Galore - Michael Crummey [9]
Devine’s Widow thought him a fool and made no secret of her opinion. But she knew years on the coast without liturgy or sacraments and was happy for those comforts now, despite the package they arrived in. Father Phelan claimed she was the only person in the new world he lived in fear of, which she dismissed as base flattery. —You’d be a half-decent priest if you gave up the drinking and whoring, she told him.
—Half-decent, he said, wouldn’t be worth the sacrifice.
He was lean and mercurial and abrupt, the sort of man you could imagine slipping through an outhouse hole when circumstances required it. He was fond of quoting the most outrageous or scandalous confessions from his recent travels, he named names and locations, adulteries and sexual proclivities and blasphemies. He had no sense of shame and it was this quality that marked him as a man of God in the eyes of his parishioners.
—I hear you’ve blessed the house with another Devine, the priest said.
—He’s sound asleep back there, Father, Callum said. —Not a peep out of him all night.
They spoke English for Lizzie’s sake. She had enough Irish to discipline her youngsters and make love to her husband but lost her way in any conversation more general. She got up to fetch the infant from the children’s room and Mary Tryphena climbed out of bed to join the adults around the table.
—Let me look at you, the priest said, holding her by the wrists and leaning back to take her in all at once. Her face pale and sunken and the eyes dark with congenital hunger. —Is she spoken for yet?
Mary Tryphena pulled both hands clear. —No, she said.
—Now I’m not asking you to marry me, girl.
Callum said, We were thinking she might take communion this visit, Father.
—Well now. That’s a step no smaller than marriage.
—Stop trying to scare the girl, Devine’s Widow said.
Mary Tryphena watched the steady flame of the candle on the table, pretending to ignore the conversation, and the priest obliged her by turning his attention to the infant. He made the sign of the cross and offered a blessing.
—Jabez baptized him, I understand.
—We thought we were going to lose him, Father.
—Jabez Trim is a good man.
—I see you got the news from Mrs. Gallery, Devine’s Widow said.
Father Phelan nodded, the habitual blankness of his face unperturbed. —I managed to slip in for an hour’s rest when I got here. —And how’s Mr. Gallery?
—I keep expecting him gone every time I come back. But so far, not. And he haven’t changed one jot all these years. Still won’t make confession.
—It might be him not being Catholic, Lizzie said, smiling into her bowl.
—That haven’t stopped others, Mrs. Devine. And not a one of those in the same need as Mr. Gallery. How are the fish this year, Callum?
—Please God we won’t starve, Father. That’s as much as can be said for the fish.
They carried on with the old introductory conversation awhile to settle back into relations as they stood when the priest left the shore months before.
—Is it true now, Father Phelan said, what Mrs. Gallery tells me about your sea orphan?
—Depends what it is she’s told you, Devine’s Widow said.
—White as the driven snow, she says he is.
—And the fiercest stench on him, Father, Lizzie said. —Would make your hair curl to smell it.
—You saw him born of the fish, Missus?
Devine’s Widow nodded. —Delivered him from the guts myself.
Callum took a breath, half afraid to speak. —Is it God wanting to tell us something, do you think?
—God give up talking to such as we a long time ago, the priest said.
Devine’s Widow stood up from her chair. —I’ll take you out to him, Father.
Mary Tryphena slipped off Callum’s lap and followed them along the side of the house. The stranger seemed to glow in the dark of his windowless shed. He was half sitting with his