The Poor Mouth_ A Bad Story About the Hard Life - Flann O'Brien [13]
I hastily put the treatise in my pocket as I heard the steps of Mr Collopy coming in the side-door. He hung his coat up on the back of the door and sat down at the range.
–A man didn’t call about the sewers? he asked.
–The sewers? I don’t think so.
–Ah well, please God he’ll be here tomorrow. He’s going to lay a new connection in the yard, never mind why. He is a decent man by the name of Corless, a great handball player in his day. Where’s that brother of yours?
–Upstairs.
–Upstairs, faith! What is he doing upstairs? Is he in bed?
–No. I think he’s writing.
–Writing? Well, well. Island of Saints and Scholars. Upstairs writing and burning the gas. Tell him to come down here if he wants to write.
Annie came out of the back room.
–Mrs Grotty would like to see you, Father.
–Oh, certainly.
I went upstairs to warn the brother. He nodded grimly and stuffed a great wad of stamped envelopes, ready for the post, under his coat. Then he put out the gas.
7
MANY months had passed and the situation in our kitchen was as many a time before: myself and the brother were at the table weaving the web of scholarship while Mr Collopy and Father Fahrt were resting themselves at the range with the crock, tumblers and a jug of water between them.
The plumber Corless had long ago come and gone, ripping up the back yard and carrying out various mysterious works, not only there but in Mrs Crotty’s bedroom. Sundry lengths of timber had been delivered for Mr Collopy himself and, since these things went on mostly while the brother and I were at school, we were told by Annie that the hammering and constructional bedlam to be heard from the sick woman’s room were Very sore on the nerves’. It was a point of apathy, or tact, or safety-first with the brother and myself to ask no questions as to what was afoot or evince any curiosity. ‘They might only be making a coffin,’ the brother said to me, ‘and of course that’s a very religious business. People can be very sensitive there. We are better minding our own business.’
On this evening Mr Collopy had given an incoherent little cry.
–A pipe, Collopy. Just a pipe.
–And when did this start?
–It is a fortnight now.
–Well … I see no objection if it suits you, though I think it’s a bad habit and a dirty habit. Creates starch in the stomach, I believe.
–Like many a thing, Father Fahrt said urbanely, it is harmless in moderation. Please God I will not become an addict …
Here he peremptorily scratched himself about the back.
–Haven’t I one cross to bear as it is? But the doctor I saw recently thought my mind was a bit inclined to wander, a very bad thing in our Order. Father Superior voiced the view that I was doing too much work, perhaps. I would not take a drug, so the doctor said tobacco in moderation was a valuable sedative. He smokes himself, of course. This pipe was a penance for the first week. But now it is good. Now I can think.
–I’ll keep my eye on you and by dad I might follow suit myself, starch and all. I needn’t tell you I also have my worries… my confusions. My work is inclined to get out of hand.
–You will win, Collopy, for your persistence is heroic. The man whose aim is to smooth out the path of the human race cannot easily fail.
–Well, I hope that’s true. Give me your glass.
Here new drinks were decanted with sacramental piety and precision.
–It’s a queer thing, Father Fahrt mused, that men in my position have again and again to attack the same problem, solve it, and yet find that the solution is never any easier to reach. Next week I have to give a retreat at Kinnegad. After that, other retreats at Kilbeggan and Tullamore.
–Hah! Kilbeggan? That’s where my little crock here came from, refilled a hundred times since. And emptied a hundred times too, by gob.
–I like to settle on a central theme for a retreat. Often it is not simple to think of a good one. No hell fire preaching