“Isn’t he insufferable?” Brady remarked to the table at large. “He and my old man would get along famously.” The priest launched into a tale about his father, who had taken over the family farm when the grandfather was too enfeebled to do the work. The story of the reluctant and ineffectual farmer could have been tragic, but the storyteller had us in fits of laughter.
“Now tell us about your own da, Brennan,” urged Father O’Flaherty, who looked on indifferently as his pile of chips was scooped up by Burke. “A recent immigrant, I understand.”
“If 1950 is recent to you, Mike, then my father’s still green in the face from the boat trip over.”
“Those times get more and more recent to me every day,” the old priest replied, to appreciative laughter. “Now, you and your family came over —”
The phone rang again, and Brennan trumped O’Flaherty in a grab for the receiver. “Yes. Hello, darlin! Grand. Ah. Now, are you asking for the wise counsel of kindly Father Burke? Or am I speaking to you as brother Brennan? Thought so. In that case, put the run to him. Oh, you did. Well, between Dublin and London, I know you’ll find a man more to your liking. But wait now, Maire. I have just the fellow for you right here. Slight of build, blue of eye, light-coloured hair —” He looked over at the poker table. “Would you gentlemen describe Mike here as cute?”
“Oh, yeah!” we chorused as one.
“Cute as a bug,” Brennan said to his sister, “and he loves Irish girls, don’t you Michael?” Father O’Flaherty blushed. “Here. I’ll put him on, so you can speak to the old sod.
About
the old sod, I mean. To Mike.”
O’Flaherty’s eyes made the round of the table, then he went for the phone. “Good evening, Maire,” he said with hearty good cheer. “You’re keeping late hours over there.”
Brennan turned his attention to the table. “Let’s play a hand without him.”
O’Flaherty must have gabbed for half an hour, during which time we played a more serious brand of cards. Then he rejoined us without alluding to the telephone conversation. Ever the gentleman.
It was around eleven-thirty when we heard the sound of breaking glass. We remained stock still for a moment, listening, then jumped from our seats and bolted for the rectory door, Father O’Flaherty shuffling behind. Brennan stopped to get a key from a ring near the entrance, then we went out to the parking lot, and ran to the side door of the church. Burke went through the vestibule into the nave and switched on a light. I was about a dozen feet behind him. Just as he turned to the left, a man leaped from a crouch beside the last pew, jumped on the priest’s back, and gripped his throat with one hand. He had something in the other hand, which he raised over Brennan’s head. Next thing I knew, Brennan had flipped him off, slammed him facedown on the church floor, and had his arms pinned behind him. This happened so fast I did not have a chance to call out, let alone reach the two combatants. A can of spray paint, full by the sound of it, clattered uselessly to the floor and rolled away. Brennan was on the vandal’s back, holding the pinned arms in place; he still had the cigar in his mouth. The phrase “muscular Christianity” came to mind.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man cried in a voice that cracked with pain and anger.
Brennan put his mouth, with the burning cigar in it, close to the man’s left ear and whispered: “I’m the Holy Father. And this,” he lifted the man’s head and twisted it towards the rest of us, “is the College of Cardinals. Prepare to be excommunicated. Right here, right now.”
“I’m not even Catholic!”
“Sure you are,” said Brennan. “Now be a good lad and tell us what kind of beef you have with the Church of Rome.”
“Fuck you!”
Brennan yanked the man to his feet and shoved him into a pew.
His forehead and chin were bleeding, and he rubbed them with a raw-looking wrist. Brennan signalled to the rest of us and we sat around him to block his escape.
“Speak!” Brennan barked at him.
“Now, Brennan,” Father O’Flaherty said in his soft brogue, “let’s give the lad a chance to get his breath.” The man whipped around to look at O’Flaherty, who turned away from the young fellow’s blazing eyes.
Brennan continued to smoke and glare malevolently at the culprit, who could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five years old; it was hard to tell. “Who the fuck are you guys?”
“We’ll ask the questions here,” Burke snapped. “Who are you?” When there was no reply, Burke leaned towards him and I put a restraining hand on his shoulder. More gently — and anything would have been more gentle — he said: “We all have problems with the Church. What’s yours?”
The prisoner looked at each of us, then settled on Father O’Flaherty; he peered closely at the older man before speaking. “You better not be one of them.”
O’Flaherty cleared his throat and asked mildly: “One of whom?”
“None of your business, you fucking Irish bog-trotter!”
The Reverend Brennan X. Burke, B.A. (Fordham), S.T.L. (Pontifical Gregorian), Doctor of Sacred Theology (Angelicum), delivered a short homily: “Watch your language, you fecking little gobshite. It’s lucky for you Father O’Flaherty’s here.”
The young man wiped blood from his face and looked belligerently at O’Flaherty in his dressing gown. O’Flaherty reached out a fatherly hand, but the prisoner flinched away. “You have nothing to fear from us, my son. Did somebody hurt you?”
“I’m not hurt!”
“So, what’s your problem?” Burke demanded.
O’Flaherty held up a conciliatory hand. “I’m Father O’Flaherty. I’m the rector here. Now let’s see if we can get you some help, my lad. What’s your name?”
“Yeah, right. Tell you my name. That’d be a genius move on my part.”
“We want to help you,” repeated O’Flaherty.
The young man’s eyes darted nervously to Burke who, in a calmer voice, said: “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Indeed he’s not going to do you any harm at all. This is Father Burke.”
”
This
guy is a fucking priest?”
“Yeah, yeah, and an Irish bog-trotter too,” Burke replied. “Save your breath. Now, why don’t you let us take you somewhere you can be safe for the night. This man is a doctor.” Brennan turned to Dr. Shaw, who was holding a snow-white handkerchief out to the injured vandal. “He’ll have a look at you. And I’m sure he’ll be happy to accompany you and Father O’Flaherty to a shelter —”
“I’m not going anywhere with them!”
“— and in the morning we’ll set you up with a counsellor, or somebody else who can start to help you.”
The captive was escorted to the rectory under guard so that Mike O’Flaherty could get dressed, and he and the doctor could tuck their charge somewhere safe for the night. We followed them to the rectory, Brennan stopping to pick up the paint can and take it with him. The party broke up then.
I called the next evening to see how things had gone and Mike O’Flaherty filled me in. The vandal had taken flight in the small hours of the morning. If Brennan had not been on the scene, and O’Flaherty had got to the guy first, would he have been more inclined to stay and seek help? Then I remembered how the intruder had attacked Burke. Father O’Flaherty would not have had the strength or agility to fight his attacker off. Things could have turned out worse.
O’Flaherty had called a meeting of people from the church and youth centre early that morning. A young man fitting the vandal’s description had spent time around the centre a few months before. He had given his name as Jason. One youth centre volunteer said Jason had asked questions about the priests at St. Bernadette’s. What kind of questions? The guy wanted to know the priests’ names, their ages and where they were from. It was a pity, O’Flaherty observed sadly, that Jason had not stayed till morning.
“Let’s hope Brennan is down on his knees somewhere beseeching the Lord to make him a channel of His peace, if the poor lad turns up again.”
II
I missed the next poker night, but had made plans for an afternoon of musical theatre at Neptune. It was one of those outings Maura and I were determined to take in together for the children’s sake. We had invited Brennan along, and were on our way to pick him up. An argument was in progress about the seats I had reserved.
“If you’d bought tickets for tonight’s performance instead of this afternoon, Collins, we’d know for sure that Frank MacKay will be singing the part. If they have an understudy, I won’t want to be there...”
The kids waited in the car while we went up to Burke’s room. “You don’t know there’s going to be an understudy. Why don’t you just wait for twenty minutes until you can read the program? Then you’ll know. It’s that simple.” But it wasn’t. Maura came from the kind of family in which everyone, whenever the phone rang, had to speculate and argue about who it was before answering it. If you ever call their house, let it ring ten times.
We knocked on the priest’s door. Brennan came to greet us, unshaven, wearing a pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt, with a glass of what looked like chocolate milk in his hand. He stood in the doorway and rubbed his back against the door jamb.
“Sure sign of a bachelor,” Maura said, “scratching your back against the door post.” She looked him up and down. “I have to tell you, you’re the seediest cleric I’ve ever seen. To think I spent a whole night with you.” Brennan looked from her to me in momentary alarm, then obviously remembered the all-night wingding at the Strattons’.
He turned to me. “Monty, have you read the papers? About the little girl who died in the car accident?”
“Oh, yes. Very sad.”
“And did you hear how she died?” Maura asked. “The news reports glossed over it, but I heard what happened. The child’s father is off at a party, all drugged up. He calls in the middle of the night and demands that his common-law wife, the little girl’s stepmother, go out and pick up some more drugs or booze or something he wants, and deliver it to him at the party, which is way over in Dartmouth. The stepmother doesn’t have the car —
he
has it — but why should he get off his arse
when he has her to do his bidding? So the stepmother goes over to another apartment in her building and gets some bozo, who happens to be drunk, to drive her on this errand. A man says ‘jump,’ she says ‘how high and can I kiss your arse on the way up.’ She drags the little girl and her brother out of bed and into the car, puts them both in the front seat without seatbelts on, gets into the back seat herself, and reclines for the journey. And away they go to the crack house, or the bootlegger, or wherever they’re going. Then they head for the bridge but they don’t get there, because the drunk at the wheel loses control of the car and they smash into a power pole. The girl is thrown from the car, and lands on her head.” Brennan closed his eyes as if to shut out the picture of the child, still in her pyjamas, broken and dying. “The brother just had scratches. The driver, well, who cares? The stepmother was able to walk away from it. They rushed the girl to the hospital and worked frantically to save her life. This is where I heard the story, from a friend who works for the ambulance service. Anyway, do you know what she said, the stepmother, when the police showed up? ‘But he told me to go, he told me to go.’ This while the child was lying there losing consciousness! I hope that woman gets —”
“I’ve heard enough of this! Jesus Christ!” Brennan snapped. He was clearly on the verge of being sick. “Do you know who that was?”
I shook my head.
He took a deep breath and went on in a quieter voice: “It was my little pet from the choir. Alvin. I just can’t —” He cleared his throat. “I can’t go with you today. I should have called.”
“Brennan, I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize her name when I read it. You don’t look so good.”
“I’m heartscalded, Monty. Heartscalded.”
Maura stood there, mortified. Then she turned and ran down the corridor.
We joined the kids and drove to the theatre in silence. Frank was singing the part.
I got a call from Brennan the next day. “I’m sorry I snapped at Maura.”
“Brennan, she understands. Believe me. In fact, she felt terrible for spilling the story like that. She gets so worked up when a child is hurt —”
“I want to apologize to her.”
“It’s up to you.” I gave him her number. I thought this was probably as close as he ever came, given his chosen life, to a little imbroglio with a woman; perhaps he’d enjoy calling and trying to straighten it out. As close as he came? How little I knew!
III
Maura and I attended Janeece Tuck’s — Alvin’s — funeral at St. Bernadette’s, arriving separately but sitting together in the middle of the church. She had Normie with her; the child had asked to come. Grieving relatives took their places, father’s and mother’s contingents studiously ignoring each other. A badly tinted blonde with blotchy pink skin had to be supported up the aisle to a seat a few rows behind Janeece’s father. Whispers made it clear that this was the little girl’s stepmother, the woman whose heedlessness had led to the fatal car ride. A group of children in uniform filed into the church under the stern guidance of Sister Dunne; these were obviously choir school children who would not be singing today. Overall, the church seemed an empty, lonely place. I remembered Janeece clattering up the stairs to the choir loft. There may have been two dozen people in the building that day, but it had not seemed lonely then.
Father O’Flaherty would be saying the funeral Mass, assisted by Father Burke, who would also be directing the music. An African-Canadian Baptist minister would be saying a few words in remembrance of Janeece, and the minister’s sister, a well-known gospel singer, would be doing a solo at the end.
The children of the junior choir, joined by a few young adult choristers, looked angelic in their white robes as they filed in with their music and moved to the chairs that had been set up in front of the altar on the right. When the choir was seated there was one chair left empty, where Janeece — Alvin — would have sat.
As Mike O’Flaherty led the small wooden casket towards the altar, followed by the little girl’s family, Burke directed the choir and congregation in the opening hymn. The words promised us that, on some glorious morrow, we would know and understand, we would
see the Saviour face to face. But the melody, poignant and moving — it was in fact
Finlandia
by Sibelius — reflected the title of the hymn: “Now Know We Not the Meaning of Life’s Sorrow.”