Celt and Pepper

by Ralph McInerny

  “Emphatically. And you say he could die at any moment?”

  “Something true of you and me.”

  “You’re a philosopher.”

  “My degree is in philosophy. But I don’t need a degree to know that all men are mortal.”

  Weber adopted a serious expression and nodded. Then, after another look around: “Does Jim Elliot know the kind of office you have?”

  “Professor Weber, please. I could not be more content than I am.”

  A pause. “I believe you.”

  It was a statement Roger would not have been able to make of Weber.

  After Weber was gone, Roger pondered the remarkably conflicting impressions the man made. From his manner, one would have taken Weber to be a dear friend of Roger’s, happy with his good fortune, miffed that he did not have a more impressive office. But if Melissa and Becky Fontana had heard correctly, Weber was resentful of Roger and of Martin Kilmartin as well. And of course Roger remembered Weber’s incredulous reaction to his Notre Dame appointment when they had first met last summer in Midlothian.

  13

  Brian was now known as “the son of the benefactor,” at least to Padraig Maloney, a taunting title, reminiscent of the phrase with which he had once jolted a class awake. “Joyce was a son of an habitual drinker.” Addressing a classroom of no longer somnolent undergraduates, Maloney went on to discuss Joyce’s linguistic jokes. “Son of a benefactor” was disguised invective, Brian knew it. Did Maloney think he had anything to do with his father’s decision not to lavish money on Celtic Studies? He asked Melissa.

  “Of course he doesn’t.” She worked her lips. “But others have heard of the breakfast. Couldn’t you talk to him?”

  “Maloney?”

  “Your father!”

  His cover had been blown by his father’s decision not to give money to Celtic Studies. A student with the same name as a building was unlikely to be suspected of a blood relationship to a donor. His father had always been discreet in his generosity, all but anonymous, so Brian’s time at Notre Dame had been like that of any other student who came from an affluent home. Such things did not matter on campus. Everyone dressed alike, the residences were great levelers, only a car might give a clue, and Brian had a SUV whose like could be found by the dozens in the student parking lots. His family was very big in the small pond of Midlothian, but even there the source of the Elliot wealth was the object of half-hidden snickers. One of the attractions of medicine was the esteem in which doctors were held for what they did.

  “Talking with my father wouldn’t do any good.”

  “What does he have against Celtic Studies?”

  What did she imagine the attraction of the program might be for a potential benefactor of the university? It could be a hundred times better than it was and it wouldn’t matter. Nothing and no one could compete in his father’s mind with an opportunity to immortalize Malachy O’Neill. Brian had got a version of the proposed center from his father.

  “Now if Roger Knight will agree…” His father’s voice trailed wistfully away.

  Brian was sure that Roger Knight’s delay was artless, but he could not have hit on a more effective way to make James Elliot determined that he should be the first director of the Malachy O’Neill Center of Catholic Literature.

  “The first director. A couple of years, to get it started, that’s all it would take.” His father paused. “Has he ever mentioned it to you?”

  “No.”

  “If it ever should come up, tell him how much it would mean to Notre Dame.”

  Brian gave his father credit for not wanting to plaster the family name around the campus. Better to honor faculty than donors. Brian avoided like sin bringing up the matter with Roger Knight. It was Roger who startled him one day by asking what he knew of Malachy O’Neill.

  “My father has mentioned him.”

  “Of course he would have. I am looking for the average undergraduate’s reaction to the name. I wonder if it would even be recognized?”

  “Probably not.”

  “He really was an interesting man.”

  Roger Knight had apparently made a study of O’Neill, gleaning from the materials in the archives and some published memoirs of students what could be learned of a man who had left so meager a trail. It was a moment when Brian could have urged Roger Knight to take the post offered him. He was deterred by Philip Knight’s mention of David Simmons.

  “You’d think he was trying to sell Roger a car,” the private investigator said with disgust.

  “It’s his job, Phil,” Roger said.

  “Selling cars?”

  Greg Whelan had stepped up his own campaign to get Roger to accept the directorship of the new center. A new development was that the university had just come into possession of more papers of Malachy O’Neill which his sister had preserved in the family home, holding them back when the first gift was made.

  “You have to go with me to make an inventory, Roger.”

  “That I will certainly do.”

  * * *

  “Did you tell Arne I went home with you for Thanksgiving?”

  “No. Is it a secret?”

  Melissa had asked Brian the question in an odd tone he could not interpret. Was she indignant? And with whom, him or Arne—or herself? Midlothian had been in the blah period between the disappearance of the leaves of autumn and the cosmetic snow that could turn the platted town on its flat plain into a pretty sight. Not that he apologized for his hometown. Brian hadn’t been quite sure himself about the wisdom of asking Melissa home for Thanksgiving. He had asked her in the certainty that she would turn him down. It was one thing to be with her on campus and quite another to introduce her to his mother and father and siblings in Midlothian. He could see that they were sizing her up as a permanent addition, and how could he blame them? She and his father got along terrifically, talking about Irish authors, and Melissa proved to be adept in the kitchen, mixing with the other women easily. But the thought that he had brought home a future bride filled Brian with terror.

  “Arne said something?”

  “He doesn’t have to say it.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “I should have asked him for Thanksgiving too. I’ll tell him that.”

  Melissa ran a finger along her upper lip. “Are you serious?”

  “About talking to him.”

  “That you would have asked him?”

  “Why not?”

  Half a minute silence. “I wish you had.”

  When he left her he felt that he had broken an engagement. My God, he felt free! The thought of being tied down to Melissa, or any other girl, just now was oppressive. He had to get back to playing the field.

  “Three’s a crowd,” Arne said, when Brian told him he wished he’d been with them in Midlothian for Thanksgiving.

  “Three! We had a house full.”

  Arne’s wary look began to fade. They had been friends, but Melissa had come between them. Brian punched the big Scandihoovian on the arm. “You can take her home at Christmas.”

  Arne brushed away the punch. “I’ve got your permission, have I?”

  “How’s the poetry going?”

  It was a dig. But he could see in Arne’s eyes the thought that he and Melissa had whooped it up in Midlothian talking about Arne Jensen writing poetry.

  “Stick it in your ear.” Arne’s answering punch was not quite playful.

  14

  Under the impetus of James Elliot’s proposed center and Roger Knight’s interest in O’Neill, Greg Whelan had reviewed all the primary and collateral materials in the archives. And so he came to the effects of the late Louise O’Neill. The boxes that had been sent to the Notre Dame archives ten years before by the sister of the famous bachelor don had been duly cataloged by some nameless predecessor, but Greg Whelan had never before perused them personally. The bulk of the trove consisted of letters to his sister from Malachy, which while composed
on the typewriter exhibited a personalized overcoming of the mechanical in a manner reminiscent of the letters of Ezra Pound.

  Like her brother, Louise had never married, and equally like him she had devoted herself to teaching. In her case, a Catholic girls academy in a western suburb of Chicago. She had lived in the house in which she and Malachy had been raised, a house which—as Greg had learned to his surprise—she had bequeathed to Notre Dame in her will.

  “What happened to it?” Roger asked.

  “I was hoping you could put the question to Father Carmody.”

  “Of course.”

  The old priest lifted his brows and cocked his head at the question. They were at table in the Knight apartment, Roger and Phil, Greg Whelan, and Father Carmody. If anyone might be called a living archive of Notre Dame’s past, it would be Father Carmody. As a young man, before his hair turned first gray, then white, he had been known as the Éminence Rouge of successive university administrations. He had not served as president or vice-president, nor had he ever been religious superior of the priests of the congregation. His name did not appear in routine accounts of the university’s past. During his active years, there had been no need to affix a title to his role. It was informal, in any case. His counsel and discretion, his practical wisdom, were at the disposal of anyone involved in directing the university. He was a man devoid of personal ambition and vanity—those virtues, and vices as they sometimes become, he reserved for the glory of Notre Dame. He was jealous of her reputation, both athletic and academic. He had known and admired Malachy O’Neill, however much he had lamented his weakness in the matter of alcohol, and his pulse quickened at the prospect opened up by James Elliot’s proposal.

  “Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten about the house.”

  “Does the university still own it?”

  A frown formed on the priest’s brow. “You wouldn’t think it possible that we should sell something like that, would you?”

  This was as close as he would come to criticize administrators of recent years who had been less ready to call upon his advice and whose judgments he sometimes, if discreetly, deplored. With Roger and his brother, the priest had been frank about developments he did not like, but he was unlikely to say anything with Greg Whelan at the table.

  “Let me check on it.”

  He did not mean tomorrow. When they rose from table, he asked to use the telephone and Roger took him into his study. “Devereux will know,” the priest said as Roger closed the door on him.

  Maurice Devereux, an old companion in arms of Father Carmody’s, legal counsel to the university for decades, had the information at his fingertips. Father Carmody’s memory had not betrayed him. The house had indeed been sold.

  “What point would there be in the university’s owning suburban Chicago real estate?” Father Carmody said, as if repeating an excuse he could not himself accept. Was he perhaps thinking that the boyhood home of Malachy O’Neill might have been moved to campus to house the proposed new center?

  That might very well have been that. But the following day, Maurice Devereux remembered something else. The house had been purchased by a Notre Dame alumnus motivated by fond memories of Malachy O’Neill. Attempts to get in touch with him brought the sad news of his recent death. The house, it emerged, was once more on the market. Father Carmody put through a call to Midlothian, Michigan.

  * * *

  There was no need to persuade James Elliot of the desirability of buying the house in which Malachy O’Neill had passed his childhood. It was that house to which O’Neill had gone whenever he absented himself from Notre Dame, so that the association had been continuous.

  “I will buy it on behalf of the university,” James Elliot said.

  “That might not be wise,” Father Carmody replied.

  “Why not?”

  “We owned it once and sold it.”

  James Elliot reaction was that of a youth who has been told the facts of life in too gruff a manner. On second thought, as a precaution, he would buy it in his own name and give it to the university with the proviso that in the event of any future sale he would have the right of first refusal.

  To these negotiations Greg Whelan was privy, whether directly or indirectly, and when the house had been bought it was he who was sent on behalf of the university to inspect its newly recovered property. Roger and Phil went along, driving over in their converted van.

  Cottonwood Ridge did not have the éclat of Oak Park nor its claim on the tourist’s attention. But until the mid December trip to the suburb, there was no reason to believe that a writer of rare ability, and accomplishment, had grown up in Cottonwood Ridge. The inter-states and other roads engineered to facilitate the daily filling and emptying of the Loop had not been kind to Cottonwood Ridge. Its one-time Main Street was now a six-lane speedway which divided what had once been a unified town. The side on which the O’Neill home was located had become the commercial half of the suburb, with the usual ruinous effects. But miraculously the house itself and its immediate neighborhood had retained the simple dignity of yore.

  A great brick house, three floors high, and above the third floor little dormer windows marking the attic. The front veranda was as wide as the house and was marked with thick pillars. The windows on either side of the main entrance were leaded. Phil unlocked the door. There was a moment of hesitation. Who should enter first? It was decided that Greg was there on official university business, so he preceded them into the house.

  Once inside they made the delighted discovery that the previous owner had bought the house in order to preserve it just as it was. A cleaning service visited fortnightly so that the furnishings in which Malachy had been raised and his sister dwelt throughout her life were not only unchanged but in superb repair. The trio moved reverently through the rooms, mounted to the second floor and found Malachy’s room. Two bookcases against the wall, containing among other things the complete works of Francis Finn, S. J. “Tom Playfair,” Greg said reverently, leafing through a volume. “Percy Wynn,” said Roger, leafing through another. On the wall hung O’Neill’s Notre Dame diploma. There was a photograph of the Grotto. There was a rosary hanging from the bedpost.

  Roger let Greg and Phil look into the attic while he sat on O’Neill’s bed. But within minutes he was startled to his feet by a great shout above. He hurried down the hallway to the door that opened on the attic stairway.

  Greg Whelan stood at the top of the attic stairway, holding a loose-leaf notebook in his hand.

  “Stories,” he cried. “By Malachy O’Neill.”

  Huffing and puffing, Roger climbed into the airless attic.

  It would be overly dramatic to compare the next hours to entry into the treasures of a pyramid. The attic was filled with mementos and impedimenta that the O’Neill family had accumulated over the years. But neatness was all. Louise’s things were kept separately—her certificate of confirmation, her high school diploma, a plaque conferred on her after her first twenty-five years of teaching. And photograph albums! Two were of special interest. They were filled with snapshots marking the stages of the life of Malachy O’Neill. But it was in the boxes containing the childhood effects of Malachy that the real treasures were found. The first fruit of the search there was a notebook containing half a dozen stories from the pen of Malachy O’Neill. Literally from his pen, written in the graceful hand familiar to Greg Whelan from documents in the archives.

  The three men emptied the attic of Malachy O’Neill memorabilia and put the boxes in the van for the trip back to Notre Dame.

  On Wednesday of that week Greg hit what he described as real pay dirt. Typewritten, bound, apparently only privately circulated, if that, was The Ballad of Pearl Harbor by Malachy O’Neill.

  15

  “It’s bad Chesterton,” Martin Kilmartin observed when Melissa asked what he thought of the recently discovered ballad by Malachy O’Neill. He added, “At best.”

  Do poets ever praise one another? Of course they do,
when there is no question of competition or comparison. A critic might praise a poet—Padraig had said fulsome things about Kilmartin’s verse—and vice versa, though this could risk the charge of opportunism.

  “Do you like Chesterton?”

  “Not really.”

  “The Ballad of the White Horse.”

  To Melissa’s surprise, Kilmartin rattled off a stanza

  People, if you have any prayers,

  Say prayers for me:

  And lay me under a Christian stone

  In that lost land I thought my own,

  To wait till the holy horn is blown

  And all poor men are free.

  “Not bad,” Kilmartin conceded. “But to keep that up for a hundred pages and more? Dense pages? The world has outlived poetry by the yard.”

  The Wasteland? Pound’s Cantos? But there was no point in arguing. Such judgments were expressions of likes and dislikes, not truths about the object spoken of.

  “He was wise to bury it,” Padraig said. “It makes him a better critic than poet.”

  “I like it,” Arne said, and he lifted his chin as he spoke.

  “So do I,” Melissa said.

  “You do?” Arne lowered his chin and smiled. What a nice smile he had. “That’s the kind of poetry I’d like to write. Not Kilmartin stuff.”

  The poet had returned to Arne’s single line in class in a discussion on the need to be able to recognize the bad and awful in verse. Melissa could almost hear Arne’s teeth grinding. His liking for Malachy O’Neill’s ballad could be a simple reaction to the really cruel remarks Kilmartin had made.

  “Have you been talking with him, Arne?”

  “You don’t talk, you listen.”

  * * *

  Roger Knight had been given a photocopy of the bound typescript now in the archives and had read it several times.

  “So what do you think?” Melissa asked.

  “It’s not clear that it was written when he was young. Of course the attack on Pearl Harbor would have been a traumatic event of his childhood.”

  “What difference does it make when it was written?”