A Star Called Henry Read online

  My mother was still in bed, seven days after my birth. Missis Drake wouldn’t let her get up yet. Anyway, my father had the chair and the stool was somewhere under Missis Drake - there was nowhere else for Melody to sit. She wasn’t to do any cooking until after she’d gone to the church and kneeled in front of the priest; she wasn’t to cut bread, peel a spud, anything. She’d contaminate the food and poison the lot of us if she laid a finger on it before the priest’s blessing had cleansed her. Melody was enjoying the luxury. For the first time in her life she was doing nothing.

  Missis Drake was lowering the gutted bunny into the pot. My father stood and brought me over to my mother, holding me like a present he’d saved all his life to buy her. I left his confident hands and landed in my mother’s.

  —In you go now, said Missis Drake to the disappearing rabbit.—And mind you don’t eat all the carrots.

  My father sat on the bed. The air around him smelt of cleanliness and hope, soon to be joined by the stew. He felt good, strong. In the months coming up to my birth, an idea had taken hold and attached itself to the lining of his gut: he was to blame. It had clung, fed on him. It had grown and shoved its way through his body: he was to blame for the deaths of all his children. It had slithered into every cell. His children had been taken from him and Melody because of all the things he had done. All the messages he’d delivered. All the people he’d scared, just by walking, tap tap, all the money he’d squeezed out of people with no money. All the skulls his leg had dented, all the men he’d murdered, and women. His children had been the price for all that bullying and killing, all that badness. And all the bodies he’d disposed of, let slide into the waters that crawled their way through Dublin, let slide in or just threw. There’d been one man called Traynor, fed into the Tolka in four neat pieces. There was a man called Farrell who’d been caught taking money from three of Dolly’s girls. There were men whose names and crimes he never knew. Into the Liffey and the Tolka they went, and the other hidden rivers that ran under the city nibbling away at its floor or, overland, against high forgotten walls, through places that led nowhere and where no one ever looked. They were Dublin’s secret rivers and my father knew them all. The Poddle and the Hangman’s Stream, the Bradoge and the Cemetery Drain. He knew them all; his leg divined them. They took his offerings and kept them. And there were other bodies, vanished without the help of water. There was Costello, the fat rozzer. Costello, the greedy rozzer. Alfie Gandon says Hello. Costello had been fed to pigs in a farm beyond Tallaght, a farm with a beautiful view of the city. There were other men who’d ended up in the pigs and then on the morning plates of the city’s merchants and chancers, on the plates of their wives and brats. Eating Henry’s messages. There’d been a man called Lynch and another called O’Grady. There’d been a man with a huge purple birthmark pouring out of the neck of his shirt and another so handsome that Henry had almost let him go. And the women. There’d been two. Two of the girls. Got rid of for reasons he knew nothing about and never asked. One of them already dead, wrapped in bloody sheets, a parcel waiting on the bed. The other he’d killed, brought her for a walk. She’d told him about the town in Galway she’d come from, the last town before Boston, and about her family and her sister the nun and her brother the fisherman and about how none of them knew where she was or what she did, and that was when he’d killed her. Susie, and the other one was Antoinette, and both of them renamed Maria. They’d both gone into the water. He’d had nothing against any of them, the women or the men. He’d just done what he’d been told to do. He did a good, professional job, never got involved. He did what hundreds of others in the city were doing or waiting to do. Alfie Gandon says Hello. Once, just once, for some reason he didn’t understand, for a change, he whispered a different message. Alfie Gandon says Goodbye.

  Melody’s eyes were closed. Missis Drake was humming. The stew was bubbling cheerfully; the rabbit was bobbing, sinking, falling apart into strings and chunks that Henry was looking forward to. He inhaled the fresh luxury, the certain knowledge that he was going to be fed. There was more than enough in the pot, enough for two days. There was nothing to worry about, more grub in the room than there’d ever been. The baby was asleep, under Melody’s breast. I was asleep, under Melody’s breast. Henry sat on the mattress. He would put his leg on in a minute but now he just wanted to rest in his happiness. For a while longer. Just a little while longer.

  I gurgled. He looked at me. He wanted to hold me again but that would have meant disturbing Melody and he didn’t want to do that. She needed her rest; she looked young and unharmed snoozing there. Henry smiled and gurgled back at me. My memory soup is full of my father’s gurgles. I see a satisfied shape at the end of the bed. I feel my mother’s breast pressing on my skull. I can smell her milk. I can taste it. Its bubbles are on my lips.

  My father was a happy man.

  —I’ll soon be out of your way, said Missis Drake.

  —No hurry, said Henry.

  He liked Missis Drake. He felt grateful to her. She’d delivered me with the hands he now watched picking lint off her shawl, the hands that still tingled seven days after my birth. And Granny Nash was afraid of her; it was days since he’d seen the oul’ witch. He watched Missis Drake moving around the room, graceful and huge, patting things as if ordering them to stay put till the morning, reassuring them that she’d be back. She’d rule the room for another two days. Henry watched her bringing the plates over to the pot. He would soon put on his leg. He had a new one, a beautiful, proud piece of mahogany. The old walked-away leg was up on the mantelpiece, beside the Blessed Virgin. He would put on his new leg. They’d chat for a few minutes, then he’d kiss Melody and his unnamed son goodbye and go off to his work.

  I saw the shape at the end of the bed, and another moving shape behind it, Missis Drake, a massive, light-warm shadow. My mother’s tit rested on my head. I could hear and feel her heart; my ear was right on top of it - a velvet pounding that gave life to the shapes before me. I was ready to nod off. The shapes and noises loved me. There was a burp crawling its way up towards the milk left in my mouth. It was making good, tickling progress. I was enjoying it, looking forward to it.

  I delivered the burp.

  —Thar she blows, said Missis Drake.—The little creature.

  My father leaned across and wiped my mouth with his coat sleeve. That coat sleeve. My mother opened her eyes to the sight of Henry running his finger along the wee fat canyon that divided my chins. He felt the soft love of her eyes on him and he leaned down the few more inches and kissed her breast. She pushed his head away but she was thrilled; a push that was really a pull. They were in love like they’d never been. It was their new life. And me in the middle of it, the little one who’d started it.

  —I’ll be off, so, said Missis Drake.

  —Thanks very much, Missis Drake, said Melody.

  —Yeah, said Henry, and he nodded at the full plates now waiting for them on the tea chest.

  —Ah sure, said Missis Drake.—It’s only a drop of water with a rabbit floatin’ around in it.

  —It smells lovely, said Melody.

  —It was a handsome rabbit, said Missis Drake.

  I gurgled for Missis Drake. Twin dribbles ran over my chins, especially for her.

  She was gone. Bye bye, Missis Drake. Melody rubbed my back and lowered me into my zinc crib. I missed her heart. I looked up at a face, then the big grey space that was the ceiling. My parents sat at the tea chest and ate the stew.

  —Jaysis, Melody, my father gasped,—the woman’s a genius.

  —She is, my mother agreed.

  They sucked the soup off carrots, swallowed chunks of the bunny. They coughed and filled their mouths with bits of spud that melted to wonderful slush on their tongues. There was no room for talk. I listened to the music of the forks on plates and to the ferocious, happy groans and gulps as they shoved Missis Drake’s grub down pipes that had never known anything like it. My mother’s breasts hummed to me. My lips s
earched for her.

  The groans and forks slowed and stopped. A screech - the chair scraping the floor. My father was on his way. I squirmed, I gulped. My lips nibbled the air - it was my turn now. My father strapped on his new leg.

  —There’s a lovely shine off it, said Melody.

  —Only the best, said my father.

  She watched him, admired the speed and confidence. Then she spoke again.

  —What’ll we call him, Henry?

  I was the Baby with No Name. I’d been baptised quickly, on the spot; water had hit my head before milk had gone near the back of my throat. God waited for no baby in the slums. He took them back as soon as He’d given them, but He threw them away if their souls were still stained. He delivered them soiled but expected them back spotless. It was a race. Each day of life was a fight and a triumph, an endless race to stay a few inches in front of the greedy hand of God. God’s gift, Original Sin, had to be washed away in case God sent another of his gifts - fever, typhoid or whooping cough, smallpox, pneumonia or rats. So I’d been baptised. I was without sin. But I didn’t have a name either.

  —Baba Smart, Missis Drake had said.

  —That’s not a name, said the priest.

  —I know that, Father, said Missis Drake.

  —I cannot give the sacrament to a nameless child, said the priest.

  —Of course you can, Father, said Missis Drake.—Sure, it’ll only be temporary. They’re not in a fit state to come up with a little name right now. Look at them, sure.

  The priest looked. An hour after I’d been born. My mother was asleep and giggling. My father was one-legged, bleeding and hanging onto the mantelpiece, trying to get his leg to stand up beside the Virgin; happiness was pouring out of him in snot and tears. Granny Nash was reading the small ads in the Freeman’s Journal, gasping as each word opened its meaning - there were bespoke suits going for 35s and a parrot with talking warranty for only 12s 6d. She wondered how much the parrot would cost without the warranty.

  —What’s your own name, Father? said Missis Drake.

  —Cecil, said the priest.

  —I’ll let them know, said Missis Drake.

  Cecil the priest looked at me in Missis Drake’s arms. He saw a magnificent baby, a baby with a glow and heft that offered immortality. He saw Cecil the Immortal Baby. He saw the story of his name being passed from neighbour to daughter and on, the story of Father Cecil and the baby. So he gave in and baptised me with water from one of the cups and I became Temporary Smart, Baba Smart, the boy without stain. He mumbled his mumbo-voodoo and dabbed a trickle on my angry head. The Immortal Boy was now ready for his death.

  A week later I was still alive and un-Cecilled. I was still the Baba. Missis Drake had never mentioned the priesteen’s name to my mother or father. She’d had a cousin called Cecil, a wee pus-filled gurrier who’d made her young life a constant misery until he’d run under a tram. Even dead, he’d terrified her. Cecil was no name for her baba. (Cecil Smart? Thank you, thank you, Missis Drake.) Missis Drake had told a lie to Cecil the priest; she was never going to recommend his ugly name to my parents. She’d taken the sin and swallowed it.

  My father let his trousers drop over the new leg. Then my mother spoke.

  —What’ll we call him, Henry? she said.

  My father looked at my mother and smiled. This was his moment.

  —Henry, he said.

  If I’d been in her arms she would have dropped me.

  —No!

  My father was surprised, and very quickly annoyed. He held back his anger, felt it battering his chest.

  —Why not?

  My mother was trying not to get sick. She couldn’t talk yet. Not yet. There was nothing in front of her; movement meant falling. But she was still ready to believe: she’d imagined it. There’d been some sort of mistake, a distortion made by the wind. She waited to be saved.

  —Well? said my father.—Did the cat get your tongue, or what?

  He was angry but he didn’t want to be; there was no enjoyment in it, no triumph. It was a fight he didn’t want. He wished now that he’d never said the name. He’d have taken back the last minutes and started again, differently, if he could have. There were other names. But he’d been thinking about it all week. He’d imagined the moment, a gift to Melody, handing it over to her. Henry. He’d been sure she’d love the idea. He’d been positive about it. Henry. The name would float between them. Just the two of them. A perfect moment.

  Just the two of them? And what about me? I was annoyed, I was hopping. I was struggling, squirming. There were two growing things, two smothering throbs, crawling over each other inside me, two sensations that I was going to have to get used to - hunger and neglect. Now though, I was going to let go of a stream of roars and yaps in the sure knowledge that results would immediately follow, hands would come and pick me up.

  —Well? said my father.—Melody?

  There was silence out there, beyond the crib. Not for long, though. The Nameless Baby would be heard. I was squirming, fretting, working myself up into a fit state for making noise.

  —Melody?

  —Yes.

  —Are you alright?

  —Yes.

  —D’you not think it’s a good idea?

  I heard a sob. My mother had got there just before me. I was furious now, robbed and ignored.

  —Well?

  She sobbed again. Then silence.

  —Well?

  —No.

  —No what?

  —No, I don’t think it’s—

  Sobs, a string of them, and silence.

  I sent out a string of my own, linked sausages full of protest and slobber, the strangled outcries of an angry wee man.

  —Why not?

  What about me?

  I heard her breathing, measuring her breath.

  —We already have a Henry.

  I sent out more exploding sausages. The zinc walls were closing in on me.

  —But he’s dead, said my father.

  I heard a gasp. My mother shook her head and hid behind her hair.

  —He’s dead, love, said my father.

  He wasn’t being callous, he wasn’t being cruel. The last sounds of his dead children were in his ears; he could measure their weight in his arms. But they were dead. Gone from him and Melody. My father didn’t believe in heaven or after-life reunions. His children were gone. Naming me Henry would take the pain and weight away; it would let them start again. It would let them include the dead in their new life. A gift to my mother.

  I was crying now, full blast; everything was in my wail.

  —He’s not, said my mother.

  —He is, said my father.—For God’s sake, love. Where is he? He’s dead. And the other little one. They’re dead.

  What about me? What about me?

  I was a pink-cheeked howl in need of arms and milk. I was alone.

  My mother shook her head. She looked up at the ceiling, at her children beyond it, waiting for her. She looked up at her first Henry. Her one and only Henry.

  What about me!

  My father looked up and saw the ceiling, just the ceiling. Nothing but the grey, sagging, cracked, stained ceiling.

  —Stars are only stars, he said.—Melody?

  My mother looked through the ceiling.

  What about meeeee!

  —Don’t pretend you can see anything up there, love, said my father.—Look at me; d’yeh hear me?

  My father was angry and not interested in stopping.

  —It’s the fuckin’ ceiling! he shouted.

  He had to shout. I was making noise to drown anything less. I was becoming noise. Adding to his anger. I was choking, screaming. Disappearing.

  —It’s a fuckin’ ceiling and the stars are only stars and his name’s Henry, d’you hear me.

  I was named.

  —His name’s Henry! Henry! So you might as well get used to it.

  He got up, the chair fell back. He came over to the crib. I heard the cha
rging tap tap. He looked down at me. I saw an angry blur, shimmering fury.

  —Listen, he said to my mother.—Are you listening now?

  He bent down - I felt his heat - and roared into my purple face.

  —Henry! Henry! Shut up! Shut up, Henry! Shut up, Henry!

  My mother kept shaking her head, hitting the name back with her damp curls.

  —Shut up, Henry!

  Was I obedient? Did I obey my daddy? I did like fuck. I screamed back up at him, my purple turned to black. I shoved my terror up into his face. And he stopped. He stopped shouting at me. He saw that I’d die before I’d stop, I’d scream my life away before I’d let him better me. What about meeee? So he stopped. He stood up straight and looked back down at me from a safe distance. He searched me, looking for some way past my screeches. His hands slowly surrounded me, gradually grew more solid. He picked me up. I left the crib behind.

  —There, there.

  He put me on his shoulder.

  —Now, now.

  I looked for a nipple in his coat. My lips met dust and blood. I tasted awful secrets. I kicked and shook. I fought his care and hands. He brought me quickly to my mother. Tap tap tap. I went from hands to smaller hands - shaking, frightened hands. Frightened faces watched me as I found a nipple, drank and fell asleep.

  I was the other Henry. The shadow. The impostor. She still fed me, held me, doted on me. But when her husband was in the room she began to feel sharp cuckoo lips on her breast. She stopped eating. There was no Missis Drake to coax food into her and Granny Nash was too busy with her head in Knocknagow and Bleak House to be bothered with feeding herself, let alone her half-wit of a daughter. My father saw the food left on the plate, saw her fading. He cursed the vanity and sentimentality that had suckered him into giving me his old name. And he hated the sky over Dublin for not being thick and dirty enough to hide the stars; he hated the wind for making open curtains of the night-time clouds. And he looked at me and saw a different child. He began to see the baby who was eating his wife away. He wanted to hold me but sometimes, even as he bent over me, he couldn’t lift his arms to do it.

  I was Henry but they never called me that. She wouldn’t; he couldn’t. But I was still Henry, too late for any other name. So they called me nothing. I was the boy. The lad. Himself. He. The child. I grew out of the zinc basin; my knees and elbows crushed its sides. I screamed as I stretched. My glow became a crust, my skin dry and furious. My mother swayed between fat and skeletal. She was a different woman every week. I went from breast to solids, straight to spuds and chunks of gristle; I bit with teeth that were robbed from a graveyard. I crunched and swallowed everything that was put in front of me. I gnawed at my father’s leg until he had to leave it on the landing before he came in. I struggled and walked and threw myself around the room. The ceiling shed its grey skin; it snowed all day on top of us. There were no more visitors, no more aahs and sighs, no food left behind. I claimed the mattress, marked my boundaries with my muck. I stopped their sleep; I muscled in on their sex, their messy efforts at saving their love. I crawled all over legs and arses and bit whatever seemed soft. They picked me up, patted me, smacked my arse, fed me, loved me, cleaned me - but they never called me Henry. I flooded the room with my stinks and waxes. I roared and screamed my right to be named.