At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [207]
The motor-car purred to its halt outside a blank façade, dead to a lane, a chapel whose sole recommendation, so Eveline perceived, was the absence of any side exit: this prisoner de luxe should not through faith be tempted to her liberty. The pilgrim crowd, discomposed by their passage, reformed by the chapel steps. Urchin eyes spilt on the coachwork, breaths gaped on the glass. She saw the pinched and mesquin faces of the women. Beyond, on a tenement sill, flowers waved in a window-box like weeds on a cliff. Shorty, in full stepping-out rig, soon made way and handed Eveline to the chapel porch. He eyed her a little doubtfully. “Thank you, Shorty,” she said, dismissing him. “Perhaps an hour. You shan’t forget me now?” And she stepped through the portal unaided.
The usher was abashed to receive her. He asked only a ha’pence and she understood then why the chapel should hum so exclusively of the Lord’s unwashed. He guided her to a forward seat where she knelt awkwardly, a veiled island of dignity beyond the promiscuous shawls.
Poor people, yet buoyant with it. There was a murmur from the benches almost of chatting. Forty days they had mortified their wants: now they feasted on the expectation of meat, a pipe of tobacco, alleluia. A youth in soutane came to light the candles. So very few candles, a begrudgement of flowers. Her back ached, so too her neck. Escape: the notion of course had crossed her mind. But where to go, what to do? History had finished with her generation. Better surely exile than to remain here, in this land of taint and squalor, among a people who saw no further than their pipes, hoped for no better than bacon at table. Twice four hundred years had Ireland famished in Lent. What cared this racaille for that?
Oh lah, but this was too unfair, and immediately she repented her dureté. Lent must have fallen very hard this year. Fish was grown so expensive in the war, it was rather a treat for the rich than any penance of the poor to be fasting on it.
A hand-bell rang. The susurration ceased, quiet came down in a fust of incense. A shock of white as entered the priest.
An elderly gentleman, quite alone save for the soutaned young man, now surpliced, his server: a well-looking youth whom presently Eva believed she must recognize. Surely I have met that young man? The priest bowed, genuflected to the altar, signed the cross. That quaint unsongful intoning, Introibo ad altare Dei. Low Mass in a slum chapel at half before noon.
The server’s responses came reasoned and clear—so very much more fitting than the rote-learnt gabble of the usual altar boys. A college student, Eva considered: an act of charity to serve in this quartier. So simply he stood and so surely he spoke, they were true, she was certain, the words that he said, that he would go unto the altar of God, unto God who gave joy to his youth.
And yes, there was a joy in this server’s youth, a joy to look at him even, so fresh of face in this dowdy scene. The vestments he wore did not shroud him entirely, and she made out, though her veil blurred a little her view, the collar of a tunic at his neck: at the cuffs and legs the heather green of a uniform. So, a Volunteer lad—had she inspected him, perhaps, at a parade?
The priest made his confession to the server, and in the people’s name the server begged God’s mercy on the priest. After, the young man made his own confession, in the name of all gathered, striking his breast for their fault, their fault, their most grievous fault. Perhaps it was this chapel and its sanctuary so very bare: the scene imposed its drama on Eva. The youth bows to the venerable priest: it might be Ireland’s sins he confesses, that she has not risen, she has not risen, most grievously has not risen.