by Maeve Binchy
“Yes. I was wondering. Is he . . . well . . . is he all right, you know? If everything is all right.”
“Well, I sincerely hope so. It was when I last heard. How do you mean?” Angela could hear her own voice speaking briskly and marveled at it. How great of it to come out with just the right responses when her brain had frozen solid and seemed to be unable to control it.
“You see there’s this sister in our Community, she is not in this house but she was staying with us last year. You may not have met her—she was hardly ever in the school, she was mainly in the nuns’ quarters. It was more or less a holiday that brought her to us.”
Angela kept a bright interested face in the monotone and swallowed the cry urging the nun to get on with it.
“And Sister has a brother who is in a seminary and he is about to go to their foundation house, and he hopes to go to the foreign missions, and you see this is why Sister came to me.”
She paused. The smile from Miss O’Hara was as polite as that of any child who thought that favors were to be bought by courtesy.
“And Sister is in this predicament, because alas her family, far from being delighted that a second child had been called by God are standing in this boy’s way. They say they want to know what kind of life it is out there and can they talk to any of the priests who have come back from the missions so that they can know what their son will be doing in his new life.” Mother Immaculata paused to tinkle an unsatisfactory little laugh. “As if any of us could know what our lives in Religion were going to be like.”
Angela swallowed and nodded.
“So I told Sister about our Father O’Hara here from Castlebay, and I gave her the address. And Sister got this very strange letter back from him. Very strange.”
“She was writing so that he could tell her parents about the daily life out there, was that it?” Surprisingly strong and unfussed.
“Yes indeed, and Sister says that her letter was very clear, which I am sure it was, because she does express herself very well. Of course it’s not easy to explain to an ordained priest that your family is not totally committed to the vocation of your brother, but I told Sister that she could write in freedom on that score. I told her that although I wasn’t here at the time, I felt that Father O’Hara’s own path to the ordination was not entirely spread with roses, that he had his own difficulties.” She smiled at Angela.
Bitch, Angela thought with a ferocity that frightened her, she told this blithering Sister all about drunken Dinny O’Hara and his outbursts.
“No, indeed,” said the voice of Angela O’Hara, “far from being spread with roses I can tell you.”
“Anyway, Sister had this very strange letter.”
“He couldn’t help her?”
“Not that exactly. He did give a very detailed account of the daily life, and how they had to regroup after the expulsion from China, and he wrote about Christianity in Formosa and in Macao and the Philippines, and of how they hope local people will train as priests and help in all this work.”
“So?”
“But it was strange—two things were strange. He said nothing at all about Japan, where he is himself. He said nothing of the work that the Foundation does there, and he also said . . . I think these were his very words, ‘I feel sure my sister will have told the community of some of my own problems here, so I am hardly the man to write to your parents on your brother’s behalf.’ That was more or less it. I think those were his exact words.”
Oh, Angela thought, we can be sure those were his exact words. Immaculata, you must have them by heart now and the rest of the letter, but there’s no mileage in quoting the bits that don’t sound strange, that don’t sound as if there might be the trace of scandal or trouble in them. No, no, don’t learn by heart and remember his words where he was helpful to this garrulous fool of a nun and her indecisive brother. Just the bit that might yield some gossip.
“Well, well, what could he mean?”
“That’s what we wondered, Miss O’Hara?”
“Oh, does Sister’s family want him to explain himself more?” She was just within the bounds of manners but only just.
“Of course not. It’s just that it’s worrying.”
“What is?”
“The problems he has, his own problems, that he told you about that he expected you had told the community about. All that. And why he is hardly the man to help in this matter.”
“Because he’s such a rotten letter writer.” Angela was amazed that Mother Immaculata didn’t see it too.
“But the rest of his letter was very clear.”
“That’s it. He can be marvelous describing the climate and the soil. I told him we should have him in the geography class. But he’s useless about describing what he feels, and thinks. I think it’s not just him, really. I believe that all men are hopeless at telling you what you want to know. My mother and I are always criticizing him for not giving us his feelings about it all . . .”
“But there must be more to it.”
“Exactly, Mother, that’s what I always say, and what Mam says. There must be more to it. What’s it like when he finishes a day in Tokyo—does he walk home through the crowded streets and look at the people’s faces and think that he and the other Fathers made progress today, that the Lord’s word was spread among the people? Do the young Japanese children understand what it was like in Bethlehem, it’s hard enough for us but what about them?” Angela was burning with indignation at this brother of hers who couldn’t describe the everyday business of being a missionary to everyone’s satisfaction.
In the end Immaculata gave up. They were at the top of Church Street.
“Where did you want to go?” Angela asked innocently.
“Nowhere.” Immaculata’s mouth snapped like a mousetrap. “I just wanted to talk to you about all this.”
Angela was sunny-tempered about it. “Well, never mind, Mother. I wanted to get some cigs anyway so you can accompany me into a shop for them. I’d go down to the end of the street to O’Brien’s to give them the turn, but we might be late for class.”
She smiled like an angel, wrapped the scarf round her neck flamboyantly and went into a shop which was half a pub and stank of stout, so that Immaculata had to hover in a fury at the door.
She wrote to him that night as she had never been able to write before. She said that he had broken the agreement and broken it shabbily. How else might he have done this in ways that she didn’t know? Must she live a tormented life wondering where would be the next weak link, the next confession of something wrong, something irregular? She said that she would prefer that he came home and asked Father O’Dwyer to allow him to announce it from the altar rails, rather than have any more of this. They had been through it a dozen times by letter and reluctantly he had agreed; now he was going behind their backs and allowing the worst, the most powerful thing that a place like Castlebay could ever know to run riot. Rumor, speculation, suspicion. She must have his word that this would happen no more. Why couldn’t he have ended his letter to the mad nun where any normal person would have ended it? What was the need for this confused breast-beating, and to a community of nuns of all people on the face of the earth?
She added that she knew it must be hard—she did realize that. She knew he was trying to keep faith with people and she had managed to stop silver paper and sales of work for him, saying that the money was coming in different ways from the motherhouse. She really and truly did know that he was so transparently honest and generous that he hated hypocrisy, but surely he must know how everyone’s hearts would crack in two if any of this were known. Since he must remember his hometown it was only fair that he should keep faith with it and not hurt the people he claimed to love so much.
She put extra stamps on it, and for the first time she left out the word “Father” on the envelope. She laughed at her silliness when she was buying the stamp from Mrs. Conway.
“Heavens above, I forgot to put Father. Still I’ll leave i
t rather than write it in a different ink. It’s so hard to remember when it’s your own brother.”
It was the right line to take. Mrs. Conway laughed too, and said imagine what it must be like being the Pope’s sister, you’d probably forget to call him your Holiness as well. Mrs. Conway wondered when he’d be home and Angela said that she hoped soon.
She got a letter from him three weeks later. He had read what she said but none of it was important now. He had wonderful news. He had sent all the details of his situation to Rome, and he and Shuya were going to go to Rome themselves, together with Denis and little Laki, who was such a beautiful girl and so like her mother. They were all going to Rome.
He was going to plead his case; there was every belief that he would be heard favorably, that he would be released from his vows, that he would be laicized. Then everything would be perfect. He could come home to Castlebay and bring his family.
The mills of Rome grind slowly. Another summer came and went and Angela learned to sleep at night without tablets. Sometimes during that summer she took herself with a book out far to the rocks, but she rarely read. She stared at the sea.
At the beginning of term Fiona Doyle shyly presented her with an envelope: it was a picture of Angela, sitting on a rock looking at the sea. Taken completely unawares.
“Gerry’s very pleased with it. He says it’s a bit artistic,” Fiona said.
“Tell him it’s very artistic and I’m very grateful, I’ll put it on my wall at home,” Angela said. She looked at it again; it looked like a picture to illustrate the Lonely or the Mad or the Outcast.
That was the summer when Father O’Dwyer went out on a sick call one night and unfortunately passed a lot of parked cars on the Far Cliff Road over the other side of town. He was surprised to notice that there seemed to be people in all of them. Precisely two people, one male and one female. Father O’Dwyer was horrified by what he saw, and he wished he could think it had only been the trippers, the people from big towns whose morals might already have been in danger, but there was ample evidence to convince him that some of his own flock might have been involved.
At the beginning of September when the visitors had gone home he preached his horror and warnings and his threats about what would happen if any of this was noticed in wintertime. Parents and guardians were urged to be forever vigilant, young people were teetering on the edge of an abyss, and alas the world we lived in had lowered its standards and debased its values. Next year there might be a radical change in the leisure pursuits, the whole ethos of the Dance would have to be looked at again. Father O’Dwyer was purple in the face about it for three weeks and his housekeeper the Sergeant McCormack went round with her mouth in a thin line of disapproval that His Reverence should have been vexed so severely.
That was the summer when Josie Dillon and Clare O’Brien learned to play tennis at the hotel. They used to go to the courts early in the morning when Mrs. Power and Mrs. Nolan were having lessons; they would act as ball boys, and then afterwards because of their help and because Josie was a daughter of the house they got a short lesson as well. Chrissie was disgusted with this, especially since she and Kath and Peggy had been asked formally by Young Mrs. Dillon not to come into the bar again. Barred from the hotel at the age of fourteen. It was so unfair, and there was goody goody Clare who was only eleven and the awful white slug Josie playing tennis as if they were somebodies. Clare had a pair of white shorts that Miss O’Hara had found at home, and she unearthed an old pair of Ned’s games shoes which she whitened up with Blanco every night. Josie had got her an old racquet from the hotel, and with her white school blouse she was the equal of any of them. Angela saw her one morning as she ran earnestly up to the net to return a difficult shot and she paused, pleased that she had bought the child a pair of shorts in the Misses Duffy’s shop. Angela had washed them once or twice and turned up the hem on the legs in order that Clare wouldn’t think they were new. It was well worth it to see the child looking so confident, and was it her imagination or had Josie Dillon lost some weight? Certainly she was able to move around the court better than Angela would have expected.
That was the summer when David Power seemed very disconsolate. Angela had met him once or twice on his own, mooching around hands in pockets. Nolan was with Fiona Doyle morning noon and night, and Nolan’s sister? Oh she seemed to have developed an interest in photography. Ha Ha. David laughed bitterly at the poor joke and the poorer situation. Maybe they could all have a double wedding, you saw that sometimes, didn’t you, brother and sister marrying sister and brother. Angela said you didn’t see it all that much actually; and that the Doyles were like summer lightning; they were different to everyone else. They weren’t real like everyone else. They didn’t get involved in anything. They just floated around on the outside. David didn’t understand. The Doyles had got pretty involved with the Nolans as far as he could see. No, Angela insisted, Fiona just goes her way and James follows along carrying the milk can, carrying the shopping, paying for the bumpers rides or whatever. Gerry goes around the beach with the camera, and Caroline trots behind him. Their father Johnny Doyle was the same years ago. Everyone was fascinated with him. He was like a gypsy. David said he didn’t think Angela understood. Angela said she was willing to have a bet with him, but it was unfair to take money off minors.
That was the summer Tommy and Ned O’Brien stopped sending home money from England. Mrs. Conway noticed of course, almost before Agnes and Tom O’Brien did.
“Not helping out are they nowadays?” she asked with a show of great concern.
“Oh, we told them to keep that. They had to set themselves up a bit better over there, give themselves a bit of comfort, a start you know,” said Agnes O’Brien with a big smile that didn’t manage to cover the hurt and worry.
It was also the summer when Angela got a letter from her friend Emer every week. Emer would just about forgive Angela for saying that she was too old to be a bridesmaid at the age of twenty-nine, she would overlook the insensitivity that was involved. After all didn’t that make Emer a little bit old to be a bride at thirty? But what Emer would not forgive, or even countenance, was for Angela not to be at the wedding. They would be getting married next Easter; since Kevin and she were both teachers this was a very suitable time for them. The problem was that everyone seemed to be taking over the wedding on them. Emer’s mother hadn’t spoken to her for four weeks, her two married sisters were in and out of the house at all hours with advice that nobody wanted. Her father had said more than once in Kevin’s hearing that he wasn’t going to finance a great extravagant do for a third time. He had thought that all that was behind him now and since Emer wasn’t exactly in the first flush of youth, he had thought it should be done quietly. Kevin’s family were all religious maniacs; there were old nuns who were getting permission to leave convents for the ceremony, and war to the knife among various priestly cousins as to who was going to do the marrying. Emer said it was like a three-ring circus with a Greek tragedy going on in the wings. Angela was to miss it at her peril.
The letters were light relief compared to everything else. Angela said that she would be there, of course. Nothing would stop her. She had to force herself to remember that these were indeed all real disasters and crises for Emer; the letters were so funny and full of ridicule they hid the hurt and the humiliation. Well so did Angela’s own letters, perhaps. Wry accounts of life in a one-horse town with the demon Immaculata and the horrific Mrs. Conway of the post office. Not a word about what it felt like to be trapped here forever with the shadow of a mad brother—who had left the priesthood, taken up with a Japanese woman and produced two children—hovering on the horizon.
Dunne was to be Head Boy in their last year. David and James had agreed not to compete for the honor because they had been too busy keeping up their postal romances and working for their exams. They explained this to Dunne at the beginning of term so that he wouldn’t get any notions about himself. Dunne however had become very authorit
arian. He said they were talking nonsense and the Community wouldn’t have dreamed of appointing either Nolan or Power to any position of trust since they were both unreliable and dishonest, and were known to carry on illicit relationships with the opposite sex. Nolan said that Dunne was showing all the signs of becoming a roaring homosexual. People who got all steamed up and purple in the face over other people’s relationships, illicit or licit with the opposite sex, were queers, and that was widely known. David said that he heard Dunne had been called Daisy as a child and maybe they should revive the name. Dunne waged a war on them and saw to it that their every activity was monitored, their letters scrutinized, and even if they were going for a quick cigarette they were sure to be caught and reported.
In a way it was no harm, it gave them time to study, for what else was there to do? And for Nolan it was particularly helpful because it took his mind off the faithlessness of Fiona. David was mightily pleased to hear that Caroline was suffering the same kind of deprivation at her school. She had been expecting to hear from Gerry Doyle but a similar lack of communication seemed to be occurring there also. Nolan said that Caroline had been pretty annoyed when they had been home at half term. He had been in a very poor temper indeed on his return; he had telephoned the Doyles in Castlebay and spoken to Gerry. When he had asked to speak to Fiona, he was told that she was studying. Where? Upstairs. Well could she come downstairs? No, not during term time, she had to work. As cool as a cucumber. The rat, and not a word about Caroline either, Nolan had mentioned that she was home for half term, and Gerry Doyle had just said that was nice.
A few weeks later David got a letter signed Charles. The letter in its heavy code seemed to be saying that she was sorry the summer had been a bit complicated and she saw things more clearly now. He read it several times and the message definitely was one of reconciliation. He wrote back a short letter, saying he was too busy to get into correspondence at the moment, with the Leaving and Matric coming up, but he looked forward to seeing her next summer. A distant letter, and he signed himself David not Deirdre, just so that she’d get into trouble in her convent. She needed a little punishment for all she had done to him.