by Morris West
In Rome, at seven o’clock that same evening, Monsignor Gerard Hopgood laid the final text of the allocution on the Pontiff’s desk and announced: ‘That’s it, Holiness. I’ve checked every last comma. Now, with great respect, I suggest you get out of here and give yourself a quiet evening. Tomorrow’s going to be a heavy day.’
‘You mustn’t worry, Gerard.’
‘I do, Holiness. It’s my job to keep you on your feet, with a clear mind, a good text and an air of total confidence. By the way, I’ve told your valet to shave you at six-thirty in the morning and to trim your hair a little.’
‘And you didn’t think that was presumptuous?’
‘I did, Holiness; but then I thought I’d rather risk your wrath and have you looking spruce at the Consistory. If you’ll pardon another presumption, we have a very elegant text and it merits a very elegant spokesman.’
‘And that, my dear Monsignor Hopgood, bespeaks a very worldly view.’
‘I know; but Your Holiness is going to be addressing some very worldly-wise people. They pay you homage and obedience; but they still remember that they are the princes who elected you and who, had you not survived, would have elected another in your place!’
It was the boldest speech he had ever uttered and there was a reproof on the tip of his master’s tongue. It remained unspoken, because Hopgood himself was instantly penitent.
‘I’m sorry, Holiness. That was impertinent; but I am concerned for you. I am concerned for the work which you are beginning so late in life. I’m another generation. I see the need for it, I feel the hope in it. I see how easily it can be misrepresented and hindered. Please forgive me.’
‘You’re forgiven, my son. I know as well as you that our elders are not always our betters; and although in the past I have often exacted it, I no longer believe that obedience should be blind. Your real fault is lack of trust in God. It isn’t easy to commit to Him. It’s like stepping out of an aeroplane without a parachute. But when you have to do it as I did – not knowing whether I was going to live or die – suddenly it seems the most natural thing in the world. We still have anxieties, the adrenalin still pumps to make us ready, like all animals, for attack or defence. But the essential calm remains, the conviction that, alive or dead, we never fall out of the hand of the Almighty … What are you doing for dinner tonight?’
‘I’m entertaining my friend, Father Lombardi. He’s the one who runs the athletic club. He’s been having a bad time lately with his parish priest, who’s also having a bad time because he’s getting over a stroke and his housekeeper has left … So Lombardi needs a little cheering up.’
‘Where are you eating?’
‘At Mario’s. It’s just round the corner from the Porta Angelica. I’ll leave the number with the switchboard in case Your Holiness needs me.’
‘I shan’t. Go and enjoy yourself with your friend. I’ll see you here at six in the morning.’
When he had gone, the Pontiff lifted the telephone and called Anton Drexel at his villa. They had agreed that Drexel, now wholly retired, should not attend the Consistory. However, a number of the visiting prelates had already telephoned him for a private reading of the situation. The Pontiff was interested to know their frame of mind. Drexel described it.
‘They are puzzled. They cannot quite come to terms with the idea of a personal change in you. Clemens, I fear, has let his ill-humour get the better of him. He has presented a picture of you as a quasiheretic, or at least a risky eccentric, which his colleagues find equally hard to accept. So, on balance, you have the advantage. Everything now depends on your allocution. Are you circulating copies?’
‘No. I thought it better not to do so. I am explaining the document as a presentation of my views, an invitation to comment on them and as a prelude to a motu proprio on certain of the major subjects. That has to bring responses, for and against.’
‘I agree. As soon as I get any comments, I’ll relay them to Your Holiness.’
‘I appreciate that, Anton. How are you feeling?’
‘Lonely. I miss my Britte. She sent me a beautiful canvas, and her mother wrote a very newsy letter. They are still under threat – which bothers me a lot; but there is nothing effective I can do, Neylan is looking after them very well. But the question does arise, Holiness: how effective is your own security?’
‘About as good or bad as it ever was, Anton. St Peter’s will be filled to overflowing tomorrow morning. People will be milling around the square. Who can control a crowd like that in a building so enormous? In a sense, the token presence of security men is as effective as that of a whole detatchment of armed men who couldn’t use their weapons anyway. Believe me, I am very relaxed about the whole affair.’
‘Our children are offering their prayers for you.’
‘That’s the best protection I can get. Thank you, Anton. Thank them, too, for me. Which reminds me. Some time in the near future, I’m going to send my new secretary out to you, Monsignor Gerard Hopgood, the Englishman. It turns out he is a very good athlete who trains a youth club out on the Flaminia. He also has experience with athletic activities for the handicapped. If he is interested and apt for the work at the colonia, he might provide both the impulse and the means of continuity … I should hate to lose a good secretary; but I owe you a debt, my friend. I should like to find a suitable way to repay it.’
‘You owe me nothing, Holiness.’
‘We shall not argue about it, Anton. Pray for me tonight.’ He gave a small, wry chuckle. ‘I have just read Monsignor Hopgood a homily on trusting God. At this moment I need it more than he does!’
Just before nightfall, Murtagh put out the big milk cans for collection by the co-operative, then moved all the cattle into a paddock midway between the house and the rim of the cliff. Neylan took the women down to the boathouse and settled them with food, blankets, a kerosene heater and the wolfhound and a shotgun for company. Britte was fretful and out of sorts, complaining of the cold and a headache. Tove signalled to Neylan to leave. She would cope better without him. Then he and Murtagh dressed themselves for a cold, long night, made sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, loaded their weapons and drove the Range Rover and the new car into the shadow of the wind-break on the western edge of the property.
Matt Neylan laid out his plan.
‘ … which isn’t a plan. It’s just what we’ve got to do any way we can, drop ’em dead in their tracks, but on this property, not outside it. Don’t have any illusions now! These are hired killers. They don’t fight by Queensberry Rules. They’ll know all the martial arts and they’ll be fast as cats on their feet. So you can’t let ’em get within reach of you … And we’ve got to get ’em all, you understand? Otherwise those that are left will keep coming after Tove and Britte. Do you read me now?’
‘I read you; but for a priest you’re a bloody-minded bugger, aren’t you?’
‘A priest I’m not; but bloody-minded, yes. Now let’s try to think how they’ll come and what we’ve got to stop ’em.’
‘If you’re bent on total elimination, then I think I can help you.’
‘I’m listening, Murtagh!’
‘When I was younger and sillier, and before my wife threatened to leave me, I used to do occasional jobs with the Provos – not for money, mind you, but because I believed in the cause … What I was good at was booby traps and ambushes. But after a while it got to me. It wasn’t fun any more, just bloody dangerous. Are you understanding me now?’
‘I’m understanding you, Murtagh, but I wish to God you’d come to the point.’
‘The point is that if you’ll go draw off a few gallons of petrol from the drums in the store and then help me fiddle with the electrics, then I think we can give our visitors the surprise of their lives.’
‘I don’t want ’em surprised,’ said Matt Neylan flatly. ‘I want ’em dead.’
‘They will be,’ said Murtagh. ‘The booby traps will distract ’em long enough for a killing volley. You’ll be up there in the
barn. I’ll be in the byre.’
‘I hope you’re not going to burn the bloody house down.’
‘No … There’ll be a little scorching maybe. Nothing a dab of whitewash won’t cover. But you’d better pray for a good eye and a steady hand. One burst is all you’ll get to bring the buggers down … Are you ready?’
‘As ready as I ‘II ever be. All I was taught was priestcraft and statecraft. Neither of them is worth a tinker’s curse at this moment.’
‘Then think of the child and the women down in the boathouse. That’ll steady your nerves. What time do you reckon the bastards will come?’
‘Not till after midnight, when the pubs are closed and the roads are quiet.’
‘That gives us time enough. Get the petrol now. Use a couple of milk pails. Set one by your own back door, the other by the kitchen of the cottage. I ‘II need some flex and a pair of pliers and a screwdriver …’
Huddled in the boathouse, with a cold wind searching through the cracks and the surf pounding on the shingle, Tove Lundberg and Mrs Murtagh kept vigil over the ailing Britte. She slept fitfully, tossing and mewing. Tove held her hand and wiped the clammy sweat from her face, while Mrs Murtagh fingered her rosary and clucked helplessly. ‘She needs a doctor.’
‘I know she does.’ Tove had learned long since that if you argued with Mrs Murtagh, she would retreat like a rabbit to a burrow and you lost her for hours on end. ‘Matt will come for us when it’s safe. Just relax now and say a prayer for us all.’
Mrs Murtagh was silent until she could bear it no longer. Then she asked: ‘What is it with you and Matt Neylan? Are you going to marry him? If you’re not, you’re wasting your life, which no woman of your age can afford to do.’
‘All the more reason not to make a mistake, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It seems to me there’s been a lot of mistakes already: you with this poor child and no husband to share her with, Matt Neylan with that great career in Rome. They were expecting him to be a bishop one day. Did you know that? And now look at him! Out of the cloth! Out of the Church altogether and every day in danger of damnation!’
‘I’m sure God understands him better than we do, Mrs Murtagh.’
‘But to throw away all the grace he’s been given! Why, only last Sunday Monsignor O’Connell – that’s our parish priest at Clonakilty – was preaching on the same thing, rejection of grace,. He said it’s like refusing a lifebuoy in a raging sea …’
‘My father was a pastor too, Mrs Murtagh. He used to say: “Men and women close the door on each other, but God’s door is always open.’“
‘Your father, you said?’
The notion of a married priest was too complicated for Mrs Murtagh and in any case vaguely obscene. It was one of ‘those Protestant things’.
‘Yes indeed. His people loved him.’
‘But you left your church too.’
‘Like Matt, I found I couldn’t believe – not, at any rate, in the way I’d been taught. So I did the only honest thing I could see. I walked away.’
‘Into a lot of trouble,’ said Mrs Murtagh tartly.
‘But that’s not the point, is it? If the only reason you hang on to God is to keep yourself out of trouble, what sort of religion is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Murtagh fervently. ‘But let me tell you, I’m glad I’ve got my beads in my hand at this moment.’
Britte gave a sudden sharp cry of pain and woke up in panic. Her mother tried to soothe her, but she clapped her hands to her head and rolled from side to side, moaning. Her eyes turned inward and rolled upward in their sockets. Tove sat beside her and cradled her in her arms, while Mrs Murtagh sponged her face and crooned over her: ‘There now, there! The hurt will pass soon.’ Outside, the wind made an eerie keening and the pounding of the surf sounded like tramping feet on the shingle.
They came an hour after midnight, all four of them, two from the east and two from the west, masked and dressed from head to toe in black, trotting silently on the thick grass of the verge. When they reached the corners of the property, they stopped to take their bearings. Then one from each pair moved towards the front of the house. The other two vaulted the front fence and moved forward until they were level with the barn. Then they turned inward and moved to face each other. When the manoeuvre was completed there was a black figure standing motionless and scarcely visible at each corner of the rectangle of buildings.
Next, they began to move slowly and silently in a clockwise direction round the perimeter. As each one came to the next corner, they all stopped. They did not speak, but signalled their observations. One pointed to the cows in the far pasture. Another noted the shadowy masses of the vehicles parked against the trees. A third pointed inward to the enclosed courtyard.
Finally, reassured that the outer perimeter was clear, they stepped into the courtyard, two moving towards the back door of the cottage, two towards the kitchen entrance to the house. Before their hands touched the woodwork the lights over both doors came on. There was a sudden billow of flame as the pails of petrol caught fire and all four were cut down by enfilading fire from the barn and the cow-byre.
Neylan went into the house to telephone Constable Macmanus. He was with them in ten minutes, but it took an hour and a half to get the Garda and an ambulance out from Cork and another hour to make the appropriate depositions and get rid of them. Murtagh drove the Range Rover down to the boathouse to collect the women. When finally they returned to the house, Britte was chattering with fever. They telephoned the local doctor, who prescribed aspirin and ice-packs and promised to call at nine in the morning. By five she was delirious and screaming with pain. They bundled her into the car and, while Tove nursed her in the back seat, Neylan drove as fast as he dared to the Mercy Hospital in Cork. By the time Britte was admitted, she was in coma. A specialist, summoned in haste, pronounced the verdict.
‘Fulminating cerebro-spinal fever. It occurs most frequently in adolescents and adults. Diplegics like your daughter fall easy victims. This form is malignant. The mercy is that it runs a swift course. Already, she is terminal.’
‘How long?’ asked Matt Neylan.
The doctor looked at his watch.
‘I doubt she’ll last through midday.’ To Tove, standing stricken but tearless at the bedside, he offered a small crumb of comfort. ‘In her case there may be a special mercy. She will be spared a great deal of grief.’
Tove seemed not to have heard him. She turned to Matt Neylan and said, with strange detachment:
‘Nonno Drexel will be terribly upset.’
Then, mercifully, the tears came, and Matt Neylan held her to him, rocking her and crooning over her. ‘There now! There! Cry it out. The little one’s fine. She had the best of it. She’ll never know the worst.’
Even as he said it the irony hit him. In the old days he would have found a dozen homely words of religious comfort, the standby of grieving folk down the ages. Now they were gone from him and all the love he wanted to pour on Tove Lundberg was the poorer for it. He was finding it much harder than he had expected to come to terms with an indifferent universe.
In the Hall of Consistories, Leo the Pontiff stood to address the assembly. Now the moment was upon him he felt strangely calm. His princes had come to him one by one to offer their ritual homage. They had prayed together for light to see and courage to walk the pilgrim road together. He had read them the admonition of St Paul to the Corinthians: ‘It is only through the Holy Spirit that anyone can say Jesus is the Lord. The revelation of the Spirit is made to each in a particular fashion for a good purpose …’ Then he had announced the appointments in a simple, bald statement.
This was the old Leo speaking, the one who disposed of embarrassing business and embarrassing people in short order. As he laid the text of the allocution before him on the rostrum, he wondered how they would accept the new Leo – and, for one brief frightening moment, whether the new Leo was not, after all, an illusion, the figment of a disordered ima
gination. He thrust the thought away, breathed a silent prayer and began to speak.
‘My brothers … I speak to you today in the language of the land where I was born. Indeed, you will hear sometimes in my speech the country accent of my home-place.
‘I want to explain to you the man I once was, Ludovico Gadda, whom the older ones among you elected to rule the Church. I need desperately to explain the man I am now and how he is different from the old Ludovico Gadda. It is not an easy story to tell, so please be patient with me.
‘I once asked a distinguished biologist to explain to me the genetic imprint, the famous double helix which differentiates one being from another. He called it “the graffito of God”, because it can never be erased. All other imprints – of memory, environment, experience – he called “human graffiti”. Let me try to decipher for you the marks which I bear.
‘I was born to poor people in a hard land. I was an only child and, as soon as I could handle a mattock and a hoe, I worked with my mother and my father. My life was a cycle of labour: school, farm work, study by lamplight with my mother. My father dropped dead behind his plough. My mother put herself into service with a landowner to complete my education and make me ready for a career in the Church. Understand this: I make no complaints. I was loved and protected. I was trained and toughened for a life without concessions. The one thing I never truly experienced was tenderness, the gentleness of leisured intercourse. Ambition – which is only another name for the instinct to survive – was always at my back, hurrying me forward.
‘For me, life in the seminary and in the Church was an easy experience. I was accustomed both to study and the harsh disciplines of a peasant farmer’s life. Even my adolescent passions were damped down by fatigue and isolation and the undemonstrative relationship between my parents. So you see, it was very easy for me to accept without question – and let me say it frankly, without critical examination – the maximalist and rigorist interpretations of law, morals and biblical exegesis which were current in the clerical education of the day.