Crooked Vows

by John Watt

  Father Kevin looks at the younger man with a puzzled expression.

  ‘What do you mean—what do I believe about what?’ There is a growing slur in his voice. Comprehension comes little by little. ‘You’re asking me whether I believe all that stuff. Is that what you mean? Believe in the body and blood of Christ. Original sin. The Virgin Mary. Purgatory, heaven, hell, all the rest. Is that it?’

  He breathes out, a long breath.

  ‘Ah. Now that’s something else. Something else entirely.’

  The older man stares silently at the empty Vegemite glass on the red Laminex table for a minute or two.

  ‘You want to know something? I’ve never talked to anyone about this in my life. My whole life. Isn’t that peculiar. Never talked about what I believe, what I think—just me, myself.

  ‘You know what it’s like. It must have been much the same for you, I suppose. When you’re in short pants they send you to the convent. And the Sisters aren’t interested in what you believe; they teach you what you have to believe. And you’d better get the answers right when they run a test. So you learn that it’s a sin to steal, or miss Mass on Sunday, or eat meat on Friday. Then it’s on to the Brothers, and the stuff gets more complicated. Like how much money would you have to steal for it to be a mortal sin instead of a venial sin. Or how far away from the church you’d have to be, to be able to miss Mass on Sunday without committing any sin at all. And it’s even more important for your health and safety to get your answers right. Then it’s on to the seminary. And eventually you get through to the real technical questions. Like would it be a sin to eat a slice of jam tart on a Friday if there’s lard in the pastry, with lard being a meat product? A bit meaty, anyway. Or what happens to babies who die without being baptised? No, that’s an easy one. But what would happen if the baby died when the baptism was only half done? Or the priest had a heart attack halfway through and then the baby died?

  ‘Now and then people come to me to ask what they’re supposed to believe about stuff like that. You know: what the Church teaches about it. And if I can remember the answer I tell them. If I can’t remember I can always look it up in a book.

  ‘Like a woman who came along a few weeks ago. Her husband was the one who jumped off the north wharf down at Fremantle after midnight, with the tide running out. You’d remember the story; it was all over the papers for a few days. Seems he’d lost quite a lot on the horses. She wanted to know whether everyone who committed suicide went to hell, on account of suicide being a mortal sin. Well, I didn’t have to look that one up. Explained to her that the only way out was by being insane at the time. But you probably remember that he’d taken off all his clothes before he jumped. Maybe trying to save a few shillings, with his wife being left fairly short. Clothes that someone had drowned in wouldn’t be worth a lot, would they? And at the last minute he’d tied his ankles together with a few feet of baler twine in case he tried to swim out in a moment of weakness.

  ‘I told her it looked very much as if he knew what he was doing. So the signs weren’t promising. She got quite upset for some reason. Started howling. It wasn’t my fault. I don’t make the rules; I just tell people what they are.

  ‘I think I’ve lost my track a bit. What were you asking me? Weren’t you wanting to know what I believe—just me? That’s a different matter, isn’t it?

  ‘Well, what is it that I’m supposed to believe? There’s a hell of a lot, isn’t there. Even in the basic list. How does it finish? I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. That’s it, isn’t it? Sounds better in Latin.’

  Thomas thinks of the creed. For him too it comes more easily in Latin. He listens inside his head to a Gregorian musical setting of the first few lines. Austere music, written in a notation that, like the Latin language, has not been used for centuries outside the Catholic liturgy. He still feels, in spite of the shabby room and the even shabbier situation and the miserable little man sitting opposite, a trace of the sense of being part of this ancient and enclosed tradition, something that lifts him beyond the comprehension of people in the wider world.

  Father Kevin stands rather shakily, walks unsteadily to the kitchen sink and props himself up with his hands on the draining board. He speaks, staring out through the window towards the side fence.

  ‘The seminary. You went to Saint Aloysius’ I suppose. And then on to Sydney. How old were you at the start?’

  Thomas is glad to lose sight of the narrow face and the tear-tracks down the skinny cheeks.

  ‘Me? I was fourteen.’ An image forms in his memory, and moves into sharp focus. An image of his arrival at the seminary. He is immature for a fourteen-year-old, conscious at the time of his lack of confidence and ease in company. He walks through an archway into a courtyard enclosed by buildings. He sees unfamiliar people, some boys of about his age, several who look even younger, others who look like men in their twenties or thirties; all dressed in cassocks and clerical collars, and behaving as if they find this quite normal and natural. There is a sensation of panic in his chest as he looks around at the enclosing buildings and the clerical garb, wondering how he came to be in this situation. And how he could get out of it. But he can’t see a way out.

  Father Kevin picks up his story again.

  ‘Fourteen, for you. With me it was twelve, back in the Old Country. A few other boys the same age, some thirteen, fourteen. As well as us kids there was a batch of grown-up men. They’d probably decided at around twenty-five or thirty that they didn’t fit into the ordinary world out there. For one reason or another. Thought they’d try something different.

  ‘So there we were, pitched in together, kids and men. Day and night. Cassocks and clerical collars. Mass, confession, retreats, Gregorian chants. Dormitories, showers. Home for the holidays with the parish priest keeping an eye on you to make sure that your religious vocation was still … what’s the word? Can’t think of it. You probably know what I mean. Intact: that’s the word. Untouched. What a laugh. I certainly wasn’t untouched.

  ‘One time I remember as if it was last week. I’m home for the holidays. The last holiday before ordination. And I’m afraid. I’m standing in front of the house, wondering whether to go through with it. No, not that: wondering whether to get out of it. No, that’s not it either: wondering how to get out of it. And I can’t see any way.

  ‘Well, you know what it’s like; you’re in it yourself. Simple in theory to leave. All you have to do is tell everyone you’re getting out, and stick to it. In practice about as simple as standing up in front of everyone at what was supposed to be your wedding, and telling them all that you’ve changed your mind. Wouldn’t go over well. It’d take real guts. More than I had.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m standing outside the house. And there’re a few people about my age going down the street. I know they’re going to a dance, so it must be Saturday night. I know some of them from childhood. And I’m thinking, that’s the ordinary world. That’s the world they live in, and I know hardly anything about that world. Been out of it for eleven years. How would I manage? A bit like being dumped in a country where you don’t speak the language and they live on raw fish.

  ‘So I decide I might as well go through with it then—ordination I mean. At least it’s a job, guaranteed. A place. Jobs weren’t so easy to find in them days.’

  He turns away from the grimy window, walks unsteadily back to the table, slumps in his chair. The slur is becoming much more obvious in his voice.

  ‘Lost my track again, have I? What were we talking about? That’s it—you were asking whether I believe it all.’

  There is a long pause. Thomas is beginning to wonder whether the priest has drifted into another foggy detour, but he gropes his way back to the point.

  ‘Never really think about it. Who does? I go through the motions, say the words. They’re all in the book; I’ve got lots of them
by heart anyway. Do what’s expected. Say what every-body is waiting to hear. Not much call for that sort of thinking in this job. It’s already done for us by somebody else.

  ‘What was it again that I was supposed to believe? Those end bits for instance . I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. That’s it.’

  For a time he is silent, staring down at the table top. Then he looks up into Thomas’s face, with the faintest trace of the familiar lop-sided grin.

  ‘Well, not very likely, is it? Seriously. We don’t look for the resurrection of dead sheep, do we? Be a bit awkward when we’ve eaten them, wouldn’t it? Nice to imagine that it’s different for us, of course. But why would it be? And the forgiveness of sins. Nice to believe that, too. But who’s going to forgive some sins? Real sins?

  ‘What about that stuff that comes earlier? Crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death, was buried. Third day, rose again, ascended into heaven, right hand of the Father, coming again in glory, and so on. No, I don’t think so. Except for the crucified bit. People get crucified all the time, one way or another. Dying too. Everyone does it. Nobody seems to come back. Can’t believe any of it, really, apart from one or two bits like that. Not when I look hard at it. Funny, isn’t it, me never taking a hard look till now.’

  Father Kevin puts both hands to his head, looking down, turning his bald pate towards his listener.

  ‘My head’s spinning. The house. Feels like it’s going round and round. Got to lie down.’ He struggles to his feet and stumbles on a wavering course towards his bedroom.

  Thomas, still sitting at the table, stares out through the grimy glass of the kitchen window. He has a sense of looking for something. But what? He’s not sure. Almost anything. Anything different from the deluge of the last few weeks. There’s the boundary fence of the church property. Overhanging from the other side is a tall shrub with pink flowers—scores of them. He wonders why he hasn’t focused on it before. It’s vaguely familiar. A hibiscus, he thinks. That’s it: apple blossom hibiscus. He remembers how proud his grandfather was of his, in a corner of the yard down near the back fence. At the old house in the old country town, with the summer-house and the monkey-puzzle tree and the snapdragons at the side, and fruit trees at the back, and behind the fruit trees, the apple blossom hibiscus, always, for him, in bloom.

  He stands, moves over to the window, looks past the blossom-laden shrub and over the dividing fence to the backyard of the house next door. The house has a back veranda where a man and a woman are sitting side by side in cane chairs. From their relaxed postures they seem to Thomas to be at ease with each other. There is a fair amount of grey in the hair of both. They are talking about something, but without any appearance of urgency. Their conversation seems to be punctuated from time to time by short periods of silence during one of which Thomas sees the man reach out to touch the woman’s arm, and the woman place her hand on his. It is another world.

  16

  After the Deluge

  Thomas sits on the hard, slatted bench under the roof overhang of one of the shelter sheds in the school playground. He’s never looked at it before, never noticed what a mean little shed it is, roofed and walled in second-hand material. There’s never enough money around a convent school in a parish like this.

  One of the boards in the wall has slipped, leaving a gap through which he sees another roof overhang and another bench backing onto his own, no doubt equally hard and uncomfortable.

  A distant memory suddenly leaps up: an image that he hasn’t thought about for years. He is probably ten years old and is peering through a small gap in another shoddy wall separating the boys’ and girls’ changing sheds at one of the old swimming spots used by the local kids.

  He is watching a girl on the other side who looks to be a couple of years older than him. She is slipping the straps of her bathers off her shoulders, pulling them down, stepping out of them neatly, casually, innocently, without any sense that she might be seen. He watches, tense, trying to breathe silently, waiting for her to turn towards him and reveal—something. He has no idea of what to expect.

  But she doesn’t turn. She towels the sand off her legs and reaches for her clothes hanging from a peg on the far wall. There are voices outside, coming nearer. He reaches for his own shorts, fumbling to get them on quickly before anyone arrives, looks, sees and guesses.

  Thomas turns away from the gap in the school sheltershed wall, shaking his head to dislodge the image of the straps slipping off the shoulders, the legs stepping neatly out of the bathers, the amazing smoothness of the buttocks and thighs.

  As if someone has pressed a switch, a sudden sharply clear series of thoughts lights up in his mind. He has been savouring memories of a naked young girl he watched surreptitiously many years ago. Now he sees himself as if from above, peering secretively with mounting excitement through the sparse stems and leaves of the grass at Jane, as she removes one garment after another. Why does he do these things at twenty-three years of age? It’s shameful. How far removed is this from Father Kevin’s repulsive behaviour yesterday afternoon? A long way distant, but obviously located in the same direction. The sudden realisation appals him, sets up a nauseous sensation in his belly that rises into his throat.

  With an effort Thomas comes back to the present moment, trying to focus on something solid, here and now. Under his feet is the bitumen surface of the cracked and pot-holed school yard. Two or three old stunted pepper trees stand out of the grim black surface, with gnarled trunks and elegant ferny foliage, the school’s only gesture towards the world of green, growing things. In front of him is the church of grey concrete blocks and grey asbestos roofing. Beyond the shelter shed are the convent classrooms, built in the same drab grey.

  From the end classroom comes the sound of singing: young children’s thin voices and uncertain pitch: Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clement’s, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin’s. When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey? When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.

  The song is suddenly interrupted by a sharp voice with an Irish edge: Sister Agatha.

  ‘Brigid Ryan, you’re not singing. Stop daydreaming, girl. Pay attention and join in or you’ll feel my stick around your legs. Now. Back to the beginning, and I want to hear everyone this time!’

  This time the piping voices get through to the end: Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

  Now Sister Agatha again.

  ‘Those churches, children. Churches in London. They were all ours once, Catholic churches, every one. The Protestants got them at the time of Henry the Eighth. And they’ve still got them. But with the help of God and his holy mother they will be ours again one day, when the English return to the true faith.’ She sniffs loudly, then adds, ‘If that’s possible.’

  Thomas grins momentarily, listening to the sour note in her voice. She doesn’t sound optimistic about the chances of converting the English. Not very enthusiastic about the project either. He remembers a passing comment of Macpherson’s about the Irish: some people seem to need their enemies even more than they need their friends.

  Small children begin straggling out of the school building and spreading in pairs around the yard, under the pepper trees, to the other shelter sheds, to the church steps. Two girls look in at his side of the shed and move on, giggling.

  They carry reading books, and the task appears to involve taking turns in hearing each other read. Giggling seems to play a fairly large part in the procedure, too, and Thomas can’t help beginning to feel more cheerful.

  The most persistent giggling is coming from the other side of the shed. Heartened by the sound of merriment, he slides along the hard bench to look through the strategic gap and discover what is generating it, without interrupting whatever the game is. The pair on the other side are, unusually, a boy and a girl. They are perched on
the edge of the hard bench facing each other with no reading books in sight. The skin of their faces, only an arm’s length away, has a clean innocent glow to it, in spite of what looks like Vegemite around the boy’s mouth. Thomas is struck by their vulnerability. The thought brings up in his mind the shocking image of Father Kevin and his victim, equally vulnerable, from the previous afternoon. With the image comes the same upwelling of repugnance combined with a surge of anger. He forces his attention back to what he is seeing and hearing.

  The girl is trying to teach the boy a song. It’s one of those repetitive nonsense songs with actions to match the words. He is struggling to follow her lead, his finger going to the wrong part of his body a fair amount of the time, setting off a fresh burst of giggles. With my hand on my heart, what have I here? This is my nosewiper, my teacher dear. Nosewiper, eyesighter, brainbox and icky dicky dicky doo, (here they put their thumbs in their ears and flap their fingers), that’s what they taught me when I went to school.

  The song, and the children’s hands, work their way down past their chatterboxes, chinwaggers and rubbernecks towards their breadbaskets with many repetitions, numerous mistakes, and much giggling.

  In the background from the end schoolroom come snatches of the other song, with an Irish voice in counterpoint. Sister Agatha seems determined to imprint on the children’s memories the names of those purloined London churches. Oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clement’s, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin’s.

  A storm of giggling brings Thomas back to the gap. The pair on the other side have hit on the idea of reversing the song, touching each other in the appropriate places instead of themselves. This is your chinwagger, my teacher dear. Chinwagger, chatterbox and nosewiper, eyesighter, brainbox and icky dicky dicky doo. That’s what they taught me when I went to school.