PENNY JORDAN - Coming Home

A man with a weaker personality than Jon’s, a man lacking in his emotional strength and compassion, might have been badly warped by the obvious and relentless favouritism of their father for David. But Jon was too kind, too caring a person to fall into that trap, and Jenny loved him all the more for what his father had once so contemptuously dismissed as Jon’s softness.

‘Come on,’ she said now, kissing his chin. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

JON GLANCED at the bedside clock. Jenny was asleep at his side, curled up next to him like a little girl. He smiled as he looked down into her sleeping face. They had made love earlier and she had fallen asleep almost immediately afterwards, his prerogative as a male, surely? And to be fair to Jenny, he was the one who normally fell asleep first, but tonight for some reason he just hadn’t been able to do so.

For some reason … There was only one reason why he couldn’t sleep—David. Not even to Jenny had he confided … admitted … how often he thought about his twin, or how much he missed him. It was ironic, really, because he knew damn well that David wouldn’t be thinking about or missing him and he knew, too, that without David’s presence in it, his own life had improved immeasurably.

Where was David now? Did he ever think of them … of him? Deliberately, Jon closed his eyes, letting his mind drift back through the years to their shared childhood. Those childhood years had been so painful for him, pushed as he was by their father into the shadows, ignored and unwanted, unloved, he had always felt, constantly reminded by their father of just how lucky he was to be David’s brother.

‘David is the first-born,’ their father used to say, and Jon had known almost before he could analyse what that knowledge meant how important it was that David should be the first, the sun, the star, and that he should never attempt to preempt David’s role.

As they grew up, it had become second nature to him to remain in the shadows, to withdraw into himself so that his twin could be first.

David … Stored away in his memory, Jon had a thousand, a million different images of him. David …

‘YOU SEEM … PREOCCUPIED. Is there something on your mind?’

David smiled warmly at his companion and teased him gently. ‘Once a Jesuit priest, always a Jesuit priest.’

The older man laughed. ‘I confess that there are times when the habit of encouraging another’s confession is too strong to resist, but purely for the most altruistic of reasons, I hasten to add.’

Looking away from him, David said passionately, ‘On a night like this, I can’t help wondering what it is about us human beings that compels us to behave so imperfectly when we have been given the gift of such a perfect universe, the potential to enhance our lives, to be the best we can be….’

‘It is a perfect evening,’ Father Ignatius agreed gravely as he sat down slowly next to David on the rocky outcrop of land from which it was possible not just to look up into the star-studded Jamaican sky above them but also out to sea. ‘But there have been other equally perfect evenings and they have not resulted in such a philosophical outburst.’

‘Philosophical.’ David shook his head. ‘No. To be philosophical is to be detached, to talk about the human condition in general terms, whereas I was thinking … wishing … regretting …’

He stopped whilst the priest looked at him and said knowledgeably, ‘You want to go home.’

‘Home!’ David gave a mirthless laugh. ‘This is my home and a far better one than I deserve.’

‘No, David,’ the priest corrected him gently. ‘This is where you live . Your home is where your heart is. Your home is in England … in Cheshire …’

‘… in Haslewich,’ David supplied wryly for him. ‘I dreamed about my father last night,’ he said to the priest abruptly. ‘I wonder what they have told him … about me … about my disappearance. I wonder if …’

‘From what you have told me of your family, your brother, your twin ,’ the priest emphasised, ‘I doubt they will have told him anything that might hurt him. But if you really wish to know, then you should go back,’ he said gently.

‘Go back,’ David repeated brusquely. ‘No, I can’t do that.’

‘There is no such word as “can’t”,’ the priest replied sturdily.

‘I’m a thief, a criminal. I stole money,’ David reminded him sharply.

‘You sinned against one of God’s laws,’ the priest agreed. ‘But you have repented your sin, acknowledging it with humility and genuine contrition. In God’s eyes, you are making atonement.’

‘In God’s eyes, maybe,’ David agreed grimly. ‘But in the eyes of the law, I am still guilty.’

‘Which is more important to you, David?’ the priest questioned him softly. ‘The burden of guilt you carry for the debt you owe your family or that which you carry in the eyes of the law?’

‘My father might no longer be alive.’

‘You have other family,’ the priest pointed out. ‘A brother … a daughter … a son …’

‘They are better off without me,’ David told him curtly, turning his head away so that the priest couldn’t see his expression.

‘Maybe … maybe not.’

‘I can’t go back,’ David repeated, but the priest could hear the uncertainty and yearning in his voice.

Ever since he had read the report of David’s nephew, Max’s knife attack, in the island’s paper, he had been preparing himself for this moment. David had become as close to him as a son and the love he felt for him was that of a father, but he was not David’s father, and had he been he knew perfectly well that it was the duty of a loving father to set even his most beloved child free to live his own life.

Since David had been working here helping him in his self-appointed task of nursing the island’s terminally sick, those too poor … too shunned by society to merit any other kind of help, Father Ignatius had come to realise just how solitary and lonely his life had been.

He had found David lying drunk in one of Kingston’s stinking gutters and even now had no real idea just why he had stopped to help him, a man who had cursed him and who, when he was sober enough, had blamed him for not allowing him to die.

It had been months before David had finally brought himself to start talking to him about his life, his past, but once he had done so, the priest had not passed any judgement. Why should he? Judging others was not what he was here for. Helping them, healing them, loving them; those were his duties.

Originally, when he had entered the priesthood, he had been filled with such ideas, such visions, but then had come the faith-shaking discovery that the man he most admired, his inspiration and guiding light, had been guilty of one of the most unforgivable of sins. Father John had broken his vow of chastity and had not just had a secret relationship with a woman but had also given her his child. Torn between conflicting loyalties, tortured by what he should do, in the end the younger man had simply felt obliged to speak up.

The result of his action had been catastrophic. Father John had taken his own life and he, Francis O’Leary, known by the church as Father Ignatius, had been to blame. Totally and absolutely. Even the bishop had seemed to think so.

He had been sent away out of the area, hopefully to get a fresh start, but the news of his role in the tragedy had followed him and he had become untouchable, defiled, someone to be avoided, a priest whose faith not just in others but in himself had been destroyed. He had volunteered for missionary work and had been granted it.

‘Even if I wanted to go home, I couldn’t,’ David said, bringing the priest back to the present. ‘There’s no way I could raise the cost of the airfare.’