by Neil Boyd
‘How much, Charlie?’
‘No charge.’
‘I mean for my services,’ the Canon joked.
‘One Our Father and one Hail Mary.’ Fr Duddleswell winked knowingly at him. ‘And by the way, Seamus, I wouldn’t mention to the Bishop the miracle of the thirteen trumps.’
I seconded that, determined to tell Fr Duddleswell privately his mistake. ‘We don’t want the Bishop to know we waste time playing cards, Canon.’
‘Not at all, Father Neil,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘I saw you change the pack for one you prepared beforehand.’
Seeing me blush, the Canon said kindly, ‘The lad has taken the scarlet fever. But do you think your parish priest is an idiot, Sonny?’
‘As a matter of fact –’ I broke off, smiling a big smile.
‘We’ve got to brighten this mouldy old place up a bit.’
Fr Duddleswell was not at all put out by Billy Buzzle so describing his Lady altar. He unfolded the architect’s plans.
‘See here, Mr Buzzle. According to this, there will be six steps leading up to the altar, all of marble.’
‘We’ve got to get a jazzier statue of our Lady,’ Billy said.
‘Our Lady,’ I repeated. ‘Your devotion is very touching, Mr Buzzle.’
‘Look, Father,’ he insisted, ‘there’ll be hundreds of charas turning up here every year and we’ve got to give value for money.’
‘Besides,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘’tis all for the glory of God, so we have to do this thing decent, like.’
‘Where is this Lourdes place, by the way,’ Billy wanted to know.
‘In France.’
‘Where exactly, Father O’Duddleswell?’
‘Let me put it like this, Mr Buzzle. If Lourdes were in Ireland, ’twould be on the Cork-Kerry border. On the Cork side.’
A young lady crept up on Fr Duddleswell. I didn’t recognize her.
‘I’ve just bought this bottle of holy water, Father.’
To satisfy me, Fr Duddleswell asked, ‘You are married, me dear?’
‘Of course.’ Fr Duddleswell nodded approvingly. ‘Am I supposed to take it inwards or outwards, Father?’
‘Howsoever you like, me dear.’
The young lady didn’t yield ground. ‘If I drink it, how many times?’
He smiled paternally. ‘Four times a day after meals.’
‘And if I rub it on me,’ the young lady said shyly, ‘where do I rub it?’
‘Um, let me see now.’ After a moment’s reflection: ‘Wherever you think it will do most good.’
The young lady was determined not to waste her money. ‘Where’s that, Father?’
‘On second thoughts, me dear,’ he said hastily, ‘I think you’d best drink it.’
Mrs Rebecca Milton, an aged parishioner, took the young lady’s place. With her rounded back, long neck and gummy jaw dropping down on her chin she reminded me of a tortoise. She, too, was clasping a bottle of holy water.
Fr Duddleswell pointed to it. ‘Have you just bought that?’
Rebecca nodded. Gently but firmly, Fr Duddleswell took the bottle from her. ‘That could be dangerous, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘You must have your money back, yes indeed. Father Neil.’
‘Father?’
‘Will you be so kind as to give this good lady a couple of bob?’
I dipped into my pocket, doubly grieved.
A couple of days later, I was with Fr Duddleswell in his study. We had been carrying carton after carton of bottles out to his garage for storage. Only one was left. He liked to keep it by him for the surprise visitor.
‘Big day today, Father.’
‘’Tis that. Canon Mahoney will be here any minute with the Bishop’s official approval of our plans. Are you convinced yet?’
‘Well, er …’
‘Dear God in Heaven,’ he said, ‘I might as well be talking up the chimney.’
To shift attention from my unbelief, I pointed to his desk. ‘Lots more mail, I see.’
‘And few of them empty.’
’Empty’ was his word for one without money. A letter ‘with a pearl’ was one with a generous contribution.
‘Look here, lad.’ He picked up the letter on top of the pile and read: ‘Dear Father Dwirdles of St Jude’s, My wife has been trying for years to have a little one. Could you help her?’
‘What does he suggest, Father?’
Mrs Pring showed in Canon Mahoney who greeted us cheerily with ‘Charlie’ and ‘Sonny’.
‘Good to see you, Seamus,’ Fr Duddleswell said, masking his excitement. ‘Will you have a whiskey?’
Canon Mahoney waved the offer aside. ‘I never drink before 11 in the morning on principle.’
‘It’s five past, Canon,’ I said.
He studied his watch, shook it and put it to his ear. ‘You are right, Sonny. Then give me a drop of the mountain dew.’
I was pouring when I heard Fr Duddleswell say in an awed whisper, ‘That water I have, Seamus, ’tis very holy.’
‘I’ll still take the whiskey neat, thank you, Charlie.’
‘I am thinking, Seamus, of opening up a kind of Lourdes shrine to our Blessed Lady.’
‘Here in St Jude’s?’
‘Indeed. What d’you think, Seamus, honestly now?’
The Canon grabbed his drink to strengthen himself as the bearer of bad tidings. ‘I tell you plainly, Charlie, Bishop O’Reilly wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘But you have the Bishop’s ear, Seamus.’
‘True, but have you ever met a bishop whose ear was connected up in any way with his brain?’ The Canon whistled without meaning to. ‘Bishops is wonderful things. God feeds ’em information direct, see.’
‘Blessed bishops,’ Fr Duddleswell fumed. ‘But for the fact that we cannot do without ’em, they are no bloody use at all.’
‘If this were Holy Ireland, now, Charlie, that’d be another kettle of fish. But it’s a matter of definition almost that miracles cannot happen hereabouts.’
Fr Duddleswell tried telling him they had been happening right under his nose for weeks.
‘A very Irish nose,’ the Canon observed.
‘Thank God,’ Fr Duddleswell said in an empty voice, blessing himself.
‘Take my advice, Charlie, and I won’t charge you even the price of a Mass stipend. Bottle the water up and put some in your suitcase for when you next go to Cork or Kilkenny.’
‘Over there,’ I suggested, ‘they appreciate the power of the holy H2O.’
‘Oh, they do,’ the Canon agreed. ‘Provided they don’t have to swallow it.’
Fr Duddleswell grunted but seemed to realize nothing was to be gained by further protest.
‘Remember, Charlie,’ the Canon said, warming to his subject, ‘the Pope had to canonize St John Fisher and St Thomas More without miracles. Even the English saints and martyrs don’t like the flicking things. It makes the world too untidy, you see, Charlie, and English civil servants, who are full to the cork with white corpuscles anyway, don’t know how to cope with them.’
Good for the English, I thought, without saying so.
The Canon raised his glass and generously, according to his lights, included me in his toast. ‘May the shamrocks forever bloom and entwine upon your grave.’
‘Thank you kindly, Seamus, but why did you not give his Lordship a sample to drink?’
‘Oh, I did,’ the Canon said, rising to go.
‘Deo bloody gratias, Seamus, if you will forgive me Greek.’ But seeing no reaction from the Canon, he murmured incredulously, ‘And nothing happened?’
‘Surely, I’m off this very minute to see him. Y’see, your man is back in hospital.’
‘Hospital,’ Fr Duddleswell and I said in chorus.
Canon Mahoney stood at the door, relishing our consternation. ‘It gave him a powerful bout of dysentry.’ With that, he left.
‘I am played out,’ Fr Duddleswell sighed. ‘So ends the most glorious episode in the history of St Jude’s.�
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‘With Bishop O’Reilly sitting on his throne.’
‘The imagination boggles,’ he said, dropping heavily into his chair. ‘Ah, but ’twas sensational while it lasted, all the same.’
He stayed pensive for a few moments, looking out of the window as the Canon drove off.
‘I’m sorry it’s all over, Father, for your sake.’
He straightened his shoulders. ‘Never spill tears for me, lad. I am of the Irish nation. I am used to being sniped at by me fellow countrymen.’
‘I only wish,’ I found myself saying, ‘that you didn’t do business with Billy Buzzle.’
‘Billy? He gave his services free.’
‘Oh,’ I said, quite bemused. ‘So you didn’t share the proceeds with him.’
‘Proceeds? There weren’t any. It was costing me three to four pounds a day in overheads.’
The telephone rang. It was Mrs Ferguson to say her deaf son, Tommy, was making great progress with his speech therapy.
‘’Tis exceeding kind of you to put it down to me holy water, me dear, but really ’tis your own great faith that is doing the trick.’
Fr Duddleswell listened further and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Now isn’t that decent of him. Wonders of grace never cease.’
Afterwards, he told me that Billy Buzzle was contributing £100 to help send Tommy to Chicago for an operation.
I was staggered.
‘I have a crow to pick with you, lad,’ he said at length.
‘Father?’
‘I can understand why Dr Daley and Mrs Pring didn’t see the miracles, and our much maligned Bishop, too, come to that. But you, Father Neil, me faithful apprentice …’
He broke off, a sad smile playing on his lips.
I tried to explain myself but didn’t do well. ‘I suppose, Father, you only see the miracles you believe in.’
‘I realize, of course, Father Neil, there are miracles all round us. Sunrise every morning. The stars at night. Trees coming into leaf every springtime. Still, ’tis nice to think that God does special little favours for his friends from time to time.’
I nodded, saying nothing. I only felt that it wasn’t really nice to think that, and that this difference created some sort of barrier between us which only time would reveal in all its immensity.
‘And, then,’ he went on, ‘you were scandalized at me risking the accusation of playing on people’s simplemindness.’
‘True.’
‘Didn’t our Blessed Lord do the same, lad, healing people of their sicknesses from morn till night, giving them tangible proof of what faith can do for them, and promising that his disciples would do greater things?’
I wanted to defend myself and my point of view but the time was not right for it. Let him fire away, I thought.
‘Faith, y’see, works in the strangest ways. It makes people feel important and that God still cares for them. Look, for instance, at Tommy’s mother.’
I nodded agreement.
‘Again, Father Neil, I’ve known many a woman who couldn’t conceive because she or her man were too tense and worried. Often when they adopted a child the worries ceased and they had a baby of their own. Faith can work like that by removing worries.’ He shook his head reflectively. ‘Though how God acts I do not know nor do I pretend to know. One thing’s for sure, incredible things happen when “simple-minded” people believe.’
I grabbed a bottle from the carton on his desk. ‘Try working one last miracle, Father,’ and I handed it to him.
‘I couldn’t possibly do that,’ he said, unscrewing the top, ‘could I?’
‘Be a devil, Father.’
His high spirits returned. He wetted his thumb and signed himself as before. Just then, the door bell rang.
‘There,’ I cried enthusiastically. ‘That could be a stranger wanting to make a huge donation to the parish.’
‘Or Dr Daley promising to be eternally tee-total.’
‘Or,’ I yelled, ‘Billy Buzzle asking to become a Catholic.’
When Mrs Pring came in, Fr Duddleswell beamed at her. ‘Tell me the worst, Mrs Pring.’
‘Mother Stephen,’ she said.
Fr Duddleswell, realizing the game was finally lost, lifted the carton off his desk and deposited it in my arms. ‘Yours for keeps, Father Neil.’
‘You were expecting me, Father?’ Mother Stephen asked.
‘Not exactly, Mother. But sit yourself down all the same. As many welcomes to you as there are straws in the thatch.’
The Superior looked upwards suspiciously. ‘But you have tiles on your roof, Father.’
‘Tell me, Mother, to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?’
‘Our Cardinal Protector has written.’
‘And?’
‘He states quite categorically that the miracles of the babies must be attributed to our Lady and St Jude.’
Fr Duddleswell pursed his lips. ‘Does he, now?’
‘Obedience demands,’ Mother Stephen began.
‘Me dear child,’ Fr Duddleswell interrupted her, making the most of his advantage, ‘I command you under holy obedience to write back to that silly Cardinal in Rome at once. Tell him that Father Duddleswell, who is in complete charge of St Jude’s, renounces the miracle in favour of your Foundress.’
Whether through astonishment at Fr Duddleswell’s magnanimity or shock at being called ‘me dear child’, Mother Stephen was at a loss for words.
‘Do you mean it?’ she managed to get out at last.
Fr Duddleswell contemplated her sternly. ‘Are you calling me a liar, Mother?’
‘No, Father, no. But this is a great, great …’
‘Miracle, Mother,’ I said.
Mother Stephen gathered herself together. ‘I must repay you, Father Duddleswell.’
He rubbed his hands together at the prospect of salvaging something. ‘Well, if you happen to have your cheque book handy.’
‘I was thinking, rather, of praying for you to our Foundress.’
That alarmed him. ‘Please do not trouble her at all, Mother.’
‘No trouble, Father.’
‘She is dead,’ I pointed out. ‘She can’t be too busy.’
‘Our sisters will pray that you, Father, become a bishop.’
He sat back in his chair, chewing the inside of his cheek. ‘Well, now, that is a thought.’
‘Where you can do most good to souls.’
Fr Duddleswell was a dreamer again. ‘Liverpool, perhaps,’ he mused. ‘Or Westminster itself.’
Mother Stephen said, ‘I was thinking, Father, of deepest Africa.’
SIX
Beddings and Weddings
‘There is too much of it around, Donal.’
‘What is that, Charles?’
Fr Duddleswell was astonished that his old pal Dr Daley, didn’t grasp his meaning at once, seeing he had been discussing ad nauseam the current outbreak of extramarital misbehavings.
‘Sex,’ Fr Duddleswell said, his eyelids fluttering. ‘Goings-on out of wedlock.’
We were guests for dinner at Dr Daley’s ramshackle house. The meal was nearing its end. In that mischievous way he had, the doctor looked around his dining room like a short-sighted person searching for his glasses.
‘I hadn’t noticed, Charles, and that’s a fact. But, then, only being a doctor, I wouldn’t have your blessed opportunities for prying.’
‘I am not referring to the confessional, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell insisted. ‘Go into any public park and what do you find?’
‘Bees fertilizing flowers,’ the doctor mumbled, barely audible.
‘You find randy young fellers on top of their girl friends, frenzied like they are doing brass rubbings.’
‘Dear, dear, dear.’
‘You have only to pick up your newspaper of a mornin’. Why, today there was that Hollywood film-star with a name like Micky the Looney who is just tearing into his fifteenth wife.’
‘If I wasn’t so outraged by him,’ Dr Daley
said, puffing like a steam engine, ‘I might be envious.’
‘Be serious, Donal.’
‘He must be terrible fit.’ Before Fr Duddleswell could intervene again, the doctor said, ‘What was it St Augustine said in his Confessions, “Lord, give me chastity when I’m too old to notice.”’
‘Something like that,’ Fr Duddleswell conceded.
‘There you are, then, Charles.’ The doctor stroked his grey, stubbly chin reflectively. ‘Now I come to think of it, I haven’t prayed for chastity in years.’
‘Me neither. The need on me is not what it was.’
‘Isn’t it easy being virtuous, Charles, when vice brings more pain than pleasure?’
Father Duddleswell sighed his agreement. ‘If you are patient, you do not have to turn your back on the divil, the world and the flesh, they turn their backs on you.’
Dr Daley gave a little giggle. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be tempted once again?’
Fr Duddleswell turned serious. ‘’Twould not,’ and Dr Daley became miserable to keep him company.
‘God, Charles, first the old eyes, then the ears, and now –’
‘I know what you mean,’ Fr Duddleswell said hurriedly to stop him finishing.
‘It isn’t fair, you know that, Charles. When the rest of you starts to fail, you can get yourself a pair of glasses and a hearing aid. Free, too, on the National Health. But as to the other –’
‘Indeed, Donal, you have made your point.’
‘Not entirely, Charles. In my experience, there is not too much indulgence in sex today but too little.’
Fr Duddleswell looked at him as if he had just dropped dead. ‘You cannot mean it, Donal.’
‘I do. Sex is like prayer or playing the fiddle. You need practice to be any good at it. But what with wireless and the cinema, there’s less time and energy for it nowadays than since the era of fig leaves. And if this new television thing catches on in a big way, I tell you, there’ll be almost no sex at all.’
‘But, Donal, the number of young women these days who are bedded before wedded! Why, ’tis worth considering banning Bank Holidays for fear of the avalanche of babies coming nine months afterwards.’
‘Granted, there have always been young couples starting the world before they should, even as contrariwise, there have always been Irishmen who think it’s sinful stripping down an engine.’
