The Loney

Chapter Nine

Spring drowned The Loney.

Day after day, the rain swept in off the sea in huge, vaporous curtains that licked Coldbarrow from view and then moved inland to drench the cattle fields. The beach turned to brown sludge and the dunes ruptured and sometimes crumbled altogether, so that the sea and the marsh water united in vast lakes, undulating with the carcasses of uprooted trees and bright red carrageen ripped from the sea bed.

Those were the worst days; the days of mist and driving rain, when Moorings dripped and leaked and the air was permanently damp. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait for the weather to change. And sitting by the bay window of the front room watching the water flowing down the fields and the lanes, listening to the rooks barking in the cold woods, filled me with a sense of futility that I can remember even now.

I’ve not said anything to Doctor Baxter about Moorings or The Loney but he says he can tell that I’m harbouring a lot of negativity from the past — his words — and that I ought to try and let it go.

I told him that with me working in a museum the past was something of an occupational hazard and he laughed and wrote something down on his notepad. I can’t seem to do or say anything without him making a note of it. I feel like a damn specimen.

***

With everyone stuck indoors, Moorings began to feel more and more cramped, and as we waited for a break in the weather people drifted away from the sitting room to find their own space. Mummer and Mr and Mrs Belderboss split off to different parts of the house to see if they could root out some decent cutlery to use instead of the huge, tarnished implements we’d made do with so far. Farther went to look at the rosemaling on the old furniture in the study. Miss Bunce and David sat at opposite ends of an Ottoman reading. Hanny was upstairs drawing pictures of the girl he had seen at The Loney. The girl and the gull with the broken wing.

Only Father Bernard ventured out, taking Monro on a long walk that brought him back late in the afternoon.

I was in the kitchen, making Hanny some tea, when he came through the door saturated and dripping. He took off his cap and wrung it out on the doorstep. Monro sat beside him, blinking away rainwater and panting.

‘And there’s me thinking that the good Lord promised not to flood the world again,’ he said, hanging his coat on the back of the door. ‘I hope you’ve started work on the ark, Tonto.’

He ruffled his hair with his fingertips and sent Monro off to the corner where there was an old blanket on the floor.

‘Your mother’s been hard at work, I see,’ he said, dusting his hands and going over to the stove where Mummer had something simmering. He lifted the lid and his face was swathed in vapours.

‘God preserve us,’ he said. ‘It’s a good job I have a will of iron. Otherwise I’d have a spoon in this before you could say jack rabbit.’

Mummer appeared and closed the door behind her. Father Bernard put the lid back on the pot and smiled.

‘God bless you, Mrs Smith,’ he said. ‘My old teacher in seminary always said that there was no better way to praise the Lord than feeding a priest. Mind you, I’m not sure whose side you’re on, tempting me like this.’

Mummer folded her arms.

‘We were wondering, Father, if you knew about the arrangements for wet days,’ she said.

Father Bernard’s smile wavered a little. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘When it was too wet to go out anywhere,’ said Mummer. ‘Father Wilfred liked to gather everyone together for prayers at ten, noon and four. To give a structure to the day. Otherwise it’s all too easy for people to get distracted. Hunger can do funny things to the mind. Pledges get broken. Father Wilfred always made sure that we stayed focused on our sacrifice so that we would remember the greater one.’

‘I see,’ said Father Bernard.

Mummer looked at her watch.

‘It’s almost four, Father,’ she said. ‘There’s still time. As long as it won’t keep you from whatever else you need to do.’

He looked at her. ‘No, that’s quite alright,’ he said and he went off to dry himself and to change his trousers, while Mummer gathered everyone in the sitting room to wait for him.

‘Give him time,’ Mrs Belderboss was saying as I came in. ‘He’s doing his best.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t need to be out for quite so long,’ Mummer retorted.

‘They need a lot of exercise those sorts of dogs,’ said Mrs Belderboss.

‘Well, perhaps he ought not to have brought his dog with him,’ said Mummer.

‘He couldn’t very well have left it behind now could he? And anyway, I’m sure the boys are enjoying having a dog around, aren’t you?’

She looked at me and smiled.

‘Father Wilfred would never have kept a dog,’ said Mummer.

‘Everyone’s different, Esther.’

‘That’s as may be,’ she replied. ‘But it’s not the dog I’m concerned about.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m sure I smelled drink on him when he came in just now.’

‘On Father Bernard?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘My father was a drunk, Mary,’ said Mummer. ‘I think I know the stench of ale well enough.’

‘But even so.’

‘I know what I smelled.’

‘Alright, Esther,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘Don’t get upset.’

Mummer turned on me and frowned.

‘Instead of earwigging,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful and see to the fire.’

I got up and looked in the wicker basket for a chunk of wood that might last the rest of the afternoon. Mummer sat with her legs crossed, red-faced, her eyes fixed on the door the same way she had watched the road the day we’d met Billy Tapper in the bus shelter. Father Bernard couldn’t come back quickly enough.

I’d learnt by now that my grandfather was a disgrace Mummer liked to keep under the carpet along with my uncle Ian who lived with another man in Hastings and a second cousin who had been twice divorced.

I’d asked her about him a number of times in the past, of course — as all boys are interested in their grandfathers — but I still knew little about him other that he was an alcoholic and a layabout and had spent his short adult life carting his withering liver from one public house to the next until he died one Saturday afternoon in the tap room of The Red Lion, his head on a table of empties.

Eventually, Father Bernard came in, his face red from scrubbing and his hair slicked back over his head. He had his thumb stuck inside his Bible, marking a particular passage that he perhaps thought might redeem him.

‘You must be freezing, Father,’ said Mrs Belderboss, getting up. ‘You have my chair.’

‘No no, Mrs Belderboss, don’t worry about me, I’m like rhubarb.’

‘Come again?’

‘I don’t mind the cold,’ he said.

‘Well, if you’re sure you’re alright,’ Mrs Belderboss said and sat back down.

Mr Belderboss stared out of the window.

‘Will you look at the weather,’ he said.

The rain blustered about the yard and the fields, where mist lingered in stretches over the grass.

‘Do you think we might be able to get out tomorrow, Father?’ said Miss Bunce.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps we could listen to the forecast later.’

Mr Belderboss chuckled as he looked at the ancient radio sitting on the sideboard — the sort of dark, wooden thing that would still be broadcasting Churchill’s speeches if we were to turn it on.

‘Oh, you’ll not get a station here, Father,’ he said. ‘It’s the hill you see. Blocks the signal.’

‘Well,’ said Father Bernard. ‘We’ll just have to take it as the Lord gives it. Is that everyone here?’

‘No,’ said Mummer. ‘My husband seems to be dragging his heels somewhere.’ She looked at me and gestured at the door. ‘Go and see where he is.’

I went to get up when Farther appeared, sorting through the huge bunch of keys Clement had left us.

‘Oh, there you are,’ said Mummer. ‘We were about to send out the search party.’

‘Mm?’ Farther said, distracted by a small brass key he had twisted off the ring.

‘Where have you been?’ said Mummer.

‘In the study,’ he replied.

‘All this time? What have you been doing?’

‘I’ve found another room,’ he said.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Mummer.

‘At the back of the study,’ Farther said. ‘There’s a little room. I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Are you sure?’ Mr Belderboss said.

‘You know the old tapestry?’ said Farther. ‘Between the paintings?’

‘Yes?’ replied Mr Belderboss.

‘I knocked it aside by accident and there was a door behind it.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Mr Belderboss.

‘I thought if I could find a key for it, we might be able to get inside and have a look.’

‘Well, it’ll have to wait,’ said Mummer, gaining Farther’s attention for the first time and indicating with her eyes that Father Bernard was poised to lead the prayers.

‘Oh, sorry, Father,’ he said and sat down.

‘We’re still missing someone,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘Where’s Andrew?’

‘He’s upstairs resting,’ I said.

‘Well go and fetch him,’ said Mummer.

‘Oh leave him,’ said Mrs Belderboss.

‘Leave him?’ said Mummer. ‘He ought to be here if we’re praying for him.’

‘He’s tired,’ I said.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Mummer. ‘We’re all tired.’

‘I know,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘But with all that noise last night, I should think he slept less than any of us. If he’s settled, it’s probably best to leave him where he is.’

‘I agree with Mary,’ said Mr Belderboss.

Father Bernard cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps we should make a start, Mrs Smith?’

‘Esther?’ said Farther.

‘Yes, alright,’ said Mummer sharply and she leant forward to light the candles set out on the table.

Mrs Belderboss sighed and looked out of the window.

‘I do hope it improves for when we go to the shrine on Monday,’ she said. ‘It won’t be the same if it’s raining, will it Reg?’

‘No,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘Not like last time, do you remember?’

Mrs Belderboss turned to Father Bernard. ‘It was a glorious day,’ she said. ‘The sun came out just as we arrived. And the flowers were just beautiful. All the magnolias and the azaleas.’

Father Bernard smiled.

‘Everyone was so happy, weren’t they, Reg?’ she went on. ‘Wilfred, especially.’

‘It must be nice to have that memory of your brother, Mr Belderboss,’ said Father Bernard.

Mr Belderboss nodded. ‘I suppose so. They do say that you ought to remember people at their happiest don’t they?’

‘Aye,’ said Father Bernard. ‘I can’t see that there’s much to be gained by doing anything else.’

Mr Belderboss looked at his hands. ‘It’s the last time I remember him being so — certain — about everything. After that, I don’t know. He just sort of seemed to …’

‘Seemed to what?’ Father Bernard asked.

Mr Belderboss looked around the room at everyone. Mummer narrowed her eyes at him, very slightly, but enough for him to notice and stop talking. There was a moment of silence. Mrs Belderboss touched her husband on the arm and he put his hand over hers. Mummer blew out the match she was holding.

‘I thought we were going to begin?’ she said.

Father Bernard looked at her and then at Mr Belderboss.

‘Sorry, Reg,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ said Mr Belderboss, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I’m alright. You carry on, Father.’

Father Bernard opened his Bible and handed it to me.

‘Would you read for us Tonto?’ he said.

I set the Bible on my knees and read Jesus’ instructions to his disciples to prepare for the persecution that would most certainly be coming their way.

‘“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”’

Mummer looked at Father Bernard and nodded her approval. The passage was her manifesto. Back at home, it was up in a frame in the kitchen, scribed in ornate calligraphy like the page of an illuminated Bible. Duty, or rather the active show of duty, was everything and to ignore the call to service was, in Mummer’s eyes, possibly the most heinous sin of all. She was of the opinion that men should at least consider the priesthood and that all boys should serve on the altar. In some ways, she said, she was envious of me because I had the opportunity to be closer to God, to assist in the miracle of the transubstantiation, whereas she had to make do with organising fêtes and jumble sales.

It had been mooted a number of times since my Confirmation, but when we returned from Moorings the last time, it became Mummer’s mission to get me into a cassock. It was time, she said, and it was obvious that Father Wilfred needed help.

‘You ought to do it for your brother’s sake, if anything,’ she said. ‘He’ll never get the chance.’

I think it came as something of a surprise to her when I agreed so readily. I wanted to be an altar boy. I wanted to be a servant to the Lord. I wanted, more than anything, to see the parts of the church that no one else did.

And so I see myself aged thirteen walking up the path to the presbytery one wet Saturday morning in an ill-fitting beige suit with Mummer’s instructions on the etiquette of speaking to a priest fixed firmly in my head. Yes, Father Wilfred. No, Father Wilfred. Speak when you’re spoken to. But look interested. Answer his questions like a boy who’s been going to church since the day he was born. Don’t drop your aitches.

Miss Bunce answered the door and I told her what I’d come for. She let me in and pointed at the row of chairs in the hallway. There was another boy there, suffering from the first fierce assault of acne and breathing loudly. He had been stuffed into an even worse suit than I had, the lapels of which were sprinkled with dandruff and stray hairs. He looked at me and smiled nervously as he put out his hand.

‘Did your mother send you too?’

Plump, freckled, a little older than me, poor Henry McCullough with egg breath and spots was to become my opposite number on the altar, performing the parts that required little or no wit. He was a towel holder and a candle straightener. He opened the lid of the organ before Mass and brought out the stool for Miss Bunce to sit on.

‘Yes,’ I said, to make him feel better. ‘She did.’

Father Wilfred came out of the dining room, wiping away the remains of his breakfast from his lips with the corner of a handkerchief. He looked at us both sitting there and weighed us up from our polished shoes to our parted hair.

‘Miss Bunce,’ he said, nodding to the door. ‘Would you be so kind?’

‘Yes, Father.’

Miss Bunce withdrew a black umbrella from the stand and handed it to Father Wilfred once he had buttoned his long raincoat. He gave her a rare smile and then clicked his fingers at us to follow him down the gravel path to the church, keeping the umbrella to himself.

***

It’s gone now, demolished to make way for flats, and much lamented by those who remember it, but I always thought Saint Jude’s was a monstrosity.

It was a large brown brick place, built towards the end of the nineteenth century when Catholicism became fashionable again with a people that didn’t do things by halves. From the outside it was imposing and gloomy and the thick, hexagonal spire gave it the look of a mill or factory. Indeed, it seemed purpose built in the same sort of way, with each architectural component carefully designed to churn out obedience, faith or hope in units per week according to demand. Even the way Miss Bunce played the organ made it seem as though she was operating a complicated loom.

As a token bit of mysticism, the mason had fixed an Eye of God way up on the steeple, above the clock — an oval shape carved into a block of stone that I’d noticed on the old country churches Farther dragged us round at weekends. Yet at Saint Jude’s, it seemed more like a sharp-eyed overseer of the factory floor, looking out for the workshy and the seditious.

Inside, a bigger than life-sized crucified Christ was carefully suspended in front of a vast window so that when the sun shone his shadow fell among the congregation and touched them all. The pulpit was high up like a watchtower. Even the air felt as though it had been specially commissioned to be church-like; to be soup-thick with sound when Miss Bunce touched the organ keys, and when the nave was empty to be thin enough to let the slightest whisper flutter round the stonework.

‘So,’ said Father Wilfred, indicating for us to sit on the front pew. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. McCullough, tell me something about the Penitential Rite.’

Father Wilfred put his hands behind his back and began a slow pacing alongside the altar rail, looking up into the vault like a teacher awaiting the answer to an impenetrable maths question.

Actually, I often thought he had missed his calling on that score and in the photograph Mummer had cut out of the paper the time he’d protested about a new horror film they were showing at The Curzon, he indeed looked every inch the Edwardian schoolmaster — thin and pale behind the round-rimmed glasses, the hair raked into a severe parting.

Henry looked down at his sweaty hands and shifted uncomfortably as though something unpleasant was passing through his gut. Father Wilfred suddenly stopped and turned to face him.

‘Problem?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Henry.

‘I don’t know, Father.’

‘Eh?’

‘You’ll address me as Father.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Well?’

‘I still don’t know, Father.’

‘You don’t know if there’s a problem or you don’t know what the Penitential Rite is?’

‘Eh?’ said Henry.

‘Well at least tell me when it comes in the Introductory Rites, McCullough.’

‘I don’t know, Father.’

‘You wish to be a servant of God and you can’t even tell me the order of the Mass?’

Father Wilfred’s raised voice echoed briefly around the church. Henry looked at his fingers again.

‘You do want to become an altar boy don’t you, McCullough?’ Father Wilfred said, more quietly this time.

‘Yes, Father.’

He looked at him and then resumed his pacing.

‘The Penitential Rite comes at the start of the Mass, McCullough, once the priest has come to the altar. It enables us to confess our sins before God and to cleanse our souls ready for the reception of His holy word.’

‘Now, Smith,’ he said, stopping to buff the golden eagle lectern where Mr Belderboss struggled with the Old Testament names when it was his turn to read, ‘what comes after the Penitential Rite?’

‘The Kyrie, Father.’

‘And then?’

‘The Gloria, Father.’

‘And then?’

‘The Liturgy, Father.’

Suspecting I was being facetious, his eyes narrowed for a second, but he turned and walked back the way he had come.

‘Right, McCullough,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if you’ve been listening. Tell me the order of the Introductory Rites.’

And so it went on until Henry could recite the structure of the Mass down to where people stood, sat or knelt.

While they spoke, I stared at the altar, wondering when we would be allowed up there, if it would feel holier beyond the invisible screen that only the privileged directors of the Mass were allowed to penetrate. If the air was different. Sweeter. If I might be allowed to open the tabernacle in the reredos, and look upon the very resting place of God. Whether there was some evidence of Him inside that golden box.

Having passed one test, I was sent away to complete another. I was to go into the office next to the vestry and bring back a pyx, a censer and a chaplet of the Divine Mercy. Father Wilfred handed me a key and then looked at me sternly.

‘You are to go to the vestry office and nowhere else,’ he said. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You are to touch nothing other than the things I have asked for.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Good. On you go.’

The office was cramped and smelled of old books and snuffed wicks. There was a desk and several book shelves and locked cupboards. In the corner was a sink with a grimy mirror above it. A candle in a red jar guttered in the draft coming through the window frame. But the things which interested me the most, as they would any boy of thirteen, I suppose, were the two crossed swords fastened to the wall — long and slender and curving gently towards their tips — the kind Hanny’s Napoleonic soldiers wore. I longed more than anything to hold one of them. To feel my chest tighten like it always did when we sang O God of Earth and Altar.

I searched for the things Father Wilfred had asked me to fetch and found them easily, setting them down on the desk where a few books had been left open.

One had a painting of Jesus standing on the edge of a mountain in the desert being tempted by Satan, who flitted about him like a giant red bat. I didn’t like that one at all. It was the Devil of my nightmares, all cloven hooves and horns, with a snake for a tail.

I turned the page and found Simeon Stylites standing on his tower. He was a popular figure in Father Wilfred’s sermons. Along with The Rich Fool and The Prodigal Son, he was an example to us all of how we could change, how we could rid ourselves of temporal desire.

Surviving only on the Eucharist, he had lived on top of a stone pillar in the desert so that he could meditate on the Word untouched by the world of sin below him. His devotion was absolute. He had stripped his life to the quick for God. And his reward was that he needed to look no further than heaven for all the things that the sinners beneath him pursued through selfish, lustful means and suffered for in the chase. Food, love, fulfilment, peace. They were all his.

In the painting he had his face turned to the sky and his arms outstretched as though he was letting something go or waiting for something to fall.

Next to it was a photograph album full of pictures of a place that I recognised. It was The Loney. Shots of the beach, our pillbox, the dunes, the marshes. Dozens of them. These were the photographs he had taken that last morning of the pilgrimage.

He had left a magnifying glass on top of a photograph of the mudflats at low tide, the sea far out, the way over to Coldbarrow clear and Coldbarrow itself a grey mound in the distance. I picked it up and moved it back and forth but couldn’t find that there was anything much to see apart from the black sludge and the sea and the low sky. What he had been looking for, I couldn’t tell.

‘Smith,’ Father Wilfred was at the door, with Henry behind him.

‘Yes, Father?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing, Father,’ I said and stood up.

‘I trust that you’ve found what I asked you to find?’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said and showed him the stuff on the table.

He looked at me and came over and picked up each object, turning them in his hands as though he’d never seen them before. After a moment or two he realised that we were waiting for him to dismiss us and he turned sharply.

‘On Sunday morning,’ he said. ‘I shall expect to see you both standing outside the vestry door at nine o’clock on the dot.’

‘Yes, Father Wilfred.’

‘Let me be absolutely clear,’ he said. ‘Lateness is not only a discourtesy to me, it is a discourtesy to God, and I will not tolerate it.’

‘Yes, Father Wilfred.’

He said no more but drew back the chair I’d been sitting on and wedged himself under the desk to look at the books. He licked his finger and turned the page in the photograph album and squinted into the magnifying glass.