An Act of Charity

The parish priest, Father Maginnis, did not like the second curate,
Father Galvin, and Father Fogarty could see why. It was the dislike of
the professional for the amateur, no matter how talented, and nobody
could have said that Father Galvin had much in the way of
talent. Maginnis was a professional to his fingertips. He drove the
right car, knew the right people, and could suit his conversation to
any company, even that of women. He even varied his accent to make
people feel at home. With Deasy, the owner of the garage, he talked
about “the caw,” but to Lavin, the garage hand, he said “the cyarr,”
smiling benignly at the homeliness of his touch.

Galvin was thin, pale, irritable, and intense. When he should have
kept a straight face he made some stupid joke that stopped the
conversation dead; and when he laughed in the proper place at someone
else’s joke, it was with a slight air of vexation, as though he found
it hard to put up with people who made him laugh at all. He worried
himself over little embarrassments and what people would think of
them, till Fogarty asked bluntly, “What the hell difference does it
make what they think?” Then Galvin looked away sadly and said, “I
suppose you’re right.” But Fogarty didn’t mind his visits so much
except when he had asked other curates in for a drink and a game of
cards. Then he took a glass of sherry or something equally harmless
and twiddled it awkwardly for half an hour as though it were some sort
of patent device for keeping his hands occupied. When one of the
curates made a harmless dirty joke, Galvin pretended to be looking at
a picture so that he didn’t have to comment. Fogarty, who loved giving
people nicknames, called him Father Mother’s Boy. He called Maginnis
the Old Pro, but when that nickname got back, as everything a priest
says gets back, it did Fogarty no harm at all. Maginnis was glad he
had a curate with so much sense.

He sometimes asked Fogarty to Sunday dinner, but he soon gave up on
asking Galvin, and again Fogarty sympathized with him. Maginnis was a
professional, even to his dinners. He basted his meat with one sort of
wine and his chickens with another, and he liked a guest who would
tell the difference. He also liked him to drink two large whiskeys
before dinner and to make sensible remarks about the wine; and when he
had exhausted the secrets of his kitchen he sat back, smoked his cigar,
and told funny stories. They were very good stories, mostly about
priests.

“Did I ever tell you the one about Canon Murphy, father?” he would
bellow, his fat face beaming. “Ah, that’s damn good. Canon Murphy went
on a pilgrimage to Rome, and when he came back he preached a sermon on
it. ‘So I had a special audience with His Holiness, dearly beloved
brethren, and he asked me, “Canon Murphy, where are you now?” “I’m in
Dromod, Your Holiness,” said I. “What sort of a parish is it, Canon
Murphy?” says he. “Ah, ’tis a nice, snug little parish, Your Holiness,”
says I. “Are they a good class of people?” says he. “Well, they’re not
bad, Your Holiness,” said I. “Are they good-living people?” says
he. “Well, they’re as good as the next, Your Holiness,” says
I. “Except when they’d have a drop taken.” “Tell me, Canon Murphy,”
says he, “do they pay their dues?” And like that, I was nearly struck
dumb. “There you have me, Your Holiness!” says I. “There you have
me!”’”

At heart Fogarty thought Maginnis was a bit of a sham and that most of
his stories were fabrications; but he never made the mistake of
underestimating him, and he enjoyed the feeling Maginnis gave him of
belonging to a group, and that of the best kind—well balanced, humane,
and necessary.

At meals in the curates’ house, Galvin had a tendency to chatter
brightly and aimlessly that irritated Fogarty. He was full of scraps
of undigested knowledge, picked up from newspapers and magazines,
about new plays and books that he would never either see or
read. Fogarty was a moody young man who preferred either to keep
silent or engage in long emotional discussions about local scandals
that grew murkier and more romantic the more he described them. About
such things he was hopelessly indiscreet. “And that fellow notoriously
killed his own father,” he said once, and Galvin looked at him in
distress. “You mean he really killed him?” he asked—as though Fogarty
did not really mean everything at the moment he was saying it—and
then, to make things worse, added, “It’s not something I’d care to
repeat—not without evidence, I mean.”

“The Romans used eunuchs for civil servants, but we’re more
enlightened,” Fogarty said once to Maginnis. “We prefer the natural
ones.” Maginnis gave a hearty laugh; it was the sort of remark he
liked to repeat. And when Galvin returned after lunching austerely
with some maiden ladies and offered half-baked suggestions, Maginnis
crushed him, and Fogarty watched with malicious amusement. He knew it
was turning into persecution, but he wasn’t quite sure which of the
two men suffered more.



When he heard the explosion in the middle of the night, he waited for
some further noise to interpret it, and then rose and put on the
light. The housekeeper was standing outside her bedroom door in a
raincoat, her hands joined. She was a widow woman with a history of
tragedy behind her, and Fogarty did not like her; for some reason he
felt she had the evil eye, and he always addressed her in his most
commanding tone.

“What was that, Mary?” he asked.

“I don’t know, father,” she said in a whisper. “It sounded as if it
was in Father Galvin’s room.”

Fogarty listened again. There was no sound from Galvin’s room, and he
knocked and pushed in the door. He closed the door again immediately.

“Get Dr. Carmody quick!” he said brusquely.

“What is it, father?” she asked. “An accident?”

“Yes, a bad one. And when you’re finished, run out and ask Father
Maginnis to come in.” .

“Oh, that old gun!” she moaned softly. “I dreaded it. I’ll ring
Dr. Carmody.” She went hastily down the stairs.

Fogarty followed her and went into the living room to pick up the
sacred oils from the cupboard where they were kept. “I don’t know,
doctor,” he heard Mary moaning. “Father Fogarty said it was an
accident.” He returned upstairs and lifted the gun from the bed before
anointing the dead man. He had just concluded when the door opened and
he saw the parish priest come in, wearing a blue flowered dressing
gown.

Maginnis went over to the bed and stared down at the figure on
it. Then he looked at Fogarty over his glasses, his face almost
expressionless. “I was afraid of something like this,” he said
knowingly. “I knew he was a bit unstable.”

“You don’t think it could be an accident?” Fogarty asked, though he
knew the question sounded ridiculous.

“No,” Maginnis said, giving him a downward look through the
spectacles. “Do you?”

“But how could he bring himself to do a thing like that?” Fogarty
asked incredulously.

“Oh who knows?” said Maginnis almost impatiently. “With weak
characters it’s hard to tell. He doesn’t seem to have left any
message.”

“Not that I can see.”

“I’m sorry twas Carmody you sent for.”

“But he was Galvin’s doctor.”

“I know, I know, but all the same he’s young and a bit immature. I’d
have preferred an older man. Make no mistake about it, father, we have
a problem on our hands,” he added with sudden resolution. “A very
serious problem.”

Fogarty did not need to have the problem spelled out for him. The
worst thing a priest could do was to commit suicide, since it seemed
to deny everything that gave his vocation meaning—Divine Providence
and Mercy, forgiveness, Heaven, Hell. That one of God’s anointed could
come to such a state of despair was something the Church could not
admit. It would give too much scandal. It was simply an unacceptable
act.

“That’s his car now, I fancy,” Maginnis said.

Carmody came quickly up the stairs with his bag in his hand and his
pink pajamas showing under his tweed jacket. He was a tall, spectacled
young man with a long, humorous clown’s face, and in ordinary life
adopted a manner that went with his face, but Fogarty knew he was both
competent and conscientious. He had worked for some years in an
English hospital and developed a bluntness of speech that Fogarty
found refreshing.

“Christ!” he said as he took in the scene. Then he went over and
looked closely at the body. “Poor Peter!” he added. Then he took the
shotgun from the bedside table where Fogarty had put it and examined
it. “I should have kept a closer eye on him,” he said with
chagrin. “There isn’t much I can do for him now.”

“On the contrary, doctor,” Maginnis said. ‘There was never a time when
you could do more for him.” Then he gave Fogarty a meaningful
glance. “I wonder if you’d mind getting Jack Fitzgerald for me,
father? Talk to himself, and I needn’t warn you to be careful what you
say.”

“Oh, I’ll be careful,” Fogarty said with gloomy determination. There
was something in his nature that always responded to the touch of
melodrama, and he knew Maginnis wanted to talk to Carmody alone. He
telephoned to Fitzgerald, the undertaker, and then went back upstairs
to dress. It was clear he wasn’t going to get any more sleep that
night.

He heard himself called and returned to Galvin’s room. This time he
really felt the full shock of it: the big bald parish priest in his
dressing gown and the gaunt young doctor with his pajama top open
under the jacket. He could see the two men had been arguing.


“Perhaps you’d talk to Dr. Carmody, father?” Maginnis suggested
benignly.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Father Fogarty,” Carmody said,
adopting the formal title he ignored when they were among friends. “I
can’t sign a certificate saying this was a natural death. You know I
can’t. It’s too unprofessional.”

“Professional or not, Dr. Carmody, someone will have to do it,”
Maginnis said. “I am the priest of this parish. In a manner of
speaking I’m a professional man too, you know. And this unfortunate
occurrence is something that doesn’t concern only me and you. It has
consequences that affect the whole parish.”

“Your profession doesn’t require you to sign your name to a lie,
father,” Carmody said angrily. “That’s what you want me to do.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call that a lie, Dr. Carmody,” Maginnis said with
dignity. “In considering the nature of a lie we have to take account
of its good and bad effects. I can see no possible good effect that
might result from a scandal about the death of this poor boy. Not one!
In fact, I can see unlimited harm.”

“So can I,” Fogarty burst out. His voice sounded too loud, too
confident, even to his own ears.

“I see,” Carmody said sarcastically. “And you think we should keep on
denouncing the Swedes and Danes for their suicide statistics, just
because they don’t fake them the way we do. Ah, for God’s sake, man,
I’d never be able to respect myself again.”

Fogarty saw that Maginnis was right. In some ways Carmody was too
immature. “That’s all very well, Jim, but Christian charity comes
before statistics,” he said appealingly. “Forget about the damn
statistics, can’t you? Father Galvin wasn’t only a statistic. He was a
human being—somebody we both knew. And what about his family?”

“What about his mother?” Maginnis asked with real pathos. “I gather
you have a mother yourself, Dr. Carmody?”

“And you expect me to meet Mrs. Galvin tomorrow and tell her her son
was a suicide and can’t be buried in consecrated ground?” Fogarty went
on emotionally. “Would you like us to do that to your mother if it was
your case?”

“A doctor has unpleasant things to do as well, Jerry,” said Carmody.

“To tell a mother that her child is dying?” Fogarty asked. “A priest
has to do that too, remember. Not to tell her that her child is
damned.”

But the very word that Fogarty knew had impressed Carmody made the
parish priest uncomfortable. “Fortunately, father, that is in better
hands than yours or mine,” he said curtly. And at once his manner
changed. It was as though he was a little bit tired of them
both. “Dr. Carmody,” he said, “I think I hear Mr. Fitzgerald. You’d
better make up your mind quick. If you’re not prepared to sign the
death certificate, I’ll soon find another doctor who will. That is my
simple duty, and I’m going to do it. But as an elderly man who knows a
little more about this town than you or Father Fogarty here, I’d
advise you not to compel me to bring in another doctor. If word got
round that I was forced to do such a thing, it might have very serious
effects on your career.”

There was no mistaking the threat, and there was something almost
admirable about the way it was made. At the same time, it roused the
sleeping rebel in Fogarty. Bluff, he thought angrily. Damn bluff! If
Carmody walked out on them at that moment, there was very little the
parish priest or anyone else could do to him. Of course, any of the
other doctors would sign the certificate, but it wouldn’t do them any
good either. When people really felt the need for a doctor, they
didn’t necessarily want the doctor the parish priest approved of. But
as he looked at Carmody’s sullen, resentful face, he realized that
Carmody didn’t know his own strength in the way that Maginnis knew
his. After all, what had he behind him but a few years in a London
hospital, while behind Maginnis was that whole vast, historic
organization that he was rightly so proud of.

“I can’t sign a certificate that death was due to natural causes,”
Carmody said stubbornly. “Accident, maybe—I don’t know. I wasn’t
here. I’ll agree to accident.”

“Accident?” Maginnis said contemptuously, and this time he did not
even trouble to use Carmody’s title. It was as though he were
stripping him of any little dignity he had. “Young man, accidents
with shotguns do not happen to priests at three o’clock in the
morning. Try to talk sense!”

And just as Fogarty realized that the doctor had allowed himself to be
crushed, they heard Mary let Fitzgerald in. He came briskly up the
stairs. He was a small, spare man, built like a jockey. The parish
priest nodded in the direction of the bed and Fitzgerald’s brows went
up mechanically. He was a man who said little, but he had a face and
figure too expressive for his character. It was as though all the
opinions he suppressed in life found relief in violent physical
movements.

“Naturally, we don’t want it talked about, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said
Maginnis. “Do you think you could handle it yourself?”

The undertaker’s eyes popped again, and he glanced swiftly from
Maginnis to Carmody and then to Fogarty. He was a great man for
efficiency, though; if you had asked him to supply the corpse as well
as the coffin, he might have responded automatically, “Male or
female?”

“Dr. Carmody will give the certificate, of course?” he asked
shrewdly. He hadn’t missed much of what was going on.

“It seems I don’t have much choice,” Carmody replied bitterly.

“Oh, purely as an act of charity, of course,” Fitz said hastily. “We
all have to do this sort of thing from time to time. The poor
relatives have enough to worry them without inquests and things like
that. What was the age, Father Maginnis, do you know?” he added,
taking out a notebook. A clever little man, thought Fogarty. He had
put it all at once upon a normal, businesslike footing.

“Twenty-eight,” said Maginnis.

“God help us!” Fitz said perfunctorily, and made a note. After that he
took out a rule.

“I’d better get ready and go to see the Bishop myself,” Maginnis
said. “We’ll need his permission, of course, but I haven’t much doubt
about that. I know he had the reputation for being on the strict side,
but I always found him very considerate. I’ll send Nora over to help
your housekeeper, father. In the meantime, maybe you’d be good enough
to get in touch with the family.”

“I’ll see to that, father,” Fogarty said. He and Carmody followed
Maginnis downstairs. He said good-bye and left, and Fogarty’s manner
changed abruptly. “Come in and have a drink, Jim,” he said.

“I’d rather not, Jerry,” Carmody said gloomily.

“Come on! Come on! You need one, man! I need one myself and I can’t
have it.” He shut the door of the living room behind him. “Great God,
Jim, who could have suspected it?”

“I suppose I should have,” said Carmody. “I got hints enough if only I
might have understood them.”

“But you couldn’t, Jim,” Fogarty said excitedly, taking the whiskey
from the big cupboard. “Nobody could. Do you think I ever expected it,
and I lived closer to him than you did.”

The front door opened and they heard the slippers of Nora, Maginnis’s
housekeeper, in the hall. There was a low mumble of talk outside the
door, and then the clank of a bucket as the woman went up the
stairs. Fitzgerald was coming down at the same time, and Fogarty
opened the door a little.

“Well, Jack?”

“Well, father. I’ll do the best I can.”

“You wouldn’t join us for a—?”

“No, father. I’ll have my hands full for the next couple of hours.”

“Good-night, Jack. And I’m sorry for the disturbance.”

“Ah, ’twas none of your doing. Good-night, father.”

The doctor finished his whiskey in a gulp, and his long, battered
face had a bitter smile. “And so this is how it’s done!” he said.

“This is how it’s done, Jim, and believe me, it’s the best way for
everybody in the long run,” Fogarty replied with real gravity.

But, looking at Carmody’s face, he knew the doctor did not believe it,
and he wondered then if he really believed it himself.

When the doctor had gone, Fogarty got on the telephone to a provincial
town fifty miles away. The exchange was closed down, so he had to give
his message to the police. In ten minutes or so a guard would set out
along the sleeping streets to the house where the Galvins lived. That
was one responsibility he was glad to evade.

While he was speaking, he heard the parish priest’s car set off and
knew he was on his way to the Bishop’s palace. Then he shaved, and,
about eight, Fitzgerald drove up with the coffin in his van. Silently
they carried it between them up the stairs. The body was lying
decently composed with a simple bandage about the head. Between them
they lifted it into the coffin. Fitzgerald looked questioningly at
Fogarty and went on his knees. As he said the brief prayer, Fogarty
found his voice unsteady and his eyes full of tears. Fitzgerald gave
him a pitying look and then rose and dusted his knees.

“All the same there’ll be talk, father,” he said.

‘Maybe not as much as there should be, Jack,” Fogarty said moodily.

“We’ll take him to the chapel, of course?” Fitzgerald went on.

“Everything in order, Jack. Father Maginnis is gone to see the
Bishop.”

“He couldn’t trust the telephone, of course,” Fitzgerald said,
stroking his unshaven chin. “No fear the Bishop will interfere,
though. Father Maginnis is a smart man. You saw him?”

“I saw him.” ,

“No nerves, no hysterics. I saw other people in the same
situation. ‘Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald, what am I going to do?’ His mind on
essential things the whole time. He’s an object lesson to us all,
father.”

“You’re right, Jack, he is,” Fogarty said despondently.

Suddenly the undertaker’s hand shot out and caught him by the upper
arm. “Forget about it, boy! Forget about it! What else can you do? Why
the hell should you break your heart over it?”


Fogarty still had to meet the family. Later that morning, they drove
up to the curates’ house. The mother was an actressy type and wept a
good deal. She wanted somebody to give her a last message, which
Fogarty couldn’t think up. The sister, a pretty, intense girl, wept a
little too, but quietly, with her back turned, while the brother, a
young man with a great resemblance to Galvin, said little. Mother and
brother accepted without protest the ruling that the coffin was not to
be opened, but the sister looked at Fogarty and asked, “You don’t
think I could see him? Alone? I wouldn’t be afraid.” When he said the
doctor had forbidden it, she turned her back again, and he had an
impression that there was a closer link between her and Galvin than
between the others and him.

That evening, they brought the body to lie before the altar of the
church, and Maginnis received it and said the prayers. The church was
crowded, and Fogarty knew with a strange mixture of rejoicing and
mortification that the worst was over. Maginnis’s master stroke was
the new curate, Rowlands, who had arrived within a couple of hours
after his own return. He was a tall, thin, ascetic-looking young man,
slow-moving and slow-speaking, and Fogarty knew that all eyes were on
him.

Everything went with perfect propriety at the Requiem Mass next
morning, and after the funeral Fogarty attended the lunch given by
Maginnis to the visiting clergy. He almost laughed out loud when he
heard Maginnis ask in a low voice, “Father Healy, did I ever tell you
the story of Canon Murphy and the Pope?” All that would follow would
be the mourning card with the picture of Galvin and the Gothic
lettering that said “Ecce Sacerdos Magnus.” There was no danger of a
scandal any longer. Carmody would not talk. Fitzgerald would not talk
either. None of the five people involved would. Father Galvin might
have spared himself the trouble.

As they returned from the church together, Fogarty tried to talk to
the new curate about what had happened, but he soon realized that the
whole significance of it had escaped Rowlands, and that Rowlands
thought he was only overdramatizing it all. Anybody would think he was
overdramatizing it, except Carmody. After his supper he would go to
the doctor’s house, and they would talk about it. Only Carmody would
really understand what it was they had done between them. No one else
would.

What lonely lives we live, he thought unhappily.


(1967)
Source: Collected Stories, 1981