Grandmother and the Priests (4 page)

So the priests came to Grandmother’s home, when they passed through Leeds, for though a lapsed Catholic and obviously living in sin in more ways than one, she was still the daughter of a Catholic family and had been baptized in the Faith. There was always the possibility that influence, patience and prayer would bring Grandmother back to the fold. They were also great gossips, bringing messages to Grandmother from Scotland and Ireland from her old friends and her relatives. They were also full of tales, for sagas were still being spoken and written in those clays.

They drew the line, these priests, at staying overnight in Grandmother’s house, though with mirth leaping in her eyes she invariably invited them and described the comforts of fires, hot water, indoor plumbing and thick feather beds and fine linen. They would look wistful, while shaking their heads. Then, hours after dinner, and after many stories, they would depart for less sinful lodgings, huddled in their thin coats. “Ye’ll be knowin’ where to reach me,” they’d say to her hopefully, before leaving, envisioning sudden alarums in the night when the only help possible would be that given by a priest. But Grandmother was superbly healthy. “It’s not dying I will be this night,” she’d answer, with a toss of red curls, her own and supplementary others. “Never fear, Father.” They wanted to ‘fear’, but Grandmother never called for a priest. She outlived all those she ever knew. But still they hoped.

Rose learned all these things over many years. But even as a young child, on her second visit to Grandmother’s house, and finally gathering that these ‘Romans’ were ‘wee ministers’, themselves, she wondered what in hell they were doing at Grandmother’s table. It was so obvious to Rose that Grandmother was a very naughty lady, indeed.

Rose had never sat at a table with Grandmother, for even when she had visited her sons in London she had not wanted a child near her, ‘the blasted nuisances’. So Rose could hardly believe it, that night in Leeds, that Grandmother had suffered her to be seated at her scintillating table, in the presence of the eleven priests. The priests had invited Rose; therefore, Grandmother could not protest at a ‘brat sitting in me presence’. But she ignored Rose’s existence as she would have ignored a pestilential fly. She continued to amuse her friends with the most outrageous stories.

But the priests did not forget Rose. An enormous hand gently took her knife to cut up her meat, and she basked in this smiling attention. She looked at her assistant timidly; his big red face beamed at her as if she were not a child at all, but a person whose company was agreeable. The priest on her left hand was being addressed as Monsignor, and though, when she looked at him, he gave her a brief smile, he had a more remote air than did Father McGlynn, and a certain chill austerity. He was Monsignor Harrington-Smith, one of the few Englishmen among all those Scots and Irish. But as he was a priest he was tolerated by his colleagues. He was also distantly related to one of Grandmother’s cousins who had married a Sassenagh. Rose soon saw that he gave a kind of ‘tone’ to the party, not only because he was the only Monsignor present then, but because of his superb manners and quietness.

A savory was placed before Rose. By this time she was exhausted by all the noise and shine and brilliance, and the heat in the dining-room, and she was a little fuzzy from the sips of wine she had drunk. “I think,” said Monsignor Harrington-Smith, “that I should not eat that, if I were you, Rose.” An adult’s word was law. She put down her fork.

Grandmother, always willing to please a priest, rang for a servant and asked if there was any milky blancmange on the premises, a lowly dish usually eaten only by domestics. There was. A shivering morsel was brought in, on a golden saucer, for Rose, and Monsignor nodded approvingly. Rose ate it obediently; it tasted like paste.

There was champagne, which Monsignor deftly prevented Rose from sampling. She decided that though he was kind enough to endure the presence of a child he was too much like Miss Brothers, who served dry sardines on drier toast as a savory. Monsignor Harrington-Smith, apparently, was no stranger to champagne, for he tasted it critically and daintily, before accepting it. But his colleagues rejoiced in it, the poor men not having much of a palate, of necessity. “It’ll be pleasing you, Monsignor?” asked Grandmother, with a wink.

“A good year,” he said, a trifle pompously. He examined the bottle which the manservant extended to him. “A good year,” he repeated, “though not the best. I understand there was not enough sun during the final weeks.”

“It’s delighted I am that you’ll be drinking it at all,” said Grandmother, demurely. “But then, one knows that your lordship was bathed in champagne, at your christening.”

“You know very well, Rose Mary, that I am a second son,” he said.

She grinned and dipped her head with mock humility. Then she rustled to her tiny feet — which were covered with satin and jeweled slippers — and the priests rose with her. Rose stood up, also. Monsignor Harrington-Smith folded his hands and prayed. Rose was fascinated by all those suddenly solemn faces around her — even Grandmother’s — and was thinking about it during the movement following the prayer when she felt a hard pinch on her shoulder, and smelled Grandmother’s hot and musky scent. “Upstairs with you,” Grandmother said.

Rose started to obey at once, then a hand fell on her shoulder. Her new dear friend was holding her hack. “And why should not the little one join us?”

“An auld head on her shoulders,” said Grandmother, somberly, shaking her own, and speaking in her curious mixture of Scots and Irish burr. “It’s nae good thing for a lass to have. It’s a touch of the divil, himself.”

She gave Rose a jumping and warning look, and Rose murmured it was past her bedtime. But she was led into the drawing-room, which she had rarely been permitted to enter before. It seemed to her at least half as large as the street on which she lived in London and was crowded with little gilt chairs covered by vari-colored damasks and tapestries, with rose damask glistening on the walls, and sofas everywhere and tall crystal lamps and portraits and mirrors and tables teeming with exquisite little ornaments and buhl cabinets in each corner filled with objets d’art and Spanish fans. A big fire danced in a fireplace in which a medium-sized ox could have stood, and over the mantelpiece hung a very fine portrait of Queen Victoria, whom Grandmother did not resemble in the slightest. If the dining-room had awed Rose, the drawing-room petrified her with its size and shine and magnificence. The windows, covered with rose shirred silk, over which were looped blue damask draperies, appeared to her to extend upward to infinity.

Father McGlynn led Rose to a little polished steel stool, a sort of hob, which stood beside the fire, and he put a cushion on it, and then lifted her onto the cushion. “There, and that’s a comfort,” he said, and patted her cheek.

Dazzled, trembling with anticipation of what she did not know, she crouched on the stool. The priests sat around the fire, with Grandmother in the semicircle, and all had big brandy glasses in their hands. There was just a little golden liquid at the bottom of the glasses; they swished the liquid around, inhaled the fumes, said “Ah!” in deep voices, and occasionally sipped. Rose was fascinated.

Grandmother pulled up her skirts to warm her thin little shanks — she was always cold in spite of the incredible amount of alcohol she consumed daily — and said to Monsignor Harrington-Smith: “It’ll be your time to tell your tale, Monsignor.”

“You know I am not superstitious, Rose Mary,” he said to Grandmother. The priests looked depressed. ‘Superstition’ was, of course, forbidden sternly by the Church, but they believed, with Shakespeare, that there are more things in heaven and earth than Englishmen would ever acknowledge or see or hear. Or perhaps they believed that no Sassenagh would be able to tell a tale that would keep a watchdog awake or curl a single hair of a more susceptible child.

A priest said hastily, “Sure, and I am thinking it is my turn.”

“Nay,” said Grandmother, with a wicked twinkle. “I remember me that it was to be Monsignor Harrington-Smith’s.”

“I am not superstitious,” said the Monsignor, as if this little interlude had not taken place. “Nevertheless — ”

The priests sat up, with more hopeful expressions. Monsignor was shaking his head, and frowning.

“Ah,” said Father McGlynn, in a deep, expectant voice. Anything that could baffle Sassenaghs must be really extraordinary. Why, if St. Michael appeared before them they’d be wanting to examine his armor for authenticity, suspecting it had been stolen from Windsor Castle, and they’d doubtless sneer, “Sheffield steel,” when running skeptical fingers along his sword.

“So — ” said Monsignor, and launched into his story with increasing reluctance, as if, someway, such things did not happen in the orderly course of events, to Englishmen of proper breeding. “It was in Ireland. Of course,” he began.

“Ah!!!” said the priests in a body, nodding, and pulling their chairs closer. If it had happened in England — nothing would have happened. But Ireland!

Edward Albert Harrington-Smith was the second son of a British peer. He, very early in life, knew that he had a vocation for the priesthood. He was the handsomer lad of the two, and his father had had hopes that his breeding, face and carriage, and undeniable intellect would attract a girl of some family and money, or, perhaps, a rich American. The father had even saved enough to send the youth to America in pursuit of the necessities. But Edward wanted to be a priest. “If only we were High Church,” said the father, with a little wistfulness. “We Catholics, even those of us with illustrious names and fortunes and castles, are not truly acceptable in this society. Now, if we were High Church we could be assured that Edward would be a Bishop within a short time.”

Edward went to a Seminary, and his priestly superiors were not particularly impressed that he was ‘a second son’. They demanded faith, character, a true vocation, and dedication and sincerity. He had all of them. Eventually he was ordained a priest. However, he had characteristics that did not quite meet the approval of his superiors. He was inclined to be proud, remote and a little disdainful of his ‘inferiors’. His superiors believed that a parish in one of the more destitute sections of Ireland would have a salutary effect on him. (“Ireland!” cried his father, with horror, never forgetting for a moment that he was an Englishman. “I will write a letter at once to his Eminence! Ireland!”)

His Eminence was kind, but realistic. “A priest must learn to go anywhere,” he wrote to his friend. “It will do Edward good.”

Edward was not certain of this. But he kept his doubts between himself and his confessor, who did not have too high a regard for the Irish, either. So Edward soon found himself in a very wild parish, indeed, where his parishioners implicitly believed in the ‘little people’, and fairies and banshees, and were quite ‘superstitious’. Moreover, they were both awed and resentful at having a Sassenagh as their pastor, a man from Oxford at that. Edward tried desperately to be humble, as his Lord had been humble, but he could not help his proud carriage, his high head, his cold and handsome young face, his lack of warm and simple sympathy. He prayed that his nature might be changed, that he could be one with his parish. He would accept the usual reverence paid to a priest, such as a pulled forelock or cap, or a curtsey, but nothing else. His rectory was a small and tumble-down place, and he had no servant. The poor village women, but only the old ones, would take turns cleaning up the tiny rooms. The thatched roof leaked. It was very cold. His stipend was practically nothing. He returned the small cheques his parents sent him. So, he was always hungry. He never demanded anything for himself from his parishioners, and they believed that he ‘rolled in it’. No one offered to clean his outdoor privy, so he did the odorous work himself. “It’ll take the pride from him, sure and it will,” the men of the parish would chuckle, only too glad to be relieved of a task rightfully theirs.

His church was hardly more splendid than his rectory. He had trouble obtaining altar boys. The old women washed and ironed the simple altar linens; an old man was surly at being appointed sexton, though he had served in this capacity most of his life. The Sisters, who had a wretched convent and little school, were all Irish, and did not like the English pastor, who was given to be rigorous at times and liked absolute discipline. In short, Father Harrington-Smith’s life was made a minor hell by his parish, especially by the Mother Superior of the convent, an old lady with a mind like iron and a will like a Toledo blade. She called him ‘that boyo’. When the Sisters giggled at this, she frowned at them in only a perfunctory way. Edward met the hostility head on, and Edward lost.

Edward had only two joys: the celebration of the Mass, and walking the wild and incredibly beautiful countryside. The land was meadow, and somewhat flat, but the cloudscapes! Slowly he began to understand that these cloudscapes were the origins of the strange Irish legends. One sunset he paused, struck, to observe a spectacle he was never to see anywhere else.

The green earth was wrapt in a faint mist, and so was anonymous and without feature. It rolled languidly to the horizon. Now cloudscapes anywhere else in the world have a way of standing in the sky. But in Ireland they appear to touch the earth, to rise from it, to be born of it, to be one with it, to merge with it. Edward saw a new earth, a new land, in the enormous clouds. First of all, looming against a red sky, stood a perfect castle, with towers and battlements and walls and a moat and slitted windows. Below it fell away a complete village, with tiny neat houses, roofed with crimson, and little winding streets and a green stream moving down to a greener meadow. Edward could actually discern the forms of sheep in the meadows, and the tiny figures of shepherds. He saw glows in the little windows of the houses, a lantern flash at the end of the street. But it was all so silent!

“Impossible,” murmured Edward, with awe. “Fata Morgana.”

As he watched the tower drifted into nothingness; the walls dropped away; the village was wrapt in a pink mist and hidden from his sight; the green meadows became dim and vanished. The clouds turned sullen and dark, pierced by one ember-like eye of the setting sun. A cold wind arose, and Edward heard cowbells and the complaints of cattle as they moved towards their paddocks. Somewhere a dog barked irascibly. An old man, in a two-wheeled cart, trundled by, pulling his cap at the sight of the young priest, then shrugging. The long purple twilight came down, and Edward stood and thought.

He knew he did not have much imagination. He was too pragmatic for that, and too much of an Englishman. But now he was full of a strange excitement. Could it be possible that past scenes and past eras were indelibly impressed on the retina of Time, so that Time could reproduce them at capricious will? Edward took to roaming the countryside in his infrequent leisure, and watching and listening. Of course, the ‘superstition’ of ‘the natives’ was not to he countenanced by a pious and intellectual priest, even if he did live in an ancient thatched house full of creaks and moans in the moonlight, and even if he did hear weird and uncanny sounds in the dark of the moon, like the howling of ghostly wolves and the crying of witches. “There are more things in heaven and earth — ” Nonsense, he would say to himself, unlocking the church door at dawn, and looking anxiously down the village street for dilatory altar boys and the sacristan. The sexton was rarely there, and Edward would frequently have to pull the bell-ropes himself, a fact the villagers appeared to enjoy slyly. “He has the muscles on him,” the old women would say, pulling the shawls over their heads and fumbling for the rosaries in the pockets of their skirts. “It’s no harm it will do him.”

The Mass is the central and holy celebration of the Church. Edward had always perceived this intellectually. Now, as he became bemused over the cloudscapes, and all the strangeness of them, he perceived the Mass as a tremendous Mystery. He had always been reverent. Now he was quietly ecstatic. He complained less to his people, so he began to find a simple dinner — apparently placed there by the ‘little people’ — on the self-scrubbed table in his dark and miniature kitchen. A piece of cold goose or chicken, a fish on Fridays and holy days, a covered dish of hot potatoes, a slice of simple cake, fresh fruit in season, a slab of cheese, a pitcher of goat’s milk, a pot of tea on the brick stove. Never questioning, he ate voraciously, for he was young. He was simply thankful — and silent — when his roof was mysteriously repaired during an absence. How had his people come to know that he was slowly becoming one with them at last? It was a mystery, but it was also a fact. Even the Mother Superior’s old seamed face cracked in a smile for him. But this was much, much later, after the Cunningham tragedy.

He tried, but he knew he would never be truly humble. That was his cross, and he bore it. But he found himself unbending. He stopped to speak to little boys playing marbles in muddy gutters. He inspected little babies he had baptized. He listened, with deliberate patience, to the complaints of housewives; he admonished men who liked their beer too much, but in an understanding tone. (That is why he frequently found a pitcher of beer on his table at night, and occasionally a small crock of raw Irish whiskey.) He was less stern in the Confessional, and more gentle. He sighed, rather than found cold and bitter words, when some shawled girl whimpered to him that she had “not been very good, Father,” in the wild fields of moonlit spring with their tiny daisies and buttercups. His inflicted penances were given with a measure of mercy. Sometimes, at dawn, before Mass, he would enter the decrepit little church and stand, in meditation, before the crucifix, and think strange thoughts for an Englishman. He found poverty no longer disgraceful, and the leisurely way of his people no longer ‘feckless’. There was more to life than a fine house and busyness.

When he was called to a cottage by a distracted father who feared his girl-wife was dying during her delivery, and he looked upon the girl as she struggled to give birth, he would invoke Mary’s help with all his heart, and without any irreverence at all:
“Salve, sancta Parens, enixa puerpera regem qui caelum terramque regit in saecula saeculorum. Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum…”
For, who knew what the coming child would be? Perhaps a great and humble man, perhaps an inspiration and a joy to his people, perhaps a deliverer from war, perhaps a priest who might one clay sit in Peter’s Chair. Or, perhaps above all, a gentle girl who would give a saint to the Church. All women were one with Mary, in their hour of giving birth. She was not remote in heaven; she was here, with her suffering daughter. He had not thought that before. But this change of understanding did not come to the priest until much later, after the Cunningham affair.

There was only one family in the vicinity which could be called ‘gentry’. The master was Michael, Lord Cunningham, his young wife, Dolores, and his brother, the Honorable Henry Laurance.

“Fine names,” said Monsignor Harrington-Smith to his listening audience of Grandmother and her priests, “and a fine Irish family, very old. They went back to the Celtic kings of Ireland, back to legend and history and the Crusades. They were also very poor, as poor I was, myself.”

Michael, Lord Cunningham lived with his wife, Dolores, in what once had been a noble castle, centuries before. Now less than a quarter of it was habitable. The rest was crumbling away, the walls littered deep in rubble, the moat dried to a trench which stank in the spring and was filled with a jungle of wild flowers in the summer. It stood upon a low hill overlooking the village. Two of its three towers were only stumps now; the one that remained had been built three centuries later than the others. Nevertheless, it had slowly detached itself from the castle; there was a chink some four feet wide between itself and the castle proper. Roofs on various rooms of the castle had fallen in chaos, so that only jagged fragments stood where once great halls had been alive with festivity. There had been a private chapel; it was now a ruin, smashed by the centuries. The beautiful gardens had decayed into a wilderness of snarled and dying trees. The castle stood against the skies in utter silence, except for the fierce cries of rooks or the sharp utterances of foxes. Gray, desolate, the remaining walls overgrown with ivy, it was hard to believe that anyone lived there at all, and especially not two young people filled with joy and the celebration of life.

The younger brother lived in a hut a quarter of a mile from the castle, and he lived as rudely as his shepherds. What little income the family had came from rents in the village, the sale of wool and mutton to hard-eyed English traders. Even that small income was depleted by taxes demanded by London Town. There was only an old female servant in the castle. Lady Dolores, nineteen years old, was dressed as poorly as any village girl. If Lord Cunningham, twenty-eight, hunted, it was for food and not for sport. He was too poor to be welcome even among his impoverished colleagues in other counties, and as he was quiet and shy he was let quite alone.

Lady Dolores had been the only child of a family as impoverished as Lord Cunningham’s, noble and old, if without a title. She had been born in County Mayo, and from birth had been extraordinarily beautiful, with wide, dark blue eyes, skin like the petals of a white daisy, and hair that resembled black silk. Her family had sent her to a convent-school in Dublin, and had had their dreams that one day their Dolores would marry into wealth and a title. They garnered their last pounds before them and gave a reception for their daughter when she was eighteen years old, and invited the gentry and nobility for miles around. Lord Cunningham and his brother, Henry Laurance, had been invited, and sensing an opportunity for some pleasure, and some free meals and a little dancing and gaiety, had accepted. There had been considerable scurrying for the proper clothing, some sale of sheep, some accepted debt. But when they appeared at the dilapidated home of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick MacMuir they had created a sensation, for they were fine figures of young men. Henry was even more handsome than his brother. Michael was three inches shorter, though still tall; his smooth brown hair was gold on his brother; his pale blue eyes were a brighter blue in Henry’s face; his overly large nose was patrician on Henry. He had a gentler chin and a more retiring air than his brother, and did not stand out in the assemblage.

Still, he would have been considered very handsome — had it not been for the glowing presence of Henry, Henry who appeared like a young Irish Tara, with a touch of Apollo in his profile.

Both young men had the Irish indifference to immediate wealth, and the Irish love for serenity and life. Michael, to the horror of his people, had enlisted in Her Majesty’s Navy, had acquired a bullet in ‘some heathen place’, and had subsequently received a pension, which was more than could be said for Henry. Neither of the young men had been educated to make his living. After all, lords do not go into the market place, particularly Irish lords. And Henry liked the bucolic life.

“No one ever suspected, except myself, and one other, that poor Henry was really stupid,” said Monsignor Harrington-Smith. “Beautiful as a Greek god, but absolutely stupid.” Monsignor hesitated, then went on resolutely: “One sees that, in decayed families. Michael was the one with the brains, though he put them to little use. He preferred living in their molding castle than to take lodgings in London and learn a profession. He loved his country.” Monsignor reflected. “There is a lot to be said for that, even in these bustling, modern days. Love of country appears to be degenerating everywhere, and when that happens — the barbarian comes in.”

Dolores MacMuir was indeed a great beauty. But she had no money, and her countrymen, even the eligibles, had no money either. Her parents could count on leaving her only two hundred pounds a year. Noble sons were all about them, drinking the free beer and whiskey, and hardly a penny among them. Of course, there were rich families in Dublin, but sons of rich families wanted to marry riches, too, and even great beauty and family did not impress the Dubliners, who had learned much from the Sassenagh, the tradesman. Dolores could dance like a fairy; she could chatter in French; she could do fine needle-work; she was very pious; she knew how to manage a household. She appeared to float, rather than walk. She had a saintly character, and a high sense of mischief. She was eighteen, and adorable. But she had no money.

It was soon evident, at the ball, that Dolores was attracted to the Honorable Henry Laurance. As for poor Henry, he was mad for the girl. He walked about in a daze; he visibly trembled when he danced with her. He tripped on her heels when she moved ahead of him. And she smiled on him with radiance. The parents were alarmed, as the days of the festivity passed. (Irish festivities do not end in a day, and sometimes not even in a week.) Henry was only an Honorable, though distinctly a distinguished Honorable. His brother, Michael, was a peer. He would marry eventually, and produce an heir to the title, which was one of the grandest in Ireland. He would always have, and his heirs, what little poor estate there was. Henry would never have anything. He could smile the heart out of you, but that was all. Even an Irish smile could not put a gown on a girl’s back, nor conjure a dinner on the table or a sovereign in a pocket.

Michael was also in love — with Dolores. Shyer than his effulgent brother, he could only stare at Dolores from a distance. She would sometimes drift to him and chaff him; his only reply was a stutter or a blush. She teased him; he looked miserable. She floated off, and his heart was in his eyes. And Henry was always at her side, laughing richly, dancing magnificently, smiling like the sun itself. The parents came to the conclusion that Dolores had fallen in love, with Henry.