stillness of relaxation. Had Tynan known it would turn out like this?
“Our faith; our culture; our people; our children’s future; altruism: where will you find any of that these days, I sometimes ask myself in my most dispirited moments,” Burke continued in a low voice. “Short supply, hmm, John?” He darted the remark to Tynan.
Tynan nodded.
“So it troubles me to hear criticism of Opus Dei when I know that its membership shows these qualities. Though they may have any and all the failings which flesh is heir to, and I’ll certainly second that,” said Burke.
Minogue wanted to protest; to say he was not being snide about Opus Dei, to say that even policemen could understand context and motives. He saw it would be useless. Any explanation would have the cast of an excuse now. Qui ’s‘excuse,’s’accuse. What had probably gotten Burke’s goat was the suggestion that there was some connection between Opus Dei and Paul Fine’s body gently drifting in off the Irish Sea. But why did Burke appear to be resigned now, after starting out so tough?
“You know, I read the paper this morning and I saw something I didn’t believe. No, it wasn’t the fact that thousands of people, poor people the most of them, are without a way to travel by public transport and carry on their lives in a reasonable manner. No, it was something even more distressing. I had Father Sheehy phone up the Irish Times and confirm the sources and I’m afraid the figures seem to be true. There are over 150,000 Irish people, all young men and women, working illegally in the United States.”
Daithi. Minogue watched the Archbishop’s eyes get bigger. Daithi wanting to be away from this. At least he’s resisting in the only way he knows will work. Fled the place.
“ One hundred and fifty thousand people! Nearly fifty thousand people a year are leaving our shores. We’re on the brink of a new millennium: there’s no famine any more to excuse us. Except there is a different kind of a famine or a hunger abroad on the land. A blight of a different order, a decay.”
Burke’s flowing allusions seemed to tire him completely now. His chin sank on to his chest and he stared balefully at the desktop.
“Do you see what I’m getting at?” he said suddenly to Minogue.
“I think I do, Your Eminence. I worry about our two at home,” Minogue conceded.
“Scattered,” Burke said as though spitting the word out. “Our young people are being scattered all over the world. It’s worse than the English ever did to us. It’s as bad as when we were persecuted for our faith. The ones that stay are often cynical and they turn inside themselves, they hold on to their jobs and they try to forget about things. Being cynical is a way of containing fear, isn’t it? Remember the rows we used to have in the lectures, John? I enjoyed them so much. I always remember you above the others, you were so full of fight.”
Burke’s features softened at the memory.
“Your Deputy Commissioner Tynan here had a very good understanding of the foundations of religious belief, Inspector. It takes a lot of nerve not to be a cynic. The youth that are leaving, even if they come back from America and the Continent, they’ve seen that things are not the same. Their faith is tested abroad and doubly so when they return. Few can come through the ordeals of unemployment and emigration unscathed.”
Should Minogue tell him that he’d rather see Daithi restless, and even cynical, than have him stay and become a credulous sycophant in Opus Dei? The authentic over the sincere any day, Burke: I’d pay the price.
“I suppose policemen’d know more about the drugs and the alcoholism,” said Burke. “Contrary to what the media might like to say, the Church does not turn a blind eye to child abuse or wife abuse either. They’re symptoms of the same disorder and what do we have now but further signs of crisis even in rural Ireland, when a married woman with a family of young children kills her husband rather than find another solution? Making orphans of her children, instead of using the law of the land to get help? Of course there’ll always be agitators who can go home to clean, warm homes far from County Tipperary and cheer for murder after breakfast.”
That was enough to tip Minogue’s gargoyle over the brink.
“Manslaughter, Your Eminence.”
“Pardon, Inspector?”
“Mrs. Ryan is charged with manslaughter.”
“She confessed to murdering her husband. Could there be clearer proof of murder?”
Tynan had not moved, Minogue realized.
“Not wishing to contradict you, but the charge against the woman is manslaughter, Your Eminence. That means that the Director of Public Prosecutions has looked at the evidence provided by the Gardai and has preferred that charge against her.”
“Saying that he knows better than the woman herself, is it?”
“Under duress,” said Tynan softly. “She was not her normal self, Frank. She had been abused and she felt her children were in danger. The Constitution obliges the State to look to her interests too, that’s the way that the legal opinions see it, I believe.”
Burke put on a tight, knowing smile. “Ever the modernist, John,” he said.
“I’m holding off on something here,” Burke added, after a pause. “It seems to be late in the day to be trying to explain things, I see. You’re a policeman, isn’t that the way, John?”
Minogue recognized the irony as a light charge of bitterness in Burke’s tone.
Tynan nodded. Burke turned to Minogue. “Inspector, I’ll be running the risk of offending you now when I ask you to leave myself and my old friend here alone for a few moments.”
It was not a question, nor was it an apology. Minogue stood and walked to the door. Behind him he heard a wooden drawer slide open. Closing the door, too confused to be angry at his dismissal, Minogue caught a glimpse of Burke’s hand rising from the drawer of his desk. The hand was holding an envelope.
Sheehy was waiting in the hall, a grave Sheehy.
“By all means sit down in the Visitors’ Room, er,” he said in an apologetic tone.
Minogue began to feel resentful now. He did not sit down but started pacing the room, not caring that Sheehy was looking at him through the doorway.
Minutes passed. Minogue stopped and, not wishing to look at the portraits of Burke’s predecessors, stared out of the window at the street-lights. His mind worked around the resentment, the burn in his chest. It struck him that he did not know why he had to be here if all he was to do was to attend on a lecture made up of Burke’s thoughts aloud and then be told to wait outside. But Burke had asked for him. Just to admonish him for riding rough on Heher and Drumm earlier in the day? Heher’s modesty might have prevented him from explaining to Minogue how Opus Dei was tackling the ills of the world and didn’t deserve his suspicions but it hadn’t bothered the same Heher to phone the Archbishop’s Residence and have Minogue receive some leaden advice. Calling in the elephants to trample mice like Minogue? Heher smiling, well-spoken, healthy-looking, self-effacing-‘Call me Joe’-and then phoning Burke to get the system, the self-same system he seemed to be bashfully abjuring as regards titles like ‘Father’, up to heat.
Sheehy was tapping timidly on the open door to the Visitors’ Room. Sheehy too, clean, pleasant manner, with a look of concern and reeling on his face-what made these damned priests look so well-washed, so bloody confident? Didn’t they have anything like sons and daughters to worry about?
“His Eminence would like to say good-bye. I believe the meeting is over,” said Sheehy.
Minogue followed him to Burke’s office. Burke was standing behind the desk, and Tynan was putting something in the pocket of his jacket. He stood up too. His face had changed, Minogue saw: his cheeks were flushed and his eyes seemed to be more noticeable, bigger perhaps.
“Good-night to you, Inspector. I wish you success in your work.”
“Thanks,” Minogue managed.
“After you leave here I think you may see things a little clearer, Inspector. I think Billy Fine’s choice has a lot more to it than a chance meeting in a Museum. Just remember this, if you will: even Billy Fine would agree that it is the people of small grasp, the ones who have a poverty of imagination, who snap at the heels of things too great and profound for them to understand. These people… these self-proclaimed messiahs in the media, these cynics, ungenerous minds… these do far more damage than their abilities and understanding would ever warrant by themselves. Do you know what I’m saying yet, or are we too far ahead of you here?”
“I don’t follow, Your Eminence,” said Minogue evenly.
Burke scrutinized him for a moment. “You don’t follow. I think that somehow I knew that before we met, Inspector.”
Burke turned to Tynan and thrust out his hand. “ Tentenda via, John.”
