My Father's House Page 2

  This particular evening, I’d plenty on my mind. I was after spending the morning in the recording studio at Radio Roma because I was making a record of two songs to be released back in Ireland. Yes. I was a professional singer before I was married. I didn’t want to give it up fully.

  That day? Oh, I can’t remember now, love, I think “Danny Boy” and “Boolavogue.” Maybe “The Spinning Wheel.” I’d have to check.

  I’d a grand little career going back at home and I got such fulfilment and excitement from that. To be honest, I missed it dreadfully, the concerts, the travelling around. But by ’41 I’d had to take a break from it, between one thing and another, the war getting worse, Tom’s posting to Rome. I was singing in Belfast the night the Luftwaffe firebombed the theatre. That’s what you call a mixed review.

  Wasn’t a town I didn’t perform in the breadth and length of Ireland. In the summers, the Isle of Man, Liverpool, Manchester, often Dundee or Ayrshire, maybe a couple of nights in Cricklewood at the dance halls. I’ve sung in Durham, Kilmarnock, Northampton, all over. A woman can lose her confidence in the house all day. And I always think, if singing’s in you, you have to sing.

  Anyhow, in comes this polite sort of fellow to my get-together that evening and introduces himself as Monsignor O’Flaherty of the Holy Office. Chilly words.

  “Monsignor” is a title conferred by the Church on a diocesan priest who’s been an administrator five years. So, it conveys a bit of importance. As for “Holy Office,” that’s the department of the Vatican where they keep a weather eye on what’s called “adherence to doctrine” and ensure everyone’s toeing the line. It’s what used to be called “the Inquisition.” So that carried a bit of weight, too. There’s few of us want an Inquisitor at our party.

  Normally at my evenings I didn’t like too many high-and-mighty sorts, because the youngsters weren’t able to relax and enjoy themselves if the quare ould hawks were along. Once, for example, a certain Cardinal who shall be nameless pitched up; a long drink of cross-eyed, buck-toothed misery if ever there was, he’d bore the snots off a wet horse, and the effect was like turning a fire hose on a kindergarten. He’d a way of smiling would freeze up the heart in your chest. As for smug? If he was a banana, he’d peel himself.

  But this Monsignor fellow was different, down to earth. Affable. You get that with Kerry people, a sort of courtesy. Too many priests at the time saw themselves not as a sign of mercy but as grim little thin-lipped suburban magistrates. Hugh wasn’t too mad on authority.

  Another different thing, his means of transport over to us that night was his motorcycle. Here he’s ambling up the steps to the residence and he grey with the dust from boots to helmet, huge leather gloves on him like a flying ace, and he blessing himself at the Lourdes water font on the hallstand. As though a priest dressed like that was the most everyday sight you ever saw. And the bang of motor oil off him. Unusual.

  He spoke in beautiful Italian to my servants. I didn’t know it yet, but I would never meet a brainier piece of work: Hugh had three doctorates and was fluent in seven languages, his mind was like a lawnmower blade; he’d shear through any knot and see a solution, if there was one.

  Around the party he sallies, anyhow, tumbler of limonata in hand, a word of chat here, a joke or two there. Two Liverpool students were playing chess; he watched them for a while, and, when they finished, asked the winner to explain what the strategy had been. He didn’t touch a drop but not a bother on him about anyone else having a glass of beer. Fire away. Whatever you’re having yourself.

  There was a young woman from Carrigafoyle, a Carmelite novice, they’d a great old natter; didn’t it turn out he’d known a late uncle of hers through golf back at home. Hugh was brought up on a golf course as you probably know. His father, a one-time policeman, was the club professional in Killarney. Then Hugh and the young Carmelite—I can see them clear as you like, still, from that night in my living room—the pair of them demonstrating to the company how to putt with a walking stick. There was a bundle of talk about happy subjects and none of the war.

  Oh, I forgot to say, when, later, we started having code names, his name was “Golf.” He was obsessed with the notion the Germans were listening. Escaped prisoners were known as “Books,” their hiding places “Shelves.” We never used the real names of the Roman streets but gave them names of our own, based on numbers, like the streets in Manhattan. Or we named them after the great Italian composers. And we had to keep mixing the codes to stay ahead of the Gestapo. But more of that, anon.

  Tom was out that evening, visiting a trio of Dubliners who were after unwisely giving lip to the Fascisti and getting themselves chucked into Regina Coeli, the jail in Rome, after a hiding; and, anyway, he rarely attended my get-togethers. He enjoyed pretending to disapprove of them more than he actually did.

  A point came in the evening when the youngsters started asking would I sing. Some of them had my 78s back at home in Ireland, or, likelier, their parents had. There was a recording of mine was after being played all that summer on Raidió Éireann, “The Voice of Delia Kiernan,” even on the Third Service and American Forces Network. The great Richard Tauber himself had said in an interview he liked it, so that was a feather in my cap. The Monsignor encouraged me to oblige them. “Go on, Mrs Kiernan, before they start breaking up the furniture.” I answered that I had no accompanist and would feel nervous without that safety net. In truth, I’d a couple of whiskeys on me.

  He answered that he was no Paderewski but would vamp along as best he could if I would tell him the key. What I had in mind was written in A-flat, which isn’t easy for an improvisor, but I told him I could hack it in A. So, over with the pair of us to the piano, a lovely old Bösendorfer, and off we went. It was an old love song, an arietta by Bellini I’ve long had a place in my heart for—a lovely loose melody like a soft-rolling folk song. It always brings my father back to me, Lord have mercy on him, it was a great favourite of his. As a girl I learned it off a 78 he had in the house, John McCormack’s version—and some of the younglings joined along.

  Vaga luna, che inargenti

  Queste rive e questi fiori

  Ed inspiri agli elementi

  Il linguaggio dell’amor

  It wasn’t false modesty from Hugh, I must say, about the level of his musicianship. Dear knows I’ve heard bad pianists in my time but he was cat altogether, God love him. He’d grand big hands on him like a pair of shovels, but he was clumsy. All the same, it was a lovely experience. You’d remember it. In recollection, Rome comes to me always as everyday music: the clunk of a shutter on a sweltering afternoon, the gasps of wonder when you’re inside the Pantheon and rain starts to fall. The hot pigeons warbling, the way the drinking fountains chuckle. But there was never music sweeter than hearing the room sing that night.

  Something happens in a room when people are singing. It changes the air, like rainfall, or dusk. You’ve those say it’s escapism but, to me, life seems realer, then.

  Forgive me. Makes me emotional to think of.

  Well, that’s how we met, and we were soon good pals. He’d come along to my evenings the odd time, bring a chum or two with him. Priests, yes—a Japanese Franciscan came once—or pilgrims from the homeland or his beloved United States, and always a bottle of excellent Chianti, the dear knows how he laid hands on it, though he didn’t drink himself, as I say. Often, he’d bring a naggin of brandy.

  A well-placed Papal Count was after gifting the Irish Legation an expensive subscription to a box at the Opera House, to which we’d often invite other diplomats and their families. You’ve to remember that independent Ireland was still a very young country, having only won her freedom in 1921. The solidarity of others was needed and valued. Hosting was something a diplomat’s wife was expected to do. Verdi sometimes proved an ally, you could say.

  This one particular occasion the plan was for a party of seven, but the Portuguese Amba
ssador was under the weather with the awful heat, the filth of which brought headaches that would cripple you and made it hard to breathe, so I invited along the Monsignor to join the group, for I knew he loved Puccini, and Tosca is set in Rome as you know. We were the Swedish Ambassador and his wife, the Swiss Cultural Attaché—there’s a part-time job if ever there was—and a lady friend, then the Monsignor and yours truly and my husband. “A riot of neutrality,” Hugh joked, shaking hands. “We lot couldn’t shoot our way out of a mousetrap.”

  Which the Swedish Ambassador laughed at. But not the Swiss Cultural Attaché, as I recall, who seemed understandably put off by the fact that Hugh had a little notebook in which he kept scribbling, all the way through the performance. It was an oddity of Hugh’s: if a thing wasn’t written down, it hadn’t happened. Even his Bible, he’d be scrawling all over the margins. Anyhow. Another story. Where were we?

  Yes.

  Late in ’42 it must have been, a kind of darkness I hadn’t seen before came over him. For a while he’d been visiting the Axis prisoner-of-war camps in Italy as an official Vatican observer. But something happened to him that autumn. He wasn’t the same. He stopped attending my evenings, went to ground a while. Someone told me he’d been sick, was after being in hospital with cancer or was considering going to Massachusetts to do parish work. My Tom heard on the Vatican grapevine he might be leaving the priesthood. But when at last he agreed to see me, he said that wasn’t so; he’d been preoccupied with what he called a private matter.

  It was after raining for days as we spoke, and the river was rising, one of those nights when the Tiber was tipping the tree-roots. Was he in trouble? I remember asking him. Was he in need of a friend?

  Because, I’ll be honest, sometimes you heard of a priest where a woman had come into the picture. Human nature is what it is. We won’t change it this late in the day. There’s many a good man discovered the celibate life wasn’t for him, but they’d be shunned by the Church when they left. The routine was you’d be told to go to a particular room in some shabby back-street hotel, on the bed there’d be a suit from a pawnshop and three pound-notes. You took off your priestly clothes, folded them on the bed, got into the dead man’s suit, left the hotel by the back door. It was understood no one from your old life would ever contact you again. They made it hard for you to leave. So, too many stayed.

  I can say now, after all this time, I had a particular lady in mind, a young Contessa recently widowed who’d been seen in Hugh’s company at art galleries and the like, around Rome, each of the pair for different reasons clad in black. A beauty she was, with something of what the French call “gamine,” slightly boyish film-star looks, like those of Leslie Caron. She and I became great friends; indeed, I was speaking with her on the telephone not two hours ago. The Vatican, like all kremlins, is a hive of whispers and envies. I know for a fact that her friendship with Hugh didn’t merit the way it was sometimes talked about. “No smoke without fire” is the way gossips put it. I always say, maybe it’s not smoke, maybe your spectacles need a wiping.

  Anyhow, he gave a laugh when I mentioned her name. The private matter he was after mentioning was nothing at all of that nature, he assured me. “But thank you, Delia, for the compliment.”

  When I persisted, he showed me a scrap of a letter that had been smuggled to him from a poor Scottish boy, a soldier in a prisoner-of-war camp, about to be executed. The lad wanted it sent to his mother. The words of it, the fact of it—forgive me a moment—had been coming between Hugh and his sleep.

  I wept when I read it. Handed it back and wept. There’s never a single day of my life I don’t pray for that mother.

  We’d go through American bombing attacks the following summer. Those I’ll never forget. Because unless you’ve lived through an air raid, I don’t think I can convey the terror. There’s no film could capture it. The screaming. The smell. The nerves would be at you weeks afterward.

  A B-25 Mitchell bomber is the size of a London bus. You look up and there’s forty of them raining 500-pound bombs. So, a street isn’t damaged, it’s obliterated. Gone. A rubble of stinking smoke and pulverised bricks. The planes would come the night before, drop eighty thousand leaflets saying what would happen the next day. So you’d plenty of time for the dread to build up. One night an air raid came during one of my evenings. I’ll never forget the young people’s fear; they were weeping, terrified.

  By now, Hugh had become aware that certain individuals in Rome—a person here, someone else over there—were helping escaped Allied prisoners and Jews get out of the country, into Switzerland, and he’d been giving them the odd bit of assistance on the QT. Things like buying train tickets in false names, getting clothes, nothing much more. It was ad hoc, you know, not organised. Hugh had a lot of friends in the city between one thing and another; he wasn’t one of those priests that eat and sleep and die in the chapel. He was half-thinking of putting together a proper group that might raise a few bob for the escapees, the odd handout, at a distance, on the quiet.

  Discreet. Nothing formal. All very hush-hush. Perhaps best not to mention it to Tom or anyone else at the embassy. There wouldn’t be any danger, it would only be in the background, like a charity fund.

  I didn’t know what it would lead to or I’d have run for the hills.

  He was after thinking of a cover for it.

  The Choir.

  3

  MONDAY 20TH DECEMBER 1943

  6:47 A.M.

  112 hours and 13 minutes before the Rendimento

  In the hours after the dash to the hospital, a head cold assails him. Racking sneezes, hacks, shivers, hot eyes. The fear looms that this is the onset of the dreaded Roman flu, which killed a dozen of his African First Years and nine of his Chicagoans last winter.

  Minutes before dawn, exhausted, he forces himself to sleep. The Daimler roaring through his nightmares.

  Somehow it becomes the Mercedes of Hauptmann, the Gestapo commander. They’re driving long spirals of impossibly narrow streets in a city that is and is not Rome. Oak trees. Lightning. Bloodstains on sand. Rain patterning a window. Vast towers. A well as deep as the moon is high. Faces turning to stone as a Chopin nocturne plays, the settled, broken blankness of those without hope. Now Hauptmann is at his bedside, a presence, a virus. You’d be afraid to breathe in case you inhale him. Tell me who you met. Tell me why you met them. The Nazi’s grey eyes. Grey infantry braid on his cuffs. Grey smoke of his grey cigarettes. The wolf feeding Romulus and Remus in a fresco comes to life and slobbers at her starving babies before devouring them.

  At ten o’clock, he leaves his room, walks uneasily to the School of Divinity, starts into the three-hour lecture he must give on Aquinas, in Latin, to a class of ninety seminarians. Last night’s sleet still beating in his head as he clutches the lectern for steadiness, the bleached-out yellow windows of the lecture hall throbbing. This term’s Third Years are bright. Their questions swarm like wasps. The glass of hot water and lemon he has brought with him to the dais tastes of mud and pencil shavings.

  Afterwards, wrapped in a blanket, he begins grading their end-of-term disquisitions but makes it through only thirty papers before retreating to his sickbed. The remaining sixty scripts he marks between bouts of flicker-lit half-sleep and fits of angry coughing. His wheezes cast a seething dog into the corners of the room. His ribcage is made of fire.

  No word from Sam Derry.

  Bombers overhead.

  Perhaps news will come tomorrow.

  Q

  Transcript of memorandum recording made on Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG Magnetophon

  This is Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann speaking. For the attention of Dollman, confidential. Twentieth of December, forty-three, Gestapo headquarters, Rome.

  Himmler telephoned again. Ranting, threatening. Furious that enemy prisoners are escaping Italy-based camps in large numbers. Says most are he
ading towards Rome, seeking asylum in the Vatican. I appreciate you’re busy but I have changed my mind and want you to look into a couple of suspects we discussed recently, including that nuisance of a priest I mentioned before. I know you think he’s nothing. Let’s find out.

  Poke around. Bang heads. The usual informants. See if he’s using a false name.

  I’m sending you a dossier on him, into which I have written what I already know. Complete its currently empty sections and return it to me before Christmas.

  Be discreet. Stay in backstage.

  Let’s get this weed uprooted.

  We don’t need trouble.

  Heil Hitler.

  Q

  TUESDAY 21ST DECEMBER

  3:04 A.M.

  91 hours and 56 minutes before the Rendimento

  Awakening in the early hours, he realises that today is the eighteenth anniversary of his ordination. Fevered, his thoughts skim oceans. He sees himself prostrated before the altar that morning in the cathedral, then walking back down the aisle, hands bound, the hawk-faced, candlelit Bishops.

  Around sunrise he drifts into some zone of pulsing, crackled redness that is not sleep, some land where candlestands have voices. Surfacing, he stirs the tumbler of medicine someone has placed on his locker and manages two sips before dry-retching.

  The lemon wedge in the copper spoon beside the alarm clock is the strangest object he has ever seen, so yellow it’s green, so green it’s blue, its aroma creeping up his sinuses like a midnight burglar until it sprouts a thousand insect legs and scuttles around the pillows, emitting a sordid, irksome buzz that becomes the reedy drone of an oboe.