On the evening that Maria returns to work, I sit with Brother Michael as I often do. He hears from the Padre every now and then, and lets me know how he’s getting on. They studied together and it was through Michael that the Padre found me work at the Villa.
“It looks as though we’re about to have company for dessert,” he says. “At least – you are. I’m out of here.”
We don’t always have a dessert after dinner, but you can help yourself to a bowl of ice cream from the freezer in the kitchen. Michael and I often look after each other, but tonight he clears away our plates on a tray and walks out the Refectory. I see why when Maria sits down in his place.
“A peace offering,” she says, and pushes a bowl of ice cream across the table. She speaks in English. “I’ve come to apologise for my behaviour last week.”
I don’t say anything – not because I’m waiting for her apology, but because I sense that whatever I say might result in her going off on one again. She scoops up a spoonful of ice cream; for a scary moment I think she might be about to feed me, but she eats it herself. I can see she’s not as young as I thought she was – I’d guess in her early twenties – and I’m not sure the blonde hair is such a good idea as it makes her look washed out and pasty. I wonder if she’s returned to work too soon.
“I was sick,” she says, “but that’s not an excuse.”
There’s no way I’m going to ask what was wrong with her, but she tells me anyway.
“I have Cystic Fibrosis and I don’t always handle it so well; even if sometimes it’s my own fault.”
She takes another mouthful of ice cream. I don’t know what Cystic Fibrosis is or what it might mean and I don’t understand how she thinks it could ever be her fault. I have a picture of Christy Brown in my head but she doesn’t look sick in the way he was sick. She pulls the bowl of ice cream towards her and smiles.
“I’ll get you another bowl.”
I say nothing. I feel as though I’m in her force field. She loves the ice cream – really loves it – and I wait for her to finish the bowl.
“In the library,” I say, and she winces.
“Sorry.”
“You were sick then, weren’t you? I heard you, and I should have helped you reach for that book. I just went for my siesta instead.”
“I doubt it would have made any difference.”
“I felt bad.”
“Well now,” and this time I get the full beam of a smile, “we can’t have that.”
“I meant –”
“Don’t worry – I’m just teasing. Ines says your Italian is improving?”
“Very slowly.”
“It was she who suggested I come over.” She stands up from the bench and picks up the empty bowl. “I’m glad she did.” She holds out her hand and switches to Italian. “My name’s Maria.”
I shake her hand.
“Brendan,” I say.
“Well, Brendan, just to warn you: from now on, it’s Italian all the way.”
I watch her walk away. I’m too intimidated to follow her into the kitchen for my own bowl of ice cream, so I leave the Refectory and go back to my cell.
I ask him where he was. He blinks and looks confused. It’s a simple question and I’m not going to help him out.
He had to take some time to get things done.
His tone is almost aggressive. It’s not like him.
I need to know if he’s going to be here or not.
He told me. He explained.
What did he explain?
That he’d take this past week to sort out his affairs, and that from today he’d be here each day at ten in the morning.
I remember none of this. And what does ‘ten in the morning’ mean to me?
He’s peeved. I asked him to set up a routine and to stick to it, and this is what he’s done. He had other commitments that he couldn’t just ignore.
Other prisoners?
Other commitments.
He sounds different. He sounds pissed off. Says he’s sorry but even the apology comes with baggage.
He told me all this the last time he came?
Yes.
And that was a week ago?
Yes.
I think back to his last visit.
I was having a bad day.
He says it’s okay; tells me to forget it.
I had a bad week.
Says he took my silence last week to be an agreement of sorts. His face softens, if that’s possible, or his features relax into a hint of a smile. At least, he says, that’s what he chose to take my silence to mean.
Maybe there’s more to this boy than I thought.
Like I said – I had a bad week.
He nods. He can’t begin to imagine what a bad week might mean for me. Can he sit?
I gesture towards the bed. He’s so close. We’re so close. The cell is smaller than ever. We both sit down.
I seem much better today, he says. Talking again. An improvement on his last visit.
I’m . . . clearer – in my head. It gets foggy up there sometimes. Is he really going to come every day?
Yes, if I agree.
I can’t guarantee there won’t be other foggy days.
He doesn’t mind that, so long as he knows I want him to turn up anyway.
It’s either every day or not at all.
I look at him and this time he really does smile. So happy; so easily pleased.
Every day it is then, he says.
Including the weekends – all days are the same in here.
Every day is like Sunday?
Exactly.
Once we have this out the way, there’s a minute or two of silence. I’m impressed that he lets the silence be.
I get tired, I say.
That’s okay.
And confused too, sometimes; I might not always be polite.
That’s okay too.
It’s not. It’s not okay.
He nods.
I don’t know what he thinks he might be able to achieve here.
He’s not so sure himself. He just knows he wants to try.
I don’t want any of your religion.
He didn’t imagine for one minute that I would.
And I’m not interested in any moral outrage – either at what I’ve done or at what has been done to me.
He looks at me, but he doesn’t reply.
So where does that leave us?
Short, he says, which is funny.
I sit in the library, looking at but not reading Gazetta della Sport. I’m thinking of Giovanni and Ines, and how they’re the latest in a long line of people who are determined to treat me with kindness. How for every bad thing that may happen, there’s someone prepared to make life easier for me. The Padre and Brother Michael, Jack Reilly in Ireland, Juliette – these are good people, and I always let them down. More dramatically with some than with others but, one way or another, I always fuck things up.
The thought of Juliette gets me thinking of the women who have loved me and what I do with that love; how I pay them all back for what Siobhan did to me. I’m not what you’d call God’s gift to women but women have been God’s gift to me, and I’ve repeatedly thrown that gift away. Can I blame it all on losing Ciara? Is this how it’s going to be forever?
It’s still unreal; everything is still unreal. I’m here, I’ve been freed. I am free. I have my passport. I’m not allowed to return to Britain, but who would want to? Am I still serving time, only in a different location – the Padre’s prisoner? If I left the Villa would someone come looking for me, or are they expecting me to leave? Are they actually waiting for the day I’ll be gone? I can’t play at being Giovanni’s assistant forever, given that he didn’t really need one in the first place.
And if I left – where would I go? What would I do? I’m as aimless as I ever was and when I’m aimless I get into trouble. I had something good with Juliette and I deliberately set about destroying it. It’s easy to make out I was a little crazy but I�
��d more than likely do the same thing all over again. I’m sorry I did what I did and I wish I hadn’t, but I know I’d do it again. All these good people wish me nothing but good, only goodness doesn’t sit well on me. There was a time when I thought it might but I lost my capacity for goodness when I lost my daughter – when I gave my daughter away for money.
I ask the Padre if he can tell me where I am. He smiles and then frowns, as he often does when there’s some restriction on what he can say. He’s happy to tell me the truth, unhappy to be telling only a partial truth.
It doesn’t matter, if you can’t say.
They said you’d most likely ask.
And?
That I was to say you’re in a holding facility in Berkshire.
A ‘holding facility’? I smile at the euphemism.
They won’t call it a prison, because that would make you a prisoner with a prisoner’s rights.
So – a holding facility it is then?
Yes.
I’m not a hundred per cent sure where Berkshire is.
It’s one of the Home Counties, west of London.
I turn to look at this young man, sat on the edge at the other end of my bed, and marvel at his lack of awareness. What kind of a people can talk so freely of the Home Counties, and what does that say about the rest of this wretched country?
Although I sit side by side with the Padre, I often – and I do this now – shift to the head of the bed with my back against the wall.
He wants to know what he said wrong. Tells me I always do that.
Do what?
Move to the end of the bed when you don’t like what I say.
He looks down at his hands and rubs the thumb of one into the palm of the other. He’s not beyond picking me up on something, but it makes him uncomfortable. What can I say to him – that he represents a type of Englishness I can’t stand? I asked him the other day where he was from and he told me a village in Hampshire and I thought yes, I bet you are, and he doesn’t know, none of them know who they are, what they represent or what is being done in their name.
I tell him I’m sorry. I try to make out it’s so I can look at him as he speaks, that I don’t want to get a crick in my neck by talking to him sideways on, but we both know that in this tiny space the head of the bed is a position of power. I watch as he sits quietly. I get the feeling he doesn’t like me that much and that he’d like to say so, just this once, to get it out his system, only he’s ashamed of the thought even crossing his mind. This is when I like him the most.
Sorry, I say again.
It’s your cell, he tells me.
It’s my holding facility.
There are long moments of silence between us. I think he understands that his presence here is like a loud noise – a constant shouting in my head. We often retreat into the silence rather than fall out with each other. He might not have the self-awareness to see why he riles me, but he readily accepts that he does. I suppose the least I can do is return the favour.
Are there many of these holding facilities?
Whenever I ask a direct question, I’m reminded that there’s what the Padre knows and there’s what he’s allowed to tell me.
He says he honestly doesn’t know. He’s been in two such places, but he’s no idea if there might be more.
How did he find this one? Why would they let him in on their dirty little secret?
Because he asked and because he wouldn’t go away; he’s a persistent little bugger. And being from the church still counts for something – he says it makes him a neutral.
Even the Catholic Church?
He says he kept stressing the Christianity rather than the Catholicism.
Does he really believe he’s a neutral, that it’s possible to be a neutral? Did he have to sign the Official Secrets Act?
Of course.
And how did that feel?
How do I mean?
Didn’t it occur to him that this immediately made him one of them, part of the machinery responsible for the holding facilities?
He wouldn’t have been allowed access if he didn’t sign, so he signed.
He knows his own conscience?
He didn’t like signing, but he signed.
What do they make of him?
Do they think he’s some sort of a crank? He’s sure they do.
But he convinced them to let him in?
They denied these places even existed, but he knew in his heart they weren’t telling the truth.
How did he know?
Because of the times we live in. He knew that people were being held and not accounted for. He knew that I’d been arrested but there was no public record of where I was taken. He had other names, too, of people who had been made to disappear.
You didn’t suspect they might have been killed?
No, he didn’t think so.
Why not?
He just doesn’t believe things are quite that bad. We’re locking people away, but we’re hardly at the stage of shooting them dead.
No? His naivety grates. What about the Brazilian guy they shot dead on the Tube?
I regret bringing this up. Something happened to me at that time – something changed - and I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it. Don’t understand sufficiently to be able to talk about it. There are other incidents I could have mentioned – Gibraltar, for instance – that prove England is always at the shooting people dead stage. It’s how England remains England, but I don’t pursue this with the Padre.
Aren’t most of the prisoners Muslim?
Yes, he says, or at least they claim to be.
What does he mean – claim to be? That they can’t be serious about their religion if they’re not of the one true faith?
No, he doesn’t mean that at all. They seem to be serious about their faith.
Seem to be?
Okay, they are serious about their faith.
Does he get to see all the prisoners?
They only let him see non-Muslims.
If a prisoner isn’t a Muslim, are they presumed to be a Christian?
They just won’t allow him to see any Muslims.
What about Jews?
It hasn’t come up.
Buddhists?
The Padre looks at me.
So if I want rid of him, I just convert to Islam?
That’s right.
He sounds tired.
What’s wrong?
Nothing, he says, but isn’t convincing. Nothing, he says again.
I’m his only prisoner, aren’t I?
Yes.
And I’m a bit of a prick?
That’s not it.
What is it then?
He wants to do so much and yet it amounts to so little.
You won’t beat them, you know. They always win.
But still.
I look at the Padre from my advantageous position at the head of the bed. He’d be a hit with the old ladies of the parish; they could mother him and bake him the occasional cake. He’d be an enthusiastic organiser of fund-raising events. What the hell is he doing in this place?
Padre?
He looks up.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
He doesn’t say anything.
Let’s call it a day.
I can see he doesn’t want to leave it like this, but I insist.
The library has become as much of a refuge as my cell, so I’m none too pleased when Maria sits down on the chair beside me. She sits sideways on, facing me, and I just know she’s itching for another of her juvenile confrontations. I’m too old and too tired for her brand of shit.
“You’re the Dog Man,” she says in Italian.
I’m leaning with my elbows on the library table, looking at but not reading the newspaper. La Gazetta will only really interest me when the football season starts again in a month’s time. I’ve finally succumbed to the Padre’s concern that I might be in need of some professional help; that I might indeed be in the midst of a se
rious depression. Physically, I’m much better. Working outdoors with Giovanni, and eating and sleeping well have all had a beneficial effect on my weight, strength and appearance. I look a lot older than I’d like to. I’ve lost a lot of hair and what remains is going grey. Each time I catch a reflection of myself in a mirror, I’m shocked at the difference between how I think I should look and how actually I do look – and I don’t particularly like what I see. These past years are written on my face and I can’t erase them. Socially, I’m much improved. I interact with other employees at the Villa, talk regularly with Brother Michael, and have become good friends with Giovanni and Ines. Perhaps this is all on a superficial level, but it’s pleasant and it’s polite. The problems arise when I ask what next? I function within the workings of the Villa, but how am I ever going to rejoin the world? I don’t trust myself, and this pre-siesta library time is when it seems to come back to me. I don’t need Maria to remind me who I am.
But she surprises me. She puts a hand on my forearm and rests it there.
“I’m so sorry,” she says in English. “I had no idea.”
The Padre claims I don’t actually want to leave here. He’s having one of his goading days. This is okay – I can’t expect him to accept things the way I do and it passes the time. There’s no set length to his visits; they range from a brief twenty minutes or so to the whole morning. One day he stayed while I ate my midday meal. I’ve figured out from his visiting schedule that they give us breakfast at eight and lunch at twelve, but knowing the times doesn’t change anything; it’s still just a routine.
He says I must start to think about what to do once I’ve been released. He often uses the word ‘must’ when he’s doing his earnest thing and it always makes me laugh. I like him in this mode – he doesn’t do despair at all well – and when I smile it drives him crazy.
I do believe they’ll let me out one day?
They’re hardly likely to start shooting us, I say, but he’s not open for sarcasm today. He gives me one of his sternest looks and it makes me smile more.
He tells me I’m a fool. This is harsh by his standards, but it’s not vindictive. He has a built-in pause button for whenever he thinks he might be going too far. You’re a fool, he says again, and he leaves it at that.
Dancing to the End of Love Page 21