If his own father didn’t believe him, who would?
Pat Junior was hammering into his ear. ‘And our poor máthair worrying herself sick. Get up, man.’
‘I’ve lost my faith,’ Joe said, the whiskey giving him strength. He pulled himself to his feet. ‘I’m leaving the priesthood.’
‘That’s the drink talking,’ Pat said.
‘No,’ Joe said. ‘It’s not the drink.’
‘How could you?’ Pat Junior loomed over Joe, so Joe cowered against the chair. ‘And with our poor daidí not cold in his grave.’
Joe reeled back.
‘Have you broken your vows?’ Pat said.
Pat stared at him, and Joe stared back.
‘You can clear off out of here if you have. You’re a fecking disgrace.’
‘So is the church,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll have nothing more to do with it.’
Pat punched him in the mouth, and what more could Joe do but slam Pat one so he was out cold for ten seconds? Pat made him sign the Pledge when he came to, gave him twenty pounds to leave and never return. Said he’d poured shame on the family, broken their máthair’s heart and they’d have no more to do with him.
Now it was time to make amends.
He picked up the letter. It was a good letter, with a fine sign-off. An olive branch, for sure, with the offer of work and all. He was sorry he’d floored Pat Junior, for it had been the drink that made him handy with his fists that day, but even so, to force him to leave town without saying goodbye to his own mother was harsh, Joe thought.
Perhaps he’d wait a bit before he went to the post office and bought a stamp.
He fingered it again. No. Tore it in two, and two again. Letters like that churned up too much. Best let sleeping dogs lie.
The old man would be wanting his tea. Joe slipped on his shoes and stepped outside. The car was still there, but no sign of the woman. No sign of Pierre either. If Pierre didn’t come soon, and that wretched woman didn’t leave, it would be too late for Betsy. He still had to do the milking.
He crossed the farmyard, walked into the kitchen. The old man sat at the table with the copy of the Evening Post open before him. He was staring at the photograph and the request attached. If anyone knows this person, or knows anything about her, would they please contact PO Box 39, St Helier. He looked up when Joe entered, adjusted his hearing aids. ‘Well?’
‘Someone answering to her name may have been found,’ Joe said. ‘But it’s a long shot.’
The old man nodded, eyes fixed again on the photograph. He needed a shave and a haircut. The collar on his shirt was frayed and the stitching on his elbow patches had come undone. Joe’d fix him up tomorrow, make sure he had a bath, change his clothes. When had he started calling him the old man?
It had been six months after the war, and not long after his daidí’s funeral in Cloghane and the incident with Pat, when Joe had drifted back to Jersey and into the farmyard at Anse la Coupe. He couldn’t think where else to go. Geoffrey had limped out of the barn on that day, a shell of a man with his clothes too loose. His hair had turned white, although his eyebrows were still black. Joe thought he’d died in the war. Seeing him there in the farmyard caught Joe on the hop and he’d stood, mouth open, staring.
It had taken Geoffrey a while to recognise Joe, too. They eyed each other before they shook hands, palms locked while they searched for clues in each other’s faces.
‘Father O’Cleary,’ Geoffrey said, and smiled, open and friendly. If Geoffrey knew anything about that day in 1943, he didn’t show it.
‘Not Father,’ Joe said, ‘an ordinary mister, now.’ Joe tried to sound casual, as if nothing had happened. That’s what they all did these days. Forget the war. Look to the future.
Geoffrey had scythed the grass round the house, cut the roses back to their roots. Joe couldn’t say he’d tried to keep the place in order while Geoffrey was away, though it was hard without fuel or light, and he couldn’t leave traces in case some busybody told the Germans he was living there. He’d had to leave the plants unpruned, the grass uncut, the yard in rack and ruin. But Pierre had been right. The Germans wouldn’t suspect so long as Joe kept his head down.
‘Oh?’
Joe nodded.
‘How come?’
What could he say to Geoffrey? He’d violated his vows? He’d witnessed too much to believe in a munificent God?
‘The church now,’ Joe said. ‘A pack of lies.’
Joe was a pack of lies too. He should be a man, own up, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it was his fault.
‘I tried to help after you were arrested,’ he said. ‘I did. But’ his voice trailed away. He couldn’t say what he did, for that would give away too much.
Geoffrey nodded. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.
‘You’ll need help to get the place shipshape,’ Joe said instead. ‘I’d be happy to do it.’ He should have said atone, but he was a coward, no two ways about it.
‘I’ve no money to pay a man,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Or put the farm in working order. I’ve been told there may be compensation, but who knows how much? Or when? I’m going to have to sell up.’
Joe turned his gaze to the field behind the house. Couldn’t look Geoffrey in the eye, not right now.
‘Where did they send you?’ Joe said.
‘Germany,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Neuengamme.’
Joe turned to face him as Geoffrey pointed to his left leg, rigid in its boot.
‘That’s where I got this.’ He cupped his hands to his ears. ‘And this.’ Added, ‘Munitions. They deafened me.’ He shook his head. ‘What use am I now? I can’t farm, not like this, not with a gammy leg and no money.’
Joe hadn’t a clue what he would do with his life now he was kicked out of the priesthood. He was too old to box. He could teach, but children could be cruel, especially to someone like himself, a feeble little man. He knew a bit about animals, and his daidí had taught them all how to slaughter and butcher. He couldn’t live among cadavers, not now. Laid out on the marble, with the heads removed, the stiffened, skinned corpses of cows or pigs looked like the bodies his mother had prepared for their coffins or the empty husks of his friends.
But a farmer’s life, that could be grand, to wander with the cows in the fields, to listen for chiffchaffs in the hedges, to watch for white-tailed eagles in the skies. Joe wasn’t afraid of work. He could be up at dawn and bed down late at night, haggle over prices in the market and complain about the cost of hay.
‘I have money, Geoffrey,’ Joe said, thinking of the twenty pounds Pat Junior had given him. ‘I could help you get back on your feet.’
‘You’re a young man, Joe,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I’m an old man now. You don’t want to be tied down here.’
‘Well, old man,’ Joe had said. ‘That’s just what I’ll be wanting to do. At least, for the time being.’
As Geoffrey got older, Joe cared for him more and more. Two old bachelors. That’s what this Barbara Hummel woman would see. Two old men sitting on their Windsor chairs either side of the ancient Aga, the quarry tiles on the kitchen floor none too clean, dust on the skirting boards. Geoffrey had always been meticulous, and Joe tried to keep the place in order, but he couldn’t do everything and he wasn’t getting any younger. Still, he and Geoffrey had proved to be a good pair, if an odd couple.
It was only when Geoffrey’d seen the photograph of Dora in the paper the other week and told Joe who she was and what she’d meant to him that Joe had made the connection between Dora and the nurse, had remembered he’d had the woman’s address all these years. He’d got it off the Red Cross that day but had never written to her, what with one thing and another. He’d meant to, mind, see how she was. It was a terrible thing they did to that woman. They did it to Maureen Davy in the field outside Cloghane and all she’d done was serve a British soldier a pint of stout. Joe was only little but he’d wondered if that was so bad when his own daidí sold the British his meat at the dead of nigh
t.
He didn’t tell Geoffrey how he’d met Dora that day. Best not to bring those sorts of things up.
Joe lifted the pan and put it to heat on the Aga. He sat in the other chair, closest to the cooker, fished in his pocket and pulled out his pipe. Felt in the other pocket for his tobacco. He always had a pipe before tea, and one after. They’d never spoken about the war, he and Geoffrey, not since that first encounter. Joe had never told him how he’d lived in the farm once before, during the final year of the war, or how he’d betrayed him that day in 1943. Buried and forgotten. What would this Hummel woman want to know, apart from the boxing?
There was a knock. Joe pushed himself off his seat. He could see through the kitchen window that it was her. He walked through the lobby and opened the door.
‘My name is Barbara Hummel,’ she said, smiling. ‘Are you Joseph O’Cleary?’
Close up, the woman was older than Joe had imagined, with dark-brown eyes and hair. Her skin was fair and freckled with fine creases on her forehead and round her mouth. An attractive woman, Joe thought, as she stood with her hand outstretched ready to shake his.
‘I am that,’ he said, taking her hand and not sure what to say.
‘It’s a nice place you have here,’ she said. ‘You were out earlier, so I took the chance to have a long walk by the sea.’
She had an accent that Joe couldn’t place. ‘You need to be careful,’ he said. ‘When the tide comes in, it can cut you off.’
‘You are expecting me? May I come in?’
Joe looked behind him. Geoffrey sat oblivious to what was going on. He couldn’t hear a word.
‘It’s not convenient, right now,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll walk you to your car.’
He stepped out, shut the door behind him.
‘That’s a shame,’ Barbara said. ‘I go back to London tomorrow. I came here especially. Were you the boxer?’
‘That I was,’ Joe said. ‘That I was. Yes.’
German. Her accent was German, though her English was good, colloquial. Her mother must have come from Jersey, for how else would she have a connection here and know of him? That would explain her English. Perhaps her mother had had an affair with a German, gone back with him at the end of the war.
‘This is such a beautiful place,’ Barbara was saying. ‘How did you find it?’
‘I’m the caretaker,’ Joe said. It wasn’t true, but it would do. ‘It’s Geoffrey’s place.’
‘Geoffrey?’ Barbara said.
‘The old man. You saw him. As a matter of fact, it was he who recognised the photograph.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘May I talk with him?’
‘Presently,’ he said. ‘Presently.’
They had reached the car, and Joe opened the door for her. In the distance, he heard the unmistakable bray of Pierre’s engine as he changed gears for the steep hill down to the farm.
‘I am expecting a visitor,’ Joe said. ‘I can’t talk now.’ Or never. Why did she want to churn up the past?
‘Some other time,’ Barbara said as she lowered herself in her seat and put the key in the ignition. ‘I’ll be back, later this summer. Goodbye then. It’s good to put a face to a name. Perhaps I could talk to Geoffrey, too?’
She started the vehicle, put it into reverse, then forward. Turns on a sixpence, Joe thought. But that’s a modern motor for you. She stopped, wound the window down again.
‘I almost forgot,’ she said. ‘I bought you a small present, from Germany.’ She held out a small package. ‘Butterkäse. Cheese. Delicious on potatoes. I hope you like it.’
What was she doing bringing presents? Joe took it, because he couldn’t think what else to do, but he wouldn’t be bought.
Jersey: January – April 1943
Joe travelled everywhere on the bicycle Pierre had given him. It was too big, so his feet tiptoed the pedals. He had to stand on them to pick up any speed. It had a broken spoke and a rusty chain, went clickety-clickety as he cycled. People knew when he was coming and waved. It reminded him of home, where no one went unnoticed, even if the attention wasn’t always welcome. Sometimes he’d look out to sea and fancy that he was back there, and know that across the grey expanse he could touch America. Not that he wanted to go to America, like his Uncle Gerald, but the sound of the place rolled off the tongue and the idea of the vastness of the ocean, its infinity, thrilled him.
Like the birds, those fragile specks floating in the firmaments from pole to pole. Did they understand infinity? Emptiness?
Once a week, more often if he could, Joe pedalled to the farm. Geoffrey had pointed out the best place to watch them, hidden in a dell on the upper field. There were birds in the town, but the special ones, those that hopped off by mistake on the coast, they wouldn’t be found there. They were on the shore, feeding and prancing and circling and screeling. He saw other birds too on his travels, ones he’d never seen before: the short-toed treecreeper with its little white breast and long curved beak, hopping up the tree trunks, hunting for grubs, and all manner of noisy little warblers foraging in the foliage.
If he was to be a saint, Joe thought, let it be St Francis, with birds on his shoulder and a community for friendship. St Francis had never had to eat alone. Joe wasn’t cut out for godliness. Try as he might to offer up his loneliness as proof of his suffering, he couldn’t get used to solitude. He’d never lived on his own before now. He’d always had family, or the boys at St Xavier’s, or his fellow seminarians at St Benignus’ for company.
It was time, Joe decided, to take the matter of the boxing club into his own hands. At least twice a week – more in the summer – he’d had the companionship of the boys and he missed it more than he could say. He knew the lads by name, and where they lived. If he spoke to them, or their parents, explained things, he was sure he’d be able to win them round into coming back. Time was always a good healer, and it was water under the bridge now, surely? If one returned, the others would follow. Tommy Dauvin was a case in point. The lad had shown promise, and interest. Sometimes stayed behind to help Joe tidy up, ask questions, ‘And is it true you beat Jacky Quinn himself?’ Joe knew his address, near the Parade Gardens.
The February day was overcast, the sea and the sky fused fawn across the island. He turned the corner, faced the quay. A small group of people stood with suitcases and shabby coats, forlorn, middle-aged. Joe back-pedalled his bike and put a foot down to steady it. There’d been some deportations a few months ago and people hoped that would be the end of it. Nobody could get a ticket to leave, so where were they going? There was a member of the Feldgendarmerie standing on the corner of the pavement, and another four with rifles at the ready, standing guard.
‘Well now.’ Joe didn’t make a habit of talking to the Germans, not after the boxing match. But the policeman was young, cleanshaven and bore a resemblance to his cousin Michael. ‘Where are they going?’
The Feldgendarm looked down at Joe, taking in his clerical suit and dog collar.
‘Juden,’ he said. ‘Jews.’
‘Are they now?’ Joe’d never met a Jew, though he’d prayed for them all his life. As far as Joe could see, they did no harm, not now. And hadn’t the Jewish lands been occupied by the Romans? Bit like Ireland, in its day, or Jersey, now. To have your homeland occupied was a terrible thing and people didn’t always do right.
‘So where are they going?’
‘Away,’ the Feldgendarm said.
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because they are corrupt, a danger.’
‘This lot wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ Joe said. He knew the Jewish businesses had been taken over, but hadn’t thought much about it. ‘What have they ever done to you?’
‘Move,’ the policeman said.
‘I only asked,’ Joe said. ‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘Move.’ The policeman butted the stock of his rifle in Joe’s chest.
‘Don’t push me like that,’ Joe said.
The harbour clock struck five. No time t
o stay. It was already getting dark. Joe pressed on one pedal, teetered, caught his balance and cycled off.
‘Mind you take care of them now,’ Joe said over his shoulder, nodding towards the group. He cycled along the esplanade. Tommy Dauvin lived somewhere in the streets behind. He stopped, twisted round and looked, but the group was out of sight.
A shove was all it had taken and he’d crossed the road to the other side. What kind of a Samaritan was he? A coward, that’s what, didn’t have the stuff of charity, or of martyrs. One arrow in his leg, one turn of the rack. Couldn’t even stand up to a young policeman. If the police treated Joe like that, what chance did that lot have? How could he be seen as a saviour of souls, when he’d rather save his own skin?
He turned into Castle Street, past the town hall, swastika flags unfurling in the breeze. Tommy lived in a tall, thin terraced house, with chipped stucco and flaking woodwork. Joe leaned his bike against the wall, knocked at the door and waited. There was a workshop opposite, a carriage works by the look of it. Joe made a mental note, in case the bike needed repairs. He knocked again. There was a pub further up the road. It looked a rough-and-ready sort of place, but didn’t they all, these days? He heard footsteps and a voice. Joe turned to face the door as the bolts shot back and a woman in an apron and slippers stood, arms akimbo.
‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
Joe had hoped for a friendlier greeting.
‘Yes.’ He felt his words slide away. ‘Father O’Cleary. It is.’ He ran his finger around the inside of his dog collar. ‘I was wondering if young Tommy is about?’
‘And what d’you want with him?’
Joe shifted his weight. ‘Well, you see,’ he said. He couldn’t admit he was lonely, though he felt a lump of grief rise in his craw. He swallowed hard. ‘Would it be possible to talk to him about the boxing at all? He has promise and it’s a shame to let that slide.’
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