The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  O’Connor seems rarely, if ever, to have defined himself in religious terms. Was he a reluctant, sceptical believer? Possibly. A questioning agnostic? Probably. He had a great deal to say about the Catholic Church, much of it critical; but in his writing life he was brother in God to the believer and the disbeliever alike. Nor did he bring any dogmatism, let alone propagandizing, to his depiction of the individual priests who people his stories. They are not, to be sure, the twinkly, gentle, overarchingly wise fellows who inhabit sentimental Catholic fiction; they tend to be bristly, fierce, manipulative. Some are lonely voices, despairingly consumed by the life they have chosen; some are social voices, worldly, drink-loving, temptable. They are also, at times, analogues of the writer:

  The attraction of the religious life for the story-teller is overpowering. It is the attraction of a sort of life lived, or seeking to be lived, by standards other than those of this world, one which, in fact, resembles that of the artist. The good priest, like the good artist, needs human rewards, but no human reward can ever satisfy him.

  From LEINSTER, MUNSTER AND CONNAUGHT – MONASTERY

  THE ROAD runs through it [Cappoquin] up the mountain to the modern Cistercian monastery of Melleray, architecturally to be clearly distinguished from its mediaeval prototype, for it sprawls there on the mountainside, as unsightly as any other modern Irish ecclesiastical building. In my youth Melleray used to be the place where drunks were sent for a yearly cure, but now I believe the distinction has passed to the other Cistercian monastery of Mount St Joseph, near Roscrea. There is a wayside pub half-way up, where these unfortunates halted to undo a little of the monks’ cure. The stories they tell about them are endless. One (which was the basis of a story of my own, called ‘Song without Words’) was of an English clerical student who was sent there by his bishop to study a little Latin. The life didn’t suit him at all, and he complained to the abbot that he was feeling unwell for lack of exercise. Instead of allowing him to take a daily walk to the pub, the abbot suggested that he might give himself some exercise by taking a hand in the stables. At first the English student didn’t at all appreciate the abbot’s sense of humour, until he discovered that an outside carrier called at the stables and could be persuaded to leave a quart bottle of beer in hiding there for a small consideration. He was then perfectly happy until he found his bottle emptied for several mornings running. One of the monks had nosed out his hiding-hole and was taking advantage of the blessing God had sent him. At this point the English student decided that he knew enough Latin and returned home.

  Another English priest went there after a nervous upset and remained for months, enchanted by its solitude and peace. But he still continued to have sleepless nights and practised shadow-boxing to weary himself. One night a poor chronic from Dublin arrived in the last stages of intoxication and was put to bed. The thirst woke him. He went to the washstand and emptied the carafe. As this failed to satisfy him, he started on the water-jug and finished that. In the early hours of the morning he found himself still mad with thirst and with nothing to drink, so he took the water-jug and set off in search of a bathroom. In the corridor outside his cell he saw the English priest shadow-boxing. At first he thought it must be he who had the d.t.’s, but after watching the apparition for several minutes decided it must be the other man.

  ‘How – how long are you here for, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been here six months,’ said the apparition.

  ‘Jasus!’ said the chronic.

  I am sorry it is losing that old distinction. It was part of its quality. Now the place of the drunks is taken by pilgrims from all over Ireland. There were charabancs of them outside the guest-house when I visited it last. The apartments weren’t very clean and the food which was served out by the guest-master and another monk wasn’t very good, but it probably is not fair to judge it by so busy a day. The gaiety of the monks themselves made up for a lot. After dinner we men were taken on a conducted tour of the monastery, the women being left behind. They are allowed to eat in the guest-house; there is even an apartment labelled ‘Ladies’ Wash-hand and Toilet Room’, but if they wish to stay they must go and sleep at a safe distance. They are not allowed within the monastery precincts. There seemed to be no vocations among the party which I accompanied through the bare dormitories, the refectory with the name-plates on the tables, the hall with its labelled hangers, where silent monks passed us with bowed heads.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ asked the pleasant young monk who acted as guide.

  ‘Cripes, brother,’ said one young man in a horrified tone, ‘I think ’tis awful!’

  I noticed that there were no dissenting voices. Afterwards I stayed for Compline in the ugly little chapel with its screen decorated with pictures of the Blessed Virgin, and was bitterly disappointed with the chant. No doubt it was all in a very good tradition, but I don’t like traditions which scamper through the Gregorian Credo. I want to hear it thundered out as though someone believed in it. Above all, in the gallery of that horrid little church, with the dusk falling on the desolate mountainside behind me, and behind the screen, invisible, those men who had abandoned the world, I felt the Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum should at least suggest that they had something to look forward to.

  But that is only a superficial view, and even as a superficial view it is not without impressiveness. Looking deeper, you see what Melleray means to Ireland. In its extremest form it is an expression of the conflict between the soul and the world, and every ugly stone of it is a story, tragic or comic. As on any other battlefield, comedy exists in its own right, and nobody enjoys it more than the monks themselves. I once knew two men in Cork who decided to leave the world for ever and become Cistercian monks. They left their comfortable jobs and disposed of their worldly goods. Their male relatives drove them down. The occasion was grave, and the gravity of it necessitated a little alcoholic encouragement. After all, it is not every day that a chap leaves the world for ever. The more they discussed it, the more encouragement they found they needed, and they were finally presented to the novice-master in the monastery in no state to care where they were. Later they returned to the jobs they had left and took up their worldly lives again. That incident just misses tragedy, but it is a real tragedy when a monk who has been for years in the order leaves it. Clerics in general who have all their lives been accustomed to obedience are badly fitted to face the world, and a worse training for the world than a Cistercian monastery affords is inconceivable. For the most part the comedy confines itself to those romantic spirits who imagine themselves equipped for so gruelling a life. One, who got the horrors on the first evening, slipped out of a window during the night, stole a suit of overalls belonging to a painter employed in the monastery, and then raced for dear life over the mountains. That, I fancy, would be my own reaction.

  But those who get over their horror learn to love the life, and their piety is of an altogether different type from that of more worldly orders. Like soldiers who themselves have been tested so far that they become almost incapable of criticizing one another, they have a large charity which approaches worldliness in everything but its source.

  SONG WITHOUT WORDS

  EVEN IF there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn’t be happy. One of them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.

  I am not, of course, suggesting that either Brother Arnold or Brother Michael was a saint. In private life Brother Arnold was a postman, but as he had a great name as a cattle doctor they had put him in charge of the monastery cows. He had the sort of face you would expect to see advertising somebody’s tobacco; a big, innocent, contented face with a pair of blue eyes that were always twinkling. According to the rule he was supposed to look sedate and go about in a composed and measured way, but he could not keep his eyes downcast for any length of time and wherever his eyes glanced they twinkled, and his hands slipped out of his long white sleeves and dropped some
remark in sign language. Most of the monks were good at the deaf and dumb language; it was their way of getting round the rule of silence, and it was remarkable how much information they managed to pick up and pass on.

  Now, one day it happened that Brother Arnold was looking for a bottle of castor oil and he remembered that he had lent it to Brother Michael, who was in charge of the stables. Brother Michael was a man he did not get on too well with; a dour, dull sort of man who kept to himself. He was a man of no great appearance, with a mournful wizened little face and a pair of weak red-rimmed eyes – for all the world the sort of man who, if you shaved off his beard, clapped a bowler hat on his head and a cigarette in his mouth, would need no other reference to get a job in a stable.

  There was no sign of him about the stable yard, but this was only natural because he would not be wanted till the other monks returned from the fields, so Brother Arnold pushed in the stable door to look for the bottle himself. He did not see the bottle, but he saw something which made him wish he had not come. Brother Michael was hiding in one of the horse-boxes; standing against the partition with something hidden behind his back and wearing the look of a little boy who has been caught at the jam. Something told Brother Arnold that at that moment he was the most unwelcome man in the world. He grew red, waved his hand to indicate that he did not wish to be involved, and returned to his own quarters.

  It came as a shock to him. It was plain enough that Brother Michael was up to some shady business, and Brother Arnold could not help wondering what it was. It was funny, he had noticed the same thing when he was in the world; it was always the quiet, sneaky fellows who were up to mischief. In chapel he looked at Brother Michael and got the impression that Brother Michael was looking at him, a furtive look to make sure he would not be noticed. Next day when they met in the yard he caught Brother Michael glancing at him and gave back a cold look and a nod.

  The following day Brother Michael beckoned him to come over to the stables as though one of the horses was sick. Brother Arnold knew it wasn’t that; he knew he was about to be given some sort of explanation and was curious to know what it would be. He was an inquisitive man; he knew it, and blamed himself a lot for it.

  Brother Michael closed the door carefully after him and then leaned back against the jamb of the door with his legs crossed and his hands behind his back, a foxy pose. Then he nodded in the direction of the horse-box where Brother Arnold had almost caught him in the act, and raised his brows inquiringly. Brother Arnold nodded gravely. It was not an occasion he was likely to forget. Then Brother Michael put his hand up his sleeve and held out a folded newspaper. Brother Arnold shrugged his shoulders as though to say the matter had nothing to do with him, but the other man nodded and continued to press the newspaper on him.

  He opened it without any great curiosity, thinking it might be some local paper Brother Michael smuggled in for the sake of the news from home and was now offering as the explanation of his own furtive behaviour. He glanced at the name and then a great light broke on him. His whole face lit up as though an electric torch had been switched on behind, and finally he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. Brother Michael did not laugh but gave a dry little cackle which was as near as he ever got to laughing. The name of the paper was The Irish Racing News.

  Now that the worst was over Brother Michael grew more relaxed. He pointed to a heading about the Curragh and then at himself. Brother Arnold shook his head, glancing at him expectantly as though he were hoping for another laugh. Brother Michael scratched his head for some indication of what he meant. He was a slow-witted man and had never been good at the sign talk. Then he picked up the sweeping brush and straddled it. He pulled up his skirts, stretched out his left hand holding the handle of the brush, and with his right began flogging the air behind him, a grim look on his leathery little face. Inquiringly he looked again and Brother Arnold nodded excitedly and put his thumbs up to show he understood. He saw now that the real reason Brother Michael had behaved so queerly was that he read racing papers on the sly and he did so because in private life he had been a jockey on the Curragh.

  He was still laughing like mad, his blue eyes dancing, wishing only for an audience to tell it to, and then he suddenly remembered all the things he had thought about Brother Michael and bowed his head and beat his breast byway of asking pardon. Then he glanced at the paper again. A mischievous twinkle came into his eyes and he pointed the paper at himself. Brother Michael pointed back, a bit puzzled. Brother Arnold chuckled and stowed the paper up his sleeve. Then Brother Michael winked and gave the thumbs-up sign. In that slow cautious way of his he went down the stable and reached to the top of the wall where the roof sloped down on it. This, it seemed, was his hiding-hole. He took down several more papers and gave them to Brother Arnold.

  For the rest of the day Brother Arnold was in the highest spirits. He winked and smiled at everyone till they all wondered what the joke was. He still pined for an audience. All that evening and long after he had retired to his cubicle he rubbed his hands and giggled with delight whenever he thought of it; it was like a window let into his loneliness; it gave him a warm, mellow feeling, as though his heart had expanded to embrace all humanity.

  It was not until the following day that he had a chance of looking at the papers himself. He spread them on a rough desk under a feeble electric light bulb high in the roof. It was four years since he had seen a paper of any sort, and then it was only a scrap of local newspaper which one of the carters had brought wrapped about a bit of bread and butter. But Brother Arnold had palmed it, hidden it in his desk, and studied it as if it were a bit of a lost Greek play. He had never known until then the modern appetite for words – printed words, regardless of their meaning. This was merely a County Council wrangle about the appointment of seven warble-fly inspectors, but by the time he was done with it he knew it by heart.

  So he did not just glance at the racing papers as a man would in the train to pass the time. He nearly ate them. Blessed words like fragments of tunes coming to him out of a past life; paddocks and point-to-points and two-year-olds, and again he was in the middle of a racecourse crowd on a spring day with silver streamers of light floating down the sky like heavenly bunting. He had only to close his eyes and he could see the refreshment tent again with the golden light leaking like spilt honey through the rents in the canvas, and the girl he had been in love with sitting on an upturned lemonade box. ‘Ah, Paddy,’ she had said, ‘sure there’s bound to be racing in heaven!’ She was fast, too fast for Brother Arnold, who was a steady-going fellow and had never got over the shock of discovering that all the time she had been running another man. But now all he could remember of her was her smile and the tone of her voice as she spoke the words which kept running through his head, and afterwards whenever his eyes met Brother Michael’s he longed to give him a hearty slap on the back and say: ‘Michael, boy, there’s bound to be racing in heaven.’ Then he grinned and Brother Michael, though he didn’t hear the words or the tone of voice, without once losing his casual melancholy air, replied with a wall-faced flicker of the horny eyelid, a tick-tack man’s signal, a real, expressionless, horsy look of complete understanding.

  One day Brother Michael brought in a few papers. On one he pointed to the horses he had marked, on the other to the horses who had won. He showed no signs of his jubilation. He just winked, a leathery sort of wink, and Brother Arnold gaped as he saw the list of winners. It filled him with wonder and pride to think that when so many rich and clever people had lost, a simple little monk living hundreds of miles away could work it all out. The more he thought of it the more excited he grew. For one wild moment he felt it might be his duty to tell the Abbot, so that the monastery could have the full advantage of Brother Michael’s intellect, but he realized that it wouldn’t do. Even if Brother Michael could restore the whole abbey from top to bottom with his winnings, the ecclesiastical authorities would disapprove of it. But more than ever he felt the need of an audience.
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  He went to the door, reached up his long arm, and took down a loose stone from the wall above it. Brother Michael shook his head several times to indicate how impressed he was by Brother Arnold’s ingenuity. Brother Arnold grinned. Then he took down a bottle and handed it to Brother Michael. The ex-jockey gave him a questioning look as though he were wondering if this wasn’t cattle-medicine; his face did not change but he took out the cork and sniffed. Still his face did not change. All at once he went to the door, gave a quick glance up and a quick glance down and then raised the bottle to his lips. He reddened and coughed; it was good beer and he wasn’t used to it. A shudder as of delight went through him and his little eyes grew moist as he watched Brother Arnold’s throttle working on well-oiled hinges. The big man put the bottle back in its hiding-place and indicated by signs that Brother Michael could go there himself whenever he wanted and have a drink. Brother Michael shook his head doubtfully, but Brother Arnold nodded earnestly. His fingers moved like lightning while he explained how a farmer whose cow he had cured had it left in for him every week.

  The two men were now fast friends. They no longer had any secrets from one another. Each knew the full extent of the other’s little weakness and liked him the more for it. Though they couldn’t speak to one another they sought out one another’s company and whenever other things failed they merely smiled. Brother Arnold felt happier than he had felt for years. Brother Michael’s successes made him want to try his hand, and whenever Brother Michael gave him a racing paper with his own selections marked, Brother Arnold gave it back with his, and they waited impatiently till the results turned up three or four days late. It was also a new lease of life to Brother Michael, for what comfort is it to a man if he has all the winners when not a soul in the world can ever know whether he has or not. He felt now that if only he could have a bob each way on a horse he would ask no more of life.