Bless Me, Father Read online

The Bishop turned to Dr Daley. ‘So you, Doctor, are personal physician to our two good fathers here.’

  Dr Daley, a bit shaky on his feet, said, ‘Yes, my Lord, and I make sure they drink plenty of the juice of the cow.’

  ‘And you, Father Neil,’—it was my turn—‘you remember what I preached you about the night before I made a priest of you.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Especially beware, when you are young, the Judies with their V-necks wider than a duck’s wake and their see-through stockings. I always say to Monsignor Pat here, “All the theological difficulties of my young priests come in silk stockings,” do I not, Pat?’

  ‘You do, my Lord.’

  ‘A good crowd tonight, my Lord,’ said Fr Duddleswell, trying to cheer the old chap up.

  ‘Whenever I see a crowd of our good people like tonight I want to sing not “Faith of our fathers” but “Faith of our mothers”, d’you see? That is where the faith resides. As I always say to Monsignor Pat here, the faith is in the hearts of our dear mothers. Do I not, Pat?’

  ‘You do, my Lord.’

  ‘If the faith is not learned at the mother’s knee,’ the Bishop went on, ‘it will hardly be learned at the father’s elbow.’

  Unthinking, the secretary said, ‘You do, my Lord.’

  Mrs Pring came to say that the Bishop’s car had arrived. It was time for adieus.

  Dr Daley knelt and kissed the Bishop’s ring. ‘May the luck stick to your Lordship like a beggar from the bog.’

  The Bishop was moved to say in return, ‘May God and Mary and St Patrick bless you a hundred thousand times.’

  My turn to kiss the ring and then Fr Duddleswell. To him the Bishop said coldly as he handed him his empty glass, ‘I would be grateful if, when I visit you in the future, Father, you see to it no wild animals are issued with tickets.’

  Fr Duddleswell gave him the assurance he sought, handed the glass to me and went to see the Bishop off the premises.

  ‘Ah,’ said Dr Daley to me, relaxing, ‘how many days Indulgence do I get for kissing his ring?’

  ‘A hundred days, I think, Doctor.’

  ‘Surely there must be easier ways of gaining a good seat in the Hereafter.’ He scratched his bald head. ‘But did you notice anything odd about the Bishop, Father Neil?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t you see how he kept swaying from side to side.’ He showed me how.

  ‘No, Doctor.’

  ‘Are you drunk, too?’

  I told him I didn’t drink.

  ‘Then have you a bilious attack or swallowed a pendulum or what?

  ‘Well, Donal,’ said Fr Duddleswell cheerfully enough on his return, ‘at least I was “beheaded handsomely”.’

  ‘He was like a shirt left out of a frosty night to you, Charles.’

  ‘The Bishop,’ Fr Duddleswell agreed, ‘has a sharp, blunt tongue on him and no mistake.’

  ‘Charles,’ the Doctor said, ‘the sight of that white stuff in his Lordship’s glass has …’ For conclusion, he pointed sickly to the region of his stomach. ‘I don’t suppose you have a drop of Punch here.’

  ‘Not here, Donal, and not any other where in this bit of a house. You have a glass eye on you already and an attack of the staggers.’

  ‘Are you drunk, Charles, or did you crack your holy head on the sanctuary floor?’

  ‘I did that surely. And oh, Donal, how me black heart is straining wild within me for its revenge on Mr Billy Buzzle.’

  ‘Did you sleep well last night, Father Neil?’

  It was breakfast time and I assured Fr Duddleswell he need have no worries on my account. In fact, he was sorry that both Mrs Pring and I had failed to hear the first ringing of the Angelus at six that morning.

  ‘Nothing ever wakes Mrs Pring,’ he said. ‘Not during the daytime, any way.’

  A ring on the front door was followed by the raised voice of Billy Buzzle demanding entry. The dining room burst open and there he was.

  ‘You …’ he hurled at Fr Duddleswell. ‘I’m going to take you to court.’

  Fr Duddleswell professed ignorance of the cause of such a cruel intention.

  ‘That noise,’ fumed Billy, ‘that, that infernal racket early this morning.’

  ‘Take a seat, Mr Buzzle,’ Fr Duddleswell said soothingly, ‘and let us discuss this quietly like a couple of gentlemen lunatics.’

  Billy sat down. ‘That bloody bell …’

  ‘Please, Mr Buzzle. I will not tolerate swearing in this holy house.’ Fr Duddleswell turned to Mrs Pring. ‘Fetch him a coffee cup so we can calm the troubled waters of him.’

  ‘That bell nearly bloody well …’

  ‘Tut-tut.’

  ‘Blasted me out of bed,’ continued Billy. ‘You know my bedroom’s on the back and that bell let rip like Big Ben only a few feet from my head.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Fr Duddleswell said without a spark of repentance.

  ‘What I want to know …’

  As Mrs Pring had just delivered a cup and saucer, Fr Duddleswell interrupted him again with, ‘Coffee?’

  ‘What I want to know …’

  ‘With milk?’ Billy nodded and prepared to speak again. ‘And sugar?’ The same. ‘Two?’ Billy nodded.

  ‘Why so early?’ Billy managed to get out.

  ‘Six o’clock. Is that early would you say?’

  ‘Yes, I bloody well would, especially as I only get back from “The Blue Star” at 3. And once I wake up, no more sleep for me.’

  Fr Duddleswell seemed amazed at Billy’s experiences. ‘Did you hear the bell, Father Neil?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘Mrs Pring.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then all I can say,’ Billy cried, ‘is they’ve got bloody coconuts for heads.’ He sipped his coffee angrily.

  Fr Duddleswell waited a few moments before asking, ‘And how is Pontius these days, Mr Buzzle?’

  Billy shrugged. ‘Fine.’

  ‘You did hear of his trespassing? You did. Now, while the Lord bade us forgive them that trespass against us, he did not, I am thinking include black labradors.’

  ‘He’s house-trained,’ said Billy proudly.

  ‘He is not House of God-trained,’ said Fr Duddleswell.

  ‘What d’you expect him to do, genuflect and kiss the Bishop’s ring?’

  ‘I expect him, Mr Buzzle, to leave our Bishop alone. He is not licensed to eat Bishops.’

  ‘A regular St Francis, you are,’ said Billy.

  Fr Duddleswell held out his hand. ‘So we are evens.’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘I repeat I am sorry you got woken up.’

  Billy, quite softened by now, said, ‘’S all right. Just this once. But make sure it don’t happen no more.’

  Fr Duddleswell withdrew his hand as if it had been stung. ‘I cannot promise you that, Mr Buzzle. In fact, ’tis me religious duty to assure you of the exact opposite. The Angelus will ring out every day at six, midday and six in the evening as Holy Mother Church has always decreed.’

  ‘Fr Duddleswell,’ pleaded Billy, ‘if I become an insomniac that’s one thing, but think of my poor pigeons.’

  ‘They did not pay one penny’s rent in me tower.’

  Billy explained that he wasn’t worried about them losing their lodgings. When the bell rang that morning three of them had flown away never to return, which he interpreted as a form of pigeon suicide.

  In the end, Billy wanted to toss for it but Fr Duddleswell’s attitude was why should he wager when he could win without.

  ‘I thought,’ shouted Billy, ‘you were bloody well supposed to love your neighbour as yourself.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fr Duddleswell punching his own arm and recoiling from the imagined pain, ‘but I care for you far more than that.’

  ‘Religious people!’ said Billy in a scornful voice.

  ‘Mr Buzzle, I love you as a Christian but that is as far as I am prepared to go.’

  ‘
God must have made you with His left hand behind His back,’ growled Billy. Then his final threat, brought on by what he saw as manifest injustice. ‘Okay. If it’s war you want, it’s bloody war you’ll get. If I don’t sleep, I’ll see to it you don’t sleep, neither. Mark my words.’

  ‘What is Billy up to, d’you reckon, Father Neil?’

  Peeping through the curtains of my study which overlooked the gardens, I said, ‘No idea.’

  He touched my arm accusingly. ‘Are you sure you should be spying on our next door neighbour?’

  I let go of the curtain at once with an expression of regret.

  Two days before, six rolls of wire-netting had been delivered to Billy’s back garden. An hour later, a couple of men appeared and erected wire enclosures over the whole area. The following day, huge crates turned up with birds in them. At first, we though Billy was increasing his stock of pigeons but the crates contained about a hundred chickens.

  ‘Pigeons and hens,’ mused Fr Duddleswell, mystified, ‘the gentlest of God’s creatures.’

  Losing my self-control, I again peered surreptitously through the curtains. ‘Wait a second, Father,’ I said.

  ‘Father Neil, keep your eyes to yourself, will you not? Remember where curiosity landed the first parents of the human race.’

  ‘There are some men with more crates,’ I told him.

  ‘What is in them, then?’

  I said I didn’t know.

  ‘Well, Father Neil, why are we having a heel-cooling here? Let’s go fast and bloody well find out.’

  Billy was on the patio of his garden. Wearing protective leather gloves, he was gingerly removing the lids from the crates with an iron bar. And there, one by one, were revealed the ten wickedest cockerels in England.

  ‘Sleeping well?’ Fr Duddleswell asked Billy slyly.

  ‘Not a wink for some days, Fr O’Duddleswell. And want to take a bet? No? From this moment on, you won’t sleep neither.’

  ‘But I have a clear conscience, Mr Buzzle, and why should I not?’ Receiving no reply, he said, ‘What’re you doing, raising chickens?’

  ‘No, Fr O’Duddleswell, raising hell. See those cockerels. No love-making for them. They’re going to be sacred bachelors’—he indicated us—‘like you and him. Thwarted lovers, you might say. Sex-starved cocks, the lot of them.’

  Each cockerel was placed in a roofed-in wire pen on its own, adjacent to the large enclosure where the hens were left free-ranging.

  Already the noise of frustrated poultry was wretched enough but soon the midday Angelus rang out. The blend of pealing bell, barking dog, madly fluttering pigeons, clucking hens and trumpeting cocks was indescribable.

  Fr Duddleswell knelt to say the Angelus and, I suspect, a few extra prayers not to be found in any manual. When he arose, Billy said:

  ‘Now Fr O’Duddleswell, let’s see if, even with your lime-white conscience, you can sleep through this.’

  ‘The Third World War,’ barked Fr Duddleswell, banging on the fence. ‘Right here the war will start. Right over this bloody fence.’

  When he retired to his bedroom to take his siesta, I knew he wasn’t likely to find much repose. I heard him restlessly pacing up and down his room, and, from time to time, opening and closing his window with a bang. Once I heard him open his window and yell, ‘Do you not know that cock-fighting is against the law, you gambler, you?’ Then he slammed his window shut with a clonk that broke the cord and smashed one of the panes. Before evening, the whole window frame was double glazed, but it didn’t seem to help.

  Fortunately for me, my bedroom, like Mrs Pring’s above, was on the front of the house. During the hours of sleep, I didn’t catch the full blast of the bell or the ravenous excitement of the cocks. Poor Fr Duddleswell was in the cocks’ direct line of fire twice a day.

  Within a week, he was but a shadow of his former self. He had lost weight and there were large bags under his red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes. He, like Billy Buzzle, was becoming an insomniac.

  At Mrs Pring’s suggestion, I persuaded Fr Duddleswell to phone Dr Daley. I was in his study when the doctor arrived two hours afterwards.

  ‘Sorry to only answer your call at this late hour, Charles,’ he said breathlessly, ‘but I’m afraid the polis summoned me for drunken driving.’

  ‘I am distressed to hear it, Donal. But did I not tell you you would be nabbed one fine day?’

  Dr Daley was amused at that. ‘I wasn’t the party accused, Charles. I am just after examining a suspect for the polis.’

  ‘And was he drunk, d’you reckon?’

  ‘One of us was, that’s for sure,’ Dr Daley said, with mischief in his voice. ‘But I gave him the benefit and presumed it was myself.’ He turned to the patient before him. ‘Now what’s this I hear that you are not sleeping too well, Charles?’

  ‘Not sleeping at all,’ said Fr Duddleswell spiritlessly. ‘Not for ten days.’

  ‘Not even during your sermons?’ said Dr Daley, as if recalling painful memories. ‘If you had told me earlier I would have lighted a candle for you before the Virgin’s statue.’

  ‘I have lighted so many for meself, Donal, there is a danger of a shortage in the diocese.’

  Dr Daley didn’t like the implications of that. ‘If God and Mother Mary have given up watching the candles that’s a terrible waste of beeswax surely.’

  ‘Ah, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said pathetically, ‘I have a famous appetite on me for a large loaf of sleep.’

  ‘Have you tried counting the lost sheep, Charles?’ The question was not well received. ‘Cocoa? Ovaltine? Cyanide? And nothing works.’

  Fr Duddleswell, with an effort, shook his head, once each way.

  ‘It’s a strange thing, Charles.’ Only Fr Duddleswell’s look said, What is that? ‘Four days ago, I was called in by a neighbour of yours.’

  Fr Duddleswell froze and into his eye came the familiar glint. ‘Billy Buzzle?’

  ‘The same. He was suffering from the exact same disability as yourself. Except his was caused by a strange … ringing in his ears.’

  ‘Did you help him sleep, Donal, that is the thing?’

  ‘That very night,’ Dr Daley said with a touch of pride. ‘Next day he phoned to say he had slept fourteen hours and was completely cured.’

  Fr Duddleswell’s face was a muddle of bitterness, envy and hope. ‘Tell me, then, Donal, what must I do?’

  ‘D’you happen to have a drop of …’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘It is not for me, Charles.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, I am sure.’

  ‘Not for me only, any way. But no matter.’ He began to extract from his black bag a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. ‘I have your healing right here in my hands.’ He poured two stiff ones. ‘Now, Charles, take four of these pills with your refresher. If they don’t knock you out, the Heavyweight Champion of the world will do no better.’ He took a sip of whiskey and rolled his tongue round the bars of his teeth. ‘Mind you, Charles, there is but one infallible cure for insomnia.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Dr Daley looked surprised he didn’t know. ‘Sleep, Charles. Sleep.’

  Fr Duddleswell obediently downed his tablets and they sat sipping quietly together and conversing as if I had not been there.

  ‘Is this the way you cured Mr Buzzle, Donal?’

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Dr Daley. ‘He didn’t need the tablets.’

  ‘The whiskey only?’

  ‘Not even that.’

  ‘Tell me, then,’ said Fr Duddleswell, peering contemplatively into his glass, ‘how did you cure him?’

  ‘Simple,’ Dr Daley said. He took a sip, then another. ‘I told him to go sleep at “The Blue Star”.’

  Next morning at breakfast, Fr Duddleswell looked worse than worse. In answer to my polite query, he said:

  ‘If I slept well, would I look now like a sorry mashed potato?’

  ‘The tablets, no good?’

  ‘I saw every inch of the
night through, Father Neil,’ He filled his lungs and exhaled slowly. ‘I am that bored with keeping me own company through all the days and nights! Worst of all,’ he snarled, ‘is that bloody Angelus bell driving into me head like a hammer at six in the morning.’ He made a sign of the cross in contrition. ‘And Billy Buzzle is missing all the fun.’

  ‘At “The Blue Star”?’

  ‘Yes, Father Neil, and that is where I am sending you.’

  ‘But I’m sleeping fine,’ I said.

  ‘Do not play puppies with an old dog,’ he said wearily. ‘Go to “The Blue Star” around midday and tell Billy, ask him—no, plead with him to come visit me here.’

  ‘You’re not going to silence the bell, Father?’ He almost hooked his lips together. ‘But you said the sound of the bell is the voice of God Himself to the good people.’

  He let out his breath jerkily like an engine that refuses to start. ‘Me downy chick of a curate,’ he whispered, ‘if you desire to live in peace with me, do not say as I say, just do as I say.’

  In his office—decorated with pictures of dogs, horses and ladies just as scantily clad—Billy was reading his paper and nibbling away merrily at his breakfast. He agreed to my request without a murmur and within fifteen minutes we were at the presbytery.

  Fr Duddleswell was in his study spread out in an armchair with his feet on a stool. On the coffee table by his side was a folded tartan blanket as well as a whiskey bottle with two glasses.

  He did not rise when we entered. ‘Good of you to come, Mr Buzzle,’ he said wanly. After inviting Billy to sit, he asked, ‘And how is yourself?’

  ‘Never felt better,’ Billy said, and I could see powerful reasons why that was so.

  ‘And me dear old friend Pontius?’

  ‘In splendid nick.’

  ‘Fine. That is fine.’ He selected from his repertoire a more regretful tone. ‘I realize, Mr Buzzle, I have not been acting in a very priestly way towards you.’

  Billy smiled as if to say he hadn’t noticed any difference but he contented himself with ‘No?’

  ‘No. I never intended, God help me, to drive you out of house and home.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. An Englishman’s home is … Those cocks.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Billy, with the magnanimity of a conqueror.

  ‘They have stirred me conscience as they did the conscience of St Peter, Prince of the Apostles.’