After the bomb atrocity and the deaths of the men roped together, nobody, it seemed, had attempted to repair the place. The kitchen table lay half in, half out, of the building and all the accoutrements of the house had been scattered; rain since then had further reduced them. Wet books and papers, old clothes, drenched footwear— devils from a black and sodden hell had rampaged here.
Vincent dismounted and, averting his eyes, walked to the rear of the house. The tree in which he used to hide from his father still flourished and his hiding place in the high branches had grown deeper and greener and safer. At least that gave him something. He found his initials— VPR— now bulging from the bark.
The field up which he used to run and the grove that had a crab-apple tree— they still looked as comforting, were still welcoming. Those bushes across the lane from the front door, those friendly bushes where he had hidden so often— they had grown higher and much, much thicker: comfort there too. Is this what that archbishop meant? Is this the kind of feeling that Captain Shannon found?
When they landed on Scattery Island, Robert leaped from the boat and walked toward the ancient ruins like a man possessed by joy. He had always been gripped by the attention of fascination. It had brought him to Ireland; it had almost certainly saved his life. He had always had the capacity to retreat from the world into a cause, a near obsession; hence his fascination with the River Shannon.
He walked here, he walked there, he looked out at the estuary and beyond it to the broad Atlantic. He settled his feet squarely on the ground. Is this it? Is this, after all, my family's footprint? Let me feel it. Let me feel the soles of my feet on the earth of this place.
The others watched him, delighted at his delight. They sat on the grass with him, they listened to his sheer enthusiasm— and they smiled at this man, a boy again.
And they jumped to their feet, startled to their boots, when a big man came striding through the grass of the ruins toward them.
Vincent turned to the house and forced himself to walk in. Obviously a bomb had done this. Some cleaning had been attempted— probably of bodies. The alcove to which they had moved his mother's bed by the fire for her last illness had been shattered. Globs of old brown mortar had been blurted from within the whitewashed walls above where her head had once lain. The people who had moved in after the Ryans had made an extra room by dividing the big family bedroom. That new wall had been blown down too, and Vincent looked into the room where he used to sleep. The ceiling to which he used to look up, and on which he drew imaginary pictures, bore streaks and blasts of black exactly above the place where he used to lie. Three beds had stood there. They had been mostly destroyed by the bomb and their bedding hung in wrinkled dark-stained hanks from the iron bedposts.
He turned and walked back, picking his way through the rubble over the dark stains on the floor— and heard a voice.
“Back to the scene of the crime,” it said.
Two men stood in the lane, facing the house.
“We knew if we kept watching,” said one of them, “murderers always come back.”
That man had a machine gun and the other had a rifle. Vincent Patrick Ryan wore an oatmeal tweed Norfolk jacket that day, and a cream shirt and a yellow knitted vest and a cream-and-red paisley tie and these lovely clothes, and his taut skin beneath them, and his organs and arteries deep inside his body now burst open as this boy who had never known peace, and whose entire life had already been riddled by the mistakes and misjudgments and misuses of others, died screaming and twisting in a storm of gunfire.
Anthony Sevovicz's voice echoed down to the water. “Excellent punctuality.”
“Your Grace? What are you doing here?”
Ellie asked, “Where's your ship? Aren't you supposed to be sailing?”
Sevovicz pointed upriver. “There she is.” A vessel bore down, black with red and blue markings, a large and lovely and threatening ocean liner. “I came down last night. I stayed with the parish priest in Kilrush. I have everything arranged.” He addressed Robert. “We will go out on the pilot boat. I thought you would like a more intimate last look at your river.”
Ellie said, “Robert?”
“Miss, a word please.” Sevovicz, now wearing a black roll-neck sweater and black pants, led her away through the grasses, halted, and stood confronting her.
“What are you doing to him?” said Ellie.
“Mother Church wants him. And Mother Church gets what she wants. Go and confess your sins, miss, and please cease to tempt our poor priests, especially when they are so weak.”
He walked away, stranding her. “Robert!” Sevovicz called. “Time to go.”
Robert had been watching the encounter and his exuberance over Senan and the island and the estuary abated. He walked away from Joe and Molly; he walked in a direction opposite to Ellie and Sevovicz, where a small gnarled hillock gave him a better view out over the water. To his right he could see the gentle mauve haze out toward the Atlantic. No boats were in sight and, on land, not a soul. When he turned left he saw the gentle majestic ship drawing closer and closer.
I should be thinking great thoughts. But I'm not. I'm thinking simple thoughts. The beauty of this place. The simplicity of the ancient past. The simplicity of my own ancient past. I knew nothing when I came here. What do I know now?
He stood for what seemed to the others the longest time, and then he left his viewing post. Sevovicz had begun to walk down to the pilot boat, where a man wearing a hat sat with oars crossed at his knees.
Robert walked over to where Ellie stood.
“I am going with him,” Robert said.
“You are?” It came out as a wail.
“Yes. I am going to travel with him now, on this ship. I will go to Rome. And I will accept the honor that they are giving me— I will accept it on behalf of all chaplains.”
Her face began to crumple; the sight pierced him, yet he lost no steadiness.
“But I will not accept the title of monsignor. And then I will do three things.”
She closed her eyes.
Robert said, “Ellie, look at me.”
She forced herself to open her eyes again. He looked straight at her, saw the pupils dilated with anxiety, the rims reddening with impending tears.
“I will suggest the forgiveness of Cardinal O'Connell. Not a perfect man, I know, but he has done good things too. And they will listen, because I have things to tell them, important things. He is in part a misjudged man.”
Robert paused and took a deep breath. “While I'm in Rome I'll begin inquiries concerning my own laicization.”
Ellie looked away, a sudden hand to her face. Sevovicz, too far from them to hear the conversation, strode down through the hillocky grass toward the sea. Ellie looked back at Robert, opened her mouth as though to ask a question, but made no sound.
Robert reached across the space between them, took her hand down from her face, and held it.
“I will tell them clearly that I wish— without being hindered— to become a layman.” He took another deep breath. “And then I will come back to you, and I will live with you by the river. That is— you are— my vocation. There are many ways to be devout. And over the weeks I've come to know that, for me, you are home.”
Far across the river stood the lighthouse and the tall ragged box of the old castle, sights Robert Shannon had seen on that first gloomy morning when he stood on the freighter's deck coming into Tarbert. Now, though, even the dark warning rocks shone in the sun, and the waters of the estuary sparkled. Nowhere in his vision did he see a terrible bloodstained wheat field, or the ragged bodies of his once-gleaming young comrades.
Neither of them moved. Robert had spoken so easily and so firmly, and he was so composed and on fire that Ellie could only stare at him.
Glory, it is said, is the flame of exploit. Whether she yet fully knew it, she was looking at a man who now saw himself clearly— and no longer as a casualty, but as a traveler come home, his life and soul brought to new
purpose by the river that he had followed all his life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FRANK DELANEY is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Ireland and Tipperary. His nonfiction work, Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea, was selected as one of the American Library Association Books of the Year. Formerly a judge for the Booker Fiction Prize, he worked for many years as a broadcaster with the BBC in England, where he also wrote many fiction and nonfiction bestsellers. Born in Ireland, he now lives in the United States.
Copyright © 2009 by Frank Delaney, L.L.C. Map copyright © 2009 by David Lindroth
All rights reserved.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Delaney, Frank
Shannon: a novel / Frank Delaney.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-5883-6796-9
1. Priests—Fiction. 2. Post-traumatic stress disorder—Fiction.
3. Family—Ireland—Fiction 4. Ireland—Politics and
government—1922–1949—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.E396S53 2009 823.914—dc22 2008040411
www.atrandom.com
v3.0
Frank Delaney, Shannon
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