David Dickinson: Death of a Pilgrim

Father Kennedy had been telling all his parishioners about the miraculous recovery of James Delaney. It was, he assured them, a blessing from God and St James the Greater. He had amended his sermon on the workings of God’s grace around the theme of the Miracle in Manhattan, as he referred to it. He was going to preach the sermon after Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

The Father had been thinking a lot about Delaney’s pact with his creator. Such pacts, he knew from personal experience, were sometimes found in families struck with terminal diseases and desperately trying to buy a reprieve for their loved ones with the promise of some unspecified future conduct. He knew, Father Kennedy, that he could ask for a new hospital, new schools, fresh charities to support the starving and destitute of New York. But all Michael Delaney would have to do would be to hand over the money. There would not be any sacrifice, for Father Kennedy had private intelligence of the relative wealth of the New York patrician classes in his parish which told him that Delaney was one of the richest of the rich, a millionaire’s millionaire.

‘Come in, Father,’ said Delaney, ‘come in! Would you care for a glass of John Powers?’ Father Kennedy nodded and settled down in a chair by the fire.

All through his son’s illness Delaney had lost weight. His shirt collars grew loose. His trousers sagged at the waist. He discussed with his valet the possibility of buying a whole new wardrobe to suit his new figure. The man advised him to wait. Now, very slowly, he was beginning to fill out again.

‘I’ve been thinking about my deal with God, Father.’ Delaney plunged straight into business. He made the Delaney Compact sound like a commercial contract, a takeover perhaps, or the sale of some of his blocks of New York real estate. ‘And I’ve been thinking about that St James the Greater man and the pilgrimage to Santiago.’

‘I am glad you have been thinking about such matters, Michael. It may do some good to your immortal soul.’

Delaney resisted the temptation to say ‘To hell with my immortal soul.’ He pressed on.

‘Can you tell me some more about the pilgrimage, Father? Has it died out completely, or do people still go on it?’

Father Kennedy had no idea what was coming next. He wondered if Delaney was going to offer to buy up the city of Santiago, or to turn the memory of the pilgrimage into a subsidiary of one of his great companies.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘it hasn’t died out completely, the pilgrimage. But it’s only a trickle, a tiny trickle of what it used to be. It takes a long time, you see, to walk from one of the starting places in France all the way to the far corner of Spain.’

‘I’ve been thinking, Father, and I want to put a proposition to you. It may sound strange. You may think I’m mad. But what about this? Why don’t I and selected members of my family go on this pilgrimage? I’d pay for them all, of course. It would be a thank-you to God, don’t you see? For my James’s life.’

Father Kennedy thought another miracle had come to Manhattan. Deeds in the service of the Almighty were going to replace the bankers’ drafts to New York’s charities. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The good of the Delaney soul, for a while at least, was going to replace the good of the Delaney wallet. Maybe Michael Delaney would get to meet St Peter up above after all.

‘What a splendid idea, Michael! I’m sure our Lord would approve. Would you like me to think about some of the details, possible starting points and so on? Do you have any idea of when you would like to set off?’

‘Not in this weather certainly,’ said Delaney. ‘I don’t know if James will be strong enough to do the whole thing – if we go, that is. I’d have to hire somebody to work out the details. Easter perhaps? Early summer? To start, I mean.’ Delaney was not an expert on European weather patterns but he thought it might be easier to make the journey once the rains and storms had gone.

‘Easter might be good, very propitious to start a pilgrimage at one of the greatest festivals of the Christian year.’ Father Kennedy thought of the amount of prayer power, nun power, candle power expended on the salvation of young James Delaney. Surely this would be a fitting recompense.

‘And would you come with us, Father? To be our spiritual guide? I don’t know very much about pilgrimages, you see. I can dimly remember the garish cover of a book in one of my school classrooms called The Pilgrim’s Progress . Will we visit the Slough of Despond? The City of Destruction? Will we see those strange places on the way? Would we dally in Vanity Fair?’

‘I think those places are metaphors, if you like, of the mental state of the particular pilgrim at any particular point along the route,’ said Father Kennedy with a smile. ‘There were many reasons for pilgrimage in those earlier times. Some went to seek forgiveness for their sins. Some went as part of a pact with the Lord. Some went seeking spiritual enrichment in the long journey and the adventures that would surely befall a traveller on such an expedition. Some, no doubt, went partly for fun. It was a holiday, as it were, as well as a quest. Plenty of different food and wine to sample on the way to Santiago, the city of James after whom your own son is named.’

Father Kennedy spent a morning in the New York Public Library in the days after Christmas. On New Year’s Eve he was back in his usual seat in the Delaney drawing room with another glass of John Powers whiskey. He brought various suggestions with him. Their great trek – for Father Kennedy had decided that he would accompany the pilgrims for part of the way at least – could start from the town of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne in southern France, one of the traditional setting-off places for the pilgrimage, and proceed down through France to Spain and the great cathedral in Compostela. Le Puy and the other starting places like Vezelay, he told Delaney, were like medieval railway stations in the busiest times for pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, a cross-over point for converging pilgrims coming from Germany and the countries of the East who were funnelled down through Le Puy-en-Velay on to the route to Compostela. An earlier version of Grand Central Station in New York perhaps. Father Kennedy didn’t expect them to walk all the way. Sometimes they would be able to take a train or a boat. Horse lovers would be able to ride for part of the journey.

Contemplating the scale of the enterprise, the vast distances, the enormous expense, Father Kennedy wondered, as he had wondered in the hospital, about the scale of Delaney’s response to the salvation of his son. He didn’t think disproportionate was the right word to describe it – it is not every day after all that a man’s only son is rescued from death’s embrace. And yet. And yet. Was Delaney trying to buy a clean slate for all the sins of his previous life? Were there hidden crimes, now buried deep in the Delaney past, that he wished to atone for? Was the pilgrimage a gesture to the past as much as to the present?

Michael Delaney had evolved a number of maxims for the conduct of his affairs, developed over his many years in business. Always pay your men enough to stop them from striking. In his early days he had been involved in a lockout, with blackleg labour and picket lines and hired detectives, and it had nearly finished him off. Always try to buy out your competitors – nothing succeeds like monopoly. Always invest in the latest technology, it will pay for itself in no time. For the management positions at the top of the organization, always look for the very best men in America. Quality managers, Delaney believed, would never let you down. Even he had never drafted a job advertisement quite like the one inserted for the pilgrimage in the New York Times . Organizer Required, it said, for pilgrimage to France and Spain, Europe. Duties to include finding as many members of the Delaney clan as possible in Europe and America, route planning, hotel reservations, liaison with church authorities. Fluent French essential. In return he obtained the services of one Alexander Eliot Bentley, son of a French mother and a doctor father from Rye, New York, graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, aged twenty-four years.