The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Colm Herron’s first writing career began at the age of seven when he sold his vampire stories to classmates. Two years later he was telling cliffhangers to the wasters in the local gambling hall. Colm’s abiding memory is that these ne’er-do-wells seemed to enjoy this weekly break from misspending their lives.

  When he was fifteen he had a play on BBC and later brought his short stories to Brian Friel, an emerging playwright. Friel said “Great. This stuff’s better than what I wrote at your age.” But Colm was unimpressed and thought “This guy’s going nowhere. I don’t know why I came to him at all.”

  So Colm gave up writing, deciding to live instead. Meanwhile Brian Friel’s plays became huge hits and over the next thirty years he built up a richly deserved reputation as Ireland’s greatest living playwright. And what of Herron? Well, while Brian Friel’s plays were showing worldwide to critical and popular acclaim a kaleidoscope of stories was kicking and turning in Colm’s head. But they still weren’t ready to come out. Till twelve years ago, that is, when he said to himself “OK, I’ve lived. Maybe it’s time to do the other thing.”

  And so began his second writing career…

  ACCLAIM FOR COLM HERRON’S PREVIOUS NOVELS

  For I Have Sinned

  “Perhaps the greatest tribute I can pay to this quirky, funny and deeply affecting novel is to declare that the moment I finished reading it, I immediately turned back to the first page to begin again. And it’s even better second time round.”

  —Ferdia MacAnna, Sunday Independent

  Further Adventures of James Joyce

  “A totally comic novel …. Further Adventures of James Joyce could just as easily be entitled The Further Writings of Flann O’Brien.”

  —Morris Beja, James Joyce Quarterly, Tulsa, Oklahoma

  The Fabricator

  “Fascinating, funny, sad and delightful. From its opening lines right through to its final pages The Fabricator is not like anything you have read before.”

  —Kellie Chambers, Ulster Tatler

  COLM HERRON

  THE WAKE

  (AND WHAT JEREMIAH DID NEXT)

  This edition: Copyright © Colm Herron 2015

  This novel was first published in 2014 by Nuascéalta Teoranta

  Visit Colm Herron’s website: colmherron.com

  Contact Colm on Twitter: @colmherron

  Cover by © Lermagh Graphics

  Formatting by 52 Novels

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9546453-6-6

  ISBN-10: 0-9546453-6-7

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  A small number of the spellings – and some of the grammar – in this novel may seem a little odd. I did this deliberately so as to reproduce authentic

  northern Irish speech.

  OTHER NOVELS BY COLM HERRON

  For I Have Sinned

  Further Adventures of James Joyce

  The Fabricator

  For Nuala

  Preface

  What is most remarkable about Colm Herron’s writing is the fact that it is so completely real in time and place. His prose, ripe with wit, has that poetic Irish lilt that makes you turn the page hungry for what is coming.

  Initially set at a traditional northern Irish wake, the novel unfolds into the drama of what chief mourner Jeremiah does next and in doing so it transcends the traditional literature of Irish shores and travels brilliantly to reach out to all cultures with its universal themes.

  As with James Joyce, there is no wasted language, only truth that makes you laugh and hurt as Herron applies the psychological meat to the flesh of his characters. The mood is lighter here than in Herron’s other groundbreaking novels and further cements his reputation as Ireland’s most gifted and important novelist writing today, in the same canon of Irish literature as Joyce and Beckett.

  Strider Marcus Jones, poet,

  Hinckley, Leicestershire, UK

  August 31, 2015

  Foreword

  Colm Herron’s The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) — a nod to the nickname for James Joyce’s final bewildering novel Finnegans Wake — is yet another exciting Irish comic work, packed with psychosexual and historicocritical detail, by the critically acclaimed, constantly inventive and forward thinking Derry author.

  Boldly revamping his style (a welcome tradition within his oeuvre), Herron’s novel is by far his most accessible and (deceptively) light read. (His previous works adopt more complex academic techniques: autobiografiction in For I Have Sinned; and metatextuality in Further Adventures of James Joyce). The Wake’s title states tersely, and wittily, its two-part structure. Part 1: ‘The Wake’ (the hero attends, and organises a Wake) and part 2: ‘What Jeremiah Did Next’ (which is, amusingly, precisely that: namely, what he did after the wake).

  Within the first section, Herron contributes to the Irish literary tradition of ‘Wake’ writing but his work is unique, and defines and details the unique Derry wake. The dialect is heavy yet easily understood, for Herron writes in a style not intended to confuse but to make his text as authentic and realistic as possible. The Hiberno-English in J.M Synge’s work is similarly impressive; the aesthetic aim being to poeticise Irish speech.

  The second section (in a brave authorial step by Herron) involves a complete retelling of the ‘Long March’ section of his 2012 historical novel The Fabricator: an ambitious and well executed plotline that reveals itself to us slowly; and the experimental stylistic concept lends itself well to Herron’s often hilarious dialogue and dark “Troubles Literature” subject matter. Overall, it’s highly delightful (like all of his novels) on both of its reading levels: swift accessible pure comic fiction and academic literature that deserves inclusion into the Irish contemporary canon.

  Dr Jonathan McCreedy

  University of Sofia (“St. Kliment Ohridski”), Bulgaria

  September 4, 2015

  Author’s Introduction

  I was born an Irish pagan and baptised an Irish Catholic. The Catholic bit was an accident, the reason being of course that if I’d been the offspring of a Protestant Unionist family I’d have been baptised a Protestant. When I come to think of it, probably being born at all was my first accident. Or rather, being conceived at all. In those days no Irish Catholic parents actually planned their families. I would say that at this moment there are hundreds of thousands of Catholic accidents over the age of fifty walking about the streets of Northern Ireland.

  I grew up to the intermittent sounds of Catholic feet marching for freedom from British rule in our little corner of Ireland. But much louder and far more frequent were the Ulster Loyalist/Unionist bands marching for the maintenance of British rule here. And louder still were the – to me – demonic rants of the Reverend Ian Paisley who thundered that the pope of Rome was the Antichrist and the Jesuits the secret police of the Vatican.

  I had never seen that reverend gentleman in the flesh, only on television or in the newspapers. And it was these parts of the media that led me to try and fill in the gaps by studying Irish history. In the course of my studies I doggedly dumped what I saw as large chunks of bunk and soon learned, among other things, that we Catholics were reluctant subjects of the British crown and that Britain controlled Northern Ireland by skillful use of the tried and tested colonialists’ policy – divide and rule.

&
nbsp; There were many poverty-stricken Protestants in this cricked neck of the woods but the crumbs that were doled out to them were slightly less derisory than the ones we Catholics got. And those same Protestants were programd by their politicians to believe that all Catholics were intent on breaking the sacred connection with Britain by foul means. So it was to be expected that the occasional uprisings by rebellious natives – freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on your point of view – were used by cunning Unionist politicians at opportune times to fire their people up. This meant that even when there was a prolonged period of peace the terrorist threat was resurrected and paraded, especially before elections.

  And so the two traditions lived in an uneasy, sometimes violent, state of mutual distrust. This had been set in stone by the actions of the Northern Ireland government, put in place by the British in 1921 at Belfast City Hall, later moving to an imposing establishment called Stormont Castle. The first prime minister here was James Craig who championed what he called “a Protestant Government for a Protestant people” (this in a state where one third of the population was Catholic). To prevent the possibility of Catholics here outvoting and outbreeding their Protestant neighbors a form of gerrymandering was put in place and this, added to job discrimination, forced many Catholics to emigrate. These measures ensured unbroken Unionist rule for almost fifty years.

  But then came 1968 and the change in the times blown to our shores from both east and west. Inspired by the Prague Spring and African American freedom movements (among others), a husband and wife team – Conn and Patricia McCluskey – started the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. The protest marches were often blocked by Unionist counter demonstrators, sometimes aided and abetted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and all this set in train a seemingly inexorable series of events that eventually led to nearly thirty years of terrible bloodshed.

  The events in The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) took place before the worst of the violence got under way in this distressful country of ours. I suppose those early events could be described as the genesis of the Troubles. In the first half of my novel I record the chatter among a motley collection of two-faced characters gathered at an Irish wake for a dead woman that none of them liked. I use the word record because what I have written is, I think (and hope), a faithful representation of many an Irish wake I’ve dropped into, where I have both smiled and frowned at comic innuendo and barefaced slander from the so-called mourners. And when the whiskey was produced, well, that was when they got down to the explosive subjects of religion and politics.

  And so to the second half. Here things turn serious – for Jeremiah that is, chief mourner of the nasty neighbor that his mother insisted on waking. Jeremiah is Catholic, conservative and guilt-ridden on account of his relationship with a beautiful bisexual called Aisling O’Connor and shortly before the wake has thrown her over to salve his conscience – only to find that he cannot live without her. Aisling is everything that Jeremiah is not – feisty and radical, angry and politically committed. But when he looks for her she is gone. And the only way to find her is to join civil rights marches and hope that somehow he can spot her. The fact that he may be risking life and limb doesn’t occur to him. But then he’s deeply, hopelessly in love and love of course is a crazy thing.

  Since an earlier edition of The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) was published a year ago I have been asked many times: “Are you Jeremiah?” And my answer has always been the same: “I was and still am Jeremiah, except in two respects. The love of my life is not bisexual but straight and has been my wife for many years. And my mother, unlike Jeremiah’s, was as kind and loving as any mother could be.” So I have tampered with the facts in an effort to get at the truth. I have used poetic license to try and make that truth more plausible. And what is the truth? For me, it is that I have learnt more from my wife and my mother than I got from all the reading I have ever done.

  Colm Herron

  Derry, Northern Ireland

  August 31, 2015

  I REALLY DIDN’T want to be bothering you about this but Maud Harrigan died yesterday, dropped dead at our kitchen table. No loss if you ask me. But wait till you hear. We’re waking her, yeah you got that right, we’re waking her. She near enough lived here and she died here and we’re not going to get rid of her till she’s carried out that bloody door. And in the meantime I have to listen to Mammy’s crap.

  “Poor Maud, she’d nobody. She was desperate lonely since Bobby died. Always looking to do you a good turn so she was.” Bobby was glad to get out of it. He was the only corpse I ever saw with a smile on its face. Nearly everybody remarked on it, one or two that I heard gave the credit to Charlie Bradley and Denis McLaughlin of Bradley & McLaughlin but most of the women at the wake decided it could only mean he was in heaven. I thought he looked more like he’d got out of hell.

  Maud was waked in our house for one reason and one reason only. Mammy insisted. I wanted her to be brought to the cathedral to lie overnight as soon as she could be boxed and then on to the cemetery after mass in the morning but Mammy wasn’t having it. Fucking hypocrite. The face she showed to the world would have made you sick. She was posing as the selfless neighbor that wanted to give Maud a good send-off and she was landing me with all the arrangements. Typical. And of course she was showing up Majella Doherty Maud’s neighbor on the other side that hadn’t spoken to her for years over Maud puncturing a ball that Majella’s weans had accidentally kicked into her back yard.

  But here’s the thing. People that came to the wake were going on as if I’d been bereaved, shaking hands with me and some of them kissing me and telling me they were sorry for my trouble. I was actually going along with it sometimes, mainly because I wasn’t able to hit the right mood between that and the distaste I felt for the whole thing. You have to understand, a whole lot of the women in this town are like professional mourners, they come into wakehouses with expressions on them like Veronica wiping the face of Jesus on the way to Calvary and you have to go along with it or people will only be talking about you. This meant that most of the time I had an expression on me of either resignation or desolation depending on who I was talking to.

  And then the stressful conversations I had with the two undertakers — these guys put their noses right up to yours when they’re talking to you as if what they’re saying is really confidential when they might be only asking you where the bathroom is or telling you what time the hearse will be taking Maud to the cathedral or exactly where the grave is located, the last bit being vital information of course because I as the chief mourner would be walking right behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery and God knows I might veer off and end up in the River Foyle like one of those horses in the Grand National that didn’t turn left at the Canal Turn and had to be pulled out of the Leeds and Liverpool canal.

  There was this big hallion of a girl too from over the terrace Majella McAllister that caught me completely unawares and gave me a French kiss at the door when she was leaving and left me standing there with my mouth full of slabber just as the Miss Quinns were arriving. I did manage to get rid of some of it by leaving four small deposits on the two old ones’ cheeks, ucching most of the rest of it over the wall of Maud’s garden as I followed them in. Majella’s had a notion of me for years and she used to give me the glad eye in the street till I stopped even looking at her. She was crafty the way she did it though. She was saying cheerio and how good I was to be waking Maud and I thought she was away till she turned quickly as if she was suddenly overcome with emotion which could well have been the case now that I think of it and gave me this warm wet kiss on the cheek and then her big sticky lips sort of slid down sideways to my mouth and that’s when the tongue came out.

  I got a day and a half off for this but to tell you the truth I’d far rather have been in school even though I’ve a Primary Six that would put years on you. Father Swindells arrived about half ten just when the wake was getting into its stride and reminded me first thing
that I had to be back by the beginning of lunchtime the day of the funeral seeing I was on playground duty all week.

  “You haven’t been well lately Jeremiah?” he said, still holding my hand after he finished shaking it. By rights he shouldn’t have been shaking my hand at all because he knows full well I’ve as much relationship to Maud as I have to Ian Paisley. I find him creepy, Swindells that is, face shiny and smooth like a choirboy’s and those piercing eyes and curved beak of a nose like an eagle. What’s the word? Egalitarian? No, hardly that. Aquiline I think. Yes, aquiline. And there was something yucky about him that was patronizing and ingratiating at the same time slowslidingly mingling the sweat of his hand with mine.

  “How do you mean Father?”

  “You were off a few days, weren’t you, this past fortnight? No notice to speak of either. You’re not having late nights are you? Not burning the candle the two ways as they say?”

  I shook my head. We were still holding hands, perspirations slippily melding. Looking down at him I felt both wary and fearful, wary of what he might find out, fearful of what he could do. He doesn’t come up to my shoulder and he makes me feel small.

  “Not at all Father. I’ve been trying to shake off this flu but it just won’t go away. I’m sure you’ve been through the same sort of thing yourself.”

  “Yes,” he said smiling joylessly, “but I haven’t been out on street demonstrations challenging the law and being chastised for it. How are you anyway? It’s a wonder they didn’t arrest you. That wouldn’t have looked good you know.”

  His shoulders then began to shake with put on mirth. “Have you ever heard the one?” he said, spluttering into his free hand. “I suppose I shouldn’t be telling it to you at a wake of all places but what would you say now is the difference between a magician’s wand and a policeman’s baton?”