The Devil is an Irishman

by Eddie Lenihan

  A bout of giggling rose again in the kitchen. The priest’s face turned red, then purple. His mouth began to work, his teeth to grind, but only incoherent sounds came forth.

  ‘I’ll ... I’ll ... nngh!’

  With one last glare about him and a snort, he was gone, also into the dark.

  It was not his last word, though. The following Sunday he preached a brimstone sermon at Mass, promising hell-fire and the tortures of the lost to all who aided or abetted such villainy, and by then, too, letters had reached Martin’s parish priest and the bishop of the diocese, explaining in graphic detail the insult to his own dignity, the bishop’s and that of the whole universal Church.

  ‘Well, well! All of that in the big city of Beagh!’ laughed the bishop, who was himself not at all averse to a game of cards. The parish priest, however, a reformed gambler and considerably more inclined to severity in his outlook, took a different view.

  ‘This is the kind of attention the parish can well do without,’ he scowled. ‘But I’ll put a stop to this before it goes any farther.’

  Why he had not done so earlier was a question he never even bothered to ask himself, for whatever reason.

  He summoned Martin to meet him in the sacristy after Mass next morning, a Saturday. Martin arrived as requested, but without the deck – he had hidden that where even Cáit would not find it, in a tobacco-tin under a flat stone in the garden.

  The priest was curt when Martin appeared in the midst of his disrobing.

  ‘Sit!’

  He did not even turn, only continued his business as if Martin were invisible. Let him sweat a while. Shorter for both of us that way, he thought.

  At last he faced about.

  ‘I have little enough to say to you, Mr Clune, but you know well why I called you here, don’t you?’

  Oh-oh! Martin was seldom called ‘Mr Clune’. He knew it boded nothing good.

  ‘No, Father, I don’t.’ Better a pretence of innocence for as long as possible.

  The priest stared hard at him.

  ‘I won’t waste words. I have a lot to do this day besides standing here talking foolery. You have a deck of cards. And I want it. It must be burned, and the sooner the better – before you burn instead!’

  His tone was flat, final. Argument there would be none. Martin looked at him mildly, listened, but answered not a word. The priest glared.

  ‘The Devil has his claws sunk in you. Ready to carry you with him. Don’t you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know it, Father. But o’ course I have only small training in theology or things like that.’

  ‘You’d do well to remember those words,’ the priest cut in. ‘But no more talk! The deck!’ and he extended his open hand, very deliberately. Martin shrugged.

  ‘I haven’t it with me.’

  ‘Where is it? I want it. Now!’

  ‘’Tis at home.’

  ‘Get it. This minute! Bring it to the presbytery.’

  There was an ugly look in his eye as he said it. Without a word more Martin turned and as he closed the door softly the priest added: ‘And don’t stay long about it. I’ll be waiting.’

  It was in a blur that his next several decisions were made – or, rather, seemed to make themselves. Cáit saw him briefly, tried to talk to him. It was no use. He made straight for the garden, muttering fiercely, reappeared, hands muddy, brushed her aside, then was off on his strong old donkey-cart, whipping the animal hard. But in the direction of Tulla? Or Limerick? She sighed, shook her head. What had happened she had no notion, but when the parish priest arrived in the yard a little over an hour later and rattled a series of questions at her she let slip nothing. The clergy were all right in their own way, but sometimes ... sometimes ...

  She sat at the hearth when she had the house to herself again. Nothing to do but wait, as she had been doing so much of late. And wait she did. And wait. But without complaint now. She knew that trouble was afoot and that he would contact her when he could.

  It was almost two weeks before he did so. The postman – a most infrequent visitor – arrived, a letter from far-off England in his fist, and Cáit could see that it was breaking his heart to part with it. It had been well pawed too and it seemed that several attempts had been made to peep into it, uncover what news it contained. There was little enough to uncover, in truth, a few lines only, in Martin’s schoolboy hand:

  Dear Cáit,

  I am safe here. I will stay for a while and play cards if they lets me. I won’t go hungry, one way or the other. I’ll send money as soon as I can. If I can.

  Martin.

  That was all. No address. No good wish for herself. No ... Oh, but what of it! Let him send, or come, or do what he liked. What difference could it make to her since he would do just that anyway?

  As to the writing and the money, he was as good as his word. Letters began to arrive regularly, and cash was soon replaced by bank-drafts. He was becoming sophisticated. Cáit pieced together, bit by bit, a picture of his progress across the water, and impressive it certainly seemed. If he could be believed, that is.

  ‘I’m playing here in this workmen’s club for the last week or two, and what little they have I’m carrying it from them. But when I buys pints for them all after it they forgets what they lost.’

  And later,

  ‘I have a leg-up got this week. This gentleman was passing and saw me playing. He took me to a kind of a hotel where there’s tables with green cloth up on them. We’re playing there since. The game is called bridge, the same as you’d cross the river with. Isn’t it a strange world, too.’

  And,

  ‘They were saying that no one could be as lucky as me. There must be something bad behind it, they said. They went to throw me out, only that this stranger stopped ’em. He said to me private that he’d like to be my agent. That’s what he called it, just like the landlord’s man. I’ll tell you more when I know it.’

  And so it went on. And what stood out clearly was that he had become something of a social attraction in London, for that was where his sharp agent had taken him – ‘He says we might as well be in the middle of it, where all the big boys with the money is.’

  Those ‘big boys’, if they insisted on meeting Martin more than a few times, kept only a very poor grip on that same money, but the more of them that lost, the more there were to take their places; wastrel sons of landed gentry, professional men attempting to ape their social betters, dour old members of high-sounding clubs and societies with nothing better to do with their time all tried and all failed to get the better of this alarming peasant from the wilds of Ballinruan – ‘somewhere upstream of the Zambezi Falls, I do believe, old chap’.

  Martin played his cards, ignored the insults and left the business side of his affairs to the agent who, in spite of taking a 50% commission for himself, turned out to be moderately clever – he had attended a Jesuit school – and invested in property, to their mutual benefit. Soon they owned between them a sizeable chunk of most desirable and fashionable real estate, enough for several families to retire on in splendour.

  A day came at last when the agent said: ‘Martin, we have enough. I don’t know whether you want to keep going until you have the whole of London in your pocket. If you do, that’s your business. But me, I’m retiring. And I’m doing it this very day.’

  ‘D’you know what?’ replied Martin. ‘I was just thinking the same thing myself. There’s no bit o’ pleasure left at all in taking money off o’ this shower of eejits. Too much of it they have for their own good. I’d like to see a bit more o’ the world. I wonder what’s things like over beyond in France.’

  ‘Well, if that’s all that’s worrying you, I can point out to you a place where they think gambling is a religion. Oh, the French are an odd people when it comes to the cards. They’d even sell their wives and children, some of them, for a bet on a dice or a hand of cards.’

  ‘They’re the type o’ people I want to sit down with,’ Martin laughed. ‘Tell
me where that place is.’

  ‘Monte Carlo is the name, and you’re no true gambler, not even a well-travelled man, until your fortune is made or lost in Monte Carlo. That’s what the French say anyway, whatever truth is in it.’

  ‘’Tis a thing I’ll have to find out for myself, an’ I’ll do it before too long,’ vowed Martin.

  ‘You might be safer not to rush into anything too quickly,’ said his friend. ‘Look, I have the address here of a reliable man, one that’ll show you the ropes there. He’ll do you no bad service. Only tell him I sent you. You won’t be much the worse for it.’

  ‘But haven’t I my deck? What more help do I want?’

  ‘That might be good enough in a place where you can understand what the people around you are saying. But be sure of one thing! The French won’t talk any language but their own, even if they could. The man I’m sending you to, he can talk it as well as themselves, so he’ll be able to catch them out if they start any trickery.’

  Martin could hardly argue with a case put so convincingly and they parted, his friend’s letter of introduction safely in his inner pocket next to the cards.

  The first Cáit knew of his new venture was when the postman came again, letter in hand, looking considerably puzzled. It was the stamp that had caught his attention and the lingering traces of a fragrance which Martin had added for the sheer devilment of it, knowing that noses all along the way, as well as fingers and eyes, thirsted for such little mysterious details. If it came from France, after all, it must smell good, even if it were utterly rotten, and Martin was not one to deprive people of their expectations.

  Letter followed sweet-smelling letter and Cáit, between visits to the Bank of Ireland in Ennis to change francs into pounds, was made aware of the details of progress in his new haunts: how he was now playing poker, blackjack and stud, not to mention others game which had even stranger names. She was only mildly interested.

  ‘Far more in his line to be here at home where there’s spuds to be sat an’ the house to be thatched. Am I expected to do everything myself?’ she complained.

  Like so many country people of her type it never occurred to her to spend any of the money on anything that might bring a little comfort into her life. Better to leave it safe in the bank ‘for the rainy day’. Little did she realise that the bank manager enjoyed many a sunshine holiday out of such ‘rainy days’.

  Martin was by now far removed from considerations so petty. His sheer skill and confidence with the cards, as well as his unfailing luck, had begun to attract the attention of others besides his victims. From being a cause célèbre in far-off Monte Carlo he took a large step up in the world when he was summoned to Paris, to grace the private apartments on Rue des Croupiers in Montparnasse. Grace them he did, too, though at some cost to their owners – who, in truth, remained their owners for but a short time once Martin got into his stride. It was the story of his stay in London all over again, only this time he was far more careful in the matter of his agent, the helpful Frenchman. 20% he was paid, and delighted to get it. And so the francs rolled in in quantities too great to be counted by any one person. Three secretaries were hired for that job alone and they worked twelve-hour days, through winter and summer alike, until their finger-tips were worn shiny from the task.

  Then one night a man dressed extra-soberly invited himself into the game at the casino where Martin was established and was by now a tourist-attraction. Before long it was obvious that here was no empty-headed nobleman, nouveau-riche businessman or disguised bishop on an occasional secret spree. His play was cautious. He passed the deal as often as he let himself be included. But above all, he kept Martin fixed in an iron-grey stare. Hour after hour they sat, yet he never once seemed to tire of observing this Irishman who could not lose.

  In the small hours, when all normal count of time had been discarded, Martin was about to deal yet again from behind a small mountain of banknotes when a sober-suited arm beckoned him to cease.

  ‘Enough, m’sieur. I ’ave seen enough. The stories I ’ave heard were not lies. So much is now clear to me. Perhaps – no? – we may speak a little in private, eh?’ and he snapped his fingers. At once the proprietor was at his side, a smile back to his ears.

  ‘Your wish, Excellency?’

  ‘A room where we may converse. Us two only.’

  ‘Of course. Yes. At once, Excellency,’ and he bowed to a discreet-looking alcove, curtained and apart.

  In the little apartment beyond, two bottles of wine stood on a round table, one red, one white. The sober gentleman bowed Martin in, towards a chair, then sat too. He stared hard at Martin, then began.

  ‘M’sieur, in all of my days I ’ave not ... ever ... seen what I ’ave witnessed zis night. You play cards like ... like ze Devil ’imself. Which is why I must speak with you now. You see, I ’ave been sent by M’sieur le President. Your name ’as come to ’is notice. It gives ’im much pleasure that you come from ze land of ’is forefathers.’

  ‘Wait a minute, now! Hold on. Don’t say another word.’

  Martin was as amazed at this latest turn of events as any man late of Ballinruan and now at the heart of France might well be.

  ‘What d’you mean? From Ireland, is it? What’s his name?’

  ‘Ze Maréchal MacMahon. Who else?! But now, come. Let us go!’

  His Excellency was not about to be denied, whatever it was that was agitating him.

  ‘Many crucial decisions await our words zis very night!’

  Martin sighed and drooped. He was beginning to be resigned to whatever might befall him. So much had happened in so short a time that meeting the President of the Third Republic was just another incident in a now-crowded life. No more than that. He allowed himself to be hustled out to a waiting cab.

  ‘Ze money will be safe, m’sieur, never fear. It will be delivered to your ’otel without delay. Only come now. Ze President awaits.’

  ‘Yerra, what use have I for it? Won’t there be more where that came from tomorrow night? s Give it to the poor people o’ the town, like a good man,’ and he scattered a fist of banknotes at the feet of two cringeing beggars, who were still gaping at them, stunned, even as the carriage clattered round the street-corner and was gone.

  His meeting with the old Marshal was cordial, though cool at first. It was obvious enough that the great man had seen better days. He squinted half-blindly, his hands shook and his breath came in rasps and gasps. Even when County Clare was mentioned as the land of his ancestors he showed only a flutter of polite interest. In fact, Martin, the formal salutes done, was turning to go, pleased enough with the honour merely of having been received, when he was poked roughly from behind. Before he could turn a voice snarled in his ear.

  ‘Mon Dieu, crétin, ze deck! Show ’im ze deck or zis visit ’as been for nothing!’

  At once he tugged the cards from the pocket where he had been fingering them nervously, then presented them in his outstretched palm and smiled his most Irish smile, three teeth missing.

  ‘Maybe ... ah ... you’d like a game, boss,’ were the first words that stumbled off his tongue.

  Looks of dismay creased the faces of those who under-stood what it was he had said, especially since all games of chance had been strictly forbidden by the presidential physician. But the story was quite otherwise in the case of the tottering Marshal. His bleary old eyes, as soon as they came to rest on the deck, took on a new sparkle. His back straightened. His heels clicked together. A smile lit up the seamed old face.

  ‘Sacré bleu, mes amis! At last, ze possibilité of a game! Let us test our wits with real strategy and throw from us zis ... zis death-in-life, zis formalité.’

  With a sudden energy electrifying to those who knew him from his military heyday he ... not quite leaped, but lurched to Martin’s side and hustled him to a nearby table. The attendants were already there, settling chairs, smoothing a green baize cloth into place.

  And so they played – poker – seven different permut
a-tions of it. For the remnants of that night and until dawn was stretching itself into the full light of day. Martin won of course, as inevitably he must, but the Marshal proved himself a wily opponent, certainly not the geriatric relic he appeared, and the more public money he lost the younger he seemed to become, until by the time that game at last broke up he was all for settling down into a drinking-session at some bistro – the seedier the better – though he had already consumed well over two bottles of brandy in the course of the night.

  His attendants were frantic with worry, but even more astonished.

  ‘’Ow can zis be? Where does ze energy come to ’im from?’

  But in spite of all their dread they were delighted too, particularly his physician, who had been applying leeches to the old man for some considerable time without any noticeable effects except fits of shivering and weakness.

  As they were parting, therefore, it was not entirely surprising that Martin should receive an invitation to return. And thus a pattern was begun: for three days every week thereafter the President became incommunicado. It mattered not what business of state called, which invited imperial delegation kicked its heels at the gates or what important piece of social legislation awaited the Presidential thumb-print; nothing could be done until after the thrice-weekly poker-game. And the old Marshal was definitely getting younger. Of that there was no doubt. All the signs and symptoms were there to prove it. From being a semi-invalid he had progressed to early morning strolls, then to brisk trots. Now he was leading his young officers a merry dance each day – and doing the same, if not more, with fashionable ladies at night, only some of whom were unmarried. Something urgent must be done, it was decided, to preserve the dignité of the Presidential office, the gravitas, the illness proper to the age of its occupant.

  But with Martin to hand that was not possible. He must be cast off. For the good of France. The Marshal was severely told so – and at once demonstrated some of his old fire by promoting Martin to the Cabinet without so much as a word of consultation with his advisers. One day a gambler; a responsible member of Cabinet the next, his new title (in a position designed especially for him): Créateur de Bonne Humeur.