Grandmother and the Priests

  And no doubt I’ll be having the rheumatism soon, too, thought Father Tim, gloomily, shuddering even under all the blankets, which smelled highly of horse, and flinching when the icy wind struck his cheeks. Snow had fallen here, too, and the dark hills behind the village were streaked with it, like pallid veins, and Carne huddled under a white quilt of it. The main street (there were but four other streets besides) was narrow, unkempt, lined with tiny little shops whose windows were sightless with steam, and there was a goodly sprinkling of pubs between. This will be a drinking village, thought Father Tim, recalling the trim pubs of Dublin. There was an inn, also, with a board creaking in the wind, and it was brave with red and blue and white and announced that it was ‘The Dashing Falcon’. Birds do not dash, thought the priest, to divert his forebodings, but it has a lively sound.

  The old men informed him that the ‘ould Faether’ would be leaving tomorrow, that the good Sisters had smarted up the rectory and were waiting there to greet him — Father Tim shivered — all four of them. His housekeeper did not live on the premises; she was a widow with five children, and she ‘did’ for the priest daily, including Sunday dinner, and left at sundown. This cheered Father Tim a little; he had been the only son in a large family of girls and female cousins and aunts, and on the occasions when he had been a curate the housekeepers had bullied him like the dragons they were and regarded him as a mere slip of a lad in need not only of maternal attentions concerning mufflers and warm socks but of guidance. One of them had known more theology than a local, much-esteemed solicitor, who prided himself on his knowledge, and she was given, in odd moments, to arguing obscure points of doctrine with the curate.

  The ‘ould Faether’ had discreetly locked himself in his little bedroom to escape the nuns and the housekeeper who ‘did’ for him, on the plea of worse rheumatic pains today. He did not emerge until he heard masculine voices, and knew that his relief was at hand. He then crept painfully from the bedroom into the little parlor, which seemed stuffed with people, so small it was, and he greeted Father Tim with sincere expressions of joy. “A stout boyo,” he said, nodding, his weary old eyes brightening, and Father Tim had the distinct impression that he would need to be ‘stout’ in Carne.

  The tiny rectory was indeed ‘tight’, so tight that the parlor steamed with the heat of the red peat fire and the heat exuded by the welcoming committee. Father Tim had a confused glimpse of brick walls painted a leprous white — this done only yesterday by himself, said one of the old men proudly — and they still smelled pungently of whitewash. The few chairs were black but sturdy, and so was the one table with its unfragrant paraffin lamp, which was burning smokily against the dull dimness of the winter day.

  “Lovely, lovely,” murmured the ‘ould Faether’, who was obviously dying for a quiet drink to ease his pains, a drink he dared not take in the faces of the nuns, all of whom stood high in their habits except for the Sister Superior. She was one of the smallest ladies Father Tim had ever seen, with the face of a pink-cheeked angel, the loveliest of gentle blue eyes, and the most tender of rose-tipped mouths. So Father Tim, surveying her, knew that she had a temper like a holocaust, a nature carved from solid iron, and an obstinacy to make a donkey envious. She appeared to be about thirty, and therefore she was somewhere in her late sixties or early seventies and had never known a pain or twinge in her life. She gave him the sweetest and most submissive of smiles, and he heard her, in his mind, saying quite clearly: “There’ll be no nonsense from you, Faether, and no interfering in our affairs, so mind you know your place from the beginning. I know you lads: full of zeal and briskness, but we’ll tame you!”

  Indeed! Father Tim replied to her coldly in his mind, in his best Dublin manner. She gave him a radiant smile, quite knowing what he had said, and he was certain that St. Cecelia had never possessed such radiance, and his heart sank. There was such a saintly smugness about her, brightened with triumph. She had quite accurately understood that here was a lad who had spent most of his life under the firm thumb of womenfolk and knew when not to cross them, and she was pleased.

  Finally the nuns departed, after receiving Father Tim’s blessing, and they moved off in a tight group, already teeming with remarks they would make when alone together. Tim had not the slightest doubt that the Sister Superior would comfort them with assurances that he would be no bother to them ‘with his interfering’.

  “A lovely soul,” sighed the ‘ould Faether’ of Sister Mary Grace. “Such piety, such devotion, and” — he paused to reflect — “such energy.” He looked at Father Tim and cackled. “A saint, boyo, a saint.”

  “So I’ve seen,” said Father Tim. The old priest clapped him on the shoulder to cheer him, but he shook his head reminiscently. “I’ll be advising you not to cross her. It’s owning the school she thinks she does, and she’s the magistrate, she thinks, of the village, and there’s not a soul that does not become half the size at the sight of her. Ah, but now for a good drink to warm the cockles of our hearts.”

  The snow came down in large wet patches. The two priests had a big if tasteless dinner. Mrs. Casey loved loaded platters, for she always took the leavings for her brood of little children, and so she heaped up the mashed potatoes and the turnips and the thick bread and the boiled beef, and kept a sharp eye out that the priests did not overstuff themselves.

  After a reasonable nap following dinner, the old priest took the younger one out for a view of the village. There was a bicycle, which was church property. They both walked today. The villagers had much business on the main street, and always seemed to be clotted in the path of the priests, so Father Tim knew he was on inspection and was being weighed in very scrupulous balances. This made him uncomfortable, and stiff when introductions were made to a few of the more important citizens and citizenesses. He knew these inspections of ‘new’ priests, for he had engaged in them as a boy with his family, and he also knew that there was very little charity in these inspections. Especially among the elderly ladies, who ought, properly, to be home on this cold and nasty day taking care of their rheumatic joints.

  His parish, of course, was not just Game but the countryside about it. “Ah, and it’s a lovely sight on Christmas Eve, just before Midnight Mass,” said the old priest, a little wistfully. They returned for tea, and then the old priest took the younger into the minute church, very tidy, very poor, and with colorful if appallingly bad and cheap statues. There was not one that could not be bought for three or four pounds in one of the religious shops in Dublin, in far back-streets. But the high altar glowed with tall white candles, if the holders were only pewter, and the crucifix was quite passable if a little gaudy. There was only one stained-glass window; the others were of plain glass.

  This told Father Tim more of the financial state of Carne than anything else. An Irishman may be half starved and live in a shanty, half frozen, but he did love to see his church ‘have the finest’. Father Tim felt deep compassion for the people of Carne. The villagers “lived out of each other’s pockets,” he was informed sadly, and sold various items to the small farmers who surrounded them. The farmers were not exactly prosperous, either. In short, Carne was very similar to Father Tim’s childhood village, the memory of which never failed to depress him, and he could not help thinking of the rectory in Dublin with some regret.

  The old priest left the next morning with unseemly alacrity, Father Tim thought, for all his expressions of reluctance. (Father Tim had not slept well on the makeshift pallet in the parlor. He had heard the howling black sea so loudly that it had appeared about to engulf the rectory.) So, in the afternoon he was alone with Mrs. Casey, busy with her blacklead on every available iron article from the fireplace to the iron-and-brick stove in the kitchen. The smell of the blacklead mixed with the smells of paraffin, turpentine, whitewash and wax, and it all gave Father Tim a headache, so he went into the church to pray for patience and for relief for his homesickness, and for strength to do his duty. In retrospect, old Father McGowan in Dublin lost
his irritability and became a benign saint, a man of monumental charity and sweetness.

  The church was crowded at Mass the next morning. Of course, the season of Advent could account for some of these pious assisters at Mass, but Father Tim doubted it. The parishioners watched him with falcon eyes for the slightest slowness or fumbling. He sighed. Every Irishman was really a priest at heart, and God help his pastor if he did not come up to expectations. The old ladies, of course, were the worst. They were, in the spirits of them, Sister Mary Graces. The Sister Superior was the most vigilant of them all, and though the church was frightfully cold, young Father Tim found himself sweating. The altar boys’ faces expressed nothing but worship and awe, and they were exactingly polite, but Father Tim knew altar boys! He had been one, himself. These lads would duly make their reports to parents about the new priest. It was with a personal desperation that Father Tim prayed, “Ad Te, Domine, levavi animam meam: Deus meus, in te confido; non erubescam, neque irrideant me inimici mei. Etenim universi qui te exspectant non confundentur.” The organ did more than wheeze; it grunted at the entrance hymn. It grunted very loud; the communicants nodded with satisfaction. The choir, all three of them, had bad colds. The offerings came to exactly two pounds, three shillings, and tenpence. Remembering his home village, Father Tim was somewhat cheered. This was a fine offering, in view of what Carne was.

  Sister Mary Grace put him through a brisk rundown on parish matters the next afternoon. Without raising the sweetest voice he had ever heard she let him know that things were well under control — due to her vigilance and authority. Father Tim sat very straight and tall in his chair, and knew that he was not in the least impressing this saintly lady, who let him see, but most courteously, the edge of her temper when he made what to her appeared to be foolish queries. She was about to take her leave, then whirled on him quickly, so quickly indeed that he was startled.

  “It is about time the divil will be making his appearance,” she told him.

  “What?” cried Father Tim, in confusion.

  “Every twenty years,” she told him factually. “Be prepared, Faether.”

  “Oh, come now!” he exclaimed. “And in this season of Advent!”

  She shook her head reprovingly at him. “Always, at the holiest seasons, Faether.”

  He looked into the eyes so like an Irish dawn, and saw she was not joking. He thought. He remembered the tales of boyhood. Satan had a bad habit, indeed, of presenting himself at the worst times, to the confusion of the faithful.

  “Hum,” said Father Tim, who had received many lectures on the subject of superstition. “And what will he be looking like, Sister?”

  She folded her arms neatly, and considered. “Who knows?” she murmured, with mystery.

  “And you’ll have seen him, once, perhaps, Sister?”

  She nodded, with more mystery. “When the ould Faether first came.”

  Father Tim was left to ruminate whether new priests brought Satan along as a matter of course to a parish, an idea that was not complimentary. Then he shook himself. It was about time that remote Irish villages were brought up to date and discarded forbidden superstitions. He would speak of that next Sunday. He sat before his lonely little fire that night after tea and prepared his sermon in his mind. Mrs. Casey came in to say good night to him; she carried a black string bag on her arm, of considerable bulk, but Father Tim was more discreet than to ask her what it contained. It had, however, a smell of black pudding, which he had had for tea. Well, after all, a laborer was worthy of his hire, and the major part of the hire of poor women like Mrs. Casey was the leftovers from the priests’ tables, and who could question that in view of the five fatherless children?

  Father Tim was rereading the Imitation of Christ for the fifth time, an exercise he had imposed on himself during the season of Advent. Each time that he read it he found more than he had found before, so he read, occasionally rose to trim the wick of the lamp and toss a few pieces of peat on the fire. The wind was very noisy tonight, and the sea joined in. It was lonely, but it was peaceful. The little clock on the mantelpiece ticked away. Snow was falling again. Bed, tonight, under half a ton of blankets, would be welcome.

  The only thing was that he did not feel sleepy, as he usually did at this hour. He murmured a few preparatory prayers, turned another page. The sea shouted under his very window, he thought, the black and ugly sea. The clock ticked.

  There was a sudden loud banging, as of a loose shutter in the wind, or rather, it sounded like a pistol shot. Father Tim put down his book and pipe, and went searching. The little house had exactly four windows, and all were shuttered tight. The one door was firmly latched. After this inspection, Father Tim said aloud, “Nonsense.” The fire burned furiously. Was there really a change in the air, a very subtle change? “Nonsense!” He must remember to reprimand Sister Mary Grace, even if she was Sister Superior. Did she make it a habit of spreading superstition among the poor people? It did not seem likely; she was a woman who exuded common sense. Yet, she had said —

  Father Tim said his prayers, and retired. It was very black and cold in his little lair of a bedroom. No wonder rheumatism was rife in the village, with the dankness. He got up and opened the bedroom door so that some of the last heat from the parlor could enter. The shot sounded again, louder than before, somewhat like the noise of a medium-bore cannon. Trees snapping in the cold? But it was not very frosty in spite of the snow. Did demons, Father Tim asked himself with humor, always announce their coming with firearms? If so, then their inventiveness had become very crude. The young priest went back to bed, yawning this time, and fell into deep sleep, the sleep of the youthful just, the faithful.

  He did not like Sister Mary Grace, for he was afraid of her. But in the next days he acquired respect. She had the village fully regimented. In fact, she was a drill sergeant. There were no loose ends anywhere, no messes to reorganize, no confusions. The people came faithfully to Confession, and always, in the background, hovered the form of Sister Mary Grace. She lines them up in platoons, no doubt, thought Father Tim, and drags them from sickbeds. There was little sin in Carne, he discovered. Part of this was due to poverty. But then, when was poverty any ally of virtue? Usually the reverse. The men gathered in the pubs and drank their beer and argued, and sometimes fought and got drunk on something more potent than beer, but Sunday morning inevitably dawned as pure as the first dawn of Creation, and the church was filled.

  And everywhere the women and children, and even the men, said, “Sister Mary will have attended to the matter, Faether.” She did. One of these days, thought the young priest with foreboding, she’ll be calling on me to put me through the catechism. He avoided the saintly old lady with the face of a blooming young girl. She left notes with Mrs. Casey for him, calling attention to some oversight or making firm suggestions. She was beginning to be a goad in his side. He began to ponder on writing the Bishop, himself. But he had no doubt that Sister Mary Grace had already intimidated the Bishop, so it was no use.

  He could find nothing wrong with the woman. That was the trouble.

  The season was the season for prayer, for preparation for the birth of the promised Saviour, and it was a season of joy. The little shops teemed with farmers’ wives shopping for gifts. A brighter light shone in the eyes of expectant children. The horses moved faster. Even the old men had a sprightly air about them. The Sisters were preparing the crèche. Christmas carols were practiced in the little school under the sound of Sister Mary Grace’s ruler. And the snow sifted down at twilight, soft as an unuttered prayer, and as beautiful and patient. If it had not been for the ever-present roaring of the unappeased sea Father Tim would have been content.

  The people of Carne were healthy, except for the pervading rheumatism. They also lived to remarkably old ages, even for the Irish, who considered eighty to be mere middle age. There were very few midnight alarums for the Last Rites, and practically no funerals. Baptisms there were, galore. And a few very hasty but very necessary ma
rriages, under quiet circumstances, due to the season. Then the young people went happily back to perform, legitimately, the rites they had been performing illegitimately. No one pointed fingers, which spoke of charity. Father Tim was able now to find familiar faces in groups, and to speak to almost all the villagers by their Christian names. He even permitted himself to believe that he was liked, and he was not wrong. Usually little hamlets were always suspicious of a priest for the first year, and kept him under strict surveillance. Mrs. Casey assured him that he met with Sister Mary Grace’s tacit approval, and she thought that he should smile with pleasure. “Ah, but she and the ould Faether had their rare fights,” she said, with wistful relish. Father Tim was faster on his feet than the old priest, and so managed to avoid the Sister Superior dexterously, most of the time. Yes, she was indeed a saint. He’d have preferred a woman not quite so saintly, and not on the job all the time. It was not that Sister Grace lacked humor; she was full of jokes. The village loved her and quailed when she bore down on any inhabitants with her habit flying and a look not quite so saintly in her magnificent blue eyes. “She should run for mayor, that she should,” said Father Tim to Mrs. Casey, who first giggled, and then looked reproving.