Read Online The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Josephine Hart
Ads: Link
Christian Brothers and the nuns. We rely on their vocations. They’re clever men: redoubtable Brother Gogarty, for example—brilliant man. I was talking to him today—double first in mathematics from UCD. He should have been a Jesuit, of course: would have suited his mind better. God works in mysterious ways. I managed a quick chat with Brother Anselm Corrigan who teaches English to the younger boys—reluctantly nominates William Shakespeare greatest playwright while implying that his mother might have been Irish! Joke, Thomas, joke.”
And he roars again like a satisfied lion. He is after all king of the spiritual jungle here. His laughter has the explosive quality he believes suitable to a bishop and to which I have had to make adjustment since my first alarming experience of its reverberation. He will now wish to develop his theme. The game will commence late this evening. I will, however, still find it difficult to resist the temptation to dispatch him with speed. Good manners demand that I do not make too obvious my superiority at the game.
“But it’s Brothers Enda and Rory I really wanted to talk to. That pair—they were twinned at birth—when God made them he matched them. Do you know that expression, Thomas?”
“No, it is new to me.”
“Take it as a gift, Thomas …” With a sigh he continues, “Well it’s the first week back. The pupils have had a terrible shock; we’ve all had a terrible shock, of course. There are rumours—oh, not many—and some disquiet, I suppose you could call it. About such matters we are normally silent here, having learned perhaps that it is wiser. Still, you know, an explosion—such a thing has a kind of aftereffect. That resurgence of trouble in the North a few years ago—that was a surprise, I suppose you could say—well it’s now virtually petered out. There’d been decades of peace in a reasonably contented Republic, civil war behind us and the North—no pleasure you know, but settled into a waiting game—as we saw it anyway. I always say that history will give us the North. A confusing phrase but you know what I mean. The British always leave in the end. Time is on our side.”
I try to resist all conversations about history, whether ancient, medieval or modern. I will write my book and remain silent. Whereof we cannot speak, we sometimes write.
“… though from what I’ve heard Brothers Enda and Rory believe time needs a bit of help, a kind of hurry-up message. They’re from Ballinasloe. It’s a great little town, Ballinasloe. I’ve got distant cousins there, the McGreevey twins. Grand lads—discovered their vocation for the priesthood in the same year Brothers Enda and Rory went off to training college to become Christian Brothers. It was bumper year, that year in Ballinasloe. Brother Enda’s vocation is, he believes, a more passionate calling than most—that his vocation empowers him to create the future soul of his country. Though he’s no Joyce. Thank God. He is a fanatical teacher. A powerful man in a community, particularly here. ‘You only get one chance with a boy to send them out blazing with love of their country,’ he declared, and admonished me to remember, a little impertinently I felt but I let it go, what Pearse said, that ‘the Irish mind is the clearest mind that has ever applied itself to the consideration of nationality and of national freedom … It was characteristic of Irish-speaking men that when they thought of the Irish nation they thought less of its outer forms and pomps than of the inner thing which was its soul.’ Brother Enda’s right, of course, it’s all about the soul, though his tone was a little arrogant. And a bishop must encourage humility.”
Here he smiled. The smile of a fat man is often less open to misinterpretation than that of a man whose skin is drawn tight over angular features, as mine is, yet there remains something sly in his expression.
“So I thought I’d bring him down a peg or two. I
And he roars again like a satisfied lion. He is after all king of the spiritual jungle here. His laughter has the explosive quality he believes suitable to a bishop and to which I have had to make adjustment since my first alarming experience of its reverberation. He will now wish to develop his theme. The game will commence late this evening. I will, however, still find it difficult to resist the temptation to dispatch him with speed. Good manners demand that I do not make too obvious my superiority at the game.
“But it’s Brothers Enda and Rory I really wanted to talk to. That pair—they were twinned at birth—when God made them he matched them. Do you know that expression, Thomas?”
“No, it is new to me.”
“Take it as a gift, Thomas …” With a sigh he continues, “Well it’s the first week back. The pupils have had a terrible shock; we’ve all had a terrible shock, of course. There are rumours—oh, not many—and some disquiet, I suppose you could call it. About such matters we are normally silent here, having learned perhaps that it is wiser. Still, you know, an explosion—such a thing has a kind of aftereffect. That resurgence of trouble in the North a few years ago—that was a surprise, I suppose you could say—well it’s now virtually petered out. There’d been decades of peace in a reasonably contented Republic, civil war behind us and the North—no pleasure you know, but settled into a waiting game—as we saw it anyway. I always say that history will give us the North. A confusing phrase but you know what I mean. The British always leave in the end. Time is on our side.”
I try to resist all conversations about history, whether ancient, medieval or modern. I will write my book and remain silent. Whereof we cannot speak, we sometimes write.
“… though from what I’ve heard Brothers Enda and Rory believe time needs a bit of help, a kind of hurry-up message. They’re from Ballinasloe. It’s a great little town, Ballinasloe. I’ve got distant cousins there, the McGreevey twins. Grand lads—discovered their vocation for the priesthood in the same year Brothers Enda and Rory went off to training college to become Christian Brothers. It was bumper year, that year in Ballinasloe. Brother Enda’s vocation is, he believes, a more passionate calling than most—that his vocation empowers him to create the future soul of his country. Though he’s no Joyce. Thank God. He is a fanatical teacher. A powerful man in a community, particularly here. ‘You only get one chance with a boy to send them out blazing with love of their country,’ he declared, and admonished me to remember, a little impertinently I felt but I let it go, what Pearse said, that ‘the Irish mind is the clearest mind that has ever applied itself to the consideration of nationality and of national freedom … It was characteristic of Irish-speaking men that when they thought of the Irish nation they thought less of its outer forms and pomps than of the inner thing which was its soul.’ Brother Enda’s right, of course, it’s all about the soul, though his tone was a little arrogant. And a bishop must encourage humility.”
Here he smiled. The smile of a fat man is often less open to misinterpretation than that of a man whose skin is drawn tight over angular features, as mine is, yet there remains something sly in his expression.
“So I thought I’d bring him down a peg or two. I
Similar Books
