Chapter 10 #18
“You say your faith has gone,” one of his questioners is saying to him now—Liam thinks it is the priest closest to the table’s end. “Define ‘gone.’ ”
Liam sighs and dabs with his sleeve at the moisture on his neck.
Ever since he set in motion this chain of events, by saying to his Provincial, as they stood together beside the half-built church, that he felt he had irrevocably lost his faith, his existence has been precisely this: angry men putting questions to him.
First the Provincial, who kept Liam in his private study for hours, making him go over and over the moment in the schoolroom, praying with him, exhorting him, telling him he was being tested, he was overtired, grieving for his father, it was only understandable, and would Liam give it more time?
Liam had refused. He had, against the Provincial’s wishes, spoken to his brethren, told them of his intention to leave the Order.
The Provincial became angry; he dispatched Liam on a long, overland journey to his superiors here in Calcutta.
Liam pushes his hair out of his eyes. If they want definitions, he will give them definitions.
“ ‘Gone,’ ” Liam says, in the manner of the eager-to-please schoolboy he once was, “the past participle of the verb ‘go,’ meaning lost, departed, passed beyond reach.”
The men lean towards each other, muttering.
Liam catches the phrases “put trust in” and “test of patience.” Without warning, the door to his right flies open and someone sweeps assertively into the room; beyond the door frame, Liam catches sight of two young novices, who are straining on tiptoe to lay eyes on this heretic, this apostate, before the door is swung shut.
The new man, Liam can tell, is the Superior Provincial, the man in charge of their mission in the whole of the Indian sub-continent: he will have received a directive from Rome and come here for the sole purpose of seeing Liam.
They have summoned this most imposing of presences as a final attempt at keeping Liam within the Order.
The man does not take the proffered seat but stands there, drawn up to his full impressive height, regarding Liam, hands clasped before him.
His voice, when it comes, isn’t booming or domineering, as Liam might have expected, but stealthy and assured.
He asks if it is true, the rumour that has reached his ears, that Father Gulielmus wishes to leave.
Liam tells him it is. He sees this man for what he is: the final hurdle he must clear before he is released, before he is allowed to leave.
And he tells him that his joining the Jesuits had been a mistake, a misplaced youthful urge to set himself against his father.
He was, he says, inveigled into it by a priest, a man who took against his father’s atheism; he believes now that the priest was just out for revenge.
His father’s passing has made him see this, as well as recognise how flimsy his faith had been.
It had been mere topsoil, not bedrock, he says to the man, with a smile.
Do you understand me? My faith was nothing but a stratum of sand or grit, destined to be swept away by a storm.
The Superior Provincial stares at Liam for a long time, well after Liam has finished speaking.
Then he steps forward. He reaches down and removes from around Liam’s neck the tasselled ebony crucifix and its length of knotted leather.
He utters not a single word but points towards the door with an urgent finger, in the manner of a man who fears contagion, indicating that Liam should stand, leave, walk away from them all and never come back.
Anyone observing the passengers packed into the ship’s dim hold might have taken the young man and woman with the little dog for a husband and wife: she has her arm linked through his the whole time, leaning towards him to whisper words in his ear.
He doesn’t say much, doesn’t meet anyone’s eye or respond to any remark made to him, fixing all his attention on the animal he keeps stowed inside his shirt.
The girl is a rare beauty, too, with hair sleek and shining as a raven’s wing, but the young man seems not to notice or care.
Some of the more observant travellers may have noticed the similarity of their brows, the set of their mouths, and decided they are brother and sister, or cousins perhaps.
Others have taken note of the girl’s bruised eye, her split lip, and their eyes have wandered questioningly to the knuckles of the young man, and resolved to steer clear of him, not to rile him in any way.
Nobody wants trouble, especially so early in their voyage.
All, however, are taken aback when, a day into their journey, a rumour goes around the darkened hold where they must spend most of their time, that they have in fact been sailing east, not west, and before they set sail for Québec, they will first put in at Liverpool.
People stand up at this news; they rap the ceiling above them, they rattle the locked hatch, demanding an explanation.
No one told them this when they bought their passages—they were told they would be heading straight across the ocean.
Glancing about her, Rose squeezes Eugene’s arm, murmuring to him in the darkness, telling him not to worry, that the sailors have told someone, who told someone else, who told her, that some passengers will leave the ship here, and the sailors will take on barrels of water and food for the journey.
“All’s well,” she says to Eugene, who trembles beneath the fabric of his jacket, who gives all his attention to the puppy, slipping her bits of dry biscuit, allowing her to lick his fingers with her narrow, pink tongue.
Rose knows that Eugene hates the ship, the dark and damp, the proximity of so many strange people.
She takes his hand and reminds him what is happening, creates a version of it that can settle in his mind, like a snowdrift: they bought two passages for Québec, they will be at sea for many days, they can walk on deck, in the fresh air, once a day, but otherwise they will be down here, Eugene must look after the puppy, has he thought what they’ll call her, and after a good long while they will land in a new country, far across the sea, where they will find Enda, and won’t Enda be surprised to see them, and the three of them—no, four, if they count the dog—will live happily ever after.
It is a story she crafts just for him, the narrative of their new life.
She says it to him whenever she senses his panic rising, his heart pounding, in the hope that the words will form a framework for him, a sense of direction.
She does not mention the spade, the cliff, the slipe, the broken heads of the gentlemen, the stormy night that snipped their life in two.
Will Eugene be thinking of this? Are his dreams, like hers, peopled by bleeding, faceless monsters, by dogs running over hills, by the sound of tearing fabric, by gunshots, by whips and marram grass, with serrated sides that cut the thin skin of palms? Impossible to know.
The ship idles at anchor for a day, then another.
The steerage passengers are allowed on deck, and Rose looks down on the grey stone buildings of Liverpool, the oily harbour water, the ragged children running along the dockside, and she is surprised because she thought everyone in this country wore fine clothes and had shoes on their feet.
She looks up at the rigging, the masts and sails, and wonders at how fragile it all seems and how this craft will ever reach the other side of the world.
She peers at the bolted door beyond which, someone tells her, the gentry travel, with damask chairs, china plates, silver knives and forks, and beds with sheets.
When the ship sets sail again, the hold is fuller than ever.
The wind is fair and strong and it carries them down the channel of water between the two countries, and when they round the headland, Rose feels the change immediately: the waves are fuller, with a deep rolling motion; they have intent and purpose.
On the afternoon of that same day, a sailor opens the hatch above them, and tells them they are past Cork, that they will soon be at the last terra firma before the Atlantic; it will be the final sighting of their homeland and they may come up on deck to see, if they wish, to bid it farewell.
The hold is silent for a moment, then there are some startled murmurs. Some people translate what the sailor has said; others get to their feet.
Eugene elbows his way through the crowd and is first up the ladder.
Rose has to wait until others have climbed up and out into the wind and spray, and she is worried that she will have missed it, this last glimpse.
When, finally, she is able to climb on deck she cannot find Eugene, and she pushes her way through people who are crying and praying, holding out handkerchiefs to flutter in the breeze.
The land looks so close, so green, to Rose, as the ship slides along beside it: she can make out fields, the meander of walls, grazing cattle, a line of trees, a bay of white sand, the thatch of houses.
Someone is singing now, and others joining in; a woman is keening, collapsed into the man beside her.
Rose turns away from this, catches sight of a familiar cap and eases her way towards it. Eugene is standing at the rail, both hands gripping the side of the ship. His face is unreadable, his gaze fixed on the low-lying headland, a town visible in the distance: the southernmost tip of their country.