Selected Stories, Volume 2

by William Trevor

  Milton explained. He said the woman had been agitating him all day, since the moment he awoke. It was because of that that he’d had to tell someone, because she was pressing him to.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone else, Milton. Don’t tell a single soul. It’s said now between the two of us and it’s safe with myself. Not even Addy will hear the like of this.’

  Milton nodded. The Reverend Cutcheon said:

  ‘Don’t distress your mother and your father, son, with talk of a woman who was on about holiness and the saints.’ He paused, then spoke with emphasis, and quietly. ‘Your mother and father wouldn’t rest easy for the balance of their days.’ He paused again. ‘There are no better people than your mother and father, Milton.’

  ‘Who was St Rosa?’

  Again the Reverend Cutcheon checked his desire to rejoin the men who were picnicking on the grass. Again he lowered his voice.

  ‘Did she ask you for money? After she touched you did she ask you for money?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘There are women like that, boy.’

  Milton knew what he meant. He and Billie Carew had many a time talked about them. You saw them on television, flamboyantly dressed on city streets. Billie Carew said they hung about railway stations, that your best bet was a railway station if you were after one. Milton’s mother, once catching a glimpse of these street-traders on the television, designated them ‘Catholic strumpets’. Billie Carew said you’d have to go careful with them in case you’d catch a disease. Milton had never heard of such women in the neighbourhood.

  ‘She wasn’t like that,’ he said.

  ‘You’d get a travelling woman going by and maybe she’d be thinking you had a coin or two on you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Milton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get rid of the episode. Put it out of your mind.’

  ‘I was only wondering about what she said in relation to a saint.’

  ‘It’s typical she’d say a thing like that.’

  Milton hesitated. ‘I thought she wasn’t alive,’ he said.

  Mr Leeson’s Uncle Willie used to preach. He had preached in the towns until he was too old for it, until he began to lose the thread of what he was saying. Milton had heard him. He and Garfield and his sisters had been brought to hear Uncle Willie in his heyday, a bible clenched in his right hand, gesturing with it and quoting from it. Sometimes he spoke of what happened in Rome, facts he knew to be true: how the Pope drank himself into a stupor and had to have the sheets of his bed changed twice in a night, how the Pope’s own mother was among the women who came and went in the papal ante-rooms.

  Men still preached in the towns, at street corners or anywhere that might attract a crowd, but the preachers were fewer than they had been in the heyday of Mr Leeson’s Uncle Willie because the popularity of television kept people in at nights, and because people were in more of a hurry. But during the days that followed the July celebration Milton remembered his great-uncle’s eloquence. He remembered the words he had used and the way he could bring in a quotation, and the way he was so certain. Often he had laid down that a form of cleansing was called for, that vileness could be exorcized by withering it out of existence.

  The Reverend Cutcheon had been more temperate in his advice, even if what he’d said amounted to much the same thing: if you ignored what happened it wouldn’t be there any more. But on the days that followed the July celebration Milton found it increasingly impossible to do so. With a certainty that reminded him of his great-uncle’s he became convinced beyond all doubt that he was not meant to be silent. Somewhere in him there was the uncontrollable urge that he should not be. He asked his mother why the old man had begun to preach, and she replied that it was because he had to.

  Father Mulhall didn’t know what to say.

  To begin with, he couldn’t remember who St Rosa had been, even if he ever knew. Added to which, there was the fact that it wasn’t always plain what the Protestant boy was trying to tell him. The boy stammered rapidly through his account, beginning sentences again because he realized his meaning had slipped away, speaking more slowly the second time but softening his voice to a pitch that made it almost inaudible. The whole thing didn’t make sense.

  ‘Wait now till we have a look,’ Father Mulhall was obliged to offer in the end. He’d said at first that he would make some investigations about this saint, but the boy didn’t seem satisfied with that. ‘Sit down,’ he invited in his living-room, and went to look for Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

  Father Mulhall was fifty-nine, a tall, wiry man, prematurely white-haired. Two sheepdogs accompanied him when he went to find the relevant volume. They settled down again, at his feet, when he returned. The room was cold, hardly furnished at all, the carpet so thin you could feel the boards.

  ‘There’s the Blessed Roseline of Villeneuve,’ Father Mulhall said, turning over the pages. ‘And the Blessed Rose Venerini. Or there’s St Rose of Lima. Or St Rosalia. Or Rose of Viterbo.’

  ‘I think it’s that one. Only she definitely said Rosa.’

  ‘Could you have fallen asleep? Was it a hot day?’

  ‘It wasn’t a dream I had.’

  ‘Was it late in the day? Could you have been confused by the shadows?’

  ‘It was late the second time. The first time it was the afternoon.’

  ‘Why did you come to me?’

  ‘Because you’d know about a saint.’

  Father Mulhall heard how the woman who’d called herself St Rosa wouldn’t let the boy alone, how she’d come on stronger and stronger as the day of the July celebration approached, and so strong on the day itself that he knew he wasn’t meant to be silent, the boy said.

  ‘About what though?’

  ‘About her giving me the holy kiss.’

  The explanation could be that the boy was touched. There was another boy in that family who wasn’t the full shilling either.

  ‘Wouldn’t you try getting advice from your own clergyman? Isn’t Mr Cutcheon your brother-in-law?’

  ‘He told me to pretend it hadn’t happened.’

  The priest didn’t say anything. He listened while he was told how the presence of the saint was something clinging to you, how neither her features nor the clothes she’d worn had faded in any way whatsoever. When the boy closed his eyes he could apparently see her more clearly than he could see any member of his family, or anyone he could think of.

  ‘I only wanted to know who she was. Is that place in France?’

  ‘Viterbo is in Italy actually.’

  One of the sheepdogs had crept on to the priest’s feet and settled down to sleep. The other was asleep already. Father Mulhall said:

  ‘Do you feel all right in yourself otherwise?’

  ‘She said not to be afraid. She was on about fear.’ Milton paused. ‘I can still feel her saying things.’

  ‘I would talk to your own clergyman, son. Have a word with your brother-in-law.’

  ‘She wasn’t alive, that woman.’

  Father Mulhall did not respond to that. He led Milton to the hall-door of his house. He had been affronted by the visit, but he didn’t let it show. Why should a saint of his Church appear to a Protestant boy in a neighbourhood that was overwhelmingly Catholic, when there were so many Catholics to choose from? Was it not enough that that march should occur every twelfth of July, that farmers from miles away should bang their way through the village just to show what was what, strutting in their get-up? Was that not enough without claiming the saints as well? On the twelfth of July they closed the village down, they kept people inside. Their noisy presence was a reminder that beyond this small, immediate neighbourhood there was a strength from which they drew their own. This boy’s father would give you the time of day if he met you on the road, he’d even lean on a gate and talk to you, but once your back was turned he’d come out with his statements. The son who’d gone to Belfast would salute you and maybe afterwards laugh because he’d saluted a priest. It was w
idely repeated that Garfield Leeson belonged in the ganglands of the Protestant back streets, that his butcher’s skills came in handy when a job had to be done.

  ‘I thought she might be foreign,’ Milton said. ‘I don’t know how I’d know that.’

  Two scarlet dots appeared in Father Mulhall’s scrawny cheeks. His anger was more difficult to disguise now; he didn’t trust himself to speak. In silence Milton was shown out of the house.

  When he returned to his living-room Father Mulhall turned on the television and sat watching it with a glass of whiskey, his sheepdogs settling down to sleep again. ‘Now, that’s amazing!’ a chat-show host exclaimed, leading the applause for a performer who balanced a woman on the end of his finger. Father Mulhall wondered how it was done, his absorption greater than it would have been had he not been visited by the Protestant boy.

  Mr Leeson finished rubbing his plate clean with a fragment of loaf bread, soaking into it what remained of bacon fat and small pieces of black pudding. Milton said:

  ‘She walked in off the lane.’

  Not fully comprehending, Mr Leeson said the odd person came after the apples. Not often, but you knew what they were like. You couldn’t put an orchard under lock and key.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, son.’

  Mrs Leeson shook her head. It wasn’t like that, she explained; that wasn’t what Milton was saying. The colour had gone from Mrs Leeson’s face. What Milton was saying was that a Papist saint had spoken to him in the orchards.

  ‘An apparition,’ she said.

  Mr Leeson’s small eyes regarded his son evenly. Stewart put his side plate on top of the plate he’d eaten his fry from, with his knife and fork on top of that, the way he had been taught. He made his belching noise and to his surprise was not reprimanded.

  ‘I asked Father Mulhall who St Rosa was.’

  Mrs Leeson’s hand flew to her mouth. For a moment she thought she’d scream. Mr Leeson said:

  ‘What are you on about, boy?’

  ‘I have to tell people.’

  Stewart tried to speak, gurgling out a request to carry his two plates and his knife and fork to the sink. He’d been taught that also, and was always obedient. But tonight no one heeded him.

  ‘Are you saying you went to the priest?’ Mr Leeson asked.

  ‘You didn’t go into his house, Milton?’

  Mrs Leeson watched, incredulous, while Milton nodded. He said

  Herbert Cutcheon had told him to keep silent, but in the end he couldn’t. He explained that on the day of the march he had told his brother-in-law when they were both standing at the hedge, and later he had gone into Father Mulhall’s house. He’d sat down while the priest looked the saint up in a book.

  ‘Does anyone know you went into the priest’s house, Milton?’ Mrs Leeson leaned across the table, staring at him with widened eyes that didn’t blink. ‘Did anyone see you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mr Leeson pointed to where Milton should stand, then rose from the table and struck him on the side of the face with his open palm. He did it again. Stewart whimpered, and became agitated.

  ‘Put them in the sink, Stewart,’ Mrs Leeson said.

  The dishes clattered into the sink, and the tap was turned on as Stewart washed his hands. The side of Milton’s face was inflamed, a trickle of blood came from his nose.

  Herbert Cutcheon’s assurance that what he’d heard in his father-in-law’s field would not be passed on to his wife was duly honoured. But when he was approached on the same subject a second time he realized that continued suppression was pointless. After a Sunday-afternoon visit to his in-laws’ farmhouse, when Mr Leeson had gone off to see to the milking and Addy and her mother were reaching down pots of last year’s plum jam for Addy to take back to the rectory, Milton had followed him to the yard. As he drove the four miles back to the rectory, the clergyman repeated to Addy the conversation that had taken place.

  ‘You mean he wants to preach?’ Frowning in astonishment, Addy half shook her head, her disbelief undisguised.

  He nodded. Milton had mentioned Mr Leeson’s Uncle Willie. He’d said he wouldn’t have texts or scriptures, nothing like that.

  ‘It’s not Milton,’ Addy protested, this time shaking her head more firmly.

  ‘I know it’s not.’

  He told her then about her brother’s revelations on the day of the July celebration. He explained he hadn’t done so before because he considered he had made her brother see sense, and these matters were better not referred to.

  ‘Heavens above!’ Addy cried, her lower jaw slackened in fresh amazement. The man she had married was not given to the kind of crack that involved lighthearted deception, or indeed any kind of crack at all. Herbert’s virtues lay in other directions, well beyond the realm of jest. Even so, Addy emphasized her bewilderment by stirring doubt into her disbelief. ‘You’re not serious surely?’

  He nodded without taking his eyes from the road. Neither of them knew of the visit to the priest or of the scene in the kitchen that had ended in a moment of violence. Addy’s parents, in turn believing that Milton had been made to see sense by his father’s spirited response, and sharing Herbert Cutcheon’s view that such matters were best left unaired, had remained silent also.

  ‘Is Milton away in the head?’ Addy whispered.

  ‘He’s not himself certainly. No way he’s himself.’

  ‘He never showed an interest in preaching.’

  ‘D’you know what he said to me just now in the yard?’

  But Addy was still thinking about the woman her brother claimed to have conversed with. Her imagination had stuck there, on the slope of her father’s upper orchard, a Catholic woman standing among the trees.

  ‘Dudgeon McDavie,’ Herbert Cutcheon went on. ‘He mentioned that man.’

  Nonplussed all over again, Addy frowned. Dudgeon McDavie was a man who’d been found shot dead by the roadside near Loughgall. Addy remembered her father coming into the kitchen and saying they’d shot poor Dudgeon. She’d been seven at the time; Garfield had been four, Hazel a year older; Milton and Stewart hadn’t been born. ‘Did he ever do a minute’s harm?’ she remembered her father saying. ‘Did he ever so much as raise his voice?’ Her father and Dudgeon McDavie had been schooled together; they’d marched together many a time. Then Dudgeon McDavie had moved out of the neighbourhood, to take up a position as a quantity surveyor. Addy couldn’t remember ever having seen him, although from the conversation that had ensued between her mother and her father at the time of his death it was apparent that he had been to the farmhouse many a time. ‘Blew half poor Dudgeon’s skull off’: her father’s voice, leaden and grey, echoed as she remembered. ‘Poor Dudgeon’s brains all over the tarmac. ’ Her father had attended the funeral, full honours because Dudgeon McDavie had had a hand in keeping law and order, part-time in the UDR. A few weeks later two youths from Loughgall were set upon and punished, although they vehemently declared their innocence.

  ‘Dudgeon McDavie’s only hearsay for Milton,’ Addy pointed out, and her husband said he realized that.

  Drawing up in front of the rectory, a low brick building with metal-framed windows, he said he had wondered about going in search of Mr Leeson when Milton had come out with all that in the yard. But Milton had hung about by the car, making the whole thing even more difficult.

  ‘Did the woman refer to Dudgeon McDavie?’ Addy asked. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I don’t know if she did. To tell you the truth, Addy, you wouldn’t know where you were once Milton gets on to this stuff. For one thing, he said to me the woman wasn’t alive.’

  In the rectory Addy telephoned. ‘I’ll ring you back,’ her mother said and did so twenty minutes later, when Milton was not within earshot. In the ensuing conversation what information they possessed was shared: the revelations made on the day of the July celebration, what had later been said in the kitchen and an hour ago in the yard.

  ‘Dudgeon McDavie,’ Mrs Leeson reported
quietly to her husband as soon as she replaced the receiver. ‘The latest thing is he’s on to Herbert about Dudgeon McDavie.’

  Milton rode his bicycle one Saturday afternoon to the first of the towns in which he wished to preach. In a car park two small girls, sucking sweets, listened to him. He explained about St Rosa of Viterbo. He felt he was a listener too, that his voice came from somewhere outside himself – from St Rosa, he explained to the two small girls. He heard himself saying that his sister Hazel refused to return to the province. He heard himself describing the silent village, and the drums and the flutes that brought music to it, and the suit his father wore on the day of the celebration. St Rosa could mourn Dudgeon McDavie, he explained, a Protestant man from Loughgall who’d been murdered ages ago. St Rosa could forgive the brutish soldiers and their masked adversaries, one or other of them responsible for the shattered motor-cars and shrouded bodies that came and went on the television screen. Father Mulhall had been furious, Milton said in the car park, you could see it in his eyes: he’d been furious because a Protestant boy was sitting down in his house. St Rosa of Viterbo had given him her holy kiss, he said: you could tell that Father Mulhall considered that impossible.

  The following Saturday Milton cycled to another town, a little further away, and on the subsequent Saturday he preached in a third town. He did not think of it as preaching, more just telling people about his experience. It was what he had to do, he explained, and he noticed that when people began to listen they usually didn’t go away. Shoppers paused, old men out for a walk passed the time in his company, leaning against a shop window or the wall of a public lavatory. Once or twice in an afternoon someone was abusive.

  On the fourth Saturday Mr Leeson and Herbert Cutcheon arrived in Mr Leeson’s Ford Granada and hustled Milton into it. No one spoke a word on the journey back.

  ‘Shame?’ Milton said when his mother employed the word.

  ‘On all of us, Milton.’