A Father Before Christmas

by Neil Boyd

  Mrs Dodson put the kettle on the hob. While waiting for it to boil, she reminisced. Fifty-three years they had been together. God was good to let them see in the Gold.

  ‘You’ll never believe it, Fathers,’ she confided, ‘but when we wed, we couldn’t afford a ring. So I went to the haberdasher’s and bought myself a brass curtain hook. One farthing it cost.’

  That hook had lasted fifty years when they bought each other a fourteen carat gold ring. ‘His was engraved FOR MY DARLING JACK and mine has FOR MY DARLING MARY. I could have kept his, Fathers,’ she said, wiping away a tear, ‘but I thought it’d be nice if he wore it to Heaven.’

  ‘A wise fellow, your Jack, Mary,’ Fr Duddleswell put in hastily, ‘arranging to go on the most propitious day of the year, All Souls, when Purgatory is cleaned out.’

  ‘God’s help is nearer than the door,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed, Mary. Your man is but a few hours asleep and him already in the thick of Glory.’

  As Mrs Dodson made the tea she explained that out of their savings she was paying for a splendid funeral. ‘He didn’t want to go owing nobody nothing, Fathers.’ The money even ran to a solid oak coffin.

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said for something to say.

  We sat sipping our tea until Fr Duddleswell picked up a large, pitted silver pot from the sideboard. ‘How interesting,’ he said with a curious nostalgic smile, ‘how very interesting. Mary, did you know …?’

  The doorbell interrupted him. Probably a neighbour calling to offer sympathy. When Mrs Dodson opened the door, we heard a simpering voice say, ‘Mrs Dodson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was a close friend of your husband.’

  The caller’s name was Philip Weston. ‘But friends of mine like your James called me Pinky.’

  Father Duddleswell confided to me, ‘That sharper must have the periscopic eyes of a toad.’

  Mrs Dodson had to admit that her Jack had never mentioned him but she thanked him for the courtesy of his call.

  ‘I used to have the odd drink with Jack in the local.’

  Mrs Dodson said it must have been a long time ago because he had been bed-ridden for the last ten years. Pinky Weston conceded it was a long time ago. ‘But you don’t forget easy an old crony like Jack Dodson.’

  Mrs Dodson was unwilling to let Pinky in until Fr Duddleswell called out, ‘’Tis all right, Mary, we are just about to take our leave.’

  Pinky Weston’s flat white face looked as if it were permanently pressed against a windowpane. Fr Duddleswell took no notice of him. Still with the pot in his hand, he said, ‘As I was telling you, Mary, I am very intrigued by this pot.’

  ‘My granma gave it me years ago,’ said Mary. ‘Her granny, I believe, gave it to her.’

  Fr Duddleswell smiled broadly. ‘That accounts for it, then. My own father, God rest him, had one like this. Elizabethan silver.’ When Mary expressed surprise at it being real silver, he said that the coating was worn off and perhaps she didn’t realize that antiques are often worth considerably less when they are re-silvered.

  Patrick Duddleswell Senior had sold his for £95. ‘Mark you, Mary, ’twould be worth every penny of £200 were it up for sale today.’ He pointed to indentations on the lid. ‘There, it looks as if a fork has pressed down on the metal. Tiger marks.’

  It seemed to me that Fr Duddleswell had cleverly warned Mary not to part with a family treasure. Pinky Weston must also have known that if he swindled the old widow he would have to answer for it to the Church.

  At the door, Fr Duddleswell said, ‘Keep in mind the old saying, Mary: “The three most beautiful things in the world are a ship under sail, a tree in bloom and a holy man on his death-bed.”’ Mrs Dodson half-smiled and half-cried. ‘I leave you goodbye and me blessing, Mary.’ He was already on the pavement when he turned to ask, ‘Oh, and by the way, Mary, which undertaker have you settled on?’

  ‘Bottesford’s,’ she said.

  I apologized for making no contribution to the visit. ‘You are wrong,’ he returned. ‘You said but little but you said it well. Times there are, Father Neil, when words spoil meanings. ’Tis pitiful but when the deer of their woods has departed, what can you do but grasp them with kindness?’

  He fell into a reverie, only coming out of it from time to time to utter the name Bottesford. He clicked his fingers and a few minutes later we were on the doorstep of Bottesford’s Funeral Parlour.

  I had not seen the proprietor since he ran out of the church some weeks earlier. He was fat—Fr Duddleswell said his hand was too kind to his mouth—and he wore an atrocious ginger wig that did not blend at all well with the greying hair beneath. He had a nose that reminded me of Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And his nostrils pointed skywards like a double-barrelled gun.

  He was in the backroom. We disturbed him while he was planing the lid of a coffin which rested on a carpenter’s bench.

  ‘’Tis a sad day for the Dismal Trade when there is no funeral, Bottesford,’ said Fr Duddleswell.

  The undertaker went on shuffling his plane back and forth. ‘People don’t die to please me,’ he snapped.

  Fr Duddleswell asked to be taken to the Chapel of Rest in order to pray over Mr Dodson. Mr Bottesford’s attitude changed at once from defiance to anxiety. He insisted he would have to go first and prepare the Chapel. It would only take a few minutes and in the meantime he invited us to take a seat.

  When he went out, Fr Duddleswell seemed intent on taking something else. There was a large cabinet in the room full of small drawers. Fr Duddleswell opened up one after another until he came across the thing he was looking for. Whatever it was, he put it smartly in his pocket.

  He made a gesture towards the coffin nearing completion. ‘Look at the quality of that wood, Father Neil. Orange boxes banged together, nothing more. Coffins were not so meagrely made even during the Famine.’

  I had to agree that Mr Bottesford’s effort didn’t look up to much.

  ‘’Twould not keep a corpse dry in an April shower. Not only does he fake his hair by putting a bird’s nest upon his head, he also fakes coffins. What can you expect, Father Neil, of a man who makes a living out of death?’

  Mr Bottesford returned puffing and blowing. He led us out and across a small grey courtyard into his Chapel of Rest. It wasn’t much more than a large garden shed. Black drapes from the war years kept out the light. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested a superb oak coffin lit up at each corner by candles of yellow-ochre. No orange box in this case, I thought.

  Fr Duddleswell suggested we all kneel for the De Profundis, ‘Out of the depths have I cried to Thee, O Lord,’ he began, ‘Lord, hear my voice,’ and Mr Bottesford and I joined forces with ‘Let Thine ear be attentive to the voice of my supplication.’

  When the prayer was over, Fr Duddleswell approached the catafalque. ‘I congratulate you, Bottesford,’ he whispered, ‘a most beautiful coffin.’

  ‘Casket,’ Mr Bottesford corrected him with the term favoured by the trade.

  Without warning, Fr Duddleswell hammered on the coffin lid with his fist. The effect in that confined space and wavering light was shattering. Mr Bottesford and I almost embraced each other in fright. Fr Duddleswell repeated his onslaught on the coffin from various angles. His recent preoccupation with death must have unhinged the old boy.

  ‘Bottesford,’ he said threateningly, ‘’tis as hollow as is your heart. Where is he, tell me, now, this instant.’ Had the undertaker sold the body for the purposes of necromancy or scientific research? Mr Bottesford pointed to an object in shadow by the wall. ‘Bring a candle, Bottesford.’

  The undertaker pulled one of the huge candles out of its socket and carried it with quivering hand to where Fr Duddleswell was standing. ‘Take it off,’ he ordered, pointing to a tarpaulin covering something of indistinct shape.

  I turned away almost expecting to see under it Jack Dodson’s corpse. It was only a second coffin. It had on it a b
rass plate with Jack’s name, his dates of birth and death, and R.I.P.

  ‘An orange box,’ said Fr Duddleswell disgustedly, ‘masquerading as a coffin.’ Even by candlelight I could see that the coffin was neatly covered by a kind of wallpaper of oak design. Tear-filled eyes at a funeral might not notice.

  I was sickened by the undertaker’s deceit, but worse was to come. Fr Duddleswell said imperiously, ‘Take it off, Bottesford. The lid, unscrew it, Bottesford.’ No doubting his meaning this time.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘There is no need for an exhumation order, Bottesford. He is not buried yet.’

  Mr Bottesford’s nerves were completely out of control. He bowed his head and the crackling candle flame shot up and singed his hair. Sparks flew and there was the odour of acrid fumes. He dropped the candle, tugged his wig off and stamped on it.

  Fr Duddleswell said, ‘’Tis but a foretaste of the cremation that the Lord has in store for you, Bottesford, if you do not alter the evil of your doings.’

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him as he stood there in the macabre light, bald and trembling. But Fr Duddleswell was still not content. ‘’Tis not there is it, Bottesford?’

  ‘He’s in there all right, Father, I swear it. Please don’t make me unscrew the lid.’

  ‘You know well enough, man, I said not he but it is not in there.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re spouting about,’ yelled Mr Bottesford, his spirit returning as he stooped to pick up his wig.

  Fr Duddleswell put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small object that gleamed in the candlelight. ‘The ring, Bottesford,’ he said, almost touching the undertaker’s nose with it.

  ‘You pinched it,’ whimpered Mr Bottesford, lifting his head like a dog.

  ‘No, Bottesford, you are the miscreant who pinched it. Black you are without and black within. Father Neil is me witness that I found this ring inscribed TO ME DARLING JACK in a drawer of your workroom. ’Twas not, I take it, the corpse that placed it there.’

  He made Bottesford promise on his ‘Catholic’s honour’ that the body would be transferred to the oak coffin—‘casket’, muttered Mr Bottesford, his professionalism coming through—and the ring replaced on the finger.

  We returned to the workshop. ‘Does the name Pinky Weston mean anything to you, Bottesford?’

  It was evident to Fr Duddleswell that only the undertaker could have tipped off the Rapper because no notice of Jack Dodson’s death had been posted on the church door. He warned Bottesford that if Pinky Weston had swindled old Mary, he would get the bill. A final admonition: ‘Mend your devious ways, Bottesford, else I will see to it you no more box or heap the cold sod on parishioners of mine.’

  On the way home, I expressed disgust at Bottesford’s goings-on. Fr Duddleswell, firm in his charitable resolve, did not entirely agree. ‘’Tis true that grave-digger would condiddle the chocolate out of a child’s mouth.’ All the same, Bottesford performed the least loved of the corporal works of mercy, bedding down the dead.

  ‘A man’s profession is bound to set its mark on him, Father Neil, if you’re still with me. ’Tis no laughing matter tailoring wooden suits and attending a hundred funerals a year. For that he needs a heart that cannot feel and a nose that cannot smell.’

  I reminded him of his words about Mr Bottesford making a living out of death. ‘And do not we with our Requiems, lad? After all, Bottesford is not Adam. He did not invent death. Indeed, by raising the cost of dying, he might even be said to discourage it.’

  Even when I mentioned the ring, Fr Duddleswell inclined to forgiveness. ‘’Tis easy to get hot under the round collar, Father Neil, but casting prejudice aside, to rob a cold ruin is not nearly so bad as robbing the living.’

  I was thoroughly irritated by his willingness to excuse the undertaker. ‘He robbed the living, too,’ I said. ‘He overcharged Mrs Dodson for the coffin.’

  ‘Casket,’ he corrected me with a wink.

  ‘And nearly lost her that lovely silver pot.’

  He agreed, overcharging Mary, who found it hard to put a pound together, was a different matter. No recently bereaved person likes haggling over the price of a funeral. It seems mean and a slur on the memory of the departed. ‘But then, Father Neil,’ he said smiling, ‘if I do not judge Bottesford too harshly for that even, d’you not think I owe him something?’

  We were at tea when the doorbell rang. Mrs Pring announced that it was Mrs Dodson. In a flash, Fr Duddleswell was on his feet to invite her in. He paid no heed to her protests. ‘Fetch Mary a cup, will you not, Mrs Pring? And, Mary dear, pity your poor feet and sit yourself down.’

  Mary’s story was that Mr Weston had prevailed on her to part with her Elizabethan pot for £75 in crisp new fivers.

  ‘That’s daylight robbery,’ I cried.

  Fr Duddleswell told me to hear Mary out and not get so uppity for God Almighty’s sake.

  Mary looked crestfallen at my remark. ‘It’s not as if my Jack had strong attachments to that pot, Fathers.’ She went on to praise Mr Weston’s honesty. He had accidentally twisted one of the handles and didn’t reduce his offer for all that.

  Fr Duddleswell flashed at me a warning to itch where I could scratch. ‘Anyone in your position obviously has need of the money, Mary.’

  Mrs Dodson explained that Jack’s illness took up so much of their savings ‘and we’re—I’m—only an old age pensioner.’ When the soil had settled on the grave she would now be able to afford a nice headstone.

  Mary brightened up when Fr Duddleswell congratulated her on acting so wisely. All things considered, it was not a bad price. The pot was damaged. Pinky had to pass it on to a dealer who would want his rake-off, and selling to dealers is not always easy. Fashions change. Pinky took a risk in that there might not be a ready market for that kind of pot at this time.

  ‘And now, Mary,’ Fr Duddleswell concluded, ‘tomorrow we will lay your darling man to rest. No more thistles where he lies, Mary, so mourn him gently, now and prayers of yours will provide him with pillows of roses for his head. Ah,’ he sighed, ‘’tis nice to contemplate that when yourself gets to Heaven ’twill be a country where you are well acquainted.’

  He took twenty-five pounds out of his wallet saying, ‘Tis your lucky day, Mary. Only Saturday last I rid meself of a perfectly useless chair and would you believe it now? this is what I was paid for it.’ He thrust the money into Mary’s hand before she could say no. ‘’Tis not for you, Mary, mind, ’tis for Jack. Towards his headstone, you follow.’

  He led the widow to the door as if she were a queen. ‘Make sure, Mary, you order him a beautiful stone.’

  When he came back half singing, ‘As leaves of the trees, such is the life of man,’ I tackled him with, ‘Father, don’t try and excuse Mr Weston’s rotten trick this time.’

  ‘Me soul detests it, Father Neil,’ he replied earnestly. ‘Would that I could poke me digit in his eye.’

  ‘Imagine cheating a dear old lady out of so much money.’

  ‘Abso-bloody-lutely, Father Neil, except that the pot was but a common or garden tea caddy worth less than half a dollar.’

  V Hell and High Water

  ‘It’s a lonesome wash that there’s not a man’s shirt in,’ said Mrs Pring. My bedroom door was open and I could see her putting my clean linen in a drawer. I nodded, knowing that she was referring to the widow Dodson who had just gone home.

  I offered her the opportunity for a chat. ‘Going to stoke up my fire, Mrs P?’

  A couple of minutes later she was piling on the coals in my study. ‘At first when you’re widowed,’ she puffed, as she knelt at the fireplace, ‘you can’t believe it’s true, or if it’s true it can’t be happening to you. It must be either a dream or someone in the War Office got the name and number wrong. Grief draws slowly like the morning fire.’

  She talked unemotionally about losing her husband. It was a long time ago. A whirlwind war-time courtship. Love at f
irst sight and she never wanted another.

  One thing bothered her: she could not honestly remember the colour of his eyes. ‘I know they were a sort of greeny brown, Father Neil, but I can’t picture them, you see?’ I pursed my lips and nodded.

  ‘We were only married a couple of months,’ she went on, brushing the grate. ‘My Ted was much younger than you, of course.’ I was glad she did not see my reaction to that. ‘I wrote to him straight away, soon as I knew, telling him that a little someone was on the way. But the letter came back with a batch of others, and with his effects. The only one unopened, it was. He was already gone, you …’ She was still for a moment. ‘Two months after, the war was over. All the killing stopped.’ She paused again. ‘Thank God.’ I wanted to touch her on the shoulder but I was too shy. ‘It meant my Helen was half orphaned before she saw the light of a candle.’ She wiped her eyes on her sleeve because her hands had coal dust on them. As she got up, she said, ‘I think people round here like talking to you, Father Neil.’ I blushed at the compliment. ‘You’re a listening man.’

  The change of topic was abrupt. ‘At least his attack of the sullens’—she pointed below—‘is over and he’s back to abnormality.’

  I sat her down and told her how Fr Duddleswell had tricked Pinky Weston. I expected her to show some disapproval but as usual when we were alone she was not too hard on him.

  ‘He’s as slippery as an eel’s tail,’ she said, ‘but he never lied to the Rapper, did he, now? He only let him lie to himself.’ She blew a stray hair out of her eyes. ‘Ah, if only he was half as wicked as he thinks he is he’d be such a nice man. And much more fun to live with.’

  Through the floorboards, confirming Mrs Pring’s view that Fr Duddleswell’s November blues were over, came strains of ‘The flowers that bloom in the Spring, tra la.’ Perhaps it was this song that caused Mrs Pring’s lapsus linguae. She said, ‘He may be an old sour puss outside but never mind him, inside he’s full of the springs of joy.’ The song ceased suddenly when the telephone rang and Fr Duddleswell took the call.