An extract from Forget Me Not
There was only the one road up to St Gertrude’s, for motor traffic or pedestrians, looping round from the Riley farm and up the hill where the nuns had settled, so it was only natural that Father Brennan should be driving that way and see ahead of him Glynis walking. The car smelled of leather, the vehicle a good one in its day and kept clean still, its windows spotless, and making a purring noise that set it apart from whatever surroundings it found itself in. Father Brennan managed the gears quietly, with a sense of enjoyment, the driver’s window down a little and Glynis’s, if she so wished, drawn down a little too. The weather was always good when he drove up behind her, she not looking round because it might be another, different, car and a different driver, and men, as her mother told her, must be guarded against.
‘You’ll not be coming to church so often, Glynis? There’s an empty seat,’ Father Brennan said. It was a reprimand, really, couched in godliness.
Well, there were reasons, said Glynis, trying to think of some or even one, even if made-up.
‘Dad’s got no one to help him, Father, not since Pat got the job at Dingle, and there’s just so much mother can do.’
‘Your dad’ll miss Pat. Still, you know where we are if you want us,’ said Father Brennan, and Glynis was left wondering who the ‘we’ he referred to might be: Father himself, naturally, and perhaps his elderly housekeeper who lived two cottages from him, or perhaps the church itself, if he was talking spiritually, which as a priest of course he must sometimes be obliged to do.
‘We don’t want you lapsing now, Glynis,’ he said and laughed gently, apparently confirming that his emphasis had been on the kindly side.
‘Sure now, you’re not in a draught?’
Sometimes, his head at an angle in the car, he reminded her of the Pope.
Why should that thought come back to her now, thought Glynis, why now, those very words as spoken by Father Brennan all those years since? It was the first car she’d ever travelled in, after all. That seemed good enough reason to remember it. Was he still there, she wondered, somewhere along the route this September day, steering the little brown car towards some mission, a new-born, a dying parishioner, someone wanting rid of a confession?
If she closed her eyes, it was one of those September days of then, September being one of the months when Sister Agathe was at her busiest, and most pleased to see Glynis. St Gertrude’s had a separate door between the outside world and the convent that let you into its garden, a wooden door made from oak, arched and decorated with brass and locked against the outside with a great key that Sister Agathe turned to allow Glynis in. The garden belonged, it seemed, to Sister Agathe alone. It was this small nun who gave the impression that she allowed the other nuns, her sisters in God, to share its produce with her. Nothing was ever said, but the fact never had to be spoken: if it wasn’t for Sister Agathe, the garden would be barren, providing nothing either decorative or consumable.
Because she’d grown up helping dad in the nursery, Glynis had a way with plants. She had loved Septembers, the planting of crocus and grape hyacinth, the last plucking of luscious fruit.
Sister Agathe always said ‘Look at all we’ve done! Well done, Glynis’ at the end of the day when she let her out by the oak-wooden door.
