after Mass. The surgeon said it was a miracle I pulled through.”
He yawned and in the same sleepy movement began to unbutton his trousers. He drew up the shirt and vest to show his naked stomach, criss-crossed by two long scars, the blue toothmarks of the stitches clear. He showed the pattern of the operation with a finger spelling it out on the shocking white flesh.
“One-third has to do the work of the whole now, so it’s why I have to eat late, you can never take much at any one sitting,” he was saying as he replaced his clothes when a clock chimed once in the hallway. Its echoes hadn’t died when another struck, harsher and more metallic, and then a medley of single strikes from all the house, startling when two clocks struck on the wall of the room.
“The last curate died here, he was a collector, and left them to the parish. They say the collection is worth something but you can’t very well go and sell them so soon. They’re a nuisance but John takes some curious delight in keeping them wound.
“It’s one anyhow,” he rose.
They knelt beside the armchairs, continual yawns impossible to suppress in the prayerful murmur.
Then he took the oil-lamp to show the way upstairs to the room.
12
“T HERE’S THE WARDROBE, YOU CAN HANG YOUR CLOTHES . John’s left a candle and matches. Would you like to light it before I go?”
“No, thanks, father, it’s bright enough. I’ll just get into bed.”
“Don’t worry about the morning. Sleep as long as you want. We’ll call you for breakfast.”
“What time will you say Mass, father?”
“Early but there’s no need for you to go. You came a long journey. There’ll be other mornings. If you’re awake you’ll hear noises.”
“I’ll probably be awake, father.”
“If you are you can come down but it doesn’t matter.”
Yet he didn’t move. He stayed with the lamp in his hand at the door, as if he expected to say a closer goodnight than the word, the collarless shirt was open on the chafed throat, and not the goodnight kiss your cursed father took years ago now on this priested mouth.
“Thanks, father. You’re very good to me,” you managed to shift away to the foot of the bed.
“I hope you sleep and are comfortable,” he made uneasy pause before he dipped his fingers into the holy water container in the robes about the feet of the statue of the Virgin on the wall and sprinkled drops towards you and said, “Good night. God guard you.”
“Good night, father,” you said as you made the sign of the cross, and he was gone, the door closed.
You took the few things you’d brought out of the suitcase and left them in the wardrobe, the textbooks you hoped to study while you were here to one side on the bed, with the nightclothes. The moon came across the graveyard, its image cut in two by a diagonal crack in the dressing-table mirror the other end of the room. Underneath the window the car shone black on the gravel beside the cactus. Wild grasses twisted on the iron railings in the graveyard grew living and yellow. The bell-rope dangled from the tower down over the gravel path to the sacristy in the moonlight.
You had come. You were in the priest’s house, you could draw back the linen sheet and get into bed. A picture of your father’s house in your mind, all the others sleeping there miles away, and you here. Joan in bed in the town four miles away, all the world you knew mostly in bed in the night as you now too, Joan’s voice, “It’s even worse than home,” in your ears, a moment passing, she must not be happy, you must find out more, you had no chance or you were too involved in your own affairs to make any effort, though what could be wrong.
Through the window the stones of the graveyard stood out beyond the laurels in the moon, all the dead about, lives as much filled with themselves and their importance once as you this night, indecision and trouble and yearning put down equal with laughing into that area of clay, and
He yawned and in the same sleepy movement began to unbutton his trousers. He drew up the shirt and vest to show his naked stomach, criss-crossed by two long scars, the blue toothmarks of the stitches clear. He showed the pattern of the operation with a finger spelling it out on the shocking white flesh.
“One-third has to do the work of the whole now, so it’s why I have to eat late, you can never take much at any one sitting,” he was saying as he replaced his clothes when a clock chimed once in the hallway. Its echoes hadn’t died when another struck, harsher and more metallic, and then a medley of single strikes from all the house, startling when two clocks struck on the wall of the room.
“The last curate died here, he was a collector, and left them to the parish. They say the collection is worth something but you can’t very well go and sell them so soon. They’re a nuisance but John takes some curious delight in keeping them wound.
“It’s one anyhow,” he rose.
They knelt beside the armchairs, continual yawns impossible to suppress in the prayerful murmur.
Then he took the oil-lamp to show the way upstairs to the room.
12
“T HERE’S THE WARDROBE, YOU CAN HANG YOUR CLOTHES . John’s left a candle and matches. Would you like to light it before I go?”
“No, thanks, father, it’s bright enough. I’ll just get into bed.”
“Don’t worry about the morning. Sleep as long as you want. We’ll call you for breakfast.”
“What time will you say Mass, father?”
“Early but there’s no need for you to go. You came a long journey. There’ll be other mornings. If you’re awake you’ll hear noises.”
“I’ll probably be awake, father.”
“If you are you can come down but it doesn’t matter.”
Yet he didn’t move. He stayed with the lamp in his hand at the door, as if he expected to say a closer goodnight than the word, the collarless shirt was open on the chafed throat, and not the goodnight kiss your cursed father took years ago now on this priested mouth.
“Thanks, father. You’re very good to me,” you managed to shift away to the foot of the bed.
“I hope you sleep and are comfortable,” he made uneasy pause before he dipped his fingers into the holy water container in the robes about the feet of the statue of the Virgin on the wall and sprinkled drops towards you and said, “Good night. God guard you.”
“Good night, father,” you said as you made the sign of the cross, and he was gone, the door closed.
You took the few things you’d brought out of the suitcase and left them in the wardrobe, the textbooks you hoped to study while you were here to one side on the bed, with the nightclothes. The moon came across the graveyard, its image cut in two by a diagonal crack in the dressing-table mirror the other end of the room. Underneath the window the car shone black on the gravel beside the cactus. Wild grasses twisted on the iron railings in the graveyard grew living and yellow. The bell-rope dangled from the tower down over the gravel path to the sacristy in the moonlight.
You had come. You were in the priest’s house, you could draw back the linen sheet and get into bed. A picture of your father’s house in your mind, all the others sleeping there miles away, and you here. Joan in bed in the town four miles away, all the world you knew mostly in bed in the night as you now too, Joan’s voice, “It’s even worse than home,” in your ears, a moment passing, she must not be happy, you must find out more, you had no chance or you were too involved in your own affairs to make any effort, though what could be wrong.
Through the window the stones of the graveyard stood out beyond the laurels in the moon, all the dead about, lives as much filled with themselves and their importance once as you this night, indecision and trouble and yearning put down equal with laughing into that area of clay, and
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