Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  BECAUSE HE DIDN’T HAVE A WIFE to tell him he looked like a slob, George William Roberts was never recognized as a medical professional by visitors to Gohen, even when he was carrying his black bag. He could have been a scavenger, a picker-upper of cast-off cigarette butts, a collector of caps of lemonade bottles.

  Doctor Roberts had grown old, impatient and forgetful in Gohen and its environs. He was so cynical it was unlikely that even a trace of idealism had wafted near him in the misty and dim pathways of his medical school. To him the world was utterly barren, and he didn’t care a damn what anyone in that world thought about him. He had no bedside manner. There was no room in his practice of medicine for words of encouragement or discouragement; his patients were told they were going to die or continue to live indefinitely. He had no time for anything except the bare medical facts of the current case.

  “Cynic” was also a good word for a physical description of the physician, because he looked like an ancient English bulldog that should have been put out of its misery years ago. He was all jowls and wattles. The rims of his bottom eyelids had turned themselves inside out, and their redness had seeped up into his ever-wet eyeballs. His bald head was vast, his ears like crinkled cabbage leaves. Tufts of hair grew out of his ears and nostrils. The nose itself was a masterpiece of architectural disproportion and misplacement, being too large and too high on his face. A copse of hairs sprouted out of its tip. A mustache covered the very long space between the bottom of his nose and the edge of his bottom lip. His mouth was not visible.

  Doctor Roberts had once been four inches taller than six feet, but, with age, the body had sunk down on itself until it was thick and stooped. However, he was still tall enough to intimidate with ease.

  The doctor had lost most of his hearing, and this added to his gruffness. He impatiently demanded that people speak up and stop whispering, for Christ’s sake. The people of Gohen, Drumsally and Clunnyboe, many of whom had borne their pains rather than endure the blunt aggressiveness of their physician, looked forward to the day when the old man would die and make room for someone else.

  After the inquest, Mister Howard told his wife that he hadn’t dared ask the doctor to state his name and occupation, nor had he dared ask him too many questions; he was, he said, afraid he might get the face et off him. The Coroner’s wife observed how it was a pity that Doctor Roberts wasn’t a Catholic, because the only thing he did for the Protestants was give them a black eye. “And he always smells like methylated spirits,” she said, thinking of the traveling clinic of her childhood when the stainless steel instruments were sterilized in gleaming stainless steel pots boiling on top of blue flames, big blunt needles inoculating screaming baby bodies against diphtheria.

  CORONER: The recorder will note that George William Roberts is the name of the witness, that he is a medical doctor by profession. And now, Doctor Roberts, will you tell the jury about the morning of August 22, 1951, please?

  DR. ROBERTS: When?

  CORONER: Now, please.

  DR. ROBERTS: What?

  Please tell the jury about the morning of August 22, 1951.

  What about the morning? I thought I was here about your man, the one that got killed on the hill out on Glower Road.

  That’s correct, Doctor Roberts. Can you tell the jury who it was that came for you that morning?

  What difference does that make? It was that man from Clunnyboe, the one I stitched up in the arm a few . . . I’m not an encyclopedist, young man. I came here to give you medical facts.

  Was it a Mister Lamb who came for you?

  Sheep, Lamb, Ramsbottom, the fellow that cut his arm when he was sharpening the scythe and shouted at me. What difference does it make?

  When you went out to Sally Hill that morning, Doctor, what did you find?

  I didn’t find anything. The body had been found already by the postman’s son. The body was lying in the middle of the road, halfway down the hill. I have my notes here, if you’ll just let me read them.

  Please tell the jury about the condition of the body.

  If you’d stop interrupting I’d be on my way home by now. The body was lying in the middle of the road, halfway down the hill. From the position of the limbs it was apparent the victim had not moved after he fell. His right leg was bent back and up in what was an unnatural position. If the man had been conscious after the fall he would have tried to relieve the pain this was causing. The hands were in the classic position of a person who had fallen from a height onto his back, the arms stretched out, the palms toward the ground, the instinctual position assumed to soften the fall. There was no—

  Sergeant Morrissey and Mister Lalor said it was the left leg that was bent back under the deceased.

  Did you ask me a question?

  I was pointing out that the sergeant and Mister Lalor said it was the left leg that was bent back under the body. Is it possible you made a mistake when—?

  They made the mistake. It was the left leg if you were looking at the body. It was the right leg if you were the body.

  Did you recognize the deceased, Doctor Roberts?

  What?

  Did you recognize the deceased?

  I’d seen him out and about on his bike often enough to . . . Will you let me finish what I have to say?! (Incoherent) The instinctual position . . . (Incoherent) The instinctual position assumed to soften the fall. There was no pulse and no other vital signs. There was rupture of the globus and extrusion of the right eye, which means the eyeball had burst and the contents had been ejected. These contents were on the face three inches below the socket. Various strings of tissue were still connecting the evisceration to the musculature of the eyeball, which means what came out was still attached to the eyeball itself with bits of tissue. There was little or no blood around the empty socket. Besides the ruptured eye, there were no injuries on the front of the body, except the . . . ah . . . the right leg, left leg, the bent leg which the postmortem found was broken in the thigh. The right leg. The guard and a Mister . . .(Incoherent) Lalor, Mister Kevin Lalor, helped me to turn the body over on its side so I could examine the back. There were multiple fractures of the occiput, meaning the back of the head was smashed in. The skull bone was smashed into small pieces and the brain was visible. There had been a great loss of blood through the severe lacerations of the scalp. This was evident from the amount of blood on the road. The wound was consistent with the head coming into violent contact with a solid object. In my opinion the solid object was the surface of the road. About a foot away from the top of the head, there was hair and spots of blood on the rock of the hill. The deceased met his death through misadventure; in other words he fell off his bike and landed on the back of his head. The sudden stop killed him. When I finished my notes, I went back to Gohen in my pony and trap. When I left, the guard and Mister Lalor were the only people I had seen on Sally Hill, besides the deceased and Mister Ramsbottom. That’s all I have to say about the matter. Do you have any questions for me?

  Thank you, Doctor Roberts. Please tell the jury what was the time of death in your estimation.

  I said that at the start. But let me go back to the beginning of my notes. (Long silence) Like I said, it’s here at the beginning. I wish people would listen. I’ll tell you again. From the state of rigor mortis, I estimated that the man had died from six to eight hours before I saw him, and I saw him at twenty-seven minutes past eight o’clock.

  Do you have anything else to add, Doctor Roberts?

  No, I do not.

  Thank you, Doctor Roberts, for your time.

  What?

  I said, thank you for your time, Doctor.

  All right. You don’t have to make a song and dance about it.

  The next witness will be Mister Edward Coughlin.

  29

  In the Sunroom

  In which Elsie Howard reveals she never did approve of Doctor George William Roberts as an obstetrician, even if he was a Protestant.

  “NO WOMAN EVER WENT to Doc
tor Roberts when she was going to have a baby. We all dealt with the Jubilee Nurse. Can you imagine that man in the room with a woman? ‘Will you push the bloody thing out and stop wasting my time, for Christ’s sake!’”

  “Stop interrupting, Else.”

  “I can’t help it when I remember that man. And for your information, Sam, I wouldn’t even wish him on the Catholics.”

  “Quiet, Missus.”

  30

  Witness: Mister Coughlin

  1951

  In which Eddie-the-cap Coughlin makes a late-night visit to the coroner, David Samuel Howard, Esq., to take preemptive precautions hours before his appearance as a witness.

  WHEN EDDIE-THE-CAP COUGHLIN took his seat on the witness chair, the people in the Woodwork Room held their breath. Spud Murphy, that weak-minded-resident-at-large and public-stroker-of-his-in-house-organ, became visibly excited. The sergeant, Joseph Aloysius Morrissey, who had already been a witness, had unhatted himself while he was giving evidence. So had Doctor Roberts. Spud Murphy, like all the people in the room, was obviously in suspense awaiting the removal of Eddie Coughlin’s cap. Nobody there had seen Coughlin uncapped since he was a youngster. Even at Sunday mass, when he knelt on one knee in the church porch, Eddie managed to inflame curiosity by keeping his too-large cap on. Occasionally, in the pubs in Gohen, men deep into their pints dared each other to knock Coughlin’s cap off to see what was underneath. And from the pubs came speculations, which quickly mutated into rumors and more speedily into facts: Coughlin had a hole in the top of his head shaped like the tip of a cow’s horn; he had a hairy growth the size of a hen’s egg on his forehead; he had a third ear, not fully developed, growing on the back of his head; he had a line of white hair running across his head from one ear to the other—the result of a wound received when, as a child, he lay down and fell asleep in the barley field where his uncle, Tuppence Tom, was wielding a scythe; that it wasn’t his cap that was too large for his head—it was Coughlin’s head that was too small for the cap.

  And now, in the Woodwork Room the rim of Coughlin’s fawn, peaked cap was resting on his stuck-out ears and the peak was halfway down his forehead, hiding the eyebrows that were not there. He was the only one not holding his breath on account of his headdress. He had taken preemptive steps to ensure the cap would not be an issue when he appeared as a witness at the inquest.

  Two nights before the inquest, Eddie-the-cap had boldly knocked at Mister Howard’s door in Gohen in the dark. Because he had never thought that anyone besides Mister Howard would answer, Coughlin was thrown into a panic of uncertainty when the door, with more brass on it than he had ever seen in one place, swung open so silently that it seemed to vanish before his eyes. And a woman was standing there, tall, comely, posed like one of those women in the posters outside the Picture House. In the brightness of the electric light over her head, she put her fingers to her lips as if trying to suppress a scream, while Coughlin, as if in the presence of Venus naked on her seashell, covered his eyes against the bright light with one hand and declared, “I was looking for Squire Howard!”

  “I beg your pardon,” the vision said in a Protestant voice.

  Lowering the hand to cover his nose, Coughlin said, “What?” It sounded like “Haw?” The woman was wearing clean shoes, the light over her head glistening in their polished toes. Coughlin noticed very little about the inside of the house, but on his way home he must have recalled the gleaming brass, a white door and a floor of reflecting brown. There hadn’t been a bit of animal dung or muck in sight.

  The woman turned to call back into the house, while at the same time keeping Coughlin in the corner of her eye. “Mister Howard!” she called, in a voice as excited as any woman’s reacting to the sudden appearance of a mouse.

  Mister Howard appeared in front of that white door before you could say Jack Robinson, and Coughlin did not notice the bedroom slippers, the cardigan, the open shirt collar, or the rumpled hair. Mister Howard recognized the farmer immediately because Coughlin, two years earlier, had paid the solicitor five pounds to write a letter to that fecker, Douling, about keeping his fences repaired and his cattle in his own fields. The solicitor assured his wife that the man was not a threat, and when he invited Coughlin to come in, he received a poke in the back. However, the becapped one was of the same mind as Missus Howard and said he would rather talk outside in the dark where they would not be seen.

  Missus Howard, more curious than anxious for the welfare of her husband, positioned herself inside a darkened window in her parlor and watched through the lace curtain. After two minutes her husband patted the departing visitor on the shoulder, and the peeping wife skipped back to the front door, believing that the mysterious man was connected with the upcoming inquest. Things had been happening at a furious pace since the missionary was killed on Sally Hill, and since that other Catholic had the accident with his shotgun two days later. The last two weeks had been a time of exciting and breathy gossip, and everything was coming to a head with the inquest. Her husband’s name would be in the national newspapers again, no matter what the outcome of the inquest. As far as Missus Howard was concerned, this slinking visit in the dark by the man in the cap was straight out of Conan Doyle. All that was needed was a swirling fog and a scraping fiddle.

  But Mister Howard, who liked teasing his wife and who also wished to reestablish the atmosphere which had been rapidly developing when Coughlin had knocked on the door, refused to tell her anything about the visitor until both were back, thigh to thigh, on the sofa in the parlor. After explaining who Eddie-the-cap Coughlin was, Mister Howard said, “Besides suffering from diarrhea of the lips, he suffers from alopecia, and he wants to keep his cap on during the inquest so that—”

  “What has he? Not the diarrhea, the other thing.”

  “Alopecia, fox mange. Mister Coughlin is as bald as an egg. In fact he has no hair anyplace on his body. He’s embarrassed that—”

  “No hair at all?”

  “He can’t grow hair.”

  “Under his arms, on his chest?”

  “None at all.”

  “At his private parts?”

  “Nowhere. He doesn’t even have eyebrows.”

  “He told you he has no belly hair?”

  “Of course he did. Didn’t you see him through the window dropping his drawers to show me his bald hanging gardens?”

  Howard’s wife smacked him on the knee and told him not to be sarcastic.

  “He didn’t even use the word ‘alopecia,’ but from what he said, that’s what he has.”

  “What did you tell him about his cap?”

  “That he could keep it on, of course. Why embarrass him?”

  “I wonder what it’s like to look at a man with no hair on his body.”

  “You’d certainly see everything at first glance, like when you look at a baby.”

  “Did you ever think of shaving your belly hair?”

  “No, the thought never crossed my mind.”

  In the Woodwork Room, Mister Howard cleared his mind of what he and his wife did after Eddie Coughlin’s visit to his house. He cleared his throat, and there was instant silence because Mister Howard’s recent blistering reprimand of Spud Murphy was still shaking the cobwebs in the windows.

  To the disappointment of all present, Mister Howard seemed to be unaware of Coughlin’s cap when he said, “The witness will please state his name and occupation.”

  WITNESS: Edward Coughlin’s my name, Squire, and I’m a small farmer, mixed farming—a few cows, sugar beet, a bit of oats and barley and wheat and spuds—

  CORONER: Excuse me, Mister Murphy, are you ill?

  MISTER MURPHY: His cap is on.

  CORONER: Mister Murphy, I am telling you for the last time not to disrupt—

  MISTER MURPHY: I thought you mightn’t a saw his cap, sir, and if Sergeant—

  CORONER: Mister Murphy, please stop talking. Sergeant Morrissey, remove Mister Murphy from the Woodwork Room, and if he speaks on t
he way out put your hand over his mouth. Missus Moore, please indicate in the minutes that the Coroner suspended proceedings while the obstreperous Mister Murphy was being removed forcibly from the inquest. Thank you, Sergeant Morrissey. Now, Mister Coughlin, please state your relationship with the deceased priest, Father Jarlath Coughlin.

  WITNESS: I’m his brother, Squire. He was my brother and was always Mick until the order changed his name. He was Bridie’s and mine—brother, that is. Jarlath is the oldest, then—

  The minutes of this inquest will show that the Coroner and all the people of Gohen extend their sympathy to the Coughlin family on the tragic death of their brother. Your brother was home on holidays, Mister Coughlin. Is that right?

  Yes, Squire, he was an order priest, a missionary in India for the last thirty years, and I was just saying to Bridie—

  For the minutes of the inquest, will you please explain the difference between an order priest and a priest like Father Mooney here in Gohen?

  An order priest belongs to an order, and a priest like Father Mooney doesn’t. But to look at them, you wouldn’t know if a priest was an order man or not. It’s like a bus driver and a postman and a guard—you can never tell one from the other the way they dress, navy blue uniforms, silver buttons and peaked caps. Some order priests run schools, and that’s what Jarlath—

  When did Father Coughlin come home?

  He came home from India in June, Squire, on a White Star ship, two big suitcases, and we met him at the bus the same day as Annie Lamb’s day-old chicks came. They must be laying hens by—

  There’s no need to call me Squire, Mister Coughlin. When was the last time he was home before that?

  Before the war. When he was going back that last time the war was just after starting, and he had to go around by the bottom of Africa and he threw up all the way into Dindian—

  You and your sister must have been looking forward to seeing him after such a long time.

  We were, Squire. We got Mattie Mulhall to thatch the house even though he only thatched it for us three years ago, and we got the Martyr to whitewash the house, and bought him a new Raleigh in Jimmy Ryan’s because I was riding his old one since he went back the last time and it’s rattling a bit, and we fattened eight bullocks last winter to buy a motor to drive him around in, a black Morris Minor, a secondhand one, we got it in Ferguson’s. We had to deal with that black Protestant because Jimmy Ryan only had Mortimer’s secondhand hearse to sell, and we couldn’t be seen driving Jarlath around in a hearse. We tried to have for him what he was used to in India, and we made sure the Martyr Madden would be at the house the whole time to take care of him and not come to the fields with Bridie and me. But we hadn’t the running water for him, because I was just saying to Bridie the rural electrification—