Andrew Hurley - The Loney

I remember Hanny once swinging over a pond on The Heath and knowing, knowing , that the rope would break, which it did; like I knew that the stray cat he brought back from the park would end up minced on the tube line, and that he would drop the bowl of goldfish he’d won at the fair on the kitchen floor as soon as we got home.

In the same way, I knew after that conversation around the dinner table that Billy was going to die soon. The thought came to me as an established fact; as though it had already come to pass. No one could live like that for long. Being that filthy took so much effort that I was sure that the same merciful God who sent a whale to save Jonah and gave Noah a nod about the weather, would put him out of his misery.

That Easter was the last time we went to the Loney for several years.

After the evening when he’d set us straight about Billy Tapper over supper, Father Wilfred changed in a way that no one could quite explain or understand. They put it down to him getting too old for the whole thing — after all it was a long journey up from London and the pressure of being shepherd to his flock during such an intense week of prayer and reflection was enough to wear out a man half his age. He was tired. That was all.

But as I had the uncanny knack of sensing the truth about things, I knew that it was something far more than that. There was something very wrong.

After the conversation about Billy had petered out and everyone had settled in the living room, he’d walked down to the beach and come back a different man. Distracted. Rattled by something. He complained rather unconvincingly of a stomach upset and went to lie down, locking his door with an emphatic swipe of the bolt. A little while later I heard noises coming from his room, and I realised he was crying. I’d never heard a man cry before, only one of the mentally disadvantaged lot that came to do crafts at the parish hall once a fortnight with Mummer and some of the other ladies. It was a noise of fear and despair.

The next morning when he finally rose, dishevelled and still agitated, he muttered something about the sea and went out with his camera before anyone could ask him what was wrong. It wasn’t like him to be so offhand. Nor for him to sleep in so late. He wasn’t himself at all.

Everyone watched him walking down the lane and decided it was best to leave as soon as possible, convinced that once he was back at Saint Jude’s he would quickly recover.

But when we returned home, his mood of fretfulness barely altered. In his sermons he seemed more worked up than ever about the ubiquitous evils of the world and any mention of the pilgrimage cast a shadow over his face and sent him into a kind of anxious daydream. After a while no one talked about going there anymore. It was just something that we used to do.

Life pulled us along and we forgot about The Loney until 1976 when Father Wilfred died suddenly in the new year and Father Bernard McGill was relocated from some violent parish in New Cross to take on Saint Jude’s in his stead.

After his inaugural mass, at which the bishop presented him to the congregation, we had tea and cakes on the presbytery lawn so that Father Bernard could meet his parishioners in a less formal setting.

He ingratiated himself straight away and seemed at ease with everyone. He had that way about him. An easy charm that made the old boys laugh and the women subconsciously preen themselves.

As he went from group to group, the bishop wandered over to Mummer and me, trying to eat a large piece of Dundee cake in as dignified a manner as possible. He had taken off his robes and his surplice but kept on his plum-coloured cassock, so that he stood out amongst the browns and greys of the civilians as a man of importance.

‘He seems nice, your grace,’ said Mummer.

‘Indeed,’ the bishop replied in his Midlothian accent that for some reason always made me think of wet moss.

He watched Father Bernard send Mr Belderboss into fits of laughter.

‘He performed wonders to behold in his last parish.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Mummer.

‘Very good at encouraging the young folk to attend,’ the bishop said, looking at me with the specious grin of a teacher who wishes to punish and befriend in equal measure and ends up doing neither.

‘Oh my lad’s an altar boy, your grace,’ Mummer replied.

‘Is he?’ said the bishop. ‘Well good show. Father Bernard’s quite at home with the teens as well as the more mature members of the congregation.’

‘Well if he comes on your recommendation, your grace, I’m sure he’ll do well,’ said Mummer.

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ the bishop replied, brushing crumbs off his stomach with the back of his hand. ‘He’ll be able to steer you all through safe waters, make good around the capes, as it were.’

‘In fact my sailing analogy is quite apt,’ he said, looking into the middle distance and awarding himself a smile. ‘You see, I’m rather keen on Father Bernard taking the congregation out into the wider world. I don’t know about you but I’m of the opinion that if one is cosseted by the familiar, faith becomes stagnant.’

‘Well, if you think so, your grace,’ said Mummer.

The bishop turned to Mummer and smiled in that self-satisfied way again.

‘Do I detect that there may be some resistance to the idea, Mrs …?’

‘Smith,’ she said, then, seeing that the bishop was waiting for her to answer, she went on. ‘Perhaps there might be, your grace, among the older members. They’re not keen on things changing.’

‘Nor should they be, Mrs Smith. Nor should they be,’ he said. ‘Rest assured, I rather like to think of the appointment of a new incumbent as an organic process; a new shoot off the old vine, if you like; a continuum rather than a revolution. And in any case I wasn’t suggesting that you went off to the far flung corners of the earth. I was thinking of Father Bernard taking a group away on a retreat at Easter time. It was a tradition that I know was very dear to Wilfred’s heart, and one that I always thought worthwhile myself.

‘It’d be a nice way to remember him,’ he added. ‘And a chance to look forward to the future. A continuum, Mrs Smith, as I say.’

The sound of someone knocking a knife against a glass started to rise over the babble in the garden.

‘Ah, you’ll have to excuse me, I’m afraid,’ said the bishop, dabbing crumbs from his lips. ‘Duty calls.’

He went off towards the trestle table that had been set up by the rose bushes, his cassock flapping around his ankles and getting wet.

When he had gone, Mrs Belderboss appeared at Mummer’s side.

‘You were having a long chat with his grace,’ she said, nudging Mummer playfully in the arm. ‘What were you talking about?’

Mummer smiled. ‘I have some wonderful news,’ she said.

***

A few weeks later, Mummer organised a meeting of interested parties so as to get the ball rolling before the bishop could change his mind, as he was wont to do. She suggested that everyone come to our house to discuss where they might go, although Mummer had only one place in mind.

On the night she had set aside, they came in out of the rain, smelling of the damp and their dinners: Mr and Mrs Belderboss, and Miss Bunce, the presbytery housekeeper, and her fiancé, David Hobbs. They hung up their coats in the little porch with its cracked tiles and its intractable odour of feet and gathered in our front room anxiously watching the clock on the mantelpiece, with the tea things all set out, unable to relax until Father Bernard arrived.

Eventually, the bell went and everyone got to their feet as Mummer opened the door. Father Bernard stood there with his shoulders hunched in the rain.