Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  Mister Coughlin, please tell the jury when was the last time you saw your brother alive.

  That was the night before he got killed, Squire. That Tuesday night in August when he was setting—

  There’s no need to call me Squire, Mister Coughlin. What time was it—that Tuesday night in August?

  About a minute before I saw him over the hedge, Squire, I heard the chapel clock striking eight, and I says to Bridie, he’s a bit late tonight, and at that minute didn’t—

  What was your brother doing when you saw him for the last time?

  Myself and Bridie were out in our Long Field stooking the oats, and we saw the top half of Jarlath sailing by on top of the hedge on his bike all dressed up in his black suit, and he had his topcoat on because after the heat in India he was always cold in Clunnyboe. That’s one thing about living—

  Why wasn’t he in the motor you’d bought for him, Mister Coughlin?

  He can’t drive, couldn’t drive. He has his own motor driver in India. He was just home from the hospital after the appendix, and that night I told him I’d drive him to the Martyr’s house and—

  And that’s where he was going, to Missus Madden’s house? Did he say anything to you or your sister while he was riding by?

  He said, “God bless the work,” Squire, and the two of us stopped stooking and said, “And you, too.” As I was just saying, we could just see his shoulders and his head and his black hat going along the top of the hedge, and Bridie says to me, I hate him going to the Martyr’s to—

  And when was the next time you saw your brother, Mister Coughlin?

  The next morning, Squire, Wednesday morning, but he was dead on Sally Hill and the new Raleigh in the grass at the bottom of the hill. The sergeant wants to buy the bike for his son—two bob off the buying price, so there’ll be little—

  What time did you get to Sally Hill on Wednesday morning?

  About a quarter past eight, because the chapel clock struck eight just as Simon Peter rode his bike into our yard, and I says to myself, what in the name of God is Simon—

  Mister Coughlin, your brother left your house on Tuesday night at eight o’clock to go to Missus Madden’s house. Did he return to your house on Tuesday night after visiting Missus Madden?

  No, because the next day his bed . . . the day he was found dead, Bridie went to make his bed and empty the water basin and the poepot, but he hadn’t slept in it—the bed.

  So you and your sister did not know till Wednesday morning that your brother never came home from Missus Madden’s on Tuesday night?

  No, Squire. I was just saying to Bridie that only for that—

  Describe your house to the jury, Mister Coughlin.

  It has a new thatched roof with a grand comb across the peak that Mattie Mulhall spent a day doing at two pounds a day. There’s four windows with a fresh coat of bluestone on the sills and a—

  Excuse me, Mister Coughlin. I did not make myself clear. Explain to the jury the layout of your house. Imagine you are standing inside your front door looking in and then tell us where the rooms are.

  There’s only one door, Squire, and that’s the kitchen door at the front of the house with two windows on one side and two windows on the other. When you go in through the kitchen door, you’re in the kitchen. The fireplace is over to your left, and behind the wall that the fireplace is in there’s a room that’s Bridie’s because any bit of heat that goes through the wall into the room makes it a bit cozy in there for her. Behind the wall that’s ferninst the wall with the fireplace is the parlor, and beyant the parlor is the room where I sleep, except that when Jarlath is home he sleeps in the room that I sleep in and I sleep in the settle bed in the parlor. That settle bed is the best—

  Your brother had to go through your room to get into his room. Is that right, Mister Coughlin?

  Yes, Squire, the parlor, and before Jarlath came home from India I put a drop of oil on the hinges, because you know yourself that a squeaky hinge in the middle of the night could waken the—

  So when you went to bed on the Tuesday night, you knew your brother had not returned from Missus Madden’s—is that right?

  Yes, Squire. I knew he wasn’t home.

  Were you worried that your brother was not home?

  No, Squire, I wasn’t. I was asleep in the settle bed nearly every night before Jarlath came home, and I was used to not seeing him once we et the supper. I’d go back out to the yard or the fields, and he’d go into his room to get ready to—

  And whenever he came home after you were in bed, did you ever wake up when he was going to bed?

  No, Squire, he never wakened me once. He knew I had to get up early in the morning, and as well as that the oil on the hinges of the door was a great idea because I was just saying a squeaky—

  When he did not get up on that Wednesday morning, did you not wonder that maybe he was sick or that he wasn’t even in his room?

  No, Squire, because there were a few times when he did not go to say mass in Gohen. And as well as that—

  So you never looked in on your brother when he did not get up at his usual time?

  No, Squire. Once Jarlath came home from India, that room was his and the only other one who could go into that room was Bridie to make the bed and sweep the floor and take out his poepot and the water in the basin he washed himself in. The Martyr Madden couldn’t go in there either, no more than myself. “I like my privacy,” is the way he—

  How about his bike, Mister Coughlin? Did you not notice it wasn’t there at your house?

  No, Squire, because we keep the three bikes, Jarlath’s, Bridie’s and mine in the turf shed, and the only time we go there is to get deggs out of the hen nest in the barrel and the turf at nighttime or to get our bikes. Bridie hadn’t gone to the well for the water yet, so she hadn’t gone there to get her bike out and neither did I go there, and I was just saying, that if only Bridie had gone to the well early for the water that morning we’d a noticed Jarlath’s bike not there. Even if the Martyr had heard a hen cackling in the shed she might have gone in for—

  Missus Madden was the last person that we know of who saw Father Coughlin alive. As a matter of interest, Mister Coughlin, how long has Missus Madden worked for you and your sister?

  I remember the Martyr tying sheaves at our house during the Boer War when she was a girl because her father got kilt in Africa one day when I was tying with her at the far end of the Long Field. She’d bundle, and I’d tie because she was so small. The old Mister Gorman, Doul Yank’s oul lad was going by in his assencart and he shouted in over the hedge to the Martyr that her father got blew up in the siege of Mafeking. Then when her husband Mick got kilt in the first war she started working full time for us. That was in 1916, and what is it now? 1951. So 1916 from 1951 is what? Thirty-five years, Squire, the Martyr has worked at our house, and she never once asked for a raise and—

  Was your brother a good man on a bike—was he in the habit of falling off his bike?

  Jarlath was only five when he learned to ride my father’s bike with one leg under the bar and the bike at an angle for balance, and he was a great biker as far—

  So, were you surprised to see that your brother had fallen off his bike on Sally Hill?

  Well, Squire, I never thought about that, but sure anyone could fall off their bike even if they never fell off it before, and especially in the dark on Sally Hill if you’re not used to it. The hill drops down so sudden you could think in the dark that the bike was going out from under you, and do you know the way you think something is going to fall and you reach out real quick to stop it but you only hit it and make it fall, and it might not have been going to fall in the first place? Well, maybe that’s what happened with Jarlath—maybe he thought the bike was going out from under him when it started down the steep hill and he tried to save himself instead of leaning forward and just holding onto the handlebars, but he didn’t need saving at all if he’d left well enough alone—

  Mister Coughlin,
you have been an excellent witness, and again I would like to express my sympathy to you and your sister for the loss of your brother. Sergeant Morrissey, Missus Madden will be the next witness.

  31

  In the Sunroom

  In which Elsie Howard appears as Venus on the half shell, and Sam comments on the weaknesses of verbal sphincters.

  IT WAS PATRICK WHO SPOKE first, and he quoted Mister Howard: “‘A woman stood there, tall, comely, posed like one of those women in the posters outside the Picture House, Venus naked on her half shell.’”

  Missus Howard clapped her hands. “Oh, Patrick. Sam was such an old romantic—still is. Venus naked on her half shell, indeed! He was a man of many names for me, romantic and otherwise. Tall, comely and posed! I think he fell into idealizing in the loneliness of his office. When he’d come home, he was as likely to call me Old Hen as Wandering Voice like the cuckoo.”

  Mister Howard said, “I can remember being so annoyed at Coughlin with his Squire-this and Squire-that that I felt like choking him. Squire! It’s a hundred years since anyone was called Squire, and then it was the landlord. Maybe Coughlin thought he had to call me Squire because I’m a Protestant. Did you notice he called Cyril Ferguson a black Protestant? I’ve never met a man with a worse case of diarrhea of the lips.”

  “What about Sergeant Morrissey?” his wife asked.

  “He had better control over his verbal sphincter,” Sam said.

  32

  Witness: Missus Madden

  1951

  In which the Martyr Madden tells the coroner that the priest, Jarlath Coughlin, took the prize she won in the Protestant horse race and tried to take something more precious.

  MISS BIDDY (BRIGID) SWIERSKI married Mister Michael Madden on a Tuesday in 1913 after the 7:30 a.m. mass in the Catholic Church in Gohen. Biddy’s married sister and Michael’s brother were the witnesses. After the brief ceremony, the priest brought the four people through the gleaming, filigreed gate in the altar rails and led them to the sacristy. On the vesting bench, the priest opened the large marriage register and produced an ink bottle and a pen with a wooden handle. He held the nib up to the light to make sure there wasn’t a hair or a tiny piece of blotting paper stuck in it. As he elicited information from the wedding party, he wrote their responses in the big book. He pointed out to the best man where he should sign his name, and warned him not to make blots. Then the bridesmaid wrote her name in a slow and careful hand, the tip of her tongue showing through her tight lips, anxious and fearful that she wouldn’t do it according to the rules of penmanship she had learned with great difficulty in school; she had practiced signing her name eighty-five times during the previous week. The best man gave the priest half a crown, which the priest, unthankfully, quickly dropped into his trouser pocket as if he were embarrassed by the introduction of Caesar into God’s house. Then the priest showed the wedding party out through the back door of the sacristy.

  As the Madden brothers led the way along the side of the church to the street, Biddy said to her bridesmaid, “Wasn’t it grand when he brought us through the little gate and we had to walk on that beautiful floor with the picture of Jesus in it? I stepped on one of his eyes and nearly died.”

  At the iron gate in the churchyard wall, the brothers and sisters parted to go back to their respective homes to change into their work clothes.

  “I’ll see you tonight, Missus Madden,” Mick called to his new wife, and they all laughed.

  “All right, Mister Madden,” Biddy called, and they laughed again. And as she walked away with her sister, Biddy said, “Thank God I’ll never be called Swierski again in my life. There’s Murphys and Coughlins and Ryans and Traceys, there’s Horans and Gormans and Gorrys, and we, of all the people in the whole world, had to be Swierski. Mammy’s the only one left now.”

  The story of how a family bearing the name Swierski ended up living in Gohen has two versions. The Protestant story says the original Swierski had been a Polish bishop who impregnated an entire conventful of nuns, or maybe a dioceseful of nuns, and had to go on the run. His run had ended in Ireland in the eighteen hundreds, and after years of wandering the country the defrocked one had settled down in Gohen, leaving a trail of pregnant women across the continent, each one a day’s journey from the next and some within a half-day’s walk of each other; two of the women lived fifty yards apart. The Catholic explanation for the Swierskis in their midst was that a Polish pilgrim went to Lourdes looking for a cure for forgetfulness, but he took a wrong turn when it was time to get dipped in the frigid baths and kept walking till he ended up in Gohen.

  In 1915, the recently married Mick Madden, in desperate need of a job, joined the British army. In 1916, he became part of the soup of Passchendaele, nothing left except his name carved in the Menin Gate in Ypres. For the last thirty-five years, the widow had lived by herself, getting steadily madder as the days slipped by. The childless Biddy had subsisted on her British army pension and the ten shillings a week she earned at the Coughlins’ house—according to Eddie-the-cap Biddy didn’t get a raise in thirty-five years because she never asked for one.

  Biddy Madden was the first to arrive at the Boys’ School for the inquest, had stood with her back to the pebble-dashed schoolhouse wall looking at her feet, dressed in her ancient green topcoat and red French beret with its one-inch node erect as always, her socks falling down her thin scabbed shins onto her battered leather boots.

  When Spud Murphy arrived with his ass-and-cart full of chairs, he took advantage of the absence of anyone else. “Any chance of an oul ride, Biddy?” he asked, and he pushed aside the flaps of his gabardine topcoat, thrust out his pelvis and rubbed his crotch. “Would you like to see what I have in here, Biddy?” he asked. “Big as a Protestant carrot in October.”

  Biddy ignored Murphy, pretended he didn’t exist, just like she pretended no other people existed either, except in cases of extreme necessity.

  Murphy had his hand in his pocket now, stroking himself toward an in-trouser delight. “Come on, Biddy. Give me a look at what you have there,” he asked, and at that moment, Missus Moore, the recorder for the inquest, came around the corner with papers in her hands. Tall, straight-standing and big of bust and body, the recorder took in the scene immediately. Like a hen defending her chicks against a rat, she flew into Spud Murphy’s face and reduced him to a quailing coward with a verbal barrage fierce enough to stop a whole herd of rats. When Murphy withdrew to the other side of his cart, Missus Moore went over to Biddy. “Did that smelly old goat touch you, Missus Madden?”

  Biddy, as if unaware of the drama raging around her, continued to look at her shoes and ignored Missus Moore.

  “If that dirt says one more word to you, Missus Madden,” Missus Moore said while looking at Murphy, “call me and I’ll scrape his carrot for him.”

  One night not long after the inquest, Mister Howard told his wife that Biddy Madden reminded him of a vole in one of his childhood books, a vole who always wore a French beret and very thick glasses, except that the vole did not have as many whiskers as Biddy Madden. His witty wife asked Mister Howard if he would like her to grow whiskers so she could tickle his fancy as she made her way south in the bed. The solicitor told his wife she was depraved. He knocked her on her back on the sofa and pantomimed a rough sexual encounter, which very soon led to the real thing, but without the removal of one piece of clothing by either party. Missus Howard, who loved unexpected sexual surprises, had to squeal through clenched lips lest anyone passing their house should think her husband was beating her to death, to say nothing about terrifying the sleeping children upstairs. Afterwards, while still in coitus, Mister Howard wondered aloud about the perpetual erectness of the node on Missus Madden’s beret. Missus Howard wondered aloud about the brains of men.

  As the vole-like, bereted Biddy Madden was shepherded to the witness chair by Missus Moore, the solicitor felt a sudden surge of pity for the loony, lonely old woman.

  CORONER: Please tell
us your name, address and occupation, Missus Madden.

  WITNESS: (Unintelligible.)

  Missus Madden, you will have to speak louder so everyone in the room can hear you.

  Brigid Madden, Father, I have my bag and my handkerchief; I have my bag and my handkerchief. It’s Mick’s pension, I told him.

  And your address and occupation, Missus Madden?

  Relict of Michael Madden, Father. Relict of Michael. Of Mick. Mick. My Mick in the muck and my father blew up at Mafeking.

  Who do you work for, Missus Madden?

  Bridie Coughlin, wash the clothes on Monday mornings. Work in the fields and the yard. Look at my hands. Look at my red hands, Mick.

  Missus Madden, could you lift up your head so we can all hear what you’re saying. Now, the only reason we have asked you to come here is because, as far as we know, you are the last person to have seen Father Coughlin alive. Do you understand that?

  All he wanted was my winnings, Father.

  Who wanted your winnings, Missus Madden?

  Bridie’s brother, Father. The soft hands, clean like a nun’s fingers, and that’s clean, says I to Bridie. What’s so funny, what’s so funny? Menin Gate.

  Keep your head lifted up, Missus Madden. The winnings he wanted, Missus Madden! Tell us what the winnings were.