My Father’s House
Joseph O’Connor
Harvill Secker, £20, 288 pages
We know that Delia Kiernan means business, because she is driving a diplomatic car at speed through Rome in the middle of a foul night in December 1943. We know that Hugh O’Flaherty means business because he threatens to beat up a hospital orderly even though he is a priest. We know that the orderly means business because he refuses to treat the figlio di puttana Nazi that they have brought to his hospital, until O’Flaherty turns violent. We know that the seriously ill patient means – or at least once meant – business because he is not a Nazi at all but Major Sam Derry, a Royal Artilleryman and escaped prisoner of war.
All this we discover in the first four pages of My Father’s House, the latest offering from bestselling Dubliner Joseph O’Connor (Cowboys & Indians, Star of the Sea). The breathless introduction sets the scene for the nuances that follow, as the many mansions implied by the title quickly crystallise into shades and complications of faith and fatherland, and into liminalities of motive and mission. They lead into other metaphorical chambers as the story progresses, and are not limited to time or space. The action flits from the present moment to fictional observations in the following decades, as if dusty documents in forbidden archives have finally given up their secrets.
O’Flaherty is as Irish as a potato – in the depths of war he says Mass for his parents back in Killarney – and a Catholic, obviously. The unnamed Italian orderly is also a Catholic who, when he realises his mistake, crosses himself, pleads ignorance and begs forgiveness: “I did not know.” O’Flaherty orders him to confession, so while willing to punch him in the face he cares for his soul as well. Kiernan is likely to be a Catholic, or at least married to one, for it is not immediately obvious to which legation her husband is attached. Derry’s name sounds like he may or may not be a Catholic, and comes with evocative undertones of nationality and sectarianism.
Derry’s name is in fact not O’Connor’s choice at all. The real-life Sam Derry authored The Rome Escape Line, which appeared in 1960. O’Flaherty is real as well, and so is Kiernan – her husband was (of course) the Irish ambassador to Rome between 1941 and 1947. She was better known in her own right as the singer Delia Murphy, which soon becomes relevant. A choir meets to practise chamber music; those not singing at any time use the cover of the sound of the others to discuss their plans to keep the escape line running. They are joined by the aristocratic Sir D’Arcy Osborne, the actual British ambassador to the Holy See (who died as the 12th and last Duke of Leeds) and a cast of others – both fictional and real – including an angry cameo appearance from Pope Pius XII.
The aims of the choir converge on the thwarting of Paul Hauptmann, the Neronian villain of the piece. He rules occupied Rome with ruthless Nazi brutality and stereotypical German efficiency, but is not without his human qualities – which makes him all the more odious. In one tense scene, made all the more tense by the sanctity and beauty of its setting, he tries to exploit historic Anglo-Irish tensions to bring O’Flaherty round, but to no effect. As Hauptmann works to destroy the escape networks, the high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse draws out various moral points – especially for the priest whose work comes into conflict with his vows, even though he is fighting a just war. Things come to an exhilarating and violent head as the chorus prepares for its rendimento – its grand performance.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Derry’s book was the basis for The Scarlet and The Black, Jerry London’s film of 1983 with Gregory Peck in the lead. O’Connor’s treatment allows his readers to inhabit the story from inside, rather than as viewers. While he insists in an endnote that “liberties have been taken with facts, characterisations and chronologies”, My Father’s House nevertheless tells a profoundly human story with profoundly human consequences – and not just for the protagonists who are on the side of right. Fictionalised it may well have been, but at the heart of this book is a true story of a remarkable group of brave people who, faced with the reality of humanity at its most depraved, dared to risk everything for the wellbeing of strangers.
<em>Eleanor Hammond lives and works in Rome</em>
