The Copper Beech Read online

  Mattie the postman sat laconically on an upturned barrel. He was one of the only spectators since almost every other citizen of Shancarrig was waiting at the school.

  The Bishop stretched out his hand very slightly as if offering his ring to be kissed.

  Mattie inclined his head very slightly and touched his cap. The gesture was not offensive, but neither was it exactly respectful. If the Bishop understood it he said nothing. He smiled to the right and the left, his thin aristocratic face impervious to the heat. Father Gunn’s face was a red round puddle of sweat.

  The first sign of the schoolhouse was the huge ancient beech tree, a copper beech that shaded the playground. Then you saw the little stone schoolhouse that had been built at the turn of the century. The dedication ceremony had been carefully written out in advance and scrutinised by these bureaucratic clerics who seemed to swarm around the Bishop. They had checked every word in case Father Gunn might have included a major heresy or sacrilege. The purpose of it all was to consecrate the school, and the future of all the young people it would educate, to God in this Holy Year. Father Gunn failed to understand why this should be considered some kind of doctrinal minefield. All he was trying to do was to involve the community at the right level, to make them see that their children were their hope and their future.

  For almost three months the event had been heralded from the altar at mass. And the pious hope expressed that the whole village would be present for the prayers and the dedication. The prayers, hymns and short discourse should take forty-five minutes, and then there would be an hour for tea.

  As they plodded up the hill Father Gunn saw that everything was in place.

  A crowd of almost two hundred people stood around the school yard. Some of the men leaned against the school walls but the women stood chatting to each other. They were dressed in their Sunday best. The group would part to let the little procession through and then the Bishop would see the children of Shancarrig.

  All neat and shining – he had been on a tour of inspection already this morning. There wasn’t a hair out of place, a dirty nose or a bare foot to be seen. Even the Brennans and the Dunnes had been made respectable. They stood, all forty-eight of them, outside the school. They were in six rows of eight; those at the back were on benches so that they could be seen. They looked like little angels, Father Gunn thought. It was always a great surprise the difference a little cleaning and polishing could make.

  Father Gunn relaxed, they were nearly there. Only a few more moments then the ceremony would begin. It would be all right after all.

  The school looked magnificent. Not even Mrs Kennedy could have complained about its appearance, Father Gunn thought. And the tables were arranged under the spreading shade of the copper beech.

  The master and the mistress had the children beautifully arranged, great emphasis having been laid on looking neat and tidy. Father Gunn began to relax a little. This was as fine a gathering as the Bishop would find anywhere in the diocese.

  The ceremony went like clockwork. The chair for Monsignor O’Toole, the elderly parish priest, was discreetly placed. The singing, if not strictly tuneful, was at least in the right area. No huge discordancies were evident.

  It was almost time for tea – the most splendid tea that had ever been served in Shancarrig. All the eatables were kept inside the school building, out of the heat and away from the flies. When the last notes of the last hymn died away Mr and Mrs Kelly withdrew indoors.

  There was something about the set line of Mrs Kennedy’s face that made Father Gunn decide to go and help them. He couldn’t bear it if a tray of sandwiches fell to the ground or the cream slid from the top of a trifle. Quietly he moved in, to find a scene of total confusion. Mr and Mrs Kelly and Mrs Barton, who had offered to help with carrying plates to tables, stood frozen in a tableau, their faces expressing different degrees of horror.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, barely able to speak.

  ‘Every single queen cake!’ Mrs Kelly held up what looked from the top a perfectly acceptable tea cake with white icing on it, but underneath the sign of tooth marks showed that the innards had been eaten away.

  ‘And the chocolate cake!’ gasped Una Barton, who was white as a sheet. The front of the big cake as you saw it looked delectable, but the back had been propped up with a piece of bark, a good third of the cake having been eaten away.

  ‘It’s the same with the apple tarts!’ Mrs Kelly’s tears were now openly flowing down her cheeks. ‘Some of the children, I suppose.’

  ‘That Foxy Dunne and his gang! I should have known. I should have bloody known.’ Jim Kelly’s face was working itself into a terrible anger.

  ‘How did he get in?’

  ‘The little bastard said he’d help with the chairs, brought a whole gang in with him. I said to him, “All those cakes are counted very carefully.” And I did bloody count them when they went out.’

  ‘Stop saying bloody and bastard to Father Gunn,’ said Nora Kelly.

  ‘I think it’s called for.’ Father Gunn was grim.

  ‘If only they could have just eaten half a dozen. They’ve wrecked the whole thing.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have gone on about counting them.’ Jim Kelly’s big face was full of regret.

  ‘It’s all ruined,’ Mrs Barton said. ‘It’s ruined.’ Her voice held the high tinge of hysteria that Father Gunn needed to bring him to his senses.

  ‘Of course it’s not ruined. Mrs Barton, get the teapots out, call Mrs Kennedy to help you. She’s wonderful at pouring tea and she’d like to be invited. Get Conor Ryan from the hotel to start pouring the lemonade and send Dr Jims in here to me quick as lightning.’

  His words were so firm that Mrs Barton was out the door in a flash. Through the small window he saw the tea pouring begin and Conor Ryan happy to be doing something he was familiar with, pouring the lemonade.

  The doctor arrived, worried in case someone had been taken ill.

  It’s your surgical skills we need, Doctor. You take one knife, I’ll take another and we’ll cut up all these cakes and put out a small selection.’

  ‘In the name of God, Father Gunn, what do you want to do that for?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Because these lighting devils that go by the wrong name of innocent children have torn most of the cakes apart with their teeth,’ said Father Gunn.

  Triumphantly they arrived out with the plates full of cake selections.

  ‘Plenty more where that came from!’ Father Gunn beamed as he pressed the assortments into their hands. Since most people might not have felt bold enough to choose such a wide selection they were pleased rather than distressed to see so much coming their way.

  Out of the corner of his mouth Father Gunn kept asking Mr Kelly, the master, for the names of those likely to have been involved. He kept repeating them to himself, as someone might repeat the names of tribal leaders who had brought havoc and destruction on his ancestors. Smiling as he served people and bustled to and fro, he repeated as an incantation – ‘Leo Murphy, Eddie Barton, Niall Hayes, Maura Brennan, Nessa Ryan, and Foxy Bloody Dunne.’

  He saw that Mattie the postman had consented to join the gathering, and was dangerously near the Bishop.

  ‘Willing to eat the food of the Opium of the People, I see,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘That’s a bit harsh from you, Father,’ Mattie said, halfway through a plate of cake.

  ‘Speak to the Bishop on any subject whatsoever and you’ll never deliver a letter in this parish again,’ Father Gunn warned.

  The gathering was nearing its end. Soon it would be time to return to the station.

  This time the journey would be made by car. Dr Jims and Mr Hayes, the solicitor, would drive the Bishop and the two clerics, whose names had never been ascertained.

  Father Gunn assembled the criminals together in the school. ‘Correct me if I have made an error in identifying any of the most evil people it has ever been my misfortune to meet,’ he said in a terrible tone.

  Their faces told him that his information had been mainly correct.

  ‘Well?’ he thundered.

  ‘Niall wasn’t in on it,’ Leo Murphy said. She was a small wiry ten-year-old with red hair. She came from The Glen, the big house on the hill. She could have had cake for tea seven days a week.

  ‘I did have a bit, though,’ Niall Hayes said.

  ‘Mr Kelly is a man with large hands. He has declared his intention of using them to break your necks, one after the other. I told him that I would check with the Vatican, but I was sure he would get absolution. Maybe even a medal.’ Father Gunn roared the last word. They all jumped back in fright. ‘However, I told Mr Kelly not to waste the Holy Father’s time with all these dispensations and pardons, instead I would handle it. I told him that you had all volunteered to wash every dish and plate and cup and glass. That it was your contribution. That you would pick up every single piece of litter that has fallen around the school. That you would come to report to Mr and Mrs Kelly when it is all completed.’

  They looked at each other in dismay. This was a long job. This was something that the ladies of the parish might have been expected to do.

  ‘What about people like Mrs Kennedy? Wouldn’t they want to …?’ Foxy began.

  ‘No, they wouldn’t want to, and people like Mrs Kennedy are delighted to know that you volunteered to do this. Because those kinds of people haven’t seen into your black souls.’

  There was silence.

  ‘This day will never be forgotten. I want you to know that. When other bad deeds are hard to remember this one will always be to the forefront of the mind. This June day in 1950 will be etched there for ever.’ He could see that Eddie Barton’s and Maura Brennan’s faces were beginning to puc
ker; he mustn’t frighten them to death. ‘So now. You will join the guard of honour to say farewell to the Bishop, to wave goodbye with your hypocritical hearts to His Grace whose visit you did your best to undermine and destroy. Out.’ He glared at them. ‘Out this minute.’

  Outside, the Bishop’s party was about to depart. Gracefully he was moving from person to person, thanking them, praising them, admiring the lovely rural part of Ireland they lived in, saying that it did the heart good to get out to see God’s beautiful nature from time to time rather than being always in a bishop’s palace in a city.

  ‘What a wonderful tree this is, and what great shade it gave us today.’ He looked up at the copper beech as if to thank it, although it was obvious that he was the kind of man who could stand for hours in the Sahara desert without noticing anything amiss in the climate. It was the boiling Father Gunn who owed thanks to the leafy shade.

  ‘And what’s all this writing on the trunk?’ He peered at it, his face alive with its well-bred interest and curiosity. Father Gunn heard the Kellys’ intake of breath. This was the tree where the children always inscribed their initials, complete with hearts and messages saying who was loved by whom. Too secular, too racy, too sexual to be admired by a bishop. Possibly even a hint of vandalism about it.

  But no.

  The Bishop seemed by some miracle to be admiring it.

  ‘It’s good to see the children mark their being here and leaving here,’ he said to the group who stood around straining for his last words. ‘Like this tree has been here for decades, maybe even centuries back, so will there always be a school in Shancarrig to open the minds of its children and to send them out into the world.’

  He looked back lingeringly at the little stone schoolhouse and the huge tree as the car swept him down the hill and towards the station.

  As Father Gunn got into the second car to follow him and make the final farewells at the station he turned to look once more at the criminals. Because his heart was big and the day hadn’t been ruined he gave them half a smile. They didn’t dare to believe it.

  MADDY

  When Madeleine Ross was brought to the church in Shancarrig to be baptised she wore an old christening robe that had belonged to her grandmother. Such lace was rarely seen in the Church of the Holy Redeemer – it would have been more at home in St Matthew’s parish church, the ivy-covered Protestant church eleven miles away. But this was 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress in Ireland. Catholic fervour was at its highest and everyone would expect fine lace on a baby who was being christened.

  The old priest did say to someone that this was a baby girl not likely to be lacking in anything, considering the life she was born into.

  But parish priests don’t know everything.

  Madeleine’s father died when she was eight. He was killed in the War. Her only brother went out to Rhodesia to live with an uncle who had a farm the size of Munster.

  When Maddy Ross was eighteen years old in 1950 there were a great many things lacking in her life: like any plan of what she was going to do – like any freedom to go away and do it.

  Her mother needed somebody at home and her brother had gone, so Maddy would be the one to stay.

  Maddy also thought she needed a man friend, but Shancarrig was not the place to find one.

  It wasn’t even a question of being a big fish in a small pond. The Ross family were not rich landowners – people of class and distinction. If they had been then there might have been some society that Maddy could have moved in and hunted for a husband.

  It was a matter of such fine degree.

  Maddy and her mother were both too well off and not well enough off to fit into the pattern of small-town life. It was fortunate for Maddy that she was a girl who liked her own company, since so little of anyone else’s company was offered to her.

  Or perhaps she became this way because of circumstances.

  But ever since she was a child people remembered her gathering armfuls of bluebells all on her own in the Barna Woods, or bringing home funny-shaped stones from around the big rock of Shancarrig.

  The Rosses had a small house on the bank of the River Grane, not near the rundown cottages, but further on towards Barna Woods which led up to the Old Rock. Almost anywhere you walked from Maddy Ross’s house was full of interest, whether it was up a side road to the school, or past the cottages to the bridge and into the heart of town, where The Terrace, Ryan’s Commercial Hotel and the row of shops all stood. But her favourite walk was to head out through the woods, which changed so much in each season they were like different woods altogether. She loved them most in autumn when everything was golden, when the ground was a carpet of leaves.

  You could imagine the trees were people, kind big people about to embrace you with their branches, or that there was a world of tiny people living in the roots, people who couldn’t really be seen by humans.

  She would tell stories, half wanting to be listened to and half to herself – stories about where she found golden and scarlet branches in autumn and the eyes of an old woman watching her through the trees, or of how children in bare feet played by the big rock that overlooked the town and ran away when anyone approached.

  They were harmless stories, the Imaginary Friend stories of all children. Nobody took any notice, especially since it all died down when she went off to boarding school at the age of eleven. Shancarrig school was much too rough a place for little Madeleine Ross. She was sent to a convent two counties away.

  Then they saw her growing up, her long pale hair in plaits hanging down her back and when she got to seventeen the plaits were wound around her head.

  She was slim and willowy like her mother but she had these curious pale eyes. Had Maddy had good strong eyes of any colour she would have been beautiful. The lightness somehow gave her a colourless quality, a wispy appearance, as if she wasn’t a proper person.

  And if anyone in Shancarrig had thought much about her they might have come to the conclusion that she was a weak girl who had few views of her own.

  A more determined young woman might have made a decision about finding work for herself, or friends. No matter how complex the social structure of Shancarrig you’d have thought that young Maddy Ross would have had some friends.

  There were cousins of course, aunts and uncles to visit. Maddy and her mother went to see families in four counties, always her mother’s relations. Her father’s people lived in England.

  But at home she was really only on the fringe of things. Like the day they had the dedication of the school, the day the Bishop came.

  Maddy Ross stood on the edge with her straw sunhat to keep the rays of the sun from her fair skin. She watched Father Gunn bowing his way up the hill towards the school. She watched the elderly Monsignor O’Toole in his wheelchair. But she stood slightly apart from the rest of Shancarrig as they waited for the procession to arrive.

  The Kellys with their little niece Maria, all of them dressed to kill. Nora Kelly should have worn a hat like Maddy had, not a hopeless lank mantilla that made her look out of place in the Irish countryside.

  Still it would be nice to belong somewhere, like the Kellys did. They had come to that school and made it their own. They were the centre of the community now while Maddy, who had lived here all her life, was still on the outside.

  She accepted her plate of cakes, all served for some reason sliced and on a plate, rather than letting people choose what they wished.

  Mrs Kelly looked at her speculatively.

  ‘I think the time has come to get a JAM,’ she said.

  Maddy was mystified. ‘I hardly think you need any more,’ she said, looking at her plate.

  ‘A Junior Assistant Mistress,’ Mrs Kelly explained, as if to a five-year-old.

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘Well, do you think we should talk to your mother about it?’

  Maddy began to wonder was the heat affecting all of them.

  ‘I … think she’s a bit set in her ways now … she mightn’t be able to teach,’ she explained kindly.