Selected Stories

Grattan Fitzmaurice drove away from the funeral, warmed by what had been said to him. Walking with his dog about the garden that had deteriorated in the last few years, although was not as neglected as it had been before he had help in it, he thought about the man who had died, who had become a friend. Con Tonan hadn’t known what a daphne was when first he came, nor what choisya and ceanothus were called. He’d been amazed that raspberry canes were cut down to the ground in the autumn. He’d learnt how to rid the roses of suckers and when to clip the yew hedge, and not to burn the leaves that came down in autumn but to let them decay into mould to enrich the soil. The two men had talked about ordinary things: the weather, and sometimes what a new government intended to do, pondering over which promises would be easy to keep, which would have to be abandoned. In other ways they were separated, but that never mattered.

When Grattan had fed his dog on the evening of the funeral, when he’d boiled himself the couple of eggs he always had at a quarter past seven, with toast and a pot of tea, there was the sound of a car. He opened the front door a few minutes later to the younger of the two priests who had conducted the service. Smiling, hand out, Father Leahy said, ‘I thought I’d come over.’

He said it easily, as if he were in the habit of calling in regularly at the rectory, as if he knew from long experience that this was a good moment. But neither he nor Father MacPartlan had ever driven up to Ennismolach Rectory before.

‘Come in, come in,’ Grattan invited. The curate’s handshake had been firm, the kind you can feel the friendliness in.

‘Isn’t that a lovely evening, Mr Fitzmaurice? Are we in for a heatwave?’

‘I’d say we might be.’

In the big drawing-room all the furniture was old but not old enough to be valuable: armchairs and a sofa shabby from wear, plant stands and rickety little tables with books and ornaments on them, sun-browned wallpaper cluttered with pictures and photographs, a tarnished looking-glass huge above the white marble mantelpiece, a card-table with a typewriter on it. The long curtains – once two shades of blue – were almost colourless now and in need of repair.

‘You’ll take a cup of tea, Father?’

‘Ah no, no. Thanks though, Mr Fitzmaurice.’

‘Well, we’ve lost poor Con.’

‘God rest him.’

‘I missed him when coming out here was too much for him in the end.’

Glancing beside him as he sat down, Grattan noticed the Irish Times, where earlier he had placed it on the table by his armchair. His eye had been caught then, as it was now, by the grinning countenance of Father Brendan Smyth being taken into custody by a grim-faced detective. Paedophile Priest is Extradited, the headline ran. He reached out and turned the newspaper over.

‘You’d miss Con, of course.’ There was a pause, and then Father Leahy added, ‘You’re a long way from the world here.’

‘I’m used to that.’

He wondered if his gesture with the paper had been noticed. He had meant it as a courtesy, but a courtesy could be offensive. Long way from the world or not, it was impossible not to be aware of the Norbertine priest’s twenty-year-long persecution of children in Belfast. One sentence already served in Magilligan Prison in County Derry, he was now on his way to face seventy-four similar charges in Dublin. All day yesterday the News had been full of it.

‘It was good of you to attend the funeral, Mr Fitzmaurice.’

‘I was fond of Con.’

The funeral service had impressed him. There’d been confidence in its ceremony and its ritual, in the solemn voice of Father MacPartlan, in Father Leahy’s, in the responses of the congregation. It was there again in the two priests’ gestures, hands raised to give the blessing, in the long line of communicants and the coffin borne away, the graveside exhortations. Founded on a rock, Grattan had thought: you felt that here. The varnished pews were ugly, the figure in the Stations of the Cross lifeless, but still you felt the confidence and the rock.

‘Mrs Tonan said the same thing, that it was good of you to come. ’Tis difficult sometimes for a parishioner to understand that someone of your Church would want to.’

‘Ah well, of course I would.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

There was a silence. Then Father Leahy said:

‘That’s a great dog.’

‘I’d be lost without Oisín.’

‘You always had a dog. I always associate a dog with you in the car.’

‘Company.’ And Grattan thought you didn’t often see a priest with a dog. Maybe once in a while you would, but not often. He didn’t say so in case it sounded intrusive. He remembered Father Leahy as a child, one of the Leahys from the white farmhouse on the Ballytoom road. Three brothers he remembered, swinging their legs on a whitewashed wall, waving at him whenever he drove past. The priest would be the youngest, the youngest in all the family, someone told him once. Four girls there were as well.