The Good Priest, page 1
The
Good
Priest
Tina Beattie
Copyright © 2019 Tina Beattie
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: 0116 279 2299
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks
ISBN 9781789019605
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For my family.
Contents
PREFACE
1.ASH WEDNESDAY
2.FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY
3.SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY
4.FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
5.FIRST MONDAY OF LENT
6.FIRST FRIDAY OF LENT
7.FIRST SATURDAY OF LENT
8.SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
9.SECOND MONDAY OF LENT
10.SECOND WEDNESDAY OF LENT
11.SECOND THURSDAY OF LENT
12.SECOND FRIDAY OF LENT
13.THIRD WEDNESDAY OF LENT
14.THIRD THURSDAY OF LENT
15.FOURTH MONDAY OF LENT
16.FOURTH TUESDAY OF LENT
17.FOURTH THURSDAY OF LENT
18.FOURTH FRIDAY OF LENT
19.FOURTH SATURDAY OF LENT
20.FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
21.FIFTH MONDAY OF LENT
22.FIFTH TUESDAY OF LENT
23.FIFTH WEDNESDAY OF LENT
24.FIFTH THURSDAY OF LENT
25.FIFTH FRIDAY OF LENT
26.PALM SUNDAY
27.MONDAY OF HOLY WEEK
28.TUESDAY OF HOLY WEEK
29.WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK
30.HOLY THURSDAY
31.GOOD FRIDAY
PREFACE
The city of Westonville is fringed to the north by the muddy stretches of the Severn Estuary and the distant contours of the Welsh hills. The Church of Our Lady of Sorrows stands amidst neat rows of terrace houses. Yew trees shelter the graves of the nuns who rest in the cemetery behind the presbytery, which used to be a convent when there were nuns enough to fill it. Spring flowers bloom on a small child’s grave watched over by a marble angel. The angel glows eerily in the early morning mist, conspicuous among the modest wooden crosses that mark the other graves.
In the presbytery garden, a blackbird clicks a snail on the concrete path, while his mate sings her prayers to the dawn. The priest’s cat paws a dewy trail across the lawn, black as night, tail twitching, green eyes fixed on the distracted bird. The snail’s shell click click clicks. The blackbird sings. The cat pounces. The bird escapes. On the hard path, the mollusc writhes, soft and alive in its shattered shell.
ONE
ASH WEDNESDAY
John awakes and licks the sourness from his lips. The sense of a dream lingers, but its memory eludes him. Only a fading anxiety remains on the edges of wakefulness. He lies in bed and listens to the singing bird, then he crosses himself to start the day.
Morning dribbles through the curtains, smudging the room in grey. He rasps his hand against the stubble of his chin, pushes aside the polyester duvet, and settles his feet on the bedside rug. It’s Ash Wednesday.
He pulls back the curtains and looks down at the garden smeared in mist. He sees the cat lurking in the shrubbery, watching a blackbird that has alighted on the path. The cat is called Shulamite, Shula for short, after the beautiful black Beloved in the Song of Songs. The trees are greening with the buds of spring. The cherry tree spreads a blush of petals against the sky.
He goes downstairs to make coffee, then he takes his mug back to the bedroom and sits in the armchair next to the window. He crosses himself, and picks up his Missal from the table beside him.
Every Lent, he resolves to pray the daily Office as it should be prayed, though never yet has he managed to keep that resolution. This year he knows it will be no different, but he starts as he hopes to continue.
He tries to concentrate, but his gaze wanders to the window. Shula, bored with hunting, has jumped up onto the wooden bench beneath the cherry tree and is grooming herself.
The ghost of a child skips past. She’s nine years old, dressed in jeans and wearing a pink sweatshirt with matching ribbons in her hair. She moves with pent-up energy unleashed, her small body a coiled spring set free from the constraints of sitting through the Sunday Mass.
John wipes his hand over his eyes. When he looks again, she has disappeared.
There’s already a small queue of parishioners on the benches outside the confessional, when he makes his way through the presbytery door that leads into the church. A smell of incense and candlewax mingles with the remnants of last night’s pancake party, wafting in under the door from the presbytery kitchen. He goes into the sacristy and drapes a purple stole over his black shirt, then he makes his way to the confessional.
Sister Gertrude, ninety two and losing her mind, is first in. She kneels on the other side of the grille. He knows it’s her because Sister Martha is there to help her and he recognises the older woman’s croaked complaint before Sister Martha leaves, closing the door behind her. He sees the shadowy outline of Sister Gertrude’s veiled head through the lattice pattern of the grille.
A white lace curtain hangs across the grille, adding to the blur so that the body on the other side melts into the background. It was put there by Edith, who has appointed herself unofficial parish manager and minder to the priest. ‘It’s important for people to know they’re anonymous Father,’ she said.
He didn’t tell her that he recognizes their shapes and voices if they’re regular parishioners. Besides, very few of them kneel behind the grille. Most of them prefer to sit on the chair beside him, knees almost touching, speaking face to face. He doesn’t know what Edith prefers, because she goes to confession in another parish.
‘I prefer it that way Father. I don’t like you knowing my secrets, when I have to see you every day.’ It amuses him to think that Edith has a secret life that he knows nothing about – or at least, she wants him to think that she does.
Sister Gertrude is the only one of the parish sisters who still wears a veil. Her head wobbles with the onset of Parkinson’s disease. He uses the formal rite, because he knows she prefers it.
‘May God, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in his mercy.’ He reads a short extract from the day’s Mass readings.
She wants him to know that Sister Martha has been spying on her again. He murmurs sympathetically and invites her to confess her sins.
‘It’s not me that needs to confess, Father,’ she says. ‘It’s Sister Martha who needs to confess.’
‘Even so, Sister Gertrude, you’re the one in the confessional.’ He speaks mildly, seeking to reassure rather than to chide.
He waits, listening to the wheeze and huff of her breath. When he first came to this parish as a young curate ten years ago, she was a youthful octogenarian. She ran the parish outreach project, taking meals to the homeless and collecting coats and blankets to distribute on winter nights. She visited the sick and gave singing lessons in the parish primary school.
He waits for a moment of lucidity to arrive. Eventually it comes.
‘I’m jealous of her, Father. Sister Martha. She’s been married, you know. She has a grown-up daughter. She joined the community when her husband died. Her daughter comes to visit her. Her name is Patricia. She has a little girl. A beautiful little girl called Lily. Martha’s granddaughter. So pretty, Father. Six years old, she is.’ She falls silent. He waits. ‘The thing is, I’m jealous Father. I’m jealous of Martha. She’s had it all, you see. And I regret not having all that. Marriage. Children. Grandchildren.’ Another pause. ‘My vocation. It was a mistake, Father. God forgive me.’
A mistake? No, Gertrude. That’s not possible. His heart is beating too fast. If Sister Gertrude repents of her vocation, what then?
‘Your vocation was your response to God’s call, Gertrude, and maybe it was for the good of others more than yourself.’ He can hear the chomping of her jaw on the other side of the grille. Her head wobbles uncontrollably. He seeks refuge in well-worn consolations. ‘God is with us in our weakness, Gertrude. Of course God forgives you. Do you want to make an act of contrition?’
‘I know why she’s spying on me, Father.’
‘Why, Gertrude?’
‘She wants to steal my jewellery. She has a lover. They’re going to run away together, and she’s planning to sell my jewellery to pay for it. She thinks I don’t know, but I do. When I went to bed last night, I cau ght her hiding in my wardrobe. She was wearing my tiara. You know, the one Princess Diana gave me. I wore it once to the parish dance.’ She wheezes. Is she laughing? ‘With my red ball gown,’ she adds. She chomps and wobbles, then she says, ‘I told Sister Dorothy to phone the police, but she wouldn’t. She’s sly, that Sister Martha. They all believe her. If they had seen what I’ve seen …’ She stops abruptly.
He takes advantage of the silence to pronounce absolution. He wishes she would sit in the chair beside him so that he could rest his hand on her head. He makes do with speaking as gently as he can.
‘For your penance, Sister Gertrude, you should say one Hail Mary. You can say it now if you like.’ He doesn’t want her to leave the confessional with even that small burden of duty on her conscience. But she says nothing, and he sees her struggling to her feet. He opens the door and goes round to help her. Sister Martha is there, waiting on the front bench. She gets up and comes over to take the old woman’s arm. She’s wearing a dark blue skirt and cardigan with a white blouse. She thanks John and shuffles slowly across the aisle with Sister Gertrude, to await the beginning of Mass.
A vision of Sister Gertrude in a diamond tiara and a red ball gown swims into his mind. He tries to imagine what she looked like when she was young. She still has warm chocolate eyes. Perhaps she was a great beauty. He pushes aside the thought of a laughing young woman at a dance. As he goes back into the confessional he sees Jane Sanderson heaving herself off the bench.
She parks her sleeping toddler in his pushchair outside the door and sits down heavily in the chair next to John’s. She is pregnant again – mother of five and a sixth unplanned on the way. She says it’s God’s will – an uninvited gift perhaps, but who is she to turn it down? Again, and again, and again. She looks exhausted. Pale face, brown hair lank and unbrushed, as if time is too short for vanities. She crosses herself.
‘Bless me Father, I have sinned. It’s been a month since my last confession.’ Jane is devout. She comes to Mass every Sunday and often on weekdays too, after she has dropped the older children off at school. She confesses regularly, once a month.
He invites her to confess her sins before Almighty God, who hears and forgives our darkest faults. She begins to cry. Jane’s confessions often begin with tears, as if she carries them inside her from one month to the next, saving them all for Jesus.
‘I’m just so tired,’ she says. ‘I long to be serene and calm and patient, but I lose my temper. I keep shouting at the children. Yesterday I slapped Susy because she wouldn’t do her homework. My fingers left a red mark on her arm. She told me she hates me – and the baby. I’m so ashamed Father. She’s right to hate me. She’s only eight. I ought to understand. I ought to be there for her. I hate myself. I can’t cope. I’m tired all the time.’ She sniffs and rubs the back of her hand across her nose. He holds out the box of tissues he keeps beside him for such occasions. She takes one and blows her nose noisily. ‘And when Pete comes home from work – he works so hard, I know that – and after he was made redundant, having to take that job in a supermarket, it destroys him inside – and all I can do is complain. And – then we go to bed – and we haven’t made love for weeks, and sometimes I think that’s the only real pleasure he has left in life, but – I can’t bear him to touch me, Father. Because – because it’s all his fault. All these children. I want us to stop. But he can’t.’ John waits as she blows her nose and cries into the tissue. ‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘Take your time, Jane, he says. ‘It’s alright.’
Head down, she half-whispers to her bulging belly. ‘So Father, I hate myself, I hate my husband, and – and most of all I hate God.’ She twists the soggy tissue between her fingers. Eventually she shakes her head and offers him a wobbly smile. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I suppose there’s nothing more to say after that, is there?’
‘For your penance, Jane, I want you to kneel in front of the statue of the Pietà and say three Hail Marys.’ Then he’s astonished to hear himself saying, ‘And I want you to say after each Hail Mary, “I am beautiful and God loves me.”’ Where did that come from? He thinks of the beautiful young woman in a red ball gown and a tiara. He wonders if by some miracle it came from Sister Gertrude.
Jane looks surprised. ‘Do you really think that’s true, Father?’
‘Of course I do Jane.’
Her face is transformed. Jane has dimples when she smiles. He remembers those dimples, framed in a froth of white on her wedding day. She stands up, and he notices that the hem of her dress is coming undone. The dress might once have been bright yellow with white flowers – a springtime dress – but like its wearer it has been wearied by too many pregnancies, and its colours have faded.
He watches her go with a heavy heart.
The door opens and Deacon Jack Logan comes in and settles himself on the chair with a sigh of resignation. Jack’s wife Penny died of a heart attack eight months ago, at the age of seventy three. She and Jack lived in the parish all their lives. They were childhood sweethearts. They have eight children and seventeen grandchildren. Now he is inconsolable. His face is red with shame as he confesses that he is masturbating to relieve the loneliness. John aches, and he recognises it as the ache of envy.
Next in the queue is Luke. John feels a tightening in his chest as Luke sits down and rests his hands on his knees. His skin is smooth and pale against his faded jeans.
Luke has a soft Irish accent. He says he hasn’t been to Mass since Christmas. He’s had a short-term relationship and lots of hasty fucks. That’s what he calls them, ‘hasty fucks’. He goes cruising sometimes. He’s not confessing to being gay – he has made his peace with God about that – but he knows that this is not the way to live.
‘I’d like to meet somebody and get married, but that’s not possible, is it Father?’ There’s something sardonic in the way he says ‘Father’.
‘With God all things are possible, Luke.’
‘With God maybe, Father John, but not with the Church.’
‘It’s God’s Church, Luke.’
‘I’m not sure I believe that John.’
John allows a flicker of recognition to pass between them, then he fixes his gaze to the right of Luke’s face, where his dark hair curls over the top of his ear.
‘We must pray for a spirit of discernment,’ he says. ‘We’re only human. God is with us in our humanity.’
‘You don’t really believe it either, do you John?’
‘Believe what, Luke?’
‘That it’s God’s Church.’
‘This isn’t about my beliefs. This is the confessional. You need to think of yourself as being alone with Christ.’
‘That’s another problem. You know one of the reasons I haven’t been coming to Mass?’ He pauses, eyeing John up and down, calculating. ‘You’ve surely noticed, John, the crucifix above the altar. Have you ever really looked at it?’
‘Yes, of course I have.’
‘So you’ll know what I mean?’ Yes, John knows what he means. ‘It’s a man up there dying in agony, and I lust after that body. It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful. The muscles in his arms and legs. The shape of his head. Jesus John, he’s practically naked. And I feel so bad about the thoughts I’m having, when I’m meant to be concentrating on the Mass. I want to be alone with Christ, but not in the way you’re suggesting.’
‘Pray for God’s help, Luke. Some of the great mystics used the language of erotic desire in their prayers. Think of Saint John of the Cross. Our human desires are complicated, but what matters most is our desire for God. Maybe it’s better to desire him in that confused way, than not to desire him at all.’
He pronounces absolution, and as Luke leaves he keeps his eyes lowered and prays for mercy. He allows himself one quick glance at Luke’s buttocks in the firm clutch of his jeans. He wonders if he should have answered Luke’s question. Of course I believe this is God’s Church, Luke. Otherwise, how could I bear it?
Last in is Holly in a blaze of colour and a waft of perfume mingled with stale cigarette smoke. Holly has orange hair and she’s wearing a green scarf around her head. Her neck and wrists and hands are festooned with heavy silver jewellery. His heart lifts.
