Heart and Soul (20 page)

“You were there because you loved me,” he explained, as if to a small child.

“Is this a holiday you're taking in Ireland?” she asked, changing the subject suddenly.

“No, I hear there's plenty of work here, and with two friends I am going to open a club.”

“You are leaving the Bridge Café?”

“It's no longer mine to leave.”

“And your little daughter, Katarina?”

“She will not want to be bothered with me. She has her mother and her rich grandfather.”

“And why do you come to me?”

“When we have this club, I want you to come and work with me. It will be like before.”

“They don't have cafés like that in Ireland,” she said.

“It's going to be a lap-dancing club. They have those everywhere. And you, Ania, you dance so well…”

“But I don't dance naked around a pole or at people's tables in front of their faces.” She was appalled.

“You would be so good. You still look lovely, you haven't got fat and puffy like Oliwia has.”

“Good night, Marek.” She made a move to go upstairs, but he put his hand on her arm.

“Let me come with you.”

“Go home, Marek. Go back, clear up the mess you made.” This time he held her arm more firmly, stopping her from leaving. Behind him, she could see the waiters come closer. Protectively.

“It's all right, he's going,” she said to them.

“You owe me—we owe it to each other to finish the dream.”

“That's what it was—a dream. On my part. On your part—I don't know. You never loved me. Never. Do you know what a relief
it is for me to know that? For such a long time I thought you had loved me and I had somehow done something to lose your love. This way it's much better. I have no fear of you anymore. No fear of displeasing you …” She was aware that Lidia had come in and was standing silently, supportively at her side.

Marek reached toward Ania, but she pushed him away. She could hear the restaurant owner asking, “What do we do now?”

Lidia was wordless. It was Ania's call.

It took her ten seconds. Then she said, “He will go away.” She stood tall, as she had told her mother she did. She met people's eyes. She had nothing to apologize for.

It was a moment when they all recognized this, particularly Marek.

“It's all right, I'm going,” he said angrily. Then he turned back to Ania and said roughly, “I did love you for a bit. Truly …”

“Good-bye, Marek,” she said, as she had said all those months ago, the night before she left Poland. But this time she really meant it.

She felt that she had been given a fresh chance, a new start. It was as if she had been cleansed, the way she had felt when she went to confession a while back. Her English was nearly good enough to go to confession now in this country. Perhaps she could see that nice Father Flynn. She would do it this week.

Brian Flynn hadn't known what to expect when the new Polish priest arrived in Rossmore. He certainly didn't expect that he would have a new best friend.

Tomasz was a cheerful, optimistic young man eager to do anything to help in the parish. He was the kind of priest that Brian thought he himself used to be twenty years back. Someone who believed that anything could be done if there was enough goodwill. Brian didn't really believe that anymore. People didn't seem to
need
the Church these days, so what was he doing trying to be a bridge between God and the faithful?

Apart from a few elderly folk there was hardly anybody at his daily ten a.m. Mass. Once it had been the start of the day for women who went about their shopping afterward and shop workers who used to slip into his church for a quarter of an hour during their break. Schoolgirls praying for a good career or a handsome boyfriend came in to light a candle. The parents of sick children came in to seek help, the anxious and disturbed came looking for peace.

Where are they now? Either up at that holy well talking to St. Ann or just getting on with life according to their own resources. Father Brian Flynn knew that if this was true and if people
were
managing on their own, then he should be pleased for them, and
God would be pleased too. Why keep an empty ritual going if nobody needed it?

But then, this way heresy lay. The next step would be to think that the Church had
no
role to play in salvation. And this was a road that Father Flynn did not want to travel. So he watched enviously as young Father Tomasz labored on, organizing processions that hardly anyone supported, and festivals that were largely ignored.

The days passed. Every morning he visited his mother, who stayed in Neddy Nolan's house, a happy home where Neddy and Clare with their baby girl managed to combine looking after not only his mother but also the aged canon and two confused brothers who used to work in a garden center before the bypass came and changed the town. They had now totally transformed Neddy and Clare's garden and made it the envy of all Rossmore. Meanwhile, Clare was still teaching at the local convent school.

These were the kind of people who had replaced the Church, Brian Flynn would sometimes say to Tomasz when they played a game of chess at night. Tomasz said people like the Nolans hadn't replaced the Church, they had just added to it and wasn't it something to be celebrated rather than sighed over?

Tomasz learned three new words every evening. He particularly liked the word
eejit.

“What does it signify exactly, Brian?” he asked.

As so often these days, Brian Flynn felt at a loss. “That fellow's an old eejit. It means he hasn't a great brain.”

“Is he mentally ill? Does
eejit
mean mentally ill?”

“No, no, it doesn't. It means that he behaves kind of foolishly.”

“Like he is going through a breakdown?”

“No, it's in his nature to do something sort of eejity. No, that's not much help. He's a bit of a gobdaw.”

“Gobdaw!”
Tomasz cried, delighted. “What a wonderful word! What is
a gobdaw?”

It was a relief to turn to talk about the conference in Dublin, the day of lectures and seminars about the Church and the New Irish,
the reaching out to immigrants, policies that were now becoming relevant to parishes all over the country.

Brian and Tomasz took the train to Dublin for the meeting. During the day the bishop approached Brian and explained that there was a great need for hardworking, energetic priests in Dublin's inner city.

“Oh, Your Grace, please don't take Tomasz from me now. He's such a live wire, such a force in Rossmore,” Brian begged.

“Who said anything about Father Tomasz? I was talking about you,” the bishop explained. And it was as simple as that. The process had begun. In a matter of three months Father Brian Flynn was transferred to a Dublin parish.

Nobody seemed to mind where he lived. The days were gone when the priest's house was a matter of concern and importance, but it was expected that he find somewhere to live fairly speedily. He had asked around and Johnny, a big, bluff guy with the looks of an all-in wrestler, said there was a flat available in the house where he lived. Not elegant, mind, but convenient—good pub round the corner, late-night shop up the street. The landlord didn't live on the premises, which was always an advantage, but of course come to think of it Brian wouldn't be throwing many wild parties. Anyway, the negotiation was done swiftly and Father Tomasz hired a van to bring Brian Flynn's few possessions up to Dublin.

“Take that nice warm rug, Brian. It might be cold here in the winter,” he begged.

“No, no, that rug belongs to the priest's house.” Brian struggled to be fair.

“Jaysus,
you're like a pair of auld ones dividing up the assets after years of marriage,” Johnny said. Johnny had strong views about matrimony, all negative. “I don't know what all this fuss is about clerical celibacy,” he would say, shaking his head in amazement. “You're well out of it, I say. Steer far away.”

“You only say that because you haven't met the right girl,” Brian would counter.

“There is no right girl. They're all the same. When I see fellows, normal fellows, wiping sick off their shoulders, changing nappies, being tormented by things going
wa-wa
for hours on end, I wonder has the world as we know it gone mad?”

“Well, if we were to follow your line of thinking, Johnny, the world as we know it would die out completely because no one would procreate at all.”

“No harm either,” Johnny would mutter.

Johnny's flat on the first floor was full of exercise equipment. The only books were fitness manuals. His fridge had health drinks and there was always a bowl of fresh fruit on his windowsill. He was an easygoing, good-natured lad and very generous with his time and skills. He gave several exercise classes a week at the social center and encouraged people to run with him in the parks, Brian included.

“We'll have to get that clerical stomach off of you, Father,” he would mock. “If you're going to survive in the city you must be a much leaner lad.”

Tomasz had taught Brian some helpful phrases in Polish. He was far better at explaining the words of his language than Brian was about English, and as the weeks went on Brian found that his work was much more in the nature of a social worker than the tradition and ritual of the priesthood.

This was no bad thing. If, at the end of the day, you had helped with housing or child support, or intervened to ensure that the minimum wage was being paid, it was often a better feeling than having offered prayers to God for something that would surely never happen. If he'd had the joyful attitude of Father Tomasz he would have seen virtue and value in both approaches.

He took a train to Rossmore every week to see his mother, but as time went on she recognized him not at all. Neddy said he must have no worries, he would call Dr. Dermot instantly if anything were to happen, and in the meantime Mrs. Flynn was content living in her early girlhood and hoping that the nice young man she had met on a day trip to the Isle of Man would get in touch.

“Was that your father, Brian?” Neddy asked kindly always looking for a happy ending.

Brian knew his father had never been to the Isle of Man, but kindness was a higher law. “It was indeed,” he said and he saw Neddy's smile broaden.

Brian heard regularly from Neddy on matters such as his mother's having developed a liking for St. Ann's Well; and from his sister Judy, who had married Skunk Slattery; and sometimes from parishioners, who wrote to thank him for what he had done in the past and to update him on miracle cures for drinking husbands, reconciliations in loveless marriages, successes of once-wild children who had returned to their studies. But more usually credit for this was given to St. Ann and her mad well.

Brian learned more about Dublin in his runs with Johnny than he had ever found out anywhere else. As he paused for breath he would find little-known statues and memorials that had escaped him. He discovered too that even in this big, wealthy, shiny city, which was full of lights and bustle, there was intense loneliness. His heart went out to the young Eastern Europeans who clung to each other for company in this strange land. He learned to eat all kinds of strange, spiced foods; he made discoveries about cabbage and meatballs that flabbergasted him. Brian Flynn, who used to be a two-slices-of-meat, two-boiled-potatoes-and-carrots man, was now much more adventurous. And it was not hard to make friends.

Johnny had introduced him to Ania, who had made curtains for his flat and said she didn't want money because it was an honor to do a small service for a good Father. Brian reminded her that Our Lord had said the laborer is worthy of his hire, and Ania had told him that God was indeed good. She had met a lady doctor in a car park who had given her a job with huge money and great importance and now she felt she could do anything, be anybody that she wanted. Sometimes she came to the evenings that Brian organized where he invited various Irish personalities to talk about the country to the newly arrived residents.

Ania explained that people loved these evenings on different
levels. Some were really interested in the country where they had come to live and others were hoping to meet people who would give them jobs. A lot of them were cold and lonely and relished the thought of a warm room and company. Brian built on this last reason for attendance and arranged that there should always be something to eat and an urn of tea at the ready. He even introduced a log fire, which they loved, and decorated the hall with pictures of Irish treasures or castles or beauty spots. He worried that they all worked too hard to earn money and didn't get to know the country where they had come to live.

It was on New Year's Eve that Brian met Eileen Edwards. Eileen had heard about the social center and wanted to be part of it. Gently, Brian told her it was really a drop-in and welcoming place for recently arrived immigrants. But Eileen insisted.

“I've heard you mention it at Mass, Father. I am one of your parishioners and I would like to be involved, if you see what I mean.”

Brian didn't really see what she meant. She was in her mid-twenties, a good-looking blonde with long, curly hair, well dressed in leather jackets. She lived in one of the very upmarket apartment blocks nearby. She told Brian that she was a freelance writer, but her real problem was that she had an allowance from her father, so she wasn't
hungry
enough to write, if he knew what she meant. Again, he didn't really know what she meant. To him it was simple: you were a writer or you weren't a writer. But then, what did he know? Here she was, a kind parishioner wanting to help. He must find her something to do.