“Oh, she’s in Father,” said Jean O’Donnell, looking back over her shoulder with an uneasy air about her. “Come in, I’ll get her out of her room.”
Lafferty followed the diminutive woman in front of him into the living room. Twin boys, aged about ten were sitting on the couch watching television. “Hello you two,” said Lafferty, sitting down opposite them. “What are you watching?”
“The Bill,” replied one of them. His tone conveyed that they were not exactly pleased at being interrupted, nor were they at any great pain to conceal the fact.
“Put that television off, Neil,” commanded his mother. “Father Lafferty has come to see us.”
Jean O’Donnell kept a fixed smile on her face, hoping to counteract the surliness of her sons.
“Maybe they can watch next door?” suggested Lafferty. “Do they have a set in their room?”
Jean O’Donnell looked vaguely unhappy at the suggestion, but the boys were off like a shot. “It’s not right,” she said. “They shouldn’t be watching television while you’re here.”
Lafferty thought she seemed strangely vulnerable when she said it and could see what she was thinking. “Times change, Jean,” he said.
Jean O’Donnell nodded briefly, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge it, even when it was presented to her as fact. “I’ll fetch Mary,” she said and left the room.
Lafferty examined his surroundings, taking in personal touches rather than the furnishings which could be found with only minor differences in any of the other flats in the block. There was a shield on the mantle with Joseph O’Donnell’s newly-etched name. Crossed darts in the centre told hot it had been won. A Maeve Binchey novel lay on the corner of the hearth with Jean O’Donnell’s spectacles lying on the cover. Lafferty could see that it was a library copy from the plastic protector on the cover. How many other people in the block visited the library, he wondered — and concluded that the fingers of one hand might suffice for the answer. Apart from anything else, the nearest public library was a bus ride away. In fact the nearest anything to these flats was a bus ride away. It was a major factor in their unpopularity.
Lafferty could hear whispered arguing outside the door. It seemed to go on for an age before the door opened and a teenage girl was pushed into the room. “She was just going out, Father,” smiled Jean. “But she’s got time for a word before she goes.”
Lafferty stood up and smiled. “Nice to see you, Mary, it’s been a long time.”
The girl, dressed in leather jacket and tight jeans looked up from beneath hair that cascaded over her eyes and said, “Sorry, I’ve been a bit busy.” Her voice was laced with resentment. She shrugged off her mother’s hand which was resting on her shoulder.
“Jean, why don’t you leave us to have a little chat?” suggested Lafferty.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Jean O’Donnell.
“Sit down, Mary,” said Lafferty pleasantly. “Are you off somewhere special?”
“Down the coast on the bikes,” replied the girl.
“The bikes? Motor bikes you mean?”
Mary nodded. She was a pretty girl, a little small for her fifteen years but well proportioned.
“Sounds exciting. But you don’t have your own bike at your age surely?” asked Lafferty.
“I’m going on the back of Steve’s.”
“Your boyfriend?”
Mary nodded and said, “He’s got a GPZ 500.”
“The Kawasaki’s a nice bike,” said Lafferty.
“You know about bikes?” asked Mary, surprised.
“Just because I’m a priest doesn’t mean I’m boring,” replied Lafferty. “I’ve always had a love of motor cycles. I keep abreast of what’s on the road these days. There’s a lot of nice machinery around.”
“Steve’s bike is the nicest. He takes good care of it. He wants to make bikes his career. He’s really good. Everybody says so.”
“How old is Steve, Mary?” asked Lafferty.
“About twenty-three. What does that matter?” said Mary defiantly.
“And you are fifteen.”
“I’m not a little girl! I know what I’m doing.”
“Maybe you do,” said Lafferty kindly. “But your mother is worried sick about you and that’s not right.”
“I keep telling her not to worry about me — but she won’t listen! What else can I do?”
“Your mother worries about you because she loves you. Try to see things from her point of view.”
“She won’t see them from mine!”
“Maybe you’re both being a bit stubborn,” said Lafferty.
“I’m going out with Steve and nothing’s going to change that!” insisted Mary.
Lafferty shrugged and asked, “What’s your father saying to all this?”
Mary lifter her hair from her forehead and revealed a black and blue mark above her right eye. “This.”
“And you’re still planning to go out this evening?”
“He’s down the boozer playing darts. I’m going out with Steve,” said Mary defiantly.
“And your mother’s left standing in the middle?” said Lafferty.
Mary was stung into saying, “She shouldn’t be! I don’t want her to be! I don’t want to be like her! I don’t want to spend my life in a dog kennel in the sky, waiting every night for some drunken bum to come home every night. I want to live! I want to enjoy myself. Is that so wrong? Don’t answer that. Your bloody church depends on people like her!”
Lafferty was wounded. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“You know,” said Mary.
“Tell me.”
“Mugs. Gullible mugs. Always on the losing side, giving away everything they’ve got, doing what they’re told. Yes Fathering, No Fathering, wasting away their dreary lives because they’ve been conned into believing things are going to get better in the hereafter. But they’re not, are they? Because there is no bloody hereafter. It’s all a bloody con!”
“Mary! Control yourself,” stormed Jean O’Donnell as she burst into the room. “How dare you speak to Father Lafferty like that! I’m so sorry, Father. I don’t know what’s come over her, I honestly don’t.”
Lafferty held up a hand and said, “There’s nothing to be sorry for Jean. Mary has a right to her point of view and I am flattered that she’s confided in me. It’s only healthy at her age to question everything otherwise we’d never make any progress in this life.”
“You’re too understanding, Father.”
Lafferty shook his head and said, “Mary strikes me as an intelligent, mature girl who is well able to form her own opinions and decide for herself what is right and what is wrong. I think you should trust her.”
Jean O’Donnell looked at her daughter without saying anything but Lafferty was pleased to see a hint of softness appear in Mary O’Donnell’s eyes.
“And you, young lady,” said Lafferty to Mary. “should make sure you’re deserving of that trust.”
“Yes, Father,” said Mary. “I’m late. I’ll have to go.”
“Enjoy yourself,” said Lafferty. “And if you’ll take one last word of advice?”
“Yes, Father?”
“Find a boyfriend with a CBR 600. It’ll beat the hell out of a GPZ500.”
When Mary had gone, Jean served tea and put a plate of Digestive biscuits on the hearth between them.
“Help yourself, please,” she said.
Lafferty took a biscuit and said, “You look worried Jean.”
“I’m thinking about Joe and what he’ll do when he finds out she’s been out with the bikers again.”
“He’s not usually a violent man is he?” asked Lafferty.
Jean’s face softened. She said, “Far from it but that young madam can push him to the limit. She did that the other night.”
“I saw the mark,” said Lafferty.
Jean was embarrassed. “She deserved it after what she said to him. Called him a drunken sot to his face.”