“At Cathedral Boys’, yeah. Here we go. Look at that. That’s Andy.”
Gregor looked. Barry Field was on his feet and holding out his hand. At the right side of the screen, a small, compact, athletic-looking man in blow-dried hair and a Roman collar was emerging from the wings to take it. When they finally came together, Field lifted both their hands into the air, turned to his audience and said,
“Brothers and sisters, Father Andrew Walsh!”
He might have been Ed Sullivan, announcing yet another appearance by Robert Goulet.
“Sometimes, he just gets on and blithers,” Declan Boyd said, “you can’t tell what he’s talking about or what he means. Sometimes he gets on and drops these really incredible bombs.”
“Theological bombs?”
“Gossip,” Declan Boyd said. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that about Andy? He’s not only a nut, he’s the next best thing to a party line.”
On the screen, Barry Field and Andy Walsh were settling down on the Danish modern couches.
“Father Walsh,” Barry Field was saying, “as most of you out there know, is a longtime missionary in the worldwide effort to reform the Catholic Church—in fact, to make the Catholic Church a Christian church, as She was intended to be. Now, I know some of you out there find his job as a priest hard to deal with. I read your letters and I feel your fear and I understand what you’re going through. There’s a lot to be feared from the Whore of Babylon. But I’ve got to tell you now as I’ve told you so many times before, real Christians need men like Andrew Walsh. We need them right where they are, in the very belly of the beast. They are our intelligence network. They are our early warning system. They are our—”
“Personally,” Declan Boyd said, “I think Barry and Andy have some kind of deal. Barry gets what he wants—which is a great big audience every time Andy comes on. Some of the farmers out there are really addicted to Catholic conspiracy theories. Andy gets to build a big rep as a dissident priest. In his head, he probably compares himself to Sakharov.”
Gregor grunted. The priest on the screen did not look as if he envisioned himself as another Sakharov. He looked as if he envisioned himself as a ski bum. Roman collar or no Roman collar, all he needed to be a perfect type was a pair of poles and some goggles.
“Now, brothers and sisters,” Barry Field said, “Father Walsh is here today to talk about something that might not seem, right off the bat, to have anything to do with the Catholic Church at all. It might not seem, right off the bat, to have anything to do with us in Colchester. Colchester is by and large a priestly city, and we all know it. The forces of God have been working here for many years. Father Walsh is here to tell us that the forces of the Devil have been working here too.”
“Never use one word where ten will do,” Declan Boyd said. “I bet he finished his English essays in fifteen minutes flat.”
“Now, Father Walsh,” Barry Field said, “a lot of the good people out there think Devil worship is a new thing in our community, that it hasn’t been around very long. You know better, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” Andy Walsh said. His voice was dreamy. “I know much better.”
“Well, Father Walsh, how long ago was it, would you say, that devil worship came to this city?”
Andy Walsh smiled. In fact, he grinned. To Gregor, he looked like a man getting ready to play an enormous joke on somebody he didn’t like.
“Well, Barry,” he said, “anybody who’s been alive long enough, and has a good enough memory, must know it’s been around here for at least twenty years.”
“Twenty years? Are you saying there’ve been men and women worshiping the Prince of Darkness, offering up sacrifices to the evil one, right here in Colchester for—twenty years?”
“That’s what I said.”
“But why haven’t we heard about this? Why hasn’t it been on the front page of every newspaper? Why hasn’t it been proclaimed by the pundits of the television screen? Why hasn’t it—”
“I hate these,” Declan Boyd said abruptly. “It’s been rehearsed. Can’t you see it? Barry Field is a really terrible actor.”
“He’s a terrible something,” Gregor agreed.
“I don’t understand how people don’t see how phony he is,” Declan Boyd said. “He doesn’t make any effort to hide it.”
Back on the screen, Andy Walsh was playing games with his arms, mocking remonstrances. “But it has been in the newspapers,” he said. “It’s been on television, too. Every one old enough out there must have seen it.”