The Hidden

by Mary Chamberlain

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JOE

  Jersey: January 1942 – January 1943

  Joe missed the boxing. He may have been small and light, but his arms were strong and his feet nimble. Every morning he did his press-ups, eleven…nineteen…thirty-one…forty-two…forty-nine, fifty, until he lay sprawled and panting on the floor. The boxing had bulked him up as a boy, so his body had taken on the definition of muscle, the markings of a man, even though he was tiny enough to be a jockey.

  Boxing was an art, a clever sport, with the finesse of a dance and the manners of gentlemen, not the bare knuckles and brute strength of ruffians. Jab and cross, slip and parry, bob and weave. In another world, he’d have chosen the boxing. In another world, he would have been brave enough. But it was a hard choice, the finger of God wagging in his face and his daidí firing rage. He didn’t have the daring.

  Of course. He should start a boxing club on the island. A boys’ club, give them something to do in the evenings, especially now that the schools were closed half the time. Next to birds, boxing had been his passion. Boxing didn’t take too much equipment. Gloves. Hand-wraps? Bandages would do. Shoes? Plimsoles would be fine. Gumshields? Improvise, cotton and tape, a bit rough and ready, but he doubted that the lads would pack too hard a punch, not at first. Skipping ropes. Punching bag. Canvas, sand, rope, a strong beam to hold it. Easy enough.

  ‘Boxing gloves?’

  Pierre raised his eyebrows, pulled out a cigarette.

  Joe wasn’t sure what to make of Pierre Besson, or his sister Gladys. He knew his type from the wide boys in Cork. A wheeler-dealer. Mr Fixer. A survivor. Charming with it. He wasn’t much older than Joe, but he emitted a worldly wisdom beyond his years. Joe thought he may as well hitch his star to Pierre’s wagon as anyone else’s.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Pierre knew who had the key to the Boy Scouts’ hut in Minden Place. ‘It’s going begging.’ He touched the side of his nose, an old favour. ‘They can’t use it now the Boche have banned the Scouts. I know a sign writer, too.’

  Two days later, Joe put up a spanking new notice, maroon with black lettering:

  Boys’ Amateur Boxing, ages 12-15

  With Fr Joe O’Cleary, Bantamweight Champion of

  Ireland 1931

  Tuesday and Friday evenings 6-8.

  Pierre had mustered three pairs of second-hand gloves. The leather was cracked in places and the fist too big for most of the boys who were likely to come, but they were better than nothing. Together, he and Pierre rigged up two punching bags, painted a ring on the floor and mocked up the sides with old rope and four used newel posts. Pierre put a notice in the Evening Post and Joe sat and waited.

  Nobody came, not that first night. Joe rolled up his trouser legs and stripped to his vest and punched and sparred. After all these years it felt good, the churn of the adrenalin, the sweat on his face, the jar of his muscles against the bag. ‘Boxing’s not a sport for angry men,’ he had heard Doyle, his old trainer, remark. Joe had taken it up in cold blood, knew what he wanted to do with it.

  They began to drift in, the boys. Three, five. Eight. Hungry lads. Joe wished he had food to give them, oranges to suck, oatcakes to munch, Lucozade even. Build them up.

  The boys took it in turns with the gloves.

  Twice a week, he held his boxing club. Pierre came along at the end of each session, lounged on a metal fold-up chair, waiting for Joe to finish and send the boys home.

  ‘Nippy in here,’ Pierre said one evening in February. ‘I admire you, you know. What you do for the boys. Some of the other Irish hobnob with the Boche. But not you, Father O’Cleary. Not you.’ He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, took out two, lit them both and handed one to Joe. ‘I like to think a bit of your goodness will rub off onto me.’ He flicked the ash into his hand. ‘Bit of your angel dust.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Joe said. ‘I’m a sinner like any man.’ He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Is that why you’re happy to oblige me?’

  Pierre shrugged. ‘I like you, Father,’ he said. ‘There’s parts of you that go deep. I respect that. Don’t often get a good man.’ He paused and laughed. ‘At least, not in my line of business. Hang in there, Pierre, I said to myself. Hang in there.’ He flicked the ash again, then blew it onto the floor. ‘You still interested in birds, then? You need new field-glasses?’

  ‘Thank you, Pierre, but I have a pair.’

  ‘I could get you a pair of Zeiss, if you’re interested,’ Pierre said. He ran his fingers through his hair, tossed his head, casual.

  The finest opticals in the world, so it was said.

  ‘Zeiss?’ Joe said. ‘They’re German.’

  Pierre sniffed. ‘So?’ he said. ‘How do you think we all survive, without a little trade here and there?’ He began to laugh. ‘Always happens, trade. In the centre, at the margins. Trade makes the world go round. You know the way to stop wars?’ He walked towards the empty stove, holding out his hands. ‘Trade. Do you know the Russians and the Norwegians carried on a trade for centuries? Grain and fish. Never a cross word.’

  ‘If I remember,’ Joe struggled to recall his history lessons, ‘trade causes wars.’

  ‘Nah,’ Pierre said. ‘That’s land. Name me a war that hasn’t been about land. Resources.’ He felt the stove. ‘You’ve got no heating here. No wonder it’s so bloody cold, pardon my French, Father.’ He wrapped his scarf tighter round his neck. ‘Land grabs. But if we all traded, it’d stop tomorrow. Trade’s the glue, see. You get stuck together, in trade.’

  Joe wasn’t sure, but it was late. He was tired, didn’t want to argue.

  ‘Why do you do this, Father?’ Pierre said.

  ‘Do what?’

  Pierre shrugged. ‘Be a priest.’

  ‘I had a calling,’ Joe said. He didn’t expect Pierre to understand that, him being a chapel goer.

  ‘Joseph Mary has the mark of the miracle,’ his mother used to say. ‘I promised Father Murphy. If he lives, Father, I said, I’ll give him to the Lord.’

  Kneeling at the eight o’clock mass, back to the congregation, Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, Joe’d fancied he’d seen the blood drip from the precious wounds of the Christ hanging above the altar at St Brendan’s. Father Murphy smiled when Joe told him in the sacristy afterwards, said he was blessed now and gave him a scapular to wear at all times. Maybe, Joe thought, he had a calling, though in his heart, if he was honest, he thought the church a morbid place with as much blood and gore as his father’s butcher’s shop or his mother’s undertaking business.

  ‘Must be lonely,’ Pierre went on, ‘no wife, no kiddies.’

  ‘Are you married, Pierre?’ Joe said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you lonely?’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘That’s not the same,’ Joe said.

  ‘Is that why you do this, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘With the boys. Boxing,’ Pierre said.

  Joe hesitated. The boys gave him company, that was right enough.

  ‘I like boxing,’ he said. ‘Birds, too.’

  Pierre laughed, wheezed, coughed, stubbed out his cigarette on the top of the stove.

  ‘I mean,’ he said. ‘Birds and boxing. Not things you usually put together. And not in a priest.’

  Joe hadn’t put them together, not till Pierre said it. But they’d walked either side of him, he realised now, and had done for the longest time. They’d been his crutches. He took them for granted, like his guardian angels.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Joe said, added. ‘But they saved my soul, believe me.’

  Pierre raised an eyebrow and Joe wished he’d never opened his mouth. The words had slipped out, away from him, just like that. He thought they were wedged more tightly.

  ‘Saved your soul?’ Pierre emphasised the words. ‘That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it? How so?’

  ‘Well, now,’ Joe said, ‘that’s my secret.’ Between me and my confessor, he wanted to say, tho
ugh he’d never confessed, not to a priest, not to anyone. He couldn’t tell Pierre. No. This was not a thing you told to any man. Joe wasn’t sure he had the words anyhow. It was never talked about.

  ‘Whoa,’ Pierre said. ‘A priest with a secret. Now, there’s one for the books.’

  Joe wanted to yank back those words too. It made it all worse. He wanted Pierre to forget it, let the subject drop. He’d spoken too much and he didn’t know why.

  ‘Enough,’ Joe said. He spoke with force, so Pierre looked startled and hurt. Joe picked up a glove from the floor, paired it with another. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. I don’t know why I did.’ He breathed hard. ‘I’m just tired, Pierre. Tired of this war.’

  ‘We all are, Father,’ Pierre said, his voice subdued. ‘Amen to that.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Joe said, as he ushered Pierre out of the door, and delved in his pocket for the keys. ‘Perhaps I am lonely.’

  Joe walked back to the convent, let himself in, footsteps clicking on the flagstone floor. His shoes had metal caps, tapped as he walked. The nuns now, their shoes were silent. You knew they were close by the click of the rosary beads and the smell of their laundered habits.

  ‘Good evening, Father.’

  ‘Good evening, Sister.’

  Joe didn’t know them all by name for the nuns never stopped to spend the time of day with him. Sometimes, he thought, a little common or garden friendliness wouldn’t go amiss. Just for one day, take him off his pedestal and ask, Father, do you have a family at all? Or, how are the boys at the club? The birds that you watch so keenly? He might be nearer to God than them, but he was still a man, and lonely. Pierre understood that, had stepped forward to be his friend and Joe was grateful, willing to overlook Pierre’s misdemeanours.

  He walked into his cell, a small room in the basement, with a single bed and a table and chair. He wanted to talk to his mother, to his daidí even, to Pat Junior, little Bridey. All of them. He didn’t think his last letter had got through. He’d never had a reply, that was for sure. He sank to his knees by the side of the bed. Please God, help me through this. Tried to think of Jesus wandering in the desert, knowing the fate that was to befall Him. At least, Joe thought, I don’t have that to contend with. Still, he wondered again if he was cut out for a solitary life. He took off his clothes, pulled on his pyjamas and lay on his bed.

  When Father Murphy had come round for tea after benediction on the Sunday of his fourteenth birthday and peered over his half-moon glasses and asked his mother Bridey for an ashtray and a tot, Joe knew he had come for a purpose. Joe’d thought about souls as if they were a trade, like any other. Souls went on forever and ever. You never ran out of souls. The church wasn’t poor, had never gone out of business, and though the priests and nuns banished their worldly wealth, so Father Murphy said, he looked plump and well on the housekeeper’s cooking, smoked sixty a day and O’Sullivan stood him the cost of a Guinness and chaser in the pub. What else would a man want? A priest couldn’t take a wife, but Father Murphy lived with his housekeeper, and that seemed much the same.

  ‘Have you prayed to your guardian angel?’ Father Murphy said.

  Joe nodded.

  ‘And you’re choosing this of your own free will?’

  Joe looked at his mother, and behind her the picture of the Sacred Heart. He nodded.

  He’d spotted a plover on the dunes that morning, lying there with a broken wing. It flew away as Joe got close. ‘Fibber,’ Joe had called after it. ‘You’ll do that once too often.’

  ‘Well, if you’re really sure,’ Father Murphy said, handing his glass to his father, Pat, and pointing two fingers to indicate the level, ‘I’ll ask at St Xavier’s to see if they can take you on. Just to get your Latin up to scratch and give you a decent education, ready for the seminary.’

  What nobody told him was that the souls of the faithful departed weren’t ones for company, that a priest was second only to God, and that was the loneliest place in the world. Living like a stylite. No one thought a priest was flesh and blood, had needs like any other man.

  ‘Who knows what the deceased might have been, had she lived longer?’ Joe paused. This borrowed surplice was too big for him and the sleeves snagged on the pulpit. His voice echoed round the empty church, sounded on the sole mourner in the front pew. ‘Or what her unborn child might have become?’

  The deceased woman’s father leant forward, his frame shuddering. Geoffrey, Joe reminded himself, his name was Geoffrey. The deceased was called Margaret. He’d never met her and had only just met Geoffrey. ‘It’s short notice,’ the parish priest had said, ‘but can you do the funeral?’ Curate to the convent, locum to the island, Joe sometimes didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

  ‘But God has a design for us all,’ he went on.

  Geoffrey howled, an anguished, animal cry of pain.

  ‘And He tests our faith from time to time.’ Joe was about to say, in this vale of tears, but stopped himself. He’d picked up the words from a book of eulogies, empty phrases that had no link with the living. Why go on? The man was in agony, and this made it worse.

  There were times Joe thought his priesthood was a coat to grow into, like one of Pat Junior’s hand-me-downs. Deep inside, he knew he wasn’t up to the job, that despite his mother’s private intentions read out at Sunday mass, he didn’t have a real vocation. But what could he do? He couldn’t back out now. People looked to him for help. He was a fraud, if truth be told. A mountebank for wounded souls. A pardoner who peddled hope. What succour could he offer a sinner?

  The church door swung open and a nurse walked in. The door slammed behind her and Geoffrey started in his pew, looked over his shoulder. Joe beckoned her to come forward, but she shook her head, sat at the back. Perhaps she was seeking sanctuary, Joe thought, had stumbled into the funeral by chance.

  What kind of a funeral was this that no one else came to, not even the parish priest? Joe was not going to judge either Geoffrey or his daughter, though plenty did. He’d heard rumours about them both. Perhaps he should be railing about sin and purgatory. But who was he to cast the first stone? The man was suffering now and was alone in the world. Joe knew how that felt.

  He put his notes back into the copy of the New Testament, stepped out of the pulpit and up to Geoffrey, in the front pew. Arm round his shoulders, man to man. He needed a friend now, not priestly platitudes, sympathy not insincerity.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  Geoffrey swallowed, tears on his cheek, nodded. Joe put his hand on Geoffrey’s, squeezed it. Better than any words.

  Joe stood up, returned to the altar, heard the click of the door as the nurse let herself out. A protestant, for sure.

  ‘Come back to the house,’ Geoffrey said. ‘When you’re done.’

  Joe couldn’t say no. He disrobed, folded away the vestments, pulled on his jacket and coat and picked up his binoculars.

  It was a while before Joe found the farm. La Ferme de l’Anse. Strange for such a small island that there were still hidden nooks and crannies. He leaned his bike against the gate and looked around. A distinctive call. Ptar-crrrp. Like little Bridey when she had the croup. Listen. He pulled out his binoculars and trained them overhead. Look. A textbook case, he thought, flying loose and disorderly. They needed a sergeant major to drill them, Mark time, forward! Silence in the ranks, about turn! Brent geese. He hadn’t seen them since he’d left Cloghane, and even there they were few and far between. He pulled out his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket, disentangled the pencil that he had threaded down its spine and secured with a string and wrote in careful script, branta bernicla. La Ferme de l’Anse. 8th February 1942.

  He put his binoculars back into their case, snug against the cushioned velvet innards. ‘Dolland & Co’ was etched on the lid. The leather still smelled the same as when Colonel Waring had stood in the passageway of their house in Cloghane fifteen years ago, with his puckered eye and an empty sleeve pinne
d to the chest of his jacket.

  ‘I don’t have use for these,’ he’d said, handing the case to Joe. ‘Not now.’

  ‘You should be careful, Father.’

  Joe jumped. He hadn’t heard Geoffrey approach.

  ‘Jerry wouldn’t take it kindly if they thought you were spying on them.’

  ‘It’s the birds I follow,’ Joe said.

  ‘Even so,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Be careful.’ He framed his arm around Joe’s back and led him towards the kitchen door. ‘But it’s a good place to spot them, so come anytime,’ he said, nodding towards the field. ‘No need to ask permission.’

  The boxing was taking off and another five boys had joined, which made thirteen in all. Joe’s skills came back, nimble feet, on your toes, hammering the punching bag. He ran through the matches of his youth, those he’d fought and those he’d watched.

  Pierre conjured three more pairs of boxing gloves and six gumshields, tapped his nose, no questions asked. It wouldn’t be long before Joe could spar against one or two of the bigger boys. Some of the lads now were learning how to throw a punch and he didn’t want broken teeth on his conscience, let alone a broken jaw. They were learning fast, and word spread, kept Joe busy all through the spring and then the long summer evenings. Now the wirelesses had been taken by the Germans, there was little else to do. Joe was happy to teach the boys every night, they were that keen. The days stretched into the autumn, September, October, November.