Minding Frankie (4 page)

“A statue to St. Jarlath! Imagine!” Emily was surprised. Perhaps she had been wrong to have encouraged them to be freethinkers. “Wasn’t he rather a long time ago?” She was careful not to throw any cold water on Josie’s plan, especially when she saw Charles light up with enthusiasm.

Josie waved this objection away. “Oh, that’s no problem. If he’s a saint, does it matter if he died only a few years back or in the sixth century?”

“The
sixth
century?” This was even worse than Emily had feared.

“Yes, he died around
A.D
. 540 and his Feast Day is June sixth.”

“And that would be a very suitable time of the year for a little procession to his shrine.” Charles was busy planning it all already.

“And was he from around these parts?” Emily asked. Apparently not. Jarlath was from the other side of the country, the Atlantic coast. He had set up the first archdiocese of Tuam. He had taught other great holy men, even other saints: St. Brendan of Clonfert and St. Colman of Cloyne. Places that were miles away.

“But there was always a devotion to him here,” Charles explained.

“Why would they have named the street after him otherwise?” Josie wanted to know.

Emily wondered what would have happened if her father, Martin Lynch, had stayed here. Would he have been a simple, easily pleased person like Charles and Josie instead of the discontented drunk that he had turned into in New York? But all this business about the saint who had died miles away, hundreds of years ago, was a fantasy, surely?

“Of course, the problem would be raising the money for this statue
and
actually earning a living at the same time,” Emily said.

That was apparently no problem at all. They had saved money for years, hoping to put it towards the education of Noel as a priest. To give a son to God. But it hadn’t taken. They always intended that those savings be given to God in some way, and now this was the perfect opportunity.

Emily told herself that she must not try to change the world. No time now to consider all the good causes that that money could have gone towards—many of them even run by the Catholic Church. Emily would have preferred to see it all going to look after Josie and Charles, and give them a little comfort after a life of working long, hard hours for little reward. They’d had to endure what to them
must have been a tragedy—their son’s vocation “hadn’t taken,” to use their own words. But there were some irresistible forces that could never be fought with logic and practicality. Emily Lynch knew this for certain.

Noel had been through a long, bad day. Mr. Hall had asked him twice if he was all right. There was something behind the question, something menacing. When he had asked for the third time, Noel inquired politely why he was asking.

“There was an empty bottle which appears to have contained gin before it was empty,” Mr. Hall said.

“And what has that to do with me and whether I’m all right or not?” Noel asked. He was confident now, emboldened, even.

Mr. Hall looked at him long and sternly from under his bushy eyebrows. “That’s as may be, Noel. There’s many a fellow taking the plane to some faraway part of the world who would be happy to do the job you are meant to be doing.” He walked off and Noel saw other workers look away.

Noel had never known Mr. Hall like this—usually there was a kindly remark, some kind of encouragement about continuing in this work of matching dockets to sales slips, of looking through ledgers and invoices and doing the most lowly clerk duties imaginable.

Mr. Hall seemed to think that Noel could do better and had made many positive suggestions in earlier days. Times when there was some hope. But not now. This was more than a reprimand; it was a warning. It had shaken him, and on the way home he found his feet taking him into Casey’s big, comforting pub. He vaguely recalled having had one too many the last time he’d been here but he hesitated for only a moment before going in.

Mossy, the son of Old Man Casey, looked nervous. “Ah, Noel, it’s yourself.”

“Could I have a pint, please, Mossy?”

“Ah, now, that’s not such a good idea, Noel. You know you’re barred. My father said …”

“Your father says a lot of things in the heat of the moment. That barring order is long over now.”

“No, it’s not, Noel. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

Noel felt a tick in his forehead. He must be careful now.

“Well, that’s his decision and yours. As it happens, I have given up drink and what I was actually asking for was a pint of lemonade.”

Mossy looked at him openmouthed. Noel Lynch off the liquor? Wait till his father heard this!

“But if I’m not welcome in Casey’s, then I’ll have to take my custom elsewhere. Give my best to your father.” Noel made as if to leave.

“When did you give up the gargle?” Mossy asked.

“Oh, Mossy, that’s not any of your concern these days. You must go ahead serving alcohol to folks here. Am I interfering with your right to do this? I am most definitely not.”

“Wait a minute, Noel,” Mossy called out to him.

Noel said he was sorry but he had to go now. And he walked, head high, out of the place where he had spent so much of his leisure time.

There was a cold wind blowing down the street as Noel leaned against the wall and thought over what he had just said. He had spoken only in order to annoy Mossy, a foolish, mumbling mouthpiece for his father’s decisions. Now he had to live with his words. He could never drink in Casey’s again.

He would have to go to that place where Declan Carroll’s father went with his huge bear of a dog. The place where nobody had friends or mates or people they met there. They called them “Associates.” Muttie Scarlet was always about to confer with his Associates over the likely outcome of a big race or a soccer match. Not a place that Noel had enjoyed up to now.

Wouldn’t it be much easier if he really
had
given up drink? Then Mr. Hall could find whatever bottles he liked. Mr. Casey would be regretful and apologetic, which would be a pleasure to see. Noel himself would have all the time in the world to go back to doing the things he really wanted. He might go back and get a business certificate
so as to qualify for a promotion. Maybe even move out of St. Jarlath’s Crescent.

Noel went for a long, thoughtful walk around Dublin, up the canal, down through the Georgian squares. He looked into restaurants where men of his own age were sitting across tables from girls. Noel wasn’t a social outcast, he was just in a world of his own making where these kind of women were never available. And why was this? Because Noel was too busy with his snout in the trough.

It would not be like this anymore. He was going to give himself the twin gifts of sobriety and time: much more time. He checked his watch before letting himself into Number 23 St. Jarlath’s Crescent. They would all be safely in bed by now. This was such an earthshaking decision he didn’t want to muddy it all up with conversation.

He was wrong. They were all up, awake and alert at the kitchen table. Apparently his father was going to leave the hotel where he had worked all his life. They appeared to have adopted a tiny King Charles spaniel called Caesar, with enormous eyes and a soulful expression. His mother was planning to work fewer hours at the biscuit factory. His cousin Emily had met most of the people in the neighborhood and become firm friends with them all. And, most alarming of all, they were about to start a campaign to build a statue to some saint who, if he had ever existed, had died fifteen hundred years ago.

They had all been normal when he left the house this morning. What could have happened?

He wasn’t able to manage his usual maneuver of sliding into his room and retrieving a bottle from the box labeled
ART SUPPLIES
, which contained mainly unused paintbrushes and unopened bottles of gin or wine.

Not, of course, that he was ever going to drink them again.

He had forgotten this. A sudden, heavy gloom settled over him as he sat there trying to comprehend the bizarre changes that were about to take place in his home. There would be no comforting oblivion afterwards, instead, it would be a night of trying to avoid
the
ART SUPPLIES
box or maybe even pouring the contents down the hand basin in his room.

He struggled to make out what his father was talking about: walking dogs, minding pets, raising money, restoring St. Jarlath to his rightful place. In all his years of drinking, Noel had not come across anything as surreal and unexpected as this scene. And all this on a night when he was totally sober.

Noel shifted in his seat slightly and tried to catch the eye of his cousin Emily. She must be responsible for all this sudden change of heart: the idea that today was the first day of everybody’s life. Mad, dangerous stuff in a household that had known no change for decades.

In the middle of the night, Noel woke up and decided that giving up drink was something that should not be taken lightly or casually. He would do it next week, when the world had settled down. But when he reached for the bottle in the box, he felt, with a clarity that he had not often known, that somehow next week would never come. So he poured the contents of two bottles of gin down his sink, followed by two bottles of red wine.

He went back to bed and tossed and turned until he heard his alarm clock the next morning.

In her bedroom, Emily opened her laptop and sent a message to Betsy:

Father Brian Flynn could not sleep in his small apartment in the heart of Dublin. He had just heard that day that he had only three weeks to find a new place to stay. He hadn’t many possessions, so moving would not be a nightmare. But neither had he any money to speak of. He couldn’t afford a smart place to live.

He hated leaving this little flat. His pal Johnny had found him this entirely satisfactory place to live, only minutes from his work in the immigrant center, and only seconds from one of the best pubs in Ireland. He knew everyone in the area. It was worrying to have to move.

“Couldn’t the Archbishop find you a place?” Johnny was unsympathetic. He himself was going to move into his girlfriend’s place. This wasn’t a solution open to a middle-aged Catholic priest. Johnny was in the habit of saying to anyone who would listen that a man must be certifiably mad to be a priest in this day and age and the least the Archbishop of Dublin could do was provide lodgings for all these poor eejits who had given up anything that mattered in life and went around doing good day and night.

“Ah, it’s not really the Archbishop’s job. He has more important things to do,” Brian Flynn said, “but it should be no trouble to find a place.”

It was proving more troublesome than he had thought possible. And there were only twenty days to go.

Brian Flynn could not believe the amounts people were asking as
rent. Surely they could never get sums like that? In the middle of a recession as well! Other things kept him awake too. The appalling priest who had broken his leg in Rome falling down the Spanish Steps and who was
still
out there eating grapes in an Italian hospital. Father Flynn was therefore
still
acting chaplain in St. Brigid’s Hospital, with all the many complications that this added to his life.

He kept hearing reports from his old parish in Rossmore. His mother, who was already fairly confused and in a home for the elderly, was thought to have seen a vision, but it turned out she was talking about the television, and everyone in the old people’s home was greatly disappointed.

He found himself increasingly brooding about the meaning of life now that he had to see so much of the end of life in St. Brigid’s. Look at that poor girl Stella who seemed to like him just because he had arranged for a hairdresser to come in and visit her. She was pregnant as well as dying. She had lived a short and vaguely unsatisfactory life but then she told him that almost everyone else did as well. She seemed not even marginally interested in preparing to meet her Maker, and Father Flynn was always very firm about this; unless the patients brought the matter up themselves, it wasn’t mentioned. They knew what his job description was, for heaven’s sake. If they wanted intervention made, prayers said or sins forgiven, then he would do that; otherwise he wouldn’t mention the topic.