Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  ‘So you asked her to marry you?’

  ‘Asked? I suppose so. I kept my job as a dowry. But, to be honest with you, I was getting a bit desperate at the time.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘When you work as an undertaker you don’t meet many women. Well, you do but not women in the marriage market, I mean. Either the tears are running down their cheeks or they’re dead.’

  I gave an understanding grunt.

  ‘If, to take an example, you see a pretty young widow at the graveside you can’t exactly introduce yourself, can you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In any case, what would you say to her? “Do you come here often?” or “Care for a night out at the pictures?”’

  ‘Your wife, I don’t suppose she secretly resents you being an undertaker?’

  Mr Williams cast a look of admiration at me. ‘Do you know, Father, I think she does. She didn’t like her father and he was one.’

  ‘Why didn’t she like her father?’

  ‘Mainly because he chose me, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Go on, Mr Williams,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, fingering his new black topper, ‘I never tried to hide the fact that I’m an undertaker and I like the job. Even when I was courting my Doris, I dressed like this.’ With his hand he gestured down his professional attire. ‘I was even married in this and used one of her father’s best hearses for the wedding. We rearranged the inside a bit, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So she knew where my heart was and I think she was pleased with me at first. I provided her with the sort of life she was accustomed to. In our street, she was proud to be spoken of as the undertaker’s wife. Always good for a few bob’s credit at the corner shop. The third steadiest job in the market place, we used to say.’

  ‘The third?’ I queried.

  ‘The first is yours, Father.’

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.’

  I urged him to continue.

  ‘It was the neighbours’ kids that turned her against me in the end. My fault, I suppose, for leaving the hearse outside the front door at nights. The kids used to pass nasty remarks at her after that.’

  ‘May I ask what sort of remarks?’

  ‘They used to say, “That one” – meaning my Doris – “that one is married to a prune.”’

  ‘Not nice.’

  ‘It was a bit thoughtless. Sometimes they referred to me as “The Big Stiff” or “The Removal Man” or’ – he hesitated – ‘“The Cockroach.”’

  I had to get beyond this name-calling to the roots of his marital difficulties. It was my duty as a priest. I launched out into the deep.

  ‘Mr Williams.’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘Mr Williams, you don’t think, er, the real source of your, er, problem, might be, how shall I put it …?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘You are sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. My Doris won’t even hear of it.’

  I changed slightly the direction of my attack. ‘Do you sleep well at nights?’

  ‘Not bad, Father. I sleep on top of my Doris.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘You do.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Yes, except when I have –’

  ‘Do you have a double bed, Mr Williams?’

  ‘Not since our honeymoon and even then I wasn’t always allowed in.’

  I was getting warm. ‘You have two singles, then?’

  ‘No.’

  The wild thought came to me that they might sleep in separate coffins. I said, ‘On the floor, Mr Williams?’

  ‘We’re not Japs, Father. Bunk beds. It’s a habit we got into when we slept in the dug-out during the war.’

  I nodded. My wild thought wasn’t so wild, after all. What is a bunk but a coffin without a lid?

  ‘You like the arrangement?’ I said.

  ‘At least we’re near,’ he said, ‘but not too near.’

  ‘And you sleep on the top bunk?’

  ‘It gives my Doris reassurance, Father. Mind you, I don’t like the set-up really.’

  ‘You’d prefer a double bed.’

  ‘I don’t want to be ambitious. No, I mean I’d prefer the bottom bunk. To start with, I can’t stand heights, that’s why I keep away from the edge of graves, you may have noticed.’

  ‘I hadn’t, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Anyway, I have a recurrent nightmare. A sense of falling from a great height. Then I wake up with a thud. On the floor usually.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very comfortable, Mr Williams.’

  ‘If I’m to be totally honest with you, Father, it isn’t. Especially as there’s a wooden plank at one end of my bunk so I have to sleep with my knees up round my chin. I’m very tall. You may have noticed.’

  I confirmed that I had. ‘Couldn’t you sleep the other way round, Mr Williams, so your feet go over the edge that way?’

  He was astonished. ‘Do you know, that’s never occurred to me. Not in ten years.’ His face clouded over. ‘I’ll ask my Doris if she has any objections.’

  ‘Why should she?’

  ‘She might wake up in the night and see these’ – he pointed, thumbs-down, to his feet as if they were alien things – ‘sticking out the end of the bunk. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight, would it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.

  ‘You haven’t seen ’em, Father. I reckon that next to undertakers there’s no one sees worse sights than a chiropodist.’

  ‘Feet are never very beautiful at the best of times,’ I said, in an attempt to cheer him up.

  He came over confidential at this point. I had noticed before that sympathy brought out the worst in him.

  ‘I’ve got corns, bunions, ingrowing toenails, the lot. Because of all the standing around I have to do. It’s lucky for me we live in England.’

  ‘Good chiropodists, you mean?’

  ‘No, we wear shoes and socks. Otherwise, I reckon I’d have to stay indoors every day till it’s dark.’

  ‘Couldn’t you wear bed socks, Mr Williams?’

  His face burst with unconcealed emotion. It was like watching a sudden outbreak of boils.

  ‘Do you know, I think you’re clever, Father, I really do.’

  I shrugged off the compliment in order to press on with the job in hand.

  ‘How do your disagreements show during the day, Mr Williams?’

  ‘Apart from her using my best cremation urns for vases?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that particularly.’

  Tears sprang into his eyes. ‘Do you realize, Father, that my Doris has never been to one of my funerals? Not one.’

  His professional pride was suffering a hurt whose extent it was difficult for a layman in these matters to calculate.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, not too sympathetically.

  ‘Not even when Mrs Jennie White died.’

  ‘Mrs White?’

  ‘She was about the most vile, disgusting person I ever met.’

  My nature got the better of me. I tried consoling him with, ‘Maybe that’s why your wife didn’t attend her funeral.’

  ‘Jennie was her best friend,’ he insisted. ‘No, she didn’t turn up so as to spite me to my face. Another thing, Father. She … she insulted me horribly.’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, providing an opening if he wanted one.

  ‘“If I die, Frederick,” she said this to me last month, putting on a face like my left foot, “if I die, I’m not letting you bury me.”’ Freddie wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Well, what a thing to say to any undertaker, let alone your own husband.’

  ‘It must have hurt,’ I whispered.

  ‘I’ve got my pride, Father. I said to her, “Doris, suppose I were to say to you, I’m not eating your cooking any more, what would you say?”’

  ‘What did she say?’

&nb
sp; ‘Nothing. But since then I’ve had to cook for myself.’

  According to a marriage guidance book I had read I wasn’t supposed to take sides in a marital dispute. All the same, Freddie secretly had my complete backing.

  ‘She’s a big woman, my Doris is, Father. Have you ever seen her?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then you haven’t. Big is perhaps too small a word for her. She’ll flatten some shoulders when she goes.’

  I admired how, even in his depression, he still managed to view things professionally.

  ‘She’s enormous, really, Father. So it’s not surprising she complains she doesn’t feel altogether loved.’

  ‘It’s generous of you to say that, Mr Williams.’

  He eyed me gratefully. ‘Her body comes between us, so to speak,’ he said, joking bravely and showing his white tomb-stone teeth. ‘There is so much of her to love. I do my best. I put my arms around as much as I can reach at a time. I do it in relays and, that way, I cover most of her in about a week.’

  Here, Mr Williams, his humour spent, broke off close to choking point. I decided it was kinder to both of us to bring the meeting to a close.

  ‘You’re the first person,’ he said to me at the door, ‘who’s ever completely understood me. Know what I mean, Father?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said, blushing, but I thanked him for the compliment. ‘Any time I can be of help, Mr Williams.’

  ‘Next Thursday at 7.30, then, Father.’

  I reflected all week on Dr Daley’s apparently crazy proposition that nowadays there was too little indulgence in sex. It was a proposition overwhelmingly supported by the only evidence I had. Batty Holohan and Dympna Tutty were intent on a virginal marriage while Freddie and Doris Williams’s bedroom closely resembled a family vault.

  On Thursday evening, I was thinking, ‘Some Family Group! Only one member and he’s an unhappily married man,’ when attendance doubled. Enter Mr Bottesford.

  ‘I have a family problem,’ Bottesford explained in his whiny voice. ‘My wife is threatening to come back to me.’

  It was the gossip of the parish that Bottesford’s wife had done the decent thing and left him for a commercial traveller.

  I could hardly refuse Bottesford’s application. As Fr Duddleswell pointed out, ‘That one may swallow a rasher of a blessed Friday but he is a Catholic of sorts, whereas Freddie Williams is only Co-op.’

  It did look a bit odd, all the same, having two rival hearses standing nose to nose outside St Jude’s, especially as Bottesford’s had a coffin in.

  I played safe, that evening. We studied, in a less personal manner than before, the Catholic theology of marriage as set out in Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii.

  We had been together nearly an hour when I was called out by an irate Fr Duddleswell.

  ‘If this continues,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I am going to the Bishop to be fitted for a new curate.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Father?’

  ‘I have had two callers at the door and three phone calls asking which of us has died, you or me.’ He beckoned me. ‘Come on, lad. If we don’t act fast, we shall have all the old women of the parish buzzing around like flies on a cowpat.’

  Having no clue to what he had in mind I followed him outside to Bottesford’s hearse. He opened the rear door and started pulling out the coffin.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ I said.

  ‘’Tis empty, Father Neil. I am not having the bloody thing outside the presbytery late at night.’

  The coffin was not empty. Something was sliding up and down inside it. Not heavy enough to be a corpse. We carried the coffin in to the hall and placed it on the floor near the grandfather clock.

  ‘Next week, Father Neil, your Family Group will be meeting elsewhere. I am not having St Jude’s turned into an undertakers’ convention.’

  With that, he returned to his study.

  The doorbell rang and, being in the vicinity, I answered it. It was Mrs Rollings, my one and only convert. A pious lady and quite impossible.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Rollings,’ I said, smiling pleasantly but firmly. ‘You haven’t come to join the Family Group.’

  I was not asking but telling her.

  ‘No, Father,’ she replied to my relief.

  ‘Perhaps you’re here to see Father Duddleswell,’ I said in hope.

  ‘No, Father. I’m told I have to be confirmed and my Wilf says you’re the priest to instruct me.’

  I told Mrs Rollings I was about to bring a meeting to a close. After that, I’d consult my diary and fix an appointment.

  ‘In the meanwhile,’ I said, ‘please make yourself comfortable.’

  Before I could stop her, she sat down on the coffin, thinking it was some sort of presbytery bench.

  I directed her to a more orthodox seat. ‘That’s a coffin,’ I pointed out and took pleasure in leaving her before she could question me about it.

  I had barely returned to the parlour when I heard a short, shrill cry followed by a thud. I hurried back into the hall where Mrs Rollings was stretched out cold on the carpet. Oozing from one end of the coffin was a thick line of blood. I nearly joined the lady on the floor.

  ‘Help,’ I called out weakly.

  Fr Duddleswell popped his head round his study door and Bottesford and Freddie Williams came running to find out what the trouble was.

  ‘Blood’ was all I could say.

  ‘I can explain,’ Bottesford said.

  ‘Later,’ I told him angrily. ‘Pick Mrs Rollings up, first.’

  With Freddie he sat her on a chair while I rushed to get her a glass of water.

  When she came to, she saw first me and Fr Duddleswell, and smiled. Then the two undertakers came into focus leaning over her and she passed out again.

  ‘I think you had better go,’ Fr Duddleswell told them, ‘or this good lady is never going to recover.’

  ‘It’s only legs of lamb in there,’ Bottesford whined, as Mr Williams loaned him a hand with the coffin.

  That’s it, I thought. That blasted Bottesford at his blackmarket activities again. Transferring meat in a coffin.

  It was a splendid cover, I had to admit. The police would have to be pretty ghoulish to stop him and ask him to open that up.

  The last picture I had of my Family Group that evening was of two undertakers walking together through our front door, solemnly bearing on their shoulders a coffin stuffed with leaky legs of lamb.

  My hope was that Fr Duddleswell’s veto on any further meetings at St Jude’s had spelled the end of my Family Group. I had reckoned without the strength of Freddie Williams’s despair. He rang to offer the use of his own home.

  Without the publicity of the Co-op hearse outside the presbytery, I expected Bottesford at least to withdraw. Again, my hopes were dashed. He rang to enquire where the next meeting was to be held.

  ‘At Mr Williams’s place,’ I told him, thinking that would dampen his enthusiasm.

  ‘I’ll be there, Father,’ he said.

  In the event, Doris Williams played ball. There was no denying the size of her. Legs like Shire horses, a bosom big enough to suffocate two guardsmen in at once and more double chins than a concertina. But she seemed an amiable creature.

  A splendid hostess, Doris kept plying us with tea and home-made fruit cake as we men formulated the purposes and ends of marriage in a lounge festooned with pictures of Mr Williams posing beside tombstones. Doris herself wouldn’t ‘partake of a crumb’ on account of her acute ‘dyspepsia’, a polite word, I presumed, for bellyache.

  When we had eaten enough, Doris sat quietly in the corner of the room, making up her face. She distracted me very much. When she powdered her nose, it reminded me of a snow-storm, and when she stretched her lips to rouge them I could think of nothing but someone getting in practice to paint a pillar box.

  After that meeting, I had a word on the side with Freddie. He was delighted with progress so far.

  ‘A really ni
ce fellow, Bottesford,’ he enthused. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Nor I,’ I said.

  ‘My Doris isn’t doing so bad, either, is she?’

  I could see he was fishing for compliments. ‘She makes a nice fruit cake,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell her that, Father, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘She’s really thrilled that you’re honouring us with your presence. She’s partial to dog collars.’

  He wasn’t joking. With every meeting, Doris ogled me more and more. I was concerned lest the other two men were scandalized. They were probably too engrossed in their theological discussions to notice.

  I found it hard to believe Bottesford was deeply interested in theology. Then, in a flash, I knew why he was coming to the meetings. He was hoping to persuade Freddie to defect from the Co-op and join Bottesford’s Funeral Parlour. With Freddie’s reputation for honesty and reliability, he would be able to sew up the trade of the whole town.

  When I voiced my suspicions to Fr Duddleswell, he said, ‘There is a distinct odour hereabouts, Father Neil, even if Bottesford is lying in lavender like Paddy’s pig.’

  The meetings had been continuing satisfactorily for a month when, one morning after Mass, I received an anonymous phone call. An Irish voice said, ‘I t’ink you should know, Fairther. Poor Mrs Williams went in the night, Fairther. A big loss, Fairther.’

  Before I could question him, the caller rang off. I recognized the voice as that of Eddie McEvoy, Freddie’s pall-bearer.

  I immediately told Fr Duddleswell that Mrs Williams’s ‘dyspepsia’ must have been something far more serious.

  ‘God rest her,’ he murmured, signing himself. ‘She’ll make a full load for four.’

  We jumped into the car and drove to Freddie’s place.

  As soon as Freddie answered the door, Fr Duddleswell gripped his arm. ‘I am so sorry, Freddie.’

  Freddie sniffed and rubbed the pouch under his eye. He had not had a wink of sleep, it was obvious.

  ‘Come in, Fathers. Bad news is like a bad shilling, isn’t it? It travels very fast from one to the next.’

  He invited us in to his kitchen and I managed to whisper on my own behalf, ‘My deepest sympathy.’