Grandmother and the Priests (3 page)

The house was very large and lighted at almost every window, and there was a reflection of red and flickering firelight on draperies not yet drawn. The building had a little portico with about four white, round wooden pillars and a broad fan of brick steps leading to the door from the street. The coachman, with a sour look, opened the carriage door for Rose. Then he was moved to some kindness for the forlorn little girl. He swung her up in his arms with a hearty word, and his rough chin and check scraped her face. He carried her up the steps and said cheerily, “There you be, little miss,” put her down, banged the knocker, and returned to the carriage for her luggage. In the meantime a smart, uniformed maid stood on the threshold, staring without favor. “A kid in the house,” she mumbled, and pulled Rose inside smartly. “Behave yourself, and no trouble,” she warned. Grandmother was entertaining at dinner, and there was no time for any greeting. The unfriendly maid pushed Rose irritably up an immense stairway of white wood and velvet carpeting, and then into a long hall filled with closed doors. A lamp burned at its farther end, the light enclosed in a crimson globe. The maid opened the door of a small and arctic bedroom, and lit a candle. Rose saw the big bed with its canopy, its horsehair chairs, its little green slipper love seat, its empty fireplace, its Brussels rug, its blue velvet draperies looped back over fine lace curtains.

“Have you had your tea?” asked the maid, threateningly.

Rose shook her head. The maid sighed. “And now I’ve got to get a kid’s tea,” she grumbled. “Very well, you. Sit there and be quiet,” and she lifted the child and set her down with a thump on a giant rocking chair whose horsehair chafed her thighs immediately. “Not a word out of you,” the maid warned, and slammed the door after her. Rose was suddenly very tired, yawned and drowsed, the chair swaying under her. She came awake to see the maid angrily lighting a small fire. There was a tray on the table of sandwiches, tea, cream, sugar, pound cake, a hot scone or two, and jam. Rose was hungry at once, climbed down from the chair, stood at the table and began to devour the food. The fire caught; the wind thundered in the chimney; the windows rattled. It was a cold night.

The maid scrubbed her with coolish water in a large bowl afterwards, sneered at her flannel nightgown which boasted no lace or embroidered buttons, and thumped her into the icy bed. “Where’s Grandmother?” Rose asked.

“Better things to do than to bother with the likes of you,” said the maid. “Go to sleep. The chamber’s under the bed, and mind you use it properly.”

Rose did not sleep for a long time. She watched the small fire on the hearth, and listened to its brisk crackling. She listened to the wind pounding at the windows, shouting in the chimney, growling in the eaves. The rain sounded like a cataract. She was at Grandmother’s, in Leeds, the first of many visits, which were not welcomed. But she had already learned that there is little welcome for anyone in the world, and so was not disturbed. She said her prayers tranquilly enough, praying dutifully for dear Papa and Mama and all the Poor. God, she was certain, was standing right there beside the bed. She had known much about Him since she had been hardly two years old, long before anyone had ever spoken His Name to her. Rose turned her head on the sweetly scented bolster, and there, over the fireplace, stood a crucifix, the first she had ever seen. It was very large, and the Body of the Christ appeared made of dark gold. Rose had never as yet heard of Him, fully, but all at once she was filled with understanding. She fell asleep as if under the blessing of a sleepless Guardian.

That was all Rose ever remembered of the first of the many visits to Grandmother’s house in Leeds. It seemed to her that those visits never ended all the rest of her life, and she returned to the memory of them as one returns to an old cathedral of one’s deepest memories — though Grandmother’s house was hardly a cathedral.

Rose was going on five on her next visit, and it was this visit that impressed itself forever on her memory, as the beginning of her friendship with Grandmother’s holy men. They were the only holy creatures ever to enter Grandmother’s houses, until the end of her life.

Rose was four in the last September and British children begin their education at that age. The little girl was sent to a very small private school run by a dejected but punishing Miss Brothers in the latter’s shabby but genteel house. Rose did not like the schoolmistress and was bored by the other children, who ranged from four to fourteen. Children, at four, learned their letters at once, and began to read, or God help them.

After the Christmas holidays she was sent to Grandmother’s again. She was delighted to be free of Miss Brothers and her schoolmates and chattered freely while her mother packed her luggage, a uniqueness that caused her mother to eye her with reflection. The train excited her as before. She read a storybook in that compartment filled with adults. They did not smile at her; children in England are not regarded as objects of interest but only as nuisances. The rain began, the dull gray rain of midwinter, and the shouting winds. Hamlets moved sluggishly beyond the windows; narrow little streets were revealed, filled with lorries or hurrying working people. Twilight was coming down.

The train rumbled; gentlemen rustled their newspapers. Ladies knitted or drowsed or conversed together in low voices, pausing only to look outside haughtily when the train paused at some sooty station. There would be the ‘lower-class’ people who were scurrying towards the second-or third-class coaches — mostly the third — their heads and shoulders hunched together against the rain and wind. Rose felt sorry for them. They were the Poor she was always being admonished to pray for every night. There seemed such a lot of them, and they appeared so cold and shabby, so red in the chapped face.

It was dark, and the rain and the wind were truly formidable. “Leeds!” called the guard, and Rose picked up her heavy bag and struggled with it to the door of the corridor. No adult, of course, offered to help her. She was a child and therefore well able to take care of herself. But the guard at the door of the compartment smiled at her kindly, and said, “Here, that’s a big lumbering thing for a little lass. I’ll give you a hand.” She was much surprised. He even lifted her down the high steps of the carriage. He embarrassed her. He made her feel small and incompetent. A new coachman and Grandmother’s carriage were waiting, and the train guard tossed her luggage into the carriage while the coachman watched impassively. The train guard touched his cap as if she were a grown-up lady, and as she did not know what else to do to repay him for his kindness she gave him a curtsey. The coachman sneered and spat. “Lookin’ for sixpence,” he muttered, driving off. “Give him that, did you?”

“No,” she said, “I have only three shillings, for emergencies.”

She spoke in the chilly accents taught her at Miss Brothers’ school, and the coachman became silent. When they reached Grandmother’s house he even alighted and lifted her and her luggage from the carriage. “Don’t get above yourself,” he warned her, however. “It’s the Madam as has the money, not your Pa.”

Grandmother, of course, was at dinner, with guests, all gentlemen from the sound of them. But what voices! They were the voices of giants, laughing, interrupting, bursting into laughter, arguing. They were also musical, with the brownish burr of the Scots and the Irish. There were snatches of rollicking song. Manly voices, strong and powerful. “The priests, again,” said the coachman disdainfully to the maid. “At it again, are they?”

“Ever so,” said the maid, in a tone to match his own. “Wot she sees in them — ”

“Once a Roman, always a Roman,” said the coachman, departing.

“What’s a Roman like?” Rose asked Elsie, with interest.

“Never you mind,” she snapped. “Just keep out of their sight. Upstairs with you, and mind your tongue.” But Rose was older now, almost five. “Watch your own tongue, Elsie,” she said with hauteur. “You are not the one to correct me.” She had learned a thing or two at Miss Brothers’, and a lady was not to endure impudence in servants.

“I’ll give it to you!” cried Elsie, viciously. But she did not haul Rose upstairs this time. She followed her with the luggage, three steps behind, muttering to herself. She lit the fire; the room was as bitterly cold as Rose had remembered. Then she went down for Rose’s tea. She came back, empty-handed. “The Madam wants you in the dining-room,” she said, incredulously. “You! A kid! Wot’s the world comin’ to, tell me? But then,” she added, as if it explained everything, as it probably did, “the priests want to take a look at you.”

The ‘Romans’. Rose was filled with curiosity. Also, she was hungry. “I want my tea,” she reminded Elsie.

“Ha!” Elsie said, and threw up her hands. “There’s a place ordered for you at the table. At the table! Go along with you now, fast as you can. But wash your hands first.”

She scrubbed Rose’s hands and more roughly scrubbed her face. Then she combed out her hair. “Red!” she said, with contempt. “And not a curl in it. Straight as a stick. Your ribbon is undone.” The comb, and her fingernails, dug into Rose’s scalp. Elsie even rubbed the dust from Rose’s boots and straightened her stockings and brushed down her woolen Tartan frock. “No beauty, you,” she said, with pleasure. “All knees and elbows and you not five yet. You’ll be as tall as a man, from the looks of you, and the Madam so dainty!” She made it sound as if to be five were rather criminal, but Rose was accustomed to this attitude on the part of adults. One outgrew five, eventually. Six followed, and then seven, and time took care of the guilt of being less than five. She had also learned that time took care of other unpleasant things, too, such as sitting in a form at Miss Brothers’. The summer would eventually come. Christmas had come, hadn’t it, just when she had given up hope? (Papa had finally surrendered to the ‘Popery’ of Christmas, at Mama’s relentless insistence, for as a true Scot he despised and ignored Christmas and celebrated only the New Year. But Mama had not, as yet, introduced the enormity of a Christmas tree.)

Rose went downstairs sedately. What would the ‘Romans’ be like, those strange creatures of whom Papa talked with mingled fear and disgust, and in a dark tone? She had learned, however, to discount much of what her parents said, and besides, Mama would often laugh at Papa’s lurid tales of priests and nuns. Rose made her way through the baize door to the threshold of the dining-room, which appeared vast, too brilliant, too intimidating, to her. It was all one dazzle, from the chandelier blazing from the ceiling, to the white lace tablecloth set with glittering silver and crystal. Worse, it was full of monumental men with huge red faces. The only lady present was Grandmother. She was flushed with wine and laughter and joy, and was dressed in her favorite color, green, satin this time, restless with gems. There was a great fire on the hearth, and the room was very hot. Grandmother’s hair was piled high on her head, and it was the color of flame.

“It’s Queen Victoria, herself, come to life again!” shouted Grandmother, catching sight of Rose, and gesticulating towards the door. “The ugly frock and all, and the sober face of her!” She yelled with mirth and lifted a freckled thin bare arm in a mock gesture of salutation. Her shoulders were astonishingly bare, and small.

The men, all dressed in black, and with odd collars, turned as a man to look at Rose. For the first time in Rose’s life every adult face smiled in her direction, and every eye was kind and tender. There seemed dozens of these friendly if gigantic creatures. There were probably no more than eleven. The nearest held out his hand to her, beckoning. He said, in a soft and growling burr, “Come to me, little colleen. I’m wanting to see ye close.”

Amazed that an adult could want to see her ‘close’, and fascinated as well, Rose went to him slowly. Grandmother grinned. “She’ll not be setting the world afire, with that solemn face,” she said, hoarsely. “There’s no style in the girl. I was a belle at her age.”

The priest stroked Rose’s hair and cheek, and there was love in his touch. “It’s the brave face she has on her,” he said, and he sighed.

And that is how Rose came to know Grandmother’s priests, and all about them, and all the stories they could tell. She came to love and trust them, as she had never loved and trusted anyone else. They had many different faces, and they were strange and sometimes not to be understood by a child, but not one had a harsh voice or a cruel expression, and in spite of their big bodies and the sense of mysterious authority about them, they were gentle.

Well-brought-up British children did not eat their meals with their elders except on special occasions such as Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Easter Sunday, and birthdays, and suchlike.

Therefore, when Grandmother, with another flourish of her diamond-laden arm, indicated that Rose was to sit halfway down at the table between two priests she was dumfounded. She had never, at any time, sat in the presence of adults, at a dinner table, except on the most extraordinary of occasions. She crept onto the damask chair, half fearing that she would be yanked from it immediately for the grossest impertinence, and sent to bed without even a light tea. She was not disturbed by anyone, however. Conversation continued all about her as if she were not present. She saw Grandmother’s beautiful S
è
vres dinner plate before her, delicate creamy-white with its deep border of dark blue and gold, and her heavy silver-and-crystal goblets filled with a variety of wines. Rose furtively studied the design of the lace cloth, as delicate as a web. A servant placed a bowl of hot broth before her, and she dubiously regarded the tiny brown items in it; she did not as yet know they were mushrooms. Hushing every sound she might possibly make, she sipped at the broth, full of wonderment. Then came a delicious trout in its own sauce and the smallest of creamed onions. This was followed by a thick slice of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and the usual British vegetables. By watching out of the corner of her eye at a big hand near her, Rose gathered what fork to use. Then came the savories, and a new wine.

During all this time Grandmother’s voice boomed, shouted, and raucously laughed so that the yellow damask walls appeared to vibrate. She was in a very high, good humor. She had wanted daughters of her own, and then granddaughters. But she detested women. It was rare that she could endure the presence even of the wittiest and smartest at her own dinner parties, and she never accepted invitations to all-female teas or dinners. She preferred her brothers to her sisters, her father to her mother, her male cousins to her female. The only men she had truly disliked were her husband and her sons. She disliked them because they did not automatically proffer her what she considered her due: admiration, affection, and appreciation of her formidable charm and magnetism. She resented a man whose eye roved from her to another woman, and this did not happen often, because she was fascinating, effervescent and always beautifully gowned. Grandmother loved living, and in her presence even the saddest could find some gaiety in life, something endurable, a fresh allurement or colorful witchery.

None of these were based on the slightest virtue at all. Grandmother was not immoral; she simply was not moral, in any meaning of the word. She was given to bursts of extravagance in favor of the Lad of the Hour, but she totally lacked any real charity. “Help your neighbor if you will,” she once told Rose, “but run fast, lassie, for your life’s sake!” Grandmother never jeopardized her life, and as she rarely assisted anyone she did not make enemies.

As a lapsed Catholic, or at least as a baptized Catholic born to a Catholic family, Grandmother was the object of the constant and earnest prayers of her brothers and sisters, all devout. According to family legend, her relatives were always at Novenas, at Mass, on their knees many times a day with rosaries in their hands, praying for Grandmother’s carefree, buoyant and hilarious soul, and for her return to the Sacraments. As they were all well off, they endlessly visited famous shrines in her behalf. Visiting her, they secreted holy medals in obscure places, which caused Grandmother high amusement when a servant unearthed them. “They’ll be having my soul, will they?” she would ask, shrieking with laughter. Her father gave her the big crucifix which Rose had seen in the bedroom upstairs, and which had been blessed by the Holy Father, himself, at the humble importunity of her great-grandmother.

As her family had been so devoted to priests and the Religious when she had been a girl at home, Rose Mary had come to look upon them all with affection. The priests in her day were not Elegant English Gentlemen, but were men of vigor and strength and imagination. They had to be, to survive in those days in Scotland and England. The weak among them had no chance at all. But even those who survived were chronically poor and hungry, as were most of their parishioners, chronically shabby and threadbare, with neat patches visible at knee and elbow and boot. What woolen scarves they had were made by female relatives, or old ladies in their poverty-stricken parishes. Moreover, most of the priests had large numbers of indigent brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, not to mention old parents, and to these went most of their tiny stipends, if any, and all of the meager gifts.

They were not persecuted, of course, in either Scotland or England, but they were ignored by all but Catholics. They appeared to live in a world that found them invisible. They had no friends except those of their own Faith, and if some of the more daring reached out a kind and tentative hand towards a possibly different friend, they were immediately accused of attempting to make converts. Rare was the Protestant minister, however full of good will, who would challenge his own congregation by inviting some starveling young priest to dinner. A minister who paused on the street to speak to a ‘Roman’ colleague was inviting the darkest of suspicions and even darker glances. Sisters meekly collecting for charities in shops were usually roughly ordered out at once, unless the shopkeeper were Catholic, himself.

So priests in England, Scotland and Wales in those days led very rigorous lives, and they needed all the humor, affection, sympathy and kindness they could get from their own people. It was no life for the faint-hearted, the timid or the too gentle, or the openly sensitive. Sons of a brawling people, they did not hesitate openly to protect a victim of a gang on some sordid street. They did not rush for a policeman. They rescued the victims themselves, and punched and kicked with fervor. Their garb did not protect them at a time when they were objects of derision. Many a priest suffered a broken head or a limb on his missions of violent mercy, but one can be sure that they gave as good as they got. Each of them would have eagerly offered his life in martyrdom for his Faith and his God, and considered such martyrdom the most blessed of Graces. But a helpless woman who was being beaten by her drunken husband, or a child who was being tormented by cruel adults, often had reason to rejoice encountering a passing priest drawn by her screams and groans. The deep humility of their souls, which would have prevented them from defending their own persons except when in danger of death, did not permit priests to stand by while the weak were being attacked or tortured. Many priests died of injuries in the slums of London and Liverpool and Manchester, when their attempts to save a helpless man, woman or child failed, or even when they succeeded. They had to be brawny and vigorous men, of courage, steadfastness and strength. They met the devil face to face many times in their lives, and often gave their lives and blood in the struggle against him. But still they preserved their good humor under the direst of challenges, and as they were mighty men they were singularly gentle and uncomplex, the first to help, the first to comfort, the first to offer kindness.

They were, of course, not Gentlemen. Few there were of noble blood, those Scots and Irish priests. Most of them had been born in the working class, in poverty, in the midst of other teeming children, in hunger, in cold. They knew hard labor as soon as they began to toddle. They never wondered if they had a vocation for the priesthood, nor did they dally at ease with the thought. A lad knew, absolutely, if he had a vocation, and he pursued it under the most dreadful of circumstances, often without a penny in his pocket or more than the clothes that he stood in. He knew what the life entailed, and so from the very beginning he could have no doubts. A boy or youth with doubts, or hesitations, never became a priest in those days.

It is no wonder, then, that their people reverenced and loved them, for they knew what these men were sacrificing for them because of their love of God and man. Few Catholics in those days, in England, Scotland or Ireland, were rich. If they were, their homes became oases of refreshment, temporary rest, and food, and what charity could be wrung from rich pockets. It was never a great deal, that charity, for men of substance who have never known pain, sorrow, hunger or homelessness are frequently hard of heart. What little money found its way into the offering plates came from hands scoured, callused and twisted by the most arduous work. Still, the homes of the rich Catholics were open to the priests, most of the time, provided the priests did not press too ardently for cash for a school or new bells or an orphanage or a convent, and used tact during the hour of possible extraction. It was a case of “I won’t look if you take anything from my purse, provided you don’t call my attention to it.”

Grandmother had known priests all her life. As they possessed her own sense of humor, vitality, shrewdness and love for living, she remained fond of them. They also reminded her of her petted childhood, when there were always at least two priests at every dinner. She had respect for them, she who respected no other men. They knew how to survive.

They were all aware of the dire state of her soul, the various members of the family usually keeping all priests up to date on the sins of ‘our Rose Mary’. Her house was open to them, and they came. There is not the slightest doubt that every priest, even while eating the best of dinners and drinking the best of whiskeys and wines in Grandmother’s house, was praying for her soul and her return to sanctity.