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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781849820899 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MacAdam/Cage Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 05/16/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 319 KB |
About the Author
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Chapter One
The parish of Kildawree rests in the low, ridged hills of south Mayo. On all but rainy days—of which there are far too many—you can see the Partry mountain range to the west, with the cone top of Croagh Patrick peering up from behind. Sometimes, when the air lightens after a cleansing shower, you can even see the pilgrims' path that winds to the top of Ireland's holy Reek.
To Father John Patrick Mulroe, newly appointed parish priest of Kildawree, those mountains were too far away. He had been born and raised in their midst and, apart from his seven years in Maynooth seminary, had spent his entire life surrounded by them. There was great comfort in the protective presence of their towering bulk. They made person feel strong and safe and that God was looking solicitously down. In the couple of months since he had come to his new parish, Father Mulroe had been suffering from a feeling of vulnerability to the element in the midst of these flat fields and puny hills and unending gray stone walls.
His new parishioners, however, went out of their way to make him feel at home. Good practicing Catholics, the most of them, as far as he could tell, which was a great consolation to a new P.P. Not a ripple of scandal or hint of trouble had disturbed the parish since his arrival. Not, that is, till the letter arrived from the mother superior. He would even after recall exactly where he was and what he was doing on that momentous occasion: sitting in his dining room in his shirt sleeves, finishing his dinner of mutton, potatoes, and carrotsat twenty past one on a Wednesday afternoon in May. He remembered even that it was the day before Ascension Thursday. There was a knock at the front door that brought his housekeeper padding down the hall. Then the voice of the postman: he had gotten to know the lilting tone of Paddy Joe Keohane, who had moved up from Kerry, it was said, to avoid being shot by the natives after the Treaty was signed in 1921. And then Bridie May floated in and left the letter by his plate and departed without a word. A silent woman, the same Bridie May, but a great housekeeper. He opened the envelope immediately, he remembered.
Since he was still getting to know his parishioners, Father Mulroe might have been expected to have not the foggiest idea who on God's earth the Reverend Mother was talking about. However, just the week before he had been called out to the townland of Kilduff to administer the last rites to an old man by the name of Michael McGreevy. There at the deathbed was a nun who introduced herself as the moribund's daughter, Sister Mary Thomas. "I came home to see him off," she explained. "We don't normally leave the convent," she added, as if a parish priest couldn't be expected to know about such an arcane practice.
"Very good," said Father Mulroe at the time. "Very good indeed." How was he to know she had no permission to be there?
"We're a very strict order," she continued. "We observe the monastic silence. Except of course when we're in school teaching the children. Or outside the convent like this."
"Yes, of course." Father Mulroe himself, because he was always fond of a good chat, had never entertained the slightest inclination to join a monastic order. It was sort of unnatural, he felt, to cut yourself off for life from the benefit and pleasure of your God-given gift of speech.
He had met her again three days later at the graveside. "I suppose I'll miss him," she said. "Though I hadn't seen him for sixteen years. And he never wrote to me until after Mammy died. He was the kind of man," she added, "whom you thought of as living forever, if you know what I mean."
"I do," Father Mulroe said. His own father had died two years ago. He shared his big black umbrella with her as they walked back from the graveyard in the rain.
"I didn't get home at all when Mammy died," she told him as they were passing Queally's public house. And then she cried a little, softly, her hand to that part of her face that wasn't covered by her veil. On Sunday morning she was at mass and communion, and then he didn't see or hear of her again until the letter arrived. As soon as he finished his jelly and custard and his cup of tea and biscuits he got up from the table and put on his soutane and biretta.
"I'm going back to Kilduff to see the nun," he told Bridie May. "So you know where I am in case the archbishop should be looking for me." He winked at the housekeeper: it had been a standing joke between them ever since His Grace had decreed that all priests of the archdiocese must leave word of their whereabouts whenever they left their residences. Outside the front door he got into the black Ford motorcar that his parishioners in Doogort had run a raffle to buy him on the occasion of his elevation to parish priest. It was his first car, and he was still a bit shy about driving it. In Doogort he had gotten around on a bicycle except when, which was fairly often, his parishioners would come to fetch him in a horse and trap or sidecar, or even on occasion an ass and cart.
He drove up the village now, very slowly and carefully. Past the post office on the left, then on the right Garvey's two-story residence, the bottom level of which housed the grocery shop. Followed by Queally's public house on the left again, painted a jarring bright yellow as if the color alone would attract every drinking man for miles around. Beyond Queally's he turned right onto the sandstone road that led to the parish of Castletown. The potholes and protruding boulders exercised the springs of the Baby Ford as he rolled by grim-looking Kildawree National School, with its gray limestone walls and long sloping slate roof, flanked on either side by concrete outhouses.
A mile and a half later he turned into the boreen for the townland of Kilduff. The grass grew down the middle of the narrow, winding track and the stone walls loomed close on either side, with hardly enough room for a hen to pass between them and the car. He counted five thatched houses and one rather new-looking bungalow, all of them close together, before he came to the one-story slate-roofed house that belonged to the deceased Michael McGreevy and where now, according to Mother Matilda, resided the nun Sister Mary Thomas. He drove through the gateway leading to the yard, to the great consternation of the hens that were nibbling there.
"Good afternoon," he said to the woman who came to the front door. "I'm Father Mulroe, the new parish priest."
"Of course you are, Father!" She smiled at him. "It's nice to see you again."
"Ah, yes," he said agreeably. She would have seen him at the altar these past few Sundays. A fine-looking woman indeed. Even if her red hair was cut terribly short and she was wearing a very plain gray dress. Although always very correct in his dealings with the opposite sex, Father Mulroe admitted—to himself only, of course—to an appreciation for God-given feminine pulchritude. "I was looking for Sister Thomas. They tell me she's still here." And the smile left his face, for beneath his calm and pleasant manner there lurked all the firmness of a parish priest fully bent on giving a delinquent nun a piece of his mind. If you belonged to a convent, you should be in your convent. If you took vows, then you kept your vows.
"Ah," said the pretty woman, "you don't know me, Father, without the habit."
"Good God!" was all the parish priest could manage at that instant.
"I think you'd better come inside, Father." Sister Mary Thomas led the way into the kitchen, where a fire burned brightly in the open hearth and a big black pot hung over the flames. Father Mulroe said nothing: his mind was grappling with the notion of a nun walking around without her habit. It seemed unnatural on the face of it. "We'll sit back in the room now, Father." She ushered him into the tiny parlor just off the front end of the kitchen. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"No, thank you. No tea now." The room was dim and musty. Sister pulled back the heavy curtains on the window and let in some light. Two olive-green armchairs stood one on either side of the fireplace, and a small sofa was set back against one wall, a piano against the other. "We have things to talk about." He settled himself comfortably into one of the chairs.
"Well, I'm glad you came now, Father." She remained standing. "I had intended going back to see you all week, but there has been so much to do. My poor father, the Lord have mercy on him, wasn't able to take care of things these last few years. The house is a bit of a mess, as you can see, and the—"
"Sit down now," the parish priest interrupted, and Sister Mary Thomas sat obediently on the edge of the other chair. Her dress, he noticed, didn't fit her too well, as if it had been stitched together in a hurry. "I had a letter from your mother superior." He paused then, the way he liked to do in his sermons when he wanted to give the congregation time to absorb a particularly important point.
"Mother Matilda!" Sister Mary Thomas's face took on a look of great animation, which made her terribly good-looking. "How is she at all, the creature? She wasn't well when—"
"She tells me in the letter that you are here in disobedience to your vows." Father Mulroe gazed sternly at this nun without habit. It was a look he had had to practice a lot in his younger days. When he was a curate straight out of Maynooth his parish priest, a dour old dodderer, had admonished him for smiling too much. "You'll never be a good shepherd of your flock if you grin at people like that," the old P.P. had said, so Father Mulroe had begun to cultivate a stern visage in his morning mirror.
"I suppose I am, Father." Sister averted her eyes humbly to the shiny linoleum floor and said no more.
"Well, then," said Father Mulroe, searching for words to fill the sudden silence. "Isn't it time you were getting back to your convent? Obedience is the lifeblood of the religious life, you know." A great phrase that! He wondered as it came out of his mouth where it was he had read it or if he had just made it up on the spot himself.
"I don't know, Father," Sister Mary Thomas murmured, still staring pleadingly at the floor, as if guidance from the Holy Ghost Himself were to be found there.
"What don't you know?" The parish priest looked sharply at the top of the nun's head. Though short, the hair was a lovely tint of red.
"I don't know if I want to go back, Father." The head remained in its position of humility, but there was just the slightest hint of rebellion in the voice.
"Ah!" said Father Mulroe. And a satisfied Ah! it was. Here was the cue for one of his favorite homilies. Coming over in the car he had thought of it as appropriate for the occasion and had run over its main points in his head. It was a sermon he had given many times over the years when asked to conduct one-day retreats for nuns. He titled it "Fidelity to Commitments" in his notebook of sermons, and it was unfailingly a great success with the Sisters. "A commitment to Almighty God," he began now, "is the most solemn undertaking a human being can ever engage in." That was the opening line, and every time he used it he could feel the atmosphere charge with electricity. The nuns would sit a little straighter on their hard wooden benches and the already perfect silence would deepen, and Father Mulroe would know that he held his audience in the palm of his hand. It was a great feeling and one that filled him with a profound humility at the power for good that Almighty God had placed in his hands.
Sister Mary Thomas looked up suddenly from the floor. "No sermons, Father, please." And she said it rather sharply. "In sixteen years I've heard them all, and most of them are not worth the paper they're written on."
Now, Father Mulroe was as kindly a parish priest as you'd find in the archdiocese. Too soft for his own good was what people had often said of him behind his back in Doogort—especially when he went around in an old suit or soutane because some of the rich people in the parish would give only five shillings for their Christmas and Easter dues. Be that as it may, if there was one thing that he had developed in his twenty-one priestly years, it was a strong intolerance for lay recalcitrance in matters of faith or morals. The priest stood in loco Dei for his parishioners and any other members of the laity who came within his purview. And nuns, especially those who resided in his parish in defiance of their vows, most certainly belonged to this class of persons. They owed him the same obedience they owed to Almighty God Himself. He bristled, searching his brain for a quick mot juste that would recall this disobedient nun to her duty. As a preamble, he looked her sternly in the eye, the same practiced stare he had bestowed on her a little earlier. But this time Sister Mary Thomas did not glance humbly at the floor. She gazed back at him with eyes that were moist with pain. And that were full, too, of another quality that stopped John Patrick Mulroe the man from uttering the sharp retort that the parish priest was on the point of delivering. "Would you mind telling me why you don't want to go back?" he asked, in the mildest of tones, as he desperately tried to recover his priestly composure.
"I'm sick of it all!" Sister Mary Thomas spoke in a forthright tone, still looking straight at him with those luminous eyes. "I don't believe for one instant that this is the way Almighty God wants us to live our lives. In the convent we are children and we are treated like children and we act like children. And in the name of holy vows we no longer act as Christians or even as human beings." She got up from her chair and stood over the priest. "When my mother was dying and asked to see me, do you know what Mother Matilda said to me? She said it was more important for me to deny myself in the name of holy obedience than to honor my dying mother's last wish. That's what she said, and that's what I did, and the memory of it gives me a pain in the stomach every time I think of it. So when the word came a fortnight ago that my father was dying I just got up and walked out without telling anyone and came home to spend his last few days with him. And I'm glad that I did, and I don't believe that God will hold it against me." And she sat down abruptly and covered her face and cried.
The remainder of Father Mulroe's homily on fidelity went out the parlor's tiny window. He was familiar with the phenomenon of the crying woman, having come across it many times in his priestly ministry. But familiarity did not bring with it facility in coping. Being a man himself and as such never having engaged in the practice he couldn't decide whether he should console the weeper so as to hasten the process or leave her in peace to let nature take its course, as it were. Previous attempts to console having resulted in embarrassment to himself and fresh paroxysms to the criers, he decided this time to sit it out. So he sat back in his chair and folded his arms and lowered his head and gritted his teeth and tried to relax his shoulder muscles. He glanced briefly again at Sister Mary Thomas's undulating red head before turning away and staring unseeing out the window.
"Sorry, Father." He was surprised at how quickly it was over. The eyes were still damp, but she was trying to smile through them, and the effect sent quivers through the parish priest's entire nervous system. He straightened in his chair and shook himself like a dog coming out of water. He had been tempted a few times in his day by women's eyes, but he had always been firm in his reaction. He was a priest, a man of God, with the strength of his calling to shield him from such temptations. And he was not about to succumb to the charm of a nun with badly cut hair and a frumpy frock.
"So what are you planning to do?" was what he heard himself say to the disobedient sister. And in the gentlest of tones. The old dodderer had been right, of course: Father Mulroe needed to be more stern. "You must return to your convent immediately," he added sternly.
"I'm not going back, Father, and that's that now," the nun retorted with equal severity. She settled back into the armchair and crossed her legs defiantly.
"I see," said Father Mulroe. But of course he didn't see at all. It was just something to fill the silence at a time when there was nothing intelligent he could say. He was in fact nonplussed. He had come across the occasional parishioner who was bold or reluctant or evasive or even argumentative, but never could he remember anyone who had defied him face to face.
"You don't know," said the nun, "what it's like to spend sixteen years locked up behind those walls. It was only when I came home and saw this place again and talked to the neighbors that it dawned on me what I had done with my life." She leaned forward confidentially. "Do you know, Father, what it was that really opened my eyes? The clouds. Would you believe that? In sixteen years I had never once seen them. Always going around with my head down in the bent of humility till I forgot they were up there. As a child I loved looking at them. I used to lie down in the fields for hours at a time and watch them rolling across the sky. And some days when there was rain on the wind they'd race across so fast and so dark that they'd frighten the wits out of me and I'd be afraid to look anymore. And on stormy nights they'd whip over the face of the moon and I'd think it was the moon itself that was chasing across the sky. But I forgot all this in the convent. And I forgot what it was like to have the freedom to stop on the road and talk to a neighbor. It was always silent in there. Except when we were teaching, of course. And the pressure of holiness weighing you down. To be more perfect. To avoid distractions. To live only for Jesus and Mary. To be always aware of my faults. To deny myself everything in the world that I liked. That's no way to live, Father. Do you really think that God put us on this earth and surrounded us with the beauty of nature and gave us our individual gifts for seeing and hearing and doing and enjoying only to have us reject them all for a life of sterility and abnegation? Well, I don't anymore. And from now on, with the help of God, I'm going to live like a real human being and I'm going to enjoy the good things that God has given us."
"I see," Father Mulroe said again. But he wasn't a bit nearer to knowing what he ought to say to this rebellious nun. Worse still, he was inclined to agree with her. Not the part about renouncing her vows, of course, but her view that it was unnatural to lock yourself up behind convent walls for your entire life. Being an honest man, he could not encourage anyone else to do what he wouldn't do himself. On the other hand, he had to recognize that Sister Mary Thomas had freely taken vows. And vows to Almighty God must be kept at all cost. He himself had taken on the obligation of celibacy, and, despite all temptations to the contrary—and they had been many over the years—he had managed to keep it and would keep it for the rest of his mortal life. So he said, "What about your vows, Sister? You have taken perpetual vows, I imagine?"
"Yes, yes, of course." She glanced briefly at him and then stared back down at the floor. "But you can get a dispensation from them. From the pope himself. We had a sister three years ago who had a nervous breakdown, and she got a dispensation."
Father Mulroe well knew that it was the duty of a parish priest to defend the teaching of the church at all times. Every last doctrine and practice, from the divinity of Christ down to the nightly recitation of the family rosary. And including fidelity to religious vows. Now, dispensations for nuns might be possible in extreme cases—though they never were for priests—but there was always fault in the petitioner when that occurred, and confessors like himself must dissuade their penitents from seeking such relief. And while it was true that Father Mulroe was not, by the letter of the law, Sister Mary Thomas's confessor, since she had never gone to confession to him, nevertheless it could clearly be held that at this moment in her spiritual life he stood in loco confessoris. And therefore it was his duty to direct her against the course of action she was proposing. In light of this, then, the response of the parish priest of Kildawree was inexplicable, and maybe even culpable. "You could do that, I suppose," Father Mulroe said mildly. And then he compounded the felony, as it were, by adding, "I'll have that cup of tea now if you don't mind."
It was only much later, after the unfortunate events that were yet in the future, that he asked himself why he had not been more firm and forthright. And even then, with the gift of hindsight, he couldn't give himself a satisfactory answer. Maybe, he considered, it was compassion for the pain in the sister's eyes. And maybe, he reflected in a moment of self-accusation, he selfishly wanted her to stay in his parish. Or worse, he goaded himself in pitiless denunciation, he was bewitched by short red hair and a pretty face. Anyway, whatever the reason, he did not properly use his pastoral powers that afternoon to persuade the reneging nun to go back to her convent. Instead, over a cup of tea and some freshly baked currant cake, he discussed his new parish with her.
"Ah, sure, it's a great place to live in, Father. I appreciate it more and more every day since I came home. It's the land, you see. The smell of mother earth. And the people are grand. This is where we belong, Father—not cooped up in convents."
"So you intend to stay here, then?"
"Where else would I go?"
"And what will you do? I mean, how will you keep body and soul together?"
"I have a farm to take care of." There was a puzzled look on her face. "Daddy left me the place in his will, you know."
"Well, is that a fact, now?" He gave the idea a moment's thought. "You'll have to get married, then, I suppose." A woman couldn't manage a farm by herself, now could she?
"Don't be too sure of that, Father." The nun arched an eyebrow at him and sipped her tea. "I've been thinking that it might be foolish for me to exchange the tyranny of one mother superior for another."
Father Mulroe blinked. "I don't quite understand that," he said a bit obtusely. He had been noticing her hands, with their long white, slender fingers, and wondering what a few years as a farmer's wife would do to them.
"Do you think for one minute that I'd let a man in here so he could tell me what I could do and what I could not do? I might as well go back to the convent." She extended the plate to him. "Have some more currant cake, Father."
"Well, now, maybe you should go back to your convent." Father Mulroe made one last belated stand for God and church and perpetual vows as he took a piece of cake. It was a long time since he had met anyone who so challenged the norms of civilization. Not, in fact, since Frank Cunnane. Frank was a stubborn confrere of his in Maynooth who challenged every doctrine taught by every professor until they sent him away in the middle of his second year of divinity. The last Father Mulroe had heard of him, he was preaching atheism on a soapbox in Hyde Park in London. This woman, he was beginning to think now, who wouldn't stay in her convent and wouldn't think of getting married, might be as big a thorn in his side in Kildawree as Frank Cunnane had been to the professors in Maynooth.
"I thought we had settled that, Father." The set of her mouth and chin said, don't argue with me any further. "I may as well tell you that I wrote a letter to Mother Matilda yesterday and cycled back to the post office with it this morning." Then she hit him with a sudden smile that had the parish priest clutching his empty cup more tightly. "So I'm here to stay, for better or worse. Anyway, Father, I'm sure that you and I will be good friends."
This was a fear that had already briefly entered Father Mulroe's mind. And it troubled him quite a bit on the drive back to the parish house. He went straightaway to his study and composed a letter to Mother Matilda.
Reverend Mother,
On receipt of your letter I visited Sister Mary Thomas at her home in Kilduff. Sister advised me that she does not intend to go back to the convent and that she has written you to this effect.
It is my considered opinion, based on a long conversation with Sister in which I advanced the most cogent arguments as to why she should return to the practice of her vows, that any further attempts to change her mind on this subject will be fruitless. I therefore suggest that the process of seeking a dispensation for Sister Mary Thomas be begun immediately.
As her parish priest I will, of course, provide Sister with all the
spiritual direction she needs in this time of special trial to her soul.
Sincerely in Christ,
John Patrick Mulroe, P.P.