‘Will we take a stroll in the garden, Donal?’
‘Whatever would be right for you, Father. Whatever.’
Father Meade unlatched the french windows and went ahead of his visitor. ‘I’m fond of the garden,’ he said, not turning his head.
‘I’m on the streets, Father.’
‘In Dublin, is it?’
‘I went over to England, Father.’
‘I think I maybe heard.’
‘What work was there here, all the same?’
‘Oh, I know, I know. Nineteen-what would it have been?’
‘Nineteen eighty-one I went across.’
‘You had no luck there?’
‘I never had luck, Father.’
The old man walked slowly, the arthritis he was afflicted with in the small bones of both his feet a nuisance today. The house in which he had lived since he’d left the presbytery was modest, but the garden was large, looked after by a man the parish paid for. House and garden were parish property, kept for purposes such as this, where old priests—more than one at the same time if that happened to be how things were—would have a home. Father Meade was fortunate in having it to himself, Miss Brehany coming every day.
‘Isn’t it grand, that creeper?’ He gestured across a strip of recently cut grass at Virginia creeper turning red on a high stone wall with broken glass in the cement at the top. Prunty had got into trouble. The recollection was vague at first, before more of it came back: stealing from farms at harvest time or the potato planting, when everyone would be in the fields. Always the same, except the time he was caught with the cancer box. As soon as his mother was buried he went off, and was in trouble again before he left the district a year or so later.
‘The Michaelmas daisy is a flower that’s a favourite of mine.’ Father Meade gestured again. ‘The way it cheers up the autumn.’
‘I know what you mean all right, Father.’
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Father Meade asked: ‘Are you back home to stop, Donal?’
‘I don’t know am I. Is there much doing in Gleban?’
‘Ah, there is, there is. Well, look at it now, compared with when you took off. Sure, it’s a metropolis nearly.’ Father Meade laughed, then more seriously added: ‘We’ve the John Deere agency, and the estate on the Mullinavat road and another beyond the church. We have the Super-Valu and the Hardware Co-op and the bank sub-office two days in the week. We have Dolan’s garage and Linehan’s drapery and general goods, and changes made in Steacy’s. You’d go to Mullinavat for a doctor in the old days, even if you’d get one there. We have a young fellow coming out to us on a Tuesday for the last year and longer.’
A couple of steps, contending with the slope of the garden, broke the path they were on. The chair Father Meade had rested on to catch the morning sun was still there, on a lawn more spacious than the strip of grass by the wall with the Virginia creeper.
‘Still and all, it’s a good thing to come back to a place when you were born in it. I remember your mother.’
‘I’m wondering could you spare me something, Father.’
Father Meade turned and began the walk back to the house. He nodded an indication that he had heard and noted the request, the impression given to Prunty that he was considering it. But in the room where he had earlier fallen asleep he said there was employment to be had in Gleban and its neighbourhood.
‘When you’ll go down past Steacy’s bar go into Kingston’s yard and tell Mr Kingston I sent you. If Mr Kingston hasn’t something himself he’ll put you right for somewhere else.’
‘What’s Kingston’s yard?’
‘It’s where they bottle the water from the springs up at the Pass.’
‘It wasn’t work I came for, Father.’
Prunty sat down. He took out a packet of cigarettes, and then stood up again to offer it to the priest. Father Meade was standing by the french windows. He came further into the room and stood behind his desk, not wanting to sit down himself because it might be taken as an encouragement by his visitor to prolong his stay. He waved the cigarettes away.
‘I wouldn’t want to say it,’ Prunty said.
He was experiencing difficulty with his cigarette, failing to light it although he struck two matches, and Father Meade wondered if there was something the matter with his hands the way he couldn’t keep them steady. But Prunty said the matches were damp. You spent a night sleeping out and you got damp all over even though it didn’t rain on you.
‘What is it you don’t want to say, Mr Prunty?’
Prunty laughed. His teeth were discoloured, almost black. ‘Why’re you calling me Mr Prunty, Father?’
The priest managed a laugh too. Put it down to age, he said: he sometimes forgot a name and then it would come back.
‘Donal it is,’ Prunty said.
‘Of course it is. What’s it you want to say, Donal?’
A match flared, and at once there was a smell of tobacco smoke in a room where no one smoked any more.
‘Things happened the time I was a server, Father.’
‘It was a little later on you went astray, Donal.’
‘Have you a drink, Father? Would you offer me a drink?’
‘We’ll get Rose to bring us in a cup of tea.’
Prunty shook his head, a slight motion, hardly a movement at all.
‘I don’t keep strong drink,’ Father Meade said. ‘I don’t take it myself.’
‘You used give me a drink.’
‘Ah no, no. What’s it you want, Donal?’
‘I’d estimate it was money, Father. If there’s a man left anywhere would see me right it’s the Father. I used say that. We’d be down under the arches and you could hear the rain falling on the river. We’d have the brazier going until they’d come and quench it. All Ireland’d be there, Toomey’d say. Men from all over, and Nellie Bonzer, too, and Colleen from Tuam. The methylated doing the rounds and your fingers would be shivering and you opening up the butts, and you’d hear the old stories then. Many’s the time I’d tell them how you’d hold your hand up when you were above in the pulpit. ‘Don’t go till I’ll give it to you in Irish,’ you’d say, and you’d begin again and the women would sit there obedient, not understanding a word but it wouldn’t matter because they’d have heard it already in the foreign tongue. Wasn’t there many a priest called it the foreign tongue, Father?’
‘I’m sorry you’ve fallen on hard times, Donal.’
‘Eulala came over with a priest’s infant inside her.’
‘Donal—’
‘Eulala has a leg taken off of her. She has the crutches the entire time, seventy-one years of age. It was long ago she left Ireland behind her.’
‘Donal—’
‘Don’t mind me saying that about a priest.’
‘It’s a bad thing to say, Donal.’
‘You used give me a drink. D’you remember that though? We’d sit down in the vestry when they’d all be gone. You’d look out the door to see was it all right and you’d close it and come over to me. “Isn’t it your birthday?” you’d say, and it wouldn’t be at all. “Will we open the old bottle?” you’d say. The time it was holy wine, you sat down beside me and said it wasn’t holy yet. No harm, you said.’
Father Meade shook his head. He blinked, and frowned, and for a moment Miss Brehany seemed to be saying there was a man at the front door, her voice coming to him while he was still asleep. But he wasn’t asleep, although he wanted to be.
‘Many’s the time there’d be giving out about the priests,’ Prunty said. ‘The hidden Ireland is Toomey’s word for the way it was in the old days. All that, Father. “Close your eyes,” you used say in the vestry. “Close your eyes, boy. Make your confession to me after.”’
There was a silence in the room. Then Father Meade asked why he was being told lies, since he of all people would know they were lies. ‘I think you should go away now,’ he said.
‘When I told my mother she said she’d have a whip taken to me.’
‘You told your mother nothing. There was nothing to tell anyone.’