Echoes (20 page)

It turned out that it was, and after all if Clare's plans went right she would be in the secondary school herself. They could barely concentrate on the film when it came on, real-life plans were more exciting.

“They'd only laugh at me. I'm no good at spelling and everything. I'd never learn all that stuff.”

“I could give you a hand if you like.”

“Why would you do that?” Josie was almost ungracious in her disbelief.

“Because you're my friend,” said Clare awkwardly, and Josie smiled from ear to ear.

It began then: the working in Dillon's Hotel rather than at home. It was much easier, and nobody seemed to mind. Clare wasn't one to be up to any devilment, not like Chrissie. If you passed the hotel you could even see the two of them working at an upper window with their books out. Clare helped her with the spellings first and Josie thought that it was a marvelous coincidence that Miss O'Hara announced a spelling bee at the very same time. The handwriting became neater, the exercise books were clean and orderly, and Josie even stooped less and seemed more alert. She once asked a question in class and Mother Brendan had nearly fainted. Clare frowned across at Josie, they had agreed the improvement must be gradual, and that she mustn't look so smart that they would decide to send her off to her boarding school and spoil everything.

The nuns had a rule that they never walked anywhere outside the convent alone, so it was common practice for a nun to ask a lay teacher or an older girl to accompany her to the post office, to Miss O'Flaherty's stationery shop or whatever errand it was. So Angela was not surprised when Mother Immaculata asked if she would accompany her down the town.

Together they walked out the convent gates and down the hill. It was never easy to find idle chat for Mother Immaculata at the best of times, and this was not the best of times for Angela. She had slept very badly despite the half pill taken with warm milk. She had a letter from Emer in Dublin with the great news for Emer that the engagement ring was being bought on the following Saturday. She wanted to know if Angela would come to Dublin and be her bridesmaid. Angela's mother had been very very stiff this morning and dressing her had been like bending painful wood to pull on stockings and to twist aching arms into garments. The children's voices had been shrill all morning, a child had been sick during religious instruction in First Year and despite open windows and Dettol the smell seemed to permeate the school. Now when she had been hoping for a cigarette and a look at the paper she had to waltz this ridiculous nun downtown to buy a postcard or whatever it was she wanted.

“Why don't they allow you out on your own, Mother? I'm delighted to accompany you of course, but I've often wondered.”

“It's part of our Rule,” Immaculata said smugly. Angela felt like punching her in the face.

“Are they afraid you'll make a run for it?” she asked.

“
Hardly,
Miss O'Hara.”

“Well there must be some reason but I suppose we'll never know.”

“We rarely question the Rule.”

“No, I suppose you don't. That's where you have my wholehearted admiration. I'd question it from morning to night.”

The nun gave a tinny little laugh. “Oh, I'm sure you would, Miss O'Hara.”

Angela wondered again how old she was—possibly only ten years older than herself. This white-faced, superior woman was quite likely to be below forty. Wasn't it extraordinary? The children probably thought she was ninety, but on the other hand the children thought every teacher was ninety, so that was no guideline.

“I wanted to talk to you actually—that's why I seized this opportunity.”

“Oh yes?” Angela was wary. What was so urgent it couldn't be discussed within the confines of school? Could Immaculata possibly have heard Angela talking about the stink of the school being quite bad enough without having the children puking all over the place?

“It's about your brother, Father O'Hara.”

Hot bile in her throat and a feeling like a hen's wing of feathers in her chest.

“Oh yes?” She said it again, willing her face to look normal, reminding herself that this stupid, mannered nun paused for effect after every single phrase she uttered. There was nothing sinister in the way she waited.

“There's a sort of mystery, you see,” Mother Immaculata said.

“Mystery, Mother?” Angela played the game by the rules: the more quickly she spoke the quicker would be the response.

“Yes. I was wondering. Is he . . . well . . . is he all right, you know? If everything is all right.”

“Well, I sincerely hope so. It was when I last heard. How do you mean?” Angela could hear her own voice speaking briskly and marveled at it. How great of it to come out with just the right responses when her brain had frozen solid and seemed to be unable to control it.

“You see there's this sister in our Community, she is not in this house but she was staying with us last year. You may not have met her—she was hardly ever in the school, she was mainly in the nuns' quarters. It was more or less a holiday that brought her to us.”

Angela kept a bright interested face in the monotone and swallowed the cry urging the nun to get on with it.

“And Sister has a brother who is in a seminary and he is about to go to their foundation house, and he hopes to go to the foreign missions, and you see this is why Sister came to me.”

She paused. The smile from Miss O'Hara was as polite as that of any child who thought that favors were to be bought by courtesy.

“And Sister is in this predicament, because alas her family, far from being delighted that a second child had been called by God are standing in this boy's way. They say they want to know what kind of life it is out there and can they talk to any of the priests who have come back from the missions so that they can know what their son will be doing in his new life.” Mother Immaculata paused to tinkle an unsatisfactory little laugh. “As if any of us could know what our lives in Religion were going to be like.”

Angela swallowed and nodded.

“So I told Sister about our Father O'Hara here from Castlebay, and I gave her the address. And Sister got this very strange letter back from him. Very strange.”

“She was writing so that he could tell her parents about the daily life out there, was that it?” Surprisingly strong and unfussed.

“Yes indeed, and Sister says that
her
letter was very clear, which I am sure it was, because she does express herself very well. Of course it's not easy to explain to an ordained priest that your family is not totally committed to the vocation of your brother, but I told Sister that she could write in freedom on that score. I told her that although I wasn't here at the time, I felt that Father O'Hara's own path to the ordination was not entirely spread with roses, that he had his own difficulties.” She smiled at Angela.

Bitch,
Angela thought with a ferocity that frightened her, she told this blithering Sister all about drunken Dinny O'Hara and his outbursts.

“No, indeed,” said the voice of Angela O'Hara, “far from being spread with roses I can tell you.”

“Anyway, Sister had this very strange letter.”

“He couldn't help her?”

“Not that exactly. He
did
give a very detailed account of the daily life, and how they had to regroup after the expulsion from China, and he wrote about Christianity in Formosa and in Macao and the Philippines, and of how they hope local people will train as priests and help in all this work.”

“So?”

“But it was strange—two things were strange. He said nothing at all about Japan, where he is himself. He said nothing of the work that the Foundation does there, and he also said . . . I think these were his very words, ‘I feel sure my sister will have told the community of some of my own problems here, so I am hardly the man to write to your parents on your brother's behalf.' That was more or less it. I think those were his exact words.”

Oh, Angela thought, we can be sure those were his exact words. Immaculata, you must have them by heart now and the rest of the letter, but there's no mileage in quoting the bits that don't sound strange, that don't sound as if there might be the trace of scandal or trouble in them. No, no, don't learn by heart and remember his words where he was helpful to this garrulous fool of a nun and her indecisive brother. Just the bit that might yield some gossip.

“Well, well, what could he mean?”

“That's what we wondered, Miss O'Hara?”

“Oh, does Sister's family want him to explain himself more?” She was just within the bounds of manners but only just.

“Of course not. It's just that it's worrying.”

“What is?”

“The problems he has, his own problems, that he told you about that he expected you had told the community about. All that. And why he is hardly the man to help in this matter.”

“Because he's such a rotten letter writer.” Angela was amazed that Mother Immaculata didn't see it too.

“But the rest of his letter was very clear.”

“That's it. He can be marvelous describing the climate and the soil. I told him we should have him in the geography class. But he's useless about describing what he feels, and thinks. I think it's not just him, really. I believe that all men are hopeless at telling you what you want to know. My mother and I are always criticizing him for not giving us his feelings about it all . . .”

“But there must be more to it.”

“Exactly, Mother, that's what I always say, and what Mam says. There
must
be more to it. What's it like when he finishes a day in Tokyo—does he walk home through the crowded streets and look at the people's faces and think that he and the other Fathers made progress today, that the Lord's word was spread among the people? Do the young Japanese children understand what it was like in Bethlehem, it's hard enough for us but what about them?” Angela was burning with indignation at this brother of hers who couldn't describe the everyday business of being a missionary to everyone's satisfaction.

In the end Immaculata gave up. They were at the top of Church Street.

“Where did you want to go?” Angela asked innocently.

“Nowhere.” Immaculata's mouth snapped like a mousetrap. “I just wanted to talk to you about all this.”

Angela was sunny-tempered about it. “Well, never mind, Mother. I wanted to get some cigs anyway so you can accompany me into a shop for them. I'd go down to the end of the street to O'Brien's to give them the turn, but we might be late for class.”

She smiled like an angel, wrapped the scarf round her neck flamboyantly and went into a shop which was half a pub and stank of stout, so that Immaculata had to hover in a fury at the door.

 

She wrote to him that night as she had never been able to write before. She said that he had broken the agreement and broken it shabbily. How else might he have done this in ways that she didn't know? Must she live a tormented life wondering where would be the next weak link, the next confession of something wrong, something irregular? She said that she would prefer that he came home and asked Father O'Dwyer to allow him to announce it from the altar rails, rather than have any more of this. They had been through it a dozen times by letter and reluctantly he had agreed; now he was going behind their backs and allowing the worst, the most powerful thing that a place like Castlebay could ever know to run riot. Rumor, speculation, suspicion. She must have his word that this would happen no more. Why couldn't he have ended his letter to the mad nun where any normal person would have ended it? What was the need for this confused breast-beating, and to a community of nuns of all people on the face of the earth?

She added that she
knew
it must be hard—she did realize that. She knew he was trying to keep faith with people and she had managed to stop silver paper and sales of work for him, saying that the money was coming in different ways from the motherhouse. She really and truly
did
know that he was so transparently honest and generous that he hated hypocrisy, but surely he must know how everyone's hearts would crack in two if any of this were known. Since he must remember his hometown it was only fair that he should keep faith with it and not hurt the people he claimed to love so much.

She put extra stamps on it, and for the first time she left out the word “Father” on the envelope. She laughed at her silliness when she was buying the stamp from Mrs. Conway.

“Heavens above, I forgot to put Father. Still I'll leave it rather than write it in a different ink. It's so hard to remember when it's your own brother.”

It was the right line to take. Mrs. Conway laughed too, and said imagine what it must be like being the Pope's sister, you'd probably forget to call him your Holiness as well. Mrs. Conway wondered when he'd be home and Angela said that she hoped soon.

She got a letter from him three weeks later. He had read what she said but none of it was important now. He had wonderful news. He had sent all the details of his situation to Rome, and he and Shuya were going to go to Rome themselves, together with Denis and little Laki, who was such a beautiful girl and so like her mother. They were all going to Rome.

He was going to plead his case; there was every belief that he would be heard favorably, that he would be released from his vows, that he would be laicized. Then everything would be perfect. He could come home to Castlebay and bring his family.

 

The mills of Rome grind slowly. Another summer came and went and Angela learned to sleep at night without tablets. Sometimes during that summer she took herself with a book out far to the rocks, but she rarely read. She stared at the sea.