Read Online Docherty by William McIlvanney - Free Book Online Page B

case. Tam rather liked their visits. They always helped him to sort his own thoughts out. With a couple of them he had a pleasant, half-bantering relationship. And there was one whom he admired profoundly, Father McDermott, who called Tam ‘Doubting Thomas’ and insulted him pleasantly while sparring with one of the boys. But Father Rankin was different. When he was angry, his eyes beheld the damned. He felt no need of reinforcements.
    ‘And it won’t be a good day for you till you become a proper Catholic again.’
    His father glanced at Conn and it was as if he was trying to explain something which Conn couldn’t understand. Conn didn’t know the significance of the words but the tone of them conveyed a reprimand, even to him. It was the first time he had ever heard anyone speak to his father like that.
    ‘You’re a pain to your mother and father. To your whole family. More than that. You’re an affront to God.’ To Conn the whole day seemed to drop dead, and they were three people standing in a desert of silence. ‘Well? Have you nothing to say for yourself?’
    ‘It’s still a guid enough day, Father.’
    Conn thought he had never seen anybody as angry as the priest. The stick quivered indecisively and when it suddenly swivelled to point in his direction, Conn hung where he was, impaled on the gesture.
    ‘Is this your son?’
    His father’s voice came very quick and very small, its smallness measuring the force which was compressing it.
    ‘Keep yer mooth aff the boay, Father.’
    The priest’s eyes enlarged, looking at Conn’s father. ‘Right,’ he said, and moved towards the entry. Almost accidentally, it seemed, his father’s hand came up to lean on the wall, so that his arm just happened to bar the way.
    ‘Where wid ye be goin’, Father?’
    ‘To speak to your wife.’
    ‘Ah’d raither ye widny.’
    ‘I’m not concerned with what you want.’
    ‘Naw, but Ah am. Slightly.’
    The pressure of their confrontation was so intense that it would have seemed impossible to walk between them. Conn stared.
    ‘I’ll have to speak to her about all this.’
    ‘She his a lot o’ worries, Father. Ah don’t think you wid help them any.’
    The priest stepped back. The stick went horizontal in his hand. His face was tight with anger.
    Tam Docherty,’ he said, ‘I have a duty to perform. You’re interfering with it. If you don’t step out of my way, I’ll take my stick to you.’
    Conn’s father released his breath painfully and shook his head, his eyes closed. Conn couldn’t understand what it meant. Despair. Tam was suddenly exhausted by the complicated terms of his life, utterly baffled by the impossible acts of equilibrium it called for. They wanted you to respect authority when authority had no respect for you. They told you what your life meant, and asked you to believe it, when it had nothing to do with what was happening every day in your house and in your head. While your wife slaved and your weans were bred solely for the pits, like ponies, and your mates went sour, the owners bought your sweat in hutches, the government didn’t know you were there. And God talked Latin. The rules had no connection with the game. You came out to your door for a smoke and a man walked up and threatened to hit you with a stick. Where did he live? Conn’s father opened his eyes and looked steadily at the priest.
    ‘You do that, Father,’ he said, ‘an’ Ah’ll brek it intae inch-long bits across yer holy heid.’
    The priest seemed hypnotised by what he saw in the other’s eyes. Tam’s frustration had become almost impersonal to Father Rankin. The priest was no more than the catalyst for many disparate perceptions, of furtive men who turned their masonic certificates face to the wall when they saw a priest coming, drunken women who would rather send their weans to the chapel than see them properly fed, his own father thankfully embracing his life like a galley-slave kissing his oar. The priest shook