Three Cheers For The Paraclete (16 page)

‘That is casuistry!’ Costello cried out. He stared ahead of him. There was an unwonted pallor in the eye-pouch and cheek that Maitland could see. ‘How can something be known if it is not known in its essence?’

‘Indeed,’ said the monsignor, who had none the less lost track of the hounds.

Costello announced, loudly but to no one in particular, ‘What I have said is aimed at proving the dangers of playing inexactly with theological terms.’

Old Monsignor Fleming nodded. ‘It’s done for many a good man. Look at the great Père Lammenais in nineteenth-century France …’

But the other three had too much on hand to take this invitation.

‘I must say in fairness to Sister Martin,’ Maitland enjoyed observing, ‘that she seems to have a profound sense of these dangers.’

‘No,’ said the nun herself, and meant it absolutely. ‘Not enough sense. Not enough.’

‘
Ipse dixit
,’ said Costello. ‘Or should I say
ipsa
?’

There was a silence. The nun bowed her head, obviously accepting on it the blame for having spoken inexactly of the deity. Since this same guilt was shared by Moses, Augustine, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc and an army of other master spirits, Maitland hoped she was proud of her crime. She gave no sign, however.

‘And now, what about these sacraments?’ Costello said, restored to victorious joviality.

After listening to Sister Martin on sacraments for a short time, and having watched that fool Maitland nodding his lean head, forbearing, perhaps even approving, Costello cut the drift of the girl’s pleadings with one downward stroke of his hand. Passionless, breathing hard, he spoke.

‘I have something to tell you, Sister Martin. I tell it without malice, merely with some sadness.’

He once again made that sinusitic rumble already tested on the mother-superior. It sounded, and was almost certainly meant to be, male and harsh and mastering, gruff as a navvy’s fart and, to Maitland’s mind, even less creditable. ‘
You
are a modernist. And modernism is a heresy.’

The woman sighed.
She
sounded feminine and soft
as any deep waters; and indicted ever so slightly the vulgarity of the doctor’s nasal cavities. ‘Do you wish to conclude I am a heretic, father?’ she asked.

‘Not yet.’ He waved his right hand spaciously. ‘We presume your good faith up to this moment. However, now that you have been warned … I beg you, my daughter, in this hour of your extreme need, to prostrate yourself before Christ your Spouse and His Blessed Mother.’

Maitland, speechless, battled for composure; as Monsignor Fleming quoted,
‘Woe unto him who scandalizeth a little one …’
He was sure she had not merited millstones. But all those who dealt with the young had to be careful, so very careful.

Suddenly Costello became therapeutically kind. He said that he would draw up, prayerfully and with specific attention to her peril, a list of theology texts she was to con thoroughly. In the meantime, she should not teach the one true faith to children. After some months he would return and interview her once again. ‘Agreed?’ he asked the monsignor, who certainly didn’t want to seem severe, but thought that such a course was proper. Not that he didn’t realize she did her level best. But until her small inaccuracies were cleared up …

‘Remember that you are the bride of Christ,’ Costello demanded of her, and shut his awe-struck lids.

Something began to pulse in Maitland’s throat, and out of the pulse, full of the rhythms of his blood, grew unaccountably his voice. It swung across the room like a pendulum.

It said, ‘The bride does not need a formula for the bride-groom. Her knowledge of him surpasses formulas.’

‘That’s all very well for the bride,’ Costello agreed after a silence.

‘Exactly,’ said Maitland.

He told the nun, ‘I know each of the books Dr Costello has recommended to you. Let me say that you will find them alien, legalistic, sterile. None the less, perhaps mother-superior will order you to read them, and in that case you must not let them influence your life as a nun or give you despair.’

The nun said, ‘I’d prefer you didn’t continue, father.’

‘Ah, but preferences aren’t your business. Dr Costello has made that clear enough. However, the only other thing I wanted to say was that I dissociate myself utterly from Dr Costello’s concerted rudeness to you.’

‘Thank you,’ she told him with classroom firmness. ‘But, of course, I understood from the beginning that none of you was acting from spite.’

As she was going, Maitland opened the door for her to pass into the hall. Here the lights shone. Two barbarous statues, lollypop-coloured, postured across the void of carpet and stained boards, and, from a place where showers and taps ran, boarding students could be heard giggling towards cabbage time.

‘Sister Martin,’ Maitland called after her from the door, ‘I haven’t time to stand on ceremony. Have you –’ He lost his temper at his powers of speech and ended in saying lamely, ‘Have you
seen
God?’

Behind them, at the far end of the parlour, Costello could be heard rumbling in judgment of this flourishing woman.

She smiled. ‘If I said yes, father, I could hardly blame you for calling me a liar.’

‘In this frantic world, how can a person be sure he isn’t pursuing a nullity, or worse still, himself?’

‘But what would you expect to be told, father? That you see God as you see a town clerk, at a given time on a given day? And as if by appointment?’ She frowned.
‘Father, I don’t think there’s one being that pursues a nullity.’

Costello coughed a summons to him. The nun formed a sudden resolve. She told him, ‘One knows by the results. Nothing is the same afterwards. Everything has a special … luminosity. You are able to see, well,
existence
shining in things.’ She shrugged, ‘Words again!’ and seemed very sad.

‘I have never experienced a more blatant attack on religious obedience,’ Costello told his notepaper softly as Maitland once more took the seat beside him. ‘If I were the type, I would count the number of times I have attempted to make you feel welcome in the happy brotherhood of this archdiocese. This is the second time I have been fanged as a result. I know that there’ll be a seventh and eighth time. Therefore,’ and he made a large gesture of cancellation, ‘I wash my hands. Of course, I may relent. Christians are meant to be professional relenters. But I have rather genuine hope that once and for all, I have left you to your own juice.’

The old monsignor chewed his lips and concentrated upon surviving the contretemps. Maitland did not make this task easier, contending, ‘No doubt, when the Holy Spirit sees fit to raise you to the episcopate, you’ll treat the society wives at charity openings with the same honest brutality you showed that girl.’

‘If ever it becomes necessary I will. Oh, what’s the use of explaining old methods to novices? Do you know how to begin to rehabilitate a woman? Do you know what the basic step is? To make her weep. Once you have, the work can begin.’

‘That’s barbarism.’

‘Ask any long-service husband,’ the doctor advised.

‘Might I be excused? From the room, I mean. From the whole turn-out.’

‘You’d better wait till mother shows.’

Costello kept working on the list of texts for Sister Martin and, when he was finished, showed it first to the monsignor, then to Maitland. In a short time, the mother-superior returned.

‘Would a retreat be possible?’ he asked her. ‘I believe that sister should make a retreat soon. There is a crisis of faith pending there, and it should be brought on quickly.’

‘My God!’ Maitland said loudly.

‘There are crises of faith in all directions,’ the doctor opined tangentially and gazed into the ordered depths of the gas fire.

Maitland stood and turned to the mother-superior. ‘Mother, thank you for having me. If I might be bold enough to say so, you gave signs earlier of thinking that perhaps you owned a jewel in Sister Martin. I concur utterly in your suspicions. Please don’t burden her with those deathly books on Dr Costello’s list.’

‘I don’t think you can go that far, young fellow,’ the monsignor protested behind him.

‘Believe me,’ said Costello, ‘he’ll go all the way one of these days. All the way.’

Maitland certainly went further there and then. ‘As for a retreat, silence can’t hurt
her
. How far is it to the bus stop, please?’

‘But surely Dr Costello would drive you …?’

‘Dr Costello is not safe at intersections,’ said Maitland. ‘Monsignor, it was a pleasure to meet you.’

Outside, it was night in an avenued suburb. The leaves spoke elementally in the wind: you would never have known that they were all tame and pampered vegetables pollarded yearly by the municipal council. Maitland felt refreshed and free.

E
GAN KEPT AT
his work as earnestly as any earnest civil lawyer and plied the arcane rules-of-thumb of his trade. However implacably the climate of his court work and that of his regard for Nora must have mocked each other, his cheeks still were faultlessly barbered, the neat coat fell pat over his schoolboy hips. Only Maitland knew him as a man whose two poles were in opposite motion.

At the clerical pole, Costello’s
Praelectiones
had been published. Its flight into the iron skies under which canon lawyers thought and functioned had been praised in all those journals that were professional meat and drink to Egan and Costello both. A colleague’s success woke no jealousy in Egan; he did, however, suspect that he would never find
his
way into the beatitudes of the monthlies and quarterlies, against whom he had somehow sinned.

This void sense of unworthiness overtook him on the evening of Costello’s further aggrandizement. Most of the staff had already come to table and were waiting to applaud the man’s entry. A student, to whom not even Nolan listened tonight, read from the rostrum. As soon as the well-known meaty shoulder pushed the door open, and that head, which could rightly be called leonine, poked into the room, Nolan rose and rang the
bell. Then all scraped back their chairs, stood and cheered Costello in. Egan, putting his hands together for his brother-priest, saw Maitland follow Costello through the door, to be transfixed by applause he could not understand. ‘Nobody has told him,’ thought Egan. ‘He is the only one in the entire house who does not know.’ And, aware now of what it was to be divorced inwardly from the striving of your peers, he spent his time in pity of Maitland’s bemusement and hungry frame and poor soutane.

Meanwhile, Costello swam towards his seat through a miasma of applause. Unprecedentedly, Nolan made a gesture of largesse with his hand and gave the chief seat up to him. This prompted so solid a spate of acclaim that even Hurst’s eyes were torn upward by it to rest on
that
face.

Maitland remained penned in the corner of the refectory, and began to blush for his intrusion on Costello’s triumph. The doctor and he had said a merely polite good evening to each other, and Maitland offered no congratulations, in the corridor where two forty-watt bulbs had had no spare light to throw on Maitland’s face and prove it honestly ignorant. Now he realized that he should acclaim whatever Costello had done – it was bound to be pretty impressive. He began to add his bit to the tail-end of the stamping, cheering, thumping approval. In the lull, while everyone found his seat, he tiptoed to his place at table. Passing Egan, he whispered, ‘Costello been nominated a bishop?’ Egan nodded. ‘Three cheers for the Paraclete,’ said Maitland, and sat.

Nolan was waiting to speak and looked authentically humbled, like a man who has seen the mills of God grinding. He carried his head at just the right tilt to convey that this was another man’s circus, not his.

‘May I officially announce news of great joy,’ he said
huskily. ‘It is news these consecrated walls were destined to hear from the time a certain young man, more than twenty-five years ago, entered them as a brilliant student to become one of their finest products. The communication came from the Apostolic Delegate this afternoon that our respected colleague and mentor, Dr Costello, has been named by His Holiness the Pope as auxiliary bishop of this archdiocese and titular bishop of Umanes.
Te Deum laudamus.
’

Having meant every word of this, he closed his eyes and bowed his precise head. Everyone cheered rarely. And a long-disregarded viper, which had once whispered to him that he would be prince, stirred on a back branch of his brain-tree and forced him in conscience to smile fervently towards Costello; and go to excesses.

For he said, ‘It may be indecent in two ways to speculate on episcopal candidates as one speculates on racehorses. Firstly because they are sacred persons, secondly because one cannot make pious wishes concerning the future archbishop of a diocese without seeming to be casting the evil eye on the present holder of that sacred office. I am sure, however, that His Grace will forgive us tonight when I predict that His Lordship – as he soon will be – His Lordship Bishop Costello will one day be our archbishop and wear the red hat of a prince of the Church.’

Maitland thought of Sister Martin and rejected the likelihood. He clapped, however, on the understanding that he was applauding Nolan for the valour of his guesswork.

‘Reverend gentlemen,’ Monsignor Nolan called, his voice nearly expended in prophecy. ‘Reverend gentlemen, I present a new bishop.’

There was such a raw and supreme joy in the Costello who rose then that Maitland’s new resentment died
utterly. It was impossible to be angry with anyone so powerless beneath an extreme happiness; it was largely impossible not to believe that a man of such blessed powerlessness would one day deserve a cardinal’s hat.

‘Gentlemen,’ Costello said, ‘this is a day that no man dare expect for himself. To be as frank as a man should be at such a moment, some people, our beloved president among them, have in the past told me that this was likely to come one day. Yet it is impossible to accept the basic fact, let alone imagine the overpowering sensation of election that a priest feels on hearing over the telephone that he will succeed the Twelve who sat at Christ’s feet and heard infallible truth from his lips. I know that I stand here instead of better men. I know the time of crisis in which I have been chosen to lead. I do not flinch, because I am aware of your obedience and the strength of God. I know that I am able to depend on the truth of those words I have so often sung for other bishops.
Ideo iureiurando fecit illum Dominus crescere.
Therefore has God given His oath that he shall cause him to flourish. So may it be.’

As he stared at the table-top, he, the pulpit orator, begging now for themes from the humble things of the table, the salt and condiments and the president’s mustard-pot, the student Hurst rose pale and urgent from his seat and escaped the room.

Not having seen him go, Costello began again to speak.

‘One wants to have the right words for an evening such as this. I believe I know what one of the right words is. Vigilance. Watch!
And
pray! Within the Church, tradition is under attack and, for the first time, the attackers are tolerated and, in some quarters, treated with leniency, even with favour. Our traditional theology is the object of scepticism, our traditional morality the
butt of cynical raised eyebrows. Even the belief in a personal God is under attack.’

One for Sister Martin and myself, thought Maitland, though he knew he flattered himself. Costello’s just anxiety, like Costello’s just happiness, was too universal for anyone to feel direct affront. But Maitland was grateful that the man had lost the nuptial air which, until a few seconds before, had exempted him from anything other than affection.

‘The price we paid throughout centuries for this faith!’ cried the speaker. ‘The price paid in Ireland, in England and Scotland and Germany and Holland! The price we have paid here! Our first priest a convict, political prisoner, shipped for months in a reeking hold, beaten in prison three hundred times with a wire cat. If we are not vigilant within our own ranks, within our own minds, we will find that a great part of that price – the political persecution, the social opprobium our ancestors bore – will go for nothing. Our belief and moral code will grow indefinite and lose conviction; our structure of authority will be weakened to the point of chaos. Though we know that the Church will last for ever, we know also that it has at times grown sick almost to the point of extinction. This could happen again, within our life-span. For chaos can be bred at a thousand times the rate of order. And if chaos does come – and here I pledge my strength to see that it does not – it will not be due to assault from without. It will be caused by priests, above all by priests.’ In a hush, he said, ‘We are, or will be, priests. Will we be the so-called liberals, the so-called modernists, the so-called humanists, corrupted by expediencey, rotten with existentialism, at whose door will be laid the blame for the ruin of the Church as we know it?’

Every face seemed to shine with a negative. Even Maitland, who knew that the besetting sin of oratory was
the sacrifice of the true for the glib, found it hard to remember that Costello had assumed that all the price which had been paid needed to be paid. It was a claim at least open to argument, though Maitland would not have liked to argue it tonight with this splendid, joyous, savage man.

The splendid man was saying, ‘I will be leaving you soon, leaving this house which has been my home, more often than not, for a quarter of a century. If I had one favour to ask of you before I go, it would be this. That you pledge your wit’s end to prevent the ruin of which I have spoken. And the second thing is, remember me.’

Perhaps, now that Hurst had galloped, only Egan and Maitland and a few others refrained, for their various reasons, from what is usually called heartfelt applause. Physically speaking, they clapped themselves dizzy, like the others.

Afterwards, in the parlour, liqueurs and coffee were drunk by the staff. Egan sat primly withdrawn, smiling at his cup of unlaced coffee, leaving the spadework of conviviality to the drinkers. James waited with apologies on the fringe of Costello’s vision. Tonight, when the air of the house was heavy with fruition, and the parlour smelt like an officer’s mess, it was easy for the bishop-elect to keep a circle of priests laughing.

‘That’s the fellow,’ said Costello. ‘The little pansy fellow with gold-rimmed glasses. What’s his name?’

‘Monsignor Garossi,’ Maitland suggested in the peculiar desire to be recognized.

‘That’s him – Garossi. Well, when I went to the phone, I could hear him clear his voice like a contralto. Then he said, “
Hayc ayst Daylaygatio Apostoleecah
.”’

Everyone found this version of an Italian nobleman’s Latin side-thumpingly funny.

‘I said, “Do you mean to say
Haec est Delegatio Apostolica
?” He said, “Thatsa what Ia say.
Hayc ayst Daylaygatio Apostoleecah
.” I said, “I see. But I thing I understanna your English better.”’

Slack with brotherhood and emotion, Monsignor Nolan chuckled and felt his lids sting with tears. ‘It won’t be the same without you, Cos,’ he called, and was convinced of it.

‘He said, “Dottore Cosatello. I haffa da grata plesser.
Permetta che io annoncio. Tu nominatus eras episcopus.
Da tellegrama she jost arife.” I said, “
Kyrie eleison
.”’

While his brothers laughed again, the coming man of God rolled a bitter-sweet sip of whisky around his mouth. Swallowing it, he sobered.

‘I hope it happens to you all one day. God knows you all deserve its joy but not its terror. But, blessedly, it comes fast, without warning. Election descends as swiftly as death.’

‘And leaves one just as breathless, no doubt,’ ventured Nolan.

‘Indeed. Indeed.’

In the pause, while most took refuge in their cups, Maitland began to speak.

‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘you must have thought that I deliberately neglected to congratulate you. You remember, when we met in the corridor tonight? The fact was that I must have been the only one in the house who didn’t know about the good news. I’d been working …’

Costello frowned, saying gently, ‘There’s no need, there’s no need …’ One way or another, Maitland’s excuses came close to making him wince. Perhaps he was as disquieted by Maitland’s good faith as Maitland had occasionally been by his.

‘You’ll notice now,’ someone said, ‘that all the ambitious men on the staff will take to print.’

‘If we can’t do anything better, we’ll write novels.’

‘Or some of this new poetry,’ Nolan decided. When he said ‘new poetry’, he meant Ezra Pound. ‘And how that Gerard Manley Hopkins could write all that barbaric verse and then approach the altar of a morning …’

‘The man had verbal diarrhoea,’ said a Scripture scholar. ‘I was never brave enough to say so in my youth. But one is less scared of fashions as one gets older.’

‘The man was a Jesuit,’ Costello muttered, and solved the question with laughter. ‘All those poor Protestant youths who have to decipher him in the universities! It pays them back for the Reformation.’

When he raised his cup to his lips then, a third of those in the room did likewise. But it was a feint on Costello’s part; rather than drink, he extended his half-smoked cigarette towards Maitland. ‘Would you mind getting rid of that for me, James?’

Nor did this seem too exorbitant a toll for anyone to pay to the man’s ease tonight. Not only did Maitland almost accept the butt, but no one in the room weighed the request and found it strange until Maitland shook his head. He could see in Costello’s sovereign-looking cheeks the assumption that no one could refuse him anything so simple, decent and do-able as this. There was even the assumption that no one could refuse him anything so simple, and not become a pariah.

The other priests were becoming aware of the new bishop’s hand stretched out in this strange way, the gesture of an instant given too long an existence because Maitland stood resisting. They were all men who had their pride, yet they would not forget this refusal. ‘When I am sent away from here,’ Maitland knew, ‘this will be quoted as one of my final indecencies.’

He said softly, ‘It is your
episcopal
ring that I am supposed to kiss, My Lord.’

Which left him one thing to do: put down his cup and flee.

It was a night so clear that Maitland could see in the Milky Way the stars within stars within stars. Under worlds that flew free of diocesan strife, he went walking, felt the smooth air part and let his head, disembodied by pique, forward into successive planes of starlight. He followed the terraces and hedges. A quarter of a mile away the sea moved, scaled by the lights of the House of Studies. Down there the scales broke on a lovers’ beach where a girl had once been murdered for love, for not being a tepid and equivocating being like Dr Maitland.