy, working on St Rose. As part of my new character I let her be, contenting myself with suggesting saints who were in some way related to culture—St Finnbarr, for instance, the supposed founder of the college, or St Thomas Aquinas. She had heard of St Finnbarr as patron of the Protestant cathedral, so she refused point-blank to have anything to do with him. She didn’t dispute the man’s orthodoxy, but it wouldn't be lucky. She didn’t like to commit herself on the subject of St Thomas, who might, for all she knew, be quite decent, but by this time she was convinced that I was only making up saints to annoy her. ‘Who was he?’ she asked without any great confidence. ‘Well, he happened to be the greatest intellect of the Church,’ I said sweetly. ‘Was it he wrote that old book you were reading?’ ‘No, that was G. K. Chesterton—a different family altogether.’ ‘Wouldn’t you think if he was so great that someone would hear about him?’ Father gave a snort and went out to the front door. As I passed out he gave me one of his sideways looks. ‘I'd try the African Mission,’ he said. ‘Funny the different forms religion takes,’ I said, standing beside him with my hands in my pockets. ‘Religion?’ he repeated. ‘You don’t call that religion? No woman has any religion.’ As usual I felt that he was exaggerating for the sake of effect, but I had to admit that whatever religion Mother had was not of an orthodox kind. At the time I was deeply concerned with the problem of faith as against good works, but with her the problem simply didn’t arise. She was just then going through a crisis on the subject of a new apparition that had taken place in County Kerry, and had succeeded in laying hold of a bottle of water from a holy well where the Blessed Virgin and a number of saints had appeared. The half of Ireland was making pilgrimages to the spot, and what made it all more mysterious was that the newspapers were not allowed by the Church authorities to refer to it in any way. I made inquiries and discovered that the apparitions had taken place on the farm of a well-known poteen-maker whose trade had fallen on evil days; that the police had searched every electrical shop for miles around in hopes of tracing batteries for a large magic lantern, and that there was no well on the farm. At the same time she was very excited by the report that Father Dempsey had performed a miraculous cure on a child with diphtheria, though, according to Mother's brand of Catholicism, this meant he had taken the disease on himself, and she was now anxiously waiting till he succumbed to it. I kept on preaching sound doctrine on such matters to her with no great effect. But I did not grow alarmed for her till some weeks later. As I say, she had never got over the loss of her second child. In fact, she had created a sort of fantasy life for him into which she retreated whenever the horses became more incalculable than usual. She had nursed him through various childish ailments, sent him to school, and seen him through college. He had no clear outline in her mind except the negative one of not resembling me. He passed his examinations entirely through the power of her prayers. Naturally, he had shown a vocation from the earliest age, and I strongly suspect that for a great part of the time he was a bishop or archbishop who put manners on the raw young priests her supercilious cronies took such pride in. I had heard about him so often that I didn’t attach any great importance to the matter. It was only as a result of my own reading that I began to see its doctrinal significance and realized that Mother was a heretic. I remonstrated with her, mildly enough at first, but, for all the difference it made to her, I could have been speaking of the poteen-maker’s apparitions. She had accustomed herself to the thought of my brother's waiting for her in Heaven, and she continued to see him there, regardless of anything I said. As usual, Father said nothing. ‘Ah, well,’ she said one evening when I was having tea, ‘it won't be so long till I see your brother again, please God.’ ‘Father and I needn’t worry much about you so,’ I said. ‘Wisha, what do you mean, child?’ she asked in alarm. ‘You'll have an awful long time to wait if you’re waiting for that,’ I said, pleasantly enough, as I thought. ‘You'll see both of us under the sod.’ Then, as I saw her gaping at me, I added, ‘I only mean that he can’t very well be in Heaven.’ ‘Musha, what nonsense you're talking!’ she exclaimed roughly, though at the same time she was disturbed. ‘Is it an innocent child?’ ‘I suppose you'll tell me next you never heard of Original Sin?’ I asked. ‘Ah, for all the sin my poor child had on him!’ she sighed. ‘Where else would he be, only in Heaven, the little angel!’ ‘The Church says he’s in Limbo,’ I said cheerfully, taking another mouthful of bacon. ‘The Church does?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘In Limbo?’ ‘That’s what we're supposed to believe.’ ‘Pisherogues!’ she said angrily. My father got up and strode to the front door with his hands in his trouser pockets. I controlled myself as best I could at her unmannerly reference to the doctrine of Original Sin as fairytales. It didn’t come too well from a woman who had just been telling us of a priest that died suddenly after seeing the Holy Ape on the poteen-maker’s property. ‘That’s what you may think,’ I said coldly. ‘Of course, you don’t have to believe it unless you want to, but it is a fundamental dogma and you can’t be a Catholic without it.’ ‘Pisherogues!’ she repeated violently. ‘I was a Catholic before they were. What do they know about it?’ ‘So you do claim the right to private judgement?’ I said menacingly. ‘Private what?’ she asked in exasperation. ‘Private judgement,’ I repeated. ‘Of course, you'll find a lot of people to agree with you, but you'd better realize that you're speaking as a Protestant.’ ‘Are you mad?’ she asked, half rising from her chair at the implication that there was anything in common between her and the poor unenlightened souls who attended St Finnibarr’s. ‘Isn’t it true that you won't believe anything only what suits yourself?’ I asked patiently. ‘Listen to him, you sweet God!’ Mother moaned. ‘I only believe what suits me! Me that have the knees wore off myself praying for him! You pup!’ she added in what for her was a flash of real anger. ‘But that’s exactly what you do,’ I said gently, ignoring her abuse. ‘You believe things that no one ever asked you to believe. You believe in the poteen-maker’s apparitions and his holy well, and Dempsey’s diphtheria cure, but you won't believe the essential teaching of the Church whenever it disagrees with your own foolish notions. What sort of religion is that?’ ‘Ah,’ she said, almost weeping with rage, ‘I was practising my religion before you were born. And my mother before me. Oh, you pup, to talk like that to me!’ I sighed and shrugged and left the house. I was more upset than I let on to be. I had seen her in plenty of states before, but never so angry and bewildered. I had a date with Babiche by the bridge, and we went up the hills together in the direction of a wood that was a favourite haunt of ours. I told her the whole story, making fun of it as I did so. After all, it was funny. Here had I been on the point of cutting loose from religion altogether because of my family, and now that I had really got back the faith it was only to discover that my own home was a nest of heretics. It struck me that Babiche was not taking it in the spirit in which I offered it. Usually, she made no attempt to follow up an argument, but caught at some name or word like ‘Ath- anasius’ or ‘Predestination’ and then repeated it for months with joyous inconsequence and in contexts with which it had nothing whatever to do. This evening she seemed to be angry and argumentative as well. ‘That was a nice thing to say to your mother,’ she snapped. ‘What was wrong with it?’ I asked in surprise. ‘Plenty. You weren’t the kid’s mother. She was.’ ‘Now, really, Babiche,’ I protested, ‘what has that to do with it? I suppose I was his brother, but that’s neither here nor there.’ ‘A dead kid is neither here nor there,’ she said sullenly. ‘You don’t care. You're only delighted to have a brother in Limbo, or wherever the blazes it is. It’s like having one in the Civil Service. If you had another you could say was in Hell you'd feel you were made for life.’ I was taken aback. I knew Babiche was unjust, and I realized that Father was right and that no woman in the world had any religion whatever, but at the same time I felt I might have gone too far. I did tend to take my own line firmly and go on without considering how other people might feel about it. We were sitting in a clearing above the wood, looking down at the river winding through the valley in the evening light. I put out my hand, but Babiche pulled her own hand away. ‘I’m sorry, Babiche,’ I said apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to start a row. Then she grinned and gave me back her hand, and in no time we were embracing. Babiche was anything but a profound thinker, above all when someone was making love to her. I found myself making love to her as I'd never done before, and she enjoyed it. Then she looked away towards the city and began to laugh. ‘What’s the joke?’ I asked. ‘If I have a kid like that, and you start telling me he’s in Limbo, I'll scratch your eyes out,’ she said. This time I felt really guilty towards Mother. But worse than that, the wild beast in me was in danger of breaking out again. It was horrible. You swung from instinct to judgement, and from judgement back to instinct, and nothing ever seemed to arrest the pendulum. But next morning when I woke the sun was shining through the attic window, and I lay watching it, feeling that something very peculiar had happened to me. I didn’t yet know what it was, but I realized that it was very pleasant. I felt fine. Then it all became clear. The pendulum had stopped. I had lost my faith, and this time I had lost it for good. My brother might not be in Heaven, but I was sure he wasn’t in Limbo either. I didn’t believe in Limbo. It was too silly. The previous months of exultation and anxiety seemed like a nightmare. Nor was I in the least afraid of the beast in myself because I knew now that whatever happened I should always care too much for Babiche to injure her. Anyone who really cared for human beings need never be afraid of either conscience or passion. The following Sunday when Father and I reached the church door I stopped and smiled at him. ‘I’ll see you after Mass, Dad,’ I said. Father showed no surprise, but he paused before replying in a businesslike tone: ‘I think we'll go down the Marina for a change. We weren’t down there this year.’ I was heartsick at his disappointment and the brave way he kept his word. That was one thing to be said for the older generation: they knew the meaning of principle. ‘You know the way I feel about it?’ I said, squaring up and looking at him. ‘What's that?’ he asked sharply. ‘Oh, yes,’ he added, ‘we all go through it. You have time enough...Tell me, who's that little black-haired girl you’re knocking round with? ‘Babiche Regan?’ I asked, surprised that he knew so much. ‘Is she one of the Regans of Sunday’s Well? ‘That's right,’ I replied, a bit mystified. ‘They're a very good family,’ Father said approvingly. ‘I used to know her father on the County Council. Is she a fancy or a regular?’ ‘Well,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders in embarrassment, ‘I suppese I'll be marrying her one of these days.’ ‘Good man! Good man!’ he said with a nod. ‘Ah, well, by the time you're settled down, you'll know your own mind better...Now, don’t be late for that walk.’ I went up the Mardyke in its summer-morning calm, a free man for the first time. But I didn’t feel free. There was something about Father’s tone that had disturbed me. It was as though he expected Babiche to turn out like Mother and me like himself. It was hardly possible, of course: even he couldn’t believe that Babiche would ever prove so irrational or I so weak. But all the same I was disturbed. (1952) Source: _Masculine Protest and other stories_ [from _Collection Three_], Pan Books, 1972, pp. 47-61 <