‘How many people know about this?’
‘Begod, my lord, by this time I think you might say ’twas common property,’ said Tom with a laugh.
The Bishop did not laugh. ‘I was afraid of that,’ he said. ‘What do they think of it?’
‘Well, of course, they all have a great regard for you,’ Tim replied, in some embarrassment.
‘I’m sure of that,’ the Bishop said without a hint of irony. ‘They have so much regard for me that they don’t care if I turn my house into a smuggler’s den. They didn’t suggest what I might be doing with the Cathedral?’
Tim saw that the Bishop was more cut up than he affected to be.
‘Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ he said anxiously.
‘I’m not worrying. What will they do to Nellie?’
‘Oh, she’ll get the jail,’ said Tim. ‘As well as a bloody big fine that’ll be worse to her.’
‘A fine? What sort of a fine?’
‘That will be calculated on the value of the contraband,’ said Tim. ‘But if you ask me quietly, ’twill run well into the thousands.’
‘Into the thousands?’ the Bishop asked in alarm. ‘But where would either of us get that sort of money, boy?’
‘You may be damn full sure she has it,’ Tim said grimly.
‘Nellie?’
‘Aye, and more along with it,’ said Tim.
‘For God’s sake!’ the Bishop exclaimed softly. He had put away his glass, and his long, fine fingers were intertwined. Then he gave a little snort that might have passed for laughter. ‘And me thinking she was an old fool! Which of us was the fool? I wonder. After this, they’ll be saying I’m not able to look after myself. They’ll be putting in a coadjutor over me, as sure as you’re there!’
‘They wouldn’t do that?’ Tim asked in astonishment. It had never occurred to him before that there might be anybody who could interfere with a bishop.
‘Oh, indeed they would,’ the Bishop said, almost with enjoyment. ‘And I wouldn’t mind that itself if only they’d leave me my housekeeper. The jail won’t take much out of her, but ‘twill kill me. At my age I’m not going to be able to find another woman to look after me the way she does. Unless they’d let me go to jail along with her.’
Tim was an emotional young man, and he could hardly contemplate the personal problems that the Bishop set up in that casual way of his.
‘There’s nobody in this place would do anything to upset you,’ he said, growing red. ‘I’m sure they’ll be well satisfied if she paid the fine, without sending her to jail. The only thing is, from my point of view, could you control her?’
‘I could do nothing of the kind,’ the Bishop replied in his blank way. ‘If I was to give you my oath to control her for the future, would you believe me? You would not, I couldn’t control her. You might be able to do it.’
‘I’d damn soon do it if I had a free hand,’ Tim said loyally.
‘I’d give you all the hand you want,’ the Bishop said placidly. ‘I’d give you quarters here if you wanted them. You see, ’tis more in my interest than yours to stop the scandal, before they have me married to her.’ From the dryness of his tone, the Bishop, an unemotional man, seemed to be suffering. ‘I wouldn’t forget it for you,’ he added anxiously. ‘Anyway, I’ll have a talk to Butcher, and see if he can’t do something for you. Not that that poor fool knows what he’s doing, most of the time.’
That afternoon, the Bishop sat on by his window and watched as a lorry drove up before his palace and Tim Leary loaded it with commodities the Bishop had thought long gone from the world – chests of tea, bags of sugar, boxes of butter. There seemed to be no end to them. He felt crushed and humbled. Like all bishops, he was addicted to power, but he saw now that a bishop’s power, like a bishop’s knowledge, was little better than a shadow. He was just a lonely old man who was dependent on women, exactly as when they had changed his napkin and he had crowed and kicked his heels. There was no escape.
Mercifully, Nellie herself didn’t put in an appearance as the premises were gone through. That evening, when she opened the door and said meekly, ‘Dinner is served, my lord’, the Bishop went in to a royal spread – the juiciest of roast beef, with roast potatoes and tender young peas drowned in butter. The Bishop ate stolidly through it, reading the book in front of his plate and never addressing a word to her. He was too bitter. He went to his study and took down the history of the diocese, which had so often consoled him in earlier griefs, but that night there was no consolation in it. It seemed that none of the men who had held the see before him was of the sort to be dominated by an old housekeeper, except for an eighteenth-century bishop who, in order to inherit a legacy, had become a Protestant. The door opened, and Nellie looked shyly in.
‘What are you feeling now?’ she whispered.
‘Let me alone,’ he said in a dry voice, without looking at her. ‘My heart is broken!’
‘’Tisn’t your heart at all,’ she said shamefastly. ‘’Tis that beef. ’Twasn’t hung long enough, that’s all. There isn’t a butcher in this town will be bothered to hang beef. Would I get you a couple of scrambled eggs?’
‘Go away, I said.’
‘You’re right, my lord. There’s nothing in eggs. Would I fry you a couple of rashers?’
‘I don’t want anything, woman!’ he said, almost shouting at her.
‘The dear knows, the rashers aren’t worth it,’ she admitted with a heavy sigh. ‘Nothing only old bones, and the hair still sprouting on them. What you want is a nice little juicy bit of Limerick ham with a couple of mashed potatoes and milk sauce with parsley. That’ll make a new man of you.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said angrily. ‘But go away and let me alone.’
His mouth was already watering, but he knew that there was no ham in Limerick or out of it that could lift his sorrow; that whenever a woman says something will make a new man of you, all she means is that, like the rest of her crooked devices, it will make an old man of you before your time.
THE SHEPHERDS
FATHER WHELAN, THE PARISH PRIEST, called on his curate, Father Devine, one evening in autumn. Father Whelan was a tall, stout man with a broad chest, a head that didn’t 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 countrywoman who made a living by selling eggs.
Devine was pale and worn-looking, with a gentle, dreamy face which had the soft gleam of an old piano keyboard, and he wore pince-nez perched on his unhappy, insignificant little nose. He and Whelan 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 Whelan, who had to put in an attendance at both; and that whenever the curate’s name was mentioned, the parish priest, a charitable old man who never said an unkind word about anybody, 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 consisted mostly of the old man’s words, with just the faintest inflection which isolated and underlined their fatuity. ‘I know some of the clergy are very opposed to books, but I like a book myself. I’m very fond of Zane Grey. Even poetry I like. Some of the poems you see on advertisements are very clever.’ And then Devine, who didn’t often laugh, broke into a thin little cackle at the thought of Whelan representing the intellect and majesty of the Church. 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, his hat in his hands, lifting his warty old nose, while his eyes held a blank, hopeless, charitable look.
‘Nothing there in your line, I’m afraid,’ said Devine with his maddeningly respectful, deprecating air, as if he put the parish priest’s tastes on a level with his own.
‘’Tisn’t that,
’ said Whelan in a hollow faraway voice, ‘but I see you have a lot of foreign books. I suppose you know the languages well.’
‘Well enough to read,’ Devine said wearily, his handsome head on one side. ‘Why?’
‘That foreign boat at the jetties,’ Whelan said 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.’
‘Terrible,’ Whelan said mournfully, turning on him the full battery of his round, rosy old face and shining spectacles. ‘There’s girls on it every night. I told Sullivan I’d go round tonight and give them the hunt. It occurred to me we might want someone to speak the language.’
‘I’m afraid my French would hardly rise to that,’ Devine said dryly, but he made no other objection, 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. He put on his faded old coat and clamped his battered hat down over his pince-nez, and the two priests went down the Main Street to the post-office corner. It was deserted but for two out-of-works supporting either side of the door like ornaments, and a few others hanging hypnotised over the bridge while they studied the foaming waters of the weir. Devine had taken up carpentry himself in order to lure them into the technical classes, but it hadn’t worked too well.
‘The dear knows,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you’d hardly wonder where those girls would go.’
‘Ah,’ said the parish priest, holding his head as though it were a flowerpot that might fall and break, ‘what do they want to go anywhere for? They’re mad on pleasure. That girl Nora Fitzpatrick is one of them, and her mother at home dying.’
‘That might be her reason,’ said Devine, who visited the Fitzpatricks and knew what their home was like, with six children, and a mother dying of cancer.
‘Ah, the girl’s place is at home,’ said Whelan without rancour.
They went down past the Technical School to the quays, these too, deserted but for a coal boat and the big foreign grain boat, rising high and dark above 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 had masses of grey stone warehouses, all staring with sightless eyes across the river. Two men who had been standing against the wall, looking up at the grain boat, came to join them. 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. His name was Sullivan; he was the manager of a shop in town, and was forever in and out of the church. Devine hated him. The other, Joe Sheridan, was a small, fat, Jewish-looking man with dark skin and an excitable manner. Devine didn’t dislike him so much. He was merely the inevitable local windbag, who got drunk on his own self-importance. As the four men met, Devine looked up and saw two young foreign faces, propped on their hands, peering at them over the edge of the boat.
‘Well, boys?’ asked Whelan.
‘There’s two aboard at present, father,’ Sullivan said in a shrill, scolding voice. ‘Nora Fitzpatrick and Phillie O’Malley.’
‘Well, you’d better go aboard and tell them come off,’ Whelan said tranquilly.
‘I wonder what our legal position is, father?’ Sheridan asked, scowling. ‘I mean, have we any sort of locus standi?’
‘Oh, in the event of your being stabbed, I think they could be tried,’ Devine replied with bland malice. ‘Of course, I don’t know if your wife and children could claim compensation.’
The malice was lost on Whelan, who laid one hairy paw on Devine’s shoulder and the other on Sheridan’s to calm the fears of both. He exuded a feeling of pious confidence. It was the eggs all over again. God would look after His hens.
‘Never mind about the legal position,’ he said paternally. ‘I’ll be answerable for that.’
‘That’s good enough for me, father,’ Sheridan said, and, pulling his hat down over his eyes and joining his hands behind his back, he strode up the gangway, with the air of a detective in a bad American film, while Sullivan, clutching his umbrella against the small of his back, followed him, head in air. A lovely pair, Devine thought. They went up to the two sailors.
‘Two girls,’ Sullivan said in his shrill, scolding voice. ‘We’re looking for the two girls that came aboard 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. ‘The other one. There’s always girls on that.’
Then Sheridan, who had glanced downstairs through an open doorway, began to beckon.
‘Phillie O’Malley!’ he shouted in a raucous voice. ‘Father Whelan and Father Devine are out here. Come on! They want to talk to you.’
‘Tell her if she doesn’t come I’ll go and bring her,’ the parish priest called anxiously.
‘He says if you don’t he’ll come and bring you,’ repeated Sheridan.
Nothing happened for a moment or two. Then a tall girl with a consumptive face emerged on deck with a handkerchief pressed to her eyes. Devine couldn’t help feeling sick 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 in him. The Good Shepherd indeed!
‘Come on, lads,’ the parish priest said encouragingly. ‘What about the second one?’
Sheridan, flushed with triumph, was about to disappear down the companionway when one of the sailors gave him a heave which threw him to the edge of the ship. Then the sailor stood nonchalantly in the doorway, blocking the way. Whelan’s face grew red with anger and he only waited for the girl to leave the gangway before going up himself. Devine paused to whisper a word to her.
‘Get off home as quick as you can, Phillie,’ he said, ‘and don’t upset yourself.’
At the tenderness in his voice she took the handkerchief from her face and began to weep in earnest. Then Devine went up after the others. It was a ridiculous scene with the fat old priest, 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. ‘They’re not accustomed to being spoken to like that. If you got a knife in your ribs, it would be your own fault. We want to talk to the captain.’ And then, bending forward with his eyebrows raised in a humble, deprecating manner, he asked: ‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to tell the captain we’d like to see him.’
The sailor who was blocking their 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 to stay behind, Devine went up the ship. When they had gone a little way the second sailor passed them out, knocked at a door, and said something Devine did not catch. Then, with a scowl, he held open the door for them. 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, businesslike tone which did not conceal a certain nervousness.
‘Bonsoir, monsieur le capitaine,’ Devine said with the same plaintive, ingratiating air as he bowed and raised his battered old hat. ‘Est-ce que nous vous dérangeons?’
‘Mais, pas du tout; entrez, je vous prie,’ the captain said heartily, clearly relieved by Devine’s amiability. ‘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,’ the captain said cheerfully. ‘I speak 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,’ Devine said as he sat.
‘One travels a good deal,’ the captain replied with a flattered air. ‘You’ll have a drink? Some brandy, eh?’
‘I’d be delighted, of course,’ Devine said regretfully, ‘but I’m afraid we have a favour to ask you first.’
‘A favour?’ the captain said enthusiastically. ‘Certainly, certainly. Anything you like. Have a cigar?’
‘Never smoke them,’ Whelan said in a dull stubborn voice, looking first at the cigar-case and then looking away; and, to mask his rudeness, Devine, who never smoked cigars, took one and lit it.
‘I’d better explain who we are,’ he said, sitting back, his head on one side, his long, delicate hands hanging over the arms of the chair. ‘This is Father Whelan, the parish priest. My name is Devine; I’m the curate.’
‘And mine,’ the captain said proudly, ‘is Platon Demarrais. I bet you never before heard of a fellow called Platon?’
‘A relation of the philospher, I presume,’ said Devine.
‘The very man! And I have two brothers, Zenon and Plotin.’
‘What an intellectual family!’
‘Pagans, of course,’ the captain explained complacently. ‘Greeks. My father was a schoolteacher. He called us that to annoy the priest. He was anticlerical.’
‘That’s not confined to schoolteachers in France,’ Devine said, dryly. ‘My father was a schoolteacher, but he never got round to calling me Aristotle. Which might be as well,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘At any rate, there’s a girl called Fitzpatrick on the ship, with some sailor, I suppose. She’s one of Father Whelan’s parishioners, and we’d be grateful to you if you’d have her put off.’
‘Speak for yourself, father,’ said Whelan, raising his stubborn, old peasant head and quelling fraternisation with a glance. ‘I wouldn’t be grateful to any man for doing what ’tis only his duty to do.’
‘Then, perhaps you’d better explain your errand yourself, Father Whelan,’ Devine said with an abnegation not far removed from waspishness.
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