by Neil Boyd
‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Very good, indeed.’
It took a few seconds for it to dawn on me that my stock response to Mrs Rollings was, in this instance, inappropriate.
When I had received her into the Church the previous Christmas I congratulated myself on being rid of her at last. I had forgotten that she needed further instruction before being confirmed.
Having woken up from my reverie, I said, ‘Pardon me, but did I hear you say …’
Mrs Rollings, mother of twins, was the baker’s wife. Fr Duddleswell maintained that Wilf had married her to save money. ‘The wind from her mouth would grind corn, y’see.’
She sat on the edge of her chair, nervy as always, and nodded glumly.
‘Tell me, please,’ I said, ‘why have you made a point of being a sinner?’
‘Well, according to you, Jesus didn’t come for good people, only sinners.’
‘That’s true.’
‘You also stressed, Father, that the nicest prayer in the Gospel is when the tax collector said, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.’
‘I didn’t mean you had to make a special effort to be a sinner,’ I said. ‘It comes easy to most people.’
My convert drew in her pointed chin so that it almost vanished. ‘Not to me, Father. You remember when I was received, you advised me to go regularly to confession?’
‘Yes. Every couple of weeks, if you can make it.’
‘That’s right. So every fortnight I examine my conscience with a toothcomb. I run through all Ten Commandments and I’ve never broken a single one.’
‘Very good,’ I repeated professionally.
‘I don’t worship idols. I go to Mass on Sundays and holy days. My mum and dad are dead so I can’t dishonour them. I don’t kill people and I don’t tell lies. Well, only fibs. I don’t steal or commit adultery.’
‘What do you do, then?’
Nothing.’
I was blinded by Mrs Rollings’ shining innocence and had no idea what this was leading to. Did she expect me to find her opportunities to sin?
‘I’m a bad Catholic, Father. I can’t honestly believe I’m a sinner.’
‘Don’t say that, Mrs Rollings.’
She fixed me with her pinhead eyes before slowly declaring, ‘I shall have to leave the Church, shan’t I? I’m not fully qualified.’
While this prospect did not dampen my spirits in the least, I felt there must be a flaw in her argument somewhere.
Fr Duddleswell entered my room at that moment. Seeing who my visitor was, he came and went in one circular movement, muttering, ‘I see you have your hands full and overflowing.’
I called him back as a matter of urgency. ‘Mrs Rollings has an interesting problem, Father.’
‘Indeed?’ he said, a bubble of boredom appearing in his left cheek. It was he who had handed her over to me in the first place, and he knew what he was doing.
‘I feel terribly guilty,’ Mrs Rollings explained, because I’m not a sinner.’
‘Is that so?’ A twinkle came into Fr Duddleswell’s eyes. ’You must have a conscience tender as a tin can.’
‘I take hours preparing for my confession. In the end, I invent sins so I have something to say. I’m making myself and all my family miserable.’
‘That is a terrible sin, Mrs Rollings.’
She looked at him, glass eyed. ‘What is?’
‘Making your family’s life a misery.’
For the first time that afternoon, Mrs Rollings cheered up. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘And if, instead of examining your own conscience, you let Wilf and the boys do it for you, you will have plenty of material for confession.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘And how much did you put in the collecting plate last Sunday?’
‘Two shillings, Father.’
‘You spend how much on cigarettes each week?’
Mrs Rollings inclined her head. ‘About four.’
‘Four.’ Fr Duddleswell had moved behind Mrs Rollings’ back. In jest, he took out his rosary and, for my benefit, pretended it was a noose with which he intended to hand her. ‘Did you tell that in your last confession?’
She shook her head.
‘You are twice as fond of fags as of Holy Mother Church and you have to invent sins?’
‘I never thought of that, Father.’
Fr Duddleswell put his rosary away and came round to face her. ‘And what, me dear, were you saying when you left the church after last Sunday’s Mass?’
‘I don’t remember, Father.’
‘Is that the truth, now?’
‘No, Father, it’s a fib.’
‘A fib is a lying word for a lie, is that not so?’
She admitted it was.
‘Be sure to tell that in confession, too,’ he said, in a brisk professional tone. ‘And by the way, what did you say as you left church?’
Mrs Rollings blushed. ‘I told my Wilf that the preacher was talking absolute bilge.’
‘Who was the preacher that day?’
‘You, Father.’
By the time Fr Duddleswell left, Mrs Rollings was convinced that she had an untapped reservoir of sins.
That week, I acquired a second candidate for confirmation: Mr Williams.
Freddie, the director of the Co-op funeral services in Fairwater, had lately lost his wife to a rival independent undertaker, Mr Bottesford.
Freddie was over the moon. His marriage had been a well-publicized disaster. Since the break-up, he had teamed up with a Catholic widow, Edith Frame, who was not only plush but pretty, too.
I had a private word with Mrs Rollings, explaining that we had an addition to the class.
‘I had no idea Mr Williams was a Catholic, Father.’
I told her he had kept it dark, chiefly because his marriage to Doris had taken place in an Anglican church.
‘So he was living in sin all those years, was he?’
Mrs Rollings did not say it with malice. She was merely checking up on Freddie’s credentials as a Catholic.
Freddie, I said, was free in the eyes of the Church to marry Mrs Frame as soon as he divorced Doris for desertion and the etceteras.
Fr Duddleswell had suggested I tell Mrs Rollings all this as a big secret. That way, Freddie’s canonical position would be broadcast throughout the parish.
Freddie and Mrs Rollings clashed at every level. In their attitude to religion, in particular, they could not have been more dissimilar.
Mrs Rollings questioned everything I taught her, whereas Freddie made it plain from the start that if the Pope said you could spread the Holy Ghost on a slice of bread that was good enough for him.
I explained that the Spirit came upon Jesus at the River Jordan in the form of a dove. Mrs Rollings wanted to know how God could possibly look like a dove. Freddie, on the other hand, was convinced that God could turn Himself into a parrot if Pius XII said so.
They had equally fierce arguments about the wind and ‘the fire which brought a new kind of love to the world at Whitsuntide.
In the end, I simply sat in silence, leaving them to fight it out between themselves.
Freddie, freed from Doris’s tyrannical influence and left blissfully alone in the family home, became a model Catholic. He returned to the sacraments which he had last received as a child. In his spare time, he helped out in the sacristy, folding the vestments away and generally keeping the place tidy. He turned up at Mass twice on Sundays in the company of his widow friend.
It was quite something to see him drive up in his Morris Oxford, jump out and open the door for her.
As Fr Duddleswell observed, ‘If ever a man opens a car door for a woman, Father Neil, ’tis either because he has a new woman or a new car.’
Freddie even played the organ at Benediction whenever Mrs Perkins was not available. The noise was frightful but when I glanced up at the organ loft, there he was, a beatific smile on his long face, while Mrs
Frame turned the pages for him.
When Freddie joined the Legion of Mary, Mrs Betty Ryder, who had been President for three years, resigned. That was something else I chalked up in his favour.
In other ways as well, he blossomed. Outside working hours, he discarded his usual suit of solemn black and started wearing sports clothes. He took up smoking and word was that he went occasionally to the local for a jar, a game of darts and a sing-song.
Eddie McEvoy, a Co-op pallbearer, whispered to me once after Mass that Freddie’s lords and masters at the funeral parlour were not pleased with him. He was no longer the establishment figure they had come to rely on. They felt that Freddie himself, like his marriage, was going to pieces.
When Freddie invited me to lunch at a local hotel I couldn’t refuse. A thanksgiving gesture for my support, he said. By ‘support’ he meant my part in inadvertently breaking up his marriage.
‘I didn’t have to go in the Forces during the war, you know, Father.’
We were at the dessert stage of the meal.
‘Is that so, Mr Williams?’
‘Funeral directors were exempt from hostilities. Like clergymen. But I volunteered.’ He filled his mouth with cherry pie. ‘I was a coward, you see.’
‘You mean you really joined up to get away from—’
He held up his hand like a policeman on traffic duty to prevent me speaking Doris’ name. ‘The war did have one advantage. It helped take my mind off her for a bit. Mind you, I was always patriotic’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I always stood up in the cinema for the National Anthem and I’m very fond of English roses.’
‘Wasn’t … she,’ I studiously avoided the name,‘wasn’t she proud of you for enlisting?’
‘She was furious. Understandable with the Blitz on. She said, “All that beautiful business going to waste, Frederick, and you have to desert into the army.”’ Freddie turned pensive. ‘But there’s other things than making a good living, aren’t there, Father?’
I said I agreed wholeheartedly with that.
‘I was dead keen to join the Grenadier Guards. I always had a hankering for those big bushy hats. Like my topper, really. Besides, I’m tall and I always keep my shoes bright and shiny.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘How kind of you to say so. Another thing, about wanting to get in the Guards, I do a pretty good death march.’
‘They didn’t accept you?’
‘My bunions let me down, didn’t they?’ He drew a foot out from under the table and surveyed it in a moody way. ‘That and the fact that I couldn’t answer a single question they asked me.’
‘So you joined the Army Catering Corps.’
‘That began as a joke. The sergeant said to me, “What were you in Civvie Street?” and I said to him, “A henpecked husband.”’
‘Nice pie, this.’
‘They thought I’d had lots of experience in the kitchen already, you see.’ Freddie reflected for a moment. ‘I suppose I had really.’
‘You went on a course?’
‘Three,’ he said, as he signalled the waitress to pour the coffee.
‘You must have ended up as a Master Cook, Mr Williams.’
‘Not really. What happened was, I failed the basic course three times. That’s why I was detailed to burn and bury the cookhouse rubbish.’
So Freddie’s war-time service was not unlike his job in Civvie street.
‘That’s how I served King and country all those years. Carting off rubbish and peeling spuds. Not one day’s leave, either.’
‘Must’ve been awful,’ I said.
Freddie dropped his coffee spoon in surprise. ‘Oh? What gave you that impression?’
I shrugged. ‘Just a guess.’
‘Happiest time of my life. Till now, I mean.’
‘It sounds relaxing, Mr Williams. Go anywhere interesting?’
‘Yes. I was stationed at Aldershot all the time. Of course, I wrote her postcards and got pals to send them from Benghazi, Burma and Anzio, dreadful places like that.’
‘Not all on the same day, I hope.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference,’ he said, with a slow wave of his hand.
‘Why not?’
‘I signed them so there was no danger of her reading them.’
‘That was sensible,’ I said.
‘You won’t believe this, Father, but I was very popular in Aldershot.’
‘I’m sure. Any particular reason?’
‘I gave all my weekend passes away.’
I drained my coffee cup in one gulp. ‘I suppose you were a bit sorry when the war was over.’
‘Oh, no,’ Freddie said. ‘The killing stopped, didn’t it? and I was able to go back to my real love, burying the dead.’
‘What about, um, her?’
‘I was always faithful to her. Even though I knew, as a Catholic, she wasn’t really my wife.’
‘Naturally. Your being faithful, I mean.’
‘What I’m saying is, when I went in the Forces she kept my civilian ration book going. And I didn’t split on her or anything.’
‘That was very generous of you.’
‘It didn’t do any good, though. Not to us. He lifted his cup with a flourish and quaffed the contents as though they were the dregs of a misery now over. ‘I remember the night I was demobbed.’
‘Yes?’
‘I came home after a whole wartime away and guess what?’
I chose the most improbable thing I could think of. ‘She made you cook the supper.’
‘Did she tell you?’
I shook my head to show there had been no complicity. ‘How did she react? To your cooking?’
‘She took one mouthful, pushed it away and said, “You did that on purpose, Frederick.”’
We stood up and I said Grace. After which, I made a token gesture of putting my hand in my pocket.
‘Can I help you with—?’
‘I wasn’t expecting that, Father,’ Freddie said, taking out his wallet. ‘I invited you, didn’t I? But if you insist on paying your share, what can I do?’
Freddie came early to the next instruction in a panic.
‘Disaster, Father,’ he managed to splutter, flagging a letter.
‘The sack, Mr Williams? Have you got the sack?’
He was trembling from head to toe. ‘Worse, much worse. She wants to come back to me.’
‘Tough,’ I said.
‘Advise me, please.’
What was I to say? Freddie wasn’t married to Doris, except in law. The whole parish knew as a result of Mrs Rollings’ bulletins that the Church did not recognize their marriage. Freddie couldn’t go back to her.
All the same, Freddie had been Doris’s partner for a quarter of a century.
‘You can’t turn her out,’ I concluded.
‘I know, Father. It’s her house.’
‘Is it?’
‘Her dad left it her in his will, the old so and so.’
Poor Freddie, he could already visualize himself either capitulating to Doris or being thrown out on the street.
‘Bottesford’s an absolute wash-out,’ he moaned. ‘I was relying on him to make her happy.’
‘Did you think he would?’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It wasn’t really on. But he could have stuck it out a bit longer. I had to.
Next morning, I received an unexpected visit from Doris herself.
‘I knew I could rely on you as a friend,’ she said, as she sank into my armchair, nearly breaking the springs.
Thinking back to how Doris had used my Family Group to have an affair with Bottesford, I didn’t take the pledge of friendship too seriously.
‘Bottesford’s a horrible man,’ she complained.
The world and his dog knew that long ago. I said politely, ‘In what way, Mrs Williams?’
‘He’s mean, he’s unfaithful, he’s dirty in his habits, he drinks too much, he deals all the time on the black
market, he’s a terrible undertaker.’ She paused. ‘Shall I go on? I could, you know.’
I said I had got the general picture. ‘But there is a little problem.’
Her eyebrows shot up like a pair of perfectly synchronized roller blinds.
‘Mrs Williams,’ I said, ‘in the eyes of the Church, Mr Williams is not your husband.’
I explained that, as a Catholic, he should have been married by a priest.
‘I’ll become a Catholic,’ Doris burst out. ‘Anything to get my Frederick back.’
She would, she implied, be inoculated against diphtheria if it would help.
‘He was always so reliable. A real treasure, my Frederick.’
‘Perhaps,’ I ventured to say, ‘he’s a different man now.’
‘I’ll get him back to normal in no time at all.’ Her voice turned smooth. ‘Father, you will have a word with him.’
Seeing I wasn’t making any promises, she heaved herself out of the chair and marched like an army to the door.
‘I’m going back to him. Even if I have to knock a wall down.’
I knew she wasn’t boasting.
I sat in my study for half an hour, praying without a hope of being heard for Freddie’s future, when I thought I had better show willing. I wheeled out my bicycle and set off for the William’s house.
I hadn’t traveled far when, by a sixth sense, I realized I was being followed. Over my shoulder, I saw a big fellow on a bike. He wore a cap back to front, motorcycle goggles, an enormous green cardigan, in spite of the warm day, knee breeches and Alpine socks.
I stopped at the traffic lights. My shadow stopped next to me.
‘Would you hear my confession, Father?’ It was Bottesford.
‘At the traffic lights?’
‘No, Father. I’d prefer it while we’re riding around.’
I told him he would have to accompany me to St Jude’s and kneel inside the box, as normal.
‘Can’t, Father. That’d blow my cover. And it’s urgent, honest.’
It went against my code of conduct to refuse to hear a penitent’s confession.
While we cycled aimlessly round the neighbourhood, he confessed what was by now public knowledge; his relationship with Doris Williams. I felt like reprimanding him less for his fault than for his utter folly.
I raised my hand to give him absolution in the usual way. A crazy thing to do. The front wheel wobbled and I nearly went under a double-decker bus.
