had assumed it would be about Tom starting school in January. That was all agreed though; what did the bloody man want now?
‘It didn’t seem right to speak to you yesterday, Sergeant, on Christmas Day. But something has come to my attention, so utterly fantastical that my first instinct was to dismiss the thing entirely. Yet it appears to be true.’
‘I’m not with you at all, Father.’
‘I’m right in thinking Tom was in Dublin with you before Christmas?’
‘Yes. He came up for a day with his grandparents.’
‘And were they party to this? I would hope not.’ The look of sanctimonious shock would have made Stefan laugh under different circumstances, but the aura of satisfaction that hung about the priest told him that there was nothing funny going on. He still made no connection though.
‘Party to what?’
‘You took a Catholic boy into a Jewish place of worship?’
For a moment he was puzzled that Father Carey had this information at all. What was Tom’s Christmas outing and the bit of police work that had intruded into it to do with him? Stefan’s job and the farm at Kilranelagh rarely touched. It was nothing he worked at; it wasn’t a separation he sought. It was just how it was. But the two worlds had touched, for a few moments, that afternoon in Dublin. He’d barely thought about it since, even if he had thought about Hannah Rosen. It was only as the curate brought the worlds into collision that the implications of those minutes in Adelaide Road hit home. Tom would have talked about it, of course he would. Why wouldn’t he? It was something new, something exotic, something he had enjoyed. The rabbi had made him laugh. Stefan finally understood why there was satisfaction behind the look of holy pain on Father Carey’s angular face.
He saw a winter’s day, fourteen years ago. He was fifteen. A crowd of men and women and children, forty or fifty, stood in front of the ruined abbey in Baltinglass, as his grandfather’s coffin was carried into the little Church of Ireland church beside it. Snow had fallen the night before. Thin ice was breaking up on the Slaney below the abbey. Among the crowd were some of his grandfather’s closest friends. Three men came forward to walk into the church behind the other mourners. The rest would bow their heads in the cemetery beside the church, as the coffin was lowered into the ground; some would wipe away tears; but they would not walk through the door of the church that their own Church said was not a real church at all.
‘He lit a candle there, that’s what I’m told!’
‘There were children lighting candles. He lights a candle whenever he goes into the church, to say a prayer for his mother. He wouldn’t know — ’
‘Are you telling me he was praying there now?’
‘The priest was telling them a story from the Bible. He was listening.’
‘You told him the man was a priest, did you?’
‘All right, the rabbi. I didn’t tell him anything. We’re talking about minutes, a few minutes. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.’ It was hard not to wonder whether he would have thought if it hadn’t been Hannah he had been meeting. There had been no real reason to be there with Tom. It could have waited.
‘You stood there and let this happen?’
‘It was a candle holder, like the one we put in the window at Christmas, and children lighting candles, like we do at home. That’s all.’
He had to say something, but he realised that nothing he said would satisfy the curate. Every word was a trap Father Carey was waiting to spring.
‘I will have to speak to Tom.’
‘I’ll explain it to him.’
‘That can hardly be enough. He has to know that it was wrong for him to be there, let alone participate in what was going on. Even a child must be made aware when a sin has been committed, even unwittingly, and ask for the forgiveness that always comes. I’m sure the boy understands that.’
Stefan’s hackles were rising at the thought of what Carey would put Tom through to make sure he really did understand that forgiveness. But the traps were all around him now; any protest would spring another one.
‘This is a serious matter, Sergeant. Righting this shocking error of judgement is one thing, but comprehending how you could make it is much harder. Even from a Protestant point of view, your behaviour must appear extraordinary. I have to ask, are you in the habit of associating with Jews?’
‘I’m a guard, Father, I don’t choose who I meet.’ He was evading the issue and he felt ashamed of himself, even as he did so. Hannah was looking at him. He saw the expression on her face. He shouldn’t even have answered the question. By answering it, he had given the priest the right to ask it.
‘You know that a Roman Catholic should not enter any place of worship that isn’t Catholic. But a Jewish synagogue is disturbing in a very particular way. I have to make some allowances for ignorance on your part, and I do.’ There seemed no choice except to allow Carey to make those allowances. ‘The Church is under attack. Christianity itself is under attack. I know we’re not immune from the menace of communism and atheism in our quiet West Wicklow backwater, but I feel as if you have brought the agents of all that among us, because the Jews are its agents, make no mistake. You exposed an innocent child to that, your own child. Don’t you understand?’
Stefan understood very well. These were not the curate’s words. The voice and intonation were almost Robert Fitzpatrick’s. Stefan could have no doubt Father Carey had heard him speak. He spoke the monsignor’s words as if he had been waiting to say them for a long time. He was a prophet now. And there was nothing Stefan could say in reply. Anthony Carey had his burning bow and Stefan was the one who had given him the poisonous arrows. The priest shook his head and stepped down from the mountain.
‘The question is where we go from here, Sergeant Gillespie.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened. But you’re making more of this — ’
‘Did you tell him it was a place of people who turned their backs on Christ, who handed Him to the Romans for execution, who rejected God?’
‘I said it was where Jewish people prayed.’
‘The boy told Mrs Lawlor’s son that Jesus was a Jew.’
‘Should I have said he wasn’t?’
‘You’re a man of many talents. Now you’re a theologian too.’
‘It’s hardly theology.’
‘No, it’s not. But on top of everything, I’m afraid it is too much.’
‘Just tell me what you want me to say — ’
‘I have had every consideration for your feelings, Sergeant, and for the boy’s. I have been patient. I have put the fact that you are Tom’s father before other concerns. Too much so! He has another Father, a Father you are distancing him from, whether it is your intention or not. I have felt it for a long time. I have nothing against your mother and father personally, but they are not the right people to raise the boy in the faith you committed him to when you married. And even if you were here, you are not the father his dead mother would have wanted for him, I am sure of that now.’
‘How dare you say that! You know nothing at all about his mother.’
This was more than temper; anger was in his heart and it was pounding in his chest. His hands were clenched very tight.
‘I wonder what she thinks as she looks down now,’ said the curate.
‘You have no right to even begin to wonder what Maeve might think. My God, if she
‘I have expressed my concerns to Father MacGuire.’
‘Where is Father MacGuire?’
‘He always has his week off after Christmas. He’s not here just now.’
‘I bet he isn’t,’ replied Stefan. The parish priest wouldn’t like this. It was no accident he wasn’t there. But it would make no difference. He was an old man. Even when he disagreed with his curate, he no longer argued.
‘I’ve spoken to the bishop. And to your brother-in-law in Portlaoise.’
‘Dermot? What the hell’s Dermot got to do with anything?’
‘They have three children, Tom’s cousins. They’d happily take him.’
Stefan stared. He hadn’t seen where this was going at all. He thought it was still just another opportunity for
