Himself(48)

The terrified wailing that begins to emanate from the library brings them both running, Michael with his heart in his mouth and Bridget clutching the soapy handle of a frying pan.

Opening the door to the library they find Father Quinn sunk to his knees in the carpet and clinging on to an occasional table. Afterwards, Bridget will remark that it’s lucky the priest is a tall man, given the considerable delay they had in laying hand on a coil of rope to haul him out, for otherwise Father Quinn would almost certainly have drowned in his own home.

By the time the weeping priest has been led into the kitchen and given a brandy, the water is tumbling out along the hall and down the garden path. Where it stops, just short of the gate, laps back on itself and becomes as still as glass.

Bridget Doosey smiles. She’ll widely proclaim the miracle of Mulderrig’s very own holy well, just as soon as she has led Father Quinn upstairs by the hand and tucked him firmly into bed.





Chapter 21


April 1944


The confessional in St Patrick’s church had always lapped up tales of suffering and spite. It fed on shame and remorse with quiet, ligneous devotion. Its deep shine was not just wood polish and spinster’s spittle; it was the gilding of guilt, rubbed over the years to a saintly lustre.

Inside, on one side of the brass lattice, sat Father Jim Hennessy, full of hard-won wisdom and indigestion. On the other side of the brass lattice sat Orla Sweeney, eyes wide in the dark.

She pressed her fingers into the grill until the tips of them disappeared. She could hear the priest breathing on the other side.

‘I talk to the dead, Father,’ she said. ‘They’ve been giving me messages since last Tuesday.’

Father Jim was trying to release gas quietly. For he was a big-framed strong man more suited to the rigours of farming than the sedentary life of a man of the cloth; his spiritual calling had all but destroyed his digestion. He carefully raised one cheek but it reverberated on the wooden bench. He apologised to the Lord and straightened his stole.

‘Child, this is a terrible fantasy to put into your head and it is false. You must look to the Lord God to find truth and peace in your life.’

‘I know it’s wrong to talk to them, Father, but they’re so lonely. At first there was only a few but now they keep coming up out of the ground and through the walls with all these things they want telling to people and I don’t know what to do.’

Father Jim learnt two things that day. First, that quantities of radishes did not agree with him and second:

‘Dorothy says it wasn’t your fault, Father.’

Father Jim’s breath halted inside him.

‘She says she would have died anyway, even if you hadn’t tried to baptise her in the cowshed. It wasn’t the chill that took her away; it was her heart.’

Father Jim went as white as a sheet in the dark. He was where? In the confessional, trying to keep breathing.

Breathing what? The familiar incense smell, beeswax and lilies, the damp wool coats of the congregation, their balsam and hair ointment, their stale smoke and cough sweets, the vinegar of last night’s alcohol.

But he was half in the past again. A child of little more than six, already with a vocation, practising the priesthood and knowing it was wrong, but wanting to. Oh wanting to, wanting to do his great loving terrible God’s work always, always.

There was his new baby sister with her face still wrinkled with brine, and there was the cup dipped again and again into the bucket in the cowshed. The low winter sun filled his eyes to the brim, spilling all around, catching cup and bucket. He remembered still the bright metal glint and the light burnishing the straw to gold and the cobbled mud to bronze.

He had baptised her Dorothy, although her name was Margaret. He drew a cross on her tiny forehead and blessed her blissfully, whispering the words like a spell.

Mammy couldn’t understand why Babby was wet in the cradle. All her things soaked. She wasn’t to know it was holy water, for the cows were in the milking shed now and the bucket was no longer a font lit by God in heaven.

And Dorothy? A livid spot on each cheek, otherwise a china doll.

A coffin small enough for Mammy to hold on her knees.

God bless, Dorothy.

The real priest was solid black; Jimmy watched from under the table with his little soul frozen with a terror that had never quite thawed.

Until he was absolved by a ten-year-old girl.

Father Jim stumbled from the confessional and shut himself in the sacristy. He looked around the familiar room. At the press with his vestments inside and the baptismal candles that lay waxy in a row. At the bottles of Communion wine and the linen, reverently folded, a mystery of worn fabric and belief. The whiskey in his hand didn’t warm. The shelves of books didn’t reassure.

This was the first time that Orla made Father Jim Hennessy cry.

Orla sat all alone in the confessional with her hands on her lap. A dim white face pressed its way through the wooden wall. Rising up from her unmarked grave just south of the altar, an ancient abbess had travelled through cold soil and colder church stone to whisper wisdom in Orla’s ear:

‘You’re on your own, treasure. Don’t expect any help.’

She shut the mild curves of her eyes and dissipated. Later she would stalk the organist, who was never warm when he sat down to his work, despite the thick socks on him.

Orla sat very still and thrilled to a brand-new idea.