The restoration room in the bowels of the National Gallery was crowded. Ten students, six young men and four young women, were gathered around a broad table as their professor delicately manoeuvred his scalpel. Their tutor was working on a torn corner of a Rosa Bonheur rural scene, carefully scraping along the square inch he had just waxed and soldered to exactly replicate the texture of the brush strokes around it. It was intricate work and intimate too, and the students needed to get right up close to see what he was doing. The room was warm and the tension palpable. Matthew felt a drop of sweat trickle from his forehead onto the inside of his glasses and managed to mop it up before it fell onto the painting beneath. Shaken, he stood back a few inches, and a heavyset girl who had been standing behind him immediately pushed into his place as if she had been waiting for the opportunity. Matthew was uncomfortable with his proximity to all these other bodies and also in his stupid outfit. He ran his hand under the collar of his soutane. The full-length garment was made from heavy wool and, try as he might, in the past six months of his religious training, Matthew could not get used to it.
When his Irish seminary, Maynooth, agreed to allow Matthew an internship at the National Gallery in London, attending their painting restoration classes, he held out great hope that he would be able to do so in ordinary trousers and shirts, given the messy nature of the work and the fact that he was in London. However, Matthew discovered, while London was swinging in the newspapers it certainly wasn’t swinging in the Catholic Church. The rector in Allen Hall, Chelsea, where Matthew was lodging while he completed his studies, was every bit as vigilant in his governance as his masters in Dublin. More so towards Matthew because he had been forewarned that the keen young art student needed a firm hand. Irish schools were ardently Catholic and ensured that the church got the pick of their male graduates. Monsignor Hoban, the rector at Maynooth, had taken him with great trepidation after learning from the young man’s father that Matthew had broken off a marriage engagement to take up his vocation. Such displays of artistic temperament were not conducive to religious study. However, at his interview, the young man showed an impressive flair for Latin and Greek and a true passion for religious artworks, especially Caravaggio and da Vinci of whom his knowledge was encyclopaedic, so the rector had taken a chance.
The twenty-first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, or Second Vatican Council as they were calling it, had begun in 1962 and it looked as if it was going to revolutionise the church. The possibility had been mooted that one day priests would be able to get married, and there was talk of them doing away with the Latin mass as early as next year. The liberalising influences of the Second Vatican Council were having their own, small effect on certain sections of the Irish religious and Monsignor Hoban didn’t like that. What better time, he decided, to accommodate a student with such a passion for languages and art forms that might soon be done away with and sold off altogether, if this wretchedly progressive Pope and his band of groovy clerics had anything to do with it? That was why the university agreed to fund Matthew’s restoration course just six months into his training. Having somebody trained in art restoration would be a feather in his biretta. Monsignor Hoban just had to make sure Matthew didn’t run off and get engaged to another woman in the meantime. He could not have imagined how far that idea was from Matthew’s mind.
When Matthew saw the female students in his class, their bare legs shockingly exposed in their short skirts, all he thought of was how much better off they were than him. He craved a day out of his own, wretched long frock, longing to work in a light shirt and trousers like the other men in his class. However, it would have meant applying to the rector at Allen Hall for special dispensation and Matthew knew their view of his vocation was on shaky enough ground without applying to go about London in mufti. He could have removed the soutane and worn the trousers and shirt at the National Gallery, but was afraid of upsetting his tutors. They all loved the novelty of having a priest among them. Sometimes they addressed him in Latin, which made him cringe.
‘That’s all for today.’
Matthew ran his sweaty palms down the front of his painter’s apron, and found the letter from his father that he had shoved in there earlier. His mother wrote to him every week. Adoring pages in her flowery scrawl, infused with pride and, more recently, an undisguised delight in his celibate state, which he found a little distasteful. Letters from his father contained the opposite sentiment. Short memorandums, usually with instructions for Matthew to post him some special tobacco he could not source in Cork. Often, his father appended his request with pointed barbs: news of his friends’ sons excelling in the GAA and getting their young wives pregnant, to which Matthew longed to tell his father what he could stuff his pipe with! But he didn’t. Because, now that he was a priest in training, he had to be good and respectful towards his father. Matthew longed for a light-hearted letter from Noreen, but she still wasn’t speaking to him. Noreen was mad at him for leaving Lara, and his sister was as stubborn as a mule and slow to forgive. Knowing Noreen, she had banned her parents from mentioning her in their letters. Perhaps she had married John? No. Surely they’d not have a wedding without him? (Ruefully, he reminded himself that his mother would never let the family have a religious service without him. She’d probably want to wait until he could do the honours!) If Noreen was still raging at him for breaking it off with her best friend, well, he didn’t blame her. He was still mad at himself.
Truthfully though, he had no choice. For a long time, the past year at least, since the issue of sex had reared its ugly head, Matthew had known there was something missing. Lara was his childhood sweetheart. He loved her. Of course he did. Lara was his best friend. His soulmate. She shared his love of art. They admired each other’s talents and were supportive and excited by each other’s work. Now, there was nobody to share this extraordinary experience at the National Gallery with. Not a day went by when something didn’t happen; a funny anecdote about some doddery old tutor, the revelation in some painting he had always admired revealing itself anew. He missed Lara whenever he wanted to share those moments with her. Each time, he made a mental note, I must tell… then remembered that he had screwed his life up and left her. Except, he knew it could not be any other way. Everything in their relationship had been perfect except the one thing, which, it seemed, was prized above all else: romantic love. He loved her but he was not in love with her. On the few occasions they made love, Matthew became aware that he was simply going through the motions. Sex had been an enjoyable, satisfying experience but Matthew knew it should be more than that. It was for Lara. The first time they made love she cried afterwards. She curled herself into his chest like a vulnerable child and wept with emotion. ‘I love you,’ she said.
‘I love you too.’ It was the first time he had lied to her. The other times he said it he had meant it. He loved her like a sister, like a friend, like a childhood sweetheart should. But he couldn’t love her like a man should love a woman. With his body, he could do a good job of pretending. But he did not feel the love for her with his heart and soul. Lara was his friend. Clever, capable, kind-hearted Lara. She loved him and he needed her. But that wasn’t enough. Not for him and, he knew, certainly not for her.
It was then that Matthew knew he wasn’t enough. It wasn’t Lara; it was him. Lara was perfect in every way. She knew him, she loved him – they had everything in common. She was beautiful, accomplished, sweet natured, strong. She took his worries away and made everything alright. If he couldn’t love Lara Collins, then surely he couldn’t love any woman. Didn’t deserve to love a woman.
As one of the cleverest boys in school, the priesthood had always been an option for him. He had never considered it because he had always loved Lara. The church offered the best education and could open doors in the field of art that fascinated him. If he could not live his own life, the life Lara had planned for them both, he would immerse himself in history. Live among books and paintings and take refuge from the world by absorbing the legends of saints and scholars. The priesthood was an ideal option. Except for the long, woollen dress.
The students dispersed and ran towards the door, anxious to get out of the claustrophobic room and back to the freedoms of their own lives.
The professor looked up at the lonely priest taking off his apron and said, ‘Vere Fratis Matthew’. Matthew smiled at him weakly and headed out the door.
Sometimes, Matthew would wind down with a visit to his favourite room at the gallery: the pre-Raphaelite room. The medieval revivalism of the mid-eighteenth century was Matthew’s favourite period in art. With its red-haired, pale-skinned maidens, it was unapologetically populist, and, although he could scarcely admit it to himself, the women, with their pale skin, long, luscious hair and soft, sensual poses reminded Matthew, however briefly and inappropriately, that he still was a man. Today, Matthew was too anxious to get into the fresh air to look at paintings, however beautiful. Outside, Matthew walked down the grand, pillared steps of the gallery and into Trafalgar Square. The scale of the gallery and the huge lions that flanked it always cheered him, reminding him that he was in London, a place where history was all around him. In the monuments, the architecture, the galleries and museums – art and history were everywhere. They had galleries and museums in Dublin, of course, but not as many and not nearly as magnificent. History in Ireland was a small, personal affair. The past always tinged with the regretful consequences of famine and revolution. All caused by the English, and although Matthew felt he should have cared about that as deeply as his republican countrymen he found he didn’t. People died for causes, men were slaughtered on battlefields. Art outlived them all. You died anyway; nothing could make a man live forever, but these monuments were as much a testament to eternal life as the Holy Trinity. Matthew wasn’t 100 per cent sure that he believed in God – but he believed in art. And through exposure to all this beauty he was beginning to believe it might be one and the same thing. If these monuments were for dead soldiers, Matthew thought, even if they weren’t for his soldiers, or his dead – did that really matter? What was left here was simply the unapologetic magnificence of these gargantuan lions, glaring proudly into the lunchtime crowd, the sun glinting off their metallic coats.
In the midst of his philosophical reverie, Matthew opened his father’s letter. It was brief, one side of a single writing pad sheet in large, round handwriting.
I won’t beat about the bush, I’m worried about Noreen. She took off over to London a month ago, for no good reason, leaving poor aul’ John in a desperate state altogether. She said she was going to work in a bar with your old beau Lara Collins, then hid the address on us. So I telephoned the Collins and got the details off them which, as you might well imagine, they weren’t too happy about giving me! I don’t mind telling you, I don’t like all this coming and going. First you and now Noreen. So, as you started all this nonsense, will you go and find your sister and tell her to ring home. Her mother is gone demented. And don’t even think of giving me any of your nancy-boy shite about upsetting Lara. It’s high time you paid a call to that young woman and gave her a proper apology after leaving her high and dry.
Your father.
P.S. And when you do see Noreen, ask the selfish strap why the hell she needs to go working in a bar in London when there is a perfectly good bar here? Tell her I’m killed out!
Attached was a card with the name of a club, Chevrons, and an address on the Kings Road.
His father’s admonishing tone was no great shock to him but the Lara news was a bombshell. Lara was in London. He had suspected as much over the months since they had parted but had made a point of never asking. Nobody volunteered the information. People were always very careful what they say to priests. It was one of the things he didn’t like about becoming one. One of the many things. However, in this case it had been useful, as he had spent a great deal of the past few months trying not to think about Lara. Of course, everything his father said was right. It was time to face up to what he had done. It was time for him to act like a man, even if the very idea of it already made him feel like a foolish, chastised little boy.
Matthew folded the letter over the small card onto which his father had written Lara’s address without looking at it.
Then he packed it back into the pocket of his soutane and headed towards Westminster.
A walk back to Chelsea along the Thames was what he needed to clear his head.
Translation from Latin: Goodbye Brother Matthew.