The Holy City by Patrick McCabe Page A

words crudely smeared in ash across the walls. Obscenities they had called them — rightly, for I accept now that that is what they were. There really can be no other description. Much of it remains vague even yet, although I can still remember the figure of an old lady retreating silently into the shadows. As I stood there, with the words I had written as blurred now before me as the rain upon the French windows of my imagination.
    Fuck the holy city. Fuck all niggers.
    They say that the sixties ended when the Rolling Stones played Altamont in ’69. Well, for me that’s not true. For me they climaxed in the cathedral that day. But the inevitable collapse had begun before that. Budin’s of Mosney — laughably, perhaps, that was our Altamont. That night when we went to the Beachcomber Bar. Or, more specifically, after I left it.
    *   *   *
    Up until that moment, things they had really been going so good. The sixties were really taking hold in Cullymore. There was colour everywhere, great ads, lots of fun, with a never-ending stream of people wandering in and out of Green Shield Stamps. And there were terrific bands playing in the Mayflower every weekend. As well as that, myself and Dolores were getting on like a house on fire. The Good Times bar was packed to the door. Which was terrific. It was great to have a place now where, like London or Paris or Milan, you could ‘do your thing’, yeah, ‘get your kicks’. If, as they said, that happened to be ‘your bag’.
    The owner of the Good Times had done a great job — completely refurbishing the pub’s interior. With the result that now there were not only posters of pop stars and singers — there was a giant one of the Beatles with their guru and one of Julie Christie swinging a Union Jack shopping bag — but also adverts for Smirnoff and cigarettes, with mountain streams flowing in super-saturated colours, the night skylines of famous cities glowing like something out of a fairy tale. Smart cocktails now were being served and a starry sky had been painted, twinkling away on the blue-domed ceiling. New chairs had been brought in that were shaped like artists’ palettes and the fabulous chrome counter had — or so it was claimed — been imported from America. There was a cardboard effigy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with a glinting star leapfrogging off his pearly teeth.
    Maybe it was inevitable that it would all end the way it did — after Dolores arrived on the scene. Who knows, had she notappeared I might never have bothered going down to Wattles Lane again, no matter how many invitations Marcus’s mother extended. As a result, once more becoming prey to those old familiar confusing emotions whenever Marcus was in the vicinity. So consumed with
wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire,
as James Joyce had written in the book to which I had become so attached. C.J. McCool, only maybe not so cool, if you examined him closely. Anything but, in fact, truth to tell. C.J. Beatnik, C.J. Pops? Christopher Hot Jazz maybe more like, C.J. yes, extremely hot. Christopher anything but smooth and cool.
    I knew it was only a matter of time: as gradually all pretence of becoming like Henry Thornton or any of his haughty empirical associates began to vanish and I surrendered so hopelessly but willingly to the feelings so eloquently described in
A Portrait.
Like the central character — if a fever quickened my pulse, or my heart began slowly to fold and fade with fear like a withering flower, I would pray intensely and the glories of Mary would hold my soul captive. My heart then, at last, would once more become calm. As I thought: Marcus is holy and so am I. Marcus is a Catholic and so am I. We two are Catholics, impelled by ardour to cast sin from our beings.
    There were times when I would tremble, such was the singular enormity of the thought — that no one existed in the world,