They stood locked like this for a time. Eventually he pulled away.
They looked at each other for moments before he spoke. ‘You’ve given me everything, Maddy Ross,’ he said.
‘I haven’t begun to give you anything,’ she said.
‘No but you have, believe me. You’ve given me such bravery, such faith. Without you I’d be nothing. You’ve given me the courage to go. Now you must give me one more thing … the freedom.’
She looked at him with disbelief. ‘You could hold me like that and ask me never to be in your arms again?’
‘That is what I’m begging you. Begging you, Maddy. It was my only sure centre. The only thing I knew … that I was to be a priest of God. Don’t take that away from me or all the other things you have given will totter like a house of cards.’
This man had been her best friend, her soul mate. Now he was asking her permission and her encouragement to leave her life entirely, to step out of it and away from Shancarrig to the village that they had both dreamed about and prayed for and saved for all these years.
Such monstrous selfishness couldn’t be part of God’s plan. It couldn’t be part of any dream of taking your chance in life. Maddy looked at him, confused. It was all going wrong, very very wrong.
He saw her shock, he didn’t run away from it. He spoke very gently.
‘Since I came to Shancarrig and even before it I’ve known that women are stronger than men. We could list them in this town. And I know more than you because I hear them in the Confessional. I’m there at their deathbeds when they worry not about their own pain but about how a husband will manage or whether a son will go to the bad. I’ve been there when their babies have died at birth, when they bury a man who was not only a husband but their means of living. Women are very strong. Can you be strong and let me go with your blessing?’
She looked at him dumbly. The words would not come, the torrent of words welling up inside her. She must be able to explain that he could not be bound by these tired old rules, these empty vows made at another time by another person. Brian Barry was different now, he had come into his kingdom, he was a man who could love and give. But she said none of these things. Which was just as well because he looked at her and the dark blue of his eyes was hard.
‘You see, I want to go with your blessing, because I’m going to go anyway.’
They didn’t meet again in Shancarrig without other people being present.
There were no more walks in the woods, no visits to the classroom. The rehearsals had to do without the kind help of Father Barry, Shancarrig Dramatic Society was told. He had been advised to take it easy. Somehow that was the hardest place, the place she missed him most. They had started these plays together; she didn’t know how she would have the heart to continue. In fact, she feared the whole organisation would fall apart without him.
The Shancarrig Dramatic Society continued to thrive without Father Barry. In many ways his leaving gave them greater scope. They were able to do more comedies. They had never liked to suggest anything too light-hearted when Father Barry was there, he was so soulful and good it seemed like being too flippant in his presence.
In the weeks that seemed endless to Maddy the society decided to enter the All Ireland contest for the humorous one-act play.
‘Poor Father Barry. He’d have loved this,’ said Biddy from The Glen, who was going to play a dancing washroom woman in the piece.
‘Go on out of that,’ said Sergeant Keane’s wife, ‘we’d be doing a tragedy if poor Father Barry was here. Not that I wish the man any harm, and I hope whatever’s bothering him gets better.’
The rumour was that he had a spot on his lung. Heads nodded. Yes, it was true he did have that colour, the very pale complexion with occasional spots of high colour that could spell out TB. Still, the sanatorium was wonderful and anyway it hadn’t been confirmed yet.
He didn’t avoid her eye, Maddy realised. He was totally at peace with himself, and grateful to her that she had nodded her head that night in Barna Woods and left without trusting herself to speak a word.
He thought she had seen his way was the only way.
The days were endless as she waited to hear that he had gone. It was three whole months before she heard what she had been waiting for. Father Gunn, visiting the school in his usual way, had asked her pleasantly if she could drop in at the presbytery that evening. Nothing in his face had given a hint of what was to be said.
When she arrived she was startled to see Brian sitting in one of the chairs. Father Gunn motioned her to the other.
‘Maddy, you know that Father Barry is going to Peru?’
‘I knew he wanted to.’ She spoke carefully, but smiled at Brian. His face was alive and happy. ‘You mean, it’s settled? You’re going to be able to go, officially?’
‘I’m going with everyone’s blessing,’ Brian said. His face was full of love, love and gratitude.
‘The Bishop is very understanding and when he saw such missionary zeal he said it would be hard not to encourage it,’ said Father Gunn.
It had always been impossible to see Father Gunn’s eyes through those glasses, but they seemed more opaque than ever. Maddy wondered had Father Gunn told the Bishop that Vieja Piedra alone and on Church business was infinitely preferable to another alternative.
‘I hope it’s every bit as rewarding for you as you and I have always believed it would be.’ Her voice choked slightly.
‘I wanted to thank you, Maddy, for all your help and encouragement. Father Gunn has been so wise and understanding about everything. When I told him that I wanted you to be the first to know he insisted that we invite you here, to tell you that it has all finally gone through.’
Maddy looked at Father Gunn. She knew exactly why she had been invited to the presbytery, so that there could be no tearful farewells, implorings and highly charged emotion in Barna Woods, or anywhere on their own.
‘That’s very kind of you, Father,’ she said to the small square priest, in a very cold tone.
‘No, no, and I must just get some papers. I’ll leave the two of you for a few minutes.’ He fussed out of the room.
Brian didn’t move from his chair. ‘I owe it all to you, Maddy,’ he said.
‘Will you write?’ she asked, her voice dull.
‘To everyone, a general letter in response to whatever marvellous fund-raising you do for me …’ He smiled at her winningly as he had smiled at so many people. As he would smile at the poor Peruvians in the dry valley, who had been calling out for him. She said nothing.
And for the first time in seven years they sat in silence. They willed the time to pass when Father Gunn would have found his letters and returned to the sitting room of the presbytery. The sitting-room door had been left open.
The farewells were endless. Father Barry wanted no present, he insisted. He didn’t need any goodbye gift to remind him of Shancarrig, its great people and the wonderful years he had spent here. He said he would try to describe what the place was like, their namesake on the other side of the world.
He cried when they came to see him off at the station. Maddy was in the back of the crowd. She wanted to be sure he was actually going. She wanted to see it with her own eyes. He waved with one hand and dabbed his eyes with the other. Maddy heard Dr Jims saying to Mr Hayes that he was always a very emotional and intense young man. He hoped he would fare all right in that hot climate over there.
And the time went by, but it was like a summer garden when the sun has gone, and although there’s daylight there’s no point in sitting out in it. More children came and went in Mixed Infants. They left Miss Ross and went up to Mrs Kelly. They still learned how to say bonjour and buenos dias in their own time. Maddy Ross had won that victory hard from Mrs Kelly – she was not going to give it up.
The fund-raising continued, but Ireland was changing in the sixties. There was television for one thing … people heard about other parts of the world where there was famine and disaster. Suddenl
y Vieja Piedra was not the only place that called to them. Sometimes the collections were small that went in the money order to the Reverend Brian Barry at his post office in a hill town some sixty-seven miles from Vieja Piedra.
Yet his letters were always grateful and warm, and there were stories of the church being built, a small building. It looked like a shed with a cross on top, but Father Barry was desperately proud of it. Pictures were sent of it, badly focused snapshots taken from different angles.
And then there was the wonderful help of Viatores Christi, some lay Christians who were coming out to help. They were invaluable, as committed in every way as were the clergy.
Maddy heard the letters read aloud, and wondered why could Brian Barry not have become a lay missionary. Then there would have been the same dream and the same hope but no terrible promise about celibacy.
But she cheered herself up. If he had not been ordained as a priest he would never have come to Shancarrig, she would never have known him, never had her chance in life.
*
There had been five years of walking alone in Barna Woods, five plays in Shancarrig Dramatic Society, five Christmas concerts, there had been five sales of work, whist drives, beetle drives, treasure hunts. There had been five years of raffles, bingo, house to house collections. And then, one day, Brian Barry telephoned Maddy Ross.
‘I thought you’d be home from school by now.’ He sounded as if he were down the road. He couldn’t be telephoning her from Peru!
‘I’m in Dublin,’ he said.
Her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch. Something was happening. Why had the communication not been through Father Gunn?
‘I want to see you. Nobody knows I’m home.’
‘Brian.’ Her voice was only a whisper.
‘Don’t tell anyone at all. Just come tomorrow.’
‘But why? What’s happened?’
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? All the way to Dublin, just like that?’
‘I’ve come all the way from Peru.’
‘Is anything wrong? Is there any trouble?’
‘No no. Oh Maddy, it’s good to talk to you.’
‘I haven’t talked to you for five years, Brian. You have to tell me why are you home? Are you going to leave the priesthood?’
‘Please, Maddy. Trust me. I want to tell you personally. That’s why I came the whole way back. Just get the early train, will you? I’ll meet you.’
‘Brian?’
‘I’ll be on the platform.’ He hung up.
She had to cash a cheque at the hotel. Mrs Ryan was interested as usual in everything. Maddy gave her no information. Her mind was too confused. She knew there would be no sleep tonight.
For five years she had slept seven hours a night.
But tonight she would not close her eyes. No matter how tired and old she might look next morning Maddy knew that there was no point in lying in that same bed where she had lain for years, seeking sleep.
Instead she examined everything in her wardrobe.
She chose a cream blouse and a blue skirt. She wore a soft blue woollen scarf around her neck. It wasn’t girlish but it was youthful. It didn’t look like the ageing school teacher grown old in her love for the faraway priest.
Maddy smiled. At least she had kept her sense of humour. Whatever he was going to tell her he would like that.
He didn’t seem to have got a day older. He was boyish, even at forty-five. His coat collar was up so she couldn’t see whether he still wore his roman collar, but she had told herself not to read anything into that. Out in the missions priests wore no clerical garb and yet they were as firmly priests as ever they had been.
He saw her and ran to her. They hugged like a long-separated brother and sister, like old friends parted unwillingly, which is probably what they were. She pulled away from him to see his face, but still he hugged her. You can’t kiss someone who is hugging the life out of you.
The crowd had thinned on the platform. Some caution seemed to seep back into him.
‘There was no one from home on the train, was there?’
‘Where’s home?’ She laughed at him. ‘In all your letters you say Vieja Piedra is home.’
‘And so it is.’ He seemed satisfied that they weren’t under surveillance. He tucked her arm into his and they walked to a nearby hotel. The lounge was small and dark, the coffee strong and scalding. Maddy Ross would remember for ever the way it stuck to the roof of her mouth when Brian Barry told her that he was going to leave the priesthood and marry Deirdre, one of the volunteers. It was like a patch of red-hot tar in her mouth. It wouldn’t go away as she nodded and listened and forced her face to smile through tales of growth, and understanding and love and the emptiness of vows taken at an early age before a boy was a man, and about a loving God not holding people to meaningless promises.
And she heard how there was still a lot to be decided. Deirdre and he had realised that laicisation took such a long time, and brought so much grief, destroying the relationships of those who waited.
But in South America the clergy had understood the core values. They had gone straight to the heart of things. They knew that a blessing could be given to a union of which God would patently approve. What was the expression that Maddy herself had used so many years ago? Something about thinking in terms of the Constitution rather than in petty Civil Service bye-laws.
And he owed it all to Maddy. So often he had told that to Deirdre, who wanted to send her gratitude. If Maddy hadn’t proven to him that he could be courageous and open up his heart to the world and to love, this might never have happened.
‘Did you ever love me?’ Maddy asked him.
‘Of course I love you. I love you with all my heart. Nothing will destroy our love, not my marrying Deirdre or you marrying whoever you will. Maybe you have someone in mind?’ He was roguish now, playful even. She wanted to knock him down.
‘No. No plans as yet.’
‘Well you should, Maddy.’ Gone was the light-hearted banter, now he was being serious and caring. ‘A woman should get married, and have children. That’s what a woman should do.’
‘And have you and Deirdre decided to have children?’ She tried to put the smile back in her voice. It was so easy to let a sneer creep in instead, to let him know how she could sense that Deirdre was already pregnant.
‘Eventually,’ he told her, which meant imminently.
He was going to leave Vieja Piedra, and they were going to a place further down the coast of Peru. He would teach in a town, there was just as much work needed there, but they had found a native born priest, a real Peruvian, to look after the valley of Vieja Piedra. He talked on. Nothing would be said to Father Gunn. The fund-raising would take a different style. Nothing would be said to anyone really. In today’s world you didn’t need to explain or to be intense. It was a matter of seizing what good there was and creating more good. It was taking your chance when it was offered.
The only person who had to be told face to face was Maddy. That’s why he had taken Deirdre’s savings to come back and tell her, to thank her in the way that a letter could never do for having put him on this road to happiness.
‘And did Deirdre not feel afraid that once you saw your old love you might never return to her?’ Maddy’s tone was light, her question deadly serious.
But Brian hastened to put her anxieties at rest. ‘Lord no. Deirdre knew that what we had wasn’t love. It was childlike fumblings, it was heavy meaning-of-life conversation, it was part of growth, and for me a very important part.’ He wanted to reassure her about that.
The train back to Shancarrig left in fifteen minutes. Maddy said she thought she should take it.
‘But you can’t go now. You’ve only been here an hour.’ His dismay was enormous.
‘But you’ve told me everything.’
‘No, I haven’t told you anything really. I have only skimmed the surface.’
‘I have to go back, Brian. I would h
ave, anyway, no matter what you told me. My mother hasn’t been well.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Of course you didn’t. You didn’t know a great many things, like Mrs Murphy in The Glen died, and that Maura Brennan brings her poor son around with her and he sits in every house in Shancarrig while she cleans floors and does washing. There are many things you don’t know.’
‘Well, they don’t tell me. You don’t tell me. You don’t write at all.’
‘I was ordered not to. Don’t you remember?’
‘Not ordered, just advised.’
‘To you it was the same once.’
‘If you’d wanted to write to me enough you would have,’ he said, head on one side, roguish again.
She closed her mind to his disbelief that she would return on the next train. He had thought she would spend the whole day, if not the weekend, in Dublin with him. What was he to do now? No relations were meant to know he was back.
‘Did I do the wrong thing coming back to tell you?’ He was a child again, confused, uncertain.
She was gentle. She could afford to be. She had a lifetime ahead of her with little to contemplate except why her one stab at living life had failed. She reached out and held his hand.
‘No, you did the right thing,’ she lied straight into his face. ‘Tell Deirdre that I wish you well, all of you. Tell her I went back to Shancarrig on the train with my heart brimming over.’
It was the only wedding present she could give him.
And she held the tears until the train had turned the bend and until she could no longer see his eager hand waving her goodbye.
MAURA
When the time came for Maura to go to school any small enthusiasm that there had ever been in the Brennan family for education had died down. Maura’s mother was worn out with all the demands that were made on her to dress them up for this May Procession and that visit from the Bishop. Not to mention communion and confirmations. Mrs Brennan had been heard to say that the Shancarrig school had notions about itself being some kind of private college for the sons and daughters of the land-owning gentry rather than the National School it was, and that nature had always intended it to be.