Kruger's Alp

Lynch’s love of easeful death wasn’t quite what it seemed; it was rather as if he saw in it the chance of the transfer the Church had always denied him. Death might be the far country from whence no traveller returned — and if so he was all for it. Anywhere must be better than this. Hence the constant warnings: ‘Hurry, my boys, I am not much longer for this life…’ and ‘Listen to these words of wisdom from a departing soul — the idealism of the Boer freedom fighters died with Kruger’s flight into exile. What followed was not a success for Calvinist nationalism but a policy of “get what you can and keep it” — only remember to call it God’s work.’

This urge to depart was more to be pitied than feared. Lynch knew that short of a miracle, or his own defection (and that meant air tickets and where was he to find the money?), he was condemned for life to this wild African place.

He suffered from dreams of money. Perhaps a rich relative would die and leave him a legacy? No, he was a practical man. But then again perhaps one of his altar boys would one day be rich enough to make a present to his old priest and mentor — enough to enable him to escape to what he called some serious country.

Perhaps this was the source of his fascination with the last days of the old Boer leader of the Transvaal Republic, Stephanus Joha

… And I shall use the short remaining time the Lord has been pleased to grant me to labour mightily, though conscious of my frailty and infirmity, to bring His people home to Him [Kruger promised in Further Memoirs], and since He has entrusted to my care the means whereby His will shall be accomplished I shall not rest until I find that place, ‘the land’, as the Lord said to Moses, ‘which I have given unto the children of Israel’…

Father Lynch would interpret this for his altar boys, saying that by that ‘place’ Kruger undoubtedly meant a physical location, a home for dispossessed and faithful Boers who would not return to serve under the hated English, and by ‘the means’ Kruger certainly meant the treasure which had accompanied him into exile, the famed Kruger hoard, the gold millions of legend (taken in the form of ingots, bullion-bars or dust, who could say?) — from the inexhaustible mines of the Reef and smuggled out when the President fled.

This obsession with the millions came to outweigh all of Lynch’s religious duties and the Further Memoirs became his daily office, his ‘familiar bible’ he called it, though it was widely believed among the altar boys he had written it himself.

It was precisely these unexpected ideas, combined with a complete lack of any religious scruple, which attracted to Father Lynch the boys from the nearby boarding hostel who were to form his little group of altar servers.

That Father Lynch was in disgrace with all the orthodox clergy appealed enormously to the wayward boys, handed by their parents into the care of Father Cradley, rector of the hostel: Ferreira, Blanchaille, Van Vuuren, Zandrotti, little Michael Yates, and, for a brief period, even Ronald Kipsel (afterwards the infamous Kipsel), these were the altar servers in Lynch’s little guild. The boys detested the Church and yet were drawn to Father Lynch, for, after all, did the Church not hate Father Lynch? Wasn’t it Father Lynch who insisted on integrating the two dozen black servants, washerwomen and gardeners who knelt in the two final pews on either side of the nave, into the white congregation? Until ordered by Bishop Blashford to restore segregation immediately, because, desirable though a certain mixing might be in an ideal world and certain though it was that such things would one day happen — though not in our lifetime — the move was premature.

And was it not Father Lynch some years later who refused to introduce the new form of the Mass with its responses in English and its furtive handshakes and blushing kisses of peace, saying that although he understood the move was designed to counter dwindling congregations by giving the laity the idea that they were a vital part of the service, a move which he understood was known among theatre people as ‘audience participation’, he and his congregation were too old to change and he would continue to say Mass in the old Latin rite? Threats were made. They were ignored. And eventually the point was not pursued. After all, Lynch was an old man ministering to an elderly and diminishing congregation served by a little band of altar boys so bound by loyalty to the obstinate priest that they were probably beyond salvation.

And of course it was Lynch who, some years later still, when Blashford a

The church of St Jude, gloomy Catholic stronghold built of rough-hewn local stone with a wide-eaved heavy roof of grey slate, was set right next door to the young and rampantly spreading Calvinist university, a rock in a Rome-devouring sea, Lynch declared. It was from the nearby hostel for homeless boys that Father Lynch recruited his altar servers, for whom he promised many surprises in the years ahead, terrible surprises for his little guild. This was Father Lynch’s way of dignifying his unpromising rag-bag of altar servers.

The hostel was presided over by another import, Father Benjamin Cradley, who came from England. He was soft, pink and mildly ma

He wandered down the gleaming corridors of the hostel with a curiously beatific smile on his face, scattering cigarette ash and dreaming of di