In These Dark Places Page 8

  I had discovered it when I was just a boy while I was out on one of my long walks that strangely, strange for a child in any case, I was of a mind to take. A trail leading down into the woods from the Darkin Road had caught my eye. Against my better judgement I jumped over the ditch and followed it. Always one to actively seek out a new adventure, all and any thoughts about being sensible were far from my mind as I followed that track down into the woods, the sound of rushing water drawing me on. The ground was strewn with shards of cracked granite and quartz and as I picked my way across it I caught my first glimpse of what would become my secret paradise, my own personal Eden. This far into the woods the trees began to crowd the path and the magnificent summer light which had bathed the road was far behind me. What lit my way now was no more than dappled shards dancing dizzily across the soft cushion of pine needles. As the gloom increased any other child might have turned heel and gone clambering back out into the glorious day, but what I had seen promised too much. It spoke of wonder, adventure, secrets. So I pressed on. As the hill which swept down from the road levelled off and as the trees drew back from the path once more, the land began to rise. New ferns swayed in the summer breeze, their tops, bright green folds of potential soaked with the morning dew. The roar of water grew louder and as I crested a small hummock I had the breath knocked from me.

  I stood on a brow of silver granite looking down into a hollow in the woods some thirty feet below me. Its granite walls glistened with mica-schist, sparkling like the inside of some great disco ball. Here and there it was stained with the ochre red run off from the woods, the days old rainwater tattooing strange and alien patterns on the ancient rock. In the cracks and crevices which dotted the concave, tufts of gorse and ferns defied Newton’s Constant, their roots clinging tenaciously to the screed of peat and soil which had accumulated over the long, slow years.

  I walked around the edge of the bowl, its precipice a dizzying spectacle. I was careful to be sure footed, marking off each step with a deliberation years ahead of my youth. I had traced the rim of the hollow, a full two hundred and eighty degrees but I could find no way down into this newfound marvel of nature. Some twenty minutes later, having given up entirely on making it down into the dell, I was sitting on the eastern rim of the ledge, a rocky prominence which jutted out into the air sixty feet above The Fola, my feet dangling out over the bracken brown water when I saw it. A way down. How I had missed it I couldn’t figure, but from my vantage point out on the edge I could see it clearly. Someone, somehow and some-when had cut steps into the granite wall. I say steps because that’s all my ten year old brain could make of them at the time. They were in fact just carved notches, hacked with great effort and less finesse, but they would serve their intended purpose. I scrambled my way back across the rim, all thoughts of safety evaporating from my mind as I went. It was another fifteen minutes before I found myself at the top of the steps. The path to them was just a rat run concealed by the tangle of gorse, and I would have missed it entirely had I not known what lay on the other side of it.

  I stepped down onto the first notch, steadying myself on the trunk of a Lebanese Cedar which leaned precariously out over the hollow, from the branches of which myself and Peter Donnelly would soon string up a swing with a coil of rope swiped from my father’s shop. Now, I’ve had spiritual events occur in my life, moments when I was lifted to the highest of highs. Times when my very soul seemed to swell with happiness and threatened to burst from its mortal confines. Stepping onto the soft, cool grass on the floor of The Dell that long ago summer morning still ranks right up there with the best of those moments.

  Like a rock star taking to the stage, or a gladiator walking across the hallowed sand in The Colosseum, I strode out into the centre of that sacred space, raw nature my adoring masses. The chirp and buzz of birds and bees the cheer of my fawning audience. I was Columbus, Hilary, Gagarin, stepping first into the great unknown.

  Of course, I knew all too well that I wasn’t the first, whoever had carved the steps had had that honour, but I was ten years old and possessed of a vivid and dangerously overactive imagination. Apart from the murmur of the Fola below me and the chatter of unseen birds there was not a sound to be heard. No traffic, no people. Even the rustle of the trees was muted as I carefully made my way to the edge of the dell, a tumble of shattered shale and grassy hummocks.

  I peered over the edge and a wave of dizziness washed over me forcing me to my knees. I lay flat on my belly and edged out closer still. I was on a rocky outcrop that jutted out some seven or eight feet with nothing between it and The Fola but twenty feet of fresh air. Later that summer Peter would tease my cowardice as he flung himself from that very spot down into the cold river, whooping and howling with delight as he went.

  It wasn’t the height that bothered me, it never was. It was the rush of the water. It was how it tumbled and churned and boiled with a white fury as it rolled by on its merry way to the sea. It was how the water might take me, what it might do to me if I was to be so stupid to pitch into it which terrified me. On those long summer days, endless days baked under the hot July sun we’d hike out there, Peter and I, toting plastic carrier bags stuffed with whatever treats we could skive from home. As Pete would hurl himself off of the precipice, The Board, as we came to call if, I’d watch on with a mixture of envy and admiration and I would curse my cowardice.

  Both Rob and Saoirse could swim, our father saw to that. And when it came to my turn to learn, there were no expensive lessons to be doled out like there had been for my siblings. No. They could teach me themselves. On my first lesson, standing by the edge of the deep end of the pool, as Saoirse demonstrated how to tread water, Rob had pushed me. It wasn’t his fault, not really. He had meant to grab me at the last second. ‘Tell Dad I saved you!’ It was that kind of thing. But he didn’t save me and in I went. I was under for no more than twenty seconds but it was long enough to instil in me a lifelong fear, a dread of water, deep or shallow, it didn’t matter.

  Yeah, I’d sit in The Dell and cheer Pete on as he found new and ever more imaginative and dangerous ways to enter the water. I’d sit and watch and wish that it was me. But it never would be. My fear was too great, too deeply ingrained to overcome. The very sight of deep water could paralyse me, it still can all these long years later. When he finally tired of the river, it was Pete who suggested that we string up a swing from the cedar tree. Now here was something I could get into. We traipsed back out there the very next day with a coil of rope freshly misappropriated from my father’s inventory down at the yard. A round of, ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ decided who would be the reluctant test dummy for the inaugural swing. It was Peter and he took to it without breaking a sweat. Many happy hours that summer were passed defying gravity in great pendulous arcs out over The Dell. It was a happy place, a place of childhood adventure. A haven of boyhood innocence, protected as it was by its isolation. We lived out our time there beneath a crystalline sphere, a barrier of puerile naiveté which kept the woes and the ills of the world at bay. But nothing lasts forever, does it? Soon that crystal sphere would shatter and evil and tragedy would pay a visit to The Dell.

  I hadn’t been back since. That first day I took Ellie out by the Darkin Road and down into The Dell in December 1973 had been my first since the glorious summer of 1964. Echoes of death and shadows of sadness awaited us.

  13

  The trail was overgrown with a tangle of bramble and gorse. The woods were somehow thicker, darker. Long gone was the dappled light which had led me on that long ago summer morning. The mud caked to our shoes and Ellie complained and protested all the way in.

  ‘For the love of God, Gabe, where are you taking me? This is ridiculous. I’m getting destroyed here. I want to go home!’ She was staggering along behind me as I led her by the hand.

  ‘It’ll be worth it, I promise.’ I told her.

  ‘It’s cold and damp in here, let’s go back out onto the road. At least it’s a bit warmer out there,
sunny, nice and bright.’

  ‘It will be in here too if you’d just give me another minute or two and hush with your whinging.’ A playful slap on my shoulder.

  ‘It better be.’

  ‘It will. I promise. You’re going to love it.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  I remember with perfect fidelity the little high pitched gasp she uttered when we finally cleared the trees and found ourselves looking down into The Dell.

  ‘Jesus, Gabriel, it’s beautiful… How did you ever find this place?’

  ‘I’ve known about it since I was a kid. Just stumbled on it one day. I was out for a stroll like the little aul lad I was back then. I thought this place was the best thing since sliced bread. I still do, well, kind of.’ I glanced up at the branches of the cedar tree and a shiver rolled over me. The lightning flash of a shredded memory flickering in my mind’s eye.

  ‘How do we get down there? Can we get down there?’

  ‘Sure we can. Come here, I’ll show you.’

  We pushed through the briars and the gorse to the top of the steps, right beside the old Cedar. Another flash in my mind’s eye. Poor Peter.

  It was warm and soft on the grass. The breeze which had plagued our walk in was high above us now. Only the sunlight reached us down there and we lay basking in its unseasonal warmth. We talked, small talk for the most part, the ghost of Dan Maguire haunting the fringes of our conversation. His shadow darkening the day like a rain cloud that threatens to ruin the perfect afternoon. We didn’t speak of him anymore by that stage. Ellie seemed to have come through the guilt which had plagued her the previous summer, still, the memory of that terrible night and its events would percolate through our unconscious thoughts and push him from the shadows into the cold hard light of day. Nameless and without form, provided that we did not mention him, we could keep his ghost at bay.

  A second ghost haunted me that day in The Dell. As we fooled around on the soft grass, caught up as we were in the throes of a youthful passion my eyes were drawn up to the old cedar. Up to the branch from where we had cast ourselves out into the bolt bright summer sky so many years ago, Peter and I. At play, two boys. Many summers of fun and laughter and life and adventure lay ahead. But only for one of us.

  Once more in my life, The Dell had become a sacred place. It was to there that myself and Ellie would go to steal away from the world. When we wanted nothing more than to be in the silent company of the other. When carnal urges consumed our better selves, when life in Crannstonbarrow began to smother, as it did with an increasing regularity back in those days, The Dell was our haven. In time it became as much Ellie’s as it was mine and we revelled in its isolation, its beauty, its silence. That silence however, would always be tarnished with the ghostly echo of Peter’s laughter.

  14

  In January 1964, Father Frank, Father Francis Xavier Atkins, to give the good man his proper title, our Parish Priest, passed away. He was an old man who died peacefully in his bed as he listened to Schubert, his housekeeper, Ms. Herterich and his GP, Doctor Coombes having kept the death watch for some four days. A great loss to our community was the obituary most frequently bandied by the parishioners as they came to terms with the loss of the man who had been their spiritual leader for near on forty years.

  Much beloved by his parishioners, a collection was taken up by myself and my father and at Granddad’s insistence, to ensure that the church was festooned with flowers on the morning of his funeral. Dad and I took the money around to the Rectory the day before the funeral. Jessop was delighted to learn that we had collected over fifty pounds, a princely sum way back then. He was seated behind his desk in his study when his housekeeper showed us in. I’ve never forgotten how comical it was to watch his eyes follow the envelope in my father’s hands as they spoke. He was like a child waiting for a treat. When my father handed over the envelope Jessop was up and out from behind his desk in a shot. Taking an enormous painting of the Sacred Heart down from the wall he revealed to us a cunningly concealed safe. I was mesmerised by it. Such a cool thing to see, like something out of the James Bond movies I loved so much.

  Taking his keys from beneath the folds of his cassock, Jessop opened the safe and tossed the envelope into the darkness of the vault. As he pulled his arm out, the cuff of his cassock caught a brown manila folder and it fell to the floor, spilling its contents. A pile of small brown envelopes fanned across the parquet floor of his study, from one of which, poorly sealed and labelled with names in Jessop’s spiderlike cursive, fell a small black glossy square. I would have sworn that Jessop actually whimpered as he scooped it and the envelopes up and hurriedly threw the pile into the safe before slamming the door shut and locking it tightly. His face was wan and pale as he replaced the picture of Jesus over the safe door.

  ‘Diocesan files and such,’ he said as he regained his composure, ‘Very sensitive things, you understand.’

  ‘Of course,’ said my Father.

  ‘Well, thank you for organising the collection. I’ll give May Boyce a call and organise the flowers for the church. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have both a eulogy and a sermon to write for tomorrow, so I better get going on that.’

  ‘Of course, Father,’ said my Dad, ‘We’ll be off, we don’t want to keep you. Come on, Gabe.’

  I was in a trance, still staring at the Sacred Heart and marvelling at how very cool it was that someone as boring as a priest had such a cool and wondrous thing in their house.

  ‘Gabe, come on. Let’s get out of Father Jessop’s hair.’

  ‘Yes, Dad. Goodbye, Father.’

  Later that night, I took a hacksaw blade and cut a hole in the wall at the side of my wardrobe. I placed a biscuit tin filled with my treasures into the void and covered it with a poster of Bobby Tambling. When my father discovered said hole some weeks later it was two days before I could sit down such was the hiding I got. My enthusiasm for my safe soon waned after that. Excitable and enthusiastic as I was as a child it wasn’t long before I forgot all about it and Father Jessop’s one too. I wouldn’t think of that safe for many, many years. Peter, and Ellie too, would be gone when the recollection of Jessop’s safe and what it might contain came back to me years later. There were other things to occupy me. My first chemistry set, burned eyebrows and a black stain on my ceiling. A microscope set for my birthday, a blue leather Chelsea football bag for the new school term.

  Bureaucracy, the slow and plodding monster that it is, particularly in the archaic constructs of the Catholic Church, saw to it that it was several months before a new Parish Priest could be appointed. Most of his cronies had written to the Archbishop petitioning for Jessop to be installed, my Grandfather included. I was sure that he was a shoe-in for the job, but thankfully, His Grace saw things a little differently. Perhaps he considered the Curate a little too young for such a responsibility, or maybe, and I was reaching with this, just maybe myself and Peter were not the only people wary of his potential proclivities. Whatever his reasons, I was thankful that our Archbishop had gone a different direction. The incident in the Teacher’s Room aside, and notwithstanding Peter’s cryptic assertions as to Jessop’s unsavoury character, our Curate had always struck me as a man not content with playing second fiddle to an ailing old man. I dreaded what he might do should he one day find himself at the helm. I distinctly remember uttering my prayer of thanks as I kneeled beside my bed one Sunday night having learned at mass that morning that the Archbishop had indeed appointed an outsider. There was however, a caveat. The man who would be our new Parish Priest was, at the time, on missionary duties in Manila and he would not be installed until February the following year.

  The Curate would run the parish in the interim, and by God, run it he did. With the reins of parish power clasped firmly in his bone thin hands he set about launching programs and institutions left, right and centre. A new Bible Club was set up, to which attendance was compulsory for all children aged six to sixteen. The same attendance directives were also a
pplied to the newly founded Scouts of God Brigade, The Junior Parish Choir, The Nature Society and The Cinema Club. And at the thick of all of these wholesome and enlightening activities, eschewing the more traditional parish committee approach to arranging such programs, was Father Earl Jessop, the workaholic autocrat. To the congregation he was a tireless marvel devoted to the enrichment of our lives, to the kids reluctantly sucked into his sphere of influence, he was a bane. Falling neatly as I did into the specified age category and with my Grandfather near on apoplectic with delight that so many practical and Godly enterprises were now open to me, I was essentially frogmarched down to the parish centre with frightening regularity.

  The first thing that I noticed at these gatherings was the sense of fear which permeated the collective. Unspoken, ill-defined, all encompassing. How many were frightened because Jessop was a stern disciplinarian and not shy with the rod and how many might have been frightened because at one time or another they too might have had an awkward and unseemly interaction with the man, I couldn’t tell. To this day I still can’t figure it. All I knew was that apart from a very small cohort of genuine Jessop groupies, each of the boys in those groups had a sincere and real fear of the man.

  There was, between a handful of us, knowing glances exchanged, desperate faces pleading for help when singled out to stay back with him to perhaps tidy the hall or to rejig the chairs. Despite these glances, we never spoke of it. Not once, not ever. Of the half-dozen boys in that parish whom I thought might have some inkling as to Jessop’s motives, no one bar myself and Peter had ever dared to mention it. I often wondered was there even a point in thinking about it after a while, I mean, what had passed between Peter and myself had been nothing more than a heads-up from him. There was no great discussion, no drilling down to the root of his unease with the man. All Peter had said was that he didn’t like him. Lots of people don’t like other people, it’s an unfortunate part of life, but there you have it. Still, I had never managed to shake off my uneasiness around Jessop and when I saw how he conducted himself around the other children that unease only increased. There was something deeply unnerving in the furtive glances, the fleeting touches, a pat on the shoulder held for one second too long, the brush of his palm on a cheek. To me, ten years old and with no adult to whom I might turn and talk to about it, my imagination ran rampant with the notion that Father Earl Jessop was indeed an evil man, the devil incarnate.