A familiar melancholy, not revealed in his manner, accompanied Father Clohessy in the minutes it took him to reach the limestone figure of the rebel leader in the square that was the centre of the town. That he considered it necessary to keep private his concern about the plight of his Church did nothing to lighten the burden of his mood, any more than the temporary absence from the parish of Father Finaghy did. At present undergoing a period of treatment after a car accident, Father Finaghy was extrovert and gregarious, a priest who carried his faith on to the golf-course, where it was never a hindrance. ‘Arrah, sure we do our best,’ Father Finaghy was given to remarking. Father Clohessy missed his companionship; almost a protection it seemed like sometimes.
‘Have you change, Father?’ a young woman begged from a doorway, a baby asleep in a shawl beside her. ‘A few coppers at all today?’
She said she’d pray for him and he thanked her, finding the coins she hoped for. He knew her; she was usually there. He might have asked her when he’d see her at Mass, but he didn’t bother.
Music blared across the small square from Mulvany’s Electrical and TV, giving way to the careless whine of Bob Dylan. Mulvany had established for himself a tradition of celebrating the birthdays of popular entertainers by playing a tribute: today Bob Dylan was sixty. Although one song only was played on these occasions, and no more than once during the day it related to, Father Clohessy considered it a disturbance in a quiet town and had once approached Mulvany about it. But Mulvany had argued that it was nostalgic for the older citizens to hear the likes of Perry Como or Dolly Parton coming out of the blue at them, and exciting for the youngsters to have the new arrivals on the music scene honoured.
That a priest’s protest had been so summarily dismissed was par for the course, an expression often used by Father Finaghy in his own unprotesting acceptance of the decline of clerical influence. The times they were a-changing, Bob Dylan’s reminder was repeated yet again before there was silence from Mulvany’s loudspeakers.
‘Isn’t that a grand day, Father?’ a woman remarked to him and he agreed that it was and she said thank God for it. He wondered if she knew, if any of them knew, that when he preached he was angry because he didn’t know what to say to them, that he searched for ways to disguise his distress, stumbling about from word to word. ‘How’s Father Finaghy?’ the woman asked him. ‘Have you heard, Father?’
He told her. Father Finaghy was making good progress; he’d heard that morning.
‘Wouldn’t it be the prayers said for him?’ the woman suggested, and he agreed with that, too, before he resumed his journey through the town to where he and Father Finaghy lodged.
His tea was ready for him there. Comeraghview, called after the mountains in the faraway distance, was a grey detached house with a handkerchief tree in a front garden protected from the main road by grey iron railings. It was he and Father Finaghy who had decided that the presbytery could be put to better use, who with their bishop’s permission, and in the end with his blessing, had given it over to become the youth centre the town had long been in need of.
‘I have ham and a salad for you,’ Father Clohessy’s landlady said, placing this food in front of him.
‘I will of course,’ Mr Gilfoyle said when Justina asked him to read Breda Maguire’s letter to her. ‘Have you it there?’
Justina had, and Mr Gilfoyle suggested that they’d take it out the back where they’d be private. His daughter-in-law went ballistic at any mention of Breda Maguire these days, never mind having to hear of her doings in Dublin. Time was when someone who’d take her sister off her hands was a relief for Maeve, but now that the two girls were grown up and Breda Maguire had gone off the rails it was naturally different.
‘
He was a moustached man, grey-haired, once burly and on the stout side, less so now, since time had established in him the varying characteristics of advancing years. His pronounced stoop, an arthritic shoulder, trouble with gallstones, fingers distorted by Dupuytren’s Disease had made another man of him. In his day he, too, had been a plumber.
