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. 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 lonseome, melancholy man and the hones 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 hones 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 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 hand and walked to the other end of the cowhouse. 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.
LOST FATHERLANDS
ONE SPRING DAY, Father Felix in the monastery sent word down to Spike Ward, the motor driver, to pick up a gentleman for the four-fifteen train. Spike had no notion of who the gentleman was. All sorts came and went to that lonesome monastery up the mountain: people on pilgrimage, drunks going in for a cure, cures coming out for a drunk, men joining the novitiate, and others leaving it, some of them within twenty-four hours – they just took one good look at the place and bolted. One of the novices stole a suit of overalls left behind by a house painter and vanished across the mountain. As Spike often said, if it was him he wouldn’t have waited to steal the overalls.
It lay across the mountainside, a gaunt, Victorian barracks. Spike drove up to the guesthouse, which stood away in by the end of the chapel. Father Felix, the Guestmaster, was waiting on the steps with the passenger – a tall, well-built, middle-aged man with greying hair. Father Felix himself inclined to fat; he wore big, shiny glasses, and his beard cascaded over his chest. Spike and the passenger loaded the trunk and bag, and Spike noticed that they were labelled for Canada. The liner was due at Cobh two days later.
‘Goodbye now,’ Father Felix said, shaking the passenger’s hand. ‘And mind and don’t lead Spike into bad ways on me. He’s a fellow I have my eye on this long time. When are you coming up to us for good, Spike?’ he asked gravely.
‘When ye take a few women into the Order, father,’ Spike replied in his thin drawl. ‘What this place needs is a woman’s hand.’
The passenger sat in front with Spike, and they chatted as they drove down the hill, glancing back at the monks working in the fields behind the monastery. You could see them from a long way off, like magpies.
‘Was it on a holiday you were?’ asked Spike, not meaning to be inquisitive, only to make conversation.
‘A long holiday,’ said the passenger, with a nod and a smile.
‘Ah, well, everyone to his taste,’ Spike said tolerantly. ‘I suppose a lot depends on what you’re used to. I prefer a bit of a change myself, like Father Felix’s dipsos.’
‘He has a few of them up there now,’ said the passenger, with a quiet amusement that told Spike he wasn’t one of them.
‘Well, I’m sure I hope the poor souls are enjoying it,’ said Spike with unction.
‘They weren’t enjoying it much at three this morning,’ said the passenger in the same tone. ‘One of them was calling for his mother. Father Felix was with him for over an hour, trying to calm him.’
‘Not criticising the good man, ’tisn’t the same thing at all,’ Spike said joyously.
‘Except for the feeding bottle,’ said the passenger. And then, as though he were slightly ashamed of his own straight-faced humour: ‘He does a wonderful job on them.’
‘Well, they seem to have great faith in him,’ Spike said, without undue credulity. ‘He gets them from England and all parts – a decent little man.’
‘And a saintly little man,’ the passenger said, almost reproachfully.
‘I dare say,’ Spike said, without enthusiasm. ‘He’d want to be, judging by the specimens I see.’
They reached town with about three-quarters of an hour to spare, and put the trunk and bag in the stationmaster’s office. Old Mick Hurley, the stationmaster, wa
s inside, and looked at the bags over his glasses. Even on a warm day, in his own office, he wore his braided frock-coat and uniform cap.
‘This is a gent from the monastery, Mick,’ said Spike. ‘He’s travelling by the four-fifteen. Would he have time for the pictures?’
But Spike might have known the joke would be lost on Mick, who gave a hasty glance at the clock behind him and looked alarmed. ‘He’d hardly have time for that,’ he said. ‘She’s only about twenty-five minutes late.’
‘You have over an hour to put in,’ said Spike as they left the office. ‘You don’t want to be sitting round there the whole time. Hanagan’s lounge is comfortable enough, if you like a drink.’
‘Will you have one with me?’ asked the passenger.
‘I don’t know will I have the time,’ Spike said. ‘I have another call at four. I’ll have one drink with you, anyway.’
They went into the bar, which was all done up in chromium, with concealed lighting. Tommy Hanagan, the Yank, was behind the bar himself. He was a tall, fresh-faced, rather handsome man, with fair hair of a dirty colour and smoke-blue eyes. His hat was perched far back on his head. Spike often said Tommy Hanagan was the only man he knew who could make a hat speak. He had earned the price of his public-house working in Boston and, according to him, had never ceased to regret his return. Tommy looked as though he lived in hopes that some day, when he did something as it should be done, it would turn out to be a convenience to somebody. So far, it had earned him nothing but mockery, and sometimes his blue eyes had a slightly bewildered expression, as though he were wondering what he was doing in that place at all.
Spike loved rousing him. All you had to do was give him one poke about America and the man was off, good for an hour’s argument. America was the finest goddam country on the face of the earth, and the people that criticised it didn’t know what they were talking about. In America, even the priests were friends: ‘Tommy, where the hell am I going to get a hundred dollars?’ ‘I’ll get it for you, Father Joe.’ In Ireland, it was ‘Mister Hanagan, don’t you consider five pounds is a bit on the small side?’ ‘And I don’t,’ the Yank would say, pulling up his shirtsleeves. ‘I’d sooner give a hundred dollars to a friend than fifteen to a bastard like that.’ The same with the women. Over there, an Irishman would say, ‘I’ll do the washing up, Mary.’ Here it was ‘Where’s that bloody tea, woman?’ And then bawling her out for it! Not, as Spike noticed, that this ever prevented the Yank from bawling out his own wife twenty times a day. And Spike suspected that however he might enjoy rousing the Yank, the Yank enjoyed it more. It probably gave the poor man the illusion of being alive.
‘What are you drinking?’ the passenger asked in his low voice.
‘Whiskey,’ said Spike. ‘I have to take whiskey every time I go up to that monastery. It’s to restore the circulation.’
‘Beer for me, please,’ said the passenger.
‘Your circulation is easily damaged, Spike,’ said Hanagan as he turned to the whiskey bottle.
‘If you knew as much about that place as I do, you’d be looking for whiskey, too.’
‘Who said I don’t know about it?’ blustered Hanagan. ‘I know as much about it as you do; maybe more.’
‘You do,’ Spike said mockingly. ‘Yourself and the kids went up there two years ago, picking primroses. I heard about it. Ye brought the flask and had tea up the mountain two miles away. “Oh, what a lovely place the monks have! Oh, what a wonderful life they have up here!” Damn all you care about the poor unfortunates, getting up at half past one of a winter’s morning and waiting till half five for a bit of breakfast.’
The Yank sprawled across the counter, pushing his hat back a shade farther. It was set for reasonable discussion. ‘But what’s that, only habit?’ he asked.
‘Habit!’
‘What else is it?’ the Yank asked appealingly. ‘I have to get up at half past six every morning, winter and summer, and I have to worry about a wife and kids, and education and doctors for them, and paying income tax, which is more than the monks have to do.’
‘Give me the income tax every time!’ said Spike. ‘Even the wife!’
‘The remarkable thing about this country,’ said Hanagan, ‘is that they’ll only get up in the morning when no one asks them to. I never asked the monks to get up at half past one. All I ask is that the people in this blooming town will get up at half past eight and open their shops by nine o’clock. And how many of them will do it?’
‘And what the hell has that to do with the argument?’ asked Spike, not that he thought it had anything to do with it. He knew only too well the Yank’s capacity for getting carried away on a tide of his own eloquence.
‘Well, what after all does the argument boil down to?’ retorted Hanagan. ‘The argument is that no one in this blooming country is respected for doing what he ought to do – only for doing what no one ever asked him to do.’
‘Are people to sit down and wait for someone to ask them to love God?’ the passenger growled suddenly. Spike noticed that even though he mentioned God, he looked a nasty customer to cross in a discussion.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Hanagan replied peaceably. ‘But do you know this town?’
‘No.’
‘I do,’ said Hanagan. ‘I know it since I was a kid. I spent eighteen years out of it, and for all the difference it made to the town, I might have been out of it for a week. It’s dead. The people are dead. They’re no use to God or man.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘You’re talking about one sort of responsibility,’ said Hanagan. ‘I’m only saying there are other responsibilities. Why can’t the people here see that they have a responsibility to the unfortunate women they marry? Why can’t they see their responsibility to their own country?’
‘What Tommy means is that people shouldn’t be making pilgrimages to the monastery at all,’ said Spike dryly. ‘He thinks they should be making pilgrimages to him. He lights candles to himself every night – all because he doesn’t beat his wife. Good luck to you now, and don’t let him make you miss your train with his old guff.’
Spike and the passenger shook hands, and after that Spike put him out of his head completely. Meeting strangers like that, every day of the week, he couldn’t remember the half of them. But three evenings later he was waiting in the car outside the station, hoping to pick up a fare from the four-fifteen, when Mick Hurley came flopping out to him with his spectacles down his nose.
‘What am I going to do with them bags you left on Tuesday, Spike?’ he asked.
What was he to do with the bags? Spike looked at him without comprehension. ‘What bags, Mick?’
‘Them bags for Canada.’
‘Holy God!’ exclaimed Spike, getting slowly out of the car. ‘Do you mean he forgot his bags?’
‘Forgot them?’ Mick Hurley repeated indignantly. ‘He never travelled at all, man.’
‘Holy God!’ repeated Spike. ‘And the liner gone since yesterday! That’s a nice state of affairs.’
‘Why?’ asked Mick. ‘Who was it?’
‘A man from the monastery.’
‘One of Father Felix’s drunks?’
‘What the hell would a drunk be coming from Canada for?’ asked Spike in exasperation.
‘You’d never know,’ said Mick. ‘Where did you leave him?’
‘Over in Tommy Hanagan’s bar.’
‘Then we’d better ask Tommy.’
Hanagan came out to them in his shirtsleeves, his cuffs rolled up and his hat well back.
‘Tommy,’ said Spike, ‘you remember that passenger I left in your place on Tuesday?’
Tommy’s eyes narrowed. ‘The big, grey-haired bloke?’ he said. ‘What about him?’
‘Mick Hurley here says he never took that train. You wouldn’t know what happened him?’
Tommy rested one bare, powerful arm against the jamb of the door, leaned his head against it, and delicately tilted the hat forward over his
eyes. ‘That sounds bad,’ he said. ‘You’re sure he didn’t go off unknown to you?’
‘How could he, man?’ asked Mick excitedly, feeling that some slight on the railway company was implied. ‘His bags are still there. No one but locals travelled on that train.’
‘The man had a lot of money on him,’ Hanagan said, looking at the ground.
‘You’re sure of that, Tommy?’ Spike asked, in alarm. It was bad enough for a motor driver to be mixed up in a mysterious disappearance without a murder coming into it as well.
‘Up to a hundred pounds,’ Hanagan said, giving a sharp glance up the street. ‘I saw it when he paid for the drinks. I noticed Linehan, of the Guards, going in to his dinner. We might as well go over and ask him did he hear anything.’
They strode briskly in the direction of the policeman’s house. Linehan came shuffling out, buttoning up his tunic – a fat, black-haired man who looked like something out of a butcher’s shop.
‘I didn’t hear a word of it,’ he said, looking from one to another, as though they might be concealing evidence. ‘We’ll ring up a few of the local stations. Some of them might have word of him.’
Hanagan went to get his coat. Mick Hurley had to leave them, to look after the four-fifteen, and at last Spike, Hanagan and Linehan went to the police station, where the others waited while Linehan had long, confidential chats about football and the weather with other policemen for ten miles around. Guards are lonely souls; they cannot trust their nearest and dearest, and can communicate only with one another, like mountaineers with signal fires. Hanagan sat on the table, pretending to read a paper, though every look and gesture betrayed impatience and disgust. Spike just sat, reflecting mournfully on the loss of his good time and money.
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