Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [50]
He pulled himself around in the chair and, having poked his glasses back on his nose, proceeded to pour tea. He passed the cup to Nora, inviting her to have milk and sugar and a tea bun if she wished. He then helped himself to four spoons of sugar and stirred vigorously as he poured a stream of yellow creamy milk into his cup. She had black tea.
“What was interesting about your grandfather,” he was looking carefully at the buttered tea bun he held between his fingers, “was how he embraced the concept of change with such enthusiasm. It excited him. He explored new ideas and talked about them with a kind of passion that didn’t seem to transfer to his everyday life. The idea was what mattered. Whether in fact it had any practical use was of no importance. I don’t honestly know whether he liked Picasso’s work or Stravinsky’s music or if he liked the innovations in the theatre that he talked about so much, but he loved the shift in creative thought and loved to speculate on where it might lead. He was a fascinating man.”
“Did you think of him as a friend?”
He studied her over the rim of his eyeglasses. “I was a bit older than him but that never seemed important. I enjoyed his company. Quite often he did the talking and I listened; I was a kind of sounding board. However …” He leaned forward, his index finger stabbing repeatedly at the black cloth on his thigh. “When we got into philosophy, that for me was our best time together. I was well able for him then.” He settled back in his chair. “I was on home turf. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, they were the two. We’d go at it hammer and tongs well into the night.” He was excited now, munching steadily on his bun, taking great gulps of strong tea.
He was avoiding her question. She needed to turn the conversation around and she didn’t have all day. She looked across at the old priest and shifted position.
“He didn’t exist for me. Can you understand that, Father O’Reilly? He was a non-person, a kind of a legend. The same applied to my grandmother.” She waited. “I’m trying to find out why he left. Until I met Peg Barry I knew nothing about him, and she has been generous in sharing her memories. She thought you might have other insights that you would like to share before it’s all too late.”
He was silent.
“As a friend,” she continued, “I thought you might know what happened. I mean, did he ever talk about his past life? Did he ever bring it up?” She pressed. “Did you ever ask?”
He put the last piece of tea bun into his mouth and chewed, looking pensive. His glasses had slipped again and he pushed them back onto the bridge of his nose. “We didn’t discuss our personal lives.” He was staring beyond her. “He never mentioned his private life and I never asked. It was a mutual understanding, unspoken.”
“You didn’t know him very well, then?”
The teacup rattled precariously as he returned it to the tray.
“He was a good man.” He spoke as he might from the pulpit, a note of authority and finality in his voice.
Good, she wondered, and what does good mean? She searched the shabby carpet at her feet. Pious, holy, virtuous, sound, slap on the back, good man yourself, sterling, satisfactory, good to the last drop, GUINNESS is GOOD for YOU! She took a deep breath to quiet the rant going on in her head. Across from her he was pensive, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair, hands clasped in front of his face, the fingers solidly intertwined, index fingers straight and pointing heavenward. He tapped his pursed lips silently with the steepled fingers.
Childhood nonsense rang in her head: Here’s the church / There’s the steeple / Open the door / There’s the people.
“A good man,” he reiterated.
She drew a deep breath. “How would you know that?” Her question, she knew, was blunt, too blunt, but she didn’t care. She was beginning to find him irritating.
He shifted, crossing one leg over the other. “When one serves in a community for as long as I did one tends to get to know one’s parishioners quite well. That’s part of the job.”
She could feel the gulf