The Hunger Page 13

  “Sops to a guilty conscience.”

  “I agree with you that something must be done. I think … I should consult Father Quinlan. The Tangney creature is Roman Catholic; Father Quinlan would want… I do not know precisely … Tangney’s salvation is in his care.”

  They heard the sound of a horse’s hooves, a man dismounting. “The doctor,” Mrs Peacock said.

  “We should say nothing to Dr Lenehan of this. Not yet. I will tell him you have had an awful fright, but I won’t reveal its nature. I am sure he will respect our wish for privacy.”

  Mrs Peacock nodded. She had no urge to recount her tale to anyone. Not even the pleasure of seeing astonished faces, of announcing she had been the principal witness to a crime, and enjoying all the sympathy and attention the story would elicit, moved her in any way. She was feeling unclean, befouled, soiled, and all she wanted was to forget what she had experienced, to bury it out of sight. And her husband, she knew, wasn’t, being ridiculous: Lot’s wife had been turned into a pillar of salt because she looked. People would wonder what her real motive was for staring in at that window.

  Anthony and Michael, of course, had no idea of the pandemonium they had created. They lay in each other’s arms afterwards, silent for a long while, listening to each other breathe, listening to the wind outside; until Michael’s shoulders began to ache, and he shifted his position, “It is more comfortable in bed,” he whispered. “I don’t mean I did not enjoy it. It was … He laughed, a little murmur of happiness. “I’ve told you before … like seeing God.”

  “Oh, that is nonsense,” Anthony said. “I see you. Only you. Though I can see me now, reflected in your eyes.”

  “You have a beautiful body. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  __________________________________

  F ATHER Quinlan’s reaction to the news was predictable, and he too thought it explained a great many discrepancies. “I am concerned … very distressed … for your wife,” he said. He was vigorously jabbing the coal on his fire with a poker.

  “To have it… thrust in front of her.” Mr Peacock shook his head, sadly. “Her face, as it were, rubbed in it…”

  “I hope she will get over it.”

  “She is a woman of strong character, Father. Now … what do you intend to do? I feel, in this matter, I should defer to a celebrant of the older religion.” Here he let himself smile, wanly.

  “Because Michael is a Catholic? Yes.” Father Quinlan frowned. “I shall speak to him. Reason with him; his immortal soul is in danger. And then I shall have a word with Mr Altarnun, or perhaps both of them together. I will let you know what passes.”

  “I think they should be made to leave the district. We cannot allow … Do you know if the brother can be reached?”

  “He is in London. Mr Altarnun told me.”

  “It would be possible to find his address? To write to him?” Father Quinlan poked the fire again. “First, let me see what they have to say for themselves.” The two men of the cloth stared at each other, the one with the big head, the squint, and the more corpulent body; the other craggy-faced, with his rocky knob of a nose, lean, tough, energetic. Their expressions were grave, inquisitorial; the mood positively that of ecumenism. “In all my years as a pastor of souls,” Father Quinlan went on, “I have never run into such a case. In the Middle Ages we burned people for …”

  Mr Peacock twitched. “I do not think burning is the answer,” he said.

  “No indeed.”

  “My wife talked of horse whips. And branding. But she was hysterical, not herself.”

  “It is obviously not a matter for physical violence of any kind! But if they are unrepentant… then a letter to Mr Altarnun’s brother would … and … public opinion might be allowed to run its course.”

  “We must not forget Mr Altarnun’s many charities.” Mr Peacock looked at his clean white hands, and pressed his fingertips together. “I hope we shall remember him … and his … in our prayers… I do not think we should press for criminal charges, do you?”

  “I have no idea whether it is a punishable crime or not. I have never given it a moment’s consideration; it is … it is unheard of in a Christian country!” Anger made a vein in his temple throb.

  “In the unedifying case of the Bishop of Clogher,” Mr Peacock said, “the law took its course.” He stood up, and reached for his hat and stick. “I must depart; I have other duties. More pleasant ones, though until today I should never have thought of them as pleasant. I mean the burial of the dead.” He looked at the clock. “I have a funeral at noon.”

  “I shall wrestle with Michael Tangney’s soul. That is the priority.”

  With that thought uppermost in his mind, Father Quinlan set out for Eagle Lodge. His errand he did not see as distasteful, as Mr Peacock would have done, or a burden; he felt almost exalted, like a doctor whose specialist knowledge has been asked for. The struggle for goodness, himself against Satan, was his purpose, and, as with medical men, he possessed a store of diagnostic procedures, purgatives, cures, even a bedside manner. He loved his calling, and this was a beloved errand. He was eager.

  He found Michael alone, as he had hoped; Anthony was somewhere on the estate, at Patrick O’Callaghan’s, Michael thought. The priest indulged in no respectful preliminaries. He dived straight in, and repeated what he had been told more or less exactly, though he omitted the identities of both his informer and the witness. Michael was terrified: what he and Anthony feared most was now happening. He felt so shocked that he found himself trembling; his heart thumping uncomfortably against his chest, and there was a sensation like paralysis in his legs and spine. He sank down onto the sofa, rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and flicked his hands several times through his hair.

  “Who saw it?” he said.

  “It does not matter in the least who saw it. I assume … you do not deny it?”

  “No.”

  “Was it… an isolated incident?” No answer. “Has it happened on other occasions?” Father Quinlan was becoming fidgety, as he did so often in the confessional.

  I could lie, Michael thought, but he knew at once that that would be a devilish temptation. He thought of Peter denying Jesus. He glanced up, out of the window, and noticed ― it was a bizarre coincidence ― a cockerel pecking at the lawn. Their cockerel, his and Anthony’s, with their last three hens. The others had all been eaten or given away: chewed up by hungry Scannells, Leahys and O’Learys.

  “No. Not an isolated incident.”

  “My child,” Father Quinlan murmured. “My poor child. You are quite bewildered.”

  “I am not.” If that cockerel crows, he said to himself, I will wring its neck and put it in the oven tonight! Whose side is it on? But the cockerel continued to peck happily at whatever it was finding in the grass.

  “You are the most intelligent person of your age in Clasheen. You read. You think. You are not some dumb wild creature out of the bogs. Which makes it all the more damnable; you know what you are doing! I said the word bewildered deliberately. You’re surely aware of the Church’s teaching on matters of … sexual licence? The use and abuse of the body?”

  “I have … thought it all out. Yes.”

  “And you remain a Catholic. You do not receive Holy Communion, but you hear Holy Mass. So you have doubts still. You know you have sinned, and sinned repeatedly! Michael, the flesh is evil. It is transient; it withers and perishes. Our time-span compared with Eternity is less than the blink of an eye! God is not mocked. Michael, turn your back on all this; return to God!” He leaned forward. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

  “He said judge not that ye be not judged.” On biblical texts, Michael, too, was a specialist. “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own?”

  Father Quinlan sat back in his chair. “We could bandy verses from the Bible all day
and it would not get us anywhere! What you are doing, what you have been doing, is an abomination in the sight of the Lord! You know that. It is barren, wasteful, foul; can only lead to misery. It has the very stench of Sodom!”

  “I love him. He and I are as married as my father is to my mother.”

  Father Quinlan sighed. “I am on stony ground,” he said. He thought for a moment. “You know the punishment for hardened sinners?”

  “A denunciation? I… should not like that.”

  “Then think on it.”

  Anthony came into the room, carrying a small parcel. “We are discovered,” Michael said. “Seen. Caught in the act. I don’t know who it was; Father Quinlan will not say.”

  Anthony did not look at all surprised. “Just let me put this in the kitchen,” he said. “It’s fresh cheese! Ty Keliher gave it to me. Wild horses wouldn’t drag out of him where he got it from.”

  “What is the matter with him?” Father Quinlan was astonished. “Does he not understand the seriousness?” Anthony returned. He was at his most English, the epitome of calm. “Ty Keliher has told me,” he said. “How he watched us … peeped through windows … that he meant no ill will… that Mrs Peacock saw him… that she might have looked too… that the worthy lady might have informed others. Evidently she has informed others. I must say I don’t think there is anything wrong with young Timothy’s head! We have all mistaken him, I fear. The cheese: it was a present. He was unhappy that he could have been the cause of trouble. Father Quinlan, I hope you will say nothing of this to Ty.”

  A sudden shaft of sunlight through a window lit up his face and hair; the hair blazed gold. Michael said to himself: how beautiful he is.

  Father Quinlan never found it easy to conceal anger, though he often prayed to be given that power. “You have no authority, sir, to forbid me to do anything I see as my duty! That you should … however… it is not my duty to question Timothy Keliher. I shall listen to whatever he says when he comes to confession, and that will of course remain secret.”

  “What kind of sin has he possibly committed?” Anthony asked. “He saw something through a window. Just as Mrs Peacock did.”

  “We are all black sinners,” Father Quinlan said, not for the first time.

  “There is far too much emphasis on sin this morning! The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is obsessed with it.”

  “That is not for you to judge!” The priest controlled himself with some difficulty. He stood up. “I am wasting my time,” he said. “I will speak to you both again when you’ve had a while to think. Meanwhile, I shall pray for your souls.”

  “Very thoughtful of you, Mr Quinlan. And thank you for calling on us.”

  The deliberate rudeness of “Mister” made Father Quinlan hesitate. “Mr Altarnun, I beg you…” He stopped, and they looked at one another, eye to eye, for a moment. “No. I can see it is of little use …”

  Anthony grinned. “Father, would you like some cheese?”

  Father Quinlan laughed, in amazement. “Man shall not live by bread alone. So Jesus said when he was tempted by Beelzebub.”

  “Can we leave Jesus and Beelzebub out of it? I know you’re partial to cheese. Take it, in memory of a friendship. We respected each other. Liked each other. We worked well together on the Committee. I, of course, resign from the Committee as of now. I would be grateful if you would inform the Reverend Peacock.”

  The thought of cheese made the priest’s mouth water. It was a ticklish dilemma: should he accept? Was this a temptation of the Devil’s? “No,” he said. “I could not.” But Michael had already gone to the kitchen and cut a large slice which he pressed into Father Quinlan’s hand. Father Quinlan laughed again, but nervously; he was now the one to be handicapped by the unanticipated move. He felt he had been lured into he didn’t quite know what, something more than just a revelation of weakness, perhaps. “Thank you,” he said, looking at the gift. It was rich, runny cottage cheese, exactly as he liked it best. “I cannot remember when I…”

  He began to eat it before he got to the end of the drive. The cockerel looked at him as he passed, stretched its wings and flapped them twice, but it did not crow. As he munched, Father Quinlan said to himself that it would take a whole conclave of learned cardinals, even the full Inquisition or the Pope himself, to rule on whether he was committing a sin or not. However, he decided to say nothing to Mr Peacock on the subject of cheese.

  “SO the Reformed Church still eats well,” Father Quinlan said. He had been asked to stay to dinner. Salmon: a present from Mr Peacock’s benefactor, Lord Smithers of Coolcaslig. Lord Smithers was an absentee, but Mr Peacock kept on good terms with his agent.

  “We do not dine like this every day,” the Protestant clergy-man said. “If we did, it would stick in our throats; that is right, my dear, is it not?” Mrs Peacock did not answer. “But I think there is no wrong in doing so when we can. If the three of us starved to death, what would become of the soup kitchen? The poor and hungry would die.”

  Father Quinlan was not certain that this reasoning was without flaw, so he changed the subject. “I could get no sense from either of them,” he said. “They seem to think their behaviour is normal, loving, and just! He said ― Michael ― that they had not asked to be the way they were, that it would surely be easier if they were as others; but, in the circumstances, it would be unnatural to suppress the affections ― loving kindness, tenderness, everything that is customary between man and wife.”

  “Normal!” Mr Peacock exclaimed. “How can he think that? It is contrary to nature! Their actions are perversely and wilfully learned.”

  “It is so,” Father Quinlan agreed.

  “Everything that is customary between man and wife! Where is the wife? Or ― which is the wife? Whatever would our good Lord have said!”

  “I think we can imagine.”

  “1 have drafted a letter to his brother Richard,” Mr Peacock went on, his mouth full of salmon and cream sauce. ”I will show you after we have eaten. Do you have the address?”

  “I did not ask. He would not have said, surely. But the London offices of the East India Company would find the man.”

  “May we talk of something else?” Mrs Peacock suggested. “It is so distasteful! Particularly at dinner.”

  “Of course, my dear,” her husband said. “I’m sorry; it was tactless of me.” He muttered to Father Quinlan, in a low voice, “She is still very distressed.”

  When the meal was finished, the clergymen retired to Mr Peacock’s study. “It is monstrous how that poor woman has been made to suffer,” Mr Peacock said. “Unforgivable! My own wife! Justice must be done, and be seen to be done!” He handed the letter to Father Quinlan.

  “I suppose they will be evicted,” the Catholic priest said, when he had perused it.

  “They deserve no less.”

  “The community should know what it is harbouring, perhaps. I am not sure. I shall talk to them again, and if there is no change I may say a few words from my pulpit. My imaginary pulpit, that is … the proceeds of the Faith in Ireland do not run to fine buildings with real pulpits. Tin sheds are what we are mostly blessed with.”

  “Before Emancipation, not even those. You are lucky that your ministry is in a liberal age.”

  “The Church Temporalities Act of 1833,” Father Quinlan said, “was supposed to allot stipends to Roman Catholic priests, but the money was spent on repairing the roofs of your churches.”

  “Do not speak of that Act! It is the unspeakable! ‘The ruffian band come to reform, where ne’er they came to pray.’ John Keble’s words, and he was right. We lost two of our archbishoprics, Cashel and Tuam, and we only had four to start with. Eight bishoprics disappeared as well!”

  “Until the time of Queen Elizabeth, they were our sees.”

  Discussion, more or less amicable, on a great variety of ecclesiastical subjects continued far into the night; points of doctrine and organization, the authority of the Pope, the strange character of the present
incumbent of the Protestant archdiocese of Dublin, the use of vestments and incense, the veneration of images, what St Augustine said or did not say, and so on: a bottle of port was consumed. Father Quinlan, returning to his house at one o’clock in the morning, felt he had succumbed to many different temptations during the course of the day; the cheese, the dinner, and openly admitting once or twice to Mr Peacock that the Reformed argument had some points to be said for it. Tomorrow he would devote to prayer. Prayer, in particular, for light to shine on the darkness in which the inhabitants of Eagle Lodge walked.

  Michael and Anthony, holding each other close in the darkness of their bedroom, were attempting to reassure themselves that things could have been worse. Ty Keliher was not a threat; the priest and the minister weren’t gossips, and, though Mrs Peacock was an unknown quantity, it was unlikely that she would care to whisper that all round the neighbourhood. A public denunciation, too, was improbable: Father Quinlan would not rush into anything so drastic without weighing all the consequences.

  “We are leaving soon,” Anthony said.

  “Yes. I would not like to be here if my parents were told. If they confronted me directly, I don’t know how I should answer. To see their sorrowing faces!”

  “I don’t think that will happen.”

  “Anthony … you have such strength.”

  “From my years in the army.”

  “I meant of character. I lean on you more and more.”

  “That’s just as true of yourself. If I lost you, I would have lost… my life.”

  THE O’Learys’ fourteen-year-old son, Tom, was ill: with typhus. The disease was now epidemic throughout Ireland; most people thought it a natural result of starvation, but it wasn’t. It was the way in which the majority of the population now lived that was exactly right for its spread. The sicknesses that starvation can cause, dropsy and scurvy, had already appeared in Clasheen, striking those whose physical condition was weakest; most of Dr Lenehan’s patients were victims of these illnesses. More people died from them than from hunger itself. Typhus and yellow fever ― which had also reached epidemic proportions ― were spread by lice, but in the mid-nineteenth century this was not known, and thought by only a few medical men to be a possibility.