The Keys of the Kingdom (11 page)

‘Before God I don’t!’ The blood rushed to Scanty’s forehead as he thumped the floor boards in vociferous denial. ‘ I don’t know nothing about that at all. How should a poor creature like me! And Ned don’t either, that’s gospel truth! Ned always treated me right, a fine generous upstanding man, except for occasions, like when Polly was away, and the drink took hold of him. No, no, Francis, take it from me, there’s not a hope of findin’ the man!’

Again a silence, frozen, prolonged. A film clouded Francis’ eyes. He felt deathly sick. At last, with a great effort he got up.

‘Thank you, Scanty, for telling me.’

He quitted the room, went giddily down the bare flights of tenement stairs. His brow, the palms of his hands, were bedewed with icy sweat. A vision haunted, tormented him: the trim neatness of Nora’s bedroom, white and undisturbed. He had no hatred, only a searing pity, a dreadful convulsion of his soul. Outside in the squalid courtyard he leaned, suddenly overcome, against the single lamp-post and retched his heart out, into the gutter.

Now he felt cold, but firmer in his intention. He set out resolutely in the direction of St Dominic’s.

The housekeeper at St Dominic’s admitted him with that noiseless discretion which typified the Presbytery. In a minute, she glided back to the half-lit hall, where she had left him, and for the first time faintly smiled at him. ‘You’re fortunate, Francis. His Reverence is free to see you.’

Snuff-box in hand, Father Gerald Fitzgerald rose as Francis entered, his manner a mixture of cordiality and inquiry, his fine handsome presence matching the French furniture, the antique prie-dieu, the choice copies of Italian primitives upon the walls, the vase of lilies on the escritoire, scenting the tasteful room.

‘Well young man, I thought you were up North? Sit down! How are all my good friends in Holywell?’ As he paused to take snuff, his eye touched upon the College tie, which Francis wore, with affectionate approval. ‘I was there myself, you know, before I went to the Holy City … a grand gentlemanly place. Dear old MacNabb. And Father Tarrant. A classmate of mine at the English College in Rome. There’s a fine, a coming man! Well now, Francis.’ He paused, his needled glance sheathed by a courtier’s suavity. ‘What can we do for you?’

Painfully distressed, breathing quickly, Francis kept his eyes down. ‘I came to see you about Nora.’

The stammered remark rent the room’s serenity, its note of mannered ease.

‘And what about Nora, pray?’

‘Her marriage with Gilfoyle … She doesn’t want to go through with it … she’s miserable … it seems so stupid and unjust … such a needless and horrible affair.’

‘What do you know about the horrible affair?’

‘Well … everything … that she wasn’t to blame.’

There was a pause. Fitzgerald’s fine brow expressed annoyance, yet he gazed at the distraught youth before him with a kind of stately pity.

‘My dear young man, if you enter the priesthood, as I trust you will, and gain even half the experience which unhappily is mine, you will comprehend that certain social disorders demand equally specific remedies. You are staggered by this –’ He returned the phrase with an inclination of his head – ‘horrible affair. I am not. I even anticipated it. I know and abominate the whisky trade for its effect upon the brute mentality of the clods who constitute this parish. You and I may sit down and quietly enjoy our Lachryma Christi, like gentlemen. Not so Mr Edward Bannon. Enough! I make no allegations. I merely say, we have a problem, unhappily not unique to those of us who spend drab hours in the confessional.’ Fitzgerald paused to take snuff, with a distinguished wrist. ‘ What are we to do with it? I will tell you. First, legitimize and baptize the offspring. Secondly, marry the mother if we can, to as decent a man as will have her. We must regularize, regularize. Make a good Catholic home out of the mess. Weave the loose ends into our sound social fabric. Believe me Nora Bannon is highly fortunate to get Gilfoyle. He’s not so bright, but he’s steady. In a couple of years you’ll see her at mass with her husband and family … perfectly happy.’

‘No, no.’ The interruption was wrenched from Francis’ shut lips. ‘She’ll never be happy – only broken and miserable.’

Fitzgerald’s head was a trifle higher. ‘And is happiness the ultimate objective of our earthly life?’

‘She’ll do something desperate. You can’t compel Nora. I know her better than you.’

‘You seem to know her intimately.’ Fitzgerald smiled with withering suavity. ‘I hope you have no physical interest in the lady yourself.’

A dark red spot burned on Francis’ pale cheek. He muttered: ‘I am very fond of Nora. But if I love her – it’s nothing that would make your confessional more drab. I beg you –’ His voice held a low, desperate entreaty. ‘Don’t force her into this marriage. She’s not common clay … she’s a bright sweet spirit. You can’t thrust a child upon her bosom and a husband in her arms – because – in her innocence, she’s been …’

Stung to the quick, Fitzgerald banged his snuff-box on the table.

‘Don’t preach to me, sir!’

‘I’m sorry. You can see I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m trying to beg you to use your power.’ Francis mustered his flagging forces in a final effort. ‘At least give her a little time.’

‘That’s enough, Francis!’

The parish priest, too much master of himself, and of others, to lose his temper or his countenance for long, rose abruptly from his chair and looked at his flat gold watch. ‘I have a confraternity meeting at eight. You must excuse me.’ As Francis got up, he patted him reproachfully on the back. ‘My dear boy, you are very immature. Might I even say a little foolish? But thank God you have a wise old mother in Holy Church. Don’t run your head against the walls, Francis. They’ve stood for generations – against stronger batterings than yours. But there now – I know you’re a good lad. Come up and have a chat about Holywell when the wedding’s over. And meanwhile – as a little act of reparation for your rudeness will you say the Salve Regina for my intention?’

A pause. It was useless, quite useless. ‘Yes, Father.’

‘Good night then, my son … and God bless you!’

The night air was raw and chill. Defeated, crushed by the impotence of his youth, Francis dragged himself away from the Presbytery. His footsteps echoed dully on the closed pathway. As he passed the chapel steps, the sacristan was closing the side doors. When the last chink of light was gone, Francis stood, hatless, in the darkness, his eyes fixed on the wraith-like windows of the clerestory. He blurted out, in a kind of final desperation: ‘Oh, God! Do what’s best for all of us.’

As the wedding day approached, consuming Francis with a deadly, sleepless fever, the atmosphere of the tavern seemed insensibly to settle, like a stagnant pool. Nora was quiet, Polly vaguely hopeful; and though Ned still cringed in solitude, the muddled terror in his eyes was less. The ceremony would, of course, be private. But no restraint need operate upon the trousseau, the dowry, the elaborate honeymoon to Killarney. The house was littered with robes and rich materials. Polly, beseeching another ‘try-on’, with a mouthful of pins, waded through bales of cloth and linen, enveloped in merciful fog.

Gilfoyle, smugly observant, smoking the Union’s best cigars, would occasionally hold conference, upon matters of finance, with Ned. There was a deed of partnership, duly signed, and great talk of building, to accommodate the new ménage. Already Thad’s numerous poor relatives hung about the house, sycophantic yet assertive. His married sister, Mrs Neily, and her daughter, Charlotte, were perhaps the worst.

Nora had little enough to say. Once, meeting Francis in the passage she stopped.

‘You know … don’t you?’

His heart was breaking, he dared not meet her eye. ‘ Yes, I know.’

There was a suffocating pause. He could not sustain the torture in his breast. Incoherently he burst out, boyish tears starting in his eyes: ‘Nora … We can’t let this happen. If you knew how I’ve felt for you … I could look after you – work for you. Nora … let me take you away.’

She considered him with that strange and pitying tenderness. ‘Where would we go?’

‘Anywhere.’ He spoke wildly, his cheek wet and shining.

She did not answer. She pressed his hand without speaking, then went on, quickly, to be fitted for a dress.

On the day before the wedding, she unbent a little, losing something of her marble acquiescence. Suddenly, over one of those cups of tea which Polly inflicted upon her, she declared: ‘I believe I’d like to go to Whitley Bay today.’

Astounded, Polly echoed: ‘Whitley Bay?’ – then added in a flutter, ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘There’s no need.’ Nora paused, gently stirring her cup. ‘But of course if you want to …’

‘I do indeed, my dear!’

Reassured by that lightness in Nora’s manner – as though a bar of that old mischievous gaiety re-echoed, like distant music, in her being, – Polly came to view the excursion without disfavour. She had a gratified, bewildered idea that Nora was ‘coming round’. As she finished her tea she discoursed upon the beautiful Lake of Killarney, which she had once visited as a girl. The boatmen there had been most amusing.

The two women, dressed for the expedition, left for the station after the dinner hour. As she turned the corner Nora looked up towards the window where Francis stood. She seemed to linger for a second, smiled gravely, and waved her hand. Then she was gone.

News of the accident reached the district even before Aunt Polly was brought home, in a state of collapse, in a cab. The sensation throughout the city was impressive. Popular interest could never have been so stirred by the mere stupidity of a young woman stumbling between a platform and a moving train. It was the prenuptial timing which made the thing so exquisite. Around the docks women ran out of their doorways, gathering in groups, beshawled, arms akimbo. Blame for the tragedy was finally pinned upon the victim’s new shoes. There was enormous sympathy for Thaddeus Gilfoyle, for the family, for all young women about to be married and under the necessity of travelling by train. There was talk of a public funeral – with the confraternity band – for the mangled remains.

Late that night, how he knew not, Francis found himself in St Dominic’s church. It was quite deserted. The flickering wick of the sanctuary lamp drew his haggard eyes, a feeble beacon. Kneeling, stiff and pale, he felt, like an embrace, the remorseless foreclosure of his destiny. Never had he known such a moment of desolation, of abandonment. He could not weep. His lips, cold and stricken, could not move in prayer. But from his tortured mind there soared an offering of anguished thought. First his parents; and now Nora. He could no longer ignore these testaments from above. He would go away … he must go … to Father MacNabb … to San Morales. He would give himself entirely to God. He must become a priest.

During Easter, in the year 1892, an event occurred in the English Seminary of San Morales which set the place humming with a note of consternation. One of the students, in the subdiaconate, disappeared completely for the space of four entire days.

Naturally the Seminary had witnessed other seditions since its foundation in these Aragon uplands fifty years before. Students had mutinied for an hour or so, skulking to the
posada
outside the walls, hurriedly deranging conscience and digestion with long
cigarros
and the local
aguardiente.
Once or twice it had been necessary to drag some tottering recusant by the ears from the dingy parlours of the Via Amorosa in the town. But this – for a student to march out through the open gates in broad daylight and, half a week later, by the same gates, in even brighter light of day, to limp in again, dusty, unshaven, dishevelled, offering every evidence of horrible dissipation, and then, with no other excuse than ‘I’ve been for a walk!’ to fling himself upon his bed and sleep the clock round – it was apostasy.

At the recreation the students discussed it in awed tones – little groups of dark figures on the sunny slopes, between the bright green copperas-sprayed vineyards, with the Seminary, white and gleaming against the pale pink earth, beneath them.

It was agreed that Chisholm would undoubtedly be expelled.

The Committee of Examination had immediately been constituted. According to precedent, as in all grave breaches of discipline it was composed of the Rector, the Administrator, the Director of Novices and the Head Seminarian. After some preliminary discussion, the tribunal opened its proceedings, in the theological atrium, on the day following the runagate’s return.

Outside the
solano
was blowing. The ripe black olives fell from the blade-leafed trees and burst beneath the sun. A scent of orange flowers swept across from the grove above the infirmary. The baked earth crackled with the heat. As Francis entered the white and lofty-pillared room, its polished empty benches cool and dark, he had a quiet air. The black alpaca soutane stressed the thinness of his figure. His hair, cropped and tonsured, gave tautness to his face-bones, intensified the darkness of his eyes, his dark contained reserve. There was an odd tranquillity about his hands.

Before him, on the platform reserved for protagonists in debate, were four desks, already occupied by Father Tarrant, Monsignor MacNabb, Father Gomez and Deacon Mealey. Conscious of a mingling of displeasure and concern in the united gaze now upon him, Francis hung his head, while in a rapid voice Gomez, Director of Novices, read out the accusation.

There was a silence. Then Father Tarrant spoke.

‘What is your explanation?’

Despite the quietness which enclosed him Francis suddenly began to flush. He kept his head down.

‘I went for a walk!’ The words resounded lamely.

‘That is sufficiently apparent. We use our legs whether our intentions are good or bad. Apart from the obvious sin of leaving the Seminary without permission, were your intentions bad?’

‘No.’

‘During your absence did you indulge in alcoholic liquor?’

‘No.’

‘Did you visit the bullfight, the fair, the casino?’

‘No.’

‘Did you consort with women of ill fame?’