by Anne Emery
“This is for Patrick, to reimburse him for his mercy flight to Halifax on Normie’s behalf. Make sure he gets it.”
“He doesn’t want it.”
“Make him want it. Do whatever you have to do.”
“My brother and I had a grand time together. He was due for a visit.”
So I took the cheque, scratched out the name Patrick Burke, wrote in St. Bernadette’s Church, initialled it, and slapped it down on the desk.
“Ready?”
“I will be in five minutes. I’ll get cleaned up.”
When had the fastidious priest ever been dirty? But I followed him to his own room, gave Maura a call about dinner, then sat at Brennan’s table by the window and waited while he performed his ablutions in the bathroom. When he emerged, we headed out together.
“How are things?” I asked him.
“Good.”
“Anything new?”
“Nothing.”
I would try another tack.
“What were you looking for in that documentary?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Well, then, why were you rewinding and playing parts of it again?”
“The sound wasn’t very good. I couldn’t hear it.”
This was a man who could hear when a note sung by one section of a four-part choir was off by a quarter of a tone. Well, I could hear too. And what I was hearing was that it was none of my business what he had been looking for. I knew that something about the program had struck a false note for me when I watched it, too, but I would figure it out later.
Brennan and I arrived at O’Carroll’s and made ourselves at home at the bar. I ordered a pint of Guinness and he got a double Jameson. He had downed it by the time I’d had two sips of my pint. It didn’t make him garrulous, by any means. He ordered a second drink and stared into it, as if he had forgotten there was anyone else around.
“Is everything all right with you, Brennan?”
“Sure, yes, I’m grand.”
He made an obvious effort to rally. If there was something on his mind, he put it aside, and told me a long, funny story about the Gaelic football team he played on as a young boy in Ireland, and the mishaps they endured on their trip to play a team in Mayo-God-Help-Us. Maura joined us half an hour later.
“You look as if you were born and raised, schooled and ordained, right there on that bar stool, Burke,” said Maura. “You, too, Collins.”
“Ah, just like the oul country itself, so it is,” Burke replied in a stagy brogue.
“Well, if you can detach yourself from it without doing internal damage, I’d prefer to have dinner at a table.”
“No worries, no damage.”
So we got ourselves settled at a table, ordered drinks, and procured menus. Conversation resumed.
“Speaking of the old country, now, Mr. Collins.” Brennan raised his glass to his lips, and his left eyebrow to me. “Your father’s people were from Cork, you’ve told me, and came over here around the turn of the century.” He took a sip of his whiskey. “Your mother’s family, on the other hand, was long established in Halifax by that time.”
“Right. They’d been here almost since the city was founded in 1749. Originally from England. Catholics, though, Brennan, as you know.”
“Bless them and save them,” he said with mock piety.
“The Earls of Halifax were Montagues, you know, back in the day,” Maura put in, affecting a snooty British accent. She pointed at me. “He’s schizo, Brennan. Lord Halifax by day, Irish rabble-rouser by night.”
“An Irish rabble-rouser is exactly what he should be if my speculations are correct. His crowd was still in County Cork when Michael Collins was toddling around in his nappies. No doubt if he made even the most elementary inquiries, he’d uncover a connection with that illustrious branch of the family. Have you made any efforts in that regard, Montague Michael Collins?”
“Well, no, I haven’t.”
“No sense of history. Did your father never tell you tales of your Irish ancestors when you were a boy?”
“Oh, he did, but you know what kids are like. They don’t listen. Then they grow up and want to know, and they find out they’ve left it too late. I hear there’s going to be an Irish history lecture at St. Bernadette’s Choir School, Brennan.”
“There is, and you’ll be expected to attend. A command performance, let us say.”
“I wouldn’t miss it, Father.”
“There’s hope for you yet, then.”
“Monty’s father helped make history, Brennan,” Maura said. “Did you know that? He did very secret intelligence work, code-breaking, during the war.”
“Right. Didn’t someone tell me he was at Bletchley Park in England?”
“Yep,” I said, “my dad had left Halifax to do his Ph.D. in math at Cambridge University. Bletchley Park recruited him from Cambridge and got him working on the codes. They couldn’t have broken the German ciphers without him, I’m convinced. My mother boarded a ship here and sailed over to be with him. Brave soul, to sail the Atlantic during the war years.”
“Montague didn’t make his appearance till they moved back here, though, a couple of years later,” Maura said.
“Hey, I could wait! Putting Hitler away was more important than getting me started.”
“I’ve never heard you so humble, Collins,” she said. “But what about you, Brennan? You were a wartime baby. What year did you come into the world,” Maura asked him, “bringing joy and laughter to those around you?”
“The people walked in darkness until 1940. Then they saw a great light.”
“Yeah, it was called the Blitz.”
“No blitzkrieg where I came from, in Dublin.”
“That’s right. You guys were neutral during the war.”
“During the emergency. That’s what we called it in Ireland.”
“Do you remember anything from those times?” she asked him. “Did young boys play at fighting Hitler, or did you sit around being quiet and doing nothing and pretending you were Swiss?”
“I know you’re takin’ the piss out of me, MacNeil, but I won’t reply in kind. I do recall listening to news on the wireless about the war. It was a long time ago so I couldn’t tell you exactly what the broadcasts said, but . . .”
I tuned them out. I went through the motions as we ate our meal and gabbed, but I was distracted all the while. Because I had just caught on to something that was so obvious I had simply overlooked it before.
Chapter 19
(Monty)
“Michael,” I said into the phone when I got home from O’Carroll’s and dialled the number of the rectory. “I apologize for the very short notice here. But you’ll recall our conversation about the orphanage in Saint John.”
“Of course I do.”
“It’s important that I go there and speak to the people in charge.”
“Really! The sisters, you mean.”
“Yes. And you mentioned a trip home if ever I went. But, under the circumstances, I don’t want to wait. I’m sorry about the rush.”
“No worries. When are you leaving?”
“I’d like to go first thing in the morning. I don’t know what Saturdays are like for you. But I can’t go during the week.”
“I’ll palm my Saturday Mass off on Brennan — God forgive me for putting it like that; I’m only joking — and I’ll be ready whenever you are.”
“Great, Mike. See you at eight?”
“Eight it is.”
So we took off for Saint John, New Brunswick, first thing in the morning. Michael kept me entertained during the four-and-a-half-hour drive with stories of his childhood in the old port city, where the orange and the green played out their ancient roles over and over again in the New World. We stopped for a quick bite to eat when we arrived, then heade
d along Waterloo Street past the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and around the corner to Cliff Street.
St. Vincent’s Convent, as it was now called, was a three-storey red-brick building, with dormers giving it a partial fourth storey. Crosses topped two of the dormers, and the building had rows of Gothic windows. A stone set high up in the facade displayed the words: “St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum, A.D. 1865.”
Michael accompanied me inside and introduced me to Sister Theodora. She looked to be in her early seventies, with short steel-grey hair and glasses. She was dressed in a dark navy skirt and white blouse, with a large silver crucifix on a chain around her neck. I explained the purpose of our visit.
“I am eighty years old,” she said, “and I will never forget my first sight of Burton Delaney. Burton McGrath, he was then. We always called him Beau. One of our sisters — Soeur Marie-France — said ‘Qu’il est beau!’ when she first saw him. And it stuck. It would have been when? Forty-five years ago? No, more than that. We were called to see about an abandoned child in a flat on Paddock Street. The boy’s father was a bitter and ferocious man. He had been given a dishonourable discharge from the army early in the war, and never got over it. He and his cronies used to sit around the house and get drunk and rant about the war, and berate little Beau, and humiliate him and beat him. At other times, the child was neglected completely. The mother was cowed into submission. Oh, it was a dreadful situation.
“He was just a wee little boy. Four years old, I think he was. The morning we arrived, he was standing inside the doorway, skinny and filthy, his shorts soiled from, well, lack of proper hygiene. There were tear tracks in the grime of his face. He was holding a fireplace poker in his hands, ready to defend himself, it seemed. I took a step towards him, and he pointed it at me as if it were a gun or a bayonet. I said: ‘You could hurt somebody. You don’t want to do that.’ ‘I do! I’m going to!’ he cried out, and he raised it up and started to bring it down on my head. But I got the poker out of his hands. He began to scream, and scream, and scream. Rage, fear, God only knows what else. I knelt down and took him in my arms. He went absolutely rigid.
“It took a long, long time to bring him around, to get him to the point where he could accept love and affection. I remember sitting in the parlour after we had fed the children. It was around Christmas-time and someone had brought us a box of Florida oranges. The children went crazy; you’d think they’d each been given a brand new bicycle. But Beau refused his. Wouldn’t even look at it. Anyway, I was sitting by myself, peeling my orange, and he wandered in. I ate a section of the orange and offered him one. He hesitated, then took it. Tasted it. His eyes grew wide, and he gave me a great big smile. I leaned over and hugged him. He hugged me back. He began to sob and soon he was positively howling. With grief and desolation. Only now was he getting the love and attention he should have had all his life. He clung to me and wouldn’t let go. He was like that for the next little while. Always around, holding one or another of us by the hand, or by the leg. He suffered a setback when we had a little baby die here. Beau came into the room when Father McDevitt was giving the baby extreme unction. We were standing around the crib, me and some of the other sisters, while he gave the last rites.”
Was this what Normie had seen? People in black robes standing around a dying baby? And another child in the room, crying.
“Sister, what goes on during the last rites? What does the priest do?” I turned to Monsignor O’Flaherty. He gestured towards Sister Theodora to reply.
“This time, when the baby died — his name was Timmy — the ritual of extreme unction was burned into my mind because we all loved that poor little baby. The priest anointed his eyes, his ears, mouth, hands, and feet, and then we said goodbye and pulled his blanket up over his face.”
The man touching the baby under his blanket in Normie’s vision. Not abuse, but the last rites of death.
“Beau wandered in and saw this, and began crying and screaming. It took a long time for him to come around again. But eventually he did.
“He began to be a regular little helper about the place. Couldn’t do enough for us. He was adopted shortly after that, by the Delaneys. A match made in heaven. How they doted on him! He blossomed under their care. He was a tiny, undersized little boy when he came to us. You wouldn’t know it, he’s such a big man now. Children don’t thrive when they’re neglected, when they’re not given love and affection. But we loved him when he came here! Then of course he was all set once he went with the Delaneys. And he grew to the size his genetic makeup intended for him! There are studies showing the same phenomenon over and over again. Anyway, Beau never gave the Delaneys a moment’s grief, at least not that I ever heard. They moved to Halifax just before he started school. Well, you know the rest. He buckled right down, became an A student, the perfect son. He went on to university and law school. Once in a while, his courtroom exploits make the news up here, and we love to read about him, especially when he’s defending the less fortunate, those who never get a break. It’s not surprising that Beau would have an affinity for the underdog. So there you have it. A life well lived, after a disastrous beginning.”
Chapter 20
(Monty)
“You and I are going to talk about Robby Tompkins,” I told Beau on Monday when I had seated myself in his luxurious office overlooking Halifax Harbour. I could see him making a conscious effort not to react, but his eyes went to the door. Yes, it was firmly closed. He turned and gazed out the window at the magnificent view of the water. Then he took a deep breath and faced me.
“The whole time I was representing Adam Gower, I was barely able to stomach it. I couldn’t look the Hubley or Tompkins families in the eye. Gower just didn’t give a damn. Anything would have been better than that. ‘The other guy made me do it.’ ‘I didn’t mean to aim at her head.’ ‘I was drunk.’ Anything but ‘yeah, I did it, so what are you going to do for me?’ All those months of that insufferable little shit, leading up to the trial. Then sitting in court hearing about what became of the victims. Scott Hubley, of course, lost his life at the age of seventeen. Cathy Tompkins was a top student in high school. Her dream was to be a nurse at the IWK Children’s Hospital. But she knew she’d have to earn some money before going for her nursing degree, because the family couldn’t afford it. So she was working every hour she could while attending school. After the shooting, she was in a coma for several days. Suffered paralysis and irreversible brain damage. Confined to a wheelchair. Pretty face twisted, like that of an old woman with a stroke. Her moods would swing from weeping depression to screaming rage. Life over. And everybody in the community hated my guts because I was helping the guy who did this to her. Well, you know what that’s like. It never used to bother me. I was on a crusade, I was the champion of the despised, I defended people other decent human beings wouldn’t be in the same room with. But it got to me this time. Anyway, as you know, I got him off. He went out west to look for work. And I couldn’t show my face in Blockhouse, Lunenburg County, again.
“Then, in November of the following year, I got a call from Gower. He’d had enough of working construction in Fort McMurray; he was coming home. And he’d got himself into some kind of scrape out there in the oil patch, so he left in a hurry. Could I help him again? He was here in Halifax, calling from a pay phone at the bus station on Almon Street. I didn’t want him in the office, didn’t want word to get out that he was back in the province. There were rumours that he might be returning, but that was nothing new; there had been rumours before. I didn’t know what to do about him but I said I’d pick him up, maybe drop him off at a youth hostel or something. I left the office and didn’t mention Gower’s name to anyone, just said I had to go out. So I pulled up outside the bus station and waited. He got into the car, said he wanted to go back to Blockhouse. I reminded him there were death threats against him — and against me, for that matter — and I pleaded with him not to go there. Not that I really
cared whether somebody shot him in the head. What I couldn’t stand was the thought of how painful it would be for Cathy and her family, and the family of Scott Hubley. But I started driving out of town anyway. I knew Gower had an aunt in Hebbville, farther out Highway 103, so maybe he could go there till he came to his senses. He just babbled on, as if he was a normal guy who hadn’t destroyed all these people’s lives.
“We were driving along and I was thinking how much I hated this guy. We were out on the 103, coming into Lunenburg County, and do you know what he said to me? ‘Wait till word gets around that Adam’s back in town. I’ll be front-page news!’ He was sitting there laughing about it! I turned and gave him a look of disgust and he said: ‘Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!’ I could barely speak but I managed to ask him: ‘What the hell are you going to say to Cathy Tompkins if you see her in her wheelchair?’ This is what he said: ‘I don’t know. Maybe, like, sucks to be you, babe!’ And he pulled the left side of his face down. Making fun of Cathy’s facial deformity!”
As I listened to Beau telling the story of what happened back in 1980, I realized this was not the story of Robby Tompkins taking revenge on the man who had destroyed his little sister’s life. As I struggled to grasp what I was hearing, Beau continued:
“I fucking lost it, Monty. I yanked the steering wheel to the right and screeched to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. Then I looked ahead and saw a turnoff to a dirt road, an old logging road or something. I gunned it and made a turn into that road. I nearly flipped the car over. I got it under control and parked. Adam started to freak out. I told him to get the fuck out of the car, and he fumbled with the door handle. He practically fell out onto the ground. I started to get out; then I thought of something. I grabbed a pair of old leather gloves from the glove compartment, pulled them on, got out, went around to the other side, and grabbed him. He was nearly shitting himself. With good reason. I shoved him in behind some trees. I went at him in a rage. I beat the crap out of him, and when he was down I kicked him, and kicked him, and kicked him. In the face, in the head, everywhere. I don’t think there was a bone in his body that wasn’t broken. I left him there and went back to the car.”