The Phantom of Manhattan (7 page)

7

THE LESSON OF PIERRE DE CHAGNY

SS LORRAINE
, LONG ISLAND SOUND, 28 NOVEMBER 1906

‘WELL, WHAT’S IT GOING TO BE TODAY, YOUNG Pierre? Latin, I think.’

‘Oh, do we have to, Father Joe? We’ll be coming into New York Harbor soon. The captain told Mama over breakfast.’

‘But at the moment we are still passing Long Island and an empty coast it is. Nothing to see but mist and sand. A fine moment to kill some time with Caesar’s
Gallic Wars.
Open your book where we left off.’

‘Is it important, Father Joe?’

‘It certainly is.’

‘But why should Caesar invading England be important?’

‘Well, if you were a Roman legionary heading into an unknown land of wild savages you’d have thought so. And if you were an Ancient Briton with the eagles of Rome marching up the beach you’d have thought so too.’

‘But I’m not a Roman soldier and certainly not an Ancient Briton. I’m a modern Frenchman.’

‘With whom I am charged, Heaven save us, to try and give a good education, academic and moral. So, Caesar’s first invasion of the island he knew as Britannia. Start at the top of the page.’

‘
Accidit ut eadem nocte luna esset plena
.’

‘Good. Translate.’

‘It fell …
nocte
means night … night fell?’

‘No, night did not fall. It had already fallen. He was looking up at the sky. And
accidit
means “it befell” or “happened”. Start again.’

‘It happened that on the same night … er … the moon was full?’

‘Precisely. Now put it into better English.’

‘It happened that on the same night there was a full moon.’

‘There was indeed. You’re lucky with Caesar. He was a soldier and he wrote in clear soldier’s language. When we get on to Ovid, Horace, Juvenal and Virgil there will be some real brain-teasers. Why did he say
esset
and not
erat
?’

‘Subjunctive tense?’

‘Well done. An element of doubt. It might not have been a full moon but by chance it was. So, the subjunctive. He was lucky with the moon.’

‘Why, Father Joe?’

‘Because, lad, he was invading a foreign land in the dark. No powerful searchlights in those days. No lighthouses to keep you off the rocks. He needed to find a flat, shingly beach between the cliffs. So the moonlight was a help.’

‘Did he invade Ireland too?’

‘He did not. Old Hibernia remained inviolate for another twelve hundred years, long after St Patrick brought us Christianity. And then it was not the Romans but the British. And you’re a cunning dog, trying to draw me away from Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
.’

‘But can’t we talk about Ireland, Father Joe? I have seen most of Europe now, but never Ireland.’

‘Oh, why not? Caesar can make his landfall at Pevensey Bay tomorrow. What do you want to know?’

‘Did you come from a rich family? Did your parents have a fine house and broad estates like mine?’

‘Indeed they did not. For most of the great estates are owned by the English or the Anglo-Irish. But the Kilfoyles go back before the conquest. And mine were just poor farming people.’

‘Are most of the Irish poor?’

‘Well, certainly the people of the countryside do not have any silver spoons. Most are tenant farmers in a small way, scraping a living from the land. My people are like that. I came from a small farm outside the town of Mullingar. My father tilled the land from dawn till dusk. There were nine of us in the brood; I was the second-born son and we lived mostly on potatoes mixed with milk from our two cows and beet from the fields.’

‘But you got an education, Father Joe?’

‘Of course I did. Ireland may be poor, but she is steeped in saints, and scholars, poets and soldiers, and now a few priests. But the Irish are concerned with the love of God and education, in that order. So we all went to the village school which was run by the fathers. Three miles away and walking barefoot. All the way, each way. Summer evenings until after dark and all the holidays we helped our da on the farm. Then homework in the light of a single candle until we fell asleep, five of us in one bunk and the four small ones tucked in with our parents.’

‘
Mon Dieu
, did you not have ten bedrooms?’

‘Listen, young lad, your bedroom at the chateau is bigger than was the entire farmhouse. You’re luckier than you know.’

‘You have travelled a long way since then, Father Joe.’

‘Oh, that I have, and I wonder daily why the Lord favoured me in such a way.’

‘But you still got an education.’

‘Yes, and a good one. Driven into us by a combination of patience, love and the strap. Reading and writing, sums and Latin, history but not much geography for the fathers had never been anywhere and it was presumed we would never do so either.’

‘Why did you decide to become a priest, Father Joe?’

‘Well, we had mass every morning before lessons, and of course on Sundays as a family. I became an altar boy and something about the mass got into me. I used to look at the great wooden figure above the altar and think that if He had done that for me, then perhaps I ought to serve Him as best I could. I was good at school and when I was about to leave I asked if there was any chance of being sent to train for the priesthood.

‘I knew my older brother would take over the farm one day and I would certainly be one less mouth to feed. And I was lucky. I was sent into Mullingar for an interview, with a note from Father Gabriel at the school, and they accepted me for the seminary at Kildare. Miles away. A major adventure.’

‘But now you are with us in Paris and London, St Petersburg and Berlin.’

‘Yes, but that is now. When I was fifteen the coach to Kildare was a big adventure. So I was tested again and accepted, and studied for years until the time came for ordination. There was quite a group of us in my class and the Cardinal Archbishop himself came over from Dublin to ordain us all. When it was over I thought to go and spend my life as a humble parish priest somewhere in the west, a forgotten parish in Connaught, perhaps. And I would have accepted that with a glad heart.

‘But I was called back by the principal. He was with another man whom I did not know. It turned out he was Bishop Delaney of Clontarf and he needed a private secretary. They said I had a good clear hand for the writing and would I like the post? Well, it was almost too good to be true. I was twenty-one and they were inviting me to live in a bishop’s palace and be secretary to a man responsible for a whole see.

‘So I went with Bishop Delaney, a good and holy man, and spent five years at Clontarf and learned many things.’

‘Why did you not stay there, Father Joe?’

‘I thought I would, or at least until the Church found other work for me. A parish in Dublin, perhaps, or Cork or Waterford. But then chance struck again. Ten years ago the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador to the whole of Britain, came from London to tour his Irish provinces and spent three days at Clontarf. He had a retinue, did Cardinal Massini, and one of them was Monsignor Eamonn Byrne from the Irish College in Rome. We found ourselves thrown together quite a bit and got along well. We discovered we were born only ten miles apart, though he was several years older.

‘The cardinal went on his way and I thought no more about it. Four weeks later a letter arrived from the principal of the Irish College offering me a place. Bishop Delaney said he was sorry to see me go but gave me his blessing and urged me to take the chance. So I packed my single bag and took the train to Dublin. I thought that was big, until the ferry and another train brought me to London. Sure I had never seen such a place nor thought any city could be so big and grand.

‘Then there was a ferry to France and another train, this time to Paris. Another amazing sight; I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The last train brought me through the Alps and down to Rome itself.’

‘Were you surprised by Rome?’

‘Amazed and overawed. Here was the Vatican City itself, the Sistine Chapel, the Basilica of St Peter … I stood in the crowd and looked up at the balcony and took the Urbi et Orbi blessing from His Holiness himself. And I wondered how a boy from a potato patch outside Mullingar could ever have come so far and been so privileged. So I wrote home to my parents, telling them everything, and they took the letter round the whole village and showed it to everyone and they became celebrities themselves.’

‘But why do you now live with us, Father Joe?’

‘Another coincidence, Pierre. Six years ago your mama came to sing in Rome. I know nothing of opera but by chance a member of the cast, an Irishman, collapsed with a heart attack in the wings. Someone was sent running to ask for a priest and I was on duty that night. There was nothing I could do for the poor man but give him the last rites, but he had been carried to your mama’s dressing-room at her insistence. That was where I met her. She was very distressed. I tried to comfort her by explaining that God is never malign, even when He takes back one of His children to Himself. I had made it my business to master Italian and French, so we spoke in French. It seemed to surprise her that someone should speak both, plus English and Gaelic.

‘She also had problems for other reasons. Her career was taking her all over Europe, from Russia to Spain, from London to Vienna. Your father needed to spend more time with his estates in Normandy. You were six and running wild, your education constantly interrupted by the travelling, but too young for boarding-school and anyway she did not wish to be parted from you. I suggested she might engage a resident tutor to travel with her everywhere. She was thinking it over when I left, to return to the college and resume my studies.

‘Her engagement was for a week, and on the day before she left I was summoned to the office of the principal, and there she was. Clearly she had made quite an impression. She wished me to become your tutor, for formal education, moral guidance and a bit of manly control thrown in. I was dumbfounded and tried to decline.

‘But the principal would have none of it and he made it a flat order. As obedience is one of the vows, the die was cast. And as you know I have been with you ever since, trying to shove some knowledge into that head of yours and keep you from becoming a complete barbarian.’

‘Do you regret it, Father Joe?’

‘No, I do not. For your father is a fine man, better than you know, and your mama is a great lady with an extraordinary God-given talent. I live and eat too well, of course, and must say constant penance for this life of luxury, but I have seen amazing things: cities to take the breath away, paintings and art galleries that are the stuff of legend, operas to make you cry, and me a boy from the potato patch!’

‘I’m glad Mama chose you, Father Joe.’

‘Well, thank you for that, but you won’t be when we start into Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
again. Which ought to be now, but here comes your mother. Stand up, lad!’

‘What are you two doing in here? We have turned into the Roads, the sun has come out and burned off the mist and from the bow you can see all of New York moving towards us. Wrap up warm and come to look. For this is one of the greatest sights of the world and if we depart in darkness you will never see it again.’

‘Very good, my lady, we are on our way. Looks as if you are lucky once again, Pierre. No more Caesar today.’

‘Father Joe?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Will there be great adventures in New York?’

‘More than enough, for the captain has told me there is a huge civic reception awaiting at the docking pier. We’ll be staying at the Waldorf-Astoria, one of the biggest and most famous hotels in the world. In five days your mama will open a brand-new opera house and star nightly for a week. In that time I think we’ll be able to explore a little, see the sights, ride the new elevated train - I have read all about it in a book I bought in Le Havre …

‘Well now, will you look at that, Pierre. Is it not a fantastic sight? Liners and tugs, freighters and tramps, schooners and paddlers; how on earth do they not bang into each other? And there she is, look, over to the left. The Lady with the Lamp herself, the Statue of Liberty. Ah, Pierre, if you only knew how many wretched people, fleeing from the Old World, have seen her coming out of the mist and known they were starting a new life. Millions of them, including my own fellow-countrymen and women. For since the Great Famine fifty years ago half of Ireland has moved to New York, crammed like cattle into the steerage holds, coming on deck in the freezing cold of morning to watch the city move across the water and pray they would be allowed in.

‘Since then many of them have moved inland, even as far as the coast of California to help create a new nation. But many are still here in New York, the Irish-Americans, more in this city alone than in all of Dublin, Cork and Belfast combined. So I’ll be feeling quite at home here, my lad. I’ll even be able to get a pint of good Irish stout, which I have not found for many years.