by William King
Now he lights up his cigar and eases himself into his chair: ‘They watch everything. They’re like old ones.’
‘Who?’
‘The priests. They have itching ears. Some of them have been gossiping since they were in All Saints fifty years ago.’
He studies my reaction: ‘They talk. None of my business what you do with your life, but if you want to take over some day – and I sincerely hope you will – you’ll need to think about severing your connection with Miss Campion. That’s one thing the Church won’t tolerate; you could have a mansion or a farm of the best land in County Kildare and they’d turn a blind eye. Mother Church has never come to terms with women. Unpredictable creatures.’ He grins. ‘And a distraction to monks who wanted to write their manuscripts.’ The grin fades. ‘That little pipsqueak in the Nunciature listens to every tittle-tattle, so at least be careful.’ Then he goes back to Gigli and how he made up for lack of vocal power with the quality of his singing; I’m half-listening while he moves to John McCormack and how he could hold the melody line better than anyone.
When I’m leaving, Boylan walks with me down the wide corridor; night lights show old prints of St Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum and the Piazza Navona on the walls. No sound now except the creak of ancient floorboards beneath our feet: ‘Ah, yes, Mother Church forces us to deny our natural urges and live in these mausolea.’ He throws his eyes towards the high ceiling and shrugs. ‘Live, hah. Live is right. But we’re in the army, Tom; we wear the breastplate of Peter, who, let’s not forget, had a wife to keep him on the straight and narrow.’ At the great oak door, he stops and looks at me with rheumy eyes: ‘Thanks for the company. You know, for all their hot passions, the Romans can be very hard-nosed about love. They have a saying … let me see now.’ He scratches his thinning hair. ‘Yes, I have it.
L’amore fa passare Il tempo;
Il tempo fa passare l’amore.
He cocks his head and repeats the phrase slowly, as if to himself, while I’m working out a rough translation in my head: Love makes time pass; time makes love pass.
‘Madly in love today; gone with the wind tomorrow. Goodnight, Tom. God bless.’
I never saw anyone recover so quickly as he does after the Nuncio’s visit; to a great extent he controls his drinking and manages to carry out his duties as a bishop. At the priests’ retreat in June, he announces that I am to become vicar-general of the diocese.
And the glamour of what might be: the seed planted silently in Rome whenever I passed the prelates who line the corridors of the Irish College is taking root. Theologians are ten a penny; bishops hold all the aces. Now Boylan is handing me the reins. Ardglass might have its first bishop. Why not? I’d be as good, if not better, than the next.
22
‘I THINK WE SHOULD CALM THINGS a bit,’ I say the next night when I’m leaving Haddington Road and Lucy is waiting for us to canoodle inside the wide-panelled door of her sitting-room. ‘You know where that leads.’
‘You had no great problem about it up till now.’
‘Well then, maybe we should train ourselves, so that, you know, it doesn’t happen as often.’ Feeling guilty, I go to put an arm round her, but, brushing my hand away, she glares at me. ‘No. I don’t need your sympathy, and if this is troubling your conscience ….’ She is already opening the door. ‘Goodnight to you.’
‘Goodnight so, Lucy.’
Apart from Sunday evening, we have been meeting whenever both of us are free; but from now on a gap is opening up. Like a secret drinker trying to hide his addiction, I become self-conscious if we meet someone in the foyer of the Abbey Theatre or at the National Concert Hall. So I have a set of excuses. Boylan, has improved, but, you know yourself – I’ve got to keep an eye on him. A load of exam papers to correct. The Papal Nuncio is coming to dinner. All true, but these commitments never stopped me before. In my conceit, I imagine she will be a constant in my life. And, despite fitful outbreaks when we refuse to speak for days, she seems willing to tag along. We still go to Wicklow, and, ill at ease, sip coffee in her bright kitchen when we return to Haddington Road; then, avoiding her gloomy looks, I make an excuse about having to return. Boylan … you know. Right. Well, thanks again. Thanks.
Then one Saturday evening in Luggala, I receive the broadside I had instinctively known was coming to me. We are walking back along the rugged path towards the stile when a strange silence descends upon her. I clutch at straws: how are things going in Trinity? Any chamber music concerts coming up? Easter has come and gone: how quickly time passes – the small change, with which, in the past, I wouldn’t waste our rich time together. My effort fails; she lapses into silence again and, as we are approaching the stile, she stops and says, ‘Tommy, you remember the lecturer I told you about. He works in the Maths Department. You met him at a lunchtime concert in the Bank of Ireland.’
‘Ronan. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you.’
‘He’s been asking me out.’
‘And?’
‘And … I gave this every chance. Gave you every chance, but I’m not hanging around any longer. I’ve to look out for my future.’
I take time to weigh up her ultimatum. ‘It’s over, that’s what you’re telling me. Over. Is that it?’
‘I would have given him the brush-off. But you’ve another agenda.’
The rain that was forecast in the morning is now drifting across from the hills.
‘I took no bloody vow of celibacy, Tommy.’
‘We haven’t been exactly living like pure spirits.’
‘No, but I could count the number of times we were together – made love.’
‘I can’t live any other way.’
She glares at me, and, with a strength that is surprising, grabs the lapels of my overcoat. ‘Why didn’t you stay away from me then? Why didn’t you pass by the window that night in Maynooth? Why?’
‘Lucy, please.’
‘No Lucy please. I’ll tell you why. You want it both ways. And another thing: I’ve got tired of the secrecy. That All Saints place is like the Kremlin; for Christ’s sake, you have to talk in riddles in case the operator is eavesdropping. Is that what the Church does to you? Grown men living like fellas in a boarding school?’
I try to free myself, but her red fingernails have a firm grip.
‘You have your Church, your priest friends, golf on a Thursday, me. In that order.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll not be an ornament.’
I recover my balance. ‘Golfing friends, yes. We know each other for a long time; been through boot camp, you might say. We’re used to each other, but what do they know about me, apart from the fact that I fix things? I’m reliable. Man Friday to Boylan. Lucy, listen to me. You’re the only one on this earth who really knows me.’
‘Then choose.’ Her voice is shrill now. I draw her close; the rain is cold on her cheek. She is trembling and I have to hold her so that we don’t both fall against the stone fence. And even though we are in the middle of a valley with only sheep following a man chugging along on his tractor, I begin to whisper like a frantic youngster, to plead and repeat myself: ‘You are so much a part of me. How can I? I mean, life without you… I couldn’t even bear to think ….’
But her gaze is fixed somewhere on the hills, among the sheep and the tractor in low gear. Slowly and deliberately, she puts her hands on my arms and frees herself from my embrace. ‘I haven’t told you the full truth.’
‘The full truth. I don’t want to hear it.’
‘I should have told you before now. I’ve been going out with Ronan.’
‘No, Lucy.’
‘I’ve been going out with Ronan. Have been for a while.’
The farmer has come off his tractor and is calling to his dog to round up the sheep. The dog crouches, the farmer whistles. Blue smoke rises from the tractor. A red tractor with one of those mechanical lifts at the front. I see it all frame by frame without making connections or sense. She keeps on talking a
bout Ronan and herself. ‘Have been going out with him for a while.’ Been to meet his family. And he has asked her to go to the Trinity Ball in May – news that falls on me like a hundred dark November evenings.
‘Lucy, for God’s sake. I’ve never in all my life been as close to anyone.’ I’m shaking my head and stretching out my hand, but she folds her arms. ‘We’ve been naked together, and in more ways than one. I have never spoken about myself to anyone like I did to you. Never. Are we going to throw away everything we had – everything we’ve shared?’
The hood of her red oilskin has fallen down and rain is dripping from her matted hair: hair that from now on will fall loose for another man to fondle. She never looked as pretty.
‘Let’s go back. We’re getting drenched.’ Her voice is calm and controlled, and I hate her for it.
‘Is it the rows, Lucy?’
‘For goodness sake, everyone has rows. No, Tommy. You’re just not available.’
Going to the Roundwood Inn, a place that had held such promise in the past, is a mistake. By the time we reach the pub, my shock has turned to poison. ‘Such honesty. I must say I haven’t experienced such overwhelming honesty for many a day. Ronan. Really?’
The poet is there with glasses perched on his nose, a mop of greying hair and the face of a friendly lion. As usual, he is buried in a book, propped up in front of him while he eats. I gave her a collection of his one Christmas: To Lucy – my gorgeous banshee. She hasn’t noticed him seated in a corner, but I’m too sick to tell her. During coffee, she raises her head: ‘It’s hard for me too, you know. The least you could do is say something.’
‘Is there something to say? Oh, there is. I’d forgotten. Yes, there is.’
She looks up, her face softens, but I air my spleen. ‘Yes, how could I be so churlish? Of course there’s something to say. Please forgive my lapse. I hope you and Ronan have a great life together, and I’ll go back to nursing a boozy bishop. And another thing, Lucy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for being so candid with me.’
She lowers her head, and the ache to ignore whomever may be watching grips me. I want to go round the table and hold her, while we put together the splinters of our world. But I insist on nursing a hurt, and anyway, we both know we’ve passed the point of no return.
The rain gets heavier, causing the traffic to slow down as we make our sullen journey to the city, and in the bitter silence I am tempted again to break the deadlock, but foolish pride won’t allow me. Let her make the first move. When she is looking away, I throw a side glance at the set of her profile: the deep red lipstick freshly applied, the hair still wet and shiny from the rain. I long to stop the car, cast aside my wounded pride, and tell her I’m sorry for being such a bastard. And that she can’t go to Ronan. When all is said and done, no one gives a tinker’s curse for me. I’ve no one else, Lucy. I’m there to cover for a washed-out bishop and bolster up priests who are teetering on the brink of despair. I was never as open with anyone as I was with you.
Instead, I bury the desperate appeal in my chest, switch on the radio, and whenever the traffic is free-flowing, increase the speed. When I stop at Haddington Road, her harp shows through the net curtain.
‘I suppose you won’t ….’ With one hand on the door handle, she half-turns to me.
‘Go in. No, I don’t think so.’ Now I want to make her suffer. ‘Ronan might drop around and we wouldn’t want Ronan to worry that there’s anything going on between us, because there isn’t.’
Staring straight ahead, I know she is looking at me, but I sink the knife even further. ‘How should I have taken it? Oh, Lucy, that’s fine … Ronan is it? Ah well, so long as it’s Ronan.’
‘You knew this was coming; I gave you every chance, but you made your choice, and I’ll play second-fiddle to no one.’ She bangs the door and storms across the footpath towards the wicket gate.
Sleep is fitful for the next couple of weeks. At three or four I’m staring into darkness – wouldn’t I be better off leaving the priesthood, and starting out a new life with her if she would still have me? Some of the best priests in my ordination year have left and got married. The Church is sinking anyway. I torment myself by going over the good times, and the times we fought. Like the Sunday morning when it was teeming with rain and she took me to the airport, though she had a concert that night with the quartet and needed to practise. And when she couldn’t stay for coffee, but had to leave me at the set-down bay, I rounded on her as I was taking my bags out of the car. ‘You know how I hate it when there’s no one to see me off. Of course, you think only of yourself. That’s you all over.’ Filling up with remorse during the flight, I phone as soon as I arrive at the Irish College in Rome with a bundle of apologies, and later search the shops until I find her special perfume.
Through those wakeful hours, tormenting pictures spring up of her and Ronan together in that big room. When he turns over in the night, will he delight in the steady beat of her contentment, and the sheer beauty in her wavy hair, slack and loose over her naked back? The fantasy goes out of control and clouds of guilt hang over me in the morning when I recite the divine office:
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
What is evil in your sight I have done.
Not since my father died do I go about my work in such a gloom; by the same token, work becomes my salvation. Apart from my golfing day, I fill each moment with lectures and meetings, and with dictating instructions to Vinny Lynch and the women in the secretariat. Boylan, though he has his own struggles to stay off the drink, tells me I look a bit peaky, and asks if I have something on my mind.
‘No, just a bit tired. I’ll be as right as rain in a few days.’
‘No wonder you’re tired – you’re like a driven man for the past few months: seven days a week non-stop.’
Some days I’m fine until I turn a corner and collide with the past: such as the glorious Sunday in June when I come upon a harpist at the bottom of Castle Street. She is no Lucy though. Pale and tired-looking with wispy hair. When she notices me lingering I move away slowly. Images well up without notice: the way, while playing, Lucy used to toss her head when her hair fell over one side of her face. A postcard she sent the time the quartet was doing a St Patrick’s concert in New York falls out of a book – Missing you, and by the way, 8 more than ever.
Gradually work numbs the pain and I reach a kind of healing, though the scar tissue remains – even to this day. I start going back to the weekly game of golf and staying on for the leisurely meal of steak and wine and clerical gossip. Up until then, I had been making credible excuses: a meeting in Maynooth, or I’ve to check on Boylan, lads – a dumb show of hand to mouth in a drinking movement.
‘They were full of sympathy: ‘God help you, Tommy. See you next week, if you can make it.’
23
BOYLAN GOES TO ROME with Vinny Lynch to present the ad limina: the report on the diocese for the Holy See, submitted every five years. The evening before, he asks me to join him for dinner, and when his housekeeper has served coffee, he goes to the sideboard and takes out a bottle of Chivas Regal and two glasses.
‘Don’t get alarmed,’ he says, ‘not a relapse,’ when he notices me following his movements. ‘A toast.’ He raises his glass and I fall in with his mood.
‘Who or what are we toasting?’ I ask him.
He is already taking off his ring and placing it on the table. ‘I got this from a member of the Curia – and, hard to believe among that set – a walking saint, if ever there was one. Take it. You’ll need it more than I will from now on. I’ll be seeing Cardinal Bartoli. He’s the kingmaker now, so – as they say – it’s in the bag. Anyway, you’re way ahead of the field as the priests’ choice. Salute.’
‘Salute.’
‘I think I still have some friends in the land of Machiavelli.’
Despite my meek protest – guff about several other priests being worthier – my heart is at full throttle.
The following week, I go to meet Boylan. He is cock-a-hoop, waddling across the arrivals floor. Vinny Lynch is behind him, pushing their bags on a trolley. From his inside pocket Boylan takes a letter and waves it in the air: ‘The rescript, Tommy. What did I tell you?’ I glance at the envelope with the official Vatican seal intact. ‘I didn’t get to meet Bartoli himself, but he sent this by his secretary to the Irish College.’ He is in the same excitable state all evening, and when Lynch leaves after supper, he tells me that I should now take off for a few days until the official announcement the following Tuesday in All Saints. ‘You’ll have a round of appointments and you’ll need all your energy for them. I’m not allowed open the rescript until Sunday.’
As with so many priests who study at the Irish College and who fall to the charms of Gregorian chant – church bells tolling in the evening – and the whiff of power, I am drawn back to Rome, like the swallows to Capistrano. So for the few days before the announcement, I traverse the narrow streets and sit in the cool of ancient churches, drafting speeches and preparing for interviews. I even look at sets of episcopal robes in Gammarelli’s, but decide that I can get those in Dublin. Before I leave the shop, however, I buy a zucchetto, which I still have as a reminder of my vanity. My golfing friends had offered to go with me to Rome, but I knew from experience how many bottles of wine would be emptied at our dinner table each night, and I needed a clear head for the following weeks.
Each morning as I hurry to the chapel for Mass, past the memorial to Daniel O’Connell where a young theologian had informed me that ‘we who study in Rome are meant for higher things’, a cock crows beyond the high walls of the college. Breakfast afterwards in the refectory with students and professors revives memories of the Council and aspiring theologians offering to type up notes for bishops. After weeks of grey skies and drizzle back in Ireland, I set off on my daily walk to wallow in the dry heat: up the via Merulana towards the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – baroque splendour against a blue sky. Rome is already heating up for the summer: hordes of tourists with cameras are beating a path to St Peter’s to file past the tombs of the Popes. In the setting sun, while they are dining alfresco in narrow streets where paint is peeling from walls and shutters, I take a taxi to a favourite restaurant in Trastevere. One evening, I go back to the Piazza Navona, and linger over coffee as darkness falls and memories of another time begin to take shape until I pull myself up, and make my way through the streets, now settling down for the night.
