Getting it in the Head. Mike McCormack

principle or humanity but from the antidote at the heart of the disease itself, the terrible soul-harrowing and puke-inducing disgust.

      O is for Obsequies

      QUIRKE (MARY ELIZABETH) died suddenly at her residence, Carron, Co. Mayo, May 21st 1993, in her fifty-ninth year. Deeply regretted by her sorrowing husband Thomas, her son Gerard and a large circle of relatives and friends. Removal to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Carron, this (Wednesday) evening at 7 o’clock. Requiem mass tomorrow (Thursday) at 12 noon. Funeral afterwards to Cross Cemetery. No flowers. House private.

       Your story on earth will never be told

       The harp and the shamrock

      Green white and gold.

      P is for Patrimony

      Four months ago James and I stood in a green field behind our county hospital, two unpaid extras witnessing a dedication. There was a small platform bedecked with ribbons, a few local politicians, the diocesan bishop and my father. The field was populated by a motley collection of patricians, merchants and outpatients; a few nurses stood at the fringes. Incredulity hung in the air like a fine mist. We were here to witness the sod turning on the foundation of the Thomas Quirke Institute for Alcoholic Research, a laboratory annexed to our county hospital and funded in equal measure by European grant aid and the single biggest bequest to the health services in the history of the state – my father’s entire lottery win. I listened as the politicians spoke on the straitened circumstances of the health services and on the pressing need for an institution of this sort in a province ravaged by alcoholism. My father was commended as a man of vision and philanthropy. I saw the bishop sprinkle holy water on the green earth and invoke the saints to guide the work of the institute. Then my father stepped forward to turn the first sod, his public awkwardness belying his easy skill with the spade. The audience whispered and shook their heads and as the earth split and turned I saw my fortune vanish before my eyes.

      In honour of the occasion James and I left the field for the pub across the road and got sinfully and disastrously drunk.

      Q is for Quietus

      We sat in the kitchen drinking the last of the whiskey. It was two in the morning and darkness hummed beyond the windows. James was slumped at the table, his head resting in his extended arm, clutching a glass. His speech came thick and slow.

      ‘Every penny,’ he was saying, ‘every fucking penny gone up in smoke and pissed against the wall. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. And every one of them bursting their holes laughing at him behind his back. The Thomas Quirke Institute for Alcoholic Research no less. Sheer bloody madness.’

      ‘Give it a rest, James, I’m fed up hearing it.’ It had been a long day and I badly needed sleep. A monstrous headache had begun to hammer behind my eyes.

      ‘Are you not mad, Ger? Christ, I’d be mad. A whole fortune squandered in one act of vanity. You’re his son, for Christ’s sake, it wasn’t just his to throw away. You’re his son and you could have been set up for life.’

      ‘I know, James. It’s all over now, though, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s all over.’

      ‘I’d kill him,’ he said suddenly, rising up and swinging the bottle wildly. ‘Stone dead I’d kill him. He hadn’t the right, he hadn’t the fucking right.’

      My father entered at that moment, his face flushed with drink, the knot of his tie well over his collarbone. James sat down at the table.

      ‘Hadn’t the right to do what, James, hadn’t the right to do what? Go on, you young shit, spell it out.’

      He was standing with his legs apart inside the door, the cage of his chest rising and falling. He looked like a man who was going to reach for a gun.

      ‘I was just saying, Mr Quirke, it was a real pity that all that money couldn’t be put to better use where right people might benefit from it.’

      ‘Is that so? And I suppose if it was your money you’d know what to do with it.’

      James’ head was lolling heavily, a wide smirk crawling to his ears.

      ‘I’d have given it to the poor of the parish,’ he said, guffawing loudly and gulping from his glass. ‘Every last penny. And I’d have put a new roof on the church,’ he finished, now giggling helplessly.

      ‘And I suppose you wouldn’t have left yourself short either, James? You being one of these poor that weigh so heavily on your mind.’

      He was leaning with both hands on the table now, towering over James. He wasn’t totally drunk, just in that dangerous condition where he could argue forever or loose his temper suddenly.

      ‘Do you know what it is, Mr Quirke? Something I saw today. Every one of those people were there patting you on the back with one hand and smirking behind the other. Telling you what a great man you were and then going away bursting their holes laughing at you. I saw it with my own two eyes.’

      James had lost the run of himself now, he didn’t care what he said. I stood between them. ‘Cut it out both of you. James, it’s time you left, I need to get to bed.’ I began hauling him to his feet.

      ‘He’ll leave when I’m finished with him,’ my father hissed, squeezing out the words between his clenched teeth. ‘When I’m finished and only then. What about you, James, were you laughing?’

      ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, Mr Quirke, I was in two minds.’ He was swaying drunkenly now, bracing himself between the chair and the table. ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I was standing there thinking that some people have more money than sense.’

      My father lunged at him, his outstretched hands reaching for his throat. James keeled backwards spilling the chair and my father landed across him, bellowing in rage and surprise. They grappled wildly for an instant. I threw aside the chair and James’ boot flicked up as he rolled over, catching me under the chin and knocking me sideways into the table. I fell down, grabbing the tablecloth and bringing the bottle and glass shattering to the floor. We scuttled to the end of the room and my father came off the floor clutching the neck of the bottle at arm’s length.

      ‘I’ll cut the fucking head clean off you,’ he roared.

      He moved towards James slowly, as if walking over broken ground. It was at this instant that the axe rose into the air, just off my left shoulder, and passed in a slow arc over my head. And it was at this instant also that there was a sound of breaking glass and the light went out. The fluorescent light showered down around our shoulders as the axe clipped it and there was a sudden rush of cold air in the darkness, a grim sound of something splitting with a soft crunch. I rushed to the wall and turned on the bulb.

      ‘Oh Jesus, oh fucking Christ.’

      My father lay face down on the floor, his head split open and the axe standing upright in it as if marking the spot. He was dead beyond any salvation. James was doing some frantic, crazy dance about his head and there was a smell of shit in the room.

      ‘Oh Jesus, oh fucking Christ, what are we going to do, what are we going to do?’

      I was stone-cold sober then, hiccupping with fright but perfectly in control. I started dragging James towards the door, hauling him by the collar.

      ‘Go home now, James, there’s nothing you can do. Go home.’

      I pushed him out into the darkness and slammed the door. My breathing came in jagged bursts and I needed to sit down. I righted the chair and sat at my father’s head, a four-hour vigil into the dawn with no thought in my head save that now, for the first time in my life, I had nothing.

      When the grey sun rose I stepped into the hall and rang the cops.

      R is for Responsibility

      Not for the first time James was picking himself up off the tarmac, wiping the blood