David Dickinson: Death of a Pilgrim

Father Kennedy worried a great deal about the very rich. He saw all too clearly that the leisure of those who lived off the interest on their money, or even, in some cases, the interest on the interest, without needing to work at all, could be corrosive. Souls could be lost in the fripperies of the season as easily as they could in the brothels and the gambling dens of the Bronx. He worried a great deal, Father Kennedy, about camels and their ability to pass into the kingdom of heaven. Three times he had asked to be transferred to a parish in one of the slums of New York. Three times the church authorities had refused. The Archbishop always maintained that remaining in Manhattan would be good for Father Kennedy’s soul. The truth was somewhat different. Father Kennedy was the greatest benefactor of the poor in the whole of New York. Not personally, but through his parishioners, who would contribute funds for the education or housing of the poor, for the support of the destitute, for building new churches where none had been before. It was all so easy. The rich just reached for their chequebooks as they might hold out their hands for a glass of champagne at a Fifth Avenue soiree. After watching this waterfall of charity dollars for years Father Kennedy himself had become cynical. They’re trying to buy their way in with false currency, he thought. God doesn’t want their money, he wants their souls. So, while he never stopped the cascade of charity, he was beginning to think about deeds rather than dollars as the way to improve the spiritual health of his flock.

Michael Delaney’s staff pressed anxiously around him as he returned to his mansion. None dared to ask the question they most wanted to – how was James? Was he still alive? The young man’s father refused all offers of refreshments except for a large glass of bourbon and took himself off to bed. He slept badly. He dreamt he was in a cemetery looking at his wife’s grave, the two marble angels he had had erected a year after her burial towering above the marble tomb. But now, by her left side was another tomb, to his son, passed away in the month of November 1905. This month. Then he noticed what was happening by her right-hand side. Four gravediggers were excavating a third burial place for another Delaney. It could only be himself, last of the line. There was no inscription yet on his grave, he realized. He might have years to go still. With that comforting thought he woke up to a darkened city at a quarter to six in the evening.

He was early at the chapel in St Vincent’s Hospital. Somebody had removed the guttered candles and replaced them with fresh ones. Delaney began to light them, remembering to say the words the Matron had told him earlier that day. Father Kennedy came and sat down with Delaney in the very first row, a large silver cross in front of them. Just repeat the words after me, he said to Delaney, that’s all you need to do for now. They started with Hail Mary.

Two doctors, one middle-aged and one very young, were examining James Delaney. The nurse had moved unobtrusively to the back of the room. They agreed that he looked a little better, that the terrible chalky colour of the previous day was less pronounced.

Father Kennedy and Michael Delaney had moved on to the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us . . .

And so a strange ritual evolved. Early in the mornings Delaney would pray with Father Kennedy in the chapel and relight the candles while the doctors looked at his son. He would wait by the bedside during the day and early evening, departing occasionally to care for his business or buy out a competitor. One of the nuns would sit on the other side of the young man and stroke his hand. Delaney now had reading matter, a missal provided for him by Father Kennedy. He also had a special prayer of his own. It was, he knew, somewhat unorthodox, owing more to contemporary business practice than to the Gospels. If God would save his son, he would, in return, make a mighty offering to God. The nature of the offering was to be determined by Father Kennedy, who smiled delphically when told about the Delaney Compact. Early in the evening all the nuns and Matron would pray for James for half an hour. His father would light the candles and say some of the new prayers he had been taught by Father Kennedy. As the priest watched the intensity of Delaney’s concern, the depth of his grief, he wondered if there might be other grounds for sorrow and remorse in his past, now mingling with anxiety for his son James.

As Delaney became a part of this medical world, so different from his own, he found his eyes roaming the wards and the corridors for a sight of Sister Dominic. Even in her formal Matron’s clothes, he thought, you could still discern the woman underneath. Lust began to flow through him as the medicines and the drugs flowed through the veins and arteries of the patients. Damn it, man, he said to himself, not here, not now. All your life you have followed your basic instincts. The temporary delights of fulfilment have all too often been followed by recriminations and remorse. This is neither the time nor the place for such base thoughts. Here, above all else, you must focus on the life of your son, James. But it was no good. His lust did not grow weaker. It grew stronger. Fantasies filled his mind, of those clothes falling to the floor, of his holding such a beautiful creature in his arms. Matron, for her part, was not insensitive to what was happening to Michael Delaney. She knew. She had seen this phenomenon all too often before. She took great care to pay even less heed to her appearance. That, had she but known it, inflamed Michael Delaney further, clothes slightly out of place, hair not properly tucked in yielding up yet more erotic thoughts. Sister Dominic did change her ways in one respect. Every evening when she and her Sisters prayed for James Delaney in the little chapel, she prayed for Michael Delaney too.

Then the doctors moved. For over a week they had monitored every medical detail they could measure about the condition of James Delaney, still lying motionless in his hospital bed. Neat folders recording his current state were tucked away in the cupboard beside the bed. The following day was a Saturday. They asked Delaney to a meeting in the library at ten o’clock in the morning. If he wished, Father Kennedy could accompany him. Matron was to attend too. All that evening the nurses and the Sisters looked at the Delaneys with great pity. All too often they had seen mothers and fathers or husbands and wives coming out of that that room, holding on to each other in desperation, weeping their way down the corridors and out into the fresh air. The library was the place the doctors brought close relatives when they had to tell them that their loved ones were about to die.

The library of St Vincent’s was on the top floor of the hospital, looking out over the tall buildings of the city. A storm was brewing outside, angry bursts of rain battering at the windows, gusts of wind blowing the hats off the pedestrians and rattling and shaking the cabs as they made their way around the streets. As Delaney and Father Kennedy filed in for their ten o’clock meeting that Saturday morning, the senior doctor, George Moreland, waved them into a couple of comfortable chairs by a low table in the centre of the room. Dr Moreland was a graduate of La Salle University, summa cum laude, and had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Harvard Medical School. He was six weeks off his fortieth birthday. He was short and his hair, to his great regret, was receding rapidly. His colleague, Dr Stead, was ten years younger with exactly the same medical pedigree as his superior. Together they represented one of the most formidable medical teams in their field in the United States.