Be Near Me

by Andrew O'Hagan

  I couldn't face my exams but I could face Blackfriars. It gave my long afternoons of grief an acceptable pattern, and so, by and by, with the help of those gentlemen of God, I came to see that all the answers were old ones. People often say to me: 'Father, how long will the grief last?' I want to say to them that it will last as long as life. When I came to the English College in Rome, that first summer of the new decade, I remember sitting by the small pool in the garden at the back of the college. I saw other young seminarians up at the windows and I wondered, sitting there with my legs dangling in the turquoise water, whether they too might gain from duty and discipline what freedom could only deny them. I went into the pool and looked up at the savage sun. The bones of the English martyrs were kept in the chapel, and my own bones, filled with air, it seemed, like a bird's, were under a covering of memorial flesh now cleansed by the Roman water.

  It takes for ever to forget the past. And then longer again to see that forgetting the past is a vivid illusion. A time came in Rome during those seven years when I could walk across the Campo dei Fiori without thinking of Grosvenor Square. One afternoon, I travelled to the Capitoline Hill. There was an orange grove there, a place on the hill where one could pick the fruit from the trees. A mulch of citrus lay among the ruins, loading the cracks of antiquity with sweet scent. I sat on the shaded grass, the great world at some long distance and my lips moving in prayer. It was like an afternoon eclipse on the ridges of the old city, one kind of belief passing slowly over another to silence the birds.

  That was the day of my ordination.

  In my mind, I said: 'Conor is gone, but the Lord is here. My life will pass and I will never taste a kiss on my mouth again.'

  A decision had been made while the sky turned from emerald to lilac. The slow moon had passed. It was over now. One becomes such a master of departures, such an opponent of doubt. Making my way down the hill I saw a party of goldfinches flying overhead, and the heavens seemed more familiar than the green earth as I fastened my coat and walked in search of the road.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The People

  THE POLICE CAME to the rectory at noon on the last Sunday in August. I had said the first Mass and was looking over some builders' estimates when the knock came. My father always said a policeman's knock is unmistakable, and so it is, the rap on the paintwork a very public command, feasting on the hearer's capacity for guilt. 'There it is,' I said. 'The immoderate summons.'

  Stepping into the house, one of the young officers took off his hat. His friend said: 'Are you David Anderton?'

  'That's right.'

  One hears of the good cop and the bad cop. This was the handsome one and the ugly one. Scanning the room with his hat under his arm, the handsome one lowered his eyes and let me dwell for a second on his toffee-coloured hair. 'Mr Anderton,' said the ugly one, seeming too rounded in his tunic, as if all his potentialities were localised in his puffed-out chest. 'I'm afraid we have to ask you some questions.'

  'By all means.'

  'Not here. You must come to the station.'

  He coughed rather too delicately into his tiny fist.

  'I'm afraid you are under arrest.'

  The face of the other policeman graduated quickly through a palette of exquisite pinks. It was difficult to imagine such a man thriving in the world as it is today, never mind rolling in the street with the criminal classes. 'Sorry, Father,' he said. 'Do you by any chance have a glass of water you could give me?'

  'Of course,' I said.

  In the kitchen, I waited for the tap to run cold. Taking the cloth, I wiped the table, seeing my shadow in the wood and catching the smell of oranges that rose from the detergent spray favoured by Mrs Poole. I had used the last of the spray the week before, when clearing up after the supper for Bishop Gerard, but the smell lingered and felt oppressive. I lifted a glass to fill it with water and saw that my hands were shaking.

  At the police station, they took me to an interview room. There was stewed tea in styrofoam cups, pencil shavings on the sergeant's desk, and for hours—six to be precise—they told me in magnificent detail the story of who I was and what I had done. The handsome officer sat with me during one of the middle hours, explaining that his colleagues were only doing their job and that everything was a shame. He told me he had recently got married, and I imagined him raking leaves in the yard behind a brand-new bungalow. I saw him carrying boxes to the loft and fixing plugs on a series of paper lamps. He would do these things in a loose shirt and khaki shorts, wearing training shoes, the fuses held between his teeth as he bent down with the screwdriver, flecks of emulsion showing in his hair as he looked over at his wife. I'd say the officer knew nothing of his own slow mind or the dimple on his chin.

  'I am going to charge you,' said the sergeant. 'But before I do so I must caution you that you do not need to say anything in answer to the charge, but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence. Do you understand?'

  I said that I did understand.

  'The charge against you is that in the early hours of 11 July this year you did sexually assault a minor, Mark McNulty, in the chapel-house of the Church of St John Ogilvie in the town of Dalgarnock. Do you understand? Do you have anything you would like to say?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'The charge is false.'

  'We'll see about that soon enough, sir,' he said. 'Please follow me.'

  They took photographs and fingerprints, the dark smudge indwelling as I lifted up my hand. Then they rubbed the inside of my cheek with a cotton swab: a DNA sample. I remember looking at the damp cotton and thinking that old family habits must be traceable there, the many Andertons with their devout notions and closed mouths. Could the DNA tell a story of the way my people have refined themselves for victimhood over the centuries? What did it say, this swab? That I'd inherited my ancestors' propensity for Catholic belief and its attendant disasters? Perhaps that my own blood was poorer than theirs, a dilution of the old stuff resulting in this sorrowful Sunday? The cotton swab lay in a plastic dish, radiating portents. Surely the information captured there could explain this frightful mistake.

  'Let's book you in,' the sergeant said.

  'You mean I'm staying here?'

  'Just tonight,' he said. 'You'll be detained in custody until you appear in court tomorrow morning.'

  'What happens then?' I asked. He put a pencil behind his ear and looked at me through dipped eyes.

  'Most likely,' he said, 'you'll be bailed to appear for trial at some point in the future. What's your date of birth?'

  '24 March 1947.'

  'Could you empty your pockets, please?'

  I took out my keys, a case of rosary beads, my mobile phone. There was an envelope symbol on the phone indicating a text. I pushed the button and saw the message:

  They made me.

  'You'll get all these back tomorrow,' said the sergeant.

  'It doesn't matter;' I whispered.

  'Sorry, sir?'

  'Oh, nothing,' I said.

  There were voices in the night. They came from the disquieted environment of my own mind. I lay on a foam bed and saw the weakest of lights out there in the corridor, not a light really—not a bulb or a filament—but a cold gathering of shadows. The darkest hour had arrived, and I listened carefully to the words that arrived across the empty room, ignoring the smell of urine as I followed the goodness and friendliness of those voices back to the places where they lived.

  My father and I would spend nights in the garden with tea and ginger biscuits. He would try to make sense of the sky. Forever pointing, he'd divine a great cluster of stars somewhere about Neptune, saying to me: 'There you have one of the oldest formations. We're talking hundreds of millions of years old, and that's just for starters.' The night sky was not a dead and cold thing in my father's company but a living show—bears and bulls pawing through the grand universe, or ploughs turning over the sizeable detritus of space. He made it sound like the heavens were an action painting of the Earth's be
st objects, stretching across the untold dark, these images looking down on us with a godly sense of themselves and their own meaning for the likes of us, watching below.

  'That's Mars,' he would say, indicating some ruby-shaded pinprick out there, and I'd feel giggly in my pyjamas, thinking the vision was only ours. But sometimes he'd point to things I couldn't see.

  'Oh, yes,' I'd say. 'It's very bright.'

  The smell of chimneys filled the garden; the taste of ginger snaps numbed my tongue. Our kitchen was yellow behind us. As my father looked up at the sky, my oohs and aahs, I now see, like my sudden questions, were an actor's disclosures of deference. I didn't really know what he was looking at or what he was saying, but I liked the garden, the moonlight making pulsars round the rim of his silver glasses.

  Kilmarnock Sheriff Court was quick the next morning. They took me up in handcuffs to the pinewood court and the charge was read out, the sheriff looking down from his perch, biting the arm of his spectacles.

  'This will be difficult,' the canon lawyer said later. We were standing in a private corner of the corridor. 'We must have faith.'

  'We shall need more than that.'

  He looked me up and down as if the remark was my second contribution to a life of crime. 'God will suffice,' he said.

  'And Bishop Gerard,' I said, 'have you spoken to him?'

  'Of course,' he said. 'He is very upset, as you can imagine.'

  'Yes.'

  'You are free to go,' he said. 'For the time being.'

  'And so are you, Father,' I said. He turned to face me.

  'What's that you're saying?'

  'Thank you for your work this morning,' I said. 'I won't be requiring any further assistance.'

  'You have only just been bailed,' he said. 'You have a trial to face. We must begin to prepare for your defence.'

  'My defence will be my own concern.'

  'Are you mad?'

  'Very possibly,' I said. 'But I have spoken to my mother. We will be engaging an advocate in due course. Thank you for your trouble.'

  'But, David,' he said, his voice low and seasoned with panic, 'this is unprecedented. You must follow procedure. You will be crucified for hiring an expensive advocate in a case such as this. As you know, the Church has some experience. We will handle things.'

  'I don't want things handled'

  The face of the canon lawyer grew red. He gathered up his papers and nodded towards the dull, scuffed tiles of the corridor, while young people in anoraks passed sleepily by and lawyers made their way in a whirl of gowns and ring binders.

  'Heaven help you, Father,' he said. 'You know, the Bishop sponsored you. He made a special case for you in this diocese. He will take a lot of flak for this. It is not right.'

  'Let other authorities be the judge of what is right.'

  'You are lost,' he said. 'Do you know what is out there?'

  He pointed to the entrance of the court.

  'I know what is in here,' I said, and I tapped a finger to my chest and took a step back from the canon lawyer.

  'It is vanity that will bring you down,' he said. 'We have known it since first you came to this diocese. You have spent more time with books than you have with parishioners. I'm afraid you are a hedonist, Father David, and your indulgences are well known, even to those who would wish to help you. Forgive me if I have spoken too frankly.'

  'Your bond is not with me,' I said.

  I felt strangely resolved leaving the Sheriff Court that first time, but I lacked whatever is required to realise how easily such resolution can be mistaken for arrogance. My stupidities were obvious, even to me, but I felt the matter required honesty and patience, quite forgetting that the world has a name for people like me and ways of bringing us down. I saw there were some photographers in St Marnock Street but thought little of it until the following morning when my picture appeared in the Daily Record. 'The Face of Evil,' it said. 'English Priest in Ayrshire Kiddie Abuse Scandal.'

  There were no cars. No dogs or children. The landing window showed a blazing sun that seemed part of a life elsewhere, as the sun always is. But that August afternoon the sun was African yellow and brought the life of elsewhere burning into Dalgarnock, the coast for an hour or two bending in the heat of an equatorial illusion.

  Mrs Poole would have spoken of the hole in the sky's protective layer, and the strange, spineless warmth argued her case. One felt unprotected. It was the day of Marymass, the annual summer fair, and I drove across the town to buy eggs and orange juice from a farm near the moor. It seemed as if the whole population had evacuated to the site of enjoyment, the streets deserted, the houses emptied, the roads cordoned off for the parade and bordered with flags and bunting. I drove past the Blue Star garage and pulled over to inspect something spray-painted on the wall. It said:

  Celebrate and Dance for Free. Celtic FC.

  I took coins from the glove compartment. I drove up and put them in the car wash and went through, the blue brushes closing in, the soap and water covering the car and making a secure world of swirling brushes, total privacy and strange motion. For a moment I felt like Jonah, sloshing in the mouth of a great whale, a mouth of saliva, until the rinsing water came from every direction and the windscreen cleared and the sea glittered before me, the sea that went over to Ireland.

  The farm shop was closed. I could hear the sound of a loudspeaker from the moor and faint eddies of applause. I drove closer and parked next to the generators that fed the fairground attractions and the gypsy caravans. You could see it then, the moor crowded with Marymass revellers, the town's inhabitants. Stalls, barbecues, waltzers, shooting galleries and burger vans crowded down to the river, with children running amok, decorated horses being led here and there by the bridle. There was a stage in the middle of the moor and it was surrounded by the time I arrived. The town bailie, in red frock coat and gold chain, was placing a crown on the head of the Marymass Queen, a teenage girl with a professional smile for the local paper.

  Marymass has been going since medieval times. My tutors at Balliol would have found it eternally interesting: the Carters' Association with its horses and banners and heralds; the papingo, of which there are etchings from the sixteenth century, a game in which archers shoot arrows at partridges set on the ramparts of the old abbey. I could see that the partridges were now made of cardboard and the arrows had rubber tips. The ancient pageant had become a beer festival. The crowd wore football colours and they jostled on the moor with their foaming plastic cups. There was a hideous drum. It pounded on the hazy side of the moor and the sun was pulsing too, like a rotary blade that churned the atmosphere.

  I was wearing civvies, a shirt open at the neck, and I found a baseball cap on the back seat of the car. I pulled the visor down and walked into the crowd that cross-hatched the grass, everywhere smelling of suntan lotion and chips. Children ran holding sticks of candy floss and took pictures of one another with their phones. Disco music shrieked from the fairground. I shouldn't have gone there. I should have been back in the rectory making calls and taking counsel. But something of the Marymass buzz drew me onto the moor, and I walked among the excited bodies wishing I could join them, 'the people', as Nashe used to call them from his armchair.

  A black pole rose some thirty feet into the air. It stood on a hill at the edge of the moor and the people gathered round, the girls with their coloured alcopops and the babies holding ice creams. The pole was smeared with black tar all the way to the top, where a side of beef, its upper side browning in the morning sun, was impaled on a large butcher's hook. The beef was a prize for the worthiest climbers. I went up close to the fence surrounding the pole. The men played in teams, climbing up on each other's shoulders and driving up through the grease, squeezing tins of lager into their mouths before and during the effort. 'Let's fucken go!' said a particularly broken-nosed one. 'Let's fucken do them?

  Oh, that high-flying flamingo, that sweet Geoffrey Nashe. He thought, along with my father, that the working class consist
ed of young, moderate, hard-working men, scented with soap and certificates. They never saw that violent face or the gold ring on every finger. 'It's not actually about class,' Nashe would have said. 'It's about character.'

  The winning team were the most sunburnt. They drank the greatest number of lagers and they had the flattest faces. They didn't mind stepping on each other's heads in the attempt to reach the top or crushing one another's fingers into the black goo of the pole. The last man, a fierce, aggressive, hollering, self-conscious brute, reached the beef at the top of the greasy pole and gripped it with his giant hands, and then, with a final push, raised himself up and sank his teeth into the stewed rump, shouting with laughter and flashing his gold fillings to the heavens.

  I had seen Mrs Poole's husband at the start of the contest. He was with one of the junior teams, one of the sports clubs, I imagine, and was drinking from a small bottle of whisky. He hadn't noticed me. His face was ashen and his cheeks were drawn. His team was knocked out early, after failing to scale even halfway up the pole, but they were jeering from the side during the other attempts. I should have left then, but the short sad truth is that I didn't want to leave.