Be Near Me (30 page)

Sheriff Wilson probed under his wig with the blunt end of a pencil. The Fiscal had already cross-examined me, but the Sheriff seemed unhappy on a number of counts. He kept saying he wished to clarify things in order to assist the jury. He put down the pencil, propped his right elbow on the bench and cupped his face.

'David Anderton. Let me be sure of something. Have you shown contempt for this court?'

'No, Your Lordship,' I said, 'not for the court, only for me inside it.'

'Well, I'll take that on trust. This has been a most vexing few days. If I suspect you have been wasting my time I will come down very hard. Do you understand?'

'Yes, sir.'

'You came to this place and pled not guilty to a charge of assaulting this young man, Mark McNulty. Do you wish now to change your plea?'

'I hated the wording of the charge, sir. I cannot conceive of myself as having assaulted him or attacked him.'

'What precisely did you do?'

'I kissed him.'

'Well, Mr Anderton. He was a fifteen-year-old boy. I'm not at all sure what country you come from, but under the laws of Scotland, in the alleged circumstances, we may call that assault. We may choose to call it other things as well, but in this case you are accused of assault.'

'My crime, Your Lordship, if I may say so, was a crime of mis-recognition. For a short time, I allowed myself to be in thrall to an unsuitable person. But I did not assault him and could not go along with myself if I perceived that I did.'

'Then perhaps you might have to alter your perception, Mr Anderton. I am bound to tell you, sir, that your attitude in this court is annoying. Your remarks are obtuse. From your behaviour, sir, I dare say you imagine your case is soon to be taken down in the book of martyrs, but please allow me to tell you that it will not. You stand accused of assaulting a young man. A young man over whom you had influence and authority. Do you understand?'

'All too well, Your Lordship.'

'I take it you are not preparing for the role of Hamlet, Mr Anderton?'

'No, sir, I am not.'

'You might have destroyed that young man's innocence.' Something in his crimson-coloured face made me realise there was nothing to fight for and nothing to lose.

'I rather doubt it,' I said. 'The young man has no innocence. I say that not in my own defence but in his.'

'That is a horrible thing to say. And to hear it from a member of the clergy—the Catholic clergy—is shocking.'

'I don't mean to shock anyone,' I said, only to give a precise account of the circumstances.'

'I believe the chapel-house at Dalgarnock has been burned down,' he said. 'And you have left the parish, is that correct?'

'Yes, indeed, Your Lordship.'

'And you still have a job?'

'No, sir,' I said. 'My job is to tell the truth in this court.'

'I am glad to hear it. But you do not seem overly attached to your vocation, Mr Anderton. Is that right?'

'I could not have been more attached, Your Lordship. My job was to know God and to serve Him.'

'And you tried to do this in the parish of Dalgarnock?'

'My job was to help people to establish the kingdom of God in their own souls.'

'And you decided to go about this, did you, by staying up all night drinking with a difficult youth?'

I was silent at first. 'I made many mistakes,' I said.

'And perhaps none so costly,' said the Sheriff. 'Your selfish behaviour may have blighted this young man's youth, Mr Anderton. And you may have put a pall on the religious feelings of the people of that town.'

'I hope not,' I said. 'And may God forgive me if I did. But I believe the people will forget me before I forget them.'

'That is not for you to judge, sir,' he said. 'I must say, Mr Anderton, you are a stranger in this court, but one gets the impression from what you have said here today that you are as much a stranger to yourself. I share the young man's instinct to pity you.'

I turned to look at him and his eyes were rheumy.

'Perhaps your own parishioners,' I said, 'the ones you
look over each day in these courts, will have more need of your pity than I do.'

Even I, a stranger, as he said, to the Scottish courts, knew that this conversation was irregular. My advocate stood to one side, smoothing the top of one hand with the other, too respectful by half, while the Fiscal, in a move that one could only imagine was bred of some great familiarity with His Lordship's methods, rolled his eyes and stacked his papers.

'I'm not particularly interested in your character, sir. Based on my experience of it in this court, it is not to my mind an especially admirable one. But it is not your vanity which is on trial. We will stick to the facts. After carousing on the housing estate with him, did you then invite this young man into your house?'

'Yes.'

'At what time?'

'It was rather late.'

'The middle of the night.'

'Yes, I'd say so.'

'And did you ply him with drink?'

'No, My Lord. He went in search of something to drink, and I allowed him to do that. I also allowed him to drink what he found. But I'd say he had fairly plied himself with drink before we met that night.'

'Yet you drank alongside him?'

'I did.'

'And you took drugs together?'

'Yes.'

'A quantity of Ecstasy tablets, we gather?'

'So I believe.'

'And you sat down with him on the sofa?'

'I did.'

'And you tried to kiss him there.'

'Yes.'

'And he refused.'

'That's right.'

'And at that point Mrs Poole entered the house?'

'Yes, indeed.'

'And let me ask you one more thing, Mr Anderton. If the young man had not refused, would you have gone further?'

I looked to the back of the court and saw the people. Their faces were almost brittle with hatred. They shook their heads in their winter jackets and swore to a communion with their own kind.

'Yes,' I said.

One or two jurors sighed into their folded arms. The day then floated into legalese, adjournments and delays. I thought the trial might afford my pride one last, intense hurrah, that some sense of dignity might contradict the filth of the accusation. But that did not happen in Court Number One, where larger, more traditional proprieties worked in their way to mock my idle romances. Due process murdered my conceit. Even my mother's face, when I saw it, was a mask of embarrassment.

'This man, for whatever reason, fooled a community into trusting him. He fooled them with his talk and with his faith. He fooled them with his background and the height of his ideals. We are not here to try his faith, yet the prosecution
may have proved, as he himself may have proved by his own words, that his journey towards this young person was a journey of self-interest. But even that does not matter if he did not, in the event, assault this young man. The law in this case does not allow for equivocation when it comes to the naming of crimes: if he did what he says he did, then you are obliged to find him guilty of the charge.'

My mind wandered. There was a morning in the Bor-ghese Gardens, when I laughed at the freshness of the pines, sure as I walked that life was a long and beautiful and private matter. Inside the gallery the day was silent. I must have spent two hours in the company of Bernini's
David.
You never saw limbs so clean and strong in all the corners of eternity. His arms showed the strain of pulling back his sling to smite the enemy: his head was alive with curls and his neck appeared to have a pulse, Bernini's addition to God's excellence. Standing in the room with the light pouring through the window, I looked at the eyes and the chest and the broad, spread toes of the perfect man, knowing his beauty spelled out for me the grandeur of life and creation. The room was empty. I reached over and inhaled the old marble before leaning in further, kissing its cool surface with my own lips of flesh and blood.

'Mr Anderton,' said the Sheriff, 'you have been found guilty by the jury.'

There was another cheer from the rows of spectators.

Wilson looked down at them and paused. 'I have to tell you that the nature of this crime, coupled with your sinister justifications in this court, could persuade me that a custodial sentence might be imposed. However, I am mindful of the fact that this is a first offence. Let it be the last. I can assure you that any future appearances you might make will result in your going to prison. Do you understand?'

'Yes, My Lord.'

'This is a sad day for you, Father Anderton. You have come a long way down in the world to be answering a charge of this sort. However, the law is the law, and you now have a conviction against you. I order that you commit to 120 hours of community service.' He then explained what that would mean and asked for my consent.

The people came to their feet.

'No Pope of Rome!'

'You should've gone doon, ya English bastard!'

'Corruption.'

'Away tae fuck. Yous aw jeest stick thegither.'

'Paedophile!'

The police weren't obliged to escort me, but they did. My mother and I came down the steps of the courthouse to a waiting taxi. People were jeering around us and at one point a camera hit me on the head. 'Get back, yoose,' said the policeman. 'I mean it. Stay back.'

The taxi drove away and the shops of Kilmarnock seemed to blur into each other as we passed the lights and the streets grew empty of people. The driver kept looking into his mirror and the journey seemed unending. After a minute or two, my mother twined her fingers into mine on the seat between us and tears came down my face.

'Don't hate me,' I said.

'That's not possible,' she said. 'Unless you allow that carnival back there to make you stupid.'

'But I am stupid, Mother.'

'Nice people don't always get it right,' she said, and as she said this I could feel a certain resolve enter her frail hand. 'It's time you had your own car again,' she said.

DUTY KEPT ME
in Ayrshire until the end of that year, or perhaps not duty so much as the struggle for dignity, the attraction of penance, the notion that fortune might startle the outcome and turn once more in my favour, allowing me to go from Scotland in a state of peace and with a heart reconciled to the terms of my disgrace. But two months passed and I worked my community service at Kennox Moss, peeling carrots with a supervisor at a home for handicapped pensioners. Many of the people who lived there had never left Ayrshire: they had stayed on the training farm, cleaning tools and haunting the greenhouses, and the years had passed in the company of rabbits and an annual show of strawberries.

Driving back from the farm one day, I stopped at the supermarket near Dalgarnock to buy some things for a stew. It happened like this: I stood with my basket and looked along the rows of red wine to the cold cabinets, and there in a pair of distressed sneakers was Mark McNulty. He clasped a skateboard with yellow wheels and he failed to see me at first, then he looked round, the boredom departing his face. He rolled along and didn't stop until his shin touched my basket.

'Hiya, Father,' he said.

'Mark,' I said. 'How are you?'

'I'm not trying to buy drink,' he said. 'I just came in to price a six-pack for my dad.'

'Good. But how are you doing?'

'Not bad,' he said. 'I've left school.'

'Why so soon? You're clever, Mark. You're too clever to give up on your education so early.'

'I'm going into the Army,' he said. 'Next week it is. I'm going to Plymouth for training. They give you a trade and everything.'

'Yes,' I said.

'The Army needs people,' he said. 'You know that. There's a war on. They say it's finished but nobody thinks it's finished.'

'I doubt it'll be finished for a long time,' I said.

'Good. Plenty of work, then. They might even send me out there eventually, to where it's all happening.'

'You wouldn't want that,' I said.

'Why not? We're making a difference out there. You know yourself it's the right thing. You've got to have your team, Father.'

'Yes,' I said. 'You told me that before.'

I wanted to shake him. I wanted to tell him it takes a whole lifetime to know anything about the right thing. 'Even so,' I said, 'just think carefully about what you're doing.'

'Have you ever known any soldiers?' he said.

'No, but I knew their names. They were carved into a wall at the old college I went to.'

'So you didn't know any, then?'

He spun one of the skateboard wheels and nipped nervously at the front of his jersey. The board's underside showed a drawing of a pirate and a torn sticker with the word 'Heroin' printed in black ink. Suddenly, he seemed just like a boy again, a great and proud unawareness bleaching his face and emptying the statements he made. 'What about your Irish Republican Army?' I said. 'I don't suppose they'd be very pleased with your choice of career.'

I wondered if he was quick enough to catch the note of irritation that came with the words. 'My dad says that's all over. And it's not as if they're going to give me a trade, are they?'

We stood in silence for a moment and he flipped the end of the board up into his hand. 'Lisa's pregnant,' he said.

People were beginning to pass us with their trolleys and I began to experience a rather familiar edginess, the fear of hostile bystanders, the thought of comments or misunderstandings. 'Oh dear,' I said.

'Don't be like that,' said Mark. 'She's happy enough.'

'Is the baby yours?'

'Nope,' he said. 'Nuttin to do with me.'

'God bless her,' I said.

'Ah, save it. Lisa's cool. She's keeping it. She'll be good at being somebody's maw.'

'She's so young.'

Mark's ease and smiling made me dislike myself afresh. I could feel my hand tightening its grip on the basket, and I wanted to go. His eyes narrowed and his lips grew thin as a serious look emerged on his face. 'It wasn't all bad, Father, was it? We had a few laughs?'

He put out his hand.

I laid down the basket and swallowed hard. 'Wherever you go, Mark,' I said, shaking his hand, 'be sure to look after yourself.'