Mr Lynch’s Holiday

34

He stepped from the warm evening air into the church. He dipped his fingers into the stone font, dabbing holy water on his head, chest and shoulders, and then stood for a moment, unsure where to go, unmoored without Kathleen and Eamonn at his side. They sat in the same pew every Sunday. Eamonn squeezing between his legs and the iron bars of the radiator, seemingly finding the clankings and clicks of the ancient heating system more mysterious and significant than the words of the priest. While Kathleen was deep in prayer, her eyes shut, her lips moving, Dermot would pass sweets to the toddler. A rainbow drop. A Flump. A foam shrimp. Tiny points of colour in the half-light.

He hadn’t been to confession since he was a boy. Father Cahill had been his priest then, a giant crow of a man. He’d manifest himself in the schoolroom unexpectedly, shoulders hunched, knees cracking, stalking up and down the desks, rapping boys’ heads with his knuckles if they gave a wrong answer to questions of faith.

Dermot’s father made them attend confession every week.

‘What will we say?’ Dominic would whisper to Dermot in a panic on the waiting pew.

‘You’ve to confess your sins.’

‘But I don’t know what sins I’ve done.’ His brother’s voice high, terrified by what he had failed to do. Dermot would invent sins for them both. Dominic had broken his mother’s teapot and blamed the cat. Dermot had written bad words in the back of the family Bible. Dominic had been gluttonous at table. He invented sins to confirm to the priest that boys were essentially feral creatures and that penance was a blessed and necessary sacrament.

Most weeks the only bona fide sin he could think of was the previous week’s fabrication of sins. He tried to imagine what the priest would do if he confessed to that. He was sure that lying to a priest was a very bad thing. The kind of thing for which he might go to hell. But hell seemed distant and unconvincing. Like God and Jesus. Cahill, on the other hand, and particularly his right fist, was close and ever present.

He moved away from the porch and took a pew on the far side of the church where he could watch unseen. Over by the two doors there were quite a few waiting their turn. Five thirty on a fine Saturday evening. He hadn’t known what to expect.

Back home you’d just had to work out who was ahead of you in the queue and then go in when you saw them come out. Now there were lights above the confessional — one red, one green. They looked festive. Reminiscent of parties or doctors’ waiting rooms.

He noticed a lag between people leaving the booth and the green light going on. He wondered what the priest was doing in those intervals. Recovering? Praying? Listening to the final score? He imagined Father Walsh, sitting in the dark, preparing his words carefully.

He had yet to see anyone looking distraught. Cahill had always managed to reduce at least a couple of sinners each week to tears. Dermot and Dominic used to speculate how he did it. Did he refuse them absolution? Rain down hellfire and damnation? Did he pull back the screen and give them a punch?

Whatever he’d done, Walsh was not doing it. The penitents emerged from the door looking relaxed, serene, often smiling. They made their way over to a pew in front of the altar, kneeled and bowed their heads for a few moments and then left. Two Hail Marys, Dermot estimated, at most.

But Dermot knew of course that Walsh was no Cahill. He was a modern priest. Kathleen was always telling him so. A friend to all. Feared by none. Guitars in church. Jokes in the sermon. The once-annual parish trip now augmented with prayer retreats, youth weekends and summer camps. Walsh would tell Kathleen of his plans to make the parish more vibrant, to re-energize the whole community in Jesus’s love. ‘Renewal’ was the word Dermot heard her use a lot.

When Tommy Nolan suffered a heart attack the previous month, it was Pat Quinlon, not Kathleen, who pestered Dermot to step in as driver for the parish trip. Kathleen would know how little relish the prospect held for him. The worst kind of busman’s holiday. He’d planned a day with Eamonn at Dudley Zoo, showing him the sleepy lions and the old castle, but found himself making a pilgrimage to the shrine at Walsingham instead.

It was a hot day. Four hours there and four hours back. Kathleen sat directly behind Dermot with Eamonn asleep on her lap and Walsh beside her. The priest was in high spirits, very talkative. He told Kathleen all about his time at the seminary, his travels in Africa, the year he spent in France, the books he had read, a quiz he liked on Radio 4. The only time he stopped speaking was to stand up and lead the congregation in a sing-song. Not all hymns. ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, ‘Fernando’. Dermot recognized them from the radio. He was a modern priest.

Once they got to Walsingham, Dermot learned that there was to be a pilgrim mass. He tried to speak to Kathleen alone.

‘It’s not really suitable for Eamonn.’

‘Why not? It’s only like going to church on a Sunday.’

‘On a Sunday he hasn’t spent four hours on a coach.’

‘He was asleep for most of it. Anyway, he enjoyed the songs.’

‘There are no other kids on the trip at all. It’s not really been planned with children in mind.’

‘He’s fine.’

‘We’re not that far from the coast. Why don’t we slip off for a bit? We can be back in a couple of hours. You can still visit the shrine.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I want to go to the mass, that’s the point of this, Dermot. And anyway, Father needs me to help.’

‘Right.’

She hesitated. ‘Why don’t you take Eamonn off? I don’t suppose you’ll really be too sad to miss the service yourself, will you?’

She and Walsh were late getting back to the coach. Everyone was waiting. Eamonn tired and teary. They’d been walking the ‘Holy Mile’, they said, Walsh explaining the medieval symbolism of the statue of the Virgin.

‘You know how I am when I get going,’ he said by way of apology, and the other pilgrims laughed.

Dermot was alone in the church, the last penitents having made their reparations to God and left. The green light remained on over the confessional door. The style of the priest might change but the church remained the same — a menacing Victorian pile, the stained-glass windows clogged with dirt, the interior impermeable to sunlight. Dermot looked up at the murky oil paintings on the wall depicting the Stations of the Cross. He read the title under each image, something dogged and awful in their detailing of every humiliation: Jesus falls the first time, Jesus falls the second time, Jesus falls the third time, Jesus is stripped of his garments. Images from a horror film. Muddy renderings of cruelty and pain hovering above Eamonn’s head every Sunday. The nails going on. The spear in the side. The boy was three years old.

He went in then. Closing the door firmly behind him.

The priest began automatically, like a coin-operated sideshow: ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.’

Dermot didn’t join in. He felt too big for the space, as though he were in a Wendy house.

‘I’m ready to hear your confession now.’

He didn’t want to kneel down.

‘In your own time.’

He could smell Imperial Leather soap. He stood against the back wall, looking down at the grille. The silence was longer this time.

‘I’m here to listen.’

He could hear him breathing.

Walsh cleared his throat. ‘Will you not say what you’ve come here to say?’

Neither man spoke for minutes. There was a shuffling, the priest moving closer, trying to see, then quietly, as if not wanting to be overheard, he said, ‘Dermot. I know it’s you.’

Dermot nodded slowly, waiting.

Walsh tried again: ‘What is it you want to say to me?’ He sounded wary. A long pause and then, almost a whisper: ‘Does Kathleen know you’re here?’

Dermot scratched his nose.

‘Keep speaking, Father. You have a talent for it.’