Mr Lynch’s Holiday

27

Dermot sat on the futon apparently engrossed in one of his library books. Like many autodidacts the spread of Dermot’s knowledge was eccentric. Eamonn had long since stopped being surprised by the things that his father knew or took an interest in: Serbian heraldry, sheep husbandry, the films of Barbra Streisand. His knowledge, though broad, was shallow, usually just one documentary or book deep. He held his sources in great reverence, taking as gospel almost everything he read, assuming the author’s word to be the last word. Eamonn found his habit of quoting as fact the crackpot opinions of long-forgotten commentators often exasperating.

He bent down to read the title: Home Computing for You and Your Family. The cover showed a sinister-looking middle-aged man in tinted glasses, beckoning two children towards his enormous desktop computer.

Eamonn sat down next to his father. ‘Good read is that?’

Dermot looked up. ‘It is. Very interesting.’

‘Has the Internet been invented yet?’

Dermot thought for a moment. ‘They haven’t mentioned it, no.’

‘Right.’ He carried on staring at the cover for a moment before remembering what he’d come to say. ‘So, I asked around, and apparently the nearest church is in Poliver.’

‘I see.’

‘I don’t know the times of the services, but there’ll be one on at some point this morning.’

‘Oh yes, it’s Sunday, isn’t it? I’d lost track of the days.’

‘I’ll charge the car battery up and drive you over there. I could come in with you if you like. Obviously it’ll be in Spanish, so I could help you with the words — otherwise you’ll be standing up and sitting down at the wrong bits and you’ll get sent to hell.’

Dermot smiled. ‘Ah, no, honestly. Don’t go to any bother. There’s no need for that.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll find a bar and get a beer instead.’

Dermot turned a page. ‘No, I mean, there’s no need to go at all.’ He examined a flow chart. ‘I don’t really do that any more.’

‘Don’t do what?’

‘The whole churchgoing business.’

Eamonn laughed, as if he’d heard a joke. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I just don’t.’

‘Since when?’

‘I suppose since your mother died.’

‘You don’t go to church?’

‘It’s not such a big thing.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Eamonn considered this for a while. ‘So, you lost your faith?’

‘You make it sound more dramatic than it is. I didn’t lose my faith.’ He scratched his head. ‘I just stopped going to mass.’

‘But you still believe in God.’

Dermot was silent.

‘You don’t believe in God?’

‘Now, Eamonn, you sound like a priest.’

‘But you were always religious.’

‘I used to go to church each week with your mother, I’m not sure that’s the same thing.’

Eamonn was quiet for a while. ‘I knew she went on about it more than you, but I still thought you believed in it all.’

‘Everyone I knew growing up went to church, believing had nothing to do with it, it was just what you did. Your mother, though, she got more into that side of things as she got older. It just wasn’t worth upsetting the apple cart and making a big song and dance about it.’

‘Didn’t you feel a bit of a hypocrite, standing there every week?’

‘I wasn’t forcing anyone else to believe. I didn’t care when you threw it all in. Did you really think that everyone there attending church was thinking about Jesus’s blood?’

‘I suppose not.’ He was silent for a while, considering the implications. ‘I think I’ll make a drink. Do you want something?’

‘A cup of tea would be great.’

He stood with the box of tea bags in his hand and called through the hatch: ‘Do you remember old Father Maguire?’

‘How could I forget him? The hours I suffered listening to that voice. Honest to God, put a horse to sleep he could. That man was a terrible bore.’

‘I was wondering, when did he start at St John’s?’

Dermot thought for a minute. ‘I don’t know. In the 70s sometime. Your mother would have known. Why?’

‘Do you remember when I came home for Mom’s funeral and you asked me to go through the photos?’

‘I do.’

‘There was a pack of photos I couldn’t work out. A couple had Mom in, maybe on a parish trip somewhere. There was a group shot on a ferry, probably early 70s. Then there was a whole load of the same bloke. They weren’t all from one roll of film, lots of different shapes and sizes of photo, but all the same guy.’ He paused. ‘He was wearing a dog collar.’

Dermot said nothing.

‘I suppose he’d be the priest before Maguire, would he?’

Dermot had got up and was looking out of the window. ‘I don’t know.’

‘A youngish guy. Fair hair, big, wide grin? Would that be right?’

‘That sounds like him.’

‘Do you remember his name?’

Dermot took a while to answer. ‘Walsh. His name was Father Walsh.’

‘Oh, right. Well that solves it, then.’ Eamonn frowned and then laughed. ‘So why did Mom have so many photos of him?’

He came out of the kitchen with the tea, but Dermot had gone.