The Poor Mouth (2 page)

It is seemly for me to explain here, I feel, the nature and standing of the persons present. Mr Collopy was my mother’s half-brother and was therefore my own half-uncle. He had married twice, Miss Annie being his daughter by his first marriage. Mrs Crotty was his second wife but she was never called Mrs Collopy, why I cannot say. She may have deliberately retained the name of her first husband in loving memory of him or the habit may have grown up through the absence of mind. Moreover, she always called her second husband by the formal style of Mr Collopy as he also called her Mrs Crotty, at least in the presence of other parties; I cannot speak for what usage obtained in private. An ill-disposed person might suspect that they were not married at all and that Mrs Crotty was a kept-woman or resident prostitute. But that is quite unthinkable, if only because of Mr Collopy’s close interest in the Church and in matters of doctrine and dogma, and also his long friendship with the German priest from Leeson Street, Father Kurt Fahrt, S.J., who was a frequent caller.

It is seemly, as I have said, to give that explanation but I cannot pretend to have illuminated the situation or made it more reasonable.

T
HE
years passed slowly in this household where the atmosphere could be described as a dead one. The brother, five years older than myself, was first to be sent to school, being marched off early one morning by Mr Collopy to see the Superior of the Christian Brothers’ school at Westland Row. A person might think the occasion was one merely of formal introduction and enrolment, but when Mr Collopy returned, he was alone.

–By God’s will, he explained, Manus’s foot has been placed today on the first rung of the ladder of learning and achievement, and on yonder pinnacle beckons the lone star.

–The unfortunate boy had no lunch, Mrs Crotty said in a shrill voice.

–You might consider, Mrs Crotty, that the Lord would provide, even as He does for the birds of the air. I gave the bosthoon a tuppence. Brother Cruppy told me that the boys can get a right bag of broken biscuits for a penny in a barber’s shop there up the lane.

–And what about milk?

–Are you out of your wits, woman? You know the gorawars you have to get him to drink his milk in this kitchen. He thinks milk is poison, the same way
you
think a drop of malt is poison. That reminds me—I think I deserve a smahan. Where’s my crock?

The brother, who had become more secretive as time went on, did not confide much in me about his new station except that ‘school was a bugger’. Sooner than I thought, my own turn was to come. One evening Mr Collopy asked me where the morning paper was. I handed him the nearest I could find. He handed it back to me.

–This morning’s I told you.

–I think that’s this morning’s.

–You
think?
Can you not read, boy?

–Well… no.

–Well, may the sweet Almighty God look down on us with compassion! Do you realize that at your age Mose Art had written four symphonies and any God’s amount of lovely songs? Pagan Neeny had given a recital on the fiddle before the King of Prussia and John the Baptist was stranded in the desert with damn the thing to eat only locusts and wild honey. Have you no shame man?

–Well, I’m young yet.

–Is that a fact now? You are like the rest of them, you are counting from the wrong end. How do you know you are not within three months of the end of your life?

–Oh my God!

–Hah?

–But——

–You may put your buts back in your pocket. I will tell you what you’ll do. You’ll get up tomorrow morning at the stroke of eight o’clock and you will give yourself a good wash for yourself.

That night the brother said in bed, not without glee, that somehow he thought I would soon be master of Latin and Shakespeare and that Brother Cruppy would shower heavenly bread on me with his class in Christian Doctrine and give me some idea of what the early Christians went through in the arena by thrashing the life out of me. Unhappy was the eye I closed that night. But the brother was only partly right. To my surprise, Mr Collopy next morning led me at a smart pace up the bank of the canal, penetrated to Synge Street and rang the bell at the residential part of the Christian Brothers’ establishment there. When a slatternly young man in black answered, Mr Collopy said he wanted to see the Superior, Brother Gaskett. We were shown into a gaunt little room which had on the wall a steel engraving of the head of Brother Rice, founder of the Order, a few chairs and a table—nothing more.

–They say piety has a smell, Mr Collopy mused, half to himself. It’s a perverse notion. What they mean is only the absence of the smell of women.

He looked at me.

–Did you know that no living woman is allowed into this holy house. That is as it should be. Even if a Brother has to see his own mother, he has to meet her in secret below at the Imperial Hotel. What do you think of that?

–I think it is very hard, I said. Couldn’t she call to see him here and have another Brother present, like they do in jails when there is a warder present on visiting day?

–Well, that’s the queer comparison, I’ll warrant. Indeed, this house may be a jail of a kind but the chains are of purest eighteen-carat finest gold which the holy brothers like to kiss on their bended knees.

The door opened silently and an elderly stout man with a sad face glided in. He smiled primly and gave us an odd handshake, keeping his elbow bent and holding the extended hand against his breast.

–Isn’t that the lovely morning, Mr Collopy, he said hoarsely.

–It is, thank God, Brother Gaskett, Mr Collopy replied as we all sat down. Need I tell you why I brought this young ruffian along?

–Well, it wasn’t to teach him how to play cards.

–You are right there, Brother. His name is Finbarr.

–Well now, look at that! That is a beautiful name, one that is honoured by the Church. I presume you would like us to try to extend Finbarr’s knowledge?

–That is a nice way of putting it, Brother Gaskett. I think they will have to be very big extensions because damn the thing he knows but low songs from the pantomimes, come-all-ye’s by Cathal McGarvey, and his prayers. I suppose you’ll take him in, Brother?

–Of course I will. Certainly, I will teach him everything from the three Rs to Euclid and Aristophanes and the tongue of the Gael. We will give him a thorough grounding in the Faith and, with God’s help, if one day he should feel like joining the Order, there will always be a place for him in this humble establishment. After he has been trained, of course.

The tail-end of that speech certainly startled me, even to tempting me to put in some sort of caveat. I did not like it even as a joke, nor the greasy Brother making it.

–I … I think that could wait a bit, Brother Gaskett, I stammered.

He laughed mirthlessly.

–Ah but of course, Finbarr. One thing at a time.

Then he and Mr Collopy indulged in some muttered consultation jaw to jaw, and the latter got up to leave. I also rose but he made a gesture.

–We’ll stay where we are now, he said. Brother Gaskett thinks you might start right away. Always better to take the bull by the horns.

Though not quite unexpected, this rather shocked me.

–But, I said in a loud voice, I have no lunch … no broken biscuits.

–Never mind, Brother Gaskett said, we will give you a half-day to begin with.

That is how I entered the sinister portals of Synge Street School. Soon I was to get to know the instrument known as ‘the leather’. It is not, as one would imagine, a strap of the kind used on bags. It is a number of such straps sewn together to form a thing of great thickness that is nearly as rigid as a club but just sufficiently flexible to prevent the breaking of the bones of the hand. Blows of it, particularly if directed (as often they deliberately were) to the top of the thumb or wrist, conferred immediate paralysis followed by agony as the blood tried to get back to the afflicted part. Later I was to learn from the brother a certain routine of prophylaxis he had devised but it worked only partly.

Neither of us found out what Mr Collopy’s reason was for sending us to different schools. The brother thought it was to prevent us ‘cogging’, or copying each other’s home exercises, of which we were given an immense programme to get through every night. This was scarcely correct, for an elaborate system for ‘cogging’ already existed in each school itself, for those who arrived early in the morning. My own feeling was that the move was prompted by Mr Collopy’s innate craftiness and the general principle of
divide et impera.

A
ND
still the years kept rolling on, and uneventfully enough, thank God. I was now about eleven, the brother sixteen and convinced he was a fully grown man.

One day in spring about half-three I was trudging wearily home from school at Synge Street. I was on the remote, or canal side of the roadway near home. I happened to glance up at the house when about fifty yards away and, turned to cold stone, stopped dead in my tracks. My heart thumped wildly against my ribs and my eyes fell to the ground. I blessed myself. Timidly I looked up again. Yes!

To the left of the house entrance and perhaps fifteen yards from it a tallish tree stood in the front garden. Head and shoulders above the tree but not quite near it was the brother. I stared at the apparition in the manner fascinated animals are reputed to stare at deadly snakes about to strike. He began waving his arms in a sickening way, and the next prospect I had of him was his back. He was returning towards the house
and he was walking on air!
Now thoroughly scared, I thought of Another who had walked on water. I again looked away helplessly, and after a little time painfully stumbled into the house. I must have looked very pale but went in and said nothing.

Mr Collopy was not in his usual chair at the range. Annie—we had now learned to drop the ‘Miss’—placed potatoes and big plate of stew before me. I thought it would be well to affect a casual manner.

–Where’s Mr Collopy? I asked.

She nodded towards the back room.

–He’s inside, she said. I don’t know what father’s at. He’s in there with a tape taking measurements. I’m afraid poor Mrs Crotty’s getting worse. She had Dr Blenner-hassett again this morning. God look down on us all!

Mrs Crotty was certainly sick. She had taken to the bed two months before and insisted that the door between her bedroom and the kitchen should be always left slightly ajar so that her cries, often faint, could be heard either by Mr Collopy or Annie. Neither myself nor the brother ever entered the room but all the same I had accidentally seen her on several occasions. This was when she was coming down the stairs leaning on Mr Collopy and clutching the banister with one frail hand, her robe or nightdress of fantastic shape and colour and a frightening pallor on her spent face.

–I’m afraid she
is
pretty sick, I said.

–Seemingly.

I finished with a cup of tea, then casually left the kitchen and went upstairs, my heart again making its excitement known. I entered the bedroom.

The brother, his back to me, was bending over a table examining some small metal objects. He looked up and nodded abstractedly.

–Do you mind, I said nervously, do you mind answering a question?

–What question? I have got a great bit of gear here.

–Listen to the question. When I was coming in a while back, did I see you walking on the air?

He turned again to stare at me and then laughed loudly.

–Well, by damn, he chuckled, I suppose you did, in a manner of speaking.

–What do you mean?

–Your question is interesting. Did it look well?

–If you want to know, it looked unnatural and if you are taking advantage of a power not of God, if you are dealing in godless things of darkness, I would strongly advise you to see Father Fahrt, because these things will lead to no good.

Here he sniggered,

–Have a look out of the window, he said.

I went and did so very gingerly. Between the sill and a stout branch near the top of the tree stretched a very taut wire, which I now saw came in at the base of the closed window and was anchored with some tightening device to the leg of the bed, which was in against the wall.

–My God Almighty! I exclaimed.

–Isn’t it good?

–A bloody wire-walker, by cripes!

–I got the stuff from Jem out of the Queen’s. There’s nothing at all to it. If I rigged the wire across this room tomorrow and only a foot from the floor, you’d walk it yourself with very little practice. What’s the difference? What’s the difference if you’re an inch or a mile up? The only trouble is what they call psychological. It’s a new word but I know what it means. The balancing part of it is child’s play, and the trick is to put all idea of height out of your mind. It
looks
dangerous, of course, but there’s money in that sort of danger. Safe danger.

–What happens if you fall and break your neck?

–Did you ever hear of Blondin? He died in his bed at the age of seventy-three, and fifty years ago he walked on a wire across Niagara Falls, one hundred and sixty feet above the roaring water. And several times—carrying a man on his back, stopping to fry eggs, a great man altogether. And didn’t he appear once in Belfast?

–I think you are going off your head.

–I’m going to make money, for I have … certain schemes, certain very important schemes. Look what I have here. A printing machine. I got it from one of the lads at Westland Row, who stole it from his uncle. It’s simple to operate, though it’s old.

But I could not detach my mind from that wire.

–So you’re to be the Blondin of Dublin?

–Well, why not?

–Niagara is too far away, of course. I suppose you’ll sling a wire over the Liffey?

He started, threw down some metal thing, and turned to me wide-eyed.

–Well, sweet God, he said, you have certainly said something.
You have certainly said something
. Sling a wire over the Liffey? The Masked Daredevil from Mount Street! There’s a fortune there—
a fortune!
Lord save us, why didn’t I think of it?