THE WREATH

When Father Fogarty read of the death of his friend, Father Devine, in
a Dublin nursing home, he was stunned. He was a man who did not
understand the irremediable. He took out an old seminary group, put it
on the mantelpiece and spent the evening looking at it. Devine’s
clever, pale, shrunken face stood out from the rest, not very
different from what it had been in his later years except for the
absence of pince-nez. He and Fogarty had been boys together in a
provincial town where Devine’s father had been a schoolmaster and
Fogarty’s mother had kept a shop. Even then, everybody had known that
Devine was marked out by nature for the priesthood, He
was clever, docile and beautifully mannered. Fogarty’s vocation had
come later and proved a surprise, to himself as well as to others.

They had been friends over the years, affectionate when together,
critical and sarcastic when apart. They had not seen one another for
close on a year. Devine had been unlucky. As long as the old Bishop,
Gallogly, lived, he had been fairly well sheltered, but Lanigan, the
new one, disliked him. It was partly Devine’s own fault. He could not
keep his mouth shut. He was witty and waspish and said whatever came
into his head about colleagues who had nothing like his gifts, Fogarty
remembered the things Devine had said about himself. Devine had
affected to believe that Fogarty was a man of many personalities, and
asked with mock humility which he was now dealing with—Nero,
Napoleon, or St Francis of Assisi.

It all came back: the occasional jaunts together, the plans for
holidays abroad that never took place, and now the warm and genuine
love for Devine which was so natural to Fogarty welled up in him, and,
realizing that never again in this world would he be able to express
it, he began to weep. He was as simple as a child in his
emotions. When he was in high spirits he devised practical jokes of
the utmost crudity; when he was depressed he brooded for days on
imaginary injuries: he forgot lightly, remembered suddenly and with
exaggerated intensity, and blamed himself cruelly and unjustly for his
own shortcomings. He would have been astonished to learn that, for all
the intrusions of Nero and Napoleon, his understanding had continued
to develop when that of cleverer men had dried up, and that he was a
better and wiser man at forty than he had been twenty years before.

But he did not understand the irremediable. He had to have someone to
talk to, and for want of a better, rang up Jackson, a curate who had
been Devine’s other friend. He did not really like Jackson, who was
worldly, cynical, and something of a careerist, and he usually called
him by the worst name in his vocabulary—a Jesuit. Several times he had
asked Devine what he saw in Jackson but Devine’s replies had not
enlightened him much. ‘I wouldn’t trust myself too far with the young
Loyola if I were you, Fogarty had told Devine with his worldly
swagger. Now, he had no swagger left.

‘That’s terrible news about Devine, Jim, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Jackson drawled in his usual cautious, cagey way, as though he
were afraid to commit himself even about that. ‘I suppose it’s a happy
release for the poor devil.’

That was the sort of tone that maddened Fogarty. It sounded as though
Jackson were talking of an old family pet who had been sent to the
vet’s.

‘I hope he appreciates it,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was thinking of going
to town and coming back with the funeral. You wouldn’t come, I
suppose?’

‘I don’t very well see how I could, Jerry,’ Jackson replied in a tone
of mild alarm. ‘It’s only a week since I was up last.’

‘Ah, well, I’ll go myself, said Fogarty. ‘You don’t know what happened
him, do you’

‘Ah, well, he was always anaemic,’ Jackson said lightly. ‘He should
have looked after himself, but he didn’t get much chance with old
O’Leary.’

‘He wasn’t intended to,’ Fogarty said darkly, indiscreet as usual.

‘What?’ Jackson asked in surprise. ‘Oh no,’ he added, resuming his
worldly tone. ‘It wasn’t a sinecure, of course. He was fainting all
over the shop. Last time was in the middle of Mass. By then, of
course, it was too late. When I saw him last week I knew he was
dying.’

‘You saw him last week?’ Fogarty repeated.

‘Oh, just for a few minutes. He couldn’t talk much.’

And again, the feeling of his own inadequacy descended on Fogarty. He
realized that Jackson, who seemed to have as much feeling as a mowing
machine, had kept in touch with Devine, and gone out of his way to see
him at the end, while he, the devoted, warm-hearted friend, had let
him slip from sight into eternity and was now wallowing in the sense
of his own loss.

‘I’ll never forgive myself, Jim,’ he said humbly. ‘I never even knew
he was sick.’

‘I’d like to go to the funeral myself if I could,’ said Jackson.

‘I’ll ring you up later if I can manage it.’

He did manage it, and that evening they set off in Fogarty’s car for
the city. They stayed in an old hotel in a sidestreet where porters
and waiters all knew them. Jackson brought Fogarty to a very pleasant
restaurant for dinner. The very sight of Jackson had been enough to
renew Fogarty’s doubts. He was a tall, thin man with a prim, watchful,
clerical air, and he knew his way around. He spent at least ten
minutes over the menu and the wine list, and the head waiter danced
attendance on him as head waiters do only when they are either hopeful
or intimidated.

‘You needn’t bother about me,’ Fogarty said to cut short the
rigmarole. ‘I’m having steak.’

‘Father Fogarty is having steak, Paddy,’ Jackson said suavely, looking
at the head waiter over his spectacles with what Fogarty called his
‘Jesuit’ air. ‘Make it rare. And stout, I fancy. It’s a favourite
beverage of the natives.’

‘I’ll spare you the stout,’ Fogarty said, enjoying the banter. ‘Red wine
will do me fine.’

‘Mind, Paddy,’ Jackson said in the same tone, ‘Father Fogarty said red
wine. You’re in Ireland now, remember.’

Next morning they went to the parish church where the coffin was
resting on trestles before the altar. Beside it, to Fogarty’s
surprise, was a large wreath of roses. When they got up from their
knees, Devine’s uncle, Ned, had arrived with his son. Ned was a
broad-faced, dark-haired, nervous man, with the anaemic complexion of
the family.

‘I’m sorry for your trouble, Ned,’ said Fogarty.

‘I know that, father,’ said Ned.

‘I don’t know if you know Father Jackson. He was a great friend of
Father Willie’s.’

‘I heard him speak of him,’ said Ned. ‘He talked a lot about the pair
of ye. Ye were his great friends. Poor Father Willie!’ he added with a
sigh. ‘He had few enough.’

Just then the parish priest came in and spoke to Ned Devine. His name
was Martin. He was a tall man with a stern, unlined, wooden face and
candid blue eyes like a baby’s. He stood for a few minutes by the
coffin, then studied the breastplate and wreath, looking closely at
the tag. It was only then that he beckoned the two younger priests
towards the door.

‘Tell me, what are we going to do about that thing?’ he asked with a
professional air.

‘What thing?’ Fogarty asked in surprise.

‘That wreath, Martin replied with a nod over his shoulder.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘’Tis against the rubrics, replied the parish priest in the complacent
tone of a policeman who has looked up the law on the subject.

‘For heaven’s sake, what have the rubrics to do with it?’ Fogarty
asked impatiently.

‘The rubrics have a whole lot to do with it,’ Martin replied with a
stern glance. ‘And, apart from that, ’tis a bad custom.’

‘You mean Masses bring in more money?’ Fogarty asked with amused
insolence.

‘I do not mean Masses bring in more money,’ replied Martin who tended
to answer every remark verbatim, like a solicitor’s letter. It added
to the impression of woodenness he gave. ‘I mean that flowers are a
Pagan survival.’ He looked at the two young priests with the same
anxious, innocent, wooden air. ‘And here am I, week in, week out,
preaching against flowers, and a blooming big wreath of them in my own
church. And on a priest’s coffin, what’s more! What am I to say about
that?’

‘Who asked you to say anything?’ Fogarty asked angrily. ‘The man
wasn’t from your diocese.’

‘Now, that’s all very well, said Martin, ‘That’s bad enough by
itself, but it isn’t the whole story.’

‘You mean because it’s from a woman?’ Jackson broke in lightly in a
tone that would have punctured any pose less substantial than
Martin’s.

‘I mean, because it’s from a woman, exactly.’

‘A woman!’ said Fogarty in astonishment. ‘Does it say so?’

‘It does not say so.’

‘Then how do you know?’

‘Because it’s red roses.’

‘And does that mean it’s from a woman?’

‘What else could it mean?’

‘I suppose it could mean it’s from somebody who didn’t study the
language of flowers the way you seem to have done,’ Fogarty snapped.

He could feel Jackson’s disapproval of him weighing on the air, but
when Jackson spoke it was at the parish priest that his coldness and
nonchalance were directed.

‘Oh, well,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I’m afraid we know nothing about it,
father. You’ll have to make up your own mind.’

‘I don’t like doing anything when I wasn’t acquainted with the man,’
Martin grumbled, but he made no further attempt to interfere, and one
of the undertaker’s men took the wreath and put it on the
hearse. Fogarty controlled himself with difficulty. As he banged open
the door of his car and started the engine his face was flushed. He
drove with his head bowed and his brows jutting down like rocks over
his eyes, It was what Devine had called his Nero look. As they cleared
the main streets he burst out.

‘That’s the sort of thing that makes me ashamed of myself,
Jim. Flowers are a pagan survival! And they take it from him, what’s
worse. They take it from him. They listen to that sort of stuff
instead of telling him to shut his big ignorant gob.’

‘Oh, well’ Jackson said tolerantly, taking out his pipe, ‘we’re hardly
being fair to him. After all, he didn’t know Devine.’

‘But that only makes it worse,’ Fogarty said hotly. ‘Only for our
being there he’d have thrown out that wreath. And for what? His own
dirty, mean, suspicious mind!’

‘Ah, I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Jackson said, frowning. ‘I think in
his position I’d have asked somebody to take it away.’

‘You would?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘But why, in God’s name?’

‘Oh, I suppose I’d be afraid of the scandal—I’m not a very courageous
type.’

‘Scandal?’

“Whatever you like to call it. After all, some woman sent it.’

“Yes. One of Devine’s old maids.’

‘Have you ever heard of an old maid sending a wreath of red roses to a
funeral?’ Jackson asked, raising his brows, his head cocked.

‘To tell you the God’s truth, I might have done it myself,’ Fogarty
confessed with boyish candour. ‘It would never have struck me that
there was anything wrong with it.’

‘It would have struck the old maid all right, though.’

Fogarty turned his eyes for a moment to stare at Jackson. Jackson was
staring back. Then he missed a turning and reversed with a muttered
curse. To the left of them the Wicklow mountains stretched away
southwards, and between the grey walls the fields were a ragged
brilliant green under the tattered sky.

“You’re not serious, Jim?’ he said after a few minutes.

‘Oh, I’m not suggesting that there was anything wrong,’ Jackson said,
gesturing widely with his pipe. ‘Women get ideas. We all know that.’

‘These things can happen in very innocent ways,’ Fogarty said with
ingenuous solemnity. Then he scowled again and a blush spread over his
handsome craggy face. Like all those who live mainly in their
imaginations, he was always astonished and shocked at the suggestions
that reached him from the outside world: he could live with his
fantasies only by assuming that they were nothing more. Jackson, whose
own imagination was curbed and even timid, who never went at things
like a thoroughbred at a gate, watched him with amusement and a
certain envy. Just occasionally he felt that he himself would have
liked to welcome a new idea with that boyish wonder and panic.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Fogarty said angrily, tossing his head.

“You don’t have to,’ Jackson replied, nursing his pipe and swinging
round in the seat with his arm close to Fogarty’s shoulder. ‘As I say,
women get these queer ideas, There’s usually nothing in them. At the
same time, I must say I wouldn’t be very scandalized if I found out
that there was something in it. If ever a man needed someone to care
for him, Devine did in the last year or two.’

‘But not Devine, Jim,’ Fogarty said, raising his voice. ‘Not Devine!
You could believe a thing like that about me. I suppose I could
believe it about you. But I knew Devine since we were kids, and he
wouldn’t be capable of it.’

‘I never knew him in that way,’ Jackson admitted. ‘In fact, I scarcely
knew him at all, really. But I’d have said he was as capable of it as
the rest of us. He was lonelier than the rest of us.’

‘God, don’t I know it? Fogarty said in sudden self-reproach, ‘I could
understand if it was drink.’

‘Oh, not drink!’ Jackson said with distaste. ‘He was too
fastidious. Can you imagine him in the DTs like some old parish priest,
trying to strangle the nurses?’

‘But that’s what I say, Jim. He wasn’t the type.’

‘Oh, you must make distinctions,’ said Jackson. ‘I could imagine him
attracted by somé intelligent woman. You know yourself how he’d appeal
to her, the same way he appealed to us, a cultured man in a country
town. I don’t have to tell you the sort of life an intelligent woman
leads, married to some lout of a shopkeeper or a gentleman
farmer. Poor devils, it’s a mercy that most of them aren’t educated.’

‘He didn’t give you any hint who she was?’ Fogarty asked
incredulously. Jackson had spoken with such conviction that it
impressed him as true.

‘Oh, I don’t even know if there was such a woman,’ Jackson said
hastily, and then he blushed too. Fogarty remained silent. He knew now
that Jackson had been talking about himself, not Devine.

As the country grew wilder and furze bushes and ruined keeps took the
place of pastures and old abbeys, Fogarty found his eyes attracted
more and more to the wreath that swayed lightly with the hearse, the
only spot of pure colour in the whole landscape with its watery greens
and blues and greys. It seemed an image of the essential mystery of a
priest’s life. What, after all, did he really know of Devine? Only
what his own temperament suggested, and mostly—when he wasn’t being St
Francis of Assisi—he had seen himself as the worldly one of the pair,
the practical, coarse-grained man who cut corners, and Devine as the
saint, racked by the fastidiousness and asceticism that exploded in
his bitter little jests. Now his mind boggled at the idea of the agony
that alone could have driven Devine into an entanglement with a woman;
yet the measure of his incredulity was that of the conviction he would
presently begin to feel. When once an unusual idea broke through his
imagination, he hugged it, brooded on it, promoted it to the dignity
of a revelation.

‘God, don’t we lead terrible lives?’ he burst out at last. ‘Here we
are, probably the two people in the world who knew Devine best, and
even we have no notion what that thing in front of us means.’

‘Which might be as well for our peace of mind,’ said Jackson.

‘I’ll engage it did damn little for Devine’s,’ Fogarty said grimly, It
was peculiar; he did not believe yet in the reality of the woman
behind the wreath, but already he hated her.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jackson said in some surprise. ‘Isn’t that what we
all really want from life?’

‘Is it?’ Fogarty asked in wonder. He had always thought of Jackson as
a cold fish, and suddenly found himself wondering about that as
well. After all, there must have been something in him that attracted
Devine. He had the feeling that Jackson, who was, as he recognized, by
far the subtler man, was probing him, and for the same reason. Each
was looking in the other for the quality that had attracted Devine,
and, which, having made him their friend might make them friends
also. Each was trying to see how far he could go with the
other. Fogarty, as usual, was the first with a confession.

‘I couldn’t do it, Jim,’ he said earnestly. ‘I was never even tempted,
except once, and then it was the wife of one of the men who was in the
seminary with me. I was crazy about her. But when I saw what her
marriage to the other fellow was like, I changed my mind. She hated
him like poison, Jim. I soon saw she might have hated me in the same
way. It’s only when you see what marriage is really like, as we do,
that you realize how lucky we are.’

‘Lucky?’ Jackson repeated mockingly.

‘Aren’t we?’

‘Did you ever know a seminary that wasn’t full of men who thought they
were lucky? They might be drinking themselves to death, but they never
doubted their luck? Nonsense, man! Anyway, why do you think she’d have
hated you?’

‘I don’t,’ Fogarty replied with a boyish laugh. ‘Naturally, I think
I’d have been the perfect husband for her. That’s the way Nature kids
you.’

‘Well, why shouldn’t you have made her a perfect husband?’ Jackson
asked quizzically. ‘There’s nothing much wrong with you that I can
see. Though I admit I can see you better as a devoted father.’

‘God knows you might be right,’ Fogarty said, his face clouding
again. It was as changeable as an Irish sky, Jackson thought with
amusement. ‘You could get on well enough without the woman, but the
kids are hell. She had two. “Father Fogey” they used to call me. And
my mother was as bad,’ he burst out. ‘She was wrapped up in the pair
of us, She always wanted us to be better than everybody else, and when
we weren’t she used to cry. She said it was the Fogarty blood breaking
out in us—the Fogartys were all horse dealers,’ His handsome, happy
face was black with all the remorse and guilt. ‘I’m afraid she died
under the impression that I was a Fogarty after all.’

‘If the Fogartys are any relation to the Martins, I’d say it was most
unlikely,’ Jackson said, half amused, half touched,

‘I never knew till she was dead how much she meant to me, Fogarty said
broodingly. ‘Hennessey warned me not to take the Burial Service
myself, but I thought it was the last thing I could do for her. He
knew what he was talking about, of course. I disgraced myself, bawling
like a blooming kid, and he pushed me aside and finished it for me. My
God, the way we gallop through that till it comes to our own turn!
Every time I’ve read it since, I’ve read it as if it were for my
mother.’

Jackson shook his head uncomprehendingly.

‘You feel these things more than I do, he said. ‘I’m a cold fish,’

It struck Fogarty with some force that this was precisely what he had
always believed himself and that now he could believe it no longer.

‘Until then, I used to be a bit flighty,’ he confessed. ‘After that I
knew it wasn’t in me to care for another woman.’

‘That’s only more of your nonsense,’ said Jackson impatiently. ‘Love
is just one thing, not half a dozen. If I were a young fellow looking
for a wife I’d go after some girl who felt like that about her
father. You probably have too much of it. I haven’t enough. When I was
in Manister there was a shopkeeper’s wife I used to see. I talked to
her and lent her books. She was half crazy with loneliness. Then one
morning I got home and found her standing outside my door in the
pouring rain, She’d been there half the night. She wanted me to take
her away, to “save” her, as she said. You can imagine what happened
her after.’

‘Went off with someone else, I suppose?”

‘No such luck. She took to drinking and sleeping with racing
men. Sometimes I blame myself for it. I feel I should have kidded her
along. But I haven’t enough love to go round. You have too much, With
your enthusiastic nature you’d probably have run off with her.’

‘I often wondered what I would do,’ Fogarty said shyly.

He felt very close to tears. It was partly the wreath, brilliant in
the sunlight, that had drawn him out of his habitual reserve and make
him talk in that way with a man of even greater reserve. Partly it was
the emotion of returning to the little town where he had grown up. He
hated and avoided it; it seemed to him to represent all the narrowness
and meanness that he tried to banish from his thoughts, but at the
same time it contained all the nostalgia and violence he had felt
there; and when he drew near it again a tumult of emotions rose in him
that half-strangled him. He was watching for it already like a lover.

‘There it is!’ he said triumphantly, pointing to a valley where a
tapering Franciscan tower rose on the edge of a clutter of low
Georgian houses and thatched cabins, ‘They’ll be waiting for us at the
bridge. That’s how they’ll be waiting for me when my turn comes, Jim.’

A considerable crowd had gathered at the farther side of the bridge to
escort the hearse to the cemetery. Four men shouldered the shiny
coffin over the bridge past the ruined castle and up the hilly Main
Street. Shutters were up on the shop fronts, blinds were drawn,
everything was at a standstill except where a curtain was lifted and
an old woman peered out.

‘Counting the mourners,’ Fogarty said with a bitter laugh. ‘They’ll say
I had nothing like as many as Devine. That place,’ he added, lowering
his voice, ‘the second shop from the corner, that was ours.’

Jackson took it in at a glance. He was puzzled and touched by
Fogarty’s emotion because there was nothing to distinguish the little
market town from a hundred others. A laneway led off the hilly road
and they came to the abbey, a ruined tower and a few walls, with
tombstones sown thickly in quire and nave. The hearse was already
drawn up outside and people had gathered in a semicircle about it. Ned
Devine came hastily up to the car where the two priests were donning
their vestments. Fogarty knew at once that there was trouble brewing.

‘Whisper, Father Jerry,’ Ned muttered in a strained excited
voice. ‘People are talking about that wreath. I wonder would you know
who sent it?’

‘I don’t know the first thing about it, Ned,’ Fogarty replied, and
suddenly his heart began to beat violently.

‘Come here a minute, Sheela,’ Ned called, and a tall, pale girl with
the stain of tears on her long bony face left the little group of
mourners and joined them. Fogarty nodded to her. She was Devine’s
sister, a schoolteacher who had never married. ‘This is Father
Jackson, Father Willie’s other friend. They don’t know anything about
it either.’

‘Then I’d let them take it back,’ she said doggedly.

‘What would you say, father?’ Ned asked, appealing to Fogarty, and
suddenly Fogarty felt his courage desert him. In disputing with Martin
he had felt himself an equal on neutral ground, but now the passion
and prejudice of the little town seemed to rise up and oppose him, and
he felt himself again a boy, rebellious and terrified. You had to know
the place to realize the hysteria that could be provoked by something
like a funeral.

‘I can only tell you what I told Father Martin already, he said,
growing red and angry.

‘Did he talk about it too?’ Ned asked sharply.

‘There!’ Sheela said vindictively. ‘What did I tell you?’

“Well, the pair of you are cleverer than I am,’ Fogarty said. ‘I saw
nothing wrong with it.’

‘It was no proper thing to send to a priest’s funeral,’ she hissed
with prim fury. ‘And whoever sent it was no friend of my brother.’

“You saw nothing wrong with it, father?’ Ned prompted appealingly.

‘But I tell you, Uncle Ned, if that wreath goes into the graveyard
we’ll be the laughing stock of the town,’ she said in an old-maidish
frenzy. I‘ll throw it out myself if you won’t.’

‘Whisht, girl, whisht, and let Father Jerry talk!’ Ned said furiously.

‘It’s entirely a matter for yourselves, Ned,’ Fogarty said
excitedly. He was really scared now. He knew he was in danger of
behaving imprudently in public, and sooner or later, the story would
get back to the Bishop, and it would be suggested that he knew more
than he pretended.

‘If you’ll excuse me interrupting, father,’ Jackson said suavely,
giving Fogarty a warning glance over his spectacles. ‘I know this is
none of my business.’

‘Not at all, father, not at all’ Ned said passionately. “You were the
boy’s friend. All we want is for you to tell us what to do.’

‘Oh, well, Mr Devine, that would be too great a responsibility for me
to take,’ Jackson replied with a cagey smile, though Fogarty saw that
his face was very flushed. ‘Only someone who really knows the town
could advise you about that. I only know what things are like in my
own place. Of course, I entirely agree with Miss Devine,’ he said,
giving her a smile that suggested that this, like crucifixion, was
something he preferred to avoid. ‘Naturally, Father Fogarty and I have
discussed it already. I think personally that it was entirely improper
to send a wreath.’ Then his mild, clerical voice suddenly grew
menacing and he shrugged his shoulders with an air of contempt. ‘But,
speaking as an outsider, I’d say if you were to send that wreath back
from the graveyard, you’d make yourself something far worse than a
laughing stock. You’d throw mud on a dead man’s name that would never
be forgotten for you the longest day you lived...Of course, that’s
only an outsider’s opinion,’ he added urbanely, drawing in his breath
in a positive hiss.

“Of course, of course, of course,’ Ned Devine said, clicking his
fingers and snapping into action. ‘We should have thought of it
ourselves, father. ’Twould be giving tongues to the stones.’

Then he lifted the wreath himself and carried it to the
graveside. Several of the men by the gate looked at him with a
questioning eye and fell in behind him. Some hysteria had gone out of
the air. Fogarty gently squeezed Jackson’s hand.

‘Good man, Jim!’ he said in a whisper. ‘Good man you are!’

He stood with Jackson at the head of the open grave beside the local
priests. As their voices rose in the psalms for the dead and their
vestments billowed about them, Fogarty’s brooding eyes swept the crowd
of faces he had known since his childhood and which were now
caricatured by age and pain. Each time they came to rest on the wreath
which stood at one side of the open grave. It would lie there now
above Devine when all the living had gone, his secret. And each time
it came over him in a wave of emotion that what he and Jackson had
protected was something more than a sentimental token. It was the
thing that had linked them to Devine, and for the future would link
them to one another—love, Not half a dozen things, but one thing,
between son and mother, man and sweetheart, friend and friend.