PENGUIN BOOKS
All These Lonely People
Gervase Phinn is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author and poet.
Over the years he has taught in a range of schools, and he spent ten years as a school inspector in North Yorkshire. As well as being a bestselling author for Penguin, Gervase is also a successful children’s author published by Puffin.
He lives with his family near Doncaster.
Also by Gervase Phinn
The Dales Series
The Other Side of the Dale
Over Hill and Dale
Head Over Heels in the Dales
Up and Down in the Dales
The Heart of the Dales
A Wayne in a Manger
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars
Poetry
(published by Puffin Books)
It Takes One to Know One
The Day Our Teacher Went Batty
Family Phantoms
Don’t Tell the Teacher
All These Lonely People
Gervase Phinn
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2009
Copyright © Gervase Phinn, 2009
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re‐sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-91907-2
Chapter One
Father McKenzie could feel pins and needles in his feet. He had been kneeling on the front pew before the altar for a good hour, praying and thinking about what to do. First thing, I suppose, he thought to himself, is to tell the bishop. Then he would break the news to his housekeeper. Thank God there was no wife to tell, no children, no relations.
He lifted his eyes to heaven. The Christ hanging on the huge cross above the altar stared down on him. The eyes were gentle. He didn’t look in any pain. There was even a slight smile on the lips, or was he imagining it? The priest noticed more flaking paint on the ceiling, more cracks on the walls, more dust, dirt, decay. There was the damp patch in the shape of a dark monster above the altar in the Lady Chapel. The damp patch brought back a memory.
When he was a young priest he had been sent to a small church in the middle of Ireland. It was in a village in the country, surrounded by pale green hills. There was a little school near the church which he would visit. One morning, when he was talking to the head teacher, a little girl about six years old came up to him. She had long red hair and jade green eyes.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ replied the priest, smiling.
‘What is it, Mary?’ asked the head teacher sharply.
‘It’s still there, Miss Martin, in the girls’ toilets,’ said the girl.
‘Is it?’ the head teacher replied.
‘It is, and it’s got bigger.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t worry about it too much. It won’t hurt you.’
‘But it’s got great curved claws and big jaws and it’s turned a mouldy green.’
The head teacher shook her head. ‘It can’t harm you, Mary.’
‘But it puts the fear of God into me every time I look at it,’ said the child.
‘Well, don’t look at it then.’
‘Sure, but aren’t your eyes just drawn to it?’
‘Run along,’ said the head teacher crossly. ‘It won’t hurt you.’
‘I can’t go to the toilet with it looking down at me, Miss Martin,’ said the child.
Father McKenzie asked the child what it was.
‘It’s a monster,’ said the girl, ‘a great, dark, green, mouldy old monster with popping eyes and sharp teeth.’
‘A monster!’ he cried.
‘In the girls’ toilets.’
‘A monster in the girls’ toilets?’ he repeated.
She patted his arm. ‘It’s not a real monster,’ she said. ‘It’s a great dark stain from the water leaking through the roof, but it gives me the shivers right enough just to look at it.’
Miss Martin explained that the flat roof always leaked after heavy rain and that the water had left an ugly stain on the wall of the girls’ toilets. It had grown in size.
‘Is it a very bad leak?’ the priest asked.
Before the head teacher could reply, the small girl piped up: ‘A bad leak? Sure it’d baptize you!’
He smiled at the memory. Young children were such a delight, so open and honest. Everything in the world for them was new and bright and interesting. Would that it was like that for adults, he thought.
The flaking paint, the cracks, the dust and dirt and the stain would still be there when he was gone, and it would be up to some new priest to try to raise the money to put things right.
*
Father McKenzie had expected the worst. In his stuffy office, Mr O’Neill, the cancer specialist, had informed him the day before, in the soft but firm voice of a doctor breaking bad news, that the disease had spread. The priest had felt strangely calm.
‘How are you feeling, Father?’ Mr O’Neill asked.
‘A little tired,’ the priest replied, ‘sometimes I feel sick in the morning, but otherwise I feel fine.’
‘Good, good,’ the doctor said. He stared down at the notes on his desk. Then he licked a finger and flicked a page. ‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid.’ He didn’t look up. ‘The lumbar puncture shows that the cancer has spread into your spinal fluid.’
The priest breathed out noisily. ‘That bad?’
‘I’m afraid so. It’s spreading faster than we thought.’
‘I suppose the question people ask at this point is how long?’
‘A few months,’ the doctor told him, meeting the priest’s eyes. ‘Maybe a little more. It’s always difficult to say. The treatment may help, but –’
‘But in my case, it sounds doubtful?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘My father died of cancer, you know,’ the priest said. ‘Not a day’s illness in his life and then he died within the month. Of course he smoked like a chimney. My father was a stubborn man. Even when he was told he had cancer, he carried on smoking. “A bit late in the day to give up,” he told me.’ The priest paused and gave a small laugh. ‘I never smoked.’
‘I really am very sorry that the news isn’t any better, Father,’ the doctor said.
> ‘You have done your best,’ the priest told him, getting up to go. ‘You couldn’t have done any more. You say I have a few months? Well, at least I’ll still be here for Christmas, God willing.’
Father McKenzie sat on the park bench in the bright sunshine before returning to his church. He watched the children in the small playground, running, shouting, laughing, chasing each other. They were so full of life and energy, and he felt suddenly very lonely. He wondered what his child would have looked like if he had married. Would she have had the shiny black hair and dark Irish eyes of his mother? Would he have been like the stocky little boy on the climbing frame, swinging like a monkey on the rope? He said a silent prayer, not to be cured but to have the strength to face what was about to happen to him.
‘Good morning.’
Father McKenzie looked up to see the park‐keeper. He shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘Good morning,’ he replied cheerfully.
‘Are you here with your grandson?’ he was asked.
‘No, no,’ said the priest. ‘I’m just enjoying sitting here watching the children playing and enjoying the sunshine. It’s a fine –’
‘People might get the wrong idea,’ said the park‐keeper, his tone of voice suddenly becoming sharp.
‘The wrong idea?’ repeated the priest.
‘Watching the children.’
‘I’m not doing any harm,’ said the priest. ‘As I said, I’m just sitting enjoying the sunshine and watching the little children play. Where’s the harm in that?’
‘I’ve seen you here before.’
‘I often come here,’ the priest told him. ‘I enjoy sitting in the park.’
‘You always sit on the same bench.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Facing the children’s playground.’
‘Is there something wrong in that?’ asked the priest.
‘Well, if I were you, I’d sit somewhere else,’ said the park‐keeper. ‘We’ve had complaints.’
‘Complaints?’ said the priest. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘From the mothers, about men such as you watching their kiddies.’
The priest felt his heart begin to thump in his chest and the blood rush to his face. ‘I… I…’ He was lost for words.
‘Now come along,’ said the park‐keeper, placing a hand on the priest’s arm. ‘You go and find somewhere else to sit.’
Chapter Two
‘Father McKenzie.’
The priest was staring at the stain on the wall in the Lady Chapel. It was like the cancer inside him, he thought, silent, unstoppable, slowly spreading. The incident in the park had upset him. Couldn’t you look at children these days without people thinking you had some deeper, darker motive for doing so? ‘People might get the wrong idea,’ the park‐keeper had said.
‘Father McKenzie.’
He glanced around. It was Miss Evans, his housekeeper. She looked like a vulture, with the sagging skin around the neck, the large beak of a nose and the red‐rimmed eyes.
‘Ah, Miss Evans,’ he said, giving her a friendly smile.
‘You were miles away.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘It’s time for confession, Father,’ she said. ‘There’s a queue.’
She sounded like a schoolmistress reminding a forgetful child.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply. He made the sign of the cross and, pulling himself to his feet, headed for the side chapel.
For the next hour he sat in the black box hidden behind a small grille, listening to people telling him about their sins. It was always the same stories. ‘I said some unkind words,’ ‘I’ve been mean,’ ‘I’ve been selfish,’ ‘I’ve had bad thoughts about somebody,’ ‘I lost my temper,’ ‘I shouted at the kids.’ There was never a murder or an armed robbery, thank God.
It wasn’t much of a queue – just three or four women sitting in the nearest pew and a nervous young man, perhaps about thirty years old, who sat some distance away, biting his lip and fidgeting. The priest recognized the women. They were regulars and they would confess the same old sins.
The young man was different. Father McKenzie hadn’t seen him before, but he had come across troubled young men like him. They hoped that this unseen listener in the darkness of the confessional might have the answer to their problems. Of course, the priest rarely had the answer.
When the women had gone Father McKenzie waited in the musty little box for the young man to enter. He sat in the darkness, thinking about the interview at the hospital and what he would write in his letter to the bishop. Finally he heard the door on the other side of the confessional open and close with a click.
‘I need some help, some advice,’ came a voice from the other side of the grille. ‘I need to talk to somebody.’ In the semi‐darkness the priest made out the shape of the young man.
‘Do you wish me to hear your confession?’ asked the priest.
‘I’m not a catholic.’
‘That doesn’t matter. I’m a good listener.’
‘I just needed to talk to somebody.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve no one else I can talk to.’
‘Would you like to tell me what troubles you?’
‘It’s difficult to explain.’
‘Take your time.’
‘Perhaps I’d better go,’ said the young man.
‘You don’t need to,’ said the priest gently. ‘Just sit here for a while. It’s a good place to think.’
The young man sniffed. ‘I really don’t know what to do.’
‘Would you like to tell me about it?’
‘I’ve no one else to talk to,’ said the man. ‘No one.’
‘Everything you say in here will go no further,’ said the priest. ‘Nobody will know about our conversation. Priests aren’t allowed to tell what is said in the confessional. It’s one of the rules.’
‘It’s not really sunk in yet,’ said the young man. ‘You know, you go through life, getting up in the morning to go to work. You go out with your mates, meet girls, watch the football on Saturday and everything seems fine. Then out of the blue you learn something that knocks the legs from under you.’ The priest knew exactly what he meant but stayed silent for a while.
‘My mother, God rest her soul,’ the priest told him, ‘always said we should expect the unexpected, that life is full of surprises.’
‘Yes, well, I wasn’t expecting this little surprise, I can tell you.’
‘Are you ill?’ the priest asked gently.
‘No. I’ve just learnt something and it’s come as a bombshell.’
‘I see.’ The priest didn’t pry. He knew that if he remained quiet the young man might open up.
‘I’ve just found out,’ said the young man suddenly, ‘that I was adopted. Thirty‐three years old and I’ve only just discovered that the people who brought me up, and who I thought were my parents, adopted me when I was a baby. They never told me. They let me grow up thinking all the time that I was their own child.’
‘You were their child,’ said the priest simply.
‘No, not really theirs.’
‘Were they good parents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they love you, take care of you, tuck you in at night, read stories to you, help you with your schoolwork? Were they there for you when you were sick?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the young man, ‘they were, and I suppose I should be grateful for that.’
‘Very grateful,’ said the priest. ‘They sound like very special parents to me.’
‘But they lied to me,’ said the young man. ‘They let me go on believing that they were my real mother and father. Why didn’t they tell me when I was young? Why did I have to find out now? Why did I have to find out like this?’
‘I don’t have an answer to that,’ the priest told him.
‘I thought you people were supposed to have the answers,’ said the young man.
Father McKenzie gave a small laugh. ‘If
only that were the case, my son,’ he said. ‘How simple life would be.’
‘I just can’t understand why my mother decided to tell me now, why she kept it from me.’
‘I’m sure that your parents felt they had a good reason to keep it from you.’
‘Well, I can’t understand why.’
‘You say your parents were good parents.’
‘They were,’ the young man said sadly.
‘My guess is that they never wanted to lie to you. They were probably too scared to tell you. Perhaps they felt you might change if you found out the truth or that it might upset you too much. They maybe thought your feelings towards them would alter. There are many reasons why people act the way they do. They might have been waiting for the right time and somehow it never came around.’
‘It was wrong not to tell me,’ said the young man, wiping his eyes.
‘Maybe it was.’
‘There’s no maybe about it. I should have been told the truth. I feel betrayed. All those times people said I’d got my father’s eyes or my mother’s smile, and they never said anything.’
‘It’s difficult, but try not to judge them too harshly.’
The young man snorted.
‘How did you discover the truth?’ asked the priest.
‘My mother just came out with it. Dad, well, I knew him as my dad, died a couple of years ago and she got it into her head that she should make a will. We had just got back from the solicitor’s and she said I should sit down because there was something she needed to tell me. “Mark,” she said. “Your dad and me should have told you before. We wanted to tell you so many times, but we put it off.” I had no idea what she was talking about and then she said, “Mark, love, you were adopted when you were a baby.”’ The young man put his head in his hands. ‘I can’t tell you how empty I feel inside. How lonely I feel at this moment. I really don’t know who I am or what to do.’
‘I can’t say whether your mother and father were right or wrong in not telling you the truth,’ said the priest, ‘but it is clear to me that they loved you very much and they have done their very best for you. Try to understand how difficult it is for your mother at this moment, what she is going through. She needs you more than ever now.’
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