White Church, Black Mountain

by Thomas Paul Burgess

  “Huh… Man of God.” He made it sound like an indictment.

  Cudden spun around, outraged. “What? What did you just say to me?”

  Eban stepped in front of Ruairí. “Will you do it, Father? Will you do it yourself… will you pull the trigger? Would you like that?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cudden was stung.

  Unnoticed by the men, Mrs Connolly had also made her way to the fringes of the group.

  She had been listening. Knowing her place.

  Waiting to announce her presence when appropriate to do so.

  But on hearing the priest’s comments she elbowed her way into the centre of things, where she fixed Cudden with an accusatorial gaze.

  “Yes, yes he would… I wouldn’t put it past him!” she announced, emboldened by this turn of events. She stabbed a finger into the man’s chest.

  “You – you call yerself a man of the cloth?”

  She turned to face Molloy now.

  “And you – you’re supposed to be for the working man… murdering fathers and cripplin’ teenagers!”

  Her unexpected outburst served as a catalyst.

  Without doubt, the tide had turned.

  All knew it.

  The momentum was for the first time with the besieged.

  Ruairí was momentarily dumbstruck.

  Seeing his mother – a devout, lifelong Catholic and obsequious, unquestioning devotee of the clergy – so readily take on this small-town demagogue galvanised him.

  He placed his face close to the priest’s.

  The merciless tension was at breaking point.

  “Is that it, Father… you’d like to do it yourself, would ye, eh?”

  Father Cudden didn’t flinch.

  Instead, he was savouring his anger. Rolling it around his mouth and over his tongue.

  He slowly smiled. His malevolence palpable.

  When he spoke, it was in a low, malicious hiss. “That’s right… yes; yes, maybe I would.”

  Fionnuala Connolly looked like she’d been slapped hard across the face. An oppressive presence seemed to fill the small room.

  “God forgive you!”

  Ruairí did not step back. He stood on, breathing heavily, almost nose to nose with the priest. He whispered something. It was hardly audible.

  “False prophet.”

  Again the priest smiled. He changed tactic again, assuming the authority of his station.

  “Look, I’m telling you for the last time: they can’t stay in here. This is God’s house!”

  “The Cardinal says we can.” It had escaped Eban’s mouth before his brain had engaged, for he did not know this to be true.

  Father Cudden’s smile grew broader. He instantly saw the bluff for what it was.

  “The Cardinal is saying precisely nothing… nothing at all… and when he does I’ll show him a petition with three hundred parishioners’ signatures all wanting you… abominations out of their cathedral.”

  Eban’s dread was rising.

  The priest seemed to possess an almost supernatural presence, foul and intimidating.

  Despite this he steeled himself and rallied.

  “I’ve heard enough, Father… you’ll have to go now.”

  He moved to place a guiding hand on the small of the man’s back.

  No-one budged an inch.

  Unnoticed, the noise from the crowd in the street had picked up and at that moment seemed to surge. The swell seemed to energise the priest. To infuse him.

  He looked directly into Eban’s eyes, withering him.

  “Take your hand off me,” he snarled imperiously.

  Abruptly there was a noise on the other side of the door.

  All eyes turned, drawn in that direction.

  A dull, low thudding.

  Like someone was kicking against it.

  It was clear in that moment that the bolt had not been sufficiently engaged.

  Each hit loosened it more.

  Making it shift a little each time from its position.

  Two blows more and it would unfasten.

  Mrs Connolly was the first to react.

  She moved toward it.

  Hand at her breast. Fearful. Petrified.

  “Who is it?Who’s there?”

  She looked over her shoulder to the others for guidance.

  Eban felt drained, but somehow exhilarated.

  Strangely resigned.

  Almost fatalistic.

  Felt like he wanted all this to be over.

  Wanted to confront whatever had been stalking them that whole night.

  Maybe their whole lives

  “Open it, open it for Christ’s sake!” he heard himself moan.

  Anto came to life. “NO! It’s a trick; those fuckers have set us up!”

  The stress in the room seemed to cause it to creak and moan.

  The wooden timbers cried out and the floorboards seemed to blanch.

  A pained, spiralling banshee wail broke from Sinéad and rose into the air.

  It began as a whimper and ended as a siren.

  “Noooooooooo… don’t let them in!”

  She clutched defensively again at her unborn child.

  Terry Molloy pushed by Mrs Connolly, sliding the bolt back fully and violently throwing the door open.

  It crashed against the wall, shaking loose puffs of white plaster and masonry.

  Both women screamed and pushed back flat against the opposite wall.

  Anto had armed himself with a billiard cue, whilst Ruairí had picked up a bread knife.

  They crouched, coiled, waiting… waiting… nothing.

  Then footfalls scurrying off down the stone stairway.

  Laughter and shouts fading away… off into the distance.

  The scene was fixed. Unmoving. Like some medieval montage picked out on a tapestry.

  As if no-one knew what to do. What to say.

  Ruairí spoke first “It’s alright… it’s okay, it’s kids… it’s only kids.”

  The hex had been broken.

  Eban reacted more quickly than anyone, his body language decisive.

  “Father, I think you’d better leave. Anto, get the door locked after them.”

  Father Cudden screwed up his face with disdain and barely concealed revulsion.

  “Oh, we’re going… the stink of this three-ring circus is turning my stomach.”

  Mrs Connolly’s adrenaline was racing.

  Denunciation from the pulpit be damned. She turned again on her parish priest.

  “You’ve some cheek… you’ve locked us out of every other room; a pregnant girl with only a sink to wash herself in… I was married in this church but it’ll be a cold day in hell ‘til I’m back at Mass again in it, I can tell you that.”

  Councillor Molloy couldn’t resist a parting barb. He spoke over his shoulder. “No amount of soap and water will scrub her clean.”

  Cudden moved toward the door, pointing at Ruairí and Anto as he did.

  “I want them out of here and on the boat out of this country.”

  The two men exited.

  Anto ran to the top of the stairs, shouting after them. “Molloy, tell your brother he’s a fucking pervert!”

  Unseen, from around the curve of the staircase came the echoing, incandescent reply. “Say it just once to his face; just once you greaseball bastard. JUST ONCE!”

  Anto chuckled to himself, happy in the knowledge that he had gotten to the man. That he had riled the Molloy brothers and that the message would go back to Tootsie.

  Laughing, he locked the door again and turned to find all inside glaring at him disapprovingly. The young man appealed theatrically, incorrigibly, shrugging with arms outstretched.

  “Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?”

  The group fell into laughter.

  Desperate, eager, insane laughter.

  The laughter borne of abject relief.

  Of being shot at with no consequence.

  Of teetering on a precipice but fall
ing backward.

  *

  After several breathless minutes the general hubbub ensued as each recounted what had just happened, all at the same time.

  Eban felt somehow vindicated. Like he had been tested in fire and had by some means come through. He felt closer to his confederates than before.

  Bizarrely, more close to them now, these strangers, than to anyone at that moment he could remember.

  “Well, that’s the Cardinal against us for sure,” he said.

  Anto was stoked. He tugged hungrily on a cigarette and blew out. “That’s no loss. He was always against us anyway.”

  Similarly, Ruairí was enthused by the residue of adrenaline. He playfully counted out on the fingers of his hand.

  “Let me see: the Roman Catholic Church… the Republican Movement… is there anybody we haven’t offended recently?”

  Only Mrs Connolly and Sinéad seemed sober. The older woman was gathering up dirty clothes again.

  “I’m gonna speak to those children’s people… running wild at this hour of the morning… do they think this is a playground for their amusement or something?”

  She was preparing again to leave on the laundry-and-provisions run.

  “I’ll pick up some sandwiches when I’m out.”

  Sinéad pleaded, “No bacon sandwiches, Mrs C… they’re cold by the time they get here.”

  “What do you want me to do, hold them under my oxters?”

  “I know, but the fat, it…” She pulled a face. “What is it, Ruairí?”

  “Congeals.”

  “Aye – the fat congeals and it turns my stomach.”

  The girl raised her hands to her mouth at the thought of it and exited for the toilet.

  Mrs Connolly looked concerned. “Ruairí… away and see if the wee girl’s alright.”

  Ruairí raised himself up from the couch, but it was Anto who pushed him down again and followed the girl out of the room.

  41

  15 Donnybrook Avenue,

  South Belfast

  2014

  Pascal Loncle was flossing, gargling and spitting.

  His bedroom was the only one in the residence that had its own small enamel sink attached to the wall, rendering his need to tarry in the common areas of the house mercifully brief.

  He even had a working fireplace, should he choose to activate it, but preferred a fire screen featuring a colourful bouquet of flowers picked out in fine latticework.

  As was his wont, he kept the curtains pulled back and tied on clear evenings, well beyond dusk. The exhibitionist in him enjoyed the slight frisson of performance as he moved languidly in his silk dressing gown across the reflecting, dark rectangle.

  Sometimes belted.

  Sometimes not.

  Pinetop Perkins played low, almost imperceptibly on his iPad speakers.

  He dabbed his mouth dry with a cotton flannel and poured himself a Laphroaig single malt whisky before settling into an easy chair. Crossing his bare legs, he dangled a tasselled slipper from one foot whilst reading Peter Silvester’s The Story of Boogie-Woogie: A Left Hand Like God.

  It was his secret passion.

  Everything about Pascal Loncle screamed ‘cultured man of the world’.

  His dress and general demeanour was that of a much older man, and he would have appeared ridiculous had he not carried this off with such swagger and aplomb.

  He favoured Harris tweed jackets, gabardine rainwear, herringbone waistcoats and cravats. He wore his thick dark hair heavily pomaded and slicked back.

  He was rarely without a tightly-rolled black Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrella.

  For a Frenchman he was quite the archetypal English toff.

  This was no accident.

  His father, Dr Henri Loncle, was a successful consultant paediatrician and dedicated Anglophile.

  It was he who kept his only son in the manner befitting a scholar, a gentleman and an artist.

  In return, Pascal realised that it would be imprudent of him to discuss his love of boogie-woogie piano or reveal his honorary position as president of the Jerry Lee Lewis Appreciation Society to his patron.

  Instead he was happy to trot out uninspired renditions of Debussy and Beethoven at the petit bourgeois dinner parties his father would throw for friends when Pascal was visiting at home in Rennes.

  Above all else, he was required to keep up the tiresome charade that perhaps one day he would provide his father with a grandchild.

  This involved elaborate stories of fictitious episodes with imaginary girlfriends.

  For Pascal had realised from quite a young age that his father would never accept his love of other men.

  Unbeknownst to them, both Rosemary and Emily had regularly featured in his fictions. Familiarity with their circumstances, their routines, their characters and even their undergarments airing on the clothes horse in the kitchen had provided him with many plausible inventions and embellishments.

  Mon Dieu, that Rosemary woman is a grotesque! he now thought to himself, and shuddered.

  Perhaps the most awful downside of his pretence was having to endure her dull advances and nervous, lumpen innuendos.

  She clearly adored him.

  He winced at the thought and reached for a mandarin orange from the bowl beside him, thoughtfully and meticulously beginning to peel it with long fingers and well-manicured nails.

  He felt better disposed toward Emily.

  She seemed to him to be someone who went through life believing that she was herself of little worth, and so chose positions and partners that were beneath her. As if she deserved little more.

  And this would seem to make clear her inexplicable interest in Eban Barnard.

  Surely she realised that she could do better?

  Pascal felt somewhat guilty when occasionally pretend-flirting with the woman.

  It was improper to even partially lead her on in any small way.

  It was a cruelty.

  But it had seemed important to him to maintain the charade, even here in Belfast.

  It helped him efficiently compartmentalise his feelings and provided a regular psychological workout in dishonesty and charade for the necessary deceptions at home.

  *

  As for Barnard.

  He had no strong feelings one way or the other.

  The man was an enigma to him. Keeping himself to himself from the time they had met. Not rude exactly, but bordering on brusque, and always seeming like he wanted to escape back to his own room and away from the social areas.

  Pascal could hardly blame him for that.

  He himself did much the same thing, but always with a parting witticism or compelling reason to excuse his taking leave that rendered him ever the charming continental.

  Eban Barnard invariably just stood up and left.

  Often as a reaction to your entering the room.

  Social graces were not his forte.

  Barnard, he speculated, had not been an unattractive man in his day.

  An intelligent, even soulful demeanour.

  Easily 6’1”, but morbidly stooped now to 5’11”.

  He had gone to seed.

  Perhaps for some good reason.

  Some life event, or maybe a woman.

  Only once did they exchange anything approaching empathy.

  Pascal had commented on a novel by a French author he had seen Eban reading at the kitchen table. The Erl-King by Michel Tournier.

  He had expressed an interest in borrowing this, and some days later Pascal had found the book outside his door.

  On opening the paperback, a black-and-white photograph that Eban had evidently been using as a bookmark fluttered to the floor.

  Pascal imagined it would have been taken in the 1930s or early 40s.

  It showed a strikingly attractive young woman, her hair piled up high in the Hollywood film star style that was popular at that time.

  She wore a high-necked dress with a collar of false pearls and flashed a stunning smile of st
rong, white teeth.

  A black line cut the picture vertically in half.

  It was clearly an amalgam of two separate portraits.

  On the other side, a young man in military uniform.

  Jet-black hair, Brylcreemed and side-parted.

  He had an open, honest face which he set bravely and optimistically toward the world and any trials that lay ahead of him.

  Pascal had returned this photograph to Eban Barnard almost immediately and – standing at his bedroom door – sought to engage him on the identity of those depicted within it.

  As he suspected, Eban acknowledged both as his parents.

  At first he seemed quite coy and reticent, but as Pascal applied his considerable charm, the man opened up somewhat and seemed to enjoy the opportunity to speak about them.

  He said that his mother had been ‘a bit of a looker’ and that the black-and-white photograph did not do justice to her fabulous auburn hair.

  He identified the uniform that his father wore as RAF.

  Pascal was impressed.

  “Oh, your father was a fighter pilot?” he asked.

  Eban had laughed. The only time Pascal could remember him doing so in his company.

  “Yeah… pilot… right. As he would say himself, ‘piling it here and piling it there’… no, sadly he was ground crew.”

  Both laughed.

  Only then did things take a turn for the worse.

  Pascal had asked Eban if he were an only child like himself.

  A shadow seemed to pass over the man’s face, and he involuntarily took a step backward from the doorway and into his room.

  “Enjoy the book,” was all he said, before closing the door in the Frenchman’s face.

  Just before this, and looking over his shoulder into Eban’s room, Pascal had noticed a baseball bat leaning against the wall in the corner.

  When he related the exchange to Rosemary Payne and inquired of her whether their housemate played the sport, the woman tittered behind an upraised hand.

  “Oh Pascal dear… you’re so trusting. Don’t you know that there were 753 baseball bats sold in Northern Ireland last year and not one registered baseball team?”

  “Et alors?”

  She leaned in uncomfortably close, tutting. “I think he employs it for ‘home defence’… you can take the man out of the ghetto, etc.… you know?”

  Pascal didn’t know and didn’t want to know.