Chapter Twenty-six
It was the first of June and the street outside was breathless and hazy in a prelude to the punishing heat that summer was to bring. Hour by hour the day had been acquiring the tension that comes before a thunderstorm. Everything moved slowly, if it moved at all. The wood pigeons in the plane tree had been quiet and motionless for hours. On the windowledge a bumble bee sat in the sunlight and didn’t stir even when I tapped the glass. The next door neighbour’s cats hunted for shade rather than the mice and finches they usually left on our doorstep.
I was revising Hamlet for an exam the following day. It was the final one. And once it was over, school would be done for good. Already the place had become different. Things had stopped mattering so much. No one, not even the teachers, seemed to care anymore and I could see it for what it was: an intestinal factory line that was winding down at the end of a particular run of production. Though what it had produced, I wasn’t sure. I felt no different to when I started. Only a little soiled from having passed through its bowels.
What I was going to do next, I didn’t know. I would be sixteen in a week’s time, but the world didn’t quite seem as open as I’d thought it might. When I looked at Farther I saw that work and school were really no different. One merely became qualified to pass from one system to the next, that was all. Routine was a fact of life. It was life, in fact.
She was leaving me alone at the moment, but I felt Mummer prowling around me, waiting for the day of my exam results when she could pounce and drag me away to the life she thought I ought to have. It’d be A Levels in History, Latin and Religious Education, then a Theology degree before six years in seminary. I could fight back, of course, assert myself, but without knowing what I wanted to do I’d have little chance against her. I’d be like that hare in the mouth of Collier’s dog.
Collier. Parkinson. I had thought about them every day since we’d come back from The Loney. It had been two months now but even with it fresh in my mind, as it were, I still wasn’t sure what had happened at Thessaly. What they had done to Hanny for him to be able to walk back up the steps of the cellar by himself and then cross the heath, and go running over the sandflats to meet Father Bernard who had come looking for us in the minibus. How they mended his shattered leg down in that cellar.
When we got back to Moorings, I told Mummer what I’d told Father Bernard—that we’d been across to Coldbarrow to look at the birds and that Hanny had slipped on some rocks and torn his trousers open on a sharp corner. The lie came out easily, without any planning, without any guilt, because I didn’t know what the truth was anyway.
Mummer didn’t ask anything else. She seemed too exhausted with the worry of where we’d been and so drained by the whole trip that she was just glad to be leaving. Everyone quickly loaded their bags onto the minibus and didn’t talk. The only sound was that of heavy fruit falling from the apple trees.
Mr and Mrs Belderboss were still keen to watch the beating of the bounds and although everybody else was tired and desperate to get away from the place, they agreed that they would stop at Little Hagby on the way. Yet when we got there, it was deserted. A warm wind blew across the uncut grass that thrummed with insects woken early from their cocoons. The priest was nowhere to be seen. The crowds that had in the past always gathered on the green with sticks of willow and birch ready to mark out the limits of the parish were shut away in their houses. We drove on.
When Hanny went back to Pinelands, I was glad. I didn’t like what we’d brought home from The Loney. He had changed. He seemed not to notice I was there. He was distant and uncommunicative, more interested in everything else around him, which he seemed to examine as though he had never seen it before. He had regressed. Whatever they had done to him at Thessaly had reversed all his learning and turned him back into an ignorant child.
Now that he was back for the Whitsun holiday, he seemed no different. Still the daft grinning all the time. Still the hours of just sitting and staring. I couldn’t stand watching him like this and had spent most of the time since he’d been back alone in my room. He hadn’t come up to see me once.
Mummer and Farther were in denial about it all. They could see that something was wrong, that he had changed, but they made no mention of it. Mummer went back to work at the shop, Farther to his office in town. And neither of them could understand why I was so unhappy, why I couldn’t just get on with things? Why did I brood so much?
***
The sun went in and the day became humid. I opened the window as far as the latch would allow, but still couldn’t get any air into the room. I watched a car going down the road. One coming the other way. The postman in his shirt sleeves cycling through the shade of the plane trees.
I went back to Hamlet and read to the end of Act One. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. Then from downstairs I heard the sound of something smashing on the floor and Mummer crying out. I went down to the kitchen and she turned sharply and looked at me as I came in. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth slightly open. Her lips moving, making bits of words. The remains of her best fruit bowl lay around her feet. She looked back at Hanny who was sitting with his hands flat on the table, a cup of tea in front of him.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
But before Mummer could reply, Hanny said, ‘Nothing, brother.’
***
Mummer called Farther and he came home at once, hot and flustered, thinking something terrible had happened. When he heard Hanny speak he cried.
Farther called Mr and Mrs Belderboss. Mr Belderboss called the presbytery and got Miss Bunce. The next-door neighbour came round to see what all the fuss was about and she cried too.
One by one they came and Mummer showed them into the kitchen where Hanny was still sitting. She hadn’t let him move in case going into a different room might break the spell. They came in tentatively at first, as though they were sitting down with a lion, and took their turn to be with him and hold his hand and marvel.
Seeing that Mummer was still in shock and unsure of what was happening, Mrs Belderboss patted her hand and said, ‘It is a miracle, Esther. It really is.’
Mummer looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘What else can we call it?’ Mr Belderboss said, smiling. ‘The Lord has blessed you.’
‘Yes, He has,’ said Mummer and clasped Hanny’s hands in hers.
‘It’s like the story in Matthew, isn’t it David?’ said Miss Bunce.
‘Yes,’ said David. ‘Which one?’
‘Nine, thirty-two,’ said Miss Bunce. ‘When Jesus heals the mute.’
‘All those prayers we said, Esther,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘All those years we asked for Andrew to be healed. God was listening all the time.’
‘Yes,’ Mummer said, looking into Hanny’s eyes.
‘And the holy water he drank,’ said Mr Belderboss.
‘Oh, yes, the water too,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘That was the thing that really did it.’
‘I’m just sorry that Father Wilfred isn’t here to see this,’ said Mummer.
‘So am I,’ said Miss Bunce.
‘He’d have been over the moon, wouldn’t he, Reg?’ said Mrs Belderboss.
Mr Belderboss was smiling and wiping away tears from his eyes.
‘Whatever’s the matter, Reg?’ Mrs Belderboss said and got up to comfort him.
‘I can feel him. Can’t you feel him, Mary?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘I can.’
‘God bless you, Andrew,’ said Mr Belderboss, reaching across the table and taking Hanny’s hands. ‘It’s you that’s brought him here. He’s with us now.’
Hanny smiled. Mrs Belderboss crossed herself and began to pray. Everyone in the room joined hands and repeated the Our Father until the doorbell rang.
***
Father Bernard had been out on his rounds of the parish and had only found the note left by Miss Bunce on his return to the presbytery. I saw his form thr
ough the frosted glass of the front door as he rang the bell again and waited. When I opened it, he smiled, though he looked—how was it?—a little nervous, a little short-tempered even. I hadn’t seen him look like that before.
‘Hello, Tonto,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, Father.’
Farther came into the hallway and reached over my shoulder and shook Father Bernard’s hand.
‘Something wonderful’s happened, Father,’ he said.
‘So I hear, Mr Smith.’
‘He’s in the kitchen.’
Everyone stopped talking when Father Bernard came in. They all looked to him to verify the miracle, so that it could be theirs to enjoy properly.
‘Father,’ said Mummer.
‘Mrs Smith,’ Father Bernard replied.
The tension between them still hadn’t quite dissipated in the months since we’d returned from Moorings.
‘Well,’ said Farther, sitting down next to Hanny and putting his arm around him. ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to Father Bernard?’
Hanny stood up and put out his hand. ‘Hello, Father,’ he said.
***
Word got around and before long the house was full of people. So many came that the front door was left propped open with a telephone directory.
The hesitancy that had been there earlier, when everyone had been worried that Hanny’s speech might disappear as suddenly as it had come, was forgotten now. Hanny had been restored and they let themselves go in the praising of God. They sang around the piano and laughed like children.
Mummer took Hanny from person to person, showing off the gift that had been bestowed upon her, upon all of us. They passed Hanny amongst themselves like a chalice, everyone intoxicated by him. Everyone except Father Bernard who sat alone watching, a paper plate balanced on his knee, chewing the sandwiches I had helped Mummer to quickly prepare.
When I passed him with a tray of empty cups, he said, ‘Could I talk to you, Tonto?’
We went outside into the garden, where a few other people from church were standing about smoking and admiring Farther’s dahlias. Father Bernard said hello to them and then we walked down to the end where there was a bench under the apple trees.
We sat for a minute listening to the swifts in the wasteground on the other side of the tube line and saw their black arrowheads whip through the garden now and then for the insects dancing over the greenhouses.
Father Bernard sat down and loosened his collar. The heat was making him sweat and there were rings of dried salt under the arms of his black shirt.
‘So, now you know what a miracle looks like, eh Tonto?’ he said looking back towards the house.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Quite a thing, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘How is he? Andrew?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean how does he seem?’
‘Alright, I suppose. Happy.’
He wafted away a bee that had droned towards him from the apple tree.
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘How do you mean, Father?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘God cured him,’ I said. ‘Like in Matthew. Nine thirty-two.’
He looked at me and frowned.
‘When Jesus heals the mute,’ I said.
‘Aye, I do know the story, Tonto.’
‘Well, that’s what happened to Hanny, Father.’
‘Aye, but do you know the ending?’
‘No, Father.’
‘You look it up then, Tonto. I have to say I’m with the Pharisees.’
‘How do you mean, Father?’
He set his eyes firmly on mine.
‘Look, something happened to you and Andrew there at that house on Coldbarrow, and it wasn’t anything to do with God.’
I looked at him and then back at the house.
‘Why did you go there?’ he said. ‘I thought we’d agreed to steer well clear of the place.’
‘Hanny wanted to see the birds,’ I said.
He knew I was lying and couldn’t conceal a look of hurt or even anger before he spoke softly again.
‘Tonto,’ he said, edging forward. ‘If you’ve got yourself mixed up into something that you shouldn’t have, I can help you, you know. You mustn’t be afraid to tell me.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I replied.
‘I don’t mean the nonsense that Clement was talking about. There are certain tricks,’ he said. ‘That clever people can pull to make you believe all kinds of things.’
‘Hypnotists?’
‘Not that exactly, but something like that. Whatever it is, it’s not real, Tonto. It doesn’t last. And I’d hate for all this happiness to be ruined.’
‘Is that what you think happened to Hanny? That he was hypnotised?’
‘Of course not. But you give me a better answer.’
‘I don’t know what to tell you, Father.’
There was a sudden burst of laughter and we both looked. Hanny was outside now and trying to talk to the churchwardens who were sitting on the bench next to the greenhouse, but a gang of children were dragging him away to play football. Eventually, the children won and Hanny began dribbling the ball around the garden with them all chasing and harrying, trying to dig it out from his feet.
‘Can’t they believe it was God?’ I said.
‘You mean let them believe?’ Father Bernard replied.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s called lying, Tonto.’
‘Or faith, Father.’
‘Don’t be a smart arse.’
He looked at me and then we turned to watch everyone up at the house. There was music drifting outside. Mr Belderboss was playing his harmonica. Mummer was dancing with Farther. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so giddy with happiness, so much like she ought to be at her age. She wasn’t quite forty.
When I think of Mummer and Farther now, I think of them that afternoon, her hands on his shoulders, his hands on her waist. I see the hem of Mummer’s skirt playing about her thin ankles. She is wearing those shoes with the cork heels. Farther has his sleeves rolled up, his glasses in his shirt pocket.
Mummer cried out and smacked Farther playfully on the arm as he dipped her.
‘There’s a different woman,’ said Father Bernard.
‘Yes.’
‘It suits her.’
‘Yes. It does.’
He looked down at his hands.
‘I’m going be leaving soon,’ he said.
‘Do you have to go back to the presbytery?’
‘I mean the parish, Tonto.’
‘The parish? Why, Father?’
‘I’ve decided to go back to Belfast. The bishop’s not going to be all that enamoured, but I think it’s best if I do. I’m not sure how much more I can do here. Not now anyway.’
‘You can’t leave,’ I said. ‘Who will we get instead?’
He smiled and gave me a sideways look. ‘I don’t know, Tonto. Somebody.’
He breathed out heavily
‘Ah, look, I don’t want to go,’ he said. ‘But I’m not what they want, or what they need. I’m no Wilfred Belderboss, am I?’
He bent down and picked up a fallen apple that lay by his feet. It was full of cinder coloured holes where the wasps had chewed it. He turned it in his hand and tossed it into the long grass by the fence.
I thought for a moment, then said, ‘Father, will you wait here?’
‘Aye,’ he said and sat back while I went over to the potting shed.
It was warm inside. A smell of old soil and creosote. Farther’s tools hung up on rusty nails and above them at the back of some old cracked pots that he was always meaning to glue back together was a plastic bag under a seed tray. I brought it down and took it to where Father Bernard was waiting with one arm over the back of the bench, watching everyone milling around up at the house.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘I think you need to read it, Father.’
He looked at me and took out the book that was in the bag. He opened it and then quickly shut it again.
‘This is Father Wilfred’s diary,’ he said, holding it out for me to take back. ‘You told me you didn’t know where this was.’
‘I was keeping it safe.’
‘You mean you stole it.’
‘I didn’t steal it, Father. I found it.’
‘Take it away, Tonto. Get rid of it.’
‘I want you to read it,’ I said. ‘I want you to know what happened to Father Wilfred. Then you might see that they’re all wrong about him. That he wasn’t ever the man they thought he was.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘He stopped believing, Father. Here’s the proof.’
‘I’m not going to read another man’s diary, Tonto,’ he said. ‘And I’m surprised you have.’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I said.
‘All the more reason to let him be.’
‘Please, Father. Then they might stop comparing you with him.’
He sighed, read for a half a minute and then closed his eyes.
‘You need to read it all, Father,’ I said.
‘I’ve read enough, Tonto.’
‘And?’
‘And what? Look,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to change anything. I think everyone suspects that Father Wilfred stopped believing in God. If they choose to ignore it then there’s not much I can do.’
‘Do you think he killed himself, Father?’
‘Tonto …’
‘Personally?’
‘You know I can’t answer that question.’
‘But you must have an opinion.’
‘It was an accidental death.’
‘But is that what you think?’
He put his fist under his nose and breathed in as he thought.
‘If they recorded it as an accidental death, Tonto, that’s how it was. And it’s how it needs to stay if the rumours are to be kept to a minimum. Look, I know people will talk, and that’s inevitable, but no one’s going to beat their fists on a closed door forever. Sooner or later they’ll just accept that he’s gone. It won’t matter how or why.’
‘But that’s the truth in there, Father,’ I nodded to the book. ‘Oughtn’t people to know what he was really like? Shouldn’t Mr Belderboss know?’
The Loney Page 25
