I WAS lying in bed one morning, having already decided I would not go to school that day and thinking that perhaps I would never go back to it. The brother’s last extraordinary letter about the Holy Father and Father Fahrt had contained a cheque for twenty-five pounds. I had already trained Annie to bring me some breakfast in bed and was lying there at my ease, smoking and thinking. I could hear men shouting at horses on the tow-path, hauling a barge. It was amazing how quickly life changed. The brother’s legacy of £5,000 was a miracle in itself, and another miracle was his feat in founding a new sort of university in London. Then you had the three of them inside the Vatican arguing with the Holy Father himself. It would not surprise me if the brother turned out to be appointed Governor of Rome or even came home in the purple of a cardinal, for I knew that in the old days it was common for Popes to appoint mere children to be cardinals. I thought I would join the brother in London. Even if his business did not suit me, there would be plenty of other jobs to be had there. Suddenly Annie came into the room and handed me an orange envelope. It was a cablegram.
COLLOPY DEAD AND FUNERAL IS
TOMORROW HERE IN ROME AM WRITING
I nearly fell out of the bed. Annie stood staring at me.
–Seemingly they are on their way home? she asked.
–Em, yes, I stammered. They will probably take the short route home direct to London. The brother’s business, you know.
–Isn’t it well for them, she said, to be globe-trotting and gallivanting?
–It can be very tiring.
–Ah yes, but look at the money they have. Isn’t it well for them?
She went away and I lay there, quite desolated—I who had been reflecting on the amazing suddenness with which life changed. I had lied automatically to Annie and only now realized that the dead man was her father. I lit another cigarette and realized that I had no idea what I should do. What could I do?
After a time I got up and hung disconsolately about the house for a time. Annie had gone out, presumably to buy food. I was completely in a quandary about breaking the bad news to her. How would she take it? That question was quite beyond me. I thought a couple of good bottles of stout would do me no harm. I was about to pull on my overcoat when I paused, pulled out the cable again and stared at it. Then I did what I suppose was something cowardly. I put the thing on the kitchen table and walked quickly out of the house. I crossed over the canal at Baggot Street Bridge and was soon sitting in a pub looking at a bottle of stout.
I was not yet really in the habit of heavy drinking but this time I was there for many, many hours trying desperately to think clearly. I had not much success. When I did leave it was nearly three o’clock and I had six stouts under my arm when I staggered home.
There was nobody there. The cablegram was gone and in its place a note saying THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE OVEN. I found a chop and some other things and began to eat. Annie had friends of her own and probably had gone to one of them. It was just as well. I felt enormously heavy and sleepy. Carefully gathering my stouts, a glass and a corkscrew, I went up to bed and soon fell headlong into a deep, sodden sleep. It was early morning when I awoke. I pulled a stout and lit a cigarette. Gradually, the affairs of the preceding day came back to me.
When Annie arrived with breakfast (for which I had little taste) her eyes were very red. She had been crying a lot but she was collected and calm.
–I am very sorry, Annie, I said.
–Why did they not bring him home to bury him here with my mother?
–I do not know. I am waiting for a letter.
–How well they wouldn’t think even of me.
–I am sure they did the best they could in the circumstances.
–Seemingly.
The next three or four days were very grim. There was almost total silence in the house. Neither of us could think of anything to say. I went out a bit and drank some stout but not much. In the end a letter did arrive from the brother. This is what he had to say:
‘My cablegram must have been a great shock to you, to say nothing of Annie. Let me tell you what happened.
‘After the Vatican rumpus, Father Fahrt and Collopy, but particularly Collopy, were very depressed. I was busy thinking about getting back to London and my business. Father Fahrt thought that some distraction and uplift were called for and booked two seats for a violin recital in a small hall near the hotel. He foolishly booked the most expensive seats without making sure they were not in an upstairs gallery. They were, and approached by a narrow wooden stairs. This concert was in the afternoon. Halfway up the first flight of stairs there was a small landing. Collopy painfully led the way up with his stick and the aid of the banister, Father Fahrt keeping behind to save him if he overbalanced and fell backwards. When Collopy got to this landing and stepped on to the middle of it, there was a rending, splintering crash, the whole floor collapsed and with a terrible shriek, Collopy disappeared through the gaping hole. There was a sickening thud and more noise of breakage as he hit bottom. Poor Father Fahrt was distracted, rushed down, alerted the doorman, got the manager and other people and had a message sent to me at the hotel.
‘When I arrived the scene was grotesque. There was apparently no access to the space under the stairs and two carpenters using hatches, saws and chisels were carefully breaking down the woodwork in the hallway below the landing. About a dozen lighted candles were in readiness on one of the steps, casting a ghastly light on the very shaken Father Fahrt, two gendarmes, a man with a bag who was evidently a doctor and a whole mob of sundry characters, many of them no doubt onlookers who had no business there.
‘The carpenters eventually broke through and pulled away several boards as ambulance men arrived with a stretcher. The doctor and Father Fahrt pushed their way to the aperture. Apparently Collopy was lying on his back covered with broken timbers and plastering, one leg doubled under him and blood pouring from one of his ears. He was semi-conscious and groaning pitifully. The doctor gave him some massive injection and then Father Fahrt knelt beside him, and hoarse, faltering whispers told us he was hearing a confession. Then, under the shattered stairway of this cheap Roman hall, Father Fahrt administered the Last Rites to Collopy.
‘Getting the unfortunate man on the stretcher after the doctor had given him another knock-out injection was an enormous job for the ambulance men, who had to call for assistance from two bystanders. Nobody could understand his prodigious weight. (N.B.—I have changed the label on the Gravid Water bottle to guard strictly against overdosage.) It was fully twenty minutes before Collopy now quite unconscious, could be got from under the stairs, and four men were manning the stretcher. He was driven off to hospital.
‘Father Fahrt and I walked glumly back to the hotel. He told me he was sure the fall would kill Collopy. After an hour or so he got a telephone call from the hospital. A doctor told him that Collopy was dead on admission, from multiple injuries. He, the doctor, would like to see us urgently and would call to the hotel about six.
‘When he arrived, he and Father Fahrt had a long conversation in Italian one word of which, I need hardly say, I did not understand.
‘When he had gone, Father Fahrt told me the facts. Collopy had a fractured skull, a broken arm and leg and severe rupture of the whole stomach region. Even if none of those injuries was individually fatal, no man of Collopy’s age could survive the shock of such an accident. But what had completely puzzled the doctor and his colleagues was the instantaneous onset of decomposition in the body and its extraordinarily rapid development. The hospital has got in touch with the city health authorities, who feared some strange foreign disease and had ordered that the body be buried the next morning. The hospital had arranged for undertakers to attend, at our expense, the following morning at 10 a.m. and a grave had been booked at the cemetery of Campo Verano.
‘I was interested in that mention of premature and rapid decomposition of the body. I am not sure but I would say that here was the Gravid Water again. I said nothing, of course.
‘We were early enough at the hospital. Collopy had already been coffined, and a hearse with horses, and a solitary cab, were waiting. I saw the Director and gave him a cheque to cover everything. Then we started out for the church of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, near the cemetery, where Father Fahrt said Requiem Mass. The burial afterwards was indeed a simple affair, for myself and the good priest were the only mourners, and it was he who said the prayers at the graveside.
‘We drove back in the cab to the hotel in silence. Father Fahrt had told me that Collopy had made a will and that it was in possession of a Dublin firm of solicitors named Sproule, Higgins and Fogarty. I will have to see those people. In the cab I made up my mind to go home immediately to Dublin, then to London, giving Father Fahrt some money and letting him fend for himself. You will see me almost as soon as you get this letter.’
Well, that was the brother’s last communique from the Continent. And I did see him, two days later.