The Good Priest (10 page)

Vincent's startled apologies met silence and no further explanation was offered.

Thinking about things, some kind of pattern seemed to be emerging. On Thursday the prayer group had, without explanation, failed to turn up, and the attendance at Mass on Sunday had been derisory. Twice, when he had rung to check on the health of a parishioner, the phone had gone dead and when he tried again his calls received no answer. Although Jean Fleming must, by now, be on the very edge of death, or dead, the messages he had left on Helen's answerphone had elicited no response. Even Satan seemed a bit remote.

Gouging an eye out of one of the potatoes with the point of his peeler, he muttered out loud, ‘If only Hugh would get a mobile!'

Out of desperation, having got a continuous tone every time he tried to contact Hugh, he had eventually spoken to another friend, Damian Malloy, a priest ministering to a parish in Dunfermline. But Malloy had had little to say and most of his replies were monosyllabic. In the course of their brief discussion, Father Vincent had conceded
that an innocent explanation could be provided for each apparent rebuff. It was undeniable that people lived hectic lives, had bad days, failed to answer their phones and overlooked messages. He knew that, had always known that; but, he explained, he was also aware of a definite change, something he could feel in his bones. His greetings in the street were no longer being returned, people avoided catching his eye. It was not, as Father Damian would have it, ‘just a bad day' – in other words, all in his head.

‘Sorry, Vincent, must dash,' his colleague had said, ending the discussion after less than a couple of minutes. ‘I've a first Holy Communion class to take. Can't be late or they'll pull the place apart. I'm rushing. I'll have to go now.'

He poured boiling water from the kettle over the potatoes, put the lid on the pan and then gave the beef casserole a stir. It looked dry and unappetising. A little red wine would perk it up, give it a better colour too.

As he was extracting the cork, he heard a loud rapping on his front door. Hurriedly putting the bottle down he went to answer it. Two large men were standing on the doorstep.

‘Come in, come in,' he said in a welcoming tone, waving them inside. He was delighted, despite the hour and his imminent meal, to have the company. One of them, he was sure, looked vaguely familiar. It would not be anything to do with marriage or baptism, as there was no woman with them. A funeral, possibly. With luck, once they'd got all the practicalities out of the way, they would accept a consoling glass of wine, perhaps finish off the
bottle with him. No doubt Father Damian had been right after all; the cold-shouldering had all been in his head.

With the two bulky men in it, his sitting-room seemed to have shrunk. Although he gestured for them to sit down they remained standing side by side, shoulders touching, looking awkward and uncomfortable.

‘Can I help?'

As he spoke, he suddenly realised that both men were glaring at him aggressively. The bigger of the two, a man whose pendulous beer-belly overflowed his belt, moved towards him, coming so close that Vincent stopped breathing momentarily to avoid the fumes of garlic on the stranger's breath. On the man's head was a coal-black wig, tilted at a slight angle, and minute beads of sweat were visible on his brow.

‘Know who I am, Father?' he demanded.

‘No, I can't say I do,' Vincent replied, shaking his head, ‘but please take a seat.' He gestured once more towards the chairs, trying to set the men at their ease and lighten the atmosphere in the room.

‘I'm Mark Houston and this is my pal, Norman.'

‘Right,' the priest said, feeling the blood rushing instantly to his neck and cheeks. His face felt hot and he knew he had gone red. He held out a hand as if to shake Houston's, but the man ignored his gesture.

‘Laura told me what you done to her,' Houston said.

‘I don't know what you mean. I haven't done anything to her.'

‘No? Don't give me that … shit! She's my wife. I love her, I believe her!'

‘Honestly, I don't know what you mean,' Vincent repeated, looking from one man to the other as if for an explanation.

‘Some fucking priest you are,' Norman said, shaking his head in disgust, ‘like a wolf in fucking sheep's clothing. Never understood why she went to your church in the first place. It's all mumbo-jumbo – and now you've been laying your hands all over her.'

‘I never touched her!'

‘She was unhappy, depressed. She just needed a friend, someone to talk to,' Houston added, suddenly raising his hands as if about to strike, ‘and you, you a priest, took advantage of her.'

‘No,' Father Vincent said, ‘that's not what happened at all. I have been counselling her, but, honestly, that's all.'

‘Counselling – that's a new word for it!' Norman guffawed.

‘You calling my wife a liar?' Houston demanded, his voice louder than before. ‘She's my wife, you understand? She's been lying to me, has she?'

His mouth unpleasantly dry, Father Vincent said: ‘No, not lying. I'm sure she's not lying, but I can assure you that I have never touched her … never taken advantage of her.'

‘Run out of nuns, eh?' Norman chipped in.

‘You don't belong here any more,' Houston said. ‘Do you understand me?'

‘How do you mean? This is my home, this is where I live,' Father Vincent replied, momentarily unable to think, puzzled by the man's remark.

As if enraged by his seeming defiance the two men advanced towards him and Norman poked him in the chest with a stubby forefinger.

‘Leave!' he commanded.

Shocked at this treatment in his own house, the priest did not immediately reply.

‘Leave!'

This time it was Houston's finger which prodded him, and as he did so the man growled in his ear, ‘Get the fuck out of here, Father, or we'll be back and make you. Understand? Force you to go. Everybody knows about you and your ways now. We've made sure of that. Kinross doesn't want you any more – not after what you done to Laura. You're not a proper priest …'

As Father Vincent remained silent, Norman slapped him hard across his cheek and, simultaneously, kicked him on the shin. Losing his balance, he fell to the ground, clutching his injured leg. Instantly, he felt a boot on his spine and then another kick, this time to his jaw. His mouth filled with blood and he almost choked on it, spluttering, finding himself spitting out one of his own teeth.

‘We mean it, Father,' said Houston, bending over and delivering his message directly into the priest's ear. ‘There's no place for you here. Do you understand?'

Vincent did not answer.

A kick to his nose followed. ‘Do you understand?'

‘I heard you,' the priest whispered, and the words were accompanied by the sharp whistling noise of his breath through the gap made by his lost tooth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘Is that you, Dominic?' Father Vincent asked, conscious once more of his new sibilance. In his mind's eye he could picture the irritation on the Monsignor's face as he realised the lateness of the hour.

‘It is, yes. To whom am I speaking?' The voice at the other end sounded blurry with sleep.

‘Vincent Ross.'

‘Very good, Vincent. What do you want with me?'

‘I'm sorry to bother you, particularly so late, but …' He hesitated, momentarily unable to find the words to describe his ordeal, knowing how sordid it would sound. ‘I know it's late but … I'm in trouble. In my parish. I'm in trouble …' The right words would not come.

‘Yes?'

‘I've been accused of … well, actually I'm not sure exactly what I am accused of. Having an affair – no, having sex with – one of my married female parishioners. I think that's it … something like that.'

‘It is late, yes. Very late, and I was away at a conference in Birmingham all day. I didn't get back until after nine. Forgive me, but could this not wait until the morning? It doesn't, to be frank, sound like an emergency.'

A pulsating pain was building up in his lower jaw. Vincent closed his eyes, forcing himself to continue talking. ‘I'm sorry, Dominic, but it is. I don't think that it can wait. You see, the woman's husband, plus one of his pals, a
heavy, have just been here, after me, threatening me. With the Bishop still in hospital I thought I ought to speak to someone. To you, as you …'

‘Heavens above! Are you all right, Vincent? Did they hurt you?' the Monsignor interjected, sounding startled and now fully awake.

‘Yes. Well, no, I've lost a tooth … otherwise I'm fine. But they say I have to leave – here, I mean, leave here. And they left me in no doubt that they meant it. So I'll have to go … for the moment at least. Until everything settles down.'

‘Mother of God! They hit you? When did all of this happen?'

Father Vincent glanced down at his watch. ‘I'm not sure. Forty minutes ago. Half an hour, maybe? I don't know. I've just washed my mouth out, and then I contacted you. I wasn't sure who to speak to, with James still being off.'

‘I'll contact the Dean right away and he'll be with you within the next hour. Somebody will be with you, to give you some support. Will you be all right on your own until he gets there?'

‘Fine, thanks, Dominic. I'll be fine.'

The paper tissue that he had been pressing against his mouth to staunch the bleeding had become soggy with blood. Disgusted, he threw it into the nearby bin and picked up his tumbler. His second mouthful of malt whisky went down more easily than the first, although he still did not enjoy the taste. It was as peaty and smoky as advertised, and therefore disgusting. But it would knock him out, be a good antiseptic, a good anaesthetic too,
quite possibly. The ache in his jaw was thumping away, moving up through his cheekbone and into his already tender left temple.

Satan, intuitively aware of his master's trauma, sat on his knee, providing comfort with his heavy, warm presence. In the silence, the sound of his purr was as loud as a chainsaw. The telephone rang and he picked it up.

‘Vincent?'

‘Hugh!' he replied, thrilled to hear his friend's voice.

‘Good to …'

The line went dead.

‘Hugh, for Christ's sake, get a sodding mobile!' he shouted down the receiver, before slamming it back onto its stand. The intense disappointment made him clench his teeth until he felt a fragment of his forcibly dislodged tooth crumble between them. Drink would wash it away.

Screwing up his face in anticipation of the unpleasant flavour, he forced himself to take another swig, quickly gulping the whisky down. Once it had gone, his tongue, with unerring accuracy, returned to explore the crater where his missing lower incisor had once been. It felt vast. As he probed its pulpy surface again, his mind involuntarily flashed back to the exact second when the man's boot made contact with his jaw. Feeling the kick afresh he instinctively put his hands in front of his face to ward off another blow. In his mind, the blows continued to land, with the shocking sound of the thud made by leather on flesh and bone. Unconsciously, he moved his lower jaw from left to right, right to left, checking that it had not been dislocated. Sickened by a sudden gush of salty blood
into his mouth, he rose and began to walk up and down the room, trying to distract himself, jerk his brain out of its obsessive loop. Twice, and unaware that he was doing so, he poked himself in the chest as Mark Houston's meaty hand had done, as if by repeating the action he would disarm it, rob it of its obnoxious significance. His pacing stopped only when the sound of the doorbell roused him, returned him to the present. Having peered through the dusty spyhole, he unlocked the front door to allow Father Bernard, the Dean, into his house.

The Dean stood in the vestibule, twirling his black umbrella from side to side, allowing the rain to drain from its gilded point onto the wooden floor by his feet. A satisfactory pool having accumulated, he removed his black Homburg from his head and tossed it like a deck quoit onto the nearby hook.

‘How are you, Vincent?' he said, shepherding him with a stick-thin arm round his back into his own sitting-room as if he was elderly and confused and in need of guidance. Seconds after his entry, and effortlessly, he had taken over the territory, his authority exercised so lightly as to be almost imperceptible. Obeying him seemed natural.

The disparity in size between the two men might, in other circumstances, have been comic. From his six-foot-six vantage point, the Dean literally looked down on the parish priest, as he did on most of humanity. It was difficult not to condescend from such a height and it, together with the way he carried himself, inspired confidence. A surprising number of people, reverting to some childhood
pattern, found themselves deferring to Bernard Hume as to a benign parent. Steering the diminutive Father Vincent towards his own armchair, he gestured for him to sit down before planting himself by the fireplace and muttering, as if to himself, ‘Awful. It all sounds quite awful.'

And then, looking into his colleague's eyes properly for the first time, he added in an almost exaggerated tone of concern, ‘And your face – what on earth has happened to your face, Vincent?'

‘Would you like a drink, a whisky?' Father Vincent asked, embarrassed by the whistle in his voice, pointing to the bottle by his chair.

‘Mmm … what is it? An eighteen-year-old, eh? My, my, that's a generous offer,' the Dean replied, picking up the bottle and bringing it to within an inch of his nose, checking the label again as if he could not believe what he had just read.

‘Dalwhinnie,' he murmured, ‘I'll certainly take a glass of that.'

Father Bernard looked like the establishment man that he was. Central casting, had it been searching for someone to play a priest, would likely have rejected him because he was too close to type; he was overly handsome with a well-shaped head, clear brown eyes and fine cheekbones. He would have appeared clichéd, too unimaginative a choice to be true to life. Fortunately, his brethren, those who had elected him Dean, were unconcerned by considerations of dramatic plausibility. They knew him to be competent, ‘a safe pair of hands' and, invariably, ‘the man for the job'. To be fair to him, he did not thrust himself
forward. He did not need to. People came to him, and thus his ambition remained concealed, hardly recognised even by himself. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he was always the chosen one: the head boy, the chairman, the spokesperson, and he did not have a subversive bone in his body. Any tendency to unorthodoxy in others both mystified and disturbed him. A desire for anarchy was incomprehensible, and he considered disaffection to be the affliction of the bitter, the unsuccessful or the disappointed. To date, life had run smoothly for him, and he was unaware of the large part that luck, including his looks, had played in it. Preferment, he believed, simply followed ability. Everywhere, although he did not examine the reasons, his face fitted.