John McGahern, The Dark (1965)

An Extract

Chapter 12: [The Fr. Gerald’s House]

[Note that Fr. Gerald has a sixteen-year-old boy in the house from a ‘large family at the other end of the parish’ whom he is training as a housekeeper in place of the usual and that the priest has previous removed the narrator's sister to the Ryan family where she is working as a servant and where she is being molested by the pater familias.]

You had come. You were in the priest’s house, you could draw back the linen sheet and get into bed. A picture of your father’s house in your mind, all the others sleeping there miles away, and you here. Joan in bed in the town four miles away, all the world you knew mostly in bed in the night as you now too, Joan’s voice, “It’s even worse than home,” in your ears, a moment passing, she must not be happy, you must find out more, you had no chance or you were too involved in your own affairs to make any effort, though what could be wrong.
 Through the window the stones of the graveyard stood out beyond the laurels in the moon, all the dead about, lives as much filled with themselves and their importance once as you this night, indecision and trouble and yearning put down equal with laughing into that area of clay, and they lay calm as you would one eternal night while someone full of problems [68] and uncertainties would lie as awake as you in a room.
 At night they left their graves to walk in search of forgiveness, driven by remorse, you’d heard many times. They came most to the house of the priest to beg: the flesh same as their  own and able to understand, but the unearthly power of God in his hands, power to pardon. But the house seemed still as  the graveyard tonight.
 The moment of death was the one real moment in life; everything took its proper position there, and was fixed for ever, whether to live in joy or hell for all eternity, or had your life been the haphazard flicker between nothingness and nothingness.
 All pleasure was lost, whether you’d eaten flesh or worn roses, it was over, or whether you had gone bare and without. The wreaths and the Mass cards and the words meant nothing, these were for the living, to obscure the starkness with images of death, nothing got to do at all with the reality, just images of death for the living, images of life and love in black cloth.
 The presence of the dead seemed all about, every stir of mouse or bird in the moonlit night, the crowded graves, - the dead priest who’d collected the grandfather clocks. You, grew frightened though you told yourself there was no reason for fear and still your fear increased, same in this bed as on the road in the country dark after people and cards, nothing about, till haunted by your own footsteps your feet go faster.
 You tell yourself that there’s nothing W be afraid of, you  stand and listen and silence mocks you, but you cannot walk calm any more. the darkness brushes about your face and throat. You ptxml breathing, but you can stand for ever for all the darks Cares. Openness is everywhere about you, and at last you take to your heels and run shamelessly, driven by the one urge to get to where there are walls and lamps.
 In this room and house there was no place to run though, [ 69] only turn and turn, nothing but hooting silence and the hotness of your enfevered body when you held yourself rigid to listen.
 Real noises came. A door opened down the landing, it was not shut. Feet padded on the boards, the whisper of clothes brushing. You raised yourself on your hands, the grip of terror close, for what could be moving at this hour of night?
 A low knock came on the door. Before you could say, “Come in,” it opened. A figure stood in the darkness along the wall.
 “You’re not asleep?”
 It was the priest’s voice, some of the terror broke, you let yourself back on your arms again.
 “No,” there was relief, but soon suspicion grew in place of the terror, what could the priest want in the room at this hour, the things that have to happen.
 “I heard you restless. I couldn’t sleep either, so I thought it might be a good time for us to talk.”
 He wore a striped shirt and pyjamas, blue stripes on grey flannel it seemed when he moved into the moonlight to draw back a comer of the bedclothes.
 “You don’t mind, do you - it’s easier to talk this way, and even in the summer the middle of the night gets cold.”
 “No, father. I don’t mind,” what else was there to say, and move far out to the other edge of the bed, even then his feet touching you as they went down. The bodies lay side by side in the single bed.
 “You find it hard to sleep? I often do. It’s the worst of all, I often think, to be sleepless at night,” he said, and you stiffened when his arm went about your shoulder, was this to be another of the midnight horrors with your father. His hand closed on your arm. You wanted to curse or wrench yourself free but you had to lie stiff as a board, stare straight ahead at [70] the wall, afraid before anything of meeting the eyes you knew were searching your face.
 “Do you sleep well usually?”
 “Alright, father. The first night in a strange house is hard.”
 “It’s always hard in a strange house, if you’re not a traveller. I used never be able to sleep the first night home from college, or the first night in the college after the holidays, what you’re not used to I suppose, and the strange excitement.”
 His hand was moving on your shoulder. You could think of nothing to say. The roving fingers touched your throat. You couldn’t do or say anything.
 “You have a good idea why I invited you here?”
“Yes, father.”
 “I was going to broach it in the sitting-room, but I thought you might be too fagged out after the journey. When I heard you restless I thought it might be a good time to talk, in fact I thought it might be the cause of the restlessness. It’s always better to talk no matter what. You’ve thought about the priesthood since? You know that that’s one of the main reasons I wanted you here?”
 “Yes, father.”
 “Have you come to any decision or any closer to one?” he moved his face closer to ask, his hand quiet, clasping tighter on the shoulder.
 “No, father,” you couldn’t say any more, you had to fight back tears, it was too horrid and hopeless.
 “You haven’t decided either one way or the other?”
“No, father, but I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
 You felt cornered and desperate, wanting to struggle far more free by this of the questions than the body and encircling arm.
 “What troubles you most? Do you want to be a priest?” “Yes, father.”
 “What then troubles you most?” [71]
 “I’m not sure if I have a vocation. I don’t know.”
 “You know that God won’t come down out of his heaven to call you. The Holy Father defined a vocation as three things: good moral character, at least average intelligence, a good state of health. If you have these and the desire to give your life to God, then you have a vocation, it’s as easily recognizable as that. Does that help you to see your way any more clearly?”
 “I don’t think I’m good enough, father,” was what you said twisting away from it put so close and plain as this, tears started to flow down your face.
 “How?”
 “I can’t be certain. I thought maybe if I went out into the world fora few years to test myself, then I could be sure. It wouldn’t be too late to become a priest then. Don’t some become priests in that way?”
 “It’d be unlikely. People get into ruts and habits and drift. Once you’ve got a taste of the world - it’s hard to settle down at any time to the daily habitual service of God - but it’s worse if you come late. It’d be unlikely you’d ever leave the world once you got its taste and if you did it would be harder than now. The excitement and novelty would soon go. And then and then and then.”
 He stopped, the conversation against a wall, and as suddenly his whole voice changed.
 “Have you ever kissed a girl?” it came with the shock of a blow.
 “No, father. Never.”
 “Have you ever wanted or desired to kiss?”
 “Yes, father,” the tears flowed hopelessly, just broken, he was cutting through to the nothingness and squalor of your life, you were now as you were born, as low as the dirt.
 “Did you take pleasure in it?”
 “Yes, father,” it choked out. [72]
 “You excited yourself, brought them into your mind. You mused seed to spill in your excitement?”
 “Yes, father.”
 “How often did it happen?”
 “Several times a week sometimes. More times not at all.”
 “How many times a week?”
 “Seven or eight sometimes, father.”
 “Did you try to break it?”
 “Yes. Always after Confession.”
 “Did you succeed for long?”
 “It’s six weeks since it happened last.”
 “Did you bring one woman or many women into these pleasures?”
 “Many women, father.”
 “Were they real or imaginary?”
 “Both, father.”
 “You don’t think this vice has got a grip on you, you think you could break it?”
 “Yes, father, I think I might.”
 “This is the most reason why you’re not sure, why you think you’re not good enough, is it?”
 “Yes, father. Do you think I might be good enough?”
 You still felt a nothing and broken, cheap as dirt, but hope was rising, would the priest restore the wreckage, would he say - yes, yes, you’re good enough.
 “I don’t see any reason why not if you fight that sin.”
 Joy rose, the world was beautiful again, all was beautiful.
 “Had you ever to fight that sin when you were my age father?” you asked, everything was open, you could share your lives, both of you fellow-passengers in the same rocked boat.
 There was such silence that you winced, you had committed an impertinence, you were by no means in the same boat, you were out there alone with your sins. [73]
 “The only thing I see wrong with you is that you take things far too serious, and bottle them up, and brood,” he completely ignored the question. “Most of those in my youth who became priests were gay. They kicked football, they went to dances in the holidays, flirted with girls, even sometimes saw them home from the dances. They made good normal priests.”
 You barely listened this time, resentment risen close to hatred. He had broken down your life to the dirt, he’d reduced you to that, and no flesh was superior to other flesh. You’d wanted to share, rise on admittance together into joy, but he was different, he was above that, you were impertinent to ask. He must have committed sins the same as yours once too, if he was flesh.
 What right had he to come and lie with you in bed, his body hot against yours, his arm about your shoulders. Almost as the cursed nights when your father used stroke your thighs. You remembered the blue scars on the stomach by your side.
 “You must pray to God to give you Grace to avoid this sin, and be constantly on your guard. As you grow older you’ll find your passion easier to control. It weakens,” he was saying. “You can stay here long as you want, you’ll have time and quiet to think, you can bring any trouble or scruple to me. We can talk. And pray, as I will pray for you too, that God may well direct you.”
 He paused. You’d listened with increasing irritation and hatred, you wished the night could happen again. You’d tell him nothing. You’d give him his own steel.
 You felt him release his arm and get out on the floor and replace the bedclothes. Your hands clenched as he sprinkled holy water on your burning face, though the drops fell cool as sprigs of parsley.
 “God guard you and bless you. Sleep if you can,” he said as he left the room noiselessly as he’d entered it. [74]