by Lowe, Tom
When I came over the crest of a hill and saw the port town, the first thing that caught my eye was the cathedral. St. Colman’s Cathedral was impressive, sitting on a hill high above the business district near the water. The exterior of the old cathedral was clad in shades of gray; inside, I knew, was where the real darkness lay in waiting. My challenge would be to somehow gain access to the semi-retired senior priest whose collar was as false as his title, healer, teacher, and a minister—‘following the example set by the first priest, Jesus Christ.’
Driving through town, I had the feeling that the place hadn’t changed too much since Titanic set sail. Maybe the old coastal town was a bit more colorful today. It had a tourist vibe with a seaport edginess, bars for longshoreman, and pubs for holiday vacationers. Most of the two and three-story buildings that faced the harbor were painted in soft shades of blue, red, burgundy, yellows, lime greens, strawberry, and other ice cream flavors of color. I parked in front of Jack Doyle’s Pub, found a pay phone, and called the main number listed for St. Colman’s Cathedral.
A woman answered, “Thank you for calling Saint Colman’s, may I help you?”
“Yes, I’m new in town. Just getting settled, my family and me. We’re looking for a Catholic church to help raise our children. I’ve heard good things about your church.”
“Oh, yes indeed. The church has a long history with Cohb, way back when the city was called Queensland. Please come attend a Sunday mass with us. I believe you will find a new church home with Saint Colman’s.”
“I’ll definitely take you up on the offer. However, before I bring the whole family … this is difficult to say, I’m sorry.”
“Please, take your time.”
“Thank you. I haven’t done a confession in thirteen years. It’s not right, I know, especially for a man my age. Something happened that I need to make penitence for, something for which I must seek forgiveness.”
“When would you like to come in?”
“When is Father Garvey available?”
“Father Garvey? He’s here part-time now. Perhaps you could see Father O’Conner—”
“Father Garvey comes highly recommended. Since I’m no longer a young man, I think a priest with Father Garvey’s experience gives him the knowledge and skill to help me. When is he available?”
“Let me check his calendar.”
As I waited for her to return to the phone, I looked down to the harbor, the water a sparkling cobalt blue, a huge three-masted schooner entering the port, its white sails expanded with wind. Church bells rang out in the direction of St. Colman’s Cathedral. I glanced at my watch. It was exactly four o’clock.
“Father Garvey will be here tomorrow, Saturday. He comes in occasionally on Saturday. Looks like he’ll be here from one ‘till four o’clock. Would three o’clock work for you?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“You’re more than welcome. Oh, sir, what’s your name?”
“Taylor, Mark Taylor.”
“Thank you Mr. Taylor.”
“Thank you, before you go, I hear church bells. Are they coming from St. Colman’s?”
“Yes. We have the largest carillon in all of Ireland, even the British Isles. Forty-nine bells, one is big as an adult elephant. Each day at four o’clock, the carillon bells play a song. It’s all automated. However, on Sundays, and holidays, we have a professional carillon player climb the steps to the top of the old spire and play by hand. He uses his fists, really. It’s quite remarkable. I’m afraid I must go, there’s another call and I’m the only one in the office. Goodbye, Mr. Taylor, and welcome to Cohb, Ireland.”
I wanted a dark and uncrowded place to eat. I didn’t know whether my picture had made it into the Irish news media. I ducked in to Jack Doyle’s Bar, my eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. Sports memorabilia hung on each wall, pictures of heavyweight boxers, rugby and football players. Three people sat at the bar. Two looked like dock workers, muscular, T-shirts and tattoos. An older man, white hair, white bushy moustache, wore a tweed cap and nursed a glass of Guinness, his moustache wet with the beer foam.
I took a seat next to the older man, he nodded, sipped his beer and said, “We’re seven minutes into happy hour.”
I smiled. “Looks like I need to make up for lost time.”
He chuckled. “When you hear the church bells ring it’s time to drink a pint and get ready to sing. Name’s Hugh Donovan.”
“Mark Taylor.”
“American?”
“How’d you tell?”
“Lucky guess.”
“How’s the corned beef here?”
“Best in town.”
The bartender approached. I ordered a Guinness, corned beef ‘n cabbage, and some Irish potatoes. Hugh sipped his beer, his blue eyes dewy. “What brings you to Cohb?”
“Holiday. I’m a history buff.”
“You look more like the guy this place was named for—Jack Doyle. He was a hell of a fighter and a movie star, had the nickname of Gorgeous Gael. And he rode the legend all the way to Hollywood. Before he made movies, he fought twenty-seven pro fights, all won by knockouts, most in the first minute. He was six-three with a seventy-nine-inch reach. That’s him in the photograph above the bar.” He pointed to a framed black and white picture of a dark-haired man, boxing gloves raised, smiling at the camera.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“Slow booze and fast women. He spent money like these drunken sailors that come in here when they hit the docks. Jack died a shadow of the man he once was.”
The food and Guinness arrived. I ate and listened while my new-found-friend reminisced about the history of Cohb. I learned that Cohb was where the surviving victims of the sinking of the Lusitania were treated. The Germans sank the British ship seven miles off the coast of Ireland. As he drank and talked, I glanced down the bar and caught the lone woman staring directly at me. Her blue eyes bright as swimming pool water. I smiled and sipped the Guinness.
“Jack used to train hitting hundred pound sacks of flour. He even used his fist to pump the carillon in the cathedral, could only play one song, The Old Rugged Cross.”
I finished my meal, swallowed the last of the Guinness, paid the bill and got up to leave. Hugh said, “You sure you aren’t Jack Doyle’s son? There is a strong resemblance. Whose son are you, or as my Irish cousins say in the states, whose your daddy?”
“Good meeting you, Hugh.”
He extended his hand. I shook it and he said, “Good luck to you, lad. May you discover what you came here to find.”
I drove to the WatersEdge Hotel and checked in under the name Mark Taylor. I entered my second floor room, tossed my one travel bag on the bed and stepped to the sliding-glass doors leading to the balcony overlooking the Cork Harbor. I stood on there and watched the freighters and cruise ships in Cork Harbor, a moderate breeze blowing from the east, the moon above the harbor, the slight smell of salt and diesel in the night air.
I thought about the people who boarded Titanic from this harbor, and how their lives would forever change a few days later. I remembered what Dave had said on his boat before I left. ‘It’s the tip of the iceberg, and right now Gibraltar is beginning to feel a bit like Titanic.’
I tried to picture what this harbor looked like three years after Titanic went to the floor of the Atlantic, when more than a 1,195 survivors of Lusitania were rescued in the Irish Channel and brought in to this harbor, most badly injured. And I tried to place myself in the shoes of the German officer who gave the command to fire the torpedo at the ship with full knowledge it was a passenger liner.
I couldn’t.
Then I stepped to the edge of the terrace and looked to my left, up the hill. St. Colman’s Cathedral stood at the top of the hill, lights pointed upward from the ground lighting the old stone. I could see a large clock halfway up the largest spire. The clock was big enough for me to read the time. Midnight. In fifteen hours, I would meet Father Thomas Garvey. I tried to
place myself in my mother’s shoes as she was about to be raped.
I couldn’t.
87
I arrived at St. Colman’s Cathedral at 3:00 in the afternoon, glad it was a Saturday. Limited office staff, if any. The front doors were slightly ajar. I opened them and entered the old church. The sanctuary was cavernous, massive marble columns supporting ornate and carved marble arches, the afternoon sunlight igniting the stained-glass windows, casting rainbow colors over the marble floor and wooden pews.
The sanctuary appeared vacant. I walked toward the altar, my hard soles echoing off the marble. The air was cool and smelled of incense and candles. I could see the confessional booth in a far corner, hand carved, polished wood. There was a small red light burning above the closed door to the right. The door on the left was closed as well. I sat in a pew closest to the confessional and waited. I could hear the subdued voice of a woman speaking, weeping, and followed by a man talking in a monosyllabic, rehearsed response.
A few seconds later, the door to the right opened. A woman dressed in black exited the booth. She knelt in front of the altar, looked up at a carved statue of Christ and made the sign of the cross. She bowed her head, whispered a silent prayer, got up and left. She never saw me sitting alone in the pew.
The light above the right-side door turned green. I entered the booth. It was lit with one small wattage blub. I looked at the lattice that separated the left side of the booth from the right. Entering into full combat mode, my senses were heightened. I could hear him breathing. I could smell his aftershave lotion. He was less than three feet from me. I said, “I’m here in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” I pressed the audio record button on my cell phone.
He said nothing for almost fifteen seconds. And then he spoke. “Do you wish to confess your mortal sins?”
“I do.”
“Proceed.”
I quietly opened the door to my side of the booth, then reached for his door—jerked it open. He was an old man, sitting in a high-back wooden chair, one elbow resting on the arm of the chair, the other hand in the folds of his white robe. His eyes had the color of a butane torch, intense, piercing, silver hair combed back. I said, “I’ll confess, but not before you do.”
He looked up at me. “Who are you, son?”
“I’m Sean O’Brien, and I’m sure as hell not your son.”
“Are you a member of the congregation? Do I know you?”
“No, but I know of you. You raped my mother more than forty years ago.”
He pushed back in the chair, stunned, unable to maintain eye contact with me. His eyes moved from his lap to the floor, as if his contact lens had fallen out. Finally, he looked up at me. “What do you want?”
“Are you not even curious as to who my mother was? Or did you rape so many women and girls you’ve lost count?”
He said nothing. His eyes now smoldering, staring straight at me. Then he said, “How dare you come into our Lord’s house and make these accusations. Who do you think you are? Get out!”
“I’ll tell you who I am … I’m Katherine Flanagan’s son. Her second son. You, you son-of-a-bitch, impregnated her when you raped her. Don’t look so surprised. Where’s Dillon?”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Didn’t you learn that lying is a sin? Get up!”
He pulled his right hand out of the thick robe, and he gripped a .357 pistol. His hand like a claw, skin the color of bone. He said, “There’s been a rash of crime in Ireland recently. One priest was robbed here in the confessional. So, of course, police will believe you, too, were here to rob the church—a most egregious sin.” He wet his lips and smiled a crooked grin. “I do remember your mother. How do you forget a woman who enjoyed it as much as she did? Rape … hardly. She was one of my regulars. And guess what? Dillon might not be the only son I produced with her.” His eyes grew wide, cruel and hard as the marble floor.
I said, “Put the gun down. You’ve caused enough pain.”
He cocked his head, his eyes filled with loathing. “Pain? I only follow God’s will. That’s what I did when your father found out I’d sired the first son in the Flanagan family, Dillon. I followed God’s holy directive.”
“You’re sick.”
“And you don’t understand, but your brother does.”
“Where is he?”
“You’ll never be the man he is. Nor was your father. So when he brought his sinful weakness to me, threatened me … threatened God’s word, I destroyed him. And now I’ll do the same with you; the difference is, I’ll shoot you in the front of the head.”
I saw the white flash.
The gunshot echoed throughout the sanctuary. The bullet tore through my upper arm. I slammed the door closed. Then used my legs and back to turn the small confessional on its side. He opened the door, disoriented, like a rat flooded out of his nest. I kicked the gun from his hand. It slid across the marble. He ran to it. Picked it up and fired three shots at me, running in the opposite direction, toward a door in the far corner marked: stairs. He opened the door and vanished. He’d fired four times. Two rounds left.
I followed, holding my wounded shoulder with one hand. The door led to some marble steps, the stone worn down near the center of each step after more than 150 years of foot traffic. I quietly slipped my shoes off and followed Father Thomas Garvey. I climbed a dozen flights of narrow steps, stopping every few seconds to listen. I could hear him above me, climbing, running, panting.
The steps escalated in a spiral circle, like climbing steps in a lighthouse—leading me all the way up the center of the largest spire. As I ascended, came closer, I could hear his labored breathing above me. Within twenty feet, I came to a bell tower. Dozens of bells were mounted on massive wooden beams. Rope and strikers hung from each bell. A strong wind blew through the large arched openings in the belfry. I could see the town and the harbor below the cathedral.
Then I saw the white robe, behind one of the largest bells. I reached in my pocket and found a quarter. I tossed it at a pumpkin-sized bell on the opposite side of the tower. It rang out. Father Garvey shot in that direction, the bullet ricocheting off the bells.
One shot left.
I moved quickly, the noise from the bells dulling the sound of my approach. I kept the old wooden posts and the largest bells in my line of sight. I saw his shadow move across a far wall. I crept up slowly, holding my breath, my blood dripping onto the wood floor. I found a penny and tossed it over at the bells against the far wall. He turned and used both hands to raise the pistol. I charged, slamming him hard up against the stone wall. I grabbed his wrist and wrestled the gun from his hand. Then I backhanded him to the floor.
He fell on his back, mouth bleeding, front teeth lose, one knocked out. He grinned and said, “You don’t have the balls to kill me! You piece of human shit! I screwed that whore you call your mama.”
I pointed the pistol at his head. I saw my mother’s face the day she told me what happened. Saw the tears spill down her wrinkled cheeks, saw the dignity in her eyes clouded with pain more than forty years later. I saw the pain in Courtney’s face the day she told me her story. I played back the TV news images of the murdered girl whose body was pulled from the swamps, a white sheet draped over the coroner’s gurney, blood on the sheet where her face once was. I pictured Kim in the hospital, the gas flames roaring on her stovetop.
“I’m going to ask you one last time. Where’s Dillon?”
“Go to hell.”
I set the gun down on the top of a smaller bell. He grinned and said, “You’re just like that weak-kneed Christian daddy you had.”
I removed my belt. Then I pulled him off the floor, backhanding him again across his mouth. Blood ran down the white robe. I wrapped my belt around his neck and said, “You’re right about one thing. I’m not going to kill you, at least not quickly. I’m going to hang you out of this bell tower for the entire town to see you for the rapist, murderer, and pedophile you really
are.” I pulled by mobile phone out of my pocket, the red record light on. I stopped the recording and played back the part where he admitted raping my mother and killing my father. I said, “Now, father figure, that’s one hell of a confession. You’ll go down as not the greatest Catholic priest in Ireland, but one of the most prolific and heinous sex offenders to hide behind that collar.” I ripped the collar from his neck, shoving him against the largest bell. “Where’s Dillon?”
“A place you’ll never find him. Maybe the distant Aideen.”
“What?”
He looked at my wound, blood seeping into my shirt. “You need balm for the wound and your soul, lad, for your feelings of grief. Dillon found it, but you, I think not. You wretched soul … you enter my confessional, my private chamber opening my door, but there’s darkness there, nothing more. Are you surprised?”
He grinned and cocked his head. Then he bolted and ran ten feet, leaping through one of the wide arched openings, falling in utter silence. I heard him hit with a dull thud. I leaned over the side of the window, almost at the top of the tower. He had fallen across a wrought iron gate, landed on his back. Three long black spikes protruding through his chest, his eyes open, Father Thomas Garvey staring at the heavens.
88
I didn’t know if anyone had heard the gunfire from the bell tower. I slipped on my shoes and ran full bore to my rental car parked on the street in the shadow of the cathedral. Father Garvey died in a courtyard in what appeared to be the rear of the church. No cars in the lot. I saw no people. I didn’t know if anyone was in the church on Saturday. I did know that I wasn’t going to be here when police arrived.
I sprinted to my rental car, the pistol wedged under my blood-soaked shirt, sweat dripping from my face. My heart raced, my mind playing back what Father Garvey said before he jumped through the open window and committed suicide. I recognized parts of what he said, but from where? Think. I couldn’t place it. Not now. Not with blood pouring out of a gunshot wound, and the sound of sirens in the distance.
As I opened the car door, I tried to remember if I’d spotted any surveillance cameras mounted on the exterior or interior of the church. It didn’t mean they weren’t there. If so, it was only a matter of time before they recognized me and then made the association to the U.S. presidential race and the notorious fly in the ointment for Senator Lloyd Logan. And that irritating insect would be me. Maybe the media would connect the dots—look at Courtney’s last name, my last name, and begin speculation as to why I might be in Ireland.