Three Cheers for the Paraclete

by Thomas Keneally

  After ten such evenings he felt like pleading catarrh and having the night for himself. He was still arguing the point with himself when the three students arrived. One of them was a dark man of his own age with long intelligent lips, and eyes that had ideas of their own. His name was Edmonds, and two minutes after Maitland had said good night to the three of them, turned the radiator off and taken, more than loth, to his prie-dieu, Edmonds came back to the room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Maitland. Could I have a word?’

  In the bad light of the ante-room the student seemed large and coy. Light from the bedroom pointed up his remorseful ham-fists.

  ‘Of course. Come in.’

  Upstairs the supper bell rang. They could hear students clumping out of rooms to the small mercies of cups of tea and biscuits. Shivering, Maitland switched back on the substantial mercy of the radiator.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said; but in case the priest came to regret the invitation, Edmonds merely took hold of a chair-back with both hands.

  ‘Were you working?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I certainly wasn’t working.’

  ‘Not after your visitors, I suppose. You go to a lot of trouble to make them welcome. I hope it’s worth your while.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it’s very pleasant for all parties – except for you, of course.’

  ‘Then why isn’t it worth while?’

  ‘Monsignor Nolan won’t like it. He’s the cattle baron and we’re the beef. To extend the image a bit, he doesn’t like having an outsider cut three of us out of the herd for any purpose he doesn’t understand. Pardon my talking so straight. But he’ll let you go on giving these evenings until he finds some irregularity he can blame on them, some breach of rules or of the etiquette due to him as number-one pooh-bah. He could use something like that to dismiss you from the service, and if you went, it’d be a tragedy.’

  Maitland sat down laughing. ‘Please. I’ve been here three months – under surveillance too. I’ve given seven plodding classes a week and I say Mass on a back altar each morning. I know one out of every six or seven students. I think my loss could be borne.’

  ‘Do you think I came back just to flatter you?’ Edmonds rumbled.

  Maitland leant forward on his elbows and stared at the litter of scholarship on his desk. He smiled, not too wryly, Edmonds being, at least in terms of the House of Studies, a man of the world.

  ‘I can’t imagine you did.’

  ‘Why it would be a tragedy is that you don’t pretend to be secure in that old-fashioned way in which Monsignor Nolan is. Or pretends to be.’

  ‘No pretends about it. He is secure. As I’m not.’

  ‘You should be grateful. That old-time security breeds old-time arrogance. You have neither.’ Edmonds smiled for the first time. ‘You’re a good example to the boys.’

  ‘Because I don’t know what I believe? You can’t tell me that, Mr Edmonds. And sit down when I bloody-well tell you.’

  Maitland was off-handedly obeyed; Edmonds was keyed for argument.

  ‘Doctor Maitland, what do you think of Henry James?’

  The priest sighed. ‘I don’t know if he was secure and arrogant like Monsignor Nolan or insecure and arrogant like me.’

  ‘Seriously. Is he a genius?’

  ‘Everyone says so.’

  ‘Say you had to examine the nature of his genius. Do you think you could easily sum up its nature in a few more or less scientific sentences? Do you think his genius would partake of quantity or mystery?’

  Maitland scratched his head and gave the beset giggle of a man detained too long in a pub. ‘Mystery,’ however, he said. ‘Definitely mystery.’

  ‘That’s right. Yet there are Freudian fanatics who believe they can define the quality of the man’s genius by explaining that James’s dad had a leg missing and this aroused in young Henry a castration complex of the type that made him court injury of a similar nature to his father’s and that all those marvellous novels are the results of a fruitfully applied neurosis all having to do with the, well, with the knackers. Do you think they’re right or wrong?’

  ‘They must be more wrong than not.’

  ‘Exactly. You can’t explain something as big as James in those terms.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose so.’

  ‘Yet the men who do explain him this way are absolutely sure, quite secure in their little bits of Freud?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  To be honest, Maitland admitted, he was enjoying this grilling.

  ‘Well,’ said Edmonds, ‘that’s the way Costello’s lecture notes go. I mean, if Henry James is a mystery, what about the God who breathed on Henry James? But Costello isn’t dismayed. You know the way he works. Question: Is God a leprechaun? No, God is not a leprechaun. This is proved by the fact that the Council of Constance, the Council of Trent and Leo the Thirteenth all condemned the perfidious opinion that God is a leprechaun. It is proved too by something that Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose of Milan all wrote, and then it is proved by passages from the Scriptures. And to top the proof off, it is proved by reason as cold as Einstein’s, but without the same flair, that the deity could not possibly be a little person.’

  Maitland laughed, remembering that Costello had used the same blithe method for plumbing the Godhead in his own student days.

  Edmonds continued, ‘Everything codified and as organized as a trawler master’s manual. Only God is a little more intangible than a diesel engine.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maitland. ‘I wish I was as certain as Costello is.’

  His left hand had been playing with a volume of letters by an eighteenth-century Jesuit. On some off-chance, his eye consulted the page and saw ‘To Sister Marie-Therese de Viomenil, Perpignan, 1740.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ he told Edmonds. He read, ‘“What I have always most dreaded has just happened to me. I have not been able to get out of accepting an office contrary to all my likings and for which I believe myself to have no aptitude. In vain I groaned, prayed, offered to spend the rest of my life in the novitiate-house of Toulouse; the sacrifice, one of the greatest of my life, had to be made. And see how visibly the action of divine Providence appears. When I had made, and repeated, my sacrifice a hundred times, God removed from my heart all my old repugnance so that I left the professed house – and you know how much I loved it – with a certain peace and liberty of spirit at which I was myself astonished. But there is more. On my arrival at Perpignan, I found a quantity of business of which I understand nothing, and many people to see and conciliate: the Bishop, the Intendant, the King’s Lieutenant, Parliament, and Army Staff. You know my horror of all sorts of formal visits and above all of visiting the great, yet I find that none of this frightens me; I hope that God will supply for everything and I feel a confidence in his divine Providence which keeps me above all these troubles. So I remain calm and in peace in the midst of a thousand worries and complications in which I should have expected, naturally speaking, to be overwhelmed!”

  ‘There, that wasn’t an arrogant man, nothing like it. Yet he had no doubt that the unknown God took a hand in his interviews with the King’s Lieutenant and staff officers and so on. And I wouldn’t mind betting that the unknown God did.’ Maitland closed the letters with some finality. ‘It’s got me beaten. One thing I’m sure of, and that is that while the arrogant priest might be an object of mockery, he’s quickly becoming supplanted by his brother, the priest who doesn’t know what anything means, who’s a sort of humanist and in whom the only positive element is that he doesn’t believe what Nolan and Costello believe in the way Nolan and Costello believe it. I just don’t know,’ he concluded and threw the Jesuit across onto the bed.

  Edmonds shook his head. ‘Anyhow, I don’t think Christ would pass the theology exams here, because he hasn’t read Aquinas and Costello’s lecture notes.’

  ‘Look, if those young fellows upstairs can be as safe and sure as Costello, then good luc
k to ’em is what I say.’

  ‘And I say God help ’em.’

  ‘No. It’s a sad life for a priest if all he knows is that the old-style religion won’t wash but doesn’t know yet what will. If I’m visibly that way, I’d be better off out of this place.’

  ‘It’s not as visible as all that.’ Edmonds dropped his large jaws onto his collar and said rumblingly, lest he seem to be boasting, ‘I suppose I’m an expert at reading signs.’

  ‘What used you do before you came here?’

  ‘I was a financial journalist.’ He winked. ‘Good fun.’

  ‘Are there any other experts at reading the signs here?’

  ‘Not many.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  One of the things Maitland most hated about the House was that you could never speak for long to anyone without a bell ringing. One rang now below Maitland’s room and above them the burr of words died and the thump of feet succeeded.

  ‘There is an example of what I wanted – had the hide to want to speak to you about,’ said Edmonds. ‘Monsignor Nolan, when the time comes for him to present the bill to you, will complain that he never liked the evenings you held because they were the cause of keeping some students late for Compline.’

  ‘I’ve never kept anyone late yet.’

  ‘You’re keeping me late. I know, I’m keeping myself late. But it’s all the same to the president.’

  ‘Well, I’m not letting you go. I have some White Horse stabled under the bed. Are you a member of the Sacred Thirst?’

  ‘Students are forbidden …’ said Edmonds, smiling. ‘It used to be a great life with the press. You’d go round to interview company chairmen about new issues of debenture stock, and the whisky would flow like Niagara.’

  ‘All right. Stay there and I’ll pour you a shaving-mug full.’

  So they were sitting together sipping when Egan ran in.

  Egan was not breathless at seeing Maitland and Edmonds drinking together like cronies. He seemed to have problems of his own. His eyes stared above the blue third-former cheeks and he shivered.

  ‘I have a problem I must speak to you about,’ he announced. ‘I wonder could you come to my room, Dr Maitland?’

  Maitland put the drink down among his notes. But he worried now about how to get rid of Edmonds without resort to status, and in the spirit of their interview. Somehow this was the basic question. For though Egan looked like a rule-making, rule-keeping priest, and though for a student to drink liquor in this house was a massive breach of law, tonight Maurice was there not as a canonist but as a mortal, scared man, swallowing and snorting as no elocutionist would recommend. So that Edmonds was safe from all those covert penalties that can fall on the erring cleric; and safe also from the less covert one of being cast out and sent back to his financial editor.

  He downed his whisky at a great pace, seeming inured to it. Maitland and Egan watched his large jaw raised for the work and his gullet joggling slowly between the strong cords of gristle in his throat. He must have decided to enter this House at perhaps the age of twenty-four. Now, five years later, he still looked like a man who knew his way around the bottles and around other things that were mystery to the two priests.

  ‘Thank you, doctor,’ he said and winked. ‘I’ll have to see a doctor about these fainting fits.’

  In Costello’s room, Hurst confessed to being again possessed by the yen for blood sacrifice. The barbarous Hurst, too naïve and too subtle to be quashed by prayer, pressed the knife upon Hurst the neophyte, promised deer-eyed Hurst – Hurst whose face was a pale geography of nervy blemishes – quietus in the gush of blood.

  ‘You have pandered to yourself mentally,’ Costello told him. ‘Too many high-jinx of the mind, and this happens.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware …’

  ‘Look,’ said Costello, trying blitz methods, ‘you’re pampered. You look pampered, you are pampered. You’re the eternal pious youth. Take a pull on yourself or I’ll boot you one, fair and square. You understand?’

  But Hurst was too jaded to take any offence, and vapidly accepted his absolution and sleeping-pill.

  Costello gave the long absolution with the special care and emphasis the words normally received only in a Hollywood piety epic. He wanted them to strike home.

  Egan scarcely waited for Edmonds to be out of the room before asking, ‘Could you come with me now, James? I really can’t afford to be away from my room for a second.’

  In the corridor, though, he took the time to draw Maitland into conference in the shadow of one if those terrible pilasters. Behind his head hung a barely perceptible painting of St Jerome in his cave. Its gloom seemed continuous with that of the passage where they stood, and Egan gave the essentially funny impression that he had emerged from the cave and was about to step back inside it. Yet Maitland did not for long feel like laughing.

  ‘Thank God you’re on hand, Maitland,’ Egan said. ‘The idea of turning to anyone else is impossible.’ He took a gulp of breath. ‘I have to be able to rely on your utter discretion and utter charity. And if you could see your way clear not to ask too many questions …’

  These demands touched Maitland. In many ways his emotions relating to friendship were still those of a blood-brothering ten-year-old.

  ‘I’m very flattered,’ he said so heartily that it sounded almost like sarcasm, though Egan did not notice. ‘I only hope I can help.’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ Egan told him, setting off again.

  Maitland followed, thinking that this was life, that it was human relationships that perfected man; that maudlin activity called helping out a friend.

  In Egan’s spruce room, a dark-haired woman lay flushed and stupefied on the bed. Her shoes were off, and the skirt of her elegant blue suit lay crookedly on her hips. Her long legs were in burgundy-coloured stockings, one knee torn. She was whimpering softly, and looked, if anything, beautiful.

  ‘What’s the trouble with her, Maurice?’

  ‘I did ask you about no questions,’ said Egan curtly.

  ‘I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Forgive me, James. I just didn’t want you to prejudge her.’

  ‘I’m not pre-judging her. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘She arrived in a taxi.’ Egan walked towards the bed and frowned down at the woman. ‘She’s a responsible type of woman, she really is. That’s why I asked you not to make any judgments. However, she arrived in a taxi, and that’s scandal enough. She found her own way up to this room and wasn’t intercepted.’

  With a peculiar and inexpert tenderness, he extended one hand towards the woman’s tumid face. His arm did not reach her. Not far away the students were singing, too late to be of aid to Egan, a hymn about God protecting their house from the evils of the night; and the high notes of the song plagued the woman’s ears. She rolled her head.

  ‘I can hardly bear to think what would have happened if Nolan had met her on the stairs. I find the idea of his treating her as some sort of she-devil a revolting one.’

  ‘He would simply have said, “My dear girl, don’t you know this house is reserved to the use of celibate males?”’

  ‘She’s such a good Catholic really. It’s the idea of people judging her that I find particularly hard to take.’

  Maitland said, ‘I’ve seen her somewhere, Maurice. Where would it have been?’

  It was this question which, against the laws of logic, preoccupied him, the woman’s face evoking something both strong and recent.

  ‘I think you must be wrong,’ said Egan. He began to work at tidying his desk, not as an evasion but because here was a start to many things that had now to be done. So he put his notes away in a crisp folder and recapped his ball-point as carefully as if it had been a Conway-Stewart, and returned two vagrant paper-clips to the small jar he kept sacred to them.

  ‘I know,’ Maitland said. ‘Costello pointed out someone like her at the Couraigne prize turn-out.’ His memory had worked so strenuous
ly on the girl’s face that only now that it had produced an answer did he begin to see how clumsily he was behaving.

  ‘That was her,’ Egan admitted without difficulty. ‘I suppose he told you something of her past. By that I mean her experience with the court.’

  ‘He mentioned something. I’m sorry, Maurice. I’m saying all the things you asked me not to.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ The defensor was now at his wardrobe, taking out his stock and collar. ‘I’m very grateful,’ he said, raising his chin and wrapping the collar round it. With Maitland at hand to receive orders, he was fast regaining competence. ‘I can’t very well expect you to come into my room and find Nora in that sad state and not ask questions.’

  ‘I’ve asked my last.’

  ‘Well, I’ll answer the one you want to ask.’ He swallowed and said in a lower voice, ‘She is – somehow, I don’t know how – the worse for liquor. She is not an habitual drinker.’

  Maitland could tell that by her complexion, which was fine-grained and unspoiled. She must have been perhaps thirty-two or three.

  While pulling on his small bum-freezing coat, Egan said, ‘We have to get her home safely. Please tell me to go to the other place if you wish to, James. Do you own any sports clothes?’

  He closed his eyes and, wincing and blind, adjusted the fall of his stock beneath the shoulders of his coat.

  ‘I’ve got a corduroy coat I used to wear in my flat in Louvain in the winters,’ Maitland told him, by way of a suggestion. ‘I’ve got a pair of denim trousers too.’

  ‘Oh my goodness!’

  ‘I agree. I’ve got an old pair of suede shoes that aren’t so inelegant.’

  Maitland felt boyish – being in on a secret went part of the way towards intoxicating him, and that his presence had helped to make Egan look efficient again filled him with gaiety.

  ‘Black trousers wouldn’t look so queer under a corduroy coat,’ Egan was considering. As an aid to reflection he closed his eyes again and pinched the bridge of his nose. In the chapel the precentor’s voice rose willow-thin and climbed the dark. For the silliest of reasons, mainly for his being party to Egan’s plans, the chant seemed as ineptly beautiful, in this absurd building, among the Couraigne-type paintings, as it had seemed when he was seventeen.