by Ray Connolly
James remembered. It had originally been Michael’s idea. ‘You thought of it first,’ he corrected. And then before he could help himself, he added: ‘You always thought of everything first.’
Again the conversation strangled itself. Father Michael topped up James’s glass. ‘Come on now, tell me about yourself,’ he said. ‘We have a lot of years to catch up on. Are you married or what?’
James accepted the drink gratefully. He did not wish to open old wounds. ‘I was. But it didn’t work out. You know how it is. She was a nice girl. She’s in Chicago now. It was a mistake. I live alone now.’
‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. I heard you travelled a lot. PhD in America.’
‘Eventually. I seem to have spent half my life in one college or another. I suppose it was a way of staying young Sometimes I feel like the morning DJ on WOLD.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Father Michael didn’t recognize the reference.
‘You know “feeling all of forty five going on fifteen”. Harry Chapin. Elektra, 1974. You must have heard it.’
Father Michael laughed: ‘1974. I’m afraid that’s a bit avant garde for me. I only go up to June 1962.’
Another silence followed. There was too much which they both wished to avoid, but with every additional drop of whiskey James was finding himself drawn to the confrontation. ‘Nineteen sixty-two. Ah yes, they were good times, weren’t they?’
Father Michael smiled. ‘I suppose so. In retrospect childhood always seems so much sunnier, I think. We had a good childhood.’
‘Do you ever think about the Holly Berries?’ James asked.
‘Oh yes. I don’t imagine a week has gone by since we left school when I haven’t thought about the way we were,’ said the priest. ‘Sometimes when I’m up on stage with the band like tonight I imagine it’s you and me.’
‘They’re very good,’ said James, with intended kindness.
‘Thank you. Do you still play?’
James shook his head. ‘I tried to make it on my own at first. I thought it would be easier in the States. It was fashionable to be English then. But I was only ever half an act. No, less than half. Without your tunes and your harmonies my words were nothing.’
‘You were a very good lyricist. I’m sure there must have been lots of chaps better than me.’
James shook his head, but said nothing. It just wasn’t true. There had never been anyone to replace Michael.
‘So now you say you’re a lecturer in London,’ the priest pulled the conversation back to today. ‘That sounds like a very nice life to me. Glamorous almost …’
James broke in: ‘Why did you do it?’
For a moment Father Michael did not quite follow. ‘What?’
James shook his head. ‘You didn’t have to, you know. We could have been …’
Now it was the priest’s turn. ‘What? What could we have been? Rich … Famous?’
‘We could have been great. Simon and Garfunkel. Lennon and McCartney. We could have been up there like those guys. You know that.’
Father Michael reached for the bottle. It was now almost empty. He poured the last drops into James’s glass. They had both drunk a considerable amount. He would have to buy a replacement bottle for Father Vincent the next day before the old priest found out. ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘They were just teenage pipe dreams. We were never more than a couple of kids with guitars dreaming about being the Everly Brothers.’
‘What are you saying?’ James felt two decades of frustration bubbling inside. ‘There was nobody to touch us. You know that. We were just getting going. We could have …’
‘That was twenty years ago. It was another time.’
‘It was our time. And we blew it. You blew it.’
Father Michael stared into the wood burner. ‘It wasn’t for me,’ he said at last. ‘I had to …’
Cruelly James cut in: ‘Had to what? Follow your vocation? Great! I never even knew you had a vocation. You never let it get in the way, did you?’
James’s voice had risen as the pain of the past had pierced him. Suddenly he was embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That’s unfair.’
Father Michael stared at his glass of whiskey. ‘I had a choice to make,’ he said. ‘The two paths didn’t seem to be reconcilable.’ He paused. James waited for him to carry on. ‘What was it the Jesuits used to say? Give us the child and we’ll give you the man. Well, I suppose, like the Mounties, they got their man.’
‘And did you make the right choice? Has it turned out to be everything you wanted?’ James was watching his old friend very closely now. He wanted more than anything to see a sign of weakness, a doubt or a regret.
Father Michael smiled, the contented look of the philosopher. ‘I suppose we all have to settle for less as life goes by,’ he said. ‘I’m a very lucky chap.’
James looked around the room, at the damp patch on the wall, the wood burner which was now smoking, the patch on the sofa where the stuffing was poking through, and the brightly coloured holy pictures which covered the walls. ‘Lucky?’ he said. ‘Are you really so lucky?’
‘It may not seem that way to you, but I think I have reason to be grateful for what I’ve got.’
The whiskey bottle was now empty, and the reunion had turned sour with the taste of too much alcohol. Father Michael gazed into space, wondering why it was that after all these years they could not have met without the acrimony of another time, but inside James an anger burned, a resentment which had always been with him.
‘I should have realized,’ he said. ‘You were always selfish.’
‘Selfish?’ The priest repeated the word as though hearing it for the very first time, a foreign word which he had never connected with himself.
‘I don’t think I ever saw it either,’ said James, all caution now gone. ‘I didn’t see it then, anyway. Afterwards, the more I thought about it, the more I began to understand.’
‘Selfish?’ The word hurt the priest. ‘Perhaps I was. I don’t know, I certainly never thought of myself as a selfish man.’ He tried a plea. ‘You must see, Jimmy, I had to do it. I had to make my own way. What did John Lennon say … “I just had to let it go.” ’
‘ “Double Fantasy”, 1980,’ murmured James, his reflexes overcoming his mood. He looked about him again. ‘You mean you let it go for this?’ he asked. ‘Is this what you wanted?’
Suddenly Father Michael felt himself bleakly sober. He fixed his old friend with a gaze that was born out of certainty. ‘That’s right,’ he said quietly. ‘For this. Exactly this. This is what I wanted. This is real. This is my faith.’
‘Faith?’ James was almost jeering. ‘You never had any faith. That was the trouble. All you wanted to do was hide behind the Holy Ghost.’
‘I don’t want to fall out with you, Jimmy. It was the right thing for me to do.’
‘And what about me?’ The pain of betrayal that James had been nursing over the years finally spilled out.
Father Michael stared at him. He knew they had both drunk too much and that the next day they would regret this conversation. But James wanted an answer now. ‘You must see that sometimes God doesn’t give us any choice in these things.’
‘No? Well he wouldn’t, would he,’ scoffed James.
There was nothing more that Father Michael could say. He had played his ace, his God, and had it chucked back in his face. James was right to be scornful. It was too easy to call on God whenever other reasons, too painful to admit to, failed to satisfy. God was the last refuge of the self-deluder.
‘To know, know, know Him, is to love, love, love Him …’ sang James softly, his voice heavy with irony. Father Michael said nothing. ‘ “Just to see Him smile, makes my life worthwhile …” You know I still like the way you sing that, Mike. Even after all these years I still like it. Listening to you tonight in the hall was just like the old days. I bet I can even remember my harmony line.’ And he began to sing again, this time a third higher.
Father Michael put
a hand to his forehead. The fire had now burnt low, and he was aware of the coldness of the room. James’s voice had lost none of its delicacy, none of its range. It was still high and clear even when he was singing so softly. And gradually, as though emerging from a mist, a memory swam into the priest’s mind of the last time they had sung that song together, in a marquee on a cricket field, where they had performed in the interval while a trad band had been busy at the bar. And just as quickly as he remembered the night he tried to blot it out, expel it from his mind.
James was too quick for him. ‘Was that when it was, Mike?’ he asked. ‘That night? Is that when you decided?’
‘Decided what?’ asked the priest dully.
James’s voice was now gentle and coaxing, almost teasing. ‘You know, to become a priest. The road to Damascus bit. Is that when it was? That night?’
Father Michael didn’t answer.
14
Paul awoke at his normal time, which was half past seven. For a few minutes he stared at his ceiling, considering the newspaper picture of Father Michael with him and his mother and sister which was directly above his bed, and listening to the rain as it thudded into his window pane. The temptation was to stay in bed on such an inclement Saturday morning, but he knew that if he wasn’t out of the house before his mother was properly awake then she would refuse to let him go out at all. She was off duty today and would be enjoying a long lie-in until nine o’clock. Slipping out of bed he padded to the window and drew back the curtains. Low, heavy clouds hung over the roofs of the facing houses. The rain was heavy and regular and was falling at an angle in the strong westerly wind.
Dressing quickly in his oldest clothes he tip-toed down stairs to the kitchen, where he made himself two pieces of toast, which together with two pieces of Shredded Wheat made up his breakfast. From the cupboard under the stairs he retrieved his Wellingtons and an old plastic bag left by the dustmen, which he had been saving for such a day as this. Taking the kitchen scissors he very carefully cut a semi-circle out of the closed end of the bag, and then pulling it over his head tried it on for size. Finding his arms a little constricted he took it off and cut two further semi-circles in the sides, through which to poke his arms. Again he tried it on. It made a perfect outer raincoat.
Lastly he scribbled a note for his mother on a sheet of paper kitchen towel. ‘Dear Mum, I’ve gone coining, Paul.’ Unlocking the back door he slipped from the house and trotted across the rear lawn to the garden shed, where he helped himself to a riddle and a shovel. Then, equipped for the day, he pulled out his bicycle, attached the riddle with string to the handlebars and gripping the shovel in his left hand drove carefully, one-handed, down the path and out into the road.
Coming home from the stream the previous evening had been achieved at a canter, but now burdened with his equipment, and with his body stuffed inside a tight dustbin liner the journey was difficult and from time to time he stopped to pass the shovel from one hand to the other.
It was half past eight when he began work. The stream was swollen from the overnight rainfall, and there were places in the middle where he had to tread warily in case he should step into a hole and find the water spilling over into his boots. The first site he selected was on the bank nearest the woods and about fifty yards away from the stepping stones. Of all the places it looked as though it had been the least excavated and therefore, he reasoned, the most likely place to be hiding the coins. Pushing his shovel into the water he dug out the top surface of silt and deposited it into the riddle, which he had secured on a couple of large stones so that the water would run through it while he was prospecting. He had grown used now to not examining every shovelful. Only when the riddle was as heavy as he could carry did he struggle downstream a few yards to a shallow where the water ran quickly over some large pebbles. Here he began to sluice out the silt, shaking the riddle in the stream so that the sand and mud was carried away leaving only the larger pebbles which would not fit through the fine gauze. That he did not immediately find any of the small, dull grey discs of which he had been told did not disappoint the boy. He had been coining so often before that he did not expect to find anything so early in the day. It would hardly have seemed right, he argued to himself as he tipped the pile of pebbles out on to the bank, if he had struck gold, (or more likely silver) with the very first riddle of the day. He would obviously have to dig deeper if he were to unearth two thousand years of history.
So the morning progressed, as riddle followed riddle on to the bank. At around nine thirty he began to look with expectancy back up the path through the woods, hoping every time he did that Luke would be pedalling down on his BMX to join him. But Luke did not appear, and he began to regret making such disparaging comments about his parents the day before.
All morning the rain did not stop, and before very long the plastic bin liner which he had hoped would save him from a soaking had torn wide open at the neck and under the arms, rendering it useless as a means of protection from the water, which had soaked now through his thick sweater and shirt right to his skin. But still he did not lose faith. Father Michael had assured him that a coin had been found here in recent memory and if there was one then there must surely be others.
He tried not to think about the previous evening. The arrival of James at the 706 Union had confused him. There had been something nervous and uneasy about Father Michael’s welcome of the ‘best friend he had ever had’, and when James had danced with his mother Paul had noticed that the priest’s eyes strayed back to the couple repeatedly. Paul did not like to think that the priest had ever had a friend closer than himself. He could not imagine the lifetime of emotion Father Michael had lived before he had even been born. Father Michael was his first, and only, real friend. Instinctively he had decided that he did not like James, did not want him unsettling the life he understood. His mother had already made herself look silly by dancing with him, pretending that she was a girl. He hoped now that she would not make herself sillier by seeing him again.
By one o’clock he had dug a deep underwater trench about five yards long, three feet wide and two feet deep and still there was no sign of anything more exciting than an old spring from a tractor. Because of the depth at which he was digging it was now impossible to push the shovel into the silt without getting a soaking up to his elbows and his fingers had long since turned blue and swollen from exposure. He could now almost see the sense of preferring to go bowling, and for a moment he imagined the warm, dry conditions of the alley and the hamburger and chips lunch that Luke would certainly be having. Luke’s father always bought him hamburger and chips whenever they went out together. His tummy rumbled with hunger. In his haste to leave that morning he had quite forgotten to fix himself any lunch, but he dare not go home for fear that his mother would not let him return that afternoon.
It was while he was thinking of his mother’s likely wrath that he heard her call to him. She was standing by her bicycle at the edge of the wood, holding a thermos flask and lunch box. Sheepishly he grinned at her, and laying down his tools tiptoed across the stepping stones and scrambled up the bank to her.
‘Well, how’s it going?’ she asked, ignoring his soaking, mud-caked clothes, and the remnants of the bin liner which hung from him, giving him the appearance of a badly-dressed scarecrow.
Paul smiled at her. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, though his teeth were chattering and his hands were too numb to hold the flask of soup that she offered him.
She didn’t scold or fret about him catching pneumonia. ‘That’s all right then,’ she said. And while he drank his soup and ate his sandwiches she scrambled down the bank and, wading into the water, began to fill the riddle herself. ‘Is this right, Paul?’ she shouted as she trudged downstream to sluice the riddle in the shallows.
Paul nodded. He felt happier now. It was good to have a companion.
He chose the middle of mass the next day to remind Luke of his non-appearance. Both Paul and Luke had been altar boys since the
beginning of the September term, Paul because he considered it an essential part of his education if he was going to be a priest, and Luke because his mother had heard it would stand in his favour when making application to his senior school.
As the congregation gave the responses to the Kyrie Eleison Paul fixed Luke with a vehement stare across the altar. ‘Why didn’t you come?’ he hissed.
Luke looked towards Father Michael. The priest had his eyes closed. ‘Lord have mercy on us,’ he heard him say.
‘Christ have mercy on us,’ came back the congregation.
‘It was raining. My father took me bowling. I said he might,’ Luke whispered back.
‘It was great,’ came back Paul.
‘Oh yes, how many did you find?’ sneered Luke.
‘You just wait and find out,’ replied Paul, with the kind of smug expression which implied secret success.
‘Lord have mercy on us,’ said Father Michael and opened his eyes.
‘Bollocks,’ snarled Luke, catching sight of Father Michael looking at him just a moment too late.
‘Lord have mercy on us,’ responded the congregation.
The priest beckoned to Luke to approach him. In fear the boy got up from his knees and climbed the altar steps. Paul joined his hands and began saying silent Hail Marys that he might have escaped without being seen.
‘Luke,’ he heard Father Michael whisper, ‘God’s house is no place for such language, and certainly not during the middle of mass. Come and see me before you go home.’
Luke nodded and returned to his place at the foot of the altar. Quickly Paul started another Hail Mary, not daring to look up at the priest. For a long, horrible moment there was silence, and then Father Michael began to recite the Gloria. ‘Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth,’ he intoned.
Paul breathed again. ‘Thank you God, Thank you Virgin Mary,’ he told the pictures on the stained glass window behind the altar. And he vowed he would never talk again during mass.
Five rows from the front Mary realized that something unscheduled had been going on at the altar, and the angelic expression on her son’s face told her that he was involved, but as usual he seemed to have got off lightly. Making a mental note she resolved to take it up with him when she got back from the hospital that evening.