The Street and other stories (9 page)

The Whiterock Road was pitch black, and the occasional young couple, hurrying home, clung their way past McCrory Park.

A few stragglers leaned together outside Jim’s Café. An over-crowded black taxi laboured up the hill. Few people noticed the two figures walking down towards the Falls Road. One was a thickset man in black overcoat, white open-necked shirt and white drill trousers. He wore a cap pushed back on his head and walked with one hand in his pocket. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. His companion, a younger man dressed in jeans and an anorak, had to shorten his natural stride to match the older man’s. They walked in silence alongside the cemetery wall until they reached the Falls Road. They turned right at the bottom of the Whiterock and strolled slowly up the road. The young man cleared his throat. His companion glanced at him.

“Come on, we’ll cut down here.”

The younger man nodded. They hurried down Milltown Row and went more cautiously then, the older man in front bent forward with one hand still in his pocket. Down and over the football pitch, across the Bog Meadows and up towards the graveyard.

The moon peeked out at them from behind clouds. Cars on the motorway below sped by unknowing and uncaring. The man with the cap was out of breath by the time they reached the hedge at
Milltown Cemetery. The cemetery waited on them, rows and rows of serried tombstones reflecting the cold moonlight. It was desperately quiet. Even the sounds from the motorway and the road seemed cut off, subdued. They forced their way through the hedge and on to the tarmac pathway. Nothing stirred. They waited a few tense seconds and then moved off, silently, a little apart, the young man in the rear, the man with the cap in front. It was twenty past eleven.

The young man’s heart thumped heavily against his ribs. He was glad he wasn’t alone, though he wished the older man hadn’t worn the white trousers. They wouldn’t be long now anyway. Ahead of them lay their destination. As the moon came from behind a cloud he could see the pathway stretching before him. His companion cut across a grassy bank and the young man, relaxing a little by now, continued on alone for the last few yards.

He thought of the morning when they had last been there, the funeral winding its way down from the Whiterock, the people crossing themselves as it passed, the guard of honour awkward but solemn around the hearse. He thought of the people who had crowded around the graveside. Men and women long used to hardship but still shocked at the suddenness of death. Young people and old people. Friends of the family, neighbours and comrades of the deceased. United in their grief. And in their anger, too, he reflected.

He sighed softly, almost inaudibly, to himself as he came alongside his companion again. The older man whispered to him. Wreaths lay on the grave which had been dug that morning, and the fresh clay glistened where the diggers had shaped it into a ridge. The two men glanced at each other and then, silently, they stood abreast of the grave.

They prayed their silent prayers, and the moon, spying from above, hid behind a cloud. The men stood to attention. A night wind crept down from the Black Mountain and rustled through the wreaths. The older man barked an order. They both raised revolvers towards the sky and three volleys of shots crashed over
the grave.

The young man was tense, a little pale. The man with the cap breathed freely. He pocketed his weapon. The young man shoved his into the waistband of his jeans. They moved off quickly. The moon slid from behind the clouds; the wind shook itself and swept across the landscape. All was quiet once more. The two men, moving across the fields, reached the Falls Road. They walked slowly; they didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Few people noticed them as they walked up the Whiterock Road. It was five past twelve. Jim’s Café was closed. An occasional young couple, hurrying home, clung their way past McCrory Park. A car coming out of Whiterock Drive stopped to let the two men cross its path. As they did so the cemetery wall was caught in the car’s headlights.

The white graffitied “
IS THERE A LIFE BEFORE DEATH
?” flashed as the vehicle swung on to the main road and headed off towards Ballymurphy.

The two men paused and looked at each other. Then they, too, continued on their journey.

The congregation shuffled its feet. An old man spluttered noisily into his handkerchief, his body racked by a spasm of coughing. He wiped his nose wearily and returned to his prayers. A small child cried bad-temperedly in its mother’s arms. Embarrassed, she released him into the side aisle of the chapel where, shoes clattering on the marble floor, he ran excitedly back and forth. His mother stared intently at the altar and tried to distance herself from her irreverent infant. He never even noticed her indifference; his attention was consumed by the sheer joy of being free, and soon he was trying to cajole another restless child to join him in the aisle. Another wave of coughing wheezed through the adult worshippers. As if encouraged by such solidarity, the old man resumed his catarrhal cacophony.

The priest leaned forward in the pulpit and directed himself and his voice towards his congregation. As he spoke they relaxed as he knew they would. Only the children, absorbed in their innocence, continued as before. Even the old man, by some superhuman effort, managed to control his phlegm.

“My dear brothers and sisters,” the priest began. “It is a matter of deep distress and worry to me and I’m sure to you also that there are some Catholics who have so let the eyes of their soul become darkened that they no longer recognise sin as sin.”

He paused for a second or so to let his words sink in. He was
a young man, not bad looking in an ascetic sort of a way, Mrs McCarthy thought, especially when he was intense about something, as he was now. She was in her usual seat at the side of the church, and as she waited for Fr Burns to continue his sermon, she thought to herself that it was good to have a new young priest in the parish.

Fr Burns cleared his throat and continued.

“I’m talking about the evil presence we have in our midst, and I’m asking you, the God-fearing people of this parish, to join with me in this Eucharist in praying that we loosen from the neck of our society the grip which a few have tightened around it and from which we sometimes despair of ever being freed.”

He stopped again momentarily. The congregation was silent: he had their attention. Even the sounds from the children were muted.

“I ask you all to pray with me that eyes that have become blind may be given sight, consciences that have become hardened and closed may be touched by God and opened to the light of His truth and love. I am speaking of course of the men of violence.” He paused, leant forward on arched arms, and continued.

“I am speaking of the IRA and its fellow-travellers. This community of ours has suffered much in the past. I know that. I do not doubt but that in the IRA organisation there are those who entered the movement for idealistic reasons. They need to ask themselves now where that idealism has led them. We Catholics need to be quite clear about this.”

Fr Burns sensed that he was losing the attention of his flock again. The old man had lost or given up the battle to control his coughing. Others shuffled uneasily in their seats. A child shrieked excitedly at the back of the church. Some like Mrs McCarthy still listened intently, and he resolved to concentrate on them.

“Membership, participation in or cooperation with the IRA and its military operations is most gravely sinful. Now I know that I am a new priest here and some of you may be wondering if I am being political when I say these things. I am not. I am
preaching Catholic moral teaching, and I can only say that those who do not listen are cutting themselves off from the community of the Church. They cannot sincerely join with their fellow Catholics who gather at mass and pray in union with the whole Church. Let us all, as we pray together, let us all resolve that we will never cut ourselves off from God in this way and let us pray for those who do.”

Fr Burns paused for the last time before concluding.

“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.”

Just after communion and before the end of the mass there was the usual trickling exit of people out of the church. When Fr Burns gave the final blessing the trickle became a flood. Mrs McCarthy stayed in her seat. It was her custom to say a few prayers at Our Lady’s altar before going home. She waited for the crowd to clear.

Jinny Blake, a neighbour, stopped on her way up the aisle and leaned confidentially towards her. “Hullo, Mrs McCarthy,” she whispered reverently, her tone in keeping with their surroundings.

“Hullo, Jinny. You’re looking well, so you are.”

“I’m doing grand, thank God. You’re looking well yourself. Wasn’t that new wee priest just lovely? And he was like lightning, too. It makes a change to get out of twelve o’clock mass so quickly.”

“Indeed it does,”Mrs McCarthy agreed as she and Jinny whispered their goodbyes.

By now the chapel was empty except for a few older people who stayed behind, like Mrs McCarthy, to say their special prayers or to light blessed candles. Mrs McCarthy left her seat and made her way slowly towards the small side altar. She genuflected awkwardly as she passed the sanctuary. As she did so the new priest came out from the sacristy. He had removed his vestments, and dressed in his dark suit, he looked slighter than she had imagined him to be when he had been saying mass.

“Hullo,” he greeted her.

“Hullo, Father, welcome to St Jude’s.”

His boyish smile made her use of the term “Father” seem incongruous.

“Thank you,” he said.

“By the way, Father…”

The words were out of her in a rush before she knew it.

“I didn’t agree with everything you said in your sermon. Surely if you think those people are sinners you should be welcoming them into the Church and not chasing them out of it.”

Fr Burns was taken aback. “I was preaching Church teaching,” he replied a little sharply.

It was a beautiful morning. He had been very nervous about the sermon, his first in a new parish. He had put a lot of thought into it, and now when it was just over him and his relief had scarcely subsided, he was being challenged by an old woman.

Mrs McCarthy could feel his disappointment and resentment. She had never spoken like this before, especially to a priest. She retreated slightly. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said uncomfortably, “I just thought you were a bit hard.” She sounded apologetic. Indeed, as she looked at the youth of him she regretted that she had opened her mouth at all.

Fr Burns was blushing slightly as he searched around for a response.

“Don’t worry,” he said finally, “I’m glad you spoke your mind. But you have to remember I was preaching God’s word, and there’s no arguing with that.”

They walked slowly up the centre aisle towards the main door. Fr Burns was relaxed now. He had one hand on her elbow, and as he spoke he watched her with a faint little smile on his lips. Despite herself she felt herself growing angry at his presence. Who was this young man almost steering her out of the chapel? She hadn’t even been at Our Lady’s altar yet.

“We have to choose between our politics and our religion,” he was saying.

“That’s fair enough, Father, as far as it goes, but I think it’s wrong to chase people away from the Church,” she began.

“They do that themselves,” he interrupted her.

She saw that he still had that little smile. They were almost at the end of the aisle. She stopped sharply, surprising the priest as she did, so that he stopped also and stood awkwardly with his hand still on her elbow.

“I’m sorry, Father, I’m not going out yet.”

It was his turn to be flustered, and she noticed with some satisfaction that his smile had disappeared. Before he could recover she continued, “I still think it’s wrong to exclude people. Who are any of us to judge anyone, to say who is or who isn’t a good Catholic, or a good Christian for that matter? I know them that lick the altar rails and, God forgive me, they wouldn’t give you a drink of water if you were dying of the thirst. No, Father, it’s not all black and white. You’ll learn that before you’re much older.”

His face reddened at her last remark.

“The Church is quite clear in its teaching on the issue of illegal organisations. Catholics cannot support or be a part of them.”

“And Christ never condemned anyone,” Mrs McCarthy told him, as intense now as he was.

“Well, you’ll have to choose between your politics and your religion. All I can say is if you don’t agree with the Church’s teaching, then you have no place in this chapel.”

It was his parting shot and with it he knew he had bested her. She looked at him for a long minute in silence so that he blushed again, thinking for a moment that she was going to chide him, maternally perhaps, for being cheeky to his elders. But she didn’t. Instead she shook her elbow free of his hand and walked slowly away from him out of the chapel. He stood until he had recovered his composure, then he too walked outside. To his relief she was nowhere to be seen.

When Mrs McCarthy returned home her son, Harry, knew something was wrong, and when she told him what had happened he was furious. She had to beg him not to go up to the chapel there and then.

“He said what, Ma? Tell me again!”

She started to recount her story.

“No, not that bit. I’m not concerned about all that. It’s the end bit I can’t take in. The last thing he said to you. Tell me that again?”

“He said if I didn’t agree then I had no place in the chapel,” she told him again, almost timidly.

“The ignorant-good-for-nothing wee skitter,” Harry fumed, pacing the floor. Mrs McCarthy was sorry she had told him anything. “I’ll have to learn to bite my tongue,” she told herself. “If I’d said nothing to the priest none of this would have happened.” Harry’s voice burst in on her thoughts.

“What gets me is that you reared nine of us. That’s what gets me! You did your duty as a Catholic mother and that’s the thanks you get for it. They’ve no humility, no sense of humanity. Could he not see that you’re an old woman.”

“That’s nothing to do with it,” Mrs McCarthy interrupted him sharply.

“Ma, that’s everything to do with it! Can you not see that? If he had been talking to me, I could see the point, but you? All your life you’ve done your best and he insults you like that! He must have no mother of his own. That’s all they’re good for: laying down their petty little rules and lifting their collections and insulting the very people…”

“Harry, that’s enough.”

The weariness in her tone stopped him in mid-sentence.

“I’ve had enough arguing to do me for one day,” she said. “You giving off like that is doing me no good. Just forget about it for now. And I don’t want you doing anything about it; I’ll see Fr Burns again in my own good time. But for now, I’m not going to let it annoy me any more.”

But it did. It ate away at her all day, and when she retired to bed it was to spend a restless night with Fr Burns’s words turning over again and again in her mind.

Choose between your politics and your religion. Politics and
religion. If you don’t accept the Church’s teachings, you’ve no place in the chapel. No place in the chapel
.

The next day she went to chapel as was her custom, but she didn’t go at her usual time, and she was nervous and unsettled within herself all the time, she was there. Even Our Lady couldn’t settle her. She was so worried that Fr Burns would arrive and that they would have another row that she couldn’t concentrate on her prayers. Eventually it became too much for her and she left by the side door and made her way home again, agitated and in bad form.

The next few days were the same. She made her way to the chapel as usual, but she did so in an almost furtive manner, and the solace that she usually got from her daily prayers and contemplation was lost to her. On the Wednesday she walked despondently to the shops; on her way homewards she bumped into Jinny Blake outside McErlean’s Home Bakery.

“Ach, Mrs McCarthy, how’ye doing? You look as if everybody belonging t’ye had just died. What ails ye?”

Mrs McCarthy told her what had happened, glad to get talking to someone who, unlike Harry or Fr Burns, would understand her dilemma. Jinny was a sympathetic listener and she waited attentively until Mrs McCarthy had furnished her with every detail of the encounter with the young priest.

“So that’s my tale of woe, Jinny,” she concluded eventually, “and I don’t know what to do. I’m not as young as I used to be…”

“You’re not fit for all that annoyance. The cheek of it!” her friend reassured her. “You shouldn’t have to put up with the like of that at your age. You seldom hear them giving off about them ones.”

Jinny gestured angrily at a passing convoy of British army Land-Rovers.

“They bloody well get off too light, God forgive me and pardon me! Imagine saying that to you, or anyone else for that matter.”

Jinny was angry, but whereas Harry’s rage had unsettled Mrs McCarthy, Jinny’s indignation fortified her, so that by the time
they finally parted Mrs McCarthy was resolved to confront Fr Burns and, as Jinny had put it, to “stand up for her rights”.

The following afternoon she made her way to the chapel. It was her intention to go from there to the parochial house. She was quite settled in her mind as to what she would say and how she would say it, but first she knelt before the statue of Our Lady. For the first time that week she felt at ease in the chapel. But the sound of footsteps coming down the aisle in her direction unnerved her slightly. She couldn’t look around to see who it was, which made her even more anxious that it might be Fr Burns. In her plans the confrontation with him was to be on her terms in the parochial house, not here, on his terms, in the chapel.

“Hullo, Mrs McCarthy, is that you?” With a sigh of relief she recognised Fr Kelly’s voice.

“Ah, Father,” she exclaimed. “It is indeed. Am I glad to see you!”

Fr Kelly was the parish priest. He was a small, stocky, white-haired man in his late fifties. He and Mrs McCarthy had known each other since he had taken over the parish fifteen years before. As he stood smiling at her, obviously delighted at her welcome for him, she reproached herself for not coming to see him long before this. As she would tell Jinny later, that just went to show how distracted she was by the whole affair.