Only Maddy knew how his heart wasn’t in any of it.
Only she knew the real man, who hid his unhappiness. Soon she found she was thinking of him all the time, and imagining his reaction to the smallest and most inconsequential things she did. If she was telling the story of the Flight into Egypt to the Mixed Infants at school she imagined him leaning against the door smiling at her approvingly. Sometimes she smiled back as if he were really there. The children would look around to see if someone had come in.
Then at home, when she was preparing her mother’s supper, she would decorate the plate with a garnish of finely sliced tomato, or chopped hard-boiled egg and fresh parsley. Her mother barely noticed, but she could see how Brian Barry would respond. She would put words of praise in his mouth and say them to herself.
She spent her time in what she considered was a much more satisfactory relationship than anyone else around her. Mr and Mrs Kelly were locked in a routine marriage if ever she saw one. Poor Maura Brennan of the cottages, who married a flash harry of a barman, was left alone with her Down’s syndrome child to rear. Major Murphy in The Glen had a marriage that defied description. They never went anywhere outside their four walls. In any other land they would have been called recluses, but here, because The Glen was the big house, they were admired for their sense of isolation.
There was nobody that Madeleine Ross envied. Nobody she knew had as dear and pure a love as she had known, a man who depended on her utterly and who would have been lost to his vocation if it had not been for her.
*
And then one night all of a sudden, when she least expected it, came a strange thought. It was one of those sleepless nights when the moon seemed unnaturally bright and visible even through the curtains, so it was easier to leave them open.
Maddy saw a figure walking past going to the woods. She thought first that it was Brian, and she was about to slip into some clothes and follow him. But then she saw at the last moment that it was Major Murphy, on goodness knew what kind of outing. It was easy to mistake them, tall men in dark clothes. But Brian was asleep in the presbytery, or possibly not asleep, maybe looking at the same moon and feeling the same restlessness.
That was when it came to Maddy Ross that Father Barry should leave Shancarrig.
He could no longer be wasted passing plates of sandwiches, rigging up old curtains, praising a tuneless choir, welcoming yet another bishop or visiting churchman. There was only one life to be lived. He must go on and live it as best he could, serving the people of Vieja Piedra. The whole notion of there being only one life to live buzzed around in her head all night. There was no more sleep now. She sat hugging a mug of tea, remembering how her brother Joseph had said those very words to her, all that while ago when she had gone to Rhodesia for his wedding, about there being only one chance to live your life.
And Joseph, who had been given the same kind of education as she had had, and who came from the same parents, had been able to seize at the life he wanted. Joseph and Caitriona Ross had children out in Africa. Sometimes they sent pictures of them outside their big white house with the pillars at the front door. Maddy had never told her mother that these little children weren’t Catholics and might not even have been properly baptized. She and Brian had agreed that it was better not to trouble an already troubled mind with such information.
If Joseph Ross had only one life so had Maddy Ross and so had Brian Barry. Why couldn’t Father Brian leave and go to South America? After a decent interval Maddy could leave too and be with him.
For part of the night as she paced the house she told herself that things need not change between them. They would be as they were here, true friends doing the work they felt was calling across the land and sea to them. And Brian could remain a priest. Once a priest always a priest. He wouldn’t have to leave, just change the nature and scope of his vocation.
And then as dawn came up over Barna Woods Maddy Ross admitted to herself what she had been hiding. She acknowledged that she wanted Brian Barry to be her love, her husband. She wanted him to leave the priesthood. If he could get released from his vows by Rome so much the better. But even if he could not Maddy wanted him anyway. She would take him on any terms.
It was a curious freedom realising this.
She felt almost light-headed and at the same time she stopped playing games. She took her mother breakfast on a tray without fantasising what Brian would say if he had been standing beside them looking on. It was as if she had come out of the shadows, she thought, and into the real world.
She could barely wait to meet Brian. No day had ever seemed longer. Mrs Kelly had never been sharper or more inquisitive about everything Maddy was doing.
Why was she putting greetings on the blackboard in different languages? Spanish. And French, no less. Wasn’t it enough for these boneheaded children to try and learn Irish and English like the Department laid down without filling their heads with how to say good day and goodbye in tongues they’d never need to use?
Maddy looked at her levelly. Normally, she would have seen Brian in her mind’s eye standing by the blackboard, congratulating her on her patience and forbearance, and then the two of them wandering together in Barna Woods crying ‘Buenos dias Vieja Piedra, we are coming to help you.’
But today she saw no shadowy figure. She saw only the small quivering Mrs Kelly, who was wearing a brown and yellow striped dress and looked for all the world like a wasp.
Maddy Ross was a different person today.
‘I’m putting some phrases in foreign languages on the blackboard, Mrs Kelly, because, despite what you and the Department of Education think, these children may well go to lands where they use them. And I shall put them on the blackboard every day until they feel a little bit of confidence about themselves instead of being humble and content to remain in Shancarrig pulling their caps and saying good morning in Irish and English until they are old men and women.’
Mrs Kelly went red and white in rapid succession.
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, Miss Ross. Not in the timetable that is laid down for you.’
‘I had no intention of doing it in school time, Mrs Kelly.’ Maddy smiled a falsely sweet smile. ‘I am in the fortunate position of being able to hold the children’s interest outside school hours as well as when the bell rings. They will learn it before or after school. That will be clearly understood.’
She felt twenty feet tall. She felt as if she were elevated above the small stone schoolhouse and the town. She could hardly bear the slow noise of the clock ticking until she could go to Brian and tell him of her new courage, her hope and her belief that they had only one chance at life.
She met him at rehearsal under the eyes of the nosey people in town.
‘How is your mother these days, Miss Ross?’ he asked. It was part of their code. They had never practised it; it just came naturally to them, as so much else would now.
‘She’s fine, Father, always asking for you, of course.’
‘I might drop in and see her later tonight, if you think she’d like that.’
‘She’d love it, Father. I’ll just let her know. I’m going out myself, but she’d be delighted to see you, like everyone.’
Her eyes danced with mischief as she said the words. She thought she saw the hint of a frown on Brian Barry’s face, but it passed.
Miss Ross left the rehearsal and she imagined people thinking that she was a dutiful daughter, and very good also to the priest, to go home and prepare a little tray for her mother to offer him. As Maddy walked home, her cheeks burning, she thought that she had been a bloody good daughter for all her life, nearly thirty years of life in this small place. And come to think of it she had been good to the priest too. Good for him and a good friend.
Nobody could blame her for wanting her chance at life.
She sat in the wood and waited on their log. He came gently through the leafy paths. His smile was tired. Something had crossed him during the day; she knew him so very w
ell, every little change, every flicker in his face.
‘I’m late. I had to go into your mother’s,’ he said.
‘What on earth for? You know I didn’t mean …’
‘I know, but Father Gunn said to me, this very morning, that he thought I should see less of you.’
‘What!’
Brian Barry was nervous and edgy. ‘Oh, he said it very nicely of course, not an accusation, nothing you could take offence at …’
‘I most certainly do take offence at it,’ Maddy blazed. ‘How dare he insinuate that there has been anything improper between us. How dare he!’
‘No, he didn’t. He was very anxious that I should know he wasn’t suggesting that.’ He walked up and down as he talked, agitated, and anxious to get over the mildness of the message, the lack of blame and the motive behind it. It was just that Father Gunn wanted to protect them both from evil minds and idle wagging tongues. In a place this size when people had little real news to speculate about they made up their own. It would be better for Father Barry not to be seen so obviously sharing the same interests as Miss Ross, for both of them to make other friends.
‘And what did you say, Brian?’ Her pale eyes had flecks of light in them tonight.
‘I said that he had a very poor opinion of people if he thought they would give such low motives to what was an obvious and proper friendship.’
But it was clear that Brian Barry had not found his own answer satisfactory. He looked confused and bewildered. She had never loved him more. ‘I am sorry, Maddy, I couldn’t think of what else to say.’ He had never called her Maddy before, always Madeleine like her mother did.
She moved over to him and closed her arms around his neck. He smelled still of cigarette smoke, but his soap was Imperial Leather now, and he hadn’t been eating the winegums. It was the chocolate cake given to him, Maddy realised, by her mother.
‘It was perfect,’ she whispered.
He looked very startled and moved as if to get away.
‘What was perfect?’ he asked, his eyes large and alarmed.
‘What you said. It is a proper friendship and a proper love …’
‘Yes … well …’ He hadn’t raised his arms to hold her.
She moved nearer to him and pressed herself towards him. ‘Brian, hold me. Please hold me.’
‘I can’t, Maddy. I can’t. I’m a priest.’
‘I held you years ago when you had no friend. Hold me now; now that I have no friend and they are trying to take you away.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘No, no, no.’ He soothed her as she had stroked him all that time ago. He held her head to his shoulder and comforted her. ‘No, it’s not a question of being taken away … it’s just … well, you know what it is.’
She snuggled closer to him. Again she could hear his heart beat in the way she had remembered so often from that first time. He was about to release her so she allowed sobs to shake her body again. He was so clumsy, and tender at the same time. Maddy knew that this was her man, and her one chance to take what life was presenting.
‘I love you so much, Brian,’ she whispered.
The answering words were not there. She changed direction slightly.
‘You are the only person who understands me, who knows what I want to do in the world, and I think I’m the only person who knows what is best for you.’ She gulped as she spoke so that he wouldn’t think the storm was over, the need for consolation at an end. In the seven years since they had first held each other in these woods times had changed; when he offered her a handkerchief now it was a paper tissue, when he sat down beside her on their log to smoke it wasn’t the flaky old Gold Flake, it was a tipped cigarette.
‘You’ve been better to me than anyone in the world. I mean that.’ His voice was sincere. He did mean it. She could see his brain clicking through all the people who had been good to him, his mother, some kind superior in the seminary possibly. She was the best of this pathetic little list. That was all. Why was she not his great love? She would have to walk very warily.
‘I have wanted the best for you since the day I met you,’ she said simply.
‘And I for you. Truly.’
This was probably true, Maddy thought. Like he wanted the best for the people of Vieja Piedra, wanted it in his heart but wasn’t able to do anything real and lasting about it.
‘You must go there,’ she said.
‘Go where?’
‘To Peru. To Father Cormac.’
He looked at her as if she was suggesting he fly to the moon. ‘How can I go, Maddy? They’ll never let me.’
‘Don’t ask them. Just go. You’ve often said that God isn’t worried about some pecking order and lines of obedience. Our Lord didn’t ask permission when he wanted to heal people.’
He still looked doubtful. Maddy got up and paced up and down beside him. With all the powers of persuasion she could gather she told him why he must go. She played back to him all his own thoughts and phrases about the small village where people had died waiting for someone to come and help them, where they looked up to the mountain pass each day hoping that a man of God would come, not just to visit but to stay amongst them and give them the sacraments. She could see the light coming to his eye: the magic was working.
‘How would I get the fare to go there?’ he asked.
‘You can take it from the collection.’ To her it was simple.
‘I couldn’t do that. It’s for Vieja Piedra.’
‘But isn’t that exactly where you would be going? Isn’t that why we’re raising this money, so that they’d have someone to help them?’
‘No, I don’t believe that would be right. I’ve never been sure about the end justifying the means … remember we often discussed that.’ They had, here in this wood, sitting in her classroom, having coffee after the rehearsals for the plays.
She looked at him, flushed and eager in the middle of yet another moral dilemma, but not moved by the fact that he had held her close to him and felt her heart beat, her hair against his face, her eyelashes on his cheek. Was he an ordinary man or had he managed to quell that side of himself so satisfactorily that it didn’t respond any more? She had to know.
‘And when you go you can write and tell me about it … until I come there too.’
His eyes were dark circles of amazement now. ‘You come out there, Maddy? You couldn’t. You couldn’t come all that far and you can’t be with me. I’m a priest.’
‘We have only one life.’ She spoke calmly.
‘And I chose mine as a priest. You know I can’t change that. Nothing will change that.’
‘You can change it if you want to. Just like you can change the place you live.’ There was something in the direct simple way she spoke that seemed to alarm him. This was not the over-excitable intense Maddy Ross he had known, it was a serious young woman going after what she wanted.
‘Sit down, Maddy.’ He too was calm. He squatted in front of her, holding both her hands in his. ‘If I ever gave you the impression that I might leave the priesthood then I must spend the rest of my days making up for such a terrible misunderstanding …’ His face was troubled as he sought some response in hers. ‘Maddy, I am a priest for ever. It’s the one thing that means anything to me. I’ve been selfish and impatient and critical of those around me, I don’t have the understanding and generosity of a Father Gunn, but I do have this belief that God chose me and called me.’
‘You also have the belief that the people of Vieja Piedra are calling you.’
‘Yes, I do. If there was a way to go there I would go. You have given me that courage. I won’t take the money that the people of Shancarrig raised. They didn’t raise it for their priest to run away with.’
The moon came up as they talked. They saw a badger quite near by, but it wasn’t important enough for either of them to comment on. Brian Barry told Madeleine Ross that he would never leave his ministry. He had a few certainties in life. This was one of them. In vain did Maddy tel
l him that clerical celibacy was only something introduced long after Our Lord’s time, it was more or less a Civil Service ruling, not part of the Constitution. The first apostles had wives and children.
‘Children.’ She stroked his hand as she said the word.
He pulled both hands away from her and stood up. This was something he was never going to think about. It was the sacrifice he had made for God, the one thing God wanted from his priests: to give up the happiness and love of a wife and family. Not that it had been hard to give up because he had never known it, and now he was heading for forty years of age so it wasn’t something he would be thinking of, even if he weren’t a priest.
‘A lot of men marry around forty,’ Maddy said.
‘Not priests.’
‘You can do anything. Anything.’
‘I won’t do this.’
‘But you love me, Brian. You’re not going to be frightened into some kind of cringing life for the rest of your days by a silly warning from Father Gunn, by Mrs Kennedy spying, by a promise made when you were a child … when you didn’t know what love was … or anything about it.’
‘I still don’t really know.’
‘You know.’
He shook his head and Maddy could bear it no more. She reached out for him and kissed him directly on the lips. She moved herself into his arms and opened her mouth to his. She felt his arms tighten around her … He stroked her back and then because she pulled away from his clasp a little he stroked the outline of her breasts. She peeped through her closed eyes and saw that his eyes were closed too.