But her students were confused and then mildly amused by her silence, especially so, since it was accompanied by a clear sag of her lower jaw, a tremble in the cheek and unblinking eyes opened so wide that they might be glaring with anger, if, that is, she were not so obviously in tears. “Michael,” she managed to say, haltingly, quietly, creating some seven syllables within the word. Only a few of her students heard the word, those closest to her choice of marginal status in the room, causing a ripple of question and answer whispers to wash back and forth across the group. The gaze of three hundred eyes darted back and forth between Janet Smythe and Father Michael Doherty, as their speaker had been introduced to them. He continued to sit unperturbed before his audience behind the plain dining table that was his proletarian podium. He offered just a gentle wave of acknowledgment and a soft, “Hi,” whilst their headmistress continued her impression of a weeping fish, damp-eyed with wordless lips apparently mouthing deafening silence. And then a wave of delighted murmuring washed across the room as the thirteen and fourteen years olds marvelled at the fact that their headmistress might even be human after all. Friends looked at one another, sharing wide wide-eyed smiles, and then continued their back and forth scan between their calmly seated speaker and their nonplussed headmistress.
It took the organising teacher only seconds to realise that she should intervene. The girl’s question had been lost and the event might descend into chaos if she did not act. Standing, she too looked from Michael to Janet and back, asking, “So you two know each other?” Michael nodded. Janet still could not find a single word as she sat down, shaking her head and wiping her eyes at the same time. “Alice,” said the teacher above the gently giggling commotion, “you were asking why Father Doherty decided to give up missionary work in Africa to do an ordinary job here in London…”
As Alice Bains eagerly took up the cue as her right and continued to frame her question, Janet heard every word, but it was as if they were the beads of spilt mercury she could remember from a science lesson during her own teenage years, beads of massive metal which shot intangibly like weightless bubbles across the teacher’s desk and then randomly onto the floor as the thermometer broke. She knew the whereabouts of everything, but could pin nothing down. The words washed over her consciousness, registering without fixing. Her heart seemed to have slipped, its heavy thump now surely in her stomach. Some students still turned her way, smiling and nudging their friends.
In an instant she took control, turned on her professional calm, consciously constructed an expression of admonition and glanced it in appropriate directions. As the girls began to settle, she then slightly theatrically transferred her attention to Michael’s answer, which was already under way and, obediently, general inattention became attention.
“I lived in Nigeria almost forty years ago,” confirmed Michael, “and then I had several years in Kenya. That’s where I met Mrs. Smythe...” He glanced at Janet and again three hundred girls’ eyes sought her reaction. Every girl in the school knew that their head teacher had been a volunteer in Africa, because one of the school’s annual activities had been a charity gala to raise funds for the school where she worked. Pictures of it showing the fruits of their fundraising had their own permanent display space in the library.
“…But it’s almost thirty years since I left there. I changed orders, you see, and the one I joined sees its mission as working amongst the poor, wherever they are. And for us it’s not enough to just to say nice things about poor people. What we have to do is live a life of poverty in the same way that Jesus Christ did. So I became a council employee in the parks department more than twenty-five years ago and that’s where I have stayed. I have seen many of you on your way to school. You have seen me, but today is possibly the first time that you have ever thought about what I do as an expression of religious faith and commitment. I am about to retire now, of course, and that’s part of the reason why I decided to accept this invitation to speak to you. I noticed, when I came into the room, that some of you recognised me. I could see on your faces something like, ‘Why on earth have they got the gardener from across the road to talk to us?’ You see, even the people I worked with didn’t know I was a priest. They never knew that my faith was anything to do with why I was doing that particular job. And they still don’t know, so all of you now have to help me to keep the secret for a few more weeks. To them, I was just another Irish navvy, any old Paddy from the bog country whose rural origins made him feel at home weeding flower beds, pruning roses, cutting grass or picking up dog shit. I bet many of you girls...” Janet twinged a little at this. It was school policy always to refer to students. She was at last starting to feel a little more like herself. “…have walked across that common…” Michael nodded vaguely to his left to indicate the vast plateau of Clapham Common. “…every day on your way to and from school and never given a thought to how it’s kept so neat and clean and who did the work. After today, you might think a little differently. I can honestly say,” Michael continued, casting a noticeably direct glance towards Janet, “that when I am dressed in my overalls – you know the sort with glow-in-the-dark discotheque decorations – and I am wheeling my bin along the paths, most people I encounter don’t even see me. They look away, past me, through me or ignore me. It’s as if I don’t exist, sometimes. I’ve even had people right in front of me drop their crap on the ground, had me pause right next to them, sweep it up, bin it, put my shovel and brush back on the trolley and then watch your man drop something else in the same place! And without even any reference to my existence! From today, you girls will realise that all people like me are real. We exist. We are individuals. Just because we are doing menial jobs it doesn’t mean that we have no worth.”
“But not all the park workers are priests,” interrupted Alice, eager to advertise the confidence of her refined elocution and upper middle class barrister family origin.
“That’s precisely the point I am making,” said Michael. “Neither was I a priest in your eyes until this afternoon, but that should have made me no more or less a human being than I was as a sweeper in the park, no more or less worthy of your respect and consideration. You all know the tea hut behind the bowling green where we brew up. Many of you walk right past it on your way to school. I can even recognise some of your faces,” he continued, scanning his audience and momentarily catching Janet’s eye. “Well there’s a bloke sitting in there right now – one of my mates. He’s also ready to retire, just like I am, but he’s lucky to have reached that stage. He’s Irish like me and been over here for more than forty years. But he’s often drunk. He’s not very clean… in fact he ifs a bit on most days…” A giggled shudder rolled through the audience at this, “…and has been in jail a few times for disorderly conduct. The management have tried to sack him several times for drinking on the job, but I have managed to keep his job for him and now he’s ready to retire.”
“But if he can’t do the job…” Alice interjected with confidence.
“Oh, I never said that,” replied Michael, cocking his head on one side, offering her overt self-confidence the chance of introspection. “He does his job just like the rest of us. He’s not as dependable as most, but then if we sacked all people who were not wholly dependable, how many of us would ever be in work? And think of what he might have done if he had been sacked. Do you think it would have helped him to lose his income, his self respect, his routine, his mates? I am proud I spent time arguing with the bosses to keep his job. I think it was the best way to keep him at least partially in control of his own life. He’s a human being like all the rest of us. He’s not perfect, but then none of us is perfect. He deserves your respect just as much as I do. I’m a priest. He’s not. But we both work for the council, do similar jobs and should have the same rights, the same as anyone else in society, rich or poor, male or female, black or white – even Irish.”
“Do remember, Alice,” said Mo Thomas, the religious education teach
er who had organised the talk, interrupting to fill the miniscule silence that had begun after Michael’s last word, “that Father Michael has been doing other work as well. I met him through one of my spare time interests. I have been active for some years with a group campaigning against people trafficking and similar activities. You will remember that we did a session some months ago when a friend of mine talked about a women’s’ support centre.”
“You mean the one about the Bulgarian prostitutes,” said Janice, a large round-faced girl with a thunderous voice and a penchant for wanting to be the centre of attention. Several smutty sniggers percolated through the group.
“That’s it. Well remembered, Janice. You clearly learned a lot that afternoon. Well Father Michael has also done counselling work in his spare time, but aimed at migrant workers, people who might be thousands of miles from home, away from their families, in a foreign country, often doing low paid work, sometimes illegally and often treated very badly.”
“But of course I don’t do that work around here,” said Michael, again scanning his audience. “I do that for an organisation based up in Kilburn twice a week in the evenings. I have often had to write letters on behalf of the people who come in and sometimes – just a few times – I have had to sign them as Father Michael Doherty to get what I wanted on their behalf. I can’t do that if people I work with find out that I am a priest. I have to stay plain Michael around here.”
“Where are the people from?” asked Janice, forcefully, as if she already knew the answer, which of course, she did not.
“Eastern Europe, Poland, Russia, Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines. They’re from all over the world. They get themselves into difficulty with their employers, with their landlords – all kinds of things. I got involved with that kind of work through my trade union. I have been a shop steward – a kind of official representative for the people I work with – and the union we join, as public sector workers, has been doing a lot of research on migrant workers, because quite a number of migrants have taken the kind of low paid jobs that councils tend to offer. I got involved many years ago and have even been to visit some of the places where the workers come from. I’ve visited the Philippines, for instance, to establish partnerships with organisations that campaign for migrant workers’ rights.”
“Have you had any Bulgarian prostitutes?
“Janice! Enough!”
“Yes, Janice,” interjected Michael. “I’ve had lots of prostitutes, though not all Bulgarian. But the cases that come to me have more often involved the unwanted attentions of employers. I’m talking about maids or nannies, for instance, who have been indecently assaulted by their employers, or…”
“Let’s move on,” said Mo Thomas, glancing first at Michael, then her audience and finally towards Janet. “We don’t want to get into specific cases.” She looked back at Janet momentarily having subliminally registered an intangible strangeness in the reaction she had received. Her interpretation, perhaps correct, was a suggestion that the session was moving in the wrong direction.
“What was Mrs. Smythe like when you knew her in Kenya?” The question emerged almost anonymously from the middle of the seated students and caused most of the assembly to laugh, just a little, less than everyone wanted. Before the teacher could make the diversionary intervention that was ready to burst forth, Michael answered the question, latching on it with some eagerness.
“Well, she was young, twenty-two when she arrived and twenty-four when she left, I suppose most of you think of a twenty-four year old as nothing less than ancient…” The girls nodded and laughed. “It was only two years, but I would say that she was a lot wiser by the time she left. She worked hard for our school in Migwani. She was very conscientious, very dependable and was very much liked and appreciated by her students. I would guess that nothing much has changed in those areas.” Michael smiled an almost proud smile as he scanned the total agreement he sensed. “And… she was every bit as beautiful as she still is today!”
The room erupted in loud laughter, some cheering and not a little applause. The noise began to subside and then reached another crescendo as Janet stood up and, smiling, offered a short bow. “On my God,” “Wicked,” “Raaaas” and an occasional “Cool” could be heard rippling uncontrolled through the group for almost a minute.
Alice Bains then brought the meeting back to order, raising her hand to ask for another question and hardly waiting for the accepting nod of her teacher. “But what really made you want to change? All of us here have seen loads of photos of the place where you used to live because of our charity day and Mrs. Smythe’s display in the library. I’m sure I can also remember Mrs. Smythe talking about you when she gave us a class about the school where she worked. What made you want to leave Africa and come to Clapham Common, because it would seem to me that you could have carried on doing really good work there…?”
Michael did not answer immediately. The assembly was perfectly quiet again and clearly interested in his answer. He spent a few moments screwing and unscrewing the end of a pen, which seemed to be stretched between the fingers of both hands. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Alice.”
“Well, Alice, that’s quite a difficult question for me to answer.” He paused again and looked towards Janet. “Sometimes things happen to you in life which are so momentous, so mind-blowing, that you never forget them. You live with them forever, vivid and clear in your mind. It’s as if you can relive them moment-by-moment. You are all old enough, I’m sure, to know what I mean. I bet all of you can think of something like that… And I mean something that you find difficult to deal with, not something associated with enjoying yourself. You might have had a death in the family, or an accident… Anything…” A few nods of agreement and a murmur of shared experience filled the short pause. “Sometimes, Alice, people do things they are not proud of. Sometimes, and sometimes even through no fault of their own, people find themselves in a situation where they have to make a decision and they do something they will regret for the rest of their lives.” He paused again here and cast a noticeably direct and prolonged glance towards Janet.
And suddenly her heart seemed to drop again. In the five seconds or so that elapsed before Michael spoke again, Janet found herself reliving her abortion, an act for which she had privately but consciously been trying to atone for almost thirty years. She had prayed for forgiveness every day of her life – often more than once – but the guilt still welled inside her, took her breath, flushed her cheeks. And all these years, it had remained a private guilt, never once shared. The governors of the Roman Catholic school of which she was head teacher did not know. Her own parish priest in north London did not know. He not only accepted the leading role she had come to assume in the life of his Christian community, he was appreciative of her efforts, admired her energy and was grateful for her assistance, offered with complete humble sincerity. But he knew nothing of her abortion. Her husband did not know. Neither she nor her mother had ever told him, and her mother had died with the secret. Her two children did not know. But Michael did know because she could remember, even relive, the experience of writing that series of letters that had helped her so much to cope with something that still gave her nightmares. She almost began to speak, but Michael continued.
“There was a death,” he said, “and I was responsible.” The room was quite silent. “It wasn’t my fault, but there again I was responsible. I didn’t do it deliberately. At the time, I didn’t even know it was happening.” Again everyone was listening intently to the silence he allowed. No one noticed that Janet was close to tears. She had grown practised at hiding her feelings. But she remembered his impassioned plea to marry him to save her baby. “In fact, your headmistress, Mrs. Smythe, knows the person who died.” A hundred and fifty pairs of eyes turned to her. Could they tell? Could they read her face? Why was Michael doing this to her? A man she has not see
n for thirty years suddenly reappears and …
“His name was Munyasya,” continued Michael, the collective gaze returning to his anguished face. “Mrs. Smythe will remember him as a tramp who use to live in Migwani market. He was very old, an alcoholic and a mwana wa Mungu – a child of God, a madman – completely off his trolley. He was absolutely bonkers. People were afraid of him, though, because they used to think he could curse them. They thought he could change you into a snake. Mrs. Smythe was cursed by him one day. I bet she can remember it like it was yesterday…”
Again faces turned towards her. The silence Michael again imposed demanded she speak. Her voice was shaking with emotion. This was not the headmistress her students recognised. “ I… I… er… I certainly can.” She stood, slowly, her tongue noticeably flicking against her cheek, as if it was trying to find words inside her mouth. “I still have bad dreams about him… He was very dirty. And dressed in rags. He used to sleep under the tree in the marketplace. You can still see the same tree in the photos in the library.” She was noticeably more at ease and scanned the sea of faces turned towards her to check confirm that her students had registered the observation as advice. “He used to shout… and spit… and he hated white people. He once attacked me… in one of the cafés by the side of the market. I was very scared. He also had a thing about buses.” She had not been aware of how much of a non sequitur this would sound and was clearly surprised at having to pause to allow the laughter to die. “When they stopped in the town, he used to lie down in front of them, right under the front wheels. It was like street theatre in London, a show that everyone knew about and came to watch. We thought he was trying to stop them from moving.”
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