Read Unholy Dying for Free Online

trivialities with her. I became more immediately involved two years ago, when I heard to my distress that she was pregnant, and that her family were threatening to throw her out of the family home.
    I should say that I had never found her parents particularlycongenial. They were at best occasional attenders at St. Catherine’s, so my acquaintance was little more than superficial. I was not surprised by their actions, but I did think they were deplorable. Julie was only seventeen, and such a response to her situation could well have made her contemplate abortion. I visited them in their home (which Julie had already left) and remonstrated with them, but they were adamant not only about the expulsion, but also in insisting they would have nothing further to do with their daughter. I soon heard that Julie had moved in with the family of the child’s father, though this turned out to be misleading: this was a temporary measure, while she waited for the Council to provide her with emergency accommodation. In any case, I gathered that the boy (he was scarcely more) disputed his paternity.
    I next saw Julie when she was wheeling Gary, her baby son, in an old pram through Shipley market. . . .
    Christopher Pardoe paused. A picture of Julie and all the circumstances of their meeting flooded his mind. She had seemed to him so incredibly lovely, and the memory of her appealing fragility still stopped his breath. He could say nothing of this to the Bishop, of course: he would stick doggedly to fact. But wasn’t this reaction the most vital fact of all?
    The next day he said to Mrs. Knowsley, apropos of nothing, “I’m not entirely ignorant about sexual matters, you know. The authorities at Maynooth winked at what went on when the seminarians went away for the weekend. They knew they got up to pretty much the same sort of thing as other young men who were let off the leash for a day or two.”
    â€œNow you are shocking me,” said Mrs. Knowsley, but quite calmly.
    â€œI expect they thought it enabled them to sow their wild oats early, and get rid of the tensions,” said Pardoe.
    But it didn’t get rid of them. It didn’t.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    The Learys were a family that still had breakfast. Not something grabbed on the run or munched from a wrapper, but a sit-down meal, albeit often a hurried one. The Learys rather prided themselves on still doing things that other people no longer did, or Conal Leary prided himself on it, at any rate. The children’s expressions around the table did not suggest one hundred percent agreement. And bacon and eggs featured at these meals only on weekends when the children—Mark and Donna—did not have anything pressing to do. Otherwise, they ate whatever was fashionably deemed healthy by their generation. Their parents too had cut back to cornflakes or porridge, followed by toast and marmalade. Conal had been quite a sportsman in his time, and still played mean games of golf and squash. He believed in keeping in shape.
    â€œWhat are you two doing today?” Conal asked his children, the sort of traditional father’s question nowadays heard more in soaps than in real life. Donna shrugged, but Mark answered.
    â€œAfter school I’ve got nets practice.” The cricket season had just started, and Mark had been waiting for it all year, impatient to consolidate his burgeoning prowess. He was a first-rate sprinter and hurdler too, but the cricket season was the highlight of his year.
    â€œYou, Donna?”
    She shrugged again. It was an expression of thirteen-year-old ennui in which she often took recourse.
    â€œDunno. Hang around with me mates after school, I suppose.”
    â€œIt’s youth club night at St. Catherine’s, isn’t it? Will you be going along?”
    â€œShouldn’t think so. It’s hopeless now Father Pardoe’s gone.”
    â€œHe’s not gone, dear,” said Mary