Rachael. The first word on his lips and the last person on his mind – every, single day. Rachael. And Ruth, was that her name? He’d never known why he chose Ruth or why he’d imagined she was a girl. Rachael and Ruth, the family he might have had, the family he had had, the family he murdered.
Yes, you, a priest, and you murdered two people. And got away with it? The sentence you received has lasted not twenty-five or forty years, but life – in the truest, most literal sense of the word. And it isn’t quite over; nearly, but not yet. And the verdict, the judgement, the incarceration, the opprobrium, the label, the guilt; the sense of being trapped, set apart from the rest of the human race, discarded, unfit, deranged; the disgust, distress, disbelief . . . they are as real, as present for you now as they have ever been – and you are dying – there’s no possible escape. Yes, you will meet Rachael and Ruth soon, but first you must meet God, face to face, to explain to God how you, Father Sean, a priest for 50 years, murdered your family.
At first he’d just ‘soldiered on’, ‘done his bit’ –salved his conscience with the thought that he was chosen by God, to serve Him and His people in that parish, for this period of his life, and theirs. It was his task to serve them well and, flawed though he was, to be their parish priest. They needed . . . him. And he needed them. So his guilt, his crime were obstacles between him and his people and he would side-step them to get on with his real task of answering his vocation.
As a consequence he’d been a very hard-working parish priest – everyone said so. He’d thought nothing of sitting-up all night with a dying man or a suffering child – praying, consoling, sharing it all. A few hours’ sleep and he’d gone to the meeting with the council and secured the funding for the play-area, the Luncheon-Club, the outing. His homilies were clever yet witty, punchy yet profound and people noticed – and wrote to his bishop, told his colleagues and turned-up for Mass. In other words, in the eyes of the Church, he was a great success and he was soon the priest, paraded out by the bishop at every opportunity: on the website as the model for others considering their vocation, quoted in the literature given-out at every diocesan event, on the panel for external relations, chair of the community-outreach committee.
They’d called it ‘overwork’ and sent him to Rome, to the English College. There, for one glorious Summer, he’d lectured in the morning, slumbered after a liquid lunch each afternoon and ‘gone-native’ every evening, before returning home to type-up some theologised anecdotes to offer to his eager students, entranced by every snippet from the ‘coal-face’.
But God is a Joker, the greatest of all comedians – there was no other explanation for what came next – Brindley Bottom. “It’s a small parish,” said the Bishop, “but with some really big, meaty problems. And we’re sure that you’re the man to establish the new Mary Magdalene Home there. With your experience and with your contacts you’ll have no difficulty securing the funding and I’m giving you a team of first-rate people to help you. Fr Paul is young and a real high-flier; and Sister Margaret has a PhD from Oxford and a tongue like a leather strap – she’ll be your ‘hard-man’!” The Bishop paused, waiting for the appropriate response to his ‘bon mot’ – his token allegiance to political correctness. He’d nearly missed it, had to hurry to catch-up, for his mind was in one place and his heart in quite another.
The Mary Magdalene home – for ‘unmarried mothers’ –that’s what they’d called it in the 1950s when he was born – from the unmarried mothers’ home. His mother had been the Matron, but they didn’t know that when she was admitted and she’d been given the full-treatment or lack of it. It was only when they discovered who she was that bunches of flowers appeared and the side-room was miraculously available – he’d been premature.
It was to the Mary Magdalene home that Rachael would have been sent – to give birth to Ruth. That’s what should have happened – if he hadn’t murdered them both – with that most powerful of all words – ‘no’. She’d faced the truth, told him the truth; she’d been willing to set-aside her family, her upbringing, her community, everything – for him and for their child; she’d asked for help – and he’d said, ‘no’. The ‘no’ that led to her suicide and their unborn child’s death, her ‘no’ to the life he offered, instead of the life she’d asked for and was told, firmly, ‘no’. So much more powerful than the word ‘yes’, the word he’d spoken to God when he’d felt his calling, known that his vocation was genuine, saw the path ahead and taken it – only he hadn’t taken that path. That path had been replaced by the way that led to Brindley Bottom, to the Mary Magdalene home, which would be, they would surely tell his successors, “Fr Sean’s greatest legacy to the parish and his way of changing more lives, no, preserving lives, than he could have ever done, even with his majestic words or text-book worship.” Once again he told himself that his ‘yes’ would cancel-out that ‘no’ and his sacred vocation would blot-out unthinkable reality.
You sad man. You thought you were seeing, but you were blind. You made yourself deaf so that you could never again hear her voice. You wrapped yourself in good-works so that you would never feel any touch that could have been her touch. You imagined that the smell of incense is an antidote to the odour of humanity, the perfume of heaven an answer to the fetid ordure of earthly incarnation. You had tasted joy yet you savoured duty. You dulled your palette, you denied your senses. You salved your tongue, burned by a taste of love, with antiseptic administered to the open wound and used the pain to mask the passion.
His triumph astounded even him. The teaming of energetic priests and fiery nun, the strategy of sound business-sense and emotional blackmail, the precise timing of media ‘hits’ and a technique of inviting responses on the eve of the local council elections, paid dividends. The bishop was delighted and his career became a meteoric rise – not to purple, but to the ranks of those for whom doors are always open and from whom no secrets are hid. He became the bishop’s conscience, the diocesan guru on matters of compassion and community, the man who can – the kingmaker – a ‘confident’ to the high and mighty, a friend to everyone and a true friend to none.
Rachael. It was precisely at that moment that she reappeared: Rachael and Ruth. Not literally, of course, they were dead – he’d seen to that. But it was Rachael. Pregnant .
Sister Margaret apologised for interrupting the work of ‘the Great Man’ – her way of bringing him down to her size – but she was sure he’d want to help her. For a moment he thought she knew. Somehow she’d found out and that’s why she’d chosen, nay dared to come from Brindley Bottom to his lordship’s palace, to ascend to his private eyrie in the episcopal loft. The circumstances were unusual, she explained: a good family and a star pupil, a model of devotion and humility – Sister had her lined-up for her order’s novitiate and then – this. It was private, for the moment. Even her parents, her family, her friends were in ignorance, the girl had come to her first. And the baby’s father? That was it, and why she’d come, for Fr Paul, his successor, did seem to have made her his protégé . . . . .
Forgetting his fleeting analysis of her motives and setting-aside her obvious delight, Sean had had to think fast. In some circles and in that modern day and age there would be no problem – a pill, a pain, a pretence and no-one the wiser. One, perhaps two, vocations saved – a chemically-induced miscarriage and the wrinkles on perfection would fade away suddenly, like the grass. It was attractive, but that’s the point of temptation, he thought, this was the devil’s modus operandi. To him it was simply, clearly and obviously wrong.
But as wrong as Sister Margaret’s suggestion? For her an unexpected opportunity for the girl to explore her calling for a year in their Croatian House, a grateful childless mother and the total discretion that only nuns can guarantee would sort it all out – leaving her with knowledge that would enslave Fr Paul forever – was the perfect solution. His full knowledge of it would be guilt by association and his complicity his penance, he knew.
It was all gradual of course. Doors were still unlocked, but took their time to open; secrets weren’t so much hidden as ‘lost somewhere in the archives’. ‘Yes’ inexorably became ‘no’. Nothing to evidence what had changed, yet it had. At his age retirement in some form was always an option and his appointment as visiting doctoral fellow at Ushaw was just that. A small flat in South Street and the compensation of a scenic walk past the splendours of Durham Cathedral each day to the bus station helped, as did the lively mind and ready humour of his supervising professor – he even wrote a book on Pastoral Care in the Parish. The proximity of Durham station helped too when he received his unwelcome diagnosis and began his treatment in the Bexley Wing of St James’ Hospital in Leeds. For a few years life had been very good, but now the cancer was back and the end was in sight.
They’d relieved him of his duties – not quite kindness, but the surest remedy for the headaches and the mood-swings that had become an embarrassment to his students and fellow-tutors alike. They gave him a housekeeper to ensure he was fed and watered, bathed and shaved, that he slept between clean sheets and his shirts were ironed. Ironically it left him with nothing to attend to but his most demanding task, his most stressful encounter – himself and Rachael and Ruth.
His confessor helped, after he’d recovered from the shock of being deceived for nearly four decades – Sean was a fine actor and so very self-controlled. Having told his story there was a kind of release, but never a permanent escape, a full unbinding – the voice inside his head ensured that. He’d always imagined it was his conscience: the part of him that checked his impulses, forced him to question before acting, guarded his reputation, kept him on the ‘straight and narrow’, the path that said ‘yes’ to God and ‘no’ to that baser self he so mistrusted.
Without me, what would your life have been? You would have amounted to nothing, done nothing, been nothing. Yes, I was hard on you – asking questions you could not face, teasing out the murkier side of your motivation, holding-onto your flaws to prevent complacency, reminding you each night of your failures and your faults to keep you focussed on clear goals and measurable success. Hard but fair, cruel to be kind.
But lately, in his moments of exhaustion, at his lowest ebb, when the treatment had taken its toll, he had become aware of another voice. A voice that created pictures in his mind of places he was led to where all he could do was – nothing. The weakness, which at first had been alarming, was now so welcome – there was no longer energy for arguing, no power to respond or to reason, no strength to be anything – but there.
And yet, as that appalling song so popular at funerals would proclaim, that blasphemous ballad-singer would squawk – he’d done it his way and now he faced the final curtain . . .
Yes, the final curtain and what lies behind it – or should we say ‘who’? Are your arguments ready, is your justification sound? Can your work, your achievements be a sufficient counterbalance to those two young lives lost, stolen, ripped-out of God’s hands? Without your bishop to speak for you, without Sister Margaret at your side, without the adulation of Fr Paul, will the cold facts save you? There is no expiation for your guilt, no way of avoiding the consequences of your actions, no ‘ducking and diving’ that can save you now. Here your witty words are worthless – here there are only the emotionless lists of your deeds and the objective descriptions of your depravity. Here you face the final curtain – naked and alone.
The awe-full truth seared his brain, shattered his last defences. He could only weep – for the guilt, the Catholic Guilt was unbeatable. The nuns and priests, parents and teachers held him, still. He knew now, as never before, that their voice inside his head . . . said it . . .
They cannot know you as I know you, Sean. They have never known the sweet love that we shared, the life-giving passion that created our child. They can never be as close to you as I was – and shall be again – for I am here to bring you the peace that eluded you all the years of your earthly exile. I was sent and I do not come alone. For here is another, the gift of love that you gave to me, that we let go of and received again. Here is the completeness of our love and the fullness of our lives. Here Sean, in this place, we are truly free. Here we live, together again. Here, now, forever. Love has spoken –listen well – listen to love– and live.
Rachael. The first word on his lips and the last person on his mind – Rachael. And Ruth.
And so Sean listened, said ‘yes’ and lived.
