‘Did you come from a rich family? Did your parents have a fine house and broad estates like mine?’
‘Indeed they did not. For most of the great estates are owned by the English or the Anglo-Irish. But the Kilfoyles go back before the conquest. And mine were just poor farming people.’
‘Are most of the Irish poor?’
‘Well, certainly the people of the countryside do not have any silver spoons. Most are tenant farmers in a small way, scraping a living from the land. My people are like that. I came from a small farm outside the town of Mullingar. My father tilled the land from dawn till dusk. There were nine of us in the brood; I was the second-born son and we lived mostly on potatoes mixed with milk from our two cows and beet from the fields.’
‘But you got an education, Father Joe?’
‘Of course I did. Ireland may be poor, but she is steeped in saints, and scholars, poets and soldiers, and now a few priests. But the Irish are concerned with the love of God and education, in that order. So we all went to the village school which was run by the fathers. Three miles away and walking barefoot. All the way, each way. Summer evenings until after dark and all the holidays we helped our da on the farm. Then homework in the light of a single candle until we fell asleep, five of us in one bunk and the four small ones tucked in with our parents.’
‘Mon Dieu, did you not have ten bedrooms?’
‘Listen, young lad, your bedroom at the chateau is bigger than was the entire farmhouse. You’re luckier than you know.’
‘You have travelled a long way since then, Father Joe.’
‘Oh, that I have, and I wonder daily why the Lord favoured me in such a way.’
‘But you still got an education.’
‘Yes, and a good one. Driven into us by a combination of patience, love and the strap. Reading and writing, sums and Latin, history but not much geography for the fathers had never been anywhere and it was presumed we would never do so either.’
‘Why did you decide to become a priest, Father Joe?’
‘Well, we had mass ever
y morning before lessons, and of course on Sundays as a family. I became an altar boy and something about the mass got into me. I used to look at the great wooden figure above the altar and think that if He had done that for me, then perhaps I ought to serve Him as best I could. I was good at school and when I was about to leave I asked if there was any chance of being sent to train for the priesthood.
‘I knew my older brother would take over the farm one day and I would certainly be one less mouth to feed. And I was lucky. I was sent into Mullingar for an interview, with a note from Father Gabriel at the school, and they accepted me for the seminary at Kildare. Miles away. A major adventure.’
‘But now you are with us in Paris and London, St Petersburg and Berlin.’
‘Yes, but that is now. When I was fifteen the coach to Kildare was a big adventure. So I was tested again and accepted, and studied for years until the time came for ordination. There was quite a group of us in my class and the Cardinal Archbishop himself came over from Dublin to ordain us all. When it was over I thought to go and spend my life as a humble parish priest somewhere in the west, a forgotten parish in Connaught, perhaps. And I would have accepted that with a glad heart.
‘But I was called back by the principal. He was with another man whom I did not know. It turned out he was Bishop Delaney of Clontarf and he needed a private secretary. They said I had a good clear hand for the writing and would I like the post? Well, it was almost too good to be true. I was twenty-one and they were inviting me to live in a bishop’s palace and be secretary to a man responsible for a whole see.
‘So I went with Bishop Delaney, a good and holy man, and spent five years at Clontarf and learned many things.’
‘Why did you not stay there, Father Joe?’
‘I thought I would, or at least until the Church found other work for me. A parish in Dublin, perhaps, or Cork or Waterford. But then chance struck again. Ten years ago the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador to the whole of Britain, came from London to tour his Irish provinces and spent three days at Clontarf. He had a retinue, did Cardinal Massini, and one of them was Monsignor Eamonn Byrne from the Irish College in Rome. We found ourselves thrown together quite a bit and got along well. We discovered we were born only ten miles apart, though he was several years older.
‘The cardinal went on his way and I thought no more about it. Four weeks later a letter arrived from the principal of the Irish College offering me a place. Bishop Delaney said he was sorry to see me go but gave me his blessing and urged me to take the chance. So I packed my single bag and took the train to Dublin. I thought that was big, until the ferry and another train brought me to London. Sure I had never seen such a place nor thought any city could be so big and grand.
‘Then there was a ferry to France and another train, this time to Paris. Another amazing sight; I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The last train brought me through the Alps and down to Rome itself.’
‘Were you surprised by Rome?’
‘Amazed and overawed. Here was the Vatican City itself, the Sistine Chapel, the Basilica of St Peter … I stood in the crowd and looked up at the balcony and took the Urbi et Orbi blessing from His Holiness himself. And I wondered how a boy from a potato patch outside Mullingar could ever have come so far and been so privileged. So I wrote home to my parents, telling them everything, and they took the letter round the whole village and showed it to everyone and they became celebrities themselves.’
‘But why do you now live with us, Father Joe?’
‘Another coincidence, Pierre. Six years ago your mama came to sing in Rome. I know nothing of opera but by chance a member of the cast, an Irishman, collapsed with a heart attack in the wings. Someone was sent running to ask for a priest and I was on duty that night. There was nothing I could do for the poor man but give him the last rites, but he had been carried to your mama’s dressing-room at her insistence. That was where I met her. She was very distressed. I tried to comfort her by explaining that God is never malign, even when He takes back one of His children to Himself. I had made it my business to master Italian and French, so we spoke in French. It seemed to surprise her that someone should speak both, plus English and Gaelic.
‘She also had problems for other reasons. Her career was taking her all over Europe, from Russia to Spain, from London to Vienna. Your father needed to spend more time with his estates in Normandy. You were six and running wild, your education constantly interrupted by the travelling, but too young for boarding-school and anyway she did not wish to be parted from you. I suggested she might engage a resident tutor to travel with her everywhere. She was thinking it over when I left, to return to the college and resume my studies.
‘Her engagement was for a week, and on the day before she left I was summoned to the office of the principal, and there she was. Clearly she had made quite an impression. She wished me to become your tutor, for formal education, moral guidance and a bit of manly control thrown in. I was dumbfounded and tried to decline.