‘Then I’ll take part in your protest march,’ Father Giffley said, ‘and condemn it from your platform.’ It was the voice of the Pulpit again, determined, authoritative, loud enough to fill a church. But there was a note in it which brought Larkin to his feet. Father Giffley’s face was red and its muscles were no longer under his control.
‘Father,’ Larkin said, ‘I’m grateful for your offer, but it wouldn’t be wise for either of us. Now let me thank you and see you safely down the stairs.’
Father Giffley did not move. He was angry. He was ashamed. It was a shame he had never experienced before, a dark tide of shame from the half-world he had tried to defend himself against all day. It flowed noiselessly into him and filled him, engulfing everything. He began to sob, but without tears. Larkin put his arm about his shoulder. Father Giffley said:
‘Don’t come with me. Please continue with your work.’
The cabman was still waiting for him. There was no rain now. The wind had bundled it away. They set off once more through streets that were growing dark with evening, so that their disconnected fragments jolting past the window were too dim to have any impact. He was grateful for that. He listened to the grinding of cobbles, the swish of puddles beneath the wheels. The need to drink again became pressing. He tapped the glass.
‘You may let me down,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk a little.’ He paid off the cabdriver, then took his bearings. He was on the riverside again. The waters, still tormented by the wind, were criss-crossed with laces of foam and slapped angrily against the berthing walls. They stretched before him, drawing his eyes with them as they widened and outran the massive confines of the quays and merged into darker, undisciplined spaces of the bay. It was a vista of cold, grey tones. A lamplighter, moving at a distance ahead of him and to his right, lifted his long stick with its taperlike flame and added bead after bead to a chain of softly glowing lamps. The melancholy became unbearable. He hastened his steps. The windows of a public house relieved the gloom of a side street. He passed the large swing doors and found what he wanted, the small, discreet entrance marked—Snug.
There was a slide in the wall which opened when he tapped on it.
‘Whiskey,’ he said.
‘I’ll put a match to the gas for you,’ the barman offered.
‘No, no—leave it as it is.’
The partition dividing the snug from the bar did not rise all the way to the ceiling. The light that spilled over was enough for his purpose; it was insufficient to betray his features or his calling.
‘Very good, sir,’ the barman said. He brought a glass of whiskey which Father Giffley raised to his lips, then lowered without tasting to say quickly before the barman could turn away: ‘Bring me another.’
Some time later he sat down. He slept a little and seemed to dream. He heard the door open, heard a scuffle and smothered laughter and then a woman’s voice said:
‘Oh Jaysus, stop, look, there’s someone there.’
Or thought he had. He could not be sure. There were three glasses of whiskey on the table in front of him, little yellow points of light in the semi-darkness. The bar had grown noisy, a persistent but sleepy noise that was now that of rough, confused voices, now the far off murmur of a church full of people at prayer. He took one of the glasses and swallowed. One little yellow point of light went out. He placed it sadly between the two that still glowed. He regarded it.
Bloodied faces begged him to have pity on them, not to beat them, not to forget he was a man of God. A puppy that had been given to him in his father’s house when he was seven years old came and barked at him and wagged its tail and asked him to play. It was white with brown markings. The sister of the bishop threatened to report him. She was as hateful as ever. She told him he was a disgrace to the priesthood, one who consecrated Christ only to crucify Him. No wonder there was blood on everything he saw or touched.
As she said this the two yellow points of light became red. He was about to shout at her. A voice advised him not to; he would be heard by others. Instead he raised one of the glasses with a sudden, defiant movement and swallowed. Thick, clinging, sickeningly warm, the taste of blood transfixed him. He spat out what he could. It was no use. The odour spread outwards and thickened the air about him. The semi-darkness became unbearable. He left down his glass and groped his way out to the street.
A band was playing in the distance. At first he could hear only the rhythmic beating of the drum. He tried to ignore it, suspecting that the sound came from inside his head. But as it grew louder in volume and the brass and reed instruments added their voices he realised what it was.
The footpath, still wet from the rain, glowed a little in the light of lamps and shopwindows. It had a tilt. He leaned sideways to balance, decided his direction, lurched forward. The wind caught him full in the face. It was the blow of a fist. He endured it. He was used to beatings; from superiors, from anonymous letter writers, from friends of the days of studenthood who had found it more prudent to forget him. The parish he ruled over beat and bruised him, with its hovels, its ignorance, its hunger, its filth. It had broken him with beatings. It had filled his mouth full of blood. He stopped at the corner, leaned against a wall, braced himself against the sudden lurch of the unstable street. The band approached.
He would go immediately to his church. That was his refuge. But first the band. The bandsmen wore peaked caps and wide bandoliers of shining black leather. The brassy notes battered against the wall he was holding, making it beat like a giant pulse beneath his hand. The din grew and the bandsmen multiplied, until they spread in fanlike waves from the centre of the street to the wall he was leaning against. With shining bandoliers and sounding instruments they passed over and through him. The wall offered no resistance to them, they brushed by him without impact, they filled the street and the sky. The banners followed and whirled above his head like shrieking birds, the torches tossed and sparked and flared in long processions down corridors of his mind, boots pounded in streets of his being, the citadel in which he had barricaded the last of himself was assailed and shaken. He hid there, awaiting dissolution. Then the band passed.
‘Help the lock-out, Father.’
Someone was rattling a box at him. He wiped the heavy sweat from his face, pushed the box aside, lurched forward in his effort to get quickly away.
‘Jaysus,’ the shocked voice said, ‘will you look at his Reverence—drunk as a lord.’
The words cut into him like a knife thrust. He recollected himself, posed cunningly as an invalid, made use of his walking stick, simulated a limp. It took him, unnoticed for the most part, through the remaining streets. They were not, at that hour, populous. He crossed the granite flag with its worn depression, passed the holy water font with its green slime and found himself in the dimness and quietness he had desired. His church.
He sat down. A woman, deep in prayer, knelt some distance from him. At shrines and side chapels candles, like gossips, bobbed numerous heads and held mischievous conversations. The sanctuary lamp, sign of the Real Presence, houseflag of the Lord God, showed a tiny point of flame above the high altar’s sacrificial slab. Christ was in residence. What was an altar, then? A monument to the world’s cowardice, where Holy men cringed to and propitiated God’s anger with the blood of others; saving their own skins with slaughtered bodies; with lambs, with doves, with the innocent blood of Christ Himself. The World—not Christ—judged, mocked, derided; the world trampled on the weak and battered in its rage at the faces of the defenceless; the world—not Christ—crucified, maimed, chastised with rods, demanded sacrifice. What priest could take the body of the world and break it between his fingers? How many desired to?