Memoirs of an Irish Monastic Life. Fergal McMahon, Order of St Benedict. Father Abbot of St Patrick’s Monastery, in the County of Galway. Privately printed by the Irish Catholic Press, 1904.
The book won’t be here, thought Michael, scribbling down the reference numbers. It’ll be long since pulped. Or it’ll be on long-term loan to some absent-minded academic who’s studying nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism, and lost it weeks ago. Or – here’s a likelier scenario – it won’t be the right Fergal McMahon, because how many Fergals and how many McMahons must there be in Ireland? And how many monasteries dedicated to St Patrick! But what if it is the right person? What if this is the man who knew Nicholas Sheehan and saw him through training for the priesthood? And then, in later life, wrote his memoirs, perhaps referring to some of the ordinands in his care? No, he thought. It won’t be. Of course it won’t.
But it was. There in the flyleaf was a short introduction written by Abbot Fergal himself.
‘In my life of service to God I came across many interesting people and events,’ the Abbot had written. ‘I believe it to be but a small indulgence to make a record of my life before He calls me, and trust I have done so with brevity, modesty and clarity and that my memories will be of value and interest.
‘A cautionary note: the tale related in Chapter Ten of these pages is anonymous as to the name of the participant. However, it is a true tale and should serve as a warning to the inquisitive. The devil’s lures are everywhere.’
Michael turned to Chapter Ten. As was customary for that era, there was a subheading, describing the section’s contents. This read: ‘My difficult decision over one of my ordinands – N.S.’s ill-starred association with the man known as the Wicked Earl of Kilderry’.
Michael read this twice, foraged in his wallet for his reader’s ticket, and checked the book out on loan. After this he carried Fergal McMahon and his monastic memories back to Oriel College.
His rooms were cold because he had forgotten to switch on the thermostat. He remedied this, put the Abbot’s memoirs temporarily in a drawer where Wilberforce could not get at them, and closed the door on the world. Then he checked his diary, seeing with relief that he had no tutorials until five that evening, and headed for the kitchen to heat some soup for a belated lunch. While it was warming up, he lured Wilberforce off a pile of third-year essays on stanzaic form by means of opening a tin of Wilberforce’s favourite cat food. After this, he sat down at his desk and took Fergal McMahon’s book from the drawer.
It took all of his carefully acquired academic discipline not to turn straight to Chapter Ten and the tale of N.S. and the Wicked Earl. Instead, forcing his mind to a scholarly detachment, he opened the book at the start, putting a notebook and pen to hand so he could write down any pertinent names or places.
To the accompaniment of Wilberforce wolfing down jellied tuna and herring chunks, he began to read Fergal McMahon’s memoirs.
EIGHTEEN
‘It was a great source of pleasure that the small, quite obscure monastery I helped found grew to be such a wonderful place for God’s work,’ wrote Fergal McMahon. ‘On the day in the early 1860s when we first opened the doors, our total funds amounted to one shilling [editor’s note: an Irish shilling is equivalent to a British shilling], but years later, during the Great Famine, we were able to help many unfortunate people.’
The writing was vivid and lively, although Michael found the depictions of the Great Famine somewhat depressing. The Abbot conscientiously described for his readers the memories of his youth – the grey, hopeless faces of the farmers and what he referred to as ‘the peasantry’, as they saw their crops fail year after year. Michael had just reached a description of the pervasive stench of potatoes rotting in the ground – ‘And the putrefaction fumes strong enough to stay in your nostrils for days’ – when there was a sound of angry hissing from the kitchen and the smell of burning. He dived into the kitchen to rescue the pan of soup, which he had forgotten about, and which had boiled down to an unpleasant brown mess, with mushrooms stuck to the sides. Michael swore, switched off the cooker, left the pan to cool, and returned to Fergal who was now describing the exodus of so many Irish families, and applying considerably more optimism.
‘They went off to seek their fortunes in other lands, and there’d generally be a bit of a craic the night before they set off,’ wrote the Abbot, and Michael was about to search his shelves for a Celtic dictionary, because craic sounded like a lobster recipe which surely could not be right, when he realized it was an Irish word for party.
‘Jars of poteen always circulated freely,’ explained Fergal, who sounded as if he might have partaken fairly robustly of the poteen himself. ‘And most of it supplied by that rascal Fintan Reilly from Kilglenn.’
Fintan again, thought Michael. Eithne mentioned him, as well – in fact it sounded as if she’d had a love affair with him, not to mention a couple of children. This was not conclusive – Ireland’s west coast was probably littered with people named Fintan – but Declan’s story had also referred to Fintan, so this seemed to provide another shred of evidence in favour of Benedict’s odd visions being real.