to keep food and uniforms and weapons away from your husband.”
She was mildly unimpressed, and he reduced her to combativeness rather than thought. “Do you think that's why we're losing the war? Look, I just wanted to be an honest woman with you, Father Darragh, and that's all. I'm determined on my way.”
Darragh, struggling, tried out the idea that he and she were not Protestants. “In the end, we submit our consciences humbly to authority.”
But Mrs. Heggarty said, almost with apology, that she was guided by authority but was not its mindless slave.
So he was forced at last to sit awhile in silence, having used every available argument he had at his conscious disposal. Her ideas might be heterodox, but he felt he could not match her strength. He had thought that this could never happen—he had gone forth to Strathfield, New South Wales, believing that he was fully equipped for every earthly argument and half of heaven's. And now, her ideas seemed even to him to shine with a certain sad and plausible wisdom.
Having come here to tell him in her genial but egregious pride that she would not creep away, and having now imparted that, she began to stand up and then to advance past the polished table to the door. The reproduction of Raphael's Virgin smiled down on her, the Sacred Heart blazed. Darragh rose as she approached the half-open door. He stepped forward and touched her elbow. “Please wait.” But he saw then that Mrs. Flannery was arranging some flowers on a hall stand by the beaded-glass front door, and had turned her full gaze towards him and Mrs. Heggarty.
“Thank you for all your advice, Father,” said Mrs. Heggarty, and nodded and left.
VI
As if to chasten people and put them in a mood for the penitential season, Singapore had fallen the weekend before Ash Wednesday. Frank Darragh celebrated Shrove Tuesday on the steps in front of the sacristy by stacking the leftover palms of 1941's Palm Sunday into an open tin tray, in which he had already lit some charcoal. The palms had dried out—the last terrible year had desiccated them, and history had taken away their sap. They burned quite easily—the little bit of charcoal barely adding to their dusty mass.
He had spent a dreadful night, because his sense of loss, of having been given Mrs. Heggarty for rescue and having failed in the task, could not be absorbed into the allocated hours of rest. He felt grainy with sleeplessness. He believed that a sort of grit had entered the soul, lay on the face of all leaves, and dimmed every bloom. How could he live to be a priest as long as Carolan had, when he could not convince a young wife, this young wife in particular, towards wisdom? When she uttered her reasons for what she did with such philosophic flagrancy! The Japanese might save him the trouble of a long priestly career, of course, but he did not want them to.
What galled was that he had no weight with the woman, no gravity to alter her path, to stop her in her purposeful flight. She had chosen to speak to him because she could say what she could not to more austere men. The interview had left her without a burden. She could tell herself she had been honest with the priests, and no hypocrite, and she had won her argument, strongly made her point. She did not leave stinging with shame at her apostasy, as the powerful of the Church would have made her do. She left saying a pleasant good afternoon.
So it was as Monsignor Carolan had said to Monsignor Plunkett—he was an easy target, and his anger at the monsignor was unjustified. No doubt his visit to Mrs. Flood produced in the Crescent, after he left, tinkling, wheezing hilarity from the lady herself and the darkest, most dismissive curses from the men at the kitchen table. So his role was to be God's fool, and he must be happy to be if necessary. Except, with all of that, his connection to the God of his joy seemed to have been cut. At Mass that morning the Latin had fled undervalued from his
She was mildly unimpressed, and he reduced her to combativeness rather than thought. “Do you think that's why we're losing the war? Look, I just wanted to be an honest woman with you, Father Darragh, and that's all. I'm determined on my way.”
Darragh, struggling, tried out the idea that he and she were not Protestants. “In the end, we submit our consciences humbly to authority.”
But Mrs. Heggarty said, almost with apology, that she was guided by authority but was not its mindless slave.
So he was forced at last to sit awhile in silence, having used every available argument he had at his conscious disposal. Her ideas might be heterodox, but he felt he could not match her strength. He had thought that this could never happen—he had gone forth to Strathfield, New South Wales, believing that he was fully equipped for every earthly argument and half of heaven's. And now, her ideas seemed even to him to shine with a certain sad and plausible wisdom.
Having come here to tell him in her genial but egregious pride that she would not creep away, and having now imparted that, she began to stand up and then to advance past the polished table to the door. The reproduction of Raphael's Virgin smiled down on her, the Sacred Heart blazed. Darragh rose as she approached the half-open door. He stepped forward and touched her elbow. “Please wait.” But he saw then that Mrs. Flannery was arranging some flowers on a hall stand by the beaded-glass front door, and had turned her full gaze towards him and Mrs. Heggarty.
“Thank you for all your advice, Father,” said Mrs. Heggarty, and nodded and left.
VI
As if to chasten people and put them in a mood for the penitential season, Singapore had fallen the weekend before Ash Wednesday. Frank Darragh celebrated Shrove Tuesday on the steps in front of the sacristy by stacking the leftover palms of 1941's Palm Sunday into an open tin tray, in which he had already lit some charcoal. The palms had dried out—the last terrible year had desiccated them, and history had taken away their sap. They burned quite easily—the little bit of charcoal barely adding to their dusty mass.
He had spent a dreadful night, because his sense of loss, of having been given Mrs. Heggarty for rescue and having failed in the task, could not be absorbed into the allocated hours of rest. He felt grainy with sleeplessness. He believed that a sort of grit had entered the soul, lay on the face of all leaves, and dimmed every bloom. How could he live to be a priest as long as Carolan had, when he could not convince a young wife, this young wife in particular, towards wisdom? When she uttered her reasons for what she did with such philosophic flagrancy! The Japanese might save him the trouble of a long priestly career, of course, but he did not want them to.
What galled was that he had no weight with the woman, no gravity to alter her path, to stop her in her purposeful flight. She had chosen to speak to him because she could say what she could not to more austere men. The interview had left her without a burden. She could tell herself she had been honest with the priests, and no hypocrite, and she had won her argument, strongly made her point. She did not leave stinging with shame at her apostasy, as the powerful of the Church would have made her do. She left saying a pleasant good afternoon.
So it was as Monsignor Carolan had said to Monsignor Plunkett—he was an easy target, and his anger at the monsignor was unjustified. No doubt his visit to Mrs. Flood produced in the Crescent, after he left, tinkling, wheezing hilarity from the lady herself and the darkest, most dismissive curses from the men at the kitchen table. So his role was to be God's fool, and he must be happy to be if necessary. Except, with all of that, his connection to the God of his joy seemed to have been cut. At Mass that morning the Latin had fled undervalued from his
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