Bless Me, Father Read online

  ‘Your messenger boy indicated you have some kind of proposition to put to me.’

  Fr Duddleswell was pouring into the glasses. ‘Yes. Care for a drink?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Would you ever consider removing those birds, the walking ones, from your garden?’

  Billy took his drink. ‘Will you promise not to ring your bell before ten in the morning?’

  ‘Me solemn word. Not even if Martians invade the parish.’

  ‘Nor if my Pontius swallows your little Bishop?’

  ‘Especially not then.’

  ‘A bargain.’

  ‘Drink to it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They tipped their glasses and both said ‘Your health’. It was a moving moment.

  Billy said, ‘I was wondering if I could interest you in a little wager. A horse at Sandown Park tomorrow. Well fancied. In the 2.30.’ He glanced across at the forlorn figure in the chair. ‘Father. Fr O’Duddleswell?’

  His adversary’s eyes were closed and, in spite of heavy breathing, he was clasping his glass in both hands with unnatural steadiness.

  Billy looked at me, drained his glass and tip-toed over to the armchair. He gently took Fr Duddleswell’s glass from his grasp, put in on the desk and helped me to pull the blanket over his defeated frame.

  The Angelus pealed out then. The sleeper stirred, spluttered and began to snore. Billy, his face shining with the innocence of a child’s, raised Fr Duddleswell’s glass to him as to a gallant foe, gulped it down and was gone from the room before the final stroke of the bell.

  IV The Parish Bazaar

  I had nearly finished breakfast when Fr Duddleswell came in and ostentatiously placed an envelope on his side plate.

  I folded my newspaper and said, ‘Good morning, Father.’

  ‘Hadn’t noticed,’ he said in an offhand way. He went through the motions of a brisk grace and, as he sat, put his huge serviette under his chin with a flourish. He removed his glasses, pointed to his straggly hair and said, ‘Short back and sides, please. But be sure not to take off more than I’ve got.’ He smiled. ‘And how are you this morning, Father Neil?’

  I told him I was very well so far.

  He leaned over and tapped my cup. ‘Is that a strong cup of coffee you have there?’ I nodded. ‘Uh huh. Fine, that is fine. Because’—he came over confidential—‘I want to talk to you about … the facts of life.’

  I wondered if I had heard correctly since it was only breakfast time. I had. His theme was, What makes men and women really happy; what makes things tick.

  I sipped my coffee like wine and gave it as my considered opinion that it could be stronger.

  ‘What every curate ought to know, Father Neil.’ He paused to fill his own cup. His method was to raise and lower the pot like a yoyo as he poured. ‘Money,’ he said.

  ‘Money?’

  ‘What does the Holy Bible say about money?’

  ‘That it’s the root of all evil.’

  ‘True, true,’ he conceded, ‘but what did our Blessed Lord himself say?’

  ‘You cannot serve God and money.’

  He received this information with a grateful shiver. He was expecting, he said, another ‘more striking’ of Jesus’ sayings.

  I reflected before proposing, ‘It’s harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for …’

  ‘Mrs Pring to get through the eye of a needle. I know it, Father Neil, but surely the Lord had more cheerful things to say about money.’

  ‘Happy are the poor?’

  ‘Not in my experience,’ he retorted. ‘Oh, I see, you are quoting our Blessed Lord again.’ I said yes. ‘Then ’tis absolutely true, Father Neil, and never you doubt it. In some unfathomable sense the poor are definitely very … happy. Not so you would notice, of course, but, yes, happy. But what I had in mind was the dictum, “The Lord loves a cheerful giver”.’

  I broke it to him that it was St Paul who said that and even he was quoting.

  Mrs Pring bustled in with a tray on which rested a couple of boiled eggs for the landlord.

  He thanked me for correcting his slip of the tongue. ‘Now, money,’ he began, ‘is like an English summer …’

  ‘It comes in slow,’ said Mrs Pring, ‘and is gone before you’ve noticed it.’ She had heard it before, annually at least.

  ‘Study each of her remarks very carefully, Father Neil. It could turn out to be the silliest thing you have ever heard.’

  ‘Only when I’m quoting you,’ said Mrs Pring.

  Fr Duddleswell grabbed his spoon and banged the top of an egg as a substitute for a more satisfactory target. “’Tis not only the love of God that surpasses understanding,’ he sighed. ‘To continue: Money.’

  ‘Jesus didn’t keep on appealing for money like you, did He?’ asked Mrs Pring. ‘When He gave the Sermon on the Mount, He didn’t keep passing the basin round, did He?’

  Fr Duddleswell said, ‘That is true,’ as he started to remove tiny fragments of shrapnel embedded in the white of his egg. ‘But Jesus did not have the double misfortune of running a cheap car and an expensive house-keeper, either.’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Pring said, turning to me, ‘He walked everywhere and He cooked for Himself.’

  ‘Mrs Pring,’ Fr Duddleswell said, enjoying the rally, ‘would you go before I beseech the Blessed Virgin to box your bloody ears?’ Then to me: ‘Herself has such a sense of her own importance, she behaves as if she were the seventh son of a seventh son.’

  ‘And he’s got great stage talents,’ came back Mrs Pring. ‘Would’ve made a wonderful actress.’ She stood at the door brandishing the coffee pot. ‘I’ll just get you some more coffee, Father Neil.’

  Fr Duddleswell mumbled a few dire imprecations until he was sure she was out of hearing, then he rounded on me. ‘I know what you are thinking, Father Neil.’

  ‘I’m not, Father,’ I hastened to say.

  ‘What are you not thinking?’

  ‘I’m not thinking what you think I’m thinking. In fact, nothing is further from my mind.’ For emphasis: ‘I’m completely thoughtless.’

  ‘You are thinking,’ he affirmed steadily, ‘that I treat herself abominably.’ He would not accept my denial. ‘Because, you see, ’tis true. And the only thing to be said in me defence is that she entirely deserves it and more.’ His plate was now a mosaic of eggshell. ‘Ah, but what would I do without her and all?’ I realized he was not inviting suggestions from me. ‘How would I ever learn discipline, patience and self-sacrifice?’ He shrugged as if to say even he had no answer to that. ‘Now, money.’

  I dipped into my pocket. It was lost on him. He removed a sheet of paper from the envelope on his plate. ‘Know what this is?’

  ‘A bank-statement, Father.’

  ‘More like an ultimatum. See all those evil-looking figures typed in tomato juice? Debts. Each year we have to find a thousand pounds for the school alone. Then there are rates, gas, electricity, a house-keeper of sorts—and now an expensive addition.’

  I thrice beat my breast in sorrow.

  ‘Yes, you,’ he said. ‘Listen, O little soul of mighty deeds, me sweet potato-bud, soon cometh our annual Bazaar.’

  Mrs Pring must have caught the last word as she returned with the coffee and she made a lot of Father D’s talent for making money.

  ‘That woman gives me six headaches at once,’ he said, and she assured me his head was more than big enough.

  He feigned annoyance, stood up and declared, ‘If you stay, Mrs Pring, I’m going to stretch me legs.’

  ‘Even half an inch would help.’

  For some reason that reply put him in a distinctly darker mood. ‘Gas, gas, gas,’ he groaned. ‘That woman could commit suicide just by putting her head in her mouth.’

  Mrs Pring was obviously sincere in praising his ability to raise money. It made her wonder why he didn’t try harder. Last year’s Bazaar, she instanced, had raised £250.

  Fr Duddleswell considered that an achiev
ement. With genuine emotion, he said, ‘The generosity of the good people brought a big lump to me throat.’

  ‘Did you swallow your tongue, then?’ asked Mrs Pring. At that moment, he had difficulty swallowing something. She took advantage of his temporary incapacity to say he ought to try this year for £500.

  ‘Five hundred,’ he choked. ‘Ridiculous.’ He took a swig of coffee and that cleared his tubes. ‘I could do it, if I wanted, of course.’

  Mrs Pring laughed aloud at that. He lacked faith, that’s what. And for proof, she cited his hiring a marquee for five years running at £50 a time.

  ‘Talking to you, woman,’ he said, ‘is a breathless walk up a steep hill.’

  According to Mrs Pring not an eyeful of rain had ever fallen on the Bazaar. ‘No faith. None.’

  He was really riled by now and banged his second egg so hard it collapsed and splayed out in a yellow mess. ‘I will show you whether I have faith or no,’ he bawled. ‘This year I will do without the marquee and raise six hundred pounds.’

  I felt sure he would regret such an unpremeditated boast. Mrs Pring said, ‘You and how many legions of angels?’

  ‘As sure as God Almighty is sitting on His throne, I will fight like a brick to get me £600.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’ Mrs Pring wanted to know.

  ‘I will fall down before you on me knees.’

  ‘Make it your head and it’s a deal,’ she said.

  ‘If I fail,’ he said, contemplating the carnage on his plate, ‘I will have an Irish row with the Almighty, besides.’

  The Bazaar committee met in Fr Duddleswell’s study. Sarah Sneezum was a bespectacled lady with a nervous tic, approaching middle age. George Groper was a giant of a man, young and prematurely bald. The chairman was Tim Fogarty, wiry and worried-looking. Tim was manager of a small catering firm. His other occupation was soon to be revealed.

  ‘Has your wife given birth to another little stranger, Tim?’ Fr Duddleswell asked.

  ‘It’s not for two or three weeks yet, Father,’ Tim said, without a trace of the brogue for all his obvious ancestry.

  ‘Anyway, for what your wife is about to receive may the good Lord deliver her.’ For my benefit, Fr Duddleswell said, ‘Tim has a power of children already. How many at the last count, Tim?’

  ‘Eight, Father.’

  ‘Bless ’em. And bless you and Margaret, too, for not using a stitch in time. Soon you will have enough little ones to string a rosary.’ Fr Duddleswell then asked Tim to take over the meeting.

  First, the target for this year’s Bazaar had to be decided. Miss Sneezum suggested nervously that the previous year’s £250 was an ideal figure. The forthright Mr Groper, having recalled the trials of reaching that amount, wanted to limit it to a couple of hundred.

  Fr Duddleswell marvelled aloud at George Groper’s lack of faith and insisted we could do better if we tried. Tim Fogarty and the rest of the committee were astonished to hear him name the sum he had in mind. Together they exclaimed:

  ‘Six hundred!’

  ‘Good,’ said Fr Duddleswell. ‘I’m glad we are all agreed on that. You are not dissenting, I take it, Father Neil?’

  I would sooner have admitted at that moment to being an atheist.

  ‘Looks unanimous, then,’ Tim Fogarty said, eyeing Fr Duddleswell uneasily. ‘The marquee, I assume, is a formality.’

  Fr Duddleswell said no, more like foolishness, especially as ‘not one shower of soft wet arrows’ had fallen on the Bazaar in years.

  There wasn’t much business after that. Tim Fogarty promised the committee would organize the stalls and the amusements while Fr Duddleswell volunteered to use the pulpit for publicity. Handshakes all round and the quiet meeting came to an end.

  Tim Fogarty was the last to leave. To him, Fr Duddleswell said:

  ‘You managed the meeting marvellously, Tim. Without your firmness it might have got out of hand. I pray you reach your target of six hundred.’

  With a spark of rebelliousness, Tim Fogarty replied, ‘I’ve only got eight so far, Father.’

  When we were alone, Fr Duddleswell said, ‘Ah, ’tis wonder ful to see the faith and enthusiasm of the laity. And,’ he squeezed my arm, ‘grateful to you for your support.’

  I put it to him on my own account that a marquee would at least give cover to the perishable goods.

  ‘Have you no faith in the protection of the Almighty, Father. Neil?’

  I remarked that I had known instances of believers being rained on.

  You cannot mean real believers, true believers,’ he said, with fluttering eyes that revealed his lack of seriousness.

  ‘Catholics, Father.’

  ‘In name only. I have never known in me long life any project entered into by true believers that foundered.’

  It seemed a wonderful thing, that Old Testament faith of his.

  ‘Did y’ever hear the story of the drought in Ireland, Father Neil?’

  Having been on the receiving end of so many, I took the coward’s way out and said I couldn’t remember.

  ‘Well, ’twas in County Donegal. There was this drought which lasted … Come to think of it, now, ’twas County Cork and all. Anyway, it lasted for eight weeks, like, and the potato crop was in peril of … Correction, Father Neil, I am quite sure at last ’twas County Cavan. Perhaps you remember the tale now?’

  I assured him that now I remembered it even less well than before.

  ‘Whenever there was a drought, y’see, the parishioners of the Church of the Annunciation processed with their statue of Our Lady into the tater field and begged her to rend the heavens and favour them with a shower or two. “Rain, O Blessed Virgin, rain,” they cried and they chanted and they sang.

  ‘Well, now, on this occasion, after eight weeks of intense, lip-licking drought, you recall, they prayed aloud: “Rain, O Blessed Virgin, rain.” And’—he eyed me challengingly—‘what d’you think came to pass?’

  ‘It poured?’

  He looked at me suspiciously. ‘You have heard it before.’

  ‘An inspired guess,’ I said humbly, ‘but please go on with your story, Father.’

  ‘Thank you kindly. Well, there was this cloudburst of apocalyptic proportions, a veritable avalanche of rain, y’might say, and all the faithful people of County Cork or wherever the bloody County was, sang and chanted and cried, “Stop, O Blessed Virgin, stop.”

  He laughed merrily and I laughed with him.

  ‘You are sure you have never heard it before?’ he stopped to enquire.

  ‘Um.’

  ‘You have.’ He was not pleased. ‘Why did you not …?’

  ‘Not in that precise form.’

  ‘Which form, then?’

  ‘Much less amusing.’

  He was still not satisfied. ‘How. exactly?’

  ‘There was far less rain in the version I heard.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘And I laughed a lot more this time, Father.’

  ‘Y’did? Rain has that effect on you?’

  I decided to change the subject. ‘But what’s the moral of it, Father?’

  ‘Moral?’ he asked, drawing back his head and shoulders in disbelief. ‘Does every rib-tickling tale have to have a moral to it? What a funny solemn English feller y’are, to be sure.’

  I remember Fr Duddleswell standing in the pulpit in his green vestments the following Sunday morning to fulfil his sad duty of talking again about the sordid subject: money.

  ‘Did not the Lord Jesus Christ’—a lift of the biretta at the mention of the Holy Name—‘say, ‘You cannot serve God and money’ and ‘Happy are the poor’? Now I am wanting you all to serve God and become exceeding happy by giving to our Bazaar.’

  He outlined the plan of campaign: posters all over town; a raffle (‘Overcome your diffidence and natural timidity, Tickets for the raffle should be purchased with avidity’); programmes sold in advance at threepence a time, reduced to tuppence for the under sevens and the over sixty-fives. Mo
st important of all, each Sunday in the porch, there would be wicker-baskets to hold the commodity requested for that week: tinned foods, toys, clothes, knitted goods—and books.

  ‘Books of a helpful and edifying character, you follow? No lurid, titillating paper-covers, if you please. No naked ladies or seducting gentlemen. No Gone With The Storm sort of thing on our Catholic bookstall. Not, me dear people, that I am exactly asking you to bring only the Holy Bible or The Imitation of Christ, either.’

  Having given them this year’s target, he concluded:

  ‘May Christ’s Holy Spirit inspire you to heroic feats of generosity in the coming weeks. Above all, have faith and pray mightily for perfect weather so our Bazaar is a huge success. Sometimes the Lord is hard of hearing so use a hammer.’

  He signed himself to show the first appeal was over. Then:

  ‘Now who is taking this morning’s collection? Is Tim Fogarty there?’ He peered shortsightedly down the church. ‘He is not. I am not going on with this Holy Mass until somebody grabs that plate and …’ He paused to listen to what someone was calling out from the back. ‘No plate there? Is this a Catholic church or is it not?’ He cupped his hands to his ears before saying agitatedly, ‘Somebody has stolen all the collecting plates? Jesus Christ!’ He had the presence of mind to remove his biretta and this gave him the idea. ‘Use this for the time being. And, Father Neil? Has me curate been stolen, besides?’ I was forced to come out of hiding from behind a pillar and bring my own biretta into service. His last words before continuing with the Creed of the Mass were, ‘’Tis enough to make St Jude himself despair.’

  A couple of Sundays later when the last congregation of the morning had gone home, Fr Duddleswell and I were examining the haul for that week. As we wandered among the Ali Baba baskets he was saying to himself, ‘Such good, generous people.’

  I seconded him but pointed out that it was hardly worth £600.

  ‘Where is your faith, Father Neil?’ he demanded to know. Besides, there were admission fees, a fun fair and an amusement arcade.

  ‘But no marquee,’ I said.

  ‘Father Neil, d’you think the Almighty God is hoarding up rain to pour it over our Bazaar? Has He not better things to do with His eternity than play practical jokes on a good sinful man with a white collar?’