I groaned. The boys I was accustomed to were fifteen and sixteen years of age, and I knew how to handle them. I had little knowledge or experience of lads of seven or eight. If I am honest, I have always found them a little noisy and irritating. They never sit still at mass, and parents nowadays have no control over them.
“Might not one of the other priests look after them?” I asked. “Those little lads can be terrible boisterous. I don’t know if I’d have the patience for them.”
“Then develop it,” he replied, the smile fading quickly again. “Develop it, Odran. Anyway, Tom has them all tamed, so there’ll be nothing for you to worry about.” He started to laugh a little. “Do you know what I heard they call him, those altar boys of his? Satan! God forgive me, but it’s funny all the same, isn’t it?”
“It’s awful,” I said, appalled.
“Ah sure, boys will be boys. There’s no harm in any of them—the ones who don’t tell lies, anyway. They always have nicknames. Sure didn’t we have nicknames ourselves for all the priests back in the seminary?”
“We did, Jim,” I agreed. “But nothing as bad as Satan.”
A silence fell on us; the archbishop seemed as if he had something more he wanted to say.
“There’s something else,” he said.
“Yes?”
“It’s a bit delicate. Not for public consumption.”
“All right.”
He thought about it and shook his head. “Ah no, it’ll keep,” he said. “I’ll tell you another time.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and I wondered whether he was going to sleep, but then he opened them suddenly, surprising me. “I meant to ask you,” he said. “Am I right in thinking that nephew of yours is the writer fella, yes?”
I nodded, surprised and a little unnerved by the abrupt change of topic.
“Yes. Jonas,” I said.
“Jonas Ramsfjeld,” he said. “Such a name. Where was his father from, Sweden?”
“Norway.”
“He’s never out of the papers for a minute, is he? I saw him on the nine o’clock news the other night talking about his book. It’s been made into a film now, they say.”
“It has, yes,” I said.
“The boy knows his stuff all the same, doesn’t he? Talks very well. And sure he’s only a young fella. How old is he, anyway?”
“Twenty-one,” I said.
“That’s what they call a prodigy,” he said, nodding.
“I don’t know if it’s good for him at such a young age.”
“Ah sure, good luck to him. I haven’t read any of his books myself, of course.”
“There’s only two,” I said.
“Well, I haven’t read either of them then. I suppose you have?”
“I have, yes.”
“And are they any good at all? I hear they’re full of effing and blinding. And all this stuff about young fellas and young ones getting up to all sorts together. What kind of books are they, anyway? Are they dirty books?”
I smiled. “They’re not as bad as all that,” I said. “I suppose he’d say that the way he writes is the way that people speak. And that he’s not writing for old men like us.”
“But the young people like that stuff, do they? It’s not fine writing, though, is it? It’s not literature. I don’t recall W. B. Yeats sailing away to fucking Byzantium or Paddy Kavanagh talking about the shitty gray soil of Monaghan.”
I stared at him, taken aback by the coarseness of his words.
“Well,” I said, ready to jump to Jonas’s defense, “like you say, you haven’t read either of his books.”
“I don’t have to eat a cat to know I wouldn’t like the taste of one,” he said. “Actually, while we’re on the subject, you might keep that quiet anyway. I don’t think people need to know that you’re related to him. It wouldn’t look good.”
I felt a hundred responses going through my head, but I held my tongue.
“Look, Odran,” said the archbishop, leaning forward, reverting to a subject that I thought was closed but seemed to be preying on his mind. “I know this is a bit of a bolt out of the blue to you. But I’ve talked it through with Tom and he agrees with me that you’re the man for the job. He has every confidence in you. And so do I. Will you trust me on this, Odran?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” I said. “I’m just surprised that Tom recommended me, that’s all. Without talking to me about it first.”
“But sure why wouldn’t he?” he asked, sitting back and smiling, extending his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “Aren’t you the best of pals, after all, you and old Satan?”
* * *
The idea of Tom Cardle as a man that the boys would either fear or hate was a disturbing one to me, particularly when I thought back to who he had been at seventeen.
That first night, after we unpacked, we went down to the Wide Hall together and ate our dinner side by side. I can remember it still. A bit of plaice with a leaky batter hanging off it, a plate full of chips, and a pot of beans in the center of the table. Fourteen hungry lads passing that pot around and pouring it all over their food to mask the taste. Everyone ate quickly except Tom, whose coloring had returned to normal but who still looked angry and afraid in equal measure. None of us knew each other from Adam, we were strangers still. Our mammies had sat us all down one day and told us we had vocations, and so there we were, ready to dedicate our lives to God. It was a great thing—that’s what we thought, anyway. Only Tom looked miserable about it.
We were shy of each other when we got back to our cell later. We turned our backs when we undressed to get into our pajamas, and the lights were off by nine o’clock, the sun still peeping through the thin pale curtains. I lay there, my hands under my head, staring up at the ceiling, thinking that this was the beginning of my new life and asking myself if I was ready for it. And yes, I replied silently. For there was a faith inside me, one I found difficult to comprehend at times. But it was there.
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?” I asked across the room when the quiet became too much for me.
“Nine of them,” said Tom.
“That’s a lot. Where do you come in the ranking?”
“Last,” he said, and I thought I could hear a choked note in his tone. “I’m the youngest. So I’m to be a priest. Two of my sisters are nuns already. What about you?”
“There’s just me and my sister,” I said. “I had a brother, but he died.”
“And do you want to be here?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I have a vocation.”
“Who told you that?”
“Mam.”
“And how does she know?”
“She had an epiphany one night while she was watching The Late Late Show.”
I heard a strange sound come from the other side of the room, a sort of snort, a half laugh. “Jesus, Odran,” he said, and I opened my eyes wide. A lad I knew in school had said Jesus once in the middle of a geography class and he’d got the leather for it, ten times on each hand. He’d not said it again. “You’re some langer.”