by Colm Toibin
For the rest of the term, then, and for some of the following year, I had permission maybe once a week or once a fortnight to take time from the study hall and go to Father Moorehouse’s room. It was presumed, I suppose, that I was being groomed for the seminary, although Father Moorehouse never mentioned that possibility. Most times when we met by arrangement Gráinne was there too, often with a friend or two friends but sometimes alone. A few times another guy from my class, who later did spend time in the seminary, came. He was clever and asked intelligent questions.
Donnacha, on the other hand, had no interest in poetry or theology. I must have talked to him about what I was reading but perhaps not much because I have no memory of us ever discussing what went on in Father Moorehouse’s room.
It is hard not to squirm when I think of some of the things I said in that room. Father Moorehouse sometimes spoke about complex matters, about God’s role in chance and choice, in accidents and in decisions made on the basis of free will, about faith and its paradoxes. He loved words like paradox and ambiguity, he loved speculating, and he often turned to poems or books to help him as he went along. At the end, and sometimes at the beginning, he asked us to pray out loud, to follow him in finding words to match our feelings. I have no memory of any of Gráinne’s friends ever doing this, but she did it and so did I. Father Moorehouse disliked cosy platitudes, as he called them, and simple stories. He pushed us all the time towards working our doubts and fears into sentences, towards using only the most precise metaphors. Sometimes we would kneel, sometimes face each other directly. Only one of us would speak. Occasionally he would ask us to address God personally, sometimes as though God were in the room with us, other times as though he were far away, a distant presence with whom we needed to communicate urgently.
It was awful, some of it, like Teilhard de Chardin crossed with Donovan or bad Bob Dylan. I know that Gráinne must remember how involved I became in it, how profoundly I talked to God! One of my greatest worries when she came to Dublin was that I would meet her somewhere and she would remind me, or start telling others, all about it. Or even that she might remember phrases or moments. Instead, strangely, her silence on the subject made me wish to avoid her even more, and made me uneasy now as I sat opposite her in the Tea Room as the wine was poured and the starter served.
‘We got one of your things out on DVD and watched it one night when the boys were out,’ Gráinne said. She sounded for a second as though she and Donnacha were meeting me in order to discuss the screenplay.
‘The boys go to dances,’ Donnacha said. ‘I have to wait around the corner in the car for them so as not to make a show of them.’
‘I hope you found the film true to life,’ I said.
‘We thought The Silence of the Lambs was bad. I mean it gave Donnacha nightmares. But yours was worse.’
‘It didn’t give me nightmares,’ Donnacha said.
‘It did. It gave you nightmares. You don’t remember because you were fast asleep for them, but I do because I had to listen to you.’
Donnacha looked at me and smiled.
‘I have never had a nightmare in my life. It would take more than a film to give me a nightmare.’
‘What was your film called?’ Gráinne interrupted.
‘A Raw Deal,’ I said.
‘It was raw all right. I mean – the dentist’s chair! How did you think of it?’
‘The director added it. I didn’t think of it.’
‘I thought you wrote it.’
‘Originally I had something much worse.’
‘I don’t want to hear,’ she said.
‘I hope you didn’t ever let the boys see it.’
‘God knows what they’re looking at. Except in our house the computer is in the kitchen, so at least we know what they’re looking at there.’
‘Ruins all the fun,’ I said. ‘The smell of cooking is bad for a computer as well.’
She sipped her wine and ignored me and looked all around the restaurant. I wondered when she would get to the point. In her company there was never exactly silence, even when nothing was being said. The way her eyes took in the room made a sort of noise. I noticed a red patch, almost a rash, becoming more obvious on her neck. Suddenly she seemed nervous.
I had never worked out what to do if she asked me straight out if Donnacha and I had ever been together. One night – and it must have been the night I spent most time in their company since they came to Dublin – we were in a bar in Donnybrook and I was almost drunk and had probably made one joke too many at the expense of decency. I sobered up quickly, however, when, once Gráinne had gone to the bathroom, Donnacha turned and spoke to me with lines that sounded like something from a bad play.
‘Gráinne doesn’t know anything about us,’ he said.
I shrugged.
‘I’d like to keep it that way,’ he said. He had been drinking as well and there was a hint of accusation.
‘Well, you’d better not tell her then,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that be the best thing?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘You mean – I shouldn’t tell her?’
‘I mean you should never say it to anyone. Anyone at all.’
‘I never have.’
‘I’m glad to hear that.’
I remembered, during that scene, how soft and biddable alcohol used to make him when he discovered it first, when he was nineteen or twenty, how funny he could become, and how uninhibited, once the light was turned off in my flat in Harcourt Terrace. I remembered that nothing made him happier when he had had a few drinks than to have me lie on my back while he knelt with his back to me and his knees on either side of my torso. He would bend as I pushed my tongue hard up into his arsehole while he sucked my cock and licked my balls.
What was strange about him later, when he would come to stay for a weekend, was that he remained part of the culture that produced him. In that culture no one ever appeared naked. In the school, there were doors with locks on each shower, and a hook to hang your clothes within each shower cubicle. Only one guy, who was from Dublin, would strip off after a game of hurling and then move bravely towards the shower. Everyone else, even in the dormitory, moved gingerly. And Donnacha, including when he was very drunk, wore his underpants to bed. A few times I enjoyed tossing his underpants across the room when he was not paying attention so that in the morning he would have no choice but to wander naked in search of them. I knew he was burning with embarrassment at the idea that I was lying in bed watching him.
Observing him now, I could sense that nothing was different. He probably slept in pyjamas, sitting each night at the side of the bed and edging them on without standing up. He was someone who never saw any reason why he should change, who lived as he was meant to live, who could be trusted, who never in his life had wanted anything more than what he had.
When the main course was served and we had ordered a second bottle of wine, Gráinne began to speak.
‘I don’t know if you have been reading my pieces on the Hierarchy,’ she said.
‘I look at the pictures.’
‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘I thought it was time. There has been a great change and I wanted to write about that.’
‘You mean that Mass is on Saturday night as well?’
‘Stop making fun of me! I mean that there is a new humility among the Hierarchy. All of them know the Church has made mistakes.’
‘You mean they’ve decided to stop fucking altar boys.’
‘Hey, here now,’ Donnacha said. ‘You’re in a posh hotel.’
‘I mean,’ Gráinne said, her face becoming redder, ‘that they know they are servants of the people, and servants of the truth.’
‘You sound as if you’re on Saturday View,’ I said.
‘I’ve seen the archbishop a number of times. I was involved in an advisory group to his predecessor.’
‘For all the good that did,’ I said.
‘He did his best. No one anywhere else did any b
etter. But what I am saying is there has been a change, a real change.’
‘Lovely,’ I said.
‘But it was something the archbishop said that stopped me in my tracks,’ Gráinne said. She had put her knife and fork down and I thought I saw tears in her eyes. This, I said to myself, is unbearable.
‘He said that it was important not only for the Church now that the truth be known, but it was something that the Church of the future would demand from us. The Church of the future would, he said, stand for truth.’
‘I see.’
‘I came home and I spoke to Donnacha, and then with his support I spoke to the boys and then all four of us knelt down and prayed and we asked our Saviour to guide us, and then we decided that the truth should be known. And I want nothing to do with tribunals of inquiry and I want no compensation but I can no longer hide the truth.’
‘What is the truth?’ I asked.
‘And I need you to know before I speak out,’ she said. ‘The priest in question is no longer in the Church and there have already been other allegations against him.’
‘Which priest?’
‘You know which one,’ she said.
‘I don’t.’
‘Which one do you think?’ Donnacha asked.
‘You tell me.’
‘Patrick Moorehouse.’
‘Are you saying you had sex with Patrick Moorehouse?’ I asked. I quickly wiped the beginning of a smile from my face.
‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake,’ she said.
‘Hold on. Did you?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Sex? Actual sex?’
‘Yes, actual sex.’
‘When?’
‘Sometimes before those little prayer meetings we had, and sometimes after.’
‘You were often there with one of your friends.’
‘On those days I doubled back and went to his room later.’
‘And on the other days?’
‘I got there early.’
I tried to think, to remember evenings when I had come from the study hall to find Gráinne and Father Moorehouse alone in that room. I realized that there was nothing, not a single detail, not a blush, for example, on either of their faces, not a thing unusually out of place, that I had noticed or could now recall.
‘What has this got to do with me?’
‘I need a witness.’
‘To what?’
‘That we were in that room, that we knew him, and we were vulnerable.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘I was vulnerable. That is me speaking for myself. And you were vulnerable too, just in case you don’t remember.’
‘You were vulnerable enough to arrive early and double back?’
‘He had us in his thrall.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘I repeat – he had us in his thrall. Are you denying that?’
‘I didn’t have sex with him.’
‘That is hardly the point.’
‘What is the point?’
‘Keep your voice down. The point is that I was taken full advantage of, aged sixteen.’
‘And you want to talk to Joe Duffy on his radio show about it? Is that right? Talk to Joe!’
‘I’ve written a book.’
‘And you want my imprimatur and the archbishop’s nihil obstat?’
‘She already has the archbishop’s nihil obstat,’ Donnacha said drily.
‘Is it a long book?’ I asked.
‘It’s as long as it needs to be.’
I realized that I wanted to ask her how much was in the book about me, how much about that room where we said prayers, and then it struck me that I did not actually care what she put in her book.
‘I am going to tell the story of my life,’ she said. ‘And it is going to be the truth.’
‘I thought you said you’d already written it.’
‘I have.’
‘When does it start?’
‘It opens on the night I met Donnacha.’
‘When was that?’
‘You were there too. Do you remember that awful opera they let us go to in Wexford one year? I checked back the year and then we both remembered. It was called The Pearl Fishers. My book starts that night.’
She smiled at Donnacha. I put my knife and fork down and poured another glass of wine for each of us.
‘I vaguely remember it,’ I said.
‘That was the first night for us,’ she said. ‘I mean the first time I knew I fancied him. And vice versa.’
As she went on I pretended for some time more that I barely remembered the night, and then I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I hoped that neither of them had noticed I had been telling lies and trying to change the subject. I hoped I could soon get away from the high drama of Gráinne’s life, which was now on display for me and Donnacha as a sort of preparatory gesture to the world, a piece of recitative for a great diva who would go on to sing many great arias. This supper was merely a way of warming up her voice, letting her know how wonderful she herself sounded, especially in the upper register.
In those first months when Donnacha and I began to have sex whenever we could in the school, it was announced that any pupil in the senior years could attend a dress rehearsal of The Pearl Fishers, which was running as part of the opera festival, as long as he came to the rehearsal room every afternoon and listened to the opera on record and attended a lecture on its form and its meaning from one of the priests who was also a music teacher. Since I was still sulking about being turfed off the bus to the hurling match and refusing even to tog out between class and Rosary in the afternoon, this seemed an opportunity for revenge on the hurling coach and the captain of our team. I could tell them that I was busy in the rehearsal room listening to an opera. I convinced Donnacha to come too. We were informed on the first day that anyone who missed one of the five sessions could not attend the dress rehearsal. By the last day, because the music and the explanation of the plot and the motifs in the opera had bored the majority so badly, there were only seven or eight of us left.
I stayed because the music took me over, especially one of the duets by the baritone and the tenor. I was also interested in the idea of a motif, a set of notes that played, say, on a harp could remind you of the same set of notes as sung by the soprano, or by the baritone and the tenor in the duet. The men’s duet was about eternal friendship sworn between them as they knew they were in love with the same woman. By the end of the opera that same melody would be sung as a duet by the tenor and the woman, who had found love, thus leaving the baritone alone and miserable.
I found this beautiful and compelling. Donnacha liked it too, or maybe he just tolerated it; he was never very enthusiastic about anything much. He came along perhaps because I did. It might have mattered to us both that the room, where the music teacher’s personal stereo had been specially set up for us, was just beside the smaller room where we had gone that first night. I never for a second thought anything as banal as that I was the tenor or the baritone and Donnacha was the other singer in the duet. But the music lifted me, and the aria they sang haunted me. It made me feel happy that I was close to Donnacha while I listened to it, and afterwards back in the study hall I composed some poems in response to it, and, I am almost ashamed to say, some prayers that I later showed to Father Moorehouse.
Students from St Aidan’s and from the convent in the town filled two rows of seats at the dress rehearsal. Because there were only eight of us, we had been allowed to walk down to the opera house without supervision but with instructions to come straight back to the school once the opera was over. Walking to the opera house that evening was like being an adult. I had never been to an opera before; I think I may have heard a live orchestra once or twice, but only a chamber orchestra. I was surprised by the lighting and the costumes and the set, how yellow and stylized everything was, and how rich the sound coming from the orchestra and the chorus. But I was overwhelmed when the two men began
to sing. When we were told about the difference between a baritone and a tenor I had understood it but it had not meant much to me. Now the tenor’s voice seemed vulnerable and plaintive, and the other voice masculine and strong. I was surprised too at the real difference between the voices, much greater here than on the recording. You could hear each voice clearly when it came to the duet and when the voices finally merged in harmony I was almost in tears. I could not take my eyes off the two men. What they had done together in that aria was the beginning of a new life for me, not only because I would follow music and singing from then on, but because it had given me a glittering hint of something beyond the life I knew or had been told about. That made all the difference to me, and I presumed that it had made a difference to those around me as well, who applauded warmly when the aria was over.
When the interval came and we got outside, however, I found Gráinne Roche laughing and gathering her friends around, delighted that she would not be going back in to the second half. Instead, she was going to lead a posse, she said, down to Cafolla’s for a hamburger and chips. No one would notice our departure, she said, and we would even be able to smoke there in freedom. I stood apart and remained silent. I watched other people standing outside who appeared, like me, to have loved the first half. I waited for Donnacha to come over and join me, but he was busy talking to Gráinne and her friends so I left him there.
It was a strange feeling, looking up at the tall buildings in the narrow street, and at the night sky, knowing that backstage here the singers were in dressing rooms preparing for the second half. And that over the next two or three weeks people would come from all over the world to see The Pearl Fishers, people who lived their lives in a way which seemed to me that night glamorous and exotic. People rich enough or free enough to travel a distance to be beguiled by music. I wondered what it would be like to be among such people.
Donnacha walked over to me looking happy.