The War Wagon

‘Chopin’s Fifteenth Prelude,’ said Geissel, referring to the music gently pouring now from a covert radio somewhere in the restaurant.  Geissel was an aficionado, and whenever a tune found the ear, even if simply one whistled by a passer-by, he was compelled to point out what the composition was.  And if it was a specific recording that could be heard, being a collector, he was likely to suggest who the players were, and when and where it had been recorded.  ‘Arthur Rubinstein, Zurich, 1950.’

‘Ah, I know him, he’s good at Chopin, I’ve heard,’ said Stinson.

‘This music was written for us, lad – to make gentle waters for us in the days ahead.’

When the tune was over, the radio announcer claimed it was a performance by Alfred Cortot that took place in Paris in 1933, and not Rubenstein in Zurich, 1950.  ‘Well, you were close enough,’ Stinson said.  ‘Paris isn’t that far from Zurich.’

Geissel had some of his favourite records in his suitcase (Bach, Brahms, Orff, Strauss, Mussorgsky, Mozart) along with his beloved Dansette Senior record player; add to all of this his three-stringed balalaika, and they were built well musically for the journey.  Although he felt a little guilty that Captain Littlewood had to haul most of this equipment onto the boat by himself the previous day. 

As they came to the end of their meal, and started knocking back the glasses of wine, Stinson and Geissel’s conversation turned to their impenetrable collaborator, Father Ronan Masterson, who they had known both only one week, and that week in his company had been grim and incalculable.  The prospect of travelling alongside him at sea was a source of much disquiet for Father Stinson especially.  Geissel tried to comfort the anxious young priest:  ‘I have met many raving pontiffs and fearsome friars in my time, I can tell you, and, true, it can be tough to deal with them, but I’ve always found if you stick to your own ventures, resolute and with deference only to your own duties to God, they will let you alone.’

‘You mean, just ignore them?  Even if their actions beg questioning?’

‘If their actions are ones to question, then those questions will most certainly be put to them at some stage.  But I have learned to let the higher powers intervene.  I’m not one to stick my nose in where it might get clipped off.  And Father Masterson, he has some history, for sure, though I feel it is business that needn’t concern either of us at all.’

‘What do you know of him, Father?’

 ‘I know enough to know when not to speak.’

‘It’s bad?’

Geissel was suddenly taken with Father Stinson’s misgiving and what seemed to be an incorruptible lustre in his eyes; he could remember a time when he too was justice-led and connivance was far off in his future days.  Masterson’s recent deeds had been circulating amongst top tier priests for some time, and though Geissel wasn’t the loose lips type, the wine and the steak and his growing regard for young Stinson inspired him to reveal how Masterson had been sleeping with an unmarried mother Niamh Delaney in his diocese just outside Belfast, and her son, Joseph Delaney, a student at St Michael’s, had caught them in the act a number of times.  He would spy on them through the keyhole of her room and then go back to his own room and draw pictures of what he had seen.  Although he was a weak student, Joseph had some talent as an artist.  Masterson was enraged when the drawings started to appear in the school.  Mass distribution was interrupted by various teachers who confiscated the images and studied their lines for clues in the staffroom.  That’s when the rumours began. 

Things were to be more or less revealed soon after: every Saturday morning, Father Masterson loaded the kids onto the War Wagon, named so for its driver who drove the bus like he was riding into battle, and took them into the city for some swimming at the Falls Baths.   They would always stop at a little sweet shop on the way where those boys with parents who had money could stock up on liquorice allsorts and sherbet bottles and raspberry drops for after the swimming; Joseph Delaney and Gerard Kavanagh were not sons of money.  As they would often do, each took their turn as lookout while the other one pocketed as many gobstoppers as the pockets would fill. 

Later on, while the boys were playing in the pools, Masterson was patrolling the dressing rooms with a Julius Caesar walk, and he noticed a gobstopper, a grand-looking purple one, on the bench next to Joseph’s clothes.  He picked up the trousers, held them upside down in front of him, and watched a rapid flow of gobstoppers hit the floor like an avalanche.  He then went through Kavanagh’s rags and found a second abundance.  Knowing these two were the least likely to have money for sweets, he concluded that thievery had gotten hold of them.  He was waiting for them when they came sliding and dancing elatedly back from the pool; and the metre stick was clenched and ready.  The other boys sat motionless in the dressing rooms, naked and shivering, as Masterson stood the two culprits before him for interrogation.  It was a short interrogation.  After he slapped Kavanagh to the wet floor, he grabbed Delaney by the throat and lifted him up against the wall.  It looked like he was going to choke the boy to death there and then.   After some time, he let him go, and then lined both of them up for lashes with the metre stick. 

This incident might have gone unnoticed, as many similar incidents did, were it not for Niamh Delaney, who went into hysterics when she saw what Masterson had done to her boy.  She wound up outside the church hall one day when the bishop of all people was there, with Joseph bruised and whimpering by her side, and her voice singing of Masterson’s violence with the boys, as well as his regular visits to her bedroom.  And so it was that Father Masterson would leave St Michael’s and join the missions, on request of the bishop, to avoid any further accusations and scandal in the area.         

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Stinson.

‘Yes, and if you think that’s bad,’ said Geissel.  ‘You should see those pictures.  The boy had some skill, I’ll admit.’