The Loney

by Andrew Michael Hurley

  Miss Bunce wetted her lips with the brandy and screwed up her face.

  ‘You may not agree at the moment,’ said Father Bernard, taking the glass from her as she held it out. ‘But, given what I know of your commitment to your faith, I think that in the cold light of day you would regret it very much if you went home so soon.’

  ‘Father’s right,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘We haven’t been to the shrine yet. You wouldn’t want to miss that.’

  Miss Bunce nodded and wiped her eyes. David came down the stairs, alternately banging Miss Bunce’s suitcase against the wall and the banisters.

  ‘Are you ready, Joan?’ he said.

  ‘False alarm,’ said Mrs Belderboss and David hesitated for a moment, looked at Miss Bunce and then went back upstairs.

  ***

  When everyone had dispersed, I went up to check on Hanny. He was sound asleep, an arm lolling out of the bed towards his soldiers, the stuffed rats and the envelope of money. He’d taken it out from under my pillow and rifled through the contents. There were bank notes all over the floor. I collected everything together and hid the money under the mattress so that Hanny wouldn’t find it again before we had to take it back.

  In his other hand were the pornographic pictures Billy Tapper had given me. I took them off him and screwed them into a ball. They needed to go on the fire whenever the opportunity arose. Why we’d kept them, I didn’t know, and what Mummer would have done had she found him with them, I couldn’t imagine. Though I’d have naturally got the blame and branded a deviant like poor Henry McCullough who had been caught in mid strike as he lay on his bed with his mother’s underwear catalogues.

  It had been around that time that a boy called Paul Peavey joined us as an altar server. He was younger than Henry and I, thin and pale, small for his age and keen as mustard to please Father Wilfred. He was the type that, given a different time and place, would have joined the Hitler Youth like a shot or been on the front row at a public hanging. His father was a regular fixture at the bar of the church Social Centre, where I helped collect the glasses on a Friday night. One of those loud individuals whose thinking is done for them by the tabloids. With him it was usually something about immigrants, or the unemployed or the Labour Party, or the nefarious connection between all three.

  One Sunday after our cassocks had been inspected for dirt and creases and stowed in the vestry wardrobe, Father Wilfred went into his little office next door and came back with two pairs of gardening gloves. One for me and one for Paul. Henry held out his hands for his pair of gloves but Father Wilfred told him to sit down and guided Paul and I to the vestry door with instructions to go the end of the graveyard and pick as many nettles as we could carry.

  Not daring to question Father Wilfred, we duly hurried out, found a clump of nettles by the large Victorian vaults and came back with fistfuls of the things, which, despite the gloves, had still managed to sting our arms.

  Henry looked up at us, his eyes widening when he saw what we’d brought back, knowing that they were destined for him in some way, his mind racing with terrible possibilities.

  ‘Sit down,’ Father Wilfred said to us and we did so, trying not to let the nettles sting us anymore.

  Henry started to ask us what was going on, but then jumped back into a rigid shape when Father Wilfred slammed the door to the vestry. For a few moments, Father Wilfred stood against the wall looking at us, prolonging Henry’s unease.

  ‘I have a question for you, boys,’ he said at last, setting off on his routine of pacing back and forth across the stone flags, patting his Bible. ‘Come the Day of Judgement, who is to be cast down the deepest?’

  Paul immediately raised his hand.

  ‘Heathens?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Father Wilfred. ‘Even lower than the heathens.’

  ‘Protestants?’ said Paul.

  Father Wilfred stopped walking abruptly and stood in front of Henry.

  ‘What do you think, McCullough?’

  Henry looked up at him nervously.

  ‘Murderers, Father?’

  Father Wilfred shook his head.

  ‘No, McCullough,’ he said. ‘The people I am talking about will look on with envy at the punishments of murderers.’

  ‘Fornicators,’ Paul said suddenly.

  ‘Close, Peavey. Onanists,’ said Father Wilfred.

  Henry looked down at his feet.

  ‘Wicked little fellows who have too much time on their hands,’ he said. ‘McCullough, your mother tells me that you are an onanist.’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘She tells me that you keep vile magazines in your room.’

  ‘I don’t, Father. They’re hers.’

  ‘Are you calling your mother a liar?’

  Henry said nothing.

  ‘Fifth Commandment, Peavey.’

  ‘Honour thy father and thy mother,’ said Paul, watching Henry expectantly.

  Father Wilfred put down his Bible on the table. ‘I’ll ask you again, McCullough. Is your mother a liar?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘Then what she tells me is true?’

  Henry put his head in his hands and Father Wilfred curled his top lip as though he had smelled something unpleasant.

  ‘Sinful boy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have time for that kind of behaviour when I was your age. I was too busy begging for the scraps the butcher’s dog wouldn’t even eat to feed my family and the family next door. Think of The Poor next time you’re tempted; they don’t have idle hands, lad. They’re either working or praying for work.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Henry sobbed.

  Father Wilfred continued to glare at Henry, but held out his hands towards me and Paul, and after a moment where we looked at one another uncertainly, we passed him the nettles, which he took from us without flinching.

  ‘Hands,’ he said to Henry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your hands.’

  Henry held out his hands and Father Wilfred put the nettles into his open palms.

  ‘Squeeze them,’ he said.

  ‘Please, Father,’ Henry said. ‘I won’t do it again.’

  ‘Squeeze them, McCullough.’

  Henry gently closed his hands and Father Wilfred suddenly clamped them tight. Henry cried out, but Father Wilfred only crushed them harder until green juice seeped out from between his fingers and ran down his arms.

  ‘Believe me, McCullough, this is nothing to the pain onanists receive in Hell.’

  After another minute of sobbing, Father Wilfred told Henry to put the nettles in the wastebin and sent him out into the church to pray for forgiveness.

  ‘Not a word, boys,’ said Father Wilfred to me and Paul as we put on our coats. Paul had gone a shade of pink with the excitement of it all. ‘These lessons are for you and nobody else.’

  ‘Yes, Father Wilfred,’ we said in the same monotone chorus.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Kneel down now.’

  We knelt down before him on the stone flags of the vestry, and in turn he placed a cold hand on our heads, reciting one of his favourite passages from Proverbs.

  ‘“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”’

  ‘Amen,’ we said and he smiled and went into his office and closed the door.

  We were like that old bike tyre he used to roll down the streets of Whitechapel as a boy, giving it little corrective taps to stop it tumbling into the filth, something which poor Henry frequently seemed to do.

  We found him in the lady chapel, kneeling in front of the Virgin, looking up into her doe-eyes, whispering and crying, his swollen hands shaking as he desperately tried to keep them together. Paul laughed and zipped up his coat and went outside.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Even though Moorings had been built fortress-solid to withstand the weather, and Mummer, out of London habit, made a point of checking every door an
d window before she went to bed, I still had the rifle next to me that night.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d seen in the woods. It seemed clear that Monro had been lured up there on purpose by the smell of the meat. We were supposed to find the thing hanging from the oak bough. It was meant to frighten us into leaving. And if we didn’t, what then?

  I thought about the animal roasted on the fire; the flies crawling in and out of its face.

  Every knock and creak of the house brought me back from the edge of sleep and I felt my hands tense around the rifle. Quite what I would do if anyone broke in, I didn’t know. The sight of the rifle might be enough to make most people turn heel and run, but Parkinson and Collier were used to guns and they’d know immediately that it wasn’t loaded.

  ***

  It must have been around eleven o’clock when I heard someone knocking on Father Bernard’s door. It was Mr Belderboss. I stood at the head of the stairs and waited until he had gone in and then went down one step at a time, sticking to the edges where they didn’t creak quite so much, and slotted myself into the darkness of the understairs cupboard.

  I could hear the clink of glasses and Father Bernard said, ‘Do you want a drink, Reg?’

  ‘Do you think we ought to, Father? Esther was right. It is Lent.’

  ‘I’m sure the Lord would permit us a small one, Reg. After all that’s gone on this evening.’

  ‘Well I will, Father, thank you,’ Mr Belderboss said. ‘Just don’t tell Mary. You know what she’s like. Anything stronger than Typhoo and she thinks I’m going to drop down dead.’

  Father Bernard laughed. ‘Is everyone alright now?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Belderboss dismissively. ‘They don’t half get into a two-and-eight about nothing sometimes. Like I say, it’ll just have been kids from the village messing about.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Father Bernard.

  They knocked their glasses together and there was a moment of silence while they presumably took back whatever it was they were drinking.

  ‘Father,’ said Mr Belderboss.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like you to hear confession.’

  ‘Of course, Reg,’ said Father Bernard. ‘If you’re sure you want me to.’

  ‘I am, Father,’ he said.

  ‘Well, finish your drink first,’ said Father Bernard. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

  ‘Alright.’

  Edging back a little, I found a box that would take my weight. Lower down there was a crack between the wooden boards and I could see a narrow slice of the room. Mr Belderboss was sitting on a chair in front of the grubby curtain that curved around the washbasin.

  He crossed himself and said the Act of Contrition.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ Father Bernard asked.

  ‘It’s Wilfred,’ said Mr Belderboss.

  ‘Ah look, Reg, I’m sorry if it seemed as though I was prying the other day.’

  ‘Oh, no no, Father,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘That isn’t why I came to speak to you. I’m not cross with you.’

  He hesitated and rubbed the back of his neck.

  ‘Father, Mary doesn’t know, but the police brought me home from the cemetery one night the other week,’ he said.

  ‘Why, what happened?’ Father Bernard asked.

  ‘Nothing happened, as such,’ said Mr Belderboss, shaking his head. ‘I think they were going to take me in, but I got the impression they thought I was bit doolally, being out at that time of night, so I let them think it and they brought me home instead.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. After midnight sometime. One. Two. Perhaps. I can’t remember.’

  ‘What made you go and see Wilfred at that time of night?’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure no one had pinched the flowers,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘They were quite expensive, you see, but it wasn’t the money really. I just couldn’t sleep for worrying that he was lying there all alone and thinking no one cared.’

  ‘Wilfred’s with God,’ said Father Bernard. ‘He knows how much you miss him. I’m not sure you need flowers to convince him of that.’

  ‘But someone had taken them,’ said Mr Belderboss.

  ‘Oh,’ said Father Bernard. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Well this is it, Father. I wandered around for a bit, trying to see if they’d been put on someone else’s grave. People do that, don’t they? If they forget to bring some or they can’t afford them. Then I saw this woman. She was sitting in one of the little shelters they have there, you know the ones, Father?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘She looked quite normal at first,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘She was dressed up in a fancy hat and she had a fur round her neck and new shoes, like she was on her way home from a party or something. I was going to ask her if she’d seen anyone acting suspiciously, but when I got closer I could tell she was a drunk. You know how they smell of the stuff? And when she moved, her coat opened and she wasn’t wearing anything on her lower half, if you know what I mean, apart from her shoes. She went on and on about someone called Nathaniel. I thought, who on earth is she talking to? But then I realised she thought I was him. She kept on thanking me for sending her these flowers. So I said—what flowers?—and she had Wilfred’s next to her on the bench. Even the little card was still there with them.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well I tried to take them off her and she started screaming and next thing I knew there were two bobbies coming along the path with torches. She’d disappeared and I was there holding this bunch of hyacinths. I felt such a fool, Father. I mean, getting into trouble with the law at my time of life, can you imagine?’

  ‘It’s perfectly alright, Reg. To miss people that have died, I mean.’

  ‘But not normal to go to their graves in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I’m not sure normal comes into it when you’re grieving,’ said Father Bernard. ‘But it might be better to go and see your brother during the day. I’m not sure I’d want to be wandering round Great Northern in the dark.’

  Mr Belderboss looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

  ‘I just feel ashamed that I’ve kept it from Mary,’ he said. ‘I ought to tell her what happened, just in case she gets to hear about it secondhand. They’re a nosy bunch down our street. One flash of a blue light and the curtains are going.’

  ‘I’m sure she’d understand if you did tell her.’

  ‘So you think I ought to, Father?’

  ‘I can’t answer that. It’s up to you. You know her best.’

  ‘So it wouldn’t be a sin to keep something important from someone?’

  Father Bernard paused.

  ‘Reg,’ he said. ‘I’m struggling to see what sin you’ve committed exactly. I’m not just going to send you off like a child to say three Hail Marys for mouthing off to your mammy. I think you need time to think about what to do for the best.’

  ‘But what does God want me to do?’

  ‘Whatever decision you make will be the right one, if you trust in Him.’

  Mr Belderboss rubbed the back of his neck and breathed out heavily.

  ‘Look,’ said Father Bernard. ‘It seems to me that you need to be in a dialogue with God, not putting out your hands for a caning. Take some time, talk to Him, pray for guidance, not punishment. God will answer you, Reg.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I know.’

  ‘You need to think about what there is to be gained from telling Mary,’ he went on. ‘Are you going to be happier for telling her, but make her worried in return? Or would it punish you too much to keep it to yourself?’

  Mr Belderboss shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It all just seems wrong.’

  ‘Well, grief can often make you feel like that.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that, Father. I mean where Wilfred’s buried seems wrong.’

  There was silence for a moment and then Father Bernard spoke.

  ‘
Why did he choose to be buried away from Saint Jude’s, Reg?’

  ‘So that he could be with the family.’

  ‘You don’t sound so sure.’

  Mr Belderboss said nothing but stared at the floor in front of his feet.

  ‘Tell me if I’m prying again,’ said Father Bernard. ‘But the other day you said that Wilfred seemed to change after you came here the last time.’

  ‘Yes, Father, he did.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just wasn’t himself anymore. He just seemed to give up.’

  ‘Give up what?’

  ‘Honestly, Father?’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘I think it was his faith.’

  ‘Why would that have happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father, but for all he said every Sunday at Mass, I wasn’t convinced he believed any of it anymore. It just seemed like lip service. Like he was trying too hard. You know how if you say something often enough you can get yourself to believe it? And then in the end, well, he just seemed to shut himself away from everyone. Wouldn’t speak to me or Mary.’

  Mr Belderboss closed his eyes.

  ‘Poor Wilfred,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s bad enough for anyone to stop believing, but it must be a terrible thing for a priest. It must have driven him out of his mind.’

  ***

  Father Bernard pulled back the curtain and poured Mr Belderboss another drink, but he didn’t touch it. They sat for a while and didn’t really talk other than to eventually bid one another goodnight. They shook hands and Father Bernard patted Mr Belderboss on the shoulder.

  ‘Peace be with you,’ he said.

  ‘And also with you, Father,’ said Mr Belderboss.

  When he had gone, Father Bernard stared at the door, deep in thought, then downed Mr Belderboss’s brandy as well as his own and got up, disappearing from the splinter of the room I could see. I heard him talking to Monro, scolding him affectionately, then he returned with a book.

  I made no sound, but he suddenly turned as though he had seen my eye in the crack. He looked directly at me, but then went back to reading, shivering a little as the wind lowed against the window and dimmed the bulbs in the room.

  Chapter Sixteen