Bless Me, Father Read online

  Billy’s behaviour took an immediate turn for the worse. ‘I can see the Third World War starting over this fence.’

  ‘Mr Buzzle,’ Fr Duddleswell said, as he approached, how many times must I reprimand you for the unseemly behaviour of your blankety-blank birds you have billeted without leave in my tower?’

  Billy banged the fence with his fist. ‘Right there the war’ll start. Right over this bloody fence.’

  ‘Am I to put up forever,’ began Fr Duddleswell, only to conclude in chorus with Billy, ‘with the noise of ’em and the mess of ’em and the stench of ’em?’ Solo again, Fr Duddleswell demanded to know, ‘Well, am I?’

  Billy drew back from the brink. ‘But aren’t they holy birds, now, Fr O’Duddleswell?’

  ‘Holy birds would not do the things they do in my tower.’

  ‘And isn’t your God Himself a pigeon fancier?’ went on Billy unperturbed.

  ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb,’ was Fr Duddleswell’s response to that.

  ‘Well, He used one to tell the world the Flood was over didn’t He?’

  ‘’Twas not Jesus but Jehovah that soaked the world with a Flood, you heathen, and never was a scraggy pigeon used in the Bible-period anyway.’

  ‘What about that pigeon that perched on Jesus’ head when He got Himself baptized?’

  ‘That,’ snarled Fr Duddleswell, was not a blankety-blank pigeon.’

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘’Twas a dove, I tell you, a beautiful snow-white dove.’

  What’s the difference, Fr O’Duddleswell?’ Billy challenged.

  ‘People do not shoot doves.’

  ‘You lay one fat finger on my pigeons,’ said Billy with menace, ‘and I’ll get Pontius to eat you alive. Even if it does make him ill.’

  Fr Duddleswell turned to me. ‘Lunch time, Father Neil.’ He sniffed the air. ‘I think ’tis, yes, ’tis definitely pigeon-pie.’

  At table I asked how the Governors’ meeting had gone.

  ‘Not entirely to me satisfaction.’ I sympathized with him. ‘I must tell you plainly I am no longer Chairman of the board.’

  I expressed surprise that he hadn’t got all the votes.

  ‘I did not get one. In advance, I did not consider it necessary to vote for meself, like.’ He tapped the table irritably. ‘That is what always happens, Father Neil. Give the laity their freedom and they promptly abuse it.’

  When I suggested they simply wanted a change he confessed himself at a loss to know why they should want a change for the worse. He would have to counter-attack, of course, by not signing cheques for any of their bills. The laity would want to elect the Pope next if they could.

  Mrs Pring came in with the food-tray, humming pleasantly to herself.

  ‘Good,’ said Fr Duddleswell. ‘After choring and jawing all the morning I am as hungry as an Irish jury.’

  Then he saw what was in store for us. ‘Well, woman,’ he demanded, ‘are you not going to introduce us? What is it?’

  ‘Risotto.’

  ‘It looks more like a poorhouse porridge bleeding to death,’ he said.

  ‘Whining while dining as usual, Father D,’ she said. ‘You try and do any better with the rations we get.’

  Fr Duddleswell handed me a plate. ‘Better eat it, Father Neil, before it eats you.’

  ‘One thing, Father Neil,’ Mrs Pring said as she ladled the stuff out, ‘that one’ll never go to hell.’ I smiled too soon. ‘The devil would never let him in.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Fr Duddleswell, ‘the troubles across the water are as nothing compared with the troubles under this roof.’

  I had the impression that their relationship was like a knotted piece of string. The more they pulled apart by arguing the tighter they came together.

  When Mrs Pring asked me how I liked Billy Buzzle, Fr Duddleswell intervened to swear that at last he was going to eject Billy’s pigeons from his tower. The bell would do it. In answer to my question, he said our own bell had been taken away ten years before, with the railings round the church, and no reprieve for them.

  ‘This bell,’ said Mrs Pring. ‘How much?’

  ‘To us, nothing,’ Fr Duddleswell replied gleefully. ‘Just think, Father Neil, from now on we will be able to toll the bell at funerals and weddings and christenings—just like in the old days before the war.’

  ‘And the Angelus, Father.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. The Angelus ringing out morning noon and night. ’Twill sound all the sweeter, believe you me, for having been rescued from a Protestant temple. ’Twill remind the whole Borough of Kenworthy of the time when the Angel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin she was to be the Mother of God, won’t it just?’

  ‘Billy Buzzle won’t like that,’ said Mrs Pring.

  ‘Say that again, sweet lady,’ he said, ‘’tis music to me ears.’

  I asked him why he kept saying ‘blankety-blank’ to Billy. He replied:

  ‘’Tis because I have no wish to demean meself by swearing in his presence. No bloody fear,’ he giggled. ‘And by the way, Father Neil.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘What are you intending doing this afternoon?’

  ‘Praying, Father. So quietly God Himself won’t be able to hear.’

  ‘Great luck to you, lad.’

  ‘One thing, Father.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘What is the real difference between pigeons and doves?’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ he came back at me.

  ‘I’m not on anybody’s side,’ I said. ‘Not in the matter of pigeons and doves.’

  ‘I see.’ He pondered. ‘The difference between pigeons and doves.’

  ‘The Old Pretender!’ said Mrs Pring.

  He touched my arm. ‘Son of me heart, me darlin’ priestling, the real difference?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He crammed his mouth with risotto. I just made out the words. ‘I have not the faintest bloody idea.’

  A couple of days later I was in Fr Duddleswell’s study as we pored over a map of the parish.

  ‘Your half of the parish is circled in red, Father Neil, and mine is circled in blue.’

  ‘Isn’t the red half …?’

  ‘Ah, so you have noticed. Yes, the red half is considerably bigger than the blue half. But then my legs are shorter than yours.’

  ‘But I thought you visited the parishioners by car.’

  He looked mystified. ‘What has me car got to do with the shortness of me legs?’

  I had to admit there was no logical connection.

  He changed the subject by telling me that the architect confirmed that our tower could easily accommodate the new bell. He was delighted with the news.

  ‘We will get it installed as soon as I can fix things with Major Timmins. Ah,’ he reflected nostalgically, ‘’twill take me back to me student days in the Venerable English College in Rome. The Holy City was as full of bells as a Suffolk garden is full of roses in the month of June. And on Sundays and festas, they’d be a-ringing and a-singing, dong, dong, dong.’

  Mrs Pring came to say an electrician had asked for admittance to the sacristy. She had let him in. Was that all right?

  Fr Duddleswell confessed that he was having to hire a contractor to put in an electrical time-switch and automated ringing device.

  ‘Is Major Timmins installing that for free?’ asked Mrs Pring.

  ‘Now, Father Neil,’ what were we talking about?’

  ‘About your legs, Father.’

  Mrs Pring said, ‘He knows he hasn’t got one to stand on.’

  The phone rang. ‘Fr Duddleswell … Three men and a driver … How much?’ He glanced guiltily towards us. ‘I know how far Wiltshire is from here but you are supposed to be shifting a bell not Cleopatra’s Needle … All right, you have me authorization.’ And he slammed down the phone.

  Mrs Pring got in before me. ‘How much is your free bell costing now?’

  ‘So far, £400.’


  ‘Would you repeat that?’ gasped Mrs Pring.

  ‘I do not cook me cabbage twice,’ he said. He turned to me for understanding. ‘Where is the sense in letting our money deteriorate in the bank? At best it grows there as fast as the legs on an old man. But’—he found a bright side—‘we will economize in other ways.’

  ‘Like on tea and sugar?’ asked Mrs Pring.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘We could pass the basin round the parish, I suppose,’ she said, keeping up the challenge. ‘Need to, to make up that tidy little sum.’

  ‘Go, woman,’ he warned, ‘before me wrath becomes incontinent.’

  ‘Hold your row, Father D. It’s only a walking funeral, you’ll have.’

  ‘Mrs …’ But she was gone before she could be named. ‘Father Neil, I cannot help meself. Sometimes the cold blast of her mouth goosepimples me all over faster than a February frost.’

  I asked him if he was sleeping any better in the afternoons.

  ‘Surely, Father Neil. As a result of your silent prayers, no doubt, I am sleeping as sound as a bell. Which reminds me …’

  It arrived on a lorry one Tuesday morning. The impressive shiny black object caused Fr Duddleswell to tap his chest with both hands and exclaim good-naturedly. ‘’Tis indeed exceedingly bell-like and no mistake, exceedingly bell-like.’

  A wooden frame, five feet high, had been built and placed in readiness in the centre of the sanctuary.

  ‘What’s it doing here?’ enquired Mrs Pring casting her eyes over it. ‘I thought bells were supposed to be hung high up.’

  ‘The Bishop,’ explained Fr Duddleswell, ‘finds it easier blessing it here than fifty feet up the tower.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Pring with sharp intuition, ‘I forgot he’s got little legs as well.’

  In an excess of high spirits, Fr Duddleswell pulled back the tongue of the bell and released it with a bong that made the air vibrate with ear-tingling sound for nearly thirty seconds. ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls,’ he sang. ‘It tolls for … Billy Buzzle’s blasted pigeons.’

  The ladies of the parish clucked away, busily decorating the frame with roses, lilies and brightly coloured ribbons. And the next day, outshining even the decorations in his purple robes, the Bishop appeared. I had not seen Bishop O’Reilly since my ordination. It is hard to convey the feelings a young priest has for the Bishop who has shared with him the inestimable gift of the priesthood, given him ex gratia the power to celebrate Holy Mass and the sacraments.

  The Bishop was a small, distinguished-looking, simple-minded man and very Catholic. I mean he understood, as few did, the Catholic mystique: the emphasis on pageantry and hierarchy and obedience. I felt doubly indebted to him for first accepting me as a junior seminarist, since his general policy was to turn down any candidate who wasn’t first or second generation Irish. He used to say privately—or so it was rumoured—that the Irish and Italians are the nations dearest to God’s own heart. Looking at the calendar of the saints, bursting with Celts and Latins, I thought this an opinion beyond dispute.

  Bishop O’Reilly had given us deacons—there were six of us—a short homily in his private chapel at Bishop’s House the night before he ordained us. In my naivete I was expecting a fiery sermon on the high office and onerous but rewarding duties of the priesthood. Instead he contented himself with warning us off the twin dangers of ‘Punch and Judy’, the clergy’s term for ‘drink and dames’. I assumed he had his reasons, based on twenty years of episcopal experience, for concentrating on these earthly topics.

  In the sacristy before the service of consecration, I heard the bishop say to his private secretary, Monsignor O’Connell, ‘Now, remember, Pat me boy, lead me mighty slowly around the church so the congregation get a generous view of me. They love it, so they do. It’s not every day of the year, they get a chance to cast eyes on their beloved Bishop.’

  As the Monsignor dressed the Bishop like a doll, he kept promising him a suitably slow gyration. He made him put on three chasubles and two pairs of gloves—only then the ring—and large shuffly buckskin slippers. Next, he pressed the tall golden mitre down on his head, keeping the second, the Precious Mitre, in reserve for solemn moments in the ceremony. Finally, he handed him a silver crozier almost as big as the Bishop himself.

  I admired the way Bishop O’Reilly sat there meekly and passively as he was clothed by a breathless, sweating Monsignor. It was one example of the burdens a Bishop has to bear.

  In the opening, tortoise-like procession, I walked alongside Fr Duddleswell and only two yards in front of the Bishop. I imagined I could feel upon my back the unswerving episcopal smile and the ringed hand raised in countless benedictions. I did not like it when a six year old, standing at the end of a bench said in a loud voice, ‘Mummy, why is she wearing that funny hat?’

  I suppose Bishop O’Reilly was used to being thought a fool for Christ’s sake. Fr Duddleswell’s comment to me as we genuflected together seemed discourteous. ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,’ he whispered.

  The choir struck up Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, Behold Our Great High Priest, and the hour-long service began. My memory of it is fuzzed by the innumerable anointings and blessings of the bell which the Bishop made with exemplary patience. There were also lots of prayers and stirring hymns, after which all ten invited clergy present on the sanctuary were permitted like schoolboys to ring the bell after the Bishop. I admit I enjoyed that bit of the ceremony best.

  The ‘incident’ occurred as we were sitting while the choir sang a Latin motet. Because of the crowd and the intense heat, the west door had been left open to let fresh air blow through the building.

  It wasn’t until he was half-way down the central aisle that I saw Pontius. He came in sniffling to right and left, surprised that for all his friendly sniffles and energetic wagging of his hind-quarters, no one in that huge crowd paid him any attention. He had a hurt look on his dignified face as if he could not understand the waning of his popularity. Those of the congregation who saw Pontius didn’t want to know.

  On he marched until it became clear he was heading for the sanctuary. Maybe the clergy were drugged by the heat or lost in the music, but, whatever the reason, not one of them stirred.

  ‘Father Neil.’ Fr Duddleswell whispered out of the corner of his mouth so the Bishop on the other side of him could not hear.

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Do you see what I see?’

  Fear made me sit as blind and still as a pepper pot. ‘No, Father.’

  ‘’Tis bloody Pontius. What d’you intend doing about it, Father Neil?’

  Still with my eyes closed, I said, ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Canon law distinctly says no animals or ladies are allowed on the sanctuary. What’re you doing?’

  ‘Praying, Father. Hard.’

  ‘Save it for me siesta,’ he said, in a tone that accused me of hypocrisy.

  The Bishop lowered his head towards his secretary. ‘Pat, Pat.’

  ‘My Lord.’

  ‘Can you not see the black monster yonder?’

  ‘It’s a dog, my Lord.’

  ‘I know, I have seen one before. Are you a man, Pat, that’s the thing. Get rid of it.’

  Fr Duddleswell had at last to admit to the foreign presence on the sanctuary. Slowly, and with as much dignity as circumstances allowed, he rose, bowed to the Bishop and his fellow-clergy, and went across to try and grasp Pontius’ collar. Pontius swerved, eluded Fr Duddleswell’s outstretched hands and made towards the Bishop as being the most interesting figure there.

  The Bishop, faced with this menace to his dignity, sat as far back as he could on his pontifical throne, cowering. The benign Pontius, drooling and undeterred, approached him and with a jump laid his forelegs on the Bishop’s lap.

  Bishop O’Reilly tried pushing the panting dog away with his crozier but only succeeded in dislodging his mitre so it fell over his eyes, temporarily blinding him.

  All this time, the choir, who ha
d a grandstand view of events from the choir-loft, were gradually slowing down like Fr Duddleswell’s old gramophone badly in need of a rewind. Then they gave up the ghost and ceased altogether.

  In the uncanny silence, Bishop O’Reilly’s voice was now a screech. ‘Pat, why aren’t you doing something?’

  Perhaps the Monsignor had a phobia about dogs because in in this episcopal emergency he was of no use at all.

  By now, Fr Duddleswell had made his way tip-toe to the Bishop’s throne. Uttering friendly clucking noises, he succeeded in grabbing Pontius’ collar. But when Pontius went sharply into reverse, he went too. He was dragged, off balance, by the great labrador half-way across the sanctuary on his back.

  Losing his sense of direction in the fray, Pontius bumped into the scaffolding and the considerable weight of man and dog made the bell give out one enormous bong followed by several lesser bongs.

  Pontius was so shaken by the noise, he tore himself free, barked stupendously and fled unopposed from the church like the Wind of Pentecost.

  I rushed to help Fr Duddleswell to his feet and removed a lily that had become wedged in the frame of his spectacles. He was muttering something about Billy Buzzle which, I am sure, he afterwards repented and confessed.

  The Monsignor rearranged the Bishop, the choir resumed their motet, and the rest of the ceremony passed off without incident.

  At the end, still seated on the sanctuary, the Bishop cleansed the oil from his fingers in the medieval way with segments of lemon and breadcrumbs. Then we all processed slowly round the church again so that the congregation could have a final filial look at their father in God.

  In Fr Duddleswell’s study afterwards the Bishop sat, tired-looking and sipping a glass of milk.

  ‘I must have walked a mile of road around the church giving my blessing.’

  Monsignor O’Connell, Dr Daley, the portly friend of Fr Duddleswell, and myself murmured sympathetically and Fr Duddleswell said. ‘The good people appreciated it and all, me Lord.’

  ‘I always tell Monsignor Pat here,’ the Bishop said, ‘the people love it, do I not, Pat?’

  ‘You do, my Lord.’