by Paul Kelly
“Good morning, Fern.” she said in a subdued voice.
“Good morning,” he answered curtly as he tucked the letter into his pocket and drank his coffee, but as he rose abruptly to leave the table, she put out her hand to stop him.
“Last night never happened, Fern,” she murmured and looked at him with eyes pleading to be understood, and the staring look he returned her told her what she wanted to know. Quietly he left the room. The sun was still shining in the clear azure sky as he made his way to the waterfall, anticipating whatever joy or sorrow the letter might contain. He threw back his head in the pure fresh air and inhaled deeply, as he approached the giant who would understand and resolve all of his problems and doubts and as he sat down beside the roaring of the waters… he took the letter from his pocket and read.
Dear Fern,
It has taken a lot of courage for me to write this letter and I hope you will understand my feelings as I write. Firstly, I hope you are well and also all at Bolarne. I intend to write to my parents after this letter, so I will convey my good wishes to them personally. Fern, my very, very good friend, I am ashamed for the way I behaved when we last met and I wish that time had never been and that it could be erased from both our minds ... but I can assure you, if I could relive those vital moments, I would make the same stupid mistake, all over again... The only thing I do not regret is that I told you of my feelings, but I am not going to embarrass you further and elaborate on that, even if I have not changed my mind in that regard. I know now, it was wrong to use Andrew as a pawn in my deceit and I have written to him this morning to tell him of my true feelings and to ask him to forgive me and that I will always hold him in very high esteem. He is such a nice caring and gentle person and I shall always have a certain love for him ... I know that, but ‘The spirit will breathe where it will,’ and there is nothing any of us can do about that. I know also that you will never feel for me as I do for you, but I have accepted that now and ask you please, always to remain my friend. I have no regrets, as I have said, for telling you that I love you, for the truth should never have regrets and I wish with all my heart, that I could begin this letter so very naturally with, ‘My very dearest darling,’ and end with ‘All my fondest love forever.’
What a fool I am, you will be saying, but if I am, please bear with me until this foolishness wears away with time, as I am told it will do, but before that fateful day, which I am not looking forward to, let me say, just once more, I do love you and ask you to understand my folly.
I hope the concert went off well and I am sure you were a great success…but not with the females, I hope. Your lovely voice would charm the birds from the trees. We all know that.
For what it’s worth, after getting that off my chest, the college life is just as it ever was here. It never changes. Each new yearly entry brings a few ‘larks’ who brighten the place up a bit, but for the most part, it is grey with studies and I am trying to inject a little enthusiasm there, even if I find it so hard to do so. I shall be home again in September. Would it be too much to ask you to reserve me a few evenings, if you’re not too busy and maybe, if you ever come to London, we might be able to take in a show or two… I am sure you would like that ... The shows I mean ... I could go on talking ... or rather writing to you forever Fern, as there is so much I want to say, but can’t. Please think of me a little and love me just a little too, since my heart beats only for one. Fern ... There is only one ...
Kindest and most loving thoughts.
Shona
P.S. I am going to dare a little kiss here ... so there.
Fern folded the letter with a heavy heart. How could he respond to so much love? Shona worried him. He was confused with his own thoughts and wondered if he did love her and was not truly aware that he did. This did happen sometimes, or so he thought.
Chapter Twenty
“HAVE YOU EVER LOVED ANYONE?” Fern’s words would not leave Peter’s mind as he drove back to the Presbytery and as his car drew up at the front entrance, the gravel crackled under the wheels.
“Have you ever loved anyone?”
The last time he had been asked that question was in his first year of philosophy and the memory was as vivid as though it had been yesterday.
He sat back in his old car to indulge his thoughts of the past.
“Have you ever been in love, Peter?”
The question came as a complete surprise to the young seminarian especially as it came from a fellow-student and Peter looked up from his book and smiled across the table, but he was sure he had not heard correctly and did not answer.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Dominic Granger strained to make his whisper audible but Peter still did not answer as his fellow student glanced at the ceiling in tried exasperation before he spoke again.
“You’re so bloody angelic looking Peter ... Don’t you ever get the bloody urge?”
Peter closed his book and looked disinterestedly at his friend as he puffed his cheeks and blew out his breath in total disregard of what he had heard.
“I’ll never get the hang of this stuff” he said and looked again at Dominic.
“Damn the philosophy. I’m asking you a man-to-man question, Peter.
Have you ever been IN LOVE?”
Dominic spoke the last two words as loudly as he dared as a few of the students looked up from their studies and warned the speakers to be quiet. One of them pointed a well-manicured finger to the caustic sign that hung above Peter’s head. It read, “SILENTIUM”. Even the instructions were in Latin and Dominic shuffled in his seat and grunted over his revision but the silence lasted only ten minutes before the bell rang for a coffee break. Peter closed his book quietly in obedience to the bell and looked at Dominic in silent protest of his behaviour. He tucked his book under his arm and walked across the study as Dominic shuffled after him, swishing a fly as it buzzed around his head.
“Blast you!” he whined and waved his hands in the air. “SShhh” … the reply came unanimously and Dominic hurried to catch up with Peter in the corridor.
“Look here, Peter, I have got to know,” he asked again, but Peter walked on , headed for the garden door, as Dominic Granger raced along to be at his side, lifting his cassock to the knees for speedier movement and disregarding the rules of self-discipline and Religious decorum.
“You are my friend, Peter. I feel I can talk to you. These other plastic saints in this bloody seminary wouldn’t know what to do if a girl gave them the ‘come on’…” Dominic said and Peter stopped abruptly and turned to his friend in his pathetic lament.
“Dominic, we really should not be talking this way. You know that, don’t you?”
“But, Peter...”
“But nothing Dominic,” Peter protested and his friend lowered his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ve been studying for the past four years, Peter and I’m still no farther advanced. I’ll never make a priest. I’m not made like the others,” he complained and Peter sighed.
“And what’s so special about you?” he asked with a pertinent look across his flushed face as he continued to upbraid his friend,” You don’t know that, Dominic. No-one ever knows what goes on in another person’s mind, what they think ...how they fantasize,” he explained and Dominic’s eyes lit up with excitement.
“Go on, Peter, tell me more.”
“You know what I’m talking about. I don’t need to elaborate.”
They walked on slowly together, to be seen observing the rule that a student should never hurry ... out onto the green lawn and ignored the instruction sign to “KEEP OFF THE GRASS”... and the old gardener blew his nose into a red checked handkerchief, before he screwed his nose up into his weather beaten face.
“Bloody students,” He remarked and blew again vigorously as the viburnum shook in the herbaceous border by
his side ... “Bugger you too” he added, glancing angrily at the offending plant and sucking his toothless gums as he tucked his hankie into his deep trouser pocket.
The cool breeze blew their cassocks gently as they walked and Dominic was irritable.
“Everywhere you look, you’re reminded of where you are,” he said; “The crucifix on the hill; the Madonna under the trees. Even the noises are HOLY… The clicking of the rosary beads … the whisper of prayers. Phew… what wouldn’t I give for a good blue joke ... something to make me laugh my rocks off …”
Peter laughed with the incredulity of his friend.
“You’ll be okay. Dominic. Everyone goes through a time like this. Its part of the training I guess,” he consoled and Dominic hitched his cassock again in a less than clerical manner as he mounted the steps leading to the rose garden.
“Yes, but it’s for life, Peter, Isn’t it?”
Peter gazed steadily ahead as he listened to his friend’s logical protest and his nose twitched in delight at the fragrance of the rosebuds.
“Yes Dominic, it’s for life, or at least, that’s what we all plan when we go forward for ordination, but surely you’ve thought all this through, long before this moment. Anyway, you have another three years before they make you a priest,” he explained as Dominic bent down and plucked a rose, but he pricked his finger as he did so and held the flower out before him.
“Not every flower is a rose, Peter,” he said sadly as Peter observed the petals in his friend’s hand and the blood that seeped slowly from his finger.
“Not every flower has a thorn either my friend,” he replied and Dominic smiled as he popped his finger into his mouth.
“I saw Jim O’Donnell making the Stations of the Cross the other day,”
Dominic went on as if to change the subject. “He looked so pious... so bloody infuriating. I don’t think he’s got one Peter, and if he has, I’m sure he doesn’t know what it’s for,” he moaned as Peter sighed and grinned.
“You’re going through a bad patch, Dom. It will pass. We all have these times... even O’Donnell, I’m sure,” he said, but Dominic ignored the placebo and screwed up his face.
“Do YOU get a hard-on fifty times a day…? Do you ever dream of getting into someone’s knickers?” he lashed out in spurts of anger and crushed the rose petals in the palm of his hand, but Peter raised a cynical eyebrow. “Be careful,” he said, “You’ll only bleed more,” and Dominic released the petals from his hand where they fell to the ground and he stared at the crushed deflated remains that lay there without recognition before him.
“I’ll never make it, Peter. I know I’ll never make it,” he concluded just as the sun slipped behind a cloud and the grass was overshadowed with gloom. The trees whispered their protest and the wind continued to blow against their cassocks. The gardener stooped in his usual ritualistic arthritic way and moaned about his ‘bloody aching back ...
Birds chirped and crickets croaked, as was their nature to do whilst Dominic gazed sadly into space and into an unknowing future.
“Somewhere out there, a little colleen waits for me,” he said and closed his eyes with an ardour and devotion that Peter had never seen before.
“Have you ever been in love, Peter Spinelli, because if you have, take heed before you pronounce your Holy Vows”...
***
Peter studied the faces of his fellow students, the following morning at Mass. He was serving, and therefore could see their faces without obstruction. There were sixty young men, all striving to separate themselves from human love in order to give themselves totally and entirely to Almighty God. How many would make it? How many would put their hands to the plough and not look back, he thought ...and he studied O’Donnell, in particular as he lisped his prayers with devotion and crossed himself most reverently with angelic discipline. Docherty, Flynn, O’Rourke and all the others; bold sentinels around the throne of God knelt at the Mass All upright, healthy, virile young men. Did they all have ‘one’, did they know what to do with it he thought, and then he blushed at his undisciplined arrogance as he turned again to look at the gathering before him.
Dominic Granger blew his nose with thunderous abandon into his hankie and startled Peter for the moment. The eyes above the handkerchief were troubled and tear-stained.
***
Three weeks later, Dominic returned to the world and two years later still, he married the colleen of his dreams and in a short time afterwards, another little Dominic graced this earth to carry on the “good fight”, all over again.
***
“Have you ever loved anyone Father?” Peter tapped lightly on the steering wheel of his car as his mind wandered back into the past, before the voice interrupted his dreams…
“Are you all right Father?” Miss Harrison, the priest’s housekeeper called from where she stood at the front door of the house, “I thought I heard your car draw up some time back.”
“Oh! I was just thinking, Miss Harrison ... just thinking.”
Chapter Twenty-One
TOM MAHON WAS PUZZLED, although pleased with Fern’s unusual request that he could stay with Rose and Mahon for a little while at least until the London and Glasgow businesses was finished.
“Please Tom. I would be grateful and I shall do everything possible to help pay my way. I have a little money from the concert and some more I have managed to save; not much, but I will try to get some more, somehow. Maybe that chap in London might do something for us ... After all… he did think my voice was promising, didn’t he?” Tom was amused and smiled at Fern’s anxiety, but he was in the dark himself as far as the London audition was concerned. He knew these things took time and he would have to be patient, but Fern was young and patience is rarely credited to the very young, he thought however he had to admit that he was becoming more than a little anxious about that venue.
Tom was not to know that a letter from London was already in the post to him. That letter requesting that Fern should come down to the studio again for a further interview with a view to appearing in a leading show in London’s west end. However there was an urgency about the boy’s appeal that worried him and Rose stood beside her husband playing with her apron strings, by tying and untying knots endlessly as in her heart she wanted Mahon to say ‘Yes’, for any or whatever reason.
“Won’t it upset Stephen and Laura, if you move in here with us, Fern?” he asked, but he knew his remark was lacking in sincerity, as he too, wanted Fern to come and live with them. Tom and Rose loved him dearly, there was Shona’s room, and it would be vacant for at least two years.
Every excuse was made and resolved at the same time and Fern waited for their answer, as he looked from Tom to Rose, but the earnest plea in his eye was the final factor “If Stephen says yes, then that’s fine by us.”
Rose threw her arms around her husband.
“You’re a wicked old teaser, Mr. Mahon, Sir ... you are that,” she said and kissed his forehead.
***
Stephen made no answer to the request that Fern suggested to him about moving out of the Manse. In his heart he knew the logic of the situation. He knew of the dangers with the boy and Laura, but he too had grown to love Fern, in his own way and in his own fashion and he knew too that he would miss the boy.
Fern had only a few possessions, the transaction was quick, and without fuss and Laura was not at home when he left the Manse for the last time.
***
Mahon had arranged a further concert when Fern had settled into his new abode and nothing more was ever said about the incident with Laura and Fern …
Besides, Tom Mahon wanted to keep things that way as there were many reasons why he wanted to have his own way of life. It was reasonable, he thought, that Laura and Stephen should have space for themselves to do the things together that they wanted to do ... He consoled
himself with the old hackneyed, if logical conclusion ... ‘That two’s company and three’s a crowd’
“You’ve done well,” said Mahon as he handed Fern the envelope.
It contained the concert fee of seventy pounds. Fern looked at the envelope and at the money in his hand and he read the enclosed remarks, before he handed the money to Tom, but Tom would have none of it.
“You must have something to spend and enjoy yourself, Fern lad. We can manage and you’re only a wee little mouth to feed,” he joked, but Fern was uneasy. He took the money and put fifty pounds into a jar in Rose’s kitchen. He knew she kept some small change there and she would eventually find it.
“The critics were kind too,” Mahon remarked casually, having received this information by separate post sent to him… “Not too bad ... Not too bad at all, considering...” he went on, but he would not show the critics’ comments to Fern.
“It’ll go to his head, and we don’t want that, do we?” he said quietly to himself, but he had formed a realistic dream now for his prodigy and had set his sights on ITALY and he was sure they could do it ... “And why not, indeed,” he concluded happily just as Rose came into the room.
“Why not what?” she enquired, raising her eyebrows in profound curiosity, “What are you hatching up now, Mahon?”
“Oh nothing much Rose ... well, I suppose it is really ... I was hoping that eventually we might be able to get Fern to Italy ...
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” he gleefully asked, but Rose lowered her eyes.
“Italy?” she enquired and there was a hesitation in her voice as she spoke. “Why would you want him to go there?” she asked as she dried her hands on her apron. “Fern doesn’t have any connections or family in Italy ... Does he...?”