Leaving Ardglass

by William King

  ‘They’re like that nowadays.’

  But he is lost in his own world: ‘A son of mine a nancy boy. Then the other bucko – good-time Charlie – is pedalling his great works of art around the streets of Paris. And when the oul ticker started acting up last year, do you think one of them would come to see me in the hospital. Tommy, have they any nature in them at all?’

  A couple of nights later, I listen to a radio programme on the Heaslip. An actor does a flawless impression of M.J.’s broad accent, how he had to emigrate or draw the dole and that he would never take the soup. His senior counsel adds that he had given employment to hundreds of Irishmen and had gone beyond the call of duty as an employer by taking a personal interest in the welfare of each worker.

  I switch off the radio, but the actor’s voice plays on in my head. Sleep is broken and at around four I am wide awake, my head teeming with images. Among them is M.J. striding across the cobbled yard of Dublin Castle, hordes of photographers shoving cameras in his face. He is nodding and smiling. Alone.

  The morning he left comes back in sepia from a peasant land of paraffin lamps and Fair Isle jumpers.

  ‘You’ll be grand, M.J.,’ my father is saying in the pony and trap. ‘Go on there, girl, go on, girl.’ He tugs on the reins to hurry along the pony. The cardboard suitcase rubs against my bare knees; my hands are sore and numb from holding the lantern, but I want to do something for my brother who is crossing the pond, as the grown-ups call it. The pony treads on potholes and leaves behind a shattered moon on ice, and in the breaking dawn is the outline of my mother’s bulk, her scarf pulled tightly around her head.

  Steam from the train rises in clouds against the dim lights of the station and fills the cold air with a bitter smell. Girls wearing Woolworth scarves, folding lines still showing, crowd around the ticket office. Clutching tickets, they brush tears away with the sleeves of their coats as they return to their families. Above the noise of the engine and the din of conversations, I hear their brave efforts to be casual. ‘Yerra, haven’t I an aunt in Slough? What need I care?’

  A youth squares his broad shoulders, yet steals a glance at an ageing couple hunched beside him. ‘Sure ’tis only a few miles across the pond. I could swim it on a fine day.’ He laughs and draws on a cigarette; the old man wipes his nose. My father takes out his pocket watch and checks the time against the big clock hanging from the cold iron girders.

  ‘Look at that,’ he gets excited, ‘will you look at that? Not a minute out in thirty years. Did ye ever see a watch like that?’

  ‘No, never.’ I catch M.J.’s eye; he returns a weak smile.

  My father puts the watch into a black purse: ‘There,’ he says to M.J., ‘you’ll need that more than I will.’

  ‘Ah, no.’

  ‘Take it, boy, in God’s name. Take it. You’ll need it in the evening, so that them subbies don’t fool you. This little watch keeps good time.’ His voice is breaking. ‘And think of me.’

  ‘I will, Da.’

  Hands deep in her Chicago coat, my mother stands in silence, but as soon as the guard throws open the carriage doors, she turns to M.J.: ‘Listen to me: don’t let anyone or anything stop you. You can make your fortune in London, if you keep your head. But you’ll have to earn it.’

  ‘Ah woman,’ my father pleads, ‘now is not the time for that.’

  ‘Hold your tongue. Now is the time.’

  An icy wind of Brylcreem and whiskey cuts through the station. I pull up my socks and do a brave jumping exercise from one foot to the other. High in the railway cabin the stationmaster is pulling long levers; a whistle pierces the grey morning. With much slamming of doors and false cheer, a guard moves through the reluctant crowd: ‘Come on now, lads and lassies, next stop Camden Town. You’ll be dancing in the Glocca Mora on Saturday night. Can’t you come on, lads? McAlpine is waitin’ for you at London Bridge.’ His attempt at humour gets lost as the crying gets louder and the awkward gestures of farewell rise above the hissing train.

  ‘Write soon.’

  ‘I will, I’ll write as soon as I get over.’

  ‘Mind yourself, boy, and go to Mass every Sunday.’

  ‘Goodbye so.’

  I look away towards Eason’s kiosk, and, on the cover of a glossy magazine, the blurred image of someone called Ava Gardner gives me a dreamy look.

  Belching plumes of smoke, the dark monster trundles out of the station, death rattle of the carriage couplings as my father hobbles beside it. ‘M.J.,’ he calls. ‘My son, don’t stay if you don’t like the place, boy.’

  ‘Listen to the fool.’ My mother tightens the scarf around her neck.

  The train snakes its way into the countryside and all we’re left with is a glimpse of the hungry-looking fields that are Ardglass, a bitter wind and the defeated voices all around us. My father keeps on waving in a clumsy manner.

  ‘God go with them,’ a woman says.

  ‘Amen,’ others chorus.

  ‘And he was a great little worker. What’ll I do?’ says a man who slouches away towards the granite archway, and who is fidgeting with the peak of his cap. As at a wake, other men console him.

  My father has to plead with my mother to stop for a drink at the Railway Bar. The shafts of the pony-trap jerk and put strain on the harness as we cross the train tracks and enter the yard behind the pub. Bicycles are thrown three deep against a wall.

  The inside is loud and dim and smells of porter; men in brown suits and collarless shirts stand at the bar. My mother stamps her way to a snug, and through the open door I watch the publican fill jugs of Guinness from wooden barrels.

  ‘We’re all in the same boat, Jack,’ says a neighbour to my father. ‘What’s to become of this oul country?’ They curse ‘them hoors of politicians who are only for the big shots’.

  On his bony fingers, my father lists the children he has lost: two in Chicago, Eddie in the depot. Soon the girls will head off. Then only Mossie and Gerry, and the boyeen there. He points to me.

  My father’s face is flushed. ‘And I suppose it won’t be long before they go off too. Come over here, Tomásheen. Come over here, boybawn.’ He draws me between his knees; his overcoat smells of pipe tobacco and the cow house. ‘You’ll never leave your oul da, sure you won’t?’

  ‘I won’t. Never. I’ll milk the cows, and save the hay for you, Da.’

  They laugh, and order drinks.

  Just then the door latch clicks and a young man in a priest’s black coat and a red scarf knotted around his neck steps in and brings with him a perishing current of air. He begins to sing:

  Lonely I wander through scenes of my childhood.

  It brings back to memory the happy days of yore,

  Gone are the old folk …

  ‘Shut the door, Dinny, or I’ll throw you out on your arse,’ the publican roars as he puts full pint glasses on the counter. ‘Isn’t it early in the morning you’re wandering lonely? But you can sell them oul ballads if anyone is foolish enough to buy them.’ My father buys three. ‘There Tomásheen,’ he says. ‘Learn a few songs for yourself.’ I look at the pink, blue and yellow sheets: ‘The Moon behind the Hill’, ‘Galway Bay’, ‘The Castle of Dromore’.

  ‘Look, Mammy.’ I hold them up. ‘I’ve ballads.’

  She shakes herself: ‘The oul eejit. Very free with our few bob.’

  27

  THE MORNING AFTER I had lunch with M.J., Nugent calls the autumn meeting to complete the clerical appointments for the year: a tidying-up exercise, since the bulk of the diocesan changes had been filled in May. As every year, the personnel board – priests favourable to the bishop, who like to believe they have power – sit around a polished table at All Saints and prescribe the changes. Unknown to them, however, Nugent presides in his library while Plunkett, Vinny Lynch and I go through the list of priests, and single out those who will receive a letter of appointment within a week. In that room with the roller blinds down, because Nugent’s fussy housekeeper has a hang-up about the sun
fading the carpet, we decide each priest’s future. The green-shaded light on the bishop’s desk casts a sickly pallor on the books, the wallpaper and the heavy furniture. We send out the standard letter that obliges each priest to gather up his belongings and within two weeks stand before a sea of nameless faces.

  Over the period of Boylan’s binges, I had got to know most of the priests, and during that time their confidence in me grew: they poured out their stories of drink and women, once in a while, young men – while on continental or American holidays. They mourned their loss of faith in life and in God, and yet asked for confession. And in the basement kitchens of city presbyteries, or in dark-panelled sacristies, I raised the hand of absolution over heads tousled with confusion. I assured them of God’s grace and forgiveness.

  I knew who was in and out of hospital with depression, and who was spending three or four days away from the parish each week. Boylan, and later, Nugent, sent me to do the dirty work: reprimand the parish priest who never let his curate know how much was in the collection, and who even came back from his holidays each Sunday evening to count the money. I sorted out the mail, and dealt with complaints from cranks and insomniacs about curates who ‘have no respect for the Holy Father, or Our Blessed Lady’. The occasional letter from a scorned woman Nugent handed to me. ‘Tom, try and deal with that as well as you can,’ was followed by a weary sigh: ‘Good God, why they won’t say their prayers and stop chasing after these women is a mystery to me. And most of them aren’t worth chasing after.’

  ‘Hard to fathom,’ I nodded in sympathy. I was a good civil servant, or maybe a reliable hiring-foreman.

  This particular morning, with half-lenses perched on his nose, Nugent surveys Vinny Lynch’s list: ‘What’s this Collins fellow like? He’s asked to get out of Knockbawn.’

  Plunkett raises his head: ‘Can’t make up his mind whether he wants to serve the Church or his mother.’

  ‘Send him to Canon Corrigan,’ says Vinny Lynch, giggling.

  ‘Canon Corrigan, then.’ Nugent makes a note in the margin.

  The longest any curate had survived with Iron Corrigan was two years: one young priest left after four months – he said the ten o’clock Mass one morning, and then caught a plane for Boston, where he became a high-school teacher.

  Next on the list is a priest who has applied for laicization. ‘Now there’s a man who should have more sense,’ Nugent declares: smack of his ring when the back of his hand strikes the page. ‘“Can I have your blessing?” he asks. And he can’t keep his trousers on.’ He throws his arms in the air. ‘I offered him a sabbatical. “No,” said he, “I’ve prayed for guidance and the Holy Spirit is leading me to share my life with Monica. And Monica agrees with me.”’

  Plunkett winces in sympathy with the bishop: ‘He came to me looking for severance pay, no less. Two thousand for every year of his priesthood, nearly fifty grand. “Are you mad?” I said. “Wouldn’t there be an exodus if we forked out good money like that?”’ He glances at Nugent for approval and receives a dry laugh.

  We move on to those who are in line for a parish. Nugent appoints to the well-off parishes priests who have gained a reputation for fund-raising and who have never caused him trouble. His right to do this we never question. He browses through my draft, purring as he ticks: ‘Yes. He’s a good priest. Good man.’ Then he stops and draws a line across the page. ‘Not as long as I’m bishop. He’ll never get a parish.’

  ‘With respect,’ I venture, ‘they think highly of him in Assumption.’

  ‘No, Tom.’ He fixes on some spot over my head. ‘My sources tell me he refuses to read out my letters in full to my people.’ Again he slaps the paper with his ring. ‘And he had a general absolution in the secondary school – that, as we all know, is strictly forbidden by the Holy See. The nun in charge should have known better, but of course, nowadays … nuns … I give up.’ He throws his hands in the air.

  ‘Now, that man’ – more smacking with his ring – ‘he’s a buffoon. An embarrassment to me at a confirmation dinner. Acting like a clown in front of the teachers with a hideous mask he’d brought from America.’

  After lunch we have to tackle child abuse cases: a series of long-running sores that shows no sign of healing. For a couple of years I have been handling questions from journalists, consulting lawyers, visiting priests in prison, and opening the morning papers to accusations about Church secrecy. And then having to endure the stale air of the basement archives, staring now and again through the window bars as I try to piece together a horrible jigsaw.

  ‘Where are the written statements, Angela?’ I ask one of the secretaries and hold up a letter. ‘This woman claims she has already sent a report.’

  Angela removes her glasses so that they hang from a chain around her neck. ‘They were never filed.’ She speaks in a low tone: ‘A long time ago, Monsignor, things were different then.’

  I pitch the letter back into the file.

  On the nine o’clock news a priest accused of multiple offences appears handcuffed between two guards. For weeks he becomes a hated figure – ugly photos in the tabloids, a torrent of phone calls, hostile to the Church, floods the chat shows.

  The first complaints about him had come in while Boylan was bishop, and I was his right-hand man. As soon as a boy and his mother had finished their deposition and we closed the big doors behind them, Boylan, in the dim light of the library, poured himself a double whiskey.

  ‘What’ll we do, Tom?’

  ‘We have to send him to a psychiatrist. That’s the recommended course of action.’

  ‘Psychiatrists. I don’t know. They never cured me of this,’ he mutters, looking at the whiskey glass, ‘asking how did I get on with my father. But as you say ….’

  I make an appointment with one of the top men in Fitzwilliam Square.

  Shuffling along the corridor one morning, a few months later, Boylan, unshaven, waves a letter in the air from the psychiatrist. ‘He’s fine now. Fine. He won’t offend again.’ One end of his dressing-gown belt trails along the carpet; traces of toothpaste show on the front of his pyjamas. ‘Sure, putting his hand on a boy’s shoulder on confirmation day, only a peccadillo, Tom. Didn’t the Greeks … you know what I mean. And look at what they’ve given us – philosophy, architecture, drama – the foundations of our civilization.’ A look of satisfaction on his red swollen face, he puts the letter back into the envelope. ‘A nice quiet parish for him, Tom.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure, I’m sure. A nice parish.’

  I stare at the bulky figure wobbling off into the darkness, and to my shame, like Pilate, I washed my hands. Boylan had a vicious side, especially when on a binge, and my chances of succession might have been put at risk if I had opposed him. Nugent’s mood swings from rage to depression. The journalists round on him one morning before a confirmation ceremony, and, to save face, he lays the blame at the feet of ‘those who have come before me’.

  They keep prodding. ‘You mean Bishop Boylan?’

  ‘Bishop Boylan was a good man, but he had lost control.’

  ‘Who then?’ Microphones are being pushed in front of his face, and like a cornered dog, he shows his teeth to protect himself.

  ‘Others?’ They keep pressing him.

  ‘Others, yes. I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Including the vicar-general, Monsignor Thomas Galvin?’

  ‘Yes. A fine priest, but he was misguided.’

  The newspapers pick it up. ‘Bishop Nugent Blames Senior Cleric for Cover-up’.

  During a daylong meeting at Maynooth, a bishop who had been in my class in Rome, and who is regarded as the only independent voice in the hierarchy, spells it out for me. Whenever the Pope makes a statement about gays or cohabiting couples, this bishop is the one the journalists descend on for a comment. ‘We’re sinking faster than the Titanic, Tom, and every man is jostling to save his mitre or his arse, I’m not sure which. You saw it yourself this morning at the opening session
.’ He gestures towards the grim building, rigid against a hellish sky. ‘We’re headless chickens. Nugent needed a scapegoat; you fitted the bill. That little Roman gadfly, the Nuncio, is breathing down his neck. Do you get my drift?’

  ‘Only what I suspected.’

  ‘Anyway, he was always jealous of you. Watched like a hawk in case you’d get the Yellow Jersey.’ We are strolling around the grounds after the lunch break. Red of autumn in the Virginia creeper, shining and tremulous along one side of St Joseph’s Square: crows are swooping, plunging and landing on bare branches, wonderment in their sidelong glances; beyond the quadrangle, more crows are raising Cain in the beeches. A sudden gust sweeps through an opening at the corner of the square and causes the bishops ahead of us to sink deeper into their scarves and the upturned collars of their overcoats while they give full attention to the pipe-smoking Cardinal. In front of them, press photographers scramble backwards on the lawn, and, on one knee, brazenly take shots from different angles: shots, they hope, that will depict the bishops as comical or even sinister in the newspapers.

  That morning, a Vatican expert on child abuse had delivered the keynote address. He was credited with cleaning up one or two dioceses in America, and was speaking to the hierarchy at Nugent’s invitation. Priests who are dragging the Church into the gutter must be expunged without delay; he hammers home his message by thumping on the lectern. ‘This is an evil, this is leprosy. Zero tolerance, My Lords, the same as we decreed at the Dallas Conference,’ he booms in his American drawl. The green-shaded light on the podium deepens the lines on his suntanned face. At the coffee break, flanked by the Cardinal and Nugent, with Plunkett bringing up the rear, he struts around the room, and, towering over grey heads, informs every group that the only way to deal with this poison is to remove forthwith any Judas against whom a claim is made. And gays must be rooted out of our seminaries; pussyfooting and all the soft talk about love is what has brought us to this sorry state. Farmers’ and shopkeepers’ sons who, over the years, had learned the skills of Church politics and were rewarded with the pectoral cross and a gold ring, look up in awe, and nod to everything the Pope’s man says. He checks his watch and tells us he can’t stay for lunch: he has to be in Geneva by six. Trouble there too.