Grandmother and the Priests (42 page)

“I am not a good guest,” said Father Tom, contrite also. “We each hae his belief; we shouldna step on toes. Forgive me. Ye are not only my friend but ye are my brother.”

Touching relief flooded the minister’s very young face, and he held out his hand frankly. Never before had he extended his hand to anyone, because of his shyness, but had always waited to see if handshaking would be pleasing to others first. The two clergymen shook hands, Betsy curtseyed timidly, and Father Tom, now definitely feeling he was an Older Man — in fact, quite elderly — took his leave, thinking.

The next morning, cold and early and stark with strong northern light, found the priest trundling his noisy barrow to the manse, to the high excitement of the watchers behind the curtains. He knocked smartly on the door, and Betsy, sleepy-eyed and pale, answered. “A good morning to you, Mistress Gregor,” said Father Tom. “And may I hae the ladder we talked of yesterday?”

Betsy looked at the barrow filled with slates and topped with hammer and nails, and swallowed. “Ye?” she murmured. The priest nodded with that wonderful new firmness of his, and, speechless now, Betsy gestured towards the back of the manse. The priest fetched the ladder and set it up against the eaves, carefully removed his coat and hat and laid them on the gate. He flexed his muscles, filled his basket, and climbed. Betsy came to the foot of the ladder and called up faintly, “Faether, if my Dada hears of this he will drive ye from the hamlet.”

“He’ll drive nae man from this day forward from the hamlet,” said Father Tom, examining the roof with a keen eye. Betsy stared up at him with enormous and very dazed eyes. “It’s nae proper for a clergyman,” she murmured.

“Not proper to labor?” said the priest. “I must disagree, Mistress Gregor.”

“Bruce will nae like it,” she said.

“Bruce will like a sound roof,” he answered in a tone of authority, which immediately made the girl respectful. She retreated within the tiny manse.

The Protestants were appalled at the thought of a ‘Roman’ repairing the manse, and the Catholics were indignant and embarrassed. A priest, roofing the manse of a heretic! “I’ll nae hold up my head again,” declared Mrs. Logan to a neighbor, after she had run to her pub to spread the news. The pub was not officially open, but people were there as to a common gathering place for the dissemination of scandal. But Mr. Logan was thoughtful, and as he blew on a glass and polished it he said, “It will fair madden the Squire, and I dinna find it in my heart to shed tears for his worship.” He had no love for the Squire, who, though he was ‘invested’ in numerous pubs in surrounding hamlets, constantly inveighed against drinking. A fair hypocrite he is, thought Mr. Logan, resentfully. A mair one I niver knew. If it were not for the Squire there would be more merriment in the village, and more open conviviality. Now a man had to drink almost in secret to avoid annoying the Squire, and secrecy, thought Mr. Logan, was the mother of sin. And the Sundays! It was ‘mair’ like death than death itself; even the bairns dared not laugh in their prams on the street. It was the Squire’s doing. It was sinful, but the Catholics, themselves, dared not take happiness and relaxation on Sundays in the hamlet, not even playing horseshoes or singing softly on doorsteps. Did Our Lord want man to suffer on the Sabbath? Nay, nay!

Father Tom found the same isolation about him as he worked on the roof that he had found when repairing his own. Curtains tweaked, but no face appeared. The hammer rang. Father Tom began to sing. He fervently dedicated his heart to Old Scotia in passionate off-key. He throbbed over ballads concerning the sufferings and deaths of true Scotsmen at the hands of the Sassenach. “ ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled!’ ” he cried to the strong cold wind. “ ‘Welcome to your gory beds!’ ”

He aroused even the invalids from their beds so that they tottered to the curtains to see the scandalous sight of a clergyman hammering and chipping away and scrambling about a roof. “Lak a beetle, wi’ no respect for his calling,” was the general consensus. But eventually some very aged gentlemen, of both religions, gathered before the manse and added their quavering notes to the rousing choruses. Sometimes Father Tom would pause to lead them with his hammer from above, like a conductor of a symphony. It was very scandalous indeed.

Suddenly the old gentlemen in their caps fell silent, and Father Tom looked down to see the Squire on his horse.

“A guid morning to you, sir,” said Father Tom, saluting with his hammer. “I hae not forgotten I am having tea with you tomorrow.”

The Squire’s face was an interesting lavender and his eyes sparked with something that was not mirth. The old gentlemen meekly pulled their caps off, then drifted slowly away, not entirely away but to a small distance.

“In the name of hell what are ye doing?” asked the Squire in a soft voice.

Father Tom looked surprised. “I am mending a roof,” he said.

“Get ye doon from there,” the Squire said, even softer.

Father Tom fitted a slate and hammered it cleanly into place. The clatter echoed in the deep and shining silence. Then he said, “No.”

“Ye are doing Our Lord’s work, are ye?”

“Aye, that I am.”

“Get doon!” The Squire had not raised his voice, but the old men retreated another few feet. The hamlet held its collective breath.

“I take it,” said Father Tom, critically examining another slate, “that ye dinna want me for tea tomorrow?”

“Get doon!” The Squire drove his horse almost up against the house.

“No,” said Father Tom. He looked at the roof. “A fair shame it is, that the wee minister’s manse is not fit for man or beast. That beastie of yours, he lies sweeter in his stall than your daughter lies in her bed in this hut.”

“Damn you!” said the Squire. “Shall I pull ye from the roof?”

No one, not even the most irascible old priest, had ever spoken to Father Tom in such a tone and so he did not know that the sudden hard beat of his heart and the hot swelling of his face were the result of intense wrath. He crouched on the roof and held his hammer tightly.

“Ye shall not pull me from anywhere,” he said. His teeth suddenly hurt; he did not know he had clenched them together and was speaking through them. “A wicked auld man with the evil in his heart! D’ye think I do this to shame ye? Ye are not that high in my regard. I bought these slates before I hae the misfortune to lay an een upon ye, and for this purpose. Along with ye, man, to your knees and contrition!”

The lavender changed to thick purple on the Squire’s face. His whole big body vibrated. He said to the nearest old man, “Tammy, get the constable.”

The old man scuttled away with a frightened face. Father Tom drew one deep breath after another to stop the wild roaring of his heart, then resumed his work. The blows on the slates were extremely hard, and one shattered and flew in chips. The hamlet watched. Father Tom tested the chimney and made a note in his mind to get enough mortar for the stones. His face was wet with cold sweat, the icy sweat of anger.

Then the constable arrived on his bicycle, a small man with a very large red mustache and ears that protruded from under his cap. He dismounted and looked up at the Squire, who pointed at the priest with his crop. “Order that — that priest from the roof which isna his property, George!”

Father Tom looked down over his shoulder at the bewildered constable and smiled a little. He was still somewhat breathless. “Inform yon auld laddie that it isna his property either, Constable,” he said.

The constable swallowed nervously. It so happened that he was one of Father Tom’s parishioners. He said, “Faether, will ye come doon, please?”

“Why?” asked the priest. “Is it a crime I am committing, then?”

“Faether, it is scandalous,” the constable pleaded.

“It is that,” the priest agreed. “Scandalous that a minister of the Gospel should live under a leaking roof, and not a man in this hamlet brave enough, or guid enough, to mend it. A braw lot of laddies ye are!”

The constable turned a bright pink. “Faether,” he said, “it isna seemly. Hae ye permission to do this to this manse?”

Father Tom paused. He had not considered this aspect of the question. Then he saw Mr. Gregor’s bicycle approaching at a frantic speed, and he squatted on the roof until the minister had reached the house and had taken in the situation thoroughly. The small man appeared overwhelmed with shame, fear and misery. The priest smiled at him reassuringly.

“Bruce,” he said with affection, “I hae taken this occasion to mend the roof of the manse. Hae I your permission?”

The Squire kept his back and the rear of his horse to the trembling young minister and gave no sign that he was there. But the minister looked at that formidable back, then up at Father Tom and moistened his pale lips.

“There’s none to hurt you mair than ye hae been hurt,” said the priest, gently, “There’s none to fear but God.”

“I — ” began the minister. The door opened and Betsy’s white face appeared. There were tears on her cheeks. Her father accorded her no more recognition than he had given her husband. “Betsy, my love,” said the minister, in despair.

The girl advanced to the doorstep. The old gentlemen had been joined by several younger men, some women and a number of children. She looked at her father’s hating and disgusted profile, then at her husband’s tremulous face, then up at the priest.

She said in a clear young voice. “The good Faether is mending our roof, Bruce. Will ye thank him kindly for us?” She put her white hands over her swelling body, and her eyes, steadfast and brown as a burn in spring, fixed themselves on her husband’s.

Bruce looked at her long and earnestly, and she smiled. Then an astonishing thing happened. The young minister appeared to grow at least three inches taller and four inches broader. The features which had always been gentle became stern, and in that moment the minister’s youth left him and he was a man.

“How can a man thank one sae good as Faether Tom?” he said. “I can only pray for him, that God will bless him.”

The priest closed his eyes for a moment. Then he said to the constable, “Ye see, I hae permission.”

The constable removed his cap and scratched his head. Then he remembered that he was The Law. He said to the small crowd, severely, “And hae ye no better to do this early in the day than to hinder a man in his work?”

The crowd raised the smallest but surest of cheers, smiled, and dispersed a few more feet. The constable straightened, and gave them a frown from under his red eyebrows. They stepped back ten or twelve more inches.

“And you, sir,” said the constable to the Squire, “is there ought I can do for ye?”

The Squire touched the crop to his horse and it jumped forward. “At five, tomorrow!” Father Tom called after him. The Squire rode off down the road, and the horse’s hoofs struck fire on the cobbles.

“Ye’ll come in for tea when ye are finished, Tom?” asked the young minister, who now stood on the doorstep with his arm about his wife. He was so tall and strong now, and she leaned against him.

“Gladly,” said the priest. The hammer banged. “Sing us another song,” said one of the people.

So the priest sang:

“Here’s freedom to him that wad read!

Here’s freedom to him that wad write!

There’s none ever fear’d that the truth should be heard,

But they wham the truth wad indite!”

The minister joined in the rousing chorus, and the walls of every house echoed back the singing. Betsy looked at her husband with pride and joy.

“Oh, there’s none ever fear’d,” sang the priest, “that the truth should be heard, But they wham the truth wad indite! Indite! Indite!”

As the little crowd joined in the lusty singing every eye turned down the street to the Squire’s house.

The westlin wind came in with a roar that night and drove the summer from the land with its lances of lightning and its drums of thunder. But the roofs of the rectory and the manse did not leak though the slates rattled with gusts of hail and water flowed over them in miniature rivers. Father Tom lay contentedly on his hard bed and listened to the storm, secure in the knowledge that his house was safe, and the manse of the minister was safe, too. The sea rushed at the high headland on which the village perched, and roared away furiously, and all the air was filled with its salt and the scent of the pines. The hills crouched under the lightning, and echoed back the thunder. It’s nae night for man or beast, thought the priest as he fell asleep.

The one Mass was well attended the next morning, for all the rain and the wind, and as Father Tom turned to bless his flock he saw the gleam of pride in many an eye in that leaden light. They were proud of him! Almost everyone came to the Communion rail, and the prideful eyes beamed upon him. Our ain priest! they seemed to say. And all he had done was to mend a roof.

Mrs. Logan informed him, when he entered the rectory shrugging water from his shoulders, that he had a visitor. “It’s auld Jim,” she said in a curious voice. “A bad lot, that Jim.”

Father Tom doubted that there was any ‘bad lot’ in the hamlet save for Squire MacVicar, that man of monolithic virtue. He could not recall any ‘auld Jim’. Mrs. Logan, sniffing as she warmed the kippers, said that Jim was a heathen, not even a Presbyterian. He had probably not even been baptized. He had had nary a wife or a bairn, but had lived what Mrs. Logan discreetly described as an un-Christian life. He was a roisterer, a son of Satan, himself, and second to the Squire in money. He had been born somewhere ‘aboot’, but where exactly no one ever had discovered. He had a small farm which he did not cultivate, and no animals but a herd of sheep. His money? He had been a smuggler ‘in the lang ago’. Somewhere in England, it was said. But she, Mrs. Logan, should not complain. He spent much time in the pub and was one of its most valued customers.

“But it’s the foul mouth he has, Faether, and there’s many who crosses himself when auld Jim passes, or makes the sign against the evil eye.”

“Why should he come to me, then?” asked the priest

Mrs. Logan shrugged. “Not to be shrived, and ye can bank on that, Faether!”

She insisted that the priest have his breakfast before seeing his visitor, “who is smelling up the parlor with one of them cheroots from London, Faether.” So the priest ate his kippers and a boiled egg, after downing a monster plate of oatmeal, milk and treacle, and drank his good hot tea. Mrs. Logan complained only once about the ham which had been given to the wee minister, but her eyes were proudful too. To think it was our ain priest who had driven the Squire off like a bad schoolboy, and never turned a hair!

Father Tom opened the door of his parlor cum study, where it was icy cold. He hesitated on seeing a large cloud of smoke rising from a chair, then glanced back at the kitchen. Mrs. Logan affected to be totally absorbed in washing up. The priest closed the door firmly, shivered, and advanced into the tidy room. “Ye wish to see me?” he asked.

The cloud moved and a short fat figure rose from under it, a rough figure in coarse but hearty tweeds. Then the priest saw an uncommonly fat round face, very old and very jolly, and the naughtiest and brightest blue eyes he had ever encountered. For some reason he wanted to laugh, for laughter was etched all over that ancient red face. Not evil laughter, but the virile mirth of a man who has greatly enjoyed life and who was continuing to enjoy it robustly.