Selected Stories

The Reverend Cutcheon had been more temperate in his advice, even if what he’d said amounted to much the same thing: if you ignored what happened it wouldn’t be there any more. But on the days that followed the July celebration Milton found it increasingly impossible to do so. With a certainty that reminded him of his great-uncle’s he became convinced beyond all doubt that he was not meant to be silent. Somewhere in him there was the uncontrollable urge that he should not be. He asked his mother why the old man had begun to preach, and she replied that it was because he had to.

Father Mulhall didn’t know what to say.

To begin with, he couldn’t remember who St Rosa had been, even if he ever knew. Added to which, there was the fact that it wasn’t always plain what the Protestant boy was trying to tell him. The boy stammered rapidly through his account, beginning sentences again because he realized his meaning had slipped away, speaking more slowly the second time but softening his voice to a pitch that made it almost inaudible. The whole thing didn’t make sense.

‘Wait now till we have a look,’ Father Mulhall was obliged to offer in the end. He’d said at first that he would make some investigations about this saint, but the boy didn’t seem satisfied with that. ‘Sit down,’ he invited in his living-room, and went to look for Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

Father Mulhall was fifty-nine, a tall, wiry man, prematurely white-haired. Two sheepdogs accompanied him when he went to find the relevant volume. They settled down again, at his feet, when he returned. The room was cold, hardly furnished at all, the carpet so thin you could feel the boards.

‘There’s the Blessed Roseline of Villeneuve,’ Father Mulhall said, turning over the pages. ‘And the Blessed Rose Venerini. Or there’s St Rose of Lima. Or St Rosalia. Or Rose of Viterbo.’

‘I think it’s that one. Only she definitely said Rosa.’

‘Could you have fallen asleep? Was it a hot day?’

‘It wasn’t a dream I had.’

‘Was it late in the day? Could you have been confused by the shadows?’

‘It was late the second time. The first time it was the afternoon.’

‘Why did you come to me?’

‘Because you’d know about a saint.’

Father Mulhall heard how the woman who’d called herself St Rosa wouldn’t let the boy alone, how she’d come on stronger and stronger as the day of the July celebration approached, and so strong on the day itself that he knew he wasn’t meant to be silent, the boy said.

‘About what though?’

‘About her giving me the holy kiss.’

The explanation could be that the boy was touched. There was another boy in that family who wasn’t the full shilling either.

‘Wouldn’t you try getting advice from your own clergyman? Isn’t Mr Cutcheon your brother-in-law?’

‘He told me to pretend it hadn’t happened.’

The priest didn’t say anything. He listened while he was told how the presence of the saint was something clinging to you, how neither her features nor the clothes she’d worn had faded in any way whatsoever. When the boy closed his eyes he could apparently see her more clearly than he could see any member of his family, or anyone he could think of.

‘I only wanted to know who she was. Is that place in France?’

‘Viterbo is in Italy actually.’

One of the sheepdogs had crept on to the priest’s feet and settled down to sleep. The other was asleep already. Father Mulhall said:

‘Do you feel all right in yourself otherwise?’

‘She said not to be afraid. She was on about fear.’ Milton paused. ‘I can still feel her saying things.’

‘I would talk to your own clergyman, son. Have a word with your brother-in-law.’

‘She wasn’t alive, that woman.’

Father Mulhall did not respond to that. He led Milton to the hall-door of his house. He had been affronted by the visit, but he didn’t let it show. Why should a saint of his Church appear to a Protestant boy in a neighbourhood that was overwhelmingly Catholic, when there were so many Catholics to choose from? Was it not enough that that march should occur every twelfth of July, that farmers from miles away should bang their way through the village just to show what was what, strutting in their get-up? Was that not enough without claiming the saints as well? On the twelfth of July they closed the village down, they kept people inside. Their noisy presence was a reminder that beyond this small, immediate neighbourhood there was a strength from which they drew their own. This boy’s father would give you the time of day if he met you on the road, he’d even lean on a gate and talk to you, but once your back was turned he’d come out with his statements. The son who’d gone to Belfast would salute you and maybe afterwards laugh because he’d saluted a priest. It was widely repeated that Garfield Leeson belonged in the ganglands of the Protestant back streets, that his butcher’s skills came in handy when a job had to be done.

‘I thought she might be foreign,’ Milton said. ‘I don’t know how I’d know that.’