A Time for Friends

by Patricia Scanlan

  And he, Edward Delahunty, had enabled many of his clients – for a very fat paycheque, it had to be said – to get away with it. He was as culpable as they were, at one level, he reflected, going back into his impressive book-lined library and pouring himself a double measure of whisky.

  ‘Sell everything except the commodities. We can buy again when they’re on the floor. Buy gold and water and keep me updated,’ Des ordered his stockbroker, marching up and down the kitchen.

  Colette felt tentacles of fear coil themselves around her gut. She had never seen her husband so agitated. She poured herself a cup of coffee waiting for him to hang up. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked as he flipped his cell closed.

  ‘Let’s say we won’t be hosting our Christmas bash in Aspen this year,’ he said grimly. ‘Get a rental agency on the phone and rent it out. It’s going to have to pay its way. We’re going to London for Christmas. That will get us out of entertaining or being entertained. We’ll have to offload the Florida properties. We’ll sell them through London. We shouldn’t take too much of a hit on them.’

  ‘How has it come to this?’ Colette was aghast.

  ‘Scrapping the net capital rule, George W and his crony Henry Paulson, deregulation, capitalism, greed. Take your pick.’ Des gulped his coffee, and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘It’s gonna be a late one. I’ll see ya.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Jazzy for lunch at the Met and then I’ve a meeting with the directors of Dickon and Austen’s UK, and dinner later with them tonight.’

  ‘Tell Jazzy she might have to sublet and move back home if things don’t improve,’ her husband said gloomily, grabbing his briefcase and taking one last swig of coffee before striding out to the elevator.

  Surely it wouldn’t come to that, Colette thought, horrified. Jazzy would hate to move back home. She was having the time of her life in her small, one-bed apartment in Turtle Bay, between Lexington and Third.

  She was doing a three-day-a-week digital internship in a big advertising company specializing in billboard and digital advertising and she was loving it, having majored in advertising and marketing at Cornell. She had a part-time job developing social networking sites for a quirky, independent publishing group, and she was dating a Boston lawyer. Jazzy’s life was sweet right now. Colette intended to keep it like that. If needs must she would work an extra day instead of the two days a week she worked at the small, exclusive fine art gallery she had set up for Dickon and Austen’s in New York five years ago.

  Des was a terrible worrier and always had been. One of these days she would spend an afternoon with their wealth manager and find out exactly what assets they had. At least she had the Holland Park property at her back, and whatever her parents left her when they shuffled off their mortal coil, and Jazzy would be a very well-off young lady indeed so she wasn’t going to get too perturbed, Colette decided, strolling into her walk-in closet to select her outfits for lunch, business meetings and dinner.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ‘Jonathan, they’re beautiful. You always bring down such lovely pots of flowers for the grave,’ Nancy approved when he showed her the vibrant tub of autumn heather, and the yellow, red and purple chrysanthemums that filled the second one. ‘Will we go and put them on the grave after you’ve had a cup of tea?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘If you’d like to,’ Jonathan agreed.

  ‘I would. Then they’d be on it for Sunday,’ his mother declared.

  The biscuit cake was scrumptious and he was on his second slice when the phone rang. ‘I’ll get it. Stay where you are,’ Nancy instructed. Jonathan watched her walk to the phone on the kitchen wall, noting that she was a lot slower and stiffer than she used to be. He hated seeing his mam ageing. He knew they were so lucky to have had her with them for so long and for her to be in relative good health, but as she often said to him, only half joking, ‘I’m in the departure lounge now. I’ve had a good innings, so when my flight takes off, don’t you be wailing and bawling. There’ll be no need for it.’

  ‘Well do you know, I clean forgot, Kitty,’ he heard her exclaim. ‘I’ll get Jonathan to run me up. He’s just arrived. I’ll see you soon.

  ‘Jonathan! My memory’s gone to the divil. I was so busy getting ready for your arrival I forgot I’d told Kitty Welsh that I’d do an hour’s vigil in the church. They’re holding the Forty Hours Adoration in St Anthony’s. Will you drop me over as soon as I get myself ready? I’m on the half twelve to half one shift.’

  ‘Of course I will. I can bring the pots over to the grave and give the headstone a clean while you’re praying,’ he said obligingly.

  ‘Grand. I’ll go and put on my face then.’ She smiled at him, and he thought how cool she was to still insist on putting on her Max Factor powder and lipstick before going anywhere.

  The small country church was sombrely shadowy, illuminated only by banks of glowing, flickering candles burning in the shrines in front of the altar and at the sides. A couple of people knelt beside the old-fashioned box waiting for confession, and a few elderly parishioners knelt in the front pew reciting the Rosary. Jonathan escorted Nancy up the aisle and heard her give a little gasp as she genuflected. Her arthritis was troubling her but she wouldn’t give in to it. She was a real trouper, he thought proudly as she moved along the seat to join the others, some of whom he recognized.

  ‘Hello, Jonathan,’ came the murmured greetings and he saluted the ones he knew before they resumed the prayers that Nancy’s arrival had interrupted.

  He sat for a while letting the peace of his surroundings envelop him. He had always liked the Forty Hours as a child. The altar would be beautifully dressed, with splendid arrangements of flowers, and the candelabra that were only used for special ceremonies ablaze with long tapers, spilling illumination on the ornate golden monstrance, which had always reminded him of a rising sun.

  The faint scent of incense mixed with candlewax wafted down from the altar and Jonathan inhaled it, remembering how much he had enjoyed being an altar boy, especially if he was given the responsibility of swinging the thurible. The first time he had been on censing duty Father Deasy had had to admonish him for swinging the gleaming brass censer too enthusiastically, a voluminous cloud of charcoal smoke and incense enveloping them on the altar.

  He smiled at the recollection. Today would have been a day for three double swings, if memory served, as it was a day of public veneration, but there were no more young altar servers to swing thuribles. All the clerical child-abuse scandals had put paid to that.

  An elderly priest made his way to the sacristy. Jonathan didn’t recognize him. He must have been a visiting priest hearing confessions. He wore a cassock. It was a long time since he’d seen a priest in a cassock. Jonathan had rather fancied himself in his own one. He loved the swish of it around his ankles. Always the little queen, he smiled, remembering how much he’d loved his robes.

  He genuflected and made his way out to the blustery September sunshine and walked over to where he’d parked. He’d brought a bucket, some cloths, a scrubbing brush and Flash spray and he shoved them all in the bucket, hung it on his arm and lifted out the two flowerpots from the boot.

  ‘Lazy man’s load,’ Nancy would have scolded if she’d seen him manoeuvring through the red swing gates that led to a side path in the graveyard. His father’s plot was neat and well tended as always. His sisters took Nancy to visit every week. Even after all these years she still took solace from the time she spent at her husband’s grave.

  The tubs of pansies and geraniums already there were still blooming and fresh-looking, if in need of watering, so he laid his two pots beside them. ‘There you go, Dad,’ he said cheerfully, taking out his cleaning spray and squirting some over the marble headstone. He cleaned and polished, enjoying the sound of birdsong, and the somnolent buzzing of a fat stripy bumblebee that feasted on the blooms that adorned his father’s grave. He took the bucket and walked down to the tap at the side of the big iron gates and fill
ed it. He’d give his own pots a drenching too. He noticed the priest who had been hearing confessions walking slowly along the pathway reading his breviary. He must be praying his office, he mused, remembering how Father Deasy also used to walk around the graveyard to say his daily prayers. He used to say that the dead always gave him peace while the living pestered him.

  Careful not to spill the water, Jonathan walked back towards the grave and he couldn’t help noticing how neglected Gus Higgins’s plot was. He paused and shifted the bucket of water to his left hand. His right one ached from where he had hit one of his knuckles with a hammer when upholstering a chair for Orla, his old friend and former flatmate.

  There were weeds thrusting up through the cracked cement of the unkempt plot. It reminded Jonathan of that dreadful cracked weedy garden path he’d walked along, many times, to the Higginses’ front door.

  ‘Hope you’re screaming in hell,’ he muttered, thinking that if Hannah heard him she would despair of his progress towards forgiveness. That wasn’t really fair! Sorry, Hannah, he silently apologized. His counsellor never despaired of him or judged him.

  ‘Nice to see the younger generation honouring the dead.’ The priest came abreast of him and lowered his breviary.

  ‘Not that young, unfortunately,’ sighed Jonathan. ‘And I’m certainly not honouring this creep,’ he added a touch bitterly.

  ‘Oh dear! And why would you malign the dead so?’ The priest raised a bushy eyebrow, staring at Jonathan disapprovingly.

  ‘Because he was very malign to me, actually, if you must know,’ Jonathan retorted rudely, highly annoyed at the unexpected interrogation.

  ‘How so?’ came the next imperious question.

  ‘He abused me when I was a child.’ Jonathan glowered at the cleric.

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ the old man tutted, shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Jonathan replied, slightly mollified.

  ‘And have you spoken to your confessor? I’m sure you have after all this time.’ The priest eyed him keenly.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Jonathan asked, mystified.

  ‘For forgiveness, my son.’

  ‘Forgiveness for whom? Surely it was up to Higgins to speak to his confessor?’

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ the old man nodded earnestly. ‘And let us pray that he did seek forgiveness and absolution, but you too must be absolved.’

  ‘Of what?’ Jonathan began to wonder if the elderly priest was the full shilling.

  ‘Haven’t you asked what part you played in this heinous sin?’

  The world seemed to stop, the sounds of nature vanished. All Jonathan could hear was the roaring of his own heart in his ears as the words echoed in his head.

  Haven’t you asked what part you played in this heinous sin? HAVEN’T YOU ASKED WHAT PART YOU PLAYED IN THIS HEINOUS SIN?

  A powerful anger surged through Jonathan, a rage so ferocious he had to restrain himself from grabbing the other man by the throat and throttling him. ‘I was a child,’ he shouted. ‘A CHILD! What sort of a human being are you? You disgrace the name of Christ. That man’ – he pointed a shaking finger at his former neighbour’s grave – ‘he was an adult and I was a child and he abused me. How can you possibly think I had a part to play in that?’

  ‘Calm down, my son,’ the priest said hastily, a glimmer of apprehension in his eyes as he stepped back from Jonathan’s towering rage.

  ‘I am not your son, you excuse for a Christian. You apologize to me, this minute, or I will drag you through the courts for slander.’

  The priest shook his head. ‘I never understand why they get so angry,’ he said almost as though he was talking to himself. ‘It’s what my own confessor said to me.’

  ‘A priest said this to you?’ Jonathan demanded. ‘Why? Were you abused?’

  It seemed as though the old man sagged, his air of authority crumbling. ‘Yes. A long time ago,’ he muttered.

  ‘What age were you? Not that that makes any difference: abuse is abuse.’ Jonathan spoke more gently this time.

  ‘I was seven or thereabouts. My uncle . . .’ He spoke so low Jonathan could hardly hear him.

  ‘And a priest said that to you.’

  ‘Yes.’ His tired, watery old eyes were sad as he looked up at Jonathan.

  ‘But you were a child! Don’t you understand that? An innocent child!’ Jonathan exclaimed. ‘You probably didn’t even understand what was happening.’

  The priest bowed his head, his shoulders hunched. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he mumbled. ‘I should go. I’m sorry if I offended you.’ He turned to walk away.

  ‘No! Wait, Father! Have you ever spoken to a counsellor?’ Jonathan’s anger evaporated.

  ‘No, we didn’t have them in our day. That’s all newfangled stuff. We just went to confession,’ the priest said heavily.

  ‘I just need to know one thing,’ Jonathan said grimly.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Did you ever abuse a child?’

  ‘I did not! I would not, ever!’ the priest said, affronted.

  ‘You see how horrified you were when I asked you that? If you had a seven-year-old boy here and you molested or raped him would you think it was his fault?’ Jonathan probed.

  The priest looked stunned as he stared back at Jonathan.

  ‘Well?’ Jonathan pushed.

  He shook his head. ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘Well then, how can you ask that question of anyone who has been abused?’

  The old man’s face creased and he gave a strangled sob. ‘My mother said I was a dirty little liar when I told her, after two years, of his filthy carry-on.’ He wept brokenly. ‘She told me to go straight to confession. And that’s what the priest asked me. I have been in hell ever since. I became a priest to try and make reparation and absolve myself of my sins.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’ Tears came to Jonathan’s eyes as he put his arms around the distraught old man and held him gently while he cried great gasping, heaving sobs, as years of repressed feelings were released in a torrent of grief.

  ‘I apologize for losing control of my emotions,’ he said wheezily, his nose running and tears still blinding him as he fumbled in his soutane pocket for a handkerchief.

  ‘That’s quite all right. You’ve nothing to apologize for. I’ve done that many times myself,’ Jonathan said kindly. ‘I’m Jonathan Harpur.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘Derek McDaid,’ the priest said shakily.

  ‘Father McDaid, would you go and see a wonderful person, who would say our meeting wasn’t an accident or coincidence. She would say we were meant to meet. You need to talk about what happened to you.’

  ‘Ah sure I’ve lived this long without talking about it. I have the good Lord to talk to,’ he said wearily.

  ‘You carry a very heavy burden. And if you spoke to my counsellor you might be able to help other priests of your generation who suffered abuse and haven’t been able to talk about it. Or priests like you, who have been made to feel guilty because of questions such as the one you were asked. Judgements like that can do such damage. As you have been damaged,’ he reminded him.

  ‘That’s true, I suppose,’ the priest said slowly.

  ‘The Lord works in strange ways.’ Jonathan gave a tentative smile.

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ Father McDaid agreed, taking several deep breaths.

  ‘Let me go to the car and get a pen and paper and I will give you Hannah’s phone number and address,’ Jonathan offered.

  ‘I’m not promising anything now,’ the old man said crabbily.

  ‘That’s all right. If you are meant to go you will go,’ Jonathan assured him. ‘And do it for yourself, not for anyone else.’

  What a weird day, Jonathan thought, somewhat shaken, rooting in his dashboard for a pen and paper to write down his counsellor’s contact details. Hannah would surely say something like ‘When the pupil is ready the teacher will come’ about his encounter wi
th the tormented priest. ‘I’ve put my phone number on this page as well in case you’d ever like to get in contact or talk about what happened to you,’ Jonathan said helpfully, handing him the page.

  ‘Very kind of you,’ Father McDaid said gruffly, and Jonathan could see that he was now highly embarrassed. He picked up his bucket of water.

  ‘I’ll leave you in peace to say your Office,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Oh! You know about the Office. Not many do now.’ Father McDaid looked surprised.

  ‘I was an altar boy once. Take care of yourself, Father.’

  ‘Thank you . . . and eh . . . again my apologies for upsetting you.’

  ‘And if I upset you, I too apologize,’ Jonathan said gravely.

  ‘Good afternoon, my son.’ The priest gave a slight bow and resumed his walk along the pathway, shoulders bowed. Jonathan watched as he walked out of the iron gates and down the narrow country road. A life ruined by abuse and religion, and a mother whose cruelty was as abusive in the damage it caused as was his uncle’s, Jonathan reflected, walking back to water the flowerpots on his father’s grave.

  ‘Jonathan,’ he heard Nancy call him as she made her way through the swing gate. His heart lifted at the sight of her tip-tapping her way along the stone-edged path with her elegant silver-topped walking stick.

  ‘Did I tell you today that you are the best mother in the whole wide world?’ He hugged her.

  ‘You didn’t,’ said Nancy spiritedly. ‘You’d better tell me.’

  ‘Well you are,’ he said. ‘Not only in the world, but in the entire universe.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Nancy said smugly, patting her husband’s headstone.