Turbulent Priests (Dan Starkey 3) (11 page)

When he was out of earshot Patricia said: ‘He’s a moody one, isn’t he?’

I watched him lope off down the hill, round shoulders bunched up. I shrugged.

Patricia furrowed up her brows, shook her head slightly. ‘Maybe he’s got ME.’

‘You mean that yuppie flu. Myalgic . . . whatever?’

‘Nah,’ she said, turning back to the church, ‘Messiah Envy.’

13

The churchyard was finally empty, save for a big woman by the gate, sitting astride an old boneshaker, her face turned up to the sun. Patricia looked at her watch. ‘Do you think they’ll be long?’ she asked and looked anxiously first at the back door of the church, and then at Little Stevie. ‘He’s due.’

‘A couple of minutes won’t make any difference,’ I said.

‘Try telling him that,’ she replied, turning the baby towards me.

He didn’t look too worried. Nevertheless, I put up a placatory hand. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said. ‘Hold on, I’ll check. See if it’s worth waiting. You want to see her too, don’t you?’

She nodded vaguely. I walked up to the back door. There came a murmur of voices from within. I knocked lightly.
The murmuring stopped. A key was turned and a man stuck his curly head out.

‘Oh. Sorry. I was looking for Father Flynn.’

‘Aye. He’s here.’

I moved forward. He didn’t move back. I could just see past him that there were maybe a dozen people in the room, seated around a long table. ‘Sorry,’ he said, pleasantly enough, but forceful with it, ‘we’re having a meeting. We’ll be finished in twenty minutes, if you want to wait.’

I shrugged. He nodded, then closed the door.

Patricia didn’t want to wait. I did. I cited important research and journalistic curiosity. She cited warm milk and nappy. We agreed to differ. She would take the car and I would make my own way home with news of the Messiah. I kissed her goodbye. I shook Little Stevie’s hand. He gurgled. He liked me. Then she drove out in a cloud of dust she would have chastised me for creating.

I kicked around in the yard for a while, enjoying the sun. I tried to eavesdrop on the meeting within, but there was nothing decipherable, only the dull throb of urgent voices. At the gate, the woman on the bike had produced a book from her saddlebag and was now earnestly studying it. I wandered across.

‘Afternoon,’ I said, a couple of yards off.

She looked up, startled, and for a second looked as if she might lose her foothold and tumble from the bike. She had a round, warm-looking face, a little flabby. Her eyes were large anyway, but were accentuated by sturdy black-framed
glasses with thumb-thick lenses. ‘I didn’t see you,’ she spluttered.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, falling naturally into the Ulsterman’s misplaced acceptance of the blame. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

She smiled. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Did you enjoy the service?’

‘Yes. Lovely.’

We looked away from each other for a few moments, our conversation already exhausted. Her eyes flitted briefly behind me, then back to her book. I squinted at it. The New Testament.

‘He dies in the end,’ I said. ‘Then he comes back.’

She looked at me. Dead straight. ‘I know.’

I kicked my feet in the dust. Behind me the back door opened and people began to emerge. ‘Excuse me,’ I said quickly and turned back.

I stood to one side of the church while a line of serious-faced men walked slowly past. Several nodded. A couple said hello. Then came Father White. He didn’t speak, but his eyes ran over me like a car. It gave me the oddest feeling. Then Father Flynn was in the doorway. ‘Dan!’ he said enthusiastically, and reached out to me. I stepped forward and shook his hand. ‘I thought it was you. Come on in.’

He ushered me through the door. At the far end of the room, at the head of the table, sat a woman; on her knee sat a child.

Flynn took my elbow and led me across. I don’t know what it says about my attitude to life, but I looked at the woman
first. Then the possible Messiah. She, the cat’s mother, looked to be about thirty-five. She had dirty blond hair, cut short. Eyes blue. Nose just a little turned up, but not unpleasantly so. She was smoking. A cigarette. I was shocked. Genuinely. It seemed incredible that the instrument through whom God had chosen to recreate his image on earth should also feel the need to shell out money on twenty Benson & Hedges. Bad enough that alcohol was banned in the name of religion – the very same alcohol which Jesus himself, a drinker if ever there was one, had gone to the trouble of creating through a mirkle to satisfy his thirst – without promoting cigarettes. B&H would have a field day if ever they got hold of a photo of the mother of God as I saw her then, a stream of smoke shooting out of her nostrils. Caught in the sun, the smoke had an almost mystical sheen, a lethal kind of mystical which, if inhaled passively, could still line your lungs with poison and allow you to die a horrible, pain-racked death completely free of charge several years down the line.

I reached out and shook the woman’s proffered hand and reminded myself that she was not the mother of God. And that the girl on her knee wasn’t the daughter of said supreme being.

The child was blonde as well. Blue-eyed. Perfectly Aryan. A smiler, too.

‘Hiya,’ she said.

‘Hiya,’ I replied.

‘Dan Starkey,’ said Flynn, ‘Moira McCooey and, of course, Christine.’

‘Hello,’ said the mother, stroking Christine’s hair.

‘Dan’s agreed to write the book about all this, Moira. He’s a brilliant writer.’

I hadn’t, but I was. Modest, too.

I nodded anyway. ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’

Moira held her gaze steady on me. ‘I hope you won’t be crucified by the critics,’ she said lazily, her voice drawled out, tobacco-husky. She smiled up at me. ‘Relax,’ she said, ‘we don’t bite.’

I gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’ll be needing to have a few chats with you, if you don’t mind.’

Moira shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette in a small glass ashtray. There were five or six others in it. ‘Yeah, sure, any time. Sure, why don’t you walk down the hill with us, and tell me what you’ll need?’

‘Yeah. Great. If you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ Moira said.

I winked down at Christine.

Christine turned her face up to her mother. ‘He has a hedgehog,’ she said.

Moira lit another cigarette as we left the churchyard and began descending the hill towards the harbour. Christine skipped happily in front of us. Flynn remained at the church.

‘You look a little pale,’ Moira said.

I felt a little pale. Unexpected references to small spiky animals tend to do that to me. I looked up at the sky. ‘We
writers don’t get to see much of the sun. We spend a lot of time in darkened rooms.’

‘You must work very hard.’

‘No, generally we just spend a lot of time in darkened rooms.’ Moira smiled politely. I nodded at Christine. ‘She seems a very happy wee girl.’

‘She is.’

‘Of course, she should be, seeing as how she’s the daughter of God.’

Moira stopped. ‘I thought you might be taking that line.’

‘What line?’

‘The cynical line.’

‘Who mentioned cynical?’

‘You don’t have to mention it. It’s an attitude. It’s written all over you.’

I shrugged as nonchalantly as the situation allowed. I would have to do something to combat the cynicism. It wouldn’t do my cause any good. I wanted to get on with these people. I might one day want to shamelessly exploit them for large amounts of cash.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid it tends to go with the territory. I’m trying to develop an open mind. Any help you can give me would be much appreciated. And remember, when this gets out, it won’t just be one cynic like me you’ll have to contend with – there’s millions of them out there. And that’s just in Belfast.’

Moira flicked her cigarette butt out into the road. ‘We’ll see,’ she said simply. We started walking again. ‘So what will you be wanting to know?’

‘Everything, I suppose. Everything you’re prepared to tell me. Are you prepared to tell me everything?’

‘Frank seems to trust you. I don’t see why not.’

‘Good. Much appreciated. I’m not really that bad. What about your husband, will he . . .?’

‘What husband?’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh . . . what?’

‘Oh, nothing. I . . .’

‘You just presumed.’

‘I just . . .’

‘This is the twentieth century, y’know . . .’

‘What, on Wrathlin? Are you sure?’

She smiled. ‘Okay, fair point, but . . .’

I pointed skywards. ‘You mean He’s the only . . .’

‘Mr Starkey . . .’

‘Dan . . . please.’

‘Dan . . . Christine was conceived during a time when I was having a relationship with a man on this island. A single man. That relationship is now over. Somewhere along the line God got involved, and I bore His child. I don’t know the whys or the hows or the biology . . . I didn’t feel the earth move . . . the heavens didn’t split open and bathe me in angelic light . . . but I know as sure as I’m standing here that Christine is God’s child and I will do everything within my power to protect her, to bring her up properly until the time comes for her to inherit the . . .’ She cut herself off, laughed lightly, almost embarrassed.

‘The earth,’ I said, and gave her a little smile. I tried not to make it seem too cynical. ‘And when do you think that might be?’

‘I have no idea. At the moment she’s just a perfectly ordinary little girl . . .’

‘Although she’s done a few mirkles.’

‘. . . just a perfectly ordinary little girl who happens to have performed a few miracles . . . just a perfectly ordinary little girl who has no real idea of her own destiny, of her own potential . . .’

‘But when . . .’

‘Dan, there’s no timetable for things like this. It’s only happened once before, and we messed it up then. Frank thinks we might see her coming into her own around about the time of puberty. Girls grow up so much more quickly than boys.’

‘It could be one hell of a first period then.’

‘If you wish to reduce it to that level, well, yes, it could.’

Christine was out on the road now, kicking her sandalled feet through the gravel.

‘Ma,’ she called, ‘come ’n’ play.’

‘Get off the road then. What have I told you about playing on the road?’

I stepped off the path and reached a hand out to her. She stepped back and kicked some gravel at me.

‘That’s not very nice, now, is it?’ I said.

She gave a mischievous smile. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’ll give you a good slappin’, girl,’ said Moira, wagging a finger.

‘Are you allowed to do that?’ I asked.

‘Of course I am.’ She gave a wink. ‘The good thing is, Christine then has to turn the other cheek.’

‘And does she?’

‘Of course not.’ Moira laughed. ‘She doesn’t know who she is yet.’

Christine reached out and took my hand. ‘Will you play with me?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ I said, and kicked some gravel over her sandals. She squealed with pleasure and pulled away.

‘You’re asking for trouble,’ Moira warned.

I took a step towards Christine. She took a step back, then raised her foot ready to aim some more gravel at me.

I took another step forward, stopped, raised my foot to attack.

We faced each other, smiling, mock-frowning, eyes locked. Moira walked ahead. The only sound was the gentle breeze, the far-off cry of a gull and . . . and something . . . whooshy . . . whooshy . . . which for a second confused me, something familiar yet strange, like blowing through a comb . . . getting closer . . . closer . . . and then I twigged . . . a sound I remembered best from childhood games and I looked quickly behind me, back up the hill, and in that moment it was already too late to do anything about it.

The woman from outside the church was racing down the incline on her bike, her legs firing like mighty pistons, her fat form raised off the saddle, her head and chest bent down over the handlebars, her hair flying behind her, mouth
gaping, eyes fixed horribly wide behind her glasses. She was screaming.

She was not out of control.

She was
in
control, and coming straight for me.

Only at the very last moment did she veer away, but before I could even think
Thank Christ
I knew that her change of direction was no accident.

She was aiming for Christine. Dead centre.

The little girl stared at her, transfixed.

Moira turned, already screaming, but she was too late, she was too far away.

14

A whiff of alcohol, a sniff, a pale imitation of the real thing, a hint of booze consumed, attacked by the stomach’s natural acids and belched back up as an unattractive, stale, harrowing gas. But alcohol, nevertheless. A suggestion of barley. Of Scottish Highland streams. Of smoky back bars. Of chat and crack. I opened my eyes. Fluttered them in the harsh fluorescent light. A pain in my head. A dryness in my mouth. A shadow to my left, moving closer. I tried to focus.

‘Hello,’ the face said. Jocular. A swollen, deep-jowelled, crusty-eyed face. And a white coat. ‘I’m Dr Finlay.’

I croaked.

I was lying on a black leather couch. There were various certificates on the wall. A bookcase. Dr Finlay’s bookcase.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

‘Sore,’ I whispered.

‘That’s understandable.’

‘How . . . ahm . . . where . . . uuuh . . . how long have . . .?’

The doctor shook his head kindly. ‘You’ve been unconscious for about six hours. I sent a message to your wife – told her you were okay and not to worry. Can I get you a wee whiskey?’

The room was too bright for my sore head. ‘You must be able to read minds,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I read lips.’

I scrunched my brow. ‘I didn’t ask for . . .’

‘No, but I saw you licking your lips, the classic sign of an alcoholic.’

‘I’m no alcoholic.’

‘Oh, no offence.’ He had been perched on the side of the couch. Now he stood up and crossed to a mirrored wall cabinet. He opened the door and examined the rows of bottles within. Little brown medicine bottles. Unencouraging little brown medicine bottles. ‘You won’t want a drink then?’