Bless Me Again, Father

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Ireland gave Irishmen to fight and die for freedom,’ Fr Duddleswell returned angrily. ‘Do not forget that, you foreign buck.’

  There was a lull in the conversation.

  Frank said, bravely, it seemed to me, ‘I reckon this whole goddam place could do with a bomb under it.’

  He was a prophet. Within days, his prophecy came true.

  Children from St Jude’s primary school were playing on a bomb-site next to Tipton Hall, a mere sixty yards from the presbytery. Two of them came to me at dusk to tell me they had uncovered something unusual.

  To please them, I went along to investigate. Sticking out of the debris was the fin-like end of what was surely a bomb.

  ‘What is it?’ the children wanted to know.

  I didn’t want to commit myself or cause a panic. I warned them to stop playing on the site and go home.

  When I reported to Fr Duddleswell what I had seen, he laughed in a rollicking way.

  ‘So ’tis a bomb, is it, lad? I will come and see.’

  He took one look at the rusty fin and exclaimed, ‘D’you know what this is, lad? ’Tis a bloody bomb. Fortunately, only a hundred pounder.’

  We hurried to the police station. In the Victorian Portico we ran into Dr Daley. He had been on duty examining a suspect drunk.

  ‘’Tis not V.E. day yet awhile, Donal.’

  ‘Are you out of your tiny mind, Charles?’ Dr Daley said, good-naturedly.

  ‘Follow,’ Fr Duddleswell said. The Doctor did an about turn and joined us at Sergeant O’Hara’s desk.

  We informed the sergeant of our find. He opened his big ledger and proceeded to take down details. Afterwards he said, ‘I’ll get on to the Royal Engineers first thing in the morning, Father.’

  ‘What is that I hear, Paddy? What if the blessed thing goes bang tonight?’

  ‘It’s ten years old, isn’t that so? Hardly likely to go off just to please us, Father. I’ll get a couple of the lads to rope off the area until first light.’

  Frank Strood was not happy about bedding down so close to an unexploded bomb, even a small one.

  In the morning, it was obvious to me he hadn’t slept a wink. He had baggy eyes and a lined face. So had I.

  Fr Duddleswell, on the contrary, was in high spirits. At last, he conveyed to us, a Yank has an opportunity to share something of the Battle of Britain.

  Mrs Pring served a scanty breakfast, wearing a sweater and green slacks. Around her head was a silk scarf.

  ‘My war outfit,’ she explained.

  Fr Duddleswell must have had a word with Billy Buzzle. I saw him in his yard after breakfast using a stirrup pump to empty the water out of his Anderson shelter. He kept the shelter because, he claimed, the sides of it produced the best marrows in all England.

  ‘What are you up to, Billy?’

  ‘Drying it out for the Yank, Father Neil. He may want to billet down there when the sappers arrive.’

  First to arrive, in fact, was the fire-brigade. They cordoned off the area while two police cars with loudspeakers warned the residents to keep a safe distance from the bomb-site.

  Eventually, a major from the Royal Engineers drove up in a jeep with two N.C.O.s.

  From my bedroom I had a grandstand view of them carrying out preliminary investigations. When they got down to the more serious stuff, I retired downstairs.

  A policeman appeared at the front door, urging us to leave the area for a few hours.

  ‘Listen here,’ Fr Duddleswell told him, ‘I refuse to leave me abode to please the shades of Adolf Hitler.’

  The rest of us said the same.

  An hour later, word arrived that the sappers could do nothing with the bomb. It was rusted into its surrounds. They had settled for a controlled explosion at 2 p.m.

  At 1.45, after a cold buffet lunch, Fr Duddleswell pressed Frank through the back door and invited him to take refuge in Billy’s Anderson shelter.

  ‘What’re the rest of you going to do?’

  ‘We are used to this sort of thing,’ Fr Duddleswell replied. ‘Hope ’tis not too damp for you down there.’

  From the darkness came a muffled, ‘It’s not too bad, I guess.’

  Fr Duddleswell handed him a gas mask.

  ‘What’s this for, Father?’

  ‘In case the bomb should fracture a gas main. Incidentally, stay put till I tell you ’tis all clear, understand?’

  In full view of our American visitor, he proceeded to pick plums off the trees.

  ‘What a grand crop,’ he called out to Mrs Pring. ‘I have not seen the like since ’39. God, didn’t we make a power of jam that year.’

  Mrs Pring went round the house, opening all the windows. At 1.55 the siren sounded.

  ‘Listen to that banshee hollering at us again,’ Fr Duddleswell exclaimed delightedly, as he opened the door to Dr Daley. He, too, was keen to revive the Dunkirk spirit.

  With whistles being blown in all the streets around, Fr Duddleswell scampered into church and rang the bell. Hitler was not going to silence our church bell again. He returned to the house and switched on the lights.

  ‘What’s that for?’ asked Billy Buzzle, who had brought his dog along for old times’ sake.

  ‘I am not wanting that damned little Corporal to put out all the lights of Europe for a second time.’

  We gathered in Fr Duddleswell’s study. Billy was in his best Italian suit, black with charcoal stripes. The shoulders were broad, as if a coat hanger was still inside the jacket.

  The desk had been placed on its side to give us some protection from the blast. At precisely 2 p.m., we all lay on the floor together.

  After five minutes of uncanny silence, there was a crack followed by a muffled explosion. It scarcely rattled the windows. We all giggled with relief and made funny remarks.

  Fr Duddleswell was first to jump to his feet. He stood at the window and peered out.

  ‘Let us hope and pray the Yank was not frightened to death,’ he cried.

  Then it happened. An explosion louder than anything I had heard during the war.

  The whole house shook, ceilings caved in, light shades and bulbs shattered, sprinkling glass fragments everywhere. The window frame was blown out of its cement casing and fell inwards in the direction of Fr Duddleswell.

  When we pondered it later, we agreed that he was saved by a miracle that Moses would have envied. The entire frame was dislodged and yet not one pane of glass was smashed. He was lucky not to have been cut to pieces.

  Flung backwards by the blast, he landed on top of a baying Pontius.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ Dr Daley said soothingly. ‘His Reverence has been thrown over like the moon on its back.’

  Fr Duddleswell soon recovered his breath and sprang to his feet. He stood in front of the gaping hole in the wall and, with horny fist held high, kept roaring, ‘Bloody Adolf. Bloody Adolf,’ as if the Führer were alive still and personally responsible for what had befallen us.

  It emerged later that the small bomb had detonated a five-hundred pounder buried in the same plot. This was what had done all the damage.

  Tipton Hall was completely demolished. Of the nearby houses, ours was the most badly knocked about. The blast had been funnelled in between bombed-out buildings and hit us broadside. Billy’s place next door only lost a few windows.

  Fr Duddleswell scoured the neighbourhood with Dr Daley to make sure no one was hurt.

  When they returned, they joined Billy, me and Mrs Pring for a strong cup of tea.

  Only then did we remember Frank Strood.

  We found him in the dug-out, white and shaken, with blood streaming from a gash in his forehead.

  ‘My God!’ was all he could say, as I hoisted him up.

  He had been climbing out of the shelter when the blast threw him against the sharp edge of the entrance. He was unable to say how long he had been out cold.

  Fr Duddleswell was deeply concerned about Frank and insisted on helping me carry him into the house where
Dr Daley bound up the wound.

  ‘Slight concussion,’ the Doctor said. ‘He’ll be all right in a day or so.’

  With Frank fixed up, Fr Duddleswell started expressing concern about the Blessed Sacrament.

  ‘Forget it, Father,’ Frank said. ‘The Lord’s in no danger. Anyway, He can handle it.’

  Fr Duddleswell did not agree with these liberal views. Frank and I followed him to the sacristy where he put on a cotta and stole and marched out to the high altar to remove the Blessed Sacrament to a place of safety.

  Seeing the east window blown in and debris everywhere, Frank said, ‘He’s a real crazy guy.’

  Crazy or not, I couldn’t let my parish priest go it alone. I slipped into a cotta and rushed after him to the sanctuary. We genuflected piously, took the Benediction Host and the ciborium out of the tabernacle and, crunching glass underfoot, made our way back to the sacristy.

  Fr Duddleswell had no sooner passed the life-size statue of the Sacred Heart than it keeled over and crashed to the ground. A second earlier and ft would have brained him. What a headline for the Catholic papers: ‘Parish Priest Killed By The Sacred Heart.’

  Minutes later, Mother Stephen was on the scene, leading a troop of nuns armed with mops, brooms and dusters.

  ‘You are still alive, Fr Duddleswell,’ she said haughtily.

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me, Mother?’

  ‘Neither. Merely voicing aloud my grievance to the Almighty.’

  The nuns set to, cleaning and tidying up.

  Meanwhile, Major Timmins, who owned half of Wiltshire, and the generous but deaf Lord Mitchin arrived.

  ‘You have caught a packet, haven’t you?’ the Major declared.

  Lord Mitchin tapped the Major on the elbow. ‘Major, they have caught a packet, haven’t they?’

  Together, they made an inventory of our losses, promising financial aid for replacements.

  In the general mêlée, Frank opened the door to Mr Fingelstein. ‘Have you come for confession?’ Frank asked, seeing the somewhat furtive look on the visitor’s face.

  Mr Fingelstein introduced himself to Frank as the local Jewish tailor. He insisted on measuring all three of us for a new cassock, free of charge.

  Fr Duddleswell pointed to his cassock. ‘This soup stain here was, indubitably caused by that blessèd bomb.’

  After that episode, he wrote out a big notice, ‘Open As Usual’, and pasted it on the front door.

  Throughout that day and the next, people of all persuasions and none came in a constant stream, armed often with the tools of the building trade. Reticent, even slothful by nature, they were responding in the best British tradition to a crisis. Something else was clear to Frank and me: whatever they thought of his peculiar brand of religion, the community was repaying Fr Duddleswell for the magnificent work he had put in during the war years and which was still fresh in people’s minds.

  The window frame was put back and cemented in, the ceilings were plastered, shattered window panes replaced. Things that had needed mending for years were attended to. We had new wiring in the kitchen and the ballcock in the bathroom lavatory was replaced. As to the wallpaper, St Jude’s had seen nothing like it since 1939.

  Fr Duddleswell, always one for saying that God brings good out of evil, began to think the bomb was the best thing to happen to the parish in years.

  Kindly parishioners brought us more food than we could eat in a month. Even Bottesford, the chiseling undertaker, showed his face. He handed Mrs Pring his hat.

  ‘Careful with that, madam,’ he said. ‘It’s got a rabbit in it.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Mrs Pring said, thinking it was a joke.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. He pulled a rabbit out by the ears and handed it to me.

  A couple of nights later, we were having a hot drink in Fr Duddleswell’s study, now as bright as a new pin.

  ‘Ah,’ he said ‘it makes you proud to be…one of them.’

  He obviously couldn’t bring himself to say ‘British’ but Mrs Pring saw the implication.

  ‘I’ll do your hair up tonight,’ she said, touching his bald head, ‘in red, white and blue ribbons.’

  When Frank Strood left next day, he almost swallowed Fr Duddleswell in a huge embrace.

  ‘See you, buddy,’ he said. ‘Hopefully not too soon.’

  ‘Keep the faith, Yank,’ Fr Duddleswell replied with a matching grin. ‘What you have left.’

  On the way to the bus stop, Frank admitted to me he had a view of pastoral life in England he never even imagined before his visit to St Jude’s.

  ‘As to that pastor of yours…’ he said, out of the corner of his mouth, though there was no one in sight.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s real crazy, I tell you. But I reckon if he put his mind to it he could walk on water.’

  15 After the Bomb

  An early autumn evening. Brilliant, warm sunshine was flooding Fr Duddleswell’s room. Why waste it playing cards and breathing in cigarette smoke thick as a Highland mist?

  I had been roped in to partner Fr Duddleswell at cards against Dr Daley and Canon Mahoney. Soon the ordeal would be over and I could take a walk before turning in.

  Dr Daley, shielding his last card, lifted his head like a giraffe on the look-out for leaves. ‘Now who has the last trump?’

  Canon Mahoney put both hands around his mouth and, with his big front yellow tooth much in evidence, gave a loud bugle call.

  Fr Duddleswell stared at him. ‘What in heaven’s name is that, Seamus?’

  ‘The last trump,’ Canon Mahoney replied triumphantly. ‘I have it myself.’

  A shower of cards fell, leaving the Canon’s victorious trump on top.

  ‘We’ve won,’ Dr Daley declared.

  Fr Duddleswell, who never missed a post-mortem on a dead hand, glowered at me. ‘You should not have led off with a heart, Father Neil.’

  ‘How was I to know?’

  ‘I trod on your foot, did I not?’

  Dr Daley slapped the table mischievously. ‘That was my foot, Charles.’

  ‘Donal, you cheated me.’

  ‘As always,’ Canon Mahoney said, blowing smoke over him, ‘you’re a bad little loser, Charlie.’

  ‘He’s worse when he wins, Canon,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway, what’s our prize?’ Dr Daley asked, eyeing the drinks cupboard.

  ‘Ten Hail Marys, spread over a month of Sundays.’

  ‘Say them for us,’ the Canon said, ‘when you’re in a more devout frame of mind.’

  ‘To show I harbour no ill-will,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘I will sell you all a drink.’ To me: ‘Be barman, lad.’

  Before I could move, Mrs Pring burst in. ‘Father,’ she spluttered, ‘there’s something very wrong with the church.’

  ‘What is the matter with it, woman? Is it on fire?’

  ‘It’s making a funny noise.’

  We all laughed merrily, wondering what she meant.

  ‘It’s creaking something awful,’ she insisted.

  We accompanied her into the locked, sunlit, peaceful-looking church. Not a sound.

  ‘Listen,’ Mrs Pring said.

  We listened. Still nothing.

  We knelt to say a prayer and were about to leave when we heard a great rumbling in the rafters above the sanctuary. It lasted about ten seconds. Then silence again.

  Fr Duddleswell asked the Canon to interpret. What d’you think, Seamus?’

  He shrugged. ‘There’s no wind to speak of. Perhaps the good Lord is trying to say something to you, Charlie.’

  A minute later, a crack like a pistol shot, followed by a kind of racking cough and more rumblings.

  Dr Daley’s suggestion was considered most probable. The bomb which had demolished Tipton Hall and damaged the presbytery had dislodged a plank or two in the church roof.

  A surveyor came the next morning. He said that a main beam had shifted and the church could not possibly be used by the public until it was re
medied.

  ‘How long?’ Fr Duddleswell was keen to know.

  ‘A month,’ was the reply. ‘If you’re very lucky, that is.’

  Fr Duddleswell was more furious than ever with Adolf Hitler, especially for putting a question mark against the principle that God always brings good out of evil.

  St Jude’s was locked up and during the week we had to celebrate Mass privately in the sacristy.

  ‘Like the bloody catacombs all over again,’ was Fr Duddleswell’s verdict.

  Scaffolding was put up in the church and the roof shored up until the full extent of the damage could be assessed.

  Mr Probble, the Anglican Vicar, offered to let us use his church on Sundays in between his own services. Fr Duddleswell politely refused. He was touched by the offer but, he told me, he could not in all conscience celebrate holy Mass on unhallowed ground. Besides, some of his flock were what he called ‘soupers and jumpers’. Others might get the idea that he was wanting them to fraternize with Protestants.

  We examined the possibility of using the school gymnasium, or even the bar of the Pig and Whistle. Neither of these places was large enough for our purpose.

  In the meanwhile, we were losing our best trade of the week. While we celebrated private Masses, our parishioners swelled the congregation and the coffers of Monsignor Clarke’s church next door.

  With time on our hands, we decide to catch up on parish statistics that were long overdue. It was the morning after a sherry party at the Vicarage to which, by good fortune, I had not been invited.

  Fr Duddleswell shoved a big ledger across his desk in my direction. ‘You add up last year’s baptisms, lad.’

  ‘You’re counting the marriages?’

  He nodded. ‘The Bishop is wanting the figures in a desperate hurry.’

  ‘How was the sherry party last night?’

  He paused in his calculations. ‘Just talking to Protestants is enough to put you off religion altogether.’

  ‘Make any converts? The Vicar, for instance?’

  ‘I did not. Mother Stephen was there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘How can you convert anyone to Catholicism with Mother Stephen on display? Me own faith is tested sore hard enough by that one.’ He scowled at the book in front of him. ‘Dear Lord, two mixed marriages on the first page.’