Crooked Vows (19 page)

Thomas listens.
Religious advisers
. He thought he caught an odd tone in the way Macpherson used the expression.

‘At our first meeting,' the doctor continues, ‘I told you that I saw the possibility of uncovering wider issues in your life than this matter of recovering your missing memories. You might think that this is really beyond my brief, so to speak, but I'd see it as part of my professional obligation to pursue one set of ideas a short distance with you. I suggest that we should have at least one more meeting. I will see you at the same time next week, and we will talk about the response from your church to the memories that have been retrieved, as well as opening up some more general questions. It would be a good thing if we could continue to meet beyond next week to explore these larger issues in your life, but that may not be possible, given that we have finished the task set by your archbishop.'

*

Thomas walks out onto the street and turns towards the bus stop. A feeling of relief is creeping over him as he contemplates, beyond the coming unavoidable interviews with the archbishop and the police, the end of this terrible saga. The police interview will be difficult, but the story he has to tell is not as black as some people might have suspected. There have probably been dreadful rumours circulating in some quarters about what he is supposed to have done.

The sense that relief and finality are at last coming into view is suddenly swept away as Thomas's mind is filled again by the image of a huge wave poised to break, and in the face of the wave, a head: Jane's head. And her arm waving, and her voice, shrill with terror. Her last words, crying out to him for help.

13

Confession

Father Kevin sits back and runs one hand across the top of his narrow bald head and sighs.

‘My God, m'boy, there's another two or three dozen hairs gone every day. I'd be able to count what's left one by one except that they're all around the back.' He grins. ‘But getting back to the main point—that's it, is it? What you've told me? Is that the extent of what happened?'

Thomas clasps his hands together tightly between his knees.

‘I think so. Or really, I'm sure. Yes. All that's important, anyway.' He looks up from the floor but can't quite bring himself to meet those small eyes.

‘And you had really forgotten all this? That's remarkable. Maybe the witch-doctor knows a trick or two after all. I'd taken him to be nothing but a fashionable fake. Judge not, that ye be not judged. It goes to show that we can learn something new every day. Maybe a small celebration is called for. Your lost days have been found again. They've returned, like the prodigal son. Or was it the prodigal sheep? Let's have just a spot of that Vat 69.'

Father Kevin heads for the bottle standing on the kitchen bench and pours two rather unequal spots.

‘There you are, m'boy. I don't think you really enjoyed your first experience with it a week or two ago. But you should try again. Persevere in the path of virtue. A parish priest needs to learn how to drink; there aren't many pleasures available in this job.' He grins, holding out the Vegemite glass with the smaller share. To Thomas, who finally manages for a moment to look him in the eye, it doesn't seem an altogether happy grin.

The small man takes a careful sip.

‘Now, talking about parish priests, I can't see any problem about your being one, and I'm sure the archbishop will take the same view when he hears your story. I take it that you will be speaking to him soon. And so will I.'

Thomas mutters something: an indeterminate sound that might suggest that he's grateful, or just that he's heard.

‘And on the subject of clean bills of health, you'd be looking to me to say something as your spiritual director, and confessor.'

Thomas looks down at the floor again.

‘I'm sure you don't need me to lay it out for you in detail. You've done the course in moral theology more recently than me, and the rules can't have changed to any extent. Still, maybe you need to hear it said.'

Father Kevin looks past Thomas to the window and the world beyond it. To the younger man, who takes a quick side-long glance at him, he doesn't look as if his whole mind is focused on this task.

‘So, you didn't try to pull that young lady out of the water. There's no sin in that. I'm not a swimmer m'self, but I take it that there'd be some considerable risk in it. For you, I mean. Nobody's obliged to risk his own life to try to save someone else's. No doubt a hero would have done it. But it's no sin not to be a hero. The Church's teaching is quite clear about this, as you know very well. There are obligations, and there are counsels of perfection. This was not an obligation.

‘In fact, when you think about it, maybe the whole thing was providential, the way it worked out. Maybe it was God holding you back from playing the hero. All that contact with a young lady: it could easily have gone to the head of a young fellow who's not used to it. You might have been tempted away from your religious vocation if it had gone on much longer. I thought I picked up a few hints along those lines, you know, while you were telling the story.'

The priest's small eyes focus obliquely on Thomas, with a momentary sly grin, which is replaced by a more earnest expression.

‘But look at what happened. The source of the temptation is gone, and you're still here, setting out on a life devoted to God's work. Saved by your own hesitation, in fact. The finger of God, perhaps, holding you back, so that you will go on to do his work. A blessing, really.

‘The self-abuse, now: that's a different matter. Holy purity. There's no such thing as a venial sin against the virtue of holy purity. All sins of impurity are grave, as you well know. And when I think about it there's another blessing in what happened: the finger of God holding you back from the danger of dying with a grave sin on your soul.'

Father Kevin is looking through the window towards the street again although he seems to be focusing on something outside that Thomas can't see. His voice has taken on an almost automatic tone, as if his thoughts are a long way away.

‘A grave sin, yes. But God knows that we are all weak, all sinners. You're sorry, no doubt? Repentant? Determined not to fall again? And to avoid the occasions of sin? Well, you will have no difficulty avoiding that particular occasion of sin. Very well, then. For a penance, say two decades of the Rosary.'

The little man swings into the absolution: ‘
Ego te absolvo,
I wash you clean from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.' The Latin formula flows easily off his tongue.

Thomas, too, looks out of the window as the ritual words flow past him. There is a degree of relief in the beginning of the end of this horrific saga. But he still has a feeling of incompleteness: a sense that something is not settled by this rehearsal of the familiar rules and ritual words.

‘Yes, I know all that. But I can't get the pictures out of my mind, or the sounds. Not since the memories came back. Her head in the foam at the gap in the reef, with one arm waving. Then she appears again out of a huge wave that's about to break over her, looking towards me, and calling to me. Screaming for help. I feel desperate to do something, but somehow I can't. I remember setting out to swim to her, but next moment pulling back. Backwards and forwards like that five or six times. More. And then she is gone. But I'm still here. Perhaps I couldn't have helped her, really, but I feel something shrinking inside when I think of myself not even trying.'

The older man makes an impatient sound.

‘Yes, yes. It's very distressing, I'm sure. But that has nothing to do with what we are concerned with here. The rules. What the rules say about that situation is quite clear.'

He drains the last drops in his glass.

‘Here, have another spot of this Vat 69. But I see that you've hardly touched your first. I think I will all the same.' He pours himself another careful half-inch and looks gloomily at the level in the bottle. ‘Nearly half-empty already. I'll have to take this slowly; God alone knows where the next bottle is coming from.'

Thomas takes a sip from his own glass. He's still not sure about it. Perhaps in time he'll make up his mind about whisky. And about a few other matters that used to seem clear, but are recently becoming hazy.

14

Final Consultation

Macpherson is sitting back in his chair with his eyes directed at the ceiling above Thomas's head, but their focus appears to be far out beyond the confines of the room. He waits for the younger man to add to what he has said, waits a full minute and more, but no more comes. He sits forward, forearms on the desk, looking at Thomas in silence.

Eventually he shakes his head.

‘That is extraordinary, if I have understood it properly. Is this the judgment of your religious adviser, that masturbation is a grave sin, but the drowning of the young lady was a blessing? Did he really say that it was providential that you couldn't bring yourself to try to help her? Because you will go on to pursue a career in your Church? Is that the way he spoke? A providential blessing! I'm sure you know that most people would see what happened as a real tragedy. Would you expect other people of your persuasion to think along the same lines as this man?'

Thomas nods, looking away.

‘The archbishop—I had a meeting with him yesterday. He seemed … I suppose he seemed relieved by what I told him. He said that this outcome was … I think his word was
satisfactory
. From his point of view. He said that he looked forward to ordaining me now that any obstacles are out of the way. He may have thought of Jane as a potential obstacle. Quite possibly.'

The older man stands.

‘Did neither of these gentlemen express any sense of how tragic the drowning of this young woman was? That is truly extraordinary. I would never have imagined that anyone could be so unfeeling. And what did you feel, when you heard them speak like that?'

Thomas looks up to find the doctor's eyes are looking at him intensely. He hesitates before replying.

‘I couldn't get those pictures out of my mind—you know, the waves breaking on the reef, Jane, clinging to the rock and then being swept out over jagged outcrops. I was imagining what it would feel like for me, being dragged over those rocks. I could hear her calling to me just an instant before the last wave broke. I was seeing and hearing all that while they were talking to me, both of them and I felt as if—this is hard to explain—as if what they were saying came from somewhere a long way away. It didn't seem to connect with what I was seeing, and telling them about. It wasn't quite like that when I went to the police. They kept me there a couple of hours going over and over what happened, and all the time I could see it as if I was still there watching it happen. But the police—this is hard to explain, too—they seemed to be closer to seeing what I was seeing. Focused on what actually happened to Jane, and the sadness of it, not on how the church might be affected.'

Macpherson turns and walks the two or three steps to the window and stands with his back to Thomas, looking out to the trees and unkempt grass in the overgrown garden. Thomas watches him, puzzled. Wondering what he could be thinking. Why he is silent for so long.

The doctor turns back but remains standing, outlined by the window. With the light behind him, his expression is hard to read. He moves to his chair and eventually sits, seeming just a little more relaxed.

‘You have spoken about sins several times. I think I told you at the beginning that I had no use for the word in my professional vocabulary. I said so, and I thought so, at the time. As far as possible I try to understand without judging—without blame. And to help anyone who consults me to understand in the same spirit. But now I find … I am not quite sure what I find. I think I find myself strongly driven to judge.

‘This is not directed at you personally, you must understand. It is for, perhaps I should say, a whole culture. I think you are beginning to find your way out of it, but you have come to me from a culture that seems to turn a good half of what I understand to be morality, completely upside down. Pain is good, pleasure is bad. Masturbation, for instance. Why on earth should anyone be taught to feel guilty about it, when I suppose everyone does it, and it harms nobody? The problem seems to be that it's a source of pleasure. Other things struck me too. In this scheme of things it seems that ritual is more important than helping anyone. People who live celibate lives turned in on themselves are reckoned to be better than people who share their lives with someone else and help to raise children. On a trivial level, a man who destroys an apple, rather than eating it or giving it to someone else, should be admired. And the one who was so intent on following his own plans that he passed by a last opportunity to visit his old mother? I would say that he was self-absorbed almost to a pathological degree, but apparently he's a saint.

‘Your culture seems to worship a God that I find very disturbing. I gather that this God is pleased when his devotees have dreadful deaths inflicted on them for no obvious advantage to anyone. And when they torture themselves and mutilate their own bodies. Your book was obviously written by a person with a very strange fascination with pain, and he clearly imagines a God who shares the same fascination. It seems that the same characteristic—I'd class it as a pathology—runs strongly through your tradition.

‘Take for example, the saint in last week's story: Saint Peter somebody. I heard a mention of his hair shirt, that he inherited from some other saint whose name escapes me now. I'm sure I've heard about hair shirts before, but I've never understood exactly what they were, or are.'