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A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
Chapter One
When the MS Irish Oak sailed from Cork in October 1949, we expected to
be in New York City in a week. Instead, after two days at sea, we were told we
were going to Montreal in Canada. I told the first officer all I had was forty
dollars and would Irish Shipping pay my train fare from Montreal to New York. He
said, No, the company wasn't responsible. He said freighters are the whores of
the high seas, they'll do anything for anyone. You could say a freighter is like
Murphy's oul' dog, he'll go part of the road with any wanderer.
Two days later Irish Shipping changed its mind and gave us the happy news,
Sail for New York City, but two days after that the captain was told, Sail for
Albany.
The first officer told me Albany was a city far up the Hudson River, capital
of New York State. He said Albany had all the charm of Limerick, ha ha ha, a
great place to die but not a place where you'd want to get married or rear
children. He was from Dublin and knew I was from Limerick and when he sneered at
Limerick I didn't know what to do. I'd like to destroy him with a smart remark
but then I'd look at myself in the mirror, pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth
and know I could never stand up to anyone, especially a first officer with a
uniform and a promising future as master of his own ship. Then I'd say to
myself, Why should I care what anyone says about Limerick anyway? All I had
there was misery.
Then the peculiar thing would happen. I'd sit on a deck chair in the lovely
October sun with the gorgeous blue Atlantic all around me and try to imagine
what New York would be like. I'd try to see Fifth Avenue or Central Park or
Greenwich Village where everyone looked like movie stars, powerful tans,
gleaming white teeth. But Limerick would push me into the past. Instead of me
sauntering up Fifth Avenue with the tan, the teeth, I'd be back in the lanes of
Limerick, women standing at doors chatting away and pulling their shawls around
their shoulders, children with faces dirty from bread and jam, playing and
laughing and crying to their mothers. I'd see people at Mass on Sunday morning
where a whisper would run through the church when someone with a hunger weakness
would collapse in the pew and have to be carried outside by men from the back of
the church who'd tell everyone, Stand back, stand back, for the lovea Jaysus,
can't you see she's gasping for the air, and I wanted to be a man like that
telling people stand back because that gave you the right to stay outside till
the Mass was over and you could go off to the pub which is why you were standing
in the back with all the other men in the first place. Men who didn't drink
always knelt right up there by the altar to show how good they were and how they
didn't care if the pubs stayed closed till Doomsday. They knew the responses to
the Mass better than anyone and they'd be blessing themselves and standing and
kneeling and sighing over their prayers as if they felt the pain of Our Lord
more than the rest of the congregation. Some had given up the pint entirely and
they were the worst, always preaching the evil of the pint and looking down on
the ones still in the grip as if they were on the right track to heaven. They
acted as if God Himself would turn His back on a man drinking the pint when
everyone knew you'd rarely hear a priest up in the pulpit denounce the pint or
the men who drank it. Men with the thirst stayed in the back ready to streak out
the door the minute the priest said, Ite, missa est, Go, you are dismissed. They
stayed in the back because their mouths were dry and they felt too humble to be
up there with the sober ones. I stayed near the door so that I could hear the
men whispering about the slow Mass. They went to Mass because it's a mortal sin
if you don't though you'd wonder if it wasn't a worse sin to be joking to the
man next to you that if this priest didn't hurry up you'd expire of the thirst
on the spot. If Father White came out to give the sermon they'd shuffle and
groan over his sermons, the slowest in the world, with him rolling his eyes to
heaven and declaring we were all doomed unless we mended our ways and devoted
ourselves to the Virgin Mary entirely. My Uncle Pa Keating would have the men
laughing behind their hands with his, I would devote myself to the Virgin Mary
if she handed me a lovely creamy black pint of porter. I wanted to be there with
my Uncle Pa Keating all grown up with long trousers and stand with the men in
the back with the great thirst and laugh behind my hand.
Copyright © 1999 by Frank McCourt
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