In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  It was a mystery to me how nobody in the town, not one single adult was able to see through Jessop and see him for what I truly believed him to be. Looking back now, the only pardon I can afford them is that it was indeed a more innocent time and the notion that a man of the cloth might have carnal inclinations to a member of the opposite sex, let alone towards young boys, was as far from their comprehension as ever a thing could be. For his part, Jessop played it well. I’ve heard it said that the devil never appears as a horned monster with a long tail, he appears as just the thing you long for, that which you most desire. In our parish of Crannstonbarrow in 1964, entrenched as we were in the dogma of that brand of Catholicism so typical to the Ireland of the day, that which the collective so desired was a strong, fervent and pious Parish Priest. Our devil came to us dressed in a black cassock, a charming smile on his lips and dripping with charisma. Given ample time he would win over every single parishioner, myself included.

  Bible Club, as were most of our extracurricular church activities, was held in the parish hall, a small and dilapidated building of crumbling Portland stone. Its slipping shingles hung at jaunty angles as they clung perilously to withering oak beams. The mortar in the walls disintegrated at the touch, everything in that building spoke of rot and decay. The hall sat on a small hummock of grass in the grounds of the church. It was bordered on three sides by hedges of Cupressus and Yew. Its exposed façade looked out on the church and in a peculiar and eerie quirk of its fenestration, in the winter, the sickly yellow light which spilled from the windows always reminded me of leering eyes. Evil eyes, as though the building itself was aware of what could happen within the damp lime-lined walls of its dim and mouldy basement.

  Despite housing an assembly hall of considerable size, Jessop would insist that we gather in one of the smaller rooms off to the side for the sake of saving on the parish heating bill. Crammed into that small room, knees touching knees, the air growing warm and damp with our exhalations, Jessop appeared to revel in the forced intimacy. His narrow face abeam with twisted delight, he would press against each and all of the boys at any given opportunity. The girls in the group were, thankfully, oblivious to and exempt from his surreptitious advances. During our group exercises Jessop would circle the boys and lean in uncomfortably close over their shoulders, the stink of cloves and onion heavy on his breath. His bony fingers brushing an arm, a leg, a cheek, at all and every opportunity. Every boy in Bible Club was a potential target, except for me. He never came near me. If he did, it was in a wide and ambulatory circle, his pinhole eyes regarding me with the calculated caution of a starving predator as it weighs up its chances of success in attacking a wounded but potentially dangerous animal.

  I was wounded. Wounded in the sense that I had no power over him. It had been a long time since the incident in the Teacher’s Room and nothing had come of it. There had been no summons from the Archbishop, no policemen had landed on his doorstep. There had been no phone call from my father. There hadn’t been one turned head or a cuffed whisper in the weeks and months that followed. By fleeing him I had stood up for myself that Sunday in December 1962. I had stood up for myself and for my integrity and therein lay the danger to him. I was rebellious, whereas the others before me might have succumbed to him simply because of his position and standing in the parish, I hadn’t. But I had kept my mouth shut and I suppose that in his view of things, that was my weakness, my one and crippling injury. I believed that to him, I was a forbidden fruit, a tempting but as of yet unattainable morsel. Father Earl Jessop was nothing if not a charming man, and a patient one too. Despite his penchant for a look which might linger too long, disregarding his inability to acknowledge or respect one’s personal space and forgoing his overall creepy demeanour, the man could, on command, ooze with charisma and charm. He was witty, well read and a natural orator. His sermons at Mass, his lessons in Bible Club, they could hold his audience in rapt attention. With colourful and imaginative analogy, droll anecdotes and a command of the English language which could put the most famed orators to shame, he drew us in, all of us.

  It was during one sermon in particular, delivered on Whit Sunday morning from the high pulpit, his elbows nestled firmly in the shagreen covered cushion atop the lecterns rim, his chin resting firmly in his cupped hands like a coy schoolgirl admiring her crush, that I began to have my first doubts about my assessment of our Curate cum Parish Priest. The seeds of the tangled briar which became my fate were first planted that day. I dropped my guard. I allowed myself to see past all I had previously hated in the man. I was seduced by his passion, by his love of God which was demonstrated so clearly during that sermon and with such a sincere emotion that it could not have from anywhere but the heart of a genuinely good man.

  There was something in that sermon which struck a deep and resounding chord in me. Whether it was the sermon itself or the manner in which Jessop delivered it, I don’t fully know. Even now, given all that has passed in the long years that stand between the innocent boy I once was and the diseased and dying man that I am today, that sermon resonates still. The tale of the king with the broken heart.

  From high up on his pulpit, Jessop regarded his congregation with steel blue eyes. The ripple of murmurs and coughing, sniffles and shuffling feet which is inevitable when one gathers a crowd in a confined space, fell silent that fine Sunday morning as the beam of Jessop’s gaze swept across all of us seated in the pews below him. When he was certain that he had the attention of each and every one of us he began his oration.

  ‘There was a King, a very long time ago. A King who, having loved his wife all the days of their life together, could not bear to lose her. But lose her he did. His Queen succumbed to the galloping consumption and the poor King was totally devastated by the loss of his love, his confidant, his best friend in all of the world. Almost immediately after the necessary deeds attendant to the death of a Queen were dispensed with, the King himself fell ill. He refused all food and water. He declined to read the bills of state which his courtiers brought to him every week. In his grief he even refused to allow his children, the two young and beautiful Princesses of the Kingdom to visit with him in his bed chambers.

  As news of his poor health spread across his realm, a pall of worry and fear spread among his subjects, who were too, if the truth were to be told, still in grievous mourning for the loss of their beloved Queen. They loved their King and the thought that he too might succumb to the great leveller filled them with a sense of dread too great for words. Weeks passed by and the King’s condition grew worse with every passing day. His personal physician was at a loss to offer up a cure, as such, a call went out across the Kingdom for help. A parcel of fertile land on the river bank and a generous annual stipend was the incentive offered to any man, woman or child who might come forward with a cure for the poor King’s ailment.

  Many salves, potions and prayers were selected from the thousands which flooded to the palace but not one of them, not a single one, offered any respite from the illness which ravaged the now emaciated King.

  As hope for a successful outcome faded, and as the kingdom prepared itself for a second royal funeral in as many months, there came a man from the furthest reaches of the realm. A Barber-Surgeon, whose name has long since been forgotten, arrived at the gates of the palace proclaiming that he had a sure-fire and certain cure for the dying monarch. The King’s physician balked when told of the barber-surgeon’s plan. A monstrously disgusting notion which was nothing short of necromancy is what he called it. If it were to give the King a chance to live and reign, wasn’t it better to at least give it a try countered the Master of the Privy Chamber. When a drowning man grasps at straws, surely it’s better for him to grasp at those rooted firmly in the river bank than those which float in the water around him.

  Still, the King’s physician argued, what was suggested was the most barbaric and inhumane thing imaginable.

  ‘No one will agree to it, love him as they do, who would agree to it?’ th
e physician enquired.

  ‘They love him, someone will do it,’ The Privy Chamber had once again countered. And so it was agreed, the call would go out to the King’s people to ask one of them to…

  A preternatural silence hung over the congregation. Doe-eyed they gaped at their priest, hanging on his every word. With his reverberating whiskey baritone, the subtle yet mesmerising gesticulating, the rise and fall in the lilt of his voice he had drawn us in. We had, each and all of us, invested ourselves emotionally in the tale of the poorly King. His pause had been to increase dramatic effect, but when Jessop realised the grasp which he held on that entranced group of people in the church that fine Sunday morning, as early summer sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, spilling onto the mahogany floor boards like some shredded rainbow, he upped the ante. He was vying for drama. As a comedian seeks unabated laughter as he goes about his gig, a sermonising priest seeks the opposite. Entire, total, utter silence. As his pause stretched out to thirty seconds, then forty, a murmur began at the rear of the church. It rippled forward, growing in intensity and volume as a wave approaching the shore might do. Had he bottled it we wondered. Had he succumbed to stage fright? Was he perhaps, in the throes of a silent, symptomless stroke as I had thought that day in the Teacher’s Room? The murmurs grew. Heads turned, puzzled glances were exchanged. As the seconds ticked past the minute mark and Jessop had still yet to resume his story, the murmurs morphed into chatter.

  Even Granddad, President and Treasurer of The Earl Jessop Fan Club, Crannstonbarrow Chapter, seemed to grow agitated. His blind faith in the young ecclesiast was shaken. The chords in his neck stood out like strained rope. He greased the front of his trousers as he ran his sweaty palms up and down his lap whispering a barely audible plea to Jessop to get on with it. ‘Speak man, for the love of the angels, will you just go right on and speak!’

  A silence so swift and encompassing slumped down onto the congregation drowning their whispers as though it were ton on ton of sand when Jessop snapped his arm up into the air, his palm facing his flock. A grin bent the corner of his mouth as he lowered his hand. Taking the microphone from its stand on the pulpit, he flicked the wire out over the alabaster edifice and descended the steps to the altar rail were, quite unceremoniously and to the chagrin of many older members of the church, he sat down on the bottom step and resumed his sermon. The entire thing had been nothing more than a theatrical flourish and it had worked, it had worked like a charm. We were in the palm of his hand.

  … to ask one of them to give up his heart for the sake of the king. According to the barber-surgeon, that was the only thing which could save the ailing monarch. Proclaiming that the King was broken hearted following the death of his beloved Queen, the barber-surgeon decreed that a new heart was necessary. All that needed doing, according to the barber-surgeon, was for the King to simply be fed the roasted heart of one of his subjects. According to this line of thinking, the grief and sadness for his loss had gathered around the King’s heart like a tumour. Should a new heart be introduced into the King’s body, roasted, chewed up, destroyed, it mattered not, this tumour of sadness would detach itself from the King’s heart, adhere itself to the masticated heart and leave the body when nature ran its course.

  The Royal Physician dismissed such a notion as utter piffle, and rightly so. He wanted the charlatan run from the kingdom at once. But the Master of the Privy Chamber loved his King, absolutely adored him, and he would have done anything and all to save his Monarch. He thereby decreed that a loyal and loving subject should make the ultimate sacrifice and offer up their heart for the King.

  Jessop made yet another theatrical pause and surveyed his rapt congregation. The smile reached his eyes this time, as it always did when he was preaching. A stony silence hung like molasses above the crowd, smothering everything save for the sound of their breathing.

  The following morning the entire population was summoned to the grand square at the front of the palace. The sickly King was wheeled out in his bed, high up on a balcony overlooking the masses. The Master of the Privy Chamber, in a most stentorian voice explained to the people what was required of one of them. The people cheered, each one filled with a love for their King so great that there was no doubt in any of their minds that to be the person selected from among the ranks of so many and give their heart up for the King, was indeed, a great honour.

  And how might such a person be selected? The Master of the Privy Chamber knew. From his waistcoat pocket he drew a feather from the tail of a sparrow hawk. Holding it between his thumb and forefinger he held it up for all to see while explaining that he would drop the feather and whomsoever it lighted upon, that lucky soul would have the honour of giving up their heart, and indeed their life, for the good King.

  A deathly silence fell over the masses as the Master released the feather out into the cool morning air. It sailed and sallied and sauntered, drifting this way and that, tumbling from one current of air to another. Whilst far below a myriad of desperate eyes followed its every move. From somewhere in the midst of the crowd a cry rose up:

  ‘God save the King! God save the King! Hurrah for the King! Hurrah!’

  Like a ripple in a mill pond it spread, until at last the entire assemblage was chanting and cheering for the health of the King.

  Jessop was back on his feet by now, pacing back and forth on the step of the altar rail, his hands gesticulating wildly. Stepping down off of the altar plinth he walked along the front row of pews, his eyes meeting those of each and every one seated there, myself included. He strode down the centre aisle, as far as the chord of his microphone would allow. All heads turned to follow him. All ears captivated by his words. As he returned to the altar he walked up the aisle backwards so as not to turn his back on his audience, he didn’t want to risk losing their attention for even one second. Even the statues high up in the ornate alcoves seemed enrapt by his story, peering down on him with cold alabaster eyes. Reaching the altar he backed into the rail, the microphone still held firmly to his lips, he padded the cold marble of the rail with his right hand before pulling himself up onto it. Our Priest was sitting on the altar rail! In the middle of mass! There was not one utterance of dismay or disdain on the lips of the congregation, not even among the oldies. Jessop fixed his hair with a flick of his hand, he ran a finger between his dog collar and the flushed skin of his neck and surveyed the crowd once again before he went on.

  For hours that feather floated. Never lighting on the head of a single subject. Still, the chants and cheers for the health of the King went on. Days and nights passed without a single strand of hair on a single head having ever been graced by the feather’s touch. As the selection process drew out the King succumbed to his illness and passed away, right there on the balcony for all of his people to see. With his passing, the cheers and chants of the crowd diminished and they fell silent. All too late that single feather finally settled on the head of a young man. He immediately raised his hand and shouted, ‘My heart for the King! My heart, my heart! God save the King!’

  But it was too late, too late by far. With tears filling his eyes, The Master of the Privy Chamber dismissed the throngs and ordered that the King’s body be taken to his chambers for embalming and anointing. After the final stragglers had left the great square, the Royal Physician emerged onto the balcony to where the Master of the Privy still stood with his head bowed in sorrow.

  ‘You did all that you could,’ the doctor informed him. ‘Even his people, loyal to him to the very end… well, you heard the cheers. You saw how much they loved him. Every last one of them wished for his good health…’

  Jessop slid off the altar rail and ambled his way back to the pulpit in silence. He mounted the steps and once more leaned on the shagreen trim of the high stone dais, regarding the crowd with darting glances, his eyes dancing wildly beneath his sallow, protruding brow.

  ‘Lip service,’ he said after an interminable amount of time, snapping the drifters in the con
gregation back to full attention. Yawns were stifled, faces upraised. ‘That’s all it was,’ he resumed. ‘Do any of you dear people realise that?’ There was the shuffling of feet, the rustling of coats as people shifted in their seats, eyes downcast once more for fear of being singled out to offer an answer to the priest.

  ‘For all of their chanting and shouting and cheers, those people, the King’s own people were paying him nothing more than lip service. You see, as that feather hovered in the air above their heads, as it gently drifted down towards one head or another and as the crowd chanted…’ He passed his gaze in a slow, broad sweep across the congregation, he was milking every ounce of drama for his performance, but this time around, no heads dropped, every parishioner held his gaze, each spellbound in rapt attention.

  ‘…As the crowd chanted and called out that last hurrah for their glorious King, each and every one of them sent a little puff of breath up into the air… It was no more than a mouthful and hardly noticed, but it was just enough to push that infernal feather away from their head and on towards that of another. For all of the passion in their cries, for all of the tear filled eyes and the sorrow worn faces, there wasn’t a single one of them willing to give up their heart for the King!’

  Jessop stared down at us from the pulpit, his eyes glazed and unseeing. Another trick of his performance.