by Maeve Binchy
No, of course it didn’t matter to her, not even a little bit, about whether this laicization happened or not. But since it mattered so much to Sean it had become important to her too. She wished it to happen to please him. Then they could get on with their lives.
This was a minefield. Angela had to tread carefully. Where did they see the rest of their lives? Shuya didn’t really know. They did love Italy of course, and anyone with children would love to be here, the people adored all children. But after? Sean would want to teach in a school, possibly. He was so clever, and he could teach so well. He would want to teach and live in a school at the same time. Then Denis could go to the same school and there would be a school nearby for Laki.
And where would this school be? In Italy or Japan or where? Shuya didn’t know exactly where, but it would be somewhere in Ireland. She wasn’t sure if Sean knew himself, but of course it would be Ireland.
She began to explain to Shuya about Ireland, and about Castlebay. She was never interrupted as she had been by Sean. Shuya came out with no roaring denials and assurances that things had changed now. Shuya listened as if she were being told a tale from a far country. She listened as if Angela knew what it was like because that was her land. She was passive during the recounting of the struggle to get the money for Sean’s ordination, and the moment of glory at his first Mass and then his first Mass in Castlebay, and even his return seven years ago for his father’s funeral. So passive that Angela wondered if she understood any of it. Angela tried to explain that despite what all the clergy in Rome said to each other, it made not a bit of difference back home, whether a priest had been laicized or not. Even if his marriage was as white as the driven snow in the eyes of God and state, in the eyes of the community it could never be accepted.
She begged Shuya to ask her questions, to challenge what she said. Shuya said there was no reason to challenge anything. Obviously Angela must be telling the truth, but did this mean that Sean should never go back to Ireland? Was this what Angela was trying to explain?
Yes. That was it. That’s what she had been trying to say to Sean in her letters, and again when she had met him in Rome. Had he not told her this? Oh he had told her, but then when Angela had agreed to come to see the family on Tuesday, and come back again Wednesday and today, he realized that he had been forgiven and that it would all be all right. He had hoped that this would happen and now it had.
Denis came back with his leaves. He was about to lay them out for discussion and identification. Angela passed a hand wearily over her forehead, she was in deeper than ever now. Her visit had been the positive green light that Sean had been waiting for. Was she ever going to get out of this mire of misunderstanding or was she walking everybody further into it?
For the first time Shuya seemed to take some action of her own. She suggested that Denis and Laki have their lunch and siesta in the house across the courtyard. Denis felt shortchanged.
“Your aunt Angela will be here when you come back,” Shuya soothed, marching them over the cobblestones, bringing some of Angela’s sweets as a bribe. It was the house of a gardener and his wife, who also helped with the sewing in the linen room. When the gardener went to market his wife had a young lover in and on those occasions Shuya took her children: so it was a fair exchange. Angela was taken aback by the racy life in the servants’ quarters and the casual way that Shuya had accepted it. But it worked in her favor and she was not going to criticize.
She seemed younger, stronger, when she came back and sat down. It was as if her listening had a different quality. She scented a problem where she had thought there was none, she wanted to hear, to learn and to see what could be done. This time she talked back, she asked questions, mainly unanswerable ones. Like why, if these people were very religious, would they not recognize and believe in a document signed by the Pope saying that Sean was released from his vows? Or why would people who say they follow a rule which is based on love for each other not give that love? Angela was helpless. But because she didn’t bluster, because she didn’t defend and make excuses, the conversation never became angry. In the end Angela asked about Japan: wasn’t there some code of honor that they had too, some kind of thing that an outsider might think was odd? Shuya paused. They had ko, which was a sort of filial piety, but it wasn’t the same as what was being asked for here. With ko you had to be docile to your parents and for a woman in particular docile to your mother-in-law. But they didn’t have anything which meant hiding the truth, and no notion that hiding the truth could ever be a good thing in itself.
The sun came in through the slats in the shutters and Angela felt a great sadness and tiredness. In Rome, Sean was bent over still more documents with still more clerics. In Castlebay the neighbors would have cleared away her mother’s lunch things. It would still be cold and windy. Up at the convent Mother Immaculata would be getting the timetable ready for the summer term. In Amalfi, Kevin and Emer would possibly be holding hands after lunch in a restaurant by the harbor or be on a boat to Capri. In O’Brien’s shop Clare would have told them about the scholarship exam and how she couldn’t wait until Miss O’Hara got back to hear the details. And here she was with this woman discussing honesty and truth and hypocrisy. She felt as if she would like to curl up and go to sleep for a month, waking up only when everything else was sorted out. She was thinking about this so wistfully that she almost missed Shuya’s words.
“I suppose then that the best thing is for us not to go to Ireland at this time. It is best for Sean to alter some parts of his dream?”
“What?”
“For him to change his hopes about going to Ireland at this time.”
“Do you think he will? He’s so set in his belief that it will be all right. I wore myself out and he didn’t change an inch, not an inch.”
“Well, I will explain to him.”
“Shuya, how can you explain? He will only think that I tried to browbeat you or go behind his back or something.”
“But that is not so.”
“I know it’s not so. I’d have said every word in front of him, but he’d have interrupted me a thousand times, I don’t understand this, I haven’t understood the other, Moral Law, Canon Law . . .”
“I know.”
She didn’t dare to hope that this strange ugly woman with the lined face and the clothes of a beggar should be able to convince her big handsome brother of anything. “Could you . . . ? I think it would make everyone happier. Not just my mother, Sean’s mother. But other people as well. They would be happier not to have to face it. I find that hard to say, especially since I know you and I know the children. I don’t think it’s fair or it’s right, but I do think it’s the way it is.”
Shuya nodded. “I think it’s the way it is,” she said.
There was a silence.
Could it be possible?
“What would you do if you didn’t come to Ireland?” It was tentative.
“Stay here I suppose until the laicization, and after that . . .” She shrugged. “I feel that may be a long time anyway, if it ever happens.”
“I suppose he’ll keep trying.”
“He says it was like an official contract with his God. It was made formally, it must be ended formally. Like a business deal. His God wouldn’t wriggle out of it, neither must he.”
“But in a way God did wriggle out of it, if He took Sean’s vocation away.” Angela was trying desperately to be fair.
“The hardest bit is going to be the letters from your mother.”
“I know. I know. What should I do? Should I not post them, should I not write them? Will I just write a sort of account of her instead?”
“It’s hard,” Shuya said. “And on you it is most hard of all.”
Angela looked up, surprised and touched at this sympathy. Her brother had not sounded so soft and so understanding.
“I manage,” she said with a weak grin.
“Yes, but you manage alone. You manage without your sisters in England. Nobody
has mentioned them because obviously there is nothing they can or will do to help. You manage without the help of anyone in your town, your priest or your friends. And you do not complain, you spend your teacher’s salary to come to see us even though you think that we should not be here, and that Sean should still be a priest.”
Angela couldn’t find words. She stammered, “It’s not . . . it’s not that easy on you. You have nothing either.”
Shuya’s plain face smiled, a smile of disbelief. “But I have everything. I have everything in the world,” she said. And on cue two figures started staggering across the yard, Denis weighed down under still more leaves and Laki, her face a red rim of pleasure from the tomato sauce she had eaten on her spaghetti lunch.
She came again on the Friday. Sean was still high with hope—the two priests he had met yesterday were really helpful. They had shown him how things could be simplified. Go for the direct route always, they had said. Don’t be misled, don’t go up side alleys. Angela’s heart fell when she listened to him. She had been foolish to get buoyed up with hope that Shuya would change his mind. Then he said, “Shuya and I were talking last night. She was saying something very interesting. She has the most extraordinary insights, you know.”
Shuya was up in the Signora’s linen room at the time having insights about hemming frayed pillowcases and darning perfect small darns in white silk.
“What did she say?”
“It was about the difference between country and town. It’s the same in Japan. It’s the same here. In the country people are slower to see what’s happening in the world—they resist change. It takes so much longer to persuade people in the country of anything. It’s not their fault of course.”
She listened with a new patience. Perhaps she even looked like Shuya now, her hands folded, waiting for him to get to the point.
“Things will change of course, but in their own time. You can’t rush people and expect them to go at your pace. In terms of absolutes you might be wise to hold off until the growth of acceptance is sufficient . . . until the ground swell of opinion has become so strong that there will be no doubt and no confusion. That way the hurt is lessened, the debate is less sharp and the lines of love rather than the letter of the law would mold people’s attitudes . . .”
She closed her eyes with relief. In his convoluted way he was telling her that he wasn’t going back to Castlebay.
They were all sad to be leaving Rome on the Saturday, and Father Flynn was at the airport to wave them off as he had welcomed them ten days before.
“It worked out all right, did it?” he said to Angela when there was no one else around—the others were all dealing with luggage.
“What?”
“What you had to do, sort out?”
She looked at him hard. Another Irish priest in Rome. Sean talking his head off everywhere he went about it all. It was only too possible that Father Flynn knew, and had known from the start. But she was going to admit nothing.
“Oh, I sorted myself out a great few days. I really love Italy. I’m heartbroken to leave, like they all are.”
“You might come back?”
“It would cost a fortune.”
“I’m sure it would be appreciated,” he said and let it drop. He was laughing and smiling and wondering what he would do next Tuesday when he had no big important wedding to officiate at.
The journey home was something she forgot. She must have talked to people, she must have said her goodbyes and gone to the station to get the train home. She caught the bus to Castlebay: Clare was waiting at the stop. At a hundred yards away Angela knew she had won the scholarship and she started to cry.
She was crying as she got off the bus, but Clare put a finger to her lips.
“Don’t say anything, Miss O’Hara. Don’t say anything. Only you and I know. Not Mother Immaculata yet, not Mam or Dad. I wanted to tell you first.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am. I can’t tell you how glad.”
Clare picked up the teacher’s bag. “I’ll walk you home. We can talk when there aren’t people looking at us.”
She was right. It would only take half an hour for it to be known everywhere that the two of them were crying and embracing.
They walked up the golf-course road, Clare bubbling about how the nun, the very nice nun in the town convent, had asked her to telephone the day before the official results, just in case there was any news. And Clare had telephoned this morning and yes, the nun had said it was definite, her Mother Superior was going to ring Mother Immaculata tomorrow. It was absolutely definite.
They had got to the O’Hara house and Angela let herself in.
“Do you want to be on your own . . . a bit?” Clare held back.
“Of course, I don’t. Mother! Mother, I’m back.”
The old woman was sitting in the chair and her face lit up. “I was hoping you’d get the bus. Was the plane very frightening? Did you have holy water with you?”
“I was laden down with it. Mother, I’ve got great news for you. The best, the best.” She had both her hands on her mother’s shoulders as she spoke, and suddenly she remembered that for her mother the best news might be the imminent return of Father Sean from the mission fields. Hastily she jumped in. “Clare’s done it, Mother. She’s won it. Isn’t that bloody marvelous!”
Angela threw herself down at the table and sobbed as if her heart would break. The tears that had never come in Rome came in a torrent. Her shoulders shook.
Clare and Mrs. O’Hara looked at each other in alarm. Nothing could be heard but the heavy sobs from the table. Mrs. O’Hara reached out but was too far away to comfort Angela. Clare didn’t know whether she should move towards the teacher or not. Tentatively she touched her on the arm and patted it awkwardly.
“Don’t cry,” she said. “Please.”
From the chair came support. “Oh, Angela, please stop that crying. We should be delighted for Clare. There was no crying in this house when you got the scholarship.”
Angela raised her head and saw the two stricken faces. Her own face was blotched and stained. But she found what they were both looking for, her good humor and her strength.
“It’s the journey, and the shock and the pleasure, the sheer sheer pleasure of it. Well done, Clare, well done. May this be the first of many triumphs for you.” Her smile blazed out through the tears and suddenly Clare wanted to cry. But that would be ridiculous. Instead she did something much more ridiculous, she ran into Miss O’Hara’s arms and together they swung around the room shouting with excitement. Mrs. O’Hara clapped her hands in her chair and they laughed like people who had long forgotten what they were laughing at.
Part Two
1957~1960
CLARE HATED SHARING THE ROOM WITH CHRISSIE WHEN SHE came home from school during the holidays. Chrissie’s clothes smelled of sweat; she always had stockings rolled up and stuffed into shoes. The dressing table was covered with spilled powder and hair clips and combs with tufts of Chrissie’s curly hair caught in the teeth. She used Clare’s bed as a place to store her clothes and only very grudgingly removed them when the occupant returned from boarding school at the end of term.
Clare thought almost nostalgically of her small clean white bed in the dormitory, of the chair where her uniform lay neatly waiting for the morrow, with the stockings folded on top like a cross. It was always nice and airy in the dormitory, freezing sometimes, actually, but there was never that close smell of bodies that you had sharing a room with Chrissie. Worst of all were the blood-spattered white coats. It had never been defined who was to wash these coats and where the washing was to be done, but while it was in dispute two or more of them often festered on the floor. Clare would hide them under other garments so that she didn’t have to speculate what part of what dead animal had bled over Chrissie’s middle. She looked around her in disgust.
She should feel sorry for Chrissie—she knew this—but it didn’t make it any easier. It was a desperate life standin
g up in Dwyers’ butcher’s shop and having to hack great bits of carcasses of dead sheep and cows. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and it couldn’t do her any good at the dance when fellows asked where she worked. Clare had suggested more than once that she try to work somewhere else. The chemist maybe? And be with that old bore Mr. Murphy, Mr. Murphy, a daily communicant who kept his own daughters under lock and key? No thank you very much. Or the hotel even? And be a skivvy passing round dinner plates or washing up for Young Mrs. Dillon and her mad old mother-in-law—no, thank you, not even if Clare was friendly with them. Thank you, Chrissie would prefer to earn her own wages and be done with the place as soon as she left it in the evening.
There had been a hope that she could have used the room they had called the Boys’ Room, the downstairs room where Tommy and Ned used to sleep all those years ago when they lived at home. But Mam and Dad said that room had to be used as a storeroom now, and since the business was far better than ever before, a storeroom was needed. The new caravan park up on the Far Cliff Road meant a great deal of trade. People in caravans had to buy everything; they didn’t do much cooking so it was mainly cold ham and tins of things. When they trekked across from the caravan field O’Brien’s was the first shop they met, perched as it was at the top of the steps going down to the sea. Very few of them went any farther, and then the caravan people came back again to stock up for the day on the beach, and on the way home they would buy things for their tea. It was all great but it did mean that the Boys’ Room was gone as a possible place to sleep, and Clare felt she must keep the rows to a minimum, only fight over things that are really important.
Miss O’Hara and Clare had another secret, another scholarship, another overambitious project. Clare O’Brien was going to go for the county scholarship. One student in the entire county would be offered a place in University College, Dublin, to study Arts, to do a B.A. degree. It was called the Murray Prize. A Mr. Murray long dead had left his money for this, and the competition was fierce. Usually a bright boy from one of the seminaries won it, but three years ago it had been a girl, a very brainy girl whose father was professor already. Clare and Miss O’Hara had decided to take it on.
