CHAPTER 25
The call came just before three o’clock in the morning. They were both asleep. Ella awoke instantly, while Franz was still surfacing, and grabbed his phone.
‘Uh?’
‘Mick, can you come?’ said Rachel’s frightened voice. ‘He’s going.’
‘Rachel, it’s Ella. We’re on our way now. Do you want to speak to Mick?’
‘No, just come.’
‘Okay.’
Franz was wide awake now. ‘Does she want us to go in?’
‘Yes.’
They both scrambled into their clothes.
‘Got the car keys?’
‘Yes, here.’
‘Will we be able to get out of the house?’ Ella whispered as they tiptoed downstairs.
‘Yes. I explained to Tom last night that a relative was dying and we might have to go out. He’s leaving the back door unlocked so we can come and go.’
In the car, on the way to the nursing home, Ella realized she had referred to Franz as Mick on the phone, as Rachel had. Whatever, she thought. He’s the same person, by any name. Glancing at him she was struck again by how closely he resembled his father and wondered if Sister Briege knew he was the son of Father McCarthy.
It was Sister Briege who met them at the front door.
‘You got here in time,’ she reassured them. ‘He probably won’t be able to speak to you but he’ll still be able to hear you, so you speak to him. The hearing is the last thing to go.’
Although they knew the way, she went ahead of them. ‘Rachel is with him,’ she told Franz, over her shoulder. Ella wondered if Sister Briege knew Rachel’s connection with Father Francis, then realized she didn’t know it herself.
Sister Briege stood back and let them go in. ‘I’ll leave you your privacy,’ she said. ‘The bell is there by the bed if you want me. Don’t hesitate to ring it.’
The bed was pulled out into the centre of the room. The old man was so thin that his outline barely rose above the level of the bed where he lay. An oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth, attached by elastic over his ears. His eyes were closed. Rachel sat beside him on the far side of the bed, holding his hand.
Franz went round and put his hand on her shoulder and she looked up briefly. He sat down at the other side of the bed and took his father’s right hand, covering both their hands with the bedclothes. So his father won’t get cold, Ella thought, with a stab, for the old man would surely soon be cold as the grave.
‘We’re here,’ Franz said into the old man’s ear. ‘It’s Franz and Ella, and Rachel’s here as well. We’re all here now.’
The old man forced his eyelids apart and turned his head towards him.
‘Francis?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Father Francis drew in a deep breath and with great effort extricated his hand from Franz’s, then raised it above the covers. As if knowing what he wanted, Franz bent his head. Ella watched the old priest trace a vertical line with his thumb down the centre of Franz’s forehead then, very shakily, a horizontal line bisecting the first one. The sign of the cross, Ella recognized: the traditional Catholic blessing. A priest’s blessing of his people. Or the blessing of father to son.
‘Francis.’
‘Yes?’
Another huge intake of breath. The hand fumbled with the oxygen mask, trying to lift it. Franz gave a quick questioning glance at Rachel, who nodded.
‘You can take it off for a couple of minutes. He wants to talk.’ She reached across and gently lifted the elastic clear of his ears and laid the mask against his chest.
The old man nodded his thanks. Focusing his eyes on Franz as best he could, he said, slowly and clearly, ‘Take care of them, Francis.’
‘I will. Don’t worry.’
He waved a hand in the direction of Ella. ‘Take care of her. And the baby.’
It was Franz’s turn to catch his breath. ‘I will,’ he said.
The hand waved again towards Ella.
‘Ella,’ Franz said.
She stepped forward, not knowing what was expected of her.
‘Sit here a minute,’ Franz said, standing up. ‘Lean nearer to him.’
She leaned towards the old man, catching back her hair with one hand so it didn’t fall over him, and stayed still while he traced the cross on her forehead. He murmured some words in a foreign language; she wasn’t sure if it was Irish or Latin.
He nodded with satisfaction and withdrew his hand. She stood up and let Franz sit at the bedside again.
Franz smiled at her. ‘Latin,’ he said, answering her unspoken question. ‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritu Sancti, Amen. A blessing, dedicating you to God – in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Rachel said.
Ella nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘Francis,’ said the old man again.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
He was struggling for breath now. Franz lifted the oxygen mask and went to put it over his mouth again but he waved it away.
‘I want to say ….’
‘Yes. I’m listening. Don’t strain.’
‘Want to say, you’ll make a good father, Francis.’
Franz ducked his head again, this time to hide tears. After a few moments he said, with a crack in his voice, ‘You made a good father as well.’ He leaned over and kissed the old man’s forehead.
‘He’s so cold,’ he said, looking at Rachel.
She put the mask back over his face and tucked the covers around him more securely. ‘I know,’ she said. She was crying as well.
Sister Briege appeared behind them. She moved silently towards the bed, lifted the old man’s hand and took his pulse.
‘He’s fading,’ she said. ‘Have you said what you need to say?’
Franz nodded. Rachel, suddenly overcome, put her head down on the old man’s shoulder and sobbed heartbrokenly. Sister Briege stroked her shoulders.
‘He’ll stop breathing pretty soon now,’ she said, ‘and you’ll think he’s gone and then he’ll take another breath, so be prepared for that. He can still hear you now, Rachel, so say whatever you want.’
As Rachel still sobbed, she said, ‘Come on, child, speak to him. He needs to hear you.’
Rachel leaned towards him and put her mouth near to his ear. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t love you more if you were my dad.’
Ella felt nausea sweep over her in waves. The room swam in front of her eyes as she stood beside Franz. She reached out her arm for something to lean against and met only empty air. She didn’t want to lean on Franz, at this time.
Sister Briege was suddenly at her side. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Uh …’
‘You’re not,’ she said. She hooked a chair towards Ella with her foot, held her firmly and lowered her into it. ‘Put your head down below your knees,’ she instructed, pushing her forward.
Swooshing noises roared in Ella’s ears, like the sound of a faulty cistern. The plumbing must be old in this place, she thought, confused. Blood rushed to her head and consciousness returned. Sister Briege sat her upright again.
‘You need to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Can you stand? If not, I can fetch a wheelchair.’
‘I can stand.’
‘Ella?’ said Franz.
‘I’ll take care of her,’ said Sister Briege. ‘You stay with your father and Rachel. Ready, Ella? Take it slowly now.’
She helped Ella to stand up and walked with her arm in arm down the corridor.
‘I don’t want to leave them,’ Ella said faintly.
‘It’s no place for you, by a deathbed. You need to take care of the baby.’
Does everybody in the world know I’m pregnant just by looking at me, Ella wondered, or is it only in Ireland?
‘Just across the hall now,’ Sister Briege encouraged her. ‘The range is lit in the kitchen; it’s warm in there. I’ll make us a nice pot of tea.’
Ella fel
t mothered. She sat in the cushioned wicker chair in front of the huge stove. Sister Briege opened the range door to let the heat come out. Ella could see the flames dancing red and blue in the glowing coals.
‘Put your feet up here,’ Sister Briege said, pulling over a low stool.
‘Oh no, I’m fine, really.’ But her feet were lifted for her and placed on the stool. And they say Jewish mothers are bossy, Ella thought, amused. They wouldn’t stand up in the ring against Catholic nuns!
She could feel herself beginning to relax, despite her reluctance to leave Franz and Rachel.
‘You’ll have a spoon or two of sugar in your tea, whether you take it normally or not,’ Sister Briege told her. ‘It’s good for faintness. And a slice of barm brack. Sister Imelda made it fresh this afternoon.’
‘Oh, I certainly will,’ Ella said. ‘I’ve been introduced to brack already. It’s good.’
‘This must all seem strange to you, doesn’t it?’ Sister Briege asked her. ‘You not being Catholic.’
‘I think it would seem quite strange even if I was Catholic,’ said Ella, with a touch of acerbity.
‘You’re quite right,’ the nun agreed.
‘Have you known Father Francis a long time?’ Ella asked. ‘I mean, before he retired?’
‘He never really retired,’ she said. ‘He still prays for everybody and anybody and people still come in to see him. We’ll miss him. I didn’t know him before he moved to Wicklow – he came from Mayo, originally, then was moved all over the country. It’s not usual for priests to be moved across from one diocese to another like that – a diocese is an area under the authority of a bishop, you know, with a number of parishes in it. I knew of him, long before I met him.’
‘You knew he was Franz’s father?’ Ella asked, hoping she wouldn’t mind being asked.
‘Oh, I knew. You can’t keep secrets like that, not in the Holy Roman Catholic Church and not in Ireland,’ Sister Briege said with a wry smile. ‘The whole holy shebang is a gossip factory.’
Ella considered this. It sounded like disloyalty. She had a feeling it might not be.
‘If he was a priest and got a woman pregnant, why wasn’t he given the sack?’ she asked.
‘Well now, a lot of people wondered that, over time.’ She stirred the tea in the pot and unearthed a tea strainer from under a pile of teatowels. ‘I heard the main reason he wasn’t let go was that the people wouldn’t let him go; wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘Because they liked him?’
‘They loved him – those who weren’t out to string him up. There was always some small faction that raised an outcry. That’s why he got moved around a lot. It wasn’t just Maria they bothered about; she was the least of their worries.
‘In fact, it was Maria herself and the bishop between them, initially, that kept him in the priesthood. He was all for leaving, at the time, giving up Holy Orders and having some kind of marriage ceremony, though a registry office was all he would have been entitled to and he would have cut himself off from receiving communion in the Church. He would have found it hard to live with that. The eucharist was always of great importance to him.’
‘He wanted to leave?’
‘He thought it was the only right thing to do, that it was his responsibility to bring up his son and look after Maria. And he loved her, no doubt about it. But she wouldn’t have it.’
‘She didn’t love him?’
‘Sure, she loved him to death. But she said he was a good priest and she wasn’t going to be the cause of depriving God of his services to the Church or of his giving up his vocation, which she believed was genuine. And the bishop agreed with her. She went to see him, which was brave of her, the poor young creature, fully expecting to be shown the door as she was.’
‘He didn’t show her the door, then?’
‘He nearly refused to see her, by his own account. He must have thought she’d come demanding money or threatening to make a scandal. But as soon as she said what she was thinking, he arranged for the two of them to see Father Francis together. They told him they wanted him to stay in the priesthood.’
‘And he agreed?’
‘Sure, what choice did he have? He could hardly move in with Maria against her will, and he would have been useless out in the world. If he’d earned one penny he’d have given away two to the poor.’
‘That's the kind of person he was - is?’
‘Oh, that was the main reason he got moved so much. No sooner did they put him in charge of a parish – or not even in charge: he was an assistant priest for most of his life, serving under those younger than himself and not half as wise, if you ask my opinion – than he gave away all the church funds, such as they were, to some deserving cause.’
Ella laughed. ‘He didn’t!’
‘He did indeed.’ Sister Briege handed her a mug of tea and a hefty wedge of brack on a chipped, rather valuable-looking plate. ‘He was out of one place within six weeks. The parish priest had an ambitious project going for church rebuilding and they’d just about reached their target when he had a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. There was no one else available to take over at the time so as a last resort the bishop sent in Father Francis – it was a different bishop from the one who’d wanted him kept on.
‘Anyway, within a week or so of moving in there Father Francis found there were three families in the parish about to be evicted from their homes. Non-payment of rent, through no fault of their own – illness, redundancy, bereavement, the kind of misfortunes that nobody brings on themselves – and the landlord was a merciless man.
‘Father Francis checked out that they were genuine: he’s nobody’s fool, whatever other faults he may have. Then he used the church building fund to buy three homes and made the church the landlord. He told the church, “You’re always hearing us priests say that the church is the people and not the building and it’s time we put our money where our mouth is.”
‘The parishioners were furious. Well, some of them were. But for the rest of the few weeks he was there, the church was packed. You couldn’t get into a Mass; it was standing room only. That’s the way it goes. You please some, you can’t please others.’
‘He's a bit other-worldly, then?’
‘Depends how you look at it. He was a bit too earthy, in some people’s eyes. That particular move turned out to be good for the Church, strangely enough. It was five years before the new church could be built: they started fundraising again though some people’s hearts weren’t in it and some thought they should go on providing housing instead for poor parishioners. But a few years later they had an anonymous donation which allowed them to have their new building.
‘Then the night before the builders were due to start work, a water main burst on the site. In repairing the water main, they discovered there was serious damage below the foundations of the old church; a deep fissure had opened up underneath it, it must have been happening over decades. So if they’d built the new church when they had the money ready the first time, it would have been built on foundations which looked solid enough but would have collapsed within a few years.’
Ella was laughing. ‘What an incredible story!’
‘Oh, there were plenty more of those. As I say, some loved him, some couldn't stand the sight of him. He didn’t arouse indifference, that’s all you could say.’
‘I suppose they called him a hypocrite, behind his back, for having a child?’
‘They called him everything under the sun, and to his face. The clergy treated him worse than the people. He was never a hypocrite – that was part of the problem. His sins were public. He never bothered to hide them. If ever he was discreet, it was for the sake of Maria and the boy. It was hard on the child.’
‘Franz?’
‘Uh-hm. Michael, they called him. Francis was his second name, after his father, of course, but it was only Father Francis used to call him that, and then only at home. I know this from Maria. I never knew him or the child
ren, not at the time. It was Maria I got to know well, through nursing her at the end of her life.’
‘He lived with them, then, in the end?’
‘No, he never did. The relationship between Maria and himself ended as soon as Maria handed him over to the bishop, as it were. He was only ever a visitor to the house, but a regular one. He never forgot a birthday. Never had money, and what he had he would give away to the poorest person, not necessarily to Maria, who was always the breadwinner for the family. But if ever there was a problem, he would always be there, Maria said.
‘Michael didn’t lack a father, in the sense that some of the kids around him didn’t know who their fathers were. But there was the constant embarrassment for him, not knowing who knew and who didn’t, and which gossipy old person – it was mostly the old ones but many of the young ones as well – was going to make some comment.’
‘Was he ashamed of his father?’
‘Embarrassed by him, though maybe no more so than most teenagers are embarrassed by their parents. And maybe ashamed of the situation he found himself in. He protected Father Francis as well as his father protecting him. He would clam up whenever he was mentioned in any context. No one could blame Michael for leaving Ireland. I’m only amazed he stayed as long as he did.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘He was twenty-two. They were living here in Wicklow by that time. Maria had worked all her life and when Michael left school he had wanted to get a job, to take over as the breadwinner, but it was Maria’s dearest wish for him to go to college and get some kind of qualification. So they compromised, or Michael called it a compromise: he went to college and worked as well, every hour he could.
‘Maria lived to see him qualified but she died shortly afterwards. He did some kind of business studies or management course, I believe. Michael would have been twenty, twenty-one maybe, when his mother died, and Rachel would have been twelve or thirteen.
‘Michael stayed till Rachel left Ireland; she’d made contact with her real mother in Jamaica and wanted to go out to stay there, maybe to live. As it happened, she stayed with her mother a while, then returned to school here and lived with a schoolfriend’s family till she finished her education, then went back to Jamaica to live. Michael had left and gone to England by that time.’
‘I don’t really understand where Rachel fits in,’ Ella said.
‘No one knows,’ said Sister Briege. ‘The rumour was that she was also Father Francis’ child but rumours will tell you anything. She was left on the doorstep of the presbytery one morning, and there was a Caribbean woman who had taken refuge in the presbytery for a while – Father Francis had taken her in when her husband had beaten her up - and everyone drew the conclusions they wanted to, I suppose.
‘Maria said Father Eamonn – he was the parish priest, Father Francis’ superior – arrived at her house with the child and asked her if she’d take care of her.’
‘Wasn’t that a bit of a cheek?’ Ella said. ‘If she was Father Francis’ child by somebody else?’
‘It was the devil’s own nerve,’ said Sister Briege forthrightly. ‘Father Eamonn had ignored Maria’s existence for all the years she lived in the neighbouring parish to his – whenever their paths crossed she never had so much from him as the "Good morning" any priest would give a stranger. He treated her like a leper. Then up he turns on her doorstep with this strange child – as though the woman didn’t have enough stigma to live with.
‘I suppose he saw her as a fallen woman and thought one more child wouldn’t make much difference. And a coloured child. If she’d suffered before, the poor woman, she hadn’t met the kind of prejudice she suffered after that.’
‘But she took the baby in anyway?’
‘She did. It wasn’t the fault of the child, whoever she was, Maria said. She had a big heart, did Maria. She’d been taken in as an orphan herself, as a child, and she felt the Lord was asking her to do the same for this other abandoned little girl.’
Ella was silent. Nine years’ age difference between Franz and Rachel, so Franz – or Michael – was nine when Rachel arrived, causing extra stigma for him as well as for Maria, no doubt. He had a lot of history to live with, this man who had now fathered a child of his own with her. She sighed.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Sister Briege asked her.
‘Yes, I’m fine now. I’ll get back to them. Thank you so much.’
‘My pleasure. I’ll come back with you,’ she said. ‘I’ve a feeling it’s over by now.’