Bless Me Again, Father

by Neil Boyd

  His appetite matched his stature. ‘There is a time for fasting and a time for feasting,’ he said, as he worked his way steadily through piles of potatoes and, later, apple pie.

  ‘I should have been born a camel,’ he quipped. ‘I have three stomachs.’

  Fr Duddleswell and Mrs Pring were won over by the visitor as effortlessly as I was. So warm and expansive was his personality that he put no break on our normal manner of conversation. In advance of his coming we feared he would.

  Fr Duddleswell said to Mrs Pring:

  ‘The Bishop has been kind enough to commend your apple pie. I will write a ballad about it and circulate it round the parish.’

  ‘Take no notice of him, Father,’ she said to the Bishop. ‘His Irish nose is out of joint because I for one will never “hurray” to his “hip-hip”.’

  The Bishop roared with laughter and before his belly had subsided, a massive hand was holding out his dessert plate for another slice of apple pie.

  When the meal was over, Fr Duddleswell took me aside. ‘He is a real human being, that one. To be perfectly honest with you, lad, I never believed any bishop could be so wonderfully kind.’

  On Friday morning, I awoke at four. There was a frightful racket and the floorboards were quaking. It reminded me of the time during the war when a flying bomb passed about twenty feet above our house. The vibrations it caused made everything, even the walls, jump up and down.

  I opened my bedroom door and peered across the landing. From the spare room, the door of which was half-open, protruded a pair of brown feet and pyjamaed legs. The Bishop must have found his bed too small for him. He had placed his mattress on the floor and was making do as best he could. How he managed to sleep through his own snoring was a mystery.

  ‘My godfathers,’ Fr Duddleswell said to me later, ‘your man has two feet on him like the Colossus of Rhodes.’

  We both assisted the Bishop at ten o’clock Mass. It was a private affair, for which I thanked God because it was pure pantomime.

  First of all, the vestments did not fit him. As soon as he put on our largest alb, it split down the middle. The cincture hardly went round his middle and he had to tie a makeshift knot. The Roman chasuble was wide at the top and went over his head all right but it only reached the base of his spine. He looked like an enormous turtle that has outgrown its shell.

  The Bishop did not mind. He greeted every apology we made for the inadequacy of our Mass equipment with a huge guffaw.

  ‘I still look better dressed than Jesus on His cross, do I not?’

  His enunciation of the Latin of the Mass was fast and practically incoherent. He had barely swallowed the ending of one word when he started chewing the next—and all in a high, sing-song voice as he rocked to and fro on those boat-like feet. His gestures were so expansive that when he said Pax vobis and stretched out his hands, Fr Duddleswell and I had to step smartly aside to avoid having our heads knocked off.

  The two Miss Flanagans had somehow got wind of the Bishop’s visit. They came to the sacristy after Mass.

  ‘My Lord,’ Maura Flanagan, the elder, said, ‘would you mind blessing my rosary for me?’

  ‘Certainly,’ the Bishop boomed back. ‘Hand it to me.’

  Perhaps Maura was not expecting such a volume of sound from an episcopal throat. She slipped and the rosary became entangled in the crocheted part of the Bishop’s surplice. There Maura hung, like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

  ‘Will you let go, Miss Flanagan,’ Fr Duddleswell said.

  Maura was too flustered to hear him. She went on pulling in an attempt to retrieve her precious rosary. The junior Miss Flanagan tugged her from behind and together they almost dragged the Bishop off his feet.

  When, finally, the three of them were sorted out, there was a big tear in the Bishop’s surplice.

  Far from being angry, Bishop Martinez praised them. ‘My dear ladies, for your devotion to the Mother of God, I will grant you an extra special Indulgence for your rosary.’

  He blessed it and sent them away blushing but content.

  On the way into the house, he said, ‘Tell Mrs Pring to saddle a needle for me and I’ll stitch the alb for you after breakfast—’ and he meant it. ‘Now, Father Neil, lead me to the food. My belly is making a noise worse than a steel band.’

  The meals were great fun. The Bishop capped every remark of ours either with a quote from Scripture, enormous passages of which he knew by heart, or with a proverb or anecdote not always apposite.

  The conversation turned once to Bill Archer, a character in our parish who spent his days in the pub and sent his wife out to work.

  ‘’Tis a scandal,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘depending on that wife of his for everything.’

  ‘Father Charles,’ the Bishop said, in his high, quacky voice, ‘I remember when I was in London two years ago. I was looking up Johnny, a former parishioner of mine, and a lazy bounder he was. He expected his brother-in-law to pay for his shoeshine.’ He paused. ‘Would you pass the potatoes, please.’

  I obliged.

  ‘Did I tell you it was winter? Well, it was winter and I eventually found him in a tenement block. Five shillings he was paying each week to sleep in a verminous corridor. When I caught up with him, Johnny had been laying there for six days. Nothing to eat and only a sack over him. He’d caught ’flu and couldn’t shake it off. “Take my boot off, Bish,” he said, “I can’t feel nothin’ in that left foot.”’

  He paused again and eyed us hungrily. ‘Either of you want more potatoes?’

  We indicated no and he emptied the dish with one scoop.

  ‘Like a fool I took off his boot and sock, didn’t I? and pulled off two toes with them. He’d got frost-bite, you see. I called an ambulance and the doctor at the hospital said Johnny was gangrened and wanted to slice his leg off below the knee. There and then. “No, no,” Johnny said. “I ain’t no chair, doc, I want my legs the same size.” And he wouldn’t let them use no saw or hatchet on him.’

  ‘What happened?’ I said. ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Only his two toes. I gave them a Christian burial, too. Johnny’s leg went smooth as ebony but he got okay. Now, what was the point of all this?’

  We couldn’t help him there.

  ‘Ah, yes, I remember. I said to Johnny one day, “Johnny, why do you let your brother-in-law do everything for you? Why don’t you become more independent?” Johnny rolled his eyes in wonder as if he’d never heard anything like that before. “Why, Bish,” he said, “ain’t you ashamed of yourself?” “Why so?” His eyes stopped moving all of a sudden as if he had stuck pins in them. “Didn’t you know, Bish,” he said, “that every man in hell is an independent man?”’

  When we expressed admiration at the sentiment, with reservations as far as I was concerned, the Bishop said, ‘Let that be a lesson to you, Fathers. Don’t tell my folks they’ll go to hell if they commit mortal sin. Any place with a fire in don’t frighten them.’

  With that, he held out his plate for Fr Duddleswell to lay on it a couple more sausages.

  No mission ever had a deeper impact on our parish than the Bishop on his brief visit.

  For example, there was a Jamaican couple called James at St Jude’s with two children aged seven and five, neither of whom had been baptized. Fr Duddleswell wondered if the Bishop might sort them out for us.

  ‘When I was in charge of a small but scattered parish, St Hilda’s in the north of the island,’ the Bishop said, taking it as a cue for a story, ‘I used to baptize legitimates on the first Sunday of the month and illegitimates on the other Sundays. After Sunday lunch, I tolled a big bell to make them come.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Ah, but I had a lovely long siesta every first Sunday.’

  He laughed so loudly that Mrs Pring popped her head in the door to make sure no one was hurt.

  ‘Then, Fathers, there was this chappie Ricardo, nice man, but would he marry Sarah Jane? He would not. God knows I tried to get him to. I said to him once, my patien
ce was all frittered, “Ricardo, I’m going to put your marriage right.” “Why, Father,” he says, “what’s wrong with it? Sarah Jane is very good to sleep with, everybody says that.” “But, Ricardo,” I argued with him, “you have six children, don’t you think it’s time for God to bless your union?” “Father,” he says, “I can’t afford God to bless my union no more.”’

  Fr Duddleswell interrupted him to offer him a slice of jam tart. Intent on his story, the Bishop grabbed the tart meant for all three of us, looked at it and sighed:

  ‘It is a lot. But I will try.’

  ‘Do your best,’ Fr Duddleswell said, making a face at me.

  ‘Ricardo was real scared that if he married Sarah Jane he wouldn’t have a hold on her no more. “My ancestors,” Ricardo said, “was slaves and me, I no wanna be one of them.”’

  He poured custard over the jam tart. ‘Now to business,’ he said.

  On Saturday evening, I went with the Bishop to show him where the James family lived in Grove Road.

  We stopped on the way, first at a draper’s shop where he bought a white woollen shawl, then at the off-licence for a bottle of rum.

  As soon as we were inside the James’s house, the Bishop held the shawl out to the mother, ‘For the children’s christening next Sunday.’ The rum was for the father. ‘For the celebrations after.’

  There was no argument about it.

  He took the two boys, Winston and George, on his lap by turns and gave them sound moral instruction in a mixture of English and Creole.

  Winston said, ‘Jaaj no waan go a skuul.’

  ‘Mi git sik,’ George, the five year old, said.

  ‘You study, George,’ the Bishop said, ‘or yu fiel ju egzam.’ He gave them both a big hug and let them play with his ring.

  Not a good idea. The ring slipped out of someone’s hand and rolled down a mouse hole. The Bishop himself had to get on his hands and knees and poke a sausage-like finger in the crevice until he got it back.

  After those exertions, he consumed two pots of tea virtually on his own and six slices of bread and jam.

  Before we left, he taught the boys a Jamaican song about labourers working all night to load the banana boats. The refrain, which he sang in a voice of thunder, went:

  Day oh, day day dah light

  An’ we wan go home.

  His last act was to slip Mr James a five-pound note to liven up the celebrations on the day of the christening.

  ‘There’s no point in arguing with my countrymen,’ the Bishop explained to me, as we walked away. ‘Their brains aren’t made for it. If he had brains he wouldn’t be working as a ticket collector on the London underground. No, they want their boys baptized, but in style, you understand.’

  In the High Street, we came across a fellow known locally as Blondy. He hadn’t a hair on his head or a tooth in his mouth. He wore a greasy yellow raincoat covered by a sandwich board on which was written, back and front, ‘Prepare to Meet thy Doom.’

  Whenever I saw Blondy coming I crossed to the other side of the road to avoid insults and arguments.

  Seeing the Bishop walking towards him, Blondy shouted in a gummy fashion, ‘Call no man “father”. Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 23, verse 6.’

  Immediately the Bishop shouted back, ‘Not even Father Christmas?’

  He roared with laughter and suggested to Blondy that it was not verse 6 but verse 9. Then he gave him half a crown for being such a good chap.

  ‘Thank you very much, Father,’ Blondy said with reverence.

  From that day on, I never had any trouble with Blondy.

  Suddenly, the Bishop decided he needed a haircut. Clem Thomas, the barber, noticing who his next customer was to be, whisked some rubber articles for sale off his shelf to avoid giving offence.

  ‘You should be a Catholic, my man,’ the Bishop told Clem.

  ‘I’ve often thought about it,’ Clem said.

  How the Bishop sensed this I do not know.

  ‘Join Fr Duddleswell’s convert class.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Clem said.

  ‘You won’t be able to sell those rubber goods any more.’

  ‘That’s okay by me,’ Clem said.

  In fact, he did join the convert class and became one of our most devout parishioners.

  After the haircut, he charged the Bishop ninepence, which was only half the minimum price. A generous gesture, considering the Bishop’s hair was as tough as barbed wire.

  No sooner had we left the shop than we humped into Fr Duddleswell who had been to the newsagent for the Evening Standard.

  The Bishop said he needed a new pair of shoes. We arrived at Johnson’s the shoe shop just before closing time.

  It didn’t take long because there was only a limited selection for a man with feet his size. But he came away with a smart pair of lace-ups for forty-two shillings. The shopkeeper wrapped them in brown paper and I carried them for his Lordship.

  A hundred yards from the shop, we were stopped by a one-legged beggar who was sitting on the curb. He smelled strongly of drink. I took the easy way out and offered him a shilling. To my surprise, he refused it.

  ‘You wouldn’t ’ave the price of a pair of shoes, sir?’

  I felt like asking why he wanted a pair. Instead, I said, ‘Sorry, I haven’t.’

  The Bishop butted in. ‘What’s wrong, Father Neil, with the shoes we have?’

  He promptly sat down on the pavement next to the tramp. Shamed by his kindness, we followed suit.

  ‘Mine are far too small for the poor feller,’ Fr Duddleswell said cheerfully.

  I removed my right shoe and the tramp tried it on. It would probably have fitted him had he not been wearing about six socks.

  ‘It pinches ’ere and ’ere,’ he said, pointing.

  Pedestrians who passed us were amazed at the sight of three clerics, one of them a bishop, who seemed to be swopping shoes with a gentleman of the road.

  The Bishop took off his right shoe and handed it to the beggar who, after trying it on, declared it was a perfect fit.

  ‘You are lucky,’ Fr Duddleswell said to the Bishop, ‘that you have a new pair already bought.’

  ‘Never!’ the Bishop cried. He said to the beggar, ‘Give me back that shoe, please.’ Then to me: ‘Give our friend my new pair.’

  Reluctantly, I obeyed. The beggar could not believe his luck. A glossy black pair of shoes the like of which had never come his way before.

  When the four of us were shod, we clerics stood up to say goodbye. The beggar offered us two shoes: his own and the spare glossy one.

  ‘Give it to someone deserving,’ the Bishop said kindly. He gave him his blessing and a half-crown specifically for a pint at the next pub.

  The Bishop asked at every Sunday Mass for prayers and money for his diocese. His appeal was simple and direct. So loud was his voice we had to switch off the microphone. Fr Duddleswell said you could have heard him two miles away without ears.

  His address was full of phrases like ‘it thundered like thunder’ and ‘he trumpeted like a trumpet’ and ‘I had to duck, my dear brethren, just like a duck’. But he was lyrical when he came to speak of his homeland.

  ‘Jamaica’. That was the Arawak Indians’ word for ‘land of wood and water’.

  He was born, he told the congregation, in the north of the Island near Port Maria, in the parish of St Mary.

  He described the blood-red sunrises and Blue Mountain Peak and how, as a boy, he had walked or taken the single-track railway to Montego Bay to watch the bananas being loaded on to the boats.

  He had painful recollections of the hurricane that hit the island and knocked all the houses down when he was seven years old.

  He spoke of the pines on the hills and the plantations and the trees of every kind: banyan and breadfruit, lime and mango, almond and logwood, yellow saunders and satinwood. He could still smell the ginger and the pimento spread out to dry in the sun.

  Encircling everything was the ocean. E
ven on Christmas Day they sang calypsos and carols in Spanish, dressed in their brightest clothes, and, after a five o’clock Mass, went for a bathe in the warm blue sea.

  Above all, he remembered the Christmas dinners of his childhood: chicken, rice, sweet potatoes, apples and avocado pears and sweet mangoes. He lapsed into Creole as his memory moved his heart.

  ‘Di mango, dem swiit,’ he said, dropping his voice for the first and only time.

  His final plea was for us to pray for Jamaican priests for Jamaica. So that his island would not have to rely for ever on Irishmen who spoke English like chickens and did not understand his people at all.

  I heard that same sermon, word for word, five times that Sunday. Each time, it left a warm glow within me. For all the roughness of his phrases and delivery, it seemed to come from the depths of a mighty and loving heart.

  The congregation evidently felt the same because they responded with a mammoth offering of £280.

  12 The Horror is Revealed

  I was no nearer to solving the mystery of Frank Byrne. My latest move had been to send him to a Commissioner for Oaths and swear that he had never been married before.

  Frank went gladly and returned with the Commissioner’s authentication. And my doubts still remained.

  Bishop Martinez had made such a deep impression on me that I made up my mind to ask his advice on the matter. I felt instinctively that if anyone could unravel Frank’s secret it was he.

  Perhaps the Bishop was tired after his five long sermons that day but he listened to my story without intervening except to ask for clarification once or twice.

  ‘When do you expect to see him again, Father Neil?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening, Father.’

  The Bishop was due to leave the next morning. He volunteered to stay an extra day. His idea was to drop into my study when Frank came for his weekly visit, casually ask me a question and, hopefully, engage the young man in conversation. That way, he would be able to judge for himself.

  Julie and Frank had no sooner settled down in my room at six-thirty the next evening than in bounced the Bishop.

  ‘You’re busy, Father Neil,’ he said, as the young couple rose to their feet out of respect. ‘I only wanted to borrow your copy of the Jesus Psalter.’