Three Cheers for the Paraclete

by Thomas Keneally

  ‘There’s a rumour you weren’t there at the vote.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Maitland could see that Edmonds half-considered the absence as a merely secondary form of treachery.

  ‘What keeps you here, doctor?’

  ‘In this college?’

  ‘In the cloth.’

  ‘Listen, if I had gone to the meeting I would have spoken up for you. And that would have merely confirmed them in their intentions. They would have rejected you with even greater certainty.’

  ‘Why do you stay, though?’

  Maitland wound up his alarm clock which had stopped two days before at some insignificant hour.

  ‘It’s my life.’

  ‘Is it?’ Edmonds doubted that.

  ‘I’m an institutional being. I have been from childhood. My one hope is to wait for my institution to re-establish some contact with the … living truth again, that’s all. Some individuals – mystics, prophets, saints – outgrow institutions. But I never will, unless I become a mystic or prophet or saint. And there aren’t any indications.’ He laughed. ‘I suppose you think it’s a funny thing that I call myself an institutional being. After all the trouble I’ve caused here.’

  Edmonds said, ‘I know what you mean.’ But, immune now, he dared to say, ‘You’re a waste, though.’

  Maitland shook the reawakened clock and agreed negligently. ‘Almost entirely. But I have to wait for the revelation within this framework. I wouldn’t be any less of a waste anywhere else.’ He set the clock down. That much was a small triumph. He’d felt sure it was broken. ‘I have to wait and see.’

  ‘And what do you suppose you’ll see? Costello made an archbishop?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that will happen. Perhaps, though, I’m waiting to be endowed with the type of certainty that Costello has. But that won’t happen either.’

  Edmonds nodded. He was no longer as recklessly bitter as he had been when he first walked in. ‘Just the same,’ he said, ‘you and I … we’ve been ghosts here, we’ve scarcely existed. And no one is bound to remain a ghost.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maitland said, ‘we’ve been pallid beings. We’ve nothing to set up against their dogmas. And I find I can’t even resent them effectively. I can be angry, I have been. But it doesn’t last. I’m prejudiced against myself in that way. I judge them good because they’re sure. I feel that being sure is a superior moral state, the sort of state a person should be relatively humble in front of.’

  ‘We all feel that way. It’s the upbringing.’

  At the sink for a glass of water, Maitland was moved to Antarctic imagery. ‘I’m like Shackleton caught in the pack-ice. All I can do is wait for a lead, an indication. Sometimes I almost believe that I’ll be damned for not going into a South American slum and sitting down merely to share death with the people. But there’s never a strong enough indication in that direction.’

  ‘And why a South American slum? There are pretty presentable half-caste slums within drive of most of our towns. You can share things somewhat less glorious than death in those places.’

  ‘Long live the financial columnist,’ Maitland laughed. ‘The cure for romance.’

  ‘Besides, you can’t sit down in any hovel. Because you’re wed to a bishop and bound by canon law not to be absent from your parish.’

  ‘Ah, the administrative ironies of the Church! In any case, I’ve a whale of a suspicion that a man must find his way within his own civilization. That it’s no use going off imposing your destiny in alien places.’

  Edmonds said, ‘What about Xavier? What about Albert Schweitzer?’

  ‘I don’t know them,’ Maitland told him arbitrarily.

  They shook hands, making doomed promises to meet at a later date.

  It was the safer of two unsafe courses to keep Egan’s secret limited to Egan, Egan’s American, the Supreme Pontiff, and himself, Maitland.

  What Maitland went to Nolan for was to offer to pay for some of Hurst’s medical expenses. Hurst was now in what Maitland’s parents used to call a nerve hospital. Under a strong drug that smelt like ether, he had tossed and spoken of nothing but the evils of inordinate castration, had sweated, railed, begged God, spoken of suicide as of a safe harbour, repented of this, begged God again. All other areas of the young cleric slept, except these that accused, were barbarous, or feared God. Whose God?

  No matter whose. Hurst would be in hospital for months.

  Maitland made the offer. He was especially anxious that his wish to save the archdiocese an expensive medical bill should not be misread as an attempt at buying a reprieve for the remainder of the year. He said contentiously, ‘I feel I have a large but not exclusive part in Hurst’s present state.’

  ‘I understand that your motives are of the highest order, James,’ the monsignor conceded. ‘But I can’t allow it.’

  ‘Can’t allow?’

  Maitland decided that Nolan hadn’t understood the offer. Or was he now such a pariah in the archdiocese that his money could not be accepted by an organization which, to be frank, would accept nearly anybody’s money? He explained the proposal once more and saw the tenderness, traditional to the face, drain like a tide. Maitland stared at the two hard nodules of cheek-bones left high and dry by the old man’s anger.

  ‘It’s no use trying to argue it, James. Your offer is against policy. If you or any of us paid for Hurst, the family of every young man who fell sick here would expect payment from us.’

  Maitland squinted from Nolan to the desk, to the typewriter advertised and caressed by nubile blondes in international magazines.

  ‘Do you mean the archdiocese does not intend to pay for Hurst’s care?’

  ‘James, the archdiocese has problems of its own.’

  ‘Hurst is the archdiocese’s problem.’

  ‘Look, James, thinking out of tune with the rest of us is a speciality of yours. The truth is that Hurst’s ecclesiastical education is at an end through no fault of ours, or should I say, through no fault of the organization as a whole. The archdiocese cannot pay. And if it doesn’t, would you expect individual members of the staff to do so?’

  ‘Yes. Though I suppose I’m old-fashioned.’

  Nolan said slowly. ‘Let me assure you, James, that you are not anything like old-fashioned.’

  ‘It seems I’ve come to the wrong agency.’

  ‘Yes. And, James, I am not a superior in the monastic sense. You are not bound to obey me as a monk obeys his abbot. But let me warn you that if you do contribute to Hurst, you are setting a dangerous precedent for the members of the staff, who –’

  ‘Have enough on their hands,’ supplied Maitland, ‘buying six-cylinder cars, Gregory Peck pontificals and typewriters favoured by blondes.’

  Nolan’s hand strayed onto the keyboard of the impugned machine.

  ‘Besides,’ Maitland added, fairly alight, ‘I think you underestimate the pride of people.’

  ‘I don’t think I can devote any more time to you, James,’ Nolan said.

  Not being a monk, and having the contempt of the young for that middle-aged fear of setting precedents, Maitland found Hurst’s address and wrote a letter to his family. He wrote, ‘Every priest is a man who believes, one way or another, in retribution. I am partly to blame, by neglect, for your son’s present state, and therefore face the retribution. If you could afford me the luxury of forgiving me and accepting this contribution …’ He knew that if they were anything like his father there was no way of convincing them that they shouldn’t hurl it back in his face.

  Within a week, a polite note came by registered mail setting down the family’s gratitude but returning the four hundred dollars. He thought then, for a crazed second, that he might contact some famed hotel, might hire a reception room called ‘Conquistador’ or ‘Alhambra’ and there gather the outsiders he had met that year, his cousins Brendan and Grete, Egan, Hurst, Sister Martin, Joe Quinlan and Morna, even Edmonds and Nolan’s sister, Mrs Clark. Yet the next day, feeli
ng defeat in every bone, he was at the bank to re-deposit his money.

  He climbed the hill home, thinking warmly of his notebooks.

  Costello, the vessel of election, beamed throughout June. He had his ring and pectoral cross now. These things were shown off of an evening in the staff parlour, where Maitland came each night to drink one cup of coffee. The mere and relentless courtesy of the other priests, who all knew that he was culpable over Hurst – had even admitted so – could not quench him. What came close to quenching Maitland were the more and more thinly disguised spasms of hope in which Egan spent whatever days were not given over to resentment – resentment of those who would be sure in the future to question his wisdom and his motives. Within the defensor, extremes were developing of such a size as made it wholly necessary and wholly impossible to deflate him.

  ‘Nora is very well, and very hopeful,’ Egan would say on a typical morning of hope. ‘She is making a novena for the success of our petition. That rather destroys your criticism, James.’

  ‘I made no criticism,’ Maitland would say, putting down his pen, for he would not get anything done for some time. ‘I merely suggested a possibility.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Egan would chuckle. ‘You’re forgiven.’

  ‘Maurice, what are you going to do with yourself? That’s what I can’t help asking.’

  This would make no mark on Egan’s enamelled visions.

  ‘I don’t know, exactly. I could manage one of the hotels.’ He would laugh and Maitland couldn’t help but laugh too at the vision of Egan controlling spreeing fettlers in the saloon bar. ‘I might take an interest in grazing.’ Maitland would not give room to the barbarous urge to laugh a second time. But Egan, down for the wool sales in big sheepman’s hat and the best of tweeds (from which the Sacred Thirst badge would be removed) also tickled the fancy.

  Then Maitland, wriggling in his seat and shaking his long head, would be bound to ask Egan not to be so sanguine, and Egan would take it as a judgment and rush to his room, where some days, curiously weakened and hollowed, he would sleep as much as fourteen hours. The staff guessed uncertainly that he was sickening for one of those sane diseases which are the only ones canon lawyers are prone to. Maitland, keeping a close watch, found that his friend had taken to two unhabitual things – napping in the daytime – napping in the daytime in devoutly creased shirt and black suit-trousers.

  Always he would return to speak with Maitland in the end, and would say with the sham jauntiness of the man just managing to conceal seasickness, ‘I know you have no sympathy for my little expedient, James. However, I want you to know that I will never cease to have a special regard …’

  So, trapped in yet another man’s incipient madness, Maitland even considered handing his friend into Nolan’s care. It was the equivalent of choosing a short death for lingering kith. But Egan was a choice lambkin, a chancery priest; and Nolan would take a narrow view, infect His Grace with it, have Egan doing penance in a monastery and ending in some ne plus ultra parish.

  18

  ONE MIDDAY, AT the dinner-table, Egan handed Maitland a note. It said, ‘Don’t you dare try to escape via a lavatory after this meal. As you can imagine, I must see you. I shall wait in my room as I prefer the uncluttered surroundings. I anticipate you will not be such a coward as to avoid this interview.’

  It was the sort of note that comes to Holmes in Baker Street during mist, fog or downpour, and James looked up smiling. He saw that Egan merely sat taking savage mouthfuls of soup, swallowing it in retaliation. Soon the entire staff would begin to notice clefts in the man whose face and body looked like a fair attempt at a formula for sanity but who left the table after half a plateful of vegetable soup.

  Maitland, too, left before dessert. He might have time to deal with Egan and still catch the quarter-to-two boat. Over the House of Studies the sky was closing in, all the windows full of Irish saints and Christian symbols had lost their radiance and gone the gross colours of boiled lollies. On the stairs where he and Egan had toted Nora, the gloom was still thick enough for any escapade.

  Striding his room from desk to window, Egan had become out of tune with the rational pastel walls and curtains genial as chance acquaintance. He said, immediately Maitland entered, ‘If I didn’t mention that that business about the letter was confidential, Dr Maitland, it was only because I thought you might realize that much for yourself.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Maitland.

  ‘Oh? Did you have a late growth of conscience then? People such as Monsignor Nolan will be gratified to know.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Maurice.’

  ‘His Grace has asked me to go into retreat for ten days at some friary – to give sober consideration to the requests I made of His Holiness.’

  ‘My God.’

  Egan stood as still as a priest arrived at the turning-point of a rite. He said fervently, ‘I only hope it was a matter of conscience with you, James, and not simply malice …’

  ‘You mean you consider that –’

  Egan latched both his fists onto the desk, and bellowed, ‘Don’t temporize! I am willing to believe that it was a matter of conscience with you, because your conscience was outraged from the start by the very thought. If you’re not malicious, you’re a … bloody fool. But Nolan has suspected that much from the start. No mean judge of men, Nolan.’

  ‘I told nobody,’ Maitland said.

  ‘Who then? The Holy Father? My friend wouldn’t have had time to see him as yet. Perhaps Nora did.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Maitland assented.

  Egan went, making noises of disgust, to the curtains and peered illusively at the grey face of the chapel. ‘Just allow me to say,’ he begged in a wafer of a voice, ‘before you go, that with full composure and deliberate malice – you see, I don’t fear to announce these things aloud – I intend to give them your secret. I want you to know what it is to have to explain the unexplainable to people such as His Grace.’

  This is what it is to be between Gods, thought Maitland, between the defined, tabbed and codified God of corporations and the indefinable, untabbed, uncodified God of Sister Martin. You lose friends and don’t care, you lose secrets without fearing the loss, and are accused without its interesting you. Because accusation cannot make you feel any more estranged than you already are.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ he said for the sake of form, because Egan was expending so much on the interview that it would have been unfair not to show some vigour. ‘If you want to tell Nolan or His Grace anything I told you in confidence, feel free. But I can’t imagine you behaving out of character to that extent.’

  ‘Wait and see!’

  ‘Secondly, you should consider the possibility of Nora’s being the culprit.’

  ‘When I was about fifteen I found half the senior football team smoking in the dressing-sheds. I was appalled to find the flower of the physical side of the school puffing weed. But worse still, the captain glowered at me and yelled, “Crap off!” I am indebted to that forgotten hero for enriching my grasp of the language, because I can’t put it better than “Crap off, Maitland!” And have your explanations ready for His Grace.’

  All the way downhill Maitland could see the moored ferry at the pier and was engrossed in catching it. Going on short sprints and pulling up broken-gaitedly whenever his breath gave, he wondered how a man could be damned or saved in any traditional sense when, on a given afternoon, the catching of the quarter-to-two ferry could seem the ultimate, while a book of notes could omit a radiance like a divine person.

  He missed the ferry, none the less.

  Now he was sobered by the poor alternatives the half-hour wait offered him. He could buy an American malted from a sad Greek or stroll along the wintering fun parlours or see sluggish monsters in the aquarium. None of this emitted a radiance like a divine person. He had time now and space in which to see the danger. They would force him out of that great scandalous body, that infamous but mystical corporation they cal
led the Church. And, convinced on the infamy, unaware of the mystery, he would find it easy to oblige and go. The question was whether a man was justified in leaving because he didn’t care. Was that an adequate or human motive? To go on the basis of a vacancy – because he didn’t care and Costello and Nolan did? If ever he proceeded to take a wife and teach in good Protestant schools, it would need to be by his own decision, not by command of those two odious Brahmins.

  He found a telephone. It was answered by some student.

  ‘Yes, doctor. He’s in the president’s office.’

  ‘Tell him I said he must come to the phone on the instant. Please. Must. An emergency.’

  There was a silence of some minutes before anyone came again.

  ‘James. Dr Costello here. The president would like you to come home. Immediately.’

  ‘Home? What do you mean, home?’

  ‘Home! Unless you have to dine with your publishers.’

  ‘No. But I’ll be home towards nine.’

  ‘Now, James, that’s hardly immediately. This is of massive importance –’

  ‘I know. You want to make me Dean of Studies. But I’ll be home, as you so fetchingly call it, at nine. Also, go gently with Egan.’

  He said good-bye and hung up. In fact he wanted vengeance, was tempted to jab at the stanchions that held the pier together.

  He came back with lovers and the crapulous in the half-past-eight boat.

  Egan could be seen straying up and down the cold pier, like an Angus Wilson clergyman with an eye out for little boys. When he saw Maitland he started to weep.

  ‘You must forgive me,’ he gurgled.

  ‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’ Maitland said, a little too reminiscently of some big-hearted American hero taking his joys and betrayals with half a pint of bourbon.

  Egan pressed into his hands a blue airmail letter. With the contrariness of such things, it presented its finish first. Maitland saw, ‘Your brother in Christ the King, Henry.’