A Father Before Christmas
Page 24
My heart experienced a great pang when I saw what the loss of the money meant to him. He seemed so unexpectedly vulnerable.
‘There must have been nigh on £300 in notes,’ he gulped. ‘Have you any idea where the divil it can be, Father Neil?’
Half jokingly I said, ‘Search me, Father,’ and turned my cassock pockets inside out to reveal nothing but a bunch of keys. As an afterthought, I asked, ‘This is serious, isn’t it, Father? You’re not having me on?’
He did not hear me. He was muttering something about cash being the only thing not covered by the insurance. He opened the door leading to the house and asked Mrs Pring if she had taken the big money into the presbytery for protection. I heard Mrs Pring deny stridently that in all these years she had laid one finger on his filthy lucre.
I helped him search the vestment drawers and cupboards. We looked into the confessionals and he even rummaged in the straw of the crib. Not a smell of it.
‘Father Neil,’ he sighed despairingly, ‘that money has disappeared as if the mill stream had carried it off.’
‘It looks like it,’ I had to admit.
‘Then don’t just stand there lengthening the day, lad, do something about it.’
‘Do what, Father?’
‘Use your head for a change.’
‘I am, Father,’ I said, ‘I really am.’
‘Oh,’ he said in exasperation, ‘go dial 999 and get the police here immediately.’
When I returned a couple of minutes later, the lights in the church were ablaze. I saw him turf the baby Jesus out of his crib. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
He looked embarrassed. ‘Just seeing if the Holy Infant was sitting on me money.’
‘Father,’ I protested. ‘First no room for him in the Inn and now none in the manger.’
We unbolted the front door and stood there waiting for the police. ‘Did they give you any indication when they would arrive, Father Neil?’
I said no. The police prided themselves on answering any emergency call in any part of London within three minutes but, of course, this was Christmas Eve.
Fr Duddleswell’s glasses were steaming and he was thumping his arms diagonally against his shoulders to stop himself from shivering.
Outside the church, the scene was one of perfect peace. In the windows of houses across the road the lights of Christmas trees were winking off and on. Smoke from chimneys was ascending like incense to heaven. In that mild winter, a few rose bushes, caught in the shaft of light from the church, could be seen still bearing flowers.
As we waited, he went crazily through the suspects. Archie and Peregrine he accused first. I defended them stoutly. Peregrine was capable of anything but surely Fr Duddleswell remembered how Archie had made him give the doctor back his wallet.
He turned his ire on Billy Buzzle. In revenge for losing his bet, Billy could have climbed the fence, got in through our back door and slipped into the sacristy after the collection. Even Fr Duddleswell discounted this theory. Billy Buzzle, he admitted, was far too crooked to stoop to straightforward theft.
Bottesford, now, what about Bottesford? He certainly had a score to settle. Another ludicrous suggestion. He was a rich man and found it far less hazardous robbing the dead than the living.
Still no sign of the infernal police. He sent me to look in the confessionals again. I reported that I’d had no luck.
‘Father,’ I said, ‘isn’t it more likely that the thief is someone without any criminal record who found all that money lying around too great a temptation?’
‘One thing, lad,’ he said … ‘Oh, where are those bloody police? When they arrive there will be no Silent bloody Night, Holy bloody Night around here. And they will probably send that brute who biffed you under the counter.’ He was now able to pick up the thread of his thought. ‘One thing, I promise you, lad. You will not go short. I will make it up to you.’
‘Please, Father, no,’ I replied staunchly. ‘If Jesus became poor for …’
He interrupted me. ‘You cannot sole your shoes on £40 a year without your fair share of the Christmas offering, you follow? Neither can I, come to that. Oh, where in heaven’s bloody name are the police?’
‘I don’t know why you pay your rates and taxes, Father.’
Mrs Pring addressed us over our shoulders. ‘Isn’t it about time you two men came in from the cold?’
Fr Duddleswell pulled his biretta more firmly down on his head. ‘This is man’s work, woman, and we are awaiting your marvellous English police.’
Mrs Pring said, ‘They’re not coming.’
‘They are delayed, woman, but they will be here any hour now.’ Mrs Pring was adamant that they were not coming. He turned to me. ‘Father Neil, did you not phone them?’
I carefully removed my biretta and smartly turned it upside down so as not to lose any of the precious collection of notes, cheques and envelopes.
He sat down on the cold step, rubbed his eyes inside his glasses, puffed, and rubbed his eyes again. ‘As the farmer said, it has been a bad year for curates.’ Then he sprang up as if to box my ears.
I took one step backwards. ‘Now, remember, Father Charles, ’tis the season of goodwill.’
Mrs Pring roared with laughter. He silenced her by giving her a mistletoe peck on the forehead and wishing her a merry Christmas.
‘Lock up, Fathers,’ she said in a snuffly voice. ‘I’ve boiled the kettle and there’s an Abishag waiting for each of you in your beds.’
We stayed there together for a few moments longer looking out on to the quiet scene. In the light of the street lamps, we saw the first snow of the winter fall. A large flake settled on my eyelash till I blinked it away.
‘Ah, Father Neil,’ said Fr Duddleswell serenely, ‘are they not the only pure white doves this sordid city sees?’ I nodded, half asleep now.
‘I suppose from now on, Father Neil, you’ll start acting as if you owned the parish.’
‘Oh no, I realize you own it, Father.’
Suddenly he turned on me. ‘I have something else I have been meaning to say to you, young man.’ I didn’t think he would let me off that lightly.
He stretched up his arms and embraced me. ‘Merry Christmas to you, Neil.’
‘Merry Christmas, Father,’ I said.
THE END
About the Author
Neil Boyd is a pseudonym of Peter de Rosa. After attending Saint Ignatius’ College, de Rosa was ordained as a Catholic priest and went on to become dean of theology at Corpus Christi College in London. In 1970 de Rosa left the priesthood and began working in London as a staff producer for the BBC. In 1978 he became a full-time writer, publishing the acclaimed Bless Me, Father, which was subsequently turned into a television series. De Rosa went on to write several more successful novels in the Bless Me, Father series. He lives in Bournemouth, England.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1978 by Neil Boyd
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0530-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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