The Poor Mouth (14 page)

‘When I arrived the scene was grotesque. There was apparently no access to the space under the stairs and two carpenters using hatches, saws and chisels were carefully breaking down the woodwork in the hallway below the landing. About a dozen lighted candles were in readiness on one of the steps, casting a ghastly light on the very shaken Father Fahrt, two gendarmes, a man with a bag who was evidently a doctor and a whole mob of sundry characters, many of them no doubt onlookers who had no business there.

‘The carpenters eventually broke through and pulled away several boards as ambulance men arrived with a stretcher. The doctor and Father Fahrt pushed their way to the aperture. Apparently Collopy was lying on his back covered with broken timbers and plastering, one leg doubled under him and blood pouring from one of his ears. He was semi-conscious and groaning pitifully. The doctor gave him some massive injection and then Father Fahrt knelt beside him, and hoarse, faltering whispers told us he was hearing a confession. Then, under the shattered stairway of this cheap Roman hall, Father Fahrt administered the Last Rites to Collopy.

‘Getting the unfortunate man on the stretcher after the doctor had given him another knock-out injection was an enormous job for the ambulance men, who had to call for assistance from two bystanders. Nobody could understand his prodigious weight. (N.B.—I have changed the label on the Gravid Water bottle to guard strictly against overdosage.) It was fully twenty minutes before Collopy now quite unconscious, could be got from under the stairs, and four men were manning the stretcher. He was driven off to hospital.

‘Father Fahrt and I walked glumly back to the hotel. He told me he was sure the fall would kill Collopy. After an hour or so he got a telephone call from the hospital. A doctor told him that Collopy was dead on admission, from multiple injuries. He, the doctor, would like to see us urgently and would call to the hotel about six.

‘When he arrived, he and Father Fahrt had a long conversation in Italian one word of which, I need hardly say, I did not understand.

‘When he had gone, Father Fahrt told me the facts. Collopy had a fractured skull, a broken arm and leg and severe rupture of the whole stomach region. Even if none of those injuries was individually fatal, no man of Collopy’s age could survive the shock of such an accident. But what had completely puzzled the doctor and his colleagues was the instantaneous onset of decomposition in the body and its extraordinarily rapid development. The hospital has got in touch with the city health authorities, who feared some strange foreign disease and had ordered that the body be buried the next morning. The hospital had arranged for undertakers to attend, at our expense, the following morning at 10 a.m. and a grave had been booked at the cemetery of Campo Verano.

‘I was interested in that mention of premature and rapid decomposition of the body. I am not sure but I would say that here was the Gravid Water again. I said nothing, of course.

‘We were early enough at the hospital. Collopy had already been coffined, and a hearse with horses, and a solitary cab, were waiting. I saw the Director and gave him a cheque to cover everything. Then we started out for the church of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, near the cemetery, where Father Fahrt said Requiem Mass. The burial afterwards was indeed a simple affair, for myself and the good priest were the only mourners, and it was he who said the prayers at the graveside.

‘We drove back in the cab to the hotel in silence. Father Fahrt had told me that Collopy had made a will and that it was in possession of a Dublin firm of solicitors named Sproule, Higgins and Fogarty. I will have to see those people. In the cab I made up my mind to go home immediately to Dublin, then to London, giving Father Fahrt some money and letting him fend for himself. You will see me almost as soon as you get this letter.’

Well, that was the brother’s last communique from the Continent. And I did see him, two days later.

T
HE
brother walked in unannounced about three-thirty in the afternoon. Thank God Annie was out. He threw his coat and hat on the kitchen table, nodded affably and sat down opposite me at the range in Mr Collopy’s ramshackle old chair.

–Well, he said briskly, and how are we?

He was very well dressed but I concluded he was half drunk.

–We are fair to middling, I said, but that business in Rome has my nerves shattered. You seem to be bearing up pretty well yourself?

–Oh, one has to take these things, he said, making a pouting gesture with his mouth. Nobody will mourn much for us when we go for the long jump and don’t fool yourself that they will.

–I liked the poor old man. He wasn’t the worst.

–All right. His death wasn’t the happiest he could get. In fact it was ridiculous. But look at it this way. In what better place could a man die than in Rome, the Eternal City, by the side of Saint Peter?

–Yes, I said wryly. There was timber concerned in both cases. Saint Peter was crucified.

–Ah, true enough. I have often wondered how exactly crucifixions were carried out in practice. Did they crucify a man horizontally with the cross lying on the ground and then hoist him upright?

–I don’t know but I suppose so.

–Well by Gob they would have a job hoisting Collopy up. I am sure that man weighed at least thirty-five stone at the end and sure he wasn’t anything like the size of you or myself.

–Have you no compunction about your Gravid Water?

–Not at all. I think his metabolism went astray. But anybody who takes patent medicines runs a calculated risk.

–Was Mr Collopy the first the Gravid Water was tried on?

–I would have to look that up. Look, get two glasses and a sup of water. I’ve a little drop here before we go out.

He produced a half-pint bottle which was one-third full. I got the glasses, he divided the whiskey and there we were, our glasses on the range and sitting vis-a-vis, for all the world as if we were Mr Collopy and Father Fahrt. I asked him how Father Fahrt was.

–He is still in Rome, of course. He is in a very morbid state but tries hard at this business of pious resignation. I think he has forgotten about the Pope’s threats. I’m sure they were all bluff, anyway. And how’s our friend Annie?

–She seems resigned, too. I told her what you said about the necessity for hasty burial. She seemed to accept it. Of course, I said nothing about the Gravid Water.

–Just as well. Here’s luck!

–G’luck!

–I rang up those solicitors Sproule, Higgins and Fogarty and made an appointment for half four this evening. We’d better get out now and have a drink first.

–All right.

We took a tram to Merrion Square and went into a pub in Lincoln Place.

–Two balls of malt, the brother ordered.

–No, I interposed. Mine is a bottle of stout.

He looked at me incredulously and then reluctantly ordered a stout.

–In our game, he said, it doesn’t do to be seen drinking stout or anything of that kind. People would take you for a cabman.

–I might be that yet.

–Oh, there is one thing I forgot to tell you. On the night before the funeral I got in touch with one of those monumental sculpture fellows and ordered a simple headstone to be ready not later than the following night. I paid handsomely for it and the job was done. It was erected the following morning and I have paid for kerbing to be carried out as soon as the grave settles.

–You certainly think of everything, I said in some admiration.

–Why wouldn’t I think of that? I might never be in Rome again.

–Still …

–I believe you are a bit of a literary man.

–Do you mean the prize I got for my piece about Cardinal Newman?

–Well, that and other things. You have heard of Keats, of course?

–Of course.
Ode to a Grecian Urn. Ode to Autumn.

–Exactly. Do you know where he died?

–I don’t. In his bed, I suppose?

–Like Collopy, he died in Rome and he is buried there. I saw his grave. Mick, give us a ball of malt and a bottle of stout. It is beautiful and very well kept.

–That is very interesting.

–He wrote his own epitaph. He had a poor opinion of his standing as a poet and wrote a sort of a jeer at himself on his tomb-stone. Of course it may have been all cod, just looking for praise.

–What’s this the phrase was?

–He wrote:
Here lies one whose name is writ on water.
Very poetical, ah?

–Yes, I remember it now.

–Wait till I show you. Drink up that, for goodness’ sake! I took a photograph of Collopy’s grave just before I left. Wait till you see now.

He rummaged in his inside pocket and produced his wallet and fished a photograph out of it. He handed it to me proudly. It showed a large plain mortuary slab bearing this inscription:

COLLOPY
of Dublin
1848-1910
Here lies one whose name is writ in water
R.I.P.

–Isn’t it good, he chuckled. In water’ instead of ‘on water’?

–Where’s his Christian name? I asked.

–Bedammit but I didn’t know it. Neither did Father Fahrt.

–Well where did you get the year of his birth?

–Well, that was more or less a guess. The hospital people said he was a man of about seventy-two, and that’s what the doctor has on the death certificate which I have in my pocket. So I just subtracted. What do you think of the stone?

–My turn to buy a drink. What will you have?

–Ball of malt.

I ordered another drink.

–I think the stone looks very well, I said, and you showed great foresight in providing it. I think you should stake out Annie on a trip to her father’s grave.

–A very good idea, he said. Excellent.

–We had better finish up here and keep that appointment.

We were slightly late arriving at the office of Sproule, Higgins and Fogarty. A bleak male clerk took our names and went into a room marked MR SPROULE. He then beckoned us in. Mr Sproule was an ancient wrinkled thing like his own parchments, remarkably like a character out of Dickens. He rose to a stooped standing and shook hands with us, waving us to chairs.

–Ah, he said, wasn’t it sad about poor Mr Collopy?

–You got my letter from Rome, Mr Sproule? the brother said.

–I did indeed. We have a correspondent of our own in Rome, too, the only firm in Dublin with one. We have a lot of work with the Orders.

–Yes, the brother said. We would like to have some idea of what’s in the will. Here, by the way, is the death certificate.

–That will be very useful indeed. Thank you. Now I have the will here. I’m sure you don’t want to be troubled with all the legalistic rigmarole we lawyers must insist on.

–No, Mr Sproule, I said impatiently.

–Well, we don’t know the exact value of the estate because it consists mostly of investments. But I will summarize the testator’s wishes. First, there are capital bequests. The house at Warrington Place he leaves to his daughter Annie, with a thousand pounds in cash. To each of his two half-nephews—and that is you gentlemen— he leaves five hundred pounds in cash provided each is in residence with him in his house at the date of his death.

–Great Lord, the brother cried, that let’s me out! I haven’t been living there for months.

–That is most unfortunate, Mr Sproule said.

–And me that’s after burying him in Rome and raising a headstone to his memory, all out of my own pocket!

He looked to each of us incredulously.

–That can’t be helped, I said severely. What else is there, Mr Sproule?

–After all that has been done, Mr Sproule went on, we have to set up the Collopy Trust. The Trust will pay the daughter Annie three hundred pounds a year for life. The Trust will erect and maintain three establishments which the testator calls rest rooms. There will be a rest room at Irishtown, Sandymount, at Harold’s Cross and at Phibsborough. Each will bear the word
PEACE
very prominently on the door and each will be under the patronage of a saint—Saint Patrick, Saint Jerome and Saint Ignatius. Each of these establishments will bear a plaque reading, for instance ‘
THE
COLLOPY
TRUST
—Rest Room of Saint Jerome’. You will note that they are very well dispersed, geographically.

–Yes indeed, I said. Who is going to design those buildings?

–My dear sir, Mr Collopy thought of everything. That has already been done. Architect’s approved plans are lodged with mo.

–Well is that the lot? the brother asked.

–Substantially, yes. There are a few small bequests and a sum for Masses in favour of Rev. Kurt Fahrt, S.J. Of course, nothing can be paid until the will is admitted to probate. But I take it that will be automatic.

–Very good, I said. My brother lives in London but I am still here. At the old address.

–Excellent. I can write to you.

We turned to go. Abruptly the brother turned at the door.

–Mr Sproule, he said, may I ask you a question?

–A question? Certainly.

–What was Mr Collopy’s Christian name?

–What?

Mr Sproule was clearly startled.

–Ferdinand, of course.