‘
What exactly are you
saying our group should do?’ asked one woman. ‘The same as last
night?’
Absolutely, I thought to myself.
‘
This may sound a bit
naff,’ Mike said, ‘but I wondered about the BDFA holding a candle
vigil outside the South Bank. Just a silent, peaceful protest with
some clear information - maybe a flier - to give out to people who
are going in to eat, saying why we’re there and what this means to
Maori. May be even more effective than what the other groups have
done. What do you think?’
Once again the members of the BDFA agreed.
Father Mike clearly carried a lot of clout.
‘
Can’t hurt to try,’ said a
voice. I realised it was Dad’s again.
‘
Right,’ said Mike. ‘I’ll
organise the candles.’ More laughter. He went on. ‘Can I have some
volunteers to record the names of those who are going to be
available over the next week and on what days and a few more to
ring round confirming a date when we can get the most people
there.’
People stirred, got up off the hard wooden
chairs and formed a queue in front of the desk at which someone had
already started to write down names.
‘
What d’you think?’ I asked
Chris. ‘Shall we put our names down for the candle vigil. I’d like
to.’
‘
I’m game.’ he said. ‘As
long as we don’t sing any hymns.’
‘
Father Mike said silent,’
I reminded him. ‘And,’ I whispered to him, ‘next time candles for
us might be a nice idea as well.’
Candles
It was a really special evening. I was so
pleased we had joined the protest. I was doing something
worthwhile. Our relationship aside, I hadn’t
felt so energised for ages. And, what was more, this was another
thing Chris and I were doing together.
We huddled on the cold steps of the South
Bank, exhaling frosty breaths at regular intervals, holding candles
in gloved hands, lighting the way for the restaurant diners as they
climbed the steps.
Father Mike was there of course, and Dad.
Mum had joined us, too.
None of us said much, we mostly kept the
silent vigil as agreed, passing out leaflets which most people
accepted. Some read our statement, a few even turned around and
went somewhere else to eat that night.
The candlelight reminded me of Gran’s
funeral. After an hour or so I fell into a contemplative mood and
my mind drifted off. I thought about the history I’d learnt at
school over the years. About the ways in which mistakes kept on
being repeated, how the new ones papered over the old, how
civilisations vanished as they were overrun by invaders or
overtaken by events, how human structures fell and got built over,
about the way in which time spiralled, curving inwards and
outwards, forwards and backwards seemingly forever, into eternity;
and the cold hard fact that there were endings as well as
beginnings.
Gran felt very close that night. Was it just
my imagination or was she actually there? I couldn’t help but hope
it was Gran, out among the wintry stars. Her notion of turning
points seemed particularly meaningful then, as was her comment that
people’s lives needed colour. Mine had developed a lot more of that
as the year had gone on. There had been several turning points and
more to come.
I wished I could have talked to you again
Gran. I wished I’d talked to you more. All those stories in your
head, I only ever heard a tiny fraction of them. They’ve all gone
with you, to wherever you are.
I’d asked myself, not that long ago, did I
still believe in a life after death.
That night I decided I did. What choice did
I have? If there was only this, only us and the rest empty
infinity, what was the point? I knew what Chris’s rational response
would be. I’d thought it myself the day we buried Gran.
Dead and gone
Life’s a song
So sing it while you
can
.
But I couldn’t help it.
Not all things
had
to be rational. Love wasn’t, for one.
That night all I knew was that I wanted the
song of my life to go on forever. I didn’t know that it would. I
could never know, not at least until the physical part of it was
over.
Big Bang.
Crunch time.
Judgement Day.
In the end there could be only hope or
not-hope, belief or not-belief, faith or not-faith.
Never proof.
Chris broke the long silence when he said,
straight into my ear so I was the only one who could hear him, ‘One
day we’ll visit the Tower of the Winds and we’ll secretly add our
own small piece of graffiti.’
‘
Why?’ I whispered back to
him.
‘
So we can live forever
even if neither of us believes in an afterlife,’ he
replied.
‘
Chris . . .’ I was about
to say what I’d been
resolving in my head but I stopped myself. I
didn’t want to disappoint him. I tried to convince myself that it
wouldn’t matter to him, and that now wasn’t the time to say the gap
had started to close for me.
He went on: ‘And I already know what we can
scratch on the stone.’
For a second or two I felt a small thrill,
imagining us making our mark on that ancient stone but, even as I
was visualising it, I knew it would end up a futile gesture. There
was no real permanence in stone. Like bodies and bones, it would
all eventually turn to dust and blow away.
‘
What will we write?’ I
asked.
‘
Life is
a story
.’
‘
I like that.’
Had he been able to read my mind after all?
Life is a story. Even when it ends it continues forever. When I was
small I often asked Dad and Mum to tell me stories. Tell, not read.
Dad was best at it. This was my favourite:
There was once a girl who asked her father
to tell her a story. So the father told the girl this story. ‘There
was once a girl who asked her father to tell her a story. So the
father told the girl this story. “There was once a girl who asked
her father to tell her a story. So the father told the girl this
story . . .”
Chris and I snuggled
closer together to try and stay a little warmer. I was quietly
happy and felt a surge of confidence. Everything would work out for
us, wouldn’t it, the uni-candidate and the undecided, the atheist
and the still-believer in a Happy-Forever-After place, the
‘re-converted’ as Kristy MacGowan might have said if she’d been
here tonight.
We didn’t see the photographer turn up at
the foot of the steps and take our picture for the next day’s
paper. Not until the flash went and he came up and asked for our
names.
Extracts from Chris’s notebook
Dear Andrea,
Dad saw it of course. He was raging. I’ve
never seen him so angry.
He thrust the paper under my nose. A
close-up of you and me on the steps of the South Bank, a couple of
protestors with candles in their hands and soppy looks on their
faces. What better way of inducing sympathy or derision. We could
have been younger versions of your parents in the eighties, rugged
up in coats and woollen hats, just not as angry. Some things never
change.
I told Dad that it had been a peaceful
protest and for a good cause. ‘I’m glad I went,’ I said to him.
He said to me that I hadn’t been thinking.
‘What was there to think about?’ I replied. Then he went on about
us having given our names to the reporter and now everyone would
know what his son had been doing. I tried to explain how pushy the
reporter had been and what did it matter if people knew whose son I
was? We believed in what we’d been doing, that was what
mattered.
Then he told me what was bothering him so
much. ‘I’m involved in this damn fiasco,’ he said. ‘I signed off
the renovation plans for the Chambers. I gave them permission to go
ahead.’
‘
But you didn’t know they
were going to uncover a burial site,’ I replied.
‘
Of course not,’ he said
‘But they’ll say I should have.’
‘
My ‘that’s irrational’
line didn’t go down too well despite it being something that Dad
says to me all the time. He really believes that if the Council
wants to blame someone then he’s going to end up being the fall
guy.
And then he said the worst
thing. ‘It’s all be-cause you wouldn’t listen to me. Carrying on
with that girl. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have ended up here, on
the front page.’
I told him I didn’t have to listen to that.
That didn’t stop him. He accused me of being prepared to throw away
everything I’d worked so hard for. I told him that was rubbish,
that it was obvious that all of this was about Andrea and me, not
what was in the paper.
He didn’t deny it. He told me that I should
finish with you Andrea and concentrate on myself. He said I should
think about studying somewhere else.
‘
I’m not interested in
anywhere else,‘ I said to him.
‘
I’ve been thinking,’ he
said. ‘Maybe you should change your study plans altogether. Don’t
stay here. Go overseas instead. Go now.’
I lay on my bed. I thought, only a few days
ago Andy was lying here beside me. The past was now. The future was
here already. What’s changed? Has anything? Has everything? Talk
about Dad’s demons. What about mine? Is ambition a demon? Is
temptation?
Ho bios mython
estin
.
Life is a story.
How does it end?
Tipping the balance
I told myself I didn’t know why I was doing
it. The rebel in me? But I’d already done the rebel bit.
Looking back though, it seemed obvious that
everything had been leading up to this.
I could have blamed Mum for reminding me of
how I’d once inspired her. I could have blamed Kristy MacGowan for
re-converting.
But it wasn’t fair to blame anyone else.
It was me all the
time.
My
demon.
It wasn’t rational but maybe I couldn’t be
rational any more. Not after having been a churchgoer for the first
fourteen years of my life.
I
had
to do it, take that first step
on a new path.
The Saturday after the candlelight vigil I
rang the presbytery where Father Mike lived. I didn’t tell anyone
not even Chris.
I was expecting Father
Mike - counting on it on, to be honest - not to be at home. He
seemed the sort of person who would be out a lot of the time so I
didn’t feel I was taking too big a risk.
He answered in person.
‘
Oh,’ I said.
‘
Hello?’
‘
Oh,’ I said again. ‘Um,
hello, it’s me, Andrea. Andrea McNamara. I was at . . .’
‘
Hi Andrea,’ he
interrupted. ‘Thanks for your support the other night. Sorry you
got your mugshots in the paper. Hope that wasn’t too much to cope
with?’
‘
No it was fine,’ I
said.
I’d talked to Chris the evening following
the vigil and he was also cool about the photo.
‘
Not the best picture of
the two of us,’ he said.
‘
Actually, it’s the
only
one of us,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to do something
about that.’
‘
We will,’ Chris
said.
‘
What did your father
think?’
‘
He . . . he didn’t have
much to say,’ said Chris.
I said to Father Mike, ‘I wondered. . . I
wondered if you’d have time to . . . if I could make an appointment
to see you, sometime, anytime. Whenever suits.’
Keep it vague so it won’t ever happen.
‘
I’m home now,’ he said.
‘Does that suit?’
Oh shit. ‘Yes Father, that’d be good. I’ll
be over soon then.’
‘
OK. See you.’
Damn. Why had I done it? I had no choice now
but to go. I asked if I could borrow the car. ‘Just for a half hour
or so.’
‘
Fine,’ said Mum.
‘Returning something to the library?’ Chris worked at the public
library every second Saturday.
‘
No,’ I said. ‘I have to go
somewhere else.’
‘
Is everything all right?’
said Mum.
‘
Everything’s fine,’ I
said. It was. Nothing was wrong except the state of my poor
confused mind.
‘
OK. See you
later.’
‘
See you Mum.’
The roads were busy and I lost the way a
couple of times and had to pull over to the side of the road to get
the street map from the glove box and check the route. I’d only
been to Father Mike’s church the once and then it had been dark and
Dad had done the driving.
I eventually found the church and the
presbytery. In daylight the church wasn’t much to look at. From the
outside it looked even more like a hall than it did inside. The
presbytery was a smallish brick house, off to one side.
I wondered if this was the hovel where the
Bishop sent rebel priests. For I’d already worked out that Father
Mike was something of a rebel. Not just because of his involvement
in the initial protest at the South Bank, his chairmanship of BDFA
and his participation in the candle vigil. No, the Catholic Church
had always been heavily into social justice so that wouldn’t have
particularly bothered the Bishop.
There was just something
about his overall attitude that made me think Father Mike might be
considered a thorn in the Church’s side. I had a feeling that if
push came to shove he wouldn’t be too tied to the church’s
rulebook. If I was right . . . I
hoped
I was right.