The Holy City by Patrick McCabe

eyes sucking his thumb as he viewed the cosmos:
    â€” The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the …
    â€” Oh Ethel, I said, as soothingly, reassuringly, my heavy eyelids began to fall, and I rested my head on her shoulder, bathed in the soothing glow of the fire. Thinking of Henry Thornton as he stood behind the French windows, indifferently staring out. Unmoved by my plea:
    â€” Please let me in, Father.
    Just sitting there with Ethel beneath the heaventree of stars, repeating the lines of the poem with her. Before all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly, she jerked, the book slipping from her grasp. And the next thing I knew she was lying on the floor.
    What’s perhaps most regrettable, even arguably unforgivable about the whole thing is that I left Ethel’s without telephoning an ambulance. I ought to have — what had happened was that she’d sustained a coronary but all I kept thinking of was why I’d made a fool of myself with Marcus Otoyo. I’ve gone and made a fool of myself with him — there seemed to be nothing else in my mind. And I have no doubt whatsoever that that was what impelled me, whether I was aware of it or not, towards the cathedral in the first place. Of course it was childish — childish and stupid. For nothing could now possibly alter the way that things had happened. I was considered a fool by Marcus Otoyo. Not just a fool — worse than that.
    Just as soon as I had pushed open the door of the cathedral I had seen the statue standing right in front of me — in the same place, before the high altar, where ithad been specially positioned for the play,
The Soul’s Ascent: Saints You May Not Know.
Yes, there he was, Blessed Martin de Porres, the dark-skinned Hispanic devotee of Christ. Who, as played by Marcus Otoyo, by unchallenged consensus, had been the unquestioned star of the show. As I stood there staring at the statue in the aisle, it exerted a powerful effect on me, the vivid memory — of Marcus as he read out the narrative:
    â€” And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
    His enunciation had been almost perfect. I recalled it vividly, exulting in its precision and passion. And it was then that I heard them: those resonant, poignant lyrics of ‘The Holy City’, the hymn that he had sung, and which had taken the breath of the congregation away. As I remained there, right in the middle of the centre aisle facing the altar, I found myself in an ancient marbled city, through whose streets I could see him proudly move as crusaders bent the knee outside its gates, and beheld in rapture that hilltop place, as beautiful to them as the vanished molten sunsets of childhood. Those gorgeous crimson piles of glory in the west, where clouds floated beyond the western heavens, from beyond whose pink magnificence now sounded the blast of martial trumpets. As, like a seraph’s wing, in its flaming beauty, the singing voice of Marcus Otoyo now filled the cathedral, the abject devout proudly striking their breasts and, like the soldiers of old, weeping before the sight of that shining city:
    â€” Last night I lay a-sleeping, there came a dream so fair,
I stood in old Jerusalem beside the temple there.
I heard the children singing and ever as they sang
Methought the voice of angels —!
    â€”
Shut up!
I found myself involuntarily crying aloud, inexplicably waving my arms, and actually breaking into a run — before it dawned on me exactly what it was that I had just done.
    The statue now lay in pieces before me, with splinters and scattered chunks reaching as far as the side altar. More than anything now I regret what I had written. The