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Book by Maeve Binchy
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Extrait :
Shancarrig School
Father Gunn knew that their housekeeper Mrs. Kennedy could have done it all much better than he would do it. Mrs. Kennedy would have done everything better in fact, heard Confessions, forgiven sins, sung the Tantum Ergo at Benediction, buried the dead. Mrs. Kennedy would have looked the part too, tall and angular like the Bishop, not round and small like Father Gunn. Mrs. Kennedy's eyes were soulful and looked as if they understood the sadness of the world.
Most of the time he was very happy in Shancarrig, a peaceful place in the midlands. Most people only knew it because of the huge rock that stood high on a hill over Barna Woods. There had once been great speculation about this rock. Had it been part of something greater? Was it of great geological interest? But experts had come and decided while there may well have been a house built around it once, all traces must have been washed away with the rains and storms of centuries. It had never been mentioned in any history book. All that was there was one great rock. And since carrig was the Irish word for rock that was how the place was named–Shancarrig, the old rock.
Life was good at the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Shancarrig. The parish priest, Monsignor O'Toole, was a courteous, frail man who let the curate run things his own way. Father Gunn wished that more could be done for the people of the parish so that they didn't have to stand at the railway station waving goodbye to sons and daughters, emigrating to England and America. He wished that there were fewer damp cottages where tuberculosis could flourish, filling the graveyard with people too young to die. He wished that tired women did not have to bear so many children, children for whom there was often scant living. But he knew that all the young men who had been in the seminary with him were in similar parishes wishing the same thing. He didn't think he was a man who could change the world. For one thing he didn't look like a man who could change the world. Father Gunn's eyes were like two currants in a bun.
There had been a Mr. Kennedy long ago, long before Father Gunn's time, but he had died of pneumonia. Every year he was prayed for at Mass on the anniversary of his death, and every year Mrs. Kennedy's sad face achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat, which was a still more sorrowful appearance. But even though it was nowhere near her late husband's anniversary now, she was pretty gloomy, and it was all to do with Shancarrig School.
Mrs. Kennedy would have thought since it was a question of a visit from the Bishop that she, as the priests' housekeeper, should have been in charge of everything. She didn't want to impose, she said many a time, but really had Father Gunn got it quite clear? Was it really expected that those teachers, those lay teachers above at the schoolhouse and the children that were taught in it, were really in charge of the ceremony?
"They're not used to bishops," said Mrs. Kennedy, implying that she had her breakfast, dinner, and tea with the higher orders.
But Father Gunn had been adamant. The occasion was the dedication of the school, a bishop's blessing, a ceremony to add to the legion of ceremonies for Holy Year, but it was to involve the children, the teachers. It wasn't something run by the presbytery.
"But Monsignor O'Toole is the manager," Mrs. Kennedy protested. The elderly frail parish priest played little part in the events of the parish, it was all done by his bustling energetic curate.
In many ways, of course, it would have been much easier to let Mrs. Kennedy take charge, to have allowed her get her machine into motion and organize the tired cakes, the heavy pastries, the big pots of tea that characterized so many church functions. But Father Gunn had stood firm. This event was for the school and the school would run it.
Thinking of Mrs. Kennedy standing there hatted and gloved and sorrowfully disapproving, he asked God to let the thing be done right, to inspire young Jim and Nora Kelly, the teachers, to set it up properly. And to keep that mob of young savages that they taught in some kind of control.
After all, God had an interest in the whole thing too, and making the Holy Year meaningful in the parish was important. God must want it to be a success, not just to impress the Bishop but so that the children would remember their school and all the values they learned there. Father Gunn was very fond of the school, the little stone building under the huge copper beech. He loved going up there on visits and watching the little heads bent over their copybooks.
"Procrastination is the thief of time" they copied diligently.
"What does that mean, do you think?" he had asked once.
"We don't know what it means, Father. We only have to copy it out," explained one of the children helpfully.
They weren't too bad really, the children of Shancarrig–he heard their Confessions regularly. The most terrible sin, and the one for which he had to remember to apportion a heavy penance, was scutting on the back of a lorry. As far as Father Gunn could work out this was holding on to the back of a moving vehicle and being borne along without the driver's knowledge. It not unnaturally drew huge rage and disapproval from parents and passersby, so he had to reflect the evilness of it by a decade of the Rosary, which was almost unheard of in the canon of children's penances. But scutting apart, they were good children, weren't they? They'd do the school and Shancarrig credit when the Bishop came, wouldn't they?
The children talked of little else all term. The teachers told them over and over what an honor it was. The Bishop didn't normally go to small schools like this. They would have the chance to see him on their own ground, unlike so many children in the country who had never seen him until they were confirmed in the big town.
They had spent days cleaning the place up. The windows had been painted, and the door. The bicycle shed had been tidied so that you wouldn't recognize it. The classrooms had been polished till they gleamed. Perhaps His Grace would tour the school. It wasn't certain, but every eventuality had to be allowed for.
Long trestle tables would be arranged under the huge copper beech tree which dominated the school yard. Clean white sheets would cover them and Mrs. Barton, the local dressmaker, had embroidered some lovely edging so that they wouldn't look like sheets. There would be jars of flowers, bunches of lilac and the wonderful purple orchids that grow wild in Barna Woods in the month of June.
A special table with Holy Water and a really good white cloth would be there so that His Grace could take the silver spoon and sprinkle the Water, dedicating the school again to God. The children would sing "Faith of Our Fathers," and because it was near to the Feast of Corpus Christi they would also sing "Sweet Sacrament Divine." They rehearsed it every single day, they were word perfect now.
Whether or not the children were going to be allowed to partake of the feast itself was a somewhat gray area. Some of the braver ones had inquired, but the answers were always unsatisfactory.
"We'll see," Mrs. Kelly had said.
"Don't always think of your bellies," Mr. Kelly had said.
It didn't look terribly hopeful.
Even though it was all going to take place at the school, they knew that it wasn't really centered around the children. It was for the parish.
There would be something, of course, they knew that. But only when the grown-ups were properly served. There might be just plain bits of bread and butter with a little scraping of sandwich paste on them, or the duller biscuits when all the iced and chocolate-sided ones had gone.
The feast was going to be a communal effort from Shancarrig and so they each knew some aspect of it. There was hardly a household that wouldn't be contributing.
"There are going to be bowls of jelly and cream with strawberries on top," Nessa Ryan was able to tell.
"That's for grown-ups!" Eddie Barton felt this was unfair.
"Well, my mother is making the jellies and giving the cream. Mrs. Kelly said it would be whipped in the school and the decorations put on at the last moment in case they ran."
"And chocolate cake. Two whole ones," Leo Murphy said.
It seemed very unfair that this should all be for the Bishop and priests and great crowds of multifarious adults in front of whom they had all been instructed, or ordered, to behave well.
Sergeant Keane would be there they had been told, as if he was about to take them all personally to the jail in the big town if there was a word astray.
"They'll have to give some to us," Maura Brennan said. "It wouldn't be fair otherwise."
Father Gunn heard her say this and marveled at the innocence of children. For a child like young Maura, daughter of Paudie who drank every penny that came his way, to believe still in fairness was touching.
"There'll be bound to be something left over for you and your friends, Maura," he said to her, hoping to spread comfort, but Maura's face reddened. It was bad to be overheard by the priest wanting food on a holy occasion. She hung back and let her hair fall over her face.
But Father Gunn had other worries.
The Bishop was a thin, silent man. He didn't walk to places but was more inclined to glide. Under his long soutane or his regal-style vestments he might well have had wheels rather than feet. He had already said he would like to process rather than drive from the railway station to the school. Very nice if you were a gliding person and it was a cool day. Not so good, however, if it was a hot day and the Bishop would notice the unattractive features of Shancarrig.
Like Johnny Finn's pub where Johnny had said that out of defere...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
Father Gunn knew that their housekeeper Mrs. Kennedy could have done it all much better than he would do it. Mrs. Kennedy would have done everything better in fact, heard Confessions, forgiven sins, sung the Tantum Ergo at Benediction, buried the dead. Mrs. Kennedy would have looked the part too, tall and angular like the Bishop, not round and small like Father Gunn. Mrs. Kennedy's eyes were soulful and looked as if they understood the sadness of the world.
Most of the time he was very happy in Shancarrig, a peaceful place in the midlands. Most people only knew it because of the huge rock that stood high on a hill over Barna Woods. There had once been great speculation about this rock. Had it been part of something greater? Was it of great geological interest? But experts had come and decided while there may well have been a house built around it once, all traces must have been washed away with the rains and storms of centuries. It had never been mentioned in any history book. All that was there was one great rock. And since carrig was the Irish word for rock that was how the place was named–Shancarrig, the old rock.
Life was good at the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Shancarrig. The parish priest, Monsignor O'Toole, was a courteous, frail man who let the curate run things his own way. Father Gunn wished that more could be done for the people of the parish so that they didn't have to stand at the railway station waving goodbye to sons and daughters, emigrating to England and America. He wished that there were fewer damp cottages where tuberculosis could flourish, filling the graveyard with people too young to die. He wished that tired women did not have to bear so many children, children for whom there was often scant living. But he knew that all the young men who had been in the seminary with him were in similar parishes wishing the same thing. He didn't think he was a man who could change the world. For one thing he didn't look like a man who could change the world. Father Gunn's eyes were like two currants in a bun.
There had been a Mr. Kennedy long ago, long before Father Gunn's time, but he had died of pneumonia. Every year he was prayed for at Mass on the anniversary of his death, and every year Mrs. Kennedy's sad face achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat, which was a still more sorrowful appearance. But even though it was nowhere near her late husband's anniversary now, she was pretty gloomy, and it was all to do with Shancarrig School.
Mrs. Kennedy would have thought since it was a question of a visit from the Bishop that she, as the priests' housekeeper, should have been in charge of everything. She didn't want to impose, she said many a time, but really had Father Gunn got it quite clear? Was it really expected that those teachers, those lay teachers above at the schoolhouse and the children that were taught in it, were really in charge of the ceremony?
"They're not used to bishops," said Mrs. Kennedy, implying that she had her breakfast, dinner, and tea with the higher orders.
But Father Gunn had been adamant. The occasion was the dedication of the school, a bishop's blessing, a ceremony to add to the legion of ceremonies for Holy Year, but it was to involve the children, the teachers. It wasn't something run by the presbytery.
"But Monsignor O'Toole is the manager," Mrs. Kennedy protested. The elderly frail parish priest played little part in the events of the parish, it was all done by his bustling energetic curate.
In many ways, of course, it would have been much easier to let Mrs. Kennedy take charge, to have allowed her get her machine into motion and organize the tired cakes, the heavy pastries, the big pots of tea that characterized so many church functions. But Father Gunn had stood firm. This event was for the school and the school would run it.
Thinking of Mrs. Kennedy standing there hatted and gloved and sorrowfully disapproving, he asked God to let the thing be done right, to inspire young Jim and Nora Kelly, the teachers, to set it up properly. And to keep that mob of young savages that they taught in some kind of control.
After all, God had an interest in the whole thing too, and making the Holy Year meaningful in the parish was important. God must want it to be a success, not just to impress the Bishop but so that the children would remember their school and all the values they learned there. Father Gunn was very fond of the school, the little stone building under the huge copper beech. He loved going up there on visits and watching the little heads bent over their copybooks.
"Procrastination is the thief of time" they copied diligently.
"What does that mean, do you think?" he had asked once.
"We don't know what it means, Father. We only have to copy it out," explained one of the children helpfully.
They weren't too bad really, the children of Shancarrig–he heard their Confessions regularly. The most terrible sin, and the one for which he had to remember to apportion a heavy penance, was scutting on the back of a lorry. As far as Father Gunn could work out this was holding on to the back of a moving vehicle and being borne along without the driver's knowledge. It not unnaturally drew huge rage and disapproval from parents and passersby, so he had to reflect the evilness of it by a decade of the Rosary, which was almost unheard of in the canon of children's penances. But scutting apart, they were good children, weren't they? They'd do the school and Shancarrig credit when the Bishop came, wouldn't they?
The children talked of little else all term. The teachers told them over and over what an honor it was. The Bishop didn't normally go to small schools like this. They would have the chance to see him on their own ground, unlike so many children in the country who had never seen him until they were confirmed in the big town.
They had spent days cleaning the place up. The windows had been painted, and the door. The bicycle shed had been tidied so that you wouldn't recognize it. The classrooms had been polished till they gleamed. Perhaps His Grace would tour the school. It wasn't certain, but every eventuality had to be allowed for.
Long trestle tables would be arranged under the huge copper beech tree which dominated the school yard. Clean white sheets would cover them and Mrs. Barton, the local dressmaker, had embroidered some lovely edging so that they wouldn't look like sheets. There would be jars of flowers, bunches of lilac and the wonderful purple orchids that grow wild in Barna Woods in the month of June.
A special table with Holy Water and a really good white cloth would be there so that His Grace could take the silver spoon and sprinkle the Water, dedicating the school again to God. The children would sing "Faith of Our Fathers," and because it was near to the Feast of Corpus Christi they would also sing "Sweet Sacrament Divine." They rehearsed it every single day, they were word perfect now.
Whether or not the children were going to be allowed to partake of the feast itself was a somewhat gray area. Some of the braver ones had inquired, but the answers were always unsatisfactory.
"We'll see," Mrs. Kelly had said.
"Don't always think of your bellies," Mr. Kelly had said.
It didn't look terribly hopeful.
Even though it was all going to take place at the school, they knew that it wasn't really centered around the children. It was for the parish.
There would be something, of course, they knew that. But only when the grown-ups were properly served. There might be just plain bits of bread and butter with a little scraping of sandwich paste on them, or the duller biscuits when all the iced and chocolate-sided ones had gone.
The feast was going to be a communal effort from Shancarrig and so they each knew some aspect of it. There was hardly a household that wouldn't be contributing.
"There are going to be bowls of jelly and cream with strawberries on top," Nessa Ryan was able to tell.
"That's for grown-ups!" Eddie Barton felt this was unfair.
"Well, my mother is making the jellies and giving the cream. Mrs. Kelly said it would be whipped in the school and the decorations put on at the last moment in case they ran."
"And chocolate cake. Two whole ones," Leo Murphy said.
It seemed very unfair that this should all be for the Bishop and priests and great crowds of multifarious adults in front of whom they had all been instructed, or ordered, to behave well.
Sergeant Keane would be there they had been told, as if he was about to take them all personally to the jail in the big town if there was a word astray.
"They'll have to give some to us," Maura Brennan said. "It wouldn't be fair otherwise."
Father Gunn heard her say this and marveled at the innocence of children. For a child like young Maura, daughter of Paudie who drank every penny that came his way, to believe still in fairness was touching.
"There'll be bound to be something left over for you and your friends, Maura," he said to her, hoping to spread comfort, but Maura's face reddened. It was bad to be overheard by the priest wanting food on a holy occasion. She hung back and let her hair fall over her face.
But Father Gunn had other worries.
The Bishop was a thin, silent man. He didn't walk to places but was more inclined to glide. Under his long soutane or his regal-style vestments he might well have had wheels rather than feet. He had already said he would like to process rather than drive from the railway station to the school. Very nice if you were a gliding person and it was a cool day. Not so good, however, if it was a hot day and the Bishop would notice the unattractive features of Shancarrig.
Like Johnny Finn's pub where Johnny had said that out of defere...
In the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young people carve their initials-and those of their loves—into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.
Unexpected passions and fear are bringing together the lives of so many, such as the sensitive new priest and Miss Ross, the slight, beautiful schoolteacher... Leonora, the privileged daughter of the town's richest family and Foxy Dunne, whose father did time in jail...and Nessa Ryan, whose parents run Ryan's Hotel, and two very different young men. For now the secrets in Shancarrig's shadows are starting to be revealed, from innocent vanities and hidden loves to crimes of the heart...and even to murder.
Unexpected passions and fear are bringing together the lives of so many, such as the sensitive new priest and Miss Ross, the slight, beautiful schoolteacher... Leonora, the privileged daughter of the town's richest family and Foxy Dunne, whose father did time in jail...and Nessa Ryan, whose parents run Ryan's Hotel, and two very different young men. For now the secrets in Shancarrig's shadows are starting to be revealed, from innocent vanities and hidden loves to crimes of the heart...and even to murder.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ÉditeurDell Pub Co
- Date d'édition1993
- ISBN 10 0440213290
- ISBN 13 9780440213291
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