When Johnny had heard what John Delaney’s job was he had to force himself to keep a straight face. And as he hastened towards the City to send a telegram from a Delaney outpost in Gracechurch Street he wondered how his friend would react when he heard of the collapse of one of his theories. Johnny decided to keep the bad news till the end.
‘Don’t worry about the number of words in your message,’ the young telegraph operator in the Delaney offices told him. ‘If Mr Delaney thought it would help, he’d send the whole bloody Bible down the wires.’
‘Brother White known as Flogger White. Likes beating boys. Wide variety of horrible canes. Don’t make any mistakes, Francis, when he’s hearing your amo amas amat. John Delaney v. respectable citizen. Wife, two children. Churchgoer. Suggest you ask Croesus Delaney for contribution for widow and orphans. Not likely to be suffering from vertigo. Man was a window cleaner. Regards Johnny.’
The scenery changed when the pilgrims set out from St-Chely-d’Aubrac. They left behind the vast plateau with the wide open skies and the cattle and entered a softer world of French agriculture, great woods of beech and chestnut beside the road, the occasional vineyard. After four hours or so the advance guard could see the Lot, known here as the Olt, the name for the river in the ancient French language of Occitan, and the little fortified town of St-Come d’Olt. Powerscourt admired the three former gateways in the old wall that led into pretty streets with houses dating back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the buildings still had the covered balconies installed centuries before. The sun was sparkling on the river, arrived here from St-Geniez-d’Olt, Ste-Eulalie-d’Olt and St-Laurent-d’Olt and twisting its way through the high cliffs towards Espalion, Estaing and Entraygues-sur-Truyere en route to its marriage with the Garonne many miles away.
There was a bizarre theological argument in St-Come-d’Olt in front of the twisted spire of St Come and St Damien. Jack O’Driscoll, displaying the curiosity for which newspapermen are famous, had bought himself a guidebook. He didn’t understand most of it but odd words made sense.
‘That’s a Flamboyant Spire,’ he said proudly, pointing to the crooked structure on top of the church.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Patrick MacLoughlin, the trainee priest from Boston, who did not have the benefit of a guidebook, ‘it’s crooked.’
‘I think you’ll find it’s called a twisted spire,’ said Father Kennedy, munching on an enormous pastry he had just picked up from the boulangerie.
‘You couldn’t worship God in a church with a twisted spire.’ Patrick MacLoughlin stuck to his guns. ‘It’s like having a crooked nave or a crooked altar. It’s not right. When did you last see one of these things in America?’
‘America doesn’t count in matters like this,’ said Jack O’Driscoll, peering at his Baedeker for guidance, ‘place hasn’t been there five minutes. Not like round here.’
‘Boston’s jolly old, very old indeed. There aren’t any twisted spires there.’
‘See here,’ said Jack, pointing triumphantly to a date in his book, ‘1552, it says here for the construction date of our Flamboyant friend, the only people running round near Boston then were those Red Indian fellows covered in war paint and living in funny wigwams and sending smoke signals to each other.’
‘What do you say, Father? Could you worship God properly in a church with a crooked spire?’
Father Kennedy was reluctant to take on the role of arbiter in the matter. He was staring sadly at his hand. Only a minute ago there had been a pastry there. Now it seemed to have disappeared.
‘I think you will find, young Patrick,’ he replied, licking his fingers for the memory of what had gone, ‘that you can worship wherever you wish. It is the mind of the congregation that is important, not the nature of the surroundings.’
Patrick MacLoughlin snorted and went off to inspect the river. Father Kennedy thought he had just enough time for a return visit to the boulangerie. There might not be another establishment like it for miles.
They marched on, the river dancing and sparkling through the rocks, to another ancient site of pilgrimage, the town of Espalion, graced with an ancient bridge the pilgrims of centuries before had crossed on their long march to Compostela. And here Alex Bentley’s organizational powers came into their own. For he had corresponded with the local boatyard, asking if they could make some rowing boats available to his party, liable to arrive in a given ten-day period. They were to leave the boats at Entraygues further down the river. And so ten pilgrims, the Powerscourts, Alex Bentley and Father Kennedy divided themselves among four boats, three crews of four and two in the last. Maggie Delaney, Stephen Lewis and Delaney himself were travelling by carriage and were due to meet up with them in the hotel at Estaing that evening.
Alex Bentley, his rowing days at Princeton and Yale coming back to him, was in charge of one boat with Lady Lucy sitting opposite him in the front and Christy Delaney and Waldo Mulligan at the stern. Bringing up the rear were Father Kennedy and Patrick MacLoughlin, two in a boat meant for four. At first all went well. They rowed past the tanners’ houses with stones sticking out of them at various levels so that hides could be scrubbed whatever the height of the river. They went by an old palace perched on a rock with a couple of pepper-pot towers. Then trouble came at the rear. Patrick MacLoughlin had protested his complete incompetence at any known form of sporting activity, so Father Kennedy, very reluctantly, took the oars. The only time Father Kennedy used his two hands together was in raising the chalice at Mass. This proved inadequate training for rowing down the Lot. The clerical figure, still dressed in black, was incapable of synchronizing the two oars together. One would drop feebly into the water and the Father sometimes forgot to stroke it through the water. The other oar, nominally under the control of Father Kennedy’s left hand, usually failed to make contact with the Lot altogether. The result was that his rowing boat, far from following the others in a straight line, careered off towards the right and began going round in circles. The river at this point had fields above it rather than the vertiginous rocks that tower over it near Entraygues, but there were still plenty of large rocks lining the banks. Patrick MacLoughlin at least had the presence of mind to call ‘Help’ as loudly as he could.
‘Bloody fool, can’t even row straight,’ said Charlie Flanagan in the third boat.
‘Christ, he’s going to crash into that great boulder in a minute,’ said Wee Jimmy Delaney, resting on his oars.
Alex Bentley felt responsible. Why hadn’t he made sure that a responsible person was in charge of that boat? He aimed his craft at a point where he should intercept the stricken religious and be able to tow them to safety. Father Kennedy’s craft continued its progress, lurching this way and that like a drunk on his way home. He made to dip his left oar in once more and missed completely. The impetus almost carried him out of the boat. Patrick MacLoughlin steadied his superior and settled him back on the thwarts. A couple of locals got off their bicycles on the path and stared at the scene, roaring with laughter.