“You’re partially right, Douglas,” he repeated, the young man now displaying considerable embarrassment that his intended flippant joke had struck a nerve, somewhere.
“How long have you been seeing Rosita?” asked Janet, unsure that she had registered his original answer correctly.
“For about a year. She comes regularly…”
David’s grunts and fidgets prompted Janet to interrupt, turning to her right, whilst placing both hands on Michael’s arm with noticeable tenderness, her action utterly controlling her environment in that it placed Michael on pause, froze Douglas and demanded the attention of the rest. “Michael is involved with an organisation that campaigns for the rights of migrant workers. He does counselling sessions for them in the evenings. Mo Thomas – my head of RE – also does some work for the same group.” A dismissive expression saying, “Bloody do-gooders!” in silence fixed in David’s face. “It was Michael’s contact with Mo that led to his invitation to speak to year nine last Wednesday, otherwise I would probably have never met up with him. It’s all very fortuitous. And if I hadn’t invited him tonight, we probably wouldn’t have known anything about Rosita’s problems, which we should know about.”
“You’ve spoken with Mo, then, since Wednesday?” Michael asked. Janet nodded, turning to face him again and letting go of his arm. “Well Rosita first came to see me about a year ago and she’s been back about once a month ever since. She has two children, currently living with her husband’s parents. As you know, the older one is secondary school age now and in the Philippines everyone wants the best education they can not quite afford. When you know that paying just a bit extra will get your kids into a better school which, in itself, will have a major impact on their eventual chances of getting work, you do everything you can to make it happen. So she’s enrolled the boy in a Catholic school in Quezon City... You’ve visited the Philippines, I think? Rosita told me that you and David went with her when she made her last visit in August last year, so you know the place where she lives.”
Both David and Janet confirmed, but David continued, interrupting. “Look. We pay her the rate for the job and always have done. In fact, we have always paid her extra. We’ve never once missed a payday and always accommodated any special requests. And if you saw the place that she calls home, made of tin sheets and hardboard in the middle of what looks like a rubbish dump, I reckon she has nothing to complain about.”
“She has never complained about her terms of employment,” said Michael. “And she is certainly not complaining about the pay. We have hundreds of Filipina domestics visiting our resource centre in Kilburn and when Filipinas get together, they talk. Believe me, they talk,” he repeated with emphasis, noting the calm that David maintained. When would he go for it? “And Rosita, financially, has one of the best deals in town. And unlike many of the others, she feels quite secure. You have been excellent employers and she would not dream of leaving. She would never want to give up conditions like these. But she is short of money because secondary schools in the Philippines can be fiercely expensive. There are the extra school fees, of course, but there’s also money for travelling, uniforms, books and everything else you need to go to school. She’s not doing anything extravagant. She just wants something better for her kids. So she has been trying to earn a bit extra on the side…”
“We’ll give her a rise,” said David. So out of character was this apparently spontaneous and bounteous gesture that Douglas, Marie and Karl all stopped chewing at the same time, froze and then eyed one another with blank-faced surprise.
“The last time you gave anything a rise was in 1963, when you tried to bake bread,” muttered Karl, prompting Douglas to choke on a farfalle.
As his face turned red above the napkin he held to his mouth to hide the doughy laugh, Marie said with her own playful giggle, “Pasta is supposed to choke priests, Douglas, not you.”
“Darling, there are farfalle, butterflies. Priest chokers are strozzapreti and they tend to be short and fat,” corrected Karl.
“As are some priests,” said Michael. Janet’s silent prompt registered a moment later. Throughout the banter, she had continued to face him, eager to air the rest of the story. “Where was I? Yes. She’s been trying to earn a bit extra money on the side by doing a few things in her spare time, but the…”
“Such as?” asked David, a new brusqueness, a directness crystallizing in his manner.
“Favours mainly. Favours for people,” replied Michael without hesitation. “Just favours. But some of the favours proved to be a bit bigger than expected.”
Janet fell into a fit of laughter. Father Bernard, who had quietly picked away at his meal since receiving his loaded plate suddenly put down his fork with a clatter and stared at her. He had known this wonderful, this amazing, this dedicated, this committed, this competent, this professional woman for years, during the entirety of his decade of involvement with St Mary’s governing body. He had helped her through troubled times. He had marvelled at her achievements. But in all that time, she had never been just a woman. And now, as she laughed with abandon, he saw for the first time her stunning beauty, her overt and inviting eroticism, her capacity for ecstasy.
One by one, everyone at table caught the same bug. Janet could not stop laughing. She went on and on. Even David, who suspected he might know the joke, joined in, just a little. It took minutes for order to descend by degree and, still not quite able to speak, Janet tried to say, “And from personal experience I can confirm that it is a big one,” but her words were indistinct, clouded by new belly laughs. Douglas and Marie jerked to face one another, silently asking if the other had caught what their mother had said, but shrugs and shakes confirmed confusion.
Shock can play its tricks. When confronted by the abyss, people cannot predict how they will react. The day Janet feasted her eyes on John Mwangangi’s smashed head, her first act had been to laugh. She had never known why, but she could always remember that laugh, relive its involuntary command of her body. And it was not just an instinctive intake or expulsion of breath. It had been a real laugh, a sustained reaction lasting several seconds. In the movies, of course, it hams its way into tears, but her reality of laughter on that day subsided to a blank silence, a dark unfeeling, perhaps anaesthetised pit in the memory destined for eternal emptiness.
But at table, it was not Janet on whom shock played its trick. The game was up. David’s face changed, as if in slow motion, from displaying its share of the communal hilarity, through a dawning confusion that publicly confessed self-doubt and finally setting in a blank tensionless glare that contrasted with the hyper-activity of his neck, as it turned jerkily to share the expression with Michael, Karl, Marie, Janet, Douglas, Janet again. He knew his wife never laughed like that unless sex was near, usually accompanied by copious use of the word ‘fuck’. This stranger, this left-wing religious paddy, bog country, bleeding Marxist, Irish bastard, shit face of a priest who had invaded his home was a confidante of Rosita, the maid he had screwed whenever the opportunity arose, and his opportunity, despite his advancing years, seemed to be rising all the time. And Janet knew, because he, that red-faced bog country Catholic hypocrite, he knew. And Karl knew. Time out of the office, indeed. Mobile switched off. Not working to his diary. He knew. And no doubt the soft fart of a school governor on his left knew, because his faithful pious wife had probably confessed to him, in the interests of the school, of course. And Marie knew, because Karl had obviously told her. And she had tried to hide the fact. That’s why Karl had only broached the subject after she left the room. It had been a way of keeping her nose out of it. The scheming little bitch! And now she would want her pound of flesh, no doubt cut from his most sensitive spot, his bleeding wallet. And who the fuck cared if his pervert of a son knew? Who the fuck cared? And I don’t care either.
But whatever reason plodded through David Smythe’s privacy, his body did what shocked reaction demanded. H
e stood up, slowly, as if preparing to deliver a speech. And then he stood there looking lost and confused, his head still turning to interrogate reaction. The laughter, save for a stifled gag, stopped. For a minute or so, they grew steadily silent as the sensation subsided. And then they were silent. David’s mouth opened a few times, and then closed, determinedly. But he stayed on his feet. And they all started laughing again, this time at him.
“Dad, if it’s Grace you want to say, I’d ask one of those two over there. They are more qualified,” said Douglas, again hardly able to stay on his chair. And then David Smythe spoke. Turning to Janet and reaching across the two, seated priests, he tried to touch her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, darling.”
Janet’s reaction surprised everyone, but not herself. She continued to laugh but, holding David’s hand so that his arm had to pass over the heads of Fathers Michael and Bernard, his down-facing palm apparently blessing their holiness, she stood and passed behind her guests, who had to duck a little to keep out of the way. She needed three steps to approach him, taken like a medieval courtesan pacing the angular formality of a distorted dance. And she hugged him and he kissed the top of her head as she buried her face in his chest. He had turned bright pink and looked as if he could be employed as space heating. Janet too was flushed and bright eyed from her bout of laughter. There was not a hint of emotion when she spoke. “C’est plus la même chose. At least you were paying someone’s school fees. It’s not the first time that international aid has screwed the recipient, but usually the aid comes first.”
Realising now the seriousness of the occasion, Douglas and Marie were silent, watching their parents, privately knowing what was never expressed between them. Michael took the opportunity to have a final mouthful of pasta and crushed the new silence with the clatter of fork on pot. Bernard, who had already finished his meal, readjusted his neatly placed cutlery, adding chorus to Michael’s lead. And then, with what seemed strangely like determination, Janet disengaged, returned to her place, sat down and replaced the napkin on her lap. She had already taken two fresh mouthfuls of pasta by the time David had returned, slowly, to his seat.
“Well how’s that for a bunch of donkeys?” said Douglas.
“You can have a herd of donkeys, a drove of donkeys or a pace of donkeys, darling, but not a bunch,” corrected Janet. “Bunch of keys, flowers et cetera, yes. But not donkeys.”
Marie looked across at her mother and smiled. She loved her mother. She loved her so much she had no words to express it. And then, for her, reality again prodded. With a sudden start, she looked up to locate the children she had momentarily forgotten. And by God they were both asleep. Carla in her pushchair, where she had spent the entire evening and Paul sprawled across the floor cushions in the corner, cushions that Janet always left there so her grandson could play during the family meal.
“All right. Plates please,” said Janet, inviting the guests to pass over their plates, which she took, carefully scraping any leftovers, of which there were few, into the empty serving dish, before stacking them neatly. Though they had not called her, Rosita reappeared in the doorway, as if by divination, with a tray on which she had arranged seven large wine goblets in a circle, each with foaming yellow zabaglione. Duly served with sweet, the guests leaned slightly and politely back in their chairs while the last remnants of the main course were piled officiously and with exaggerated care onto Rosita’s tray. It was as if she, not the tray or the crockery, was being protected from damage. Throughout, David said nothing, but he did look at her and give a discreet smile.
And then they ate again, the first spoonfuls for both Marie and Douglas prompting prolonged “Mmmms” of satisfaction, joy that communicated more than taste. “Mum, it’s the same every time. You are absolutely wonderful,” said Douglas before starting to lap his next spoonful like a dog in an attempt to make the sensation last longer. The new course seemed to restart the evening, as if the new taste drew a curtain that started a new act, the previous one complete if unresolved, its drama yet to be fully explained and its consequences still unknown.
“So what’s next?” asked Marie, her manner newly relaxed by the children’s slumbers. The unexpected directness of her intervention required repetition to make it clear. “Mum told me that you are ready to retire, Father Michael. What are you going to do next?”
“Now there’s a question,” he said, smacks of his lips testifying to his own satisfaction with the sweet. “A complete change. I can’t continue with what I was doing as a worker-priest. It’s a rule for us that we have to work like anyone else and be subject to the same conditions. I can’t be a special case, so I have to retire. I’ve got several other interests, such as…” He looked up to see if the conversation might force its way back to his dealings with Rosita, but the business was clearly to remain unfinished, compartmentalised perhaps for later examination in private. They had moved on. “…Well several things, but none of them is enough for me. I need a new challenge, so I’m off back to Africa.” He sat up a little and beamed a proud smile that elicited no active acknowledgement, except, he unexpectedly and slowly came to realise, from his right, where Father Bernard stiffened to sit right back in his chair, turning his way, as if to get a better view of his fellow guest against the strain of his long sightedness, “I left unfinished business in Kenya and I’m going back.”
It was Janet, of course, who ought to have reacted, but she remained stolidly unmoved, calculatedly and carefully re-instating her headmistress persona, her feelings well covered by a public presence of calm and control.
“I had to leave Kenya after my road accident, at least for a while, and then my priorities changed. My faith changed as well, and I never went back. But things are different now. I won’t be doing any missionary work. The priests in Kitui are all Kenyans now. When I was there we only had two Kenyan priests in the whole diocese, one of whom is still there. It surprises me that he’s even still alive, given the speed at which he used to ride his motor bike on those whores of roads.”
“Father Peter,” interrupted Janet, her tension palpably released, no longer being able to control the swelling frustration to speak, just to say something so that when the real words came she would retain control.
“Wow, you have some memory,” he said, turning to face her and inserting his last and only flat-filled spoon of zabaglione into his mouth.
“He was fierce crack altogether,” she told him with a smile which he returned, amplified.
“So there’s no need for missionary work like I used to do at the parish level any more. But there are other things that need to be done. The world has changed in the last thirty years. Things have moved on and, if anything, they are a bit sadder. When I worked in Africa, we were enthusiastic. We talked of ‘development’,” he said, indicating the quotes with two fingers of each hand, “and we talked of ‘progress’ and ending poverty. In Africa today, the issue we now have to cope with is AIDS. So I am going to work full time in a hospice in Nairobi where they care for terminally ill AIDS patients.”
When Janet pushed her chair back and bent forward to thrust her face into her hands, they all thought she was ill. Or perhaps it was the delayed shock of David’s revelation that he had been unfaithful to her again. Slowly she sat upright, breathed very long and deep several times, flexing every muscle in her face as if they needed exercise. From where she had pushed her chair, she could look across Michael’s back, half turned towards her, to Father Bernard who, concerned, had turned in his chair to face her. He was still sitting bolt upright, his chair pulled back from the table.
“How did it go on Wednesday?” He had said so little during the meal and its prelude in the lounge that the others found themselves momentarily stunned as they were reminded of the power of his voice. That evening, Bernard’s previous contributions had all been polite mutterings, soft punctuation of other’s conversation. Now speaking for himself, his voice was full, sonoro
us and highly musical, capable of delivering a sermon to a large congregation without a microphone. “I couldn’t get into school to see you either yesterday or today. I had assumed that your invitation tonight was to clarify things. You don’t need me to tell you how important this is for the school.”
“They agreed,” she said flatly, if somewhat cryptically, stretching the two words into a string to bind her.
“So when is it to happen?”
“We start the process immediately with a view to appointing by Easter.”
“And you are still convinced that we can appoint internally if there are no reasonable external candidates?”
“She can do the job. Whether she should do it is up to her. It must be her decision. But I’m confident that she will apply. Whoever else applies, she will be short-listed and then it’s up to the appointment panel. If she decides she wants it she will interview well and she’ll get it. Only a superb external candidate could possibly be better suited to the job and in either case the school wins.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“What on earth is going on?” asked David, each apparently private interchange between Bernard and his wife ratcheting up his nervously wheezing frustration.
Janet pulled her chair forward, back to its place at table, and answered, her voice so completely matter of fact, she might have been addressing a staff meeting to convey the most mundane of routine arrangements. “I’ve been granted a sabbatical. I applied at the start of term, I’ve done thirty years of service. I’ve been head for a decade and it’s time the school had some new blood to keep it fresh. I’ve not gone stale, but I want to make sure that I don’t. I can’t have early retirement, because they don’t give that away too easily nowadays. I’m still too young.”
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