The devils diary, p.5
The Devil's Diary, page 5
‘The table is set for four,’ Father Jerry remarked. ‘Are you expecting another guest?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ Hugo smirked. ‘Arty is like you, he always lays out supper for the Devil. He’s late this evening by the look of it. What on earth can be keeping him?’
‘Actually, as you may have guessed, the missing man is McDaid,’ said Brennan.
‘Then let’s drink a toast to absent friends. To the Devil and McDaid!’ Hugo raised his glass while Brennan blew his nose and Father Jerry jabbed a handkerchief up his sleeve with his forefinger.
‘Well, speak of You-Know-Who,’ Hugo shouted as McDaid appeared at the door.
‘You’ve missed the starters.’ Father Jerry sought to be affable.
‘I never have a starter,’ McDaid replied. ‘Nothing but the main course. I believe in solid fodder.’
‘Mandamus is a self-starter,’ Brennan explained.
‘You should have had the avocado,’ Hugo said. ‘It was almost perfect. Pity it was just a bit hard at the thin end.’
‘Let me get you another,’ Brennan offered.
‘I’ll have a whiskey instead.’
‘We’ll be having wine with the main course,’ Brennan promised uncomfortably.
‘I never have wine with my meals, always whiskey. Since I’m having steak, I’ll have Irish. You’re having fish, Father Jerry. You should really have Scotch.’
‘I’ll have mineral water,’ Father Jerry said to Brennan.
‘And I’ll share a bottle of whiskey with Hugo,’ McDaid said in a spirit of willing co-operation.
‘That settles it.’ Brennan beckoned irritably to the waitress. ‘A bottle of Jameson for these two soaks, half a bottle of the house claret for me, and some Perrier for Father Jerry.’
His hand shook the table as he ordered. It was a large, broad hand, heavily clothed in fine red hair that failed to conceal the bulging blue veins beneath.
‘How much do you want for Burke’s?’ Brennan asked aggressively as soon as the drinks arrived.
‘Burke’s is not for sale,’ said Hugo. ‘When I’ve reroofed it, I’ll have a snug little nest that will stir the imagination of every nubile woman in the parish.’
McDaid guffawed and waited for Brennan to speak.
‘If you sell Burke’s to me, you’ll have enough money to buy a bigger nest. The modern woman expects elbow room, including a bedroom to herself.’
‘Burke’s is more than a home for me. As a boy I spent my afternoons in the old forge. It has what sentimentalists call a sentimental value.’
‘I’m stymied, then. My Holiday Village is a non-starter and the money I’ve already spent buying up land for it is money down the drain.’
‘There must be other sites,’ said Hugo.
‘Where?’
‘Just be patient. Something will turn up.’
‘What do you want with a Holiday Village?’ Father Jerry asked. ‘You’ve done enough, you should be satisfied.’
‘Business must grow. A business that doesn’t is earmarked for the receiver.’
Hugo poured himself another whiskey and told McDaid that his steak would have been perfect had it been medium rare, as requested, rather than just a shade overdone.
‘I have the money to attract more wealth to the glen but I would like to see local involvement,’ Brennan said. ‘I’ve put money in people’s pockets. Now I’d like to see them invest some of it in their own future. You are chairman of the parish council, Father Jerry. You could get the parish to back this new venture, perhaps even encourage landowners to provide a site. What I’m doing is not for myself but for the good of the community.’
‘I’m against the Holiday Village,’ Father Jerry said. ‘We’ve had enough changes here, more than we’ve been able to absorb in so short a time. There is more money and more of the things that money can buy. Sadly, the quality of life has deteriorated. People have lost their innocence and with it what was left of the local culture.’
‘They wouldn’t agree!’
‘Of course not. The man who’s lost his culture is the last to realise it.’
‘Ah, you see yourself as a custodian of cultural values.’ Brennan laughed sarcastically.
‘As a priest, I see myself as the custodian of a culture that makes moral values possible.’
‘You’re a late convert to peasant culture. You weren’t brought up in a poor widow’s cottage as I was, you lived in style in the doctor’s house in the village. You lived among Corinthians, and now you wish to write self-righteous epistles to the Corinthians like that other convert St Paul. Just remember this: some of us remember enough about the past to know when to say, “Enough”.’
‘Why don’t we forget the past and all that nostalgie de la boue,’ Hugo said. ‘Let’s relax and enjoy the sumptuous present. This is the best spread I’ve seen since I unexpectedly found myself guest of honour at a cannibal feast in a remote corner of the Pacific over ten years ago. No, don’t grimace, Arty. It wasn’t at all as you imagine. There was no dancing round a big pot, as you see in the movies. This was much more sedate. They sat quietly round the turning spit, just like the hippies on the Glebe at one of their cannabis feasts.’
‘A living culture is a changing thing,’ Brennan said to Father Jerry. ‘I’ve enriched the local culture and I’m proud of it.’
‘Think of the summer evenings in the glen when we were boys. Young men came to the crossroads to play pitch-and-toss. Now they come to your motel to play bingo.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘There’s more skill in pitch-and-toss. Bingo is a game for morons.’
‘Cannibalism is going too far,’ said Hugo. ‘It makes frogs’ legs and snails’ eggs seem like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. And remember, there’s no Béarnaise sauce — nothing between you and the flesh that horrifies.’
‘The loss of culture has led to a weakening of religious feeling,’ Father Jerry raised his voice. ‘When we were growing up, one or two women would faint at eleven o’clock Mass every Sunday, and two strong men would get up and carry them outside for a breath of fresh air. It was a ritual as regular as the transubstantiation itself. If no one fainted, people felt that there had been a failure of sanctity, that the priest had somehow betrayed his function. When have you last seen a woman faint in church?’
‘They fainted simply because they walked long distances from the mountain and because they came to Mass fasting,’ Brennan said witheringly. ‘Now they come in cars and they eat a hearty breakfast before leaving home.’
‘How can you have a spiritual experience on a full stomach?’ Father Jerry asked. ‘Sanctity abides in the skin and bones of the poor, not in the adipose tissue of the overfed.’
Brennan slapped his thigh and winked at McDaid.
‘Cannibalism is only one kind of excess,’ Hugo shouted. ‘Another is what happened below on the plain while Moses was up the mountain getting his tables of stone. Do you know what went on, Arty?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘That’s because you don’t wish to know. Every man can find out by looking into his heart. Any man who hasn’t doesn’t know himself.’
‘You should have had the wine,’ Brennan said. ‘It aids digestion whereas whiskey inflames the imagination and impairs the judgment.’
‘Ask me if I’ll sell Burke’s.’
‘I’ll do better, I’ll offer you full partnership in the venture. The Holiday Village will attract the better class of tourist: university professors, writers and artists in search of simplicity, businessmen in need of a rest cure, and intellectuals who have lost their way. We mustn’t be selfish, we mustn’t keep our ancient culture to ourselves. We must do our bit to rejuvenate a tired civilisation. We’ll offer the Total Experience: we’ll pay a few elderly locals to live in the new village to provide a sense of reality — telling stories, singing songs, and generally looking wise. It will be the Total Holiday with Total Immersion. How is that for a slogan? It will be a goldmine for the glen. If you’re willing to provide the site, Hugo, I’ll split the profits with you fifty-fifty. What do you say?’
‘Total Ballsology! Your problem, Brennan, is that you have no gift for theology. What interests me is the origin of moral scruple. Why is cannibalism wrong?’
‘It’s a great evening altogether,’ interjected McDaid. ‘For the first time in thirty years we’re together round a table — all except Mary Rose herself. If she were here, would we replay the Game? I like to think we’re still young enough to play it.’
At the other end of the room the celebrating family began singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and the white-haired octogenarian burst into tears at the sight of eight red candles burning. Hugo raised his glass to Brennan and in a coarse and gravelly voice sang, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. McDaid got to his feet to conduct while Brennan and Father Jerry stared stonily at each other across the table.
‘That ends the formal proceedings, I hope,’ said Brennan when Hugo had finished. ‘We’ll now go upstairs to my personal lounge to take brandy and coffee in peace.’
‘I’m off,’ McDaid said. ‘I don’t have coffee. Nothing but solid packing for the working man.’
‘I won’t have brandy,’ said Hugo. ‘But I’m willing to finish the whiskey.’
They entered a small oak-panelled room with an oval table in the centre and a portrait of a bearded Victorian worthy above the fireplace. On the opposite wall hung a blown-up photograph of Arty Brennan steadfastly gazing at the other portrait.
‘Is he an ancestor of yours?’ Hugo asked. ‘I didn’t know you had any.’
‘He’s Sir John Matlock, the man who built the old hotel. I’ve put a photograph of the Declaration of Irish Independence beneath his picture. It makes a neat political point, I think.’
‘It oversimplifies history, a besetting sin in Ireland,’ Father Jerry remarked.
‘It’s important to me. This house was once the symbol of foreign occupation in the glen. Now it’s owned by a local lad, the son of a poor widow made good.’
‘Plus ça change … Once it was English landlords, now it’s tourists from France and Germany and hippies from God knows where.’
Brennan poured coffee. The house claret seemed to have had a mellowing effect on him. He subsided in his chair and gazed up at the portrait of Sir John.
‘It’s a pity we see so little of each other,’ he said affably. ‘You and Hugo and Mandamus and myself have a bond that time hasn’t broken. We share an unforgettable childhood. Perhaps that’s why the three of us have come back here.’
‘I came back to slip quietly out of this accursed century,’ Father Jerry said. ‘It seems that you came back to make my task more difficult.’
Brennan smiled amiably and lit a stumpy cigar.
‘I came back to satisfy the demands of my imagination,’ he said. ‘Here I am the flywheel on which smaller wheels depend.’
Father Jerry had a feeling that Brennan was making a deliberate effort to be friendly. He spoke at length of his early struggles in America and of how he could think only of home once success had finally come to him. Hugo seemed to have fallen asleep, and Father Jerry, who listened without saying much, thought that the men who wreak most havoc in this world, and who deserve to have havoc wreaked on them in the next, are men with a sense of mission. As the clock on the mantelpiece struck one, he prodded Hugo and rose to go.
‘You have a strong sense of mission, Arty,’ he said. ‘It rarely goes with a sense of proportion.’
Brennan smiled understandingly and accompanied them down to the courtyard. The night sky above them was a bulging sail of stars. They stood on the steps of the front entrance while Hugo searched his pockets for the ignition key. The rock music had ceased. The night was quiet, the only noise the back-and-forth drag of the sea. Father Jerry was expecting to hear the wail of a curlew from the shore. He was thinking of human loneliness and the boon of sleep.
‘I’ll drive,’ he said to Hugo when Brennan had left them. ‘You’ve had far too much to drink.’
Hugo climbed into the driver’s seat without answering.
‘You rather overdid it with your wild talk of cannibalism. Don’t you realise that people may think you’re being serious.’
‘You think I was making it up?’
‘I refuse to think. Some things are unthinkable.’
‘As your brother, I deem it my duty to confront you with the full horror of life. Your tourists and hippies are only piped Muzak that doesn’t please your ear. Come out of the sanctuary and look at the world as it is. You say I overdid the cannibalism. Well, you overdid the ancient culture bit. Now I know why you came back: to weep over Jerusalem, nothing less. Both you and Brennan are men of extremes. There isn’t a ha’p’orth of difference between you.’
Father Jerry felt sleepy. It had been an evening of talk, and he knew that he had talked enough. Hugo was hunched over the steering-wheel, driving with exaggerated care. The road was bumpy and the jouncing headlights picked out clumps of rushes along the verge, and here and there a weathered telegraph pole. The road ran downhill along the edge of the sea cliffs. As they came into the first bend, a stiff-legged wether made as if to cross in front of them.
‘Holy Christ! The brakes have gone.’ Hugo swerved to the right, away from the railings along the edge.
The Land Rover swayed and the road tilted. For a moment they seemed to balance on two wheels above the sea.
‘Hold tight, I’m going to ditch her.’
They were running alongside a bank of peat-moss on the right, still gathering speed as Hugo eased closer with the brake pedal to the floor. He was holding on through the bumping and grating, as if the steering-wheel were a lifebuoy. Then, with a jolt that seemed to electrify the floor, they came to a stop.
‘We could have been killed,’ Father Jerry said.
‘If we’d gone out over the cliff it was goodbye to drink and trogging with women.’
Father Jerry stumbled on to the road and Hugo dragged himself slowly across the seat. He got a torch from the back and crawled in under the vehicle. Father Jerry leant against the wing, staring uncomprehendingly at his brother’s upturned feet.
‘It’s Brennan, the bastard,’ Hugo spat.
‘Brennan?’
‘Someone’s tampered with the brakes. The pipes have been cut, come here and see for yourself.’
‘Brennan couldn’t have done it,’ Father Jerry said emphatically.
‘He didn’t have to. McDaid left an hour before we did. Brennan kept us talking to give him time.’
‘It’s unbelievable.’
‘There’s nothing for it now but to walk home.’
They stood dumbly side by side looking down the cliff and listening to the plunging and slapping of the water below. The sound of the sea came from far away. It seemed to Father Jerry that he had his head down a well shaft and that his eardrums were about to explode in a vacuum of silence.
‘This is serious. We could have been killed,’ he repeated.
‘I know.’
‘It’s now become a matter for the police.’
‘Not yet. I’d like to ponder the possibilities for a day or two. The riposte must be swift and telling. It must preclude any possibility of a counterstroke.’
‘I don’t like that kind of talk.’
‘Consider the position. You know who’s behind all this but can you prove it?’
‘It is not my business to prove it.’
‘I’ve made up my mind. It came to me as a flash of revelation. Now I know what I must do.’
‘What must you do?’ Father Jerry asked.
‘If I told you, you’d be an accomplice before the fact. You’re a priest, you must be protected.’
‘Hugo, this is wild talk. You are for ever making light of things that are profoundly serious.’
‘Far from it. I am nothing if not a moralist,’ said Hugo.
Chapter 6
When Father Jerry returned from morning Mass, he found Hugo in the kitchen munching black pudding and stamping his gumboot in time to dance music from the radio.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he announced.
‘Have you?’ Father Jerry surveyed the mountainous mixture of sausages, bacon rashers, mushrooms and tomatoes on his plate.
‘We must take a theologian’s view,’ Hugo explained. ‘We must try to judge Brennan’s actions with reference to his intentions. The question is: did he have murder in his heart? Was it his direct intention to kill or create a serious risk of death?’
‘The man who cut the brake pipes knew the road home. He knew that it runs downhill for half a mile, parallel with the sea cliff all the way.’
‘And still in my mind there’s a nagging doubt. Perhaps he merely wished to frighten us. Again, he may have convinced himself that murder would be justified by the “good” consequences that would flow from it. Dead men are not recalcitrant; they wouldn’t stand in the way of the Holiday Village. When I know the answer to all these questions, I shall have a clearer idea of the course we should pursue. I would value your opinion, Father Jerry. Can murder ever be morally justified?’
‘We are concerned here with a specific attempt at murder. Just ask your conscience. If I’m not mistaken, you’ll get an unambiguous answer.’
‘You mean that Brennan has broken the Fifth Commandment?’
‘The Fifth Commandment is not just for Brennan, it applies to you and me as well.’
‘You said that I should go to the police. I’ve been considering the theological implications of that too.’
