The cardinal paused. ‘I do,’ he said finally. ‘Of course I do. I’m not stupid.’
‘And do you understand why so much of that anger is directed towards you?’
‘It’s difficult for me to comprehend it,’ he replied quietly, and there was honesty in his voice here at last. ‘I’ve thought about it, Liam. Of course I have. I’ve genuinely thought about it. I’m not some sort of monster, even if that is how your friends in the media want to portray me. But I don’t know. I can’t understand why any man, let alone a priest, would do these things. And I don’t know when the world changed so much. Nothing like this ever happened to me when I was a boy. Or to anyone I knew. The priests I knew as a child were very decent men.’ He gave a sigh and I felt a certain sympathy for how lost he sounded. ‘Sometimes, Liam, it’s like I went to bed in one country and woke up in another.’
‘People believe that you knew what was going on and that you covered it up.’
‘Then people would be wrong.’
‘If you had known about Tom Cardle, for example,’ said Scott, trying a different tack, ‘and then moved him to different parishes, would you agree that you would be an accomplice to his crimes?’
The cardinal thought about it. ‘I can’t answer that,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because the question requires legal definitions that I’m not qualified to offer.’
‘When you move a priest,’ asked Scott, ‘do you do all the paperwork yourself, or is it approved higher up the ladder?’
‘Well, it’s really down to me,’ said the cardinal. ‘But of course, as a bishop, I would send the papers to the Primate of Ireland to be signed, just as the bishops now send their papers to me. But that’s more a matter of bureaucracy than anything else. He would simply sign off on whatever moves each archdiocese would suggest. There would be no reason not to.’
‘And in turn those appointments would go to Rome?’
‘They would, of course.’
Scott took a breath. ‘So all these priests who were moved from parish to parish, all these crimes that were not reported to the Gardaí, the Pope would have known about them? He was in on the fix?’
‘Ah now, Liam,’ said the cardinal, ‘show a little respect. The Pope is dead and can’t answer for himself.’
‘Would he have known? Would the crimes have been reported to him?’
‘Who can say?’
‘Would he have approved the moves?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he know what was going on?’
‘I couldn’t tell you.’
‘If he did know, would it not be fair to say that he is tremendously guilty? That he was the brains of the operation, if you will. That he was, in effect, the criminal mastermind? The worst of them all?’
The cardinal took a deep breath. I took one myself. It was an extraordinary remark. One that I never thought I would hear over the national airwaves in Ireland. Not because I didn’t think there was truth in it. But because I didn’t think anyone out there in RTÉ had the guts to say it.
There was nowhere to go after that remark but to the phone lines and the half-hour that followed was predictable in its way. A caller would say how disgusted he or she felt at the Church, at the conspiracy of silence they had built up amongst themselves, at what a bunch of perverted criminals we all were; the next would condemn the media, saying that the radio stations and the newspapers were out to get the Church, to bring it down, because the media was full of hatred and what right had he to say these things to a decent man of God like Cardinal Cordington. A victim phoned in and challenged the cardinal, in a calm and rational manner, saying that fifteen years earlier he had sat in a room with him while his father begged the then-bishop to investigate what his son had told him and they’d been ignored. The cardinal said he had no recollection of the meeting but it certainly didn’t sound like something he would do.
As the hour drew to a close and there was talk of the news coming up on the hour, Scott thanked the cardinal for being there, who said that he was always happy to speak to the people, a note of relief in his voice now that his trial – the only one he would ever receive – was over, but Scott found time for one last question.
‘Do you feel any shame?’ he asked. ‘Do you feel even an ounce of shame when you realize what your Church has been responsible for? For the legacy of abuse, for the cover-ups, for the criminal behaviour, for the lives you have destroyed and the lives you have ended? Do you feel any shame for that?’
‘I feel a great sense of the Holy Spirit, is what I feel,’ replied the cardinal. ‘And the certain knowledge that the Lord moves in mysterious ways.’
Ah goodnight, I thought, switching the radio off and getting on about my business. There’ll be no recovery from that.
My plane landed at Gardermoen Airport, thirty miles outside Oslo, in the early afternoon. From my window seat I had looked down at the fjords and watched a single speed-boat cutting its way through the water, leaving an arrow of flume in its wake as it pointed me towards the city. I collected my suitcase and looked around for the sign directing me to the train station. Three decades earlier, when I had last been in Norway, I remembered a delegation of Ramsfjelds collecting me from the airport in a car that looked as if it had been around since the dawn of motoring and the great craic we had on the two-hour drive north to Lillehammer. Kristian had arrived with his uncle and two of his cousins, Einar and Svein.
I was still young then, of course, and there had been a part of me that had glanced at Svein as we drove north, trying to decipher something on his face, some knowledge of the world that was missing from my own. I envied him, a little.
Kristian’s Uncle Olaf had brought two bottles of Vikingfjord vodka with him for the journey and by the time we reached Lillehammer they were both empty and we were none of us in complete control of ourselves. Hannah, who had been staying with her fiancé’s family for a week before the wedding, took one look at us as we tumbled out of the car, giggling like idiots, and gave us no end of grief for the accident that might have happened on the roads. But still, we were there safely and in fine fettle.
Now, of course, I was travelling alone and found a quiet seat on the train, happy to sit back and watch the passing scenery, feeling a certain degree of calm that I knew would diminish the closer I got to my destination.
I was hypnotized by the sea that ran the entire journey on my left and the thick-forested hills across the water with their occasional villages nestled in the serenity. White-plastic-sealed oblongs of hay were stacked like ice-cream blocks left out to melt in the late-afternoon sun. Was it any wonder that Kristian had spent most of his adult life longing to return?
Halfway through my journey, at Tangen, the doors opened and the few other occupants of my carriage disembarked. A woman of about thirty boarded with her son, a blond-haired child who might have stepped straight out of an advertisement for the Norwegian tourist industry, and she sat about six seats down from me while the boy, who could not have been more than seven years old, sat next to her at first, then opposite her, then wandered down the carriage to sit next to me. The woman paid no attention – this was not Ireland, the people were not so filled with fear – but was listening to music on her iPod while flicking through a newspaper.
‘Hei,’ said the little boy, grinning at me.
‘Hei,’ I replied, standing up immediately and walking past his mother as I made my way to the doors at the end, then continued on to the very last carriage on the train, found another empty window-seat and sat down.
This is the way I do things now, of course. I do not put myself at risk.
I arrived at Lillehammer train station at half past four and left my luggage in a locker there before opening my map and rereading the directions that I’d written down earlier in the week.
Was this sensible, I wondered. Or merely another mistake.
It was a long enough walk, perhaps thirty minutes or more, but I wanted to gather my thoughts as I made m
y way towards the hilltop houses above the Maihaugen Museum, where Einar and Svein had brought me all those years before to see the history and culture of Norway all gathered together in the open air: threshing barns, stave churches and young people dressed in nineteenth-century costume. I made my way along a twisting road with well-tended gardens, clusters of trees separating neighbour from neighbour, until finally, as I took one more turn to my left, I noticed a small brown King Charles spaniel truffling in the grass outside a gate, and as he turned to look at me I felt certain that this was the house.
I made my way down the driveway, the dog trotting happily at my heels as his head swung up to stare at me, and glanced at the car parked outside the front door; on the back seat was a car-seat for an infant and I felt a twinge inside me when I saw that.
I rang the doorbell and heard the sound of a second dog barking inside and then a voice, a woman’s, calling out to him in words I could not understand before she opened it; her face changed slightly when she realized that she did not recognize me, that perhaps I was a salesman of some sort, or a Jehovah’s Witness, or someone who was seeking her vote at a council election.
‘Hei?’ she asked, as the first dog slipped past her and disappeared down the hallway, returning almost immediately with a plastic rabbit in his mouth which he displayed proudly to me. The second dog, another King Charles, padded into the hallway and yawned.
‘Hello,’ I said.
She reverted to English immediately. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Is this Aidan Ramsfjeld’s home?’ I asked.
‘It is, yes.’
‘I wonder if I could speak with him.’
‘He’s not back yet. He should be here any minute. And you are …?’
‘I’m Odran,’ I told her. ‘Odran Yates. His uncle.’
Her smile faded a little and her mouth fell open for a moment in surprise. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘All right. Did he know that you were coming? He never said anything.’
‘No,’ I told her. ‘Actually I didn’t know myself until a few days ago. I thought I would just arrive and hope that he wouldn’t be away on holiday.’
‘On holiday?’ she asked, laughing a little. ‘We should be that lucky.’ She stepped back and I entered the house, noticing a doctor’s bag on a side table which could only have belonged to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a moment as we stared at each other, extending her hand. ‘I should have introduced myself. I’m Marthe. Aidan’s wife.’
‘Odran.’
‘Yes, you said. Would you like to come through?’
I followed her down the hallway into a large living room, carefully decorated with a rather good painting of a river-way on the walls. I recognized it, but wasn’t sure why. Had I passed it on my train journey?
‘Do you like it?’ she asked me, seeing where I was looking. ‘It’s the Ponte Sisto in Rome. We went there on our honeymoon. I bought it to remind myself.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, the memories flooding back. I turned away from it to look around the rest of the room and staring back at me were two small children, a boy of about four and a little girl of about two.
‘Children, this is Odran,’ said Marthe. ‘Your father’s …’ She hesitated. ‘This is Odran,’ she repeated. ‘And these are Morten and Astrid.’
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hei,’ they cried in unison and I smiled at them; they were beautiful-looking children. ‘What’s that you’re watching?’
The boy, Morten, uttered a long string of Norwegian words which he punctuated with hand movements, and when he was finished, he nodded thoughtfully and turned back to the television set.
‘Ah grand,’ I said. I turned back to Marthe and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry to turn up unannounced,’ I told her.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Shall we have some tea?’ I followed her into the kitchen, which was immaculate despite the fact that she was clearly in the middle of preparing the evening meal. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Hannah hasn’t taken a turn for the worse?’
‘No, no, it’s not that.’
‘And Jonas?’
‘He’s fine, as far as I know. In Hong Kong, I believe.’
‘Lucky him. Sit down, won’t you?’
I sat and a few minutes later she placed a cup of tea before me. I sipped at it, unsure what to say.
‘Well,’ she said, sitting opposite me.
I looked at her and felt uncertain of what I was doing here. This was a nice house; a family lived here with a pair of beautiful, well-loved children and a couple of friendly dogs. Why was I bringing all this misery to her door?
‘Maybe I should leave,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’
‘You’re not disturbing me,’ she said. ‘Not in the least.’
‘I had to come, you see.’ Feeling the weight of all these years growing inside me. ‘I have to speak to him. To explain.’
‘To explain what?’
I looked directly at her. I shook my head; if I couldn’t find the words for her, then how would I ever find them for him?
Her face changed and her smile fell. ‘Oh,’ she said, and at that moment I heard the sound of a key in the door and jumped to my feet, feeling a sense of fear, as if there was the possibility that I had stepped into a moment that I might not survive. Marthe turned, looked down the hall and whispered his name as he walked towards us.
‘What a day!’ he was saying. ‘Einar was late with the invoices and when he finally finished them, he’d only gone and—’
He stopped when he saw me, a look of surprise on his face, and in a moment I felt the build-up of twenty years of lies and deceit, of trauma and cruelty, and recognized my hand in it, for had I not left that man alone with my nephew to do whatever he wanted with him?
And as the pain grew inside me, the tears came out of nowhere and I fell back to the chair, weeping as I had never wept before. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, the words strangled in the emotion, not even a hello or a shake of the hand from me. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t know … will you forgive me, Aidan, for I swear I didn’t know …’ And the rest of the words were garbled, for by now there were tears and spit and snot and I was crumpled over the table like a mess of a man while Marthe stared in amazement at the scene playing out before her, a hand to her mouth, and Aidan, that good man, better than all of them put together, put his bag down and came over to me, put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him and said, ‘Stop crying, Uncle Odie. Stop crying. Stop crying or you’ll set me off and I might never stop.’
We met two nights later in a bar in Oslo. I had stayed for only a short time at Aidan and Marthe’s house, for after the emotion of that first half-hour passed, a strained atmosphere developed between us and he grew very quiet, staring at the floor as Marthe made small talk with me, and finally I suggested that perhaps I should leave.
‘I took you by surprise,’ I said. ‘I should have let you know that I was coming. But maybe I could see you in a few days’ time when you’ve had a chance to think about things?’
I watched his face, grown dark and lined now from outdoor work, as he considered this. He had a three-day stubble that looked as if it never grew longer nor was ever cut shorter. I could see Kristian in his eyes, Hannah in the way he turned to look at me when he thought that I was looking away. There was nothing of that boy entertainer about him now; he was a man through and through.
‘How long will you be in Norway?’ he asked finally.
‘As long as I need to be,’ I said. ‘I’ve a hotel booked in Oslo for a few nights, but if you tell me to go home to Dublin, then that’s what I’ll do.’
He nodded, but his expression gave nothing away. I glanced at Marthe, but there was nothing in her face that suggested that she would intervene.
‘Let me give you my details,’ I said, writing down the address. ‘Maybe you’ll give me a call if you feel like talking.’
And without any more conversation on eithe
r of our parts, I left.
I spent the next day sightseeing, although my mind wasn’t fully on it, watching the young people on their inter-railing holidays and wondering what it would be like to be twenty again – to be twenty now, in 2012, when everything was different – before pushing that idea to the back of my mind, for only misery lay inside those fantasies. In the late afternoon I visited the cathedral, lighting a candle before the wooden Madonna and Child, and when I got back to my hotel there was a message from Aidan, who said that he had to be in Oslo on business the following day and if it suited me, he could meet me for a drink at seven o’clock in a bar on the Aker Brygge Wharf. When I made my way there, I found him seated alone with a beer, reading the sports pages of the newspaper. He looked up as I approached and offered me a half-smile.
‘I can’t get used to seeing you in regular clothes,’ he said. ‘I’ve never known you without the habit.’
‘The open collar doesn’t suit me,’ I said.
‘Will you have a beer?’
‘I will.’
He signalled for a fresh round and I welcomed the tall glasses when they arrived. I had a thirst on me and the drink would give us something to do while we settled ourselves.
‘Marthe seems like a grand girl,’ I said.
‘Yes, she is.’
‘She’s a doctor, is that right?’
He nodded. ‘A paediatrician. She has her own practice in Lillehammer.’
‘She’s not the woman you were living with in London all those years ago?’
‘No, that didn’t last. I only met Marthe when I came here.’
‘And you?’ I asked. ‘What do you do?’
‘I run a construction firm,’ he told me. ‘Or rather, I co-run it. My cousin Einar is in it with me.’
‘I remember Einar,’ I said. ‘From when your mother and father got married.’
‘No, that would have been his father. Einar’s only in his twenties. Einar Junior.’
‘Ah right. Einar, Svein, your father and I drove up together from the airport and drank vodka all the way. We got rightly hammered. How are they both?’
‘Einar’s fine,’ he said. ‘He lives near us. But Svein died a few years ago. Cancer.’