Collected Stories (104 page)

“Aha!” Nellie cried triumphantly. “Didn't I say it myself? That his own father couldn't read or write, and the joke of the countryside for his foolish talk!”

“Never mind his father,” the Bishop said sternly. “He had an uncle in the lunatic asylum. All that family were touched. Tell him to come up here to me tomorrow, and I'll give him a bit of my mind.”

“You will to be sure, my lord,” she said complacently as she rose. Then at the door she stopped. “But why would you talk to a little whippersnapper like that—a man like you, that has the ear of the government? I suppose someone put him up to it.”

The Bishop meditated on that for a moment. He saw Nellie's point about the impropriety of people's going over his head, and recognized that it might be the work of an enemy. Like Nellie, he knew the secrets of power and understood that the most important is never to deal directly with people you look down on.

“Give me my pen!” he said at last in a voice that made Nellie's heart flutter again. When some parish priest had been seen drunk in a public place, the Bishop would say in the same dry voice to his secretary, “Give me my pen till I suspend Father Tom,” or when some gang of wild young curates had started a card club in some remote village, “Give me my pen till I scatter them!” It was the voice of ultimate authority, of the Church Militant personified in her own dear, simple man.

I
N SPITE
of strenuous detective work, Nellie never did get to see the Bishop's letter to his friend in the government, Seumas Butcher, the Irish Minister of Revenue, but, on the other hand, neither did the Bishop ever get to see the Minister's reply. It was one of the features of Nellie's concern for him that she did not like him to know of anything that would upset his health, and she merely removed such letters from the hall. But even she had never seen a letter so likely to upset the Bishop as that from the Minister:

Dear Dr. Gallogly:

It was a real pleasure to hear from you again. Mrs. Butcher was only saying a week ago that it was ages since you paid us a visit. I have had careful inquiries made about the matter you mention, and I am very sorry indeed to inform you that the statements of the local Revenue Officer appear to be fully substantiated. Your housekeeper, Miss Ellen Conneely, is the owner of licensed premises at the other side of the Border which have long been known as the headquarters of a considerable smuggling organization, whose base on this side appears to be the Episcopal Palace. You will realize that the Revenue Officers have no desire to take any steps that could be an embarrassment to you, but you will also appreciate that this traffic involves a considerable loss of revenue for both our country and the North of Ireland, and might in the event of other gangs operating in the neighborhood being tried and convicted, result in serious charges. I should be deeply grateful for your lordship's kind assistance in putting an early end to it.

Mise le meas,

Seumas O. Butcher

Aire

Nellie fully understood, when she had read this, the tone with which the Bishop said “Give me my pen,” as a father might say “Give me my stick.” There were certain matters that could only be dealt with by a pen like a razor, and that evening she sat in her own room and wrote:

Dear Sir:

His Lordship, the Most Reverend Dr. Gallogly, Bishop of Moyle, has handed me your letter of the 3rd inst. and asked me to reply to it on his behalf. He says it is a tissue of lies and that he does not want to be bothered anymore with it. I suppose his lordship would not know what is going on in his own house? Or is it a rogue and robber you think he is? I do not know how you can have the face to say such things to a bishop. All those lies were started by Tim Leary, and as his lordship says, what better could you expect of a man whose uncle died in the Moyle Asylum, a wet and dirty case? The public-house you talk about is only another of the lies. It does not belong to me at all but to my poor brother who, after long years of suffering for Ireland in English prisons, is now an incurable invalid with varicose veins and six children. How would the likes of him be a smuggler? Tim Leary will be thrown out if he calls here again. It is all lies. Did Tim Leary suffer for Ireland? Has Tim Leary six children? What has happened our Christian principles and what do we pay taxes for? We were better off when we had the English.

Yours sincerely,

Ellen Conneely

There was something about this letter that gave Nellie a real thrill of pride and satisfaction. Like all women of her kind, she had always had the secret desire to speak out boldly with the whole authority of the Church behind her, and now she had done it.

She had also illustrated to perfection the Achilles' heel of Catholicism, because, though Dr. Gallogly would probably have had a heart attack if he had known the contents of her letter, no layman could be quite sure of this, and the Minister and his staff were left with a vague impression that, somehow or other, the Bishop of Moyle was now the ringleader of a smuggling gang. Being all of them good Catholics, they took the charitable view that the Bishop was no longer responsible for his actions and had taken to smuggling the way some old men take to other peculiar pursuits, but all the same it was a nasty situation. Whatever happened, you could not raid the palace for contraband. The very thought of what the newspapers would say about this made the Minister sick. The
Irish Times
would report it in full, with a smug suggestion that Protestant bishops never did things like that; the
Irish Independent
would assert that instructions for the raid had come direct from Moscow through the local Communist cell; while the
Irish Press
would say, without fear of contradiction, that it was another British plot against the good name of Irishmen.

“Jesus, Joe!” the Minister said, with a moan, to his secretary. “Forget it! Forget it, if you can!”

B
UT
the local customs officers could not forget it. Nellie didn't allow them. Scared by Tim Leary and the Minister's letter, she worked openly and feverishly to get rid of all the contraband in her possession, and the professional pride of the customs officers was mortified. Then, one day, a man was caught trying to cross the border into the North with a keg of whiskey under the seat of his car, and he swore by God and the Twelve Apostles that he had no notion how it had got there. But Tim Leary, who knew the man's friendship with Nellie, knew damn well how it had got there, and went to Paddy Clancy's liquor store in Moyle, from which it had originally come. Paddy, a crushed and quivering poor man, had to admit that the keg had been sold to the Bishop.

“Get me the Bishop's account, Paddy,” Tim said stiffly, and poor Paddy produced the ledger. It was an ugly moment, because Paddy was a man who made a point of never interfering with any man's business but he knew of old that the Bishop's liquor account was most peculiar. Tim Leary studied it in stupefaction.

“Honor of God!” he said angrily. “Are you trying to tell me that the Bishop drinks all that?”

“Bishops have a lot of entertaining to do, Tim,” Paddy said meekly.

“Bishops don't have to have a bloody bonded store to entertain in!” shouted Tim.

“Well, Tim, 'tis a delicate matter,” Paddy said, sweating with anxiety. “If a man is to have customers in this country, he cannot afford to ask questions.”

“Well, begod, I'm going to ask a few questions,” cried Tim, “and I'm going to do it this very morning, what's more. Give me that ledger!”

Then, with the ledger under his arm, he went straight up to the palace. Nellie tried to head him off. First she said the Bishop was out; then she said the Bishop was ill; finally she said that the Bishop had given orders that Tim was not to be admitted.

“You try to stop me, Nellie, and I'll damn soon show you whether I'm going to be admitted or not,” said Tim, pushing past her, and at that moment the study door opened and the Bishop came out. It was no coincidence, and at that moment Nellie knew she was lost, for along with the appetite of a child the Bishop had the curiosity of a child, and a beggar's voice at the door would be sufficient for him to get up and leave the door of his study ajar so that he could listen in comfort to the conversation.

“That will do, Nellie,” he said, and then came up to Tim with a menacing air—a handsome old man of six foot two, with a baby complexion and fierce blue eyes.

“What do you want?” he asked sternly, but on his own ground Tim could be as infallible as any bishop.

“I'm investigating the smuggling that's going on in this locality, and I want to ask you a few questions, my lord,” he replied grimly.

“So I heard,” said the Bishop. “I told the Minister already I couldn't see why you had to do your investigating in my house.”

“I'm a public servant, my lord,” Tim said, his voice rising, “and I'm entitled to make my investigations wherever I have to.”

“You're a very independent young man,” the Bishop said dryly but without rancor. “Tell me, are you John Leary's son from Clooneavullen?”

“I'm nothing of the sort. Who said I was John Leary's son? My father was from Manister.”

“For God's sake!” the Bishop said softly. “You're not Jim Leary's boy, by any chance?”

“I am, then,” said Tim with a shrug.

“Come on in,” the Bishop said, holding out his hand to Tim, while his eyes searched away into the distance beyond the front door. “Your father was headmaster there when I was a canon. I must have seen you when you were a little fellow. Come in, anyway. No son of Jim Leary's is going to leave this house without a drink.”

“But I'm on duty, my lord,” said Tim, following him in.

“Aren't we all?” the Bishop asked mildly as he went to the sideboard. “I'm as much a bishop now as I'll ever be.” With shaky hands he produced two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He gave one tiny glass to Tim and took another himself. It was obviously a duty rather than a pleasure. The Bishop did not go in for drinking, because it seemed to ruin his appetite and that was bad enough already.

“Now, tell me what all this is about,” he said comfortably.

Tim was beginning to realize that he really liked the man—an old weakness of his, which, combined with his violent temper, made him a bad investigator. He sometimes thought the bad temper and the good nature were only two aspects of the same thing.

“A man was caught trying to cross the border a few days ago with a keg of your whiskey in his car,” he said firmly as he could.

“A keg of my whiskey?” the Bishop repeated with real interest and apparent enjoyment. “But what would I be doing with a keg of whiskey?”

“That's what I came to ask you,” replied Tim. “You seem to have bought enough of them in the past year.”

“I never bought a keg of whiskey in my whole life, boy,” said the Bishop with amusement. “Sure, if I take a drop of punch before I go to bed, that's all the whiskey I ever see. It's bad for a man of my age,” he added earnestly. “I haven't the constitution.”

“If you'll take one look at your account in Clancy's ledger, you'll see you're supposed to have an iron constitution,” said Tim, and as he opened the book, there was a knock and Nellie came in modestly with a bundle of receipted bills in her hand. “Or maybe this is the one with the iron constitution,” Tim added fiercely. He still had not forgotten his unmannerly reception.

“You need say no more,” she said briskly. “I admit it, whatever little harm I did to anyone. 'Twas only to keep my unfortunate angashore of a brother out of the workhouse. Between drinking and politics, he was never much head to his poor wife, God rest her. Not one penny did I ever make out of it, and not one penny of his lordship's money ever went astray. I'll go if I have to, but I will not leave this house without a character.”

“I'll give you the character,” Tim said savagely. “And furthermore I'll see you have a place to go. You can do all the smuggling you like there—if you're able.”

“That will do!” the Bishop said sternly. “Go away, Nellie!” he added over his shoulder, in the tone he used when he asked for his pen to suspend Father Tom.

Nellie looked at him for a moment in stupefaction and then burst into a howl of grief and went out, sobbing to herself about “the fifteen good years of my life that I wasted on him and there's his gratitude.” The Bishop waited imperturbably till her sobs had subsided in the kitchen before he spoke again.

“How many people know about this?”

“Begod, my lord, by this time I think you might say 'twas common property,” said Tim with a laugh.

The Bishop did not laugh. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “What do they think of it?”

“Well, of course, they all have a great regard for you,” Tim replied, in some embarrassment.

“I'm sure of that,” the Bishop said without a hint of irony. “They have so much regard for me that they don't care if I turn my house into a smuggler's den. They didn't suggest what I might be doing with the Cathedral?”

Tim saw that the Bishop was more cut up than he affected to be.

“Ah, I wouldn't worry about that,” he said anxiously.

“I'm not worrying. What will they do to Nellie?”

“Oh, she'll get the jail,” said Tim. “As well as a bloody big fine that'll be worse to her.”

“A fine? What sort of a fine?”

“That will be calculated on the value of the contraband,” said Tim. “But if you ask me quietly, 'twill run well into the thousands.”

“Into the thousands?” the Bishop asked in alarm. “But where would either of us get that sort of money, boy?”

“You may be damn full sure she has it,” Tim said grimly.

“Nellie?”

“Aye, and more along with it,” said Tim.