Collected Stories (103 page)

I got into the car and away with me down to Barney Phelan's pub on the edge of the bay. Barney's pub is the best in this part of the world and Barney himself is a bit of a character; a tall excitable man with wild blue eyes and a holy terror to gossip. He kept filling my glass as fast as I could lower it, and three or four times it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him what I was doing; but I knew he'd make a story out of it for the boys that night and sooner or later it would get back to Willie Joe Corcoran. Bad as Willie Joe was, I would not like to hurt his feelings. That is another great weakness of mine. I never like hurting people's feelings.

Of course that was a mistake, for when I walked out of the pub, the first thing I saw was the cliff dweller and two other yokels peering in at the parcel in the back of my car. At that I really began to feel like murder. I cannot stand that sort of unmannerly inquisitiveness.

“Well,” I said, giving the cliff dweller a shoulder out of my way, “I hope ye saw something good.”

At that moment Barney came out, drying his hands in his apron and showing his two front teeth like a weasel.

“Are them fellows at your car, doctor?” says he.

“Oho!” said the cliff dweller to his two friends. “So a docthor is what he is now!”

“And what the hell else did you think he was, you fool?” asked Barney.

“A painter is what he was when last we heard of him,” said the lunatic.

“And I suppose he was looking for a little job painting the huts ye have up in Beensheen?” asked Barney with a sneer.

“The huts may be humble but the men are true,” said the lunatic solemnly.

“Blast you, man,” said Barney, squaring up to him, “are you saying I don't know the doctor since he was in short trousers?”

“No man knows the soul of another,” said the cliff dweller, shaking his head again.

“For God's sake, Barney, don't be bothering yourself with that mis-fortunate clown,” said I. “'Tis my own fault for bringing the likes of him into the world. Of all the useless occupations, that and breaking stones are the worst.”

“I would not be talking against breaking stones,” said the cliff dweller sourly. “It might not be long till certain people here would be doing the same.”

At that I let a holy oath out of me and drove off in the direction of Jerry MacMahon's. When I glanced in the driving mirror I saw Barney standing in the middle of the road with the three yokels around him, waving their hands. It struck me that in spite of my precautions Barney would have a story for the boys that night, and it would not be about Willie Joe. It would be about me. It also struck me that I was behaving in a very uncalled-for way. If I'd been a real murderer trying to get rid of a real corpse I could hardly have behaved more suspiciously. And why? Because I did not want people discussing my business. I don't know what it is about Irish people that makes them afraid of having their business discussed. It is not that it is any worse than other people's business, only we behave as if it was.

I stopped the car at a nice convenient spot by the edge of the bay miles from anywhere. I could have got rid of the beef then and there but something seemed to have broken in me. I walked up and down that road slowly, looking to right and left to make sure no one was watching. Even then I was perfectly safe, but I saw a farmer crossing a field a mile away up the hill and decided to wait till he was out of sight. That was where the ferryboat left me, because, of course, the moment he glanced over his shoulder and saw a strange man with a car stopped on the road he stopped himself with his head cocked like an old setter. Mind, I'm not blaming him! I blame nobody but myself. Up to that day I had never felt a stime of sympathy with my neurotic patients, giving themselves diseases they hadn't got, but there was I, a doctor, giving myself a disease I hadn't got and with no excuse whatever.

By this time the smell was so bad I knew I wouldn't get it out of the upholstery for days. And there was Jerry MacMahon up in Cahirnamona, waiting for me with a bottle of whiskey his wife wouldn't let him touch till I got there, and I couldn't go for fear of the way he'd laugh at me. I looked again and saw that the man who'd been crossing the field had changed his mind. Instead he'd come down to the gate and was leaning over it, lighting his pipe while he admired the view of the bay and the mountains.

That was the last straw. I knew now that even if I got rid of the beef my Sunday would still be ruined. I got in the car and drove straight home. Then I went to the whiskey cupboard and poured myself a drink that seemed to be reasonably proportionate to the extent of my suffering. Just as I sat down to it Bridie walked in without knocking. This is one fault I should have told you about—all the time she was with me I never trained her to knock. I declare to God when I saw her standing in the doorway I jumped. I'd always been very careful of myself and jumping was a new thing to me.

“Did I tell you to knock before you came into a room?” I shouted.

“I forgot,” she said, letting on not to notice the state I was in. “You didn't go to Dr. MacMahon's so?”

“I did not,” I said.

“And did you throw away the beef?”

“I didn't,” I said. Then as I saw her waiting for an explanation I added: “There were too many people around.”

“Look at that now!” she said complacently. “I suppose we'll have to bury it in the garden after dark?”

“I suppose so,” I said, not realizing how I had handed myself over to the woman, body and bones, holus-bolus.

That evening I took a spade and dug a deep hole in the back garden and Bridie heaved in the side of beef. The remarkable thing is that the whole time we were doing it we talked in whispers and glanced up at the backs of the other houses in the road to see if we were being watched. But the weight off my mind when it was over! I even felt benevolent to Bridie. Then I went over to Jim Donoghue, the dentist's, and told him the whole story over a couple of drinks. We were splitting our sides over it.

When I say we were splitting our sides I do not mean that this is a funny story. It was very far from being funny for me before it was over. You wouldn't believe the scandal there was about Bridie and myself after that. You'd wonder how people could imagine such things, let alone repeat them. That day changed my whole life.… Oh, laugh! Laugh! I was laughing out the other side of my mouth before it was through. Up to that I'd never given a rap what anyone thought of me, but from that day forth I was afraid of my own shadow. With all the talk there was about us I even had to get rid of Bridie and, of course, inside of twelve months I was married like the rest of them.… By the way, when I mentioned unhappy marriages I wasn't speaking of my own. Mrs. Ryan and myself get on quite well. I only mentioned it to show what might be in store for yourself if ever you were foolish enough to come and live here. A town like this can bend iron. And if you doubt my word, that's only because you don't know what they are saying about you.

Achilles' Heel

I
N ONE THING
only is the Catholic Church more vulnerable than any human institution, and that is in the type of woman who preys on celibates—particularly the priest's housekeeper. The priest's housekeeper is one of the supreme examples of natural selection, because it has been practically proved that when for any reason she is transferred to a male who is not celibate, she pines away and dies. To say that she is sexless is to say both too much and too little, for, like the Church itself, she accepts chastity for a higher end—in her case, the subjection of some unfortunate man to a degree unparalleled in marriage. Wives, of course, have a similar ambition, but their purposes are mysteriously deflected by love-making, jealousy of other women, and children, and it is well known that many Irish wives go into hysterics of rage at the thought of the power vested in priests' housekeepers.
Their
victims, being celibate, have no children, and are automatically sealed off from other women, who might encourage them to greater independence.

But the most powerful among these are the housekeepers of bishops. Nellie Conneely, the Bishop of Moyle's housekeeper, had been with him since he was a canon, and even in those days he had been referred to by his parishioners as “Nellie and the Canon.” “Nellie and the Canon” didn't approve of all-night dances, so all-night dances were stopped. Half the population depended for patronage on “Nellie and the Canon,” and presents were encouraged—food for the Canon and something a little less perishable for Nellie. The townspeople had no doubt as to which was the more important partner. She had even appeared on the altar steps on one occasion and announced that there would be no eight-o'clock Mass because she was keeping the Canon in bed. She was a comparatively young woman for such a responsible position, and even at the time I speak of she was a well-preserved little body, with a fussy, humble, sugary air that concealed a cold intelligence. Her great rival was Canon Lanigan, who was the favorite in the succession of the diocese. In private he sniggered over her and called her La Maintenon, but when he visited the Bishop he was as sugary as herself and paid her flowery compliments on her cooking and even on her detestable bottled coffee. But Nellie, though she giggled and gushed in response, wasn't in the least taken in; she knew Lanigan preferred old French mishmash to her own candid cooking, and she warned the Bishop not to trust him. “God forgive me,” she said sadly, “I don't know how it is I can't warm to Canon Lanigan. There is something about him that is not quite sincere. I know, of course, that I'm only a foolish old woman, and you don't have to mind me.”

But the Bishop had to mind her and he did. The poor man had one great fear, which was that he was fading away for lack of proper nourishment. He knew what the old-fashioned clerics were like, with their classical scholarship and their enormous appetites, and, comparing his own accomplishments and theirs, he couldn't see for the life of him how he was ever going to reach ninety. After eating a whole chicken for his dinner, he would sit in his study for hours, wondering what the connection was between serious scholarship and proper meals, till Nellie thrust her head in the door.

“You're all right?” she would ask coyly.

“I'm not, Nellie,” he would reply with a worried air. “I'm feeling a bit low tonight.”

“'Tis that chicken!” she would cry, making a dramatic entrance. “I knew it. I said it to Tim Murphy. There wasn't a pick on it.”

“I was wondering about that myself,” he would say, fixing her with his anxious blue eyes. “Murphy's chickens don't seem to be the same at all.”

“What you want is a nice grilled chop,” she would say authoritatively.

“I don't know,” he would mutter, measuring his idea of a chop against his idea of night starvation. “There's a lot of eating in a chop.”

“Well, you could have cutlets,” she would say with a shrug, implying that she didn't think much of cutlets for a bad case like his own.

“Cutlets make a nice snack,” he agreed.

“Ah, they do, but they're too dry,” she would cry, waving them away in disgust. “What you want is a good plate of nice curly rashers, with lots of fat on them. 'Twas my own fault. I knew there was nothing in that chicken. I should have served them with the chicken, but I declare to you my wits are wandering. I'm getting too old.… And a couple of chips. Sure, 'twill be the making of you.”

O
NE DAY
, Nellie came in terrible trouble to the Bishop. She had just been visited by one of the local customs officers, Tim Leary. The Bishop's diocese was on the border between Northern and Southern Ireland, and since there was never a time when something that was plentiful on one side wasn't scarce on the other, there was constant smuggling in both directions. The South sent butter, eggs, ham, and whiskey to the North, and the North sent back petrol, tea, and sugar—all without benefit of duty. The customs officials of the two countries worked together in their efforts to prevent it. Nellie seemed to have the greatest difficulty in explaining to the Bishop what Tim Leary wanted of her. You'd have thought she was not bright in the head.

“You said it yourself,” she said ingenuously. “This diocese was ever notorious for backbiting, but why do they pick on me? I suppose they want to have their own housekeeper, someone that would do their whispering for them. It is something I never would do, not even for your sake, and I will not do it for them, even if they do say you're too old.”

“Who says I'm too old?” the Bishop asked mildly, but his blue eyes had an angry light in them. He knew the people who would say such things, and there were plenty of them.

“Don't, don't ask me to carry stories!” she begged, almost in frenzy. “I won't do it, even to save my life. Let Canon Lanigan and the rest of them say what they like about me.”

“Never mind Canon Lanigan,” the Bishop said shortly. “What did Leary say about you?”

“But what could he say about me? What have he against me only old
doorsha-dawrsha
he picked up in the low public-houses of the town? Oh, 'tisn't that at all, my lord, but the questions he asked me. They put the heart across me. ‘Who was the chief smuggler?'—wasn't that a nice thing for him to ask me?”

“He thought you knew the chief smuggler?” the Bishop asked incredulously.

“He thought I
was
the chief smuggler,” she replied with her hand to her heart. “He didn't say it, but I could read it in that mean little mind of his. Whiskey, petrol, tea, and things, my lord, that I declare to you and to my Maker, if I was to go before Him at this minute of time, I never even knew the names of.”

“He must be mad,” the Bishop said with a worried air. “Which Learys is he belonged to? The ones from Clooneavullen?” The Bishop had a notion that most of the mysteries of human conduct could be solved by reference to heredity. He said he had never yet met a good man who came from a bad family.