Grandmother and the Priests Read online

  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 Sèvres 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.

  So the priests came to Grandmother’s home, when they passed through Leeds, for though a lapsed Catholic and obviously living in sin in more ways than one, she was still the daughter of a Catholic family and had been baptized in the Faith. There was always the possibility that influence, patience and prayer would bring Grandmother back to the fold. They were also great gossips, bringing messages to Grandmother from Scotland and Ireland from her old friends and her relatives. They were also full of tales, for sagas were still being spoken and written in those clays.

  They drew the line, these priests, at staying overnight in Grandmother’s house, though with mirth leaping in her eyes she invariably invited them and described the comforts of fires, hot water, indoor plumbing and thick feather beds and fine linen. They would look wistful, while shaking their heads. Then, hours after dinner, and after many stories, they would depart for less sinful lodgings, huddled in their thin coats. “Ye’ll be knowin’ where to reach me,” they’d say to her hopefully, before leaving, envisioning sudden alarums in the night when the only help possible would be that given by a priest. But Grandmother was superbly healthy. “It’s not dying I will be this night,” she’d answer, with a toss of red curls, her own and supplementary others. “Never fear, Father.” They wanted to ‘fear’, but Grandmother never called for a priest. She outlived all those she ever knew. But still they hoped.

  Rose learned all these things over many years. But even as a young child, on her second visit to Grandmother’s house, and finally gathering that these ‘Romans’ were ‘wee ministers’, themselves, she wondered what in hell they were doing at Grandmother’s table. It was so obvious to Rose that Grandmother was a very naughty lady, indeed.

  Rose had never sat at a table with Grandmother, for even when she had visited her sons in London she had not wanted a child near her, ‘the blasted nuisances’. So Rose could hardly believe it, that night in Leeds, that Grandmother had suffered her to be seated at her scintillating table, in the presence of the eleven priests. The priests had invited Rose; therefore, Grandmother could not protest at a ‘brat sitting in me presence’. But she ignored Rose’s existence as she would have ignored a pestilential fly. She continued to amuse her friends with the most outrageous stories.

  But the priests did not forget Rose. An enormous hand gently took her knife to cut up her meat, and she basked in this smiling attention. She looked at her assistant timidly; his big red face beamed at her as if she were not a child at all, but a person whose company was agreeable. The priest on her left hand was being addressed as Monsignor, and though, when she looked at him, he gave her a brief smile, he had a more remote air than did Father McGlynn, and a certain chill austerity. He was Monsignor Harrington-Smith, one of the few Englishmen among all those Scots and Irish. But as he was a priest he was tolerated by his colleagues. He was also distantly related to one of Grandmother’s cousins who had married a Sassenagh. Rose soon saw that he gave a kind of ‘tone’ to the party, not only because he was the only Monsignor present then, but because of his superb manners and quietness.

  A savory was placed before Rose. By this time she was exhausted by all the noise and shine and brilliance, and the heat in the dining-room, and she was a little fuzzy from the sips of wine she had drunk. “I think,” said Monsignor Harrington-Smith, “that I should not eat that, if I were you, Rose.” An adult’s word was law. She put down her fork.

  Grandmother, always willing to please a priest, rang for a servant and asked if there was any milky blancmange on the premises, a lowly dish usually eaten only by domestics. There was. A shivering morsel was brought in, on a golden saucer, for Rose, and Monsignor nodded approvingly. Rose ate it obediently; it tasted like paste.

  There was champagne, which Monsignor deftly prevented Rose from sampling. She decided that though he was kind enough to endure the presence of a child he was too much like Miss Brothers, who served dry sardines on drier toast as a savory. Monsignor Harrington-Smith, apparently, was no stranger to champagne, for he tasted it critically and daintily, before accepting it. But his colleagues rejoiced in it, the poor men not having much of a palate, of necessity. “It’ll be pleasing you, Monsignor?” asked Grandmother, with a wink.

  “A good year,” he said, a trifle pompously. He examined the bottle which the manservant extended to him. “A good year,” he repeated, “though not the best. I understand there was not enough sun during the final weeks.”

  “It’s delighted I am that you’ll be drinking it at all,” said Grandmother, demurely. “But then, one knows that your lordship was bathed in champagne, at your christening.”

  “You know very well, Rose Mary, that I am a second son,” he said.

  She grinned and dipped her head with mock humility. Then she rustled to her tiny feet — which were covered with satin and jeweled slippers — and the priests rose with her. Rose stood up, also. Monsignor Harrington-Smith folded his hands and prayed. Rose was fascinated by all those suddenly solemn faces around her — even Grandmother’s — and was thinking about it during the movement following the prayer when she felt a hard pinch on her shoulder, and smelled Grandmother’s hot and musky scent. “Upstairs with you,” Grandmother said.

  Rose started to obey at once, then a hand fell on her shoulder. Her new dear friend was holding her hack. “And why should not the little one join us?”

  “An auld head on her shoulders,” said Grandmother, somberly, shaking her own, and speaking in her curious mixture of Scots and Irish burr. “It’s nae good thing
for a lass to have. It’s a touch of the divil, himself.”

  She gave Rose a jumping and warning look, and Rose murmured it was past her bedtime. But she was led into the drawing-room, which she had rarely been permitted to enter before. It seemed to her at least half as large as the street on which she lived in London and was crowded with little gilt chairs covered by vari-colored damasks and tapestries, with rose damask glistening on the walls, and sofas everywhere and tall crystal lamps and portraits and mirrors and tables teeming with exquisite little ornaments and buhl cabinets in each corner filled with objets d’art and Spanish fans. A big fire danced in a fireplace in which a medium-sized ox could have stood, and over the mantelpiece hung a very fine portrait of Queen Victoria, whom Grandmother did not resemble in the slightest. If the dining-room had awed Rose, the drawing-room petrified her with its size and shine and magnificence. The windows, covered with rose shirred silk, over which were looped blue damask draperies, appeared to her to extend upward to infinity.

  Father McGlynn led Rose to a little polished steel stool, a sort of hob, which stood beside the fire, and he put a cushion on it, and then lifted her onto the cushion. “There, and that’s a comfort,” he said, and patted her cheek.