Copper Beech

Shancarrig School Father Gunn knew that their housekeeper Mrs. Kennedy could have done it all much better than he would do it. Mrs. Kennedy would have done everything better in fact, heard Confessions, forgiven sins, sung the Tantum Ergo at Benediction, buried the dead. Mrs. Kennedy would have looked the part too, tall and angular like the Bishop, not round and small like Father Gunn. Mrs. Kennedy's eyes were soulful and looked as if they understood the sadness of the world. Most of the time he was very happy in Shancarrig, a peaceful place in the midlands. Most people only knew it because of the huge rock that stood high on a hill over Barna Woods. There had once been great speculation about this rock. Had it been part of something greater? Was it of great geological interest? But experts had come and decided while there may well have been a house built around it once, all traces must have been washed away with the rains and storms of centuries. It had never been mentioned in any history book. All that was there was one great rock. And since carrig was the Irish word for rock that was how the place was named--Shancarrig, the old rock. Life was good at the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Shancarrig. The parish priest, Monsignor O'Toole, was a courteous, frail man who let the curate run things his own way. Father Gunn wished that more could be done for the people of the parish so that they didn't have to stand at the railway station waving goodbye to sons and daughters, emigrating to England and America. He wished that there were fewer damp cottages where tuberculosis could flourish, filling the graveyard with people too young to die. He wished that tired women did not have to bear so many children, children for whom there was often scant living. But he knew that all the young men who had been in the seminary with him were in similar parishes wishing the same thing. He didn't think he was a man who could change the world. For one thing he didn't look like a man who could change the world. Father Gunn's eyes were like two currants in a bun. There had been a Mr. Kennedy long ago, long before Father Gunn's time, but he had died of pneumonia. Every year he was prayed for at Mass on the anniversary of his death, and every year Mrs. Kennedy's sad face achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat, which was a still more sorrowful appearance. But even though it was nowhere near her late husband's anniversary now, she was pretty gloomy, and it was all to do with Shancarrig School. Mrs. Kennedy would have thought since it was a question of a visit from the Bishop that she, as the priests' housekeeper, should have been in charge of everything. She didn't want to impose, she said many a time, but really had Father Gunn got it quite clear? Was it really expected that those teachers, those lay teachers above at the schoolhouse and the children that were taught in it, were really in charge of the ceremony? "They're not used to bishops," said Mrs. Kennedy, implying that she had her breakfast, dinner, and tea with the higher orders. But Father Gunn had been adamant. The occasion was the dedication of the school, a bishop's blessing, a ceremony to add to the legion of ceremonies for Holy Year, but it was to involve the children, the teachers. It wasn't something run by the presbytery. "But Monsignor O'Toole is the manager," Mrs. Kennedy protested. The elderly frail parish priest played little part in the events of the parish, it was all done by his bustling energetic curate. In many ways, of course, it would have been much easier to let Mrs. Kennedy take charge, to have allowed her get her machine into motion and organize the tired cakes, the heavy pastries, the big pots of tea that characterized so many church functions. But Father Gunn had stood firm. This event was for the school and the school would run it. ThinkinBinchy, Maeve is the author of 'Copper Beech' with ISBN 9780385307758 and ISBN 0385307756.