Bless Me, Father Read online

  I worked my way through most of my first course before daring to say, ‘One small question, Father. How do you manage to …?’ I hesitated.

  ‘To square it with me conscience?’

  ‘What I meant was …’ I couldn’t delicately express what I meant but he seemed to understand.

  ‘’Tis like this, Father Neil: Mary is not saying she is pregnant. Neither am I.’

  ‘Everybody else is, Father.’

  ‘’Tis true. But that is their look-out, is it not?’

  ‘And you don’t feel in any way responsible for their misunderstanding?’

  ‘Father Neil, Mary is making a justifiable mental reservation. You know what a mental reservation is?’

  I thought, ‘Putting a cushion up your jumper and letting folk believe you’re pregnant when you’re not.’ But I only dared say, ‘It’s the art of letting people deceive themselves without actually telling them lies.’

  ‘A definition worthy of St Thomas Aquinas,’ he exclaimed appreciatively. ‘There are times, believe you me, when to lie would be a sin and to tell the truth would be a disaster.’

  ‘And silence?’

  ‘Silence … Silence can be very … pregnant, if you will forgive the expression. Silence can arouse the very suspicions you are aiming to eliminate.’

  ‘I suppose so, Father.’

  ‘Father Neil, a priest has to become a good poker player. He has so many secrets, confessional and otherwise, he cannot reveal that he has to be a skilled practitioner of the mental reservation.’

  To change the subject, I asked, ‘When have you decided the baby’s going to be … born?’

  ‘In a day or so, Mary’s hubby, Paddy, is due to send a telegram to Grannie Macaulay. Here, I’ll show you.’

  He took two pieces of notepaper out of his wallet.

  ‘This first is the telegram. It reads: ‘Mother and baby doing well. It’s a girl. Love Pat.’ I’m not sure Paddy can write, so I have to put words on the lips of his pen, like. And this here,’ he said, waving the second sheet, ‘is a letter from Mary to be sent a couple of days later. In it, Mary explains that the baby having been born premature …’

  I looked up. ‘Premature, Father?’

  ‘Two months premature, in fact. Due to this, shall we say, early delivery, a priest in Birmingham baptized the baby, naming her Kathleen after her grandmother.’ He gritted his teeth at the reference to a lady whose excessive pride, he considered, was causing him much inconvenience.

  ‘Is the baby baptized, Father?’

  ‘Of course. You do not think I would ask Mary to tell a lie on my behalf, do you? I baptized little Kathleen three days after birth in Paddy’s flat.’

  ‘You’re the Birmingham Priest?’

  ‘The priest in Birmingham,’ he corrected me.

  ‘But, Father’—I spoke as politely as I could—‘I was taught you can only baptize a baby in private when there’s danger of death.’

  ‘Quite right, Father Neil. And was there not an imminent danger of death when Kathleen came into the world?’

  ‘You mean she really was premature?’

  ‘Not at all. She was born nine months to the second after she was conceived. I mean there was danger of spiritual death, you follow? Now don’t you try telling me that is not what canon law intends. ’Tis what the Almighty intends that matters.’

  ‘Spiritual death?’ I echoed, hoping for some sort of explanation.

  ‘Would there not be slaughter of souls all round, Father Neil, were the truth to be broadcast? Mrs Macaulay would disown her daughter and die like the Pharisee she is, Mary and baby Kathleen would be deprived respectively of mother and grandmother—no great loss from an outsider’s point of view but distressing perhaps from theirs.’

  At this juncture, Mrs Pring came in to remove the remains of the first course and supply us with strawberries and custard.

  Pointing to the bowl of strawberries, Fr Duddleswell said, ‘Sacred Hearts again, Mrs Pring?’

  ‘Yes, your irreverence. There’s a glut of ’em in the market, so the price has fallen faster’n Lucifer himself. If they go down much more I can see you having ’em for breakfast besides.’

  ‘And custard?’

  ‘I know you likes it, so why shouldn’t I pamper you?’

  As Mrs Pring prepared to depart in a clatter of cutlery and dirty dishes, Fr Duddleswell said for her benefit, ‘We had an American priest supplying here last summer, Father Neil, and he suggested that in England the taps should be marked Hot, Cold and Custard.’

  Mrs Pring snorted like a cow on a cold morning and lifted her nose in disdain.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, Mrs Pring,’ Fr Duddleswell said, before she could screen herself with the door.

  ‘I know. Midwifery again tonight.’

  ‘Mary will come to the side at 8 o’clock as usual and I’ll run the both of you to Euston Station.’

  ‘This’ll be the third time I’ve delivered that bairn.’

  ‘And the last, Mrs Pring.’

  ‘I’m pleased for Mary’s sake you’ve finally agreed to let Kathleen come into the world. Must be the longest pregnancy on record.’

  When she had gone, Fr Duddleswell’s comment was: ‘She has her uses, does Mrs Pring. Très formidable. Arms like Moses. Should have been a windowcleaner.’

  He went on to explain that Mary was currently carrying Mrs Pring’s kitchen cushion. He and Mrs Pring were meeting Mary at Euston on Fridays, where the foetus was implanted in the Ladies and the miscarriage took place on the Sunday evenings following.

  ‘There is only the christening to think of now,’ said Fr Duddleswell. ‘Kathleen has been baptized; all that remains is to supply the rest of the ceremonies in St Jude’s.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘No hurry. We will wait awhile so ’tis not so easy to judge how old the child is. Everyone will say that Kathleen is very advanced for her age, and that will make her old granny prouder and fitter for the Fire than ever.’

  To stir things up a little, I put forward a hypothesis of my own: ‘What if Mary really is pregnant again and another child turns up too soon after the first? Won’t you have to go through all this trouble again?’

  ‘Not on your life, I won’t. I won’t. No. I won’t. I would not care now if the next babe were born two days after its conception. That would be a miracle, no doubt, but no aspersions would be cast on its legitimacy. So!’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid, I asked finally, ‘that Mary and Patrick will give you away?’

  ‘Not a chance, Father Neil. They are terrified of that old harpy, can you not see that? And,’ he added less convincingly, ‘they are terrified of me, too. I have warned ’em that if they let the cat out of the bag, I’ll whip ’em to a pulp with me rosary.’

  ‘It seems safe enough, then.’

  ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I put the fear of God into them for good measure. Told ’em I considered the whole matter is under the seal of confession. They will not breathe a word of it now, even to their guardian angel.’

  A few weeks later, I went to the reception at the Macaulay’s after Kathleen’s christening. There I made the acquaintance of Paddy, an incoherent lad with freckles who had originated the whole train of events, and I said ‘Hello again’ to Mary, now a trim, relaxed young woman.

  Across the room, I could see Fr Duddleswell listening with growing agitation to something Mrs Macaulay was whispering in his ear. He was becoming redder and redder, and he kept raising his spectacles and lowering them on his nose, a gesture I interpreted to mean he was furious about something.

  After a couple of minutes, he suddenly broke away from the conversation, proclaiming with masterly self-control. ‘Charming little grand-daughter, you have, Mrs Macaulay, to be sure, charming.’ But as he grazed past me to get to the door, he was muttering so only I heard: ‘The bitch. The bloody bitch. Deceiving me all this time.’

  He left in an almighty hurry.

  Mrs Macaulay, for her part, followed
Fr Duddleswell with a beatific smile. Then she came across to me and led me to where Kathleen was lying asleep in her cradle.

  ‘Fr Duddleswell …’ she began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s a real saint is that darlin’ man and innocent as a newborn babe. As the saying is in the Emerald Isle, may he be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows he’s dead.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so highly of him,’ I said, saddened that her kindly sentiments towards my parish priest were not reciprocal.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Macaulay. ‘I can tell you, Father, because you’re a praste. It was Fr Duddleswell himself saw to it that our Kathleen was born legitimate, like.’

  III The Bell

  ‘Hope I am not interrupting you.’

  I was seated comfortably in my study reading my breviary one morning when Fr Duddleswell appeared.

  ‘Not at all, Father.’

  ‘I was not talking to you, Father Neil.’ He pointed aloft, smiling. ‘The Guvnor.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I said, and invited him to take a seat.

  ‘Just time for a wee chat about this and that, and that and this.’ He settled down and lifted his glasses on to his forehead. ‘You have been here how long?’

  ‘A month, Father.’

  ‘Tut-tut. How time drags. Seems more like nine to me. How long does it seem to yourself?’

  ‘About a month,’ I replied honestly. ‘Give or take a day.’

  He lowered his glasses again as if to examine more closely a specimen of manhood with such a peculiar sense of time. ‘Uh huh. I was just after wondering what you do with your afternoons.’

  ‘I can do anything you like, Father. What would you like me to do with them?’

  His reply was firm. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Y’see, Father Neil, since you have been stationed with me nine months—or thereabouts—I thought you might have discerned how I spend me afternoons.’

  ‘Sleeping, Father.’

  ‘Trying to sleep, Father Neil.’ He spoke as if he was used to engaging in some heroic post-prandial enterprise. ‘Do you sleep well, Father Neil?’

  Aware that he wasn’t directly interested in my sleep-pattern, I said, ‘Very well, thank you.’

  ‘God bless you for that. Perhaps one of the reasons for it is that when you close your eyes at night I do not switch on the radio, like, or whistle the all-clear at you like Mrs Pring’s kettle, or stamp around in ten league boots.’

  I said I was sorry.

  ‘What for, Father Neil?’ He put on his bewildered look. ‘Have I said anything to blacken your character? Have I openly criticized you for something at all?’

  ‘No, Father,’ I lied.

  ‘And I am sure I never will have to.’ He turned his attention elsewhere to show how highly he thought of me. ‘Mrs Pring, now, our frolicsome widow, that is another topic entirely. For twenty years—or centuries—I have had to put up with her moaning from crow o’cock to the song o’ the red breast. Mind you,’ he broke off, ‘she has been a good housekeeper ever-and-all to me. I have to say that. Because I am a good Christian, you follow?’

  I held up my breviary. ‘I can pray, if you like, in the afternoons.’

  ‘Aloud?’

  ‘To myself.’

  ‘You cannot pray to yourself, lad,’ he said, his eyes fluttering.

  ‘I mean quietly, Father. At the bottom of my voice.’

  ‘That is fine, fine.’ He looked up again. ‘If that is all right with Yourself.’ Finding that joke now a little worn, he went on to tell me he had already to contend each afternoon with Billy Buzzle’s pigeons.

  He paused to prove his point. The gentle cooing of pigeons came through the window, refreshing as sunlight.

  ‘What a bronchial racket is that for Billy Buzzle to answer for!’

  The gentleman in question lived beside the church and had his back yard next to ours. I had often seen him whiling away the afternoon hours among the flowers. He always looked the same: mottled face, square jaw, bushy eyebrows, a wisp of hair curled by tongs jutting over his right eyebrow. Invariably he wore a smart pin-striped suit, from the sleeves of which emerged large stiff white cuffs, with diamond links which made it seem as if both his arms were in splints from the elbows down.

  ‘Father Neil, when Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ d’you think he also meant the people next door?’

  I pointed out to Fr Duddleswell that I was ‘next door’ to him.

  ‘So y’are. Then a word of loving advice to me next door neighbour.’

  I waited without encouraging him.

  ‘If you want to be happy as a priest,’ he began didactically, ‘let the chaff go with the wind and the wood with the stream. You follow?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Father,’ I said, understating the case.

  ‘Uh huh. Try again. Aim not, if you are wise, to make water run uphill nor try pulling milk from the udders of a billy-goat.’ He leaned back, pleased with the exercise of his poetic powers. ‘Any clearer?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘What I mean is, while you are at St Jude’s do not contradict nature.’

  ‘How would I do that, Father?’

  ‘By not doing what I damn well tell you.’ He grinned and waters of joy filmed his eyes. ‘Not so solemn Father Neil. Remember legs are not only sticks for walking on.’

  He went on to tell me that he was about to perform one of his chores of office. The board of school governors was meeting in the parlour and he was Chairman.

  ‘I am chosen every year by a show of hands,’ he said. ‘This time, though, I am going to insist on a free and secret election so they can all choose me democratically.’

  Mrs Pring came in to announce that the governors were arriving.

  Fr Duddleswell told her that she was not to waste time nattering while he was ‘choring’. ‘’Tis not the nodding of the head that rows the boat.’

  As he led me down to introduce me to the governors he declared, with exaggeration, ‘There is suffocating dust everywhere in this bit of a house. D’you know, Father Neil, once I bought herself a bunch of artificial flowers and in three days they died.’

  We stood together at the front door greeting the governors as they arrived in twos and threes. Last to float in view, chauffeur-driven in his Daimler, was Major Timmins, a retired army officer. His first words to Fr Duddleswell were:

  ‘How’d you like a bell, Padre?’

  ‘What sort of a bell, Major?’

  ‘Cast-iron … bell-shaped … you know what a bell’s like.’

  Fr Duddleswell had previously told me the Major was a rich kindly gentleman of few words and he certainly lived up to this non-description.

  ‘Weighs a couple of hundred pounds,’ the Major said. ‘Bought it in my village in Wiltshire.’

  Apparently, it really was the Major’s village. His family had owned most of the farmland in the area for generations.

  ‘Is it very old, Major?’

  ‘Victorian. Tip-top condition. Taken from the Anglican church at the end of the war. Meant to boost the war-effort—cannons, shells, that sort of thing. And after,’ snorted the Major, who obviously hated inefficiency, ‘they couldn’t put it back. Nitwits rebuilt the tower and the damn bell wouldn’t fit.’

  ‘That is very generous of you, Major.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the Major, blustering at the compliment. ‘Only cost me £50. Thought of you immediately, Padre.’

  As Fr Duddleswell led the Major into the meeting, the old soldier was muttering, ‘Glad to see, by the way, you’ve got yourself a new recruit.’

  Mrs Pring enticed me into her kitchen for a cup of tea. ‘Full of wiles, that one,’ she said as she stood over the stove. ‘Father D could give you ninety yards start in a hundred and still beat you by fifteen.’

  It was dawning on me that Mrs Pring and Fr Duddleswell liked to shadow-box like a couple of butterflies.

  ‘He’s that belligerent,’
she said, ‘every time he picks up a knife and fork they start to fight.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ I said, slightly embarrassed at the revelation.

  ‘In spite of it all,’ said Mrs Pring, filling the pot, ‘he has a heart as big as a barn. He loves big—and he hates big. Or tries to. Mostly he hates out of a sense of duty and it’s just comical. My advice to you …’

  ‘You have advice for me, Mrs Pring.’

  ‘Bite the bulldog’s tail. The only way to make a bulldog take his teeth out of you is to bite his whatsit.’

  I thanked her for her counsel.

  ‘Poor Father Neil,’ she said, ‘I can tell he’s been at you already with his blackthorn stick.’

  I assured her our main subject of conversation was Mr Buzzle. Mrs Pring, unlike Fr Duddleswell, had a high regard for him.

  ‘It’s not just the pigeons,’ she explained. ‘Billy runs a Night Club, “The Blue Star,” Father D don’t approve of that. Thinks it’s shady. And then Billy’s a Bookie.’

  Billy, it seemed, employed several ‘runners’ who took bets on his behalf at street corners, in pubs, factories, cafés and on building sites where many Irish navvies worked. These runners were occasionally picked up by the police and fined. Billy paid the fines with the money he saved on income tax.

  ‘But,’ concluded Mrs Pring, ‘the real reason Father D keeps fighting Billy is because they’re too much alike. But I think he’s lovely. Billy, I mean.’

  ‘Hello there, young ’un.’

  I was busy in the garden when Billy Buzzle addressed me in this friendly way across the fence.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Billy Buzzle. Call me Billy. Mrs Pring tells me you’re Fr Boyd.’ As we shook hands he said, ‘May I introduce you to Pontius.’ A superb black labrador. ‘When I bought him he was only a puppy. His first owner called him Pilot. I christened him Pontius in honour of your boss-man.’

  I said I was sure Fr Duddleswell appreciated the compliment.

  ‘My Pontius, too,’ he said, ‘is very good at washing his paws. Shall I tell him to have a good lick?’

  Fr Duddleswell entered the garden fresh from the Governors’ meeting. ‘Father Neil,’ he called, ‘what’re you doing fraternizing with the enemy?’