Andrew Hurley - The Loney

‘Oh, sorry, Father,’ he said and sat down.

‘We’re still missing someone,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘Where’s Andrew?’

‘He’s upstairs resting,’ I said.

‘Well go and fetch him,’ said Mummer.

‘Oh leave him,’ said Mrs Belderboss.

‘Leave him?’ said Mummer. ‘He ought to be here if we’re praying for him.’

‘He’s tired,’ I said.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ said Mummer. ‘We’re all tired.’

‘I know,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘But with all that noise last night, I should think he slept less than any of us. If he’s settled, it’s probably best to leave him where he is.’

‘I agree with Mary,’ said Mr Belderboss.

Father Bernard cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps we should make a start, Mrs Smith?’

‘Esther?’ said Farther.

‘Yes, alright,’ said Mummer sharply and she leant forward to light the candles set out on the table.

Mrs Belderboss sighed and looked out of the window.

‘I do hope it improves for when we go to the shrine on Monday,’ she said. ‘It won’t be the same if it’s raining, will it Reg?’

‘No,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘Not like last time, do you remember?’

Mrs Belderboss turned to Father Bernard. ‘It was a glorious day,’ she said. ‘The sun came out just as we arrived. And the flowers were just beautiful. All the magnolias and the azaleas.’

Father Bernard smiled.

‘Everyone was so happy, weren’t they, Reg?’ she went on. ‘Wilfred, especially.’

‘It must be nice to have that memory of your brother, Mr Belderboss,’ said Father Bernard.

Mr Belderboss nodded. ‘I suppose so. They do say that you ought to remember people at their happiest don’t they?’

‘Aye,’ said Father Bernard. ‘I can’t see that there’s much to be gained by doing anything else.’

Mr Belderboss looked at his hands. ‘It’s the last time I remember him being so — certain — about everything. After that, I don’t know. He just sort of seemed to …’

‘Seemed to what?’ Father Bernard asked.

Mr Belderboss looked around the room at everyone. Mummer narrowed her eyes at him, very slightly, but enough for him to notice and stop talking. There was a moment of silence. Mrs Belderboss touched her husband on the arm and he put his hand over hers. Mummer blew out the match she was holding.

‘I thought we were going to begin?’ she said.

Father Bernard looked at her and then at Mr Belderboss.

‘Sorry, Reg,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ said Mr Belderboss, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I’m alright. You carry on, Father.’

Father Bernard opened his Bible and handed it to me.

‘Would you read for us Tonto?’ he said.

I set the Bible on my knees and read Jesus’ instructions to his disciples to prepare for the persecution that would most certainly be coming their way.

‘“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”’

Mummer looked at Father Bernard and nodded her approval. The passage was her manifesto. Back at home, it was up in a frame in the kitchen, scribed in ornate calligraphy like the page of an illuminated Bible. Duty, or rather the active show of duty, was everything and to ignore the call to service was, in Mummer’s eyes, possibly the most heinous sin of all. She was of the opinion that men should at least consider the priesthood and that all boys should serve on the altar. In some ways, she said, she was envious of me because I had the opportunity to be closer to God, to assist in the miracle of the transubstantiation, whereas she had to make do with organising fêtes and jumble sales.

It had been mooted a number of times since my Confirmation, but when we returned from Moorings the last time, it became Mummer’s mission to get me into a cassock. It was time, she said, and it was obvious that Father Wilfred needed help.

‘You ought to do it for your brother’s sake, if anything,’ she said. ‘He’ll never get the chance.’

I think it came as something of a surprise to her when I agreed so readily. I wanted to be an altar boy. I wanted to be a servant to the Lord. I wanted, more than anything, to see the parts of the church that no one else did.

And so I see myself aged thirteen walking up the path to the presbytery one wet Saturday morning in an ill-fitting beige suit with Mummer’s instructions on the etiquette of speaking to a priest fixed firmly in my head. Yes, Father Wilfred. No, Father Wilfred. Speak when you’re spoken to. But look interested. Answer his questions like a boy who’s been going to church since the day he was born. Don’t drop your aitches.

Miss Bunce answered the door and I told her what I’d come for. She let me in and pointed at the row of chairs in the hallway. There was another boy there, suffering from the first fierce assault of acne and breathing loudly. He had been stuffed into an even worse suit than I had, the lapels of which were sprinkled with dandruff and stray hairs. He looked at me and smiled nervously as he put out his hand.

‘Did your mother send you too?’

Plump, freckled, a little older than me, poor Henry McCullough with egg breath and spots was to become my opposite number on the altar, performing the parts that required little or no wit. He was a towel holder and a candle straightener. He opened the lid of the organ before Mass and brought out the stool for Miss Bunce to sit on.

‘Yes,’ I said, to make him feel better. ‘She did.’

Father Wilfred came out of the dining room, wiping away the remains of his breakfast from his lips with the corner of a handkerchief. He looked at us both sitting there and weighed us up from our polished shoes to our parted hair.

‘Miss Bunce,’ he said, nodding to the door. ‘Would you be so kind?’

‘Yes, Father.’

Miss Bunce withdrew a black umbrella from the stand and handed it to Father Wilfred once he had buttoned his long raincoat. He gave her a rare smile and then clicked his fingers at us to follow him down the gravel path to the church, keeping the umbrella to himself.

***

It’s gone now, demolished to make way for flats, and much lamented by those who remember it, but I always thought Saint Jude’s was a monstrosity.

It was a large brown brick place, built towards the end of the nineteenth century when Catholicism became fashionable again with a people that didn’t do things by halves. From the outside it was imposing and gloomy and the thick, hexagonal spire gave it the look of a mill or factory. Indeed, it seemed purpose built in the same sort of way, with each architectural component carefully designed to churn out obedience, faith or hope in units per week according to demand. Even the way Miss Bunce played the organ made it seem as though she was operating a complicated loom.

As a token bit of mysticism, the mason had fixed an Eye of God way up on the steeple, above the clock — an oval shape carved into a block of stone that I’d noticed on the old country churches Farther dragged us round at weekends. Yet at Saint Jude’s, it seemed more like a sharp-eyed overseer of the factory floor, looking out for the workshy and the seditious.

Inside, a bigger than life-sized crucified Christ was carefully suspended in front of a vast window so that when the sun shone his shadow fell among the congregation and touched them all. The pulpit was high up like a watchtower. Even the air felt as though it had been specially commissioned to be church-like; to be soup-thick with sound when Miss Bunce touched the organ keys, and when the nave was empty to be thin enough to let the slightest whisper flutter round the stonework.