The Poor Mouth Part 3

Prayer? I see. You'd never know, we might try that yet. You can move mountains with prayer, I believe, but I'm not trying to move mountains. I'm trying to put a bomb under that Lord Mayor. But there is one very farfetched idea I've had and d.a.m.ned if I know would it work. I'd want influence ... a word in high places ... great tact and plawmaus ... perhaps a word of support from his Grace. Indeed it might be a complete and final solution to the whole terrible crux. If it came off I would go on a pilgrimage to Lough Derg in thanksgiving.

It must be a miracle you're looking for if you'd go that far, Collopy, Father Fahrt said smiling. And what is this idea of yours?

Trams, Father. Trams. I don't know how many distinct routes we have here in the city, but say the total is eight. One tram for each route in each direction would suffice, or sixteen trams in all. Old trams repaired and redecorated would do.

Are you serious, Collopy? Trams?

Yes, trams. They would have to be distinctive, painted black all over, preferably, and only one sign up front and rear-just the one word WOMEN. Understand? It would be as much as a man's life was worth to try to get into one of them.

Well, well. At least this idea is novel. Would there be a charge?

Very likely there would be a penny fare at the beginning. To look for a free service at the start, that would be idealism. But once we have the cars running, we could start an agitation for the wiping out of the penny fare in the interest of humanity.

I see.

I would like you to think this thing over, Father. Let us say that a lady and gentleman are walking down the street and have a mind to go for a stroll in the Phoenix Park. Fair enough. But first one thing has to be attended to. They wait at a tram stop. Lo and behold, along comes the Black Tram. The lady steps on board and away she goes on her own. And the whole beauty of the plan is this: she can get an ordinary tram back to rejoin her waiting friend. Do you twig?

Yes, I think I understand.

Ah, Father, you don't know how dear to my heart this struggle is and the peace that will come down on top of my head when it is happily ended for ever. Decent people should look after women-isn't that right? The weaker s.e.x. Didn't G.o.d make them the same as he made you and me. Father?

He surely did.

Then why don't we give them fair play? Mean to say, you or I can walk into a pub- I beg your pardon, Collopy. I certainly can not walk into a public house. You never saw a priest in a public house in your life.

Well, I can walk into a pub and indeed I often do.

Well, well, Collopy, you are full of ideas but I must be moving. I didn't realize the hour.

Good enough, but you will call again. Think about what I've said. Can I offer you a final glasheen for the road?

No thanks indeed, Collopy. Good night now lads, and mind the Greek article haw-hee-taw.

In unison: Good night, Father Fahrt.

He went out with dignity, Mr Collopy his escort.

6.

IT had been a dull autumn day and in the early evening I decided that the weather would make it worth while looking for roach in the ca.n.a.l. My rod was crude enough but I had hooks of a special size which I had put away in a drawer in the bedroom. I got out the rod and went up for a hook. To my surprise the drawer was littered with sixpenny postal orders and also envelopes addressed to the brother describing him as 'Director, General Georama Gymnasium'. I decided to leave this strange stuff alone, took a hook and went off up along the ca.n.a.l. Perhaps my bait was wrong but I caught nothing and was back home in about an hour. The brother was in the bedroom when I returned, busy writing at the smaller table.

I was out looking for roach, I remarked, and had to get a hook in that drawer. I see it's full of sixpenny postal orders.

Not full, he said genially. There are only twenty-eight. But keep that under your hat.

Twenty-eight is fourteen bob.

Yes, but I expect a good few more.

What's all this about General Georama Gymnasium?

Well, it's my name for the moment, he said.

What's Georama?

If you don't know what a simple English word means, the Brothers in Synge Street can't be making much of a hand of you. A georama is a globe representing the earth. Something like what they have in schools. The sound of it goes well with general and gymnasium. That's why I took it. Join the GGG.

And where did all those postal orders come from?

From the other side. I put a small ad. in one of the papers. I want to teach people to walk the high wire.

Is that what the General Georama Gymnasium is for, for heaven's sake?

Yes. And it's one of the cheapest courses in the world. A great number of people want to walk the high wire and show off. Some of them may be merely mercenary and anxious to make an easy, quick fortune with some great circus.

And are you teaching them this by post?

Well, yes.

What's going to happen if one of them falls and gets killed?

A verdict of death by misadventure, I suppose. But it's most unlikely because I don't think any of them will dare to get up on the wire any distance from the ground. If they're young their parents will stop them. If they're old, rheumatism, nerves and decayed muscles will make it impossible.

Do you mean you're going to have a correspondence course with those people?

No. They get a copy of my four-page book of instructions. Price sixpence only. It's for nothing. A packet of f.a.gs and a box of matches would cost you nearly that, and no f.a.g would give you the thrill of thinking about the high wire.

This looks to me like a swindle.

Rubbish. I'm only a bookseller. The valuable instructions and explanations are given by Professor Latimer Dodds. And he has included warnings of the danger as well.

Who is Professor Latimer Dodds?

A retired trapeze and high wire artist.

I never heard of him.

Here, take a look at the course yourself. I'm posting off copies just now to my clients.

I took the crudely-printed folder he handed me and put it in my pocket, saying that I would look over it later and make sure that Mr Collopy didn't see it. I didn't want the brother to appraise my reactions to his handiwork, for already I had a desire to laugh. Downstairs, Mr Collopy was out and Annie was in the bedroom colloguing with Mrs Crotty. I lit the gas and there and then had a sort of free lesson on how to walk the high wire. The front page or cover read 'THE HIGH WIRE-- Nature Held at Bay-Spine-chilling Spectacle Splenetises Sporting Spectators-By Professor H. Q. Latimer Dodds'.

Lower down was the t.i.tle of the Gymnasium and our own address. There was no mention of the brother by name but a note said 'Consultations with the Director by appointment only'. I was horrified to think of strangers calling and asking Mr Collopy to be good enough to make an appointment for them with the Director of the Gymnasium.

The top of the left inside page had a Foreword which I think I may quote: 'It were folly to a.s.severate that periastral peripatesis on the aes ductile, or wire, is dest.i.tute of profound peril not only to sundry membra, or limbs, but to the back and veriest life itself. Wherefore is the reader most graciously implored to abstain from le risque majeur by first submitting himself to the most perspicacious scrutiny by highly-qualified physician or surgeon for, in addition to anatomical verifications, evidence of Menire's Disease, caused by haemorrhage into the equilibristic labyrinth of the ears, causing serious nystagmus and insecurity of gait. If giddiness is suspected to derive from gastric disorder, resort should be had to bromide of pota.s.sium, acetanilide, bromural or chloral. The aural labyrinth consists of a number of membranous chambers and tubes immersed in fluid residing in the cavity of the inner ear, in mammals joined to the cochlea. The membranous section of the labyrinth consists of two small bags, the saccule and the utricle, and three semi-circular ca.n.a.ls which open into it. The nerves which supply the labyrinth end with a number of cells attired in hair-like projections which, when grouped, form the two otolith organs in the saccule and utricle and the three cristae of the semi-circular ca.n.a.ls. In the otolith organs the hair-like protruberances are embedded in a gelatinous mess containing calcium carbonate. The purpose of this grandiose apparatus, so far as h.o.m.o sapiens is concerned, is the achievement of remaining in an upright posture, one most desirable in the case of a performer on the high wire who is aloft and far from the ground.

I found that conscientiously reading that sort of material required considerable concentration. I do not know what it means and I have no doubt whatever that the brother's 'clients' will not know either.

The actual instructions as to wire-walking were straightforward enough. Perhaps it was the brother's own experience (for he was undoubtedly Professor Latimer Dodds) which made him advise a bedroom as the scene of opening practices. The wire was to be slung about a foot from the floor between two beds very heavily weighted 'with bags of cement, stone, metal safes or other ponderous objects'. When the neophyte wire-walker was ready to begin practice, the ma.s.sive bedsteads were to be dragged apart by 'friends', so that the necessary tension of the wire would be established and maintained. 'If it happens that the weight on a bed turns out to be insufficient to support the weight of the performer on the wire, the friends should sit or lie on the bed.' Afterwards practice was transferred to 'the orchard' where two stout adjacent fruit trees were to be the anchors of the wire, the elevation of which was to be gradually increased. The necessity for daily practice was emphasized and (barring accidents) a good result was promised in three months. A certain dietetic regimen was prescribed, with total prohibition of alcohol and tobacco, and it was added that even if the student proved absolutely hopeless in all attempts at wire-walking, he would in any event feel immensely improved in health and spirits at the end of that three months.

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.s.

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 h.e.l.l fire preaching by our men, of course.

Mr Collopy nodded, reflectively. When eventually he spoke there was impatience in his voice.

You Jesuits, Father, are always searching for nice little out-of-the-way points, some theological rigmarole. Most of you fellows think you are Aquinas. For G.o.d's sake haven't you got the Ten Commandments? What we call the Decalogue?

Ah, Saint Thomas! Yes, in his Summa he has many interesting things to say about the same Decalogue. So had Duns Scotus and Nicolaus de Lyra. Of course it is the true deposit.

Mean to say, why don't the people of this country obey the Ten Commandments given in charge of Moses? 'Honour thy father and thy mother.' The young people of today think the daddy is a tramp and the mammy a poor skivvy. Isn't that right?

Here the brother coughed.

Oh no, Father Fahrt said.

He also coughed here but I think the pipe was responsible.

It is just that young people are a bit thoughtless. I would say you were as bad as the rest, Collopy, when you were a young fellow.

Yes, Father. I could trust you to say that. I suppose you also think I coveted my neighbour's wife?

No, Collopy, not while you were a young fellow.

What? You mean when I grew up to man's estate- No, no, Collopy, it is my jest.

Faith then and I don't think the Commandments are the right thing for G.o.d's anointed to be funny about. I never put my hand near a married woman and there are two of them on my committee, very valuable, earnest souls.