The Trout

by Peter Cunningham

  Father Greely shakes his head, as if in the short time we’ve met I have managed to exasperate him. ‘Father Deasy hasn’t lived or worked here for some time,’ he says.

  ‘His name is up on the parish website.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s up in Times Square, he isn’t here,’ the priest says.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  Father Greely sighs. ‘What did you say your name is?’

  ‘Alex. Alex Smyth. I’m Canadian. I’ve come here specially to find Father Deasy. We knew each other many years ago.’

  ‘Mr Smyth, Father Deasy isn’t well. But it’s complicated. We’re under instructions not to talk about him. All inquiries should be referred to the chancellery. Bishop Werner’s orders. Now, if you’ll please excuse me… ’

  ‘When you say he’s not well… ’

  ‘He’s got inoperable cancer. He’s dying.’

  I take a step back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

  The priest shakes his head again. ‘How could you have?’

  ‘So he’s in hospital?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask the bishop where he is. The number of the chancellery is right there, on the notice board. Now I have to go.’

  ‘There are things I need to tell him,’ I say as we step out into the warm sunshine.

  ‘He got a raw deal,’ the priest says.

  I say, ‘I know.’

  3

  The new Canadian day leaps out to the western horizon. In winter, fir and maple seem to be cut blackly from the cold sky, but in spring their branches and pliant young leaves ooze into the new air.

  Kay is grim as she drives towards Roger’s Quay. Five minutes ago she got a text from Tim saying ‘gon watreskying’, and now he’s not answering. She blames Keith, who was meant to have shown up at the house earlier. Keith has no permission to bring Tim water-skiing. I don’t need this, she thinks, I really don’t.

  If she could have another career, she thinks, it would be as an artist, living in Toronto, with maybe a couple of exhibitions a year. No trouble. An artistic life with like-minded friends. No baggage from someone else’s life, which, it seems, she must always help to carry. Maybe it’s too late for all that. Or maybe not. No one can go back, but, if she could, Kay thinks that she might take more time and do it differently.

  She pulls up outside the wire-fenced boat compound and sees Keith on the jetty, in his usual blue overalls, loading a box of provisions onto a launch.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Smyth!’

  ‘Keith,’ she says calmly, ‘is Tim here?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘How did he get here?’

  ‘I drove him here, ma’am.’

  ‘Damn it, he’s not allowed here without one of us being told!’ Kay says. She looks around. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Waterskiin’,’ Keith replies.

  ‘But… you’re here. Who’s he water-skiing with?’

  ‘With Mr White. Doin’ pretty good too.’ Keith looks out to the lake. ‘There they are now.’

  Way out on the morning water, Kay can see two specks and a plume of foam.

  ‘I want him to come back in,’ she says and feels her legs weaken. ‘Now.’

  ‘I heard Mr White saying they were going back to the jetty at his place when they were through,’ Keith says. ‘You okay, ma’am?’

  4

  Twenty blocks go by before I can pick up the north-south highway. A little breeze is teasing out high branches and the hems of flags.

  When I telephoned the chancellery, the call was diverted and then answered by a woman who spoke halting English. Por favor, mantener la línea. I was just about to hang up when a man’s voice said ‘Bishop Werner.’

  In this upmarket, residential neighbourhood the houses are screened from view by tall fences or hedging. One tightly clipped and razor-topped line of verdure runs for almost fifty yards and ends in ten-foot high, gilt-tipped electric entrance gates that swing inwards when I press the bell. Dense shrubs mark one side of the driveway, and on the other, where an apron-like lawn sweeps down to the boundary of the property, wind-driven spray from a sprinkler system rinses upwards. The front door is carved from a yellowish wood with a theme of moons and stars set into the grain. A tiny, red activation beam shines like an eye from a high-mounted CCTV camera.

  ‘I’m sorry about all the security—it’s because of the insurance.’

  The bishop is slightly built, stooped, sallow of complexion, and wears spectacles that make him look short-sighted. He wears a priest’s suit, a Roman collar and a small cross at his neck. He walks with the aid of a single crutch that props his right elbow. The hall is dominated by a life-size crucifix. To the left, two steps rise to an open door. A grand piano stands beneath an oil painting of the Virgin and Child.

  ‘I’ve asked for tea to be brought to my study.’

  Bishop Werner leads me through double doors and along a corridor to a book-lined room. Leather chairs with cushions are arranged around a low table.

  ‘Do you take milk, Mr Smyth?’

  ‘I don’t, thank you, Bishop. And I’m Alex.’

  ‘I’m Harald, or Hal, which I prefer to ‘Bishop’, although I’m afraid not many take me up on the offer.’

  He pours the tea, sits back.

  ‘So, Alex, Father Greely tells me that you were inquiring about Father Thomas Deasy.’

  ‘Yes, Hal. But before we go any further, I wonder is it possible to see a recent photograph of Father Deasy? It’s very important. I need to see it and then to make a phone call.’

  The bishop looks mildly surprised, but gets back to his feet and makes his way slowly to an antique desk in the corner. From the bottom drawer, after some searching, he hefts out a photograph album.

  ‘This was a few years ago,’ he says as he places the album flat on the table between us. ‘The diocesan retreat. We went to the Catskills.’

  He turns the plastic pages: pictures of groups of priests, each group with a younger Bishop Werner at their centre.

  ‘There’s Thomas,’ he says. ‘Recognize him?’

  He’s pointing to a man at the end of a group of ten. A broad-shouldered, round-faced man wearing an open-neck, red and white check shirt. My breath catches.

  ‘You recognize him?’ the bishop asks again.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do,’ I tell him. I’m standing up, out of breath. ‘May I please use your telephone? The battery on mine is dead.’

  5

  Kay is driving into Bayport. She’s called Larry and got his mailbox. She didn’t leave a message but tried several more times, with the same result. She normally loves this time of year, when Bayport is full of new people, as cottagers from the islands come in for their errands; now everything she sees is alien. She doesn’t think she can keep this up.

  After two years as a qualified nurse in Toronto General, she began to study psychology at nights. Gavin was five years old and I had just started work as a teacher. Kay became immersed in Freud and Jung; an analyst told her that she had spent her life, including her childhood, caring for other people. With her father dead and her mother unable to face reality, the responsibility had all fallen to Kay. It was as if she was in a role she could not change, facing a future she could not resist. Eight years later, she qualified as an analyst, and ever since, she has been listening to the problems of others.

  She pulls in by Mr Amos’s and again calls Larry’s number; once more she gets his mailbox. The town is buzzing. Mr Echenoz is loading groceries into the back of his pick-up. Keith comes out of the pharmacy, carrying a package, and walks quickly up the sidewalk, right past her. She thought she had left him back in Roger’s Quay.

  ‘Keith?’

  But Keith just walks on. Puzzled, Kay eases out and drives slowly down to the lake road. Larry’s house has a spectacular view over the water. Kay feels a vein throb in her forehead as she goes around to the back door of Larry’s house. She peers out to the lake from the empty jetty, but cannot see beyond the bluff of land that
protects the little harbour.

  Before Larry White came to Bayport, this house was rented to an architect and his wife, with whom Kay and I occasionally socialised during the summer vacation. Kay raps on the screen outside the back door, although she knows that Larry is not at home. As she waits, she looks down over the tidy plot which he has already prepared for vegetables, and, beyond it, to the untroubled skin of the inlet. Stillness and peace. As she turns to go, she looks again and sees that the back door behind the screen is open.

  ‘Larry?’

  On the lake-facing veranda that runs the short length of the house is a rocking chair, a cage with a budgerigar, and a tripod with a mounted telescope. Kay goes to the telescope, removes the viewing cap and puts her eye to the lens. It takes a moment to realize what she is looking at. She gasps. The telescope, pointing at the high tree line to the left of the lakeshore, is trained on our house.

  6

  A clock ticks on the mantelpiece in the bishop’s study. From the front garden the sprinkler sound is audible in wet snatches. Bishop Hal, who has listened intently, interrupting only when points required clarification, now leans forward.

  ‘What a burden you’ve had to carry all these years.’

  ‘I think Terence has read my book and feels outraged. I think he wants to put the record straight before he dies.’

  Bishop Hal reaches for a file and opens it.

  ‘Before we go any further, I have to ask you to promise me that as long as Terence is alive, what I am about to reveal to you remains completely confidential,’ he says. ‘The contents of this file are highly sensitive and personal – I am only sharing them with you because it may be in Thomas’s best interests to do so.’

  Our eyes meet. Behind the heavy spectacles, his are deep, dark brown.

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Very well.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Over forty years ago, a young Irishman, Terence Deasy, comes to the United States. He is twenty years of age. He gets a job as a trainee teacher in a Catholic school in Tampa, Florida. His work impresses the Director of Vocations for the diocese and he is invited to apply for admission to the local seminary.’

  The bishop adjusts his position in the chair.

  ‘Terence goes through the checks and psychological screening that are in place at the time. These notes hold a few clues to the problems that will later emerge. For example, Terence’s childhood in Ireland is surprisingly lacking in detail—he comes from a poor background and has grown up in the care of a state-run institution in County Tipperary, but that’s it. A note also says that he complains of sleeping badly and of occasional bad dreams.’

  Bishop Werner turns some pages.

  ‘On the positive side, he appears to be a self-sufficient if somewhat tough individual. He is also an intelligent young man, devoted to his religion; in other words, an ideal candidate for a vocation. In the 1970s, the Church is used to recruiting Irish candidates whose backgrounds and hard early circumstances preclude them from the priesthood in Ireland.

  ‘The local bishop admits Terence to the seminary in Tampa. He changes his first name from Terence to Thomas. He is twenty-three years of age.’

  The bishop’s hip gets the better of him and he stands at the desk, referring to the file.

  ‘In preparation for the priesthood, Thomas studies philosophy and theology, and after three years graduates in these subjects. Five years later he is ordained a priest and begins work in the Tampa area.

  ‘A few years go by before evidence of heavy drinking emerges. Father Deasy is stopped by a routine police patrol and found to be three times over the legal limit. The police decide to prosecute. Apparently, he has been stopped before but his standing as a popular local priest has persuaded the police not to act. Now he is in trouble. The bishop steps in. He does a deal with the local chief of police: in exchange for Thomas leaving the diocese, the charges will be dropped. Thomas is transferred to Detroit, which is when I first come to know him.’

  Bishop Hal smiles.

  ‘Thomas is a compassionate man. Congregations love him, the sick and the dying adore him. He’s a good priest but he drinks too much. A few years after he arrives here, a new problem arises. In divorce proceedings between parishioners of this diocese, a husband alleges that his wife has being conducting extra-marital affairs with, among others, a Catholic priest. Thomas is the priest.

  ‘In those days you could keep things out of the papers, which is what happens. The diocese pays a sum of money to the husband and the matter is dropped.

  ‘Thomas claims that drinking has clouded his judgement. He is suspended by my predecessor and agrees to enter a rehabilitation programme, which will also include in-depth psychological analysis. He stays in rehab for three months and quits the booze. When he comes out, he is given duties administering to the sick in local hospitals. During this period, he also works as chaplain in a local prison for young offenders.’

  The bishop stoops to the file.

  ‘The doctors’ psychological analysis is unanimous: Thomas Deasy should never have become a priest.’

  7

  Kay cannot stop trembling, and yet, as if she is homing in, inch by inch, on a truth that will not be avoided, she is unable to leave.

  ‘Larry?’

  She can see dishes and a cup, a saucepan by the stove. As she pushes in the door the caged bird begins to chirp. Her head pounds. The kitchen is warm and recent cooking smells linger. Kay looks around. She cannot now remember what hung on these walls when the architect and his wife were here, but several framed photographs of Larry stare at her, his big face smiling out from a snowscape, beside a skidoo.

  She is walking a precipice; if she stops, she will topple. Her lips stumble over an old prayer: please let Tim be safe. She thinks about calling me, but realizes that her phone is in the car. At the sink, she pauses. Why has Larry left his door open? Does he want her to come in? If he does, it means he knew she was coming. She makes herself sit at the kitchen table. She is looking for an explanation, although to what she cannot say. Something in here will tie Larry to recent events. The bedroom door is to one side of the fireplace; Kay goes to it and looks in. A big, square and wooden-framed bed with a headboard fashioned from a split log of local cedar dominates the room. She turns.

  ‘Oh!’

  On the chimney breast hangs a blown-up photograph of Larry in his role in last year’s Christmas play. Kay gapes. Made up to be the Ghost of Christmas Past, Larry is very pale and suddenly familiar. Kay leans on the bedpost. Across the bed, near the window, a bedside light sits on a pine locker. Kay edges past the bed. Coins lie on the locker, and a partly used foil card of pills. Larry’s private life. A slim, leather briefcase is propped by the locker. She lifts the flap. A desk diary, spine upwards, some magazines. Kay lifts out the diary, places it on the bed and opens it. Today’s date is marked by a brown envelope which is postmarked Charlton. The envelope is addressed to

  Alex Smyth

  Author

  Bayport

  Lake Muskoka

  Ontario

  8

  The bishop all at once looks much older.

  ‘The psychologists report that Thomas seems to have retreated into a childlike world, a wistful, sad place which he is unable to discuss in any detail. More than that, they say that his childhood experience has become what they call “discontinuous”. In other words, he cannot provide a full narrative history of his own childhood. Thomas displays all the symptoms of someone whose young life has been interrupted by severe trauma. In such circumstances, the injured person erects psychological defences that allow his life to go on but at great internal cost. Such people are often outwardly tough and resilient and project an aura of self-sufficiency, but in reality this aura conceals a secret dependency, which in Thomas’s case is manifested in alcohol.’

  The bishop pours himself a glass of water. He reads aloud:

  “Thomas is prone to regular panic attacks, reports terrifying nightmares and his prevailing mood is
one of defeat and hopelessness. He sometimes says that he grew up too soon and that he hates himself.”

  ‘And then one day, the dam bursts. Thomas tells his doctor how he has, since the age of five, been routinely sexually abused by his parish priest in Ireland. The abuse has taken place at night, under the guise of fishing trips. This horror has gone on for over four years until, in another tragedy, the uncle who reared Thomas hangs himself. Thomas is not allowed to attend the funeral, but is put into an institution for children in Clonmel, a sort of workhouse or juvenile jail, where he remains until he reaches the age of seventeen.’

  I wonder if there is any mercy in the world.

  ‘He confronted the truth,’ I say, ‘which is more than I did.’

  ‘The truth is cruel,’ Bishop Hal says. ‘He has been covering it up for so long that he appears to himself like a stranger. Apparently, this is not unusual, but that doesn’t make it any easier. He feels he is in the wrong place. He tells me that he realizes he should never have become a priest.’

  Sadness has taken hold of Bishop Hal’s face.

  ‘But he is a priest and has no place else to go. He is off the drink. We are short-staffed at the time, so Thomas is admitted back into parish work just after I become bishop.

  ‘Then, a couple of years ago, a new problem emerges.’

  The bishop goes to the window that overlooks his rose garden.

  ‘An anonymous letter is received in the chancery that alleges Thomas is in an improper relationship with a woman in the neighbourhood. I wasn’t born yesterday. We are all sinners, and there are priests who conduct discreet affairs that don’t affect their ability to minister. Frankly, they’re not breaking the civil law; the people involved are consenting adults. And yet, celibacy is an iron law of the Church. A priest who openly abandons celibacy cannot remain a priest, otherwise he would give scandal. The woman Thomas is seeing comes from Costa Rica, is about half his age and is living in the United States illegally. Her name is Maria.’