by Morris West
Cavanagh took the note, unfolded it and read it. He looked at Giulia. She had turned away and was staring at the bright, mosaic images under the water: octopods and dolphins and Proteus guarding them all. Cavanagh felt a cold hand closing around his heart. The words he uttered were more visible than audible, a frosty whisper of despair:
‘Dear Mother of God! You got this letter in 1980, twelve years ago! Why did you leave it so long? Why didn’t you do what Lou asked?’
She did not answer. She stood mute and still as a stone image, her hands clasped about her breasts.
Cavanagh was locked in his own solitude. He read and reread Molloy’s letter, understanding every syllable of every word, but not yet able to grasp it as a coherent whole.
My dear Giulia,
I’m not prepared to die with a lie between us. Sandro should not embark on the life he has chosen with any part of the truth untold.
All the documents I have signed over the years affirm that Sandro is my son. There is no evidence that can, or should, prevail against them.
But you know, and I know, that when you married me, you were already pregnant and that the natural father of the child was Bryan Cavanagh. I didn’t know it at the time. I was too preoccupied with my business affairs, too eager to make a happy marriage with you. If you had told me the moon was made of cotton candy, I would have believed you.
Afterwards – what can I say? – I loved the boy so much, I would have killed anyone who told me he was a bastard. In fact, no one ever did, directly. When you and I separated and Lenore came to look after me, it was she who, one night in bed, told me of your affair with Cavanagh. After that it was a simple matter of mathematics.
My attitude to Sandro never changed. I still loved him and treated him as a son. When I judged – rightly or wrongly – that he should be told the truth, I told him as much as I knew or guessed.
Now, I believe it’s your turn to fill in the gaps. If you could bring him and Cavanagh together without starting a war, it might be the best solution of all. But you must at least talk to Sandro. His life will be out of balance until you do.
I wish I could say I love you. I tried, believe me. Let’s at least have the grace to forgive each other.
Lou
Cavanagh folded the letter and handed it back to Giulia. She took it without a word and thrust it deep into her pocket. Cavanagh stood up and took her arm.
‘Why don’t you show me the rest of the place?’
A long time later, while they were walking silently, hand in hand under the orchard trees, Cavanagh asked:
‘What does Sandro say about all this?’
‘Nothing. He has never told me what Lou wrote to him. Until recently, he had never asked me a single question about the matter. It is my guess that Lou told him the simple facts and said that it was my right to explain the rest of it in my own time. There was a great bond between those two – a kind of special chivalry in which I had no share.’
‘But why have you decided that this is the time? What’s special about this day, this week, this month?’
‘Because it’s an important moment in his life, in his career. I wanted to give him a gift. I asked him what he would like. He said: “If it could be arranged, without hurt to anyone, I should like to meet my natural father.”’
‘And just like that, I’m paid to come here and meet with him – no warning, no preparation! My God, Giulia, you really are an incorrigible bitch! All I know about this man is his name and the fact that he’s a thirty-nine-year-old diplomat and you’re about to slam us in each other’s faces. Not good enough, Principessa! Not good enough by half! If you’ll excuse me now I’ll go and pack. You can either call me a taxi or have your chauffeur drive me back to Rome. If my son wants to see me, he’ll find me at the Hôtel de Ville! . . .’
‘Please, Cavanagh! I beg you, don’t go like this. It doesn’t help. It just drags everything out. Your son – our son – will be here at six tonight to say an evening Mass, talk to you and then have dinner with us.’
Cavanagh stared at her, gasping like a grassed trout.
‘You told me he was a diplomat?’
‘He is, in the Vatican Secretariat of State.’
‘Oh God! A priest in the family! And himself born on the wrong side of the blanket! Now there’s a comedy for you!’
Suddenly, he was laughing, a dry, hiccuping sound that brought tears to his eyes and had no merriment in it at all.
‘He’s a bishop, Cavanagh. He was consecrated last week to the titular see of Trajanopolis in Phrygia! He expects to be sent abroad very soon as legate, to one of the new East European republics.’
‘And I’m to be his going-away present!’ Cavanagh was not laughing now. A slow, sullen anger was building up inside him. ‘The Farnese don’t change, do they? Last time, it was your father handing me to you, to keep you sweet and compliant until you were safely wedded to Molloy. Now with no warning, with no shred of proof, you endow me with a bastard son – complete with mitre and crozier – and you expect me to crush him to my bosom and shout “God be praised!” You have to do better than that, Giulia mia! Why in Christ’s name, all those years ago, didn’t you tell me you were carrying my child? I wasn’t running away from you. I was begging you to marry me!’
‘Because I didn’t know . . . I just didn’t know!’
‘Remember when we talked this out in Sardinia? I said I wanted to make a child with you . . .’
‘My thought was the same, Cavanagh. I loved you. I wanted your child, not Lou Molloy’s. If I didn’t marry you, I’d always have part of you to keep. So I took the risk; but don’t you see, I didn’t know I was pregnant until you were gone!’
‘A week after we left Ischia, I missed my first period. I missed the next one too, which was due the week before we were married. So this child would make a scandalously early arrival. I talked to Aunt Lucietta. She talked me out of my panic: lots of women had premature babies. We would certainly make this one look premature, by having a Caesarean. The big, heart-stopping gamble was whether the baby would look like you, with those blue eyes and that ruddy complexion. On this question I had to talk to papa. He laughed at my fears. All newborn babies looked alike. Once Lou had registered the birth, as father of the child, its paternity would be beyond challenge.’
‘He was right,’ said Cavanagh. ‘In Italian law the document prevails. Your father had really done a thorough job on this marriage. You were all lucky the boy looked like a Farnese. You were also lucky Lou loved the child – and loved you enough to swallow the shame you put on him.’
‘That’s a brutal thing to say!’
‘I’m afraid, Giulia mia, you’re the brutal one. Everything in life has to be tailored to your demands!’
‘And why not? I paid more than enough for the privilege of being Giulia Farnese!’
‘What about Sandro? Why didn’t you do as Lou asked and tell him our side of the story?’
‘What was there to tell? I fell in love with a man I couldn’t have. All I had left of him was a baby with Molloy’s name and a medallion the baby used to grasp as he suckled at my breast. Now you’re here, you can explain it all to Sandro!’
‘No way! No how! I’m leaving!’
He turned on his heel and began striding through the orchard trees back to the house. Giulia followed him, running, and then barred his way, a tiny, imperious figure, formidable in her anger.
‘You accepted my retainer, Cavanagh. You asked for my instructions. I have given them to you. Since they are legally and morally reasonable, it seems to me you have a clear duty to carry them out! Mass will be celebrated in the villa chapel at six this evening. Luca will conduct you there. All the staff will be present. You and Sandro will have time to talk before we dine together at eight. I cannot believe that you will fail your son or me!’
The next moment she was gone, fleeing back to the villa. Cavanagh made no move to follow her. Instead he walked slowly back to the pool, squatted by the edge and dangled his
fingers in the water, trying to attract one of the fat carp which swam lazily above the images of another age.
At five minutes to six Luca, the major-domo, came to his room to conduct him to the chapel. Luca was garrulous now. This was a special thing for the family and the household, a Farnese bishop saying their house Mass. He was so young for such an honour: not yet forty! It was not impossible that, in twenty years or so, there could be another Farnese pope. At least he would have to get a cardinal’s hat . . . This Sandro was a man full of surprises. Before he left for America, he had been a wild boy, hard for his mother to manage. But, once in America with his father, he had settled down beautifully. He had been a fine sportsman: a tennis player, a sailor, a runner. He had graduated in philosophy and humanities: summa cum laude. Then, suddenly, poof! He was out of it all and enrolled in the diocesan seminary in New York. Ordained there, he came back to Rome for further studies at the Gregorian University, from whence he was co-opted straight into a position at the Secretariat of State in Vatican city.
Luca’s eulogy had to end there, because they were already at the door of the chapel, a small vaulted chamber designed into the villa edifice itself and decorated in a subdued Palladian style. Giulia was kneeling at a prie-dieu on the left of the nave, with members of the household, maids, gardeners, farm folk, ranged on both sides behind her. The celebrant stood alone at the altar, vesting himself for the Mass. Luca led Cavanagh to a prie-dieu on the right-hand side of the nave, level with Giulia, then walked up to the sanctuary to lay out the altar vessels and serve as acolyte.
Cavanagh knelt down and looked at the man whom he had begotten and who was as remote from him as a creature from Mars. However, there was no doubt he was a Farnese. He had the long face, the high forehead, the beaked nose and the full lips of his grandfather and of their ancestor, Pope Paul the Third, brother of Giulia the Beautiful.
Cavanagh noted with detached approval that he seemed not yet to have acquired the sleek and corpulent look of the desk-bound cleric. He was still slim. His movements at the altar table were measured and precise, his recitation of the vernacular prayers simple and unmannered. The focus of his gaze was somewhere in the centre of the room and not on Cavanagh or Giulia. It was an old preacher’s trick, to collectivise an audience, but Cavanagh was grateful for it. He was even more grateful when, after the ritual summons to ‘offer each other the sign of peace’, Sandro stepped down and embraced each member of the small congregation, who then exchanged the salute with each other. Giulia crossed to Cavanagh, embraced him, and, as their cheeks touched, she whispered: ‘Please, Cavanagh! Let us make peace.’ Cavanagh’s anger died. He squeezed her hand in a silent consent and a moment later stood by her side to receive the consecrated bread and the wine from the chalice. Then he returned to his place, buried his face in his hands and prayed as he had not prayed in years. He was still there when the worshippers had gone and the bishop, divested of his hieratic garments, stood beside him and said formally:
‘We have to talk, Doctor Cavanagh.’
‘Indeed we do.’ Cavanagh got stiffly to his feet.
‘I fear,’ said the bishop, ‘I am something of a shock to you.’
‘And I am an embarrassment to you.’ Cavanagh managed a weary smile. ‘Now may we cut the formalities. I need a drink – a strong one!’
‘I, too. Let’s go to grandfather’s study.’
As they walked out of the chapel, Cavanagh groped for another line with which to begin a dialogue. He was not very proud of what he produced.
‘Your mother tells me your full name is as much of a mouthful as mine is. So call me Cavanagh. Your mother always did.’
‘And I’m Sandro, like my grandfather.’
In the study, rich with old leather bindings, dark wood and ancestral portraits, a tray was laid with liquor and glasses and ice. Cavanagh settled himself in a deep leather armchair. Sandro poured a large measure of scotch for each of them. Cavanagh raised his glass:
‘To the truth. Let’s have it out between us and be done with it.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Sandro the bishop.
They drank. Cavanagh said:
‘That’s a hell of a title you’ve got yourself: Bishop of Trajanopolis in Phrygia!’
Sandro laughed. It was an open, cheerful sound. ‘A big name for no place at all. There’s a whole list of these titular sees in the Pontifical Almanach.’
‘Who picks them for “the new boys” like you?’
Theoretically, His Holiness, but in practice, some prelate from the Congregation for Bishops. I’m told you can ask for a vacant title, but you never get what you ask for. It’s very Roman. All through your life in the ministry someone dishes out these little pinpricks just to remind you that you’re a man subject to authority. Now tell me, Cavanagh, which of us is going to begin?’
‘Well,’ said Cavanagh, ‘mine’s the shortest and the simplest story. But you’ll save me some breath and yourself some boredom if I know how much Lou Molloy told you about me.’
‘Quite a lot.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘You were a smart-ass Australian – his words, not mine! You had a good war record and a new law degree and you knew how to run a boat.’
‘So far, it’s an accurate report.’
‘He said you had a good Jesuitical mind, which would either land you in gaol, or at the top of your profession. He also said you had an easy way with women and were a rough man to fight with. He admired you, Cavanagh. Sometimes I used to think he was reading me the specifications for the son he wanted me to be. That didn’t make me like you very much, especially when I learned you’d seduced my mother!’
‘When did your father tell you all this?’
‘When I informed him I wanted to enter the seminary and become a priest. He wasn’t well at the time. He became very agitated and told me I shouldn’t do it. We both got very heated. Then he told me I couldn’t do it anyway because of some old provision in canon law that illegitimate sons were barred from holy orders.’
‘That was a hell of a way to break the news!’
‘It was, and it nearly broke me. I just didn’t know who I was any more. I’d come to terms with a lot of things: a divided family, my mother’s love affairs, my father’s aberrant lifestyle. This was one blow too much! I went crazy for a while. I hit the bars. I hit on all the girls I knew and a lot I didn’t know. I spent money like water. Lou let me run until I’d exhausted myself and my allowance – which was a very generous one. Then he apologised and tried to explain that although he loved me dearly, he was tired of living a lie – a whole pack of them in fact. He wanted the record straight between us. I still wasn’t sure I understood his motives, but at least we were friends again. He’d gone a step further and asked for a ruling from some canonist or other and had come back with a clear decision: my certificates of birth and baptism, all my life history, confirmed that I was the legitimate son of Lou Molloy.
‘However, we were still left with a couple of problems. Lou had to explain how my mother had become pregnant by you. I had to work out how my wild weeks of indulgence matched with my aspirations to a life in the ministry of the gospel.’
‘I’d be interested to know how you worked out both problems.’
‘That’s not easy to explain, because you have to understand where Lou’s life was heading at this time. These were the early seventies. Lou was in his late fifties, a rich man, an active man, stuck in a timewarp from which he couldn’t escape. The America of the fifties had changed beyond recognition, but he had been so busy with his own affairs at home and abroad that he was insulated from the impact of events. He read them only as shock-waves on the graphs of financial analysis. His Church had changed too – according to him, for the worse. Pope John XXIII had opened the door to the Left. The Vatican Council had shaken all the old certainties. His marriage was a wreck beyond salvage. Most of his old business associates were dead or retired. Now that I was going into the Church, he felt he had nothing on which to build a new life.
/> ‘Lenore, who kept house for him, said to me one day: “My heart breaks for him, Sandro. He’s so desperately lonely. Because of your mother, he’s lost his trust in women and his taste for them too. He hasn’t even got a steady man-friend any more. He’s talking of building a new boat, so he can go cruising with these young fellows he brings into the house when you’re not around. I don’t know what will happen to him when you’re gone . . .” I didn’t know either, Cavanagh.’
‘Did you ever try to talk to him about it?’
‘Yes, I did, several times. He only got angry and told me to keep my nose out of his life. One day, I got angry too and shouted that his life was my life, because I loved him and I hated what he was doing to himself! Finally, it was like breaking through a wall to a prisoner, and finding him huddled in fugue. I coaxed him. I bullied him. I did everything possible to make him talk. Eventually he told me about himself and Hadjidakis. He opened his safe and brought out Hadjidakis’ journal. He knew I’d studied Greek and Latin in my humanities course, so he handed me the book and told me: “. . . You’ve had a small taste of hell recently, Sandro. Now read this and see what a real hell looks like. While you’re reading it, and making all the judgments that you can’t avoid making, write this little note on your shirtcuff: ‘Even when I was in hell, I thought it was heaven, because I was sharing it with a loving friend.’ If that makes a grain of sense to you, you’ll probably make a good shepherd of souls. If it doesn’t, give up the whole idea and go join the bandits like Sindona and Gelli, who are playing games with the Vatican’s money; just like the Colonna and the Borgia and the Farnese did in the old days . . .”’
‘So,’ Cavanagh asked: ‘You read the journal?’
‘I read it several times. I was hypnotised.’
‘But what did you feel about it?’
‘I laughed. I cried. I wanted to puke. I was shamed. I was angry. Sometimes I wished I had been there to share the sexual adventures with them. Sometimes I had nightmares from which I woke sweating in the darkness about all the spoiled lives and all the brutal tyrannies of the underworld, which had been my father’s playground and was becoming so again. Looking back, I think the book confirmed me in what I saw as my vocation, to bear some of the human burden, some of Lou Molloy’s burden, on my own shoulders.’