The Wreckage (14 page)

“You’d best speak to the Monsignor,” the nun said. “Come.” She went past them to the front doors.

“Thank you, Sister,” Johnny said, following after her.

She took them across a narrow footbridge over the stream, the banks reinforced with shale. Mercedes looked up the hill to where it ran down from a grotto behind the church—a high, mortared wall of shale stone, a marble statue of a woman placed out of the weather in an alcove.

“Who is that supposed to be?” Mercedes asked and Amina gave her a look.

They waited in the hall while the young nun spoke to Father Power behind a closed door.

“Do I have to bow when I sees him?” Mercedes asked.

“What?”

“Like what you did at the church.”

“Let me do the talking,” Amina said.

The nun beckoned them into the parlour, where the priest was standing beside the fireplace. He was dressed in black robes with a sash around his waist that served to draw attention to his massive belly.

“Come in, come in,” he said impatiently, motioning with both hands as if he was trying to scoop water onto his clothes. They lined off in front of him and he put his hands behind his back. His wire-rimmed spectacles caught the light coming through the window in such a way that they couldn’t see his eyes.

“Thank you, Father, for seeing us,” Amina said.

“Sister Marion tells me you are looking for Lilly Berrigan.”

“We’re looking for Wish Furey,” Mercedes said.

Amina jumped in quickly. “We were hoping his aunt might be able to tell us where he is.”

The priest turned to Johnny Boustani. “Who are you to these girls?”

“I’m meant to be their chaperone, Father.”

“Are you related?”

“He’s a friend of the family, Father,” Amina said.

“You two are sisters?” He sounded skeptical on the matter.

“No, Father.”

“Which one of you is it is looking for Aloysious?”

“I am,” Mercedes said.

The priest looked over their heads a moment. “If I might inquire,” he said, “what is it you want with him? Has he done harm to someone?”

“No, Father. He’s—” Amina looked at Mercedes quickly, then back to the priest. “He’s engaged to Mercedes here,” she said.

“Engaged?” Johnny Boustani said.

“Engaged?” Father Power repeated.

“Yes, sir,” Mercedes said. “Father, I mean.”

The priest stood completely still a moment and then made a sound that seemed involuntary, as if he’d touched an open sore in his mouth with his tongue. “Where are you from—Mercedes, is it?”

“I’m from Little Fogo Island.”

He wiped a finger under his nose. He turned to Johnny Boustani. He said, “Would you excuse us a moment, Mr…. ?”

“Boustani, Father. Lieutenant Johnny Boustani.”

“Boustani,” the priest repeated.

“It’s Lebanese, Father,” Johnny said. “But I’m from Pennsylvania.”

“If we could have a moment alone, Lieutenant.”

As Johnny left the room the priest rose up on his toes and rocked back a number of times, as if preparing to break into song. He looked from one girl to the other. “Are you with child?” he asked Mercedes.

“No, sir.”

“Father,” Amina whispered.

“No, Father,” Mercedes said.

“But he’s run off on you.”

“He was drove out of the Cove, Father. Being as he was a Catholic.”

“Ah,” the priest said. A look of consternation came over him a moment before he pushed it aside. “Your parents did not sanction the engagement.”

“My father,” Mercedes said, “is dead.”

The priest bowed slightly forward. “Your mother, then.”

“I come into St. John’s to find him, Father, but he isn’t there. I thought he might have come back to Renews.”

The priest turned to face the empty fireplace. “I have a delicate question for you, Mercedes. Has there been”—he reached a finger to touch the cast-iron poker in its stand—“has there been a union of the flesh between yourself and Aloysious?”

“A what?”

“No, Father,” Amina said.

“No, Father,” Mercedes repeated.

The priest watched Mercedes to see if he could gauge the truth of the matter from her expression. “I know it may seem a cruelty to you,” he said. “But you are very young to be entering into holy matrimony.”

“I’m the same age my mother was when she married.”

“Still and all. Perhaps as things are in—” he paused, “as things are at such a preliminary stage, it may be that your mother is not wrong to oppose a union such as this.”

“I need to talk to Miss Berrigan.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Lilly Berrigan is cloistered.”

“Father?”

“In seclusion. She sees no one but the Sisters.” The priest smiled at them, which seemed an unkind thing and made Mercedes dislike him more intensely.

“He used to live,” Mercedes said, and she took a moment to call up the name, “with Tom Keating. Do you know where he lives?”

“Twenty-five years,” Father Power said, “I have been parish priest in Renews. I know everything there is to know about the people here. Including your,” he paused over the word, “—
fiancé.”

“Would you be so kind,” Mercedes said deliberately, “as to tell me where Tom Keating lives?”

“I can show them the way,” Sister Marion offered. Everyone turned to where she stood against the wall by the door. They had all forgotten she was in the room.

“Oh all right,” Father Power said angrily. “Take them.” And he made the same strange scooping motion he’d ushered them in with, but in the opposite direction.

They went down a path pointed out to them by Sister Marion, toward the water, travelling along the harbour edge. Past each house they added a dog or curious youngster to the caravan following behind them. The Keatings’ saltbox house stood beside a salmon river that ran into the tidal flats at the foot of the harbour. Tom Keating’s wife, Patty, saw the troupe coming and met them at the door. Her hair grey and blonde hauled back into a bun, the skin of her forehead and face criss-crossed with lines deep enough to funnel rain. A black-and-white dog with orange markings over its eyes sniffed at their shoes.

She said, “You must be after Tom.”

“Is he about?” Mercedes asked.

“Depends why you’re after him.” She looked Johnny up and down. “You fellers carry guns?”

He lifted his hands away from his body. “No, ma’am.”

“How in hell’s flames you planning to beat the Jerries, you don’t carry guns?”

“I’m trying to find Wish Furey,” Mercedes said.

Patty Keating held her eye a moment. “You might as well come in. You crowd looks half-starved.”

She sent one of the youngsters who had followed them off to find Tom. Inside she set out a plateful of molasses buns. “Supper won’t be ready before five, you’ll have to tide yourself over with these. Where are you staying tonight?”

“We don’t know,” Amina said.

Johnny bit into a bun, looked at it curiously as he chewed. Pale chunks of something greasy and unidentifiable in the dough.

“Room here if you don’t mind a crowd,” Patty said. “Pork fat,” she said to Johnny. “Make a meal of those buns if you need to.”

He nodded, his mouth still full. And started surreptitiously feeding the bun to the dog under the table.

Tom Keating arrived with a young man about the age of Wish.

Patty put a hand on her husband’s arm, said, “She’s here looking for Wish.”

“I’d love a mug of tea,” he told her. “Now,” he said to the group at the table, “which one of you is—?”

“I’m not pregnant,” Mercedes announced.

Johnny Boustani’s head jerked in her direction as if he’d been slapped.

“We’re engaged,” Mercedes went on. “Me and Wish.”

“Signs and wonders,” the younger man said, “before the end of time.”

Eleven people sat at the table when supper was served, adult children and their husbands and wives and grandchildren of various ages, along with the three guests. A handful of children stood outside, trying to get a glimpse of the strangers through the windows. Various conversations went on across the table, and people moved from one to another without seeming to miss a word.

“I’ll say one thing for Wish Furey,” Tom said. He had just turned from a discussion of how long it would take to mend a cod trap torn by drift ice. He was cleaning his plate with a piece of bread, swivelling it with his hand to cover the entire surface. “He knew how to make a drop of shine. Best ever I tasted. I never bothered with more than a few potatoes or molasses myself, but Wish used to pick the juniper berries down by Aggie Dinn’s Cove. Went down honey-sweet, his brew.”

“He could turn his hand to anything,” the younger man said. His name was Billy-Peter. “Wish could put the arse in a cat.”

“Where do you think he might have gone?” Mercedes asked.

Tom Keating watched her. “Couldn’t say, my love. Haven’t laid eyes on him since he run off in St. John’s.”

“What do you mean, he ran off?” Johnny Boustani asked.

“We were sailing in this bronze statue we took off a Spanish wreck,” Tom said. “Christ on the cross, it was. This was just after the war started. The Archbishop got wind of it and asked the Monsignor if we would bring it to town. Not much money in it and two days lost to the trip, but it was the Church asking. Me and Billy-Peter and Wish took it in.”

“And he ran off?”

Billy-Peter said, “We went out on the town after we got the statue off the boat. Me and Wish. He never bothered to come back to the harbour.”

“It was his first time to town,” Tom said. “Should have known by the look on his face he was gone. He always had a restless streak to him, that one. Couldn’t settle.” He looked at Mercedes apologetically. “What with losing his folks. And things with his aunt being the way they were.”

“She got the second sight, Lilly have,” Patty said. “She’ve told women they’re pregnant before they knows it themselves.”

“I wanted to see her,” Mercedes said. “But the priest says she’s … she’s …”

“Cloistered,” Amina said.

“Locked up, is what she is,” Tom said. “Father Power got her tied to a stake up at the convent.”

Patty leaned toward Mercedes. “I might be able to help you,” she said.

The house was gone to bed when Patty roused Mercedes. They went out along the main road and turned onto a path that went steeply uphill, travelling above the houses on the water. Off to their left Mercedes could make out a field of pale shapes stretching back into blackness. The graveyard chill drifted through her, goosebumps rising on her skin, and she walked closer to Patty.

“Not a soul in there going to do you any harm.”

Mercedes said, “Why did Wish come to live with you and Tom?”

“He was more or less living with us months before Lilly was brought to the convent.”

“They didn’t get on?”

“You know she was going to be a nun?”

“No.”

“Entered the convent when she was sixteen, left again within the year. Moved into a little place here used to be a goat barn. Taught up at the school, worked as the priest’s housekeeper. A mystery why she give up the nuns. She was asked to leave, is what I heard. Not even the Sisters knew what to do with her.”

“It’s true what Tom said, is it? She’s locked away?”

Patty said, “Lilly belongs to another world than this one.”

They passed behind the church and Patty stopped in front of the low concrete wall at the grotto, crossing herself before the statue of Mary. There was a room beside her with a large window just above ground level where a row of votive candles were burning. In the light of them, Mercedes could make out the face of Mary in her portal.

“The Ocean Star,” Patty said. “She’ll watch out for us tonight.”

They went on past the rectory to the convent, which was completely dark. They walked around to a side door that led down to a room in the basement. Mercedes could tell from the heat and the smell of vegetable must and dishwater that they were in the kitchen. Patty said, “I cooks for the sisters when they have special events at the convent.”

They were standing close in the pitch. Mercedes could smell the older woman, an unpleasant, oddly metallic odour carried on the heat of her body. Patty felt her way to a table and scuffled around a moment until she found an oil lamp. “Leave your shoes by the door,” she said, “and stay close to me. Not a word from here on.”

They went down a long corridor, keeping one hand to the wall as a guide. At the end of the corridor they went up a staircase to the third floor, then back along the corridor with Patty counting doorways as they went. At the fourth door they stopped, and Mercedes could hear the muffled jangle of a key ring being taken from a coat pocket.

“Where did you get those?”

“Tom found them up at Lilly’s place after she was brought over here. She used to have the run of the convent when she cleaned for them.”

“He stole them?”

“Salvage, my love,” Patty said. “Salvage.”

She was trying one key after another in the door, without success. She stood straight and took a deep breath, then went back to it. The right key finally thunked in the lock and Patty pushed the door open. She struck a match inside and lit the lamp, turned the wick back and placed the globe over the flame. When they turned to the illuminated room Lilly Berrigan was sitting up on the side of her bed, watching them. The tiny space was bare but for a night-stand and a crucifix on the wall over the bed.