Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Export?’

  ‘I am sending it to a few friendly parishes round about.’

  I admired his altruism. ‘That’ll be expensive,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you still as green, lad, as a leprechaun sitting on a blade of grass?’

  ‘You’re not selling holy water.’

  He did his best to look hurt. It was almost believable. ‘Of course not, Father Neil. I am charging but two shillings for the bottles.’

  ‘You’re giving water away free in two shilling bottles.’

  ‘There, you have it.’

  ‘But those bottles aren’t worth tuppence.’

  He waved my objection aside as if it weighed less than a smoke ring from Dr Daley’s cigarette. ‘You have to reckon on the labour costs, lad.’

  ‘Whose?’

  He filled up another bottle and screwed the top on before replying. ‘Mine.’

  ‘But this is disgraceful,’ I said.

  ‘Listen to me, lad. You have a Papal Indulgence hanging on your wall. Did you pay for it or no?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I responded heatedly.

  ‘Yet you did pay for the parchment ’tis written on.’

  I remembered that I also had a bone of St Thérèse of Lisieux in a reliquary that cost me ten bob.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I conceded. ‘But I still think you’re playing on people’s credulity.’

  His turn to be shocked. ‘Is that what you think faith is, simple-mindedness?’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘As good as.’ He softened a little, a tactic he frequently employed when he wanted to slip through my guard. ‘The good people realize perfectly well that ’tis not the water in itself that matters.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘’Tis what God does when they use the water with an ardent faith.’

  ‘Why, then,’ I wanted to know, ‘do they need your water at all? Why don’t they just pray?’

  He gave me the pitying look he usually reserved for our discussion of Protestants. ‘Why do we need water for baptism? Why did our Blessed Lord Himself use clay mixed from spittle to heal the eyes of the blind man?’

  I hadn’t the faintest idea but was saved from admitting it by the entrance of Billy Buzzle.

  Fr Duddleswell put down his jug to greet him. ‘Ah, Mr Buzzle, me dear neighbour, hail.’

  ‘The bottles’ve arrived, then, Father O’Duddleswell.’

  My suspicions were aroused. ‘You supplied the bottles, Mr Buzzle?’

  ‘I took your tip, Father. We’re partners, him and me.’

  ‘That makes it worse,’ I groaned.

  ‘No, much better,’ Billy insisted. ‘I’ve got a good business brain, see. I’ll take charge of market research, sales, transportation. He does the religion bit.’

  To spiritualize matters, Fr Duddleswell put in, ‘After the last water-drinking ceremony, Father Neil, did we not have two conceptions to our knowledge?’

  ‘Father!’ I cried. ‘The first woman was just back from her honeymoon.’

  He arched his eyebrows gothically as if I had hinted at something marvellously wicked. ‘And what, pray, has that got to do with it?’

  I ignored the question. ‘And the second girl wasn’t even married.’

  He looked concerned. ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘Now,’ I said, hammering the nail home, ‘she’s trying to convince her parents it wasn’t her boyfriend but your holy water.’

  ‘There’s one born every minute,’ Billy said.

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is the danger.’

  ‘Very well, Father Neil,’ Fr Duddleswell assured me, ‘in future we will only give it to the marrieds.’

  Billy jumped in with, ‘No need for that. The unmarrieds can put their bottles away with their trousseau.’

  ‘Of course they can,’ Fr Duddleswell said, relieved. He turned to me. ‘We really do have to trust the young folk.’

  That from a man who nearly burst a blood vessel whenever he saw a courting couple holding hands.

  ‘If, in the end, the Bishop doesn’t approve,’ I pointed out, ‘you’re sunk.’

  ‘We’ll offer him ten per cent,’ Billy said.

  Fr Duddleswell didn’t agree. ‘You are far too generous with my money, Mr Buzzle.’ He scratched his chin reflectively. ‘I am thinking of asking a friend of mine to give the Bishop one of these little bottles for free.’

  ‘Let’s hope,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t have the same effect on him it had on Deirdre Jameson.’

  ‘Nobody was ever as good as Father D,’ Mrs Pring observed tartly, ‘except perhaps Jesus at the peak of His form.’

  She was becoming understandably irritated by the constant stream of visitors and the endless phone calls. Everyone was demanding an interview with ‘the faith healer of St Jude’s.’

  Apart from the ceremony for barren women, he conducted services of healing. Elderly people with rheumatism and arthritis, others with slipped discs, handicapped children, among them a ten-year-old deaf boy from the parish, Tommy Ferguson. They all found their way into the church of St Jude’s where Fr Duddleswell cared for them, prayed over them and distributed rosaries and medals.

  Mrs Pring was convinced he was making a huge profit. ‘That one could sell rosaries to the Blessed Virgin,’ she said. ‘And pigs and Sacred Heart statues to Jews.’

  I wasn’t sure about the profit potential myself, still less about the rights and wrongs of raising the expectations of the sick. I couldn’t deny it gave some of them the chance of a rare outing. I once saw among the congregation three people in wheel chairs and a stretcher case. But wasn’t it all motivated by rank superstition?

  When I tried to discuss it with Fr Duddleswell he accused me of being a bit ‘wanting’ in the head.

  ‘Can’t you wait,’ I pleaded, ‘until the Bishop grants his approval?’

  ‘Quiet, Saxon,’ he said. ‘Remember the old proverb, take Time by the forelock for he is bald behind.’

  ‘But why should this water be so special?’

  ‘Dear God, lad, your faith is so thin a sheep could nibble grass through it. Why is Lourdes water special? Why the water in any holy well in Old Ireland? Instead of asking why, why, why, you should drop humbly on your benders saying Deo gratias.’

  He saw that I couldn’t say Thank God for so dubious a benefit.

  ‘You ask too many questions, Father Neil. Why were you born a Catholic and the lad next door a Protestant, tell me that? Why are you a priest and your best friend at school a harrassed married man with a power of kiddies?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Don’t think ignorance is a sign of genius,’ he snorted, disapproving of my tone. ‘You consider the barrel in my garden is too wretched a thing for God to work wonders with, isn’t that so?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But wasn’t our Saviour born in a stable with only an ox and an ass for companions? And didn’t his fellow countrymen say of Him, Can any good come out of Nazareth? And weren’t His apostles fishermen, lowly folk without school certificates or university degrees?’

  ‘And,’ I chanted, already heading for the door, ‘doesn’t God choose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the strong?’

  I was almost out of earshot when I heard his final blazing retort:

  ‘Will you stop running away on your sheep’s trotters, boyo. Doesn’t God do that sort of thing. Well, doesn’t He?’

  I was roped in, two evenings later, to make up a foursome at cards. Of the regulars, Dr Daley and Canon Mahoney had turned up but Father ‘Nelson’ Kavanagh had called off at the last moment with ’flu.

  I was partnering Fr Duddleswell at whist and we were out of luck. After a hand in which we only made one trick I suggested that, while I dealt the cards, he tried to improve our prospects by using some of his holy water.

  He seemed pleased that my faith was progressing. He went to his cupboard through the cigarett
e haze to fetch a small bottle, wet his thumb and signed his forehead. Meanwhile, I secretly exchanged the pack of cards we were playing with for another pack I had doctored beforehand. I would show up Fr Duddleswell’s superstition for what it was.

  Seeing him sign himself with holy water, Canon Mahoney expressed relief that he wasn’t drinking the stuff.

  Dr Daley noticed the inexpert way I handled the cards. ‘I’m surprised,’ he said, ‘you can’t play poker or gin-rummy.’

  ‘Only whist, Doctor.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Canon Mahoney whistled through his jagged black teeth. ‘I don’t know what they teach the young lads in the seminary these days.’

  ‘Trumps?’ Dr Daley wanted to know and I told him, ‘Spades.’

  Out of the tops of my eyes I saw Fr Duddleswell picking up his cards with growing excitement. When Canon Mahoney said, ‘My lead, I believe,’ Fr Duddleswell touched his forearm with, ‘No need, Seamus.’

  ‘Aren’t you playing any more, Charlie?’ the Canon asked.

  Without a word, Fr Duddleswell laid his cards on the table triumphantly. All of them spades.

  ‘God,’ Dr Daley exclaimed, ‘the whole suit of trumps.’

  ‘A miracle, Father,’ I gasped.

  Canon Mahoney said, ‘You’d better let me have a closer look at that holy water, Charlie.’

  I was really relishing the situation. Grown men, I thought, two priests and a doctor of medicine seriously looking on a ‘chance’ distribution of cards as evidence of the intervention of Almighty God in the affairs of men.

  Dr Daley was saying, ‘After a shock like that, Charles, I’m needing a sup of whiskey.’

  ‘Whiskey,’ Fr Duddleswell replied. ‘Holy Moses, ’tis useless as hammering cold iron with a hair of me head.’

  All the same, I could see he wasn’t annoyed in the least, so delighted was he to have visible proof of the efficacy of his holy water. In the presence, too, of the Bishop’s own theologian.

  At the mention of whiskey, the card game broke up. We moved for refills to the desk where the liquor was set out on a tray with a jug of water.

  Dr Daley was muttering, prayer-like, ‘Wherever two or three Catholic priests are gathered together in His name, there is a bottle of whiskey in the midst of them.’

  ‘You could knock the habit, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell announced gaily, ‘if you only had faith.’

  ‘Our Blessed Lord says,’ Canon Mahoney put in, licking his rubbery lips, ‘that if you have faith you can move mountains.’

  ‘Who wants to shift mountains?’ Dr Daley enquired.

  ‘I do agree with you,’ Canon Mahoney said. ‘Besides, wouldn’t it be terrible unsafe for mountaineers?’

  Dr Daley’s face registered an impious shock. ‘That’s blasphemious, Seamus.’

  I poured Canon Mahoney a double and held the jug poised. ‘Water, Canon?’

  He snatched the glass from me. ‘Thank you, no. I washed before I came.’

  ‘I meant water for your whiskey, Canon.’

  ‘Jasus, Sonny. The very sight of the filthy stuff is enough to bring me on a duodenal ulcer.’

  Dr Daley intervened with professional solicitude. ‘Then you mustn’t drink it, Seamus, you must not.’

  Canon Mahoney signed his breast with a big yellow thumb. ‘Donal, you have my solemn word.’

  Dr Daley switched to his host. ‘To tell you the blessed truth, Charles, I did put a lick of your holy water here.’ He touched the part of his scalp where his forelock used to be.

  ‘Wait till I get my flashlight,’ the Canon said.

  ‘And nothing came of it,’ Fr Duddleswell remarked, stating the obvious.

  ‘Oh, it did, Charles. For a few days, I grew a thick, glossy patch of skin.’

  Fr Duddleswell admitted, red-faced, that he, too, had made the same experiment, hoping against hope to grow a bit of fur.

  Canon Mahoney roared with laughter. ‘And you’re both as bald as the prophet Elisha.’

  ‘Better bald than headless, I reckon,’ Dr Daley muttered, mourning his lost youth. Ash fell from his cigarette on to his brown jacket and red cardigan to signify that worse things than baldness were in life’s pipeline for him.

  ‘Now to business, Charlie,’ the Canon said. ‘Donal tells me there has been an epidemic of miracles in the parish here.’

  Fr Duddleswell proceeded to give details. First, when Deirdre Jameson conceived, her husband George asked to become a Catholic.

  Canon Mahoney butted in, a twinkle in his eye. ‘The smart feller knows we priests have the power, y’see.’

  ‘They’re the best Catholics, the turned ones,’ Dr Daley said, remembering perhaps his own sorry drinking record.

  The Canon agreed with him. ‘Indeed, Donal, they want to make up for lost time, like. Even so, I’m grateful to the Almighty God for giving me the Truth whole and entire first time round.’

  ‘That’s right, Seamus,’ Dr Daley said, ‘it’s like being handed the whole bottle and not being rationed just to a meagre glass-full.’

  ‘Then last week,’ Fr Duddleswell said, anxious to continue, ‘I gave Deirdre another sip of our home-made holy water and the hospital diagnosed twins.’

  Dr Daley raised his glass ‘To the both of them,’ he said, and, having drunk, peered nostalgically into emptiness.

  ‘After that,’ Fr Duddleswell went on, ‘George’s two maiden aunts decided they want to receive instruction and they are or were on the committee of the Humanist League.’

  The Canon held his glass aloft. ‘As the whale said when he saw Jonas, “This’ll take a bit of swallowing.”’

  ‘Don’t give the girl any more of that holy water,’ was Dr Daley’s advice.

  ‘Why ever not, Donal?’

  ‘Because, Charles, there’ll be so many queuing up for baptism, the devil included, there’ll be a water-shortage in the diocese.’

  Fr Duddleswell called for silence. ‘I believe in “Multiply and fill the earth” more than most men, as me parish registers show, but I have definitely closed the bottle now to that Jameson girl.’

  Dr Daley showed him his dry glass. ‘In my experience, Charles, you are a winner at putting stoppers in bottles.’

  ‘Wait now till I tell you,’ Fr Duddleswell said, warming to his theme. ‘Only the other day, Tricia Boswell who suffers something awful from arthritis drank some water and walked across the room.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘First time, mind, in three years.’

  ‘And fell flat on her face,’ I added.

  Fr Duddleswell cold-shouldered me. ‘But she walked, d’you hear?’

  ‘She broke her jaw,’ I said.

  Having curdled my blood with a look, Fr Duddleswell turned to Canon Mahoney. ‘What d’you think, Seamus?’

  The Canon sucked a big black tooth. ‘Perhaps you’ve just been lucky so far, Charlie.’

  ‘Me lucky? When I am being persecuted by a Mother Superior whose tongue is saltier than Lot’s wife after her accident.’

  Dr Daley attempted to put things in perspective. ‘Charles, your good fortune is such that if ever you get caught in a downpour it’s sure to rain new potatoes.’

  Before Fr Duddleswell could reply, Mrs Pring burst in.

  ‘Mrs Pring,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘did I not tell you, no visitors?’

  ‘Mother Stephen,’ Mrs Pring announced.

  Fr Duddleswell was on his feet in an instant. ‘Apart from very important people, of course.’

  ‘Do not get up,’ Mother Stephen told the rest of us, her look intimating that she had uncovered a whole school of gin and sin.

  Fr Duddleswell helped the Superior to sit and, sensing that his authority as parish priest was on trial, said:

  ‘If you are here about Deirdre Jameson, Mother, I think I can prove that miracle belongs to me.’

  Mother Stephen grew three or four inches in her chair. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Deirdre is expecting twins, Mother.’

  ‘You are mistaken, Father.’

>   ‘Oh?’

  ‘A more careful examination of Mrs Jameson shows she is carrying triplets.’

  ‘You are sure, Mother?’ Seeing the coldness of her face, he hastened to add, ‘No, I am not calling you a liar, Mother.’

  It amused me that there should be a dispute over the responsibility for a baby’s birth. ‘Mother Foundress,’ I said, ‘is working her three miracles all at once.’

  ‘I am pleased, Fr Duddleswell,’ the Superior said, ‘that your assistant is not siding with you.’

  ‘I have written the Bishop, Mother, claiming the miracle for me holy water.’

  ‘And I,’ Mother Stephen said, rising like the Loch Ness monster out of dark waters, ‘have written to our Cardinal Protector in Rome claiming all three miracles for Mother Foundress. Good day, gentlemen.’

  We were too shaken to get up.

  ‘Jasus, what a bleak mid-winter sort of a woman,’ the Canon declared. ‘She must’ve eaten sour grapes soaked in vinegar.’

  Fr Duddleswell did his best to keep his morale up. ‘I realize I was tough with her, Seamus, but that is the only kind of talk she understands.’

  I nodded encouragement, once more firmly on the side of the home team.

  ‘’Tis enough to make a saint swearing-mad,’ Fr Duddleswell fumed. ‘That is the tenth time this week I’ve had to put up with her visitations.’

  ‘Give me the plagues of Egypt any time,’ the Canon said.

  ‘She’s more trouble than the ten commandments,’ I said.

  Dr Daley leaned over and capped it all. ‘My sympathy, Charles. When you’ve your back to the wall, there’s nothing for it but to turn and run.’

  Mrs Pring came to tell us the coast was clear and to ask if she should make a cup of tea.

  ‘Surely, my dear,’ Dr Daley said, ‘provided you don’t bring it in here.’

  Canon Mahoney seized the opportunity to ask Mrs Pring what she thought of the recent miracles.

  ‘I do my best not to, Canon.’

  ‘Be off with you, woman,’ Fr Duddleswell growled. ‘You are not worth the water eggs are boiled in.’

  ‘Charlie,’ the Canon said, patting his arm, ‘you look as if you’re going round in circles like a one-legged duck.’

  Fr Duddleswell held out a bottle of holy water in desperation. ‘You are a member of the Chapter, Seamus. Will you give Bishop O’Reilly this sample from me?’