In The Name Of My Father: Chapters: 34 & 35

Tuning into the past…an eerie experience

“Look I won’t bore you with details,” Jim told them. “Most of it you wouldn’t understand since you’re not in the business. I didn’t manage to retrieve everything, unfortunately, but what I did manage, is interesting. Sounds like the last minutes of Alistair’s life are memorable for all the wrong reasons. As I said, much of it was irretrievable, but for some reason this last bit is pretty much intact. What happened before is open to speculation…look I could work a bit more on it, however I suspect it won’t be much good. But check this out.”

The three sat around, intently listening to the last few breathtaking minutes of Alistair’s life. The quality wasn’t the best, but it was easy enough to hear.

“You’re an excellent priest boy. Don’t spoil it. You’re young and inexperienced, and whether you believe this or not, we have all been through the same misgivings.”

“That could well be the case, but it doesn’t change how I feel.”

“I also know you will regret leaving us. You have talent and already I hear talk about the distinct possibility of an exciting future for you in our church. Believe me, being recognized so early is not something that happens often! When you are selected at an early stage in your calling, it almost always means huge promotion.

“I don’t think you are aware of this, so let me spell it out to you right now. You will be giving up so much more than you bargained for, if you turn it all in. A life spent in God’s service, is a life well-spent!”

“So you say, but I can’t be an excellent priest when every day of my life is spent dealing with regret, with sadness, and with a level of loneliness I could never have been prepared for. This is not something that just happened overnight. As I explained to you, and to the Holy Father in my letter, I have tried so hard to deal with my issues during my time as a priest.

“The truth is, I was wrong all along. I should have listened to others. My father is of Irish stock and he has been witness to things in the church that he disapproved strongly of. Believe me, both my parents tried to dissuade me from entering, but I was blind to all protestations, to their suggestions that I hadn’t thought things through, and that I needed to get away for a while and experience the world before cloistering myself in the church.

“You talk of my arrogance about asking to leave, but in some ways I can now see my brushing aside their concerns as absolutely egotistical behavior on my part. So whether you accept this or not, it is with the utmost humility that I now know I need to leave.”

“You do realize that you are breaking your vow of celibacy? Does that frighten you in any way?”

“Frighten me? Why on earth should it?”

“Because you have bound yourself to Church, and to its teachings, and you just can’t walk away from that.”

“Oh I think I can. I’m not walking away from God. I’m leaving a way of life that I simply can’t deal with. How can that be so bad…and why should it be so frightening?”

“That’s for you to find out for yourself and believe me you will find out…at some stage in your life…and I have to warn you of this Alistair, if you do leave us, you will come crawling back in time. When the ordinariness of your life begins to blanket you in its fog and with its own element of loneliness, you will realise your error. The everyday blandness of your living will eat away at your core, and you will come begging.

“Think about it this way. As a priest you have standing in the community. People look up to you. They value your opinion. They seek you out for advice. Where else can you feel so revered?

“I promise you that in the years to come there will be amazing openings for you within the Holy See. As I suggested before, that is a privilege afforded to only a few, and a lifestyle that will take your breath away with its beauty and its standing. Don’t be stupid enough to turn your back on so much.”

“If only that were enough for me, but sadly, it’s not.”

“Maybe you haven’t told me the whole story, and perhaps this is the time to come clean.”

“I am not happy as a priest. I want to leave. That’s a very simple reason for my being here in the first place. There is no complication, as you suggest.”

“Listen here young man. Believe me when I say this. We have ways of finding things out. You’re a good-looking man, maybe too handsome for your own good, and I suspect that at the root of this is not loneliness within the church, so much as in some vital part of your body.”

“THAT IS OUTRAGEOUS! HOW DARE YOU!”

“Calm down Alistair. Calm down. I’ve seen this before. You’re only human after all. So many young priests have strayed into the arms of pretty women, and like you, they ended up confused and ready to leave the fold. Fortunately for most of them, they were convinced to stay.”

“I can tell you now, that won’t be me.”

“I’ll tell you this. Leaving never bodes well for either the priest…OR…or for the filly concerned.”

“She’s NOT a filly…and…”

“There you are! I knew it. Asking to leave can almost always be traced back to the sins of the flesh. This meeting is over and mark my words young man. Neither one of you, will go on to enjoy your lives together…not one day, if I have anything to do with it.”

“You bloody moron…you damned, evil cretin…here was I, thinking I could exit the priesthood with some decorum and decency, and with peace in the eyes of God. For some obscure reason I thought that I could have had a man-to-man conversation with you about my issues, and I really believed you might have understood. Who gave you the imprimatur to determine how I should do things?

“What cunning revenge you have drummed up to camouflage your baseness. Look at you. How you live with yourself I have no idea, and how you reconcile your attitude with YOUR God, (for yours is surely not mine), I cannot possibly imagine. What a miserable scum of humanity you are. YOU are little more than a victim of your own salacious imagination!

“Now listen to me, and this time, YOU mark MY words. I will have NO regrets, I will never turn back to YOUR church, and my life will go on despite your threats.

“You know, I’ve just realized what a terrible poverty yours is. Your darkness, your clear wantonness has robbed you of heart. I don’t need you, or any other member of this church, to sanction the choices I make in life, not you, nor the Holy Father!”

There was a palpable silence around the room as the three listened intently.

“Would you like me to play it again?” Jim asked after a few minutes.

“It’s a bit confronting,” Cam answered eventually, “but yes, it would help…and then we have to determine what to do with it.”

“I actually retrieved it a couple of days ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to contact either one of you…that this kind of behavior existed in the church not that long ago, beggars belief. Though it has nothing to do with me, I haven’t been able to erase it from my mind, or to sleep, to be frank. I’m not suggesting for one moment that behavior such as this was rife, but that it existed at all…well it just puts it into the realm of ordinary.

“So whatever happened to the young woman who was pregnant…and her baby?”

Father Brannan spoke up, shaking his head at the sadness of it all.

“She died in an unfortunate accident, only weeks ago. Her daughter had suspected for a long time that her mother was carrying a secret, one that she wanted to share, but for some reason seemed never to find the courage. In my experience, secrets tear people apart, and when they’re let go, it’s akin to opening up a Pandora’s box.

“It was after her mother’s passing, that her adoptive father told her the truth. That came as a shock. She’s a feisty young woman, so you can imagine her predicament. One day she has a brother and her father as family, and the next she is faced with the prospect of having an army of relatives.

“She came to me for help. You know,” he said quietly, “sometimes in life, you meet up with somebody, and the rules of privacy all change. I was really drawn to her and her problem, and decided I’d been called upon to help. As it turned out it was easy to do.

“We checked back some twenty to thirty years ago, and we found the father’s surname and photograph. I didn’t mention it to her, but when I looked at the photograph, and compared it to the young woman before me, I had no doubt about the paternity. His strong genes are replicated in her.

“After she left I was looking through some yearbooks, and one fell onto the floor, opening on the page where your photo was, Cam. I took that as a sign, and,” he said, looking towards Jim, ”that’s why we got together. How is that for the universe hopping in to help us?”

“So now we three have some information that could set the tinderbox alight.”

“Or, more positively, it could be the thread that binds,” Cam said quietly. “So how do we manage the recording?”

“There’s much to think about,” Jim replied. “Nobody’s deliberately broken the law, but we need to think carefully about what we have uncovered. I’m sure there’s a whole family out there who would want to know the truth about Alistair and put their collective suspicions to bed. Let’s sleep on it. We can’t change the past, but we can help one special lady contemplate and deliberate on one whole spectrum of her future.”

To DNA, or not…

“So you’re saying that Cam has had the recorder all these years and never thought to hand it over to the police?”

“Correct…more correctly, it was damaged in the accident and the police didn’t seem to be interested in having it. He was the one directly dealing with them at the time as the family was too distraught, and at the back of his mind was the thought that he might try to have it repaired. But then he got caught up in the funeral arrangements, so he put it in a drawer and left it there, and totally forgot about it, until recently…so you could say it’s older than I am.”

“That’s interesting,” Alistair answered, “REALLY interesting.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m thinking that your father’s DNA could still be on it, given that the machine has been largely untouched for all these years.”

“It wouldn’t last that long, would it?”

“I can’t say categorically, but given that it was in a drawer that was probably not opened much, if at all, it might have been covered in a protective film of dust, so would have been safe from the elements. It would be interesting to find out. Who has the machine now?”

“It’s back with Cam…in the drawer where it feels most comfortable I suppose. I’m thinking that he prefers it there, in case he’s broken the law.”

“Oh I think he’s pretty safe. There was no criminal intent.”

“But what would be the advantage in finding my father’s DNA?”

“We all share our parents’ DNA Ailsa, fifty per cent from each parent. It would establish whether Alistair was your father or not.”

“But what if you find lots of different DNAs on the machine? How would that play out?”

“That’s always a possibility. Those would be classified as secondary DNA.”

“Which means?”

“Well think about it this way. Your father buys something from a shop, and by the time he leaves the shop, that item already has many people’s DNA on it, the packer, the salesman, customers, and his. It could have many more of course. What we have to do is sift through to find the one that matches the one we’re looking for, in this case, yours. It’s a bit of a simplistic explanation, but I think it gives you an idea.”

“Hmm! I can’t say I’m not a teeny bit attracted to the idea. How would we go about finding out?”

“I’d have to do a little research, but to be honest it’s not really vital to establish DNA in your case. John, your father, and Cam, were all privy to your mother’s pregnancy. The DNA pathway could be relatively easy, and definitive, but not necessarily produce the outcome you would like. Instead, which I think is better, we have two reliable people we know who can vouch that Alistair is your father, we have a very significant and damning recording of the last moments of his life, and we have you, who by all accounts has so many of your biological father’s features and personality traits. These all build up a very credible picture to anyone concerned with being confronted by, or finding the truth.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I know it seems like I’m backpedalling on the DNA business, but it might be better to put it on the back burner for the time being.”

“Why? To me it’s such a simple way of establishing a fact.”

“That’s correct, if that’s all you care about, but that’s all it would be, a fact. Right now you’re between a rock and a hard place. You aren’t entirely convinced you want answers to validate everything that has taken place, yet your curiosity is aroused, and who could blame you?”

“To be honest there’s a little bit in me that secretly would rather that I could wake up one day, and find out that it was all nothing more than a bad dream. Then I’d be free to be myself.”

“And that’s a perfectly understandable response. One day you’re part of a small, relatively happy family. The next you are minus a mother and you find out the man you loved most in your life, the one you would have moved heaven and hell for, is not your biological father. That’s pretty difficult to deal with wherever you’re standing. I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes and try as I might, I can’t squeeze into them!”

“Damn! I don’t know when I ever felt so lost. I could just decide to do nothing. It’s still a decision.”

“But not one that sounds like you. Besides, you’d crucify yourself somewhere down the track.”

“Thanks! I was hoping you’d back me up.”

“I can, if that’s what you want, but maybe you should be a little more circumspect. Right now you have all sorts of emotions bubbling through your mind. Making a decision based on any one of these temporary feelings could possibly be your biggest mistake.

“Look, the reason I think that shelving the DNA pathway might work better for you in the long term is because, though you may not have realized it, so far there has been a huge element of serendipity in your journey. From where I’m standing, serendipity is becoming your best friend, walking with you along your path, holding your hand, gently allowing you to turn corners, reassuring you, and allowing you to make mind-blowing discoveries incidentally, and accidentally, on the way.

“Of course we could do the DNA testing, and we would most assuredly have a definitive outcome, tomorrow, or next week. But it won’t add to your story. Yours will still be a blank page. It will be bland, and sterile, and factual, but you want more than that, surely. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so worried.

“See that’s the problem with our modern way of researching. It’s quick and efficient, but it’s dull and boring, and totally without character.

“The fact is that the harder you have to work on your research, not just you, any of us, the more beneficial and enriching the journey, and the more amazing the outcome. So I say, keep the DNA at the back of your mind for when you might need it.”

“Well that’s taken the wind out of my sails. I was almost going to toast to our success.”

“Save it. Trust me on this Ailsa. I’m not usually this intuitive as you know but I am convinced that your journey will be more exciting if we trust in the winds. It’s scarier, but it’s also bold and robust, just as you are.”

“Is that so, now?”