Free The Dark by John McGahern Page A

and opened both doors wide. The cruets had to be filled with water and wine, the bowl with water, the white cloth laid across. He gave you a soutane and surplice of his own to wear.
    “We’re ready now, but it’s not eight yet,” he said when they stood robed before the crucifix on the sacristy wall. “A Miss Brady, a retired schoolmistress, used come but she hasn’t put in an appearance for over a week, I think she may be gone to the sea, but we’d better wait till eight just in case.”
    There was silence in the sacristy, except for birds outside, waiting for eight, now as always tension of something strange about to happen, and then both of you bowing together to the crucifix at eight.
    You had to concentrate too much to wander or think during the Mass, follow the words and movements to make the responses, pour wine and water, ring the small bell though no one was there to hear, and change the missal. The priest moved as in a dream, in the formality of the ritual and black vestments of the dead, nothing whatever to the priest of the night before.
    You served too the rite as in a dream, the bread and wine were utterly changed without you knowing. Only at the Communion did any disturbance come, you could not receive, you had sinned. You watched the priest but he didn’t seem to notice or else it meant nothing to him. Then dumbly you went and poured the last water and wine and followed the Mass through to its end.
    Breakfast was ready in the house. A boy of fifteen with blond hair, his face so pale that it seemed to belong more to the city than here, came with the tea, and the priest said, “John, this is Mr. Mahoney.”
    “You’re welcome here, sir,” the boy smiled as he shook your hand, and you could get nothing out, you’d never been called Mr. Mahoney or sirred before, it was too unreal.
    The newspaper had come. The priest commented on the headlines, and then as he folded it up towards the end of breakfast he said, “They’re such a waste of time, but strange the grip they get on you, it’s habit or curiosity, you feel there’s something important that you may miss. It’s some sort of illusion that you’re in contact with a greater world outside your own little corner.”
    “I suppose so, father. I never thought of it like that.”
    It went so, nothing was spoken of the night before. The priest said he had to go away for the day. He’d not be back till the late evening.
    “You can amuse yourself in any way you wish. John will get you your lunch. There are books, the key’s in the bookcase, you can search and find for yourself. I used to spend a lot of my holidays with Uncle Michael, the Canon now, and I used read and read.
    “You know you can stay as long as you wish: a week, or a fortnight. I’ll be away a good deal. You’ll have plenty of time to think and come to a decision. You can make yourself completely free and at home.”
    “Thank you, father,” you bowed your head, there was nothing else to say.
    The priest went and gave some instructions to John, then he left, offering no explanation for his going, nor could you ask. You watched the car turn round the pedestal, the tyres crunching on the gravel, and you answered the priest’s wave before he went out of sight on the circling drive of laurel and through the gates that no one seemed to ever close.

14
    O NCE BACK IN THE ROOM YOU HAD THE PURE DAY ON YOUR hands, without distraction, except what you wished to be without, the fears and doubts and longings, coming and going.
    The mahogany bookcase stood solid. Scott, Dickens, Canon Sheehan under glass: Wordsworth, Milton, volumes in brown leather, gold on the spines: staunch religious books, doctrine, histories of the church, books of sermons. One lone paperback, Tolstoy’s Resurrection in a red and white Penguin, and you turned the small key to get it out, though you’d never heard of it or Tolstoy. It didn’t look such a tomb as the others, there were more green leaves and living light