THE RAGGY BOY TRILOGY
Novels by Patrick Galvin
Published by New Island Books, Dublin 14
ISBN 904301 08 8. 425 pages. E11.99
Patrick Galvin is one of Ireland’s most distinguished poets and is is a member of Aosdana, that circle of writers and artists recognised and rewarded by the government of Ireland.
However it was not always so.
These three novels are about his early years and the grinding poverty and malice which the young – and the very young – Patrick Galvin had to suffer.
How he suffered became the forge of his poetic style; laconic, ironic, surreal. There is no self pity, he allows the events and the bizarre and often grotesque characters speak for themselves of the horrors. Yet the book – or books – are strangely pleasurable, uplifting – this is because of Galvin’s great art as storyteller and poet.
Each chapter in the first book, SONG FOR A POOR BOY, is very short, a succinct vignette, often surreal, always wry, always very, very funny. The novel is prefaced by a poem which sets the scene, the mood and the style:
SONG FOR A POOR BOY
When he was young and had no sense
And souls were sold for eighteen pence
While he ran mad in streets of gold
And people said he must be old
And hard as nails.
When hunger tore the windows out
And all the rooms were steeped in sin
He prayed to witches in his bed
And painted all the doorknobs red
And danced and sang.
And strong men went to take his soul
When he refused the begging bowl
But he was made to stretch his wings
And lead a company of kings
And touch the stars.
And silver ghosts leapt from his hand
When famine raged across the land
We locked him in a padded cell
And said he’d surely go to hell
And twist and burn.
But in the dark he learned to creep
When all the guards were fast asleep
And in his house of spinning pearls
He hopped about in loops and whirls
And rang the bell.
We chained him to the madhouse floor
And heard his long night-goblin’s roar
He split the chain and smashed the lock
And stopped the white wall-ticking clock
And climbed the stair.
We held him down inside his tomb
We robbed his heart and fired his room
He watched us from his bony place
And all the seas ran down his face
And drained the world.
But when the lamps were going down
He made himself a one-eyed clown
He saw the sun fall through the skies
And knew that all we knew was lies –
And grinned and grinned.
Then we meet the characters; cohesion of plot in this first novel is mainly established through character development and how they interact with each other in a recognisable setting. We meet a lot of people; immediate family, neighbours, distant relations; they float and fall through Galvin’s memory and imagination like charms in a kaleidoscope.
Most powerful is his description of his cousin Beatrice. I quote from that chapter:
My cousin Beatrice was fish. She never married. And for thirty one years she sat by her stall in the Coal Quay Market and sold fish. She sold mackerel and herring, pollock and hake, whitefish and crabfish, salmon and skate. My cousin Beatrice slept with fish. And when she woke up in the morning the scales clung to her.
“Is it any wonder I never married? I belong to fish.”
My cousin Beatrice dreamed of fish. She knew where they lived – in sunken castles a thousand fathoms deep – and in her dreams she’d visit them. The sharks pleasured her. The whales carried her on their backs and the salmon waltzed with her.
“Is it any wonder people persecute me? I dance with fish.”
But one morning my cousin Beatrice awoke from her dreams and knew that she hated fish. The hate grew on her breast. A dark stream weeping through her skin. She could see it in the mirror. She could smell the stench. She could hear the sea rising through a green mist to cover her.
“Is it any wonder the sea haunts me? I drown in fish.”
My cousin Beatrice rose from her stall in Coal Quay Market and renounced fish. She bought perfumes and herbs, ointments and soaps, and a wire brush to scrub herself clean ....
She opened the window of her room and screamed out,
“People of Cork – I abjure all fish!”
And so on!
In the second novel, SONG FOR A RAGGY BOY, the bizarre gives way to more recognisable types and the prose style settles down into direct storytelling. It was this novel which first attracted Hollywood and Irish actor, Aidan Quinn. The trilogy is now being made into a major film. Again the novel is prefaced by a poem from which I quote:
Raggy boys don’t go to Mass
Raggy boys are thick in school
Raggy boys should be slapped
And then strapped.
Raggy boys stay out all night
Raggy boys lead you astray
Raggy boys curse
And much worse.
Raggy boys are black of heart
Raggy boys end up in jail
Raggy boys don’t mind
They eat their kind.
In this novel we are on the move, we begin to go places, far from childhood and its family based environs, but not to places any of us might want to go...
The first chapter sees a child handcuffed on a train, handcuffed to a policeman. Neither is comfortable with the situation. A nun enters the compartment, she only sees a man and a boy, maybe father and son. She talks to the man about the weather and then offers the boy a sweet from a paper bag. He reaches out to accept it and the nun notices the handcuffs ... so the journey begins.
It ends at St Jude’s Reformatory School where we meet an array of sinister masters, all Christian Brothers, all with varying weaknesses and we meet one lay master, Mr Franklin, just back from fighting (on the Republican side) in the Spanish Civil war. He has a big influence on the young Galvin. He has travelled and he knows about – and likes – poetry.
This novel is mainly concerned with atmosphere, we do really get to understand what life must have been like in that institution. There is the conflict between many of the ordained priests and the lay Mr Franklin, there are debates and there is sometimes cruelty. There are also redemptive moments.
It is interesting that Mr Franklin arrived hot-foot from Spain. The Spanish Civil war becomes a constant lietmotiv behind all three novels, becomes their heartbeat. It serves as a metaphor and illustration of points made during the course of the novels, characters refer back to the Spanish Civil war in an academic way, as if to clarify their own present predicament; it is however, in its embodiment of the apocalypse, that its true power is wielded. Those in touch with that apocalyptic moment in history are somehow enhanced. If they fought on the republican side, whether they died there or came back, they have some kind of permanent halo over them.
A recent BBC docu-drama about George Orwell put things into bitter perspective; Orwell went to Spain hoping for a proletariat uprising – that was the big buzz - yet as soon as the working class took command, which they did for a for a few weeks, communism – which became totalitarian - took over, shattering Orwell’s dreams, shredding his illusions.
The third novel is called SONG FOR A FLY BOY and is an account of teen-age Galvin’s experiences in the RAF Fly boy?
The novel’s prologue sets the scene:
I had never met Adolf Hitler, but my mother heard him speaking on the radio one night and said the one good thing to be said for him was that he was now at war with the British. The fact that he had also supported General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and sent the Condor legion to Spain to blitskrieg Guernica and the Spanish Republicans into submission, did present her with some difficulties, but my mother was like that. When in doubt – bomb the brits.
The beginning of the first chapter establishes the style; again laconic, almost unbelieving...
The recruiting Sergeant in Belfast looked like Richard Greene advertising brylcreem and said he was glad to see me. He offered me biscuits and tea. I declined.... “Distinguished Service,” he said and touched his ribbons.... I waited for more but he lit a cigarette and turned to the wall. “The rest is history,” he sighed – “and Hedy Lamarr.” I looked at Hedy Lamarr. Her portrait hung upon the wall beside a large map of Occupied Europe and her lips spooned “Kiss me I’m all yours.” The sergeant kissed her and the smoke from his cigarette encircled her head and clouded her face....
From Belfast then to England, then to West Africa, finally to Egypt but not as a “fly-boy” merely for ground duties. This novel uses a dialogue to depict character and an evoke time and place. And again we find the story-teller is somewhere he doesn’t want to be even though this time he had “joined up.”
These events and “happenings” extend throughout the latter part of the second world war period, so this novel ends in 1945. Galvin was eighteen years old. He had lied about his age to join up. He hadn’t as yet written a single poem. That whole part of his life lay in front of him like a continent. What a lot he had lived already!
The tone of all three of these of these books is the unspoken, delirious need to escape, physically, and also in an abstract, metaphysical sense. Narrative power, resolute style, tonal lament; I have no doubt that this trilogy will take its place in the highest echelons of Irish - and world - literature.