“It is a great achievement.”
“Yes, we’ve done very well. Church and State have created a philosophically and spiritually united country. Much of that has been achieved in less than forty years. Much of it due to an outstanding education system based on the Christian Brothers and the nuns. We rely on their vocations. They’re clever men: redoubtable Brother Gogarty, for example—brilliant man. I was talking to him today—double first in mathematics from UCD. He should have been a Jesuit, of course: would have suited his mind better. God works in mysterious ways. I managed a quick chat with Brother Anselm Corrigan who teaches English to the younger boys—reluctantly nominates William Shakespeare greatest playwright while implying that his mother might have been Irish! Joke, Thomas, joke.”
And he roars again like a satisfied lion. He is after all king of the spiritual jungle here. His laughter has the explosive quality he believes suitable to a bishop and to which I have had to make adjustment since my first alarming experience of its reverberation. He will now wish to develop his theme. The game will commence late this evening. I will, however, still find it difficult to resist the temptation to dispatch him with speed. Good manners demand that I do not make too obvious my superiority at the game.
“But it’s Brothers Enda and Rory I really wanted to talk to. That pair—they were twinned at birth—when God made them he matched them. Do you know that expression, Thomas?”
“No, it is new to me.”
“Take it as a gift, Thomas …” With a sigh he continues, “Well it’s the first week back. The pupils have had a terrible shock; we’ve all had a terrible shock, of course. There are rumours—oh, not many—and some disquiet, I suppose you could call it. About such matters we are normally silent here, having learned perhaps that it is wiser. Still, you know, an explosion—such a thing has a kind of aftereffect. That resurgence of trouble in the North a few years ago—that was a surprise, I suppose you could say—well it’s now virtually petered out. There’d been decades of peace in a reasonably contented Republic, civil war behind us and the North—no pleasure you know, but settled into a waiting game—as we saw it anyway. I always say that history will give us the North. A confusing phrase but you know what I mean. The British always leave in the end. Time is on our side.”
I try to resist all conversations about history, whether ancient, medieval or modern. I will write my book and remain silent. Whereof we cannot speak, we sometimes write.
“… though from what I’ve heard Brothers Enda and Rory believe time needs a bit of help, a kind of hurry-up message. They’re from Ballinasloe. It’s a great little town, Ballinasloe. I’ve got distant cousins there, the McGreevey twins. Grand lads—discovered their vocation for the priesthood in the same year Brothers Enda and Rory went off to training college to become Christian Brothers. It was bumper year, that year in Ballinasloe. Brother Enda’s vocation is, he believes, a more passionate calling than most—that his vocation empowers him to create the future soul of his country. Though he’s no Joyce. Thank God. He is a fanatical teacher. A powerful man in a community, particularly here. ‘You only get one chance with a boy to send them out blazing with love of their country,’ he declared, and admonished me to remember, a little impertinently I felt but I let it go, what Pearse said, that ‘the Irish mind is the clearest mind that has ever applied itself to the consideration of nationality and of national freedom … It was characteristic of Irish-speaking men that when they thought of the Irish nation they thought less of its outer forms and pomps than of the inner thing which was its soul.’ Brother Enda’s right, of course, it’s all about the soul, though his tone was a little arrogant. And a bishop must encourage humility.”
Here he smiled. The smile of a fat man is often less open to misinterpretation than that of a man whose skin is drawn tight over angular features, as mine is, yet there remains something sly in his expression.
“So I thought I’d bring him down a peg or two. I mentioned … oh, I don’t remember how,” he smiles again, “but I managed to bring in Brother Gogarty’s first in mathematics: not normally our forte. He didn’t like that.” And the bishop relished the memory of his small triumph and continued, “Well that started Brother Enda! The Pearse quotations tumbled from his lips: ‘ “An heroic tale is more essentially a factor in education than a proposition from Euclid!” Tell that to Brother Gogarty, Bishop.’ ‘But sure you see him all the time Brother Enda, you tell him.’ ‘I will,’ he said, ‘and I’ll remind him of Pearse on the subject of Lady Aberdeen’s mathematical abilities.’ Do you know that quote, Thomas?”
“Alas no.”
“‘It is further known,’ wrote Pearse, and I like this one myself, ‘that a pound a week is sufficient to sustain a Dublin family in honest hunger—at least very rich men tell us so, and very rich men know all about everything, from art galleries to the domestic economy of the tenement room. I would ask those who know that a man can live and thrive, can house, feed, clothe and educate a large family on a pound a week to try the experiment themselves. Let them show how the thing is done … they will drink their black tea with gusto and masticate their dry bread scientifically (Lady Aberdeen will tell them the proper number of bites per slice); they will write books on “How to be Happy though Hungry;” when their children call out for more food they will smile.’ Brilliant, that bit of satire by Pearse. He’s a hero, no doubt about it. But to Brother Enda he’s more than that. It seemed essential to remind the good Brother of the sin of idolatry but nothing stopped him. Said he wasn’t worthy to kiss Pearse’s feet. I assured him no one was going to ask him to go that far. Is this boring you Thomas?”
“No. Not at all, Bishop. Does he teach any history other than Irish history?”
“Oh indeed. The Reformation—not a period to be celebrated in a Catholic country.”
“No doubt he has his own version.”
“Ah we must not mock Brother Enda.” And the bishop smiles that sly smile again. “He tells the boys English lust destroyed the Catholic faith in England.”
“Lust is not a specifically British characteristic.”
“Oh I agree Thomas, but English lust! It is Brother Enda’s opinion that you’d not find an Irishman destroying the Catholic faith for a woman.”
“Is it not true, Bishop, that the greatest woman in Ireland is Cathleen Ní Houlihan? Does she not become young and beautiful when she has lured the young groom away to fight for her—for Ireland—in Mr. Yeats’s play?”
“Ah, wouldn’t you charm the birds Thomas! We appreciate it when a newcomer—because you’re no longer a stranger here, you’ve moved up in the pantheon—pronounces our most beloved names correctly. I’ll give you another: Roisín Dubh—dark Irish rose—how about that for the name of a country?”
“Enchanting.”
“The poet, seventeenth century I believe, was originally talking about his love—I suppose we stole his pet name for her and gave it to Ireland. Isn’t it a lovely thing to name your country after a woman? We gave her all those women’s names so that when we sang our rebel songs, even at a time when we sang them in Gaelic, the English wouldn’t know what we were singing about. We know what love is. It’s deep and enduring and requires sacrifice. It’s not lust, which is just a surrender to our baser nature. That’s one of my most popular sermons. I’m talking too much. Forgive me, I suppose I’m talking the encounter out of me in order to understand it better … Shall we start?”
After a short, not wholly companionable, silence we commence our game. His defeat is swift.
“No! How did you do that? You win again! I sometimes feel I come here for the good of my soul. Yes, ritual humiliation is good for the soul. It teaches one humility, which I must then teach others.”
“A bishop needs humility?”
“Most particularly a bishop.”
“Another whiskey?” I know he will say yes. He finishes the whiskey quickly.
“I am armed now and I’m ready again for battle, Thomas.”
“Wh
at an alarming prospect, Bishop.”
The explosive laughter again. I smile and demolish him. An uncharacteristic revelation of my contempt for the inadequacy of his game. He is hurt. I have been foolish. We sit in silence for a moment. Distraction is required. He picks up a book from a small side table.
“And is that Mr. Böll’s work I see here? Irisches Tagebuch—‘Irish Journal.’ Thomas? Following in eminent footsteps. And what’s this I see? Speeches from the Dock, A. M. Sullivan and, I do believe, a first edition. That’s a treasure you’ve got; all the great speeches there: Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, the Sheares brothers, hanged together while holding hands, Charles Joseph Kick-ham … The list is endless.”
He settles back in the armchair in which my father once sat. On which Harriet carelessly threw her wet cape, on which once I lay while she held me in her mouth for … How long was it? Sexual timelessness. Inaccurate memories of the dream. I get up abruptly.
“Forgive me, Bishop. I need to check something.”
“Of course, Thomas.” Then he settles down to my books.
I close the door gently and lean against the table in the hall. I hold its edges too tightly. I must control this sudden desperation to see Harriet Calder. I have much practice. When I come back he looks pensively at me. Is there something in my face? Bishop Fullerton is a man who searches daily for traces of a man’s soul in his face. He is a spiritual cartographer of the physiognomy. I may be the master at chess, a fact he resents, but I feel that he could position a man on his moral ladder with far greater expertise than he places his queen or pawn.
“A little supper, Bishop?”
We move to the sideboard where, with a flourish, he unveils the sandwiches and the cake.
“Did you mind me doing that? Ahhh! isn’t Bridget a saint … lower case, Thomas. A woman’s touch! Did I ever tell you that I once considered marriage?”
He is determined on this intimacy. His conversational ship has left port. It will take time to anchor him again. I can wait. As we take our plates back and I attend to the fire he begins his story.
“I was about twenty-four, in the year of my vocation. A late vocation, in a sense. I met her at university—we were friends. Aisling was her name and she was a vision. Clever too. But despite her infinitely careful encouragement over many months … well, shall we say I resisted. She married my cousin a few years later. They are not happy, my mother tells me, but they soldier on; they soldier on. We believe in endurance in these matters. You come from another world. Another set of rules apply here between men and women. Temptation, of course, comes to us all, but is easier to resist when the conscience is trained by a loving God. I do appreciate the discretion with which, I’m told, you entertain your female companions. You avoid scandal.”
I am appalled at this astonishing invasion of my privacy. I experience a momentary desire to respond. It passes. I must not forget that I now live in a sexually repressed, deeply religious, very small town. I must and do respect its proprieties. I have every intention of continuing to be discreet. After a tense moment or two during which he gleans that I do not intend to comment he continues.
“Ah well, tomorrow I visit Sissy O’Hara. It won’t be easy.”
“No,” I say and sit down opposite him again.
“You were at the funeral—you knew the boy?”
“I met him. Not often. In fact the last time I saw him he talked of Pearse and indeed Sarsfield.”
“Patrick Sarsfield! Earl of Lucan—one of my favourite heroes. When his own name was whispered to him as the password didn’t he throw it down like a gauntlet in front of his enemies when he relieved the siege of Limerick? That man had everything: wealth, brilliance and they say he was very good looking. He died later on the battlefield in France, crying out, ‘Oh that this was for Ireland.’ So he talked of Sarsfield as well as Pearse?”
“Yes—I found it moving. If a little unsettling.”
“And why would it unsettle you?”
“Such passion. Such competition with his sister to know by heart speeches, rhetoric.”
“Well I’ve told Brother Enda to calm the rhetoric a bit. I’m considering talking to the powers that be about a transfer for that pair, maybe to Dundalk or Drogheda. Might suit their temperaments better. Very passionate towns up there; they’ll feel more at home. I know it was a terrible accident and that any teenage boy, as they call them now, could lay his hands on a chemistry set—maybe more—still, after what happened in the North … in that pathetic campaign. Yes, minds were twisted there, just after we’d all settled down, though never giving up our legitimate hopes for the future. But there’s a world of difference between a free nation building its soul on the tales of men who fought hard and long against a ruthless oppressor and breaking young minds with the weight of old sadnesses and burdening young shoulders with an unpayable debt to ghosts. Do you know how Pearse said you appease a ghost, Thomas?”
“No Bishop, I do not.”
“You give it what it asks.”
“A dangerous concept.”
“Indeed it is, Thomas. It’s Hamlet, of course.”
“Who was unequal to the task: ‘an oak tree planted in a costly vase.’”
“Goethe! It’s marvellous to talk to you Thomas. This conversation with you will help me tomorrow when I visit the O’Haras, to begin to help them to forget.”
“I doubt they will ever do that.”
“If they allow themselves to be lost in God’s love they will remember differently. An embarrassing concept to you, no doubt.”
I cannot resist feeling angry in some obscure way.
“My father said there were four things a man or a nation could do with their history, which is, after all, their collective memory.”
“Well now, you have me fascinated, Thomas.”
I proffer the whiskey.
“No! I couldn’t. Oh, all right then. Eamonn will be cross with me. Just a splash. Continue. Not with the whiskey. With the story.”
His small brown eyes behind the glasses he dons for chess can sometimes glitter with a concentrated hunger.
“My father said a nation could forget, exploit, obscure or live with its history.”
“What a succinct appraisal. Wouldn’t I have loved to meet your father.”
I note that he uses the past tense.
“He rarely leaves Germany now.”
He has realised his mistake. Coughs, puts his glass carefully on the table. There is an uneasy silence between us now. The Bishop does not know how to deal with the history of my country. But then who does? He sighs and I watch to see him search for another subject, perhaps related in some way to what we currently discuss so that there will be no implication of a too-abrupt cessation.
“My sister’s husband fought in the First and Second World War. Is it indelicate to mention this?”
“Not at all, Bishop.” I am surprised he does not use the common terminology “The Emergency” to describe the Second World War.
“He’s a peer, you know. Much older than Deirdre. But I must say they seem happy. She met him in Dublin. His cousin was shot dead in front of his wife that terrible Sunday morning, 21 November 1920. Though he didn’t tell my sister for years. Thought it might kill the romance, I suppose. Michael Collins ordered the squad—the ‘Twelve Apostles’; never liked that name, obviously—to kill army spies from Dublin Castle. Hard to look a man straight in the face—which I suppose you must—and pull the trigger with his wife standing there screaming. Managed eighteen, they say, or was it fourteen?—it’s debated. They say he hoped the British would retaliate. He got his wish. They opened fire later the same day in Croke Park at a Gaelic football match. Thirteen killed, including three children. Bloody Sunday, they called it. The Anglo-Irish War: long, long and bloody story. Ah it must be the whiskey. I’m lost in history again. I didn’t expect to tell you that, about my sister and her husband, I mean. Nor about his cousin. It shall remain our little secret.”
“A confession, B
ishop?”
“Confession to a non-Catholic is indeed a humiliation. To a Catholic, Thomas, it holds out the possibility of absolution.”
“And the memory of sin? Can anyone absolve that?”
“We try, Thomas. We try.”
SIX
I do not drive a Mercedes, nor do I drive a Volkswagen. I drive an English car. Other than the Volkswagen which, I’m told, is assembled in Dublin—the first non-German franchise—few cars are manufactured in Ireland. Even in daylight the scenery in this part of Ireland does not obtrude. I am not dragged unwillingly by dramatic beauty into the world about me. This is not a colourful county. Fierce colour in Ireland is most often found in language. I, of course, am content not to be ravished. September is here. It is cold and it is wet. They do not have Indian summers in Ireland. They do not normally have summers at all. This year’s sudden summer days were an aberration.
There are few cars on the road. It is an under-populated country. This fact, whether demonstrated by the comparatively empty roads or by the nation’s difficulty in creating a successful modern economy due to its small population, which becomes each year ever smaller, inevitably leads one in any conversation, however short, to the tragedy of emigration. Which leads to the tragedy of the Famine and its cruel mathematics. Subtly in the mind of the listener the shadow of guilt arises, unjustified yet somehow essential if the conversation is to continue.
I am a careful driver. Harriet is not. This thought comes each time I drive. It is a connection to her that I need. I remind myself almost daily of my dependence. How else is my life—this shadow life without her—to be lived? Harriet. Dear Harriet. Not dear Harriet. When I first saw you, you were wearing white. Remember? You wore dresses then. I remember the dress you wore that first day. How easy it was. My terrible, easy first time. It should have been just that.
The Truth About Love Page 6