The Hidden

by Mary Chamberlain

  He could feel the suspense building within him. ‘And have you met the man yet?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  Was she teasing him? She said she didn’t have a sweetheart.

  ‘And could you share that with me now?’

  She smiled, tapped his nose with her forefinger. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘One day.’

  Trude turned and trained her glasses on the spinney by the house. ‘Are there woodpeckers, do you think?’

  ‘I would think so,’ Joe said. ‘The great spotted. But you won’t see them from here. We’d need to get into the trees for that.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘And do they mate for life?’

  ‘Well, now,’ Joe said, ‘I believe they do. But the male does the hard work of digging out the nest.’

  ‘Like us.’ Trude laughed. ‘Tell me, Father. Do men and women come to you for help?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Joe said. ‘It’s all part of the job.’

  ‘But if they want advice, say, on their marriage, how could you give it to them? Without knowing it yourself?’

  ‘Well,’ Joe said. ‘You don’t need to touch fire, to know it’s hot.’

  ‘But do they tell you things?’ Trude said. ‘In the confession.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Joe said. ‘They tell me all sorts.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Now I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘But aren’t you ever curious?’ Trude went on.

  ‘About what?’

  Trude looked at him with clear brown eyes. ‘About love.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said quickly. ‘We know what the sacrament of marriage entails.’

  Trude raised her eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  This was not a suitable conversation, not for a priest. Too close to the bone, too familiar. Trude was straightforward, in a modern, German way. Why ask him at all?

  ‘What about other things?’ she said.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. About the war. Us Germans.’

  Joe wasn’t sure how to answer that. Another forthright question. He thought for a moment.

  ‘People grumble,’ he said. ‘Of course they do. It’s not easy, for anyone.’ Apart from his friend Pierre, but Pierre was a law unto himself.

  ‘But if there’s anything in particular,’ she said. ‘Let me know. I’ll see what I can do to help.’

  ‘Well,’ Joe said. ‘You can’t say fairer than that.’

  He levelled his field glasses towards the spinney. Nobody had ever been curious about him, asked him what he thought. Trude was the first. Question after question. No one had ever really gone out of their way to be his friend before. Intimate. He didn’t bare his soul to Pierre, not in the way it seemed he could do with Trude. He liked that. It broke his isolation. There was nothing wrong with that. Maybe she understood him.

  It was difficult to tell how old she was. She had a face that would look the same at twenty as at fifty. Plain as a pavement. Round as a muffin. But her skin was unlined and her hands were young. Clean hands, unchafed. Most of the women he knew from home had raw, chapped hands, coarsened by the soil or the washtub. Hers were smooth and small. She had fine bones, vulnerable in their film of skin and dimpled flesh. ‘Stout’ was the word his mother would have used. Joe preferred chubby, a little chubby.

  ‘Actually,’ he said. ‘There is something you can do.’ One of the nuns was a diabetic but they were running out of insulin. ‘You’re a nurse, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You know I am. Why?’

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained. His mouth was dry, so he licked his lip, swallowed. ‘Could you see your way round to letting me have a phial or two of insulin?’

  Trude frowned. ‘You know I can’t do that,’ she said. She was wearing slacks, the colour of acorns. She ran her hands down the creases, smiled. ‘But I’ll see what I can do. On one condition. Will you bring me here again?’

  Joe hadn’t thought about sharing this, but Trude was so enchanted by it.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  ‘This will be our special place, for the birds,’ she said. ‘And no one else. Do you ever come at night?’

  ‘Well, no.’ Joe was surprised she had asked. ‘We’re bound by the curfew.’

  ‘I forgot,’ she said. ‘Silly me. But I’m not. I could come. Look for nightjars.’

  Joe laughed. ‘You’d be lucky to see one of those.’

  ‘I could try. Tell you all about it. Would you mind?’

  Well, Joe thought, put like that, it would be churlish to say no.

  Every time they met it was like the first day. A smile dancing on her lips as if she was pleased to see him. Joe could just make it out. He wanted to place his finger under her chin, lift up her face, look at me. He was pleased to see her too, though that surprised him. Shocked him. He thought about her when she wasn’t there, talked to her in his head. She was a devilment that had entered into his soul and he should cast her behind him. But he was weak, he knew that now. And was it so sinful, to have a friend?

  ‘Where shall we go?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t mind. No. I do. Our special place.’

  ‘What shall we look for?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  Joe felt himself blush, a sticky pink heat churning through his cheeks. It was all too much, as if he was walking into the sea, with cross-currents and rip tides tugging and pulling. He was out of his depth. But he couldn’t pull back to shore, not now.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ she said that day.

  ‘Then we won’t go far.’

  He pushed away on his too-big bike. Perhaps they’d see some swallows. Or swifts. Migrate in the winter, return in the summer. Perhaps Trude was like a migratory bird, going home to nest.

  ‘A swift,’ he said. ‘Listen.’

  Soft, high trill, like a chorus, all together. Black against the sky.

  ‘I thought it was a swallow,’ Trude said.

  Joe shook his head. ‘A swallow, now. They natter, like a couple of biddies, with their pale breasts and red throats. You can’t mistake them.’

  He watched as she trained her ear, head on the side, then lifted the glasses and focused on the flock.

  ‘Remarkable birds,’ he went on. ‘They eat and drink and sleep on the wing.’

  He followed her gaze. For all the world, they looked like a squadron of fighter planes in formation.

  And for all the world, he should not be feeling like this, because now he wondered if he wasn’t falling for her. Or she him. No girl had ever fallen for him.

  He should stop seeing her. But what could he tell her? It’s best we don’t see each other again. He couldn’t tell her the truth. I am falling in love. And what was wrong with a priest in love? He wasn’t being unfaithful, not to his calling. Infidelity meant carnal knowledge, that’s what they taught in the seminary. He wondered whether Trude wasn’t right: what would a priest know about love, what could they advise? Wondered too, whether, in a roundabout way, she was testing him, do you have a sweetheart, Father?

  Birch and hawthorn were floating green, and the earth shimmered with the sapphire of bluebells and forget-me-nots. Joe spent his regular Monday afternoons with Trude and his solitary Wednesdays cycling over to Anse la Coupe.

  The weather was warm at the very end of May, the ground dry enough to sit on. Trude said she couldn’t meet him anymore on Mondays.

  ‘Then Wednesdays,’ he said. ‘We’ll go to the dell.’

  ‘Our special place.’

  ‘Oh, that it is,’ Joe said.

  They pedalled to the bay, he on his bike with the clickety spoke, she on her lady’s bicycle with the basket on the front, rubber tyres and a pump clamped to the down tube. It was a miracle it hadn’t been stolen.

  He nodded to the red-headed nurse they passed as they freewheeled down the hill.

  ‘Who was that?’ Trude said.

  ‘I don’t know her name,’ Joe said. ‘But I see her here every Wednesday.’
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br />   ‘Why does she come here?’

  They had reached level ground and rode side by side. Geoffrey was the only one who lived at the end of that lane.

  ‘How would I know? Perhaps she has a sweetheart at the farm.’

  Just like old Aiden Docherty at home. Not even the matchmaker could find him a wife, until the nurse came visiting. She was young, too. And a redhead, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  He looked over at Trude and smiled, but she didn’t see him glance. She was focused on the road ahead, as pretty as a posy in her soft poppy-print dress.

  Joe opened the gate to the field and they filed in, propping the bikes against the hedge. They walked along the rows of waist-high oats, swathes of soft, dark-green fronds, through which the tips of pale golden heads could be glimpsed. But Geoffrey had not sown the dell with oats and it was neglected. Cowbane and ragwort were pushing up through the rough grass and a small oak had self-seeded. It took years to build a pasture, Joe knew. It must have broken Geoffrey’s heart to plough it up for oats. German orders. Geoffrey would have his time cut out returning this to grazing land. He felt a spit of anger at the waste of a good meadow, as he observed Trude shaking a blanket free of its folds. She has nothing to do with this, he told himself. The blanket billowed to the ground, grey regulation-issue, borrowed from the German hospital. Had she asked permission? He liked the thought that she had smuggled it out.

  She sat down, pulling her skirt over her knees, and patted the space next to her.

  ‘If we sit,’ Joe said, ‘we won’t be able to see.’

  ‘Perhaps we can look at the voles and mouses.’

  ‘Mice,’ Joe said. He crossed his legs, pivoted and sat in a single movement.

  ‘That’s clever,’ she said. She lay back, stretched out with her left arm above her head. Her skirt had risen up her leg and fell in folds over her knees, and through the opening in her sleeve Joe could see a faint tangle of brown hair under her arm. He looked away.

  ‘Lie beside me,’ she said.

  Joe blushed, coughed. ‘I’m not sure that would be right,’ he said.

  ‘What harm does it do?’

  What harm indeed? Was it wrong to lie down next to a woman? Father Ciarán had railed against the temptations of Eve. But what right did Father Ciarán have to say such things?

  Joe stretched out alongside her, one arm supporting his head. He was aware of her next to him, of her short, plump body rising and falling as she breathed. He had an urge to reach over, stroke her, tell her it was all right, tell himself it was all right. He walked his fingers towards her and met her fingers as they crept towards him, and they lay, hand in hand. He had never been so happy.

  ‘I like you,’ she said. She had stopped calling him Father.

  ‘I like you too, well enough,’ he said. He wanted to say, I love you, thought that wouldn’t be right, him a priest, and maybe a sinner now, too.

  ‘Have you ever touched a woman?’

  ‘No,’ Joe said, added, ‘apart from my sisters and my mother.’

  ‘They don’t count,’ she said. ‘Has a woman ever touched you?’

  ‘No.’

  He wanted her to touch him. He was on a helter-skelter, hurtling round and round.

  ‘Are you frightened?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. That was an easy answer.

  ‘What is there to be frightened of?’

  The jangle of his feelings, his tingling flesh. A woman.

  ‘You’re a good-looking man.’ She laughed. ‘Almost pretty.’

  Joe shut his eyes. He’d never told a soul, never breathed a word of it, only to his daidí, that once, and never again. You’re a pretty boy, Joe.

  ‘Did I say something wrong?’ Trude said.

  Joe shook his head. Dared not open his eyes. He was weeping, the moisture trickling down his cheek, his lips puckering like a little boy’s.

  She was leaning over him. He could feel her warmth, the brush of her blouse. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What’s troubling you?’

  Not even in confession had he said a word, bless me, Father, for I have sinned. A grievous sin, but he couldn’t name it, could only touch its carnal agony. He could feel a gathering force, as if Trude’s soft words had lanced the boil and the pus would erupt in an unstoppable flow. He should get up, leave, have nothing more to do with her, but the pain was too abrupt, too deep.

  ‘You can trust me,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  He wasn’t sure he had the words, nor could face the disgrace. The mortification of it. Not to Trude, not to anyone. He’d done a wicked thing.

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you.’ It sat on his conscience, an abyss of misery, his personal hell. He had no right to burden Trude with the truth.

  ‘You can try,’ she said.

  For her sake, he had to bear it. She was not a worldly woman, he could tell by the angelic purity of her face. It would destroy her. And wasn’t it his duty to protect her from such things?

  ‘What do the English say? A problem shared is a problem halved.’

  Could he make a clean breast of it? Would she even comprehend what he was telling her? What did she know of such obscenities?

  Yet he wanted to spill it out, lighten the load. Perhaps she wouldn’t blame him. Perhaps a woman would understand, in ways that his own daidí couldn’t. Could he tell her without sullying her beauty, destroying her innocence? Without ruining this tender union they had? What would she make of him?

  ‘You’ll think the worst of me,’ he said.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  Because of the nature of sin, Joe thought.

  He leant up on his elbow. Her face was close to his. She smiled.

  ‘I will never think the worst of you.’ She ran her finger across her throat. ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘Ich schwöre bei meinem Leben. On my life.’

  The sunlight brought out the colour of her eyes, flecks of green and gold, the light down on her skin.

  ‘Will you lie back the way you were,’ Joe said. He didn’t want her to see his face, couldn’t bear her to see his shame. He didn’t know how to start. Or where. With the gates of St Xavier’s? The loneliness of the dormitory?

  ‘I was only young,’ he began. Searching for the words. ‘And small. For my age. And there was this priest, Father Ciarán–’ A clumsy man, with an over-ripe face and a dirty cassock. ‘He asked me to pray with him in his cell, after the others had gone to sleep.’

  Joe could feel the tap on his shoulder as he lay under the blankets, the soft, Follow me, Joe.

  ‘Then, one night–’ Joe’s breath came and went in short, shallow puffs. ‘He took off his clothes.’ His voice was cracking and he swallowed hard to make it whole again. ‘He made me take off mine.’

  Trude lay beside him. She didn’t move, though he could hear her silent breaths.

  ‘I was a child.’ Tears had welled up, were rolling down his cheeks. ‘What did I know?’

  He paused, sniffed. Trude on her back, eyes gazing at the clear blue sky. ‘Go on,’ she said. Her voice soft and gentle. ‘Did you think it strange?’

  ‘I thought people would laugh at me if I said anything.’

  He wiped his eye. Trude wasn’t laughing. She was listening, giving him strength to go on.

  ‘One night, he grabbed my wrist and clamped my palm over his–’ he swallowed, put a hand to his face, thumb and finger pressing into his eyes. He couldn’t say the word, not to Trude. He whispered, hoped she couldn’t hear. ‘Down there.’

  Goosebumps rippled over his skin. ‘Father Ciarán called it his special–’ He stopped. Sobbed. ‘His special grace.’

  ‘You were very innocent,’ Trude said.

  Joe wasn’t sure if she was smiling. ‘I was,’ he said. ‘That’s the truth.’ He reached out for Trude’s hand once more, as if holding it could earth him, deflect the pain, drive it into the ground.

  ‘And was that the end?’ Trude said.

  ‘No,’ Joe said. ‘No, it wasn’t.’


  He began to cry, man-size sobs that wracked his slender body. He couldn’t say what happened. What words to use? What order did the pain come in? The shame?

  ‘I understand,’ she said. She leaned over, stroked her fingers across his face. ‘You poor thing.’

  ‘I was a child.’

  I am a child. Frightened and confused. Fresh and raw, as if it happened yesterday. Lying in bed with the corner of the pillow stuffed in his mouth so no one would hear his screams. Alone.

  ‘Homosexuals.’ She spat the word out.

  Joe had never known Trude angry, and he didn’t want to hear it now. He wanted to curl up and be held, rocked to sleep, an innocent, there, there. Fourteen years old. Small for his age.

  He hated himself, for what Father Ciarán had done to him. He’d wanted to punish himself, slam his fist against a treetrunk, his head against a wall. A hard pain that helped drive away the other, the soft, agonising ulcer inside him.

  He took up boxing. He didn’t say why.

  ‘You’ll have your nose broke,’ his mother wrote at the time. ‘Cauliflower ears.’ It would be a fitting punishment. He had sinned, had made himself unworthy of all grace. His sin, his secret, had cut him off from love and trust.

  He thought the other boys went through this and it hadn’t worried them. He thought he’d have to grow up, get over it, like they had. He wanted to hit Father Ciarán so hard his teeth would clatter across the floor like dice. Fight with your brains, the first rule of boxing. Joe had raised his fists at the priest, had glowered at him, saw the beads of sweat breaking out on his nose, the broken veins in his cheeks.

  ‘We lock them up,’ Trude was saying. ‘Degenerates.’

  He was just a man. A pitiful coward.

  ‘What happened to that priest?’

  Boxing filled his mind and dulled the pain.

  ‘Was he punished?’

  Joe looked up at Trude. She was smiling, tender, and he was here, with her. A pitiful boy.

  ‘What’s that you said?’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Joe said.

  ‘And you never told a soul?’