by A. J. Cronin
‘And Conor?’ he asked in an undertone, when she had finished.
She did not answer, but with a meaningful glance that passed over my head, silently compressed her lips, imperceptibly shook her head and left the room.
‘Miss O’Riordan will be bringing up our tea. I expect the sea air has given you an appetite,’ my uncle said cheerfully. He put me into one of the two old and rather battered leather chairs on either side of the fireplace, and went and stood at his desk. ‘Just let me finish what I was doing. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
I felt instinctively that he was giving us both time to settle down. Certainly these were strange surroundings for me. Beyond the chairs and the roll-top desk, on which stood a large blue and white statue of the Madonna, there was little furniture and less comfort in the room. The drab curtains were shabby, and the carpet, like the chairs, was badly worn; as though trodden by many feet over many years. On the mantelpiece a biretta and a long row of pennies arranged in little piles caught my eye. On one wall a black and ivory crucifix hung. But what startled me was a large engraving on another wall of a long-bearded, half-naked, hairy old man, perched on top of a high stone pillar.
‘Do you like him?’ Uncle had risen and was watching me with a faint smile.
‘Who is he?’
‘One of my favourite saints.’
‘But whatever is he doing up there?’
‘Nothing much.’ Uncle was really smiling now. ‘Just being a peculiar person, and a saint.’
At this point, with an air of supreme effort, Miss O’Riordan brought in a black japanned tray on which the tea things and a large plate of thick slices of bread and butter were set out. Although accustomed to much better fare, I barely noticed the absence of cake. My mind was so filled with this amazing old man on the pillar that when the housekeeper had gone I broke out:
‘How high was he up, Uncle, and how long?’
‘Thirty-six cubits high, on top of a mountain too. And he stayed up for thirty years.’
It was so truly astounding I choked on my first slice of bread and butter.
‘Thirty years! But how did he get his food?’
‘By lowering a basket. Of course he fasted a lot.’
‘Why didn’t he fall off when he was asleep? I know I would have.’
‘Well, he was a very miraculous old man. And probably he didn’t sleep much. Perhaps his hair-shirt kept him awake.’
‘Good gracious, Uncle. A hair-shirt!’
He smiled.
‘I can’t see why he did it,’ I said at last.
‘Well, Laurence.’ I felt a throb of pleasure as he used my first name. ‘ Simeon lived long ago, in wild mountainous country, amongst savage tribes. As you may imagine, great crowds came to see him. He preached to them, often for hours on end, healed the sick, became a sort of judge, worked miracles, and in this way made an immense number of conversions to Christianity.’
There was a silence.
‘Is that why you have him in your room?’
He shook his head.
‘When I was at college in Spain I got to know of him. And as his name was like mine I felt rather flattered. So you see it’s just vanity on my part after all.’
I gazed warmly at my uncle, enchanted by our conversation which, instead of the expected references to my father that might have made me blubber, had raised me up to rare historical and intellectual heights.
‘I wish I might see a miracle, Uncle,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘They’re happening every day, if we only look for them. Now tuck into your bread and butter. It’s Mrs Vitello’s day off and we won’t get much more before breakfast tomorrow,’
I wanted to stay with this newly discovered uncle for further talk about pillars, but he told me he must go to the church to hear confessions, adding however, and so whetting my expectation, that he would be free after Mass tomorrow to show me something interesting. And so, when Miss O’Riordan came for the tray she claimed me. After she had again satisfied herself that I did not want to ‘go’, we went down a short flight of stairs to the kitchen. Here she produced a bottle with a label depicting a huge cod with its mouth open.
‘I’m putting you on Purdy’s Emulsion, dear. A tablespoonful three times a day. Ifs wonderful for the chest.’
She slowly decanted the creamy fluid which, though well disguised, tasted of cod liver oil.
‘Now,’ she said, when I had gulped it down, ‘let’s look what you’ve on.’ Prodding my shirt open with a forefinger she gave an exclamation of distress. ‘What! No flannel, dear? You should have flannel next the skin. God knows we don’t want you to go the way of your poor father. I’ll see to it for you before you’re a day older.’
She then released me, telling me to go into the garden and play, but not to catch cold or spoil my, clothes. I went out. The garden was a square of green, bordered by a shrubbery in which a little grotto had been made with a large statue of Our Lady wearing a coronet of stars and standing upon a pediment of sea-shells. A narrow concrete path traversed the grass, giving access to the side door of the church. I longed to go there to look for my uncle but held back, aware that he would be in his little grilled box.
I hung about with my hands in my pockets, thinking of a great many interesting things about the man on the pillar, and wishing that I had witnessed the many miracles he had performed. What a splendid sight—a miracle—and they could be seen, too, if one looked out for them. I thought also that, although the fading light made me long for my mother, I might do very well here with Uncle Simon, if only Miss O’Riordan would let me alone.
Alas, as the town clock struck six, she appeared at the back door of the refectory, and beckoned me in.
She had made porridge for my supper and a plateful, with its attendant glass of milk, steamed on the kitchen table. As she sat down opposite to watch me sup she may have observed in my expression a flicker of discontent. She said:
‘We never turn up our noses at good food, dear. We live very plain here.’
‘Plain, Miss O’Riordan?’
‘Yes, plain, dear. The church is fair loaded with debt. And your uncle, poor Soul, is fair killing himself to pay it off.’
‘But how could the church get in debt?’
‘It was the rebuilding of it, dear. Fifteen years ago, when I first came here. I won’t mention names, but a certain reverend gentleman had ideas that went more than a trifle beyond his station.’
‘But don’t the people pay, Miss O’Riordan?’
‘Pay, dear?’ she exclaimed with a scorn that lashed nameless congregations. ‘Have you seen the coppers on your uncle’s mantelshelf? That’s how they pay. Pennies and halfpennies and, God save us, sometimes farthings too, the brutes. Why, with the debt redemption and the interest, and what he does for charity, there’s scarcely enough for the poor man to put a decent shirt on his back. But he’s a clever one, and a good one, and with God’s help, and mine, he’ll do it.’
These startling revelations, while depressive, had enabled me to finish my porridge without noticing that there was no salt in it. Later, I discovered that she was a firm advocate of a saltless diet being, as she put it, easier on the kidneys. We rose from the table.
‘I have your rosary now, dear,’ Miss O’Riordan confided, in an intimate tone: ‘We’ll just say five decades in your room before I put you to bed.’
Upstairs, we knelt down in the bare bedroom that seemed to exhale the austerity of the many missionaries it had harboured, going and coming between the port of Cregan and the interior of Africa.
‘We’ll take the five sorrowful mysteries,’ Miss O’Riordan whispered. ‘And remember. Our intention is for your poor father.’
She began: ‘First sorrowful mystery: the agony of Our Lord in the Garden’: and first moving my lips noiselessly I finally joined in. Despite our intention I did not think about my father. I was sorry for him. I deplored his pitiable state. But that fearful midnight scene which kept recurring in grotesque forms th
roughout my dreams had made him taboo during the daytime when my will, such as it was, could exercise command. Instead I thought about Mother, and as I was then, and have been since, a visual, her face rose vividly before me. I saw her look of strain and sadness, mingling with tenderness and sweetness when she said goodbye to me that morning. I thought on no other agony but hers. And suddenly, though she had begged me to be brave, while I continued to pray mechanically, a flood of tears defiled my cheeks. I did not care that my companion’s eyes were glued upon me—this, indeed, increased the flow. At last we finished. Miss O’Riordan got slowly to her feet, still viewing me and with—could it be?—a new interest and respect.
‘Before God, dear,’ she said solemnly, ‘you pray well. Such piety! I will certainly tell his reverence. Never have I seen a child so touched to the heart over his beads.’
I reddened guiltily. But in an odd way, I felt comforted.
‘Look, dear,’ she went on persuasively, when I had undressed. ‘Here’s a little something I’ve run up for you. It’ll keep your poor lungs nice and cosy.’
She produced a sort of chest protector made of red flannel and fastened it on with tapes round my neck and back. I found it hot and uncomfortable but was now so worn down by her ministrations I had not the strength to resist. This is my hair-shirt, I thought sadly, and Miss O’Riordan is my pillar.
When I had closed my eyes in simulated sleep, but still keeping a faint chink through which I could warily observe her, she stood for a few moments looking down at me. Then she made the sign of the cross over my bed and turned out the gas-light. Suddenly, in the darkness I felt the press of lips on my forehead, not the soft warm lips to which I was used, but dry, stiff, strangely unaccustomed lips. Still, a kiss—and from Miss O’Riordan. I heard the door quietly close behind her.
Poor Miss O’Riordan, I must never permit myself to record anything really unkind of you. What harder thing is there in all the world than to be a frustrated, lonely, self-martyred, hypochondriacal, spinster housekeeper of forty-five, with only a daily Italian cleaning woman for help, in a struggling parish rectory? Nothing, unless perhaps to be the priest.
Chapter Eleven
My stay at St Joseph’s was to prove longer than I had foreseen and although, unlike his housekeeper, my uncle did not at the outset overwhelm me with attentions, I soon sensed that he welcomed my presence in the rectory and that my companionship, absurd though this may seem, relieved that special and very human loneliness enforced by his vocation, the more so since he could not fail to observe that I was beginning to be attached to him. This was not difficult. Simple goodness, so different from Miss O’Riordan’s religiosity, is always attractive and, for all his self-imposed discipline, there was a softness in his nature, a fine sensibility, that must have won any child.
He was, like my father, naturally clever, with the same in born distinction, an attribute which, I was soon to discover, had not been bestowed by heaven on their two brothers. Bernard and Leo. At an early age he had been sent to the Scots College at Valladolid in Old Castile where, during seven formative years, he had lived and studied with outstanding brilliance. Spain had educated, moulded him, imbued him with its traditions and culture. He loved Spain, and deeply admired its people—I well remember one of his phrases, ‘the nobility of the men, the grace and purity of the women’. In his dark clothes, with his thick black hair, dark eyes and sallow skin, his clerical cape drooping from his shoulders, he had indeed a Spanish look which rather consciously be sought to emphasize by many little mannerisms. And how often, in a nostalgic way, did he speak to me of the happiness of his life at Valladolld, the lovely city of Cervantes and Columbus that was saved from the Moors by Sancho de Leon, evoking not only the dramas of history, but more personal images of sun-splashed cloisters, a white-walled study facing on distant ochre mountains, and of the College gardens, scented with orange trees, leading to a special arbour of vines under which he took the midday sieste, and from which the small honey-sweet grapes fell, as he put it, almost into one’s mouth. To be transported to a raw, run-down Scottish parish, amidst uncouth accents and the din of nearby shipyards, seemed to me a sad dismissal from Eden.
But Uncle Simon did not mind. He was completely at home in his parish, knew all the children, and most of the old women, by their first names, and seemed actually to enjoy the many parochial duties and demands, in my view dull and fatiguing, which, from six o’clock in the morning when he rose to prepare for his early Mass, complicated a day often extending until late at night. Because I enjoyed his society and missed him when he was away it annoyed me that he should place himself at the disposal of everyone, especially since, in addition to his normal routine, he now devoted a half-day every week to crossing to Ardfillan to see my father, visits from which he returned with a fictitious cheerfulness that did not deceive me.
Nor did I approve his readiness to respond to every distressful story. I sensed that he was being imposed upon, a view vigorously shared by Miss O’Riordan, who was especially critical of what she called the Beggars’ Procession. Every Wednesday afternoon a string of needy petitioners presented themselves with unfailing regularity at the kitchen door, to be rewarded with their established perquisites. Watching from the open window of the kitchen with Mrs Vitello, the daily woman, while Miss O’Riordan dealt with the queue. I suspected that not a few were imposters and of these, one especially seemed the worst, an old crone with a shifty eye named Sarah Mooney who hobbled on a crutch, dragging one leg, with many wails and groans, and who never was satisfied that her ‘peck’ of tea and canister of sugar contained full measure. In my suspicion I was fully supported by Miss O’Riordan, and time and again I heard her protest to my uncle against Sarah’s depredations on fee larder.
Uncle Simon, however, despite the handicap of youth, had a way with his difficult housekeeper who through long tenure had come to believe herself the keystone of the parish. He let her have her head in many directions, tolerated her foibles, did not interfere in the management of the house, and above all, endured her atrocious cookery without complaint. Of Miss O’Riordan’s culinary skill I may say that never before or since have I known anyone inflict more harm on a simple mutton chop or an inoffensive joint of beef. But unlike me, Uncle had apparently slight regard for what he ate, his only indulgence being a large cap of black coffee after the one o’clock dinner, with which he smoked a thin, curved cigar with a quill at the end selected from a box sent to him by a colleague in Spain.
By this forbearance in matters which he considered of small account, he not only earned Miss O’Riordan’s regard but was able to assert himself without interference in all that pertained to his ecclesiastical office. Quietly and with firmness he interposed on my behalf, and while he could not defeat all her ministrations—notably those directed against my bowel, for she purged me relentlessly, nor must I omit the large camphor cross which for hygienic reasons she hung round my neck and which, impregnating my skin, made me smell like an animated mothball—he negatived her untimely religious plans for me, too ambitious steps to saintliness that would have compelled me to make my first confession, take the order of the Brown Scapular, and learn by rote the Latin responses so that I might serve my uncle’s Mass within the brief compass of my visit. If she had had her way I believe this devoted woman would have had me ordained, tonsured, perhaps even canonized before she had done with me. But Uncle Simon would not have it. He had both the sense and the sensibility to realize the psychological shock I had sustained, and to see me as a nervous, highly strung and physically undeveloped child often tormented by nightmares that awakened me in a cold sweat and which since, they were centred always on grotesque variations of my father’s haemorrhage, I referred to as my ‘red dreams’. How grateful I was for the time he somehow managed to devote to me. In the evenings we played draughts, a game I already knew. He taught me the rudiments of chess, and engaged me without his queen. Our conversations were always interesting since he never laughed at my naïveties, and I
recall that we touched on further notable eccentricities amongst the saints, while on another occasion we had a very reassuring talk on the subject of hell. On several Mondays, his least occupied day, he hired a row boat and took me out to that part of the firth known as the Tail of the Bank. But our greatest diversion was the entertainment he had hinted at when we first met.
One morning, when he had said his office immediately after breakfast, he led me up to the attic and there amidst the lumber of years stood a model locomotive, covered in dust, but a real working model, so big, so full of magnificent potential that I jumped at the sight of it.
‘I’ve no idea how it ever came here,’ Uncle meditated. ‘The remnant from a jumble sale perhaps. And I don’t believe it works very well. But we might have a shot at it.’
We took it down to the garden, placed it on the concrete path outside the back door. I ran into the kitchen to Miss O’Riordan for dusters. Cleaned, revealing gleaming driving wheels, double cylinders and pistons, and a shiny green tender, it was an engine to thrill the heart.
‘Look!’ I exclaimed, pointing to the bronze letters on the casing of the driving box: ‘The Flying Scotsman.’
It was actually a scale model of that famous, locomotive. What joy to fill the boiler with water, to charge the little fire-box from the bottle of methylated sprat Uncle had thoughtfully provided, to light—with matches obtained over Miss O’Riordart’s protest—the well-trimmed wick and then to stand back, holding one’s breath, expectant of immediate action. Alas, when all this was done the Flying Scotsman refused to fly. The water boiled, promising steam floated from the funnel, even the tiny whistle emitted its shrill and fascinating note, but for all its inner agitation, and mine, the beautiful machine remained indifferent and inert.
‘Oh, Uncle, we must get it to go!’ In my eagerness I scarcely noticed that I had used Miss O’Riordan’s classic phrase.
He seemed to be of the same mind. He removed his coat and knelt down with me on the bare concrete. Together we oiled the engine with the oiler from his bicycle kit. We examined in detail all its working parts. Vainly we unscrewed nuts and retightened them. Lying flat now, with dirty smears of oil on his face, Uncle was blowing hard on the spirit flame with a view to intensifying the heat when Miss O’Riordan suddenly appeared.
