The Penance Room

by Carol Coffey

  He smiles at her and nods. “Sorry, occupational hazard,” he says.

  My mother doesn’t answer. She knows that she and Steve are a little alike.

  Steve stands up and fixes his shirt. He looks at my mother and his expression changes from his usual smile to an intense gaze.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt Aishling,” he says before opening the door quietly and slipping away.

  I ease myself gently into the chair beside my mother. She wipes a runaway tear and stares out the window. Steve has exposed the secret she keeps from herself. He knows that she is as lost as some of the residents here and that the knowledge of this weighs heavily on her.

  Later that night, I lie in my bed and wait for movement outside my door which will tell me that Martin is awake and frightened. When I feel the feet of Aishling’s old chair scrape on the wooden floor, I rise and follow her down the hallway. I check my watch and it is two o’clock, later than normal for Martin to face his night-time fears and earlier than normal for me. I ease my way into the doorway past her and stand by the window. Sometimes I feel that there are two Martins, one who sits in the Penance Room and antagonises most of the people around him and the other who cowers in fear at night when there are no distractions from his conscience.

  Aishling is wearing an angry expression on her face. I know she wanted to get some sleep during the night so that she is fresh for her date tomorrow with Steve.

  “Martin, will you please take your sleeping tablet? You can’t expect to have any peace without it,” she says.

  He looks up and when he sees me, he decides to co-operate. He knows I will sit with him until he falls asleep.

  “I won’t ring no more,” he says.

  “And you’ll take your tablet?” Aishling asks hopefully.

  “No, God damn it! You deaf or something?” He looks sheepishly at me. “Sorry,” he says.

  But Aishling rejects his apology and storms off, leaving the two of us staring at each other.

  “My mother was the same. Hot-tempered Irish!” he says smiling.

  I move from the window and sit on his bed while I take out my notebook.

  “Did you see your brothers again?”

  Martin nods and sighs.

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “Don’t make any difference. Maybe Aishling’s right, but they’re so real that when I see them I can’t accept that I’m imagining it, that they’re not really there. I’ve been thinking about it . . . maybe it is my mind playing tricks on me and, if it is, doesn’t seem much I can do about it now. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life seeing them and what kind of a life is that? I’d rather be dead.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I write. “It’s much harder to put things right when you are dead.”

  Martin laughs loudly and we both tense in case Aishling returns and tells us off.

  He pats my head and laughs. “You’re a strange little bloke,” he says and laughs again.

  I think that this is better than crying in fear, even if he is laughing at me.

  “You want to sit here till the train goes by?” he asks and I wonder at this. We are both afraid of things that don’t exist.

  I nod and he smiles.

  “Good boy.”

  “What did your brothers say tonight?” I write.

  “They said: ‘Go see Danny.’”

  “Your brother on the farm?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t seen him since I retired off the mine. Never spoke to him then either.”

  “Will you go?” I sign. I have been teaching Martin basic sign and he is learning.

  He throws back his head and laughs at this outrageous notion.

  “And give them another chance to send me packing?” he says, shaking his head.

  “There’s just you and Danny left now. Maybe he needs to hear from you. Maybe he needs you to apologise so that he can move on too?” I write.

  Martin looks at me with his bloodshot eyes. I can see tiny burst veins all around his face. For a moment I think he is going to hit me as the veins in his neck bulge. I can see a small vein jumping on his leathery neck and I move back a little.

  “What have I got to apologise for?” he shouts. Spit flies out of his mouth and I become very afraid of him. He looks into my face and calms suddenly. Perhaps he is tired of looking at fearful faces, the faces of people he should have been kinder to. He reaches forward and I jump off the bed but he opens his locker and takes out a bottle of whiskey and an old tin box. He opens both and laughs again.

  “Got the girl to bring this in to me. Ssh!” he says, smirking.

  I know he is referring to his daughter Ellen who is frightened of him. She will do almost anything he asks, even if it is bad for his health. He opens the box and inside are several old photos.

  “My mother got these done. Must have cost her a fortune. I didn’t see some of these photos since I was a boy. When Una visited Danny, he gave these to her. If I know Una, she outright asked for them. She got copies done and brought them back to him. She said he was nice when she visited and made her tea.”

  Martin runs his wrinkled hands through the photos and finds the one he is searching for. In the photo are four boys, one smaller than the other. Martin points himself out first, the tallest boy to the left of the black and white photo.

  “That’s me, and the boy beside me, that was Tom. See, we looked nothing alike for twins.”

  I look at Tom and can almost see his barrel-shaped chest, the shape of a boy who gasped for breath each day of his life in this dusty country. Martin on the other hand stands tall in the photo with a mop of dark hair and a defiant expression on his thin face.

  “That was Liam” he says, pointing at the smallest child who is seated in front of his older brothers on a tall wooden stool. He is dressed in what looks like a little sailor’s outfit, so many miles from the sea. He is a cute boy with bright coloured hair that curls up at the bottom as he stares into the camera with a serious expression.

  “And this,” he says, pointing at a tall dark-haired, serious-looking boy, “is Danny.”

  I look into the photo and look closely at the boy whose dreams of a life in Sydney ended when his father died and he had to work in the mine.

  “He looks like you,” I write.

  “Yeah, some said that all right,” he says, still looking at the photo.

  He puts the photo on his locker and starts rummaging through the rest of the photos. He picks out a photo of his mother and tells me that it was taken long after they had fallen out and I look at the photo with interest. Bridie Kelly is tall and lean with a mass of white hair tied in a bun. She has bright, piercing eyes, even brighter than Steve’s and there is something about her that unnerves me, as if the anger she felt at life is burning through the photo itself.

  As I try to think of something nice to say about the intense woman, I feel the sudden vibrations of the train passing beneath my feet. It takes me by such surprise that I let out a roar. Martin leans forward and holds onto me as I sway. I can see the sudden fear in his face. I look down and can see my shoelace caught in the bolt that joined the tracks. I kick to free myself and panic.

  “It’s okay, Christopher,” he says as he pulls me closer to him. “It’s not real, son.”

  I grab onto his nightshirt and bury my head shamelessly in his chest where I cry until the fear passes. I look up at the clock above Martin’s bed. 3.05 a.m. He releases me and I look away, embarrassed.

  He puts his hand forward and lifts my chin.

  “I’ll think about it,” he says.

  I frown. I am lost in my own problems and am unsure what he means.

  “I’ll think about going to see my brother.”

  I open his door and creep by Aishling who is fast asleep at her desk.

  I lower myself into my bed, my heart continuing to beat fast and as it slows I fall into a deep sleep where I dream of Martin and his brother, laughing about the past and all its foolishness.

  When I awake the f
ollowing morning, I get out of bed and dress slowly. I don’t look at my foot and pull my sock over it quickly. There are some mornings that I don’t want to be reminded of it. As I pass Penelope and Victoria’s room I notice that Greta is there and that she is talking to Victoria alone. I wonder how she has managed to separate them and find myself admiring her persistence.

  “Looks lovely!” she says to Victoria who is spinning in front of a tall mirror in the bedroom. I stand by the doorway and think that Victoria looks very different when she smiles and is not wringing her hands in fear. She is wearing a modern red dress that Greta must have bought for her.

  “Do you like it?” Greta asks.

  “Yes. But Penelope will never approve,” she says sadly.

  Greta puts her hands on Victoria’s narrow shoulders and looks into her face.

  “Victoria, you can make your own decisions.”

  Victoria nods and smiles nervously and starts wringing her hands again. She is wearing the same expression as Bill’s son who sometimes comes here and gets told off for breaking the flowers in my mother’s garden. Her head is lowered and all I can see are her two huge blue eyes that appear to be looking upwards at Greta even though the women are roughly the same height.

  Greta decides on a different tactic. I know it is her final strategy as she doesn’t want to manipulate Victoria but wants to try freeing her gradually from Penelope’s authority.

  “You know, it’d mean a lot to me if you wore this dress tomorrow when your nephew arrives.”

  Victoria looks away and says, “I . . . em . . . maybe.”

  Greta nods and moves over to the window. She opens it and takes a deep breath of fresh air.

  “So, Victoria, are you looking forward to telling your story tomorrow?”

  Victoria resumes looking like Bill’s naughty son and starts to bite her lower lip.

  “Yes. Penelope says it’s a wonderful idea,” she says but her eyes don’t reflect her words.

  I think she is nervous about tomorrow and that if it wasn’t for Penelope’s bossy ways, Victoria would have refused to talk to Steve.

  “But she says I have not to speak.”

  Greta spins around. “Not speak? What’s the point in that? How can you tell your story if you don’t speak?”

  “No. Penelope will tell our story. Penelope says it is best if I stay quiet. I’m . . . I’m not to be trusted,” she says shyly.

  Greta moves forward from the window. She opens her mouth to say something but thinks the better of it. I know what she is thinking. One step at a time.

  I wander down to Jimmy’s room and wonder if he is going to be all right. Jeff spent the previous evening at the hospital and I saw Kora say that Jimmy opened his eyes and smiled at his son. I hope he recovers and comes back. He has more work to do.

  When I go back downstairs I see Aishling looking through the mail. She is dressed for her outing with Steve and is wearing short denim cut-offs and a cheesecloth striped blouse. I can see suntan lotion glisten on her legs and I think she is wasting her time. Her Irish skin will never be brown. I have seen my mother tell her this many times but she doesn’t listen. I watch her pick a letter up. It is posted to her and my heart jumps when I see her tear it open but it is not from her parents. It is a reply from the McGonigle family, the family of Father Hayes’ lost love, Deirdre. Aishling takes a breath. I can see the disappointment on her face but she is happy for Father Hayes. I stand behind her and read even faster than she does. It is written in English and is signed by Nóirin McGonigle, a niece of Deirdre.

  Dear Aishling

  Thank you for your letter telling us all about Father Francis. The letter came to my father, Pádraig, and he asked me to write back to you. His hands are bad with arthritis and he finds it hard to write. He was sorry to hear about Father Francis’ ill health and asks that you give him his regards. You will be interested to know that his name is not actually Francis but Aiden. I know you asked about his life before he left Ireland and this is what my father told me.

  Aiden lived with his mother and father on a small farm about three miles from our own here. There were only two boys in the family, Aiden and his older brother, Francis. Francis was almost ten years older than Aiden and he joined the priesthood when Aiden was just a little boy. I hear that poor Aiden grew up in the shadow of his older brother. It was a great honour to have a priest in the family and his mother was very proud. Anyway, Aiden was a great hurler here and a scholar but he knew that he’d be the only one to run the farm. He wanted to be a teacher though. My father, who was a few years behind Aiden in school, remembers him well. When he was about fifteen, he started walking out with my Aunt Deirdre. They were an item from such a young age but it was all very harmless and innocent back then. But she came home and told my grandmother that they had agreed to marry as soon as they were both eighteen. Of course, no one took them seriously. Deirdre was a bit of a wild one. She was a fine-looking girl and I’ve enclosed a photo of her when she was around sixteen or seventeen that I thought Aiden would like.

  Aishling stopped reading and looked at the photo. It was wrapped in soft paper and when she opened it, a black and white photo of a smiling girl stared back at us. Deirdre had long curly hair and bright eyes. She was smiling confidently into the camera like a movie star. Aishling nodded at the photo and could see why Father Francis confused herself with Deirdre. She returned to the letter.

  You can’t tell in a sepia photo but she had long dark-red hair and green eyes. She was quite a beauty. My grandmother wanted her to become a nurse in Dublin. She had an uncle living there then that she could have stayed with but she refused and said that she never wanted to leave. She knew Aiden would be tied to the farm and she was happy to marry at eighteen and live out her life in the village. When Aiden asked my grandfather for Deirdre’s hand, he agreed but the condition was that she do her nursing training in Dublin and they could marry when she finished it. He was a quiet man who was fond of Aiden and knew he’d be good to his daughter. She came home on the train once a fortnight and Aiden would be waiting for her outside the station. He didn’t care when the other lads made fun of him. He was an unusual sort, gentle and thoughtful, a real gentleman, my father said.

  But it wasn’t to be. Aiden’s brother Francis was killed in Africa. He was part of the Missions there and he was murdered. My father never found out exactly what happened but Aiden’s mother was devastated. She fell into a deep depression and poor Aiden didn’t know what to do. All her hopes had been pinned on her religious son. He was her reason for living. Little by little she started praying that Aiden would receive a calling to join the priesthood and finish off his brother’s work in Africa. She thought Francis’ work trying to save the souls of Africans would remain unfinished unless she offered up her only remaining son to God’s work. You have to remember it was a different time. Day by day she worked on him. My father said he lost a lot of weight and so did Aiden’s father who was against him becoming a priest. But slowly over months she wore him down. I know that this is our own opinion here and you’d have to ask Aiden for his side but that was how it seemed to the people in the village.

  When he broke his engagement with Deirdre, the whole village knew that Anne Hayes got her wish and that soon Aiden would be off to the seminary. My father said that Aiden wrote to Deirdre in Dublin explaining his actions and that she wrote back asking him to wait until she came home on Friday’s train to talk about it. People didn’t have phones then and it must have been an awful time for the couple. When she got off the train the following Friday, Aiden was not there to meet her. It was the end of summer. My grandmother sent my father who was just a teenager to wait for her. He remembers her looking around for Aiden as she got off the train in her blue summer dress. When he told her she cried in his arms and he was embarrassed that one of his friends would see him.

  The next time my father saw Aiden, he had taken the name Father Francis, in honour of his dead brother, and it was like he never existed. He had ta
ken his brother’s name and his brother’s vocation and few believed that Aiden had ever had a calling, not when he was so in love with Deirdre. She took it hard and when she finished out her training she went straight to New York. She told my father that she couldn’t bear to live in the place where she had hoped she would spend her life with Aiden, that everywhere she looked she would be reminded of him. Aiden’s father was never the same. He became ill and back then the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him. He only lived for eight months after Aiden was ordained. Looking back it at, my father thinks it was cancer he had, that the shock of losing two sons in such a short time finished him off.

  Mrs Hayes stayed in the old farmhouse but the land was sold off and someone else runs it now. She used to bring photos of Aiden in his cassock everywhere and show them off without a care that she had ruined his life. Any time he did come home, he was the same gentle Aiden but he had lost that spark. He wasn’t allowed to play hurling or any sports. My father said it would have been better if he’d never been born. My grandmother, who had been so against her daughter’s early engagement, never forgave Mrs Hayes for ruining Deirdre’s happiness. She felt Deirdre never got over losing Aiden.

  The family would hear bits of news about Aiden over the years. He’d been in Africa mostly and South America. When Mrs Hayes died, my father never saw Aiden again and never knew that he’d been in Australia all those years. He asked me to tell you that even though it broke his sister’s heart, he never held it against Aiden and he felt they were both victims of the times they lived in. He said he wishes him well.

  I posted your letter on to Deirdre. Sorry, I should have mentioned that she is alive and well. She never came home from New York. After many years nursing there, she married a policeman, Joe. He was Irish. He died a few years back. She had a daughter and a son and, as odd as it seems, she called the boy Aiden. He lives in Sydney. Small world. He’s married to an Australian girl. I’ve included Deirdre’s address as I am sure that she would love to hear from Aiden.