THE SAINT

As a kid I had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin. I found it
difficult to pray to the Sacred Heart because I was always rather
intimidated by men with beards. At that time I was going through a
real religious phase, collecting new prayers to say, and going through
agonies of scruples trying to say them in a recollected way while my
mind went off at a thousand tangents about football, air rifles,
mountain climbing, and birds’ nests. Sometimes I began a prayer twenty
times and each time got lost in the relative clauses till my head
sagged onto the bed and I was barely able to climb in between the
sheets, exhausted. To help me to concentrate I had made an ingenious
shrine out of a wooden packing case, stuffed with brown paper that I
had sized to make it look like rocks, and with a hole cut in the back
where I could mount a small statue or a picture, lit by a hidden
candle. It really was quite smashing.

For a time I felt that Our Lady thought a lot of me, too. It was just
little things she did for me without any of the usual fuss I had with
favors I asked of the saints. I even had the notion that she liked me
so much that one day she’d appear to me and give me messages for the
Bishop and the Government about the way she wanted things done, as she
had in France. If this happened, I felt pretty certain it would be
either in the quarry or down the Glen, so I took to rambling there in
the dusk by myself. I thought it would be the Glen, more likely,
because though the quarry had lots of suitable grottoes, it was too
close to the public road, and you couldn’t appear there without
drawing a crowd. I had it all worked out pretty carefully, how I’d go
up to Farranferris to the Bishop’s Palace, and he wouldn’t believe
me—bishops never do in the lives of the saints—and then I’d have to
produce a sign, like a flower out of season, and he’d send me off on
the train to Dublin to see the Government.

For months I went into the church every day on my way home from school
to say a prayer. It was always nice then, deserted and dark and silent
after the street outside, with only the small red lamp burning before
the sanctuary, and one great grove of candlelight in the corner on
your left with the statue of Our Lady rising out of it, framed in dark
rocks. There was rarely a sound, except the screech of a tram passing
outside, the slow solemn tick-tock of the clock like silence
breathing, or the padding of Mickie Mac’s felt slippers and the swish
of his soutane as he genuflected before the high altar.  Mickie Mac
was the sacristan; a man with a bald brow, a shrill voice, and a most
edifying presence, who I always felt was probably more than halfway to
being a saint too.

I always had some new favor—intention, we called it—to ask about long
division or an air gun, and it really was remarkable the number of
them I was granted. Normally, I couldn’t get my compositions put on
display because, however I managed it, they were always full of blots,
but when I made it an intention I had two put up in quick succession,
blots and all.

But what I really loved was when I had a penny to buy a candle from
the box beside the shrine and could light one myself. Then I could
stay there any length of time, and when I left, I felt that Our Lady
had something to remember me by until Mickie Mac came round with the
snuffers and there was nothing left alight but the one red sanctuary
lamp. I often thought of her, alone there with the little lamp and
nothing but the sound of the clock. Anyhow, it was natural for me to
buy her candles. I always liked giving things to people I was fond of,
and felt there was something mean about asking the Blessed Virgin to
do this, that and the other thing for me and never giving her anything
back. My poor mother was persecuted for pennies.

“Another penny?” she’d say with a harassed air.

“I know Mummy,” I replied meekly, “but I have another intention.  I
have, really.”

“Ah, you can’t be lighting candles all the time, child. Besides, Our
Lady doesn’t expect it from poor people like us.”

I did my best to keep my patience the way the saints always did and
only said, “Very well, Mummy,” but I couldn’t help feeling it was easy
for her to talk. A lot she knew about what Our Lady expected!

Then one evening I made the mistake of asking for the penny when my
father was in. Now, Father wasn’t an irreligious man, far from it, but
he was full of worldly wisdom and suspicious of all the channels down
which his good money might disappear. I was one, religion was another,
and the conjunction probably evoked visions of destitution in the poor
man’s mind.

“A penny for a candle?” he exclaimed, walking across the kitchen in a
state of acute irritation. “What do you want a penny for a candle for?
That’s no way to go wasting money.”

My mother, who secretly cherished hopes that I might become a bishop,
didn’t at all like this loose, worldly talk before me.

“There are worse ways of spending money,” she replied with heat.

“But do you know how much these candles cost?” he asked indignantly.

“What matter what they cost?” she snapped. “I suppose they have to be
special candles.”

“They do not have to be special candles,” my father shouted
angrily. “Eight a penny is the price they pay for those candles, and
then they sell them at a penny apiece. Sure the thing is daylight
robbery.”

My mother gave me the penny then, just to undo whatever harm my father
might have done me, but it was too late; the harm was already
done. Next day it was with real resentment that I put a penny in the
offertory box when I took my candle—half a farthing’s worth. I felt
that I was being exploited; still worse, I felt that Our Lady was
being exploited. In a properly organized society, for that penny I
could be burning candles to her every day of the week, instead of
coming in day after day with the poor mouth on me.

And from then on, the poor mouth was a genuine grievance to me, It
wasn’t any longer my personal loss but the whole world’s loss. My
devotion to Our Lady became all mixed up in my mind with my devotion
to social reform, and one day, when the saint wasn’t feeling up to
scratch, the social reformer took charge.

My plan didn’t involve any difficulties. At that hour of day there was
rarely anyone in the church, only Mickie Mac, padding and swishing his
surplice about the high altar. If there did happen to be anyone at the
shrine I could wait. Then a glance to make sure I wasn’t observed, and
I picked up a candle, lit it, and stuck it in one of the empty
holders. I can’t say I was ever very easy in my mind about it; not
that I thought it wrong, but it always had so much the air of an
adventure that I found it hard to be recollected in my prayers.

This went on for weeks during the summer. Then one day when I went
into the church there was another small boy, about the same age as
myself, there. He was a fellow you wouldn’t pay much attention to. I
went in briskly, genuflected, and went to the shrine to light my
candle and then knelt and covered my face with my hands.  I really had
developed something of a professional clerical manner.  Soon after,
the small boy got up and went out creakily on tiptoe.

Outside the church door I was suddenly pounced upon. It was Mickie
Mac, not looking in the least saintly or even half saintly. He looked
more like an enraged old market woman, and swore in a shrill voice
harmless oaths he had made up out of hymns and prayers.

“God of Mercy and Compassion!” he hissed, dragging me after him with
one hand while he held the other raised, ready to knock me flat. “So
you’re the dirty little thief I’m watching these months?  Oh, you
savage, stealing from the House of God!”

“I didn’t, I didn’t, Mr. Mac,” I screamed, trying to break free.

“Sweet Spirit, will you listen to him!” chanted Mickie Mac, almost
turning purple. “In front of the House of God, telling damn lies!”

“I’m not telling lies,” I screamed. “I’m not. I’m not. I paid—ah,
please, Mr. Mac, let me go!”

Instead, I was dragged triumphantly toward the presbytery, where the
curate on duty was saying his office in the sunlight outside, his
biretta down over his eyes.

“There he is, Father!” Mickie Mac squeaked scornfully, almost hurling
me at the priest. “There’s the little caffler I’m watching for night
and day these three weeks past. Would you look at the size of him and
he ready for all that wickedness?”

“Did you steal candles from the church, boy?” the priest asked.

“I didn’t, Father,” I protested. “I paid for them. I swear I did.”

“False oaths to the priest of God!” moaned Mickie, clapping his hands
in despair. “First he steals from Our Blessed Lady, and then he swears
false oaths to the priest. Didn’t Charlie Donnellan see you, you
Turk?” he added, chokingly.

“What were you doing with those candles?” asked the priest.

“Lighting them, Father,” I said.

“Where were you lighting them?”

“To Our Lady, Father.”

“Oh,” he said with a change of tone, “you weren’t taking them away
with you?”

“Oh, no, Father,” I sobbed, horrified at the suggestion.

“I see,” he said. “Well, why couldn’t you pay for them like anyone
else?”

“But I did, Father,” I said. “Last Friday, really I did.”

“Last Friday?” he repeated in a puzzled tone. “What did you
pay for last Friday?”

“The candles, Father.”

“How much money did you put in the box last Friday?”

“A penny, Father.”

“Very well. And how many candles did you light since then?”

“Three, Father.”

“And you never paid for them?”

And suddenly all my father’s worldly wisdom dropped away
from me. I knew now that my mother was right and that it didn’t
matter what the candles cost to buy.

“No, Father,” I said, and this time I began to cry with real
bitterness because I knew I had no defense.

“Do you come into the church every day?” he asked.

“Yes, Father.”

“Well, now, don’t you think it would hurt Our Blessed Lady to
see you taking candles from her shrine and not paying for them?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that she would take that point of view
at all, but when he put it up to me it struck me as a likely enough
thing from a woman.

“Yes, Father.”

“Tell me, how many did you take in all, do you remember?”

“I don’t, Father,” I said. “About twelve, I think.”

“Very well so,” he said smoothly. “We’ll call it twelve. Now, don’t
forget that you owe Our Lady twelve pennies, and that you must put
them in her box as you get them, and not be lighting any more candles
till you have it all paid. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Father.”

“All right so,” he said with a smile.

He was a nice priest, and he didn’t make it seem so bad, but one look
at the faces of Mickie Mac and the altar boy, who both seemed to think
penal servitude for life was the least I ought to expect, and I burst
into a fresh flood of tears and ran all the way home, sobbing.

Every week for twelve solid weeks I took in my penny and put it in the
box. I did it coldly and resentfully. I never waited to say a
prayer. Instead I went up to the shrine of St. Francis and prayed to
him.  My devotion to the Blessed Virgin waned, and not only to her but
to all the saints as well, even the little St. Thérèse. They were all
very well when they were in good humour, but like all other women, you
could never rely on them.


First published: Mademoiselle, 1952-06.
Source: A Set of Variations; Alfred A. Knopf, New York; 1969.
URI: https://archive.org/details/setofvariationst00ocon/