VANITY

There are a lot of things bishops have to put up with beside old age,
loneliness and domestic discomfort, and the worst of these is
coadjutors. To be God Almighty—the just and moral Governor of your own
private universe—for years, and then have an assistant God Almighty
tagged on to you is enough to break the spirit in most men. The Bishop
of Moyle, the Most Reverend Dr Gallogly, called his coadjutor the
Stump, the Spy or the Boy, according to the way he felt about
him. Mostly it was the Boy. The Boy had nasty supercilious ways that
the Bishop detested. He let on to know a lot about French history,
gave himself out as an authority on food and wine, jeered at Dr
Gallogly’s coffee—the best bottled coffee on the market—and mocked
at his statement that the best food and wine in the world were served
on the train from Holyhead to Euston. As a one time Professor of
Dogmatic Theology, the Bishop was vulnerable to that sort of
criticism.

Worst of all, the coadjutor had the illusion that at eighty-six the
Bishop was past his prime while the Bishop himself knew that he had
never been younger or livelier. Just to prove it, he would suddenly
order round his car, drive a couple of hundred miles to Dublin and
interview three Ministers. The Bishop was such a nice, friendly,
inquisitive old man that the Ministers fell over themselves, telling
him things he wanted to know, and then, of course, everybody in Moyle
learned about them except Lanigan. Lanigan let on to be amused at this
because it showed up the Bishop’s senile fatuity, but, being an
inquisitive man himself, the Bishop knew Lanigan was furious, and only
pretended indifference out of vanity. Vanity—the besetting sin of
people in religion, according to the Bishop—was Lanigan’s weak spot,
and the Bishop continued to play on it.

Whenever the notion of going to Dublin struck the Bishop he always
made inquiries about people from Moyle whom he might call on there. He
knew they liked that. Everyone is impressed by a Bishop, and it gave
people like that an advantage over their city friends, and later they
came home and said what a wonderful old man he was—so modest!—so
considerate!—another thorn in the coadjutor’s side.

One morning before setting out he made inquiries and discovered that
one of his curates was in a nursing home for an operation.

‘Father O’Brien?’ he exclaimed, hitting his brow. ‘What’s he being
operated on for? Surely, he’s only—what is he, father?’

‘Forty-five, my Lord.’

‘Forty-five? And having an operation like that? Sure, there’s no sense
to it. Remind me to go and see Father O’Brien, Paddy,’ he added to his
chauffeur.

Even the Bishop’s best friend would not have pretended that this
was all kindness, though the Bishop had plenty of that. It was mainly
delight and wonder at himself for having reached the age of eighty-six
without a pain or an ache while a whole generation of priests was
growing up who couldn’t get to forty-five without an operation. ‘Motor
cars!’ he said to himself. ‘It’s all the blooming motor cars!’

And every step he climbed up to the first floor of the nursing home
the Bishop vacillated between good: nature and complacency: good
nature because he was genuinely glad to be able to do a good turn for
a lonesome young priest, far from his family and friends, and a
furious complacency because it wasn’t the young fellow of forty-five
who was coming to visit the sick old man of eighty-six. The two
emotions mingled in the triumphant smile with which he opened the
curate’s door and trumpeted joyously: ‘Father O’Brien, what does this
mean? Do you want me to suspend you?’ That would get back, too.

The Bishop was no fool, but he was so pleased with himself that he
talked with more freedom than usual about the Moyle clergy and their
families, particularly the families. ‘If you want to know about a man,
father, find out about his family,’ he pronounced oracularly. ‘Now,
there’s Dr Lanigan. To understand Dr Lanigan, you would have to know
his brother, Mick, the way I did. Now, Mick was a clever sort of man,
and a conscientious one in his own way, but he died when he was only
sixty of some sort of children’s disease that was never known to kill
anyone else, and for years before he died he was suffering from
religious scruples. Scruples! You see, father, that whole family was a
bit neurotic.’

The Bishop returned to his hotel, saying to Paddy, his ‘man’, ‘That’ll
show them, Paddy,’ and Paddy grinned with perfect
comprehension. Nobody resents a coadjutor more than a bishop’s
man. The lounge of the hotel was crowded and several people were
waiting for the lift. By this time the Bishop’s complacency had
assumed monstrous proportions. ‘Ah, I can’t be bothered waiting for
that old machine,’ he said testily, loud enough to be overheard, and
went up the stairs ‘like a hare’ according to Paddy, though this was a
slight exaggeration.

He negotiated the main flight of stairs successfully, but when he came
to one of six steps leading from one level to another, he tripped. He
had only six steps to fall, but he knew they might as well be
twenty. He was dished. He didn’t move; he knew it wasn’t safe. ‘Pride
goeth before a fall,’ he thought ruefully. ‘I should have waited for
that blooming old lift.’

But when an old waiter appeared he did not lose his composure. ‘I
think I’m hurt,’ he said placidly. ‘Don’t tell anyone. Get
something to lift me in on and call Dr Jameson.’

It was agony being transferred to the stretcher and laid on the bed,
but pain was the least of the Bishop’s troubles, and the tears in his
eyes were as much humiliation as anything else. He was only beginning
to realize the full extent of the disaster that had overtaken
him. After an irreproachable life of eighty-six years he was suddenly,
because of what he thought of now as ‘a mad vagary’, no longer his own
master, and as much the property of stretcher-bearers, doctors and
nurses as any poor curate. Lanigan had his chance at last. No longer
would they think of him in his own diocese as a marvellous old
man. The shock of it was almost enough to make him lose his
reason. But his voice remained steady and unemotional, the voice of a
theologian.

‘Am I bad?’ he asked the doctor, who was a brisk, moonfaced young man.

‘It looks as if you’ve broken your shoulder and your leg, said the
doctor. ‘We’ll have to get you to hospital to see if there’s anything
else.’

‘Am I going to die?’ the Bishop asked almost hopefully. If he were
going to die there would be no further problem.

‘I doubt it, said the doctor, who was privately convinced that the
Bishop wouldn’t leave hospital outside a box. ‘You must be pretty
tough.’

‘Ah, I’m tough enough,’ the Bishop replied complacently. ‘Couldn’t you
do whatever you have to do here?”

‘I couldn’t, my Lord.’

‘Why couldn’t you?’ the Bishop asked angrily. He hated to be
contradicted in that positive way—it is one of the drawbacks of
having been Almighty God.

‘Because I’ve got to have an X-ray taken at once.’

“Then why can’t you get it taken here? They must have portable ones. I
don’t like hospitals.’

“Why? What’s wrong with hospitals?’

“They’re too public,’ the Bishop said flatly. ‘When a man has a bit of
authority, the way I have, he can’t be making a spectacle of
himself. He has too many people round him, trying to make out he’s not
fit to look after himself. They treat you as if you were a child.’

‘But an accident can happen to anybody,’ said the doctor.

‘An accident can happen to a young man,’ the Bishop said. ‘If the same
thing happens to an elderly person, people go on as though you did it
out of spite. Boland, the manager here, is an old friend. He’ll keep
quiet about it. If I went into a hospital ’twould be all round Moyle
tomorrow,’

‘It’ll be all round Moyle anyhow.’

‘Not if I can help it, the Bishop said, clamping his long thin lips.

‘But people will have to know.’

‘Why will they have to know?’ the Bishop asked with sudden
fierceness. It was bad enough to endure helplessness and agonizing
pain without being contradicted into the bargain. ‘What business is it
of theirs? Or I could go into hospital under a false name.’

‘You couldn’t do anything of the sort,’ said the doctor. ‘You’d have
to tell the nuns.’

‘I would not tell the nuns,’ said the Bishop with renewed
irascibility. ‘You don’t know nuns the way I know them. I wouldn’t
tell a nun anything.’

‘They’d have to know you were a clergyman.’

‘Ah, a clergyman in this country can have no privacy,’ the Bishop
said, becoming weaker and more fretful. ‘The first thing they’d want
to know is what diocese I was from, and then they’d have a nun or a
nurse checking up on me. I’m in a most unfortunate position. What sort
is the Reverend Mother in that place?’

‘Ah, she’s a nice homely sort.’

‘Never mind how homely she is. Where is she from?’

‘I never asked her.’

The Bishop was so upset by this that it took him a full minute to
collect his thoughts. He was astonished that a professional man
wouldn’t inquire about a thing like that, and wondered if the young
doctor was quite as good as he was supposed to be.

‘Send her over here to talk to me,’ he said. ‘I see I’ll have to make
my own arrangements.’

‘Do you know, my Lord, you’re a very obstinate old man,’ said the
doctor with a grin.

‘That’s what has me where I am,’ the Bishop replied ambiguously. He
never minded being told he was obstinate or even pig-headed because it
showed he was making the right impression.

Ten minutes later the doctor returned with Reverend Mother and left
her alone with the Bishop. She was an elderly, soft-mannered,
gigglesome woman who almost smothered the Bishop with
solicitude. Knowing it was only her stock-in-trade, he let her moan
on, and then rested. his good hand lightly on hers. From the
gentleness of his face, you might have thought he had become
reconciled to his fate, but that was only the Bishop’s stock-in-trade
as well his manner for hysterical females,

‘The doctor is a bright young man, Mother,’ he said earnestly, ‘but I
don’t find him easy to talk to. Laymen can never understand the
difficulties of people in religion, The reason is that every calling
has its own graces and its own temptations. Now, the great temptation
of religious people is vanity.’

‘I wonder, my Lord,’ she said coyly.

‘You needn’t,’ the Bishop said firmly. ‘That’s what makes it so hard
for people in religion to be growing old. You’re a young woman yet, he
continued with brazen flattery, ‘so you mightn’t know. Tell me, where
are you from?”

‘Mayo, my Lord,’ she said. ‘Mayo, God help us!’

‘Are you from Mayo?’ the Bishop asked with a sinking heart. He did not
trust nuns, and he did not trust Mayo people. ‘But as I was saying,
your turn will come. You’ll see the young people pushing you out to
make way for themselves, watching and criticizing, waiting for you to
make a slip.’

‘Ah, you needn’t tell me, my Lord,’ she said in a wail. ‘I saw it
already.’

‘Ah, you’re an observant young woman, the Bishop said ingenuously.
‘Now, Mother, this is something I wouldn’t like to admit to a lay
person, but I know you’ll understand. I have a coadjutor and we don’t
get on—I know this won’t go any further. He thinks I’m not able to
look after myself. If it got round that I had an accident, he’d be
saying I wasn’t fit to make decisions on my own, Now, you must have
had cases like that before.’

“My Lord,’ she said in mock-girlish alarm, ‘I don’t think you know
what you’re asking.’

‘In fact, if I’m not mistaken, ’tisn’t so long since you had a certain
member of the Government in your place.’

‘Well, of course, we always have special patients.’

‘They called it pneumonia, I believe,’ the Bishop said gravely.
‘However, it was greatly appreciated in government circles.’

‘Ah, ’tisn’t alike, my Lord,’ she said anxiously. ‘A Minister is one
thing but a Bishop—how could I?’

‘There is nothing an intelligent woman can’t do if she puts her mind
to it, Mother,’ he said.

‘No, nor anything an inquisitive woman can’t find out if she puts her
mind to it, my Lord,’ she replied wryly.

That evening, the Bishop was comfortably settled in a room corridors
away from the rest of the building with two old nuns to guard him. The
old nuns had long ceased to be active: Sister Dympna was crippled with
the rheumatics and Sister Martha was slightly gone in the head, but
they rejoiced in their new responsibility, exulted in the fact that at
last somebody reliable was needed, and revenged themselves on those
who had slighted them by silence and cunning.

The Bishop was in great pain, but even this did not take from his
feeling of triumph. The curate was upstairs, probably lying awake and
marvelling at the Bishop’s sturdy health while unknown to him, the
Bishop was lying awake, helpless as himself but knowing something he
didn’t know. The essence of authority consists in keeping your
secrets.

But after a few days even the Bishop became aware of the fury of
curiosity his secret roused. Reverend Mother was the only nun
permitted to visit him and nurses were not allowed in his room at
all. But the trouble with the Bishop’s gallant old watch-dogs was that
they had lost their teeth. They were easy game for the younger nuns
and nurses, because Sister Dympna’s bad legs and Sister Martha’s bad
head meant that once they left the room there was no guarantee that
they would ever get back. On the third day the door opened suddenly
and a middle-aged scraggy nurse came in and looked at him in apparent
astonishment.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I must be in the wrong room. Are you Mr
Murphy?’

Now, if there was one thing the Bishop could not stand it was
inquisitiveness. He was an inquisitive man himself, so he understood
the vice in all its manifestations.

‘No, I’m Mr Dempsey,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Fitzpatrick,’ she said smoothly, and he knew as if God had
revealed it to him that it wasn’t. ‘You wouldn’t be one of the
Dempseys from Limerick?’

‘No. My family came from Kanturk,’ he said curtly.

‘We had a nurse one time from Kanturk,’ she said, screwing up her
eyes. ‘Lucey, her name was. You wouldn’t know her?”

‘She must be from another part of Kanturk,’ said the Bishop.

‘I dare say, she said, realizing she had met her match. ‘What happened
you anyway?’

For a moment the Bishop was so mad that he nearly asked her if she
knew who she was talking to. Then he recollected that she probably
didn’t.

‘A fall I got off my bicycle,’ he said, glaring at her.

‘At your age!’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘I’m astonished at you.’

She left him in a state of blind rage. Never, never, since the time he
was a boy had anybody spoken to him in that coarse familiar way. Then
he broke into a chuckle. As a young priest he had noticed how
conversation changed when he entered a room, and wondered how people
really behaved when there wasn’t a priest around. Now, in his old age,
he had discovered. ‘The religious life is too sheltered,’ he
thought. ‘Too much play-acting about it. “Father, what do you think of
this?” and “Father, what would you say to that?”  No wonder the
Jesuits were supposed to have spies to report on what people said. No
wonder at all they had the reputation of being so clever. He waited
impatiently for the nurse to come back.

Instead, there came a young and good-looking nurse who didn’t even
pretend to have strayed in by accident. She gave him a guilty look and
then shrugged and smiled, but all the time her small, keen, beautiful
eyes wandered about the room, searching for a clue.

‘They say you were in America,’ she burst out without preliminaries.

‘What makes them think that, girl?’ the Bishop asked good-humouredly.

‘How would I know?’ she replied with another shrug. ‘I suppose because
you don’t seem to have a family.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you the truth,’ said the Bishop slyly. ‘I haven’t. I
was never what you’d call a marrying man.’

‘Why would you?’ she asked. ‘I suppose you can get them without.’

The Bishop was so stunned that he almost gave himself away again. He
stared at the nurse, but her charming little face still remained vague
and sweet and innocent.

‘Isn’t that a shocking thing for a girl like you to say?’ he asked.

‘What’s shocking about it?’ she asked lightly. ‘I suppose you didn’t
do without them. I’d know a queer a mile off.’

This left the Bishop very thoughtful indeed. Even in a long life there
were apparently many things that had escaped his eye. He shook his
head over it. ‘Too sheltered,’ he muttered again to himself. ‘Too
blooming sheltered. We don’t know the half that’s going on. We might
as well have blinkers.’

What really surprised him was that he was becoming quite attached to
his own anonymity, and grew quite hopeful when he heard a woman’s step
outside his door. He felt a match for any of them now. When the first
nurse came back and told him a dirty story, he guessed at once that it
was to test some new theory of his identity and let on to be very
amused by it, though he had never realized that women knew dirty
stories. ‘We live and learn,’ he thought. ‘I don’t know do even the
Jesuits know the whole thing.’

It took the Bishop the whole of ten days to recover from his
fractures, but it was a great day for him when he left the hospital by
the back door. The two old nuns knelt for his blessing, and wept
because they would again be regarded as old and useless. The curate
was still upstairs.

‘I suppose you’ll go straight to the hotel? said the doctor.

‘I’ll do nothing of the sort, said the Bishop, whose only plan was to
put a couple of hundred miles between himself and the hospital before
they found anything else wrong with him.

‘You’re a very lucky man,’ said the doctor. ‘I can tell you now I was
sure you were for the long road. I have a patient of twenty-two that
the same thing happened to, and he’ll never walk again. I can’t even
keep you quiet.’

‘Ah, poor fellow! poor fellow!’ the Bishop said perfunctorily. ‘I
suppose he hadn’t the stamina.’

The Bishop was like a boy. He had always been a great student, and
never before had he noticed how beautiful was the road back to
Moyle. Illness, he thought, was a great thing, because it made you see
more of life. For the future he must meet more laymen, and not laymen
like the old crawthumpers who were always round the palace, but
broad-minded people he could describe his adventures to.

It was something of a disappointment to him when he got home to find a
large crowd waiting for him outside the gate of the palace. When the
car stopped they began to cheer, and Jerry Cronin, on behalf of the
County Council, stepped forward shyly to congratulate him on his
recovery. Then they all dropped on their knees and the Bishop gave
them his blessing.

‘Tell me what’s all this about, Jerry,’ he said, propelling
Cronin to the car. It didn’t occur to the Bishop that in a small town
the presence of two bishops is nearly as good as a boxing match.

‘Ah, well, you know, people were very upset when they heard of the
accident, my Lord,’ said Jerry.

‘And I suppose they knew all about it inside twenty-four hours?’ the
Bishop asked with a glare.

‘Oh, sooner than that, my Lord, sooner than that,’ said Jerry.

‘Nuns, nuns, nuns!’ said the Bishop petulantly. ‘Take a fool’s advice,
Jerry, and never trust a nun. And whatever else you do, never trust
anybody from Mayo.’

(1953)