In The Name Of My Father: Chapter 23
One door quietly closed…oblivious to heart break on the other side…
In the days after Anna returned home, Helen had time to think, too much time! Might the love she and Alistair had shared be her one allocation in life?
Frailty was her constant bedfellow, fear ever present. She realized her eyes would have to locate a new focus to enable her to crawl through the demands of the next few months’ broken chapters.
There were only two sides to the equation, the blindingly scary, or the wonderfully exciting. Either was hers to choose.
So deep in thought, she almost walked past him.
“Helen, how are you?” he asked, turning on his heel.
With thoughts miles away about all she had to face, she had not noticed him.
“John! How are you? So sorry, I was off on another planet.”
“You’re looking well.”
“I am?”
“Maybe a little anxious, to be honest…hell, it’s so good to see you.”
“You too…what have you been up to?”
“I’ve kept myself busy, and…look let me shout you a coffee…do you have time?”
“I have time…but I may pass on the coffee. It doesn’t seem to agree with me these days.”
“Well now, I always had you pegged as a coffee aficionado. Maybe they need to up the standard on campus.”
“I can recommend a café just on the corner of Andrew’s Lane, if you like.”
But it didn’t take long for Helen to feel the overwhelming nausea that the aroma of coffee brought on.
“Excuse me John…I…I just…” and without finishing her sentence, she headed straight for the Ladies’, where she emerged some ten minutes later looking pale and sickly.
“Let’s get out of here,” John suggested, taking her arm with concern.
“I’ll be fine now…now that I’ve thrown up. There’s nothing left in my stomach.”
“Would you like me to take you home? I have my car parked nearby. It’s no bother.”
“I was on my way to the office, but I can do that another day. I’d actually appreciate a lift home, if it’s not too out of your way.”
Once inside they talked about the past, friends they had each lost touch with, but eventually Helen spilled her story, a breathless outpouring that worked more magic than a one-on-one confession with the Pope himself.
Initially he said nothing, leaving her to fill the void.
“Those butterflies I felt for him, have now turned into a whole new being…the patter of tiny feet is another way of putting it. I couldn’t tell you about Alistair at the time because you deserved so much more. I’d hurt you already and…
“Actually, the truth is that he wasn’t someone else at that stage. It’s just that suddenly things changed between me and you…meeting Alistair elbowed you into a corner through no fault of your own.”
“Well it doesn’t matter about me. I’m not pregnant, but I do think you’re a bit of a mess. I don’t stand in judgement of your for having fallen for a priest. As a man he was as needy as the rest of us. But there was a time when I believed we were a match made in heaven.”
“Oh John…I never, ever intended to cheat on you…and I didn’t. I just couldn’t let you go on thinking everything in the garden was rosy.”
“It happens. The fact is, if I’d really been the one for you, you’d never have fallen for Alistair. It’s taken a while for me to see things straight, but it’s what happens. I fall for you, and you…”
“Fall for someone behind your back,” she finished lamely.
“It’s not what I meant Helen. Look I won’t pretend. I was devastated for a very long time. I felt I could never trust again. I really did, but then I reached a stage where I needed to grow up and accept reality.
“And now your reality is to get through the next months. It may seem bleak right now, but things will get better, and you will have a different love in your life. You realize the church will be ducking for cover right now. Had the two of you had just fled the scene, you would still have Alistair in your life, and the hardest thing you would have had to face would be telling your family. You wouldn’t be the first person to carry a priest’s child.”
“The truth is my parents would have helped us through it all. I’m not saying they would have been impressed but they would have survived the inevitable gossip. Do you ever think about fate in life?”
“Of course.”
“See, the reason I met him in the first place was because my mother sent me off to Mass one Sunday, worried that a young priest might be being suffocated by old parishioners. The truth is she doesn’t approve of the celibacy part of things. Anyway, we got taking, I liked him immediately, and we found we shared lots of interests. And then we just kept meeting up.
“It felt as if it was meant to be, give or take a pregnancy, but even that might have been a way of God telling him to get out of a job he’d come to hate. He was miserable.
“I’ve thought a lot about his death, wondering if he deliberately threw himself under the bus, but I dismissed that immediately. He was excited about the baby. What worried him more though was his meeting with Bishop Scanlon. He’s not a likeable man.
“Alistair was determined not to implicate me in his decision to leave the church, but, I’ve an idea how these things work. It wouldn’t have been easy.”
“The church has no power to keep people who no longer want to be there.”
“True…but just imagine if there were threats made …on him…or on me! It happens.”
“I’m sure you’re right!”
“I knew a priest once who threw himself in front of a train, because of he was being threatened. He was madly in love with a woman and made the mistake of disclosing to his superiors. The church put so many obstacles in his way, he became so depressed and could see no way out. Ending his life was his solution — pathetic I know, but maybe the powers that be had meddled with his mind. Who knows? Anyway, he’d taken steps to identify himself in case his body was mangled beyond recognition. The police found some telephone numbers and a letter, carefully written, on his person. It was in interesting read.
“But Alistair was strong. Threats would have made him more determined to get out. He was too level-headed, and too determined, to be disturbed by stand-over tactics and the likes.”
“You’re probably right. It’s not too hard to imagine his state of mind when he left the meeting…some angry words spilt, making his way back home, upset, not concentrating…it’s easy to make up a likely scenario about how it all happened.”
“But we’ll never know,” Helen added sadly. “And that’s the part that troubles me most. I want to know. I never will so instead I imagine the possibilities. I am totally exhausted.”
The two sat there, each absorbed in their own thoughts, sharing the silence, but at last John spoke.
“So how can I help you Helen?”
“You can’t. I don’t deserve your help, and it wouldn’t take long before you came to regret it.”
“That may be your opinion, but it’s certainly not mine. Let’s look at it this way. For the couple of years I spent with you, I was the happiest bloke alive. I felt so sorry for everyone else. I truly did. Nobody, but nobody could have felt happier than I did. You were everything to me, my heart, my hopes, my tomorrows, and my soul. Who else enjoys that in life, even for a few short years?”
Once again Helen’s eyes became rimmed in tears, and John faced her squarely. Gently he took her hand in his.
“Won’t you let me trade in a wee bit of what you gave me, just to provide some temporary support?”
“You have your own life John, and I can’t weasel my way back in just because I’ve stuffed up my own.”
“You didn’t stuff it up. That was done FOR you!”
“Maybe, but the reality is that I now have a child to look after, and I have to find my own way. I really must. But now…I’ve just realized I’ve asked nothing about you. Your life…how is it going? Do you have a special friend these days?”
“No special friend I’m sorry to say. I’ve had a few odd dates here and there, but none that has lasted. When you start off with both coffee AND cream, it’s hard to settle for less, and so being alone is probably because I am the one who’s wanting, rather than the other way around.”
Helen regarded him quizzically.
“I’m confused.”
“It’s a metaphor Helen. YOU were both my coffee and cream, and”, but he stopped as Helen once again became tearful.
“Sorry,” she blurted out. “It’s just that…it’s just that I taught Alistair how to drink coffee with cream the way you and I used to do.”
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I have no idea what I was thinking. Forget I said that.”
“Looks like you and Alistair might have had something in common. You WOULD have liked him. He was lots of fun and we just clicked. I wasn’t out looking for an exchange for you. For some reason we just seemed to keep bumping into each other and the rest is history…plus a baby.”
“So where do you go from here?”
“Time off from uni…I was on my way to the office. I have NO idea how I will support myself. I have some savings, and I might be able to teach music, but rent is expensive.”
“Then stay with me. I have a spare room.”
“I’ll respond to that when you’ve recovered from whatever you’ve been smoking,” she laughed weakly.
“It was a serious offer,” he responded quietly. “I’m not one to jump in and then have regrets. You should know that. Besides, I remember saying I’d always be there for you, and I meant that, though I never ever imagined this scenario.
“Look this is not a proposal. It’s an offer of refuge, something you desperately need.”
Once again Helen’s eyes filled with tears and she lay her head on his shoulder, just as she would have done in times gone by, allowing him to draw her just a little closer.
“What about friends then? Do any of them know?”
“No, no one close enough to share my story. It was deliberate. I wanted to finish my degree as soon as possible, and I’d taken on a few extra study units. But my friend Anna knows.”
“Anna the hairdresser?”
“That’s right, though she would hate to be identified as that. She came down for a few days when she heard. We had discussed him at one stage, and we both agreed that selling himself to the church was such a waste. She wanted to quit her hairdressing apprenticeship which she hates, to be with me, but I wouldn’t have that. She will need that qualification when she goes to uni next year, or whenever. You’d like her.”
“I’m sure I would. Now I’m no expert on pregnancy, but I’m thinking you’re going to need people around you. And whether you can understand this or not, I really believe that I will get as much from helping you, as you will from me. It’s the way things work. One day you might look back and think that it was all meant to happen the way it did. One door has closed for you. Don’t focus on that. Who knows how many other doors might open in the future?”
“You are an angel John. Maybe we were meant to reconnect, but let’s take this one day at a time.”
“One day at a time it is. And let’s get this straight. I’m no angel.”
Later Helen wondered had the universe conspired to bring them both together? So many mountains to climb, but life in the present was all she could bank on. Each day though, she would work out her own steps, her personal way to scale her mountains, and not dwell on her loss. Who knows where it might lead? It’s what Alistair would have wanted…his child of tomorrow growing within her…and with that she picked up her violin and for the first time, played for her baby. Suddenly her world took on another hue.
Liam Ireland Aldric Chen Jay Toran Stuart Englander James Knight