by John Watt
‘One thing, yes. I had a book.’
Thomas notices Macpherson sitting upright, eyes focusing on him more intently. ‘A book. Now what book was that? A novel?’
The young man replies hesitantly. ‘It was Lives of the Saints. Butler’s Lives of the Saints. The abridged edition.’ And wonders, while answering, why he is adding that extra detail.
‘Ah.’ Macpherson breathes out, a long breath. ‘Butler’s Lives of the Saints. I don’t believe I’ve read it. This is interesting. The one thing out of your personal belongings that you salvaged and carried for, was it, four days? It must be important to you. Can you explain why?’
Thomas searches his mind for a way to begin. How to explain? A good Catholic would not need any explanation. Would certainly not ask for one.
‘It’s not easy to—–’
Macpherson cuts in sharply on the pause. ‘Try. Do your best to make me understand.’
He begins, hesitantly, searching for the words to make this intelligible. To show how this fits into the larger pattern of traditional piety. The general obligations required of everyone: Mass attendance, confession, Holy Communion, abstinence from meat on Friday. The more optional rituals: benediction, novenas, the rosary, and among the seriously devout, a range of individual practices of piety. Some profess a special attachment or devotion to one or other of the saints: pray for his or her help in difficult situations, make the corresponding saint’s day a day of special celebration, and so on.
Early in his time at the seminary he came to understand that something of this sort was expected of him: a sign of the personal piety that should mark a young man called to the service of God. What he didn’t understand was how he was to choose a private devotional practice like this. How did other people choose? How, also importantly, did they make their choices known? This was never explained.
Then for his birthday a present arrived from a pious aunt. A book: Lives of the Saints. Providential. His choice was made for him, and it was a distinctive choice. Other people might profess a personal devotion to one saint or another. His personal devotion would extend to the whole calendar of the saints. For every date, the book offered sketches of the lives of one or more saints. His practice would be to read every day about the life of one saint who is celebrated on that day, and to ponder on the lessons to be learned from the story. He would do this privately, but not so privately as to prevent his piety being noticed. It would be observed, probably without comment, but with approval. Even, perhaps, with admiration.
Thomas, eyes on the floor, struggling to explain at least some of this outside the circle within which it is already understood, feels himself to be stumbling through a swamp of embarrassment. His explanation begins to falter. He glances at the older man, finds eyes and attention fixed on him. Looks away again at the floor, past his knees that still jut awkwardly up and out in front of him.
‘To you, I suppose, this must sound rather unusual.’
‘No, no! Or rather, it doesn’t matter a jot how unusual it might sound to me. It could be useful; that is the point. I expect it to be useful. You salvaged that book and carried it with you. Did you go on with the daily readings?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. Perhaps I did. Probably. I hope so.’
‘Let’s both hope so. Perhaps for different reasons. For me it provides a convenient way to proceed. A promising way. Possibly this book can provide the switch to turn your missing memories back on.
‘We will need a series of consultations; it’s impossible to predict how many. But before we make a real start I will need a better understanding of the background from which you come to me. Especially your personal history. You were born in Australia, I imagine.’
Thomas nods. ‘Yes. Down in Albany.’
‘And your parents, were they Australian-born too?’
‘No, they were both born in Ireland. They came here from the Old Country as children. With their families.’
‘They’re both alive and well?’
‘Yes they’re still in Albany, running a grocery shop that they’ve owned for years.’
‘What about brothers and sisters—do you have any?’
‘Yes, there’re three of us boys: I’m the second. But no sisters.’
‘Now this family of yours—would you describe it as a particularly religious family?’
Thomas looks past Macpherson to the window, and hesitates before replying. He wonders what is the point of digging for all these family details? What connection could they have with his loss of memory? What is this man trying to get at? But a response is obviously expected.
‘I suppose we’re more religious than some. We always went to Mass every Sunday morning. Benediction often on a Sunday evening. Naturally we, the boys I mean, went to Catholic schools. We were all altar boys in the parish church. The parish priest would sometimes visit for a cup of tea. That sort of thing.’
Macpherson raises his eyes from the notebook in which he has been jotting.
‘That’s an interesting word to choose. Naturally. I don’t suppose that going to Catholic schools happened literally as a natural result of anything. Wasn’t it something your parents chose— to send you to Catholic schools?’
Again Thomas feels a faint unease; the question feels needlessly intrusive. What could hang on his answer?
Macpherson picks up on his hesitation. ‘Perhaps some of these details seem irrelevant to you. But please trust me, they may turn out to be quite important. And not only for the project of reclaiming your memories.’
Thomas still hesitates momentarily, wondering what other project could be in question. But he attempts a response.
‘I don’t think they would have seen it as something to think about and decide. It was the only thing to do. Catholic parents send their children to Catholic schools. That is the way they would have seen it.’
The doctor rubs his chin with one hand, looking directly at Thomas with an expression that is hard to read—perhaps as if he is considering probing that last response, but deciding against it. He goes on, ‘Your schools. Can you tell me a little about them?’
Thomas finds this an easier question to manage.
‘I started at the local convent. Then I went on to the Brothers’ school. The boys had to move to the Brothers’ by the time they turned eight.’
‘I see. So the nuns—I assume you were taught by nuns at the convent school—the nuns catered for boys and girls together, but only up to the age of seven. I wonder why it was thought that you needed to be separated so young. But we won’t go into that just now. I am particularly interested in the institution where you have been training to be a priest. The seminary. I gather that you have graduated from it quite recently. If graduation is the appropriate word. How old were you when you started there?’
‘I was fourteen. Just over fourteen. That was when I started at Saint Aloysius’s here in Perth. The last four years I was over in Sydney at Saint Finian’s.’
Thomas looks up to see the older man’s eyes fixed on him. Macpherson puts down his pen.
‘So you have been training to be a priest for—how long is it—nine years? You’re twenty-three now.’
Thomas nods agreement.
‘How did you come to start on this path? You must have been only thirteen when the plans were made. Who initiated them? That’s a very early age for any decision like that. Was it what you wanted? Was the idea yours? Was it regarded as normal for boys to begin the training so young?’
Thomas runs a couple of fingers around the inside of his clerical collar. He is set back by this sudden flood of questions, and pauses, considering which of them to attempt first.
‘The age, it’s quite normal. Quite common. Some of us start earlier, some later.’
He contemplates the other questions. Whose idea had this been? Did he himself want this, make the decision? Not exactly. Of course that was an outsider’s way of looking at it. It was not really a question of what he wanted to do: more one of what he
was called to do. What God was calling him to do. That is the Catholic view of it. He may not want to at all. He may recoil from the idea. But is God calling? How many times did the rector address the students along these lines? Dozens, scores, certainly. Possibly even hundreds. How many stories has he heard and read, about saints who struggled for months or years against a divine calling, before finally accepting the will of God?
He thinks about his last year at the Brothers’ school. He was thirteen. The word had been spread around his small world that he had all the signs of a vocation to the religious life, and would be going to the seminary the following year. He remembers the origin of this process, when he expressed some interest during one of the recurrent intensive drives at school to attract the students to a future as a priest or a brother. He remembers moments of panic over the year as he realised that the passing interest was being treated as a decision; the news was spreading and appropriate arrangements were being made. The teachers all knew, the family knew, the parish priest and his curate knew. The shape of his life was rapidly slipping out of his control, moving in a direction that he had not anticipated. How much of this should he try to explain to this man? He can imagine how it might be understood, perhaps rather misunderstood, by someone outside the circle of faith. And not without reason, he can see that. But if, as has been stressed so often, the controlling hand was the hand of God, what was he to do?
Macpherson is speaking again.
‘The seminary, or I should say the seminaries, as you have attended two of them: are they residential institutions? ‘I’m interested in understanding how much of your life they have occupied over the last nine years, and how much of your time you spent elsewhere. Living with your family, for instance.’
Thomas feels more comfortable; this seems safer territory.
‘Yes, we lived in at the seminary. At Saint Aloysius’s we went home for the usual school holidays. We could have visitors there every second Sunday afternoon, and some of us had regular visits. But my family was in Albany running the shop, which kept them busy down there. When I was in Sydney I got home once a year at Christmas. And the programmes took up most of our time; we didn’t go out from either place much at all.’
The older man jots a few words in his notebook, and then looks up again.
‘I see. So from what you tell me it seems that you haven’t lived in a family situation or had a great deal of family contact since you were, I think you said, just fourteen.’ He pauses, looking up at the ceiling for a few moments before going on. ‘I had supposed something like that would be the situation, but what you describe, it goes beyond what I had imagined.’
He pauses again, looking at the wall somewhere above Thomas’s head, then focuses back on him.
‘I want to explore another approach that might be fruitful. Tell me, Mr Riordan, do you often have dreams that you remember after you wake?’
Thomas wonders about the sudden change of direction.
‘Yes, I dream sometimes. I don’t know how often—or how often other people dream. It’s not something we talk about much, the people I know.’
‘A pity perhaps. There’s a lot to be learned from our dreams. And from thinking about them. This is what I want you to do. When you wake up from a dream, especially a vivid one, spend a few minutes going over the details. Try to fix them in your memory. Perhaps make a few notes about it. The next time we meet I will ask you to tell me about it. It may help us to unravel a few issues.
‘I have already pencilled in the same time next Friday for our second meeting. Apart from any dream you might have had, please bring the book with you, Lives of the Saints. And resist the temptation to look back at the stories for those days that have dropped out of your memory. Until next week.’ The faint smile lightens his face again. ‘I imagine that resisting temptation is a habit that you have cultivated more conscientiously than most of us.’
Thomas listens, uncertain about how to react. Is Macpherson laughing at him? Or laughing at himself? Has the consultation finished?
‘One question, Mr Riordan, before you go. It has nothing to do with our professional relationship; it’s just to satisfy my curiosity.’
The younger man, hands on the arms of the chair ready to hoist himself upright, settles down again.
‘The Latin language. I had to learn a little of it myself. Heaven knows why it was supposed to be part of a proper old-fashioned schooling. As far as I knew it hadn’t been in ordinary use for centuries. But it’s still used in the services of the Roman Catholic Church.’
Thomas agrees , registering again the word Roman. Wondering again whether it is intended to be slightly provocative. He is unsure. Perhaps not. Probably not.
‘I’ve never attended one of your regular services, but I understand that they are conducted almost entirely in that language. I have been to two or three funerals in churches of your persuasion. Perhaps more. Weddings too. Even one christening. Because of connections with relatives and friends. I was surprised to hear Latin even on more personal occasions like those. As far as I could judge most of the congregation showed no sign of understanding much of it. Would you say this was fairly typical?’
Thomas considers. Is it typical? He thinks of the congregation in Saint Brigid’s last Sunday. The shuffling, the coughing, the crying babies, the restless children, the elderly nodding off in the pews. Father Kevin rattling through the ritual at high speed. With some reluctance he agrees, wondering what congregations are like in non-Catholic churches.
Macpherson nods. ‘I was puzzled at the time about the point of conducting services in a language that most of the people didn’t understand. Can you explain this for me?’
Thomas hesitates. The reasons for the use of Latin. Children in Catholic schools are taught the reasons. He rehearses them in the back of his mind. He is not sure how they would sound to a non-Catholic. Should he try to explain his feeling about this from a priest’s point of view? A certain feeling about being initiated, step by step, into an inner group, with its own special power and knowledge, a magic of its own, framed in its own language, inaccessible even to most of the Catholic laity. Further still, beyond the comprehension of the world at large. How would this be understood by someone far outside the circle of faith? He is unsure, insecure about exposing himself so far. He answers cautiously, tentatively.
‘I suppose it’s mainly just traditional.’
The doctor listens, considers, feeling the weight of the answer. He looks dubious.
‘Traditional. I suppose that is a reason. One sort of reason.’ He pushes back his chair and stands. ‘Well then. We shall see each other at the same time next Friday. And you will bring the book. You may also have a dream to tell me about.’
3
A Pastoral Visit
Thomas turns the corner. In front of him is the last stretch of the twenty-minute walk from the bus stop to Saint Brigid’s Parish Presbytery. Is it home? Home has been a difficult idea for him. For years he has been unable to think of the family home as anything but a place to spend holidays. He has eaten, slept, studied, and prayed in two seminaries, but it has been just as difficult to think of either of those cold places as a real home. Now the presbytery has to be home of a sort, perhaps, for the time being. A trial posting as parish assistant, the archbishop had said, just until the issue of his ordination was … clarified. He had paused, hesitated, looking out of the window at the old palm trees in the garden before settling on the right word. Thomas had noticed how plump and smooth his face is. And his hands.
He hates this last stretch. An unkerbed roadway with the bitumen edges breaking up, and an uneven footpath of pale grey concrete slabs, most of them cracked and broken. Between the path and the road there is a strip of road verge, dry and sandy, with a few thin stands of dead wild oats bleached pale at the end of the long dry summer. Outside two or three of the houses the verge shows a patchy green, with token fences of small sticks and string to keep the neighbours’ cars and children and dogs off the stru
ggling grass. The defences have not worked well against the dogs.
It’s a modest street in a very modest suburb full of small houses with walls of fibro sheet or home-made cement brick. He passes a few of them, waiting for their owners to find the time and the money to finish a side sleepout or a front veranda.
Thomas measures his progress towards the parish buildings at the far end. Every twenty-two paces, with due allowance for side streets, there is or ought to be a tree. Since the corner he has counted eleven clearly alive, five clearly dead, three apparently undecided, and seven spaces where the attempts to improve the street have disappeared altogether, probably to improve some of the local backyards. It will be a long wait before the survivors do much to soften the scene; the best of them are no taller than Thomas himself.
He thinks about Macpherson’s suggestion that there might be two problems to be explored in their consultations, the task of recovering lost memories being only the more obvious one. He finds this suggestion puzzling, and a little unsettling. The doctor distinguished the archbishop’s concern from a possible issue that related more directly to Thomas himself, but he does not see what this might be.
At the front of one of the houses a young woman is holding a hose, watering a tiny square of garden. There are small plants around the edge with orange flowers that look to be a little past their prime. He searches his memory for a name, and the word calendula appears. Possibly that’s the right word. His grandfather would have known. In the centre of the bed is one rose bush, with a couple of pink buds beginning to open.
The woman turns now and then to spray the feet of a little boy, who squeals and pretends to run away, then dashes behind his mother to wait for another staged surprise. She pretends ostentatiously to have lost him, calling and looking in every direction except behind, while he stifles giggles and catches Thomas’s eye. Thomas slows his stride, then stops for a few moments to watch the game.
His attention is caught by her movements: the way the curves of her hips and thighs shape the skirt of her dress as she swings the hose around. He finds himself imagining what she might be wearing under her dress—and what she would look like under that layer. He notices her neckline, lower than he is accustomed to seeing outside the church on a Sunday morning. The curves of her breasts and the cleavage between them are plain to see. Excitement flares up like a flame.