A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

  ‘The thing is, Father Odran,’ said Father Burton – I hated this affectation; call me Odran or call me Father Yates. The whole Father Odran thing was the stuff of American television dramas – ‘it’s important that you think about the parish.’

  ‘Sure what harm can it do the parish?’ I asked. ‘I’ll only be gone for a few days, a week or two at most if it even goes on that long. And I’ll still be here to celebrate Mass in the mornings.’

  ‘I meant in terms of the publicity,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get your name dragged into all this, do you? It could reflect badly on us.’

  ‘When you say us, Father Burton, who are you referring to exactly? You and me?’

  ‘The Church.’

  ‘The Church has bigger things to worry about than whether or not I sit in a courtroom for a few hours every day.’

  ‘The man is accused of multiple crimes against children,’ he insisted. ‘Over twenty-five years, for pity’s sake. And look around you, Father Odran. How many thousands of children do we serve in this parish? If you’re seen to be supporting him too closely—’

  ‘I’m not supporting him, as such,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Well, what are you doing then?’

  ‘I’m just … attending. That’s all.’

  He shook his head. ‘You said it yourself. You’re old friends. Whatever you may tell me here, it will look like you’re supporting him, and in the world that we live in, it’s what a thing looks like that matters the most.’ He frowned and leaned forward, an idea occurring to him. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Do you think he’s not guilty? Is that it?’

  I felt the words dry up in my mouth. I hadn’t anticipated him asking me such a question. ‘Isn’t that what the courts are there to find out?’ I asked.

  ‘But you, what do you think?’

  ‘I think I’m going to take a few days off, Father Burton. That’s what I think.’ I didn’t add what I wanted to say: And if you don’t like it, you can fuck off with yourself.

  It was a question that, once asked, was difficult to dislodge. Did I think he was guilty? I had known Tom Cardle since 1973. Thirty-five years of friendship. And if, during that time, I felt that I had never really got to the heart of the man, then it wasn’t for the want of trying. Yes, I knew that he had struggled to fit into the seminary, that he hadn’t come to the priesthood of his own volition, but did that make him a monster in the way that the papers portrayed him? The photographers with their telescopic lenses must have taken hundreds of shots of him as he arrived back in Dublin and was brought to the holding cells in anticipation of the trial, but they always chose to publish the ones that made him look the most predatory, the most fiendish. Did that make him guilty? The pictures I saw in the paper did not look like the man I knew.

  And yet, and yet … there were so many contradictions in my head. So many suspicions. Events over the years, things I had noticed and ignored that sat uneasily with me. Did I have blame of my own to carry here? I pushed ideas like these far to the back of my mind. I could not think about such things. Not yet.

  Ahead of me, a scrum of photographers and television reporters were standing outside the Four Courts watching the protestors, maybe a dozen of them walking silently outside the courts in a circle, holding placards, condemning Tom, denouncing the Church. Their signs made for difficult reading, as did the hollowedout expressions on these poor men’s faces. How had it come to this, I wondered. Who was to blame for all this suffering?

  I stopped and listened for a moment as a TV3 camera crew interviewed one of them.

  ‘Six years,’ the man was saying, a nice, respectable-looking fella in an ill-fitting suit with a neat haircut and tears in his eyes. A woman who had the look of him – his sister, I thought – was standing by his side, holding his hand, a steely defiance on her face. ‘From the age of nine until the age of fifteen. I gave him a dig when I turned sixteen and that was the end of it.’

  The reporter asked him a question and he nodded. ‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent all my life not talking about it. My job now is to spend the rest of my life making up for that mistake.’

  There was a roar of questions from the press and I don’t know how he selected which to answer, but when he spoke they all fell quiet again, scratching away on their notepads. ‘I don’t know if they all knew,’ he told them. ‘But I believe that most of them did. The men in charge did, that’s for sure. There was a culture of conspiracy. The bishops, the cardinals, the Pope himself. It’s not just one man on trial here today, it’s the whole bloody lot of them. If you ask me, they should be taken out of their houses and their palaces, dragged out into the street by their hair if necessary, and made to stand trial one by one in the full public gaze. And if John Paul II was alive today then someone with courage should take him to the International Court of Human Rights and make him pay for what he did. People say he should be made a saint.’ He was growing emotional now, his voice rising in anger. ‘A saint?’ he cried in despair before spitting on the ground in his fury. ‘That’s what I say to that. Because if there’s such a place as Hell, you can rest assured that white skull-cap of his is being scorched off his head even as we speak. That man knew everything and did nothing. Nothing, that Polish prick. And Benedict’s no better. He’s in it up to his neck. They all are. Protect themselves, protect the money, that’s what it’s all about. Scumbags. Human life doesn’t get any lower than that pair of criminals.’

  The man’s sister tugged at his arm and tried to pull him away as the reporters asked more questions. ‘Of course I’m fucking angry!’ he cried. ‘Why wouldn’t I be angry? Wouldn’t you be angry? Listen, you hear everyone in this country talking about how wrong it all was, how the priests need to be held accountable for their actions – not just the ones who committed the crimes, but the ones who stood by and did nothing – and still you drive by a church on a Sunday morning and the poxy little sheep are lining up to climb into the pews, dragging their children along for communion or confirmation Masses, even though they don’t believe a word of what they hear or live their lives in the way that their contaminated religion tells them to. The people are as bad, do you hear me? But the priests are still in control of ninety per cent of the schools. Do you think that if there was any other sector of society which has displayed such a predilection towards paedophilia we would let them within a mile of a school, let alone let them run the places? I mean what kind of country do we have here at all? We need to get rid of them, do you hear me? Put them out of every school. Keep them away from our children. Perversion is bred in their bones. We should stop at nothing to expel every last one of them from Ireland, like St Patrick got rid of the snakes.’

  I walked on. I could listen to no more. The anger in the man’s voice. The hatred. And why shouldn’t he be angry, I asked myself. Why shouldn’t he feel this fury? Sure hadn’t his life been ruined on him by men in black suits with white collars. Men like me.

  As I approached the steps of the courthouse the photographers turned to look at me, raising their cameras in case I was someone of significance.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked one and I didn’t answer.

  ‘Are you a friend of Cardle’s?’ said another immediately.

  ‘Driving offence,’ I said, unable to look the man in the eye. ‘I haven’t paid my parking fines. I’ll be lucky if they don’t take the licence off me.’

  ‘He’s nobody,’ said the photographer, turning away, and his colleagues examined their cameras, flicking back and forth through their digital images, no longer interested in me. How easily they all believed a simple lie.

  The courtroom was full when I entered, but I managed to find a seat at the back. I had never been inside a court before and found the atmosphere oppressive and intimidating, the oak of the benches, the sense that tens of thousands of people had passed through here over the course of a century: defendants, both guilty and innocent, victims, the families of both. A group of six women, all in their early sixties, were sea
ted in the row in front of me and I assumed that they were mothers of some of the victims, determined to see justice done.

  An announcement from the clerk of the court marked the arrival of the judge, who took her seat in the black cloak and white wig that signalled her authority. More black outfits; who first decided that this was the pigment of power? Was black not supposed to signify the absence of colour, a thorough emptiness? Of course the shades in my profession changed as one advanced through the ranks, from black to scarlet to white; darkness, blood and a cleansing at the very top.

  A group of barristers were huddled together at the front of the court, most of them chatting away or laughing like old friends, but they took their seats when the judge sat down and the jury were brought in. I looked at their faces one by one, a crosssection of society if ever I saw one. Retired men looking pleased to have their opinions valued once again, young women in business suits putting their BlackBerries away, a few serious-looking thirty-something lads with carefully sculpted facial hair.

  And then, emerging from somewhere beneath the courtroom, appeared Tom Cardle himself, stepping cautiously into the dock and looking around with a frightened expression on his face, as if he did not know how his life had brought him to this place, what cruel fate had led him from a troubled farm in Wexford to the Four Courts in Dublin. He seemed surprised by the number of spectators, whose voices hushed a little as they got their first look at him. The six women in front of me took advantage of the quiet and stood up as one to begin shouting:

  ‘Good luck, Father!’

  ‘We’re all behind you, Father!’

  ‘Don’t let them break you, Father, with their filthy lies!’

  I sat back, my mouth falling open in astonishment, as the entire room turned to look at them and the judge ordered that they be removed immediately. The bailiffs stepped forward and the women pulled crucifixes from their bags and for a moment I thought they were going to hit the uniformed Gardaí with them, but no, they simply waved them in the air as they were dragged roaring from the room, breaking into a round of Hail Marys as they went. What could inspire such devotion, I wondered. Would they stand behind him even if he was guilty? Did they even care?

  The women’s removal left a few seats empty in front of me and I moved forward, glad of the extra space, for no one else was to be let in once proceedings had begun. I had Tom in my sights now, he was no more than thirty feet away from me, and I noticed how he kept scratching his face, a nervous affliction, and throwing sideways glances at the jury one by one, as if he was trying to get the measure of them. He’d lost weight since I’d last seen him; the tendency towards corpulence that he’d developed as he approached middle age was gone now and an unhealthy gauntness could be seen across his features.

  A series of remarks were made between the judge and the barristers – legal mumbo-jumbo, I could make no sense of it – and then there was a long period when nothing much happened and a Garda tapped Tom on the shoulder and told him to sit down. No sooner had he sat than the judge began to address the court and Tom was lifted brutally off his chair, the Garda’s hand clasping him tightly around the upper arm, and I could see that he took a certain pleasure in the violence of the action. It crossed my mind then that Tom had chosen not to wear his priest’s clothing today but appeared as a layman and I wondered about the thought process that had gone into this decision. Did he – or his lawyers – think that the jury would automatically think badly of him if he was clad in clerical garb? There had been so many of these men in the papers over the last couple of years, did they think that he would be conforming to a stereotype, the pervert priest in the dock? Or did he simply not feel like a priest any more? I might have asked him, had I the opportunity.

  A moment later, the charges were read out. The DPP had decided that the evidence of only five boys was worthy of the prosecution, and although they were not in the courtroom, their evidence would be taken over the days that followed; one by one their stories emerged in the newspapers and they made for upsetting reading.

  The youngest had been seven at the time, the oldest fourteen. The seven-year-old had lived next door to Tom in 1980 in his Galway parish. His father had died the year before and Tom, who was himself only twenty-four at the time, had been asked by the boy’s mother to show an interest in him, for the poor lad wasn’t coping well at all. And this was the manner in which Tom had shown his interest.

  A ten-year-old boy had served as an altar boy in Longford in 1987 and been abused two or three mornings a week in the sacristy before Mass. The fourteen-year-old lived in Sligo in 1995 and had been taken to the beach by Tom every Wednesday afternoon, where Tom undressed him for a swim in the sea and then took him back into the dunes afterwards. A younger boy in Wicklow in 2002 had been taken for drives out to Brittas Bay, where similar behaviour had taken place. And there was a lad from Roscommon whose story was so upsetting that it was hard to believe that any human being could put another through such cruelty.

  These were only the handful of boys whose stories had been considered capable of securing a conviction, and as I read them I thought, what about Belturbet? And Wexford? What about Tralee and Mayo and Ringsend? These were other parishes where Tom had been based over the years. Were we expected to believe that he had not committed his crimes there, but been relocated by the Church anyway? And were we to think that he’d only had his eyes on one child in Galway, Longford, Sligo, Wicklow and Roscommon? Here were five; where were the nineteen that Archbishop Cordington had spoken of? And if nineteen had come forward, how many had not? Another twenty? Fifty? Hundred?

  The judge asked Tom whether he pled guilty or not guilty and he looked around, as if uncertain whether the question was really being directed towards him or not. He offered a half-smile, perhaps out of fear more than anything else, and shook his head. There was a contemptuous murmuring in the courtroom. Was he taking none of this seriously? The judge repeated the question and looked up.

  ‘Not guilty,’ Tom said. ‘Sure I’d never lay a finger on a child. It’s a terrible thing to do.’

  And his voice cracked at the end of it and I knew immediately that I had made a mistake in coming here and that I could listen to no more. My legs felt weak, my stomach sick, and I dragged myself to my feet, practically falling over myself as I rushed towards the door. I looked back for a moment and Tom had turned and was staring in my direction. He caught my eye and there was something there that said, Odran, Odran, will you not save me from this? Odran, please.

  Odran, why didn’t you save me from it long ago, when you might have been able?

  I could not stay. I emerged into the Round Hall.

  Despite the number of people lingering under the circular dome, making their way in and out of the other three courtrooms where different cases were being heard, I felt that I could breathe out here; I was not yet ready to make my way through the reporters and photographers who were still gathered outside on Inns Quay, but, mercifully, were not allowed through the open doors. I made my way to one of the benches by the side and sat down next to a woman on her own, bending over a little with my head in my hands. What kind of life was this, I wondered. To what sort of an organization had I dedicated my life? And even as I searched for blame, I knew that a darkness was stirring inside me concerning my own complicity, for I had seen things and I had suspected things and I had turned away and done nothing.

  A hand touched my arm and I almost jumped off the seat in fright, but it was just the woman seated next to me. She had a tired expression and not a hint of a smile on her face. I thought she was going to say something like Are you all right, Father? but instead she just stared at me and I knew that I recognized her from somewhere, only I could not say where. Was she the mother of one of the Terenure lads, perhaps? No, that wasn’t it.

  ‘You’re Father Yates, aren’t you?’ she asked me finally, her voice low and quiet.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘You do,’ she said. ‘Do you no
t remember me?’

  I shook my head. ‘I do and I don’t,’ I said. ‘You look familiar, but I can’t place you.’

  ‘Kathleen Kilduff,’ she said and I closed my eyes. I thought I might be sick.

  ‘Mrs Kilduff,’ I said meekly. Forgive me.

  ‘We met in Wexford. In 1990. You were down visiting your pal. I was the fool who was delivering her son into his hands every week for an hour.’

  I nodded. What could I say to justify myself?

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I remember you now.’

  ‘And you remember Brian too, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I remember Brian.’

  ‘Did you feel good about yourself, reporting him like you did? You know the Gardaí scared him half to death when they interviewed him about the damage he’d done to that monster’s car?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what to do at the time. I thought there was something wrong with the boy. I thought that if Tom knew then maybe he could help him.’

  ‘Oh, he helped him all right,’ she said, laughing bitterly. ‘Sure didn’t he go to the Gardaí and tell them that if they just cautioned the boy then he’d see to it that he never did anything like that again. And then he persuaded me to send Brian into him Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, three days a week for an hour every time, and of course I did what I was told. Brian,’ she added. ‘My little lad. Who never did a bit of harm to anyone in his life. He wanted to be a vet, did you know that? He had a little dog that he just adored.’

  I stared down at the floor. When I told that story earlier, when I told you about 1990, did I mention that I had reported what I had seen to Tom the next morning, who had called the Gardaí in? And that I had told them what I had seen, identifying the boy in his own house later that same day? Perhaps I didn’t. If I didn’t, I should have. Anyway, here it is out in the open now. We are none of us innocent.