He went through the motions of living, noting her sprightly return from Donegal Town once a fortnight, wondering why the hell he did not wring her neck. Still, he did nothing, and one day when she told him that she was pregnant, he said that there was nothing more satisfying than success after unremitting application, and that now she could wait for the chimes with a clear conscience. To his surprise, she took her pregnancy seriously. She no longer saw the man or men who had sown her, and she spent the days of turgescence on the sofa in the sitting-room reading light novels and eating Turkish delight. Dr McGarrigle came and felt her belly, and told Roarty that there was some danger of a premature birth. A week later, when she was rushed to Donegal Hospital, Roarty experienced a sense of alarm that surprised him. He went to visit her, and was told that there had been complications because of her age. A healthy baby girl had been born by caesarean and the mother was in intensive care. She had opened two sunken eyes and taken his hand, and he knew that she would never take it again.
‘We’ve had some good times, Tim,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve come a long way together. You’ll never know how much you shortened the first hundred miles.’
What could he say? Her words bore the full gravity of life’s tragedy, and no response of his could cheapen them. In dying, as in living, she had defeated him.
He looked after the child as best he could, somewhat grudgingly at first; then tenderly as she smiled whenever he stooped over her cot; and finally joyously as the first miraculous words brought new life the house. She was a lovely little girl, dark haired and dark eyed, her oval face bright with innocent intelligence. Within a year she had transformed his life. She was not only his daughter but was his little woman, too. He taught her to read and write before she went to school; he took her for walks and told her all he knew about the flowers and small animals of the glen; he drove her seventeen miles to Garron twice a week for piano lessons with the best teacher in the area; and when she was thirteen he sent her to the best convent school in the county. She was not of his flesh; instead she was the apple of his eye. And perhaps because she was not of his flesh, he was driven to mould her to an extent that no ordinary father would attempt. Forever at pains to provide a rich tilth of experience in which her young personality could grow, he was rewarded by the sweetness of her nature evident even in the delicacy of her piano playing.
Her holidays from school were heaven. The house would flow with music, and he would eat whatever she cooked and ask for more. He could see that she was already in possession of a young woman’s grace of movement, but still he was reluctant to instruct her in the questionable designs of would-be boyfriends. He reasoned that there was no need. She was head of her class at the convent school. Surely she was capable of seeing through the wiles of unlettered bumpkins.
Then Eales came with his cats and transplanted her to a putrefactive tilth, the very midden of life where nothing grew but black-gilled toadstools. A fortnight ago he had written to tell her that she had won a university scholarship, imagining her joy and eagerness to come home at once. Sadly, he was still waiting for her reply. Instead he’d had her pathetic letter to Eales. He wondered if he himself was to blame. A caring mother would have warned her against the ungovernable tides of life.
The symphony ended, leaving him with a sense of life’s, and perhaps Schumann’s, unsettling ambiguity. His thoughts now hung on that iniquitous trinity of Eales, Potter and McGing. They had woven themselves into the warp and weft of his life, as if by some theological sleight of hand they had become one and the same person, the creation of his own insatiable demon. Day after day they tortured and oppressed him in their ubiquity, until he longed for some cleansing purgative to rid his mind and body of all trace of them. Yet in his heart he knew that without them he would no longer be himself. Was it not the obsessive nature of his imagination that coloured his every experience and formed the very core of his personality? We are all victims of our self-love, he thought. Even if we could be reconstituted and streamlined at a stroke, we would no more desire it than a lover of Schumann would wish to see his music rescored by a composer with a finer sense of orchestration, for the simple reason that it would no longer be Schumann.
He tiptoed down the dark stairs and let himself out by the back door. He took a pair of gardening gloves, a cold chisel, and a hammer from the garage and followed the west road out of the village. Turning north at the crossroads, he doubled back through the fields until he found himself fornent the high-walled churchyard. The sudden soss of a salmon rolling in the river gave him a start. He squatted on his hams and looked all around. He held up his finger before his nose, but the night was so dark that he could barely see it. An opaque sky pressed down like a black cope on the shoulders of the hills, ideal for the business in hand.
Having climbed over the drystone churchyard wall, he lurked for a moment in the shadow of the belfry. Satisfied that all was quiet, he stole forward to the sacristy window, put on his gloves and raised the bottom sash with a heave, thankful that some thoughtless altar boy had not put the catch back in place. Within minutes he had climbed inside. As a former altar boy himself, he had no trouble finding his way in the dark. Soon he was standing in the sacristy doorway, mesmerised for a moment by the flickering of the red sanctuary lamp. Eerie shadows darted along the walls at each upward leap of the flame, revealing aspects of holy pictures and objects he had never noticed before.
With an unnerving feeling that he was being watched by an eye that never closed, he tiptoed down the nave. The poor-box was inside the porch door. He prised it open and stuffed a fistful of coins in his pocket. Within twenty minutes he was back once more in his bedroom, grateful that the night’s work was done. The Canon would order an investigation that should keep McGing busy for a week or two. It would be a baffling case, if only because of the difficulty of imagining who in a god-fearing community would sacrilegiously steal ninety-four pence from the poor. He couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt, which was more than he had felt after the deletion of Eales. Luckily, he could make amends for his sin tomorrow by sending £2.00 anonymously to the St Vincent de Paul Society in Dublin. After all it was common knowledge that the urban poor were more deserving than their country cousins.
As his thoughts lost their way on the verge of sleep, McGing receded into the shadows while Potter loomed large with his extraordinary view that the Famine represented ‘more austere and truer times’.
12
‘Has everyone got a drink?’ Roarty asked. He had locked the street door and taken the till from the bar so that if McGing knocked it would appear that he was having a social drink with a few close friends.
‘Let the meeting begin,’ said Cor Mogaill from the depth of the armchair by the fireplace. His sharp face glowed with eagerness, the face of a man who had long dreamt of revolution and could hardly believe that he had lived to see its dawn. He kicked his knapsack away from him and, resting his feet on it, inhaled the smoke of his cigarette so deeply that Roarty wondered if the effects might reach to his toes. Cor Mogaill was an innocent, he told himself; a Marxist perhaps but the salt of the earth, nonetheless. Not a man to cut through a dead man’s tibia with a hacksaw, and far too serious to make schoolboy jokes in bad taste.
Roarty sat next to Potter on the sofa, while Gillespie with notebook and pencil sat at the table, and Rory Rua, accompanied by Setanta, his red setter, sat hunched on a stool in the corner. Potter, in a well-cut corduroy jacket, open-necked shirt and cavalry twills, looked the picture of suave urbanity at ease in the country. Suntanned and fine-featured, athletic and self-confident, he stared with handsome eyes that betrayed icy coldness for all their beguiling blueness. A thoroughbred, thought Roarty, compared with whom Rory Rua is a Clydesdale. Potter offered his tobacco pouch to Rory Rua who took it with the awkwardness of a man who had no sense of ceremony. He must have washed his hair; it looked redder than usual, almost as red as that of his dog, and the large freckles on his face and hands could have been blotches from some
rare skin disease. He tamped his pipe, exposing the raw-red saltwater boils on both wrists. Rory Rua could have been some half-formed amphibious creature, less than human, a prosaic version of Caliban. I’m becoming far too sensitive, Roarty told himself, taking a therapeutic swig from his glass.
‘We all know why we’re here,’ he began. ‘Until we have formed an executive committee, I’ll take the chair. The first thing we must do is elect officers. I propose Kenneth Potter for president and chairman.’
‘I second that and I think Setanta here would agree.’ Rory Rua patted his dog on the head.
‘I appreciate your faith in me,’ Potter said with a smile. ‘However, I feel I must decline. I’m a stranger here, suspect in the Canon’s eyes and therefore a liability in any negotiations with him that may ensue. Members of the executive committee should be above criticism. While I’m willing to give all the help I can behind the scenes, I must not be seen to hold elective office. I therefore propose Mr Roarty for president. He is a respected figure in the glen and, I feel sure, broadly acceptable to the Canon.’
‘I second that,’ said Gillespie.
It was put to the vote and Roarty was elected.
‘Thank you,’ Roarty said. ‘Is it the wish of the meeting that I should remain in the chair?’
Everyone murmured yes, except Cor Mogaill.
‘Can’t we have an informal meeting over a few jars without making pompous asses of ourselves like a drove of schoolteachers at their AGM?’ he asked. ‘Is all this fiddle-faddle about proposing and seconding necessary among boon companions?’
‘We must now elect a secretary,’ said Roarty, ignoring him.
‘If we must have a secretary, I propose myself for the job,’ said Cor Mogaill.
There was a long silence while they glanced at one another and at the self-promoting Cor Mogaill, who was reclining in his chair with a challenging look in his eye.
‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to have a self-declared Marxist as secretary,’ said Rory Rua. ‘We must elect men who go to Mass on Sunday and receive the sacraments regularly. I propose Gimp Gillespie because he fulfils those two conditions and because he’s used to the pen and in a position to give us valuable publicity in the Dispatch.’
‘I second that,’ said Potter.
A vote was taken and Gillespie was elected with Cor Mogaill abstaining.
‘Now for the treasurer. May I have a nomination?’ Roarty asked.
‘I’m certain that Gimp will make a good secretary,’ Cor Mogaill conceded. ‘But I think I’d make an equally good treasurer. I don’t mind going to Mass while this project of ours is in motion, so will someone nominate me, then?’
‘Where are your Marxist principles?’ Rory Rua demanded.
‘I’ll define my position but, like most politicians, only after I’m elected. As an upright citizen, I refuse to be interrogated.’
‘No reflection on your honesty, Cor Mogaill, but I think that a man who has admitted to having robbed the poor box should not be in charge of the finances of what may well become an epoch-making society in the history of the church.’ Rory Rua spoke with an unaccustomed twinkle in his eye.
‘I didn’t rob the poor box.’
‘Then why did you tell the Canon and McGing that you did?’
‘I did it to show McGing up for a jackass by later denying it all. And when the Canon asked me if it were Marxist doctrine to rob the poor of their coppers, I saw it as an opportunity to confuse him with Scripture by reminding him that the New Testament says quite clearly that gold and silver are infected. I told him that I threw the money into the sea in order to cleanse it before the poor received it. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Cor Mogaill, you’re quite mad,’ Roarty said. ‘Everyone in the glen now believes that it was you who robbed the poor box. Why did you blacken your name by admitting to a crime you didn’t commit?’
‘You’re all sunk in embourgeoisement. What does the opinion of capitalists, even tuppence-ha’penny capitalists like you, matter to a Marxist revolutionary? I’ve already promised to repair the poor box and “return” the money—a masterstroke in my war against Church and State. Loftus and McGing are happy in their ignorance, while the real culprit may well be encouraged to commit a more serious crime in the hope that I’ll take the rap again. In this I’m a true revolutionary, undermining society by seeming to take its sins on myself!’
‘It’s a Christ-like rather than a Marx-like gesture,’ Potter smiled.
‘Anyway we can’t have you as treasurer,’ Rory Rua declared. ‘You’re too confused in your thinking to seek high elective office.’
‘Shit and piss and cock and balls,’ said Cor Mogaill.
‘I nominate Rory Rua for treasurer,’ said Gillespie.
Potter seconded the proposal and Rory Rua was duly elected.
‘And what about Potter and me?’ demanded Cor Mogaill.
‘We’ll make you both honorary officers,’ said Roarty, going to the bar for another round of drinks.
He was both angry and irritated. How could he keep McGing busy if Cor Mogaill was going to put a spanner in the works every time? He would have to think of something serious, something more indictable than robbing the poor box, something that even Cor Mogaill would not ‘confess’ to. Now, thanks to Cor Mogaill, McGing was free to devote himself to the murder again. He was running out of time, and he still hadn’t devised a way of dispatching Potter. He was enjoying the meeting, however. It was a fresh venture, and with any luck it would obliterate the insistent pattern of thought that dogged him night and day.
‘Next we must think of a name for our society,’ he announced, returning with a full tray.
‘Surely, you’re putting the cart before the horse,’ Cor Mogaill advised. ‘First we should discuss what we aim to do.’
‘I propose a self-explanatory name,’ said Roarty. ‘The Society for the Preservation of the Wooden Altar.’
‘Too prosaic,’ said Gillespie. ‘We need a name that will lull the ear and linger in the public memory. We need a pronounceable acronym like Unesco. We must think in terms of public relations. And let me tell you, there is nothing subeditors like better than a snappy title. The column width of the Dispatch is only twelve picas, in layman’s language two inches. Therefore we need a short name for headlines, which is why I propose the Wooden Altar Society, which will collapse into the catchy acronym WAS.’
Cor Mogaill, flinging his head back, collapsed in laughter. ‘Why don’t we call it the SFB?’ he hooted. ‘The Society for Bullshit because it’s what you’re all talking.’
‘I agree with Gillespie,’ said Potter. ‘What we need here is the x-factor.’
‘And what the fuck is the x-factor?’ Cor Mogaill enquired. ‘More bullshit, or I’m a giraffe.’
‘It’s the unquantifiable, the unpredictable. It’s what made Wellington, Nelson and Churchill great leaders against the odds. With it, we could be the instigators of a revolution, a liturgical counter-revolution that will put the clocks back to pre-tridentine times and light a thousand candles under the cassock of every priest and bishop in the country.’
‘Will you just imagine the heat!’ said Cor Mogaill. ‘It will burn the hair off their bollocks within seconds, if they’ve got any.’
Roarty could see that Potter was enjoying himself. He had the knack of bringing out the worst in Cor Mogaill, and he knew it. ‘Our primary aim is to preserve the wooden altar,’ Roarty said, calling the meeting to order.
‘And possibly to remove Canon Loftus,’ said Cor Mogaill. ‘Let’s not pretend to an innocence we as children of the dark don’t possess. If we raise enough stink over the altar, the Bishop of Raphoe will want to know why Loftus isn’t keeping his parishioners in line. There will be questions over the brandy and possibly a change of scene for our Canon.’
‘We mustn’t be led into cheap Marxist anticlericalism,’ said Rory Rua. ‘We must not show the slightest hint of personal animus. We must all appear upright and hono
urable, occupying the front seats at Mass on Sunday. We must reform from within, not without.’
‘Rory Rua, you scoundrel and hypocrite!’ roared Cor Mogaill. ‘Tell the truth: you don’t give a fiddler’s fuck for religion. All you care about is lobsters.’
‘If we keep sniping at one another like this, we’ll deserve to be called the Altercation Society,’ Gillespie smiled.
‘And the perpetrator of such a feeble pun deserves to be strung up by the privities and shot with a ball of his own inspissated stool,’ Cor Mogaill hooted.
‘We may talk lightly,’ said Gillespie, ‘but this meeting could be a turning point in the history of the Church. We’re not merely saying “no” to a limestone altar; we’re saying “no” to a table altar, the centre-piece of the new liturgy. Our “no”, if we say it loudly enough, could be the genesis of a counterrevolution, as Kenneth has reminded us.’
‘You’ve mentioned the x-factor, but you haven’t told us the title that’s got it.’ Roarty turned to Potter.
‘It’s quite simple,’ Potter replied. ‘The Anti-Limestone Society.’
‘Sounds like a society for cranks, a geological variant of the Flat Earth Society.’ Cor Mogaill shook his head.
‘Precisely,’ said Potter. ‘We need a title that isn’t too solemn, something to show people that we have a sense of humour as well as a nodding acquaintance with theology.’
‘I do believe you’re right,’ said Roarty, putting it to the vote. On a show of hands, Potter’s title was adopted. ‘Now we must discuss tactics,’ Roarty continued.
‘Wouldn’t it be more sensible to discuss strategy?’ Cor Mogaill suggested.
‘We’ll discuss both,’ said Potter.
‘We need to hold a public meeting to which everyone in the parish is invited. But first we must show we mean business. We must do something to make us a topic of conversation in every chimney corner.’
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