Theirs was a middle-class home in Sydney, with long views of the embayments of the Harbour and the Parramatta River, as broad here as most lakes, and complicated in geography. Beneath sandstone ledges, a beach glimmered sunstruck and saffron. This was the inheritance of the Breslins, and it was an exhilarating place.
There was peril in being here. If Docherty desired any woman on earth, it was Maureen. He cherished her in an enduring way. Damian knew it and had forgiven it. Docherty wondered which of them would open the door. It was Maureen. Though he had seen her on his previous visit, he was thrown further back, to when he had first left Australia for Canada, when feelings between the three of them were still very raw. So now at the door their history of shame and longing caused them to pause, to give themselves a chance to measure how things had been then, and to reduce these emotions to the present scale of accommodation between the three of them.
After this assessing pause, Docherty kissed Maureen’s cheek. What fine northern European skin she had. Even the Australian sun had not marred it.
‘Well …’ she said. ‘Yes, I was nervous, and you were, but no need to be now the door’s been answered. So fit all that into the enigma of longing, and let’s have breakfast.’
She led him through the house and onto the sundeck. There, tall Damian Breslin walked to meet Docherty with a stoop that was more a mannerism than an ailment and bespoke a tense wish to make his visitor welcome.
Maureen filled in Docherty about the three Breslin children. Rosie was living in Sydney with her husband and they had a daughter. She’d wanted to call around to see him but had had to go to Adelaide as her father-in-law was seriously ill. Niall was in London doing something financial Damian did not quite approve of; and their third, Joe, was an academic, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Maureen smiled with her relief that the business of being a parent had come good. She asked Docherty about Canada and again he found himself describing the Arctic winters in his pleasant stretch of Ontario close to the Great Lakes. She asked him about his work, but seemed half-distracted, her attention drifting mid-sentence.
‘You gave a lecture,’ she asserted with a sudden piercing look.
He uttered a few banal words about it and the reception it had had, and then eventually forced himself to ask, ‘How is the monsignor?’ trying to sound as though he was indifferent to the answer.
Maureen looked at Damian, who had raised his eyes from the barbecue. ‘He’s involved in a damages case against the archdiocese,’ she said. ‘It’s been in the press.’
‘Ah,’ said Docherty. ‘Yes, I think I’ve seen something about that.’
‘He’s giving evidence for the archdiocese. Damian doesn’t approve of the Church’s case. He’s a most subversive Catholic, my husband.’ She adopted a brittle chirpiness.
‘They’re engaged in this,’ cried Damian, ‘like any big corporation trying to scare off plaintiffs. But it’s worse. Because corporations don’t pretend to love the world and honour a moral code.’
‘Litigation is very bad therapy,’ observed Docherty. ‘For all parties.’
‘We are not as concerned as some are about the Church’s temporal wealth,’ said Maureen, puzzling Docherty with her bleak eyes. She paused and looked into a middle distance. ‘Just for example,’ she asked after a long pause, ‘what would you do if you’d been told the name of a priest who might have been an abuser?’
By the barbecue, Damian paused. What if I know the name of an abusing priest myself? Docherty privately asked himself.
‘You’d certainly let him know you had heard something of the kind,’ Docherty suggested cautiously. ‘I think it’s too broad a question. Do you have details?’
He knew this could not – surely – concern her brother. It must be another grievous story.
Maureen and Damian exchanged a long look. She addressed Docherty with that same sideways flick of her eyes that had once enchanted him, and still did, for that matter. He thought that this was why marriages lasted. However a face aged, the contours of ageless intentions rose in it as freshly as ever.
‘Frank, we’re terribly sorry to put this on to you when you’re here for such a short time and there is so much to catch up on – so many more pleasant matters. But this is a pressing one that we need to deal with, no matter how distressing it is. We need to show you a note that’s come Maureen’s way,’ said lean, intense Damian. ‘As soon as we heard from you, we knew we’d need to consult you about it.’
‘But especially given your expertise, Frank,’ Maureen rushed to say and her face had paled. ‘Wait a second.’
She went into the house and while she was gone Damian turned to him and said, ‘If the sod had taken after his sister, he might have been halfway a man.’
‘You mean Leo?’ asked Docherty.
Damian did not reply immediately. ‘I’m sorry,’ he confessed then. ‘I really don’t want her to have this grief to deal with. She’ll feel more guilt than he will.’
Docherty felt helpless to give her aid. He had earlier heard accusations against her brother, and seemed now about to be offered a kind of corroboration.
Maureen returned holding a sheet of paper, two-handed, as if it offered resistance.
‘Some days ago I visited Liz Cosgrove. Do you remember Liz? She and I met in your group of Gandhi-ist revolutionaries. I believe you helped her with that drunk of a husband of hers. Do you recall? They had two boys. And now the younger one, Stephen, has killed himself. A heroin overdose of all things – he’s been addicted for years. I blame that awful father of his – he drank himself to an early grave, and now his son.
‘I went to see Liz to console her, and for some reason Stephen’s brother, Paul, let me walk away with this.’ She held up the piece of paper. ‘It’s Stephen’s suicide note. Maybe it was confusion or maybe Paul wanted me to be stuck with it for some reason. And I am stuck with it. It was like carrying home a spider on my dress. I’d like to pretend I delayed before making copies. But I did make them. I sent the letter back the next day with a note of apology, saying I had taken it by accident …’ And now Maureen looked on the verge of breaking down. ‘I know I don’t have to say it, Frank. But I give you this copy in strict confidence.’
Acutely aware of her harrowed eyes on him, Docherty nodded, reached a hand to her lower arm as if she might not be able to walk further without support, then took what she had given him and began to read.
When he was finished, he handed back the letter. He wished he could reassure her in some way. But the gravity of the thing, and what he knew from the cab driver, Sarah, prevented him from uttering the normal comforts – ‘I find it hard to believe’ or ‘The accusation might be unfounded.’
He muttered, ‘That’s terrible.’
The worst of cases – those in which the victim was left by the predator so empty of solace that he or she killed themselves.
Part of him was even aggrieved as he read that he was being given too hard a test, and that if he could not rise to it Maureen would be damaged. He had heard the accusations about Shannon and girls, and now Maureen sat fretfully waiting for his word on accusations about Shannon and boys. There were abusers who did go from boys to girls, but it was rarer, as far as he knew from research he had read, for a man to go from adolescent girls to pre- and barely pubescent boys. That did not mean it could not happen. Or that Maureen could be easily consoled.
Maureen looked directly at Docherty, her eyes irreparably young under the stylish, grey-streaked coiffure. Despite his professional competence, he did not want to be a judge in this case, one that dulled her gaze with so much anguish.
‘Do you think this note is reliable?’ she pleaded. ‘Tell me, absolutely frankly.’
Docherty felt that he could not manage to answer. But then he heard himself talking. ‘Well, I believe it should be investigated. Nobody wants anyone unjustly accused.’ He was saying that a lot lately. ‘On the other hand, this boy took his life. All I can say is … The sense of unworthiness, and inability to validate himself academically … these are certainly symptoms of some sort of emotional or other abuse. And … well, he mentions your brother.’
There, he thought, it’s getting easier. She wants candour, this honest woman.
‘You asked me to be honest with you. These are all elements that give a certain credibility to the note. He was about to suicide, he evinces guilt about his family, but he can’t avoid talking of your brother. Was he delusional? Anything’s possible. Was he moved by malice – well, he himself was the target of his own malice.
‘This other young man mentioned in here … Brian Wood. Do you know anything about him?’
Maureen said, ‘No. We’ve done some research, but we don’t even know if he’s still in Australia.’
‘He’s got an international consultancy firm,’ said Damian, ‘and we think he’s living in Hong Kong.’
‘I felt I must urge Liz to take it to the archdiocese,’ said Maureen. ‘I called Paul yesterday but he said she won’t be persuaded, she’s still irrational with grief, as she’s entitled to be. The question is, what on earth should we do? Naturally, I don’t want to betray my brother in any way.’
Damian and his wife again exchanged glances. Despite everything, there was a steeliness in the look Damian gave her. An uxorial ‘I-told-you!’
‘I can’t send it off to the cardinal,’ Maureen said in a throttled way. ‘I don’t think I can …’
‘You should contact this Wood,’ Docherty suggested.
‘How can I?’ Maureen demanded. ‘I’m the sister!’
‘I should let you know,’ said Docherty, ‘the coroner would have been given a copy by the police. There’s an outside chance he might send it to the public prosecutor as evidence on which to charge Leo.’
Maureen began to weep very softly now. Docherty rushed to comfort her, however irrationally. ‘Though I’m not at all sure he would, without further evidence.’
‘So it’s back to us,’ Damian said. He assessed Frank Docherty almost as if weighing him for some form of combat. ‘We wondered if you would do it. We understand it has to be done. In case … Well, we know enough of these cases to know the people involved are usually repeat offenders.’
‘I have no standing in this archdiocese,’ said Docherty. ‘As you know.’
‘But you’re still a Catholic priest, aren’t you?’ asked Damian.
‘Marginally considered so, I believe.’
‘Then you’re entitled to take it to the cardinal.’
‘If I did that,’ said Docherty, feeling a profound sadness at the fearsomeness of suicide and damage and harsh duties, ‘I would have to warn your brother. But the best thing would be to persuade Liz or Paul to do it.’
Damian looked directly at him. ‘If they haven’t, it’s because they feel powerless. They can see the way the plaintiff is being dealt with in this trial that’s in progress.’
‘For which, of course, you blame my brother,’ said Maureen to her husband – with a repressed, teary anger suddenly let loose.
‘Well, I won’t pretend I ever fell for His Smarminess the monsignor.’
‘Well, I didn’t either,’ Maureen declared defensively. ‘But it doesn’t mean his guilt is proven.’
‘Oleaginous,’ murmured Damian. ‘Smooth as oil. Sorry, my love. It’s the way he is.’
Docherty intervened, suddenly resolved as to what needed to be done. ‘Why don’t we go together to see Liz Cosgrove?’
‘She won’t let me in,’ said Maureen. ‘She tossed me out when I visited her.’
‘We should try it anyhow. I could do it tomorrow afternoon. Would you consider that?’
Eventually Maureen agreed, but the spirit had gone out of her. A sort of dread, a weight of conflicting duties, seemed to have overcome her.