Trauma

Four

The O’Donnells lived on the eighth floor of a tower-block in Scotland Road. It was one of four blocks that stood in a square. The front two overlooked to the bypass that ran round the east side of town; the rear two had an uninterrupted view of the railway marshalling yards. The height of the buildings ensured that there was a permanent echo down on the tarmac square they enclosed.

A group of teenage boys were playing football as Lafferty approached Melia Court. Their alternating laughter and curses drifted upwards on the night air. One of them noticed Lafferty’s collar and started a sniggering chorus of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ to the spluttering amusement of his friends.

“Good Evening Boys,” said Lafferty facing them up.

Their heads went down and the football continued.

Lafferty held his breath all the way up in the lift lest the stench of urine overwhelm him. The suggestion in spray paint on the corrugated metal wall of the ‘vandal-proof’ car as to what should be done to the Holy Father barely registered with him. He had seen it so often before. The fact that Sharon loved Billy also failed to impress. The doors moved sluggishly back after an initial jerk and he stepped out on to the landing. He walked over to the balcony to take in a deep breath and the view.

The air wasn’t fresh; it smelled of fried onions and emulsion paint. There was a whiff of diesel and exhaust coming from the bypass and a faint drizzle settled on his forehead as he stood motionless at the intersection between two walkways. Laughter and curses and the sound of a plastic ball hitting off tarmac drifted up from below to compete with a nearby television set and an argument between a man and a woman on the floor below. Lafferty walked along to the O’Donnell’s door and rang the bell.

A woman appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a tea cloth. “Father!” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting you to call tonight.”

“Don’t upset yourself Jean. I just thought I might have a word with Mary if she was in,” said Lafferty. “If she’s not or if it’s inconvenient, there’s no problem. We can fix up another time.”

“Oh, she’s in Father,” said Jean O’Donnell, looking back over her shoulder with an uneasy air about her. “Come in, I’ll get her out of her room.”

Lafferty followed the diminutive woman in front of him into the living room. Twin boys, aged about ten were sitting on the couch watching television. “Hello you two,” said Lafferty, sitting down opposite them. “What are you watching?”

“The Bill,” replied one of them. His tone conveyed that they were not exactly pleased at being interrupted, nor were they at any great pain to conceal the fact.

“Put that television off, Neil,” commanded his mother. “Father Lafferty has come to see us.”

Jean O’Donnell kept a fixed smile on her face, hoping to counteract the surliness of her sons.

“Maybe they can watch next door?” suggested Lafferty. “Do they have a set in their room?”

Jean O’Donnell looked vaguely unhappy at the suggestion, but the boys were off like a shot. “It’s not right,” she said. “They shouldn’t be watching television while you’re here.”

Lafferty thought she seemed strangely vulnerable when she said it and could see what she was thinking. “Times change, Jean,” he said.

Jean O’Donnell nodded briefly, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge it, even when it was presented to her as fact. “I’ll fetch Mary,” she said and left the room.

Lafferty examined his surroundings, taking in personal touches rather than the furnishings which could be found with only minor differences in any of the other flats in the block. There was a shield on the mantle with Joseph O’Donnell’s newly-etched name. Crossed darts in the centre told hot it had been won. A Maeve Binchey novel lay on the corner of the hearth with Jean O’Donnell’s spectacles lying on the cover. Lafferty could see that it was a library copy from the plastic protector on the cover. How many other people in the block visited the library, he wondered — and concluded that the fingers of one hand might suffice for the answer. Apart from anything else, the nearest public library was a bus ride away. In fact the nearest anything to these flats was a bus ride away. It was a major factor in their unpopularity.

Lafferty could hear whispered arguing outside the door. It seemed to go on for an age before the door opened and a teenage girl was pushed into the room. “She was just going out, Father,” smiled Jean. “But she’s got time for a word before she goes.”

Lafferty stood up and smiled. “Nice to see you, Mary, it’s been a long time.”

The girl, dressed in leather jacket and tight jeans looked up from beneath hair that cascaded over her eyes and said, “Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy.” Her voice was laced with resentment. She shrugged off her mother’s hand which was resting on her shoulder.

“Jean, why don’t you leave us to have a little chat?” suggested Lafferty.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Jean O’Donnell.

“Sit down, Mary,” said Lafferty pleasantly. “Are you off somewhere special?”

“Down the coast on the bikes,” replied the girl.

“The bikes? Motor bikes you mean?”

Mary nodded. She was a pretty girl, a little small for her fifteen years but well proportioned.

“Sounds exciting. But you don’t have your own bike at your age surely?” asked Lafferty.

“I’m going on the back of Steve’s.”

“Your boyfriend?”

Mary nodded and said, “He’s got a GPZ 500.”

“The Kawasaki’s a nice bike,” said Lafferty.

“You know about bikes?” asked Mary, surprised.

“Just because I’m a priest doesn’t mean I’m boring,” replied Lafferty. “I’ve always had a love of motor cycles. I keep abreast of what’s on the road these days. There’s a lot of nice machinery around.”

“Steve’s bike is the nicest. He takes good care of it. He wants to make bikes his career. He’s really good. Everybody says so.”

“How old is Steve, Mary?” asked Lafferty.

“About twenty-three. What does that matter?” said Mary defiantly.

“And you are fifteen.”

“I’m not a little girl! I know what I’m doing.”

“Maybe you do,” said Lafferty kindly. “But your mother is worried sick about you and that’s not right.”

“I keep telling her not to worry about me — but she won’t listen! What else can I do?”

“Your mother worries about you because she loves you. Try to see things from her point of view.”

“She won’t see them from mine!”

“Maybe you’re both being a bit stubborn,” said Lafferty.

“I’m going out with Steve and nothing’s going to change that!” insisted Mary.

Lafferty shrugged and asked, “What’s your father saying to all this?”

Mary lifter her hair from her forehead and revealed a black and blue mark above her right eye. “This.”

“And you’re still planning to go out this evening?”

“He’s down the boozer playing darts. I’m going out with Steve,” said Mary defiantly.

“And your mother’s left standing in the middle?” said Lafferty.

Mary was stung into saying, “She shouldn’t be! I don’t want her to be! I don’t want to be like her! I don’t want to spend my life in a dog kennel in the sky, waiting every night for some drunken bum to come home every night. I want to live! I want to enjoy myself. Is that so wrong? Don’t answer that. Your bloody church depends on people like her!”

Lafferty was wounded. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“You know,” said Mary.

“Tell me.”

“Mugs. Gullible mugs. Always on the losing side, giving away everything they’ve got, doing what they’re told. Yes Fathering, No Fathering, wasting away their dreary lives because they’ve been conned into believing things are going to get better in the hereafter. But they’re not, are they? Because there is no bloody hereafter. It’s all a bloody con!”

“Mary! Control yourself,” stormed Jean O’Donnell as she burst into the room. “How dare you speak to Father Lafferty like that! I’m so sorry, Father. I don’t know what’s come over her, I honestly don’t.”

Lafferty held up a hand and said, “There’s nothing to be sorry for Jean. Mary has a right to her point of view and I am flattered that she’s confided in me. It’s only healthy at her age to question everything otherwise we’d never make any progress in this life.”

“You’re too understanding, Father.”

Lafferty shook his head and said, “Mary strikes me as an intelligent, mature girl who is well able to form her own opinions and decide for herself what is right and what is wrong. I think you should trust her.”

Jean O’Donnell looked at her daughter without saying anything but Lafferty was pleased to see a hint of softness appear in Mary O’Donnell’s eyes.

“And you, young lady,” said Lafferty to Mary. “should make sure you’re deserving of that trust.”

“Yes, Father,” said Mary. “I’m late. I’ll have to go.”

“Enjoy yourself,” said Lafferty. “And if you’ll take one last word of advice?”

“Yes, Father?”

“Find a boyfriend with a CBR 600. It’ll beat the hell out of a GPZ500.”

When Mary had gone, Jean served tea and put a plate of Digestive biscuits on the hearth between them.

“Help yourself, please,” she said.

Lafferty took a biscuit and said, “You look worried Jean.”

“I’m thinking about Joe and what he’ll do when he finds out she’s been out with the bikers again.”

“He’s not usually a violent man is he?” asked Lafferty.

Jean’s face softened. She said, “Far from it but that young madam can push him to the limit. She did that the other night.”

“I saw the mark,” said Lafferty.

Jean was embarrassed. “She deserved it after what she said to him. Called him a drunken sot to his face.”

Lafferty stayed silent, making Jean feel obliged to continue.

“Joe has never had the best of luck. He’s been unemployed for longer than I care to remember, and maybe he does enjoy a drink or two but basically, he’s a good man...”

“Do you think I should have a word with him?” asked Lafferty.

Jean considered for a moment then said, “No, I don’t think so. But I’ll tell him you called and saw Mary.” Her eye caught Lafferty’s and they both understood. Lafferty said a short prayer and then got up to go.

“Thank you for coming.”

“See you Sunday.”

Lafferty walked back along the walkway and paused at the same spot as before to watch the lights of the traffic on the bypass. He left the flats with a heavy heart. The O’Donnell girl had been upset but what she had said had hit home and he’d had to work hard at remaining composed about it at the time. The Church did depend a great deal on women like Jean O’Donnell. Decent, hard-working, good natured and God-fearing women who saw their faith as the cornerstone of their lives. The real question was, how much did the Church depend on them and did it amount to exploitation as Mary O’Donnell had asserted. It was something he would rather not think about on top of everything else, but there would be no getting away from it, he feared. The best he could hope for was a respite while he set out to find the drunk who had witnessed the Main boy’s exhumation.

McKirrop swung his arms across his chest as he paced up and down on the towpath on a repetitive ten metre patrol. Ostensibly he was keeping warm — he kept remarking to Bella how cold it was — but nerves were playing a large part in his discomfort, not to mention the fact that they were both desperate for a drink.

“For God’s sake, stand still!” snapped Bella.

McKirrop swung his arms all the harder and complained, “Where the hell is he?”

“We’ve only been here five minutes!” retorted Bella.

“Seems like bloody hours.”

Bella watched the pacing figure in the gloom and began to grow suspicious. “Why are you so edgy?” she demanded. “What are you really up to?”

“I told you,” replied McKirrop. “The bugger owes me money. Fifty quid.”

“So what’s there to be nervous about?”

“I’m just cold damn it! Now give it a rest.”

“Twenty quid for me, right?”

“Right. We agreed all that,” snapped McKirrop. “What are you going on about? We’re a team aren’t we?”

“That’s right, John boy,” said Bella. “But if you’re holding out on me...”

“Nobody’s holding out on you for Christ’s sake! Where the hell is he?” McKirrop started pacing again but turned smartly when a voice from up on the bridge said, “McKirrop?”

McKirrop looked up and saw the dark silhouette above the parapet. His throat tightened. “Have you got my money?” he croaked.

“All in good time. Did you bring the card?”

“In my pocket.”

“Bring it up.”

“You come down.”

“What’s all this about a card?” demanded Bella from the shadow of the wall beneath the parapet.

“He just dropped his library card, that’s all,” said McKirrop dismissively, annoyed that Bella had opted for a speaking role.

“Who’s down there with you, McKirrop?” asked the voice from above.

“Just my friend Bella, come to see fair play,” replied McKirrop. “She’s here to see that you give me my money.”

“I’m a witness,” crowed Bella. “Give him the money you owe him.” McKirrop wished that Bella would just keep her mouth shut.

“I’m coming down,” said Sotillo.

McKirrop could feel his heart thumping in his chest. He was only a few seconds away from getting his hands on five thousand pounds. Five thousand pounds! He could hear the scrabble of Sotillo’s feet on the steep earth path that led down to the towpath, the sound of a man bringing him five thousand pounds. McKirrop desperately wanted to urinate. He pressed his hands into his crotch from inside the pockets of his great-coat and shrugged his shoulders up round his ears. He took a step backwards to allow Sotillo to descend the last few metres in a sideways crab-like run forced on him by the steepness of the path.

“Where’s the card?” asked Sotillo, straightening up.

McKirrop couldn’t make out Sotillo’s features in the darkness but was aware that Sotillo had the same problem. He figured that he had got the best of that bargain because, while Sotillo sounded as unruffled and urbane as usual, his own cheek muscles were twitching as if electrodes had been inserted in his face. his throat was as dry as the desert. “Where’s the money?” he croaked.

Sotillo’s hand came out of his overcoat pocket. There was enough light to pick out the white envelope he held in it. “Here.”

McKirrop snatched at it with his left hand and brought out the library card with his right.

“Here’s your card.”

Sotillo took it and McKirrop ripped the envelope open to feel what was inside, rather than look at it. There was no mistaking the feel of bank notes. A thick bundle of notes.

“Did you get it?” asked Bella from the shadows.

McKirrop had almost forgotten about her. Confidence was flooding through him like a cocaine rush. “I got it,” he replied, his voice no longer a croak from a fear-tightened throat. “Nice doing business with you,” he said to Sotillo. “Maybe we’ll do it again some time.”

“I was afraid you might think that,” said Sotillo. He said it slowly and sonorously as if he had been expecting the worst and it had just happened. “No,” he said. “Our business as you term it will come to an end here and now.”

“As you say, squire,” said McKirrop but there was something about Sotillo’s voice that threatened the reliability of his anal sphincter. All his new found cockiness evaporated in an instant and he found himself wishing that he had not made any reference to future ‘business’. “Just a joke.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Bella, sensing that all was not well. “You’ve got your money. Let’s get a drink.”

Bella tugged at McKirrop’s arm as she turned to start out along the towpath but suddenly the tugging stopped and McKirrop heard her exclaim, “Who the hell are you? What’s your game?” He spun round to see two large figures loom up out of the darkness. They were blocking the path behind them.

“What are you trying to pull, Sotillo?” demanded McKirrop with more courage than he felt.

“Give me back my money.”

There was an electric pause before Bella said, “Give him it for Christ’s sake. We don’t need all this shit for fifty lousy quid.”

“Fifty pounds? Is that what he told you,” sneered Sotillo. “Perhaps your... colleague, hasn’t been quite honest with you.”

Bella turned on McKirrop. “You bastard! I knew you were up to something. A team, you said. We were a team! I’m going to get Flynn to kick your fucking head in! How much?” she yelled. “How fucking much?” She flew at McKirrop.

The two figures moved in to separate Bella and McKirrop who were spitting venom at each other.

“When thieves fall out, there’s no telling what can happen,” said Sotillo to the two silent figures who were now holding Bella and McKirrop. “I think under the circumstances, gentlemen, they should perhaps do each other some serious and lasting damage.”

Lafferty had been down to the canal earlier to begin his search for the man he now knew to be John McKirrop. He hadn’t remembered the name himself but one of the two down-and-outs he found by the canal had given him this information and told him that McKirrop would probably be down later. The two of them had seemed pleased to help and almost were in competition to tell him everything they knew about McKirrop

“A brave man,” said one. “You know he tried to stop these bastards from digging the kid up at the cemetery?”

“So I understand.”

“Should be given some kind of medal, I reckon.”

The other drunk nodded sagely. “Or at least some kind of compensation for the injuries he suffered.”

“Injuries?”

“They beat him up.”

“Beat him within an inch of his life,” added the other.

“I hadn’t realised,” confessed Lafferty.

“Well, nobody gives a damn for the likes of us, Father. Begging your pardon, like.”

“God does,” replied Lafferty. “Never forget that.”

“Yes, Father,” replied the drunk, obviously unconvinced.

“You will tell John that I’d appreciate a word with him later if he should show up?”

“Of course, Father.”

Lafferty could make out six figures as he descended from the bridge to the towpath. As he got closer he saw that the nearest man was either asleep or unconscious on the fringe of the group. He lay sprawled over the path with his head at a slightly raised angle where it rested on what looked like a railway sleeper. An empty bottle was still clutched in his hand. Lafferty stepped over him gingerly. “Is he all right?” he asked the anonymous group in front of him.

“Who wants to know?” snarled a voice from the darkness.

“I’m Father Lafferty from St Xavier’s. I was down earlier looking for John McKirrop. Is he one of you?”

“McKirrop, McKirrop, always McKirrop,” replied the voice. “No he isn’t.”

“Then can you tell me where I can find him?” asked Lafferty.

“Mr McKirrop is out courting at the moment,” came the sneering voice.

“Courting?”

“He is out walking with his lady, Father, the beautiful Lady Bella and I do believe they’re without chaperone.”

The group broke into cackles of laughter.

“I really would like to speak to him if I possibly could,” said Lafferty.

“They went that-a-way,” snapped the voice. “About an hour ago.”

“Thank you, Mr?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the voice.

“I think it does,” said Lafferty.

“Flynn,” replied the voice.

“God bless you, Mr Flynn.”

“I’d rather he came up with a jacket and a pair of shoes,” replied Flynn sourly. The others supported Flynn with their laughter.

“There was a sale at St Xavier’s last week end,” said Lafferty. “There were some things left over. Call round tomorrow afternoon to the church hall and we’ll see what we can do.”

The silence behind him awarded him some kind of moral victory as he set out in the direction indicated by Flynn.

The towpath darkened with each step Lafferty took away from the canal basin and he began to feel cold. The temperature was now close to freezing. What had Flynn meant by, ‘courting’? Surely McKirrop and the woman, whatever her name was, couldn’t be... or had the others back at the basin been making a fool of him? The collar round his neck sometimes had this effect. People confused celibacy with ignorance. Lafferty often regretted the downside of clerical garb. In many ways it seemed to act as a barrier between him and the people he sought to reach.

He recalled several instances in the past of priests removing their collars and going to live in deprived areas to find out what it felt like. In Lafferty’s opinion, this had been a pointless exercise. Sitting in a cold flat on a housing estate all day did not tell you anything about the reason for being there. It did not tell you what it felt like to be unemployed and with no prospect of a job for the next twenty years. You could not simulate that. It had to happen to you before you could possibly know what it felt like.

The canal water to his left picked up a thin white reflection and Lafferty looked up to see the moon slide out from behind a bank of steep cloud. He was grateful for any source of light; the path was now so dark. Something ahead scuttled across the path and rustled off into the undergrowth. Lafferty hoped that it wasn’t a rat; this was one of God’s creatures he had little time for. An owl called out from a distant thicket.

As he rounded the bend leading to the next bridge Lafferty thought that he saw the silhouette of two or three people above the parapet but couldn’t be sure, and besides, it didn’t matter, they seemed to be heading away from the canal not coming down to the towpath. Which was a relief — he did not welcome the prospect of joggers or worse still cyclists coming hurtling towards him on the narrow path. The fact that he was wearing clerical black would not have helped matters in the darkness.

As he neared the bridge, Lafferty suddenly stopped in his tracks. There was a single street lamp up on the road leading to the bridge. A little of its light spilled down on to the towpath, not much but, to eyes accustomed to the gloom, it was enough to see what was there. He could see two figures lying on the bank by the water’s edge. Could it be McKirrop and the woman?

“Are you all right?” he called out. And called again when the couple failed to respond. There was still no sound or movement. No cursing and scrambling around in the grass. Nothing.

“Hello there!” he tried once more.

Apart from the owl, which chose his moment well to emphasise the silence, there was no sound from the couple and they remained motionless.

Lafferty reminded himself that the two on the bank were alcoholics. They could simply be blind drunk. He walked over to them and knelt down to shake one of them by the shoulder.

McKirrop’s head flopped round to reveal a face lacerated on both cheeks and with a frightening wound on his forehead where he had obviously been hit by something heavy. There was a large depression in his skull and blood had congealed in a black mess within it. The glass around his feet suggested to Lafferty that the weapon had been a bottle.

“God Almighty,” whispered Lafferty. He turned his attention to the woman. She was lying in McKirrop’s shadow and he had to move McKirrop a little to get to her. It was only then that he realised that her head was not resting on the bank at all. It was hanging over the edge of the bank and was submerged in the water! Struggling to gain a foothold on the slippery grass, Lafferty managed first to pull the woman’s head up out of the water, and then pull her body up on to the bank. Her eyes were wide open but they did not see the moon that had just emerged from the clouds. One of her cheek bones had been smashed and the eye above it had been dislodged from its socket. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth.

Lafferty whispered a prayer under his breath but then recoiled as the woman’s body suddenly made a gurgling sound. Water and weed slurped out of her mouth as if she had vomited weakly. She was quite dead but some latent muscular spasm had been triggered. Some lost electrical brain impulse wandering around inside her body had conveyed its last message. As the body sank down into rest again Lafferty prayed over the woman and then turned back to McKirrop.

The word, ‘courting’ came into his head and it, in turn, led to the phrase, ‘lover’s tiff’. For some reason he could not put a rein on this surreal line of thought. A lover’s tiff. Good God Almighty, how inappropriate a phrase to describe the scene at his feet. But it was not inconceivable that the papers might choose to report it as such. What had led to it? What had they fought over? The bottle? The lady’s honour? There it was again, an intruding phrase from another world.

Lafferty said a prayer over McKirrop’s body but, as he opened his eyes, he saw McKirrop’s hand move. He watched the dead man’s fingers move like a white spider. A scar across the forefinger stood out in relief in the moonlight. Lafferty was mesmerised by the sight. He felt sure that this had to be another example of muscle spasm after death but the fingers didn’t stop. They went on searching, trying to make contact from the depths of some timeless abyss. Surely McKirrop could not have survived such a horrific head injury he had sustained? Lafferty knelt down on the grass and felt at McKirrop’s neck for a carotid pulse. There was none. And then there was something — very weak and very faint but it was there. It caressed the tip of his third finger like a fluttering butterfly. McKirrop was still alive!

Lafferty scrambled up the steep muddy path to the bridge on all fours. The very urgency of his movements seemed to act against him and he kept losing his footing and slipping back. With a last frantic effort, he pulled himself up on to the bridge path where he started to run towards the nearest houses, a small group of bungalows some two hundred metres away. He was breathing heavily and his trousers were covered in mud when he reached the nearest house and flung open the garden gate to charge up the path. He banged on the door with both fists until he saw the hall light come on and heard someone behind the door.

“Who is it?” asked a timid woman’s voice.

“I have to call for an ambulance!” replied Lafferty. “It’s very urgent. Please open the door.”

“Go away!” said the voice behind the door. “Go away or I’ll call the police.”

“Look, I’m Father Lafferty from St Xavier’s. There’s a man badly injured down on the canal bank. He needs urgent hospital treatment.”

“I’ve told you once. Go away! Don’t tell me any more lies! I’ll call the police. I mean it!”

“Sweet Jesus!” exclaimed Lafferty. He dropped his hands to his sides in exasperation and moved his mouth soundlessly before giving up on the woman and crashing his way through the adjoining hedge to the house next door. Again he banged on the door. There was no reply and the house remained in darkness.

He had more luck at the third bungalow. The door was opened before Lafferty had even reached it by a man with a can of beer in his hand.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked the man.

Lafferty told him.

After the ambulance and police had been called, the man asked Lafferty, “Is there anything I can do?”

“Maybe some blankets and a torch?” suggested Lafferty.

“Of course.”

The man’s wife was quick to come up with a pair of blankets from the airing cupboard in the hall, while he himself fetched a torch from the garage.

“Take this one; it’s got a powerful beam,” he said. “Want me to come with you?”

“No,” said Lafferty. “You stay here and tell the ambulance people where to come. I’ll be down on the path on the east side of the bridge.”

“Will do,” said the man.