The Devil's Diary, page 11
‘In for the last knockings, Helga?’ we shout.
‘Knockings, what’s that?’ she calls back. ‘I’ll have a pint instead.’
She doesn’t sponge, she stands her round. She makes no distinction between young men and old. She’s a man’s man’s woman, a tomboy through and through.
McDowd comes to the pub every evening now. He’s cleaner and younger-looking, and he’s started making jokes. You can tell by his step that he walks on air. The poor man is in a bad way. Yesterday I lay with him under the lee of a rock watching her comb the shore for driftwood. He knew I had my eye on her and I knew that he had his eye on her too, but each of us pretended to be looking at rain showers passing down the bay. McDowd was lying on his side, his long legs stretched, with his trousers tucked into white socks. He took his pipe from his gob and blew a puff of rank smoke across my face.
‘It’s a great pipe you’ve got there,’ I said.
‘It’s bigger than yours.’ He pretended to look into the offing.
‘Is it a pipe of peace?’
Helga straightened and turned, offering us two juicy grapefruit. They bounced up and down in perfect unison as she walked.
‘If it were a pipe of peace, I wouldn’t smoke it,’ he replied. ‘There’s always something to trouble a man. There’s never any peace, not even on Sunday.’
Helga was stooping with her back to us, tying a piece of rope to the thin end of a tree trunk.
‘When you see Helga in slacks and high leather boots, what do you notice?’ I thought I’d give him a little test.
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘She’s ever so slightly bow-legged. She gives me a sense of massed armies marching, trampling everything into the ground.’
‘That does something for you?’
‘It’s impressive.’
McDowd turned to me, his face serious and hard. I could see the blue of the sea reflected in the unnatural blue of his eyes.
‘When I see Helga,’ he said, ‘I think of soft chocolates.’
‘I don’t think she’d appreciate that.’
‘Then you don’t have to tell her.’
Helga put the rope over her shoulder and, leaning forward, began dragging the tree trunk after her.
‘She’ll do herself an injury if she isn’t careful,’ I said.
‘She’d give a weak man a hernia watching her. Now a strong man would offer to take the strain.’
She came towards us up the path with her head down and her hair unkempt from the breeze. I got up and offered her a hand, because at that moment all I wanted was to be her chosen helpmate. She looked a cool refusal. She was about to pass when McDowd got up and said, ‘We’ll both give you a hand, and you can stand back and be gaffer.’ That seemed to please her. She stretched out between us in the shelter of the rock and lit one of her sexy French cigarettes. We both put away our pipes, content to share the slipstream of her Gauloise. McDowd was lying behind her, peering over her shoulder down the shadowy cleft inside her blouse, a randy man with one thing on his mind, totally lacking in sexual delicacy. As I was facing her, I could see his slack mouth and his eyes leaping in their sockets. I had a fair idea of what he was going through, lying there so close to her and at the same time so far from home. He drew even closer, slowly and silently, as if trying to ease an ache on the sly. She must have felt his tobacco breath on her neck because she turned on her back, and we both leant on one elbow looking down at her. Her eyes were closed and in her face was a serenity that challenged the urgency of all animal appetite.
‘You’re no great shakes as conversationalists, are you?’ she said.
‘Conversation, did you say? All you need is love,’ McDowd advised.
‘I’ve always wanted to know what the men here talk about as they lie under rocks looking out to sea. Now that you’re both together, perhaps you could give me a demonstration.’
‘Ah, very difficult,’ said McDowd. ‘We’re two hot-blooded men in the prime of life. How can we pretend that you’re not sandwiched between us? It’s asking too much of straining flesh.’
‘This morning I saw you mowing the field below the cottage and you left a square uncut in the middle. Now why did you do that? Is it an old superstition?’ she enquired.
‘I came on a corncrake’s nest and I didn’t want to disturb her little family.
‘I am impressed, Mandamus. You have a warm heart after all.’
Her breasts rose as she inhaled. Pure blue smoke poured from her nostrils, flowering between me and McDowd. I could see that he was excited. He looked as if he could eat her. His lips were wet.
‘I was only being selfish.’ He pretended to be self-effacing. ‘I’m fond of the corncrake. You and Hugo may hear her call this evening but I’ll know that it’s me she’s praising.’
‘Crex-crex! Crex-crex!’ Olga mimicked. ‘Praise Mandamus, O my soul: and forget not all his benefits.’
‘You yourself will have cause to praise me. I robbed a wild bees’ nest this morning and kept the honey for your tea.’ McDowd almost cooed in her ear.
‘The bees will go hungry when winter comes,’ I said casually.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t accept it.’ She glanced quizzically from one to the other of us.
‘Only you can decide. It’s a matter of fine moral judgment.’
‘If you accept, you’ll be doing good,’ McDowd said. ‘I promise not to rob any more bees’ nests today.’
‘I’ll accept it then. I believe in doing good,’ she smiled.
‘I’ll bring you the honey in time for tea. It’s better than any honey you’ve ever had from a pot.’
‘We’ve talked about the corncrake and wild honey. What would you two talk about if I wasn’t here.’
‘The past,’ I replied before McDowd could catch her ear again.
‘The past is Mary Rose,’ explained McDowd. ‘She grew up with Arty Bradley, Father Johnnie, Hugo and myself, then she left for London and married a millionaire. You should have known her. There was no girl like her, not till you came to the glen.’
‘Do I look like her?’
‘You think like her,’ I said. ‘Now, she was a daring girl.’
McDowd bent over her and whispered in her ear. I missed the first sentence but I heard the second.
‘Heaven is in your breeks,’ he said.
‘I refuse to believe it.’ She smiled through an ethereal smoke screen.
‘I’d like to prove it, but for that I need your permission.’
‘Proof is for scientists. As an artist, I’m willing to take your word for it.’ She ended the rally with a smash. ‘Now I want to be gaffer,’ she said, getting to her feet.
I had wanted the three of us to lie under the rock for the whole afternoon, making slow conversation with neither envy nor animosity in our hearts, postponing all resolution, and delighting in the delicious tension between not knowing and the desire to know. It was not to be. McDowd had broken the spell. No sexual finesse, that’s his problem. I once said to Helga, ‘Heaven is in your bed’, and she didn’t bat an eyelid. It was the word ‘breeks’ that made her bridle. I could see by the way she threw back her head.
McDowd and I carried the log between us up the slope. We laid it against her barn gable and waited for her to speak. He listened to her breathing as she thanked us, and suddenly he knew that thanks was all he’d get. I could see the blank disappointment in his face as she closed the door on us.
‘You should buy her a pair of braces for her britches,’ I said. ‘She’s for ever hitching them up.’
‘Isn’t that the beauty of them, the sense of inner space they give you?’
‘There are men who wouldn’t welcome inner space,’ I reminded him.
‘It doesn’t worry me. Her breeks may look like flour bags, but as Father Johnnie might say, if he had a mind like mine, “One night in them, O Lord, is better than a thousand.” ’
McDowd doesn’t like me and I’m not overfond of him. Helga smiles on him, though it’s possible that she may be flirting to make me jealous. She is not a woman but womankind. She could have carved her own figure, it’s so trim; made by the Devil himself to model tight skirts and skimpy shirts. Instead she comes to the pub in flour bags so capacious that McDowd and myself could get lost in them simultaneously. And what of Father Johnnie? Surely there’s room in them for him. He’ll be the last (apart from Helga) to know that he’s besotted. Men who make morality their business often lose the yearning for moral perfection, while those with a gift for immorality are sometimes driven by a vision of the via negativa. You need to have made the dunghill to appreciate the full beauty of the rose that grows on it.
Father Jerry read the entry twice before going downstairs to resume his note-making on grace and God’s salvific will. Olga was a woman with a soul that must be saved. In all his conversations with her he was aware of an alternative dialogue, of the things he should be saying to enliven her awareness of the exalted life. He had decided to proceed by indirection and thus preserve his influence and her good opinion. St Paul would have laid it on the line and lost her. From the beginning he had realised that what was required was a man with an instinctive understanding of women.
Hugo had misread her of course. She was serious and strong-minded, full of sharp angles and edges. With her there would be no communion, either physical or spiritual, no enfolding warmth, only a chilly calm. She was the antithesis of Dr Sharma who was as warm-hearted as a mother, open-handed and tender, full of concern with no wish to coerce. That evening, after much heart-searching, he tackled Hugo over dinner.
‘I want to marry Olga,’ Hugo said. ‘And marry her I shall.’
Father Jerry could have told him that she was already married but he took the view that, if he did, he would be breaking a confidence.
‘Olga wants to be left in peace. She’s an artist who puts her art before all mere conveniences.’
Hugo gave a laugh of cold ridicule.
‘Then you must put in a good word for me next time you see her. In the village they think she practises her art on you. They snigger and quip about “Father Jerry’s romance”.’
‘Idle gossip.’
‘Smoke without fire? Someone saw her reading an odd sort of book on the beach the other day. The Sin of Father O’Mara I think it was. And last week she said to me right out of the blue, “Can a man who lacks a religious sensibility experience sexual ecstacy? Sex is a sacrament, it’s wasted on the ungodly.” ’
‘Olga is a young woman who is far from friends and home. I see myself in loco parentis. Whenever she needs help or advice I shall be here to give it.’
‘The neighbours see her as a mysterious woman full of tricks and artifice. She’s unleashed the communal imagination; her visits to the parochial house have become the germ of all fantasy and gossip here. Someone kissed her dark eye in the pub one night and later swore that it was icy cold. “Like the tip of the Devil’s pintle,” was how he put it.’
‘All this is beneath the contempt of any intelligent man. Olga is serious and hard-working. She does her best to fit into the life here. She even comes to Mass on Sunday.’
‘She doesn’t take Communion.’
‘Neither do you, I’ve noticed.’
‘I’ve eaten human flesh, that’s enormity enough.’
‘You blaspheme against the Mass and against God Himself. Is there anything in life, or even within yourself, that you hold sacred?’
‘Nothing. Everything’s for sale and also everybody. I’m for sale, you’re for sale, and so is Olga. Believe it or not, even Burke’s has a price.’
‘If you believe that, you’re lost.’
‘One thing could redeem me: a woman’s love. She wouldn’t have to be perfect. Olga would do.’
‘Love doesn’t just make do. Such a marriage would be no more than a business contract.’
‘You talk to me as if I were a teenager. I’m a middle-aged man who’s seen enough of life to have learnt detachment. I’ve decided to marry Olga but, sadly, when I try to talk to her she talks only about you.’
‘Perhaps we’ve talked enough.’ Father Jerry went to the door.
‘We may both lose her,’ Hugo grinned. ‘The man with the best chance is McDaid. He’s head over heels, and I heard this afternoon that she’s employed him to do odd jobs about the cottage. She’s a superior woman. It’s possible that she might wish for an inferior.’
‘You parade your so-called detachment,’ Father Jerry said. ‘It’s nothing more than a profound lack of seriousness.’
Throughout the evening he kept pondering Hugo’s blasphemous reference to the Mass. That night he kept dreaming the same dream and waking up every half-hour. He was alone on the island in late autumn and the ground was bare and cold. Below him lay the shingle strewn with severed feet and hands and whitened bones from feasts long forgotten. The sun sank and night fell. The Devil’s Pintle melted and shrank into darkness visible. In vain he waited for the moon to rise. He lay on his back on the hard ground, his head filled with the rattle of bones being dragged over pebbles by an ebbing tide.
Chapter 11
Canon Hackler called just before noon. He settled himself on the sofa with vulturine inelegance and spoke briefly of the bishop’s passion for panatellas, causing Father Jerry to wonder what was really on his mind. As the clock on the mantelpiece chimed twelve, he poured the canon a glass of Balvenie. He had been waiting patiently for the clock to chime because he judged that to offer him Scotch before noon might imply that he was fond of it. The canon sipped his favourite malt and sneezed four times in succession, making a sound that seemed to say Eheu fugaces!
‘Bless you, Canon,’ Father Jerry said aloud, though to himself he murmured Carpe diem.
The canon blew his nose and fished a battered envelope from an inside pocket.
‘I never pay any attention to anonymous letters,’ he said, ‘but I think that this is one you should see. In every parish there are mischief-makers. Sometimes it is prudent to attend to what they say before someone else does.’
Father Jerry read slowly with an expression which he hoped was suitably blank. The letter was written in capitals and in black ink. There was no address at the top and no signature at the bottom. It said:
Dear Canon,
I write out of Christian concern, not mischief. Father Jerry McSharry in all innocence plays with fire. A handsome young German woman called Olga visits him daily and spends her evenings in the company of drinking men in pubs. Her wood carvings of naked women are immodest and could be considered inflammatory. If the scandalous speculation and gossip which she attracts should prove to have a foundation in truth, the parochial house and the priesthood may well be dragged into disrepute. Father McSharry in his sanctity is unaware of all this. Perhaps it would be a kindness to bring it to his attention.
Yours in Jesus Christ,
Concerned Parishioner
With a smile of resignation Father Jerry handed him back the letter.
‘Well, you have brought it to my attention, as the anonymous letter-writer suggested.’
‘I am not for a moment accusing you …’
‘Like most anonymous letters, it contains a germ of truth. My nearest neighbour is a young German woman called Olga, and she does indeed call in here from time to time. I know that she is a wood carver and for all I know she may visit the village pubs. More than that I can’t say.’
‘Who could have written such a letter?’ the canon wondered.
‘Not many people here: the schoolmaster, the postman, the doctor, the lightkeeper, and possibly the police sergeant. I prefer to leave conjecture to gossips.’
‘I thought you should see it, that’s all.’
The canon dragged himself to the edge of the sofa and after two attempts got to his feet.
‘The bishop is coming next week. This is just a visit, not a visitation.’
‘What’s on his mind?’ Father Jerry asked.
‘Income and expenditure. We’ve always paid our way in this parish but we must do better. I think it’s time you organised some bingo, Jerry.’
‘You know I don’t approve of bingo. I’ll announce a retiring collection next Sunday instead.’
‘Tithes are like teeth, I always say. They should be extracted painlessly. For painless extraction Mr Bingo is your only anaesthetist.’ The canon’s face expanded in a smile of self-satisfaction.
Father Jerry watched him drive off, then washed his glass and put the Balvenie back in the cabinet. For a moment he gazed at the bottle, which was more delicate in shape than any Scotch bottle he’d ever seen. Beset by Hugo’s wayward aggressiveness, by the smug prurience of the letter-writer, and by the canon’s obsession with bingo, he wondered why the sense of exaltation he sought came so rarely. Perhaps he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps the inner peace he craved was to be found in the seclusion of a monastery rather than in the glasshouse of parish life.
The canon was to be envied. When in doubt he could consult his budget to see if he were on target. Less businesslike priests had it harder. They had no projections, no critical path charts for guidance; no log; no compass with which to make a dead reckoning. How many souls have I saved today? How many sinners have I forestalled in their desire to sin? Am I on schedule or behind schedule, O Lord? He pulled himself up short. He had caught himself out again. Whenever he felt weary and overwrought, he tended to measure his ministry against the canon’s. It was perhaps a harmless piece of self-deception. Harmless? He went back to the cabinet and gazed again at the almost feminine form of the Balvenie bottle. More self-deception. The things that threatened his spiritual life had little to do with either the canon or Highland malt.
He went upstairs, remembering that Hugo wrote his diary in black ink. He read a page in praise of vehicles with four-wheel drive and a paragraph about the effects of sexual frustration on the human metabolism. Then he lit on a longer entry which must have been written the previous night:
August 2nd
