Chapter 14

    Decades down the road, with a Pope well aware of the early sixteenth century lechery of the Bavarian priesthood that helped give Luther his troubled platform, and a totally different bishop than the one heading the diocese of Hastings in the time of Toby's second visit - and indeed for years afterward - that little experience at the student/faculty lunch tables would have sent Toby to the chancery. He would have had time before he caught his bus home. He had not spent a winter steeped in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas for nothing. Shame was appropriate to the young, said the Dominican, but not for the mature. Thomas, of course, was a most clear minded theologian, and not at all as confused on such issues as so much of the Church Militant in the twentieth century. And Toby himself, a veteran of inexperience amongst the clergy, could honestly wonder if the priest was blushing merely because he had caught Toby's look, blushing for the younger man's hasty judgement? Yet the girl's mood had been a possessive one, and awfully confident. In that, she was even annoying. In fact, damned irritating. Yet again, accusation in a serious matter required more than one witness. Aquinas would say that too, but the Lord had already put the rule as strongly as possible. If there was something going on, why would she flaunt it so publicly?
  
    But he was not inspired to go to the chancery, and without inspiration, because that was what he had now been living with for some time, he could not act. And, had he done so, it would only have been a waste of time, given the bishop of the day. He did not go down that metaphorical road, but walked instead up a real one, the gravel track leading to the creek and the reservoir that served as one of the town's two sources of water, for the little campus was truly on the edge of the forest and the mountain that loomed over the town. He had to admit that he was surprised at the rejection, and disappointed, and needed some time with his old friend the natural universe. He even wept a few tears, and yet he could not see any alternative but that he return at some point. God had insisted on putting the place in his head so much, and so regularly. But what water had to flow under the bridge before he came back?
  
    He did not sleep all that well on the bus, and when he arrived back at the Omagh family house at nine, Jelena fed him breakfast and ordered him to bed, where she climbed in and held him until he fell asleep. He recounted the interview, but without mentioning the girl, and teased his wife about their first months about this house, when the only thing she could cook for him was a fried egg sandwich. Her mother had not been one to share the kitchen very much when Jelena was growing up. Indeed, he never thought about the priest and the girl again until he returned to Hastings.
  
    But he did speak about the priest's odd question about Thomas Dewey. "I went there, I suppose, to talk about Thomas Aquinas, and this sort-of-Franciscan asks me about an education philosopher that even the intelligent pagans at UBC had no time for. What the hell was that all about? Oh, well. I saw where you grew up. Beautiful place. This must have been all for a reason, although I'm fried if I know what it was. Anyway, we're having a holiday. You and your Mom been getting along?"
 
     "As well as can be expected. She can't understand how you thought you could get a job teaching English in a college without a degree."

    "In a place where the president asks a theologian about John Dewey they want a degree? Give me a break. I don't think he knew either the Bible or Saint Thomas from a doughnut shop. What I do know is that God writes straight with crooked lines, especially in my life. So we go back to Broughton Harbour and maybe the novelist will get a job on a seine boat. If I made lots of money maybe we could go to Toronto. Did you search out the return route?" The plan, because he had to be back to work in the village post office on Monday, was not a return on the weekly steamer, but the ferry to Nanaimo, the bus to Kelsey Bay, and the little old Lady Rose, earlier a Union Steamship vessel on the milk runs out of Vancouver. He had probably sailed on her on his childhood excursions to Bowen Island.
 
     "We can go to the early mass, and then catch the ferry. Dad said he'd drive us. That leaves Saturday to check out some old haunts. Do you want to go out to the campus?"
 
     Toby thought for a long minute. He had by no means disliked Broughton Harbour. With their substantial library, the Church, and his musical instruments, there had been no shortage of intellectual life. The teachers had been good, interesting, and even adventurous company, and he'd got his chances to teach, even making a definite name for himself and realizing that at some point the classroom and the blackboard was his natural - and supernatural - turf. And most important, there had been no interruption whatever with his essential browsing and experiencing Thomas, the Scriptures, and John of the Cross. Moreover, he'd even got back into organized sports, with the island's softball team. Yet, from time to time, he'd missed the university and all that went with it. Truly, it had been a most nourishing Alma Mater, even had it not been where he met his beloved. Sometimes, two hundred miles north of the city, he had wished so strongly that he could simply get up from his desk and saunter into the Brock or the Caf for a coffee and a chat with whomever showed up with the same intentions. He had known no hankerings to return to class there, simply because there was no instruction in what he held dearest, his theologians, in that outpost of reformation and rationalist culture, but he could not help but miss his old friends and very useful interlocutors. Yet he had no desire now to walk out to the tip of Point Grey, as they had so often done in earlier days. Somehow, there was not a shred of sentimentality in him, and it was not just because the academic season out there was virtually done. He simply had no interest, at this point, in seeing the place.
 
     "No," he said. "I'd rather go down town. I want to get some books at Duthie's, and buy a pair of baseball spikes. We've already had our reunion." That was true. Coming up from the dock when they had arrived in the city they had into a pair of old acquaintances, one a fellow law student, and then a girl he had known very well. They had gone to coffee with her, and caught up, and that was enough for such a flying visit. Moreover, he felt a certain degree of failure and bewilderment over not getting the teaching post, and had no yearning to talk about it.
  
    But Duthie's was great and just what the doctor ordered. He found almost a dozen paper backs that he knew he was ready for: Teresa's Interior Castle, and the remainder of John of the Cross' series, a Belloc, a couple of Gerald Vann, and other related titles. There was no bookstore in Broughton Harbour. And it was in Duthie's, back in August before they set off from the city, that he had ordered his  three-volume Summa., and quietly enjoyed the clerk's discreet show of amazement at such a request from someone so young and not in a collar. It was in plundering the book store that they truly revisited his old alma mater, for throughout his last and finest year there he had made good use of the specifically Catholic titles from the shelves of the main library and Saint Mark's. And in the winter they had also made good use of Duthie's, for Jelena had ordered him Etienne Gilson's Christian Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas for his Christmas present.

    On the Sunday morning they caught the early mass at the church of his baptism, first communion, first confessions, confirmation, and their marriage, then were driven to the CPR ferry to Nanaimo. There was a bus to Campbell River, which he had ridden south when he and his mates from the survey crew had flown out of the Homathko country, and then another, smaller, bus over the dirt road to Kelsey Bay. They sailed home on the Lady Rose in the rain, and Toby found himself, among the usual passenger list, somewhat aching for the students and the mood of the little campus he had failed to get a job with.

    But back at the Harbour, it being dark and cold and wet when they arrived, they took a taxi home, and Toby felt good about telling the driver he'd picked up a pair of baseball spikes.