by Anne Emery
“Charlie begins the Mass. Vince is nowhere to be seen, but that doesn’t register with Charlie. At least, not right away. When Charlie gets to the point where he is to deliver his homily, carefully prepared to inspire the faithful and the bishop, he hears a noise behind him. Sounds like a toy helicopter. It’s coming towards him. Brrrrr, this loud noise gets closer. Charlie turns his head, sees something flying in his direction, jumps and gives a little squawk. Vince has planted a big bowl of ripe fruit behind a nearby tree and has released into the air a bunch of Goliath beetles. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with them.”
“I think I can speak for us all when I say no to that,” Maura said.
“Right. I didn’t think so. This is, as far as I know, the largest beetle in the world, grows to over four inches in length. It’s so heavy, it makes that helicopter noise when it flies. And the male has a big horn on its head.”
Michael looked over at Monty and Maura. The expression on their faces showed that they shared his opinion of the giant flying insect. Brennan, who had heard the story before, didn’t look much better.
“So Vince has released a bunch of these monsters, hoping that at least one will fly in Charlie’s direction on its way to the stash of food. In fact two of them follow the desired flight path. Charlie hates bugs, is terrified of them, especially the great enormous things that populate the African tropics. He wants to continue his sermon, but he can’t concentrate. Finally he reaches up and swats at the things, and one of them falls on his foot. That has him dancing. The people are smiling about this, all except the bishop, who doesn’t crack a smile. Charlie gets through the Mass, just barely. The whole time he’s sneaking glances above his head, down to his feet, fearful the beetles will get on him and climb up his legs. He’s got a hand going like a windmill at all times to ward them off.
“Finally, Mass is done. But the ordeal isn’t over yet. Vince has another surprise for Charlie. A post-Mass meal prepared by the local church ladies. And I’m not talking crustless sandwiches and little cakes. No. Among the delicacies presented to Charlie and the bishop were Mopane worms, which are very colourful and edible caterpillars. And edible stink bugs.”
“Oh, God!” Michael croaked. He couldn’t help it.
Kitty continued, “Charlie reels at the sight of them, clutches the table. All the while, Vince is behind him, speaking in a low voice, giving a running commentary. ‘Please take a moment to savour these delightful morsels, brought in specially for the occasion from Limpopo. The Mopane worm. Spiky, yet succulent. The edible stink bug. Note the piercing mouth parts. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the animal has glands between its first and second pair of legs that produce a foul-smelling liquid. That’s for defence purposes, of course, and can safely be ignored while consuming them.’ He goes on and on. Charlie can’t take it. He’s the palest white man Africa has ever seen. He comes up with an excuse for leaving, and casts pleading looks in my direction for support. Suddenly, he has to be back in the village to administer a dose of regularly prescribed medicine to an old woman who had to stay behind. I take pity on him and excuse myself.
“Well, Charlie and I hop in one of the Jeeps and we can’t get it started. We open the bonnet and fiddle with the motor and the alternator or some such thing. Charlie is pouring sweat by this time, and I’m not much better. Of course everyone back at the Mass site can hear us trying to start the vehicle. So they come over to help, led by Vince, who kindly bears a doggy bag full of treats for me and Charlie. Charlie says to him, ‘Fuck you, Walsh, and all belonging to you!’ And the bishop hears it, and purses his lips preliminary to delivering a lecture. But Charlie finally gets the Jeep going and starts down the hill. I’m hanging off the side by my fingernails. I assure the crowd we’ll be back to pick them up, and off we go. If you could have seen the face on poor Charlie.
“So,” Kitty said, “my time abroad has mostly been a career of busted motors, large and terrifying insects, and embarrassing outbursts of inappropriate language. Don’t know that I accomplished anything in all those years, but I’ve seen a lot of the world and met thousands of lovely people, and — believe it or not — had all kinds of fun and foolishness along the way. I’m after them to put me on the road again.”
The voice of Sean, the barman, brought them back home. “Your change, Tim!”
Michael looked over and saw Tim Shanahan heading for the exit, looking ill. Sean was waving an Irish pound note at him, but Shanahan ignored it. He gave Michael and his companions an anguished glance and left the pub.
“Paid too much and didn’t even stay to finish it,” Sean muttered, as he removed Shanahan’s near-full pint glass from the bar and wiped beneath it.
“I hope you’re able for it now, Kitty. Michael is a divil for the dancing,” Brennan said when they arrived at the dance in Phibsborough.
“We’ll see who’s able for it, Burke. But if he wears me out, there’s a whole room full of women here who I’m sure would love to do a turn around the room with Michael O’Flaherty.”
“And well they should!” Michael exclaimed, he who had been known all over Saint John, New Brunswick, for his prowess on the dance floor. He still loved to kick up his feet whenever somebody rolled up the rug. No wallflower was Michael O’Flaherty. You wouldn’t know it to see him now but he had been quite the eligible bachelor in his day; he had courted more than one young lady before he entered the sem. After his ordination, well, he had fallen for a pretty face, or a kind heart, from time to time. Resisted the temptation to act, of course. And then there was the occasional church lady who had become infatuated with him. Some of the flirtation directed his way was over the top, in his view. He did nothing to encourage it, God knows. In fact, he was embarrassed for those women, if the truth be known. He said nothing, and kept them in his prayers. Now, though, the band was warming up. Michael loosened his tie. Who knows — before the night’s over, I may yank it off entirely.
The band played a set of fast modern numbers. Michael sat out the first few of those. If you couldn’t do a jive or a jitterbug, what was the point? But then they did a couple of pieces from the big band era, and Michael was on his feet. Kitty did a pretty good job of keeping up with him. Michael was having a ball, and Kitty looked as if she was enjoying it every bit as much. Monty offered a round of drinks and headed to the bar. Brennan and Maura came onto the dance floor just as the band struck up its next number. An old Strauss waltz. Very romantic! Michael took Kitty in his arms, and Brennan did the same with Maura, but not before looking over at Michael and Kitty and saying in a stage whisper, “She’ll only break your heart, Michael.”
“And she yours,” Michael retorted.
“Nah, she’s too busy breaking something else; I won’t say what they are. But the woman abuses and torments me from morning till night. And that one backs her up!” he said, pointing at Kitty.
“You fellows are no match for the pair of us,” Kitty responded. “Now give your gobs a rest and listen to the music. It’s heavenly.”
Heavenly, it was. After the Strauss, there was a break and they all rested their feet and had a drink. The band returned with a new tempo, a series of jigs and reels that had the whole crowd on its feet. Then the fiddlers stood to become first and second violin, and the opening chords transported Michael back to his childhood, when his father used to play this very song on their old Victrola. John McCormack singing “Macushla.” Not everyone appreciated the Irish tenor voice, but Michael did, and never more than tonight. It made him ache for a time that was forever lost, and ache for the present time, his time with Kitty, which would be all too fleeting. He held her close and she smiled up at him as they danced around the room.
Macushla! Macushla! Your sweet voice is calling
Calling me softly again and again.
Macushla! Macushla! I hear its dear pleading
My blue eyed Macushla, I hear it in vain.
“I don’t see Mr.
Shanahan here this afternoon,” Michael said to Frank Fanning the next day at Christy’s. Eddie Madigan and Jimmy O’Hearn were poring over the hurling results in the paper. Sean Nugent was tending bar.
“Howiyeh, Michael,” Frank said in greeting. “No, I haven’t seen Tim yet today.”
“He was here last night, but he left looking a little distressed.”
“Is that so?”
“He left without finishing his pint!”
“Must be terminal, Mike!”
“He seems like a good soul.”
“He is. A fine fellow, is Tim. He’s a professor, you know, teaches poetry and literature. A Yeats scholar is what he is. Knows everything there is to know about William Butler Yeats and his poems. And it’s a shame what they’ve done to him.”
“To whom?”
“Done to Tim. They sacked him from his job because of the drink.”
“Oh! Where was he working?”
“At the college. UCD.” University College of Dublin. “And a brilliant professor. His students loved him. So what if he missed a lecture from time to time? D’you think the students don’t miss a day or two themselves? And for the same reason?”
“I’m sorry to hear it, Frank. He’s a young man still. Lots of years left in him.”
“That’s right. He toils away part-time in a library now to meet his expenses. He’s overqualified for that sort of work, to put it mildly. Not making use of his talents at all.”
Michael hesitated for a moment, then said, “You know, Frank, to me Tim has the look of a priest. That’s something I’m quite familiar with, as you can imagine.”
“Ah, yes. He doesn’t speak of it, but he was indeed a sagart. Still is, in a way, I suppose. Isn’t that what you fellows say, ‘Once a priest, always a priest’?”
Michael nodded. “Something like that, yes.”
“But he doesn’t practise his vocation now. I don’t know why. He’d make a fine man of the cloth. But he never talks about it, and nobody wants to annoy him about it.”
“Do you suppose he’d be open to some help about his drinking?” Michael asked.
“Help?” Frank looked puzzled. “Taking the pledge, that class of a thing?”
“Not so much that as counselling, you know. I’ve done some of that in my time as a priest.”
“Well, I’m sure he’d appreciate the thought behind it, Mike. Not sure how much good it would do. I mean, does he want to give it up, you have to ask yourself.”
“Well . . .”
“My wife’s always after me to take the pledge,” Jimmy O’Hearn piped up. “Says I can move back in with her if I go off the drink. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think she means it. I think she’s happy with things just the way they are. She put the run to me when our youngest daughter moved out to get married. I pay Mrs. O’Hearn a visit once in a while and we get along great, and the rest of the time she has the place to herself. Suits her just fine.”
“Suits the both of you, I’d say,” Frank remarked. He looked at Sean Nugent, who was wiping the far end of the bar. “What would you do, Sean, if the whole crowd of us here took the pledge?”
“Sure I’d be out of work in short order, Frank, but I’d wish you all the best even so!” He smiled, folded his cleaning rag, and disappeared behind the bar.
“Now there’s a fine lad,” Frank said.
“Yes, a most personable young man, and he handles things very well here,” Michael agreed. “He told me he had an uncle who lived in the town where I come from, in Canada. Grand-uncle, I guess it was. Dead now. I’m thinking I may have met the fellow.”
“Right. Sean’s grand-uncle. Born back in the 1890s and married late in life. Let me tell you something about him. He did his part for Ireland, even though he was on the other side of the ocean. Smuggled guns over to our boys. On ships coming out of Canada. He and his brother, as soon as they got word of the Rising in 1916. He resisted the call to fight in the Great War. Refused to fight for the Brits, was the way he looked at it. Trained to become a doctor, and that kept him out of the army’s sights. So he was able to direct his efforts to assisting Ireland in her hour of need.”
Sean reappeared with a couple of bottles of John Jameson in his hands. He saw Fanning looking at him and asked if it was time for a refill.
“I wouldn’t say no, Sean. You, Michael?”
“No, but thank you anyway, Frank.”
Sean put his bottles on the shelf and began to pour Frank a pint of Guinness.
“We were just talking about you, Sean.”
“Nothing too terrible, I hope.”
“Not at all. I was telling Michael about your grand-uncle in Canada. You must be proud of him.”
“I am, Frank, but you know . . .” He leaned towards Frank as he passed him his pint. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s our family name that accounts for the way we get held up at customs and border crossings in the U.K.”
“Could be, Sean. Those fellows on British territory have long memories. Or it could be that somebody else in the family has been carrying on the tradition.”
Fanning winked at Nugent, and the young fellow gave a quick little smile. Fanning took a long draft of his pint.
Frank Fanning was obviously a man with a keen interest in history and politics. Little wonder he found Christy Burke’s such a congenial spot to drink and socialize.
But it was another regular, Tim Shanahan, who was on Michael’s mind. “I wonder what made Tim rush away last evening. I was with some friends — well, they’d be familiar to you by now — Brennan and Monty and his wife, and Sister Curran, and Sister was regaling us with some highly entertaining stories about her time in Africa. I noticed Tim was kind of listening in, and then he . . . well, he virtually fled the pub.”
“Tim spent some time in Africa himself, I know. Maybe the good sister’s stories made him homesick!”
“What was he doing in Africa?”
“I don’t know. It may have been back when he was wearing the collar, I’m not sure. He never mentioned it himself. It’s just something I heard. But don’t be worrying yourself about him, Michael. I imagine he’ll turn up as usual tomorrow.”
The next day was Wednesday, and Brennan had scheduled an extra couple of lectures at the seminary in Maynooth. Michael was having breakfast in Bewley’s Café with him before he left for the day. Monty, after taking a few minutes to admire the Harry Clarke stained-glass windows that adorned the place, joined Brennan and Michael at their table overlooking Grafton Street. They ordered a pot of tea, and all three of them ended up gorging themselves on Bewley’s rich cakes and pastries instead of anything one would consider a traditional breakfast.
They occupied themselves with their meal for a few minutes, and then Michael asked, “Now what is it you’ll be speaking about today, Brennan?”
“The trinitarian treatises of St. Thomas Aquinas. A comparison of what he writes in the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles.”
“You’re not going to scare off a crop of young recruits, are you?”
“No, this is for the lads who are a little farther along. Only fitting, wouldn’t you say? What goes around comes around. St. Thomas himself, the Angelic Doctor, was taught by an Irishman.”
“How did he manage that?” Monty asked. “Came up to Dublin for a stag weekend and stumbled into a monastery on Monday morning?”
“Em, no. The Irish were imparting their wisdom to continental Europe by the early Middle Ages, as I’m sure you know. So why should anybody be surprised that there was an Irishman on the faculty of the University of Naples when Thomas Aquinas was a student there in the thirteenth century? Petrus Hibernicus. Peter of Ireland. Peter helped form the mind of our great medieval theologian. And that mind was appreciated back here by none other than James Joyce, who said that Thomas Aquinas just might have been the most clear, the most keen m
ind the world has ever known. And it falls to me to impart some scraps of Thomas’s wisdom to the angelic baby priests of Maynooth.”
“Well, I know you’ll be clear in your presentation of a very deep and complex subject. Best of luck!”
“No worries. I’ve been speechifying on this topic for years. So what are you two planning today?”
“There’s a traditional music session at Christy’s this afternoon,” Michael replied. “Would you like to take that in, Monty?”
“Great. I’m off to meet the MacNeil for some sightseeing now, but I’ll join you at the pub later on.”
Michael was at the bar next to Frank Fanning, enjoying a piece played on the uilleann pipes, when Monty arrived. Christy’s was jammed, but a group of young people at a table near the door invited Monty to join them. That was just as well because, as much as Michael enjoyed Monty’s company, he had something else on his mind today. Seeing Brennan head off to teach Thomistic theology to a group of seminarians made Michael think of Tim Shanahan, a priest out of uniform who had been a professor of literature before losing his job, a job he must have treasured. Once again, he was absent from the pub.
When the piper took a break, Michael said, “I see Tim’s AWOL again, Frank.”
“Sure I’m asking myself what’s got into him!” Frank replied.
“True. Let’s just hope he’s all right. Another thing I’m wondering about is why Tim left the priesthood. A priest inevitably wants to know why another gave it up. Did Tim leave to get married? Was that it?”
“Now I can’t help you there, Mike, because I don’t know myself what happened. He’s not married, though. Lives alone as far as I’m aware. I can tell you this much: it can’t have been a loss of faith. The man goes to morning Mass at St. Saviour’s every day without fail. Well, I say without fail, but he missed the last couple of days. I know that because Father Ryan, that’s the Dominican father who says the Mass, was in here for a wee drop — just one, mind — and he was asking me if I’d seen Shanahan. He wasn’t at Mass today or yesterday, and that was a fact notable enough to draw the attention of Father Ryan.”