Seán frowned. ‘About our Father McVee? Our parish priest?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of dreams?’
As if alcohol had sparked a light in my brain, I said, ‘Can I tell you something you must never tell anyone?’
‘What?’
‘You must promise.’
‘I promise—now, what?’
‘As if you were hearing my confession,’ I said.
‘Jesus, Alex, this would want to be good. What?’
I took a deep breath. ‘I think Father McVee is a dirty old man.’
Seán Phelan rocked back in his chair and put down his glass. ‘What?’
‘I think he does dirty things with children. With boys.’
‘My God, Alex, that’s a very serious accusation.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you saying he did things to you?’ Seán asked.
‘No, I’m not. He didn’t.’
‘So, why are you saying it?’
‘I just know.’
‘You’d want to be careful what you say. Did somebody else give you this information?’ Seán had gathered himself. ‘Has someone, another lad, made this accusation about our parish priest?’
As suddenly as it had gone on, the light in my mind went out and I was floundering. I turned my face away because I was going to cry and couldn’t stop myself. I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my running shirt and tried to stop.
‘Alex?’
‘Forget it, I’m sorry. It was just the drink talking.’
‘Listen to me now,’ Seán said sternly. ‘Father McVee gave me my First Holy Communion. He anointed both my grandparents. When my sister got scarlet fever and was a month in the hospital in Clonmel and we all thought she was dying, Father McVee went in to see her every day and sat beside her, even though he might have picked up her infection. And, as far as I know, he wrote you a glowing reference for the seminary—am I right?’
‘Yes.’ All of a sudden the stout and whiskey had given me the beginnings of a bad headache. ‘Forget everything I said.’
‘Alex, look at me, please.’
Seán had knelt down and had placed his hands on my shoulders.
‘Look at me!’
I felt that I had lost something important, but had no idea how to get it back.
‘We all have these dreams,’ Seán said urgently. ‘Sex tries to do in our heads and makes us imagine the worst in everyone. Our imagination goes mad, just as yours did a minute ago. Sex makes us want to kill ourselves for the bad thoughts we have indulged in. That’s why you think there’s a killer inside you! It’s you, Alex, trying to kill yourself for your impure thoughts!’
My head spun.
‘Everything we dream about is ourselves in a different disguise—do you not remember Nugent’s lectures?’ Seán asked.
I nodded.
‘So when you dream that Father McVee is a dirty old man, it’s you who is the dirty old man, Alex—can you see that? It’s you who are doing dirty things, in your dreams, with other boys, not Father McVee. That’s the devil’s way of trying to snare you. He sneaks into your bed, into your mind when you’re asleep and plays every trick he knows to make you commit a sin. It’s very important that you understand that, Alex, and that you never ever again say what you’ve just said to me.’
He was gripping my shoulders tightly.
‘Every one of us in the seminary goes through something like you’re going through. It’s natural—we’re young healthy men. But here’s what I’m going to tell you. You and I came into this together and we’re going to come out of it together. Okay? We’re a team. Any time you want to tell me about your dreams, that’s okay too. Have we a deal?’
I nodded, mutely.
‘Come here to me.’
He hugged me close to him, his ginger stubble on my neck, as Christ and Jackie O looked on and I could see light glinting in the far window as a clearance crept up the estuary.
4
I could not shake off a feeling of despondency that overtook me every time my father came to mind. It was as if he would always represent something dark that could be understood only by a part of me that had been buried beyond my reach. My dreams, which I never mentioned again to Seán, continued. The doctor and Father McVee would appear, riding a white horse together. Or they were on a train pulling out of Kilkenny station, just as I arrived. Or I was gliding down a river, not of water but of leaves. The day was warm and I had peeled off my clothes. Suddenly, the wooden deck of the boat ruptured and a crab apple tree pushed into view, growing powerfully even as I watched it. Sexual longing swept through me. But the boat had begun to sink and I could not swim.
It would take another forty-five years for me to understand what these dreams were about.
5
The bus pulled up in sunshine at the front steps of the seminary and we climbed on, each with a bag for his sports clothes. Women from the kitchen carried out picnic hampers and loaded them. We headed down the Mall, across the Manor and out the Tramore road. I sat beside a man from Ferrybank, Anthony Butler, whose uncle was a bishop somewhere in Africa. Anthony said little and was slight of build. I spent the twenty-minute journey looking at the photographs of an African village that his uncle had sent him and of which Anthony was shyly proud.
I had done well in my exams but I was not looking forward to the summer holidays. In August the college was closing and everyone was going home for three weeks. The prospect of three weeks with my father in Carrick dismayed me, which in turn made me feel ashamed.
We must have presented a strange spectacle that day as we disembarked at the end of the promenade: over thirty young men in Roman cassocks and birettas, heading at speed like a gaggle of black geese for the Rabbit Burrows. In sand dunes, a mile from the town, we changed into football jerseys and shorts. Senior seminarians arranged us into four teams and laid stones out on the strand to mark the pitches. The Whit Monday seven-a-side Gaelic football game had been going for years.
We ran at each other, roaring for the ball and howling when it went into the sea. Occasionally, local people who had walked this far down the strand paused to watch us. We played fifteen minutes a side, then, boiling and sweaty, ripped off our jerseys, runners and socks and charged like mad men into the surf. Since I could not swim, I went out only to my waist and splashed around, while others, like Seán, made a point of heading for the horizon. I watched as his body sliced through the waves like a white fish.
Anthony Butler couldn’t swim either so he and I walked back in towards the shore and stood in the shallow water. I remember the glad sun on my chest and the pounding of the tide. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, Anthony was gone. I turned and saw him hurrying back into the sand dunes. And then I saw three girls, standing twenty yards away, watching what was going on.
The sea breeze had blown their hair back from their faces and had wrapped their summer skirts tight to their legs. I felt my skin prickling. They were laughing quietly as they resumed their walk and in a moment or so would pass me. I stared. The girl nearest to me had long black hair. She was taller than the others and her figure was deliciously formed. She was so beautiful she could have been Jackie O. As she passed within two yards, she looked straight at me and smiled. Her eyes were sea-deep green. Then, as if someone so beautiful could not bear to exist for more than a second, she was gone, back up the strand, striding out like a beautiful cat, and I was left standing in the tide.
The seminary was renowned for its food, the produce of its out-farms. Plates of sliced pork, cured ham and pressed tongue were laid out on white tablecloths in the lee of the sand dunes. We poured home-made lemonade from glass bottles. Some of the lads had gathered flotsam for a fire and we boiled up the water we had brought.
I had known for thirty minutes that I had made the wrong choice in life. Something fundamental had changed. I saw the other lads, up to this morning my close companions, as strangers. Later, as we changed back into our cassocks, shoes and
birettas, collected up the picnic things and made our way up the strand to the bus, I was overwhelmed by what had happened. A primal message had been conveyed to me and I had become aware of my extraordinary new potential.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Seán said as we lined up to get the bus. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I may have caught something.’
In June we made hay on the college farm near Cheekpoint, and stayed in a draughty old house that looked back up the river towards Waterford. The brothers who ran the farm reared pigs and I helped them with the birthing sows around whose udders the blind piglets poked and sucked.
I did not know what to do or how to disentangle myself. My greatest dread was my father, for I knew that he would never understand or accept my changed position. I went back to the seminary to see Father Nugent, a caring man in his early fifties, who had once played hurling with some distinction. He offered me a cigarette and we both composed ourselves in a cloud of smoke. I wanted to discuss my dilemma only in general terms, for I feared that if I told the truth, my father would find out.
‘There is no shame to feel you may be called to the religious life and then discover you were mistaken,’ Father Nugent said. ‘The real shame, Alex, is to be called and not to answer.’
‘Sometimes… it’s just that I sometimes wonder if I’m in the right place.’
‘One of our great strengths lies in numbers,’ Father Nugent said. ‘Over four hundred thousand of us worldwide, every one of whom has at some point asked himself the questions you’re now asking. Look around you and every priest you see, including yours truly, has had enormous doubts about whether or not he’s in the right place. Think of the priests you have known growing up as a child in Carrick: it’s the same for them. Your own parish priest, Father Charles McVee, wrote your letter of reference when you applied to come here. Even Father McVee will have had doubts about his vocation, but has overcome them to live a healthy life of prayerful watchfulness in union with God.’
Father Nugent got a fit of coughing that bent him in two.
‘I’ll have to give these up,’ he gasped, ‘and with the help of God I will.’ He walked me to the door of his study. ‘Would it help you to have a chat with Father McVee about this whole matter? He’s a very good man and a personal friend of mine. I could give him a ring and I’m sure he’d be only too happy to oblige.’
‘Thank you, Father, but I’d prefer we kept this between the two of us.’
‘Of course, of course. Remember Saint Luke, Alex,’ Father Nugent said, taking my hands in his. ‘“Any who do not carry their cross and come after me cannot be my disciple”.’
I returned to Cheekpoint that evening. I stepped down from the bus and walked to the end of the long avenue to find Seán Phelan, standing at the door, waiting.
‘Did you hear the news?’ he asked.
‘What news?’
‘About Nugent?’
‘I met Nugent earlier. We had a fag together.’
‘He’s in intensive care in Ardkeen Hospital,’ Seán said. ‘Heart attack. Not expected to live.’
6
On a hot July day, as Seán and I walked out the Dunmore Road, the smell of the river at low tide floated over the town. From an abattoir on the far bank, we could hear the squeals of pigs as they met their end. Father Nugent had been transferred to a nursing home for recuperation. We had prayed at his bedside in hospital when he had been anointed; but now he was able to walk a few steps and sit outside in a wheelchair.
‘You’re very quiet these days,’ Seán said as we turned into Maypark Lane.
‘I’m just thinking.’
‘Remember our deal,’ he said.
I felt the burden of my deceit and wondered if the change in me was obvious.
‘Can I tell you something?’ Seán asked. ‘Something I’ve never told anyone?’
We had come to a small factory and stopped by the low wall that divided it from the road.
‘Like everyone, I… you know, have bad thoughts. Dirty thoughts. My body goes mad.’
‘Seán, you don’t have to tell me…’
‘I want to tell you! You see, I know that it’s Satan in the bed beside me, but even though I pray, he won’t go away. I can’t sleep. D’you know what I do?’
I shook my head.
‘I take out the noggin I have hidden in my shirt drawer, and I drink it.’
‘You drink what?’
‘Vodka,’ he said and his expression was that of a man imparting great news. ‘Neat vodka. It works wonders. Twenty minutes, I’m asleep.’
I stared at him. ‘You mean, you get drunk and pass out?’
‘Look, getting drunk is a far less serious sin than letting Satan take over your body. I’m a soldier in an army marching for the greatest cause the world has ever known. I fight with every means at my disposal. Sometimes it’s not pretty—but in the end I’m still a soldier, still in the army. Christ’s army.’
Trees overhung the driveway to the nursing home. On a lawn, where white wooden seats were laid out, patients sat with their visitors. Father Nugent, wearing a dressing gown, slippers and a white peaked cap, was parked to one side in the shade.
‘Hello, boys.’
Seán had stopped at a shop on the way and bought cigarettes.
‘Oh, Lord, if they see me smoking they’ll kill me,’ the priest said. ‘Push me round the side of the house, there’s a good lad.’
I stood back as Seán steered the wheelchair under a rose trellis. As I prepared to follow, a slender figure in a nurse’s uniform appeared from the nursing home. Her black hair was tied up beneath a white cap. I felt myself begin to tremble. Her hand went to her mouth and she stared.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘You… oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘For what?’
She was looking at my cassock. ‘You’re… you’re a priest.’
‘I’m not, I’m really not. My name is Alex.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, but we knew that up to that moment our encounter on the strand had been alive for both of us. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I need to tell you something.’
She frowned. ‘What?’
‘I have to see you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You need to understand something.’
She shook her head. ‘Alex, I think you’d better go round the back for a smoke with your friend and Father Nugent.’
‘On the strand that day, something happened, am I right? To both of us.’
‘God, this is so embarrassing,’ she said in a lowered voice. ‘Would you please go away?’
‘Please tell me your name.’
‘Look, it was a mistake—can we leave it at that?’
‘Please.’
‘No!’
‘Since that day I’ve thought about you every minute,’ I said.
‘Oh, God!’
‘I’m completely serious. I’ve thought of nothing else. Nothing is more important to me.’
‘It was… stupid. All right? Now I’m very busy, as you can see.’
‘Please listen. I’m leaving the seminary.’
She blew out her cheeks.
I said: ‘No one else knows that. There’ll be murder, but I don’t care.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ she said.
‘My only mistake was thinking I wanted to be a priest.’
She put one hand on her hip. ‘Do you go on like this with every woman you meet?’
‘Please!’
I could see people looking at us.
‘This is crazy!’ she whispered and tried to laugh. ‘Go away!’
‘Please.’ I could hear the wheel rims of Father Nugent’s wheelchair on the gravel. ‘Give me one chance.’
Father Nugent was having another fit of coughing.
‘Alex! Where were you?’ I heard Seán calling.
‘Just tell me your name!’
‘God,’ s
he said. ‘My name is Kay.’
7
The Woodstown bus left clouds of airborne exhaust at every bend. It was Friday, the last day of July. I had written to my father telling him that I was not coming home, for reasons I would explain later.
Seán Phelan’s parents had rented a house in Tramore for the month of August. Seán was now the person I dreaded telling, almost more than the doctor.
‘Let’s go for a walk first,’ I said when the bus dropped us off at the Saratoga.
‘I thought we were coming out here to celebrate the end of term,’ Seán said.
‘Yes, but first let’s walk.’
Shells crunched under our black shoes as Seán ducked his head into his chest and lit a cigarette.
‘It’s been a great year,’ he said, striding out, ‘and they say the first one is the hardest.’
In the dunes to our right, families sat with picnics and children rolled down steep banks of sand.
‘I’m going to train at swimming every day of the holidays,’ he said. ‘There’s a sponsored race from the Boat Cove to Brownstown Head and I’m going in for it. Over two miles, boy. We’ll all have to grease up.’ He inhaled smoke deeply. ‘You could come down and go in one of the boats, Alex. How about it? Would you come? It’s on the bank holiday weekend. You could take swimming lessons—now there’s a good idea! How about it?’
‘I can’t come, Seán.’
‘I know, I know, staying at home with the da. Why don’t you bring him down for the day—a little outing. He can’t work all the time. He could come in the boat too, if he wanted. He’d love it.’
‘I’m not going home, Seán,’ I said.
He frowned at me and pulled up. ‘You’re not?’
‘No.’
‘So where are you going?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said and took a deep breath. ‘You see, I’ve decided to leave the seminary.’
Seán Phelan’s hand went to his mouth and he took two steps back. ‘What?’
‘I’m telling the rector tomorrow.’
‘You mean . . . you’re transferring to Maynooth or someplace?’
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