At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [42]
She gave an enchanted clap. “Bravo, Father, bravo. Tell me now, do, what was that you said?”
“It was the Irish for thank you.” Again he nodded.
“Too long have we waited for a lead in this parish. And now you have come in answer to a prayer.”
His smile sucked on sherbet. He leant cannily forward. “So you heard my sermon?”
“Splendid show.”
“I thought it went very well.”
“A magnificent blow for Ireland.”
“And for the Church.”
“And for the Church, of course.”
“The two are inseparable. And you do not think my hopes too extravagant?”
“In what way extravagant now?”
“No, Madame MacMurrough, I see you stand foursquare beside me. For the past twenty years the Gael has been crying aloud for help to beat back the Anglicization that drags its slimy length along. The immoral literature, the smutty postcards, the lewd plays and suggestive songs were bad, yet they were merely puffs from the foul breath of a paganized society. Even today I saw ye, many of ye here this morning, on your very way to Mass, I saw ye stoop to purchase—”
“I’m sorry, Father?”
“No, Madame MacMurrough, I quote from my sermon, you will recall. It was at that point I mentioned the News of the World and there was tremendous shuffling of feet and coughing throughout the congregation.”
“Yes, of course.”
“For we know now that should we continue traveling in this same direction, condemning the sports that were practiced by our forefathers, effacing our national features as though we were ashamed of them, contemning indeed our own native tongue that cannot speak but it praise God, and putting on, with England’s stuff and broadcloths, her masher habits and feminine follies, we had better at once!”
“At once, Father?”
“And publicly, abjure our nationality, clap hands for joy at the Union Jack, and declare unto a disbelieving world that Ireland!—she has lost her faith of old.”
“I see.”
“It was all in the sermon and I believe it went tremendous well.”
The girl came in with the tray, délivrance, and rattled it on to a table. “Leave us, child. I shall serve the father myself.”
She measured tea into the teapot, poured the water. To her surprise she saw the child had remained.
“Mam, there’s a poor woman come to the kitchen door, mam.”
“Well?”
“She’s looking to take in washing, mam.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Only Cook said—”
“Cook?”
“Didn’t she say to tell you—”
“Enough. Show the woman to the pass door. I shall interview her there.”
“Thank you, mam.”
“Go raibh maith agat,” said the priest.
Curtsying cheeses, Nancy left.
“Sugar?”
“I do.”
“Cream?”
“A taste only.”
“Your tea, Father.”
“Go raibh maith agat.”
A gracious language, if somewhat limited of expression. “You’ll excuse me, Father O’Toiler, if I abandon you a moment.”
“A domestic crisis ensues,” he said, rising. But Eveline had already left.
The clock clicked, tock-tick. Over the hearth hung a heavy frame, carved in blackening shamrock lace. It leant ponderously forward as though the likeness within had been listening the while and now intended to intrude. An advocate perhaps, a politician certainly, last scion of a dispossessed clan. The large, square, low-fronted head was quarter-turned, as if to catch from the shadowy plane the ceaseless cries of an oppressed people. The gleam of the eyes showed humor, but the mouth had thinned with scorn as, blow for blow through the midless years, it had turned a conqueror’s jibes. In ageing morbidezza, the character of their race.
The priest heard the door close and knew that Eveline stood behind him. “My father,” she said after a time.
His face, which had lifted, lowered. “A great man.”
“He was that.” A pier glass gave gaze of her profile. I am my father’s seed.
“Not a day but he worked in Ireland’s cause.”
“He lived for his country.”
“He was a great man and a good. Any number of windows I have seen, painted windows in chapels wheresoever in the province, with his name in dedication.”
Yes, she idly thought, her father had been scrupulous in providing for the Church. The rate of one glass window per