Gospel (8 page)

Lucy felt brave enough to ask, “Dr. Abdullah, excuse me, but I thought there was a crucifixion in Moslem teachings.”

“Oh, there was a crucifixion but Jesus did not suffer it. Simon the Cyrene or perhaps Judas himself, say some traditions. Surah 4:155. Uh … it's difficult in English …
Yet they crucified him not, but had no more than his likeness … No sure knowledge did they have of Jesus,
and on and on,
they really did not slay him but God took him up to Heaven.
In the traditions, it is thought a spy sent to entrap Jesus was crucified instead. No one
good,
surely, was crucified in his place.”

“Let's hope not,” said Dr. Whitestone lightly tapping the gavel, concluding the discussion, “or it should spoil our dessert.”

Everyone pleasantly rose and walked slowly to the adjoining common room where dessert would be served with renewed, plentiful decanters of port, sherry, madeira, the chilled sauterne, chocolates and pastries, and brandy and cigars.

“I thought we
had
dessert,” Lucy asked O'Hanrahan as they walked to the next room.

“That was pudding, this is dessert. Look it up in the encyclopedia.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The rabbi pulled aside the professor. “Paddy,” he said, “why don't we make a break and talk strategy with Keegan, hm? Leave Mata Hari behind?”

Father Keegan sidled up to O'Hanrahan and the rabbi, looking put out.

O'Hanrahan asked the Irishman, “Can't they get you anything from the kitchen, Father?”

“Of course not, not here in England. Kitchen's closed and rules are rules.”

The rabbi suggested, “I think our fellow Acolytes will allow us to slip away to a pub and get the poor man something to eat, don't you, Patrick?”

“Why certainly,” said the professor, matching the arched tone of the question. O'Hanrahan deigned to recognize Lucy. “Well, Lucy dear,” he said, “we are going to fetch some victuals for Father Keegan and have a pint of something good for us.”

“Aye,” said the priest.

“So we'll be back in an hour or so, all right?” O'Hanrahan announced rather than asked. “And we'll talk then about many mysteries of the One True Church, hm?”

Lucy nodded numbly. “Yeah, okay. I'll be with the others.”

Lucy returned to the paneled room they'd had drinks in earlier and she let her hand run along the wall to steady her. Too much alcohol. She used to be able to hold her booze but those were undergraduate days and since she was twenty-five or so she had cut back the boozing to nothing. First, alcohol went straight to her hips and belly and that was reason enough. The second motivation for abstinence was her father had become a worse heavy drinker as his recent retirement progressed. Not quite an alcoholic, she supposed, because he never fell down drunk or passed out, but he drank continually and the only thing worse than Mr. Dantan after a few stiff ones—obnoxious, spiteful, hypercritical, cynical, disapproving—was Mr. Dantan sober.

Lucy's mind flashed over a number of times in a traffic jam, at a family function, at a parents' day “thing” at St. Eulalia's, that her sisters and brothers and mother danced lightly around Dad because one wrong comment would be the detonation, the match on the gasoline that would create a scene and mortify them all. Lucy's mother would then rush her father home by way of a tavern and the pressure would be alleviated, meltdown contained. He was the same way about his food. Not on the table when he got home at five from the stockyards? Hell would be unleashed, torrents of abuse, declamations of the insufficiencies of Mrs. Dantan, his children, how no one did any real work except him, no one contributed anything except him … and then like some dumb animal, he would be fed, and then he'd be all right.

Now that her dad had retired he had become a nuisance all day around the house instead of just at night, taking charge and “supervising,” declaring that no wonder nothing got done given the worthlessness of the family, and thank God above he was there now to make things right. I have never, thought Lucy, regretted for a nanosecond moving out of that house and to Kimbark Street.

Forty minutes passed.

After enough small talk and conversation with the others, who were not so terribly interested in her life or her thesis, it seemed to be certain that O'Hanrahan had escaped.

“Dr. Whitestone,” she asked. “Did Dr. O'Hanrahan tell you where he and Father Keegan were going?”

Dr. Whitestone looked wrily at her and Lucy gleaned that the O'Hanrahan's-mistress-misconception had made the rounds, courtesy of Father Beaufoix. But he answered, “Those fellows always finish these affairs by an appearance at the Turf Tavern.”

Lucy got directions, buttoned her coat, and went out into the drizzle, walking under the mock Bridge of Sighs spanning the medieval street leading to New College, founded 1379. She backtracked and saw students slipping between two buildings down an alley not two yards in width. There was a streetsign:
ST. BRIDGET'S PASSAGE.

She went down this alley past a streetlamp perfect for a Victorian Sherlock Holmes movie set in the fog, then turned to see the Turf Tavern come into view at the bottom of a slight hill, surrounded by the backs of Oxford townhouses and college buildings on all sides. The pub was a 13th-Century beam-and-plaster building with a ceiling less than six feet tall one must duck under, while outside there were picnic tables and stools where students gathered to warm themselves on this chilly spring evening before roaring fires. The pubyard was at the foot of the old city wall; the firelight cast ghastly, pagan shadows along the gray rotted stones and Lucy, squinting, sensed some former past-life, perhaps, amid the camps of Alfred with tomorrow a battle against the Danes to face.

After peering in various nooks and crannies, she discerned Dr. O'Hanrahan, wilder and more obviously inebriated, Rabbi Hersch, and Father Keegan, all being amused by one of Dr. O'Hanrahan's booming renditions of a tale:

“… and
that's
why,” he was saying through hoarse laughter, “I never fail to go to Mulligan's when in Dublin, Father!”

“Ah,” said the priest, “they did their duty by ye, m'boy. Carryin' ye all the way back to Dun Laoghaire like that. Just be sure you don't disgrace yourself before Father Creech and those bastards when you get over there.”

O'Hanrahan nodded, “Don't worry, I'll be on my best behavior if it means getting the scroll…” He noticed Lucy and aborted this line of discussion. “Why, look! My darling daughter! Come to see your old papa!”

The Irish priest stood to shake her hand. “Why, Paddy, I'd no idea! Pleased to meet you, I'm Father Keegan.”

“I'm
not
his daughter, Father.”

Father Keegan looked mournful. “Aw Paddy, Paddy, at your age…”

“No,” she snapped, “not the mistress either.”

O'Hanrahan gleefully: “She's a spy from Chicago. She's the CIA.”

“Lucy Dantan, Father.”

“You can sit with us, lassie,” said O'Hanrahan, “if you drink a pint of this heavenly brew.”

“Oh, I don't think I'd better drink anything else—”

O'Hanrahan: “Then go away and haunt our revels no more!” O'Hanrahan thrust two pound coins into Father Keegan's hands. “Whadya think, Father? Dogbolter or Headbanger?”

“She's a wee one, Paddy. We'll start her off on Headbanger.”

After Father Keegan's departure, Lucy turned to the rabbi while her drink was being fetched. “Don't you ever, Rabbi sir, show the effects of alcohol?”

“Never,” answered O'Hanrahan for him, “he is the Hebrew Socrates. Drinks all night and never seems drunk—nay, he even gets more lucid, damn him. Whereas I…” O'Hanrahan was a bit unsteady as he matched his florid speech with ample gestures. “… get more colorful and ribald.” He said the last word “ribbled” like the English say it.

“Sit still, Paddy,” said Rabbi Hersch, pulling him back into the chair. “You're ribald enough without any help.”

“Found your way, my dear, down St. Bridget's
passage,
did you?” O'Hanrahan asked it with a prurient emphasis. “St. Brigit, Virgin of Ireland, Morey,” he went on. “Ne'er a man was there who e'er went down her passage, aye begorrah.”

“Jesus, the Irish accent we're getting now,” said Rabbi Hersch. “Now you know we're in trouble.”

Father Keegan returned with her pint of Headbanger. “Here you go, m'dear. Now ye be careful with that.”

Lucy sipped it to be polite, finding it soapy and strong. But not … not bad tasting, exactly. Well, she must drink this, really. English beer is very esteemed, even though it's warm and nauseating. I can't tell Judy I didn't have drinks at a ye olde English pub, now can I?

“Yes, good old Mulligan's,” mused O'Hanrahan. “Shall we meet there, Father Keegan? Before our special mission!”

“Give us a call at the parish, 'fore ye depart, Paddy.”

What mission? thought Lucy, remembering her own. Elsewhere in the pubyard, a band of young men in rowing sweatshirts and sweatpants whooped it up as one of their crewmen exposed his behind, before falling off his picnic table, insensibly drunk.

“Ah, to be in England,” said O'Hanrahan.

Halfway to the bathroom, one of the spindlier rowers stumbled to a wall and threw up everywhere in the path.

“Ah, to be in England!” repeated O'Hanrahan. “Now it's your round, Lucy, dear Lucy the daughter I never had! Cordelia to my Lear, Ruth to my Naomi!”

The rabbi cackled for the first time all evening.

Father Keegan hid his laughter as O'Hanrahan warbled, “Go get us three of the same, O daughter mine, blossoming flower of mine seed…”

Lucy, feeling green herself, particularly after watching the boy over there get sick, steadied herself on the back of the priest's chair and aimed herself toward the pub building.

That's it, she thought, no more drink, not for me.

Lucy staggered into the hot, smoky pub and waited in the line to get her order. When she returned with the pints … the table was empty.

They'd gone and stiffed her.

“Hello there!” called a female voice.

It was the tall girl Lucy had seen earlier that morning with the beret and magenta stockings. She was sitting at a picnic table by a roaring fire surrounded by four young men, three of whom were moving on to a “drinks party,” or so they announced. The tall girl waved Lucy toward her and Lucy got a closer look at the clear-featured handsome young man with rich black curls that hung before his eyes.

“Do you want these pints?” Lucy said instinctively.

Lucy set them down and joined the table.

“I'm Ursula Crewes,” said the tall girl. She didn't introduce her brooding companion. “You're Julian's American friend, aren't you?”

Lucy paused long enough for Ursula to rush right in:

“You simply
must
come to Tessa's party—there'll be
stacks
of drink, I swear. There, I've done it. Everyone thinks I'm an utter selfish bitch, but I've just proven I'm not. You simply
must
come.”

“Well I—”

“Oh, besides, it will terrify Alex when he gets back from London after the break! When he hears we've been friendly, comparing notes, saying horrible things about him, which we must. I'll go first. He's a dreadful lover, really he is. Too drunk or too quick, though maybe you have found the golden mean that eluded me…”

Lucy should have been correcting the mistaken impression that they had mutual friends, but Ursula was intensely devoted to what she was saying.

“No, there wasn't
much
between us; I just made a beastly fool of myself, threw myself upon him at the St. John's Ball. I was an
utter
slag-whore, I admit that! Oh he surely told you; I can't believe he's that gentlemanly, not to gossip about me.”

“Well, actually—”

“You might as well call in later,” Ursula said, “because the party's on our staircase and you'll be kept awake anyway.”

“You can have parties all night in Braithwaite?”

“Heavens no, but Jim the porter's on duty tonight, always dead drunk, never susses. Three quads away. Well, we're off!” Ursula stood with her male admirer and reiterated the invitation kindly before sweeping her friend along toward St. Bridget's Passage.

That left Lucy alone with one pint.

“Still givin' 'em away, pet?”

She turned to see a young man with dark-blond, close-cropped hair, leather jacket, a T-shirt that had a caricature of Margaret Thatcher and something about
FUCK THE POLL TAX.

“Sure,” said Lucy.

The young man left his nearby table and sat at hers. “American?” he asked.

“Yep. From Chicago. My name's Lucy.”

He was Duncan from North Shields, that was up north where no tourist ever went so he didn't expect her to know about it. Lucy was thrilled with the singsongy way he talked, up and down as if each sentence ended in a question. Had she heard of Newcastle, near where he was from? No, Lucy hadn't.

Duncan then asked, “How do you know Ursula?”

“I don't know her at all. She thinks she knows me from somewhere, I think. I'm staying in the guest room at Braithwaite and her room's on the same staircase.”

“'Tis the fuckin' end of civilization, that place.” Duncan in a few swallows had drained the pint of beer.

“What college do you go to?”

“Braithwaite, so I knay what I'm talkin' aboot.” Duncan suddenly patted Lucy on the knee. “Whadya say, pet? Fancy a kebab?”

Lucy was having trouble deciphering Geordie: he wants a bob? Which is some kind of coin, right? She reached into her suit jacket and produced a pound coin.

“Champion! Let's set out then…”