The Loney

Chapter Twenty-six

It was the first of June and the street outside was breathless and hazy in a prelude to the punishing heat that summer was to bring. Hour by hour the day had been acquiring the tension that comes before a thunderstorm. Everything moved slowly, if it moved at all. The wood pigeons in the plane tree had been quiet and motionless for hours. On the windowledge a bumble bee sat in the sunlight and didn’t stir even when I tapped the glass. The next door neighbour’s cats hunted for shade rather than the mice and finches they usually left on our doorstep.

I was revising Hamlet for an exam the following day. It was the final one. And once it was over, school would be done for good. Already the place had become different. Things had stopped mattering so much. No one, not even the teachers, seemed to care anymore and I could see it for what it was: an intestinal factory line that was winding down at the end of a particular run of production. Though what it had produced, I wasn’t sure. I felt no different to when I started. Only a little soiled from having passed through its bowels.

What I was going to do next, I didn’t know. I would be sixteen in a week’s time, but the world didn’t quite seem as open as I’d thought it might. When I looked at Farther I saw that work and school were really no different. One merely became qualified to pass from one system to the next, that was all. Routine was a fact of life. It was life, in fact.

She was leaving me alone at the moment, but I felt Mummer prowling around me, waiting for the day of my exam results when she could pounce and drag me away to the life she thought I ought to have. It’d be A Levels in History, Latin and Religious Education, then a Theology degree before six years in seminary. I could fight back, of course, assert myself, but without knowing what I wanted to do I’d have little chance against her. I’d be like that hare in the mouth of Collier’s dog.

Collier. Parkinson. I had thought about them every day since we’d come back from The Loney. It had been two months now but even with it fresh in my mind, as it were, I still wasn’t sure what had happened at Thessaly. What they had done to Hanny for him to be able to walk back up the steps of the cellar by himself and then cross the heath, and go running over the sandflats to meet Father Bernard who had come looking for us in the minibus. How they mended his shattered leg down in that cellar.

When we got back to Moorings, I told Mummer what I’d told Father Bernard — that we’d been across to Coldbarrow to look at the birds and that Hanny had slipped on some rocks and torn his trousers open on a sharp corner. The lie came out easily, without any planning, without any guilt, because I didn’t know what the truth was anyway.

Mummer didn’t ask anything else. She seemed too exhausted with the worry of where we’d been and so drained by the whole trip that she was just glad to be leaving. Everyone quickly loaded their bags onto the minibus and didn’t talk. The only sound was that of heavy fruit falling from the apple trees.

Mr and Mrs Belderboss were still keen to watch the beating of the bounds and although everybody else was tired and desperate to get away from the place, they agreed that they would stop at Little Hagby on the way. Yet when we got there, it was deserted. A warm wind blew across the uncut grass that thrummed with insects woken early from their cocoons. The priest was nowhere to be seen. The crowds that had in the past always gathered on the green with sticks of willow and birch ready to mark out the limits of the parish were shut away in their houses. We drove on.

When Hanny went back to Pinelands, I was glad. I didn’t like what we’d brought home from The Loney. He had changed. He seemed not to notice I was there. He was distant and uncommunicative, more interested in everything else around him, which he seemed to examine as though he had never seen it before. He had regressed. Whatever they had done to him at Thessaly had reversed all his learning and turned him back into an ignorant child.

Now that he was back for the Whitsun holiday, he seemed no different. Still the daft grinning all the time. Still the hours of just sitting and staring. I couldn’t stand watching him like this and had spent most of the time since he’d been back alone in my room. He hadn’t come up to see me once.

Mummer and Farther were in denial about it all. They could see that something was wrong, that he had changed, but they made no mention of it. Mummer went back to work at the shop, Farther to his office in town. And neither of them could understand why I was so unhappy, why I couldn’t just get on with things? Why did I brood so much?

***

The sun went in and the day became humid. I opened the window as far as the latch would allow, but still couldn’t get any air into the room. I watched a car going down the road. One coming the other way. The postman in his shirt sleeves cycling through the shade of the plane trees.

I went back to Hamlet and read to the end of Act One. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. Then from downstairs I heard the sound of something smashing on the floor and Mummer crying out. I went down to the kitchen and she turned sharply and looked at me as I came in. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth slightly open. Her lips moving, making bits of words. The remains of her best fruit bowl lay around her feet. She looked back at Hanny who was sitting with his hands flat on the table, a cup of tea in front of him.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

But before Mummer could reply, Hanny said, ‘Nothing, brother.’

***

Mummer called Farther and he came home at once, hot and flustered, thinking something terrible had happened. When he heard Hanny speak he cried.

Farther called Mr and Mrs Belderboss. Mr Belderboss called the presbytery and got Miss Bunce. The next-door neighbour came round to see what all the fuss was about and she cried too.

One by one they came and Mummer showed them into the kitchen where Hanny was still sitting. She hadn’t let him move in case going into a different room might break the spell. They came in tentatively at first, as though they were sitting down with a lion, and took their turn to be with him and hold his hand and marvel.

Seeing that Mummer was still in shock and unsure of what was happening, Mrs Belderboss patted her hand and said, ‘It is a miracle, Esther. It really is.’

Mummer looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘What else can we call it?’ Mr Belderboss said, smiling. ‘The Lord has blessed you.’

‘Yes, He has,’ said Mummer and clasped Hanny’s hands in hers.

‘It’s like the story in Matthew, isn’t it David?’ said Miss Bunce.

‘Yes,’ said David. ‘Which one?’

‘Nine, thirty-two,’ said Miss Bunce. ‘When Jesus heals the mute.’

‘All those prayers we said, Esther,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘All those years we asked for Andrew to be healed. God was listening all the time.’

‘Yes,’ Mummer said, looking into Hanny’s eyes.

‘And the holy water he drank,’ said Mr Belderboss.

‘Oh, yes, the water too,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘That was the thing that really did it.’

‘I’m just sorry that Father Wilfred isn’t here to see this,’ said Mummer.

‘So am I,’ said Miss Bunce.

‘He’d have been over the moon, wouldn’t he, Reg?’ said Mrs Belderboss.

Mr Belderboss was smiling and wiping away tears from his eyes.

‘Whatever’s the matter, Reg?’ Mrs Belderboss said and got up to comfort him.

‘I can feel him. Can’t you feel him, Mary?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘I can.’

‘God bless you, Andrew,’ said Mr Belderboss, reaching across the table and taking Hanny’s hands. ‘It’s you that’s brought him here. He’s with us now.’

Hanny smiled. Mrs Belderboss crossed herself and began to pray. Everyone in the room joined hands and repeated the Our Father until the doorbell rang.

***

Father Bernard had been out on his rounds of the parish and had only found the note left by Miss Bunce on his return to the presbytery. I saw his form through the frosted glass of the front door as he rang the bell again and waited. When I opened it, he smiled, though he looked — how was it? — a little nervous, a little short-tempered even. I hadn’t seen him look like that before.

‘Hello, Tonto,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine, Father.’

Farther came into the hallway and reached over my shoulder and shook Father Bernard’s hand.

‘Something wonderful’s happened, Father,’ he said.

‘So I hear, Mr Smith.’

‘He’s in the kitchen.’

Everyone stopped talking when Father Bernard came in. They all looked to him to verify the miracle, so that it could be theirs to enjoy properly.

‘Father,’ said Mummer.

‘Mrs Smith,’ Father Bernard replied.

The tension between them still hadn’t quite dissipated in the months since we’d returned from Moorings.

‘Well,’ said Farther, sitting down next to Hanny and putting his arm around him. ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Father Bernard?’

Hanny stood up and put out his hand. ‘Hello, Father,’ he said.

***

Word got around and before long the house was full of people. So many came that the front door was left propped open with a telephone directory.

The hesitancy that had been there earlier, when everyone had been worried that Hanny’s speech might disappear as suddenly as it had come, was forgotten now. Hanny had been restored and they let themselves go in the praising of God. They sang around the piano and laughed like children.

Mummer took Hanny from person to person, showing off the gift that had been bestowed upon her, upon all of us. They passed Hanny amongst themselves like a chalice, everyone intoxicated by him. Everyone except Father Bernard who sat alone watching, a paper plate balanced on his knee, chewing the sandwiches I had helped Mummer to quickly prepare.

When I passed him with a tray of empty cups, he said, ‘Could I talk to you, Tonto?’

We went outside into the garden, where a few other people from church were standing about smoking and admiring Farther’s dahlias. Father Bernard said hello to them and then we walked down to the end where there was a bench under the apple trees.

We sat for a minute listening to the swifts in the wasteground on the other side of the tube line and saw their black arrowheads whip through the garden now and then for the insects dancing over the greenhouses.

Father Bernard sat down and loosened his collar. The heat was making him sweat and there were rings of dried salt under the arms of his black shirt.

‘So, now you know what a miracle looks like, eh Tonto?’ he said looking back towards the house.

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Quite a thing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘How is he? Andrew?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I mean how does he seem?’

‘Alright, I suppose. Happy.’

He wafted away a bee that had droned towards him from the apple tree.

‘What happened?’ he said.

‘How do you mean, Father?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘God cured him,’ I said. ‘Like in Matthew. Nine thirty-two.’

He looked at me and frowned.

‘When Jesus heals the mute,’ I said.

‘Aye, I do know the story, Tonto.’

‘Well, that’s what happened to Hanny, Father.’

‘Aye, but do you know the ending?’

‘No, Father.’

‘You look it up then, Tonto. I have to say I’m with the Pharisees.’

‘How do you mean, Father?’

He set his eyes firmly on mine.

‘Look, something happened to you and Andrew there at that house on Coldbarrow, and it wasn’t anything to do with God.’

I looked at him and then back at the house.

‘Why did you go there?’ he said. ‘I thought we’d agreed to steer well clear of the place.’

‘Hanny wanted to see the birds,’ I said.

He knew I was lying and couldn’t conceal a look of hurt or even anger before he spoke softly again.

‘Tonto,’ he said, edging forward. ‘If you’ve got yourself mixed up into something that you shouldn’t have, I can help you, you know. You mustn’t be afraid to tell me.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I replied.

‘I don’t mean the nonsense that Clement was talking about. There are certain tricks,’ he said. ‘That clever people can pull to make you believe all kinds of things.’

‘Hypnotists?’

‘Not that exactly, but something like that. Whatever it is, it’s not real, Tonto. It doesn’t last. And I’d hate for all this happiness to be ruined.’

‘Is that what you think happened to Hanny? That he was hypnotised?’

‘Of course not. But you give me a better answer.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you, Father.’

There was a sudden burst of laughter and we both looked. Hanny was outside now and trying to talk to the churchwardens who were sitting on the bench next to the greenhouse, but a gang of children were dragging him away to play football. Eventually, the children won and Hanny began dribbling the ball around the garden with them all chasing and harrying, trying to dig it out from his feet.

‘Can’t they believe it was God?’ I said.

‘You mean let them believe?’ Father Bernard replied.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s called lying, Tonto.’

‘Or faith, Father.’

‘Don’t be a smart arse.’

He looked at me and then we turned to watch everyone up at the house. There was music drifting outside. Mr Belderboss was playing his harmonica. Mummer was dancing with Farther. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so giddy with happiness, so much like she ought to be at her age. She wasn’t quite forty.

When I think of Mummer and Farther now, I think of them that afternoon, her hands on his shoulders, his hands on her waist. I see the hem of Mummer’s skirt playing about her thin ankles. She is wearing those shoes with the cork heels. Farther has his sleeves rolled up, his glasses in his shirt pocket.

Mummer cried out and smacked Farther playfully on the arm as he dipped her.

‘There’s a different woman,’ said Father Bernard.

‘Yes.’

‘It suits her.’

‘Yes. It does.’

He looked down at his hands.

‘I’m going be leaving soon,’ he said.

‘Do you have to go back to the presbytery?’

‘I mean the parish, Tonto.’

‘The parish? Why, Father?’

‘I’ve decided to go back to Belfast. The bishop’s not going to be all that enamoured, but I think it’s best if I do. I’m not sure how much more I can do here. Not now anyway.’

‘You can’t leave,’ I said. ‘Who will we get instead?’

He smiled and gave me a sideways look. ‘I don’t know, Tonto. Somebody.’

He breathed out heavily

‘Ah, look, I don’t want to go,’ he said. ‘But I’m not what they want, or what they need. I’m no Wilfred Belderboss, am I?’

He bent down and picked up a fallen apple that lay by his feet. It was full of cinder coloured holes where the wasps had chewed it. He turned it in his hand and tossed it into the long grass by the fence.

I thought for a moment, then said, ‘Father, will you wait here?’

‘Aye,’ he said and sat back while I went over to the potting shed.

It was warm inside. A smell of old soil and creosote. Farther’s tools hung up on rusty nails and above them at the back of some old cracked pots that he was always meaning to glue back together was a plastic bag under a seed tray. I brought it down and took it to where Father Bernard was waiting with one arm over the back of the bench, watching everyone milling around up at the house.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

‘I think you need to read it, Father.’

He looked at me and took out the book that was in the bag. He opened it and then quickly shut it again.

‘This is Father Wilfred’s diary,’ he said, holding it out for me to take back. ‘You told me you didn’t know where this was.’

‘I was keeping it safe.’

‘You mean you stole it.’

‘I didn’t steal it, Father. I found it.’

‘Take it away, Tonto. Get rid of it.’

‘I want you to read it,’ I said. ‘I want you to know what happened to Father Wilfred. Then you might see that they’re all wrong about him. That he wasn’t ever the man they thought he was.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘He stopped believing, Father. Here’s the proof.’

‘I’m not going to read another man’s diary, Tonto,’ he said. ‘And I’m surprised you have.’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I said.

‘All the more reason to let him be.’

‘Please, Father. Then they might stop comparing you with him.’

He sighed, read for a half a minute and then closed his eyes.

‘You need to read it all, Father,’ I said.

‘I’ve read enough, Tonto.’

‘And?’

‘And what? Look,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to change anything. I think everyone suspects that Father Wilfred stopped believing in God. If they choose to ignore it then there’s not much I can do.’

‘Do you think he killed himself, Father?’

‘Tonto …’

‘Personally?’

‘You know I can’t answer that question.’

‘But you must have an opinion.’

‘It was an accidental death.’

‘But is that what you think?’

He put his fist under his nose and breathed in as he thought.

‘If they recorded it as an accidental death, Tonto, that’s how it was. And it’s how it needs to stay if the rumours are to be kept to a minimum. Look, I know people will talk, and that’s inevitable, but no one’s going to beat their fists on a closed door forever. Sooner or later they’ll just accept that he’s gone. It won’t matter how or why.’

‘But that’s the truth in there, Father,’ I nodded to the book. ‘Oughtn’t people to know what he was really like? Shouldn’t Mr Belderboss know?’

Father Bernard brandished the book at me.

‘And what would he know by reading this? How could the ramblings of some poor devil who’s clearly lost his mind ever be anything to do with the truth? The best thing you can do is put it on the fire. I’m serious, Tonto. Wrap it in newspaper and burn the bloody thing.’

‘And leave Mr Belderboss in the dark?’

‘And leave him happy. You saw him inside. He’s certain his brother’s in blissful peace. Why the hell would you want to try and convince him otherwise?’

He calmed his voice and then spoke again.

‘Tonto, the truth isn’t always set in stone. In fact it never is. There are just versions of it. And sometimes it’s prudent to be selective about the version you choose to give to people.’

‘But that’s lying, Father. You said so yourself.’

‘Then I was being as naive as you. Listen, I do have a bit of experience in these things. It’s why I was sent to Saint Jude’s in the first place.’

‘Experience of what?’

‘Managing the truth. You see, that’s what your mother didn’t understand about me. I wasn’t trying to expose anything about Wilfred, I was trying to help them keep the rumours on a short leash. But I couldn’t do that if everyone was determined that I should be kept in the dark, could I?’

‘Then you do think he killed himself?’

He thought for a moment.

‘You remember you once asked me what Belfast was like?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you. It’s like an ants’ nest,’ he said. ‘An ants’ nest that’s always being rattled with a stick. People scurry here and then they scurry there. Then the stick comes out again and everything changes.

‘The Protestants move out of The Bone to Ballysillan and the Catholics in Ballysillan move back to The Bone. There are too many Catholics in The Bone but they’d rather sleep two to a bed than live in a Protestant street where there are empty houses. So they go across the Oldpark Road to Ballybone and the Protestants in Ballybone go back to the houses that the Catholics wouldn’t take. And on the roads that are the fault lines between the estates, they pack up all their stuff, cross the road, swap houses and shout at each other from the other side of the street instead. A street that’s probably changed its name half a dozen times, mind you. It’s madness.’

‘What is The Bone, Father?’

It was strange, he’d mentioned the place so many times, and I’d never asked him where it was.

He made a rough shape with his fingers, something like a pentagram.

‘Flax Street, Hooker Street, Chatham, Oakfield and Crumlin. But that’s just my opinion. Ask someone else and they’ll give you a different answer. No one knows where the hell they are in Belfast half the time.’

He looked at me and when it was clear I didn’t really understand what he was saying, he sighed and laughed a little.

‘See,’ he said. ‘When you’re a priest, you hear all kinds of things. And when you’re a priest in Belfast you get told all kinds of things. And when you’re a priest in the Ardoyne you wish you didn’t know anything. There’s always rumours flying around about who’s done what to whom and why. Who’s an informer. Who’s with the Provos. Who’s not. Whose son’s in the jail. Whose daddy keeps a pistol under his pillow. Who’s your friend. Who’s your enemy. And they’d look to me to give them the right answer. And that’s the trick, Tonto. Making them believe that you know what the right answer is. God knows if I’d been honest about what I knew, the whole place would have gone up in flames. They shouldn’t call us priests. Not when we’re really firemen.’

He looked back to Mummer and Farther and the others.

‘I’m sure they know that you were only trying to help them,’ I said.

‘Maybe, but it doesn’t look as though they need it anymore. I don’t suppose anyone’s going to think badly of Wilfred now this has happened.’

‘No?’

‘You saw them in the kitchen, Tonto. He’s come back and blessed them all. I don’t think they really care how he died.’

***

They couldn’t say for certain. It may have been the loose handrail — after all it had come apart in the young policeman’s hand when they’d gone up to the belfry. It might have been a simple misjudgement of the first step in the gloom — the bulb over the top of the stairs had blown. It might have been the old floorboards that had warped away from the joists. It might have been all three. It might have been none of these things. The only thing that seemed obvious, or easiest, was that it was a tragic accident.

While it was still dark, there was a phonecall from Mrs Belderboss, and even before Mummer had finished speaking to her I knew that Father Wilfred was dead.

Everyone was at the church, she said. Something terrible had happened.

Mummer and Farther and I went and joined the group of people gathered around the doors in the snow. They had taken Father Wilfred away in an ambulance and there was no real reason for us to stand there. But no one knew what else to do.

A policeman was on the steps preventing anyone from going inside. He tried to look intimidating and sympathetic at the same time. A police car was parked at the side of the presbytery. I saw Miss Bunce sitting in the back seat with a policewoman. She was nodding and dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

‘Poor Joan,’ one of the cleaning ladies said. ‘Finding him like that.’

Mummer nodded with as much compassion as she could muster, but I knew she was put out by all the attention that was being lavished on Miss Bunce. And for what? The silly girl had gone to pieces.

She had come as usual at breakfast time and, worried that he was nowhere to be seen in the presbytery and that his bed was cold and unused, Miss Bunce had gone looking for Father Wilfred in the church. She searched the vestry and the sacristy and as she made for the book cupboard by the main doors — thinking his recent obsession for tidying and cataloguing might have taken him there — she came across him almost by accident at the foot of the belfry stairs. He was staring up at her, his head broken on the edge of the bottom step and an old sword lying a few feet away from his outstretched hand.

***

It was an open and shut case. It was, as they had first thought, an accidental death. An elderly priest had tripped and fallen. The sword? Had he been trying to defend himself against an intruder? There was no evidence of anyone else having been there. The church was locked from the inside. But then there was the bell that people had heard tolling around midnight. It was strange, certainly, but they had no grounds on which they could grant it any significance. Bells were often rung in churches. The sword and the bells proved nothing and were dismissed. They led nowhere useful.

The funeral took place the day the winter snow began to thaw. The parish turned out in black and stood under the dripping trees in the Great Northern Cemetery before heading back to the wake at the Social Centre.

Nobody stayed very long. Miss Bunce couldn’t bring herself to eat anything. Mr and Mrs McCullough sat by the cardboard crib the Sunday School children had made, giving Henry accusatory looks between mouthfuls of pork pie, as though they suspected it was all his fault in some way. And the Belderbosses were worn out with the endless condolences offered by the other churchgoers who had turned up to pay their respects — not quite as grief stricken as they, but nervous and bewildered all the same about the ripple that been sent across their pond. What would become of Saint Jude’s now?

They shook Mr Belderboss’s hand and kissed Mrs Belderboss on the cheek and went off to sit in huddles in their coats, eating their sandwiches quickly and letting their drinks go flat.

In the end, Mummer, Farther and I were the only ones left, and uncertain what else we could do, we started to clear away the plates of uneaten sandwiches and half empty glasses of beer. Once the tables had been wiped clean, Mummer draped the dishcloth over the tap in the kitchen, Farther switched off the lights and we went out into the slush. It seemed an absurd ending to a life.

***

While the bishop was arranging Father Wilfred’s replacement an ancient priest came to Saint Jude’s for a few weeks to plug the gap. He was functional and nondescript. I can’t even remember his name. Michael. Malcolm. Something like that. He had no responsibility other than to take Mass and receive confession, and perhaps feeling a little insignificant because of this he took his role as caretaker rather literally, sending us altar boys out to weed the beds in the presbytery garden or touch up the paint in the vestry.

After Mass one Sunday, he dispatched me to the belfry to check that there were no pigeons nesting there. He had had a great deal of bother with pigeons nesting in the belfry at a church in Gravesend, he said. Their muck played merry hell with the mortar on these old buildings. If pigeons were found, he would have to inform the bellringers to ring Erin Triples. Only Erin Triples would shift them. He was quite mad.

The belfry stairs had been made safe. The handrail had been replaced and a new bulb screwed into the light fitting. A heavy rug had been thrown down over the buckled floorboards while they waited on a carpenter.

There were no birds nesting there, of course. It was completely silent. The bells hung motionless in their frame. I went to look out through the small grimy window that faced south for the light. It was February. The snow had been washed away by the rain and the streets all around were slick with it. It being Sunday the roads below were quiet. A car would occasionally go down the street with its lights on but that was all. Beyond, there were other streets, houses, low-rise flats, belts of diffused greenery and then the grey monoliths of the taller buildings in the city. I was struck by the sudden thought that my future lay amongst all that somewhere.

I was about to go back down when I noticed the stack of colour in the corner. Father Wilfred’s robes. The purple that he wore at Lent, the red for Pentecost, the workaday green, and the white he had latterly put on for Christmas. The police hadn’t noticed them. I suppose they looked like the kind of junk that ended up in belfries, which were only really loud attics when all said and done. But the robes hadn’t been dumped. They had been neatly folded, the creases smoothed away. His crucifix was lying on the top along with his Bible and his white collar. And his diary.