The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  It was Brother Arnold, the more resourceful of the pair, who solved that difficulty. He made out dockets, each valued for so many Hail Marys, and the loser had to pay up in prayers for the other man’s intention. It was an ingenious scheme and it worked admirably. At first Brother Arnold had a run of luck. But it wasn’t for nothing that Brother Michael had had the experience; he was too tough to make a fool of himself even over a few Hail Marys, and everything he did was carefully planned. Brother Arnold began by imitating him, but the moment he struck it lucky he began to gamble wildly. Brother Michael had often seen it happen on the Curragh and remembered the fate of those it had happened to. Men he had known with big houses and cars were now cadging drinks in the streets of Dublin. It struck him that God had been very good to Brother Arnold in calling him to a monastic life where he could do no harm to himself or to his family.

  And this, by the way, was quite uncalled for, because in the world Brother Arnold’s only weakness had been for a bottle of stout and the only trouble he had ever caused his family was the discomfort of having to live with a man so good and gentle, but Brother Michael was rather given to a distrust of human nature, the sort of man who goes looking for a moral in everything even when there is no moral in it. He tried to make Brother Arnold take an interest in the scientific side of betting but the man seemed to treat it all as a great joke. A flighty sort of fellow! He bet more and more wildly with that foolish good-natured grin on his face, and after a while Brother Michael found himself being owed a deuce of a lot of prayers, which his literal mind insisted on translating into big houses and cars. He didn’t like that either. It gave him scruples of conscience and finally turned him against betting altogether. He tried to get Brother Arnold to drop it, but as became an inventor, Brother Arnold only looked hurt and indignant, like a child who has been told to stop his play. Brother Michael had that weakness on his conscience too. It suggested that he was getting far too attached to Brother Arnold, as in fact he was. It would have been very difficult not to. There was something warm and friendly about the man which you couldn’t help liking.

  Then one day he went in to Brother Arnold and found him with a pack of cards in his hand. They were a very old pack which had more than served their time in some farmhouse, but Brother Arnold was looking at them in rapture. The very sight of them gave Brother Michael a turn. Brother Arnold made the gesture of dealing, half playfully, and the other shook his head sternly. Brother Arnold blushed and bit his lip but he persisted, seriously enough now. All the doubts Brother Michael had been having for weeks turned to conviction. This was the primrose path with a vengeance, one thing leading to another. Brother Arnold grinned and shuffled the deck; Brother Michael, biding his time, cut for deal and Brother Arnold won. He dealt two hands of five and showed the five of hearts as trump. He wanted to play twenty-five. Still waiting for a sign, Brother Michael looked at his own hand. His face grew grimmer. It was not the sort of sign he had expected but it was a sign all the same; four hearts in a bunch; the ace, jack, two other trumps, and the three of spades. An unbeatable hand. Was that luck? Was that coincidence or was it the Adversary himself, taking a hand and trying to draw him deeper in the mire?

  He liked to find a moral in things, and the moral in this was plain, though it went to his heart to admit it. He was a lonesome, melancholy man and the horses had meant a lot to him in his bad spells. At times it had seemed as if they were the only thing that kept him sane. How could he face twenty, perhaps thirty, years more of life, never knowing what horses were running or what jockeys were up – Derby Day, Punchestown, Leopardstown, and the Curragh all going by while he knew no more of them than if he were already dead?

  ‘O Lord,’ he thought bitterly, ‘a man gives up the whole world for You, his chance of a wife and kids, his home and his family, his friends and his job, and goes off to a bare mountain where he can’t even tell his troubles to the man alongside him; and still he keeps something back, some little thing to remind him of what he gave up. With me ’twas the horses and with this man ’twas the sup of beer, and I dare say there are fellows inside who have a bit of a girl’s hair hidden somewhere they can go and look at it now and again. I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whole world is in it, and bit by bit it grows on us again till the day You find us out.’

  Brother Arnold was waiting for him to play. He sighed and put his hand on the desk. Brother Arnold looked at it and at him. Brother Michael idly took away the spade and added the heart and still Brother Arnold couldn’t see. Then Brother Michael shook his head and pointed to the floor. Brother Arnold bit his lip again as though he were on the point of crying, then threw down his own hand and walked to the other end of the cow-house. Brother Michael left him so for a few moments. He could see the struggle going on in the man, could almost hear the Devil whisper in his ear that he (Brother Michael) was only an old woman – Brother Michael had heard that before; that life was long and a man might as well be dead and buried as not have some little innocent amusement – the sort of plausible whisper that put many a man on the gridiron. He knew, however hard it was now, that Brother Arnold would be grateful to him in the other world. ‘Brother Michael,’ he would say, ‘I don’t know what I’d ever have done without your example.’

  Then Brother Michael went up and touched him gently on the shoulder. He pointed to the bottle, the racing paper, and the cards. Brother Arnold fluttered his hands despairingly but he nodded. They gathered them up between them, the cards, the bottle, and the papers, hid them under their habits to avoid all occasion of scandal, and went off to confess their guilt to the Prior.

  ‘THE STAR THAT BIDS THE SHEPHERD FOLD’

  FATHER WHELAN the parish priest called on his curate, Father Devine, one evening in autumn. He was a tall stout man, broad-chested, with a head that did not detach itself too clearly from the rest of his body, bushes of wild hair in his ears and the rosy, innocent, good-natured face of a pious old country woman who made a living selling eggs. Devine was pale and worn-looking with a gentle, dreamy face that had the soft gleam of an old piano keyboard and wore pince-nez perched on his unhappy, insignificant little nose. He and his PP got on very well considering – considering, that is to say, that Devine, who didn’t know when he was well off, had fathered a dramatic society and an annual festival on old Whelan, who had to attend them both, and that whenever the curate’s name was mentioned the parish priest, a charitable old man, tapped his forehead and said poor Devine’s poor father was just the same. ‘A national teacher – sure, I knew him well, poor man!’ What Devine said about Whelan in that crucified drawl of his would take longer to tell, because for the most part it consisted of a repetition of the old man’s own words with just the faintest inflection that isolated and underlined their fatuity, so much so that even Devine himself, who didn’t often laugh, broke out into a little thin cackle. Devine was clever; he was lonely; he had a few good original water-colours and a bookcase full of works that were a constant source of wonder to Whelan. The old man stood in front of them now with his hat in his hands, lifting his warty old nose while his eyes held a wondering, hopeless, charitable look.

  ‘Nothing there in your line, I’m afraid,’ said Devine with his maddeningly respectful, deprecating air as if he really thought the schoolboy adventure stories which were the only thing his parish priest read were worth his consideration.

  ‘I see you have a lot of foreign books,’ said Whelan in a hollow far-away voice. ‘I suppose you know the languages well?’

  ‘Well enough to read,’ said Devine wearily, his handsome head on one side. ‘Why?’

  ‘That foreign boat at the jetties,’ said Whelan without looking round. ‘What is it? French or German? There’s terrible scandal about it.’

  ‘Is that so?’ drawled Devine, his dark eyebrows going up his narrow slanting forehead. ‘I didn’t hear.’

  ‘Oh, terrible,’ said Whelan mournfully, turning on him the full battery of his
round, rosy old face and shining spectacles. ‘There’s girls on it every night. Of course there’s nothing for us to do only rout them out, and it occurred to me that you’d be handy, speaking the language.’

  ‘I’m afraid my French would hardly rise to that,’ Devine said drily, but he didn’t like to go further with his refusal, for except for his old-womanly fits of virtue, Whelan was all right as parish priests go. Devine had had sad experience of how they could go. So he put on his faded old coat and clamped his battered hat down over his pince-nez, and the two of them went down the Main Street to the Post Office corner. It was deserted at that hour, except for two out-of-works like ornaments supporting either side of the door, and a few others hanging hypnotized over the bridge while they looked down at the foaming waters of the weir. The tall, fortress-like gable of an old Georgian house beyond the bridge caught all the light.

  ‘The dear knows,’ said Devine with a sigh, ‘you’d hardly wonder where they’d go.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the old parish priest, holding his head as though it were a flower-pot that might fall and break, ‘what do they want to go anywhere for? They’re gone mad on pleasure. That girl, Nora Fitzpatrick, is one of them, and her mother at home dying.’

  ‘That might possibly be her reason for going,’ said Devine, who knew what the Fitzpatricks’ house was like with six children and a mother dying of cancer.

  ‘Ah, sure the girl’s place is beside her mother,’ said old Whelan without rancour.

  They went down past the Technical School to the quays; these too deserted but for a local coal boat and the big foreign grain boat, rising high and dark over the edge of the quay on a full tide. The town was historically reputed to have been a great place – well, about a hundred years ago – and it had masses of grey stone warehouses all staring with lightless eyes across the river. There were two men standing against the wall of the mill, looking up at the grain boat, and as the priests appeared they came to join them on the water’s edge. One was a tall gaunt man with a long, sour, melancholy face which looked particularly hideous because it sported a youthful pink-and-white complexion and looked exactly like the face of an old hag heavily made up. He wore a wig and carried a rolled-up umbrella behind his back as though supporting his posterior. His name was Sullivan, the manager of a shop in town, and a man Devine hated. The other was a small, fat, Jewish-looking man with dark skin and hair and an excitable manner. His name was Sheridan. As they met by the boat, Devine looked up and saw two young foreign faces propped on their hands peering at him over the edge of the boat.

  ‘Well, boys?’ asked old Whelan.

  ‘There’s two of them on it at present, father,’ said Sullivan in a shrill, scolding voice. ‘Nora Fitzpatrick and Phillie O’Malley.’

  ‘Well, better go aboard and tell them come off,’ said Whelan tranquilly.

  ‘I wonder what our legal position is, father?’ said Sheridan, scowling at Whelan and Devine. ‘Have we any sort of locus standi?’

  ‘Oh, in the event of your being stabbed I think the fellow could be tried,’ said Devine with bland malice. ‘I don’t know of course whether your wife and children could claim compensation.’

  The malice was lost on the parish priest, who laid one hairy paw on Devine’s shoulder and the other on Sheridan’s to calm their fears. He exuded a feeling of pious confidence.

  ‘Don’t worry your heads about the legal position,’ he said paternally. ‘I’ll be answerable for that.’

  ‘Good enough, father,’ said Sheridan with a grim air, and pulling his hat over his eyes and putting his hands behind his back he strode up the gangway while Sullivan, clutching his umbrella against the small of his back, followed him. They went up to the two young sailors.

  ‘Two girls,’ said Sullivan in his high-pitched scolding voice. ‘We’re looking for two girls that came aboard about a half an hour ago.’

  Neither of the sailors stirred. One of them turned his eyes lazily and looked Sullivan up and down.

  ‘Not this boat,’ he said impudently. ‘That boat down there. Always girls on that.’

  Then Sheridan, who had glanced downstairs through an open doorway, saw something below.

  ‘Phillie O’Malley,’ he shouted in a raucous voice with one arm pointing towards the quay, ‘Father Whelan and Father Devine are here. They want a word with you.’

  ‘Tell her if she doesn’t come at once I’ll go and bring her off,’ shouted Father Whelan anxiously.

  ‘He says if you don’t come he’ll damn soon make you,’ shouted Sheridan.

  Nothing happened for a moment or two. Then a tall girl with a consumptive face came to the top of the gangway with a handkerchief pressed to her eyes. Devine couldn’t help a sudden pang of misery at the sight of her wretched finery, her cheap hat and bead necklace. He was angry and ashamed, and a cold fury of sarcasm rose up in him.

  ‘Come on, lads,’ said the parish priest encouragingly. ‘Where’s the second one?

  Sheridan, flushed with triumph, was just about to disappear downstairs when one of the sailors turned and flung him aside. Then he stood nonchalantly in the doorway, blocking the way. The parish priest’s face grew flushed and he only waited for the girl to leave the gangway before he went up himself. Devine paused to catch her hand and whisper a few words of comfort into her ear before he followed. It was a ridiculous scene: the sailor blocking the door; Sheridan blowing himself up till his dark Jewish face turned purple; the fat old parish priest with his head in the air, trembling with senile anger and astonishment.

  ‘Get out of the way at once,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, man,’ Devine said with quiet ferocity. ‘If you got a knife in your ribs, it would be your own doing. You don’t want to quarrel with these lads. You’ll have to talk to the captain.’ And then, bending forward with his eyebrows raised and his humble, deprecating manner he asked, ‘I wonder if you’d mind showing us the way to the captain’s cabin?’

  The sailor who was blocking the way looked at him for a moment and then nodded in the direction of the upper deck. Taking his parish priest’s arm and telling Sullivan and Sheridan not to follow them, Devine went up the ship. When they had gone a little way the second young sailor passed them out, knocked at a door and said something which Devine couldn’t catch. Then, with a scowl, he held the door open for them to go in. The captain was a middle-aged man with a heavily lined sallow face, close-cropped black hair and a black moustache. There was something Mediterranean about his air.

  ‘Bonsoir, messieurs,’ he said in a loud business-like tone.

  ‘Bonsoir, monsieur le capitaine,’ said Devine with the same plaintive, ingratiating manner as he bowed his head and raised his battered old hat. ‘Est-ce que nous vous dérangeons?’

  ‘Mais pas du tout; entrez, je vous prie,’ the captain said heartily, obviously relieved by the innocuousness of Devine’s manner. ‘Vous parlez français alors?’

  ‘Un peu, monsieur le capitaine,’ Devine said deprecatingly. ‘Vous savez, ici en Irlande on n’a pas souvent l’occasion.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said the captain, ‘I speak a little English too, so we will understand one another. Won’t you sit down?’

  ‘I wish my French were anything like as good as your English,’ said Devine as he took a chair.

  ‘You’ll have a drink with me,’ said the captain, expanding to the flattery of words and tone. ‘Some brandy, eh?’

  ‘I’d be delighted, of course,’ said Devine regretfully, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve a favour to ask of you first.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly,’ agreed the captain enthusiastically. ‘Anything you like. Have a cigar?’

  ‘Never smoke them,’ said old Whelan in a dull stubborn voice, looking at the cigar-case and then looking away; and to mask his rudeness Devine, who never smoked them either, took one and lit it.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better explain who we are,’ he said, sitting back, his head on one side, his long delicate hands hanging over the arm of the chair. ‘This i
s Father Whelan, who is the parish priest of the town. My name is Devine and I’m the curate.’

  ‘And my name,’ said the captain proudly, ‘is Platon Demarrais. I bet you never heard before of a fellow called Platon?’

  ‘I can’t say I did,’ said Devine mildly. ‘Any relation to the philosopher?’

  ‘The very man!’ exclaimed the captain, holding up his cigar. ‘And I have two brothers, Zenon and Plotin.’

  ‘Really?’ exclaimed Devine. ‘What an intellectual family you are!’

  ‘My father was a school-teacher,’ said the captain. ‘He called us that to annoy the priest. He was anti-clerical.’

  ‘That’s scarcely peculiar to teachers in France,’ said Devine drily. ‘My own father was a school-teacher, but I’m afraid he never got to the point of calling me Plato.… But about this business of ours. There’s a girl called Nora Fitzpatrick on the ship, fooling with the sailors, I suppose. She’s one of Father Whelan’s parishioners and we’d be very grateful if you could see your way to have her put off.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, father,’ said Whelan, raising his stubborn old peasant’s head and quelling fraternization with a glance. ‘I don’t see why I should be grateful to any man for doing what ’tis his moral duty to do.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d better explain your errand yourself, Father Whelan,’ said Devine with an abnegation not far removed from waspishness.

  ‘I think so, Father Devine,’ said Whelan stubbornly. ‘That girl, Captain Whatever-your-name-is,’ he went on in a slow voice, ‘has no business to be on your ship at all. It is no place for a young unmarried girl to be at this hour of night.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the captain uneasily, looking at Devine. ‘Is this girl a relative of yours?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Whelan. ‘She is nothing whatever to me.’

  ‘Then I don’t see what you want her for,’ said the captain.