Across the River

by Alice Taylor

  One night, the year Tim was seventeen, she had gathered them all together into the kitchen behind the pub and told them that she had bad news. Nothing could have prepared them for the shock: she had been diagnosed as having cancer, with only months to live. Their world crashed in around them. There followed months of black despair with occasional rays of hope that were quickly obliterated by deeper despair. Finally it was all over and they moved around the house like shadows in a morgue. For Tim it was a torturous time. His mother had been the glue that had held them all together. Now he was cut adrift in a world that had no centre, as if he had been hurled up into the air and had splintered into many fragments that would not come back together again. During all the trauma, his father had remained silent and bewildered. Sometimes Tim would come on him staring into space, but as soon as he became aware of Tim’s presence he would try to pull himself together. Every morning his father crept quietly out of the house for early mass and every night he knelt to say his rosary. Tim watched him and felt that he was beginning to cope because he had access to a spiritual seam that Tim could not understand.

  “Boy, when the world is a black pool, you’ve got to look up or else you’ll drown,” he told Tim.

  If in later years Tim ever questioned himself as to why he had become a priest, and he had often had reason to question himself, he knew that it had something to do with his mother’s death. It had turned him into a different person. At the seminary he had often clashed with the powers in charge. One dean had told him, “Brady, you will always be on the edge of trouble.” But despite everything he had come through, though he still asked himself at times if he was the right man in the right place. He had found it very difficult to come to terms with the fact that being a priest set you apart from the ordinary people. It was difficult to understand how it happened, but once you were ordained, you were different. People assumed that you were in some way holier and better than them. It might suit some to be on a pedestal, but not him. He had often found it a lonely, frightening place.

  The Wednesday morning after his “hay sermon”, he thought back over his life since ordination and wondered if he was ever meant to fit into the priestly straitjacket. Burke was designed for the job; he loved the power and the respect his collar earned him and listening to himself pontificating off the altar every Sunday. Tim constantly found himself unsure of how he should be handling the problems that were thrust upon him as part of his parochial duties. Sometimes he felt that no one man could have the wisdom to be what a really good priest should be, but he did the best he could and often prayed to his mother for guidance. He thought of Kate’s opinion that he should not have given the “hay sermon”. She was probably right, but then if you were hidebound by too many rules and regulations, you lost your natural instinct.

  As he was about to leave the house to say mass, the phone rang and it was Kate.

  “I had a chat with Sarah Jones, and the rumour about us is going around, though not widely, but Lizzy is in on it so Fr Burke will know.”

  “I’m for the high jump this morning after mass, and it’s best to know in advance if he has a joker up his sleeve.”

  “Well, he has that joker anyway and he might have a few more, knowing him,” Kate warned, “but whatever you do, don’t lose your cool and tear into him, because then he’ll be laughing all the way to the bishop.”

  “I could be going down that road anyway,” he said ruefully.

  “If you can get it sorted out with him, he will have no reason to go to the bishop,” Kate advised.

  “Time will tell.”

  “David thinks that it’s much ado about nothing,” Kate comforted him.

  “I hope he’s right.”

  As he picked up his keys, he glanced around his small hallway with its flagged floor and thought that he would hate to leave this old house into which he had accumulated all his books and bits and pieces over the years. There was something about the essence of this little house that soothed him as soon as he opened the front door. It had a comforting spirit. His father had given him some surplus furniture from the old home when one of his brothers got married. It felt good to have his mother’s special pieces around him. Some of the village women thought that he should have a housekeeper, but he liked having the freedom of the house to himself and he enjoyed cooking. When he had moved into the house, every room was painted magnolia, but he had brightened the whole place up with vivid colours. Mark had given him some wonderful pictures and over the years he had got endless pleasure from them. At least, he thought, I can take them with me.

  When he came on to the altar to say the mass, there were the usual few people scattered around the church. He liked the weekday mass. There was something calm and unhurried about it, and he felt, too, that the people who came were there because they wanted to be, though it was probably true that for some of them it was more a habit than anything else. But then who was he to judge? Sarah Jones was there most mornings, having cycled in the few miles. There was a great serenity about her and he felt that she had an unshakeable faith. I wish that I had her confidence, he thought. His father had it as well. Was it going to disappear with their generation? But then he doubted that the PP had it. If he had he would have been a kinder man. After mass Tim walked down the street to his own house and had a quick breakfast. The time on his summons was 10am, so he had best not be late. As he walked in around the back of the church to the parochial house, he envied the birds singing happily on the trees. It was such a lovely morning that he felt cheated to have it blighted by the encounter ahead. He looked up at the fine old trees that lined the avenue into the house and smiled to remember the row when Fr Burke got a notion of cutting them down a few years ago and Kate and David had opposed him.

  He lifted the heavy black knocker and could hear the loud clang echoing back the long hallway. After some time when nothing happened, he was just about to lift it again when he heard bolts being pulled and Lizzy’s beaky nose peered around the edge of the door. It always annoyed him the way she never opened the door back properly, almost as if she were expecting an attack or to find someone unpleasant on the doorstep. When she saw him it was as if her suspicions were confirmed, and she withdrew slightly with a look of disapproval.

  “He’s expecting me,” he told her, suppressing an impulse to push the door open wide and stride past her.

  “I’ll see,” she sniffed and disappeared. He pushed in the door and walked into the drab brown hallway.

  What a depressing hole. It had not got a lick of paint since he had come to the parish, and that was probably because Fr Burke never even noticed it. Perhaps he wanted to portray the image of self-denial and austerity. As Lizzy, thin and drably dressed in tight black clothes, came back into the hall, Tim thought that she blended into it.

  “Fr Burke will see you now,” she told him, stabbing a purple finger to a door back the hallway.

  Fr Burke was a large man who had obviously never denied himself anything at the table. Sitting behind an enormous desk, his recent summer bug had not paled his heavy red face that swept upwards into a glistening bald head edged around with white bristle cut to the bone. As Tim looked at him, he remembered his mother’s remark about anybody she considered to be powerfully strong, that “they were fit to plough”. Fr Burke fitted the bill.

  He continued to write when Tim came in, and the only acknowledgement of his presence was a thick finger pointed at an isolated chair in the middle of the room.

  You’re being cut down to size, Brady boy, he told himself. Burke is really going to enjoy this and he has the stage set for the performance. He sat on the hard bentwood chair that creaked in protest. Then there was complete silence in the room but for the scratching of Fr Burke’s pen. This silent treatment is to unnerve me, Tim thought, so I had better not fall into that trap. He tried to force his mind back to the mass that morning, but it was difficult to prevent the tension from gripping him.

  “Well?” Fr Burke barked.

  Tim felt like
saying, “Well what?” but knew that it was better to try to keep things as pleasant as possible.

  “You sent for me, Father,” he said.

  “And did that surprise you?” Fr Burke demanded, laying down his pen and settling him with a steely glare.

  Now will I start playing his game of dodging around the issue or go straight to the point? Tim decided on a middle course.

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “So you have some realisation of what you have done?”

  “I suppose it all depends on the way you look at it,” he ventured.

  “Well, there is only one way to look at it and that’s the right way. You beat up a parishioner when he came to voice an opinion and …”

  “He came to do more than that, I’m afraid,” Tim interrupted. “He charged into the sacristy and attacked me first.”

  “Well, that’s not the way I heard it,” Fr Burke said heavily.

  “Depends on who you believe,” Tim said, feeling that he had a right to defend his corner, “and the altar boys saw what happened.”

  “We won’t be dragging the altar boys into this mess. They have been scandalised enough already,” Fr Burke told him.

  “Now, even if the parishioner arrived in the sacristy in an excited state, it was your duty as a priest to calm him down, not to beat him out the door unheard.”

  “I don’t think that he came for a reasonable discussion,” Tim said, “and if I had not defended myself, I would have finished up in a pretty battered condition.”

  “Better you than the parishioner.”

  “Well, maybe,” Tim agreed.

  “Now the cause of this argument was the subject of your sermon, which was ill-advised to say the least of it.”

  “I don’t agree with burning the produce of the earth.”

  “Nobody does, but when the produce in question comes from fields that are the subject of a deep-rooted feud in the parish, you should have kept your mouth shut.”

  “Maybe in retrospect it might have been better,” Tim agreed.

  “Much better,” Fr Burke confirmed, beginning to look less confrontational and pleased with the way things were going.

  Tim began to relax, thinking that maybe they might be able to sort things out.

  “So you will go to that parishioner and apologise,” Fr Burke told him.

  He was just about to open his mouth to protest when his father’s advice in a similar situation came back to him: No skin off your nose, my lad, and a meal of humble pie is very good for the spirit.

  “Very well,” he agreed and almost smiled at the surprise on Burke’s face, who had been beginning to look like the proverbial cat with the saucer of cream. His next shot was direct, no beating about the bush.

  “What’s this about yourself and Kate Twomey?” he demanded.

  “Gossip,” Tim told him.

  “A priest cannot afford to be the subject of parish gossip.”

  “When there is no truth in the gossip, it burns itself out,” Tim asserted.

  “By then it will have done a certain amount of damage by breaking people’s trust and respect for their priest.”

  “If someone decides to start a malicious rumour, there is very little that can be done.”

  “There is, by not giving any grounds for talk in the first place,” Fr Burke pronounced.

  “So what do you suggest?” Tim asked.

  “No more visiting Kate and David Twomey.”

  “But they’re my friends,” Tim protested.

  “Well, that’s the source of the gossip, and if you want to nip it, that’s what you have to do,” Fr Burke told him.

  Tim was taken aback. David and Kate were part of the reason that he liked Kilmeen. David and himself got much enjoyment out of training the teams and spent many pleasant hours fishing together, and it was great to be able to pop in and out of their house. They were like his extended family. But on the other hand maybe Burke was giving him a way out of the dilemma and was prepared not to take it any further. Maybe if they sorted it out here and now that would be the end of it. He felt that he was being cornered, but decided to give in.

  “All right,” he agreed, “if that’s what it takes.”

  “I’m glad that you’re being sensible about this,” Fr Burke said, smiling sourly.

  “That’s all right so,” Tim said. Thinking that they had finished their business, he rose to his feet.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Fr Burke told him, “but you are to see the bishop tomorrow morning at 11am.”

  Tim stared at Fr Burke in disbelief. He had thought that the PP was giving him a chance to sort the problem out between them, but all the time he was only leading him up the garden path. What a two-faced old devil he was! Tim’s temper began to simmer and his self-control slip.

  “You mean to tell me that you put me through all this and that you had already contacted the bishop?” Tim demanded, and before Fr Burke could say anything, he grasped the back of the bentwood chair and thumped it off the floor. “You’re some hypocrite!” he blazed. “You can forget all the high-minded promises you extracted under false pretences. That malicious rumour that’s going around probably came from you or Conway, and one of you isn’t much better than the other.”

  Before Fr Burke had time to recover, Tim shot out the door, nearly falling over Lizzy who was busy polishing the brass knob.

  “Give your man inside a rub,” he told her and banged the heavy front door after him.

  He could feel the temper thumping in his head. Fr Burke must really have enjoyed extracting those promises out of him. You’re some fool, Brady, he told himself. As he passed the church door, he turned in on impulse and went up and sat into the front pew.

  “Listen, hear you,” he said, addressing the unseen presence on the altar, “if you think that I’m going to put up with much more of this, you’re going to be minus one labourer in your vineyard. If your bishop is anything like your parish priest, it’s definitely going to be curtains between us.”

  Tim sat for a while until he calmed down, and then he thought of his father and wondered what he would think of the situation. He decided to drive over and have a chat with him. As it was a long drive to his home town, he put a note on the door to call Fr Burke for any sick call. He drove out of the village, glad to be going home, away from the confusion that had become part of his life here. When he pushed open the pub door, his brother, who was serving a customer, winked in welcome. He made a bee-line for the kitchen behind the pub. The last thing he felt like was a chat with old neighbours who would be all questions about how he was getting on. He knew that his father, who was busy at the other end of the pub, would follow him in. The kitchen was empty and for that he was grateful.

  His father came in quietly and closed the door firmly behind him. A tall, thin man with a thatch of white hair, Dan Brady had three interests in life: his family, his customers and the GAA. Of his five sons he worried most about Tim. He was the one who had been most affected by his mother’s death, and Dan had never been quite sure if he were cut out for the priesthood. Tim would either be a star turn or a disaster; there would be no middle course. Looking at his face now, it seemed as if disaster were threatening.

  “What’s the trouble?” his father asked, putting on the kettle and taking a chair across the table from Tim.

  “That sounds as if I’m always coming home with my problems,” Tim said.

  “Where else would you go?” his father asked.

  “I’m thinking of leaving,” Tim said, and until he had put it into words he had not fully realised the possibility.

  “Fill me in,” his father said.

  So Tim told him the whole story and his father listened without interruption. Tim was glad to get an opportunity to get it all out. It was as if in the telling he got to see things more clearly himself.

  When he finished his father said, “A lot will depend on the bishop’s reaction, won’t it?”

  “You’re right,” Tim agreed,
“and if his reaction is anything like Burke’s, I’m getting out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  AS HE DROVE up the avenue to the bishop’s palace, Tim wondered what lay ahead. Coming back down, would the decision be to remain a priest or to step back into the secular world? If he decided to get out, it would be a huge upheaval, but at the moment he had had as much as he could take of the Church and her archaic customs. In many ways he would be sorry to leave because there was much about the priesthood that he loved, but Fr Burke’s charade yesterday had been the last straw. Nobody enjoyed eating humble pie, but to find out after eating it that it had served no great purpose was galling. Fr Burke was driving him crazy. Maybe if he were a proper priest, Burke would not irritate him so much. Questions without answers floated around his head as he parked at the foot of the sweeping steps.

  He was pleasantly surprised when the door was opened by an old classmate who seemed delighted to see him. “I knew you were the bishop’s secretary, but I didn’t expect you to answer the door.”

  “I saw your name on the list of appointments and thought that you might like to be met by a familiar face.” His friend smiled and drew him into the wide, polished hallway.

  “I blotted my copybook,” Tim told him. It was good to see Bernard’s welcoming face instead of some grim-faced cleric.

  “Heard you were practising your boxing skills.”

  “Good news travels fast.”

  “Burke was on the phone and I could hear him yelling even though I was across the table, and I followed the conversation from the bishop’s comments. Of course, I was all ears when I heard Burke, because I figured out straightaway that you were in trouble.”

  “Is it big trouble?” Tim enquired.

  “I doubt it, and the bishop is a good old skin, so you’ll get a fair crack of the whip.”

  “That’s good to hear, because I’m half thinking of leaving.”