Immaculate Heart (27 page)

 

The next day was May Day, the procession from the hill before Father Dowd's special Mass at the holy well. I told Mam and Dad I didn't want to go, and they didn't press me. They told Father Dowd I was sick and Tess led the procession by herself.

I laid in bed awhile trying to listen through the silence, but no one was there. Then I dressed and went up to the hill. When I looked down toward Rathgar I could see them shuffling down the boreen through Jim Boyne's pastures, people I knew and people I didn't, though I couldn't tell them apart from that distance. There were two hundred at least.

It was a beautiful day, but how could I enjoy it? I needed to be alone but Declan was there sitting on the bench where he'd carved their initials, smoking a cigarette, looking out over the town.

I sat down beside him.—Why did you tell her … why'd you tell her we'd …

—I didn't tell her anything, Síle, Declan said wearily.—She got it into her head that we'd done it, and after that there was no tellin' her otherwise.

—What did you say to make her think it?

—Nothing, he said.—Nothing. We had a row and she leapt to the worst.

—It isn't fair, I said.—She'll never believe us.

—I'm sorry, Síle. I wish it hadn't happened.

He laid his arm round my shoulders and for a minute we sat there on the bench, not saying anything.

—It's over now, he said finally.—Orla and me, we're finished. He kicked at pebbles in the dirt.—It's for the best though.

—Since you're leaving?

He nodded.—I leave this Thursday week.

I wanted to ask him how he'd got the money for his ticket, but I didn't.—Will you be in Australia for a long time?

—I will, he said, and let out a mad laugh.—I'm never coming back.

—What about your mam?

—When I get settled in a good job I'll send for her and she can come and live with me. Declan got this hard look on his face, the way he did whenever Father Dowd was there.—I'm never comin' back here, Síle. Never.

—You hate it that much? Living in Ballymorris?

—Your sister was never going to leave. She'll find a husband and have a litter of kids. She'll live out her life in this horrible place.

—It's not so bad, I said.—Maybe you'll see it differently if you come back to visit.

Declan turned to me then, and it was like he was seeing me for the first time.—Sweet Síle, he said, and he began to stroke my hair back from my forehead.—I won't miss much about this place, but I
will
miss you.

—And I'll miss you sharing your chocs with me, I said.

He kept touching me.—You're a lovely girl, you know that?

—You make me feel as if I were, looking at me like that. I felt something strange welling up in the pit of my stomach.

—You are, he whispered.—You are.

That's how we came to do the thing we were accused of, on the hill above the grotto where no one could see. He took me by the hand and led me up, laid me down, and pulled off my knickers, and it happened just as Orla said. And Our Lady's words rang out in my mind … I'm always with you, Síle, even when you can't see Me … and I felt sick all over as Declan found a new place inside me, dark and deep. He fell onto me and wept into my hair,—I wanted this, I wanted this, God help me, I wanted it, and all I could think was why didn't he tell me it would hurt?

Afterwards he said we should each go down alone, so he left me in the grass, and I lay there in a daze for a long time looking up at the blue sky and the bright clouds. I wasn't pure anymore. Our Lady would never come to me again.

 

10

NOVEMBER 14

In the morning I texted Tess to remind her I'd be leaving in two days, and she replied within seconds.
We can go for a walk if you like. Have you been to Saint Brigid's Well? Then maybe we can come back by the pilgrims' route, up to the grotto.

I told her I was up for it, and turned to my breakfast. I'd reached the point in Síle's diary where I didn't really want to read any farther, but it wasn't as if putting it away had ever been an option. Another of those nearly impenetrable passages went on for a dozen pages—this one about a son who fantasized about suffocating his mother with a pillow, as best I could make out—and then I came to the next entry.

I hadn't gone up to the hill in a full week. It was over, all the wondrous mystery of it had finished forever through our own stupidity.

I was in our room reading when She came to me. Orla had gone out with her new friends. The Blessed Mother was so bright and I was so full of shame that I couldn't bear to look at Her.

—Why do you turn away from Me, child?

—I'm ashamed, I said through my hands.—Ashamed of what I've done.

—I know what you've done, She said, but Her voice was gentle and sweet.

—I've sinned, I said, and I hid my face in my hands.—I've sinned and she'll never forgive me. You'll never forgive me.

She lifted my chin with Her finger and my hands fell away again as I rose to face Her.—Have you, now? She said softly.—Show Me. Show Me what you'd do, if you had it all to do over again.

In a flash She was gone and I was back on the hill in the warm spring sunshine, Declan sitting beside me on the bench, and this part of me sat quietly inside of myself whilst the rest of me went on saying the words just as I'd spoken them the first time. Why did you tell her. She'll never believe us.

Inside I waited and listened, waited until Declan said the words you're a lovely girl, you are, you are. It was like moving through honey to draw back when he touched me, to rise from that bench, but I did rise.—No, I said.—It isn't right, and I turned from him and ran down the hill, and I heard the crunch of my runners on the gravel echoing in the space between then and now, done and undone.

The day melted away again, I was back at home on my bed, and there She was before me.—Good girl, Síle. I knew you'd make it right.

I opened my mouth, but at first I didn't know how to ask what I was so desperate to know.

The way Our Lady smiled then, it reminded me of the beginning, only there was just myself and Tess left now.—You were made by God to wander the world, high and low, bright and dark, and bring the Light, God's light, to every man, woman, and child you encounter. To walk in the joy of Creation, and to share in that joy.

And I said,—That's lovely, Mother. Thank you. I …

—What is it, child?

—Have I … I hardly dared to ask.—Have I undone it?

The Blessed Mother nodded and kissed me on my forehead. She'd never kissed me before, and how it thrilled me. And the relief of it, I'd never in a million years be able to describe the relief.

A half hour later I knocked on the door of the youth center, and Tess emerged in a slouchy hat, a crimson rain jacket and well-worn hiking boots. “This way,” she said, and a couple minutes later, we were walking down a muddy lane between two hedgerows, as if the town were even smaller than I'd thought.

“How are you feeling today?” I asked.

“It's becoming more real to me,” she sighed. “It felt so good to sit and chat with you the other night—to forget for a while.” She hopped nimbly over a puddle in the lane. “I wish you had more time. I'm afraid I'm bound to be terrible company today, but it wouldn't have felt right not to see you before you go.”

“Well, I'm glad we're doing this. It's good to see you.” I watched her cast half a smile into the gloomy sky. “Besides, I haven't gotten any exercise all week.”

“You'll have it today,” she replied. “It's just under ten miles to the well and back.”

We walked in silence for a minute or two. There weren't any houses beyond the hedgerows now, just cows grazing in green fields. I waited for Tess to speak again.

“I wasn't sure I was going to tell you any more,” she said finally. “Did you listen to the tapes? I was going to ask you the other night, and then I didn't.” She glanced over at me, and I nodded. “I don't remember what I said.”

“Way more than you told
me,
” I said teasingly.

She hesitated. “Tell me what I said.”

“You told Father Dowd the apparition showed you her heart.”

For the next few paces, Tess closed her eyes. “There's a bluebell wood not far from here,” she said as we kept walking. “If you'd come in the spring, I'd have taken you there.”

“Maybe next time,” I said.

She opened her eyes and smiled a little. “Just don't let it be another twenty-five years, all right?”

I smiled back. “I promise.”

“Orla and I used to spend all afternoon there in the summer holidays sometimes, when the weather was nice.”

“All afternoon?”

“All afternoon,” she sighed. “Just talking and making flower chains.”

“What did you talk about?”

She smiled sadly. “Boys, mostly.”

“You don't miss it?”

“What?” Tess gave me the closest thing to a laugh. “Talking about boys?”

“I've always been curious about the whole celibacy thing.”

She seemed amused. “Why?”

“I could never go the rest of my life without…” I remembered who I was talking to, and fell silent.

“You don't understand it because it's not your calling,” Tess replied.

“You never wanted a partner, though? Kids?”

“Everyone wants those things at some point in their lives. The younger priests, they'll even admit as much to the congregation because they understand it's important for people to see we're as human as they are.”

“If you want marriage and children, though, how does that jive with being ‘called'?”

Tess paused to formulate her answer. “It's like going to a place on holiday, falling in love with it and wishing you could live there for always,” she said gently. “But you come home again because it's where you belong.”

“I don't believe that,” I said. “I think we can ‘belong' wherever we want to be.”

Tess looked at me. “So you'd say you belong in New York?”

I could tell by her face that my face had betrayed me. I'd lived there all my adult life—traveled to warmer, greener, sunnier places I hadn't wanted to leave—and yet I'd never truly given it any thought.

We came to a turnoff. A wooden signpost for
ST. BRIGID'S HOLY WELL
pointed right, and I followed her onto a track even muddier than the first. Tess took a breath, looked as if she were about to speak, and closed her mouth again. I waited. Finally she said, “You said you'd spoken to Orla.”

“Yes. I've talked with her a couple of times now.”

“And she said she didn't believe she saw it. That she only convinced herself to hide Síle's illness.”

“It doesn't make sense,” I said. “If you all saw it, then how come only one of you is in a home?”

Tess gave me an unreadable look—or, rather, there were so many emotions vying for control of her face that I couldn't tell which would win. “That might be the one thing you came here to find out.” It was the only thing she'd ever said that didn't ring true.

Lightly she ran her fingertips along the dull green leaves in the hedge. “There's loads of fuchsia here in the summertime,” she murmured, and again we walked in silence for a bit. “Seeing as we're headed to her well, would you like to hear about Saint Brigid?”

“Sure,” I said.

“There's a legend says that when she was a child, a host of angels carried her, asleep and dreaming, over the sea and back in time to witness the birth of Christ.”

“That's a nice story.”

“Isn't it? There's such a depth and richness to the history of our Church that most people never explore,” she said. “So many nooks and corridors that lead you to something obscure and wonderful.”

“I never looked at it that way.” I smiled. “But you know what I think of the Church. Dusty and humorless and completely out of touch.”

“Aye,” she said earnestly, “but it doesn't have to be that. There's a beautiful painting in the National Gallery of Scotland by an artist called John Duncan. He painted two angels carrying Saint Brigid across the sea, with seagulls and seals bobbing in their wake. The angels have wings colored like the sunset, and if you look closely you can see their robes are embroidered with scenes from the Old Testament.” She sighed. “I went to Edinburgh when I was nineteen, and I just stood and looked at that painting for what felt like all afternoon.”

“You sound like Síle,” I said. “Painting pictures with words.”

Beyond the hedge, sheep were nibbling on weeds growing among the ruins of an old stone farmhouse. “You've been spending a lot of time with her,” Tess remarked.

“I wouldn't say ‘a lot.'”

“But you've been to see her several times.”

I nodded. “She said to tell you she was asking for you.”

“And you said she's doing well?”

“Very well,” I said. “She draws and paints all day and goes for walks by the sea.”

“That sounds like a good life,” Tess replied. If anyone else had said so, it would've sounded sarcastic.

“If you forget she isn't allowed to leave.”