Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘How did you get in today?’ asked the cardinal.

  ‘John dropped me off. He had to get some phosphate.’

  ‘What’s it like in the hills?’

  ‘Deeper than here, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Did you lose any?’

  ‘It’s too soon to tell, but I don’t think so. They’re hardy boyos, the blackface. I’ve seen them carrying six inches of snow on their backs all day. It’s powerful the way they keep the heat in.’ The old man fidgeted in his pockets again.

  ‘Why will you not go back to the doctor?’

  The old man snorted. ‘He’d probably put me off the drink as well.’

  ‘Cigarettes are bad for you, everybody knows that. It’s been proved beyond any doubt.’

  ‘I’m off them nearly six months now and I’ve my nails ate to the elbow. Especially with a bottle of stout. I don’t know what to do with my hands.’

  ‘Do you not feel any better for it.’

  ‘Damn the bit. I still cough.’ The old man sipped his Guinness and topped up his glass from the remainder in the bottle. The cardinal stared over his head at the fading light of the grey sky. He could well do without this Ecumenical delegation. Of late he was not sleeping well, with the result that he tended to feel tired during the day. At meetings his eyelids were like lead and he daren’t close them because if he did the quiet rise and fall of voices and the unreasonable temperature at which they kept the rooms would lull him to sleep. It had happened twice, only for seconds, when he found himself jerking awake with a kind of snort and looking around to see if anyone had noticed. This afternoon he would much prefer to take to his bed and that was not like him. He should go and see a doctor himself, even though he knew no one could prescribe for weariness. He looked at his father’s yellowed face. Several times the old man opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. He was sitting with his fingers threaded through each other, the backs of his hands resting on his thighs. The cardinal was aware that it was exactly how he himself sometimes sat. People said they were the spit of each other. He remembered as a small child the clenched hands of his father as he played a game with him. ‘Here is the church, here is the steeple.’ The thumbs parted, the hands turned over and the interlaced fingers waggled up at him. ‘Open the doors and here are the people.’ Now his father’s hands lay as if the game was finished but they had not the energy to separate from each other. At last the old man broke the silence.

  ‘I’m trying to put everything in order at home. You know – for the big day.’ He smiled. ‘I was going through all the papers and stuff I’d gathered over the years.’ He pulled out a pair of glasses from his top pocket with pale flesh-coloured frames. The cardinal knew they were his mother’s, plundered from her bits and pieces after she died.

  ‘Why don’t you get yourself a proper pair of glasses?’

  ‘My sight is perfectly good – it’s just that there’s not much of it. I found this.’ His father fumbled into his inside pocket and pulled out two sheets of paper. He hooked the legs of the spectacles behind his ears, briefly inspected the sheets and handed one to his son.

  ‘Do you remember that?’

  The cardinal saw his own neat handwriting from some thirty years ago. The letter was addressed to his mother and father from Rome. It was an ordinary enough letter which tried to describe his new study-bedroom – the dark-brightness of the room in the midday sun when the green shutters were closed. The letter turned to nostalgia and expressed a longing to be back on the farm in the hills. The cardinal looked up at his father.

  ‘I don’t recall writing this. I remember the room but not the letter.’ His father stretched and handed him the second sheet.

  ‘It was in the same envelope as this one.’

  The cardinal unfolded the page from its creases.

  Dear Daddy,

  Don’t read this letter out. It is for you alone. I enclose another ‘ordinary letter’ for you to show Mammy because she will expect to see what I have said.

  I write to you because I want you to break it gradually to her that I am not for the priesthood. It would be awful for her if I just arrived through the door and said that I wasn’t up to it. But that’s the truth of it.

  These past two months I have prayed my knees numb asking for guidance. I have black rings under my eyes from lack of sleep. To have gone so far – five years of study and prayer – and still to be unsure. I believe now that I can serve God in a better way, a different way from the priesthood.

  I know how much it means to her. Please be gentle in preparing her.

  ‘Yes, I remember this one.’

  ‘I thought you might like to have it.’

  ‘Yes thank you, I would.’ The cardinal let the letter fall back into its original folds and set it on the occasional table beside him.

  ‘And did you prepare her?’

  ‘Yes. Until I got your next letter.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She thought it was just me – doubting Thomas she called me.’

  ‘It was a bad time. Every time I smell garlic I remember it.’ He knelt to poke the fire. ‘Another bottle of stout?’

  ‘It’s so good I won’t refuse you.’ His father finished what was left in the glass. The cardinal poured a new one and set it by the chair. The old man stared vacantly at the far wall and the cardinal looked out of the bay window. The sky was dark and heavy with snow. It was just starting to fall again, large flakes floating down and curving up when they came near to the window.

  ‘You’d better not leave it too late going home,’ he said. The old man opened his mouth to speak but stopped.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ His father knuckled his left eye. ‘Except . . .’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘I suppose I showed that letter to you . . . for a purpose.’

  ‘As if I didn’t know.’

  ‘I want to make a confession.’ Seeing his son raise an eyebrow the old man smiled. ‘Not that kind of confession. A real one. And it’s very hard to say it.’ The cardinal sat down.

  ‘Well?’

  The old man smiled a smile that stopped in the middle. Then he put his head back to rest it on the white linen chair-back.

  ‘I’ve lost the faith,’ he said. The cardinal was silent. The snow kept up an irregular ticking at the window pane. ‘I don’t believe that there is a God.’

  ‘Sorry I’m not with you. Is it that . . .?’

  ‘Don’t stop me. I’ve gone over this in my head for months now.’ The cardinal nodded silently. ‘I want to say it once and for all – and only to you. I have not believed for twenty-five years. But what could I do? A son who was looked up to by everyone around him – climbing through the ranks of the Church like nobody’s business – the youngest-ever cardinal. How could I stop going to Mass, to the sacraments? How could I? I never told your mother because it would have killed her long before her time.’

  ‘God rest her.’

  ‘Frank, there is no God. Religion is a marvellous institution, full of great, good people – but it’s founded on a lie. Not a deliberate lie – a mistake.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I know that God exists. Apart from what I feel in here,’ the cardinal pointed to his chest, ‘there are convincing proofs.’

  ‘Proofs are no good for God. That’s Euclid.’ The old man was no longer looking at his son but staring obliquely down at the fire. ‘I know in my bones that I’ll not be around too long, Frank. I had to tell somebody because I would be a hypocrite if I took it to the grave with me. I am telling you because we’re . . . because I . . . admire you.’ The cardinal shook his head and looked down at his knees.

  ‘Do you know what the amazing thing is?’ said his father. ‘I don’t miss Him. You’d think that somebody who’d been reared like me would be lost. You know – the way they taught you to talk to Jesus as a friend – the way you felt you were being looked after – the way you were told it was the be-all and the end-all, and for th
at suddenly to stop and me not even miss it. That was a shock. I’ll tell you this, Frank, when your mother died I missed her a thousand times more.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you did.’

  ‘To tell the God’s honest truth I miss the cigarettes more.’

  The cardinal smiled weakly. ‘If this was a public debate . . .’ He seemed to sag in his chair. His shoulders went down and his hands lay in his lap, palm upwards. The snow was getting heavier and finer and was hissing at the window. The old man looked over his shoulder at the fading light.

  ‘I’d better think of going. I wonder where John’s got to?’

  ‘Did he say he’d pick you up here?’

  ‘Yes.’ The old man looked his son straight in the eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to be honest with you because . . .’ he looked into his empty glass, ‘because I . . .’

  ‘You can stay the night and we can talk.’

  ‘There’s not much more to be said.’ The old man got up and stood at the window looking down. He looked so frail that his son imagined he could see through him. He remembered him at the celebration after his ordination in a hotel in Rome banging the table with a soup-spoon for order and then making a speech about having two sons, one who looked after the body’s needs and the other who looked after the soul’s. When he had finished, as always at functions, he sang ‘She Moved thro’ the Fair’. The old man looked at his watch.

  ‘Where is he?’ He put his hands in his jacket pockets, leaving his thumbs outside, and paced the alcove of the bay window.

  ‘If I may stand Pascal’s Wager on its head,’ said the cardinal, ‘if you do not believe and are as genuinely good a man as you are, then God will accept you. You will have won through even though you bet wrongly.’

  The old man shrugged his shoulders without turning. ‘The way I feel that’s neither here nor there. But this talk has done me good. I hope it hasn’t hurt you too much.’

  ‘It must have been a great burden for you. Now you have just given it to me.’ Seeing the concern in his father’s face he added, ‘But at least I have God to help me bear it. I will pray for you always.’

  ‘It’s not as black as I paint it. Over the years there was a kind of contentment. I had lost one thing but gained another. It concentrates the mind wonderfully knowing that this is all we can expect. A glass of stout tastes even better.’ The old man took one hand out of his pocket and shaded his eyes, peering out into the snow. ‘Ah there he is now. It must be bad, he has the headlights on.’

  ‘Does John know all this?’

  ‘No. You are the only one. But please don’t worry. I’ll continue as I’ve done up till now. I’ll go to mass, receive the sacraments. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.’

  ‘That’s the farthest thing from my mind.’

  The old man turned and came across the room. The cardinal still sat, his hands open. His father took him by the right hand and leaned down and kissed him with his lips on the cheekbone. The hand was light and dry as polystyrene, the lips like paper.

  The cardinal had not cried since the death of his mother and even then he had waited until he was alone but now he could not stop the tears rising.

  ‘I will see you again soon,’ said his father. Then, noticing his son’s brimming eyes, he said, ‘Frank, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘It’s not because of that,’ said the cardinal. ‘Not that at all.’

  After he had seen his father to the door and had a few words with his brother – mostly about the need for them to get home quickly before the roads became impassable – the cardinal went back to his office. He sat for a long time with his elbows on the desk and his head in his hands. He blessed himself slowly as if his right arm was weighted and said his prayer-before-work. He picked up the microphone and spoke.

  ‘The Church has a public and a private face. The Church of Authority and the Church of Compassion, the Church of Rules and the Church of Forgiveness. What the public face lacks is empathy. This was not so with Jesus. We who are within the Church must strive to narrow the gap that exists between . . . them. We know that . . .’ His voice trailed away and he switched off the microphone. Then, with an effort that made him groan, he slid from the chair to kneel on the floor. The cushioned Rexine of the chair-seat hissed slowly back to its original shape. He joined his hands in prayer so that the knuckles formed a platform for his chin. When the words would not come he lowered his hands, and his interlocked fingers were ready to waggle up at him as in the childish game. He parted his hands and laid them flat on the chair.

  In the car with John the old man sat forward in his seat watching the brightness of the snow slanting in the headlights.

  ‘Did you do what you had to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye – it’s all in the back,’ said John. ‘What do I smell?’

  ‘Stout.’

  ‘The odour of sanctity.’

  The windscreen wipers, on intermittent, purred and slapped. In front of them the road was white except for two yellow-dark ruts.

  ‘That snow’s thick.’

  ‘It’ll get worse as we climb,’ said John.

  ‘Just follow the tracks of the boyo that’s gone before and we’ll be all right.’

  From then on there was silence as John drove slowly and with great care up into the mountains.

  THE DRAPERY MAN

  I RISE EVERY day and walk the half mile up the hill to Jordan’s place with his dog at my heels. I have to take it slowly, for the sake of the dog. It is a small brown and white short-haired terrier which he christened Pangur-Ban. Each evening I take her home with me to prevent Jordan, as he says, ‘taking the air on the patio and tramping in shite, then walking it throughout the house.’ She waddles and her tongue hangs out. Her paws slip on the stone mosaic footpath. The dog is as old in dog years as Jordan.

  Today he has asked me to bring tennis balls. I have bought half a dozen packed like eggs in a plastic container which crackles as I walk up the hill.

  I used to live with Jordan until things became intolerable. Then he rented a place for me, small but with a good view over the Atlantic. I am on my own when I want to be, which suits me. It suits him as well because a blind man needs to live on his own. He can remember where the furniture is, where he last set something down. The only drawback, Jordan tells me, is that he will probably die on his own, and that frightens him. He is in his seventies, has a bad heart and is expecting the worst.

  He is sitting in a director’s canvas chair in the middle of the converted barn tilting his head back to the light waiting for me. As soon as he hears the door he shouts, ‘Here, girl.’ Pangur-Ban barks twice and runs to him. Even if she doesn’t bark he can hear her pads and claws on the stone floor. She wags her tail so much that her whole body seems to move. He scratches her head.

  ‘And my drapery man.’ I kiss him like we were father and son and lift the dog up on his knee. He caresses the back of my thigh.

  He laughs, ‘This morning when I awoke I had a little stiffness in my joints. One in particular.’ He laughs. ‘Isn’t that good at my age?’

  ‘I bet it didn’t last long,’ I say, moving away from him.

  He is on edge – he wants to start a new painting even though we haven’t finished the previous three. I have spent the last few days making canvases to his specifications – one seven feet by fourteen and then a smaller one, six by three.

  ‘Give the big one a wash of turps and burnt sienna – as dilute as possible.’

  Before he went blind completely he would inspect my colour mixing. He would tell me equal parts viridian and cobalt with just a smear of black and I would mix it for him. He then would bend over the tray, like a jeweller, squinting with his one good eye at the colour. ‘Yes it’s right,’ or, ‘More black.’ It was about this time that he began to wear the glasses with the mudguards at the sides.

  Since he has totally lost his sight he uses other things to denote colour. ‘The blue vase beside the window
– the shadowed side of it,’ or, ‘The maroon cover of Marius the Epicurean.’ I begin to search the bookshelves.

  ‘Who’s it by?’

  ‘Pater.’ He gives a little sigh. ‘Walter Pater – an English fuckin hooligan, if ever there was one.’

  I find it and hold it up to the light. Jordan says, ‘As a book it’s rubbish – but it’s the right colour.’

  Occasionally he uses previous pictures of his own as a reference.

  ‘I want the umber to be exactly what I used in “Harbinger Three”.’ And I have to try and remember! Reproductions are only the merest approximation. Colour slides are better but still their colour values are not accurate. Sometimes, when he is being particularly difficult or pernickety, I have to admit to cheating. I will tell him I remember the colour and have got it exactly. He has no way of knowing.

  I change into what was a navy blue boiler suit. It is japped and stippled with every colour he has made me use. Because of the heat the only other thing I wear is my underpants. In the old days this used to drive him wild. I squeeze a fat worm of burnt sienna into a roller tray and drown it in turps.

  He uses masking tape a lot. That way he can feel with his fingers what he can see in his mind.

  ‘Three verticals of white, the three-quarter inch, spaced like cricket stumps.’ I peel off the tape when the paint has dried, leaving livid white.

  Sometimes he will say, ‘Let me make a shape,’ and approach the canvas with a stick of charcoal. He will draw big and simple out of the darkness of his head.

  He has an amazing visual memory. To divide up his canvases he will refer me to a book of Flags of the World.

  ‘The three bands should be like the South Vietnamese flag stood on its end,’ or, ‘The band at the bottom should be as broad as the blue stripe in the Israeli flag.’

  The work is as hard as painting a room. He sits listening to the click of the roller and my breathing, fondling the bones of the dog’s head. Sometimes her upright ears flick like a cat’s when touched.

  When the canvas is covered I sit down for a break but he becomes impatient with me.