The Copper Beech (5 page)

She was twenty-three and very restless.

The only person in the whole of Shancarrig who understood was Father Barry. He was thirty-three and equally restless. He had been called to order for preaching too much about Vieja Piedra, by no less an authority than the Bishop. He burned with the injustice of it. Monsignor O’Toole was doting, and knew nothing of what was being preached or what was not. Father Gunn must have gone behind his back and complained about him. Father Gunn was only a fellow curate, he had no authority over him.

Father Brian Barry roamed the woods of Barna, swishing angrily against the bushes that got in his way. What right had men, the pettiest and most jealous of men, to try to halt God’s work for dying people, for brothers and sisters who were calling out to them?

If Brian Barry’s own health had been better he would have been a missionary priest. He would have been amongst the people of Vieja Piedra, like his friend from the seminary, Cormac Flynn, was. Cormac it was who wrote and told him at first hand of the work that had to be done.

In the Church of the Holy Redeemer there was a window dedicated to the memory of the Hayes family relations who had gone to their eternal reward. There had been many priests in that family. On the window the words were written
The Harvest is Great but the Labourers are Few
. There it was, written in stained glass, in their own church, and the mad parish priest and the selfish complacent Father Gunn were so blind they couldn’t see it.

In one of these angry walks Father Barry came across Miss Ross from the school, sitting on a tree trunk and puzzling over a letter. He calmed himself for a minute before he spoke. She was a gentle girl and he didn’t want to let her know the depth of his rage and resentment in
the battle for people’s souls, and all the obstacles that were being put in his way.

She looked up startled when she saw him, but made room on the log for him to sit down.

‘Isn’t it beautiful here? You can often find a solution in this place, I think.’

He reached through the slit in his cassock to take cigarettes out of his pocket and sat beside her without speaking.

Somehow, she seemed to understand the need for silence. She sat, hugging her knees and looking out ahead of her, as the summer afternoon light came in patches between the rowan trees and beeches that made up Barna Woods. A squirrel came and gazed at them, inquisitively looking from one to the other before he hopped away.

They laughed. The tension and the silence broken, they could talk to each other easily.

‘When I was young I’d never seen a squirrel,’ Father Barry said. ‘Only in picture books, and there was a giraffe on the same page so I always thought they were the same size. I was terrified of meeting one.’

‘When did you?’

‘Not until I was in the seminary … someone said there was a squirrel over there and I urged everyone to take cover … they thought I was mad.’

‘Well, that’s nothing,’ she encouraged him. ‘I thought guerrilla warfare was sending gorillas out to fight each other instead of people.’

‘You’re saying that to make me feel good,’ he teased her.

‘Not a bit of it. Did they all laugh or didn’t any of them understand?’

‘I had a friend, Cormac. He understood. He understood everything.’

‘That’s Father Cormac out in Peru?’

‘Yes. He understood everything. But how can I tell him what’s happening now?’

As the shadows got longer they sat in Barna Woods and talked. Brian Barry told of his anguish over the work that had to be done and the burden of guilt he felt about the people of this place that seemed to call to him, but what did he do about Obedience to superiors? Maddy Ross told of her brother Joseph who had sent money and expected his mother and sister to come and be there for the happiest day of his life.

‘How can I find the words to tell him?’ Maddy asked.

‘How can I find the words to tell Cormac there’ll be no more support from Shancarrig?’ asked Father Barry.

That was the day that began their dependence on each other – the knowledge that only the other understood the pressures, the pain and the indecision. The very thought that somebody else understood gave each of them courage.

Maddy Ross found herself able to write to her brother Joseph and say that she would love to come to his wedding, but that Mother did not consider herself strong enough to travel. It meant a lot of silences and sulks at home, but Maddy weathered it. She assembled a simple wardrobe and made her bookings.

Eventually her mother relented and began to show some enthusiasm for the trip. She didn’t take this enthusiasm to the point of going with her daughter, but at least the stony silences ended and the atmosphere had cleared.

Father Barry too showed courage. He spoke directly to Father Gunn, and said that he accepted the ruling of the diocese that there was not to be exceptional emphasis on the missions in general or on one mission field in particular. He agreed that other themes such as tolerance and charity
on the home front and devotion to Our Blessed Lady, Queen of Ireland, be brought to the forefront.

He also said that in his spare time, if he could run sales of work, he could set up charitable projects in aid of Vieja Piedra. He felt sure that there could be no objection. To this Father Gunn, with a sigh of pure relief, said that there would no objection.

In the summer of 1955 Maddy Ross and Brian Barry wished each other well, she on her journey to Africa, he on his fund-raising efforts so that Cormac Flynn would not be let down. When they met again in the autumn they would tell each other everything.

‘We’ll meet in the woods with the giant squirrels,’ said Father Barry.

‘Watching out for the military gorillas,’ laughed Maddy Ross.

They were both looking forward to the meeting even as they were saying goodbye.

They were very much changed when they met again. They knew this just from the briefest meeting in the church porch after ten o’clock mass. Father Barry was rearranging the pamphlets that the Catholic Truth Society published, which were in racks for sale, but were always mixed up whenever he passed them by. The problem was that everyone wanted to read ‘The Devil at Dances’ and ‘Keeping Company’, but nobody wanted to buy them. Copies of these booklets were always well thumbed and returned to some position or other.

He saw Madeleine come out with her mother. Mrs Ross spent a lengthy time at the holy water font, blessing herself as if she were giving the
Urbi et Orbi
blessing from the papal Balcony in Rome.

‘Welcome back, stranger. Was it wonderful?’ He smiled at her.

‘No. It couldn’t have gone more differently than was planned.’

They looked at each other, both surprised by the intense way the other had spoken. Father Barry looked over at Mrs Ross, still far enough away not to hear.

‘Barna Woods,’ he said, his eyes dark and huge.

‘At four o’clock,’ Maddy said.

She hadn’t felt like this since gym class back at school, where they did the wall bars and all the blood ran to her head, making her feel dizzy and faint.

When she found herself deliberating over which blouse to wear she pulled herself up sharply. He’s a priest, she said. But she still wore the striped one which gave her more colour and didn’t make her look wishy-washy.

When her mother asked her where she was going, she said she wanted to pick the great fronds of beech leaves in Barna Woods. They could put them in glycerine later and preserve them to decorate the house for the winter.

‘I’ll look for some really good ones that have turned,’ she explained. ‘I might be some time.’

She found him sitting on their log with his head in his hands. He told of a summer where everything he had done for Vieja Piedra had been thwarted, not just by Father Gunn, who had turned up dutifully at the bring and buy sale, at the whist drive and the general knowledge quiz, but because the interest simply wasn’t there. And since he could no longer use the parish pulpit to preach of the plight of these poor people he didn’t have the ear and the heart of the congregation any more. His face was troubled. Maddy felt there was more he wasn’t telling. She didn’t push him. He would tell what he wanted to tell. Now he
asked about her: had her brother Joseph been delighted to see her?

‘Yes, and no.’ Her brother’s fiancée was of the Presbyterian faith and had only agreed to be married in a Catholic Church to please Joseph. Now that his mother wasn’t coming to the wedding Joseph had decided that he shouldn’t put Caitriona through all this since, really and truly as long as it was Christian, one service was the same as another in the eyes of God.

So Maddy had gone the whole way to Africa to see her brother commit a mortal sin. There had been endless arguments, discussions and tears on both their parts. Joseph said that since they hardly knew each other their tie as brother and sister was not like a real family. Maddy had asked why then had he paid for her to come out to see him.

‘To show people that I am not alone in the world,’ he had said.

Oh yes, she had attended the ceremony, and smiled, and been pleasant to all the guests. She had told her mother nothing of this. In fact, she was worn out remembering to call the priest Father McPherson rather than Mr McPherson, which was the name of the Presbyterian minister who had married the young couple, in a stiflingly hot church under a cloudless sky – a church with no tabernacle, and no proper God in it at all.

They walked together to find the kind of sprays she wanted. She explained that she had made a sort of excuse to her mother for going to the woods. Then she wished she hadn’t said that – it might appear to him as if she needed an excuse for something so perfectly innocent as a meeting with a friend.

But, oddly, it struck a chord with him.

‘I made an excuse too, to Father Gunn and Mrs
Kennedy, of course. I told him that I wanted to make a couple of parish calls, the Dunnes and the Brennans. Both of them are sure to be out, or at any rate unlikely to invite me in.’

They looked at each other and looked away. A lot had been admitted.

Speaking too quickly she told him about how you preserved flowers and leaves, and how the trick was to put very few in a vase with a narrow opening.

Speaking equally quickly he nodded agreement and perfect understanding of the process, and said that parish calls were an imposition on the priest and the people, everyone dreaded them, and how much better it would be to spend our life in a place where people really needed you rather than worrying had they a clean tablecloth and a slice of cake to give you. His face looked very bitter and sad as he spoke and she felt such huge sympathy for him that she touched him lightly on the arm.

‘You
do
a great deal of good here. If you knew how much you touch all our lives.’

To her shock his eyes filled with tears.

‘Oh, Madeleine,’ he cried. ‘Oh God, I’m so lonely. I’ve no one to talk to, I’ve no friends. No one will listen.’

‘Shush, shush.’ She spoke as to a child. ‘I’m your friend. I’ll listen.’

He put his arms around her and laid his head on her shoulder. She felt arms around her waist and his body close to hers as he shook with sobs.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m so foolish,’ he wept.

‘No. No, you’re not You’re good. You care. You wouldn’t be you unless you were so caring,’ she soothed him. She stroked his head and the back of his neck. She could feel his tears wet against her face as he raised his head to try to apologise.

‘Shush, shush,’ she said again. She held him until the sobs died down. Then she took out her handkerchief, a small white one with a blue flower in the corner, and handed it to him.

They walked wordlessly to their tree trunk. He blew his nose very hard.

‘I feel such a fool. I should be strong and courageous for you, Madeleine, tell you things that will console you about your brother’s situation, not cry like a baby.’

‘No, you
do
make me feel courageous and strong, really, Father Barry …’

He interrupted her sharply. ‘Now, listen here. If I’m going to cry in your arms, the least you can do is call me Brian.’

She accepted it immediately. ‘Yes, but Brian, you must believe that you have helped me. I didn’t think I was any use to anyone, a disappointment to my mother, no support to my brother …’

‘You must have friends. You of all people, so generous and giving. You’re not locked up in rigid rules and practices like I am.’

‘I have no friends,’ Madeleine Ross said simply.

That afternoon there wasn’t time to tell each other all the millions of things there were still to tell – like how Brian had a letter from his great friend Cormac Flynn in Peru saying for heaven’s sake not to be so intense about Vieja Piedra, it was just one place on the globe – Father Brian Barry hadn’t been born into the world thousands of miles away with a direct instruction to save the place single-handed.

Father Brian Barry had been more hurt than he could ever express by that letter. But when he told Maddy and she tumbled out her own information about Kathleen White and how she had begged Maddy, her friend, not to
write to her so intensely, they saw it as one further common bond between them.

She learned about his childhood – his mother who had always wanted a son as a priest, but who had died a month before his ordination and never received his blessing.

He heard of life with a mother who was becoming increasingly irrational – of a life lived more and more in fantasy – in a world where her cousins were people of great wealth and high breeding – where all kinds of niceties were important, the wearing of gloves, the owning of a coach and horses in the old days, the calling with visiting cards. None of it had any basis in reality, Maddy said, but Dr Jims said it was harmless. Lots of middle-aged women had notions and delusions of grandeur, and those harboured by Mrs Ross were no worse than a lot of people’s, and better than most.

Their meetings had to be more and more conspiratorial. Maddy would stay late in the school, decorating her window displays. Father Barry would call with some information for the Kellys and happen to see her in the classroom. The door would be left open. He would sit on the teacher’s desk, swinging his legs. If Mrs Kelly were to look in, and her anxious face seemed to look everywhere, then she would see nothing untoward.