The Collar (17 page)

Sullivans' was the nearest farmhouse. The three men got into the car again and drove slowly down under the trees past the monastery. There was an iron railing, which seemed strangely out of place, and then a field, and then the bare mountain again. It was coming on to dark, and it struck Spike that they would find no one that night. He was sorry for that poor devil, and could not get over the casualness of Mick Hurley. A stationmaster! God, wouldn't you think he'd have some sense?

‘It isn't Mick Hurley I blame at all,' Hanagan said angrily.

‘Ah, well, Tommy, you can't be too hard on the poor monks,' Linehan said reasonably. ‘I suppose they were hoping he'd go away and not cause any scandal.'

‘A poor bloody loony!' snapped the Yank, his emotion bringing out a strong Boston accent. ‘Gahd, you wouldn't do it to a dawg!'

‘How sure you are he was a loony!' Spike said, with a sneer. ‘He didn't seem so very loony to me.'

‘But you heard what Father Felix said!' Hanagan cried. ‘Mental blackouts. That poor devil is somewhere out on that goddam mountain with his memory gone.'

‘Ah, I'll believe all I hear when I eat all I get,' Spike said in the same tone.

It wasn't that he really disbelieved in the blackouts so much as that he had trained himself to take things lightly, and the Yank was getting on his nerves. At that moment he spotted the passenger out of the corner of his eye. The rain seemed to have caught him somewhere on top of a peak, and he was running, looking for shelter, from rock to rock. Without looking round, Spike stopped the car quietly and lit a cigarette.

‘Don't turn round now, boys!' he said. ‘He's just over there on our right.'

‘What do you think we should do, Spike?' Linehan asked.

‘Get out of the car quietly and break up, so that we can come round him from different directions,' said Spike.

‘Then you'd scare him properly,' said Hanagan. ‘Let me go and talk to him!'

Before they could hinder him, he was out of the car and running up the slope from the road. Spike swore. He knew if the monk took to his heels now, they might never catch him. Hanagan shouted and the monk halted, stared, then walked towards him.

‘It looks as if he might come quietly,' said Linehan. He and Spike followed Hanagan slowly.

Hanagan stopped on a little hillock, hatless, his hands in his trousers pockets. The monk came up to him. He, too, was hatless; his raincoat was covered with mud; and he wore what looked like a week's growth of beard. He had a sullen, frightened look, like an old dog called to heel after doing something wrong.

‘That's a bad evening now,' Hanagan said, with an awkward smile, which made him look unexpectedly boyish.

‘I hope you're not taking all this trouble for me,' the monk said, looking first at Hanagan, then at Spike and the policeman, who stood a little apart from him.

‘Ah, what trouble?' Hanagan said, with fictitious lightness. ‘We were afraid you might be caught in the mist. It's bad enough even for those that know the mountain. You'd want to get those wet things off you quick.'

‘I suppose so,' the monk said, looking down at his drenched clothes as though he were seeing them for the first time. Spike could now believe in the mental blackout, the man looked so stunned, like a sleepwalker.

‘We'll stop at the pub and Spike can bring over whatever bags you want,' said Hanagan.

The public-house hotel looked uncannily bright after the loneliness of the mountain. Hanagan was at his most obnoxiously efficient. Linehan wanted to take a statement from the monk, but Hanagan stopped him. ‘Is it a man in that state? How could he give you a statement?' He rushed in and out, his hat on the back of his head, producing hot whiskeys for them all, sending Spike to the station for the bag, and driving his wife and the maid mad seeing that there was hot water and shaving tackle in the bathroom and that a hot meal was prepared.

When the monk came down, shaved and in dry clothes, Hanagan sat opposite him, his legs spread and his hands on his thighs.

‘What you'll do,' he said, with a commanding air, ‘is rest here for a couple of days.'

‘No thanks,' the monk said, shaking his head.

‘It won't cost you anything,' Hanagan said, with a smile.

‘It's not that,' said the monk in a low voice. ‘I'd better get away from this.'

‘But you can't, man. You'll have to see about getting your tickets changed. We can see to that for you. You might get pneumonia after being out so long.'

‘I'll have to go on,' the monk said stubbornly. ‘I have to get away.'

‘You mean you're afraid you might do the same thing again?' Hanagan said in a disappointed tone. ‘Maybe you're right. Though what anyone wants to go back to that place for beats me.'

‘What do people want to go back anywhere for?' the monk asked in a dull tone.

Spike thought it was as close as ever he'd seen anyone get to knocking the Yank off his perch. Hanagan grew red, then rose and went in the direction of the door, suddenly changed his mind, and turned to grasp the monk's left hand in his own two. ‘I'm a good one to talk,' he said in a thick voice. ‘Eighteen years, and never a day without thinking of this place. You mightn't believe it, but there were nights I cried myself to sleep. And for what, I ask you? What did I expect?'

He had changed suddenly; no longer the bighearted, officious ward boss looking after someone in trouble, he had become humble and almost deferential. When they were leaving, he half opened the front door and halted. ‘You're sure you won't stay?' he snapped over his shoulder.

‘Sure,' said the monk, with a nod.

Hanagan waved his left arm, and they went out across the dark square to the station.

Spike and he saw the last of the monk, who waved to them till the train disappeared in the darkness. Hanagan followed it, waving, with a mawkish smile, as though he were seeing off a girl. Spike could see that he was deeply moved, but what it was all about was beyond him. Spike had never stood on the deck of a liner and watched his fatherland drop away behind him. He didn't know the sort of hurt it can leave in a boy's mind, a hurt that doesn't heal even when you try to conjure away the pain by returning. Nor did he realise, as Hanagan did at that moment, that there are other fatherlands, whose loss can hurt even more deeply.

A M
OTHER'S
W
ARNING

O
NE WINTER EVENING
Father Fogarty's housekeeper let in a strange young woman. She was tall and thin with a slight pale face, and her good manners barely contained a natural excitability of manner. Though he was normally shy of women he was attracted by her and offered her coffee.

‘When you know what I came about you probably won't ask me to have coffee,' she replied with a rueful grin.

‘In that case I'd better order it first,' he said, responding to her tone.

‘You'd better hear what I have to confess and
then
order it,' she suggested slyly.

‘By the way, it's not confession you want, is it?' he asked professionally.

‘That comes afterwards too, like the coffee,' she replied.

‘I don't know what your name is yet,' he said as she sat down.

‘Sheila Moriarty.'

‘You're not from this part of the world?'

‘No. I'm from Limerick. I'm working here in Carr's Stores.'

‘How do you like it?'

‘The shop is all right. The place itself is fine. Too fine. I suppose that's what got me into the mess I'm in. Oh, I didn't realise it in time, but I was probably brought up too sheltered.'

‘How many of you are there?' he asked.

‘Six. Three boys, three girls. Daddy is an insurance agent; Mummy – well, I suppose Mummy is a saint.'

‘A what?' he asked in surprise.

‘Oh, I don't mean it that way, but she is, really. Trying to bring up six of us on Daddy's couple of quid and see that we had everything – education, music, religion. I'm damn full sure I couldn't do it. Now, here I am after less than a year away bringing disgrace on her!'

‘What did you do?' he asked quietly.

‘Stole stuff from the shop,' she replied sullenly. In Fogarty's experience there were two sorts of women criers, the ones who cried at once and the ones who got sullen. She was the sort who got sullen. ‘Nice, aren't I?' she asked with a bitter little smile.

For a few moments he could say nothing. With her looks and temperament he would have expected her to say that she was pregnant, but you could never tell with women.

‘How serious is it?' he asked gravely, and she opened her handbag and put a brooch on the little table beside her. It looked to him as silly as any other brooch – a sort of golden leaf that he couldn't imagine anyone's risking a job for.

‘How much is it worth?' he asked doubtfully.

‘Three quid,' she said.

‘Can't you put it back?' he asked, and she shook her head slowly.

‘I'm in a different department now.'

‘Or put the price of it in the till?'

‘Not without its being spotted.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘Send them a postal order anonymously. They won't ask any questions.'

‘It's not as simple as that,' she said. ‘Somebody knows I stole it.'

‘Oh!' he exclaimed. ‘Somebody in the shop?'

‘Yes. An assistant manager. He encouraged me, in fact. He said the whole staff did it. Maybe they do; I don't know, but it doesn't matter anyhow. I should have known better.'

‘I take it this manager fellow is a man?'

‘Yes. His name is Michael Joyce. He lives in St Mary's Road.'

‘Is he married by any chance?'

That did it. She began to sob dryly and bitterly. Then she dabbed her nose viciously with a handkerchief and went on talking as though at random.

‘Cripes, and before I left home Mummy told me never to take anything that belonged to my employers. I went into hysterics on her. It shows you the way we were brought up. I didn't know people could do things like that. And
then
she told me not to have anything to do with married men because they weren't all like Daddy! We always thought she was so blooming innocent. She wasn't as innocent as we were, though.'

‘You'd better tell me the rest of this,' Fogarty said sternly. ‘How far has this thing gone?'

‘Too far.'

‘You mean you and he have been living together?'

‘Near enough to it anyway. And that's what he wants.'

‘But it's not what you want?'

‘Not now,' she said almost angrily. ‘At first, I suppose I let myself be dazzled. I must have when I let him persuade me to pinch that, mustn't I? Now that I know what he's like I'd sooner pitch myself in the river.'

‘What is he like?' Fogarty asked.

‘Oh, he's not what you think,' she said ruefully. ‘He's clever. I know he's smooth and he's a liar, but he could probably get round you too if it was worth his while.'

‘What do you mean when you say he's a liar?' Fogarty asked, weighing it up.

‘I mean he told me things about his wife, and
they
were lies.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because I met her.'

‘Oh, so you know his wife?'

‘I do. He made me come to his house one night after work for a bit of supper. It nearly choked me. That was when I turned against him. He brought me there deliberately to show me off to her. He watched us the whole time. And everything he'd said was wrong. She was decent and she was as frightened of him as I was. There's a devil in that man.'

‘Is that all?' he asked.

‘Isn't it enough?' she retorted. ‘I think only for that last evening he could have done what he liked with me. But he isn't normal.'

‘I mean, could we have the coffee in now?' he asked with an encouraging smile. Then he went to the head of the stairs and bellowed ‘Mary! Coffee!' He shut the room door behind him and swaggered back to the mantelpiece. ‘I'll have to think what's the best thing to do,' he said, sounding more confident than he felt. ‘About this, to begin with,' he added, picking up the brooch. ‘I gather you have no further use for it?'

‘I wish to God I'd never seen it,' she said.

‘You won't see it again,' he said, and put it in his coat pocket. ‘I have to think about Mr Joyce as well. Meanwhile, whatever you do, don't go anywhere with him. Don't even talk to him. If he annoys you, tell him to go to hell. I suppose he's trying to blackmail you over the brooch?'

‘I suppose so, in a way,' she replied uncertainly. ‘He's not as crude as that, of course.'

‘They never are,' he said from the depths of his worldy wisdom. ‘But remember, there's nothing he can do to you that wouldn't injure himself a great deal worse.'

‘I wouldn't be too sure of that,' she said doubtfully. ‘A fellow in a position like that doesn't have to say “Miss Moriarty stole a brooch from the jewellery counter.”'

‘I don't think he'll say anything,' Fogarty said forcefully. ‘Does he know you were coming to me?'

‘No. I never told him anything.'

‘If he starts anything, tell him I know everything about it,' he said. ‘There's nothing these fellows dread more than a third party who's in on the game. Meanwhile forget about it. But remember, next time you meet a married man, what your mother told you. They're
not
all like your father. She was right there.'

When they had drunk their coffee he saw her to the door and held her hand for a moment.

‘Give me two days to see what I can do,' he said. ‘I'll be here on Friday night if you want me. Until then, forget about it.'

But this was more than he could do himself. Fogarty, partly because of his character, partly because of his circumstance, was a man who lived a great deal in his own imagination, and something about the girl had set his imagination on fire. Even the few words she had dropped had made him see the sort of home she came from, and the anxious, pious mother who tried to spread out her husband's little income into a full and comfortable life for six children who probably didn't even realise the sacrifices she was making for them, and wouldn't realise it till she was dead and buried. ‘A saint', the girl had said, and she was probably right. He had known saints like that whose lives nobody would ever know about, much less write about. He could even see how a girl brought up in a poor, pious, cheerful home like that, where no quarrel was ever allowed to occur that could not be reported later as a joke to friends, and who was then left alone in a cheerless town would be readier than the next to grasp at whatever society offered itself. And he had no difficulty at all in imagining the sinister figure of Joyce, trying to lure the girl from one small misdemeanour to another until eventually he could exercise a moral blackmail on her. He had seen a few men like that as well. What would have happened to the girl if she hadn't had the sense to consult a priest required no imagination at all. But, in spite of his burning determination to frustrate Joyce, he wasn't at all sure what he should do.