Office of Innocence (32 page)

If Aunt Madge's object had been to make him fascinated in an old-fashioned way, then he was fascinated and appalled in a general sense, but surprisingly not in any personal way at Aunt Madge, who had always seemed to carry with her the possibility of great passion.

“And believe me,” said Aunt Madge, not pausing to get his pardon, “there would be bucketloads of parish priests and bishops who could make the same or similar confession. Sex is a grand and terrible thing, Frank. It makes everyone mad sooner or later. Now you read all these prayers every day that talk about what a sinful generation we are, how fallible, how we can't clean our own backsides without God's help. And it's all the truth, Frank, it's all the bloody truth. But the trouble is you believe it only applies to you. You don't look at all these other fellows and say, They're just as silly as I am. You only look at yourself, and condemn yourself. As if you are one of a kind.”

“The monsignor thinks I'm one of a kind,” Darragh asserted.

“And so is he. And so—
bloody well
—is he. A pretty ordinary kind, too. Frank, your mother sheltered you too much when you were a kid. Your father had been round the traps, but she made sure you got none of his balance, none of his wisdom. You thought every monsignor had the authority of a god, of God himself. You were an angelic kid. But Australia's the wrong place for that. In any case, it's only because you've been in the newspapers by accident that the archdiocese is running round like headless chickens. And by the way, don't you think that's a bit infantile of them?”

“They don't want to have to deal with a scandal,” said Frank, to fight off Aunt Madge's superior wisdom. “You can't say that they haven't been generous. All this . . .” He pointed about him. He meant the hospital, the medical treatment. Tears pricked his eyes at the idea of it.

“Why not? You're entitled to it, Frank. Don't let them make you feel guilty about
that
as well. You can't help being a bit knocked about, you know. As for newspapers and scandals, they're the stuff of a day. I'd say the chances of your being pointed to in your old age as someone notorious are pretty small.”

Darragh yielded to an unexpected laugh. He thought, as it came up his throat, This is a natural laugh. Perhaps this is not the laugh of a total fool and a scandal.

He said, “They talk about people having a Dutch uncle. You're my Dutch aunt.”

“Someone's got to be,” said Aunt Madge. “Are you shocked? Do you forgive me?”

“That's already been settled,” he said blithely, far from shocked, after Fratelli, at such normal sins as those of Regan and Madge. “Ancient history.”

“Anyhow, I depend on your discretion, Frank, even if you're upset for the moment.”

“That's it,” said Frank. “You've got it in one, Aunty Madge. Mad as a cut snake. At least, so I'm told.”

But he was, in a way, recovering. When the day came to attend Fratelli's court-martial, Darragh was driven to the barracks by the archbishop's secretary and accompanied by a nurse. Darragh remembered the secretary from the seminary, a man a few years older than himself, extremely competent and clever. They chatted about former classmates all the way to Victoria Barracks, Darragh sitting in the front seat like a fully restored member of the archdiocese. Occasionally, something the other priest said would evoke in him a vast dread of the encounter about to take place. “Thank God they've let only one news agency in to observe this court-martial.” It was a sentiment he had heard before, but now it had immediate meaning. Monsignor Carolan, for whatever reason, had passed on to Darragh a bit of gossip—there had been a debate at the cathedral about whether Frank should, as he had always intended to, give his evidence in full clerical suit, or wearing a white shirt and tie, like a seminarian. The monsignor did not realize that since his conversation with Aunt Madge, Darragh had begun to see such fretful debate as inane.

On arrival at the barracks, the archbishop's secretary seemed somewhat abashed to be asked to sit outside the courtroom, whose door was guarded by the sort of splendidly turned-out and revolver-equipped American military police of whom Darragh felt he had already seen too many. The secretary muttered to an army officer at the courtroom door, obviously explaining that Darragh had not been himself and might need support within the chamber of the court-martial. But his argument was politely rebuffed.

Darragh let himself sink into a daze, surrendered to the numb web of his blood, and so rose and was escorted through the door by a guard. The court-martial chamber was ballroom-vast, with its windows taped for air raids and draped to exclude light. Eleven splendid officers of varying age sat at a high table on which was draped a succession of American flags. Amongst the military judges was a bald, plump man in a dark suit. In front of the president of the court, a stern, square-faced soldier, stood a microphone, and behind him the Stars and Stripes and various army banners crossed over each other to make an impressive pattern against the wall.

By contrast with this heavily populated upper table the court chamber itself seemed underpopulated. At the table for the defense sat a captain of perhaps thirty years of age, and Fratelli waited beside him. Darragh found himself staring at Fratelli and was, for reasons he could not define, hungry for signs. Fratelli merely looked in his direction and nodded once, curtly. A man who had tried to throttle him seemed to owe him more, Darragh thought. But then, there was hatred, wasn't there? He remembered that. Inspector Kearney had told him. Darragh formed words in his head and tried to transmit them to Fratelli.
I no longer dread you
. Imprisonment and accusation had crushed all that force, that look and air of grandeur, out of Fratelli.

The prosecutor, an older officer, asked Darragh about his meetings with Master Sergeant Fratelli: the day when Fratelli had asked him to say Mass for his aunt, and then the capture of Private Aspillon. The man spoke about the incident in a way which implied it was well known and investigated, and so in a way which seemed to promise Gervaise a continuing existence. Next, the prosecutor wanted to know what the Australian corporal had said about Fratelli's being the cause of the storm of fire in Lidcombe. In other matters, Darragh pleaded the seal of the confessional, and was able to say only that Fratelli had said to meet him, for the sake of spiritual guidance, outside the confessional. Then there was the issue of what Fratelli had said while trying to strangle him. No seal extended to that.

All that he was able quickly to recite, anxious to be let go again, back to the anonymity Aunt Madge had promised him was imminent.

Throughout, Fratelli seemed to be as abstracted from what was happening as Darragh was, and gazed ahead with a fixity alien to all his previous behavior as the young officer appointed to defend him began to ask Darragh questions with an edge to them. Did Father Darragh think a sane man would have tried to open fire on the shed in Lidcombe where Aspillon and Darragh huddled together? Without violating what he heard in the confessional, had he done his best to turn Mrs. Heggarty away from Fratelli? Then, an irrational question as far as Darragh understood it: to what extent did his own feelings for Mrs. Heggarty make him resent the idea that she would go with another man? This was a question the journalists at their table liked.

It was therefore very welcome to the numbed Darragh when the president of the court called for a suspension of that line of examination, put his hand over the microphone, and held an earnest discussion with the bald man in the suit—the observing judge from the New South Wales Supreme Court. Fratelli seemed to have drifted to sleep, or perhaps it was an act. At last the president unclasped his hand from the microphone. “I'm not going to let you pursue the direction you're heading in,” he told Fratelli's defender. The defending officer could, said the president, call as many specialist witnesses as he chose on the matter of Fratelli's sanity. He could call the men with whom Fratelli lived. There was no profit in expecting a decent gentleman of the cloth to make judgments on how Fratelli might have felt about this or that.

With the polite thanks of the court, Darragh was told he could go. He rose with his eyes still on Fratelli, who did not look back. But it did not matter. They had sent
him
behind the wire. They had made
him
say the rosary on his fingers and live without shoelaces. Darragh could see that within the walls, as a prisoner, he was the mere mirror of the courtier and warrior, the ghost of the fellow who commanded angelic white helmets. Near the door, one of Darragh's knees gave way and he fell into an involuntary demi-genuflection. Feeling foolish, he struggled upright. He heard the president call to his accompanying military escort, “Give the father a hand there, Private.”

And then he was outside, welcomed back by the secretary-priest and the nurse. As they descended the stairs and entered the large black car from the cathedral, the secretary murmured, as if it did not matter, “Did anything painful come out, Frank?”

“Nothing painful,” said Darragh. “He didn't look at me.”

After his hospital stay, they sent him to live at home, urging him not to forget to take his pills. The vicar-general had told him to go to the pictures, and for good long walks. “Your mother's area of Sydney is full of them,” he said. When he had been home three days, the vicar-general visited him again, this time in his mother's living room. Mrs. Darragh made tea, set out the finest cups, and then withdrew.

“Frank,” Monsignor McCarthy told him when they were alone, “the archbishop has been very busy considering what is best for you. What you should do when you get your medical clearance. We think it might be best if you were laicized for a time, until you're completely fit to work again.”

A fury rose in Darragh. “Laicized?” he said. He shielded his eyes from the idea. “That's a punishment, isn't it? In melodramas, it's called ‘being defrocked.' ”

“It's not meant to be a punishment, not in this case. It's to show great confidence in you. Many men who have crack-ups are given a few months off. To holiday. Even to do a bit of secular work. You see, we could get you work as a proofreader at the
Catholic Weekly
. And, of course, you could wear lay clothes for the time being.”

“So that everyone could tell I'm under some sort of probation,” Darragh said.

“That's not what it's meant to imply. It's meant to imply you're getting your health back. And there are many pleasant and untaxing jobs you could do ultimately, although you're not well enough now.”

“I don't have any suitable lay clothes.”

The vicar-general sighed. “You were wearing them the night you went out with Fratelli.”

“It was like fancy dress. I looked ridiculous. Fratelli and Trumble both said so.”

“Frank, don't resist us on all this. The archbishop is doing his best by you. You'll be exempt from saying your office and administering the sacraments. You'll have nothing to burden you. We'll keep in constant contact, and when you're ready to return . . . As for celibacy, you're a seasoned hand at that, Frank, and that will stand, of course. You don't have to be told that.”

“I don't,” said Frank. “I'll still have all the disadvantages of the priesthood.”

“You're sounding bitter, Frank. You'll see it's best. The archbishop wanted me to give you some . . . I suppose you could call it setup money. To buy a suit, and all the rest. I expect you'll be back at your duties at St. Margaret's or somewhere else by Advent. Or the New Year at the latest. . . .”

The vicar-general took a sheet of paper from a satchel. “This is a decree of laicization. And a letter from the archbishop. You may use them in case there's any confusion over who you are, and to show you really are a cleric and a priest.”

“Especially to myself,” said Darragh, with a tight smile.

“Come on, Frank. Rally, son! Take this as it's intended.”

Eventually Darragh's mother was asked to join them, and the vicar-general told her with a brittle joviality that Frank was to have four or five months' rest from work. That he ought to go on holidays—perhaps the Blue Mountains. “I have a cousin who's on a farm at Gilgandra,” said Mrs. Darragh. “Maybe Frank would like to go out there and stay, help them with things.”

The vicar-general said that would be a superb idea, and soon it was time for the man to go. Mrs. Darragh showed him off the premises, Darragh remaining behind so that he would not have to shake his hand.

Mrs. Darragh returned to him with a fretful hope in her face. “I think that's a good thing, don't you, Frank—a break? In mufti. You can go to race meetings in civvies. I wonder can I call Gilgandra? I wonder will the post office let me?”

For the sake of mercy to his mother, he announced with a demented emphasis, “I think it's a very good idea. I'm going to put on a suit coat right now and take Aunt Madge to the pictures.”

Almost at once, Darragh had a polite call from Mrs. Flannery. Another curate was coming to St. Margaret's and Darragh would need to return to the presbytery to clear out his room, to take away his books and clothes. “Is the monsignor there?” he asked, and Mrs. Flannery, with a remarkable biddability, went to fetch him.