Echoes (25 page)

“It's our agenda for tomorrow morning. When we meet in the daylight. I want to discuss the subjects written down there and nothing else.” She smiled pleasantly; she took a sheaf of huge Italian notes in almighty denominations and signaled for the bill.

Sean was reading aloud. “ ‘Hypocrisy and Betrayal. Family and Community. ' What
is
this, Angela? It looks very like the title of some sermon or a pamphlet in the Catholic Truth Society.”

She was still easy and relaxed. “Let's leave it till tomorrow, will we? It's been a lovely evening and it's too late to start on these things now.”

He was genuinely bewildered; he wasn't acting. He sought to placate her. “Right, sure, whatever you like. And we'll arrange for you to come to Ostia.”

She shuddered at that. She felt a slow sweat form on her shoulders and back at the thought of meeting this Japanese woman who shared a bed with her brother the priest, and a dread of meeting these two children.

“Not until after Emer's wedding, not until next Tuesday.”

She was firm: he was disappointed.

“But we were
sure
you'd come for Easter itself.”

“I'm going to go to the Holy Week Ceremonies tomorrow and all of the weekend with my friends. When that's all over, I'll come to Ostia.” If it's too awful to face, she thought, I can always pretend to be sick. To have a fever or something.

Sean was downcast. “I had thought that . . .”

“It's all fixed.”

“No. I mean, I thought that maybe you were going to ask us to the wedding. To Emer's wedding.”

She looked at him, stunned.

“I've met Emer, remember. I met her when you were in Dublin, and she came to Daddy's funeral.”

“Yes, she knows you as a priest.”

“But surely you've told her?” He was amazed.

A headache was beginning right across her eyes. “Don't be ridiculous, Sean. Of course I haven't told her. I haven't told
anyone.
”

“This is much more complicated than I thought,” Sean said, shaking his head. “I thought it was only Mam you were keeping it from until the time was right. I didn't know that you had such old-fashioned views and hard attitudes. I'm still a Catholic for God's sake. I haven't given up my Faith or anything. I still go to Mass and Communion.”

It was far too late to debate it now. The bill was paid and they walked amicably back to her hotel. All the time he pointed out places to her as if she were an ordinary tourist and he were her ordinary brother. He kissed her on each cheek and walked away into the night to his friend who was still a priest and who would not lie awake all night anguishing about what had happened to Father Sean O'Hara, and what course his life would take now.

 

She was businesslike in the morning. She said that she would prefer him to listen to her and only speak when she asked his view; otherwise her visit would have been wasted. He was startled but agreed. She examined the possibility of his coming back to Castlebay once more, once only and pretending to be still a priest. He was so horrified, he leaped up from the table. But she persisted. Examine it: technically, what would be the flaws? Did he still have any clerical clothes? Could he get away with it or would someone from the Mother House hear of it? No, don't ask
why
was this necessary at the moment—just see if it could be done. According to Sean, even if he wanted to do an insane thing like this, he couldn't do it. He would be found out in days, and as he wouldn't say Mass in Father O'Dwyer's church, he would be an object of suspicion at once.

Could he say that since the Order had left China there had been a change in the Rule and priests had become workers and teachers and were working among the community more? Could he imply that
all
priests had been downgraded, not only Father Sean? No that was ludicrous too. You only had to read the papers to know that this was untrue, it wouldn't hold good for five minutes.

Could they pretend that he had died, been kidnapped? Sean looked at Angela as if she weren't all there. Why on earth should anyone begin such a tissue of hypocritical lies and bungling?

Angela's eyes flashed. She would tell him why, because if he told their mother the truth it would break her, literally
break
her. The only thing of value she had done was produce a priest for God, it was the only constant and hope in her soul and it was her only standing in the community. That was what Angela meant about Betrayal. To tell the old woman with the enlarged joints and crooked limbs that her priest wasn't a priest—that would be betrayal of a high order. Angela had come to Rome to beg her brother not to do this.

He was patient with her. He began to explain that once the process of making him a layman was completed, he had as much right before God to marry as anyone had, so he had anticipated it but it would then be regularized, post hoc. Angela silenced him with a word, this was
her
time: last night had been his. He was to decide between hypocrisy and betrayal. She would listen to no more speeches about breaths of fresh air blowing through the dusty corridors of the Vatican and new thinking and the Congregation of the Clergy. There was no fresh air blowing through Father O'Dwyer's church in Castlebay except what came in the windows on the day of the east wind. There was no radical rethinking in the O'Hara cottage, there was no spirit of brotherly love and understanding among people like Sergeant McCormack. Sean must decide between
hypocrisy
and
betrayal.
He must decide on the old principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Which way would less people get hurt.

But, Sean protested, there could be no question of that. The truth was the truth—it was absolute. It couldn't be tinkered with and played with like plasticine, deciding who should believe what.

Their coffee cups were refilled over and over. Angela banged on the table to get him to stop talking and listen to her account of daily life in Castlebay. She didn't intend it to be humorous, but sometimes she said things that made him smile and she smiled herself to acknowledge that she did exaggerate in some areas. But not in the general picture.

She swore that it wouldn't matter all that much for her; to be frank she would prefer not to have the pitying and patronizing stance of Immaculata for the rest of her working life, and she would like not to have the knowledge that they had just stopped talking about it all every time she appeared. But she could live with it, she had lived with her father's reputation after all. She'd survive, but she was going to fight with every breath in her body for her mother not to have to try to survive it.

“When Mam dies, Sean, then I'll walk with you down Church Street in Castlebay. Don't come to her funeral, but six months later you can come back and I'll stand beside you.”

“That's the wrong way to do things,” Sean said, “to wait till someone dies before you can bring your children home. How do you tell your son and daughter that you have to wait until their grandmother has been buried before they can come home, come home to where they belong?”

Angela's heart lurched again. He really and truly thought that these half-Japanese children and their mother
belonged
in Castlebay. She looked at her watch, and stood up to call for the bill again. It was time to go to lunch with the wedding party. He looked confused and unsettled.

“You will come, you will still come and see us?”

“Yes,” she promised.

“On Tuesday, and you'll stay a few days.”

“No, I won't stay the night. I might come again, but I'll just come for the day. Thank you all the same.”

“But why not? There's a bed there.”

“There's a bed in the hotel too. I'd prefer to come back.”

“Shuya will want to know do you send her a greeting.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“What is it? What is the greeting?”

“Say I am happy to meet her.”

“It's not very warm,” he grumbled.

“It's all I've got. And you think about what I've said, because we have to sort it out. Will you discuss it with Shuya?”

“Yes, I suppose so, but it's hard—her family were so good, so welcoming, I don't want her to think mine are like a row of stones.”

“No. I understand.”

“Thanks anyway Angela. You're doing your best,” he said.

That's what did it. That's when the tears started, she threw some money on the table and stumbled away.
Doing her best!
God, wasn't she doing her bloody best! The ingratitude and lack of understanding were no longer possible to take. She ran almost blindly away. She heard him calling that he would collect her at the hotel on Tuesday and she nodded, not able to look back. She ran until she was well away, then she began asking directions and from the concerned looks people gave her she realized she needed dark glasses if not a full veil to cover her red-blotched face.

 

Father Flynn was a treasure, there was nothing he didn't know the answer to. He said it was going to be as dull as ditchwater when he got back to Dublin after all this, and the place was so gorgeous too. Dublin was so gray and gritty. Kevin's uncle David, considered a little eccentric by the rest of Kevin's very straitlaced family, didn't usually go a bundle on priests: he said that normally they gave him a pain in the top of the stomach. But this little Druid was an exception. He wore a soutane which didn't at all suit his small round figure. Once when they were passing a lingerie shop which sold frilly waspy-waist corsets he asked Emer and Angela should he get something like that for himself to wear so that he would look good in wedding photographs. Father Flynn was full of stories about everyone and everything, all very ridiculous but not hurtful. And best of all, he could laugh at himself. He seemed to be well known everywhere they went. Italian shopkeepers setting out their cheeses on display would shout greetings to Fazzer Fleen.

But he had his serious side too and he told them that it was an honor to be married in St. Peter's, and that obviously they would remember it all their lives. Nobody was so forgetful as not to recall where they got married, but this was something special. He took them down to the crypt chapel and they looked at it in awe on Holy Thursday afternoon just as the huge basilica was getting ready for its Holy Week ceremonies. Emer and Kevin were to be married here—it was almost too much to take in.

And the man seemed to know about clothes. He was fascinated by what they should wear at the wedding and thought that they would look absolutely great—apart from the shoes. There was something about Irish shoes that didn't look quite
right
in Rome. Late on Thursday evening the strange party wandered along the Via Condotti, and Angela and Emer tried on different footwear and paraded them for Father Flynn, Kevin, Marie and David. Marie became so excited that she started trying them on too, and Father Flynn said if his soutane didn't hide them he would be sorely tempted by those gray suede ones. Everyone in the shop was nearly hysterical, and when they settled on the fiercely elegant ones that all three had decided to buy, Father Flynn began to haggle like a fishwife about the price and brought the cost down enormously.

He stopped them at a flower stall where he was well known too. He did great gesticulations and explanations about the color of dresses, Emer's white with a blue trim, her hat blue with a white ribbon. Angela's dress was beige and her hat was white with beige and brown flowers. The family who ran the flower stall became highly excited over the wedding and fought amongst each other about what the bouquets should be. Soon they were all shouting at each other while the Irish group looked on amazed. Flowers were being held up to Emer first, then to Angela, heads were shaking, arms were waving and in the end a satisfactory combination of flowers and timings and delivery to the hotel and prices was arrived at. The family gave everyone a buttonhole there and then as a gift. There were hand kissing and good wishes, and they seemed as pleased as if it were one of their own family.

“Could you imagine my mother being as pleased as that over anyone's wedding?” Emer said wistfully. “Is it any wonder people would love to come here to get married? Total strangers are delighted with us and at home there's been nothing but fuss.”

“My family would have half the geriatric priests and nuns on the move by now, all of them complaining,” Kevin said.

“Less of that attitude,” Father Flynn demanded. “I'll be a geriatric priest someday, and when your children are getting married in about thirty or thirty-five years from now, I want someone to come for
me
in a wheelchair and take me to the party.”

He was
so
nice, Angela thought with a rush of affection. Despite all his jokey going on he was one of the kindest people she had ever met. What a sensitive little man he was; wouldn't he be a great priest to have in a parish instead of dull old Father O'Dwyer; instead of people who couldn't even stay
in
the priesthood.
Stop.
She was not going to think about Sean until Tuesday: that was her little treat to herself. She hoped she would be able to keep to that promise and enjoy herself.

 

There had been a bit of a problem about the best man. He hadn't turned up. But Father Flynn had that sorted out too. If the best man wasn't there, couldn't David stand in? David was doubtful, he wasn't actually in the State of Grace, he said, he wasn't what you would call a conventional person to take part in the ceremony, as one of the performers, that was. Father Flynn seemed to regard a public announcement of being in a state of sin as the most normal thing in the world.