Crooked Vows (14 page)

The priest, outlined against the bright glare of the doorway, runs one hand across his bald head.

‘Protestant thinking. Intellectual pride. A good Catholic accepts the wisdom of God, as revealed by his Holy Church through its clergy, and doesn't presume to think everything out for himself … or herself.'

Then he seems to sense his abrasiveness, and makes a new start, beginning with an effort to soften his voice and his approach.

‘In our limited human understanding, we can't expect to fathom the mysteries of religion.' He looks around quickly, as if his heart is not really in this homily. ‘Faith. That's the key. Faith and humility. And obedience. That's what you Protestants don't understand.' The confronting tone is back again. ‘You must have been talking to your Protestant pastors.'

When she replies the tremble in her voice is more obvious, but she continues to defend herself.

‘That's not true. I've been reading for myself. Thinking for myself. I did talk to an Anglican priest about it and he was very understanding. As far as he was concerned I made that promise under duress so I shouldn't feel bound by it. But he said that I should speak to you.'

Looking down the passage past Father Kevin's skinny right shoulder, Thomas can see that she is wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. The little girl, who has been sitting patiently in the stroller, is beginning to complain. The mother leans to pat her head.

‘I'm not surprised,' the priest snaps. ‘Mixed marriages never work. That's one thing we understood in the Old Country. We never trusted Protestants there. And we were right.' He turns, then swings back for a final shot. ‘And another thing: Anglican ministers aren't priests. They don't have valid ordination.'

He turns his back on the young woman, pushing the door shut and closing off Thomas's view of her as she turns her back on the presbytery and makes her way down the narrow path to the street and the heat of the afternoon. He wonders how far she has to walk.

9

The Feast of Saint Francis Xavier

‘Well, now. At last we've come to a saint I've heard about. I was beginning to think that I was totally uneducated in the matter of saints.' Macpherson rubs his cheek. He looks doubtful. ‘At least his name is familiar. I remember being in a church that was named after him. I think it was for a funeral. And I've read about a school in Melbourne called Xavier College. A fairly expensive school, I believe. Exclusive. But what the man did, or what fate befell him—I'm rather vague about this. I've a faint memory about some connection with India, of all places, so I look forward to hearing more about him, and perhaps hearing about any memories that his story revives for you.' He sits back in his chair, eyes fixed on a spot on the wall above Thomas's head.

Thomas sinks back into the depths of his own chair, opens his book, and begins.

Among those who in the sixteenth century laboured most successfully in the conversion of nations, the most illustrious was Saint Francis Xavier, the Thaumaturgus of these latter ages, whom Urban VIII justly styled the apostle of the Indies. This great saint was born in Navarre, at the castle of Xavier, eight leagues from Pampelona, in 1506. From his infancy he was of a complying, winning humour, and discovered a good genius and a propensity to learning.

His inclinations determined his parents to send him to Paris in the eighteenth year of his age where he entered the college of Saint Barbara, and commenced a course of scholastic philosophy. His faculties were hereby opened, and his penetration and judgment exceedingly improved; and the applause which he received agreeably flattered his vanity, which passion he was not aware of.

Saint Ignatius came to Paris in 1528, with a view to finish his studies, and after some time entered himself pensioner in the college of Saint Barbara. This holy man had conceived a desire of forming a society wholly devoted to the salvation of souls; and being taken with the qualifications of Peter Faber, called in French Le Fevre, a Savoyard, and Francis Xavier, who had been school-fellows, and still lived in the same college, endeavoured to gain their concurrence in this holy project. Xavier began to see into the emptiness of earthly greatness, and to find himself powerfully touched with the love of heavenly things. Yet it was not without many serious thoughts and grievous struggles that his soul was overcome by the power of those eternal truths. From Ignatius he learned that the first step in his conversion was to subdue his predominant passion, and that vain-glory was his most dangerous enemy. And well knowing that the interior victory over his own heart and its passions is not to be gained without mortifying the flesh and bringing the senses into subjection, he undertook this conquest by hair cloth, fasting, and other austerities.

When the time of the vacancy was come, in 1535, he performed Saint Ignatius' spiritual exercises; in which, such was his fervour, that he passed four days without taking any nourishment, and his mind was taken up day and night in the contemplation of heavenly things.

In 1534, on the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, Saint Ignatius and his six companions, of whom Francis was one, had made a vow at Montmartre to visit the Holy Land and unite their labours for the conversion of the infidels. They travelled, in 1536, all through Germany on foot, loaded with their writings, in the midst of winter, which that year was very sharp and cold. Xavier, to overcome his passions, and punish himself for the vanity he had formerly taken in leaping (for he was very active, and had been fond of such corporal exercises) in the fervency of his soul, had tied his arms and thighs with little cords, which, by his travelling, swelled his thighs, and sunk so deep into the flesh as to be hardly visible.

The saint bore the pain with incredible patience, till he fainted on the road; and, not being able to go any farther, was obliged to discover the reason. His companions carried him to the next town, where the surgeon declared that no incision could be safely made deep enough, and that the evil was incurable. In this melancholy situation, Faber, Laynez, and the rest spent that night in prayer; and the next morning Xavier found the cords broken out of the flesh. The holy company joined in actions of thanksgiving to the Almighty, and cheerfully pursued their journey.

After waiting a whole year in Rome to find an opportunity of passing into Palestine, and finding execution of that design impracticable, on account of the war between the Venetians and the Turks, Saint Ignatius and his company offered themselves to his holiness, to be employed as he should judge most expedient in the service of their neighbour. John III, King of Portugal, wrote to Don Pedro Mascaregnas, his ambassador in Rome, and ordered him to obtain six of these apostolic men, to be sent to plant the faith in the East Indies.

Saint Ignatius could grant him only two, and pitched upon Simon Rodriguez, a Portuguese, and Nicholas Bobadilla, a Spaniard. The former went immediately by sea to Lisbon; Bobadilla, who waited to accompany the ambassador, fell sick, and by an over-ruling supernatural direction, Francis Xavier was substituted in his room, on the day before the ambassador began his journey.

The journey was performed all the way by land, over the Alps and Pyreneans, and took up more than three months. At Pampelona, the ambassador pressed the saint to go to the castle of Xavier, which was but a little distant from the road, to take leave of his mother, who was yet living, and of his other friends, whom he would probably never more see in this world. But the saint would by no means turn out of the road, saying, that he deferred the sight of his relations till he should visit them in heaven. This wonderful disengagement from the world exceedingly affected Mascaregnas, who by the saintly example and instructions of the holy man, was converted to a new course of life.

‘Perhaps we could stop there. The story of Saint Francis Xavier is shaping like a rather long one, and promises to be a good deal longer; he's still well short of the Indies. I think we can interrupt it to find out whether any memories are coming to the surface.'

Thomas puts the book aside. He sits back, eyes closed, arms and legs relaxed, head resting against the back of the chair. He recalls putting the book aside, a small ribbon-shaped leaf marking a page in the story of the life of Saint Francis Xavier. There is a clump of short twisted trees with narrow leaves, on a rocky headland. Under the sketchy foliage is a patch of mottled shade. He is sitting on the hard, uneven ground in this patch of shade. It is the middle of a blazing day. This is the only shelter from the sun as far as he can see in any direction; most of the headland is bare rock or low scrub only a foot or two high.

The patch of shade is barely enough for two people so although he has carefully placed the rucksack between him and Jane, she is still within arm's reach, lying on her back, eyes closed, apparently asleep. His gaze, as if it has a life and intentions of its own, strays over her body, registering the way her breasts push up under her once-white shirt, taking in the stains of mud and sweat on her clothes, noticing that her legs have relaxed slightly apart, and a fold of her skirt has slipped into the small space between them. An intense sense of her difference, her femaleness, is strangely mixed with a sharp perception of her vulnerability. He turns his head away and tries to focus his mind on their situation.

Before he took out
Lives of the Saints
they had been eating a couple of biscuits each and a handful of dried fruit and nuts, washing them down with swampy water they had found the previous morning. It had tasted of roots and decaying leaves and mud. Now they have less than one small bottle left between them and a long, hot afternoon ahead. Another day tomorrow, perhaps many more.

Between the stems of the stunted trees that are throwing this sketchy shade he scans the next stretch of the coast: another long sweep of beach, with swells breaking in white foam. A fine mist of spray hangs over the line along which the waves are crashing onto the sand. Behind the beach the dunes rise higher as they march inland, starkly white in the glare, with patches of low greyish vegetation here and there. At the far end, a long way off, there is a rocky promontory. How many more repetitions of this sequence of beach and headland must they trudge over, before seeing some sign of human habitation?

Thomas's mouth and throat feel as if they have been parched for days. He watches her for a few moments, her face half turned away from him, her breathing slow and steady. Carefully, he lifts the water bottle out of the pack, takes two or three extra mouthfuls, replaces the lid and returns the bottle quietly to the pack, thinking meanwhile, that this is only fair after all, when he is burdened with extra weight. She is relying on him to carry the food and water for both of them.

Minutes later she begins to stir, sits up with her back against the twisted stem of one of the small trees. She looks around and sees the book laid down on a slab of rock between them. After a few seconds of hesitation she speaks. May she look at it, just for a few minutes? She has noticed him deciding to carry it all this way, reading from it each day, and wondered.

Thomas feels the familiar prickly embarrassment about exposing himself to anyone outside the circle, but passes the book to her, wondering whether it will seem to her rather … odd. He goes back to scanning, or pretending to scan, the next stretch of beach and the rollers breaking on it. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her open the book where it is marked with the leaf, watching apprehensively as she looks over the double page she has opened and turns back to the beginning to read the story through. Little creases form in the middle of her forehead, just above her nose, giving her face an expression of serious concentration, with, at this moment, a suggestion of puzzlement.

She closes the book slowly and places it in her lap, staring into the distance at the beach and the line of spray hanging over it before turning towards him, hesitant. She can't understand the story she's just read. He takes the book from her outstretched hand without meeting her eyes, and replaces it in the pack. He was right to feel uncomfortable.

She makes another start. That bit about his mother. What's his name—Francis Xavier? About visiting his mother. Actually about not visiting his mother. She got the impression that he was supposed to be admired for that. Is that right? Admired for passing by without taking the trouble to visit his mother?

Thomas clears his dry throat and makes a start on an explanation. It's not just that, it's because he chose to do God's work instead. What God had called him to do—wanted him to do.

The young woman listens, creases still marking her forehead. It takes her some time to respond. What
did
God want him to do? Wouldn't God have wanted him to visit his mother? Especially if she was old and this was his last chance. Jane was brought up a Methodist, went to Methodist Sunday School. There were prizes for learning bible texts—Golden Texts, they called them—with attendance prizes too. What they learned at Sunday School was that God wanted them to be kind to people, especially old people, poor people, sick people, babies, children: anyone in need of kindness. Sometimes the teacher would organise them to take a little present that they had made, like a picture they'd drawn, to one of the old folk in the area. That was what they were taught: to do things like that.

To her way of thinking, this man Francis Xavier was being selfish, doing what he wanted to do without considering his mother; and imagining that God wanted him to do this, too. That's self-centred. What was the ambassador supposed to have learned from this example? Did he learn not to waste his time visiting his own elderly mother? As she saw it, he began with a better idea of the right thing to do. Maybe Francis needed to learn something from the ambassador.

The prickly feeling has spread from the back of Thomas's neck across his shoulders. He struggles to put an answer together. He begins an attempt:
there are some things more
important than
… he pauses. His throat feels tight. Perhaps, in a way, now that he thinks about it, visiting his mother might have been the right thing to do. Without answering her he looks away, suddenly aware of the discomfort of sitting on the uneven stony ground. He grabs at the stem of one of the stunted trees to hoist himself up. Reaching for the rucksack, he stands, heaving it up onto his shoulders. They need to move on. They must find water soon; it's nearly all gone.