Stealing God

by James Green

  The drinker took his change and his pint.

  ‘Well he’s made a poor choice if he has. There hasn’t been a secret kept in Eriskenny since Cromwell was a Catholic.’

  And he rejoined his friends.

  From his table the solitary Englishman glanced at the group of thinkers and drinkers. They were locals, friends, and neighbours having a drink together. They probably met like this most nights of the week. God knows there wasn’t much else to do in this town except stay home and watch the TV. His mind reflected on the place he had fetched up in: Eriskenny. An ugly little town on the main road to nowhere, it had a run down, hopeless air about it. It survived on an agriculture which itself struggled to survive the wet, rocky, heather-strewn land. The wide main street was a collection of shabby little shops selling everything a householder might ever need, from paint and paraffin to lace curtains and china tea sets with the odd funeral wreath and First Communion dress here and there.

  Among the shops were scattered no less than seven bars. The man took a sip of his Guinness. He didn’t really like it, that was why he drank it, that way the pints lasted longer and he could get through the night on just three. Maybe he would change to Smithwicks. It might be all right, and if he took a good long walk in the mornings and again in the afternoons maybe after three pints of bitter he would be ready to sleep.

  He took another glance at the men at the table. They certainly weren’t furious drinkers. Their pints seem to last longer than his and he was deliberately slow. How could a place like Eriskenny support seven bloody bars? He did a quick calculation. Allowing fifty per cent of the population were women and three quarters of what was left were kids that meant there was one bar for about every twenty adult males. That couldn’t be right. Yet that seemed to be how it was. Suddenly the man who had just bought a pint got up and came to his table.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming over but, as you’ve been here a few nights, we thought we should say welcome like and maybe buy you a drink.’

  The drinker stood and waited. The crumpled man looked at him then at the group. They were all looking at him, the youngest, a man of about twenty, gave him a big smile and called across.

  ‘Welcome to Eriskenny.’ The others nodded, endorsing the sentiment, but they didn’t smile, as if to distance themselves from the impetuosity of youth. The crumpled man seemed reluctant to speak and looked back to the man standing at his table who realised it was his initiative so he had to make the next move. ‘What’ll you have, sir?’

  ‘No.’ The man standing blinked at the sharp emphatic response, but the crumpled man’s voice changed as he went on. ‘Let me buy you all a drink, that would be better. You’ve said welcome and I appreciate you saying it, so let me say thank you and buy you all a drink.’

  The young man shouted across again.

  ‘Good luck to you, sir,’ then to the barman, ‘mine’s a Bushmills, Ned, a double.’

  The oldest man of the group, eighty if he was a day, looked at him.

  ‘Yours is a pint like it always is, Seamus Dooley.’ Then he turned to the crumpled man. ‘All pints, thank you, two of Guinness and two of Smithwicks.’

  The crumpled man looked to the bar.

  ‘And you, you’ll join me?’

  The barman nodded. This was turning into a big night.

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll have an orange juice.’ The crumpled man started to get up. The barman stopped him with a gesture. ‘No need, sir, I’ll bring them over.’

  The man standing at the table made the invitation which would cement the night and turn it into an occasion.

  ‘Would you care to come and join us?’

  ‘Thank you but if you don’t mind I’ll pass on that tonight. I’ll be going soon and I have a few things I have to think about before I go, but thank you for the offer. Another night, maybe.’

  ‘Any time, sir, any time at all, and thank you for the drinks.’

  He returned to his friends where the talk subsided to whispers and sly glances. A writer. The consensus was definitely a writer of some sorts. Someone in the cultural line anyway, an educated man, properly educated, like a priest.

  Jimmy sat with his thoughts, not that they were particularly good company, but he sat with them anyway. He didn’t hear the lowered tones or notice the glances, he was doing his thinking. Six weeks had passed since he caught a train out of Rome to Milan. From there he had flown to Paris then travelled to Roscoff where he caught the ferry to Cork. Now he was back in the same part of the west of Ireland where he’d run last time. Then it was people in London who wanted him dead and here he was again, still running. Was he safe? He was not. Was he happy? He was not. Did he have any idea what he was going to do? He did not. He had a small piece of information lodged in his brain and it was going to kill him as certainly as if it was a malignant tumour. He was on the run, but he was no Anna Schwarz, he didn’t have the Catholic Church to hide him away where no one would ever find him. The question he thought about was the same one he had started with on the day he left Danny in the bar. What next, where to go next? The door of Maloney’s Bar opened and an old man in a black cap and black raincoat walked in. Jimmy recognised him at once as he walked to Jimmy’s table and sat down.

  ‘Hello, Jimmy. How are you?’

  ‘Well, thank you, Father.’

  ‘Good. I’ve come across to give you something.’ Jimmy looked at him. How many times had they talked over cups of tea in the comfortable presbytery in another dead and alive little town on some other main road to nowhere? It was the old priest who had finally persuaded him to write off and enquire about the priesthood, who had waited patiently with him while Rome processed his application. ‘I’ve something for you. It came today and I thought you should have it right away.’

  He began to fumble around inside his raincoat.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  The priest stopped fumbling.

  ‘This is a very small part of the world and I’m a parish priest. People talk to me and I listen. How would I not know you were here?’

  The barman brought the drinks to the next table where they were taken and raised to Jimmy with various toasts to their benefactor.

  ‘To you, sir.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘God bless you.’

  The barman came to Jimmy’s table.

  ‘Can I get you something, Father?’

  ‘No, no, I’m in and out, Ned. Just talking to my man here and then on my way.’ The barman left them to their talk and the priest began to fumble again. ‘It’s in here somewhere.’ Finally he pulled out an envelope and passed it to Jimmy. ‘It was in a letter sent to me from Rome and I was asked to pass it on if I knew of your whereabouts.’

  ‘And of course you knew of my whereabouts?’

  ‘Thirty-odd miles, Jimmy, just thirty-odd miles between us, why wouldn’t I know? If a cow farts or a sheep coughs I know about it.’ Jimmy took the envelope and put it in his jacket pocket. The priest stood up. ‘Well, I’ve done what I came to do, goodnight, Jimmy. You know where I am if you need me.’

  He turned and headed for the door.

  ‘Goodnight, Father.’

  The old priest nodded to the barman and left. After he had gone Jimmy sat for a while then finished his Guinness, said his goodnights, and left. Back at the small hotel he sat on his bed, pulled the envelope from his pocket, and looked at it for a while. Then he tore it open and took out the sheet of paper.

  Duns College

  Vialle Santo Maria Magdalena 21

  Vatican City

  00 135 Rome

  Dear Mr Costello,

  I have no way of knowing whether this will reach you but I have sent copies of this letter to three places where you might be found.

  I feel you are owed an apology. I apologise. I regret that, like Anna Schwarz, I was given a choice between two evils but I think I made the right choice. Nonetheless you were used and have been put in harm’s way as a result.

  I as
sure you that all records of your presence in Rome have been erased from any file or storage system to which I have access. Officially, you were never a Duns student and never in Rome. However, I cannot erase memories, so your existence as a student in Rome remains with those who knew you while you were here.

  Before I met you I only knew you as you had been, as you were remembered by the people who had known you as a policeman in London. You know better than I what picture that would have drawn of you. But having known you a little as you are now, I think you are trying to change, to live a life your late wife might be proud of.

  I know it is not easy and I also know that what I did has made it that much harder for you, perhaps impossible.

  I cannot undo what has been done. What was done had to be done. But now I can offer my help.

  If you would like some time to think again about the priesthood I would be happy to arrange a placement for you with a parish priest. It would be somewhere discreet but I cannot promise total anonymity. Alas the Collegio Principe has many resources, but not a witness protection programme.

  I know that a parish placement is not much, but it may help you to get closer to where you thought you were going when you first applied to Duns College.

  If you take up the placement and decide to reapply to Duns College I think I can assure you that acceptance for training will be a formality. Further than that I cannot go.

  Concerning the other matter, I regret I cannot help you. It is not that what I have in my possession is not enough to help you, unfortunately it is too much.

  However, if you ever came back to Rome I assure you there would be the fullest co-operation of all agencies with which we have influence to ensure your safety while training.

  With my prayers and every good wish,

  Professor Pauline McBride

  Jimmy put the letter on the bed. He couldn’t make her out. Had she been responsible for Ricci’s death or had it been natural causes? Or what? He gave up, he didn’t want to think about it tonight. He didn’t want to think about the priesthood, Rome, or any of it. If it was going to be part of anything in his life then that was still in the future. He would leave it for tonight. But despite himself he thought about Danny. Had they found Danny yet, had they come and watched him? Had they talked to him or hurt him trying to get information he didn’t have? Or maybe he’d picked up with his old partner, the white rum. Maybe now he drank and slept well and had given up on his friend from Rome.

  Jimmy got up, picked up the letter, folded it, and put it in his pocket and slowly began to get undressed with one simple thought.

  Forget Rome. Rome was yesterday and yesterday is finished and gone. Think about today and get ready for tomorrow. You do what has to be done in whatever way you can. You use whatever comes to hand. Whoever comes to hand. You …

  And then the words stopped and thinking finished. You did what you did and you tried to live with it. He switched the light out, got into bed, and tried to pray. ‘Dear God, take Bernie and Michael into your mercy and …’ But he still didn’t know if he was talking to nothing and there was no Michael and Bernie any more. Was there a God? Maybe when you died that was it, no eternity, no Heaven, no Hell. Nothing. How could you know? Well, whatever Bernie and Michael had got, he would settle for the same and fuck all the rest of it, God, eternity, the Church, the whole lot. Fuck you and …

  And nothing. You couldn’t turn life off at the switch. So he lay still and waited for sleep in the full knowledge that soon he would wake up to another day, and it would all go on again, day by day, until it ended. He began again to pray. ‘Oh my God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins …’

  It wasn’t what you wanted, but it was all that was on offer, so you took it, and you did what you had to do.

  …..and for those that are interested.

  I don’t know about other writers, but sometimes a lot of what goes into developing a story never actually makes it to the printed page. This was the case with Stealing God. I had to have a place in Rome for Jimmy to go to train for the Catholic priesthood. However, many genuine institutions do that very job. There’s even a UK one for mature, unmarried men which meant I had to create somewhere that could not in any way be confused with the real thing. So, for any reader who might be interested, here is my account of …

  How Jimmy Costello got to Rome

  The English College was the first of the National Colleges for training priests to be set up in Rome. Catholics in England were under the Tudor cosh and just being a priest meant you were likely to end up in bits at Tyburn, literally. Most of the priests from the English College who went home to minister to Catholics got caught and died horribly. That explains why the English College has more martyrs among its past students than any other of the many Roman Colleges and picked up the Italian nickname ‘Venerabile’. But if the English College is the most venerable of the National Colleges, Duns College, by unanimous consent, is the least venerable.

  Duns College was founded in 1903 against the wishes of almost everyone who gave it any serious thought. It was a small postscript to a rather tricky diplomatic question – what is to be done about Berwick-upon-Tweed?

  The Catholic hierarchy was restored in England in 1850, its northernmost diocese being Hexham which, among others counties, covered Northumberland. Unfortunately Berwick, although without question belonging to the English, lay on the Scottish bank of the River Tweed and, for complex historical reasons, was not at that time part of Northumberland so, when the Scottish hierarchy was restored in 1878 and the Diocese of Edinburgh created, the question of Berwick thrust itself forward.

  It was unthinkable that one of the first acts of the newly restored Scottish Catholic hierarchy should be to make a present to the English of the ancient and much disputed border town. But it was equally unthinkable to re-write history and declare Berwick Scottish. A pretty and, in 1878, very urgent dilemma.

  It was, on the surface, a Church problem, one for prelates not politicians, but it was a problem quite capable of re-igniting the deep and ancient hatreds which London and Edinburgh were busy representing as dead and buried. In Britain all eyes looked to Rome for the solution. Prelates cursed and politicians prayed and all of them waited while, in the Vatican, the Church’s finest diplomatic minds looked at the map and studied the tiny, and up until now, forgotten fortress town on the north bank of the Tweed estuary. The result, which pleased no one but satisfied everyone, was the miniscule Archdiocese of Berwick, answerable directly to the Vatican and independent of its two new Catholic neighbours.

  Berwick’s first archbishop was neither English nor a Scottish but an insignificant priest from a French religious order. Regarded by all parties as an acceptable neutral he was a Valerian Father, a member of a small religious order founded in 1732 in Paris to minister to and care for the insane. Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits, usually unable to agree about anything, were united in the claim that the Valerians were the most dedicated of all religious orders because they identified so totally with the unfortunates they served, so much so that it was usually impossible to tell the carers from the cared for.

  It was a Valerian who in 1911, to stem the tide of scientific rationalism which lay at the heart of the heresy of Modernism, set out to prove that faith was a greater force than gravity. In front of amazed crowds he stood on the top of St Peter’s in Rome, opened his arms, and flew a distance of exactly thirty-two metres using only the power of prayer. Unfortunately his flight was completely in a downward direction and the spot where he hit the piazza at once became a place of pilgrimage amongst those devout Catholics who opposed Reason wherever that dangerous evil surfaced in their Church.

  Valerians, from foundation, valued wealth and high-birth in their men far more than brains, which may have explained why they remained untouched in their Paris lunatic asylum when the Terror of the French Republic purged priests and aristocrats alike. It may have been that Citizen Robespierre decided a few high-born but weak-headed priests who care
d for a crazy-headed flock should be left in whatever peace there was to be had in an eighteenth-century Bedlam.

  Over the years earnest but dim younger sons of the Catholic wealthy and well-born, first from Europe then from around the world, were pointed at Paris. It was a safe life and, in its way, a worthy one, so even as the twenty-first century dawned there were always enough Valerians to be chaplains to those exclusive and expensive European clinics where the mental illness of those who could afford the fees was better understood and treated.

  Being sent to Berwick, even as an archbishop, was not considered among Valerians a plum posting but the supply never ceased. Today, as always since 1878, Catholics in and around the sleepy little town are ministered to by a Valerian father and although to the uninformed it may appear to be identical to countless other small parishes, it remains an archdiocese and its parish priest an archbishop.

  The ingenious, but not untypical, Vatican solution of creating the Archdiocese of Berwick threw up one other piece of madness: Duns College in Rome. The archdiocese might have been brought into being as nothing more than a diplomatic solution to a political nuisance, but to the mind of Rome an archdiocese is an archdiocese and must be treated as such. To do otherwise would be to undermine the prestige of archbishops the world over. Berwick, in the eyes of Rome, being neither Scottish nor English, was granted its own national identity. Berwick became, technically and only to the Vatican, a papal state, the equivalent of an independent country. To the world this independence existed only as mere Vatican bureaucracy and was ignored, but to the Vatican no piece of bureaucracy can be ignored, not matter how mere. Thus it was that the papal state of Berwick, being independent, was entitled to a college in Rome and in 1898, after a decent lapse of time, Pope Leo XIII created the necessary Bull. However, the Vatican was well aware that a papal recognition of Berwick’s independence, even after twenty years, might be deemed an affront to the Court of St James so the Bull was set to one side until Pope Leo died. In 1903 the Bull was enacted by Leo’s successor Pope Pius X as part of ‘unfinished business’ from the previous papacy and Duns College came into being, although no particular pope could be said to have actually been responsible for its creation. The name of the college was chosen because just across the border from Berwick, in Scotland, lay the little town of Duns, the birthplace of the great thirteenth-century theologian known as Duns Scotus, the Scotsman from Duns. The name having been chosen, the Vatican, careful, thorough and efficient, as always, declared the business of Berwick finished and drew a line under the whole episode to the satisfaction of all concerned.