If she considered boredom the extent of his sufferings, Darragh thought, then it was a good thing.
The tea was ready. She went to the ice chest and took out a lump of fruit cake.
“You can't make it properly, under rationing,” she told him. “You have to skimp on the eggs and butter.”
“I can't,” said Darragh. “Lenten fast.”
“What if I cut just a small cube? You could have that.”
He consented. “A very small cube.” And sipping his tea he tasted the mouthful of cake she had cut for him and declared it superb. Perhaps, despite her disclaimer about the cake, the kind man's eggs and butter were in this recipe. And with the sweetness in his mouth, he began to ask himself what he was doing here. Shorn of all power except the power of his eunuch example. Did she like the idea, after all and despite herself, of a tongue-tied priest dancing attendance on her?
He was distracted by Anthony running in flushed from the backyard, followed by neighbors' kids all demanding their slice of cake. Anthony with an only child's resolve swamped by clamant, rough-elbowed children. To those children, Darragh was barely a presence, while Anthony was made to stand still and greet him. Then, with the fruit, flour, and sugar in their blood, they raged out again without spoken intent, in a tight formation like migrating birds. They knew what they were about.
“Thalia Stevens's kids are a bit rowdy,” Mrs. Heggarty explained with a faint smile. “She's got too many of them to polish them. But she's the best neighbor I have. No pretensions.”
But was Thalia Stevens the source of some of her ideas, Darragh wondered.
There was now another rattle at the back screen door. Darragh thought it must be a late-arriving child. From his place at the table, however, he saw the stooped blond figure of Ross Trumble, leaning there, peering in. His face was weirdly bloated—he had either been in a fight or got a skinful of beer somewhere. He carried a heavily wrapped packet in his hands.
“Ross,” called Mrs. Heggarty. “What in heaven's name are you doing here?”
“I,” said Trumble. For a time, he considered the proposed shape of his intended sentence. “I have had the afternoon off from the sickroom,” he said. “Been to town. The Journalists' Club. I have a friend . . .”
“The bar's open there, obviously.”
Heartburn made Trumble's mouth form into a rictus. When the spasm had passed, he said, “You could say that, Katie. But I've got some chops for you too. From another friend. At the abattoirs.”
“Another Red, I suppose?”
“Well, Katie, you don't need to take them.”
“I don't want them if they're stolen goods.”
“No, they're part of his meat quota, for Christ's sake.”
“No blasphemy, Ross. Come in then. Have some tea.”
Trumble opened the screen door and stepped in. As he put down the bundle of meat on the sink, his eyes took in the room, with Darragh at the table.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Father Death himself.”
“Father Darragh,” said Kate. “And you be polite! Sit down here.” She organized a chair for him, back on to the sink, and picked up the parcel and transferred it deftly into her ice chest. She seemed to Darragh to be habituated to this movement—Trumble called in regularly, and brought gifts of meat. Surely she was not risking damnation for the sake of such prosaic parcels?
Today, however, Trumble found the business of sitting occupied all his mental and physical powers. Watching him, Darragh's own mental powers were centered on whether to stay or go. Why was it his kind of priest, and not the monsignor's kind, who sat at a tea party with a would-be apostate and a Communist?
“How is Mrs. Flood?” Darragh asked Trumble.
“How's Mrs. Flood?” Trumble repeated, but—it seemed—with not too much viciousness. “Not too bloody flash is the answer. I ought to be there, but I needed to have a break. I don't know. The sickroom gets me down. I spent long enough sick myself. . . .”
“You devote a great deal of time to her, Ross,” Kate Heggarty reminded him. The proposition that hung in the air was that he was a fine and considerate adulterer. The scales of virtue were shifting in this kitchen, and the standard weights no longer applied. Even Darragh felt the shift. The idea that there could be virtue at the heart of sin seemed not as outrageous an argument as it should. And this was the problem with Kate Heggarty, he saw. She was a Catholic, but within a world of Stevenses and Floods and Trumbles, whose codes of conduct had not been laid down in any Thomistic code, and whose ethics were not mediated by the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Trumble drank his tea hungrily. It brought sweat out on his forehead. When he was finished, he looked up at Darragh. “You know, I'm trying to be polite. But I don't like you breathing around Kate.”
“Shut up, Rossy,” said Kate Heggarty, a sudden and easy severity in her eye which showed she knew how to manage rough trade.
“You like sick women, don't you?” Trumble asked Darragh. “You've got 'em where you want them. They can't do anything except say sorry. But Kate's not sick, is she?”
“Drink up,” Kate ordered Trumble. “You're out of here, son!”
He looked up leadenly. “It's the truth,” he said.
“You know I'm a Catholic. Don't even begin it, Ross! Drink up and get out.”
“Oh jeez!” said Trumble, but he drank and—to Darragh's amazement—rose, belched, said a polite general good afternoon, and vanished by the back door.
“Thanks for the chops,” she called after him. And then to Darragh, “I'm sorry.”
Darragh smiled, but wondered whether he should question her about Trumble. For reasons he could not define, he didn't want to. He did not want to find out she had stooped to Trumble. He might turn into an automatic priest again and say something to drive her away. “Don't worry,” said Darragh. “I've been told off by Mr. Trumble in the past.”
But he was delighted the man had gone. Now a conversation between a parishioner and a curate could develop. But Mrs. Heggarty did not want it to, or had other matters more important to her.
“See, Ross never knew his mother,” said Kate Heggarty, anxious to explain Trumble's behavior. Bert had been the same way. There was something about Trumble which made people enumerate the reasons for his blunt rhetoric and hostility. “Rosie Flood was like his mother and his girlfriend all in one. And Rosie's dying, so he comes sniffing round other kitchens, looking for a future home.” And she smiled broadly at this; the predictable brashness of it had endeared Trumble to her. “He doesn't mean any of that stuff he says,” she continued. “It's just he gets scared if he doesn't fill the air with it, he'll have to explain himself. He thinks everyone has to be told about the whole caboodle—history, society, religion, the world. He's easier with all that than he is saying hello like a normal person.”
Darragh could tell from the fading light beyond the screen door that soon he must go. He could not sit on in this quiet hour, drinking tea to no purpose.
“Look,” he said, feeling more her brother than her priest, “I know you can't be harangued, Kate. And I don't want to . . .” He began again. “To be honest, I can't see much benefit here, in these walls, from that fellow, whoever he is. I can't see anything notable enough to risk a marriage over. That's what puzzles me.”
Her face flushed, but only mildly. “I think, living in the presbytery, it's hard for you to tell, Father.”
“Is there nothing to be said then?” he asked her. He knew traditional priests would scorn the asking of such a question. They would have walked out the door, warning her emphatically of hell. But that would not have been of any service to her.
“You know what I'll say,” she said, suddenly straining for breath. “I know what you'll say. Have more tea though. Don't give me up for another five minutes.”
So he drank more tea and there was minor conversation but little to say. He rose at last, and thanked her and left fairly briskly, not to string out the futility. He was aware too that the
re was no basis for future meetings, unless like Mrs. Flood she should unexpectedly summon him to bring the sacraments or other comfort. Walking home in a light shower, he felt depressed that the contact had ended. Was Catholicism and its orthodoxy sometimes better designed for the timid, for twitching souls who came too often to confession, for the scrupulous so hungry for absolution at every hour? That was a mystery. A mystery so great that, although not short of breath, he found himself pausing, like an asthmatic gathering strength for the next stride. Like the old monsignor creeping up the seminary driveway.
XI
As Darragh ate toast with nothing but a thin film of butter one Lenten morning, the monsignor, wearing his usual indoors clothing of white shirt and black trousers, came into the dining room, a long, knowing smile on his face. It was of a nature to make Darragh suspect that the man indulgently knew of his letter and visit to Mrs. Heggarty, and would want to argue about it and offer a tolerant rebuke of the kind Darragh found harder to answer than screaming outrage. But it was some other mystery of human behavior and divine will he wished to bring to Darragh's attention.
“A fine Catholic, that Inspector Kearney,” said the monsignor. “Here is a man who must run the investigation of every notable crime in New South Wales. Yet he still has time for the faith of his childhood. He's tracked down your young man, Howley, the missing brother. This Howley's been working on a transport ship, taking supplies to Queensland. Good way to vanish from a community, eh? At least for a time.”
“Is he well?” asked Darragh.
The monsignor pulled the lower part of his face sideways and assessed his whiskers with the back of his palm. “Brother Keogh went to see him at some seamen's canteen in town. The young bloke fobbed him off. By now he's no doubt been around the fleshpots of Townsville, which they say is full of Yanks.”
As for Mr. Regan, Darragh's mother's neighbor, so for the monsignor: the Yanks and fleshpots went hand in hand.
“I suggested to Keogh you might want to go along next time, to confess the boy. And advise him.”
Darragh could not say anything of that. “If Brother Keogh wants me to. Yes.” But what an awkward meeting it would be, over mugs of tea in some sailor-frequented place.
“The bugger's situation needs to be made regular,” declared the monsignor.
Darragh hoped that Brother Howley would both remain on coastal steamers and seek dispensation from his vows. Yet Darragh thought his case too complex for his talents. It was not normal in the way Mrs. Heggarty's case was normal.
In the gravel walk between the presbytery and church, Darragh paced and recited the office, the crunch of his boots pleasantly syncopating the utterance of the Latin psalms and hymns. This was near the place where he had spoken earlier to the formidable Inspector Kearney, who put murdered spirits to rest and thus needed his beer. As Darragh recited, he frequently had to repress the dangerous images of Mrs. Heggarty's honest and lovely fury as she ordered Trumble from her kitchen. And even more fatuously, the silly daydream that he would look up to see her standing by the gateway into the street, tired now of apostasy, a sister in Christ. Her lack of so doing had him restive, and the Latin he recited had a strange feel of being tedious not so much to himself as to God. The Cantate Domino passed from his lips more as sigh than urgent whisper of exultation. “Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum,” As the hart yearns for the water of the brooks, so does my soul desire Thee, felt like an utterance of pale hope rather than accomplished reality. How could it be the established truth of his soul when his eyes kept being drawn towards the street gate?
The gate to the street did creak in answer to his fantasy, and he looked up to see Master Sergeant Fratelli wearing a shining helmet, as if posing for St. Gabriel in Raphael's The Annunciation. The letters MP on his sleeve showed he was on duty, or close to it. A large camouflaged car stood parked behind him as if, in the best police tradition, sealing an exit. Another soldier was at the wheel.
“Hello, Father,” called Fratelli. “I said I'd be around. I got something you might need. Just a moment.”
He walked away to the car, opened its back door, and extracted a cardboard box. As he approached again through, Darragh could see the box was laden with groceries, lustrously packaged. Even as America hung on for survival, it had the thoroughness to send its glittering products everywhere with its troops. Perhaps the images on the tins of Spam and peanut butter gave the American warrior a vivid sense of the preciousness of what he fought for. “I thought that with rationing and all,” said Fratelli, “you and the monsignor might need a little something extra.”
“You mustn't put yourself out,” Darragh protested. “After all, it's still Lent.”
“No, I can get this stuff easy, Father. Anyone of my rank can. It's nothing.”
Indeed, Darragh felt an automatic gratitude rise in him. This package would have great potency with Mrs. Flannery, who was always talking about the difficulties of shopping, and the niggardliness of certain Masonic shopkeepers who knew that she worked for the priests.
“Well, it's extremely kind of you,” said Darragh, though an instinct told him there was something in Fratelli which wasn't kindness, a mute, jolly force, like that of an out-of-control dog who jumped on everyone to impose its affection. Darragh took receipt of the box and placed it on the sacristy steps.
Master Sergeant Fratelli, the child of Mammon who had asked for a Mass, said, “I'd better get back to the car.”
But the sergeant had not entirely gone. Near the gate he turned and was back with a lowered voice. “Let me know if you guys ever need any gas. Petroleum, you know. I could help you.”
Darragh was bewildered by the offer. “I don't think we need black-market petrol.”
Fratelli inclined his head. The strange, compelling quality was back. “If Uncle Sam can't help out a few priests, it's a poor world. Thanks again for the Mass.”
“You were there?” asked Darragh. He had not seen Fratelli in the congregation.
“Father, I'm sorry. I was on duty.”
“That's a good reason,” said Darragh, who respected military duty.
Fratelli saluted, and went back out again to his camouflage-painted vehicle. Carrying the strangely labeled butter, canned salmon and beef, and condiments indoors, Darragh became an instant hero to Mrs. Flannery. “Well,” she said, as if willing to admit Darragh had secret gifts she had not until now seen. As soon as Lent ended, these delicacies, these enhancements of human existence, could be opened and lushly employed in her cooking.
There were other surprises that week. Bert Flood turned up himself at the presbytery door, wearing a blue suit and a broad dun tie, with the news of his wife's death. She had gone quietly, said Bert. “The doc kept the morphine up to her,” he explained. He asked Darragh would he consent to bury Mrs. Flood. Then, in the corrugated desert of his face, tears broke forth.
“Yes,” said Darragh, taking Bert by the elbow into the parlor. “She made her confession. There's no hindrance.”
Bert said, “She was such a beautiful girl. This bloody TB robbed years off her.”
“Yes,” said Darragh. “I'm sorry, Bert.”
“She'd be really pleased if you did it.”
“I just wondered about Ross Trumble. I'm not scared of him. But will he attend the funeral?”
“Well, look, he helped to nurse the missus, and he's got a lot of respect for what she wanted. He understands this is her show. But I'll sit on him, anyhow.”
“Yes,” said Darragh. “If he's got any respect for Mrs. Flood, he shouldn't turn her funeral into some sort of argument.”
Bert took hold of Darragh's elbow again, in fleeting reassurance. “He knows that much, and if he doesn't, I'll soon tell him. But Rossy's all right, Father.”
The question of Trumble's behavior had already partly preempted the event, the coming funeral. Trumble, for whom everyone made excuses, was a very selfish revolutionary, or so Darragh decided.
There was to be no Requiem Mass,
since Darragh considered that to be inappropriate. If he said a Mass, it might prove that there was no one to take the consecrated host but himself. Yet when he entered from the sacristy for the funeral prayers and saw shrunken Mrs. Flood's coffin in place, he observed in the body of the church a number of Catholics—the Clancy sisters and Kate Heggarty among them—who could be depended on to stand and kneel at the right times and to make the sign of the cross impeccably. Darragh described Mrs. Flood as a beautiful woman with a winning smile who had traveled far and returned to the faith of her childhood, and even this brought no other response than a stupefied stare from Trumble, who stood in the foyer, beyond the holy water font, amidst the church notices. Kate Heggarty and the Clancys, along with others, piled into the cars Bert had hired and followed the coffin on the short journey to Rookwood Cemetery, where Darragh read the final burial service. Trumble and Bert stood woodenly yet solidly together at the graveside in Rookwood, Trumble frowning under the stern management of Bert and perhaps of Kate Heggarty, who stood beside him. It was as if Bert had him on drugs, or whisky, or both.
As everyone left the grave, one of the Clancy sisters said to Darragh, “Father, she had as fine a service as a good Catholic.”
Darragh was trudging over the lumpy clay detritus of recent burials towards the undertaker's car, which would take him back to the presbytery, when he saw Mrs. Heggarty at his side. He flinched at the suddenness of the apparition.
“You do the burial service well, Father.”
“Thank you.” But he frowned. If she wanted to extend the tricks she had already played on him, what sort of woman was she?
“You were patient with me, and here I am, hearing the beautiful words of the Church. Requiem aeternum . . .”
“Yes,” he told her warily.
“I have to thank you for your patience.”
“Patience is my job,” he said neutrally. “Not all of it. Part of it.”
“I would be better in the end to make allies amongst women in my situation. Soldiers' wives . . .”