by Maeve Binchy
They talked late into the night. Tomasz was full of theories. Maybe Brian's kind manner had given Eileen some sort of false encouragement? But that couldn't explain these e-mails and text messages that she claimed to have got from him. Possibly she was a reformer, someone who had to change other people. That might be why she felt free to walk through his house commenting and criticizing.
Yes. But it still didn't explain the messages.
“Perhaps she is a mad person,” Tomasz said eventually.
“Yes, I think that must be it,” Brian agreed sadly.
They had another mug of tea and sighed over it all.
“Maybe you could get in touch with her family?” Tomasz suggested.
“I don't think she is close to them. She talks about her father giving her an allowance. She never says anything about them. Any of them.”
“And does she live alone?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You don't know much about her, Brian.”
“You're right, Tomasz. I hardly know anything about her at all.”
Johnny was in the heart clinic doing cardiac exercises with a group of patients. The group included Kitty Reilly, who kept insisting that any good health or improvement was due to the direct intervention of some saint or other and blamed the world in general for ignoring this saint whenever she was not feeling great. There was the kindly Judy Murphy, who was now so fit that she was like an assistant to Johnny, helping the wild, flailing limbs of people like Lar to stay in some way contained. Bobby Walsh with his anxious, sad face, said that he would do anything to get more strength in his arms, so Johnny had put him for a sustained period on the arm machine. Everyone was getting along fine at their various stations when Clara came in.
“An urgent phone call for you, Johnny,” she said.
Johnny was surprised. Who could be ringing him at the heart clinic? His mobile phone was on answer. He could have got the message later.
“I'm sorry, Clara. I don't know what it's about.”
“It's a priest, a Father Flynn. He sounds very distressed. Go and deal with it, Johnny, I'll supervise the class here.”
“Oh, good, we can relax a bit now that the sergeant major has gone,” said Lar with some relief.
“Oho, you haven't seen me in action. I'm a devil for the treadmill ,” Clara Casey said. “You'll be praying for Johnny to come back, believe me.”
“Hello, Brian, how's tricks?”
“Not good, Johnny. That Eileen came up to me after the Polish Mass today and said I'd asked her out tonight and that she was buying a slinky black number.”
“What?”
“A dress, I think she meant.”
“I know that's what she meant. But you didn't ask her out, did you?”
“Of course I didn't. So what am I to do, Johnny?”
“I think it's a sign you should give up being a druid once and for all. That's what it's saying to me.”
“I'm serious, Johnny.”
“So am I. If you can pull good-looking birds while you're inside the system, think what you could do when you shake yourself free.”
There was a silence.
“I'm sorry, Brian. She's a nutter, that's all.”
“Probably, yes.”
“So treat her as one. Ignore her.”
“That's hardly the way to deal with disturbed people.”
“No? Then get yourself a slinky black number too and hit the town.”
“Sorry for having interrupted your work.” Brian's voice was clipped.
“Jesus, Brian, I'll buy you a pint at lunchtime. Try to put old looney tunes out of your mind.”
“Sure. Fine,” said Father Brian Flynn and hung up.
Ania watched Johnny as he too put the phone down.
“Does poor Father Brian have problems?” she asked.
“Yeah, he does a bit.” Johnny didn't want to tell any secrets and start gossip.
“He is such a kind man and he lives so simply. I iron a few shirts for him. I see how little he has in his flat.”
“Would you iron my shirts, Ania?”
“Yes, but you would have to pay me. To do work for a holy priest is an honor, a privilege, not for a gymnastic person like you.”
“Your English is getting better every day, Ania,” Johnny said.
“Well, if you lived in a place where they only spoke Polish you too would learn the language,” Ania said to him.
“Oh, no, I couldn't learn your language. It's all Ws and -Zs.”
“Sorry for that.” Johnny came back to the exercise room. Bobby hadn't fallen over anything and some of them were moving at a brisker pace.
“Your friend, the priest, is he all right? He sounded very stressed,” Clara inquired.
“He's stressed, all right. He has a stalker, a mad one altogether. Keeps claiming that he's asking her out. Poor Brian wouldn't do that in a million years. He must be the only one in the Church who has always kept the rules.”
“There are a few, certainly,” Clara agreed.
“He wants to know what to do,” Johnny said.
“Only one thing he can do.” To Clara it was simple. “He has to go to the Guards.”
“Are you out of your mind? Go to the Guards?” Brian said to him in the pub as they had a pint and a sandwich.
“They'd stop her antics. What's she doing now?”
“She's showing everyone these text messages and e-mails that I am meant to have sent her.”
“But they weren't sent on your phone?” Johnny was bewildered.
“Apparently they were. She showed me. It was my mobile number on the top. I don't know how it works. Could she have transferred it or something?”
“I don't think so. Could she have found your phone and borrowed it, so to speak?”
“I don't see how. I nearly always have it on me.”
“And about the e-mail?”
“It came from the Internet café down the road where I do my e-mail.”
“And would she have known your password?”
“No. She made a great play out of telling me to keep it to myself when she was teaching me. She said she would look away when I was putting it in.”
“Maybe she didn't look away at all. Brian, she's unhinged. We do need to tell the Guards.”
“I can't land her in it like that. I'd have to tell her first. It's only fair.”
“She hasn't played fair with you.”
“No, but that's different.” As usual, Brian found excuses for people.
“Because she isn't playing with the full deck?”
“Something like that. I will have to warn her, then maybe it will stop.”
“And maybe we'll see little pink pigs flying over the Dublin Mountains,” said Johnny, who was not of a naturally optimistic frame of mind.
It wasn't hard to find Eileen Edwards. She was having a coffee at the social center, talking animatedly to the girls, telling them about a new handbag she had bought. There were only thirty-six of them in Ireland. She had stood in line for it in Grafton Street. The girls listened, fascinated. Eileen came from another world. A world they were dying to join.
“Can I have a word? There has been a mix-up about arrangements,” Brian said and sat down at a table in full view of all the others. Eileen was not going to claim that they had a secret meeting or anything.
“Oh, well, if it's private,” she simpered at him.
“No, it's not private. It's just that you made a mistake. There was no arrangement to meet you this evening.”
“I have your text message.” She flashed her phone at him triumphantly.
“Well, that's what I mean. Somebody must be playing games, because I didn't write that message you showed me this morning.”
“It came from your phone, Brian,” she said, her eyes dancing.
“That's what we are going to have to investigate. The Guards will help us find the solution.”
“The Guards?” Her eyes widened.
“Yes, they have
people who can trace these calls and e-mails. We have to find out what's happening.”
“And you are willing to let the Guards know all about our …relationship?”
“We don't have a relationship, Eileen.”
“No? They might be surprised how I know all about your bedroom and the posters for Real Madrid and Sunderland on the walls, the bathroom with the big, old-fashioned water heater, the lumpy sofa in the sitting room. How could I know all these things if you haven't invited me into your flat?”
“Eileen!” His big, honest face was aghast at her cunning.
“No use saying my name like that, Brian. You told me that I was special, that you would get released from your vows to marry me. You introduced me to your friend James O'Connor, who was an ex-priest …”
“I introduced you because you came and stood by us for so long in Corrigans I had to do something. Listen to me, Eileen—stop this thing, whatever it is, before it gets started. You're a beautiful young woman. You can have a life of your own, should have a life of your own.”
“You always tell me I am beautiful,” she said dreamily, “but that's not what I want to hear. I want to hear when we can be open about what we have.”
“What we have? We have nothing, Eileen. Come to your senses, for heaven's sake.”
“You've committed yourself to me. There's no way you are wriggling out of it now.”
“You know this is nonsense—” he began.
“Well, tell the Guards, then. See if I care.” She looked very young and vacant as she spoke.
“I will tell them, Eileen, for your sake as well as mine. You need help.”
“Not from the Guards I don't. Anyway, they won't believe you. Just another priest with a panic attack. That's what they'll think.”
“Suppose they do believe me and give you a caution,” he said.
“Then I'll go to the newspapers. The way I was treated here is shameful. Building up my hopes, promising me the sun, moon and stars, and when you had your way with me, just backing out.”
“Eileen, I beg you, you're not well…”
“No, of course I am not well if you throw everything back in my face and take away my future.”
“But your parents, Eileen. Your family—what would they say? Can't they help you? If I could meet them and explain.”
“Nothing you would say would make any difference to them. They would see you as a priest who abused your position. So, what time are we meeting tonight and where are you taking me?”
“We are not meeting. I am taking you nowhere.”
“Oh, well, have it your way, but if they find my body in the Lif-fey, you can be quite sure they'll find the whole explanation in my apartment. Details. Pictures. Everything.”
Brian sighed, “Eileen, the Guards wouldn't give that kind of thing to the tabloid papers. It's just the ravings of someone who is a bit upset. Disturbed even.”
“Oh, well, then, I had better go straight to the papers,” she said cheerfully.
“There's nothing between us, Eileen—”
“You're right. There's not now. Only a lot of hurt and disappointment,” she said.
“There never was anything. Anything at all.”
“Yes, I can see. It's all tidied away for you and you expect the same from me.”
He spoke gently now. “There was nothing to tidy away. I beg you, think back, think clearly.”
“I'm very clear, thank you. Crystal clear. You've moved on, found someone else. But I owe it to her and the many others to go public on this.” And she picked up her new handbag and flounced out of the coffee area.
Brian went back to his flat. He was dead tired. He needed to lie down and rest. Maybe an idea would come to him. Wasn't it sad to have lived this long and have no one to turn to? His own mother didn't recognize him. His sister would only say, “I warned you!” He couldn't ask the bishop, as His Grace would undoubtedly think that Brian had been somehow inappropriate.
He thought suddenly of James O'Connor, who had been ordained with him all those years ago. James was always so definite and certain. He had wanted to be a priest, a missionary even, but then he met this woman and he wanted to be a married man. Once he knew that was what he wanted, he set about it without a backward glance. He even managed to convince his parents that what he was doing was right. James was the man to consult.
And Johnny, who was always such a great, solid mass of common sense. Johnny had no time for nonsense. He once told Brian that he had never dreamed. He actually didn't know what people were talking about when they said they dreamed of this or that. He might well know what to do. Maybe they would be able to find a way out. As he was considering calling him, Brian got a phone call from Neddy Nolan.
“The most extraordinary thing, Brian. You know the way your mother often has a problem remembering who people are.”
“Yeah, I do. Mainly Judy and myself.”
“Well, she's convinced that you have left the priesthood and got married. She said she got a phone call telling her that your wedding is in Dublin next month and she wants to go to it.”
“God Almighty.”
“Well, I'm only telling you this, Brian, because she told Father Tomasz and he hit the roof. I tried to explain to Father that poor Mrs. Flynn has trouble sorting out fact from a kind of dream world, but I didn't do a good job. Father Tomasz has been here all morning asking me who could possibly have telephoned your mother. Then he kept saying ‘bad bad woman’ and assured me he did not mean your mother, so I didn't know what to do, you see …”
Brian Flynn could see poor Neddy confused and trying to do what was best.
“So I asked Clare and she said I should call you myself. If you were getting married, then you wouldn't mind us knowing and if you weren't, then you'd know what to do.”
“The answer is no to everything, Neddy. No, I'm not getting married and no, I don't have any idea what to do.”
“Tomasz?”
“Is that you, Brian? You heard?”
“Did she really ring and ask to speak to my mother?”
“Yes, she must have. The carer answered the phone and brought it in to Mrs. Flynn. This can't go on.”
“I know it can't.”
“Are you ready to talk to the police yet?”
“I'm ready,” Brian said. But he wasn't ready to go alone. He needed an ally. And yet he himself was meant to be a priest of God, a man with strength and confidence. Where was it when he needed it most? And to think he had once thought it was hard and complicated living in Rossmore.
He took the train to visit his mother. He held her hand in his and said that once a priest, always a priest. The lady on the phone was just confused. It was a lady, wasn't it?
“Yes, a lady called Eileen. She said she was going to marry you, that you had got your papers from Rome and didn't want to tell me in case I would be upset.”
“And what did you say, Mother?”
“I said I was happy to see you well out of the priesthood. But I pointed out that you were engaged to me, had given me a ring and that she was to get any ideas of her marrying you out of her head.”
Brian Flynn realized with a sense of defeat that within one paragraph his mother had slipped from knowing who he was to believing he was his father. There would be no further details about the phone call from Eileen. All was resentment now. Eileen was the enemy. The threat who might take his long-dead father away from the marital home.
Wearily he came home, back to Dublin, and let himself into the flat. There was a light on in the bedroom. He opened the door of the room and there on the bed was a bunch of red roses. And a note. The note enclosed a picture of Eileen lying there among those cushions with the soccer posters on the wall in what was undeniably his bedroom. Her letter said simply:
Thank you for letting me be part of your life, your heart and your bed. I had always looked forward with hope and happiness to our future together. Perhaps it will still come to pass.
Love always,
&n
bsp; Eileen
There was no longer any time to wait for allies. Brian Flynn left his flat and walked purposefully to the Guards station. It wasn't going to be easy, but it had to be done. He was right in that it wasn't going to be easy. The desk sergeant was a small, foxy-looking man who had seen it all in his time. Priests wandering from the straight and narrow was part of the territory nowadays, he said. Often it was no more or no less than a vocation having ended, a new phase of life having begun.
With a very short fuse Brian listened to this man spouting nonsense.
“But where do you stand, Sergeant, when there isn't one word of truth in these allegations? This woman has told my friends, she has told everyone at the social center where I work and now even my mother, who is suffering from partial dementia down in Rossmore, that she and I are a number, an affair, even an impending marriage. Not one word of this is true.”
The sergeant glanced at the photograph of Eileen Edwards in the priest's bed. The e-mail he was alleged to have sent to this woman, the list of names and addresses: Father Tomasz, James O'Connor and Johnny Pearse.
The glance said everything and hinted that despite the filing of a report, nothing was going to be done. The glance said this was a priest who had had a fling and had now changed his mind. For no reason Brian Flynn felt as if he were going to cry. He hadn't cried for a long time. But now everything seemed to be beyond him, like a swimmer heading for shore when shore was too far away. He might not make it. Perhaps he had encouraged this woman. A tear fell down on the sergeant's desk.
The sergeant was not entirely unfeeling.
“Maybe you should just go home now. Think about it and if it's still preying on your mind, then you should get a lawyer and write to the young lady in question …”
Brian scooped up all his belongings and returned them to the canvas bag he used for his shopping. It had a logo on it: TAKE CARE OF THE EARTH. As he left the Guards station, Brian thought to himself that he was doing his best to take care of the earth, but it wasn't working out very well.
“Ania, will you come for a pint in Corrigans tonight?” Johnny asked when Ania came into his cardiac fitness room with the forms the patients were meant to fill out every session.
