The Collar (13 page)

‘Distinction?' the captain said. ‘Pooh!'

‘At the Battle of the Boyne you fought for us,' Devine said persuasively. ‘We fought for you at Fontenoy and Ramillies.

When on Ramillies bloody field

The baffled French were forced to yield,

The victor Saxon backward reeled Before the shock of Clare's Dragoons.'

He recited the lines with the same apologetic smile he had worn when speaking of sheep and shepherds, as though to excuse his momentary lapse into literature, but the captain waved him aside impatiently.

‘Your beard!' he said with a groan and a shrug. ‘I know all that. You call yourselves Irish, and the others call themselves Scotch, but you are all English. There is no difference. It is always the same; always women, always hypocrisy; always the plaster saint. Who is this girl? The
curé
's daughter?'

‘The
cure
's daughter?' Devine exclaimed in surprise.

‘Whose daughter?' asked Whelan with his mouth hanging.

‘Yours, I gather,' Devine said dryly.

‘Well, well, well!' the old man said blushing. ‘What sort of upbringing do they have? Does he even know we can't get married?'

‘I should say he takes it for granted,' replied Devine over his shoulder, more dryly even than before. ‘Elle n'est pas sa fille,' he added with amusement to the captain.

‘C'est sûr?'

‘C'est certain.'

‘Sa maîtresse alors?'

‘Ni cela non plus,' Devine replied evenly with only the faintest of smiles on the worn shell of his face.

‘Ah, bon, bon, bon!' the captain exclaimed excitedly, springing from his seat and striding about the cabin, scowling and waving his arms. ‘Bon. C'est bon. Vous vous moquez de moi, monsieur le curé. Comprenez donc, c'est seulement par politesse que j'ai voulu faire croire que c'était sa fille. On voit bien que le vieux est jaloux. Est-ce que je n'ai pas vu les flics qui surveillent mon bateau toute la semaine? Mais croyez-moi, monsieur, je me fiche de lui et de ses agents.'

‘He seems to be very excited,' Whelan said with distaste. ‘What is he saying?'

‘I'm trying to persuade him that she isn't your mistress,' Devine couldn't refrain from saying with quiet malice.

‘My what?'

‘Your mistress; the woman you live with. He says you're jealous and that you've had detectives watching his ship for a week.'

The blush which had risen to the old man's face began to spread to his neck and ears, and when he spoke, his voice quavered with emotion.

‘Well, well, well!' he said. ‘We'd better go home, Devine. 'Tis no good talking to that man. He's not right in the head.'

‘He probably thinks the same of us,' Devine said as he rose. ‘Venez manger demain soir et je vous expliquerai tout,' he added to the captain.

‘Je vous remercie, monsieur,' the captain replied with a shrug, ‘mais je n'ai pas besoin d'explications. II n'y a rien d'inattendu, mais vous en faites toute une histoire.' He clapped his hand jovially on Devine's shoulder and almost embraced him. ‘Naturellement je vous rends la fille, parce que vous la demandez, mais comprenez bien que je le fais à cause de vous, et non pas à cause de monsieur et de ses agents.' He drew himself up to his full height and glared at the parish priest, who stood in a dumb stupor.

‘Oh, quant à moi,' Devine said with weary humour, ‘vous feriez mieux en l'emmenant où vous allez. Et moi-même aussi.'

‘Quoi?' shouted the captain in desperation, clutching his forehead. ‘Vous l'aimez aussi?'

‘No, no, no, no,' Devine said good-humouredly, patting him on the arm. ‘It's all too complicated, I wouldn't try to understand if I were you.'

‘What's he saying now?' asked Whelan with sour suspicion.

‘Oh, he seems to think she's my mistress as well,' Devine replied pleasantly. ‘He thinks we're sharing her, so far as I can see.'

‘Come on, come on!' said Whelan despairingly, making for the gangway. ‘My goodness, even I never thought they were as bad as that. And we sending missions to the blacks!'

Meanwhile, the captain had rushed aft and shouted down the stairway. The second girl appeared, small, plump, and weeping too, and the captain, quite moved, slapped her encouragingly on the shoulder and said something in a gruff voice which Devine suspected must be in the nature of advice to choose younger lovers for the future. Then the captain went up bristling to Sullivan, who stood by the gangway, leaning on his folded umbrella, and with fluttering hands and imperious nods ordered him off the vessel.

‘Allez-vous-en!' he said curtly. ‘Allez, allez, allez!'

Sullivan and Sheridan went first. Dusk had crept suddenly along the quays and lay heaped there the colour of blown sand. Over the bright river-mouth, shining under a bank of dark cloud, a star twinkled. ‘The star that bids the shepherd fold,' Devine thought with sad humour. He felt hopeless and lost, as though he were returning to the prison-house of his youth. The parish priest preceded him down the gangway with his old woman's dull face sunk in his broad chest. At the foot he stopped and gazed back at the captain, who was scowling fiercely at him over the ship's side.

‘Anyway,' he said heavily, ‘thanks be to the Almighty God, your accursed race is withering off the face of the earth.'

Devine, with a bitter smile, raised his battered old hat and pulled the skirts of his coat about him as he stepped on the gangway.

‘Vous viendrez demain, monsieur le capitaine?' he asked in his most ingratiating tone.

‘Avec plaisir. A demain, monsieur le berger,' replied the captain with a knowing look.

P
EASANTS

W
HEN MICHAEL JOHN CRONIN STOLE THE FUNDS
of the Carricknabreena Hurling, Football and Temperance Association, commonly called the Club, everyone said: ‘Devil's cure to him!' ‘'Tis the price of him!' ‘Kind father for him!' ‘What did I tell you?' and the rest of the things people say when an acquaintance has got what is coming to him.

And not only Michael John but the whole Cronin family, seed, breed, and generation, came in for it; there wasn't one of them for twenty miles round or a hundred years back but his deeds and sayings were remembered and examined by the light of this fresh scandal. Michael John's father (the heavens be his bed!) was a drunkard who beat his wife, and his father before him a landgrabber. Then there was an uncle or granduncle who had been a policeman and taken a hand in the bloody work at Mitchelstown long ago, and an unmarried sister of the same whose good name it would by all accounts have needed a regiment of husbands to restore. It was a grand shaking-up the Cronins got altogether, and anyone who had a grudge in for them, even if it was no more than a thirty-third cousin, had rare sport, dropping a friendly word about it and saying how sorry he was for the poor mother till he had the blood lighting in the Cronin eyes.

There was only one thing for them to do with Michael John; that was to send him to America and let the thing blow over, and that, no doubt, is what they would have done but for a certain unpleasant and extraordinary incident.

Father Crowley, the parish priest, was chairman of the committee. He was a remarkable man, even in appearance; tall, powerfully built, but very stooped, with shrewd, loveless eyes that rarely softened to anyone except two or three old people. He was a strange man, well on in years, noted for his strong political views, which never happened to coincide with those of any party, and as obstinate as the devil himself. Now what should Father Crowley do but try to force the committee to prosecute Michael John?

The committee were all religious men who up to this had never as much as dared to question the judgments of a man of God: yes, faith, and if the priest had been a bully, which to give him his due he wasn't, he might have danced a jig on their backs and they wouldn't have complained. But a man has principles, and the like of this had never been heard of in the parish before. What? Put the police on a boy and he in trouble?

One by one the committee spoke up and said so. ‘But he did wrong,' said Father Crowley, thumping the table. ‘He did wrong and he should be punished.'

‘Maybe so, father,' said Con Norton, the vice-chairman, who acted as spokesman. ‘Maybe you're right, but you wouldn't say his poor mother should be punished too and she a widow woman?'

‘True for you!' chorused the others.

‘Serve his mother right!' said the priest shortly. ‘There's none of you but knows better than I do the way that young man was brought up. He's a rogue and his mother is a fool. Why didn't she beat Christian principles into him when she had him on her knee?'

‘That might be, too,' Norton agreed mildly. ‘I wouldn't say but you're right, but is that any reason his Uncle Peter should be punished?'

‘Or his Uncle Dan?' asked another.

‘Or his Uncle James?' asked a third.

‘Or his cousins, the Dwyers, that keep the little shop in Lissnacarriga, as decent a living family as there is in County Cork?' asked a fourth.

‘No, father,' said Norton, ‘the argument is against you.'

‘Is it indeed?' exclaimed the priest, growing cross. ‘Is it so? What the devil has it to do with his Uncle Dan or his Uncle James? What are ye talking about? What punishment is it to them, will ye tell me that? Ye'll be telling me next 'tis a punishment to me and I a child of Adam like himself.'

‘Wisha now, father,' asked Norton incredulously, ‘do you mean 'tis no punishment to them having one of their own blood made a public show? Is it mad you think we are? Maybe 'tis a thing you'd like done to yourself?'

‘There was none of my family ever a thief,' replied Father Crowley shortly.

‘Begor, we don't know whether there was or not,' snapped a little man called Daly, a hot-tempered character from the hills.

‘Easy, now! Easy, Phil!' said Norton warningly.

‘What do you mean by that?' asked Father Crowley, rising and grabbing his hat and stick.

‘What I mean,' said Daly, blazing up, ‘is that I won't sit here and listen to insinuations about my native place from any foreigner. There are as many rogues and thieves and vagabonds and liars in Cullough as ever there were in Carricknabreena – ay, begod, and more, and bigger! That's what I mean.'

‘No, no, no, no,' Norton said soothingly. ‘That's not what he means at all, father. We don't want any bad blood between Cullough and Carricknabreena. What he means is that the Crowleys may be a fine substantial family in their own country, but that's fifteen long miles away, and this isn't their country, and the Cronins are neighbours of ours since the dawn of history and time, and 'twould be a very queer thing if at this hour we handed one of them over to the police … And now, listen to me, father,' he went on, forgetting his role of pacificator and hitting the table as hard as the rest, ‘if a cow of mine got sick in the morning, 'tisn't a Cremin or a Crowley I'd be asking for help, and damn the bit of use ‘twould be to me if I did. And everyone knows I'm no enemy of the Church but a respectable farmer that pays his dues and goes to his duties regularly.'

‘True for you! True for you!' agreed the committee.

‘I don't give a snap of my finger what you are,' retorted the priest. ‘And now listen to me, Con Norton. I bear young Cronin no grudge, which is more than some of you can say, but I know my duty and I'll do it in spite of the lot of you.'

He stood at the door and looked back. They were gazing blankly at one another, not knowing what to say to such an impossible man. He shook his fist at them.

‘Ye all know me,' he said. ‘Ye know that all my life I'm fighting the long-tailed families. Now, with the help of God, I'll shorten the tail of one of them.'

Father Crowley's threat frightened them. They knew he was an obstinate man and had spent his time attacking what he called the ‘corruption' of councils and committees, which was all very well as long as it happened outside your own parish. They dared not oppose him openly because he knew too much about all of them and, in public at least, had a lacerating tongue. The solution they favoured was a tactful one. They formed themselves into a Michael John Cronin Fund Committee and canvassed the parishioners for subscriptions to pay off what Michael John had stolen. Regretfully they decided that Father Crowley would hardly countenance a football match for the purpose.

Then with the defaulting treasurer, who wore a suitably contrite air, they marched up to the presbytery. Father Crowley was at his dinner but he told the housekeeper to show them in. He looked up in astonishment as his dining room filled with the seven committeemen, pushing before them the cowed Michael John.

‘Who the blazes are ye?' he asked, glaring at them over the lamp.

‘We're the Club Committee, father,' replied Norton.

‘Oh, are ye?'

‘And this is the treasurer – the ex-treasurer, I should say.'

‘I won't pretend I'm glad to see him,' said Father Crowley grimly.

‘He came to say he's sorry, father,' went on Norton. ‘He is sorry, and that's as true as God, and I'll tell you no lie …' Norton made two steps forward and in a dramatic silence laid a heap of notes and silver on the table.

‘What's that?' asked Father Crowley.

‘The money, father. 'Tis all paid back now and there's nothing more between us. Any little crossness there was, we'll say no more about it, in the name of God.'

The priest looked at the money and then at Norton.

‘Con,' he said, ‘you'd better keep the soft word for the judge. Maybe he'll think more of it than I do.'

‘The judge, father?'

‘Ay, Con, the judge.'

There was a long silence. The committee stood with open mouths, unable to believe it.