by William King
On the plane back to Dublin, the sight of Matthew in a dress and green branches haunts me, as do M.J.’s sullen looks, the headmaster’s fine manners and Grace’s delight about her son’s vocation. But I can’t afford to spend much time mulling over my brother and his family: I have a diocese to run and Boylan is on another of his binges.
A man fond of company and red wine, he found the solitude of the Roman palazzo beyond his endurance. ‘Winter nights are my nemeses, Tom,’ he tells me. ‘The Romans were right – Hibernia, land of winter.’
Every so often he invites a few of us who had known him in Rome for a home-cooked meal, and with an apron around his wide girth, he stirs the pasta sauce on the big iron stove while we stand around with glasses of Chianti. Snatches of Gigli’s Pinkerton making false promises to the ill-fated Madame Butterfly reach us through the kitchen’s open door.
Boylan presides at the table, and relates one anecdote after another about Popes he has worked for – the control freaks, those who suffered bouts of depression, self-doubt and loneliness – and members of the Curia who would put the Cosa Nostra in the shade. Dinners at the long table in the papal apartment – just himself and the Pope – the hollow sound of their voices beneath the high arched ceiling. And he makes every effort to keep us as the night wears on, refilling our glasses, remembering another story about Roncalli or Montini. Stories too about his friend, Monsignor Loftus, who was helping the Popes to improve their English. The first sentence he asked them to repeat several times was: There is a vacant see in Ireland and Monsignor Loftus is the most suitable candidate. Despite his effort at humour, his tone grows heavy, and he begins to slur his words.
I have an agenda, however, and am blind to this wreck of a man who had been a joy as a lecturer at Propaganda Fide, pacing on the dais, not once referring to notes, breaking naturally into Latin, French or German. ‘Stay well clear of the fires of passion, gentlemen. Don’t let your wings get burnt like Icarus,’ became his parting comment at the weekend: a reference to the prostitutes who were encamped in front of the college and who lit braziers at night for the comfort of their clients.
Now Boylan is coming apart. He calls me one morning in May: he has sprained his ankle. The light switch isn’t working, he says, and he missed the step down to the kitchen. Those steps can be a death trap, you know yourself. I do. A death trap. He grimaces like a fat child holding his foot, while I make coffee and put on toast. Near his radio is an empty Jameson bottle. ‘You’ll find my appointments diary on the desk in the library.’ His hand is shaking when he raises the cup to his lips.
Apart from the odd groan when he tries to move his foot, he is silent until we pull up near the front door of the hospital. ‘I want you to deal with any priest who is in trouble,’ he says, while we wait for a porter to bring him a wheelchair. ‘And keep Pat Nugent as far away as possible from my house. I don’t trust that lackey one bit.’
‘Look after yourself, and don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be back to collect you tomorrow’ is my parting comment after an X-ray has shown up a slight fracture.
A couple of weeks later, he signs in to an English clinic, and when he returns, looks eager to resume his duties, and is full of dreams for the diocese. A false dawn, as I learn many times over the following years. I become his shield. ‘His Lordship is on a commission at the Vatican,’ becomes my stock excuse to school principals, architects and engineers, or parishioners who want the Church to bring back the Latin Mass. They believe, or pretend to believe, the explanation. He pays me off by giving me the running of the diocese: a conspiracy of two addicts – one to Jameson, the other to power. I get the reputation of being a workaholic; but I have their sympathy – I am carrying the diocese.
From time to time, I spend a day in St Benedict’s Monastery. There, my spiritual guide is blunt: I am trying to keep step with my brother’s success. Strolling through the lush fields that surround the monastery after confession, I jettison his counsel. All right for monks in monasteries to have fanciful notions; they can say their prayers in tranquillity and then milk their cows; they don’t have to carry the can for an alcoholic bishop.
Work is grist to my mill. I rise at five-thirty each morning to revise my lectures, then take care of Boylan’s mail: letters of complaint from parishioners – one priest is saying Mass in eight minutes, another is driving around with a young teacher who wears a very short skirt. ‘She’s in his house until all hours, and sometimes I see her car when I’m going to my Mass each morning,’ a woman writes. In England and America, priests are pulling out of the ministry. The diocese, too, is affected – two or three each year. Priests who have found the love of their lives I try to dissuade from leaving: ‘Give it another year. The experience could make you a better man.’
‘No. My mind is made up.’
I meet the bullies: the Horse Muldoons who run their parishes like sergeant majors, men who are quite odd, but whose pious parishioners regard them as holy priests. I get to know the silent majority who keep their heads down, work in the trenches, and wait for their turn to become parish priests.
Despite the trickle of priests who leave, the diocese is expanding. Engineers and builders who have an eye out for the next church or school take me to lunch, and against a background of clinking glasses and silverware, and soft-spoken waiters, they repeat their offer to me and the diocesan accountant to play golf with them in Spain. Maybe later on – in July – too much on my plate at the moment, but kind of you to invite me. Priests, too, who in the past would hardly bid me the time of day, but who are itching for a foothold, invite me to the best restaurants in the county for haute cuisine. One man – we were in All Saints together – is on the lookout for a plum parish; he arrives on Christmas Eve with a canteen of Newbridge cutlery for Boylan and an invitation to me to join him for lunch at his club.
I am freewheeling down the sunny avenue of my prime, and, instead of wearing me out, non-stop meetings, lectures and appointments with troubled priests become a stimulant.
19
THAT SUMMER is devoted to the hysteria surrounding the Pope’s visit in September. Priests who want to make their mark contrive to secure a place on one of the organizing committees, and lose no opportunity to show remarkable zeal about papal encyclicals, especially when the Nuncio is present.
Archbishop Marcinkos flies in from Rome on a reconnaissance mission and dominates the planning room at Maynooth – ‘to check out the joint’, he informs us in his East Side Chicago. We survey maps laid out on a wide table, and plan our strategy for the Phoenix Park, and the other places the Pope will visit. Whenever needed, the top brass of the gardaí join us for a briefing. At one of those meetings, the president of a seminary shows Marcinkos the configuration for the Galway Youth Mass, and during the course of the briefing mentions the word ‘nuns’. Before he has time to finish the sentence, the archbishop whips the cigar out of his mouth, sweeps the room with a powerful arm, and declares: ‘No broads on the altar.’
The soft-spoken president looks up, beads of perspiration on his upper lip: ‘Of course, Your Grace, no br … religious in the sanctuary.’
‘Save for those who are presenting the offertory gifts to the Holy Father,’ Marcinkos says.
‘Precisely.’
Often it is eleven or twelve before the meetings come to an end, then we drift off down by the low-burning light of the corridors to the professors’ common room for a light supper. Tables at one side of the room are laden with sandwiches, bottles of whiskey, brandy and beer, as well as tonic water and soft drinks. Bishops and monsignors outdo one another with stories of Maynooth’s glorious past; how, once upon a time, they had the best brains in the country; how Ireland and indeed Europe would be in the Styx if it hadn’t been for the civilizing influence of the Church. They recall brilliant students they had taught: those who got firsts in Latin and Greek, Celtic Studies and Theology. One of the bishops keeps fixing his zucchetto on his head and repeating that ‘the media haven’t a clue’ and th
at they are no match for us because ‘we’re professionals’. He goes on to lambaste left-wing Jesuits and Protestants. Everyone knows his place and when to speak his lines; as by right, the bishops and the senior clerics dominate.
On one of those balmy nights, a priest, who teaches philosophy in the college and composes limericks about the bishops, whispers to me as we are filing out, high on Rémy Martin and Maynooth’s golden age: ‘The last hurrah, Tom, and they know it. They’re afraid the bark of Peter is listing rapidly under the weight of the liberals – FitzGerald, the Cruiser and their ilk – so J.P. II is being hauled over to get us back on course.’ He checks the corridor. ‘Methinks it would take even more than that mighty man to keep this leaking vessel afloat. Churches will be empty in ten years, Tom, except for old people, cramming for their finals.’ He disappears into the night, and I’m left with the cynical grin of his flushed face: Alice’s grin without the cat.
I have a room in Maynooth, so, to clear my head, I go for a walk along the wide avenue, which generations of students have called Grafton Street or, more commonly, The Graf. The scent of cut grass mingles with a wholesome smell of earth after an afternoon shower; pigeons bedding down for the night murmur contentment from somewhere in the ancient oak trees. Priests from the various committees pass by in twos and threes, their cigarettes glowing and then fading into the night. They stop and ask me to join them; we chat for a while, but I want to be on my own. They talk plans; their tone is confident and, when they flick away their cigarettes and open a door at the back of the college, an amber glow lights up their cheerful looks.
All is quiet again. A shooting star streaks across the sky and dives behind the trees at the far end of the grounds. I want to reach out, embrace this moment and keep it for ever more young – the jubilation, the hope, the shooting stars.
Suddenly, out of the heavenly night the rolling cadences of a harp come pouring through an open window on the ground floor. I quicken my steps and stand beneath the window: a film of dew on the grass twinkles in an apron of light. Inside, a woman is singing an Irish melody: ‘The Spinning Wheel’. Her flawless voice casts a spell over time and place; present surrenders to past. A Christmas night long ago. Delia Murphy singing on our first wireless – bought by M.J. for the new house; growling, the dog races around in circles and takes refuge beneath the table. If you feel like singing, do sing an Irish song. We all laugh except my mother, who is making clicking sounds with her tongue and muttering: ‘What do we want that wireless thing for?’
Stock-still, I listen beneath the window until the song finishes, then I follow as if some crazy impulse has taken possession of me and all I can do, or want to do, is flow with the current. She is seated on a stool by the harp, halfway up the long hall; her head is tilted while she turns over the pages of her music book. Moving nearer, I estimate that she is probably in her late twenties.
‘Do you come here often?’ I joke.
‘Only when there’s a Pope in the neighbourhood.’ Dark eyes peer through the harp strings.
‘I was out there for a stroll, took your beautiful singing, and the harp, to be some sort of spell brought on by this glorious night.’
‘You mean like the banshee. No. I’m real. At least a lot of the time.’
Later – much later – in playful moments, I would tease her, adding interest to her comment. Oh, I’m real, all right. Oh, yes, Father, you can bet your life I’m real.
‘Are you singing at one of the Masses?’
‘Galway.’
‘He’ll like “The Spinning Wheel”.’
She laughs. ‘Ah no, that was just an exercise.’
‘A beautiful exercise.’ I take her outstretched hand.
‘Tom Galvin.’
‘Lucy Campion.’
She talks about the pieces she will play at the Youth Mass. Casting aside the armour of caution I’ve hauled around for over a decade, I make no effort to hide my interest in Lucy Campion while she tweaks the tuning pins and we both exchange brush strokes of our lives: her studies at the Kodály Institute in Hungary, concerts in Budapest and now her part-time post at the university campus across the main road. I give her an overview: Kilburn High Road, Rome, and bits and pieces from Ardglass. And all the while the occasional nervous fluttering of her eyelashes is filling my veins with something close to the thrill of the Galtymore and the crystal bowl scattering snowflakes over the laughing dancers: excitement that I had mostly kept at arm’s length until now.
‘Will you sing for me?’ I hear myself saying.
‘What?’
‘I’d love to hear you again. Will you?’
‘Now?’
‘Please.’ I gaze in fascination at waves of dark hair reaching her shoulders.
‘What would you like?’
‘You choose.’
‘Let me see.’ When she stretches over to the stack of music books, the black lace sleeve of her dress falls over a tanned arm. ‘How about a piece that might suit the occasion: it went down great with the Yanks when I was playing at Bunratty Castle last summer.’
I sit on the edge of a stool and watch while she makes more adjustments. Graceful hands coax music from the strings; she closes her eyes:
Once in the dear dead days beyond recall,
When on the world the mists began to fall,
Out of the dreams that rose in happy throng
Low to our hearts Love sung an old sweet song;
And in the dusk where fell …
At the end, the plucking slows down; for a moment, her fingers remain outstretched as if in prayer, then her hands come together and rest on her lap. I look away just in time before she opens her eyes; the lyrics and the music linger in the silence of the hall. And all I want is to sit there beside her, away from maps, cigar smoke and the slating of left-wing Jesuits; and a string of stories that hanker for the days when Browne of Galway and other muscular bishops, with one pastoral letter, were able to frighten the daylights out of government ministers.
‘Thank you. Just what the doctor ordered.’
While tidying up her books, she stops and looks at me. ‘You’re on one of the committees?’
‘Yes, I’ve been coming down here for the past couple of weeks.’ When I tell her about the Marcinkos embargo on nuns, our laughter fills the hall so much that, like mischievous children who fear getting caught, we lower our voices. ‘In that case,’ she says, ‘I’d better stay well back.’
‘Hide behind a few tall bishops; then the Pope also will think you’re the banshee.’
Afraid I might overstay my welcome, I look at my watch: ‘Better be heading to my cell. It’s near to the witching hour.’
‘Yes, after the banshee; enough for one night without meeting a witch too. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’ With my hand on the doorknob, I turn round: ‘I have to see you – I mean, hear you again.’ We laugh at my silly slip of the tongue.
My light footsteps echo in the empty corridor; away at the far end, one dim light burns in front of St Patrick. The door of the professors’ common room is half-open and a couple of priests are standing, glasses in hand, listening to one of the bishops whose voice is in the toned-down mode of midnight.
In my room, just big enough for a bed, a bookcase and a desk, I sit and open my breviary at Night Prayer. But Lucy Campion’s rich black hair and her perfume lingering on the palm of my hand come between me and the page. I put the book aside, get on my knees beside the bed and gaze at the brown crucifix over the iron bedstead. This is just a natural attraction for a beautiful woman; I’m quite capable of controlling my feelings at this stage in my life. After all, nothing much happened with Simona and we were meeting frequently that summer in Rome, when I was preparing for my viva voce, and she was finishing off her thesis. Well, a few harmless kisses after a meal and a bottle of wine at the Piazza Navona. And, after all, it was our last night – everyone on holidays: couples laughing and embracing at the fountains, water spouting from the mouths of baroque horses,
golden lights showing up the terracotta shutters. And fireworks going off in our bloodstream.
So this is nothing to be concerned about; and nowadays, whichever book one picks up on the ministry, spiritual writers, except for those on the loony right, promote the importance of friendships in a priest’s life. It’s healthy. Keeps a man sane. And You always showed understanding for human weakness: look at the prodigal son. The bowed head of the crucified Christ remains impassive.
The following night, when the clock shows five past eleven, I begin to fidget with my pen, and when the meeting eventually tapers out, waste no time over the usual chat, and refuse invitations for a nightcap. A touch of a headache. Do you want an aspirin? No thanks, the night air will do the trick. Thanks. See you tomorrow. God bless. And I’m hurrying along a side path hidden by pampas grass, magnolias and lavenders; well away from the clusters of priests who are now lighting up pipes and cigarettes and taking a stroll beneath the swan-necked lights at the centre of the quadrangle, their contentment spreading over St Joseph’s Square.
The back of the college is in darkness. No stranger to disappointment, I manage to nurse my blighted hopes with the prospect of meeting her again before my work with the committee is complete. I do several rounds of the football pitches, checking in the hope that light will at any moment flood the special window on the ground floor.
The day after, I run into her on my way to the chapel; she is wearing a summer frock buttoned down the front. Red-painted toenails show through the straps of her sling-back shoes.
‘No serenading last night. What a letdown.’ I raise my hands in mock dismay.
‘I was there, but no one came to ask for an encore.’
‘We were working late – some of those monsignors are in love with the sound of their own voices – but all is not lost.’
