Don tutted in the right places, nodded or shook his head as appropriate. She seldom left room for replies, but he was happy enough to provide punctuation. Gladys Acton was easy company.
‘My husband was always a fool,’ she said.
‘So it would seem, Gladys.’
‘When Dad dies, the farm comes to me. If I died, it would go to Eric Acton, or so he thought. Then I told him he was disinherited in favour of my cousin, showed him a copy of my new will, and off he buggered. I waited till after I’d altered it before telling him, because he might even have killed me and Dad for the farm.’
Don loved listening to her. She wittered on endlessly, but was seldom boring. After a few weeks he realized that she reminded him of Mammy except for the accent. There was something soothing about a female witterer. He was delighted when she invited him into the house. ‘Not yet, while the weather’s all right. But in winter, you can have a spare room. You’ll be warmer in there. It’ll be one that has its own log-burning stove.’
He remembered the words of Paul Cropper – ‘You’ll be out of that caravan in quick sticks . . .’
Gladys liked Don. He asked intelligent questions, made rough maps of the acreage, labelled areas R for root crops, T for top vegetable or fruit crops, and G for grazing. B and C were barley and corn, while a reversed R represented rape seed. He wanted to keep bees in the farmhouse gardens, and was preparing to clean out a greenhouse for tomatoes and bedding plants. ‘We could get someone to sell them from the bottom gate next year if you agree,’ he explained. ‘Honey, tomatoes, flowers, spuds, carrots, cabbages – there’s always passing trade from people having a day out in the countryside.’
She was thrilled to bits with him. If she’d married somebody like this, she’d have had a lot less trouble and a couple of adopted children. Don loved the land; he was made for it. He would never have left her; he would never have called her an ugly old bag. ‘I’m glad you came here,’ she said.
‘So am I. I’m getting a bit old for the nomadic life. This is the first time I’ve wanted to stay in the one place.’ It was also the first time he’d enjoyed life; gradually, he began to understand fully that he’d been in the wrong job. Had he stayed away from the priesthood, things would have worked out better for him. The need to go back to Liverpool was diminishing. It wasn’t worth it just for an old photo and a watch, or just to walk about among those people without being recognized.
‘Well, I feel glad that you ended up at Drovers. This is a very old farm, one of the ones sectioned off in the sixteenth century. It’s got a proud history, and it needs a man in charge. There was a man in charge, but he’s upstairs in the oldest part of the house on his deathbed. Thank you for spending time with him. My dad was the last real man here. Then you came.’ She picked up their cocoa-stained mugs. ‘Thank you for picking Drovers, Don. You’re my right-hand man, and don’t you forget it. See you in the morning, love.’ She left.
Love. She’d called him love. Not since Mammy had anyone spoken to him with so much affection and gentleness. In a few weeks, he would be inside the house. According to Paul Cropper, all workers ate at the scrubbed table in the kitchen during winter, though family used the small breakfast room. It was a warren of a house with bits added on over the centuries: sloping floors, creaky boards, heavy doors, beamed ceilings, and a huge flag-paved kitchen with a bread oven in one of the walls. As long as Gladys Acton lived, Don Hall would have a fine, comfortable home and a job he enjoyed.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine someone like Henry VIII in the larger of the two dining rooms, dogs at his feet, lords and ladies laughing while the king threw scraps for the hounds. It was a valuable farm, though it could never be Brendan Hall’s, because Brendan Hall didn’t exist. Oh, and he might as well change it to Brendon, since Don seemed to suit him.
He lay in his narrow bed and wondered how it would be to share with a woman. And she might get a divorce. Would she expect him to marry her? He couldn’t marry anyone if he didn’t have papers. It might be necessary to develop a wife in some faraway place, one he couldn’t divorce due to Catholicism.
Life was complicated. He left it behind by falling asleep. A dead man didn’t dream.
Smoke filled the hallway and floated out to greet the couple at the door. ‘He’s set the bloody place on fire again,’ Frank said. ‘And here we are, invited to celebrate our engagement while he causes a conflagration. Maniac.’ He spoke to his closest friend when the door opened fully. ‘What a smell, Chris. What were you cooking? A dead cat? Did you forget to skin it?’
The man in the doorway pretended to snarl. ‘Sarcasm again.’ He winked at Polly. ‘Lowest form of wit,’ he pronounced.
Polly, who had never before seen a priest in a flowered and frilled apron, stifled a chuckle. Father Foley’s chin had a smut on it, while his hair stood on end like the spines on a hedgehog. He smiled ruefully. ‘What a lovely evening this is in spite of everything.’
‘Sorry,’ Frank said. ‘I thought this was St Columba’s presbytery, but I can see I’ve skipped the funeral and come straight to the crematorium.’
‘Don’t start.’ Chris wagged a finger at his friend. ‘The fire’s out, and your supper’s in the backyard. Hello, Polly. Come away in, the both of you. We need to pray for manna from heaven, for there’s not a bite to eat in the whole house. We could go to the Salvation Army, I suppose.’
Frank held out a hand. ‘Cough up,’ he ordered. ‘I’m passing the collecting plate for a change. Fish, chips and peas three times, right?’
‘Right.’ Chris handed over a ten-shilling note. ‘I want my change.’
‘And don’t set fire to my fiancée, she’s hot enough already. Who did you cremate anyway, Chris? Anyone we know?’
‘A close friend who used to be a chicken.’
‘Sad.’ Frank kissed his girl and went off to buy supper.
Polly was led into the living room where the table was set with a cloth that wasn’t quite straight, an ill-assorted collection of cutlery, and three plates. ‘You should have got my brother to cook for you, Father.’
‘I’m Chris to my friends and to my enemies, of which number your Frank is currently one. He says I cheat at cards. As for your brother, how’s he doing?’
‘Very well, thank you. He walks up and down outside the cafe every day on his crutches. I’m insisting that we have a double wedding.’
‘Oh, I’ll have to charge twice for that.’ He rubbed his hands together like a ham actor playing Shylock. ‘You’re to marry at St Anthony’s, but with me as the one in the frock at the front.’
Polly grinned. ‘There could be three of us in frocks: me, Linda and you. So don’t wear your best, or you might outdo the brides.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Your face is dirty, and your hair’s standing to attention, Father Chris. I don’t know what that is on your apron, but it’s a funny colour. Have you been paddling in the Alt? It’s a mucky river, that one.’
He looked down. ‘No, it’s just a bit of good Irish butter and a few drips off bacon. I covered the chicken in bacon to keep it moist. Then the chicken gave up its ghost a second time while I was out ministering to a very sick old man. When I got back, the house was all but on fire. In my job, we get the odd emergency. Emergencies breed, you know. One begets another, which goes on to . . .’ Still chattering away to himself, he went off to clean his face, tame his hair and change his clothes.
Polly looked round the living area, which was typically masculine: no flowers, no colour, no imagination. The furniture was old but good, while a floor-to-ceiling library on two walls demonstrated this man’s eclectic taste when it came to literature. He had three volumes on the birth of the Church of England, a shelf covered in Communism, a large tome on Haiti where voodoo and Catholicism rubbed shoulders, and several Bibles, plus volumes on Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. He clearly liked to know the opposition, then. Frank had described Father Foley not only as his best friend ever, but also as a man of huge intellect. ‘He struggles with his
faith, Polly. Even priests do that, so don’t blame me for my battle with it.’
She looked at his authors of fiction. Shakespeare in his entirety filled a shelf, Dickens rubbed shoulders with du Maurier, Kipling kept company with Lawrence, Eliot and Agatha Christie, while Geoffrey Chaucer lingered next to Aristotle. Father Foley owned an original 1928 Lady Chatterley’s Lover, published in Florence, Italy, and a small collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s grim stories. So here was a priest with a mind broad enough to encompass and learn from just about everything. She replaced Oscar Wilde and picked up George Bernard Shaw.
Chris came back. ‘Ah, you’ve met my friends, then. A motley crew, wouldn’t you say? I doubt I’ve read half of them.’
‘A mixture,’ she agreed. ‘But at least you keep pace with what’s going on in the world. I see you’ve read about the Holocaust.’
‘Just the once, Polly. My stomach heaved and I wept buckets. Pope Pius made love to Hitler while getting as many Jews as he could out of the danger zone. He became an expert in the ways of bribery and corruption. People thought he was on the side of the Nazis, but he wasn’t. A good man. A very good man. What I don’t accept is the fact that people knew what was happening. Not all Germans were for Hitler, you know. But to see what one dictator can do is frightening, because the Germans themselves were defeated by him. He shouted jump, and they jumped.’
Polly sighed. ‘Well, we won.’
‘Nobody wins in war,’ he told her. ‘It’s death and destruction, more or less. It’s one human flattening another’s house and garden, but on a bigger scale. Man is the most territorial creature on the planet. Never satisfied with his lot. See, a tiger kills when she’s hungry, but man kills because he can.’
The bringer of supper rang the doorbell. ‘Here comes trouble,’ Polly said.
‘Will we leave him where he is?’ Chris asked.
‘No. He’ll start breaking windows or kicking your door in.’
‘True. I’m glad you have the wisdom to deal with him. Keep a chair and a whip to hand at all times.’
They sat round the table. Chris poured wine and toasted the bride-to-be and her beau while Frank doled out the food. ‘God bless you both and God help Polly.’
‘Hattie Benson was in the chippy,’ Frank said. ‘And she’s found your bridesmaid. She was in the paper last Wednesday under articles for sale.’
‘Kerry Blue?’
‘Who the heck’s Kerry Blue?’ Polly asked.
‘A dog.’
‘That’s not very nice,’ the man of the house opined. ‘She’s probably quite good-looking in her own way.’
‘Still a dog, though. Anyway, she comes with a stiff brush and a metal comb, and she needs grooming daily, even on Sundays. Very curly hair, you see. Because you’re a priest and she’s from a good Irish Catholic family, you can have her for free. Hattie answered the ad on your behalf. It’s a full Kerry, blue-black with no white patches.’
‘Is she ready?’
‘Oh yes, she’s waiting for you.’
The penny had dropped. ‘So you want a dog?’ Polly liked dogs.
Chris nodded. ‘Oh yes, I do want one. Man’s best friend, a sight better friend than your fellow here, who accuses me of cheating at poker.’
‘My Frank never lies. If he kicks somebody, there’s truth in his boots.’
Chris eyed his new female adversary. ‘So you think a priest cheats?’
‘If he says you cheat, you cheat.’
‘Love is blind.’
Polly leaned across the table. ‘If he says you cheat, you cheat,’ she repeated. ‘Just eat your chips and feel grateful. Frank may have lapsed, but he’s agreed that his children will be raised in their mother’s faith, and he’ll even go to Mass with them.’
‘Holy Moses, a miracle.’ The cheating priest blessed himself before beginning to eat chips with his fingers.
‘Not even civilized,’ Frank commented.
‘Shut up,’ his fiancée commanded. ‘It’s his house, so he can do as he pleases. But if he cheats on you anywhere else, thump him till you’ve knocked seven shades of daylight out of him.’
Chris burst into laughter. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven; it was also proof that God had a sense of humour, because together, these two were hilarious. ‘Ah, you’ll have a fierce and funny marriage. Will you live above the shop? Will you work alongside this man in the shop, Polly?’
‘No idea. I want to keep the cafe going for as long as possible. They’re used to it, you see. And so much is going to be taken away from them; I haven’t the heart to add to their troubles.’
Chris told them he’d met Billy’s Daniel the spaniel. ‘A grand young dog and a grand young boy. Billy still insists that Father Brennan’s alive.’
They discussed the idea of second sight, though Frank begged Polly not to tell the tale of the deceased Mary Murgatroyd from Rachel Street.
‘She wasn’t sighted,’ Chris said. ‘Superstitious, she was. Billy’s a different kettle altogether. He says Brennan’s thinner, working on a farm and living in a little house with wheels. Only you can’t always tell with children, lively minds and vivid imaginations. He still dreams about his attacker, but he’s no longer afraid because the man isn’t frightening in what Billy calls his new life. This child, you know, is different.’
‘Do you believe in second sight?’ Polly asked.
‘I do, indeed. Many’s the time I’ve come across it, and many’s the time I’ve not listened. But in the case of little Billy Blunt, I cleaned out my ears specially, for that boy is right. Father Eugene Brennan is very much alive.’
Polly and Frank stopped chewing. They laid down knives and forks.
‘I phoned the police in a place called Buxton, and they put me on to the right people. They found – well, we know what they found, and we are just now trying to eat, so we’ll leave the details to one side. So I questioned the Derbyshire police about the rosary. Told them I was a colleague and asked them to describe it.’
Frank swallowed. ‘And?’
‘Dark blue glass. And it’s a very small one, a child’s, the sort that gets given to a little boy at his First Holy Communion and kept as a lifelong memento. Girls usually have white ones. Brennan’s rosary is like mine, full-sized and made of brown wooden beads. He’s been filling in for me these past seven years, and I never saw him with a child’s rosary or with any rosary other than the wood and silver one. So I told the police that the body they found was unlikely to be Eugene Brennan. Whether they took me seriously I’ve no way of telling.’
‘I can’t finish this food, Father,’ Polly said.
‘It’s Chris unless I have the back-to-front collar on. Billy Blunt’s grandmother had the sight. It often leaps a generation. I had to grow out of my own stubborn and know-it-all youth before I accepted that small miracles happen daily among mortals who will never be saints. I bet the two of you every book in this room that the man is still alive. When I’m proved right, I’ll pick something special out of your junk shop.’
Frank pushed his plate away. ‘Chris, he’s just an ordinary kid.’
‘As was St Bernadette. Most of them don’t get noticed, and many grow up and forget the gift. Some throw it away deliberately, and I understand them, I do, because it must be a burden as much as a blessing.’
Polly stared unseeing at the table. ‘I believe you, Chris. Billy’s a good kid. He wouldn’t lie. He’s simple. I don’t mean stupid, I mean he’s not a complicated little soul. He likes toy cars and trains and Tarzan of the Apes. He loves my brother because he was always lower down with being in the wheelchair, and Cal’s good at crashing Dinky cars.’
Frank remained unconvinced. He wasn’t sure about God, let alone the visions of children. But the rosary certainly provided evidence, he supposed, though no one could prove that Brennan hadn’t hung on to his childhood keepsake. ‘And they found Scotch,’ he said quietly. ‘He always drank Irish.’
Chris carried on eating, though his visitors had stopped
. ‘The Blunts are still intending to sue,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘Whether or not Brennan is found, they’ll sue the diocese. Our three teachers who were witnesses will be giving evidence about what they saw. I could lose them, and my school will be all the poorer. Good teachers, they are. But they’re looking to disappear into the state system, which makes me sad. Mr Davenport will give evidence, as will you, Frank.’
Frank agreed. ‘I’ll tell the truth, Chris.’
‘And so you should. You’re not eating. Why?’
‘It’s the thought of him being alive in the world,’ Polly answered for both. ‘When we were told he was dead, that knocked everybody for six, because we wanted him to pay. But what if he hurts someone else’s child?’
‘He won’t,’ was Chris’s answer. ‘He has a new life. The way Billy put it was to say that the bad man stopped being a priest, and he’s not frightening when he isn’t a priest. I happen to know he was from a farming family and worked the land from childhood. He’s had a renaissance, born again in his fifties, possibly labouring and living in a caravan.’
Frank swallowed some wine. ‘You take Billy’s sight seriously.’
‘Indeed I do. As for the explanation, I can tell you now that many a young Irish lad took Holy Orders just to please his parents. I’m confessor to one who has three children, but I don’t damn him, because it’s his own life and his own soul. We all sin.’
‘But would you forgive Brennan?’ Polly asked.
‘Ah, no. He’s beyond the reach of my feeble powers. Assaulting a minor and endangering his life was evil. The murder of a good man is the same. He is accountable under the legal system as well as to God. I wash my hands of him. If called upon to testify, I, too, shall tell the truth.’
A Mersey Mile Page 24