Gospel (31 page)

O'Hanrahan squinted at a photo print under a lamp. “We had Mary McCall drive us back to Ballycastle and had a rush job done on these prints … ehh, this is out of focus,” he added, looking through a small eyeglass at the photo.

Lucy: “Where's Father O'Reilly?”

O'Hanrahan: “Eating lunch in his room. Bread and gruel, I suspect. We couldn't interest him in a drink.” After a lull during which Lucy was made to feel in the way again, the professor directed, “Go play with David some more.”

“I am.”

O'Hanrahan looked at her wickedly. “You like him, don't you?”

“I'd tell you, but you'd probably find a way of embarrassing me with the information.”

“How well you have come to know me,” he said, before closing the door.

Back at his home, David was stretched out by the fire, his feet on a chair. “Let's get going,” he said, “and make it to the standing stone before it pisses down.”

Lucy and David pulled on the high rubber boots and clomped to the end of the road to stand before the stile, which was muddy on the north-facing side, puddles that would never evaporate. With much squishing and squealing, Lucy laughingly got a foothold on the stile and leaped over only to sink in further.

“Your mother was right!” she shrieked.

The short grass and turf were slippery and Lucy felt her foothold give several times on the hillside. In a moment of supreme confidence, as Lucy stepped toward a sure-looking imbedded stone, she slipped on the mud and hurtled down on her side. I look like such a dork, thought Lucy … until it occurred to her that she could be a damsel in distress.

“Are ye still alive?” David cried out, stomping over to help her.

Lucy suggested they hold hands the rest of the way up, which they did as David regaled her with tales of Viking raids. The Vikings would storm these shores and the men would lock themselves in the
dun,
or fortress. Down at the shore they put out their possessions. If the Vikings were weak from all the time at sea, they would settle for this easy theft. Then outside the castle the Celts put their women. The men stayed within and watched as their womenfolk were raped. Now if the Vikings wanted the castle, well then, the men would have to fight!

“The Irish gentleman,” surmised Lucy.

But the very scenario seemed so surreal, David said he couldn't believe it. Imagine, men watching their daughters and mothers being raped. No, there had to be more to the story than that:

“I can see the men proposing to fight,” David said, “and the women saying, no no, you mustn't risk the castle. We'll run down to the shore and sacrifice ourselves. And then when they got down to the shore, they yelled at the Viking boys, Sven, Erik, here fellas, over here!”

Lucy bowed her head, laughing.

“Well, face it, the Scandinavians were something to look at, ye know? Tall and handsome. And the Celts, bah, were short and runty, and no one in Ireland has sex anyway, I'm sure that's been the way for centuries. This was the girls' night out, when the Vikings came by.”

(After St. Adoman's Decree in 556, the women were expected to take the Viking invasions passively or behave as St. Ebbe and her convent, who cut the noses off their faces in order to be unappealing for the Vikings. So better to preserve their precious virginity.)

Lucy and David reached the summit and Lucy walked forward to touch the menhir. “And there's our own standing stone,” David said, out of breath. “Neolithic, Megalithic, I don't know. Two thousand
B.C.
, something like that.”

Lucy touched the striated cold granite. She noticed that a couple named Constance and Peter had scratched their declaration of love on one flank of the stone.

“People're so foul,” muttered David, “writing on a monument like this.”

Lucy was glad she didn't suggest
LUCY LOVES DAVID
for the other side.

Before the descent, which was surely to be one long slide on her behind, Lucy surveyed the whole valley beyond the town, the village, the broad green hills leading to the Atlantic, the winding stonewalled highway tracing the contour. It was sufficiently clear to the north to see a corner of Rathlin Island in view offshore.

“Got a boyfriend, Lucy?” David asked.

Panic.

“Oh. Uh, well…” She felt the possibilities of the moment slip away while something automatic welled up and found release: “There's this guy Gabriel, and we're sort of—well, not official anymore, nothing too official, really. We grew up together.”

“Childhood sweethearts like?”

“Yeah, I guess, but it's not really, you know…”

“Ah, I figured you'd have someone back home waiting for ye.”

They began the descent of the hill and Lucy sensed nothing but darkness! She replayed the exchange. She saturated her misstep in the bitterest acid of regret. After a hot moment of abjuration a familiar brooding settled upon her: you are a coward. What was the worst that could have happened if she'd said, “No one I couldn't dump for you, David McCall.” And the worst, worst possible conceivable disaster that would have happened was that he might mildly reject her—how gently he would do it, how open-ended he would leave it—and she could pass herself off as having been unserious, flirtatious.… To some women these tactical skills came easily. Oh damn him, she thought while negotiating the muddy slope, damn my upbringing, damn me, damn everybody.

As evening approached, Lucy regained her equanimity. She and David changed, threw their muddy clothes in the washer, and talked over two pots of tea. The conversation turned to Chicago and Lucy was ready at the drop of a hat to give David the deluxe, superduper tour. Yes, Chicago—
that's
where she'd make her move! Lucy began feeling more confident and happy from the moment she had solidly postponed this showdown.

Furthermore, all the talk of Chicago also made Lucy antsy to check in with Judy, or maybe call home. She hadn't called from Dublin as she intended, and now it was three days past that. She decided she'd hop down to the bus stop and make a call just to check with Judy and make sure there were no pressing messages for her back at the department.

“Use our telephone,” said David, “it's all right.”

“Nah, it's expensive. Look, I'll go get one of those phone-card deals and call long-distance at the bus stop.”

So Lucy stepped back out into the windy afternoon to walk to the bus stop, which sold the phone cards and had a phone outside that utilized them as well. Above, a sentinel seagull cawed and rose in the gusts; beyond it the sweep of rainclouds moved as fast as they ever did in Chicago, bringing with their gray and drizzle an early end to this Irish summer day.

It was dead at the bus stop. It was 5:55 and there was a coach at 6:00
P.M.
but no one was waiting to board it. There was a man, an odd-looking middle-aged man in strange attire: a bolo tie with an Indian clasp, yellow golf slacks and white spats, an ill-fitting, cheaply made pink-checked sports jacket, with a plaid cap. He was reading a tame Irish girlie magazine. Otherwise there was the newsstand proprietor. Lucy paid him for a £10 phone card and went to use the pay phone against the stone wall of the neighboring shop. She punched in the department number and waited for a connection to be made … instead she heard a series of clicks and hisses as technology attempted the impossible, a transatlantic call from a pay phone in Ireland.

She felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Hi, Luce.”

It was Gabriel.

“Gabe!” she gasped, hanging up the phone immediately. “What … what are you doing here?”

He stepped back, holding one hand tightly in the other nervously, as he had done since he was a kid. “Is it really a surprise? I thought O'Hanrahan had spotted us and knew we were here.” By
us
he meant the short, brutal-looking man of Mediterranean features with a scar on his lip and cheek, who stood beside two suitcases. Wait a minute, Lucy figured, this is the guy I saw at the Greyfriars back in Oxford.

She quickly stammered, “The innkeeper said the Crown was full of American tourists but how is it that we haven't run into you?”

“We're not at the Crown; we've been over in Ballycastle. Luce, it's good I found you, because now I don't have to leave Patrick a note.” Gabriel shivered in his windbreaker, which was much too light for Northern Irish weather.

But this was going too fast for Lucy: “Wait, Gabe, can we have some tea or something? We gotta talk!” She put a hand on his arm to prevent his escape.

“I can't. We've got to get the bus back to Belfast and out of Ireland. With Brother Vincenzo.”

Lucy glanced at the rough-looking man by the bags.
“He's
a monk? Looks more like a hoodlum.”

Gabriel whispered, “He
was.
Before he found God. Best second-story man in Naples. He was in prison three years when—”

“Gabriel,
please,
what happened between you and Dr. O'Hanrahan in Italy? Did you really sneak off with the scroll behind his back?”

Gabriel shifted his weight. “You know, he'll thank me one day, I'm sure, when he finds out all the information.”

The newsstand proprietor, acting very self-important as if this were a train platform and he a stationmaster, made an announcement to all of the three people assembled that the coach for Armoy, The Drones, Killigan Bridge and Ballymena, and Belfast was approaching. Lucy saw the bus distantly two hills away groaning and shifting gears along the narrow country road.

“Finds out what?” Lucy pursued.

But Gabriel's mind was elsewhere. “The
Drones?
Doesn't that sound like a great vacation spot?”

Lucy was near despair. “Gabe, what's going on?”

Gabriel turned as Brother Vincenzo coughed ominously to prompt him to be ready to meet the coach. “I'll tell you everything one day, but now it'll just mess up the works, but I can tell you this much now:
go home.
O'Hanrahan is in danger and if you stay with him so are you. That scroll is worth a lot and, like, some very dangerous people want their hands on it. It ought to be under armed guard, somewhere a lot safer than in O'Hanrahan's back pocket.”

Lucy and Gabriel stood there awkwardly as the bus pulled to the side of the road, and a single young lady disembarked. The newsstand man put the men's suitcases in the underside of the bus.

Gabriel: “You'll be back in Chicago soon, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. Aren't you coming back home too?”

“Well, I decided that my life…” Gabriel apparently decided not to squander the wealth of things to say with the bus panting there. “I've decided so much about my life in the last few months. I think after this is all over I'm going to South America, somewhere Third World. I'm sick of academia, you know? I'm not John and Eileen's little boy on Halsted living above the paint store anymore.”

Lucy remembered a few other times Gabriel had announced he had his life in order.

“Now here's the message for Patrick, which is very important. Tell him: I'll see him in Assisi, if he wants to come.”

Lucy privately doubted that Dr. O'Hanrahan would be paying social calls on Brother Gabriel in Assisi, but she promised to pass it along. Brother Vincenzo wordlessly got on board the bus while Gabriel called back, “Come visit in Assisi sometime!”

She felt her head swim with unasked questions and unsatisfactory half-answers, but as she leaned forward to kiss him good-bye, Gabriel had quickly bounded onto the bus. He took a seat near a window and looked down at her.

“Bye-bye, Gabe,” she said, waving faintly.

And soon the bus was bound for Belfast, and she watched it sputter away in a haze of bus exhaust, getting quieter and quieter as it moved to the bend ahead. Lucy stared until she realized she was looking at the distant hills of rough scrub, combed by the gusty saline breeze, no more color in the early-evening landscape than a black-and-white photograph.

Lucy put her phone card away and decided she'd better tell O'Hanrahan of this encounter. She wasn't sure just what to report—maybe merely that she'd seen Gabriel again. She turned and nearly ran into the man in the badly matched golfing clothes. He lifted his hat politely, giving her an intense, curious look before self-consciously reverting to his magazine.

Back at the Crown, O'Hanrahan had amassed a jovial crowd around him, Mr. McCall, the rabbi, David, Mrs. McCall nursing a half-pint, and a few other interested listeners.

“Lucille!” he cried, lifting a Guinness in her honor.

“Evening, Dr. O'Hanrahan.” She noticed that Father O'Reilly, their watchdog, was missing. “Did you find the father?”

“Gone back to the chapel,” said the professor, pointing beside his glass to a note Father O'Reilly had left them. “I was discussing with this ignorant man…” He meant Mr. McCall, who was tipsy and laughing. “… that it is the O'Somethings rather than the McSomethings that put Ireland on the map.”

“Total rubbish!” said Mr. McCall, as his wife restrained him by putting a hand on his arm.

The argument raged on with everyone in on the joke and Lucy distant from the discussion; she saw that David was also transfixed. She was tired from her bad night of sleep on Rathlin Island and wished to make it an early night. Maybe she would have a soft drink and then excuse herself.

“Lemme fetch ye a beer, love,” offered Mr. McCall.

“Just a Coke,” she insisted. “Do they have Diet Coke?”

Unheard of in these parts.

“Just a Coke then.” Lucy picked up Father O'Reilly's note and folded it and then unfolded it, occupying her hands.

Gentlemen,

Unexpectedly I've had to return to the Church of the Holy Savior where many duties await me. I shall return by nightfall to discuss in full our business.

Fr. O'Reilly, S. J.