Beyond Absolution

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Jimmy telling stories to the infant class, well, I would never have thought of that. Are you sure it was Jimmy?’ queried the Reverend Mother. Sister Mary Immaculate sounded more like her old self. It was good to see her emerging from the terrible apathy. She would try to keep the conversation going. Nothing better elicited a flow of words from her second-in-command than a hint of disbelief.

  ‘I assure you, Reverend Mother. He was telling the little ones that his cousins owned an underground palace on Morrison’s Island and that it was full of furniture and of gold and silver.’

  ‘Really!’ The Reverend Mother was impressed. Perhaps she was doing the wrong thing trying to teach the poor child this wretched alphabet where so many letters had so many difficult possibilities and where combinations of letters laid enormous traps for novice readers. Perhaps he might learn to read from a storybook, as she believed she herself had done. As they walked out onto the street, she began to plan enthusiastically. Perhaps Eileen might help her to get a few simple sentences printed so that Jimmy could feel that he was reading a real book. Surely, she could find some money to pay for this. An underground palace sounded a wonderful idea. Could Jimmy draw pictures, she wondered. She would have to see.

  ‘Let’s walk over to Morrison’s Island,’ she suggested when they had got as far as the quays. The tide was in and the river full, sparkling in the unusual sunshine and not smelling as badly as usual. Nevertheless, it was a nice day for a walk by the river with a blue sky and white seagulls swooping and diving. She had planned to call into the friary to enquire after Prior Lawrence, but she thought that she would wait and see how Sister Mary Immaculate reacted to this suggestion. Perhaps she could park the woman in the antiques shop and slip away for a quarter of an hour. In any case, it would make a nice walk and she would plan ideas for Jimmy’s storybook. To her relief there was just a weary sigh from her companion at her suggestion so she walked a little more quickly and set a good pace along the quays. Cork was looking its best, today, she thought.

  ‘It seems amazing, doesn’t it, that about a hundred and fifty years ago, most of our city was a marsh,’ she said chattily. ‘Can you imagine Patrick Street, the Grand Parade and the South Mall were river channels and between them was nothing but Dunscombe’s Marsh and the Reap Marsh. And, of course, Morrison’s Island, where we are going now, that was a marsh, too, used to be called Dunbar’s Marsh, I remember my father telling me that and how they had to rebuild the Holy Trinity Church because of the unstable ground.’

  There was no reply from her companion. Had heard it all before, thought the Reverend Mother. She knew, rather guiltily, that she tended to mention these facts rather frequently. The thought of Cork as a sort of Venice in a northern climate had always fascinated her, but that was not to say that people always enjoyed hearing her talk about it. In any case, Sister Mary Immaculate was not from Cork city, but from somewhere near to Limerick. She was patently not interested. Still, it had got them down to the ‘flat of the city’, as Cork people said, and now they could cross over Parliament Bridge and then just wander down along Charlotte Quay. And, after all, if she kept talking, Sister Mary Immaculate could not in all politeness keep sighing heavily. She searched through her memory for more reminiscences about the building of the modern city of Cork, of the enterprising merchants who had financed the draining of marshes, the building of quays and the roofing over of river channels. Perhaps it would be tactful to leave out the history of the Holy Trinity Church, in view of the memory that might be evoked in the woman at her side.

  And then to her relief she spotted the barrister, Tom Gamble, on a ladder propped up against a lamppost. ‘What is Mr Gamble doing on that ladder?’ she asked chattily. ‘Your eyes are better than mine are, sister. Can you see what he’s doing?’

  ‘He’s putting up a poster,’ said Sister Mary Immaculate. Her voice sounded a little better, a shade of animation had crept into it. ‘I suppose, yes, that’s right, they’re cancelling the performances of The Mikado. I suppose they would have to, as that man is dead; he was the principal character, wasn’t he?’ She was beginning to sound like her old self, and the Reverend Mother felt relieved. ‘Hysteria; that’s the cause of all those headaches,’ Dr Scher had said. ‘She’ll get over it. Don’t encourage her to talk about it. Just ignore her. Give her plenty to do. Don’t let her think that she is important. That will only encourage her.’ Now the good sister was looking very disapproving, staring crossly at Tom Gamble in shirtsleeves and an old pair of paint-stained trousers. ‘You would think that a barrister wouldn’t show himself up like that. Why didn’t he get a man to do it for him?’ she said crossly.

  ‘Let’s go and ask him.’ The Reverend Mother did not wait for a reply but went rapidly across the road and stood beside the ladder.

  ‘You should always have someone to hold a ladder for you, Mr Gamble,’ she said severely. ‘That’s very dangerous. What if it slipped?’

  A handsome young man, she thought, as he came rapidly down and shook hands. ‘You’re quite right, Reverend Mother,’ he said. ‘I had Jonathon Power, but he went back for some more posters. And how are you on this lovely day? And sister, too? You’re having a walk, are you?’

  His manners were very good, and so they should be. His father had sent him to one of the most expensive schools in Ireland. It was interesting, she thought, that he had been sent to Clongowes Wood College, a Roman Catholic school run by the Jesuits, but that he had taken his mother’s religion and turned Protestant when he reached the age of twenty-one. She wondered whether the judge minded. Probably not, she thought. The Gambles were one of the commercial families of Cork, one of the merchant princes, as they liked to call themselves. Money would matter more than anything else would. Judge Gamble, she thought, was not a particularly religious man.

  Aloud, she said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear of the death of your friend Mr Doyle.’

  ‘Terrible. Dreadful, the things that happen. Poor Peter. As if he had anything to do with the death of Father Dominic.’

  ‘I was telling Sister Mary Immaculate about the history of Cork,’ said the Reverend Mother, anxious lest the mention of the deaths might occasion an outburst of tears from her companion.

  ‘Your family reclaimed the marsh here, didn’t they, Mr Gamble?’ she went on hurriedly.

  And while he was telling Sister Mary Immaculate the old story about Henry Gamble who had owned the marsh, reclaimed it, built warehouses, and who supplied preserved provisions to the Peary Polar Expedition in 1824, she pondered on him. It was a familiar pattern. One generation made the money, educated the second generation – in the Gambles’ case, Henry Gamble’s son had risen through the ranks of clerk to become a solicitor, and his well-educated son had qualified first as a solicitor and then a barrister to become a judge – and the third generation spent it. Tom, by all accounts, was certainly doing his best to spend as fast as he could. Rags to riches and back to rags in three generations, her father used to say, she remembered, as Tom Gamble was giving a lively account of the shipwreck and the finding of the provisions in quite a miraculous state of preservation, eight years later. At that time, the Gambles had owned the whole of Morrison’s Island, but now only the judge’s house was left to the family.

  ‘It was your family who sold the land to the Capuchins to build the Holy Trinity Church, wasn’t it, Mr Gamble?’ she enquired. By some miracle, Sister Mary Immaculate was looking quite interested, probably thinking of making a lesson of it for the girls, she thought.

  ‘That’s right,’ he confirmed with a quick look at the beautiful Gothic limestone building across the road from where they stood.

  ‘I seem to remember,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘that my father told me that the building had to be abandoned at an early stage. Wasn’t there some story that the foundations slipped?’

  He stared at her. There was a certain frozen look on his face. It interested her immensely. ‘No, I never heard that,’ he said shortly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Revere
nd Mother, and sister, I really must go and see what has happened to Jonathon.’ He wore no hat that he could doff, but he waved a hand airily and was off, walking across the road and down Queen Street. The long strides took him from their sight very rapidly.

  ‘Well,’ said Sister Mary Immaculate, in affronted tones, ‘I don’t think much of that young man’s manners. He could have listened to you. You have so many interesting memories of the past, Reverend Mother. He could have learned from you.’

  ‘He’s probably busy,’ said the Reverend Mother in abstracted tones. It was very odd, almost impossible, she thought, that Tom Gamble would not know how the marshy ground had caused the first foundations of the Holy Trinity Church to slip in 1832, and how the church was abandoned for almost twenty years and then rebuilt, adding new foundations on top of the old. Surely, Judge Gamble would have known the story from his own father and would have passed it on to his son. And if Tom had not known it, she would have thought that he would have been interested. He knew all the history of the polar expedition and of the wonderfully preserved provisions, so he was interested in family history. And yet the young man had looked at her almost with dislike, no, more like a mixture of fear and dislike, when she had talked about the rebuilding of the church.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk around,’ she suggested and Sister Mary Immaculate trailed behind her as she walked briskly down the street past the friary. An odd place, Morrison’s Island, she thought. A mixture of poverty-stricken lanes, derelict buildings, and expensive three and four-storey houses near to the South Mall, most of them owned by members of the legal profession, or by doctors. And then, near to the river, warehouse after warehouse. Many of those warehouses did not look in good condition. Of course, it would have been a tempting situation for warehouses as the Lee was very deep at that point and quite big ships were able to moor on Charlotte Quay. But the marsh had been the victor in many cases; the water had crept back oozing up and around foundations. Some of the warehouses still stood, a few were still used. Quite close to the river were some that had been repaired, but most were abandoned. The majority looked downright dangerous, with sagging walls and broken roofs. Some were slanted and leaning sideways. The foundations had slid, just as had happened to the original Trinity Church, she thought, looking thoughtfully at one where a front door still stood in its original framework, but at a very odd angle. The wall above it had crumbled and the sky was visible through the large gap. She would have to have a word with Jimmy about not going into those buildings. Like most of the children in her school, he was street-wise, but children could not be expected to understand that buildings, so very high above their heads, might be dangerous. Their vision tended to be at the level of their eyes.

  Sister Mary Immaculate was now talking in an animated way about the dangers of keeping preserved food too long, so she listened with half her mind, while the other half thought about the first building of the Trinity Church. She wished that Dr Scher were her companion. He was a man who seemed to have garnered lots of odd pieces of information during his lifetime and she would have liked to discuss what had possibly gone wrong with the church foundations and perhaps more importantly to her now, how the matter had been remedied.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look at the antiques shop,’ she interrupted the flow and headed Sister Mary Immaculate in the opposite direction. The antiques shop was not too far from Judge Gamble’s house. Perhaps it had been owned by that family and when Tom became friendly with Peter Doyle and with Jonathon Power, he might have suggested that the two Englishmen could set up shop in one of their empty warehouses. Odd, though, she thought. Why did they come to Cork, of all places, from England?

  To her pleasure, the antiques shop was open despite the death of its owner. Jonathon was now at the counter, but both Robert Beamish, the Olympic oarsman, and Miss Marjorie Gamble were helping. And their presence was needed. There seemed to be a large amount of people, attracted by the article in the Cork Examiner about the most recent death on Morrison’s Island, probably, but busily looking at the various wares. Tom Gamble was there, also, pouring out glasses of sherry and handing them around. He came across to her immediately.

  ‘Terrible, isn’t it, to be open today, after the death of poor old Peter,’ he said with an attractive smile. ‘Jonathon shut the place for the morning, but then so many turned up to pay their respects, knocking on the door, popping in cards and envelopes. So he thought it was easier just to open the shop and allow people in today. So many seemed to want to do something, seemed to want to talk about poor old Peter, and it’s one in the eye for those wretched Shinners, isn’t it?’

  ‘We couldn’t tempt you to a glass of sherry, Reverend Mother, could we?’ Marjorie Gamble had come to join him. Marjorie was, of course, an acquaintance. They had sat together at an educational conference and the Reverend Mother had found her intelligent and full of ideas. She smiled and shook her head, but was glad to see the woman. It would seem quite natural to gossip a little with her. Something about this set-up puzzled her.

  ‘Your school is on holidays, of course, isn’t it?’ she asked. These private schools, she knew, had long holidays.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Marjorie. ‘We broke up a few weeks ago. I live with my father during the school holidays. Tom and I came around to see how Jonathon was managing on his own.’

  ‘So they were partners, Mr Power and Mr Doyle,’ she said. ‘I had thought that Peter Doyle was the owner.’

  ‘Yes, they were partners,’ said Marjorie. ‘They came over from England, together. We all became friendly with them because of the singing. Tom and I used to sing at concerts to raise money for the victims of this dreadful burning down of houses, raise money to send them off to England with a few comforts, that sort of thing. Peter came up to us after one concert and he had this idea about putting on shows of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas to raise money for worthy causes. We got Robert Beamish, the oarsman, you know, we got him to join, too. He was a friend of Tom’s and he has a great voice. And I got the music teacher from my school, Anne Morgan, and the older girls became the chorus. It was much more fun for them than just singing. We had a great time. I suppose all that will be finished now. It’s a shame. We’ve had such fun. I still can’t believe that poor Peter is dead. He was always the life and soul of everything. He put so much into these Gilbert and Sullivan operas. We all loved doing them and they were a great success.’

  ‘So I understand,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Does it have to finish?’

  ‘Well, Jonathon is thinking of going back to England. This might be in the nature of a closing down sale,’ explained Marjorie.

  So, since Jonathon was a partner, he presumably would inherit all the profit; that was interesting! What he did not sell to customers, he would probably dispose of easily to other shops and dealers. There might not be too much left, though. The amount realized by the sale today could be huge. The Reverend Mother eyed the eager crowds. There was now quite a queue in front of Jonathon and everyone was clutching some antiques. A man and his son had even carried over a small Queen Anne desk and were standing holding it, as if loathe even to put it down for a minute.

  ‘I was telling Sister Mary Immaculate that most of Morrison’s Island belonged to your family at one stage.’ The Reverend Mother wished that her assistant would look a little more interested. Perhaps a sherry might cheer her up, she thought fleetingly before regretfully rejecting the idea. ‘Tell me, Miss Gamble, did this building belong to your father?’

  ‘Well, yes, I think it did at one stage. It was quite a small warehouse, I think.’ She cast a glance around at the joking young men and there was an understandable look of regret in her eyes. She would miss the companionship and the fun, thought the Reverend Mother. She was not too old, would be about thirty, she thought, delving into the past. Her father, the judge was a baby when she entered the convent. She remembered hearing of his wedding with a shock of surprise. Marjorie was his elder child. Probably too old now to think of gett
ing married, but not old enough to give up readily some amusements out of school.

  ‘You couldn’t keep the Merrymen going, could you?’ she asked.

  Marjorie Gamble looked regretful. ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ she said. ‘Now that Jonathon is talking of going back to England and that would be the two best voices in the company gone, and, in any case, the whole thing seemed to depend on Peter. He is, was, a great organizer …’ She stopped, and shook her head sadly.

  There was a lot to be said for the Catholic habit of breathing a prayer for the repose of the departed soul, thought the Reverend Mother. It got the relations and friends of the deceased person through one of those awkward silences.

  ‘He was the one that began the society, was he?’ she said and Mary’s face brightened.

  ‘That’s right. He and Jonathon came over from England, looking around them to see what they could do and they saw this old warehouse. I think Tom was involved somehow in the legal formalities and he got friendly with them and one night, in a bar, Peter started singing “Hark the hour of ten is sounding,” from that Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Trial by Jury and the other two joined in. Peter had a lovely tenor voice and Jonathon a baritone, and Tom, my brother, is a bass. And so the barman said to them, “You gentlemen should put on a show!” and that night they discussed forming a society, a society to put on the Gilbert and Sullivan operas – that’s where they got the name, Merrymen from The Yeomen of the Guard, you know.’

  ‘And you joined in, did you?’ The Reverend Mother was puzzled about Tom Gamble being involved in legal formalities for the transfer of property. After all, the man was a barrister, not a solicitor. And she thought that Marjorie had skipped the intriguing part of the story. Cork, poverty-stricken and almost without industry or employment, haemorrhaged its own citizens to the cities of England. What had brought those two personable young men to journey in the opposite direction? Still, perhaps Marjorie Gamble, born into a wealthy family and used to a prosperous way of life, would not find anything strange in that whim or decision.