Andrew Hurley - The Loney

I was revising Hamlet for an exam the following day. It was the final one. And once it was over, school would be done for good. Already the place had become different. Things had stopped mattering so much. No one, not even the teachers, seemed to care anymore and I could see it for what it was: an intestinal factory line that was winding down at the end of a particular run of production. Though what it had produced, I wasn’t sure. I felt no different to when I started. Only a little soiled from having passed through its bowels.

What I was going to do next, I didn’t know. I would be sixteen in a week’s time, but the world didn’t quite seem as open as I’d thought it might. When I looked at Farther I saw that work and school were really no different. One merely became qualified to pass from one system to the next, that was all. Routine was a fact of life. It was life, in fact.

She was leaving me alone at the moment, but I felt Mummer prowling around me, waiting for the day of my exam results when she could pounce and drag me away to the life she thought I ought to have. It’d be A Levels in History, Latin and Religious Education, then a Theology degree before six years in seminary. I could fight back, of course, assert myself, but without knowing what I wanted to do I’d have little chance against her. I’d be like that hare in the mouth of Collier’s dog.

Collier. Parkinson. I had thought about them every day since we’d come back from The Loney. It had been two months now but even with it fresh in my mind, as it were, I still wasn’t sure what had happened at Thessaly. What they had done to Hanny for him to be able to walk back up the steps of the cellar by himself and then cross the heath, and go running over the sandflats to meet Father Bernard who had come looking for us in the minibus. How they mended his shattered leg down in that cellar.

When we got back to Moorings, I told Mummer what I’d told Father Bernard — that we’d been across to Coldbarrow to look at the birds and that Hanny had slipped on some rocks and torn his trousers open on a sharp corner. The lie came out easily, without any planning, without any guilt, because I didn’t know what the truth was anyway.

Mummer didn’t ask anything else. She seemed too exhausted with the worry of where we’d been and so drained by the whole trip that she was just glad to be leaving. Everyone quickly loaded their bags onto the minibus and didn’t talk. The only sound was that of heavy fruit falling from the apple trees.

Mr and Mrs Belderboss were still keen to watch the beating of the bounds and although everybody else was tired and desperate to get away from the place, they agreed that they would stop at Little Hagby on the way. Yet when we got there, it was deserted. A warm wind blew across the uncut grass that thrummed with insects woken early from their cocoons. The priest was nowhere to be seen. The crowds that had in the past always gathered on the green with sticks of willow and birch ready to mark out the limits of the parish were shut away in their houses. We drove on.

When Hanny went back to Pinelands, I was glad. I didn’t like what we’d brought home from The Loney. He had changed. He seemed not to notice I was there. He was distant and uncommunicative, more interested in everything else around him, which he seemed to examine as though he had never seen it before. He had regressed. Whatever they had done to him at Thessaly had reversed all his learning and turned him back into an ignorant child.

Now that he was back for the Whitsun holiday, he seemed no different. Still the daft grinning all the time. Still the hours of just sitting and staring. I couldn’t stand watching him like this and had spent most of the time since he’d been back alone in my room. He hadn’t come up to see me once.

Mummer and Farther were in denial about it all. They could see that something was wrong, that he had changed, but they made no mention of it. Mummer went back to work at the shop, Farther to his office in town. And neither of them could understand why I was so unhappy, why I couldn’t just get on with things? Why did I brood so much?

***

The sun went in and the day became humid. I opened the window as far as the latch would allow, but still couldn’t get any air into the room. I watched a car going down the road. One coming the other way. The postman in his shirt sleeves cycling through the shade of the plane trees.

I went back to Hamlet and read to the end of Act One. The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right . Then from downstairs I heard the sound of something smashing on the floor and Mummer crying out. I went down to the kitchen and she turned sharply and looked at me as I came in. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth slightly open. Her lips moving, making bits of words. The remains of her best fruit bowl lay around her feet. She looked back at Hanny who was sitting with his hands flat on the table, a cup of tea in front of him.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

But before Mummer could reply, Hanny said, ‘Nothing, brother.’

***

Mummer called Farther and he came home at once, hot and flustered, thinking something terrible had happened. When he heard Hanny speak he cried.

Farther called Mr and Mrs Belderboss. Mr Belderboss called the presbytery and got Miss Bunce. The next-door neighbour came round to see what all the fuss was about and she cried too.

One by one they came and Mummer showed them into the kitchen where Hanny was still sitting. She hadn’t let him move in case going into a different room might break the spell. They came in tentatively at first, as though they were sitting down with a lion, and took their turn to be with him and hold his hand and marvel.

Seeing that Mummer was still in shock and unsure of what was happening, Mrs Belderboss patted her hand and said, ‘It is a miracle, Esther. It really is.’

Mummer looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘What else can we call it?’ Mr Belderboss said, smiling. ‘The Lord has blessed you.’

‘Yes, He has,’ said Mummer and clasped Hanny’s hands in hers.

‘It’s like the story in Matthew, isn’t it David?’ said Miss Bunce.

‘Yes,’ said David. ‘Which one?’

‘Nine, thirty-two,’ said Miss Bunce. ‘When Jesus heals the mute.’

‘All those prayers we said, Esther,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘All those years we asked for Andrew to be healed. God was listening all the time.’

‘Yes,’ Mummer said, looking into Hanny’s eyes.

‘And the holy water he drank,’ said Mr Belderboss.

‘Oh, yes, the water too,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘That was the thing that really did it.’

‘I’m just sorry that Father Wilfred isn’t here to see this,’ said Mummer.

‘So am I,’ said Miss Bunce.

‘He’d have been over the moon, wouldn’t he, Reg?’ said Mrs Belderboss.

Mr Belderboss was smiling and wiping away tears from his eyes.

‘Whatever’s the matter, Reg?’ Mrs Belderboss said and got up to comfort him.

‘I can feel him. Can’t you feel him, Mary?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘I can.’

‘God bless you, Andrew,’ said Mr Belderboss, reaching across the table and taking Hanny’s hands. ‘It’s you that’s brought him here. He’s with us now.’

Hanny smiled. Mrs Belderboss crossed herself and began to pray. Everyone in the room joined hands and repeated the Our Father until the doorbell rang.

***

Father Bernard had been out on his rounds of the parish and had only found the note left by Miss Bunce on his return to the presbytery. I saw his form through the frosted glass of the front door as he rang the bell again and waited. When I opened it, he smiled, though he looked — how was it? — a little nervous, a little short-tempered even. I hadn’t seen him look like that before.