by Tom Keneally
‘Bless me, Father!’ he called jovially. An old joke, uttered by a man secure at his hearth.
‘Bless you, my son.’
Docherty helped Maureen carry cups and plates and cutlery to the sundeck. It was a bright, still winter’s morning. It somehow made him melancholy by its uncomplicated dazzle. It was the coming departure that gave him the blues. So we will get old, he thought, turning our bodies towards the sun, while the orbiting earth grinds us to dust with its rotations.
The question of Leo hung over the table, but first the three of them ate their yoghurt and fruit salad, their scrambled eggs, and got at least one cup of coffee aboard.
Damian said, ‘We need you back so the right rebellious things are said at our funerals.’
‘My mother wants me to do hers, too. The thing is, who will say the right rebellious things at my funeral?’
The habit of life, the chemicals that promoted a sense of immortality, made even a priest think that he would somehow be around to approve of the tone of his own postmortem obsequies.
In the eucalyptus below the sundeck magpies made their gargling morning cry and a kookaburra landed at the end of the veranda, adopting that air of scepticism Docherty remembered in the kookaburras of his childhood. They deigned to visit the habitations of man and woman, but they seemed to know that at best they would be offered some sort of meat substitute, not the small, live, fatty reptiles that were their desire.
Docherty relayed a conversation he’d had the day before with the dean of social sciences at Sydney University, who had made promising notes about employing him as an adjunct.
Damian said, ‘When you get back, I’m not sure I want to become the husband in one of those old Catholic couples who travels round with the priest friend. A ménage à trois of the Holy Spirit. I used to think they looked pretty pallid, like three tallow candles.’
‘When I come back, I’ll get a suntan, then,’ said Docherty.
Maureen put aside her scrambled eggs. ‘What about Leo?’ she asked softly.
‘Maureen, I had to send a statutory declaration to the ombudsman. It was drawn up by a lawyer. But it doesn’t mean —’
‘It doesn’t mean he’s guilty,’ she murmured, completing the sentence for him. ‘Of course he’s guilty. That letter reeks of authenticity. I haven’t been able to think my way past it.’
‘Well, I have to tell you that someone’s stolen my copy. I dropped it by accident in Harris Street, and then it was gone. I’m sorry. I don’t know why it was taken. It could be in a garbage bin somewhere.’
He gathered himself and continued. ‘There are other accusations against Leo. I’m sorry … It’s all so coincidental, the cardinal thinks it a plot.’
‘Other accusations?’ asked Maureen, frowning. ‘Are you actually investigating my brother?’
No, he said emphatically. He watched her mistrust vanish but could see she nonetheless required an explanation. So he told them the tale of the cab driver, not vouchsafing her name, and of his meeting with her, and her specific accusations. Maureen looked ill; Damian moved to her side and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘You are not him,’ he clumsily sought to assure her. ‘His crimes aren’t yours.’
The recounting had exhausted Docherty. And there was no apologising for it. Maureen could not now keep abhorrence for her brother out of her eyes.
‘Look,’ Docherty murmured, ‘why don’t you talk to Leo?’
She looked at the floor. ‘I did. Angry denials, that’s all. Meanwhile, this Devitt case is everything to him. It’s almost as if he thinks the Church is unsustainable unless it quashes Devitt.’
Docherty drank tepid coffee. It made him feel nauseated. He said, ‘Leo has the cardinal’s full support. I don’t know whether that consoles you, Maureen, or not.’
Maureen roared, ‘Of course it doesn’t console me. Why should it?’
Damian suggested gently, ‘Don’t savage Frank. He’s not the wrongdoer in this case.’ He kissed the top of her head, and she swallowed and composed herself.
She said, ‘Leo was certainly angry enough with me, and some would think his anger proved his innocence. But I know him from childhood. He has a good act. Sadly, I now know it to be an act.’
With the hollowness that is no stranger to Eros, after a few more minutes Docherty pecked a farewell on Maureen’s cheek. He gave Damian a positive hug, acclaim for the man he was, the man who was no fool, the loyal complainer, the just critic, the consoler.
34
Docherty Visits Brian Wood
July 1996
The offices of Wood and Associates sat on the upper floors of a city skyscraper. The water-facing building owned all the desirable views north-east to the very sandstone gates of Sydney, the great promontories of the North and South Heads; and, more proximately, of the Opera House, Circular Quay with the gag of the Cahill Expressway across its mouth, and the grand steel artifice of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, beneath which Docherty and his mother had recently sat. The firm wanted people to know it possessed its own rotating bank of Australian modern art – Sidney Nolan, Lloyd Rees, John Olsen and the rest. Nolan’s painting on display was of Burke and Wills, naked in what used to be called, in Docherty’s boyhood, ‘the dead heart of Australia’.
Behind reception, a stylish young woman was obviously not accustomed to seeing clergy here. Docherty had wanted to stand out with this woman, because he felt his oddity might impress her when he said he desired a quick word with Mr Wood. You can’t send the clergy away as readily as you dispense with couriers, the homeless and demented, particularly if they are wearing the best of alpaca.
‘If you just give him my name,’ urged Docherty earnestly and in his most tranquil tone. ‘He knows me. I need see him only briefly.’
The receptionist looked stressed, her eyes flitting between Docherty’s sternum and the piece of paper on which he had written his name. She called someone and uttered the details of Docherty’s request into the mouthpiece, looking abashed, her glossed lips bloodless. She nodded, put the phone down and looked thoughtful. She said, ‘Would you mind taking a seat? Mr Wood will be here soon.’
To soothe his sense of having too many schemes running at once, too many people to juggle, Docherty set out to think himself into the state of being nothing in the face of the transcendent. In nothing, of course, there is no ground for embarrassment. In nothing, there is the flawless passage of the divine winds.
Wood appeared, accompanied by two young men with dossiers. They stopped and conversed tersely, then one broke away with a familiar salute. Wood and the other stood at the mouth of the corridor speaking earnestly for a while. Wood was giving instructions without an imperious air, nodding a great deal for emphasis. Eventually both men approached Docherty, who stood.
‘Father Frank Docherty,’ said Wood. ‘This is Peter Irving, my CFO.’
Irving shook his hand and, this little ritual past, excused himself. Wood said with a masculine gruffness, ‘How long would you say we need to meet, Father?’
‘Five minutes,’ said Docherty.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I’ll be in the boardroom for ten minutes,’ Wood instructed the receptionist.
‘Not that long,’ Docherty assured him.
In the boardroom Wood sat at once, as if by habit, at the head of the table. The harbour and the brightness seemed magnified in this place, as if every window was a lens designed to allow a drench of light and a blue water view, with the summits of humbler buildings crowding up to convince Docherty of all their vertiginous glory.
Wood said, ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet you again, Father.’
‘Call me Frank. I wanted to let you know, there’s going to be a meeting of the victims of the monsignor. It’s tonight at the Cosgroves’ at seven. The Cosgroves, another victim and … I’ll be there too, by invitation. It’s up to you whether you come, of course. But it would have been discourteous of me not to let you know that the vari
ous possibilities for action and inaction will be canvassed by them. Not by me.
‘Also, I want to let you know that I lost a copy of Stephen’s suicide letter. I dropped it in the city, by accident. Your name was blanked out in it. But I thought you should know. Finally, to fulfil my duty as a citizen, I sent a statutory declaration to the ombudsman citing Stephen’s letter and the information that came from the other victim, whom you may meet tonight. But that’s your call.’
Wood seemed to have held his breath through Docherty’s speech. Now he exhaled and shook his head. A chestnut lock came loose on his forehead, and for a second you could see the handsome schoolboy who’d preceded the man.
‘I thought all this was settled, Father … Frank. I have to show you something.’ He pressed a digit on the phone in the boardroom and it was answered instantly. ‘Bring the Financial Times Asia piece, if you don’t mind. Just the one copy. Yes. Boardroom.’
As they waited Docherty watched Wood. He appeared less hostile than he had been in the hotel after the funeral. A young woman in an impeccable blouse and navy-blue skirt opened the door and stood with a page in her hand. Wood thanked her as she left. He handed the printed page to Docherty. A banner from the Financial Times Asia with a date showed the report was only three days old. The item concerned an offer from a company named Kamichi Business Process Outsourcing, apparently well-known as KBPO, to amalgamate with Wood and Associates. Through its South-east Asian and South-west Pacific expansion Wood and Associates had become an attractive target for amalgamation on terms that would be very advantageous to it. The merger would extend the reach of both parties throughout the region. The sum Kamichi was investing in the merged entity, and the proposed cost of a new Shanghai office, were in digits Docherty’s imagination could barely get purchase on. A number of commentators stated that both partners brought great strengths and promise to the table, and that the amalgamation involved ‘promising synergies’. There was a photograph of Wood and a corporate Japanese man, not shaking hands but jolly in each other’s presence.
‘Frank,’ said Wood, pointing to the report. ‘I’m either this man or I’m Monsignor Shannon’s rape victim. I can’t be both, and I choose this one. Because … Who wouldn’t? So, thank you, but I won’t be there.’
‘I understand,’ said Docherty, but he was not convinced. It was as if there were an unexpressed tremor in the room. It belonged to Wood, but he would not acknowledge ownership.
‘I hope Mrs Cosgrove is okay,’ Wood told him. ‘I imagine not, poor woman!’
‘It’s kind of you to ask. Thus far she’s inconsolable, of course.’
They shook hands.
‘Thank you for my five minutes,’ said Docherty.
35
The Meeting at the Cosgroves
July 1996
At the Cosgrove house, as a prelude to the meeting Paul administered beer and wine to the company. Sarah Fagan and Liz Cosgrove had each a glass of silvery sauvignon blanc before them and it gave the small gathering a marginally convivial air. ‘There’s coffee, Frank,’ Paul told him. ‘If you don’t want a drink.’
Docherty asked for some water, as Sarah Fagan presumed to speak brightly to Mrs Cosgrove, telling her about the school she’d been enquiring into − a real school, Liz replied, not some old fortress of prejudice and hypocrisy. Undeniably, there seemed to be a new vigour in the cab driver. She turned at last to Docherty, the natural convener. ‘All right, Frank, fill everyone in on what you have been doing.’
He did it – everything he’d reported to Wood and what he meant to report to the cardinal the next day.
‘I was exceptionally disturbed by losing the copy of the letter that I was bringing to show you, Sarah. But I think you might be able to put my mind to rest on that matter.’
‘How can I manage that?’ she asked, looking at him with absolute directness.
‘I can understand why you needed the letter: it was proof in written form of an injury parallel to the one done to you. I know that sometimes what happens in these cases can seem so preposterous that even the victim needs proof. You didn’t intend me any harm. Look, I’m not trying to embarrass you, but I have a certain responsibility to the Cosgroves. Do you have the letter, Sarah?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She exhaled. ‘Sorry, Liz.’
Liz Cosgrove looked aghast but Sarah said, ‘I’ll keep it safe.’
Docherty nearly said, ‘I was the one flattened by your friend.’ It was nothing, however, compared to the pain of Liz Cosgrove.
‘I suppose it was a pretty transparent strategy I used, eh?’ Sarah said.
‘If it only took me a day to work it out, it must have been transparent,’ Docherty said.
Sarah turned to the Cosgroves. ‘I wanted to keep the letter and digest it, so I had a young man take it from Frank.’
Then, from the complacency and ease of her confession, her face collapsed. It seemed to Docherty more than a collapse of shame, of being caught. She let out a howl of pain and said, ‘I don’t even know what to do with it. But I wanted to have it.’
Liz reached out to her. ‘Maybe,’ Sarah said, gurgling with tears, ‘maybe Paul and I could go to some underworld pub and give someone five thousand dollars to execute the mongrel! That’s my contribution to tonight. That’s the only damn thing that will really work.’
Liz was looking at her new friend with astonishment. She kept her hand on Sarah’s wrist. The inconsolable mother had become a comforter, at least for now.
‘Only if he’ll guarantee not to let Shannon die easily,’ said Liz with a hack of laughter – to Docherty it sounded salutary, a renouncing of the proposed murder. It came just as he was proposing that they should not say such things in his hearing, for if the monsignor had a freak accident, a tumble downstairs, or a brake failure … Well, he had heard them whistle up the man’s death.
Through all this Paul kept his restrained demeanour, a man who did not indulge in the absolutes of the women’s hate for the unjust man, for the killer of children.
‘There are bad things, let me tell you,’ Docherty assured them, ‘awaiting the monsignor. He’s the sort of man who would love to be a bishop, and now, on the basis of the letter Stephen wrote, he never will be. Despite everything, he’s at least become a figure of suspicion. That has been brought to pass, and it’s no small thing.’
Sarah’s temper returned and she protested, ‘The death of Stephen wasn’t a small thing either. It was a bigger thing than Monsignor Shannon not becoming a bishop, for Christ’s sake!’
Unrealistically, given the small and secret conclave of the wronged that had gathered here, there was a ringing of the doorbell. Who would want to belong to such a company? It was as if someone authoritative had been brought to the door by their criminal surmises. Docherty hoped it was not Maureen. It was a purely selfish hope – to face her in this company would be an ordeal. It couldn’t be Wood, he knew.
But Paul led Wood into the room. The young tycoon wore a sheeny suit but his tie was off and his shirt collar opened.
‘Good evening, Mrs Cosgrove,’ he said to the bereaved mother. He sounded composed. ‘And my friend Frank over there, who doesn’t give me any rest.’
Paul wrung his hand and the two of them embraced. Then Paul said, ‘And this is Sarah Fagan. She has an interest in this entire thing.’
‘This entire thing. Are we considering legal action? I’ll foot the bill,’ announced Wood.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any malt whisky, Brian,’ Paul went on. ‘I have red wine.’
‘Did you know, Paul, that the month of July is devoted liturgically to Christ’s blood? Blood and red wine cheek by jowl in the Mass.’
This emerged from Wood like a statement of mild hysteria.
Paul said, ‘I did know something along those lines.’ He went to the cupboard and poured a glass of red wine and brought it to Wood, who raised it and said, ‘Mrs Cosgrove, here’s to Stephen.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. Wood drank a sip and the
others joined in, Sarah’s eye on him with intense curiosity, as if he had brought to the meeting the possibility of an option she had not yet thought of. Maybe it was that he seemed to wear his victimhood lightly.
Paul pulled out a chair for Wood and he sat. ‘So, what is it to be? This man has to be punished.’
‘We’ve been discussing assassination,’ Sarah said with a puckish lilt. ‘Haven’t we, Father Frank?’
Docherty said, ‘Sarah is well-connected in the tough-guy market. I can attest to that.’ He was still in part breathless from the Wood apparition.
Sarah declared, ‘If the Church’s lawyers are able to prove this nonsense − that the Church as a trust can’t be sued − we can’t succeed legally anyhow. Isn’t that the case, Paul?’
‘That, I’m appalled to say, seems to be the case. If Devitt’s plea is denied. But what if we agitate for criminal proceedings? Make a noise they can’t ignore.’
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘I couldn’t live through that. The lawyers being snide …’
Now it was Sarah’s turn to stroke Liz’s forearm.
‘Perhaps not now, then,’ said Wood.
Paul said, ‘My mother and I have agreed to disagree on this.’
‘Please,’ said Liz plaintively. ‘If Stephen were depicted as a liar, or was blamed in any way – and he would be, as an addict – I don’t think I could bear it. And the monsignor could walk away in the end. With the court’s apology. Now that is something I really could not bear.’
Wood said, ‘It would be harder for them to dismiss him with the court’s blessing if I gave evidence.’ There was dead silence in the room. ‘I’m not boasting. It’s just a matter of fact.’