The Loney Read Online Free

Father, but it doesn’t matter,’ she said after his first solo mass at Saint Jude’s. And, ‘Father Wilfred would normally have said grace himself,’ when he offered the slot to me over a Sunday lunch that it seemed Mummer had arranged merely to test him on such details.
    We altar boys thought Father Bernard was fun—the way he gave us all nicknames and would invite us to the presbytery after Mass. We had, of course, never been asked there by Father Wilfred, and even to most of the adults in the parish it was a place of mystery almost as sacrosanct as the tabernacle. But Father Bernard seemed glad of the company, and once the silverware had been cleaned and put away and our vestments hung in the closet, he would take us across to his home and sit us around the dining table for tea and biscuits and we’d swap stories and jokes to the sound of Matt Monro. Well, I didn’t. I let the other boys do that. I preferred to listen. Or pretend to listen at least and let my eyes wander around the room and try to imagine Father Bernard’s life, what he did when no one else was around, when no one was expecting him to be a priest. I didn’t know if priests could ever knock off. I mean, Farther didn’t spend his free time checking the mortar on the chimney stack or setting up a theodolite in the back garden, so it seemed unfair that a priest should have to be holy all the time. But perhaps it didn’t work like that. Perhaps being a priest was like being a fish. Immersion for life.
    ***
    Now that Father Bernard had been served, everyone else could have their tea. I poured out a cup for each person—finishing one pot and starting on the next—until there was one mug left. Hanny’s mug. The one with a London bus on the side. He always got a cup, even when he was away at Pinelands.
    ‘How is Andrew?’ Father Bernard asked, as he watched me.
    ‘Fine, Father,’ Mummer said.
    Father Bernard nodded and pulled his face into a smile that acknowledged what she was really saying, beneath the words.
    ‘He’ll be back at Easter, won’t he?’ said Father Bernard.
    ‘Yes,’ said Mummer.
    ‘You’ll be glad to have him home, I’m sure.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Mummer. ‘Very glad.’
    There was an awkward pause. Father Bernard realised that he had strayed into private territory and changed the subject by raising his cup.
    ‘That’s a lovely brew, Mrs Smith,’ he said and Mummer smiled.
    It wasn’t that Mummer didn’t want Hanny at home—she loved him with an intensity that made Farther and I seem like we were merely her acquaintances sometimes—but he reminded her of the test that she still hadn’t passed. And while she delighted in any little advancement Hanny seemed to have made—he might be able to write the first letter of his name, or tie a bootlace, say—they were such small progressions that it still pained her to think of the long road ahead.
    ‘And it will be a long road,’ Father Wilfred had once told her. ‘It will be full of disappointments and obstacles. But you should rejoice that God has chosen you to walk along it, that He has sent you Andrew as both a test and guide of your soul. He will remind you of your own muteness before God. And when at last he is able to speak, you will be able to speak, and ask of the Lord what you will. Not everyone receives such a chance, Mrs Smith. Be mindful of that.’
    The cup of tea that we poured for Hanny that went cold and grew a wrinkled skin of milk was proof that she hadn’t forgotten. It was, strangely, a kind of prayer.
    ‘So,’ Father Bernard said, putting down his half empty tea cup and declining Mummer’s offer of more. ‘Does anyone have any suggestions about where we ought to go at Easter?’
    ‘Well,’ said Miss Bunce quickly, glancing at David who nodded encouragement. ‘There’s a place called Glasfynydd.’
    ‘Where?’ said Mummer, giving the others a sceptical look that Mr and Mrs Belderboss returned with a grin. They had never heard of the