The Collar (12 page)

F
ATHER 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.

‘I think so, father,' Whelan said stubbornly. ‘That girl, Captain Whatever-your-name-is,' he went on slowly, ‘has no business to be on your ship at all. It is no place for a young unmarried girl to be at this hour of night.'

‘I don't understand,' the captain said uneasily, with a sideways glance at Devine. ‘Is she a relative of yours?'

‘No, sir,' Whelan said emphatically. ‘She's nothing whatever to me.'

‘Then I don't see what you want her for,' said the captain.

‘That's as I'd expect, sir,' Whelan said stolidly, studying his nails.

‘Oh, for Heaven's sake!' exclaimed Devine, exasperated by the old man's boorishness. ‘You see, captain,' he said patiently, bending forward with his worried air, his head tilted back as though he feared his pince-nez might fall off, ‘this girl is one of Father Whelan's parishioners. She's not a very good girl – not that I mean there's much harm in her,' he added hastily, catching a note of unction in his own tone which embarrassed him, ‘but she's a bit wild. It's Father Whelan's duty to keep her as far as he can from temptation. He is the shepherd, and she is one of his stray sheep,' he added with a faint smile at his own eloquence.

The captain bent forward and touched him lightly on the knee.

‘You're a funny race,' he said with interest. ‘I've travelled the whole world and met with Englishmen everywhere, and I will never understand you. Never!'

‘We're not English, man,' Whelan said with the first trace of interest he had so far displayed. ‘Don't you know what country you're in? This is Ireland.'

‘Same thing,' said the captain.

‘It is not the same thing,' said Whelan.

‘Surely, captain,' Devine protested gently with his head cocked, sizing up his man, ‘we admit some distinction?'