Sue Gates

Sue Gates is a voluntary helper at St. Joseph’s, a devoted mother to Ben, and a woman whose renewed Catholic faith does not extinguish her love for Gerry Fenn. Her story is shaped by the effort to hold together forms of care that cannot substitute for one another: service to the church, responsibility for her son, and the difficult desire to love and be loved. When Fenn finally asks her to leave the gathering with Ben, she does so, even as the procession approaches and the crowd turns toward the oak.

Identity and Work at St. Joseph’s

Sue helps maintain both St. Joseph’s and the presbytery. Her duties are practical and communal: village women work alongside her to clean the church and house, buy food for Monsignor Delgard, and answer the telephone and the door. The work has occupied her morning as the calls have come in without pause. Her place in the parish is therefore not merely devotional; she is part of the everyday labor that keeps its household and church functioning while Delgard is busy.

Her role also brings her into contact with the growing activity around the pilgrimage site. At the open-air service, a young priest recognizes her as a voluntary helper and arranges for her and Ben to sit near the recently erected altar. The platform stands five feet above the ground so the congregation can see the ceremony. Sue is not among the dignitaries seated at the front, but her work gives her and her son a place close enough to witness the gathering and Alice Pagett’s arrival.

Faith, Motherhood, and the Pilgrimage

Delgard describes Sue as able, sincere, and someone whose faith had wandered before returning with renewed vigor. He connects that change to a wider understanding of pilgrimage: at Lourdes, he says, the lasting miracle may be the renewal, strengthening, or beginning of faith among pilgrims, not only the physical cures. Sue’s renewed religious awareness is thus treated as a real change in her life, rather than simply an effect of her church duties.

At the Sunday gathering, however, religious devotion is entangled with spectacle. Sue sits with Ben among pilgrims, clergy, civilians, medical attendants, relatives of the sick, and reporters. The press clusters near the front, while television cameras remain outside the grounds, their lenses aimed over the hedge toward the oak and altar. Hymns and prayers sound from different parts of the congregation. Sue feels tense, and senses the excitement around her has risen since the previous week. Ben, usually bored by waiting, shares the anticipation; his shivering seems to Sue to reflect exhilaration as much as the cold.

The crowd falls silent when Alice emerges through a newly made opening in the church boundary wall. Molly Pagett holds her daughter’s hand while the Reverend Mother leads them toward the seats before the altar. Alice looks toward the tree rather than the onlookers, whose reverent attention has turned her arrival into a public spectacle. Ben climbs onto the bench to see, but is unimpressed. Sue’s perspective places a mother and child within the crowd’s expectation, while also showing that its emotional force does not affect everyone in the same way.

Love and Care for Others

Sue’s faith does not resolve her feelings for Fenn. During an evening when he has left Nancy Shelbeck in Sue’s care, she reflects that church work, religion, and time with Ben have helped compensate for the absence of a settled relationship, but have not fulfilled all her emotional needs. She had tried to persuade herself that physical love, with its dependence, jealousy, and responsibility, was unnecessary. She has come to recognize instead that, for her, loving and being loved on equal terms matters, even with the difficulties it brings.

Fenn’s urgency sharpens that realization. He has returned from a church in Barham with Nancy, whom Sue understands to have had a relationship with him, and then hurried away to see Delgard with something important to show him. Sue wonders what has frightened them and why he has brought Nancy to her. She also recognizes that Fenn’s apparent insensitivity can be a performance: he knows the reactions he provokes and often prefers them to passivity. This time, though, his desperation makes it clear to Sue that he needs her help; Nancy’s connection to him does not make that need irrelevant.

When Nancy wakes in distress, Sue responds immediately. She runs to the bedroom, tries to stop Nancy from pushing her away, and speaks steadily until Nancy’s struggle weakens and her eyes settle on Sue. Nancy weeps, then clings to her like an upset child. Sue feels awkward but does not pull away; she strokes Nancy’s hair and reassures her that she is safe. The care she gives is not presented as effortless affection or as the end of her jealousy. It is a compassionate response to a frightened person, even while Sue remains painfully conscious of her own attachment to Fenn.

Choice at the Gathering

When Fenn returns to Sue, her relief is visible: she reaches toward him, worried by his absence, and he kisses her cheek. Their reunion does not erase their unresolved conflict. Later, when he asks her to trust him and do what he asks, Sue jerks her head away angrily and questions why he has waited so long. His appeal rests on her love for him, but the request still requires a choice she must make herself.

Sue studies him for several seconds, then takes Ben’s hand and says they are going home. Ben looks up in surprise; Fenn’s head drops with relief, and he kisses Sue’s hands, his eyes bright with unshed tears. Her decision takes her and her son away from the gathering at the moment the crowd falls quiet and the procession approaches, its voices singing praise of God and the Virgin Mary. Fenn turns back toward the oak and silently prays. Sue’s departure is a personal boundary set inside a public religious climax: she answers Fenn’s plea, but does so by taking Ben with her rather than surrendering her own judgment to the spectacle around them.

Narrative Significance

Sue’s arc holds together two kinds of renewal without treating either as a replacement for the other. Her return to Catholic faith gives her a source of purpose and connection through work at St. Joseph’s, yet it cannot dispose of her longing for Fenn. Her care for Nancy demonstrates that this longing does not prevent compassion, while her choice to leave with Ben shows that love does not make her simply compliant. Through Sue, the pilgrimage’s collective fervor is set against ordinary, intimate obligations: answering calls, tending to a frightened guest, caring for a child, and deciding when to walk away.