by Neil Boyd
The front door was already ajar and Fr Duddleswell stood there against the light in dressing gown and slippers. He must have heard the familiar ticking over sound of the taxi. I expected a reprimand for being out after hours, but nothing of the sort. He merely pointed. ‘Quick, up the wooden hill with you, Father Neil. The bathroom is free.’ I left my bicycle in his charge and heaved myself heavenwards.
Ah, such simple, unsung ecstasies. Such blessed relief. Never had life seemed so sweet, so very sweet.
Outside the bathroom Fr Duddleswell was waiting with a bottle of Milk of Magnesia and a dessert spoon. ‘’Tis true what they say, the best things in life are free.’ I went with him into my study. ‘At your age, Father Neil, you have to be more careful that the Jordan does not burst its banks.’
‘She rang, then,’ I said, collapsing into a chair.
‘Who, Miss Davenport?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’ I had swigged three spoonfuls of the medicine before it sank in that Fr Duddleswell knew my plight in some detail without being told.
‘Monsieur le Comte,’ he said.
‘You know about him?’
From his pocket he drew a dog-eared Menu, a replica of the one on the table that evening except it was initialled D.D. and C.D. ‘A Memento, Father Neil.’
‘Charles,’ I exploded.
‘We have all to go through it the once, Father Neil. I did meself and so did me two curates before you. Take your ease and I will tell you about it.’
He had known tonight was the night because of the date, October 13th, the anniversary of Daisy’s final farewell to Henri. The incidents with the pets were part of the usual build up to the banquet.
When I suggested that we should not make fools of ourselves for money, Fr Duddleswell looked hurt.
‘’Tis true, Father Neil, that in a couple of days I will receive a cheque for £500 for the Schools’ Fund as has happened a trinity of times before. But as God is me witness I did it all for Daisy.’
It was news to me that anyone had been involved but myself.
He went on to explain that Miss Davenport had renounced her beloved rather than break up his marriage. She had acted in strict obedience to the Church’s law on marriage and divorce. With her purchasing power she could have bought out any half-baked Frenchman. The meal I had just shared was, in his view, a kind of eucharistic memorial of the last supper when Daisy sacrificed herself for her faith.
‘You believe her story?’ I asked.
‘To speak the truth, I have not the faintest idea whether it happened like that or she imagined it. What matters is that ’tis real for her, you follow?—and the rich are especially worthy of a priest’s consideration.’ He slowly raised his head and dropped it. ‘You see, lad, they cannot take refuge in the ultimate human illusion that money is the cure of every form of ill.’
I nodded, truly sorry for having misjudged both him and Daisy.
‘Never mind, lad,’ he said. ‘St Jude’s is proud of you. You showed by your generous behaviour you are indeed the boy for the place.’
‘One thing, Father,’ I said in a more sober tone, ‘you knew what was in store for me. Why did you let me eat that vast quantity of stodge beforehand?’
‘Well, Father Neil, you had got so fractious over the mere blessing of a canary I thought you might opt out altogether, like. Besides, did I not try to let you off lightly by rationing you to a single sausage?’ He stretched out his podgy hand in fellowship. ‘No hard feelings, lad?’
But this time I could not forgive him. I was lurching back to the bathroom on a far more urgent errand.
III Fr Duddleswell is Drunk in Charge
‘Look at her, Father Neil,’ cried Fr Duddleswell, ‘stifled with fine clothes like the tinker’s wife.’
Mrs Pring was serving breakfast in a new bottle green dress and black patent leather shoes, a sure sign that today was her birthday.
I complimented her on her hair-do. ‘You look really lovely, Mrs P.’
‘She would look good to a blind man, that’s for sure,’ Fr Duddleswell said.
I presented her with a Parker pen. Fr Duddleswell’s gifts were more exotic. The housekeeper’s excitement mounted as she rummaged in the carrier bag he had placed on the window-ledge. A cameo brooch, a microlite table lamp for her bedside and, last, well wrapped up, a bottle of Gordon’s gin.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she got out.
‘If I had known it needed but a little gift to render you speechless, woman,’ said Fr Duddleswell, ‘I would have practised magnanimity towards you long ago.’
Instinctively I stood up and planted a kiss on Mrs Pring’s plump cheek. That brought on the tears which Fr Duddleswell’s remark was designed to check.
‘Now, Mrs Pring,’ he warned, ‘I will not have you behaving here like a Jew in Babylon, else I will give you the full of me mouth, your twenty-first birthday or no.’ I had never known him have such a blunt edge to his tongue. ‘Now, wash that Ash Wednesday mug of yours, will you not? And be ready, mind, when your daughter comes to fetch you.’
At 9.30 a grey Morris Minor drew up at the back door. On hearing it, Fr Duddleswell bade me accompany him to the kitchen. Half a dozen cards were displayed on the mantelpiece and Mrs Pring was adding another from her daughter.
‘Helen,’ cried Fr Duddleswell delightedly.
‘Uncle Charlie,’ returned Helen, and she raced towards him with outstretched arms.
When the embrace was over, Fr Duddleswell introduced me to his ‘niece’. Helen Phipps was in her early thirties, pretty, petite and smartly dressed.
‘Father Neil,’ said Fr Duddleswell, drawing himself up to his full five feet seven, ‘is not this the beautifulest colleen that ever sets foot in St Jude’s? Would not she turn the eyes of guardmen on parade?’
I did not say no.
‘Take that pair of sparkling eyes, now, those rosy lips. And those teeth, what are they if not Solomon’s flock of even-shorn white sheep? Is she not living proof, Father Neil, that God Almighty can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?’
‘He’s scrag end of mutton himself,’ said Mrs Pring, stifling her real emotions, ‘and he pretends he’s fillet steak.’ A few more tears escaped and glossed her cheek.
‘Did you not hear me tell you,’ said Fr Duddleswell stamping his foot, ‘I will not have you dripping hot and cold in me kitchen.’
‘My kitchen,’ shouted back Mrs Pring, quite recovered all of a sudden.
Fr Duddleswell, as his costliest birthday gift to her, conceded the point. ‘’Tis worth more than double,’ he said, ‘so she takes her knuckles out of her eyes.’
After a few more minutes banter and detailed instructions from Mrs Pring on how to heat up the stew for supper, Fr Duddleswell produced a two pound box of chocolates for the three grandchildren. Then a sharp, ‘Be off with the both of you, and say a prayer to St Christopher, mind.’
That day we lunched at the Clinton Hotel. Fr Duddleswell told me how Mrs Pring had been with him ‘the worst part of twenty years.’ It had not hit me before that Helen, whom I had met for the first time that morning, must have been with her mother when Mrs Pring was, as Fr Duddleswell put it, ‘ordained as me housekeeper twenty years since’.
Every time he spoke of Helen his eyes shone. As the meal wore on he became quite lyrical in her praises.
‘You have seen her. Doesn’t she hang together well, Father Neil?’
I thought it politic to put myself firmly among Helen’s admirers. ‘She does, Father.’
‘She has a sweet smile would melt the upland snows. D’you know, from when I first saw her as a little girl, I folded her to me heart. She had two cheeks on her like poppies on a height on a sunny day.’
His two half pints of ale must have had something to do with it.
After coffee, he asked if I were ready for home. I had drunk my usual couple of glasses of wine. ‘Certainly, Uncle Charlie,’ I said. I thought my impertinence may have affected him because it
was with difficulty that he rose to his feet.
Though drowsy, I noticed in the car that he kept blinking furiously, and once he leaned over the wheel to rub the windscreen with his sleeve as if it were misted up.
His erratic driving shook me out of my somnolence. I hung on to my seat with both hands and joined Mrs Pring and daughter in fervent prayers to St Christopher.
It was market day in the High Street. There Fr Duddleswell swerved and hit a greengrocer’s stall. Fortunately, we had slowed to about five miles per hour, but the barrow collapsed instantly. Pyramids of apples, oranges, tomatoes and melons were tossed in all directions. Many burst and squelched under the tyres of buses and cars.
Fr Duddleswell braked in a daze, his face ashen and his knuckles white. As he clutched the wheel, he was shaking visibly.
A noisy crowd was gathering and the stall holder was cursing in colourful cockney as he tried to recover some of his fruit and veg.
Within thirty seconds a police car was on the scene and out stepped the two constables who had invaded Mrs Pring’s kitchen on the night I couldn’t sleep.
P.C. Winkworth and P.C. Richards, approaching slowly from the front, recognized us immediately and exchanged a glance. Once more the senior of them started to take out his notebook.
He opened the door on Fr Duddleswell’s side. ‘Would you care to step outside for a moment, sir, and show me your driving licence?’
Fr Duddleswell heaved himself out and held on to the door to stop himself falling. ‘I’m not feeling …’ he began.
P.C. Winkworth sniffed sardonically through his small red nose. ‘Been wetting your whistle, have you, sir?’
I leaned over and called out, ‘Only two halves of ale, Officer.’
P.C. Richards, still sporting a black eye, poked his arm through the window and grabbing my shoulder, said, ‘When we want a statement from you, we’ll ask for it, sir.’
The stall holder, senses restored, pushed to the front of the crowd. He saw for the first time that it was Fr Duddleswell who had done the damage. ‘Are you okay, Father?’ he asked with concern.
‘I am in no way wounded, thank you, Michael,’ said Fr Duddleswell, grateful no doubt that the stall holder was one of the good people of his parish.
He summed up Fr Duddleswell’s predicament in a flash and, having no love for the Law, he apologized for pushing his barrow too far into the road. ‘I might ’ave caused you two Fathers to be involved in a ruddy accident.’
The two coppers took the hint, but P.C. Winkworth declared doggedly that they would have to run the older clergyman in on suspicion of being drunk while driving.
Since I couldn’t drive, P.C. Richards radioed Control for a breakdown van to tow our car to the police compound. Then we were driven to the Station.
There again fortune smiled on us. The Sergeant on duty was Patrick O’Hara. He touched his forelock in salute as we approached his desk attended by his two junior colleagues.
The reception area, with its pale blue walls, was as inhospitable as a public lavatory. ‘I have not been to gaol,’ muttered Fr Duddleswell, ‘since me last game of Monopoly.’
‘Drunk in charge,’ asserted Black Eye.
‘Is that so, now?’ said Sergeant O’Hara, peering over an enormous nose. ‘And which of the two reverend gentlemen would you be accusing of this heinous crime?’
‘The short fat one,’ growled P.C. Winkworth, aware of forces at work here beyond his comprehension.
The Sergeant persuaded the two constables to leave the matter with him for a few minutes while they bought themselves a well-earned cup of tea. After they had gone, with some reluctance, Sergeant O’Hara made no bones about it: when there was a conflict between the Law and the Gospel, it was his duty as a policeman to uphold the Gospel.
‘There is not a word of truth to it, Paddy,’ whispered Fr Duddleswell in a confessional tone of voice. ‘I came over queer, I am telling you, but not even a girl-child could become inebriated on one pint of diluted ale. Must have been something I ate.’
Sergeant O’Hara broke the news to Fr Duddleswell that it was his sad duty to summon one of the doctors on their list. ‘What would you say, Father, to being examined by a Dr Daley?’
In ten minutes, Dr Daley arrived in bulk. Beads of perspiration stood out on a pink head bald but for a narrow circlet of white hair. His eyes were more bloodshot than usual. A cigarette was wedged in the corner of his mouth. The smell of whiskey preceded him as he advanced, humming for our benefit, ‘When constabulary duty’s to be done, to be done.’
Having listened with scant interest to the charge in the presence of the two constables, he asked the Sergeant to be allowed to examine the accused in the politeness of a cell.
The three of us sat round a table on which Dr Daley placed his black bag.
‘Now, Charles, don’t look so glum,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to sell you a raffle ticket.’
Fr Duddleswell put on his best ‘I’m-trying-to-be-brave’ act.
‘Strange times are these, Charles, and getting stranger, but I hear it rumoured you have been drowning the shamrock, like.’
‘A few sips of ale only, Donal. Barely enough to wet me tonsils.’
‘I cannot smell any alcohol on your breath, Charles, that’s for sure,’ said Dr Daley, suppressing a burp.
‘Donal,’ said Fr Duddleswell, ‘in all the years we have been acquainted, have you ever known me be guilty of foolishness?’
‘Indeed I have not. As ridiculous an idea as the Pope looking for promotion. I have confessed foolishness to you, now, many a time,’ said Dr Daley, pretending to choke with emotion on his words, ‘and I have another assignation with you next Saturday night and all, when my hope is you will pity me as I now pity you.’
He sighed audibly and tapped his waistcoated tummy. ‘It shames me that when I’m in my cups, my brogue betrayeth me and I betray the Green.’ Another heave of his broad chest. ‘Sweet Jesus, but it is hard, Charles, mighty hard to mortify the meat.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘I have this thirst on me, you see, like a fire. It is stoked by quenching. Mind you’—a sudden change of gear—‘it’s a marvellous thing seeing that fringe of orange flame around the world.’
He went mischievously on about his shame at allowing himself to become over the years ‘as round as a pickled onion and more entirely tonsured by time, Charles, than even your holy self.’
At length, he emerged from his reverie to assure Fr Duddleswell he would vouch for the innocence of one who had never raised his hand at any man, saving in holy benediction. It was blasphemous to contemplate his reverence being brought before a hanging magistrate and having his licence endorsed or taken away.
Dr Daley opened his bag. A bottle clinked as he took out his stethoscope. Good, I thought, as he put it round his neck, at last the medical examination is about to begin. I was wrong. It had just ended. The doctor was walking briskly towards the door.
‘This is so important a matter, Charles,’ he said. ‘I will not wait even to take a death-preventing dose of the liquor.’
He paused with his hand on the knob to ask, ‘And why, Charles, do you think these constables are endeavouring to smirch your excellent good name?’
Fr Duddleswell staggered to his feet. He explained that they had burst into our house one night without a warrant screaming obscenities and Father Neil had bravely blacked the eye of one before the other kneed him in the unmentionables.
Dr Daley nodded sagely. ‘That clears that up, then.’ He flung the door open, pushed Fr Duddleswell ahead of him and proclaimed in the manner of Pontius Pilate, ‘Look at this man. I can find nothing to charge him with.’
‘But,’ protested Black Eye, ‘you haven’t made him walk the gang-plank yet.’
‘Nor have I, Constable,’ said Dr Daley. ‘Nor have I.’ He gestured to a thin white line parallel to the wall and indicated to Fr Duddleswell that he should walk carefully.
‘Father Neil,’ whispered Fr Duddleswell in my ear, ‘I never
had much of a talent for treading the straight and narrow.’
I patted him on the back for luck and he followed the white line steadily enough until the end when he lurched to his right.
‘There, what did we say?’ called out Constable Winkworth, ‘he’s drunk.’
‘He is as shober, shir,’ said Dr Daley, as you or I. Watch me.’ He gave a dramatic slow motion imitation of a tightrope walker that would have earned him half a dozen deaths.
Sergeant O’Hara was completely convinced. ‘Well, lads,’ he said kindly to the constables, ‘it seems as if we’ll have to drop charges.’
Outside, Dr Daley expressed himself satisfied that justice had been seen to be done. He told Fr Duddleswell he was probably suffering from a bilious attack. Nothing that a good dose of salts wouldn’t cure. ‘If not,’ he said, ‘pay me a visit at my surgery.’
He volunteered to give us a lift home but we preferred to walk and go on living. I phoned George Walker, a trusted parishioner, asking him to pick up Fr Duddleswell’s car from the police compound and took ‘the drunk’ home in a taxi.
At the presbytery, Fr Duddleswell leaned on me as he went upstairs to his bedroom. When I left him, I heard him bumping into things. After that, silence.
He did not appear at tea, and as supper approached he banged on my wall. I found him propped up in bed. ‘Everything keeps spinning round, Father Neil, like a Catherine wheel,’ he said, ‘till the world turns white as the skirt of a poached egg.’
I ate the stew alone and waited anxiously for Mrs Pring’s return. At 10 o’clock, she came in with Helen. She sensed that something was wrong and rushed upstairs leaving me to chat awhile across the kitchen table with Helen.
It was easy to talk to Helen. She told me that when she was in her early teens her mother couldn’t make ends meet on a war widow’s pension. Jobs were hard to come by during and after the Depression. Fr Duddleswell had given her mother employment and both of them a roof over their head. ‘I never knew my father,’ she said simply, ‘so Uncle Charlie was a kind of father to me.’
