Be Near Me (24 page)

Marymass has been going since medieval times. My tutors at Balliol would have found it eternally interesting: the Carters' Association with its horses and banners and heralds; the papingo, of which there are etchings from the sixteenth century, a game in which archers shoot arrows at partridges set on the ramparts of the old abbey. I could see that the partridges were now made of cardboard and the arrows had rubber tips. The ancient pageant had become a beer festival. The crowd wore football colours and they jostled on the moor with their foaming plastic cups. There was a hideous drum. It pounded on the hazy side of the moor and the sun was pulsing too, like a rotary blade that churned the atmosphere.

I was wearing civvies, a shirt open at the neck, and I found a baseball cap on the back seat of the car. I pulled the visor down and walked into the crowd that cross-hatched the grass, everywhere smelling of suntan lotion and chips. Children ran holding sticks of candy floss and took pictures of one another with their phones. Disco music shrieked from the fairground. I shouldn't have gone there. I should have been back in the rectory making calls and taking counsel. But something of the Marymass buzz drew me onto the moor, and I walked among the excited bodies wishing I could
join them, 'the people', as Nashe used to call them from his armchair.

A black pole rose some thirty feet into the air. It stood on a hill at the edge of the moor and the people gathered round, the girls with their coloured alcopops and the babies holding ice creams. The pole was smeared with black tar all the way to the top, where a side of beef, its upper side browning in the morning sun, was impaled on a large butcher's hook. The beef was a prize for the worthiest climbers. I went up close to the fence surrounding the pole. The men played in teams, climbing up on each other's shoulders and driving up through the grease, squeezing tins of lager into their mouths before and during the effort. 'Let's fucken go!' said a particularly broken-nosed one. 'Let's fucken
do them?

Oh, that high-flying flamingo, that sweet Geoffrey Nashe. He thought, along with my father, that the working class consisted of young, moderate, hard-working men, scented with soap and certificates. They never saw that violent face or the gold ring on every finger. 'It's not actually about class,' Nashe would have said. 'It's about
character.
'

The winning team were the most sunburnt. They drank the greatest number of lagers and they had the flattest faces. They didn't mind stepping on each other's heads in the attempt to reach the top or crushing one another's fingers into the black goo of the pole. The last man, a fierce, aggressive, hollering, self-conscious brute, reached the beef at the top of the greasy pole and gripped it with his giant hands, and then, with a final push, raised himself up and sank his teeth into the stewed rump, shouting with laughter and flashing his gold fillings to the heavens.

I had seen Mrs Poole's husband at the start of the contest. He was with one of the junior teams, one of the sports clubs, I imagine, and was drinking from a small bottle of whisky. He hadn't noticed me. His face was ashen and his cheeks were drawn. His team was knocked out early, after failing to scale even halfway up the pole, but they were jeering from the side during the other attempts. I should have left then, but the short sad truth is that I didn't want to leave.

My pleasure came to a sudden halt. The cap was knocked from my head and a bare-chested man stood in front of me. He had an Indian-ink tattoo on his neck. It was a broken blue line and the words said: 'Cut Here in Case of Emergency.' Like men of that sort, he seemed excessively aware of the crowd's presence and he played to it. 'You're that paedophile cunt of a priest! Ya dirty bastard.'

'Steady on,' I said.

'Dirty Fenian scumbag,' he said. There was a brief moment of hesitation and the man swayed before me; it seemed he was weighing the exact measure of violence to deploy, and he flexed his terrible fingers, as if beckoning the crowd's assent.

One never buys a house or pays school fees. One sleeps in a single bed. One lives like an orphan in a beautiful paternalistic dream. As a priest one may never grow up. In a sense, one lives as an infant before the practical trials of reality, and I never in my life felt old before standing in that field and facing that young man, the sun uncommonly warm. But the young man was grinding his teeth like an expert, his crimson face and his shocking vitality bare before his neighbours, making me old, making me unsteady on my legs and far
from reason. I had travelled a long way to this field and the terror of his unholy face. His mouth was moving. I imagined he was another species from me. His eyes were like a bird's, and so were those of the crowd: in that instant they were like ospreys, their spiked hair tearing away from their skulls full of gel and motion, their eyes sharp with murderous intelligence as I put out my hands to stop him.

I heard a moan in the crowd and I found myself numb on the grass. I think I closed my eyes, then eruptions of panic and weakness and embarrassment filled the moment. I could feel a trickle of blood running down my cheek and it entered my mouth, salt and metal stopping my tongue as the man reached down to slap me. I could feel him tearing at my shirt and poking an iron finger into my chest. 'Fucken no-use peedo bastard. I'm gonnae waste you for what you've done.'

'Get off me,' I said.

'Dirty English cunt.'

'That's bang out of order,' a voice said at the young man's side. 'Come on, Sammy, son. You're gonnae get into bother here.'

'Jeest leave him,' said a girl.

'Ah, Sammy. That's enough. He's an old guy.'

I got to my feet and saw the young man was surrounded by a group of people clutching drinks.

'Thank you,' I said to them.

'Thank
fuck all!
' said the man. 'I hope you burn in hell, ya dirty fucken beast. I hope you swing for this, tamperin' wi' weans.'

A man had me by the arm. I could smell drink on him and I dusted grass off myself before turning. It was Mr Poole. 'Come on,' he said. 'You better get away frae here.' One of the girls handed him a baby's bib, and he used it to wipe the blood.

'Just keep it,' said the girl. I could see through my good eye that she curled her lip as she said the words, backing away.

Mr Poole drove the car back to the rectory. He was any number of times over the limit, having trouble at first with the automatic gearbox, but I was too upset to question him. 'It's all right,' he said, over and over. He kept shaking his head as he drove and he drummed his nicotine-stained fingers on the steering wheel. 'Everything's all right.' When he pulled to a stop on the gravel outside the chapel I felt a twinge in my eye.

'Jesus Christ,' he said. The glass on the rectory door was cracked and someone had sprayed '
PEEDAPHILE
' on the path.

'Good Lord,' I said.

Mr Poole handed me the car keys. His hands were shaking but he wouldn't come into the house.

'No, you're awright,' he said. 'You'll be okay from here.'

'You've been very kind, Mr Poole,' I said. 'Are you sure you won't come inside? I could make some tea.'

He looked sadly at the broken door.

'Not at all,' he said. 'That's...' He paused. 'That's where Anne goes to work. It wouldnae be right. I've never been where she works. She wouldnae like it.'

'Well, thank you ever so much.'

The situation seemed to make him shy. He wanted no part of it. He shook his head outside the car and wiped his mouth, as if to still himself and still what others might say. Eventually, he nodded goodbye. 'It's a rough business,' he
said. Then he walked down the side of the chapel and vanished at the corner where a rose bush hung in ruins over the garden wall. There was only the sound of birds twittering in the lane. From there I stepped into the house and locked the storm doors behind me.

Here again: the fortifying thrill of solitude. The house was silent. The most refreshing shade could be found in the bathroom, where I swabbed my eye with antiseptic and cleaned my face. Then I brushed my teeth and turned on the radio, the sound travelling through the house like a cool and edifying breeze, Radio 4, an announcer with humour in his voice and a regulating tone of seriousness. 'The American Army Surgeon General announced an investigation,' he said, 'into the deaths of two soldiers in Iraq. This comes on the heels of news that a further hundred in the region were hospitalised with severe pneumonia. It has been argued that the soldiers' exposure to the US military's anthrax vaccine may be the cause of the fatalities.'

Downstairs, when I poured boiling water into the cup, the teabag flopped and released its flavours in a dark effusion. The radio played upstairs but the voices were muffled by carpets and doors. Everything seemed to be passing to another place, the professional voices on the radio retaining their tone but none of their meaning as they travelled into the woodwork and fibres of a desecrated house.

The garden. It was a mercy the flowers had gone. The months had marched on and only a few roses were left, but these had been ripped and kicked apart, the remaining white petals gone dark with stomping. I lifted the teacup and walked out among the broken bushes, and, sitting on the
bench against the wall, I absorbed for a while the ruin of peace and the rising scent of lunacy. I caught again the sound of the radio upstairs. My great failures were not diminished by the terrible climate in which the people enjoyed them, by the way they could say I had met their worst fears and prejudices. It was a trap which time had set for me, not them. They knew of the scandals involving Catholic priests, and now they had one too, their very own, and forgive me for feeling the riot of execration in that place was tinged with a sense of wonderful achievement, for the crowd now had its bogeyman and its spot on the news. There is no pleasure in seeing how the badness of one's nature may give rise to a tribal fulfilment no prettier than its cause. But I would be stupid to ignore it, just as I had been stupid to ignore those parts of myself which brought the young people to my door in the first place.

My tea was cold when the telephone rang.

'It's Gerard,' he said, with an undertow of the River Clyde.

'Good afternoon, Bishop.'

'How are you?'

'Quite chipper,' I said. 'For someone who was charged yesterday.'

'But you're all right?'

'Not a hundred per cent. But don't worry, Gerard. I won't be inflicting any further wounds.'

'Don't be daft, David. This is a serious matter. Father Brendan tells me you're refusing counsel.'

'I'm not guilty. I didn't assault anybody. I'm not apologising to the families and hanging my head before the tabloids.'

'David,' he said, more in anger, 'the boy was in the rectory at seven o'clock in the morning. There were bottles on the table. Drugs were involved. He's given a statement. So have others.'

'It wasn't assault. Not to my mind.'

'And what is your mind?' he said, his anger now charging down the line with a mitre of authority. 'I took a chance bringing you to this diocese. I went against advice to bring you from England. You know what, David: the Bishop of Lancaster gave you a questionable reference. He said you'd spent twenty years being an excellent administrator and a poor pastor. He said you'd organised a cabal—that was his word—of classical-music lovers and wine tasters. Wine tasters! That's what your ministry at Blackpool consisted of in the mind of your Bishop.'

'So why didn't he fire me?'

'For the same reasons I didn't,' he said. 'Because he thought you were intelligent and because we're short of priests.'

'I'm grateful.'

'No,' he said. 'God strengthen us. I don't think you are. All those years ago in Rome, when I met you, David, you were full of zeal for the Church. Things were changing. It was our time, and you had the character to meet all the challenges. Is that not right? And what happened to you? You end up frittering away your vocation, reading paperbacks and cooking fish?'

'I never had the character, Gerard,' I said. 'I was just a lonely young man. I think you knew that.'

'Don't tell me what I knew! You had a calling. You had faith in God. And I had faith in you. How dare you deny that now?'

'Nevertheless,' I said, 'my faith was built on the wrong foundation. It was built on ... the wrong things.'

'There are no wrong things to build faith on.'

'I'm sorry, but there are.'

'What are you saying?'

'I'm saying I think I used the Church. It was a beautiful hiding place. I'm sure it has been for others.'

'You're having a crisis,' said Bishop Gerard. 'I've seen it before. You need to retreat and examine your faith. I've seen it before in my life, with other priests. You need a holiday.'

'My life has been a holiday,' I said. He coughed down the phone and the anger lengthened through his voice.

'And you bring this to
my door?
'

'I'm sorry for that. I truly am. Please believe that, Gerard. And I am sorry to the parishioners and to God.'

He sighed. 'I remember you coming to see me at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The Dominicans worshipped you. You were full of ideas in Rome and you were holy, David. I won't hear any different now. I was thinking about it this morning: maybe you always had a touch of the victim. I remember showing you around the chapel and the room where Galileo was interrogated. The house next to the church. You wanted to stand there for ever, you said. You were full of all your Oxford University questions. Book questions. Faith questions. I remember that.'

'I've always been interested in the telescope,' I said.

'No, David. I remember your actions. You were playing the part of Galileo. One of the old friars was telling us about the Dominicans' suspicion of Galileo and their interrogation of him, and you were transfixed, mouthing the words along with him. You've always been an actor, David. An actor will always want to play the part.'

'My confusions were genuine.'

'But why now?' he said. 'Why has it all come back now? Our troubles are behind us, and we've all had troubles.' He sounded personally defeated, and I hated to think of that.