A Pocketful of Rye (3 page)

Frank was the only son of a painfully pious mother, a devotee who haunted the church, not merely to wear out her knees before the Stations of the Cross, but as a kind of female sacristan who dressed, adorned, and tended the altar with a holy solicitude that defied the repressive hints, discouraging looks, and even downright prohibitions from the rector of St Patrick's, the fabulous Canon Dingwall. Unhappily for Frank, his father was a cock of less downy feather. Dr Ennis, perhaps the best and the hardest-worked doctor in town, was a big untidy man with a rough, ribald tongue, a strong addiction to neat whisky and a fondness for squeezing the dairymaids at the outlying farms he visited. Careless of public opinion, he did as he pleased, and while nominally Catholic, his views of religion were unorthodox, often spectacularly unpredictable. For that matter, using the pretext of his busy practice, he was rarely seen inside the doors of St Patrick's. It was he who had sent his son to the Academy, preparatory to entering him at Edinburgh University where he would take a medical degree and join his father in practice.

Frank was a most prepossessing boy, open and friendly in manner, and quite exceptionally good looking. Tall, slightly built, with a delicate girlish complexion, and thick chestnut hair, he had the bluest, long-lashed eyes I had ever seen. In school he was not noticeably clever, rather the reverse, and in his physical contacts with the rougher boys he was inclined to timidity. Although he never complained of this bullying, he had obviously suffered until I was able to take his part. But his one outstanding quality which set him apart was simply this: in the strict sense of the word he was
good.

One morning during our first week together he was late coming to school and was given an imposition.

‘What happened, Frank?' I asked him. ‘Did you sleep in?'

‘Oh, no.' He smiled. ‘Canon Dingwall was held up by a sick call. You see, I serve his seven o'clock Mass every morning.'

‘What! You do … get up so early!'

‘It's quite easy once you have the habit.'

‘I suppose Dingwall's forced you into it. He puts the wind up me.'

‘You're quite wrong, Laurence. He just seems terribly stern and severe. Once you know him he's the sweetest person.'

I glanced at him doubtfully. The Canon, a black, forbidding, hatchet-featured Highlander, six feet two tall and thin as a ramrod, an emaciated Scots Savonarola, towering in the pulpit, scourging his groundling Irish immigrant congregation with an intellectual sardonic wit that bit deeper than mere crude blastings of hell-fire, flagellations interposed with sudden ritual snuff takings during which a pin might be heard to drop in a church packed to suffocation, scarcely struck me as a fount of sweetness and light. He invariably stood at the church door before the eleven o'clock Mass, had already spotted me, and was undoubtedly aware of my dubious antecedents.

‘Every time I pass him he gives me the excommunication stare.'

‘He just has to put on that kind of act, Laurence. To get results. And he has. All the top Prots, the Dennison Brothers especially, think the world of him, the way he's stamped out drunkenness in the town. It was mostly in our lot. But beyond that he's terribly interesting, well read and cultured, a real scholar. He spent five years teaching philosophy at the Scots College in Rome. You'd love him.' As I shook my head he smiled and took my arm. ‘I'll give – you a knock down to him after Mass next Sunday.'

‘Some hope,' I said, scornfully. ‘I'll skip him by going in the side door.'

Nevertheless, rather averse myself to morning rising, I respected Frank for this unexpectedly revealed asceticism as I did progressively for other comparable aspects of his character. He never, for example, took the slightest notice of the usual school smut, the lavatory scrawlings, the dirty jokes. And if anyone told a doubtful story in his presence his starry eyes remained fixed on the horizon, the actual meaning of the thing seemed to pass over his head.

All this struck me as commendable, more perhaps as the indication of an original refined and superior turn of mind than from considerations of morality – since I was probably as venal as the boys he despised. One day, however, a peculiar incident occurred.

I still had a bicycle, from my better days, an old Rudge Whitworth, and as Francis, whose mother denied him nothing, had a brand new Humber, we began on Saturdays to take rides together into the surrounding country, then quite unspoiled, still wild with the freedom of Scottish hills and heaths. Summer was coming in and as the days got warmer we went farther afield, to Malloch and along the winding shore of Loch Lomond to Luss where we bathed. It seemed slightly odd that when we undressed on the warm pebbled beach Frank always moved off a few paces to the shelter of a rock, emerging well covered by a full bathing suit. I did not remark on it, imagining that perhaps he had a mole or some kind of birthmark and was sensitive about it. One day I forgot to bring my pants and, thinking nothing of it, tore off my clothes and dashed into the Loch in a state of nature.

‘Come on in,' I shouted. ‘It's wonderful.'

There was a pause, then he called back:

‘I'm not bathing today.'

‘Don't you feel well?'

He did not answer.

I took a long swim out to the island. The water was warmer than usual and the sense of being completely naked and unhampered made it even more delicious. When I came back and had dressed Frank came out from behind the rock. He was deeply flushed, his lips set in a firm line.

‘You know, of course,' he said accusingly, his voice stony, ‘ that it's a sin, almost a mortal one, to expose yourself.'

I stared at him in amazement.

‘And that you make me sin too if I look at you.'

I burst out laughing.

‘Oh, come off it, Frank. Don't be such a sissy. None of the other boys wear pants, let alone complete bathing suits, and it's far nicer without. You must try it.'

‘I won't,' he shouted, beginning to tremble. ‘Never.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake …'

‘Stop it,' he said, in a low intense voice. ‘It is for heaven's sake. I don't care what the others do. And I'm not a sissy. I simply want to remain pure. And you must too, Laurence. So if you don't cover yourself decently in future I won't bathe with you at all.'

I saw that he was in dead earnest and was wise enough to let the matter drop. We were both rather silent on the way home and I caught myself glancing oddly at him from time to time, but when we got back he stopped, straddled his bicycle, and seemed to want to talk.

‘We are still friends, aren't we, Laurie?'

‘Of course.'

‘More than ever in fact. I do wish I was coming with you to Winton instead of being shoved off to Edinburgh.'

‘Then talk your father into it.'

‘Oh no.' His face clouded as it usually did at the mention of Dr Ennis. ‘ I've tried it before. In fact I've often tried, and had no luck, talking him out of shoving me in for medicine. You know, I'd far rather take an arts degree.'

I was silent, wondering if some unrecognized or at least undeclared aversion to his father had put Frank off the idea of medical practice, and with the incident of that afternoon still in mind I said suddenly:

‘What surprises me, Frank, is that you haven't plumped for the priesthood. It's so … so obvious. Not only would it delight your mother, you're the one person in the world who ought to have a vocation.'

He looked at me for a moment then, to my amazement, he burst into a fit of laughter, very boyish and natural.

‘You won't have to wait long for the answer to that one, my boy. Next week I want you to meet someone
very
special.' Before I could question him he smiled over his shoulder and started to pedal off. ‘ Come on, let's hurry, or we'll miss our half hour with your friend the Canon.'

Yes, the impossible had happened, and to Frank's amusement, tinged perhaps with a little chagrin, Dingwall had practically adopted me. One day on the way from school I had come upon a depressing tableau. Frank, frightfully pale, on his knees in the gutter with two of our chief tormentors, the Buchanan brothers, bending over him, the younger of the two holding a can of liquid mud.

‘Confess your sins, Ennis, or we'll baptize you with this. Come on, begin: holy father I killed a cat …'

Intervention, however unpleasant, was the only possible course of action. I snatched the mud can, put the younger Buchanan out of action with a direct hit, then sailed into his big brother. Heavy damage was done on both sides but I had the worst of it and was undoubtedly due for a bad beating when a sudden apparition obscured the daylight: Dingwall himself, dressed ‘for the town' with his invariable priestly precision in long black overcoat, black umbrella held upright, and his famous tall top hat, that made him look a mile high. A terrifying spectacle, a veritable spectre of Popery, before which, to my gasping relief, even before the umbrella went into action, the Buchanans wilted, and took to their heels.

For a moment the Canon did not speak, then turning to Frank, who, still pale, had collapsed against a convenient wall, he said, sadly:

‘Go home, my boy, and lie down till you recover.'

Then, taking me by the arm, he led me to the presbytery and upstairs to his study. Still in silence he set about repairing me. I had a badly cut lip, a fat ear, and the inevitable black eye, not to speak of skinned knuckles and a fearful hack on the shin where the younger Buchanan, free of mud, had weighed in towards the end.

‘Stout lads, these Buchanans,' the Canon murmured, engaged with cotton wool and iodine, and still wearing the hat. ‘Thank God you have some of that same good Scottish blood in you.'

When he had finished with me I had to sit down. He gave me a look, went to a cupboard, brought out a thistle-shaped wine glass and a bottle.

‘A tablespoonful of this won't hurt you. It is the genuine Glenlivet.'

It tasted extremely genuine.

‘Well, Carroll,' he went on, ‘you've been dodging me rather skilfully for some weeks but I'm happy to have made your acquaintance. And in such not unfavourable circumstances, too.' He turned on me his smile of infinite charm. ‘Since we are no longer strangers I invite you to come here, to my study, with your friend Ennis, on every Friday afternoon, after school, to discuss the affairs of the day, literature, even theology. You accept?'

My head was still ringing with that bash on the ear. I accepted.

‘Good.' He took out his watch. ‘As I must go to a School Board meeting, for which I am already late, may I ask how you intend explaining your present appearance to your grandparents?'

This, indeed, was a problem already worrying me.

‘I could tell them I was sticking up for King Robert the first.'

‘A subtle thought, Carroll. Emerging from the disgraceful Irish in you. But no, we will not demean a noble action with a lie, for which I perceive you have a natural aptitude. I will telephone your grandfather from the Board offices.'

So that, exactly, was the beginning of my association with a remarkable personality. His objective was not then apparent to me and became so only when it had failed. But for many months I was to enjoy the benefit of his wit, learning, and kindly charm. They left their impact upon me.

Today, however, I was less attentive at our usual session, I kept wondering what Frank had up his sleeve and who might be this someone special.

School was on the point of breaking up and on the following Thursday Frank and I set off for home together. He lived at Craig Crescent not far from my grandfather's house, and we took the same road across Levenford Common. This afternoon, however, with an offhand yet mysterious air, he said.

‘Let's go by the station tonight. I've someone to meet there.'

‘Who?'

‘Cathy Considine.'

‘And who's she?'

‘She's my girl, Laurence.'

I must have shown my amazement. He laughed delightedly.

‘We've known each other since we were kids. Brought up together in our prams so to speak. It's not surprising we're in love with one another.'

Now I was staggered. All that gush about holy purity and now this … this early commitment to Venus. God, you're a queer one, Frank, I thought. And I was suddenly extremely curious to see Cathy Considine.

‘She's at the S.H. Convent at Dalcair. Home for the holidays. We'll have a ripping time.' Frank ran on excitedly as we climbed the station steps to the upper level. Having exploded his news he was eager to talk. ‘I'm sure you'll like her …'

But the train had just arrived and almost at once Frank cried:

‘Cathy! Look, Laurence, there she is!'

A stunningly pretty girl was coming towards us, smiling, and with an answering wave of her arm. She was not wearing her school uniform but, probably as one of the older convent girls, had on a natty little navy blue reefer jacket with brass buttons, a swinging kilted skirt and a fetching blue beret tilted slightly to one side. Never could I forget that first view of Cathy Considine. She was of medium height, her figure supple and free moving, her expression full of vivacity and life. Her eyes were dark, almost black, and sparkling with animation against her warmly coloured skin. She had a short rather flat undistinguished nose but her mouth was delicious, large, beautifully shaped with very red lips, parted now in a wide smile which exposed perfect teeth. Her dark brown hair, hanging loose from her beret, framed one cheek on which, high over the cheekbone, was a tiny dark mole. I felt my heart turn over as she drew near and, barely seeing me, took both of Frank's hands.

‘Cathy.'

‘Frank.'

They stood like this, looking at each other for a long moment, then she gave me a cool examining look.

‘Who is the long-legged Borstal boy disguised in an Academy Blazer?'