William Trevor - A Bit on the Side

‘You have children now, Corry?’

‘We have three. Two boys and a girl.’

‘You’re finding work?’

He shook his head. ‘It never got going,’ he said. ‘All that.’

‘I’m sorry, Corry.’

Soon after Mrs Falloway bought Mountroche House and came to live there she had attended the funeral of the elderly widow who’d been the occupant of the Mountroche gate-lodge. Being, as she put it, a black Protestant from England, who had never, until then, entered an Irish Catholic church, she had not before been exposed to such a profusion of plaster statues as at that funeral Mass. I hope you do not consider it inter ference from an outsider, she wrote in her first letter to Bishop Walshe, but it is impossible not to be aware of the opportunity there is for young craftsmen and artists. With time on her hands, she roved Bishop Walshe’s diocese in her Morris Minor, taking photographs of grottoes that featured solitary Virgin Marys or pietàs, or towering crucifixions. How refreshing it would be, she enthused to Bishop Walshe when eventually she visited him, to see the art of the great high crosses of Ireland brought into the modern Church, to see nativities and annunciations in stained glass, to have old lecterns and altar furniture replaced with contemporary forms. She left behind in the Bishop’s hall a selection of postcards she had obtained from Italy, reproductions of the bas-reliefs of Mino da Fiesole and details from the pulpit in Siena cathedral. When she had compiled a list of craftsmen she wrote to all of them, and visited those who lived within a reasonable distance of Mountroche House. To numerous priests and bishops she explained that what was necessary was to bring wealth and talent together; but for the most part she met with opposition and indifference. Several bishops wrote back crossly, requesting her not to approach them again.

Breaking in half another biscuit, Corry remembered the letter he had received himself. ‘Will you look at this!’ he had exclaimed the morning it arrived. Since he had begun to carve figures in his spare time at the joinery he had been aware of a vocation, of wishing to make a living in this particular way, and Mrs Falloway’s letter reflected entirely what he felt: that the church art with which he was familiar was of poor quality. ‘Who on earth is she?’ he wondered in bewilderment when he’d read the letter through several times. Less than a week later Mrs Falloway came to introduce herself.

‘I’ve always been awfully sorry,’ she repeated now. ‘Sorrier than I can say.’

‘Ah, well.’

When it was all over, all her efforts made, her project abandoned, Mrs Falloway had written in defeat to a friend of her distant schooldays. Well, yes, I am giving up the struggle. There is a long story to tell, which must wait until next you come for a few summer weeks. Enough to say, that everything has changed in holy Ireland. Mrs Falloway spoke of that to Corry now, of her feelings at the time, which she had not expressed to him before. The Church had had enough on its hands, was how she put it; the appearance of things seemed trivial compared with the falling away of congregations and the tide of secular attack. Without knowing it, she had chosen a bad time.

‘It was guilt when I gave you that poor little house, Corry. I’d misled you with my certainties that weren’t certainties at all. A galumphing English woman!’

‘Ah no, no.’

‘Ah yes, I’m afraid. I should have restrained you, not urged you to give up your employment in the joinery.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘You’re hard up now?’

‘We are a bit, to tell the truth.’

‘Is that why you’ve come over?’

‘Well, it is.’

She shook her head. There was another pause and then she said: ‘I’m hard up myself, as things are.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Are you in a bad way, Corry?’

‘O’Flynn’ll give me a place in the stoneyard at Guileen. He’s keen because I’d learn the stone quickly, the knowledge I have with the wood. It’s not like he’d be taking on a full apprentice. It’s not like the delay there’d be until some young fellow’d get the hang of it.’

‘You’d be lettering gravestones?’

‘I would. He’d put me on wages after a twelvemonth. The only thing is, I’d be the twelve-month without a penny. I do a few days on a farm here and there if there’s anything going, but I’d have to give that up.’

‘The stoneyard seems the answer then’

‘I’d be in touch with anyone who’d maybe be interested in the statues. I’d have them by me in the yard. A priest or a bishop still looking for something would maybe hear tell I could do a Stations. O’Flynn said that to Nuala.’

They went on talking. Mrs Falloway poured out more tea. She pressed Corry to have another biscuit.

‘I’d have the wages steady behind me,’ Corry said, ‘once we managed the year. I’d ride over to Guileen every morning on the bike we have, no problem at all.’

‘I haven’t money, Corry.’

There was a quietness in the room then, neither of them saying anything, but Corry didn’t go at once. After a few moments they talked about the time in the past. Mrs Falloway offered to cook something, but Corry said no. He stood up as he did so, explaining about the three o’clock bus.

At the hall door Mrs Falloway again said she was sorry, and Corry shook his head.

‘Nuala’s tried for work herself only there’s nothing doing. There’s another baby coming,’ Corry said, feeling he should pass that on also.

*

When Nuala heard, she said it had been a forlorn hope anyway, and when Corry described the state of Mountroche House she felt sorry for Mrs Falloway, whose belief in Corry had always seemed to Nuala to be a confirmation of the sacred nature of his gift, as if Mrs Falloway had been sent into their lives to offer that encouragement. Even though her project had failed, it was hardly by chance that she had come to live only fourteen miles from Carrick at a time when Corry was employed in the Riordans’ joinery; and hardly by chance that she’d become determined in her intentions when she saw the first of his saints. He’d made the little figure of St Brigid for Father Ryan to set in the niche in St Brigid’s parish hall even though Father Ryan couldn’t pay him anything for it. Whenever Nuala was in Carrick she called in at the parish hall to look again at it, remembering her amazement – similar to Mrs Falloway’s – when she’d first seen it. ‘He has a right way with a chisel,’ O’Flynn said when he’d made his offer of employment in the stoneyard. ‘I don’t know did I ever see better.’ For Nuala it was all of a piece – the first of the saints, and Mrs Falloway coming to live near by, and O’Flynn’s offer when they’d nearly given up hope. She could feel it in her bones that that was how it was.

‘Rest yourself,’ she urged Corry in the kitchen, ‘while I’ll get the tea.’

‘They all right?’

They were out playing in the back field, she said; they’d been no trouble since they’d come in. She spread out rashers of streaky bacon on the pan that was warming on the stove. She’d gone down to the Super-Valu, she said, and Corry told her how he’d nearly missed the bus back.

‘He was drawing away. I had to stop him.’

‘I shouldn’t have sent you over on that awful old trek, Corry.’

‘Ah no, no. To tell you the truth, it was good to see her. Except she was a bit shook.’

He talked about the journey on the bus, the people on it when he was coming back. Nuala didn’t mention the Rynnes.

*

‘Glory be to God!’ Etty Rynne exclaimed. She felt shaky so she sat down, on a chair by the hallstand. ‘I don’t think I understood you,’ she said, although she knew she had.