Our Fathers

by Andrew O'Hagan

  Margaret protected the old woman’s ways. She didn’t let the undertakers involve themselves in this intimate business. We bought their carpentry. We hired their cars. She asked that the carrying men be there on the day. But she refused to have his body in the undertaker’s parlour. It hurt her not to have it at home. But that couldn’t be. She begged that the body remain in the hospital mortuary, which it did, and she came to and fro on the bus, with her lady friend, her prayer book, her weeds.

  Hugh had a pile of penny policies; he had never been rightly insured. They lay in a tin: Empire Exhibition Scotland, 1938.

  I collected four hundred pounds from Friends Provident in Kilwinning. I drove to Saltcoats, then Prestwick, a hundred pounds here, forty there. The books Margaret gave me had columns of figures, written in different inks. Each book had been abandoned years before. I put the money under the clock in Margaret’s room. I wrote some cheques. I put an advert in the Evening Times:

  Hugh Thomas Bawn

  ‘Mr Housing’ Beloved husband of Margaret, father of Robert,

  grandfather of James Died, at Crosshouse Hospital, on 26th December 1995 Eleven o’clock Mass at St Joseph’s Church, Affleck, on 30th December

  No flowers

  Ecclesiastes: “One generation passeth away, and another

  generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”

  St Joseph’s was not as I remembered it. The church sat different in my mind. But here it was, aslant at the head of the harbour; the green shutters of the church-house fading now, and ready to drop to the sea. The pews used to run in rows from the altar to the door. Now the altar was to one side. The pews curved around in the new style. There were children’s drawings at the stations of the cross. But the same old angular Marys were there. The wooden apostles with their agonised faces, the pointing fingers, the open mouths. The Roman soldiers with oversized feet. And new stained glass in the windows. Indigo glass.

  Hosannas above; fish below.

  The names of local boys who died in the wars out there: in Gallipoli, Normandy, the bogs at Goose Green.

  Up by the altar hung a painted board; the names of St Joseph’s parish priests were picked out in red.

  Father Seamus Brady, 1948–62

  Father Dominic Savio, 1962–66

  Father Martin Healy, 1966–79

  Father Ian Timothy 1979–

  The chapel was half full. The air was heavy with hymns and incense. My granda’s coffin was there. Father Timothy came up as we stood at the back. His hair was still lush – but lushly grey. He put his arms around Margaret. He took her hands. He whispered a word.

  ‘Faith,’ he said.

  She gripped at the front of his jade-coloured robe. And then he turned to me. The smell of after-shave was there about him. It roamed in the air just between us. I thought I could see that his years had been hard.

  It’s good to see you, Father,’ I said.

  ‘James.’

  We hugged each other. It was not as easy as it used to be. Standing together after all those years. He felt like a boy in my arms.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said.

  ‘We are all sorry.’

  I stroked at his arm just a second. It seemed to be me that was comforting him.

  The father went back to the sacristy.

  Margaret and I walked down to the front. On the way past the coffin Margaret bowed and kissed the lid. It was covered in cards.

  Words took over, and music too, and a slow-stepped liturgical dance, a standing and sitting and kneeling and bowing, a run of steps too dreadfully known.

  God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

  There was purple light coming down from the roof. A thousand tiny rags again, falling as dust on the father’s hands, on the empty pews, on the water font. And down it came, with nothing of pity, nothing of shame, on the small-looking coffin of Hugh Thomas Bawn.

  ‘The most sacred of our Seven Corporal Works of Mercy‚’ said the priest, ‘is to bury the dead.’

  Eternal rest give to him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him …

  The children’s drawings sang yellow and red in their clip-frames. There was something very happy in their mixture of small and big letters. Four were pinned like a window above the baptismal font. The Four Cardinal Virtues:

  Prudence (a smiling man in a suit holds a few gold coins); Justice (a woman in a long wig with her hand on a gate, an arrow saying ‘freedom’); Fortitude (a cowboy stands on a small hill surrounded by crimson Indians); and Temperance (an old man with folded arms; he looks at a bottle labelled ‘Vodca’).

  A larger drawing took up the back wall. The work of several crayon-happy children; the work of a class, P4. It was filled up with mountains and lightning, a long-bearded Abraham, a frightened Isaac. Their eyes were wide to the world. Abraham’s dagger hung in the air. The son saying no to his father.

  No.

  … grant to the souls of thy servants departed the remission of all their sins …

  Father Timothy turned up his hands.

  ‘Through Christ our Lord,’ he said, ‘in whom there hath shone forth upon us the hope of a blessed resurrection: that those who are saddened by the certain event of death may be consoled by the promise of future immortality. For to thy faithful, O Lord, life is changed, not taken away; and when the earthly house of this our habitation is dissolved, an eternal dwelling is made for us in heaven.’

  The chapel was like a great shell: the sound of the sea.

  Hugh lying dead in his box. I wondered: would Hugh be as a vengeful ghost? Would he storm about the country? Would he haunt us in our own infirmity? The words of the mass lapped out. The sound dimmed in my ears; familiar faces, lips moving. The way of the cross showing out on the walls. Jesus meeting his afflicted mother. The cross being laid upon Simon of Cyrene. Jesus falling the third time. Jesus being nailed to the wood. His mouth saying no.

  No.

  Up in the choir a woman was standing. She held a black book. She wore a black coat. Her lips moved out of time with the rest. The church cleaner. I had known her all my life. She was up in the choir. Her lips moving.

  ‘Confiteor Deo omnipotenti …’

  I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the archangel, to blessed John Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault …

  The words came back in a roar. And still it was out of sync. People were saying different masses. They were using different words. There was a babble of voices, separate streams of prayer, eddies of litany, coming together, falling away. Sometimes only Father Timothy’s voice would be left in the air. His voice was the central one: everything else, a clash of whispers.

  ‘It started with Father Brady,’ a woman said at my back. ‘They still say mass in the old way. They’ve had hassle about it. They use the old words. The Bishop’s been hauled in on it, but they seem to get away with it still. Other out-of-the-way churches do it too. They use the old words, and some use the Latin.’

  The priest read from John’s Gospel. Then he nodded down. Margaret made a space to let me out. My legs were weak as I took the steps. The red carpet seemed to glare at me. There was something mocking in its brightness. I felt suddenly tall as I swayed at the pulpit. My suit felt short. I wiped the hair from my eyes. And I looked up. A few seconds seeped like a century of minutes. There were all those faces. My granny in her overcoat and black scarf. My mother a few rows back, with Bob in his tie, his white shirt, and ring. There were people there whose faces I knew. A half-dozen rows from the Corporation. Fergus McCluskey and my granda’s apprentices. The local MP and his surly wife. The barman from the British Legion. A bank of young men who meant nothing to me. My teacher Mr Buie. He stood on his own. His eyes seemed narrower now; he held himself low. My keen enemy from the local paper was there. Also Riccarton the doc
tor. And several young women stood with babies by the door. I wondered if they were mass-goers, or if they knew Hugh, and just liked him as he walked in the street, or spoke of large things in the pub. Maybe they had lived in one of his tower blocks. I had never seen any of them before. Maybe they just felt sorry.

  Some of the men’s faces were marred with booze. And their expressions showed respect for life’s public duties; there was something deeply broken-in about their black ties; they carried themselves like men for whom things had gone wrong. There was a quality of few words about them. They stood to attention. They had seen the world change. You could see all that. All their confidence and hot contempt had grown cold; they stood there like invalids.

  At the very back was a man in a leather jacket. His head was bald; red at the sides. His mouth was still. The sort of man who radiates a vast separateness. His hands held for care to the pew in front. His face was pale. My father.

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘The Responsorial Psalm,’ I said. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.’

  ‘The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

  ‘The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

  He shall feed me in a green pasture,

  And lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.

  He shall convert my soul:

  And bring me forth in the paths of righteousness.

  For his name’s sake.

  The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

  Yea so I walk through the valley of the shadow of death:

  I will fear no evil;

  For thou art with me,

  Thy rod and staff comfort me.

  The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

  Thou shalt prepare a table before me,

  Against them that trouble me,

  Thou hast anointed my head with oil,

  And my cup shall be full.

  The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

  But thy loving kindness and mercy shall follow me,

  All the days of my life:

  And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

  The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing.

  Margaret was weeping in her hands. I went back to my place and held her. The chapel spun before me, a chasm of memory and unbelieving. I held poor Margaret for all I was worth. I wanted to weep for her broken heart. I wanted to say something, to raise up a voice in that holy place, and make our losses plain, and not let my grandmother’s sore weeping pass into nothing. I wanted to break the secrecy of her trials. Just for a minute, just for a day, to cheat the devil of all indifference, to make the saints stand up and listen, and in one vast moment of truth, to make the people in that chapel know of our lives, and know of their own, and let Hugh Bawn’s burial day be a time of gentle recognitions, a longed-for day of the open heart.

  Shivering there, with Margaret undone, I wanted to silence our exotic muttering. There had to be a word. We had need of a word to unsay ourselves. But we hadn’t that. Not in that chapel, in that country, on that day. All we had was our clash of whispers.

  I turned and looked at Mr Buie. My old teacher had his head down in prayer. We hadn’t a word between us. Not between any of us. Margaret was alone with her faith. Others behind us were speaking to gods. The rest of us roamed in our heads for comfort.

  Father Timothy went to the pulpit with a square of paper. He unfolded it there and raised his head.

  ‘This has been a century of very great challenges,’ he said. ‘I think of wars, diseases, famine, new technologies, visits to the moon. But for most of us, for men and women like you and me, the greatest of all the challenges were here, on our own soil. They were challenges about how we lived. Our time has been one of improvements – not in morals, perhaps, or in church attendance, or in our ability to break those unchristian habits which daily tempt us. But it has been an age which set high goals for itself, especially in the area of social reform. Even in a small place like this, in Ayrshire, in Glasgow, or in Scotland as a whole: this has been a century of progress. Hugh Bawn was a man who believed in that progress. It is often said of him that he stood alone. But what he stood for was good and plain: clean, affordable modern houses. More than any other person of his generation, he saw to it that this goal was achieved. One does not have to look far into the history of our parishes to see evidence of the terrible slums. Since the end of the last war Hugh made it his task to drive ahead one of the biggest social revolutions ever to take place in this country – the building of high-rise flats, or tower blocks, as he called them himself.

  ‘The job of cleaning up after the war, and building again, could not have fallen to better men than Hugh Bawn and his kind. His mother was the famous suffragette and rent-strike organiser Effie Bawn. She called herself a socialist. She taught him what it meant to be a citizen, to be a visionary, and to be a Catholic. And as well as these things Hugh was a patriot. He loved this country, and all his life he seemed to yearn to make it better.

  ‘Fashion is wont to cast a shadow over them whose moment is past. Hugh Bawn’s buildings, like the man himself like all of us indeed, were deemed, in more recent times, to be imperfect. Hugh himself remained philosophical about this. He saw that another generation must have its day. He was a man of some passion, and again, in recent times, he was to be drawn into one dispute and another. But as he begins his journey towards God’s everlasting protection, in a dwelling-place built for eternity, we can only be sure that Hugh has left all earthly concerns behind. But we can also hope, with Our Father’s heavenly grace, that something of Hugh Bawn’s pioneering spirit will remain here with us, and that his consideration for his fellow man will serve as a guide and example to all. It has been said that this is a country without many modern heroes. Hugh Bawn was such a thing. He bound tradition and the future like no one else I can think of. For his life we must always be grateful.’

  He folded the paper.

  We sat in silence.

  It seemed that one large pulse had entered the room. This was not the truth for which I’d stirred. It wasn’t a story some would recognise. But it bound the people in that chapel like no words spoken hitherto. I was rooted with shock that the priest had managed it. He had spoken with all the strength he had. He had given a shape to the terrible mess of our feelings that day. He had spoken up. He’d shown courage – the courage to believe that the truth is not everything. When he returned to the centre of the altar I looked at his eyes. They were fixed on Margaret. He had done it for her.

  ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal testament; the mystery of faith, which shall be shed for you, and for many, to the remission of sins.’

  The father held up the cup.

  An altar-boy in sandshoes rang the bell. He yawned and bit his lip. His face gave no notion of why he was there. He just yawned. He rang the bell. The sound sparkled down the air, as if that moment was all there was, and all there ever would be. The boy stood beside the priest. He held a bowl of Communion hosts. I joined the line for Margaret’s sake. They all took Communion in their hands now. I stepped up to the priest and put out my tongue.

  ‘Body of Christ,’ he said.

  He placed the bread on my tongue.

  ‘Amen.’

  I did what I did as a child: I made the rice-wafer soft on my tongue, and then I pressed it up to the roof of my mouth. It stuck there, as it always had; I spent the end of the mass, a boy again, straining my tongue, scraping an age at the sickly-sweet plaster.

  Father Timothy put his hand on an open book.

  ‘Instructed,’ he said, ‘by thy saving precepts, and following thy divine institution, we presume to say

  And then he looked up, paused, and he nodded.

  They said the Lord’s Prayer. Everyone said it – relieved, no doubt, that this was something they all could say. And so the volume grew in
that church. I thought of the sea outside, taking these voices away from the west coast of Scotland, making the words of this common worship heard in another place, in another time. And yet I was too much myself not to doubt it. I could feel the prayer rising from their throats – something of the life of each mourner rising with it, and tears – but falling like nothing in the sea out there, going nowhere, and washing back as vapour on the frozen rocks. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour.

  … thy kingdom come: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread …

  And by then it was almost at an end. The dark lady up in the choir folded her book. The priest and the altar-boy conferred. Out of nowhere came a gold incense cradle. It swung on the end of a chain. The boy and the man were busy with eyes and hands. Eventually the smell came to us. The acrid burn at an ended life. Quills of blue smoke rose out of the swinging ball. It was the smell of ancientness; the smell of Rome. With that expense of scent in our nostrils – the embalming scent, the swing of hypnotic gold – we dreamed that we breathed as a mighty civilisation. Father Timothy swung the ornament around Hugh’s coffin.

  Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord; Lord hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. If thou, O Lord, shalt observe iniquities, Lord, who shall endure it …?

  I asked McCluskey and four of his men to join me in carrying the coffin out. Margaret said nothing. They came to the front with sombre lips. We lifted the coffin with ease from the Sticks. Margaret walked at our backs. The woman in the choir started a hymn as we paced to the door with the last of Hugh. McCluskey’s arm came under the coffin and on to my shoulder. He steadied me there with his draughtsman’s hand. The woman’s voice went over St Joseph’s.

  Hosannas above; fish below.

  Faith of our fathers living still, we will be true to you till death. We will be true to you till death.