Crooked Vows (23 page)

A distant memory suddenly leaps up: an image that he hasn't thought about for years. He is probably ten years old and is peering through a small gap in another shoddy wall separating the boys' and girls' changing sheds at one of the old swimming spots used by the local kids.

He is watching a girl on the other side who looks to be a couple of years older than him. She is slipping the straps of her bathers off her shoulders, pulling them down, stepping out of them neatly, casually, innocently, without any sense that she might be seen. He watches, tense, trying to breathe silently, waiting for her to turn towards him and reveal—something. He has no idea of what to expect.

But she doesn't turn. She towels the sand off her legs and reaches for her clothes hanging from a peg on the far wall. There are voices outside, coming nearer. He reaches for his own shorts, fumbling to get them on quickly before anyone arrives, looks, sees and guesses.

Thomas turns away from the gap in the school sheltershed wall, shaking his head to dislodge the image of the straps slipping off the shoulders, the legs stepping neatly out of the bathers, the amazing smoothness of the buttocks and thighs.

As if someone has pressed a switch, a sudden sharply clear series of thoughts lights up in his mind. He has been savouring memories of a naked young girl he watched surreptitiously many years ago. Now he sees himself as if from above, peering secretively with mounting excitement through the sparse stems and leaves of the grass at Jane, as she removes one garment after another. Why does he do these things at twenty-three years of age? It's shameful. How far removed is this from Father Kevin's repulsive behaviour yesterday afternoon? A long way distant, but obviously located in the same direction. The sudden realisation appals him, sets up a nauseous sensation in his belly that rises into his throat.

With an effort Thomas comes back to the present moment, trying to focus on something solid, here and now. Under his feet is the bitumen surface of the cracked and pot-holed school yard. Two or three old stunted pepper trees stand out of the grim black surface, with gnarled trunks and elegant ferny foliage, the school's only gesture towards the world of green, growing things. In front of him is the church of grey concrete blocks and grey asbestos roofing. Beyond the shelter shed are the convent classrooms, built in the same drab grey.

From the end classroom comes the sound of singing: young children's thin voices and uncertain pitch:
Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin's. When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey? When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.

The song is suddenly interrupted by a sharp voice with an Irish edge: Sister Agatha.

‘Brigid Ryan, you're not singing. Stop daydreaming, girl. Pay attention and join in or you'll feel my stick around your legs. Now. Back to the beginning, and I want to hear everyone this time!'

This time the piping voices get through to the end:
Here
comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop
off your head.

Now Sister Agatha again.

‘Those churches, children. Churches in London. They were all ours once, Catholic churches, every one. The Protestants got them at the time of Henry the Eighth. And they've still got them. But with the help of God and his holy mother they will be ours again one day, when the English return to the true faith.' She sniffs loudly, then adds, ‘If that's possible.'

Thomas grins momentarily, listening to the sour note in her voice. She doesn't sound optimistic about the chances of converting the English. Not very enthusiastic about the project either. He remembers a passing comment of Macpherson's about the Irish:
some people seem to need their enemies even more
than they need their friends
.

Small children begin straggling out of the school building and spreading in pairs around the yard, under the pepper trees, to the other shelter sheds, to the church steps. Two girls look in at his side of the shed and move on, giggling.

They carry reading books, and the task appears to involve taking turns in hearing each other read. Giggling seems to play a fairly large part in the procedure, too, and Thomas can't help beginning to feel more cheerful.

The most persistent giggling is coming from the other side of the shed. Heartened by the sound of merriment, he slides along the hard bench to look through the strategic gap and discover what is generating it, without interrupting whatever the game is. The pair on the other side are, unusually, a boy and a girl. They are perched on the edge of the hard bench facing each other with no reading books in sight. The skin of their faces, only an arm's length away, has a clean innocent glow to it, in spite of what looks like Vegemite around the boy's mouth. Thomas is struck by their vulnerability. The thought brings up in his mind the shocking image of Father Kevin and his victim, equally vulnerable, from the previous afternoon. With the image comes the same upwelling of repugnance combined with a surge of anger. He forces his attention back to what he is seeing and hearing.

The girl is trying to teach the boy a song. It's one of those repetitive nonsense songs with actions to match the words. He is struggling to follow her lead, his finger going to the wrong part of his body a fair amount of the time, setting off a fresh burst of giggles.
With my hand on my heart, what have I here? 
This is my nosewiper, my teacher dear. Nosewiper, eyesighter,
brainbox and icky dicky dicky doo,
(here they put their thumbs in their ears and flap their fingers),
that's what they taught me
when I went to school.

The song, and the children's hands, work their way down past their chatterboxes, chinwaggers and rubbernecks towards their breadbaskets with many repetitions, numerous mistakes, and much giggling.

In the background from the end schoolroom come snatches of the other song, with an Irish voice in counterpoint. Sister Agatha seems determined to imprint on the children's memories the names of those purloined London churches. 
Oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clement's, You owe me
three farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin's.

A storm of giggling brings Thomas back to the gap. The pair on the other side have hit on the idea of reversing the song, touching each other in the appropriate places instead of themselves.
This is your chinwagger, my teacher dear. Chinwagger, chatterbox and nosewiper, eyesighter, brainbox and icky dicky dicky doo. That's what they taught me when I went to school.

They swing into the next verse.
With my hand on your heart,
what have you here? This is your rubberneck, oh my teacher dear. 
Each has a hand inside the collar of the other's shirt, and the giggling reaches new heights.

The game stops abruptly, cut off by a piercing voice from a classroom window.

‘You two! Stop that! Get your hands away from each other's bodies.'

The pair jump apart, look around, eyes wide with fright, and eventually locate Sister Agatha glaring out of the end window.

‘Now don't move so much as an inch.'

The pale accusing face disappears from the window and within half a minute the nun is sweeping out of the building and down the few steps, her habit trailing behind. She stands tall over the children. Her eyes are wide. Her face, what can be seen of it that is not concealed by the constricting head-dress, is an even starker white than usual. She is directly in Thomas's view.

‘Stand up! What do you think you've been doing?' She grabs each by an ear, pulls them upright, and hauls them around, turning back towards the school building. The boy makes no sound, but the girl whimpers.

‘We'll have none of that here. You can stand at the back of my classroom until lunch-time. I'll deal with you then.' She marches them, both flinching, towards the school steps.

Thomas gathers his courage together into a decision and steps out from behind the shelter shed.

‘Sister Agatha.'

The nun swings around.

‘Surely Sister, there's no need to be so harsh. Those children, they're hardly more than babies. I've been watching them. Listening. They've only been playing. Doing no harm.'

She stares at him for some time without responding. Then she snorts.

‘No harm. Is that what you're telling me? You'll excuse me I hope, Mr Riordan, if I point out that I've had more experience with children than you. Original Sin, Mr Riordan. I'm sure I don't have to explain it to you. Young doesn't mean innocent. The triple concupiscence: the three sources of temptation to sin. The world, the flesh and the devil. Especially the flesh.' Somehow she manages to inject a tone of disgust into that last word.

‘It's never too early to nip that sort of thing in the bud. Sins against holy purity. Next year they'll both be eight, the age of reason. Capable of mortal sin. Good Catholic parents don't send their children to good Catholic schools to learn behaviour like that.'

Sister Agatha sweeps around again and off towards the school door. Thomas stands by the shed. His initiative has achieved nothing. But at least he has stood up and tried. He hears the yelps of the children as they are dragged up each step. Then the three disappear into the building.

From the church comes the sound of the bell. The Angelus: the midday call to prayer. Father Kevin is going through the motions, as he put it, doing what's expected. Probably repeating the habitual sequence of words.
Angelus domini … The angel of the lord declared unto Mary; and she conceived by the Holy Ghost … Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. 
The traditional plea for help. But what if there is nobody out there to hear it?

Startled, Thomas focuses on that unpremeditated thought. What if there is nobody there to hear? Is it possible that the ritual words are projected out into a void where there is nobody listening? Where has this shocking question come from? Why does it break through into his consciousness at this moment? He tries to push it out of focus and back into a corner where it can be ignored, at least for the present. But he knows that it has found a foothold. However hard he tries to redirect his attention, it will be back sooner or later, demanding that he confront it.

He turns to wondering what thoughts might be moving in the small priest's mind under the tolling bell and the unthinking words. Surely he must be filled with anxiety about the previous afternoon and the possible looming consequences. More than anxiety. Fear. How can he be slipping into the familiar daily routine as if nothing significant has happened? Surely he has some sense of the enormity of what he was seen doing. Waves of nausea overtake Thomas as the scene witnessed through that front room window comes back to him. He realises that he's been avoiding the issue—trying to focus on other things. But he is also aware that the time for decisive action is looming. How many times has the Regan boy been subjected to that outrage? And how many other defenceless little boys?

The Angelus bell rings on towards the end of the ritual sequence. Thomas imagines the short, ageing man standing on the porch, pulling the bell-rope, his lips moving as he mouths the ritual words. Another disturbing thought intrudes. He imagines himself in ten years, twenty years, thirty. Will his life, like Father Kevin's, be centred on going through the ritual motions, repeating the ritual words? Is this really what God wants of him? The question is immediately overwhelmed by the other terrifying question. Is it possible, is it even thinkable, that there is really no God to hear, to see, to want anything of him?

Can it be, that he has been living inside a complicated edifice of myths and rules and rituals, without any foundations? An intricate fabrication? And perhaps not altogether an innocent one. What did Macpherson say?
An inhuman streak. 
And sometimes perverted
.

Perverted. How far might Thomas himself drift in the same direction as Father Kevin if he continues to allow the same current to carry him along? He recalls his memory of the young naked girl in the changing shed—his horror at the thought that he has floated even a short distance that way.

A huge wave of questions is breaking over his head. And he is floundering among them; drowning in challenges that demand to be confronted. He suddenly feels a dizzying sensation of vertigo as if he were spiralling down into empty space.

He half closes his eyes and lets their focus drift out past Saint Brigid's to bring up from his memory the reassuring image of the real church that stands behind it. And a trace of it is still there: at least, a very hazy outline of the splendid structure of pale golden stone, with soaring spires, fanciful gargoyles and saints looking out from the carved niches and the stained glass of the windows. But it's much further away, the details much vaguer than when he last conjured it up. The image is fading. Whatever music is perhaps being sung inside is far beyond his hearing.

Children's voices from the end classroom come to him again. 
Today or tomorrow, say the bells of Saint Sorrow.
' Thomas senses the approach of another thought. It's nothing sharply defined, only the hazy outline of a realisation away in the distance. But with it comes a feeling that he is caught up in a different current that is inevitably drifting him in a new direction, sweeping him closer to an idea not yet properly in sight, bringing that thought, in time, more clearly into view. The realisation that someday soon, today or tomorrow, or perhaps next week or next month, he will search his memory and the image will be gone. And with it, the whole elaborate fantasy that lies behind this fading image of the spires, the saints' statues, the brilliant windows—all gone.

Melted into air, into thin air
. Where did that line come from? Shakespeare again, probably. The rector was very determined about Shakespeare. About literature in general. Though he never seemed to get any pleasure from it. Or from anything else either.