Death of a Pilgrim (5 page)

Dr Moreland had been replaced by the younger man, Dr Stead. He brought with him a medical journal which he read from time to time, making notes or marks in the margin with a silver pen. By
eleven o’clock the storm outside showed signs of abating in its fury. James Delaney was still breathing. The doctor beckoned to the elder Delaney and to Father Kennedy and Sister Dominic to
follow him to a little room off the main ward that served as a nurse’s office. Timetables, rotas and pictures of the Virgin lined the walls. He motioned them to be seated.

‘I thought I should bring you up to date on our thinking about this case,’ he began. Michael Delaney felt a moment of resentment. His son was more than a case. ‘James’,
the doctor carried on, ‘is still with us. We do not know how long it will take for the drugs to pass out of his system. Certainly their power is less, considerably less, than it was twelve
hours ago. Our hypothesis, and it is only a hypothesis, has been that if the withdrawal was going to kill him, it would probably have done so by now.’

‘Does that mean, Doctor,’ said Delaney, the hat spinning ever faster in his hands, ‘that he is going to recover, that he’s getting better?’

Dr Stead had heard this note of hope against all the odds many times before. ‘I don’t think we could say that. Not yet. Not now. At this point the absence of bad news is almost good
news. That is all I can say, I’m afraid. It’s too soon for hope, for the present.’

Delaney pressed him. ‘I understand your qualifications, of course I do. But would you say that his chances of recovery are better now? Better than they were, I mean?’

The doctor looked down at his journal. ‘I would not wish to give you false hope. But if you pressed me, I should say that the answer is yes. Or probably yes. Our knowledge is so limited.
Forgive me, but I have been looking at a recent article in my medical journal here about the process of dying. It is, if you like, a timetable of the way death comes over the body. It is concerned
with diseases similar to, but obviously not the same, as James Delaney’s. It suggests to me that if he were going to pass away, he would have done so by now. I emphasize the word
“suggests”. We could be wrong.’

Delaney was still looking for comfort. ‘Should we be more hopeful now? Is the worst over?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘I could not agree to that at this moment. The crisis is not over. It may yet be ahead of us, I don’t know. But the breathing has become slightly more
regular in the last two or three hours. His colour may be fractionally better. That is good.’

‘And what’, Delaney went on, ‘would you have us do now? Should we stay with him through the night?’

‘That is entirely up to you. I think I would say that you should go home and rest before you come back. Lack of sleep is well known for causing lack of judgement. You have to weigh in the
balance the possibility of his leaving us while you are away against the need to remain strong for the days ahead, as you certainly have done up till now, Mr Delaney. Dr Moreland or I will stay on
duty by the bedside.’

‘I see,’ said Delaney. ‘Thank you so much for keeping us in the picture.’

Father Kennedy added his weight to the doctor’s opinion. ‘I too think you should go home, Michael. I’m sure we can leave the young man in the hands of the medical staff. And,
of course, in the hands of God.’

Delaney made up his mind quickly. In his own kingdom of finance he was famous for it. Father Kennedy accompanied him down the long corridor that led out of the hospital. They would both return
in a couple of hours.

‘Father, can you tell me some more about that saint on the wall? I’ve been looking at him all day. St James the Greater, you said he was called?’

‘Fisherman, disciple, martyr,’ Father Kennedy replied. ‘He was beheaded for his beliefs by Herod Agrippa, grandson of the biblical Herod, in about 44
AD
. Legend has it that his
body was taken to the north-western coast of Spain in a stone boat. His remains were discovered centuries later.’

‘And what was he made a saint for?’ asked Delaney, pausing suddenly.

‘If you were a disciple and a martyr,’ said Father Kennedy, ‘it was virtually certain that you would become a saint some day. In fact, St James the Greater became much more
famous after his death than he had been in his life. They made him the patron saint of Spain, for one thing. In the countries where they speak Spanish or Portuguese, the name Santiago is the same
as our James. There are cities and churches and statues of him all over the Iberian Peninsula and in South America. During the centuries when the Spanish were trying to expel the Moors from Spain,
the story goes that Santiago would appear on the battlefield on a mighty horse, wielding a great sword and urging his troops on to victory. “Santiago Matamoros!” was the battle cry of
the Spanish soldiers. “Santiago the Slayer of Moors!”’

‘You implied, Father,’ said Delaney, resuming his walk towards the main doors, ‘that his military powers were one of the reasons for him becoming famous after his death. Are
there others?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Father Kennedy. ‘A great city grew up close to the place where the body was found. A great cathedral was built in his honour and in his name. It became a place
of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, one of the most important pilgrimages in Christendom. Jerusalem and Rome were the most important sites, but Jerusalem was not a healthy place to go to at the time
of the Crusades and Rome was in the hands of the barbarians. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims from all over Europe made the journey.’

Father Kennedy paused and looked Delaney in the eye. ‘I think we may have witnessed a miracle here tonight, my friend. If that is the case, and your son James survives, as I believe and
pray he will, we must put it down to the intervention of St James the Greater, praying for your son in his picture on the wall.’

‘And what was the name of the city with the cathedral?’ asked Delaney.

‘The city? I forgot to tell you. The city is still there. It is called Santiago de Compostela, James of the field of stars.’

As the two men passed out into the wet night the bells of New York began to peal the midnight hour. It was Sunday in Manhattan.

James Delaney didn’t die on Sunday. He was still alive on Monday.

Always now, Delaney had a special prayer of his own as he roamed the corridors of the hospital and watched over his son. On Tuesday James opened his eyes and smiled weakly at his father. The
snows and rain of November turned into the snows and rain of December. Early that month the doctors told Delaney his son was getting better. They were perfectly honest with him, saying that their
ignorance of the disease worked both ways. They hadn’t been sure in the past that they knew how to treat his illness. Now they were not sure why he was getting better. All they could say was
that doing virtually nothing seemed to work best of all and they proposed to continue with that course of non-treatment. Five days before Christmas they pronounced James Delaney out of danger. It
would be a long time yet, they said, before he could come home. Delaney offered the hospital unlimited funds to study the disease that had nearly carried off his boy, saying he didn’t see why
anybody else should have to suffer as much as he and his son had done. He presented monies for a five-year supply of candles for the chapel in new designs approved by Matron and Father Kennedy. He
wondered then if he had fulfilled his obligations to God and man. All through the month, as the Christmas trees and Christmas decorations filled the shop windows and New York prepared to celebrate
the birth of Christ, Michael Delaney was haunted by the image of St James the Greater, the brown saint in his brown background praying with fingertips joined, on the wall above his son’s bed.
A strange idea haunted him too, an idea he could not shake off. Two days before Christmas he invited Father Kennedy to join him for a festive drink.

Father Kennedy had been telling all his parishioners about the miraculous recovery of James Delaney. It was, he assured them, a blessing from God and St James the Greater. He had amended his
sermon on the workings of God’s grace around the theme of the Miracle in Manhattan, as he referred to it. He was going to preach the sermon after Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

The Father had been thinking a lot about Delaney’s pact with his creator. Such pacts, he knew from personal experience, were sometimes found in families struck with terminal diseases and
desperately trying to buy a reprieve for their loved ones with the promise of some unspecified future conduct. He knew, Father Kennedy, that he could ask for a new hospital, new schools, fresh
charities to support the starving and destitute of New York. But all Michael Delaney would have to do would be to hand over the money. There would not be any sacrifice, for Father Kennedy had
private intelligence of the relative wealth of the New York patrician classes in his parish which told him that Delaney was one of the richest of the rich, a millionaire’s millionaire.

‘Come in, Father,’ said Delaney, ‘come in! Would you care for a glass of John Powers?’ Father Kennedy nodded and settled down in a chair by the fire.

All through his son’s illness Delaney had lost weight. His shirt collars grew loose. His trousers sagged at the waist. He discussed with his valet the possibility of buying a whole new
wardrobe to suit his new figure. The man advised him to wait. Now, very slowly, he was beginning to fill out again.

‘I’ve been thinking about my deal with God, Father.’ Delaney plunged straight into business. He made the Delaney Compact sound like a commercial contract, a takeover perhaps,
or the sale of some of his blocks of New York real estate. ‘And I’ve been thinking about that St James the Greater man and the pilgrimage to Santiago.’

‘I am glad you have been thinking about such matters, Michael. It may do some good to your immortal soul.’

Delaney resisted the temptation to say ‘To hell with my immortal soul.’ He pressed on.

‘Can you tell me some more about the pilgrimage, Father? Has it died out completely, or do people still go on it?’

Father Kennedy had no idea what was coming next. He wondered if Delaney was going to offer to buy up the city of Santiago, or to turn the memory of the pilgrimage into a subsidiary of one of his
great companies.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘it hasn’t died out completely, the pilgrimage. But it’s only a trickle, a tiny trickle of what it used to be. It takes a long time, you see, to
walk from one of the starting places in France all the way to the far corner of Spain.’

‘I’ve been thinking, Father, and I want to put a proposition to you. It may sound strange. You may think I’m mad. But what about this? Why don’t I and selected members of
my family go on this pilgrimage? I’d pay for them all, of course. It would be a thank-you to God, don’t you see? For my James’s life.’

Father Kennedy thought another miracle had come to Manhattan. Deeds in the service of the Almighty were going to replace the bankers’ drafts to New York’s charities. It is easier for
a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The good of the Delaney soul, for a while at least, was going to replace the good of the Delaney
wallet. Maybe Michael Delaney would get to meet St Peter up above after all.

‘What a splendid idea, Michael! I’m sure our Lord would approve. Would you like me to think about some of the details, possible starting points and so on? Do you have any idea of
when you would like to set off?’

‘Not in this weather certainly,’ said Delaney. ‘I don’t know if James will be strong enough to do the whole thing – if we go, that is. I’d have to hire
somebody to work out the details. Easter perhaps? Early summer? To start, I mean.’ Delaney was not an expert on European weather patterns but he thought it might be easier to make the journey
once the rains and storms had gone.

‘Easter might be good, very propitious to start a pilgrimage at one of the greatest festivals of the Christian year.’ Father Kennedy thought of the amount of prayer power, nun power,
candle power expended on the salvation of young James Delaney. Surely this would be a fitting recompense.

‘And would you come with us, Father? To be our spiritual guide? I don’t know very much about pilgrimages, you see. I can dimly remember the garish cover of a book in one of my school
classrooms called
The Pilgrim’s Progress
. Will we visit the Slough of Despond? The City of Destruction? Will we see those strange places on the way? Would we dally in Vanity
Fair?’

‘I think those places are metaphors, if you like, of the mental state of the particular pilgrim at any particular point along the route,’ said Father Kennedy with a smile.
‘There were many reasons for pilgrimage in those earlier times. Some went to seek forgiveness for their sins. Some went as part of a pact with the Lord. Some went seeking spiritual enrichment
in the long journey and the adventures that would surely befall a traveller on such an expedition. Some, no doubt, went partly for fun. It was a holiday, as it were, as well as a quest. Plenty of
different food and wine to sample on the way to Santiago, the city of James after whom your own son is named.’

Father Kennedy spent a morning in the New York Public Library in the days after Christmas. On New Year’s Eve he was back in his usual seat in the Delaney drawing room
with another glass of John Powers whiskey. He brought various suggestions with him. Their great trek – for Father Kennedy had decided that he would accompany the pilgrims for part of the way
at least – could start from the town of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne in southern France, one of the traditional setting-off places for the pilgrimage, and proceed down through France to
Spain and the great cathedral in Compostela. Le Puy and the other starting places like Vézelay, he told Delaney, were like medieval railway stations in the busiest times for pilgrimage in
the Middle Ages, a cross-over point for converging pilgrims coming from Germany and the countries of the East who were funnelled down through Le Puy-en-Velay on to the route to Compostela. An
earlier version of Grand Central Station in New York perhaps. Father Kennedy didn’t expect them to walk all the way. Sometimes they would be able to take a train or a boat. Horse lovers would
be able to ride for part of the journey.