by Peter Murphy
“There are times when I hate my uncle,” Joel answered, thinking out loud. “Because of his principles . . .”
He didn’t say any more so Danny threw his butt into a snow bank. “C’mon then, let’s get me back before my balls bang together and shatter.”
“You should have let me put your pants on.”
“Ah now, Joel. You’re a good friend and all but I’m not sure I want you in my pants.”
Joel looked horrified as he stepped out of view and began to push the chair back toward the hospital.
“Are you a bit homophobic there, Joel? I used to be too. Until I found out that my uncle was gay. Then he died and it took me a while to sort all that out. But now I’m proud to say—even though I’m a total fuck-up—I’m not the slightest bit against any of that. Live and let live, eh?”
Joel grunted something but it might have been because they were sloshing through the slush as they crossed Bond Street again.
“The Nazis were against them too.” Danny decided to change the mood; they were getting a bit morbid. “Even though they were all closet-cases themselves.”
Joel still didn’t answer, but that might have been because he was pushing Danny up the ramp, gasping a bit as he did.
“Are you all right there, Joel? You know there’re going to be lots of hills in Rome, don’t ya?”
“We’ll get a moped with a side car.”
“Now that would be something for the kids to put on YouTube, or something. We could become the Hell’s Angels of Rome.”
“Danny.” Joel stepped back in front of him as they waited for an elevator. “Rachael wanted you to know that Deirdre will have someone with her.”
Danny kept smiling even though a tiny little flame inside of him went out. It had sputtered back to life when he’d come out of the coma and the first familiar face he saw was hers. But he’d no right to expect anything. It was just nice to feel a little foolish about her again.
“Well you tell Rachael that there’s nothing to worry about. I’m very happy that Deirdre has someone new in her life; she deserves it. And besides, I’m just delighted that we can all be together again, even if everything is different. Everything is anyway, so why should that spoil anything anymore?”
He knew Joel would repeat every word he said and Rachael would repeat them to Martin. “It took being in a coma for me see to see a bit of sense. And I do now. I can see that I was the luckiest sod around—when I got out of my own way. I’ve a family who’s still willing to be seen with me even after all I’ve done.”
He meant it too—most of it, anyway. When he’d been out of it, he’d got to watch his whole life right from the beginning. And it wasn’t like when he’d actually lived it. It was more like a movie and he got to see things differently. And even though he could see all the shit that happened, he could see there were other ways he could have handled things.
“Joel.” He almost smiled when he was tucked back into his warm bed. “Thanks for everything.”
“What, for taking you out into the freezing weather so you can smoke yourself to death?”
“Yeah, and for all the other stuff too. And for Rachael. Martin really lucked out there.”
“They’re good for each other and we can both take some pride in that.”
They nodded in agreement at that.
“Can I ask you something? How the fuck did you put up with me before.”
“Because you’re the only person I know that doesn’t treat me like an outcast.”
“Ya know”—Danny smirked—“when they get you to Rome—my mother’s probably going to have a few Jesuits on standby to try and convert you.”
“Perhaps we could get a deal—like a two-for-one.”
“That’s very Jewish of you there, Joel.”
“I would have thought that being in a coma might have helped you see the ugliness of racial profiling, you Irish drunk.”
Danny pretended to glare at him but he couldn’t keep it up. “Thanks, Joel. I really mean it.”
*
“I just wonder if bringing her new boyfriend is wise.”
Miriam was pushing John across the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, the narrow pedestrian bridge that led to the Castel where popes often hid from the people of the city—and others who came to challenge their temporal power. John liked the bridge and always waved up at the stone angels along the parapets.
“Maybe she needs him as a foil.” He didn’t usually comment on her news of Deirdre but he seemed interested in Danny Boyle.
“Really?”
“Yes, she will want to support him but not give him any false hope.”
“You have remarkable insight into people you’ve never met.”
“Not really. What would you do in her place?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to think that I could be like her but I’m not sure. Deirdre has learned how to be loving and detached and that’s still beyond me. She’s doing this for the sake of her family. It is Jacinta Boyle’s grand scheme to save her son, and Deirdre is willing to go along with everything and play out her part as she must.”
“And you don’t think you could do that?”
“The role of motherhood was always beyond me. That’s why I chose the veil.”
“Do you have regrets?” John asked without looking back at her. Instead, he was staring down at the river.
“Yes and no. When I became a nun it was a revered vocation.”
She locked his wheels and joined him in looking at the river. “And often the only way a woman like me could get an education and have some independence in the world.”
“What set you apart?”
She knew exactly what he meant. They had both spent most of their days separate and apart from the rest of the world.
“When I was a child, my mother was an avid reader and would sit by the fire every night reading. My father could never understand and would get impatient with her. He wasn’t such a bad person but he had little education. He was taken out of school to run the farm.
“When we were very young she read to us, but when we were more grown up, she gave us books to read on our own. But we had to wait until all our chores were done—so as not to aggravate my father.
“So for an hour every evening I got to sit and read, and it was the happiest part of my day. I knew then that I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to share the joy I had found with others. I suppose I was vain, too, and wanted to be the one that turned on the switch inside them. But instead, I have just become an anachronism.”
The river flowed slowly past them, sparkling in the sunshine. Books had changed everything for her. They had opened her mind to a world beyond the fields her family had farmed for years. Books helped her see beyond the hills that rimmed their world. They had made her different, even from her sisters who finished school and went out into the world looking for husbands.
They found them, too, and settled down to raise families of their own. When Miriam was in America they wrote often but it was more a sense of obligation to fading familial bonds. And, when she was defrocked and had gone back to Dublin in disgrace, they were cordial enough, but she knew her past was not something they wanted their friends to know about. They lived in places like Killiney and Howth and could never find the right time to have her visit. Those that were still alive wrote emails, at Christmas mostly, with vague promises about meeting up the next time they were in Rome.
“We’re both relics.” John smiled and his faded blue eyes seemed so sad. “But at least we’re in the right place for that.”
“Yes, there is that. And I must admit that I’m looking forward to seeing Deirdre’s children again. They always make me feel that I belong to something.”
She was determined to play her part too. She’d be as nice and as supportive as she could with Danny. She’d never really disliked him—she was just
hurt by the things he’d done to Deirdre. But it was time to put all that aside. It might even be a nice visit for everybody, but she would have to make sure John was taking his medications properly. Sometimes he played around with them and could get very dark.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have regrets?”
“A great many.”
“I mean about choosing the priesthood?”
“No, not about that. Even though I had read that we should wear the world as a loose garment—I had to play my part. I could not stand by and let terrible things go unchallenged. I had to become a part of the good in this life.
“But, as it turns out, the saddest part of living is learning that so much that we held as good had been corrupted. Yes, great new ideals spring up, but it is only a matter of time before they are turned for profit. Even this.” John waved his hands across the Roman skyline. “All the ideals of the Republic became nothing more than the rationalization of a pyramid built on the backs of slaves.
“And when it was the turn of the Christians, the simplicity of Christ was lost in the clamors that are matters of State and Politic. The voice of Love became the voice of censure and condemnation. This is our nature and this will be our fate. Blessed are the weak of mind for they can go along with it all, assured by the comforting lies of the world.”
“That is the most un-Jesuit thing I have ever heard.”
“Yes, I have become a heretic.”
He was smiling again and she reached forward and gently stroked the back of his hand, old and white and wrinkled.
“What would you have done differently?”
“Very little.”
“Even the war?”
“Even the war. That was what shaped me and made me for the paths I was given.”
“Don’t you think you might have been shaped and chosen before then?”
“No. Many men go to war and do not become Jesuits. This was my doing. At the end of the day, and despite all that happens to us, we make our own choices.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
John turned his hand and took hers in his. He held it for a moment but she could feel all that was still kind and tender in him. “We can see it so easily in those around us. Look at Deirdre’s husband.”
“Ex-husband.”
“Regardless. Was he made by the world or has he chosen poorly?”
“John.” Miriam interrupted his musings as they approached the Via Giulia. She would let him pray with the dead for a while before she wheeled him home for the night. “We need to talk about Patrick.”
“What about him?”
“You haven’t been very nice to him recently.”
“Haven’t I?”
“You know you haven’t. You’ve been very impatient and dismissive with him. He doesn’t deserve that and especially not from you.
“John?” she asked again when he didn’t answer.
“Very well then. I am jealous of him because he still has a purpose in the world and is reluctant to embrace it.”
“I see, but isn’t that his choice? Patrick was never one to go rushing off tilting at windmills. He was always the more patient sort who trusted that he’d be given his part when the time came.”
John snorted and hunched his shoulders to urge them along.
“Not everyone is like you, you know? Not everyone is always up to fight the good fight,” Miriam chided gently and let his chair come to halt. She stepped in front of him so she could see his face and he could see hers. “Patrick has a different approach. You have to allow for that.”
“It’s not just about what I want. Patrick’s uncle wants to move on but he cannot until he fulfills some old promise he made.”
“To Danny Boyle’s grandmother?”
“Yes, and to Patrick himself.”
*
“I have tried talking to him,” Miriam told him when she called, but Patrick wasn’t convinced.
He’d found it better to avoid John altogether and soothed any guilt for deserting the old man by convincing himself that it was better not to upset him.
“And do you think you got through to him?”
“Who knows, Patrick? But I do know that he does not mean the things he says. He’s really very fond of you and admires all that you’ve stood for. He says that you’re like the last of the Desert Fathers.”
Patrick almost smiled at that. Lately he’d been finding solace in the writings of the Apophthegmata Patrum, something John had picked up on the last time they met. “Say something to your bishop,” he had paraphrased, “that he might be edified.”
“If he is not edified by my silence,” Patrick had responded, almost with a smirk, “he will not be edified by my speech.”
It was a bit petulant of him and he’d regretted it immediately, but he resented John harping on at him about his uncle.
“Well it was kind of you talk with him but, if you don’t mind—I don’t think this is something we need bother John with anymore.”
“No,” Miriam agreed and paused for a moment. “I suppose you’re right.”
After she had hung up, Patrick took the letter from his pocket. He’d found it at the bottom of the bishop’s box of papers. Old and yellowed and addressed to him in his uncle’s bold hand, and dated the evening of Patrick’s ordination. He’d read it so often that he could recall it verbatim.
It might be that my greatest sin was that I got you into it all. I could have tried to turn you away from this life even though you seemed bound and determined. Perhaps I could have done more but now I will pray that you can prove stronger than most and always be a true priest and not just another functionary in God’s bureaucracy. I pray that the spirit you have shown since you were a boy is never diminished.
He put the letter back into his pocket and recited the rest as he walked out into the night.
“Are you well, Uncle,” he called up to Bruno when he reached the piazza as the night closed in around them.
No complaints, me boy. And are you well?
“I am. You know Danny Boyle is on his way?”
I do indeed.
“And would you happen to know what it is I’m supposed to say to him?”
His uncle just smiled and didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Patrick knew. All he had to do was to clear his heart and mind and let God work through him, for better or worse.
This was the moment his life had led up to. He was being given another chance to play his part in the great plan that would help save Danny Boyle from himself.
Chapter 19 – Summer 2012
It was, Patrick had to admit, going to be a lot more difficult than he had anticipated. The invasion of Boyles was far too much for him. It was nothing they did. He just wasn’t used to dealing with so many people at one time and that made him sad. He’d become a shepherd who couldn’t be around his flock.
Not that they seemed to notice. Jacinta invited him over to their hotel for lunch the day after they arrived and greeted him as if he was a cardinal. Danny was very cordial, too, but a bit more hesitant—at times contrite and at times embarrassed, particularly when his mother spoke for him.
She didn’t seem aware or concerned, sitting like a dowager, the way old Nora Boyle used to.
Martin and Grainne had left their kids at home with their mothers-in-law and sat at the next table over with their spouses and Deirdre. Patrick had met them all in the foyer and liked them immediately. Grainne looked more like Anne Fallon and Martin was the image of his father—except a lot more polished and proud. He liked Doug, too, and Rachael, but he wasn’t sure what to make of her father. “Brand,” he had introduced himself. “Joel Brand,” he went on as if Patrick should have known him or something. But he seemed nice enough and Miriam had told him that he never left Danny’s side. Danny was walking with a ca
ne and Joel was never far away. He looked over a few times, making sure that Danny was okay.
As far as Patrick could see he was, but he looked awful and Patrick didn’t normally dwell on such things. He looked like a man who had been dragged through the fires of hell by wild horses. There was hardly anything left of him. Patrick had always remembered him from that day in Rathfarnham Castle—the day they walked around and talked about the trouble Danny was in. That was the day when he felt most Christ-like in all the years he’d been a priest. Nothing else came close. Funerals, weddings, baptisms—they were pretty run of the mill. Of course he had to act the part, being happy if it was a wedding or a baptism and sad when the other situations called for it. He did, however, like visiting the old people, even though he realized most of them were so lonely they would have looked forward to his visits even if he was selling insurance.
At the end of the day that was all he was doing, and that was the problem. Not even the pope could stop bad things from happening, no matter how much he asked them all to pray. That’s what his uncle’s letters said: the best they could hope for was to try to be able to clean up afterwards.
“And how was your journey over?” he asked Danny, as kindly and welcoming as he could. He wanted him to know that he was really happy to see him. From what he had read about alcoholics, they all suffered terribly from shame—at least until they were sober for a while. But Danny wasn’t really listening; he was gazing over at the other table where his family sat.
Deirdre had come alone. Jacinta had phoned the night before to let Patrick know they’d arrived safely and mentioned it, almost casually. Jacinta had also confided in her that things weren’t rosy on that front, but it was probably for the better.
They all needed to know the lay of the land, but it still felt like gossip. Old Fr. Brennan used to call it one of the delicacies of life but Patrick never felt proper about it. Still, as Miriam had rationalized aloud, they all had their part to play in Jacinta’s plan.
“And what are you hoping to see in Rome?” Patrick tried again when Jacinta had finally fallen silent, having answered his previous question and talked all through the meal that she had just picked at. She said flying always did that to her; her stomach took a few days to land—not that it was great at the best of times, but she still had her health other than that, and there were many who’d be more than happy to change places with her.