The Collar

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘Perhaps you’d talk to Dr Carmody, father?’ Maginnis suggested benignly.

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about, Father Fogarty,’ Carmody said, adopting the formal title he ignored when they were among friends. ‘I can’t sign a certificate saying this was a natural death. You know I can’t. It’s too unprofessional.’

  ‘Professional or not, Dr Carmody, someone will have to do it,’ Maginnis said. ‘I am the priest of this parish. In a manner of speaking I’m a professional man too, you know. And this unfortunate occurrence is something that doesn’t concern only me and you. It has consequences that affect the whole parish.’

  ‘Your profession doesn’t require you to sign your name to a lie, father,’ Carmody said angrily. ‘That’s what you want me to do.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t call that a lie, Dr Carmody,’ Maginnis said with dignity. ‘In considering the nature of a lie we have to take account of its good and bad effects. I can see no possible good effect that might result from a scandal about the death of this poor boy. Not one! In fact, I can see unlimited harm.’

  ‘So can I,’ Fogarty burst out. His voice sounded too loud, too confident, even to his own ears.

  ‘I see,’ Carmody said sarcastically. ‘And you think we should keep on denouncing the Swedes and Danes for their suicide statistics, just because they don’t fake them the way we do. Ah, for God’s sake, man, I’d never be able to respect myself again.’

  Fogarty saw that Maginnis was right. In some ways Carmody was too immature. ‘That’s all very well, Jim, but Christian charity comes before statistics,’ he said appealingly. ‘Forget about the damn statistics, can’t you? Father Galvin wasn’t only a statistic. He was a human being – somebody we both knew. And what about his family?’

  ‘What about his mother?’ Maginnis asked with real pathos. ‘I gather you have a mother yourself, Dr Carmody?’

  ‘And you expect me to meet Mrs Galvin tomorrow and tell her her son was a suicide and can’t be buried in consecrated ground?’ Fogarty went on emotionally. ‘Would you like us to do that to your mother if it was your case?’

  ‘A doctor has unpleasant things to do as well, Jerry,’ said Carmody.

  ‘To tell a mother that her child is dying?’ Fogarty asked. ‘A priest has to do that too, remember. Not to tell her that her child is damned.’

  But the very word that Fogarty knew had impressed Carmody made the parish priest uncomfortable. ‘Fortunately, father, that is in better hands than yours or mine,’ he said curtly. And at once his manner changed. It was as though he was a little bit tired of them both. ‘Dr Carmody,’ he said, ‘I think I hear Mr Fitzgerald. You’d better make up your mind quick. If you’re not prepared to sign the death certificate, I’ll soon find another doctor who will. That is my simple duty, and I’m going to do it. But as an elderly man who knows a little more about this town than you or Father Fogarty here, I’d advise you not to compel me to bring in another doctor. If word got round that I was forced to do such a thing, it might have very serious effects on your career.’

  There was no mistaking the threat, and there was something almost admirable about the way it was made. At the same time, it roused the sleeping rebel in Fogarty. Bluff, he thought angrily. Damn bluff! If Carmody walked out on them at that moment, there was very little the parish priest or anyone else could do to him. Of course, any of the other doctors would sign the certificate, but it wouldn’t do them any good either. When people really felt the need for a doctor, they didn’t necessarily want the doctor the parish priest approved of. But as he looked at Carmody’s sullen, resentful face, he realised that Carmody didn’t know his own strength in the way that Maginnis knew his. After all, what had he behind him but a few years in a London hospital, while behind Maginnis was that whole vast historic organisation that he was rightly so proud of.

  ‘I can’t sign a certificate that death was due to natural causes,’ Carmody said stubbornly. ‘Accident, maybe – I don’t know. I wasn’t here. I’ll agree to accident.’

  ‘Accident?’ Maginnis said contemptuously, and this time he did not even trouble to use Carmody’s title. It was as though he were stripping him of any little dignity he had. ‘Young man, accidents with shotguns do not happen to priests at three o’clock in the morning. Try to talk sense!’

  And just as Fogarty realised that the doctor had allowed himself to be crushed, they heard Mary let Fitzgerald in. He came briskly up the stairs. He was a small, spare man built like a jockey. The parish priest nodded in the direction of the bed and Fitzgerald’s brows went up mechanically. He was a man who said little, but he had a face and figure too expressive for his character. It was as though all the opinions he suppressed in life found relief in violent physical movements.

  ‘Naturally, we don’t want it talked about, Mr Fitzgerald,’ said Maginnis. ‘Do you think you could handle it yourself?’

  The undertaker’s eyes popped again, and he glanced swiftly from Maginnis to Carmody and then to Fogarty. He was a great man for efficiency, though; if you had asked him to supply the corpse as well as the coffin, he might have responded automatically, ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Dr Carmody will give the certificate, of course?’ he asked shrewdly. He hadn’t missed much of what was going on.

  ‘It seems I don’t have much choice,’ Carmody replied bitterly.

  ‘Oh, purely as an act of charity, of course,’ Fitz said hastily. ‘We all have to do this sort of thing from time to time. The poor relatives have enough to worry them without inquests and things like that. What was the age, Father Maginnis, do you know?’ he added, taking out a notebook. A clever little man, thought Fogarty. He had put it all at once upon a normal, businesslike footing.

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ said Maginnis.

  ‘God help us!’ Fitz said perfunctorily, and made a note. After that he took out a rule.

  ‘I’d better get ready and go to see the Bishop myself,’ Maginnis said. ‘We’ll need his permission, of course, but I haven’t much doubt about that. I know he has the reputation for being on the strict side, but I always found him very considerate. I’ll send Nora over to help your housekeeper, father. In the meantime, maybe you’d be good enough to get in touch with the family.’

  ‘I’ll see to that, father,’ Fogarty said. He and Carmody followed Maginnis downstairs. He said goodbye and left, and Fogarty’s manner changed abruptly. ‘Come in and have a drink, Jim,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather not, Jerry,’ Carmody said gloomily.

  ‘Come on! Come on! You need one, man! I need one myself and I can’t have it.’ He shut the door of the living room behind him. ‘Great God, Jim, who could have suspected it?’

  ‘I suppose I should have,’ said Carmody. ‘I got hints enough if only I might have understood them.’

  ‘But you couldn’t, Jim,’ Fogarty said excitedly, taking the whiskey from the big cupboard. ‘Nobody could. Do you think I ever expected it, and I lived closer to him than you did.’

  The front door opened and they heard the slippers of Nora, Maginnis’s housekeeper, in the hall. There was a low mumble of talk outside the door, and then the clank of a bucket as the women went up the stairs. Fitzgerald was coming down at the same time, and Fogarty opened the door a little.

  ‘Well, Jack?’

  ‘Well, father. I’ll do the best I can.’

  ‘You wouldn’t join us for a – ?’

  ‘No, father. I’ll have my hands full for the next couple of hours.’

  ‘Good night, Jack. And I’m sorry for the disturbance.’

  ‘Ah, ’twas none of your doing. Good night, father.’

  The doctor finished his whiskey in a gulp, and his long, battered face had a bitter smile. ‘And so this is how it’s done!’ he said.

  ‘This is how it’s done, Jim, and believe me, it’s the best way for everybody in the long run,’ Fogarty replied with real gravity.

  But, looking at Carmody’s face, he knew the doctor did not believe it, and he wondered then if he reall
y believed it himself.

  When the doctor had gone, Fogarty got on the telephone to a provincial town fifty miles away. The exchange was closed down, so he had to give his message to the police. In ten minutes or so a guard would set out along the sleeping streets to the house where the Galvins lived. That was one responsibility he was glad to evade.

  While he was speaking, he heard the parish priest’s car set off and knew he was on his way to the Bishop’s palace. Then he shaved, and, about eight, Fitzgerald drove up with the coffin in his van. Silently they carried it between them up the stairs. The body was lying decently composed with a simple bandage about the head. Between them they lifted it into the coffin. Fitzgerald looked questioningly at Fogarty and went on his knees. As he said the brief prayer, Fogarty found his voice unsteady and his eyes full of tears. Fitzgerald gave him a pitying look and then rose and dusted his knees.

  ‘All the same there’ll be talk, father,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe not as much as there should be, Jack,’ Fogarty said moodily.

  ‘We’ll take him to the chapel, of course?’ Fitzgerald went on.

  ‘Everything in order, Jack. Father Maginnis is gone to see the Bishop.’

  ‘He couldn’t trust the telephone, of course,’ Fitzgerald said, stroking his unshaven chin. ‘No fear the Bishop will interfere, though. Father Maginnis is a smart man. You saw him?’

  ‘I saw him.’

  ‘No nerves, no hysterics. I saw other people in the same situation. “Oh, Mr Fitzgerald, what am I going to do?” His mind on essential things the whole time. He’s an object lesson to us all, father.’

  ‘You’re right, Jack, he is,’ Fogarty said despondently.

  Suddenly the undertaker’s hand shot out and caught him by the upper arm. ‘Forget about it, boy! Forget about it! What else can you do? Why the hell should you break your heart over it?’

  Fogarty still had to meet the family. Later that morning, they drove up to the curates’ house. The mother was an actressy type and wept a good deal. She wanted somebody to give her a last message, which Fogarty couldn’t think up. The sister, a pretty, intense girl, wept a little too, but quietly, with her back turned, while the brother, a young man with a great resemblance to Galvin, said little. Mother and brother accepted without protest the ruling that the coffin was not to be opened, but the sister looked at Fogarty and asked, ‘You don’t think I could see him? Alone? I wouldn’t be afraid.’ When he said the doctor had forbidden it, she turned her back again, and he had an impression that there was a closer link between her and Galvin than between the others and him.

  That evening, they brought the body to lie before the altar of the church, and Maginnis received it and said the prayers. The church was crowded, and Fogarty knew with a strange mixture of rejoicing and mortification that the worst was over. Maginnis’s master stroke was the new curate, Rowlands, who had arrived within a couple of hours after his own return. He was a tall, thin, ascetic-looking young man, slow-moving and slow-speaking, and Fogarty knew that all eyes were on him.

  Everything went with perfect propriety at the Requiem Mass next morning, and after the funeral Fogarty attended the lunch given by Maginnis to the visiting clergy. He almost laughed out loud when he heard Maginnis ask in a low voice, ‘Father Healy, did I ever tell you the story of Canon Murphy and the Pope?’ All that would follow would be the mourning card with the picture of Galvin and the Gothic lettering that said ‘Ecce Sacerdos Magnus.’ There was no danger of a scandal any longer. Carmody would not talk. Fitzgerald would not talk either. None of the five people involved would. Father Galvin might have spared himself the trouble.

  As they returned from the church together, Fogarty tried to talk to the new curate about what had happened, but he soon realised that the whole significance of it had escaped Rowlands, and that Rowlands thought he was only overdramatising it all. Anybody would think he was overdramatising it, except Carmody. After his supper he would go to the doctor’s house, and they would talk about it. Only Carmody would really understand what it was they had done between them. No one else would.

  What lonely lives we live, he thought unhappily.

  THE MASS ISLAND

  WHEN FATHER JACKSON DROVE UP to the curates’ house, it was already drawing on to dusk, the early dusk of late December. The curates’ house was a red-brick building on a terrace at one side of the ugly church in Asragh. Father Hamilton seemed to have been waiting for him and opened the front door himself, looking white and strained. He was a tall young man with a long melancholy face that you would have taken for weak till you noticed the cut of the jaw.

  ‘Oh, come in, Jim,’ he said with his mournful smile. ‘’Tisn’t much of a welcome we have for you, God knows. I suppose you’d like to see poor Jerry before the undertaker comes.’

  ‘I might as well,’ Father Jackson replied briskly. There was nothing melancholy about Jackson, but he affected an air of surprise and shock. ‘’Twas very sudden, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it was and it wasn’t, Jim,’ Father Hamilton said, closing the front door behind him. ‘He was going downhill since he got the first heart attack, and he wouldn’t look after himself. Sure, you know yourself what he was like.’

  Jackson knew. Father Fogarty and himself had been friends of a sort, for years. An impractical man, excitable and vehement, Fogarty could have lived for twenty years with his ailment, but instead of that, he allowed himself to become depressed and indifferent. If he couldn’t live as he had always lived, he would prefer not to live at all.

  They went upstairs and into the bedroom where he was. The character was still plain on the stern, dead face, though, drained of vitality, it had the look of a studio portrait. That bone structure was something you’d have picked out of a thousand faces as Irish, with its odd impression of bluntness and asymmetry, its jutting brows and craggy chin, and the snub nose that looked as though it had probably been broken twenty years before in a public-house row.

  When they came downstairs again, Father Hamilton produced half a bottle of whiskey.

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ Jackson said hastily. ‘Unless you have a drop of sherry there?’

  ‘Well, there is some Burgundy,’ Father Hamilton said. ‘I don’t know is it any good, though.’

  ‘’Twill do me fine,’ Jackson replied cheerfully, reflecting that Ireland was the country where nobody knew whether Burgundy was good or not. ‘You’re coming with us tomorrow, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, the way it is, Jim,’ Father Hamilton replied, ‘I’m afraid neither of us is going. You see, they’re burying poor Jerry here.’

  ‘They’re what?’ Jackson asked incredulously.

  ‘Now, I didn’t know for sure when I rang you, Jim, but that’s what the brother decided, and that’s what Father Hanafey decided as well.’

  ‘But he told you he wanted to be buried on the Mass Island, didn’t he?’

  ‘He told everybody, Jim,’ Father Hamilton replied with growing excitement and emotion. ‘That was the sort he was. If he told one, he told five hundred. Only half an hour ago I had a girl on the telephone from the island asking when they could expect us. You see, the old parish priest of the place let Jerry mark out the grave for himself, and they want to know should they open it. But now the old parish priest is dead as well, and of course Jerry left nothing in writing.’

  ‘Didn’t he leave a will, even?’ Jackson asked in surprise.

  ‘Well, he did and he didn’t, Jim,’ Father Hamilton said, looking as if he were on the point of tears. ‘Actually, he did make a will about five or six years ago, and he gave it to Clancy, the other curate, but Clancy went off on the Foreign Mission and God alone knows where he is now. After that, Jerry never bothered his head about it. I mean, you have to admit the man had nothing to leave. Every damn thing he had he gave away – even the old car – after he got the first attack. If there was any loose cash around, I suppose the brother has that.’

  Jackson sipped his Burgundy, which was even more Australian
than he had feared, and wondered at his own irritation. He had been irritated enough before that, with the prospect of two days’ motoring in the middle of winter, and a night in a godforsaken pub in the mountains, a hundred and fifty miles away at the other side of Ireland. There, in one of the lakes, was an island where in Cromwell’s time, before the causeway and the little oratory were built, Mass was said in secret, and it was here that Father Fogarty had wanted to be buried. It struck Jackson as sheer sentimentality; it wasn’t even as if it was Fogarty’s native place. Jackson had once allowed Fogarty to lure him there, and had hated every moment of it. It wasn’t only the discomfort of the public-house, where meals erupted at any hour of the day or night as the spirit took the proprietor, or the rain that kept them confined to the cold dining-and-sitting room that looked out on the gloomy mountainside, with its couple of whitewashed cabins on the shore of the lake. It was the overintimacy of it all, and this was the thing that Father Fogarty apparently loved. He liked to stand in his shirtsleeves behind the bar, taking turns with the proprietor, who was one of his many friends, serving big pints of porter to rough mountainy men, or to sit in their cottages, shaking in all his fat whenever they told broad stories or sang risky folk songs. ‘God, Jim, isn’t it grand?’ he would say in his deep voice, and Jackson would look at him over his spectacles with what Fogarty called his ‘Jesuitical’ look, and say, ‘Well, I suppose it all depends on what you really like, Jerry.’ He wasn’t even certain that the locals cared for Father Fogarty’s intimacy; on the contrary, he had a strong impression that they much preferred their own reserved old parish priest, whom they never saw except twice a year, when he came up the valley to collect his dues. That had made Jackson twice as stiff. And yet now when he found out that the plans that had meant so much inconvenience to him had fallen through, he was as disappointed as though they had been his own.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said with a shrug that was intended to conceal his perturbation, ‘I suppose it doesn’t make much difference where they chuck us when our time comes.’