‘He knew I was using the barrel-organ,’ Rashers confided.
‘I thought the same,’ Hennessy agreed.
‘In a way,’ Rashers said, ‘we have as much right to it as this relative—bloody habeus corpus.’
Hennessy shrugged. Blood, he felt, was thicker than water and had legitimate claims. As they turned at last into Chandlers Court, Rashers stopped and said:
‘That was my cell he put the monkey in.’
Then he began to tell him, not for the first time, of his day in prison that marked the visit of Edward VII.
The blinding rain of a bad Sunday evening kept the three of them housebound. Father O’Sullivan, armed with pen and ink and writing material, entered the sitting room about eight o’clock and found Father Giffley there—a rare occurrence. Father O’Connor, arriving later, was equally surprised at Father Giffley’s presence. Knowing an immediate withdrawal would betray uneasiness, he sat down.
‘What terrible rain,’ he remarked as he did so.
‘I’ve been expecting it all day,’ Father O’Sullivan said. He was now writing at the table, but left down his pen to raise his right arm and make a grimace which conveyed pain.
‘Rheumatism?’
‘Since early morning,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘it’s an infallible sign.’
Father Giffley lowered his paper to stare at him.
‘A little Kruschen salts, John,’ he said, ‘as much as will fit on a sixpence. Take it regularly each morning and you’ll have no further worries of that kind.’
‘You advised me about that before, but the pain goes away after a day or two and I never remember,’ Father O’Sullivan confessed.
‘Take the Kruschen,’ Father Giffley admonished, ‘or continue as you are—a walking weathercock.’
Father O’Sullivan smiled, picked up his pen and returned to his work.
After that the atmosphere was easier. The three settled down, great wind gusts sent the rain rattling against the window and made a dull roar in the chimney. But the fire burned brightly and the oil lamps—so disposed that reading or writing did not overtax the eyes—cast a soothing light.
It was a brown room, with heavy upright chairs in black about the great centre table, and heavy, comfortable armchairs, also in black, in an arc about the fire. Father O’Sullivan’s biretta for some reason crowned the pile of magazines that stood near the end of the table on his left. The enormous painting of the Crucifixion which hung on one wall was beyond the effective range of the lamps, so that only the white zigzag of a lightning streak above the cross stood out and an oval of grey countenance sagged under its thorny crown. In daylight there was a cobweb interlaced with the crown, Father O’Connor remembered—a real one—too high for the servant’s brush. Black letters on a brass plaque beneath said: Consummatum Est. On either side in daylight, but not now seen, were the Blessed Mother in a blue mantle, head bowed in grief, arms folded on her bosom; and the disciple beloved of Jesus. Son, behold thy mother—mother, behold thy son. John—same name as O’Sullivan.
The Kruschen worried Father O’Connor. Surely it was intended for the bowels. A little brandy, Giffley had once advised him, but he had refused. A wonder he had not recommended peppermints—his own unvarying physic.
Both prescribed for and prescriber were now lost in concentration, the one writing laboriously, the other reading. Father O’Connor searched his pocket and found Yearling’s letter. He began to read it again.
As a result of a wager with myself, which I had the good fortune to win, I am back here in Connemara. My intention was to fish, but in making the arrangement I overlooked a simple fact—that the fishing season had already closed. So, although I am determined to uphold my undertaking to myself by staying here for the promised duration, my rods are lying unpacked in the bedroom and there is no one left in the hotel to share the turf fire here in the lounge with me except the cat, an animal so overfed in the season on the left-overs of the best salmon and trout that he (perhaps she—cats always baffle me) is a phlegmatic egocentric who sleeps most of the time. What night life is there for a cat in Connemara, especially outside the holiday season? What Can It Do? Being one of the lower animals, not yet advanced sufficiently along Mr. Darwin’s evolutionary path, its accomplishments are limited. In centuries to come, I have no doubt, its descendants will vie with each other in the compilation of histories and the elaboration of philosophies, like Anatole France’s penguins. Meanwhile it yawns and waits.
Have you read Sketches of the Irish Highlands by Rev. H. McManus? Do you know of him? I think he may have been a friend of my father’s but I am not sure. He was the first missionary of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to learn the Irish language in order to spread his particular brand of enlightenment among the Connemara peasantry. I am reading him at present from a mildewed copy which I found in the bookcase here on a wet afternoon some few days ago. How he ever hoped his parsimonious bore of a God could succeed with these naturally gentlemanly and generous people I cannot imagine. I am entirely behind them in their rejection of a Deity disinclined to gaudy images, incantations, Holy Water and plenty of drink.
Autumn is not so noticeable here in Connemara as elsewhere, I think because there are so few trees (a stone wall is a stone wall, winter or summer). Yet I feel the melancholy of the season just as keenly. The glow of the fire, the smell of the turf smoke, the quality of the light which is now beginning to fail outside the window, all speak as certainly as any scurry of brown and yellow leaves of the turning of the year. Soon they will light the lamps and call me to my meal. Mutton. No possibility whatever of a surprise. In Connemara it is always either salmon or mutton.
Have you seen Bradshaw lately? He and I are not firm friends. When I dared some time ago to suggest that he ought to do something about repairing those tenement houses of his by the railway line, he concluded that I had become an honorary emissary of Mr. Larkin. You should speak to him if you get the opportunity. Some day they’ll collapse on the unfortunate tenantry. I know your main concern will not be whether they are killed but whether being killed, they are all in a fit state of saving grace to ascend straight to heaven to fill the vacant places left by Lucifer and his fallen angels, which, as you once so picturesquely explained to me, is the reason why your God creates his populous conglomeration of verminous and under-privileged slum-dwellers. Why can’t He make more angels on the spot, instead of taking such a roundabout means of filling the vacant celestial mansions. Look at the trouble and expense he puts good-living and well-to-do Christians to (including our friend Bradshaw) bribing the City and Borough Councillors to stop them serving an order on them to have their wretched hovels made habitable. And look at all the failures, whom he sends to hell to swell the enemy ranks and make Lucifer feel the revolt was well worth it. I was about to ask if you had read Anatole France but I seem to recollect that he is on the Index—Omnia Opera, lock stock and barrel.
Oh dear, I could go on in this vein for many pages, but they have come to tell me my meal is ready. How far away this little place is from your strike-tormented city; Larkin and Syndicalism, Carson and Home Rule, Griffith and his Sinn Fein desperadoes. By the way, did I ever tell you what I heard G. B. Shaw saying at a lecture several months ago in the Antient Concert Rooms, when he was asked what he had to say to the menace of Sinn Fein? He said: ‘I have met only one Sinn Feiner since I returned to Dublin. She is a very nice girl.’