Left to his own devices, Anselm would have preferred to walk – a long, irreverent ramble through the vineyards of France, blistering his feet on the Alps, drinking too much wine and then descending, light-headed and a boy again, through the landscape of frescoes on to Rome. Instead, he did as he was told and took the 12.15 p.m. flight from Heathrow to Fiumicino. He was to stay with a community of friars at San Giovanni’s, an international house of studies incongruously situated between two restaurants near Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, beneath the Janiculum Hill. A priest would collect him.
Anselm was standing in the arrivals area in his long black habit, beginning to feel the heat, when he was greeted from behind by a back-slapping friar in cut-off shorts and a T-shirt:
‘Hello there, I’m Brandon Conroy But call me Con.’
He had the build of a shaven ox with hands like pit shovels. But the most startling feature was his eyes, china blue, elfin and glittering, deeply set beneath a brow of heavy bone.
‘I knew it was you from your outfit,’ said Conroy ‘Here, give us your bag,’ and off he went, whistling, while Anselm trailed behind, all pores opening.
Conroy compressed himself into a flaming red Fiat Punto, with Anselm at his side, and took the autostrada to the city.
Crossing the Grande Raccordo Anulare and accelerating towards the west bank of the Tiber, Anselm sensed a gradual disintegration in conventional road positioning. A slanging match of horns, bewildered voices and Latin passion tumbled through the open window, while Conroy made various offensive hand signals to right and left. There seemed to be a wide digital vocabulary the sophistication of which had completely escaped Anselm’s well-informed schooldays. The whole melee was thrashed out under the blessed heat of the sun and a cloudless cobalt sky
‘Been here a month now and I’m beginning to get the hang of it,’ said Conroy, his gesturing arm at rest on the doorsill. ‘I thought Rio was bad, sure. But here you’ve got to play to kill. No arsing around, you know, or they’ll have your cojones on pasta.
Anselm didn’t quite know how to respond. It wasn’t the usual language of recreation at Larkwood. He kept a firm grip on the door handle while Conroy clattered on.
‘I’m brushing up my theology. Then back to Paula and the kids.’
Paula? Kids? Anselm had to reply He’d start with the children.
‘Kids?’
‘Yep.’
‘How many?’
‘Too many’ Conroy waved his first and little finger at a priest on a bike.
Anselm’s eyes widened involuntarily ‘I see,’ he observed, politely sympathetic but resolved now to make no further enquiry about Father Brandon Conroy’s domestic arrangements. Each took a side-glance at the other.
‘Loosen up, Father, I’m only having a laugh,’ chuckled Conroy his hands off the wheel while he scratched his shoulders. ‘Street kids. The homeless. Sao Paulo. I’ve been at it thirty-five years.
Anselm laughed. Small buttons flew off some carefully ironed garment of childhood restraint. He’d never met anyone like Conroy in his life, except perhaps Roddy: they both gave copiously from the wine of themselves. The Punto weaved its way into the narrow streets of Trastevere and Conroy, tired of rambling, turned to enquiry:
‘Anyway, what brings you to Bernini’s twisted columns?’
‘My Prior received a fax asking me to attend a meeting at four o’clock tomorrow ‘
‘Sounds serious.’
‘It is. We’ve just had a Nazi land on us claiming “sanctuary”.’
‘My arse.’
‘Funnily enough, that’s what my Prior said:
‘Really?’ asked Conroy, surprised, gesturing in response to an attack of horns.
‘Not in quite the same terms.’
‘Thought not.’
They drove on. Conroy was thoughtful. He’d slowed down his driving and the roads were somehow all the quieter for it. He said, ‘Who’s your meeting with?’
‘Cardinal Vincenzi.’
Conroy chewed his bottom lip. ‘There’s only one other higher than your man, and that’s Himself.’ The jester was no longer at the wheel. With the earnestness of experience he asked, ‘But why you?’
‘I used to be a lawyer and I speak French. Our visitor was based in Paris during the war. That’s all I can think of.’
‘Father, let me give you some advice, all right? I know this place.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s just say I’ve had my little run-ins. If you’re going to get dragged into Church politics, you’re entering one of those tents at the circus packed with curved mirrors, twisting and pulling things out of shape. Be careful. Don’t go by appearances. Nothing’s what it seems here.’
The car came to an abrupt halt and they walked into San Giovanni’s, Conroy restored to his former self, shouting out for peaches, Anselm trailing behind, subdued.