Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin

Author:Colm Toibin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780330441827
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2006-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

DARKNESS WAS falling as she approached her bungalow, but she could clearly make out Father Greenwood’s car parked again in front of her car. She realized that he would have seen her in one of the mirrors just as soon as she saw him, so there would be no point in turning back. If I were not a widow, she thought, he would not do this to me. He would telephone first, minding his manners.

Father Greenwood got out of the car as she came close.

‘Now, Father Greenwood, come in,’ she said. ‘I have the key here in my hand.’ She brandished the key as though it were a foreign object.

She had put the heating system on a timer so the radiators were already warm. She touched the radiator in the hallway for a moment and thought of taking him into the sitting room, but felt then that the kitchen would be easier. She could stand up and make herself busy if she did not want to sit listening to him. In the sitting room, she would be trapped with him.

‘Molly, you must think it strange my coming back like this,’ Father Greenwood said. He sat down at the kitchen table.

She did not answer. She sat down opposite him and unbuttoned her coat. It struck her for a moment that it might be the anniversary of Maurice’s death and that he had come to be with her in case she needed his support and sympathy, but she then remembered just as quickly that Maurice had died in the summer and that he had been dead for years and no one paid any attention to his anniversary. She could think of nothing else as she stood up and took her coat off and draped it over the armchair in the corner. Father Greenwood, she noticed, had his hands joined in front of him at the table as though ready for prayer. Whatever this was, she thought, she would make sure that he never came to her house unannounced again.

‘Molly, Frank asked me—’

‘Is there something wrong with Frank?’ she interrupted.

Father Greenwood smiled at her weakly.

‘He’s in trouble,’ he said.

Immediately she knew what that meant, and then thought no, her first reaction to everything else had been wrong, so maybe this too, maybe, she thought, maybe it was not what had automatically come into her mind.

‘Is it …?’

‘There’s going to be a court case, Molly.’

‘Abuse?’ She said the word which was daily in the newspapers and on the television, as pictures appeared of priests with their anoraks over their heads, so that no one would recognize them, being led from court-houses in handcuffs.

‘Abuse?’ she asked again.

Father Greenwood’s hands were shaking. He nodded.

‘It’s bad, Molly.’

‘In the parish?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘in the school. It was a good while ago. It was when he was teaching.’

Their eyes were locked in a sudden fierce hostility.

‘Does anyone else know this?’ she asked.

‘I came down to tell you yesterday but I didn’t have the heart.’

She held her breath

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