ACHILLES’ HEEL The Catholic Church has only one weak point which is well known to all the faithful. This is the type of woman who preys on celibates, particularly priests’ housekeepers. The priest’s housekeeper is a subject in itself, because tests have shown that when transferred to males who are not celibate it pines away and dies. To say that it is sexless is to say both too much and too little. Like the Church it pursues chastity for higher ends, which—in the matter of priests’ housekeepers—means the subjection of men in a way that mere wives cannot comprehend. Wives, of course, have a similar ambition, but their purposes are mysteriously thwarted by lovemaking, jealousy, and children; and it is well known that many wives break down and weep with rage when they think of the power of priests’ housekeepers. Their victims, being celibate, have no children, and are automatically sealed off from other women, so that even women who have business to transact with them find they have to do it through the housekeeper. The Bishop of Moyle was no exception. His housekeeper, Nellie, had been with him since the time he was a Canon, and even then, unknown to himself, he had always been réferred to by his congregation as ‘Nellie and the Canon’. ‘Nellie and the Canon’ disliked all-night dances, for instance, so all-night dances simply stopped. There was even a story that Nellie had once appeared on the altar and announced that there would be no eight o’clock Mass because she was keeping the Canon in bed. Even in those days she could not have been very old, and by the time I speak of her, she was a well-preserved woman with a fussy, humble, sugary air that concealed a cold intelligence. In private, her great rival, Canon Lanigan, used to call her ‘La Maintenon’, but when he visited the Bishop’s he was as unctuous as herself, and affected to admire her cooking and even her detestable bottled coffee. For all Nellie’s airs and graces, she wasn’t in the least taken in by the Canon; she knew he preferred old French mish-mash to her own simple, straightforward cooking, and she even warned the Bishop against him. ‘God forgive me, my Lord,’ she said meekly, ‘I can’t warm to Canon Lanigan. There’s something about him that’s insincere. Or am I just being silly? I know I’m a foolish old woman, but you knew that yourself the day you engaged me.’ Anyway, Nellie’s cooking was not aimed at the Canon but at her own dear simple man—a giant with the heart of a child, as she often said herself in her poetic way. His only real fear was that he might fade away for want of proper nourishment. It wasn’t that he was greedy, but that he didn’t have much else to worry about. He knew what the appetites of old-fashioned clerics were like, and comparing his own accomplishments and theirs, he couldn’t see for the life of him how he was ever going to reach the age of ninety. After eating a whole chicken for his dinner, he would sit in his study for hours with his hands folded on his lap, brooding on it, till Nellie stuck her head through the door. ‘You’re all right, my Lord?’ she would cry. ‘Ah, I’m not, Nellie,’ he would say despondently over his shoulder. ‘I’m feeling a bit low tonight.’ ‘’Tis that chicken,’ she would cry, making a dramatic entrance. ‘I knew it. I said it to Tim Murphy. There wasn’t a pick on it.’ ‘I was wondering about that,’ he would say sadly, fixing her with his anxious blue eyes. ‘I thought myself ’twas on the slight side.’ ‘What you want is a nice grilled chop’. ‘I wonder, Nellie, I wonder,’ he would mutter, shaking his head. ‘There’s a lot of eating in a chop.’ ‘Or cutlets, if you prefer them.’ ‘Well, cutlets make a nice late night snack,’ he would say, beginning to relax. ‘They do, but they’re too dry. What you want is a good plate of nice curly rashers, with lots of fat. Sure, ’twas my own fault. I knew there was nothing in that chicken. I knew there should be rashers along with it, but the way I am, the head is going on me. I’m getting too old. One of these days I won’t be able to remember my own name...And a couple of chips—sure, ’twould be the making of you.’ The Bishop was anything but a stupid man, but he did tend to take Nellie at her own valuation. He could easily have imagined her in various sorts of trouble. He could have imagined her lending her little savings to the breadman on foot of a proposal of marriage, or getting into debt with a bookmaker. When at last she came to him with her troubles, he couldn’t conceive of her having any difficulty with the Revenue Commissioners, and she, it appeared, couldn’t either. ‘Ah, you said it yourself, my Lord,’ she said ingenuously. ‘This diocese was ever notorious for slander. But why would they try to fix it on me? I suppose they want to get their own candidate in—someone that would do their whispering for them. It is something I never would do, and I won’t do it now, my Lord, even if they do say you are too old.’ “Who says I’m too old?’ the Bishop asked with a flash of his blue eyes. ‘Oh, don’t ask me to tell you things like that,’ she said with disgust. ‘I’m fifteen years with you, and I never carried stories yet, let Canon Lanigan say what he likes,’ ‘Never mind about Canon Lanigan,’ said the Bishop, feeling he was never going to get to the bottom of it. ‘What did this fellow from the Revenue say?’ ‘Is it Tim Leary?’ she asked. ‘Sure, what could he say? Ah, ’tisn’t that at all, my Lord, but the questions he asked me, the sly rogue! And the things he said! “The biggest smuggler in the whole country”—wasn’t that a nice thing for him to say?’ ‘He called you “the biggest smuggler in the whole country”?’ repeated the Bishop, between amusement and rage. ‘Ah, how could he call me that?’ she replied. ‘Sure, the tongue would rot in his mouth, Is it a poor defenceless old woman like me? But that’s what he meant all right, my Lord. Sure, I knew well what he had in his mind the whole time. Whiskey, petrol, tea, and things, my Lord, that I declare to you, as if I was going before my Maker this minute, I never heard the names of.’ ‘Ah, that fellow must be a bit soft in the head,’ the Bishop said with a worried air. ‘Which Learys does he belong to? Is it the Learys of Clooneavullen” In spite of the fact that he had been a Professor of Dogmatic Theology, the Bishop was convinced that you could explain everything about a man just by knowing who his parents were. The grace of God was all very well, but it wasn’t the same thing at all as belonging to a good family. ‘Aha!’ she said, wagging a finger at him. ‘Didn’t I say exactly the same thing myself? That his own father couldn’t read or write, and he accusing me!’ ‘Never mind about his father,’ the Bishop said earnestly. ‘Sure, hadn’t he an uncle up in the lunatic asylum? I knew him myself. What business has a fellow like that interfering with the likes of me? You tell him to come up here tomorrow, and I’ll talk to him myself.’ “You will to be sure, my Lord,’ she said complacently. Then at the door she stopped. ‘But sure, why would you talk to a little whipper-snapper like that—a man like you that have the ear of the government? You would only have to tell them to send him somewhere else. How well he didn’t mind going over your head. Ah, well, I suppose they told him you were too old.’ The Bishop meditated for a moment on that. When she mentioned his getting old she touched on his sore spot because he knew a lot of people thought he was getting old. And he saw her point about people’s going over his head, which might, or might not, be the work of clerical opponents like Lanigan. He knew the secrets of power as well as Nellie did, and the most important of these is never to deal directly with your inferiors. Of course, in the eyes of God, they might be anything but inferiors, but nobody knew exactly how they did look in the eyes of God, so the best thing was to put them down before they became a menace. ‘Very well, he said in a detached voice that made Nellie’s heart flutter. ‘Where’s my pen?’ It was a voice he used only when some parish priest had been seen drunk in a public place or a gang of young curates had started a card school. ‘Give me my pen till I suspend Father Tom,’ he would say in a dry voice to his secretary, or else, ‘Give me my pen till I scatter them.’ It was the voice of ultimate authority, of the Church Militant personified in her own dear man. In spite of good detective work Nellie never did get to see the Bishop’s letter to the Minister, Jim Butcher, but, on the other hand, the Bishop did not get to see the Minister’s reply either: Nellie thought it might worry him too much, It ran: ‘Dear Doctor Gallogly, how pleasant to hear from you again. Mrs Butcher was saying only yesterday that it was a long time since we saw you. I have had careful inquiries made about the matter you mention, and I am sorry to inform you that the statements of the local Revenue Officer appear to be fully substantiated. Your housekeeper, Miss Ellen Coneely, is the owner of licensed premises on the other side of the Border which have long been known as the headquarters of a considerable smuggling organization, and their base on this side is believed to be the Episcopal Palace. You will realize that the Revenue Commissioners hesitate to take any steps that might embarrass your good self, but you will also realize that this traffic involves a considerable loss of revenue. I should be deeply grateful for your Lordship’s assistance in putting an early end to it. _Mise le Meas. Seumas O Buitséir, Aire.’ Nellie turned cold when she read it. Things were worse than she imagined. It wasn’t only Tim Leary she had to deal with but shadowy Commissioners and Ministers in Dublin who might be up to any sort of blackguarding. Nor could she rely on the Bishop himself to deal with them. He was a good, kind man, but the fire had gone out of him. She took up her own pen and wrote: ‘Dear Sir, His Lordship, the Most Reverend Doctor Gallogly, Bishop of Moyle, has passed on to me your letter of May 3rd and asked me to reply to it for him. He says it is all lies and intrigues and not to bother him any more about it, He says is it likely he would not know what was going on in his own home, or is it a daylight robber you think he is. This campaign was started entirely by Timothy Leary, and as the Bishop points out, what better could you expect of a man whose uncle died in the Moyle Asylum, a wet and dirty case. The public-house you talk of is only another matter of the lies. It does not belong to me at all, but to my unfortunate brother, a Commandant in the Army of Freedom (how are you?), and now a helpless invalid with varicose veins and six children. How would the likes of him be a smuggler? Timothy Leary will not be allowed to enter this Palace again. What do we pay taxes for? We were better off when we had the English. Your obedient servant, Ellen Coneely.’ There was something about this letter that gave Nellie great satisfaction. Though she did not recognize it, it illustrated to perfection the Achilles Heel of Catholicism, for though Dr Gallogly was entirely innocent of its contents, they left the Minister and his staff with a strong impression that the Bishop of Moyle was now the ringleader of a powerful smuggling gang. No doubt the poor old man was not responsible; old age took people in all sorts of different ways, but it was embarrassing because you couldn’t possibly go raiding the Bishop’s Palace for contraband. The very thought of what the newspapers would say about that made the Minister wince: the Irish Times would report it smugly, with the implication that whatever could be said against Protestant bishops, they drew the line at certain things; the Irish Independent would assert that instructions for the raid must have come from Moscow, while the Irish Press would compare it to the Casement forgeries. ‘For God’s sake, leave it as it is, Peter,’ the Minister told his secretary. ‘This thing is dynamite.’ Nellie, scared by the Minister’s letter, worked feverishly and openly to get rid of the contraband in her possession, and Tim. Leary knew it and was mortified. ‘Then one day a man was caught crossing the Border with a keg of whiskey strapped under his car, and Tim was able to trace the keg to Paddy Clancy’s liquor store. Paddy had no alternative but to admit that he had sold the keg to the Bishop. ‘Give us a look at the Bishop’s account, Paddy,’ Tim said irritably, and poor Paddy felt it would be safer to produce the ledger. It was an ugly moment. He was never a man to interfere in other people’s business, but he knew of old that the Bishop’s account was peculiar. Tim Leary looked at it in stupefaction. ‘Merciful God, are you trying to tell me the Bishop drinks all that?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t know, Tim,’ said Paddy. ‘I dare say bishops have a lot of entertaining to do—parish priests and that.’ ‘A gallon a man a night!’ Tim cried. He was a rather hysterical young fellow, Paddy thought, and anyway took his job too seriously. ‘Now, that’s all very well, Tim,’ Paddy said severely. ‘I’m not in a position to ask my customers questions.’ ‘Well, I’m going to ask a few,’ Tim said, headstrong as ever. ‘And unless that man is an out-and-out criminal, he’ll answer them, what’s more. Give us that ledger.’ Paddy watched him from the door striding off up the street and decided that he wouldn’t last long in his job—a young fellow who took things to the fair like that. At the Palace, Nellie tried hard to head him off. She said first that the Bishop was out. Then she said he was sick, and finally that he had given orders not to admit Tim. Unfortunately for her, she could not get Tim to keep his voice down, and she knew to her cost that with the appetite of a child, the Bishop also had a child’s curiosity, and a beggar could hardly come to the door without his peering out and listening. Suddenly, there was a step in the hall and the Bishop came out. ‘That will do, Nellie,’ he said mildly and came up to Tim with a threatening air, a handsome old man with a baby complexion and fierce blue eyes. ‘Now, what do you want, young man?’ he asked sternly. ‘I’m investigating the smuggling that’s going on in this locality and I’d like a few words with you, my Lord,’ ‘I already wrote to the Minister, young man, and told him I didn’t know what I had to do with it.’ ‘If you’ll listen to me for a few minutes I’ll soon show you what you have to do with it,’ said Tim, ‘Aren’t you a very saucy young fellow?’ the Bishop said in a tone of reproach. ‘What part of the world do you hail from?” ‘I’m from Manister,’ replied Tim, who couldn’t be aware of the significance the Bishop attached to heredity. ‘I thought you were John Leary’s son from Clooneavullen,’ the Bishop said in surprise. ‘I’m nothing of the sort,’ Tim said shortly. ‘My father was a schoolmaster.’ ‘You’re not Jim Leary’s boy?’ the Bishop said softly, resting his old hand on Tim’s. ‘I am, then,’ said Tim, pleased to be identified at last. ‘Come in, come in,’ the Bishop said, giving his hand a squeeze. ‘Your father was Headmaster there when I was a curate. No son of Jim Leary’s is going to leave my house without something.’ ‘I’m on duty, my Lord, said Tim, following him into his sitting room. ‘Ah, sha, aren’t we all?’ asked the Bishop, going to the sideboard. With shaky hands he produced two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He put a few spoonfuls in one glass and almost filled the other, which he gave to Tim. ‘Now, you can tell me,’ he said comfortably. Tim was beginning to realize that he liked the old man, a weakness of his that made him a bad investigator. ‘Well, a fellow was caught trying to cross the Border three days ago with a keg of your whiskey slung under his car,’ said Tim, ‘A keg of my whiskey?’ repeated the Bishop with amusement. ‘But what would I be doing with a keg of whiskey?’ “That’s what _I_ was wondering,’ replied Tim. “You seem to have bought enough of them.’ ‘I never bought a keg of whiskey in my whole life, man,’ the Bishop said candidly. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with it. A drop like this just to keep someone company is all I ever see of it. I haven’t the constitution for whiskey.’ ‘If you’ll take one look at your account in Paddy Clancy’s ledger you’ll soon see the sort of constitution you’re supposed to have,’ said Tim...‘Or maybe this is the one with the constitution,’ he added fiercely as Nellie walked in with a bundle of bills in her hand. ‘That’s enough of the whispering and intriguing,’ she said. ‘I admit what I have to admit. ’Twas only to keep my unfortunate angashore of a brother out of the workhouse, a fellow that never did a hand’s turn only fighting for Ireland. ’Twas people like me that had to do the real fighting. Not one penny of his Lordship’s money went astray. I will go if I’m made but I will not leave this house without my reference.’ “You could keep a houseful of brothers out of what you made on the petrol alone,’ Tim said angrily. ‘And I suppose you forget the tea and the butter.’ ‘That will do,’ the Bishop said firmly. ‘Go away, Nellie,’ he added over his shoulder in his dry voice, his episcopal voice. Nellie looked at him in stupefaction and then burst into a howl of grief and went out, sobbing to herself about ‘the fifteen good years of my life that I gave him, and this is all the gratitude I get’. The Bishop waited till her sobs had subsided in the kitchen, and then leaned forward with his hands joined between his knees. ‘Do me a favour, Tim,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Tim?’ ‘I’m honoured, my Lord,’ said Tim. ‘But don’t call me Paddy,’ added the Bishop, an old joke that did not ring true. ‘Tell me, how many people know about this?’ ‘You might say that, by this time, ’twas common property,’ said ‘Tim. ‘And what do they think about me?’ asked the Bishop. ‘You must know yourself they have a great regard for you,’ said Tim. ‘They have, the Bishop said dryly. ‘They have so much regard for me that they don’t mind if I turn my house into a smugglers’ den. They didn’t suggest what I might be doing with the Cathedral?’ Tim saw then that the Bishop was more affected than he let on to be. ‘What will they do to Nellie?’ the Bishop added. ‘Send her to gaol, I hope,’ said Tim. ‘Not to mention the fine, that will be worse for her,’ ‘What sort of fine?’ ‘It’ll have to be calculated,’ said Tim. ‘But it’ll probably run into a couple of thousand pounds.’ ‘A couple of thousand?’ exclaimed the Bishop. ‘Sure, I haven’t that much money myself, Tim.’ ‘You may be damn full sure she has it,’ said Tim. ‘Nellie?’ said the Bishop. ‘And more along with it.’ ‘For the love of God!’ the Bishop said softly and sat back crossing his legs. ‘And here was I, thinking she was only an old fool! Oh, after this, they’ll say I’m not even fit to look after myself. They could put in a coadjutor on me over a thing like this.’ “They wouldn’t do that,’ Tim said in alarm. ‘Oh, indeed they would,’ the Bishop said gaily. ‘And they’d be fully entitled. And that’s not the worst of it. Do you know what’s the worst thing about being old, Tim?’ he added, leaning forward again. ‘I’ll tell you. By the time you finish your lunch you start worrying about your dinner. I suppose a man must have something to look forward to. When I was a young priest I didn’t care if I never saw a dinner. And if they put Nellie in gaol, ’twill kill me. At my age I’m not going to be able to get another housekeeper like that.’ Tim was a generous young man, and, after all, the Bishop had been a friend of his father. ‘Do you think you’d be able to control her for the future?” he asked. ‘I do not,’ replied the Bishop with his outrageous candour. ‘A priest never controlled a woman yet. We haven’t the experience, I suppose.’ ‘Begod, I’d soon control her if I had a free hand,’ said Tim. ‘Oh, I’ll give you all the hand you want,’ said the Bishop with an episcopal wave of his hand. ‘’Tis more in my interest than yours, before they have me married to her.’ Then he got up and gave Tim a pat on the shoulder. ‘You’re a good boy,’ he said, ‘and I won’t forget it for you. Butcher is a good enough fellow, only he’s ruined with that wife of his.’ That afternoon the Bishop stood by the window with his hands behind his back and watched while Tim Leary loaded the lorries with commodities the Bishop had thought had gone from the world—chests of tea, bags of sugar, and boxes of butter. Nellie herself did not put in an appearance, but that night when she opened the door and said, ‘Dinner is served, my Lord,’ the Bishop sat down to a dinner in a thousand—juicy roast beef and roast potatoes with the tenderest of young peas drowned in butter. The Bishop ate his way through it, but he never addressed a word to her. He was thinking of the way he had had to coax and beg for it an old man with nothing else to look forward to. After that, he went to his study and took down the history of the diocese that had often comforted him before when he had dreamed of what his own name would look like in future editions, but that night it only made him feel worse. Looking back on the men who had held the see before him he couldn’t think of one against whom there had been a breath of scandal, except for one eighteenth-century Bishop who had turned Protestant. He was beginning to think that turning Protestant wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a Bishop. Then the door opened and Nellie looked in coyly. ‘What way are you feeling now?’ she whispered. ‘Let me alone, he said in a dry voice without even looking up. ‘My heart is broken.’ ‘Ah, ’tisn’t your heart at all,’ she said. ‘’Tis that beef. ’Twasn’t hung long enough. There isn’t a butcher in this town will take the trouble to hang beef. Would I get you a couple of scrambled eggs?’ ‘Go away, I said!’ he retorted, but she heard the tears in his voice. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in eggs only coloured water. O God, would I fry you a couple of rashers?’ ‘I tell you I don’t want rashers, woman,’ he said in a cry of pain. ‘The dear knows, they’re not worth it,’ she admitted sadly. ‘What are they only old bones with the hair still growing on them? What you want is a nice little juicy bit of Limerick ham with a couple of mashed potatoes and milk sauce with parsley. ’Twould make a new man of you.’ ‘All right, all right,’ he cried angrily. ‘Do what you like but leave me alone.’ Even the prospect of the ham could not lift his sorrow. He knew that whenever a woman says something will make a new man of you, all she means is that it will help to make an old one of you before your time.