Turbulent Priests Part 7

Duncan smiled bashfully and manoeuvred the cot sideways through the front door. I thought it best not to join in the tweaking until I had figured out his s.e.xual orientation.

Patricia bustled in behind him. *It's good of you to bring it,' I mimicked behind her. *You've changed your tune.'

*I'm only being polite,' she whispered.

*You could be polite to me,' I said.

*That'll be the day,' she hissed with enough venom to suggest a nodding acquaintance with the family Viperidae.

I shrugged and followed them in. It's funny how marriage vows give you a licence to be mean to your loved ones but polite to strangers. I have always believed and practised that it should be the other way about. Indeed, that I was within my rights to tell Duncan b.l.o.o.d.y Cairns to stick his cot up his hole, as Oscar Wilde had once famously not said. But I held off. He had the flushed face and red-rimmed eyes of someone who might know where the beer was kept.

Duncan set the cot down in the bedroom, then stood back and admired it for a moment. *It was mine when I was a kid,' he said.

*Aw,' said Patricia.

He looked at Little Stevie, sleeping soundly on the bed. *Now there's a picture,' he said.

*Aye,' said Patricia.

I had done enough beating around the bush. I'd let him through my front door. I'd let him relax in his new surroundings and get to know us as friends. He'd crammed a lot into ten seconds. *Listen,' I said, *I'd offer you a drink, but there appears to be none on the island.'

*Naw,' he said with a slight shake of his head, *there's not.'

*How come?' I asked. *I saw the pub's shut on the way in.'

Patricia tutted. *You've got drink on the brain, Dan,' she scolded. *Would you like a cup of tea, Duncan?'

*If it's no trouble . . .'

*No trouble at all.'

She scooted off to the kitchen. *What's with the lack of drink, then?' I asked.

*Aye, well, Old Jack McGettigan . . . he owned the pub . . . well, he kind of got religion and decided to close it down.'

*That must have gone down well.'

*Actually, it did, mostly. The Parish Council took a vote and decided to ban the stuff entirely.'

*Jesus,' I said.

*Something like that.'

He held my eyes for a moment, then turned and walked into the kitchen.

They had tea. I had another Diet Pepsi. If I ever do write my novel I will have to put *with added Nutrasweet' on the cover.

*So who had the cottage before us?' Patricia asked, elbows on the table, fists bunched loosely beneath her chin. *They left it in a bit of a mess.'

*I know. I'm sorry a again. A couple of young bucks over from the mainland rented it out. They seemed decent enough, but . . . you know . . . they weren't. They were asked to leave.'

*They seemed to leave in a hurry,' I said.

*Yes,' he said. He nodded once, as if to signal that the subject was closed. He looked about the kitchen. So did I. It looked a good deal better since we'd worked at it. *So do you think you'll be comfortable here,' he asked, *what with the baby *n' all?'

*Of course we will,' Patricia said, and gave his arm a little squeeze.

He was pleasant. Chatty without being gossipy. Interested without delving. Informative but not revealing. He didn't raise the subject of the child Messiah. Neither did I. It could wait. Even sitting, he was tall. He'd a shock of black curly hair. It was difficult to put an age on him, with his pale unlined face, but wind-hardened skin. He said he'd been a teacher in the school for six years. He was island born, bred and b.u.t.tered. His parents were long dead and he now lived alone in a cottage at the rear of the school. The school itself wasn't much more than a room in which he taught pupils from five up to pre-teen. After that they were shipped off to the mainland.

*So where did you learn to be a teacher?' Patricia asked.

*Derry,' he said.

*But you came back here after you trained.'

*Yeah. That was always the plan. My dad was teacher here before me. It was kind of expected of me.'

*I think that's nice.'

*Well,' he said, and nodded once. His gaze lingered on Patricia.

My gaze often lingers on Patricia, but that is my right. I've paid the licence fee.

He turned to me. *I thought maybe you could come along and read something of what you've written to the kids,' he said.

*You think they'll be into s.e.x and drugs and rock'n'roll?'

*Oh,' he said flatly, and looked at the table.

*Dan . . .' said Patricia.

I shrugged.

*He's only teasing,' Patricia said. *You'll have to get used to his sense of humour.'

Duncan nodded slowly. His eyes returned to me. *So what are you writing?'

There are two ways to go when you get into a mood. You go with what comes naturally. Free flow. Stream of consciousness. Honesty. Say it with pa.s.sion. Stuff the consequences. Or you can be polite. Sometimes you don't know until you open your mouth.

*I'm talking to Spielberg about a screenplay.'

Patricia tutted.

*It's an examination of the drink-sodden later years of Oskar Schindler. It's called Schindler's p.i.s.sed.'

*Dan . . .'

*I don't think that's funny,' Duncan said quietly. He didn't look at me. He looked at his tea. He stirred it slowly. With a spoon.

*I do.'

*You shouldn't make fun of a subject like that. Six million Jews died in the war.'

*Ach, lighten up,' I said and flicked my empty can at the waste bin in the corner. It missed. I went and retrieved it. Then I placed it carefully in the bin.

*He's right, Dan,' Patricia said, *there's no need . . .'

*I have a close affinity to the subject,' I said. *My dad fought in the war. While he was killing Germans, Spielberg was taking it easy in someone's womb.'

*Spielberg wasn't born until 1946,' said Duncan.

*It was a long pregnancy,' I countered. We were silent for a moment. Patricia looked daggers at me. Duncan continued to stir. So did I. Sometimes, once you're started, it's difficult to stop. You get in the groove. *Sure how would you know anyway? There's not even a b.l.o.o.d.y cinema on the island.'

*I read a lot.'

*About movies?'

*Sure.'

*That's like reading about music.'

He stopped the stirring. He blew a rush of air out of his nose. Then he stood abruptly, knocking the chair back and over. *I'm not going to apologise to you for life on this island,' he growled. *You're the one who wanted to come here.'

He reached down and righted the chair. *I'm sorry,' he said quickly to Patricia. *Anyway. I must be off. I'm sure you've lots to do.'

*Nonsense, you . . .' Patricia began, but he was already turning for the door.

*I was only raking,' I said, belatedly. He nodded. I was starting to calm down. The little burst of temper helped.

Patricia walked him to the door.

I sat where I was. I felt a little stupid. I heard him say, *I'm sorry, I get a bit defensive about this . . .'

*Don't say a word, Duncan, he hasn't been well. Just on a short fuse. We'll see you again, soon I hope. Why don't you come for dinner one night?'

I didn't hear a reply. A shake or a nod.

The door closed.

*What do you mean I haven't been . . .?'

Patricia came back in and slapped me across the back of the head. *What did you do that for?' she snapped. There was a squall on her face.

*I'm sorry. I just . . .'

*Why are you always so nasty to nice people?'

I bit at a lip. I rubbed the back of my head. *I'm not comfortable with nice people. Nice strangers. You know that.' She was shaking her head. *I think it's a self-confidence thing.'

*It's a bad manners thing. There's no excuse for it. You're like a child who won't share a toy. You were awful to Tony when you first met him as well. You tried to punch him.'

*He was sleeping with you, for Christ's sake!'

*He wasn't then, Dan.'

*Oh.'

*Your plain b.l.o.o.d.y nastiness drives people to extremes, Dan. Don't you know that after all this time?'

I shrugged.

*It's lucky I love you,' she continued, *because you're a self-centred arrogant pig, and you've nothing to be self-centred or arrogant about. That poor man went out of his way to bring us a cot, his own cot for G.o.d's sake, and all you can do is try to be smart a and fail.' Suddenly she slapped the table. The surprise crack of palm on wood jerked me back. *You'll go after him right this minute, and you'll apologise,' she snapped.

*I will not.'

*You will.'

Patricia can stare without blinking for longer than anyone in this part of the universe.

*Okay,' I said.

Patricia went into the bedroom to feed and change Little Stevie. Or change and feed. I hadn't quite got to grips with the running order. She closed the door behind her.

I wrote her a note. I'M SORRY. I LOVE YOU. I KNOW I'M STUPID. FORGIVE ME. DUNCAN SEEMS ALL RIGHT. IF I'M STUPID AGAIN, I'LL SHAVE MY HEAD. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a great threat, but then Patricia knows how much I value my hair. I would have nightmares about it not growing back. Or growing back ginger.

8.

It was getting towards dusk, a beautiful autumnal dusk with the sun slowly drifting down beyond the lazy waves, when I drove up the hill towards the school. I gave the pub a lingering look of regret as I pa.s.sed. There was probably beer still locked up in there. If the owner had suddenly got religion, I couldn't imagine him having a closing-down sale. It might warrant further investigation if things got really bad. I laughed. I didn't really need it.

The shops on the Main Street, shiny in the heat, were closing up. I nodded at a couple of men. They squinted at the unfamiliar car for a moment, then nodded back. One smiled. One waved. I felt pretty good. The apology to Duncan was a bit of a bother, but I'd get that out of the way soon enough. Maybe he could help me suss out where the drink was. Then I could get settled into some serious writing. Perhaps the great Ulster novel wasn't entirely beyond me. Maybe it just needed me to get away from the temptations of the city, from the familiar distractions of friends and news and troubles. Wrathlin, a little paradise off the coast of frightened, bickering Ireland.

I parked in the school yard, a dusty little garden of feet-hardened and sun-baked mud. There wasn't much to the school. A room, just. I peered through the window. Desks. Chairs. A blackboard. Simplicity itself. It could have been my own primary school thirty years before, a time before video, a time before computers, a time before you could stab your teacher through the heart if you disagreed on a point of arithmetic. By the door there was a small cardboard box; toes of trainers poked out. Ah yes, that brought it back. The communal plimsole box, once a fixture of every school but outlawed since the great verruca epidemic of '71. On the desk at the front there was an upright wooden box containing half a dozen recorders, and beside it a bottle of Dettol. The instruments would be pa.s.sed from child to child, dutifully dipped in the antiseptic fluid each time to clear out any lingering spit. The herpes epidemic of '78 had seen to that one too. It was like I'd pa.s.sed through the Time Tunnel. Chalked on the blackboard, I noted, was the sign of the cross.

There was a small unevenly whitewashed bungalow behind the school, as if the paint had been applied by dozens of little brushes. And it probably had. There was s.p.a.ce for a car, but no car. I rapped on the front door. No reply. Through the window: spartan lounge a sofa, one armchair, a foldaway desk with exercise books piled upon it. No TV. I turned from the window. The apology would have to wait.

I stood in the yard and looked down the hill over the town, serene, and out over the water to the mainland, now just a hazy blue line, like a distant fence keeping the troublemakers in. I looked up the hill towards the church, lonely, but confident, standing guard over the island. Perhaps subduing it. I started up through the long gra.s.s. There's no time like the present is a phrase which rarely enters my vocabulary. Any time but, is much more likely. Yet it was a pleasant evening, all was quiet, all was well, and if Father Flynn wasn't there there was the off-chance I might be able to locate some communion wine.

I was more than slightly out of breath when I got to the top of the hill. I would have to get back to the gym. Once I had enough strength to get the doors open. Luckily the church doors were open. As they should be. Once, years before, Flynn had offered me sanctuary in his church in Crossmaheart. It wouldn't have deterred any of the various shades of killer pursuing me at the time, but it was a nice gesture. Now I was spying on him.

Or not spying on him. There was no one about. I stood in the doorway and stared down the aisle.