Prayers for a Live Soul

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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

Prayers for a Live Soul

November 7, 2007

By Cormac MacConnell

THE canon reached out over the table and poured himself a third cup of tea from the delph pot which Margaret always left in exactly the same place on his breakfast table.

The third cup, he thought, is always the best one. You have gone through the mechanics of eating the egg and toast, and the tea is getting stronger and more aromatic all the time. He added just a half-spoon of sugar and a drop of milk to the cup, sipped and sighed with pleasure.

The big window in front of him overlooked the town’s square. The morning was brightly sharp, floods of yellowed leaves from the oaks and chestnut and sycamore trees on the edge of the Town Park falling with each breath of the November breeze. It would shower later, he thought, but not a bad day at all.

Dr. Downey’s surgery was already open since 9:30 a.m., and he saw Tony Dalton and Meg Mortimer going in together behind a country couple whose names escaped him for the moment. There was a mother parking her car in front of the surgery too.

He watched her help a young girl, maybe eight years old, out of the back door. The child had an aluminum crutch and a plaster on her left foot.

The mother was one of the Nestors — was it June Nestor? — and it seemed only last summer he had married her to Tommy Jones, but the child’s age proved it was longer than that.

Good people too, both families. They were mad for hurling and camogie; for sure the young one picked up an injury playing camogie.

He went over to the window and opened it slightly to keep Margaret the housekeeper from abusing him again about smoking. She could be heard talking to Gerry the postman at the front door.

The square was well awake by this time. He saw the two young Polish girls walking briskly up the street to the Haven where they worked.

Religious, like all the Poles, he thought, they never missed his morning Mass. Pity more of his own were not as religious any more.

He went back to his chair and topped up his cup again. Margaret came in with the morning post and the news that the Hoctors had twins in the Regional last night, Nuala and the babies both doing well, both boys, Seanie and the brother already at it in the Haven, brandies all round. And young Murphy came off the motorbike again, but would survive, one leg broken.

And the Gaffneys’ cattle had gone down in the TB test and the farm would have to be cleared. And the Miller house had been sold to some Dubliner for *300,000.

And she sniffed and looked hard at him and opened the window a little more. The blue whorls of smoke were whipped out straightaway. He said nothing as he reached for the post and she went out again.

The first white envelopes for the November Masses for the Holy Souls had come in. There were eight of them altogether among the brown envelopes of bills and junk, nothing important there.

He opened the white envelopes one after the other. They all contained the usual donations in payment for the Masses for the departed loved ones of the parish.

Six of them contained the usual *20 donation. One, from Maggie Lane, contained the equally usual *10 note. And the one from Vera Mulcahy of Manusmore, remarkably, contained a brown *50 note.

The canon put the money in a pile beside his right hand. He picked up Vera’s handwritten list of her Holy Souls.

Johnny was first as always, then her parents Tom and Annie, then her sisters Brid and Eileen and the brother Jimmy that died in England in a brawl, and Tomsie that died of simple old age in the spring, and then Marge Moloney who had been Vera’s neighbor and best friend for 60 years, gone too since June.

And at the end of the list, with a start, the canon saw that Vera had firmly written down her own name!

The canon smiled at that. He did a quick tot in his head. Vera was older than Tomsie, and Tomsie had been 87 when he died.

She was probably very close to 90 this November and, though spry as a bee, was being pragmatic about her chances of surviving until another November. The children of this world, he thought, are wiser in many ways than the Children of Light.

He topped up his teacup one last time and put the wad of notes in his wallet.

Outside the leaves fell and fell and fell.

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