I killed my tormentor at Dunargus, high above the Ocean
near Malin Head.
I throttled him with wire from a clothes-line. Gulls caught
his screams and lifted them through a sky stained copper
by the setting sun. Spittle dribbled onto my wrists as he
kicked and jerked.
A dog cowered by the wall of the byre, whimpering and turning.
I dragged the body inside, my hands sticky with blood. The
place reeked of cattle piss. He lay quiet now, grey hair
streaked with cattle dung. I took off his black boots and
tied them around his neck.
The sun slipped blood-red into the Atlantic.
I jerked him onto a cart before the light failed. The dog
was quiet now and came to me, tail tucked. Outside, the
air was sweet with the smell of cut grass. A donkey stood
in the field. I put a harness on him and pushed him between
the shafts.
I was elated.
My name is Patsy Gallagher. That night I was fifteen. The
man I had killed was Eamon Dalton - Doctor Dalton - my teacher,
a priest.
It was 1961 when I entered the secondary school at Crandonagh.
My mother was still at school when I was born. My father
was an actor from London. They met when she went to a play
at the Rialto in Derry. He disappeared. When I was born
in Malin Head, my mother threw herself into the Atlantic
at Hell’s Hole. The rocks are like razors. They found
the body in Lough Foyle. Her beautiful face was ripped raw.
My grandfather recognised her boots.
When Eamon D’Alton first started to fondle me I had
no one to tell. Love was scarce in Ballyhillion amid rocks
and wind.
“Young Patsy is wild bright,” Master O’Callaghan
told my grandfather at the school in Malin Head; “he’d
best go to the secondary school in Carn. There’s a
curiosity in him strange to this sea-scorched place.”
“That’ll be from his father,” grumbled
grandpa, “…’twas the mother gave him his
looks.”
Both aspects of my personality were noted by Doctor D’Alton
when he began to teach me.
“You have an aptitude for history, Patrick Gallagher,”
he drawled, “you know about high crosses. You have
visited the stone circles, notice standing stones. This
we must foster and nourish.”
His fingers tousled my hair and strayed down my back.
D’Alton gained a doctorate in Maynooth and stayed
to lecture. His field was early Christianity in Ireland.
There had been an incident - a complaint, I later discovered
- and he was sent to Inishowen.
My talent merited special tutoring.
He was a handsome man in his early forties, aristocratic
in manner.
“My family came to Wexford with Richard fitz Godebert
- that first wave of Norman influence in 1167. I like to
think we helped to take the rough edges from the Gaels…gave
them some finesse. You’ll have heard of the Roche
family? No? Oh dear. Are you all tinkers in Malin Head…?
Come here, Patrick, let this be our secret - not a word
about it, not a word.”
I told my granddad that Doctor D’Alton was being
funny with me. I got a clout in return.
"Will you not respect the priest - and him a doctor?"
I told Father McDermott, the Principal in Carndonagh.
“How dare you, Gallagher! Doctor D’Alton is
eminent in his field. The school is lucky to have such a
scholar. What other wain from Malin Head has your chance?”
“I’d mind saying anything agin the priests,”
warned my friend Jimmy Doherty as we skimmed stones on the
shore; “you’re lucky to get the attention. It’ll
stand you in good stead. Aren’t the priests the fellers
with influence? Stick in there, Patsy.”
My friends in Carndonagh were terrified of speaking to
the priests. Criticism merited eternal damnation. I had
nowhere to go. But I was intelligent. I knew what was happening
to me was wrong, so I wrote to the Bishop in Derry and told
him what Doctor D’Alton was doing to me. No reply.
I wrote again. Nothing. I wrote a third time. A week later
Father McDermott summoned me to his office and thrashed
me. My legs bled.
"It is only the goodness of Doctor D'Alton, Gallagher,
you scut, that keeps you here. If you ever contact the Bishop
again…you'll be back to fishing and scraping the rocks
at Malin Head", he roared.
My tutorials in early Christian history continued.
“I will see you under the clock of the chapel after
school”, commanded Dr. D’Alton in his well bred
Kildare accent.
In a book-lined study, his hands explored every bit of
my body whilst he drawled about the seventh century Carndonagh
cross.
“The Continent again, my dear. You don’t think
those designs came from Inishowen, do you? From France and
Italy, Patrick. France especially. Monks returned imbued
with ideas for design. We have to admit that local craftsmen
carved them. So much stone here, don’t you think?
The ignorant louts about Inishowen wouldn’t know about
King David, now, would they?”
His face glistened and at times his body jerked but the
drawl was steady.
Every week I looked at the chapel clock and trembled. When
I passed the Carndonagh crosses I felt sick. The very symbols
of my salvation were destroying my innocence. I was on my
own in a place of evil. Nobody listened; nobody believed.
And D’Alton gave not a cuss.
In the holidays he came to Ballyhillion in his Morris Minor.
He bewitched my grandfather with charm. The neighbours were
amazed that this learned priest took time to educate Patsy
Gallagher.
"And him a bastard from that slut of a mother!”
they marvelled.
We walked from Cullourt to Dunargus and Knockamany. D’Alton
explained how the shore was formed from the melting of the
glaciers. He expounded on the Armada and the Napoleonic
wars; gave reasons for the building of the Lloyds Tower
at Malin Head.
The winds whistled around us. The sky whirled and shook.
Sheep bleated. Gulls screamed. At the White Strand, the
tide hissed through small stones. Seaweed gleamed in the
August sun. The smell of salt clung to my clothes. Often,
on that elemental coastline, he put his arm around me and
started to grope, his fingernails bruising my skin.
On the Five Fingers strand, I decided to kill him. I would
never convince anyone that this priest was evil. He was
so grand, so confident, so secure. I planned to take him
to Hell’s Hole and push him onto the needles that
had torn life from my mother. The Ocean could grope him
as he had groped me. Let crabs gorge themselves on his flesh.
But, after two years of abuse I had grown a little mad.
This grandee of the church needed to leave life with a grand
gesture. It must have been my father’s actor’s
genes that built the scene…
I led the donkey out of the byre. It was late September
in 1963. A yellow moon followed the sunset and dappled Trawbreaga
with light. It fell on D’Alton’s body slewn
across the cart like an old sack. I smelt his urine. Where
now was his Norman elegance, his learning, his clerical
aloofness? I found a pitchfork glinting in the moonlight
and covered the corpse with sods of turf.
With peat for a shroud, we drove into the night - the donkey’s
shadow jumping along the ditches, the dog dandering alongside.
Down through Knockglass by Quigley’s hill we passed
along the Lagg shore. Black night was my theatre. Fuchsia
nodded in approval. Water nudged the shore and applauded.
A fox slunk across the road, grinning his appreciation.
Stacks of hay blew their fragrance. The clock on Carndonagh
chapel glowed in the moonlight.
We padded through the town, the dog panting, the donkey
sweating, D’Alton stinking. The river slipped over
rocks beneath us. In front of our cortege stood three crosses,
the high cross caught full in the moonlight. King David
and the two thieves of the Crucifixion greeted us at Patrick's
old church.
The moon was my spotlight. Drawing the cart across the
base of the cross, I calmed the donkey. The dog lay down,
tongue hanging, eyes bright in the light. I lifted the sods
of turf, loosened the thongs of the harness and tipped the
cart. Down onto cold stone slithered the body of Father
D’Alton. The sods clattered about his head, the scent
of peat like incense.
I threw the spade into the cart and lectured the animals.
“Now this is a perfect example of seventh century
High Crosses. Notice the simple incised technique of carving
and the presence of broad ribbon interlace. Some prefer
a later date, the ninth century. For myself, I feel the
earlier date can be confidently asserted from perusal of
the literature.”
The donkey and the dog were impressed. The clock struck
the half hour. I put the dog in the cart and turned the
donkey for Malin Head.
