Across the River

by Alice Taylor

  “Oh my God, I never thought that he was getting under your skin to that extent.”

  “Well, not all the time,” he admitted. “Sometimes there is a clear run and then all hell breaks loose. Maybe it’s just that we see the priesthood in a totally different light.”

  “Thank God for that. No parish could survive two of him,” Kate declared as she poured him a second cup of tea. It always amused her the way Fr Tim did everything so fast. It could not be good for him to be always on the go, and she felt sure that it was only when he was fishing that he came to a standstill. He was full of compressed energy, and she knew from experience that he moved first and asked questions afterwards. But for now he seemed to be putting thought into what he was about to say.

  “Well, what is it?” she prompted him. “You seem to have something stuck in your craw, as Jack would say.”

  “Kate, would you give me a straight answer to something that’s bothering me?” he asked.

  “Try me,” Kate told him, “and I’ll do my best.”

  “How am I shaping up as a priest?” he asked. “Sometimes I have huge doubts about my suitability for this business.” Kate looked at him in amazement.

  “You’re the best,” she told him. “You’re what it’s all about, and that’s not alone my opinion but the opinion of most people in the parish, especially the young ones.”

  “Sometimes I think that I’m a bit of a fraud,” he said grimly. “I preach the love of God to people, but there are times when I question if he is even there.”

  “Don’t we all?” Kate assured him. “But despite that we still keep going, and then one day something happens and you know that he is right there in the heart of everything. When I sit by the deathbeds of old country people who have lived close to the earth and God all their lives, I feel Him with them. Their simple faith confirms me in mine.”

  “I know what you mean,” Fr Tim agreed slowly. “Death is a sobering moment, when all the masks slip away and you see reality. Some of these old country people are amazing.”

  “Not all of them, mind you,” Kate smiled. “Probably only the ones who found their own inner harmony. I was with my mother when she died, and she slipped away as quietly as she had lived.”

  “‘As a man lives, so shall he die,’” Fr Tim quoted to himself.

  “I suppose,” Kate continued, “if we haven’t found God in our daily round, nothing is going to change in death.”

  “He is very important to you, isn’t He?” Fr Tim asked.

  “I don’t often sit down and analyse things like we’re doing now, but in my job I feel His power when I watch people die and, at the other end of the scale, when I help deliver a baby.”

  “Whenever I meet you after you’ve delivered a baby, there is a special glow about you,” Fr Tim smiled.

  “It’s a miracle every time,” she told him.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “It must be very hard not to have one of your own,” he said gently.

  “Very,” she told him grimly.

  “You never mention it.”

  “Maybe I’m afraid that if I start talking I’ll never stop. I don’t want it to become an obsession with me because in many ways I have so much. David and I are very happy together and I know that he would love a child, but because he knows that I feel the same way, we try not to let it become a mountain in our lives. We have almost come to the stage now where neither of us brings it up in case of upsetting the other, and that’s not right either.”

  “Understandable though.”

  “Still, it’s good to discuss it occasionally, and strangely enough Jack and myself sometimes talk about it.”

  “You’re very fond of Jack,” Fr Tim smiled.

  “He’s been the backbone of my life, always there through every storm that blew through Mossgrove,” she said thoughtfully.

  “The last one shook him up quite a bit,” Fr Tim said.

  “It did indeed,” Kate sighed. “His hay would be sacred in Jack’s eyes, and to see it being burned was almost like scorching himself.”

  “Hard to understand Conway,” Fr Tim said.

  “What was it St Paul said: ‘Understand it even though it’s beyond all understanding.’”

  “Never knew that you were a biblical scholar.”

  “Funny the way you remember certain little bits,” Kate told him. “Oh, and by the way, I almost forgot to tell you that Rodney Jackson is coming soon.”

  “The dashing American rides into town,” Fr Tim smiled.

  “No Mrs Jackson yet?”

  “Not yet,” Kate told him, “but if he is on the lookout, there would be no shortage of contenders around here.”

  “He would probably fancy an Irish wife,” Fr Tim suggested.

  “Well, he has decided that everything else Irish is to his satisfaction anyway.”

  “You must know him pretty well at this stage since he always stays here with you,” Fr Tim said.

  “What you see is what you get. Direct, generous and decisive, wielding huge power in his business world, and yet very unassuming and very anxious to do everything that’s good for Kilmeen on account of the family connection here.”

  “He has made a big difference to this place,” Fr Tim remarked.

  “Getting the old Jackson house for the school was wonderful for David, and he has never looked back. And, of course, what Rodney has done for Mark is fantastic.

  Now Rodney is organising this exhibition in New York and Mark is going over for it.”

  “He must be worth a fortune.”

  “I’d say so,” Kate said, “but he keeps a very low tone about it. He thinks that we Irish are very special, so much so that he almost tiptoes around local sensibilities in case he’d upset anyone.”

  “God help him,” Fr Tim declared, “he’s in for a rude awakening some day.”

  “Oh, you of little faith,” Kate smiled. “You must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

  “Something like that,” he admitted, rising from the chair, “but do you know what, Kate? I’m the better for talking to you. You always straighten me up and face me in the right direction when I find myself going astray.”

  “A signpost,” Kate told him laughing. “Maybe I should stand up at the village corner and point people in the right direction.”

  After Fr Tim had gone, she sat thinking about him. She was extremely fond of him and sometimes she worried that he had become too big a part of her life. He seemed to have slipped into Ned’s shoes, and she depended on him to discuss and tease out things with her. But whereas Ned had been tranquil and calming, Fr Tim, although he had the same deep sensitivity as Ned, was full of restless energy. It was just as well that she loved David deeply and had done so since she was a teenager, because it would be very easy to be carried away by the vibrancy and excitement of Fr Tim. The fact that he was totally unaware of his appeal made him more appealing, and maybe the fact that he had a collar around his neck marking him as unavailable added to that.

  As there was still about half an hour before the dispensary opened, Kate walked out into the garden. She liked to stroll around the garden in the morning and see how everything had survived the night, and she never failed to be delighted at the little changes each day brought.

  Now she saw that one of her mother’s old roses, which she had transplanted with care from Mossgrove, was turning from a bud into bloom. Its deep rich aroma more than compensated for its lack of showmanship. Kate always thought of it as a quiet rose. It could almost go unnoticed as you walked around the garden, but once you had passed, it reached after you and enveloped you in veils of fragrance, and then you returned, apologetic for overlooking it in the first place. Since she had moved in here she had tended this garden with loving care and turned it into her haven of delight. She came out here to be healed when she returned home after handling sad cases on her rounds. In the early days of her marriage, she had visualised a pram under the tree at the end of the gar
den. She thought of the impending visit of Rodney Jackson and his big plans for Mark’s exhibition. It gave them all something to look forward to, which was a great thing after the upheaval of the hay burning. It was wonderful the way he loved this place and came as often as he could. Maybe Fr Tim was right and that he might meet a local girl. Pity that Nora is too young, Kate thought. Wouldn’t she just love flitting back and forth on his trips with him? Kate smiled to herself. She had better watch herself or she’d turn into a second Julia or Lizzy.

  Chapter Eight

  FR TIM BRADY put his back to the altar and looked down at the congregation. He did not normally say the second mass. Fr Burke, the parish priest, always kept that mass for himself. The PP called the first mass the creamery mass, bluntly saying that the great unwashed went to it, because the men who brought the milk to the creamery came to it on their way home. But today he was confined to his bed with a summer bug and had Lizzy running up and down the stairs fetching and carrying.

  The church was full but not as packed as it had been at the first mass. In winter the biggest crowd was at second mass, but farming people could not afford to lie in bed on a summer’s morning. But whichever mass they went to, it amused him the way people always went to their own place. We are creatures of habit, he thought.

  Martha Phelan sat impassively four rows from the front, beautiful, remote and controlled. One could never be sure what was going on behind that glacial facade. Beside her sat sunny-faced Nora. It was hard to think that they were mother and daughter, but Peter at the back of the church was surely his mother’s son. He was dynamite on the field and there was no beating him once he got going. The same would apply to his mother. I wouldn’t like to cross her, Tim thought.

  Across the aisle sat the Conways. Big burly Matt always reminded him of a Hereford bull, with the personality to match. Biddy Conway looked as if she were apologetic for the space she was taking up. Poor woman. What a miserable life she had. If Danny got half a chance he had the makings of a grand lad, but the odds were stacked against him.

  Sarah Jones was a few seats behind the Conways. She was a pleasant woman who kept her mind to herself and only spoke up when things were seriously out of step. Across the aisle from her were Kate and David, a smashing couple. Kate was like a ray of sunshine in her yellow dress. “My dear brethren,” he began, “today we are going to go back to the beginning. To the first prayer that Our Lord gave to His disciples. He told them, ‘This is how you pray … Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give give us this day our daily bread…’,” and he stopped for a few moments. “It’s with this part of the Our Father we will concern ourselves today. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We are asking the Lord to bless us with the fruits of the earth. It is a wonderful petition, and the Lord in his generosity grants it abundantly. The earth is generous and we depend on it for our daily bread. In this farming community, we are very aware of that. At the moment we are in the midst of the haymaking season, the hay that will feed our cattle who provide us with milk and the milk cheque with which people buy the necessities of life in this community. We must treasure and respect the fruits of the earth. They are not ours, and we must never destroy them because that is going against the laws of nature. They are the gifts of God and the answer to our request, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’”

  There was absolute silence in the church. He continued, “The next line of the Lord’s Prayer says, ‘and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. This is surely a testing part of this prayer. But we must leave old hurts behind. So let us go forth in peace to love God, and that means loving our neighbour as well. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”

  After the final prayers he returned to the sacristy with the altar boys. He was just removing his surplice when the door crashed open and Matt Conway burst in roaring, “If you think that you can read me off the altar, you half-baked priest, and get away with it, you have something else coming to you.”

  Before Fr Tim had time to recover, he was caught by the bunched up surplice, lifted off the floor and thrown back into a corner full of tall brass candlesticks that clattered in all directions. He recovered himself quickly and wondered if he should try to placate the man or sort him out at his own game. The choice was not his, however, as Conway was coming at him again with his head down. The Lord had said turn the other cheek, but in this case it could be reduced to pulp, and maybe the Lord did not have a little lightweight boxing experience. Swinging out a right uppercut, he landed Matt Conway into a bunch of altar boys. He had forgotten all about the altar boys, who were watching in open-mouthed amazement. My God, what stories they will make out of this! Before Conway got to his feet, Tim whipped open the door and ordered the astonished boys, “Out.”

  He was glad they were gone when Conway, regaining his feet, spat out, “I’ll sort you out, yourself and that Kate Phelan, playing around under that fool of a husband’s nose. Is that barren old bitch hoping that you’ll produce the child that she’s waiting for?”

  All thoughts of turning the other cheek were banished and he was back in the ring with all the old skills. Matt Conway did not know what hit him. He had never been beaten in a fight, but then he had never come up against a boxer. It was like trying to hit a flying object, and the punches came at him from where he least expected. Finally he backed to the door, but before he disappeared, he left his threat: “This will cost you the collar, you cur.” When he was gone Tim collapsed into the nearest chair. He had forgotten the pleasures of boxing and had got immense satisfaction from getting the better of Conway. He had always felt sorry for Biddy, especially since he found out about Conway throwing her down the stairs. Then there was the sorry story of Mary and Kitty. Oh yes, he had a lot of scores to settle with Conway. But was this the way a priest should act? Oh boy, was he in trouble now. Big trouble! It was probably unheard of in any parish for the curate to beat up a parishioner, no matter what the reason. He closed his eyes and groaned aloud, “Oh God, I’m supposed to be preaching and practising love your neighbour. Oh Brady, you’ve really torn it this time.” He sat for a long time with his face in his hands, trying to figure out where he was going to go from here. Burke would be down on him like a ton of bricks. He was always complaining about too much time at games and too much time fishing. There was no end to what was wrong. Now, you fool, he thought, you’ve played right into his hands. He’ll be delighted to fill the bishop in and get you out of here. You’ll probably finish up in the back of nowhere, if you don’t finish up nowhere at all. What were the steps to being thrown out? He had had no reason to find out before but, by God, he had good reason now. Maybe he should spare them the trouble and go anyway.

  Suddenly he remembered that the candles were still lighting out on the altar because he had rushed the altar boys off before they had time to finish their jobs. He went out into the silent church and put them out. The church had the warmth of the recent occupancy of many people.

  He had grown to love this church during his ten years here, especially the richly coloured stained-glass windows. When the sun poured through them, it turned the place into a rainbow. He came back into the sacristy and locked the door.

  He was loth to leave the sacristy, not quite sure of what lay outside. How could he face people on the street and how would they react? It was undoubtedly the talk of the village by now and would be all over the parish in a matter of hours. Oh boy, had he blown it.

  Then another more frightening thought struck him, what Conway had said about himself and Kate. Could people really be talking about them? Whatever about belting Conway, if there was talk about Kate and himself, he was really in trouble. A step in that direction and they crucified you altogether! He didn’t know whether he was coming or going. What did he really feel about Kate? He thought she was like the sister he never had, but then what did he know about that? He had never had a siste
r, and maybe what he felt for Kate was more than that. He loved being with her and they had great fun together and he had never thought very much about it, but maybe that was not right either. His head was so addled he did not know what to think.

  Suddenly there was a knock on the side door of the sacristy. This is it, he thought. Burke is after hearing it and he wants me up. He remained sitting, reluctant to open the door.

  “Come in,” he called, and to his amazement Davy Shine breezed in.

  “Father, I heard you beat the pulp out of Conway. That was well coming to him. Coming to him with years,”

  Davy proclaimed with relish. “Whatever good you have done in this parish up to now, and you’ve done a lot of good with the teams and everything, it’s nothing compared to this. This beats all! I think you should start a boxing club.”

  Tim looked at Davy Shine in disbelief, and in the face of his lighthearted assessment, the whole situation seemed less threatening. His sense of trauma cracked and he burst out laughing.

  “Davy, you’re incredible,” he said.

  “Whatever that’s supposed to mean I’m not sure, but we’re all waiting for you up in the field for the match. How could you forget about the final? Come on and don’t be keeping us all waiting.”

  “By God, Davy, you saved my sanity,” Tim said.

  “I hope I’ll save a few goals now and keep the pressure off Danny,” Davy told him.

  They walked up to the field together and the few people they met along the street were as friendly as usual. Maybe the people might have no problem with what happened, but unfortunately they did not have the final say. In the field all the lads were raring to go, and once the match started he got so caught up in the excitement he almost forgot his troubles. When Kilmeen scored the winning point in the last few minutes, there was general elation. Afterwards Peter came over to him.

  “You played a blinder this morning on the altar,” he said.

  “Might have played myself off it,” Fr Tim said ruefully.