by Maeve Binchy
‘Goodnight Sergeant, it’s Father Hurley from the presbytery here, I’ve had a message, a very urgent one, there’s been an accident …’ He gave the road and the area. He thought the time was in the last half hour or so. He looked over at Gregory, the boy nodded miserably.
‘Yes, it seems it was a hit and run.’
The words had a disgusting finality about them. This time Gregory didn’t even lift his head.
‘No, Sergeant, I can’t tell you any more. I’m sorry, it was reported to me in the nature of confession. That’s all I can say. I’m going out there now to see what happened to the unfortunate …’
‘No, it was just confessed to me, I know nothing about any car or who the person was.’
Father Hurley went for his coat. He caught a sight of his nephew’s face and the relief that flooded it.
Gregory looked up at him gratefully.
‘I never thought of that, but of course it makes sense, you can’t really tell because of the seal of Confession.’
‘It wasn’t Confession, I could tell but I’m not going to.’
‘You couldn’t break the sacred …’
‘Shut your face …’
This was a different uncle than he had ever seen before.
He took a small bag with him in case he would have to administer the last sacrament to a seriously injured victim on the side of a dark road outside Dublin.
‘What will I do?’
‘You will walk home. And you will go to bed.’
‘And the car?’ ‘I will deal with the car. Get home and out of my sight.’
The cyclist was a young woman. She was according to the student card in her wallet a Ms Jane Morrissey. She was aged nineteen. She was dead.
The guards said that it was always the same no matter how often they saw it, a dead body on the side of the road when some bastard had not stopped, it was terrible. One of them took off his hat and wiped his forehead, the other lit a cigarette. They exchanged glances over the priest, a pleasant soft-spoken man in his fifties. He prayed over the dead girl and he sobbed as if he were a child.
*
He did it all for Laura, he told himself afterwards in the sleepless nights, because he couldn’t drop off and be in a deep dreamless unconscious state for seven and eight hours a night any more. He had changed it to Confession because if it hadn’t been then he would have had to report his sister’s only boy as a hit-and-run driver. Even within the sacrament of Confession he should still have urged the boy to confess and admit.
In real life things weren’t like an old black and white movie with Montgomery Clift playing the tortured priest in an agony of indecision. Today a priest would insist that if a penitent wanted absolution he must face up to the responsibility of his actions, he must make his restitution.
But James Hurley had thought of Laura.
This was a way to save her. It was a way to tell that weak son of hers that he was regarding the matter as one between sinner and Confessor. It hadn’t a leg to stand on in civil or canon law.
He lied to the Garda Sergeant, he said it had been a hysterical call from someone trying to confess, that he had no idea who the driver was. He lied to the parish priest about the caller in the night, he said it was a man looking for alms.
He lied to his sister when she asked him why he couldn’t come down soon and see them again. He said there was a lot on in the parish. The truth was that he couldn’t look them in the eyes. He couldn’t listen while they told him some new tale of Gregory’s excellence.
He had driven Gregory’s car to a service station on the other side of Dublin in a place where nobody had known him. He had lied to the garage owner, said that he had driven the parish priest’s car and hit a gate. The garage man loved to hear that a priest could do wrong too, he knocked out the dent and he gave it a thorough going over.
‘The parish priest will think you kept it in great nick now,’ he said, glad to be in on some kind of a game.
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Ah, go on Father, there’s nothing in it, say a few Masses for me, and my old mother, she’s not been well.’
‘I don’t say Masses in exchange for repairs.’ The priest had turned white with fury. ‘In God’s name man will you tell me how much it cost?’
Frightened, the garage owner stumbled out an amount.
Father Hurley recovered and put his hand on the man’s arm, ‘Please forgive me, I’m desperately sorry for losing control and shouting at you like that. I’ve been under a bit of strain but that’s no excuse. Can you know how sorry I am?’
Relief flooded the man’s face. ‘Sure, Father, there’s nothing like giving a car a bit of a tip against an old gate for putting the heart across you, and specially in the case of a respectable clergyman like yourself. Think nothing of it, it wasn’t even as if there was any harm done.’
Father Hurley remembered the white face of Jane Morrissey aged nineteen, student of Sociology with the side of her head covered in rapidly drying blood. He felt faint for a moment.
He knew his life would never be the same again. He knew he had entered a different kind of world now, a world of lies.
He had placed the keys of the car in an envelope and left them through the letter box of Gregory’s flat. He had parked the car in the car port and walked back to the presbytery.
He read in the evening papers about the accident, he listened to the appeal for witnesses on Radio Eireann.
He played a game of draughts with the old parish priest with his mind a million miles away.
‘You’re a good man, James,’ said the old priest. ‘You don’t let me win like the others do. You’re a very good man.’
Father Hurley’s eyes filled with tears. ‘No I’m not, Canon, I’m a very weak man, a foolish, vain and weak man.’
‘Ah, we’re all foolish, weak and vain,’ said the parish priest. ‘But given all that, there’s goodness in some of us as well and there certainly is in you.’
*
But those frightening days were long over now, and still sleep didn’t come. He had established an uneasy and formal relationship again with his nephew.
Gregory had phoned at once to thank him for the car.
Father James Hurley had said calmly down the phone, ‘I’m afraid he isn’t here.’
‘But that is you speaking, Uncle Jim.’ Gregory was puzzled.
‘I’ve told so many lies, Gregory, what’s one more?’ His voice sounded tired.
‘Please. Please, Uncle Jim, don’t talk like that. Is there anyone there listening to you, you know?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Can I come and see you?’
‘No.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘No. Stay away from me, Gregory. Far far away.’
‘But I can’t do that, not for ever. I don’t want to for one thing, and what about Mother and Father for another thing? It would look … well, you know how it would look.’
‘I don’t think they’d guess in a million years. I think you’re safe. They would believe better of you. To them it will be just a small paragraph in the papers, another sad thing that happened in Dublin …’
‘No I mean about us … if we’re not going to be speaking.’
‘I suppose we’ll speak again. Give me time. Give me time.’
Gregory couldn’t get through to him, not for weeks. If he turned up at the presbytery his uncle apologized but said he was rushing out on a sick call. If he telephoned it was the same.
Eventually he chose the one place where he knew he could get the undivided attention of the man who was running away from him.
In the Confession box the little partition slid back. Father Hurley’s handsome head could be seen leaning on his hand, not looking straight at the penitent, but looking forward and slightly down. In a listening position.
‘Yes, my child?’ he began comfortingly.
‘Bless me Father for I have sinned,’ Gregory began the ritual. His voice was too famili
ar not to be recognized. The priest looked up suddenly in alarm.
‘Good God, have you decided to make a mockery of the sacraments as well?’ he whispered in a low voice.
‘You won’t listen to me anywhere else, I have to come here to tell you how sorry I am.’
‘It’s not me you have to tell.’
‘But it is, I’ve told God already through another priest, I have decided to give a certain amount each month out of my salary to a charity to try and make up, I know it won’t. I’ve given up drink. God, Uncle Jim, what more can I do? Please tell me. I can’t bring her back to life, I couldn’t have even then.’
‘Gregory, Gregory.’ There were tears in Father Hurley’s eyes.
‘But what is the use, Uncle Jim, what good will be served if you don’t speak to me, and you don’t come back home because you don’t want to speak about me? I mean if I had been killed that night too, it would all have been different, you’d have been locked in with my mother and father. So shouldn’t we be glad I’m alive anyway even if that poor girl was killed in an accident?’
‘By a hit-and-run drunken driver.’
‘I know, I’ve accepted it.’
‘But not the punishment for it.’
‘But what good would it do? Really and truly. It would break Mother’s heart and disgrace Father, and humiliate you, and suppose it all came out now, now weeks later, it would look so much worse. We can’t relive that whole night. I would if I could …’
‘Very well.’
‘What?’
‘Just very well. We will be friends.’
‘Ah, I knew you’d find it in your heart.’
‘Good, well you were right, I’ve found it in my heart, now can you allow someone else in to make their peace with God?’
‘Thank you, Uncle Jim. And Uncle Jim …’
The priest said nothing.
‘Will you come and have lunch in my flat some time? Maybe Saturday. No liquor but a couple of my friends. Please?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you again.’
He went to the boy’s flat. He met two young men and a girl. They were pleasant easygoing company. They drank wine with their lunch and argued genially about whether the Church still ruled everything in Ireland. Father Hurley was practised in this kind of conversation, most of his friends’ children took this line. He was bland and unfailingly courteous, he saw the point of view on this hand, on the other hand and on yet further hands. He had a soothing murmur, an ability to appear to lose a point in order to let the opposition concede a point too.
He watched Gregory carefully. Only mineral water went into his glass. Perhaps the boy was shaken and was trying to start a new life. Perhaps James Hurley really should find it in his heart to try to forgive the boy even if he couldn’t forgive himself. He smiled at his nephew and got a warm smile back.
They all helped to clear the table out to the small smart kitchen.
‘Hey Greg, what’s this bottle of vodka doing, if you’ve given up the jar?’ asked one of his friends.
‘Oh, that’s from the days before, take it with you.’ Gregory spoke easily.
Father Hurley wondered whether his own soul had become somehow poisoned because he had a suspicion that his nephew’s eyes were somehow too bright for a boy on plain water, perhaps he had been topping it up with vodka out in the kitchen. The other drink was kept on a sideboard.
But if this was the way he was going to think all the time then there was no point in having any relationship with his nephew at all. He put it firmly from his mind. Into that store of other things he was simply refusing to think about these days.
He went to see Laura and Alan during the week. They were delighted to hear about the presence of the girl at the Saturday lunch party, they thought she might be a current girlfriend.
‘She didn’t seem to be relating to him specially.’ Father Hurley felt like an old lady gossiping at a tea party.
‘She’s been around for a while,’ Laura said happily. ‘I think this may be the one all right.’
It had been a strange visit, everything his sister and his brother-in-law said seemed to grate on him.
They told him he was lucky to have certainties. Sometimes in the law there were grey areas.
He smiled grimly as if there were no grey areas in his line of work.
They said how lucky they were with Gregory, the son of a friend of theirs had joined Sinn Fein, first as a legal adviser, then as an active campaigner and then as a fully fledged member of the Provisional IRA.
‘At least he had some ideals, however misplaced and mad,’ Father Hurley said.
‘Jimbo you must be mad, there’s no ideals in that lot,’ Laura cried.
And as always he smiled self-deprecatingly. There was no way he was going to explain to them that he thought any cause was better than the weak-minded cause of saving your own skin which their son had done. With his connivance.
He looked uneasy and unhappy; Alan Black in his diplomatic way changed the subject.
‘Tell us, are you officiating at any nice society weddings these days? We love to feel near the high and mighty of the land through you, Jim.’
No, Father Hurley told them that young people always had some friend of their own to marry them nowadays, they didn’t go for old family friends of the parents these days. No, not a posh wedding coming up. A silver wedding though, he said brightly, and in England no less.
They were interested as they always were in everything he did. He explained he had married this couple way back in 1960 – it didn’t seem like a quarter of a century ago but that was apparently what it was! The daughters and son of this couple wanted him to attend, they had said it would be meaningless if he didn’t have some kind of ceremony for them all.
Laura and Alan thought that it was only right that this couple whoever they were would want Father Hurley again.
‘I didn’t know them very well,’ he said, almost as if talking to himself. ‘I know Deirdre’s mother Mrs O’Hagan slightly, and I knew Mrs Barry, the mother of the bridesmaid Maureen Barry. But I didn’t know the young man at all.’
‘You never mentioned them.’ Laura was drawing him out.
‘Well no, I suppose I marry a lot of people. Some I never see again. I always get a Christmas card from Deirdre mind you, I used not to remember exactly who they were, Desmond and Deirdre Doyle and family …’ He sighed heavily.
‘Did you not like them?’ Laura asked. ‘It doesn’t matter telling us, we don’t know them, we won’t ever meet them.’
‘No, they were perfectly nice, I did like them as it happened. I suppose I didn’t think they were well suited, that they’d stay together …’ He gave a little laugh to lighten the mood. ‘But there you go, I was wrong. They’ve been together now for twenty-five years and it don’t seem a day too much.’
‘They must like each other.’ Laura was thoughtful. ‘Otherwise they wouldn’t want you round and have a big do and everything. Will there be a renewing of vows?’
‘I don’t know, it was their daughter who wrote to me.’
He relapsed into silence, but silence in the big book-lined room of Alan and Laura Black was never anything to worry about.
He thought about that wedding, the year that Gregory was born. He remembered how Deirdre O’Hagan had come into his sacristy saying that she had heard from her mother that he was going on a six-month secondment to London. It was partly a study assignment and partly in case he might want to join the Irish chaplaincy scheme in Britain. There were so few English Vocations, and so many of the Catholic flock were Irish or second-generation Irish who preferred a priest from their own tribe.
Deirdre O’Hagan had seemed distressed and tense. She wanted to know could he organize a marriage for her in the next month or so.
It had all the hallmarks of a shotgun marriage but she would not be drawn into any conversation about the reasons for the speed.
He had asked mildly that she should consider having the ceremon
y in Dublin but she had been adamant. Her fiancé’s people were from the West.
But surely Dublin was nearer to the West of Ireland than London was?
Deirdre O’Hagan whom he had remembered as the pretty giggling university student daughter of Kevin and Eileen O’Hagan who were supportive and well-off parishioners seemed to have developed a will of steel. She was marrying in London, she said it would be a kindness to her family to involve a curate whom they knew and liked, but of course if he wasn’t able to she would make other arrangements.
Father Hurley had tried at the time, he thought looking back on it, to involve the girl in some questioning of the suddenness of her decision. He had said that one shouldn’t go into matrimony too hastily and for all the wrong reasons.
He had obviously sounded stuffy and inquisitive, for he remembered her voice clear as a bell and cold, very cold.
‘Well Father, if one was to take your own attitude to matrimony one would never marry at all and one would suddenly find that the whole human race had died out.’
Despite this poor start the wedding had been perfectly pleasant. The boy’s people were simple small farmers from the West, they didn’t field a very large contingent. The O’Hagans were there in force. A nice man, Kevin, quiet and thoughtful. He had died some years back but Eileen was still going strong.
The bridesmaid had been that handsome young woman Maureen Barry, who ran the smart dress shops nowadays. He had seen her only the other day when he had said the Requiem Mass for her mother. He wondered would she go across to London for this ceremony. He wondered would he. He sighed again.
‘You’re not in good form, Jimbo.’ Laura was concerned.
‘I’d love to be an old settled priest, you know, totally certain about everything, no doubts at all.’
‘You’d be unbearable if you were,’ she said affectionately.
Alan looked up from his book. ‘I know what you mean, it would be easier if there was just one law and you had to administer it, abide by it. It’s all this awful business of trying to judge each case on its merits that confuses things.’
James Hurley looked at his brother-in-law sharply but the solicitor had no hidden meaning, no insight about his son and the trouble he had caused. He was thinking in terms of the district court and a justice being lenient here and strict there according to what he knew of the person before him.