The Loney (7 page)

The only thing of note about it was that it was where the spider supposedly egged on Robert the Bruce to clobber the English, and there that the English replied by massacring the McDonnells. Even the children. Apparently you could still find blood stains on the rocks that the sea refused to wash away.

So little happened on the island that memories were as long as the savage winters that were the starting point of most of Father Bernard’s stories.

‘Would you listen to that rain?’ he said, looking towards the window. ‘It reminds me of the winter our stores were flooded out.’

‘When was that, Father?’

‘Oh, I was only a wee boy. I can’t have been any more than eight or nine.’

‘What happened, Father?’

‘My daddy, God love him, was a good farmer but he was a lousy roofer. He’d patched up the storehouse with old bits of wood, you see, and they just rotted away like everything else on the island. One night the whole thing went in and nigh on every scrap of food we had was ruined. I remember my mammy chasing a whole load of carrots and turnips that were floating out of the yard.’

‘I shouldn’t laugh,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t funny. We weren’t that far from starving.’

‘Didn’t you have animals, Father?’

‘Aye.’

‘Couldn’t you eat them?’

‘If we’d done that we’d have been poor as well as hungry come the New Year market in Ballycastle. The animals were why we nearly starved. We had to feed them first, you know?’

‘Couldn’t you have got some food from somewhere else?’

‘Oh aye,’ he said. ‘The O’Connells from the farm over the way came around with potatoes and meat, but my daddy was too proud to take anything off them. He’d rather we all wasted away than rely on charity.

‘When my mammy found out, she was furious. It was the only time she ever raised her voice to him, and when the O’Connells came around again she took everything they’d brought.

‘You know, Tonto, it sounds daft, but I don’t think my daddy was quite the same from then on. I think it half killed him, sacrificing his pride like that.’

I stopped dealing and put the pack of cards in the middle of the table.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I’m going on. How’s school at the moment? Almost done now, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Exams soon, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well make sure you work hard. Otherwise you might end up with a career in the priesthood.’

He smiled and pulled his cards together, tapping them on the table.

‘Are you a good lad at school?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘I was a wee terror,’ he said. ‘When they could get me to go, that is.’

He fanned the cards in his hand and laid one down.

‘Mind you, if you’d seen the place, Tonto, you wouldn’t have gone either.’

‘Why’s that, Father?’

‘There were fifty of us in one room. Half of us hadn’t any boots to wear. And it was so cold in the winter that the ink iced over in the wells. Can you imagine?’

‘No, Father.’

He frowned at my expression and then laughed.

‘Ah, I’m just pulling your leg,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t that bad. Apart from O’Flannery.’

He threw a card down onto the pile, before picking up another.

‘You’ll not have anyone like O’Flannery where you are, I’m sure. He was a very old fashioned sort of teacher. You know what I mean? A real hardliner.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Some of the other lads said he wore a cilice. And I wouldn’t have put it past him, the face he had on him sometimes. You know what a cilice is, right, Tonto?’

‘Yes, Father.’

He tapped his fingers on his cards and took his turn and then smiled to himself.

‘I laugh hearty at it now,’ he said. ‘But O’Flannery was an out and out bullyman. Even the mammies and daddies were frightened of him. He made sure he put the fear of God into you from day one.’

‘How?’

‘Well, whenever anyone new joined the class, he’d always ask them the same question.’

‘What was that?’

‘It was to translate
dura lex, sed lex
.’

He looked at me.

‘Aye, that was the face they pulled too. Right before he’d give them a whack on the arse with his cane.’

He pursed his lips and shook his head.

‘You know, I can still feel it now. He’d hit you so hard with the old birch that all he had to do after that to stop us silly wee cubs in our tracks was to go to the desk and touch it. We shut up pretty quickly then, I can tell you.’

‘Didn’t you have other teachers though, Father?’ I said.

‘Aye, we did in the end.’

‘How do you mean?’

He laughed drily to himself.

‘Mr O’Flannery’s career was cut short let’s say.’

‘Why, what happened?’

‘The silly sod fell off the cliffs at Rue Point, photographing the puffins. When they told us on the Monday morning, all the lads cheered, and to my eternal shame so did I.

‘We were still cheering when the headmaster came in. I thought we were done for, you know. But he didn’t scold us at all. He knew what O’Flannery was like. What people thought of him. He just sat on the edge of the desk asking us questions about geography and science and mathematics. And do you know what? Between us we answered every single one. He must have been there for an hour and then he said something that I’ve never forgotten to this day.’

‘What was that, Father?’

‘He said, “In time to come, each of you will thank the man who gave you your mind.” Then he got up and left. And he was right. I mean he was hard as nails, O’Flannery, and I hated him at the time, but I feel kind of grateful to him now, you know? There aren’t many lessons of his that I don’t remember.’

‘What did it mean, Father?’

‘What did what mean?’

‘The Latin.’

He laughed. ‘The law is harsh, but it is the law. Then there was, let’s see,
Ex fructu arbor agnoscitur
and
Veritas vos liberabit
.’

‘What does that one mean, Father?’

‘The truth will set you free,’ he said and played his card.

‘John,’ I said, automatically.

Father Bernard raised his eyebrows and then looked at me thoughtfully.

‘Father Wilfred taught you a lot, didn’t he?’

I nodded and was about to show Hanny which card to lay down when I realised that he had won.

‘Show,’ I said and bent the cards towards Father Bernard.

Hanny pulled them back to his chest.

‘It’s alright, Hanny,’ I said. ‘You’ve won. You’re the winner.’

‘Aye, he is that,’ said Father Bernard looking at Hanny’s hand, and then throwing in his own cards.

He sat back and looked at me as I scooped the cards into a pile to deal them again.

‘There was something I wanted to ask you actually, Tonto,’ he said.

‘Yes, Father?’

‘On behalf of Mr Belderboss.’

‘Yes, Father?’

‘When Father Wilfred passed away,’ he said. ‘There was something of his that went missing. A book. You’ve not seen it knocking about have you?’

‘A book?’

‘Aye, you know, a diary, a notebook, that kind of thing. It was quite important. To the family. Mr Belderboss is pretty keen on getting it back.’

‘No, Father.’

‘Not in the vestry? Or the presbytery?’

‘No, Father.’

‘Do you think any of the other lads might know?’

‘I don’t know, Father.’

‘Would it be worth me asking them?’

‘I’m not sure, Father. Maybe.’

He looked at me and I started dealing.

‘You know, Tonto, confession is bound by a seal of secrecy. I can’t tell a soul what you say to me,’ he said, pausing for a moment. ‘Even with a gun to my head.’

I looked up at him sharply, thinking that he had somehow seen the rifle, but he was gathering his cards together and spreading them in his hands.

‘But I’m not in confession, Father,’ I said.

He laughed and then outside on the landing I heard Mummer calling for him.

‘You have a think about it, Tonto,’ he said and got up to open the door. ‘If anything comes to you, let me know.’

Mummer came in. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘I hope these two weren’t keeping you up, Father.’

‘No, no, not at all, Mrs Smith,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to see if they’d got any better at cards.’

‘Oh,’ said Mummer, confused as to whether Father Bernard had set up some elaborate test to see if we were secret gamblers. ‘Have they?’

‘No,’ he said, winking at me. ‘They’re still terrible cheats.’

‘Oh,’ said Mummer. ‘Well, if I could borrow you for a moment, Father, there are a few things I wanted to speak to you about.’

‘By all means, Mrs Smith,’ he said.

He got up and went past Mummer who held the door open for him. When he had gone down the landing Mummer snapped at me.

‘Why isn’t Andrew asleep? You know he’ll be no good if he’s tired.’

‘I know.’

‘Well if you know, stop messing around up here and get him settled.’

‘Yes, mother.’

She looked at us both and then walked away. I waited for a moment and then went to the door and onto the landing.

‘I don’t know if you realised, Father,’ said Mummer as they went down the stairs. ‘But Father Wilfred made himself available for confession when we came here.’

They had stopped in the hallway outside Father Bernard’s room. Mummer had her arms folded in the way she had started doing since he had arrived at Saint Jude’s.

‘I see,’ said Father Bernard. He nodded at the door of the under-stairs cupboard. ‘Not in here surely?’

Mummer gave him an indulgent smile.

‘No, we used Father Wilfred’s room. The room you’re in. It has the little curtain around the wash stand you see.’

‘Ah.’

‘He was very accommodating.’

‘I’m sure.’

Mummer moved closer to him. ‘I don’t ask for myself particularly, Father,’ she said. ‘It’s the others. Mr and Mrs Belderboss really. They find this place, this time of year, well it encourages an openness with God. A chance to cleanse the soul.’

He held Mummer lightly by the shoulders. ‘Mrs Smith,’ he said. ‘Rest assured that I will listen to whatever you wish to tell me.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ said Mummer. ‘Now about Andrew.’

‘Aye?’

‘It’s very important that he fasts like the rest of us over the weekend. I’m sure you’ll agree that he must be properly prepared.’

‘Aye, of course.’

‘Then I’ll need your help, Father.’

‘Naturally, Mrs Smith.’

‘Now, when we get to the shrine itself …’

They moved off into the kitchen but I knew what Mummer was saying to him. What she wanted him to do. How they would get Hanny to drink the water. How the power of Jesus would cleanse his body and drive out the sickness that had kept him silent since the day he was born.

When they had closed the door, I went back to the bedroom. Hanny was standing by the window. He had taken the rifle out from under the blanket. He saluted me, fiddled with the firing pin, twisted the sight and before I could tell him to put it down, he pointed the rifle at me and pulled the trigger.

F
or a moment I thought I was dead. I was dead and it was alright. I was strangely relieved that it was all over and that it had been as quick and painless as I’d always hoped it would be. But Hanny was still there, I was still in the room, we were still at Moorings. I realised that I’d been holding my breath and now I let it out and went over to him.

‘Give,’ I said.

Hanny refused and turned away from me, clutching the rifle to his chest. They were forever taking his stuff off him at Pinelands and the bugger had learnt to fight his corner. I was proud of him for that but I couldn’t have him thinking that he could parade around Moorings with a rifle. Mummer would have had a fit, I would have got the blame, and that would have been the end of that.

‘I said give it to me.’

I held out my hands and sensing that I was serious Hanny passed me the rifle. I wound the strap around the stock, slotted it under the floorboards and laid the rug back over the top.

Hanny sat down on his bed and then folded up his legs the way a child might do, grasping his ankles and shuffling his feet under his backside. He picked up the book Father Bernard had removed from the bedside table and opened it. He wanted me to read to him.

‘You need to go to sleep, Hanny,’ I said. ‘You heard Mummer. She’ll only get cross.’

He flipped through a few pages until he found the story that he wanted.

‘Alright, Hanny. But afterwards you’ve got to go to sleep or I’ll get it in the neck.’

***

We had barely got half way through the story before Hanny was snoring. I turned off the lamp but I couldn’t sleep at all and lay there in the darkness for a while before I fetched a torch out of my bag, took up the loose floorboard and brought out the rifle to look at it again. I felt around the metalwork and found the bolt that opened the receiver. It was empty of course. I closed it up again with a quiet click and then slipped it back under the floorboards.

I lay down on my bed once more and tried to sleep but I was too restless, and rather than staring at the dark, I went out to look at the photographs of the taxidermist and his wife that had been placed at intervals up the stairs.

He was a diminutive man and looked to have owned only one shirt in all the years he had lived at Moorings. He wore bottle-end glasses and slicked his hair back over his head. He looked a little like Charles Hawtrey, I thought. Or Himmler.

In each shot, he and his wife posed with a stuffed animal between them. A lioness. A beaver up on its back legs. A kangaroo wearing boxing gloves. The date neatly written in the corner.

The poor sod. Apparently he lost it when his wife died. Ended up sectioned in some hospital near Preston, where I always imagined him painting those seascapes over and over again. The boats getting a little smaller and the clouds a little bigger each time, until there was nothing but tempest.

As I was looking at the photographs, someone came out of the sitting room and knocked softly at Father Bernard’s door. From the sniffing I knew it was Mrs Belderboss.

‘Hello, Father,’ she said, when the door opened.