Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  Isaac slowly shook his head. ‘We will put you out of your agony, little father.’

  Fr Duddleswell sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘You will tell us what you have decided?’

  Isaac and Christine spoke together as they must have planned it. ‘What we have done.’

  There was a stunned silence before Fr Duddleswell, in a daze, asked, ‘You are married already?’ He turned to the girl who was like a daughter to him. ‘Christine?’

  Christine blushed and nodded. Isaac was left to explain.

  ‘It was obvious after the last meeting that you two could never agree. So we decided to marry in the Register Office. Yesterday, in fact.’

  Had I tried in advance to imagine the effect of such a disclosure I would have been hopelessly wrong.

  Fr Duddleswell almost ran to Christine, crying, ‘Congratulations! Me little girl married.’

  Christine looked up, wide-eyed. ‘Aren’t you upset, Father?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and I knew that a part of him must have felt blasted like a tree in a storm. ‘But Christine a bride? Congratulations a hundred thousand times.’ And he put his arms around her.

  ‘But, Father,’ Christine said, overcome, ‘mortal sin. I’m living in sin.’

  Fr Duddleswell put his fingers to her lips to silence her and when she kept murmuring about the Church’s law and marrying outside the Church he knelt before her and held her tight.

  ‘Never let me hear you talk so of someone I love, d’you hear me speak to you? The Church tells us what is a sin. Even she does not know who the sinners are, nor the saints.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Only God knows such things.’

  ‘But, Father …’

  Still holding her, he leaned back to look at her and brushed her tears away. ‘What will you be wanting for a wedding present? Bed linen? Cutlery? You tell me, now, and I will see you get it.’

  ‘Father, Father,’ was all she could say, ‘Father.’

  He rocked her in his arms, whispering things I could not hear.

  I averted my gaze only to see the Rabbi holding Isaac’s hands in silence and shaking his head with deep emotion and from time to time kissing first his right hand, then his left.

  ‘Rabbi,’ Isaac managed to get out, ‘I have left the path of righteousness.’

  ‘Leben.’ The Rabbi kissed his right hand. ‘Leben,’ now it was the left. ‘You want I call a special meeting of the Sanhedrim and have you punished? No, no. You suffer too much before in a tiny life, Leben. Grief should be on holidays. Grief not yours to know, no more.’

  Isaac was a little boy again, dependent on his only friend and comforter.

  ‘What now, little father. Can even you sort out this trouble?’

  ‘Wait till Elijah come,’ the Rabbi said. ‘What else he paid for?’

  ‘What about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?’

  ‘He hold six crows by the tail if He want.’

  ‘What will He say?’

  ‘He recover, Isaac mine. He take smelling salts with His snuff. Besides, He is patient, He has lived long times.’ The Rabbi peered optimistically into the future. ‘You have two Sabbaths a week, lucky fellow and chap. You will live twice as old as any Jew, living and dead. Mazel Tov.’

  Isaac was really taken aback. ‘How can you wish me Good Luck, little father?’

  The Rabbi shrugged as if he amazed himself at the incredible things he was capable of.

  ‘Should you not rend your clothes in mourning?’

  ‘I should be but look, my clothes already mourned themselves dead.’

  ‘You always said you wanted to read the Ketubah for me under the wedding canopy.’

  The Rabbi was not listening any more. He blew his nose, called out, laughing, ‘New Year’s Day, Isaac,’ and searched around till he found what he wanted.

  Fr Duddleswell had placed a sherry bottle and five glasses on his desk. Rabbi Epstein grabbed a glass and put it on the carpet by Isaac’s feet.

  ‘Trod this for me, Isaac.’

  ‘But,’ Isaac objected, ‘that is the priest’s glass.’

  ‘So? Is there such a thing as Gentile glass for you?’

  ‘I mean the priest might not like it.’

  Rabbi Epstein turned to Fr Duddleswell. ‘Charoly?’ and Charoly gave his consent.

  ‘Come here over, Isaac, you are groom. Trod it for me. For my joy. And then we drink toast, “To Life”.’

  ‘I can’t do that, little father,’ Isaac said, sharply tipping the emotional see-saw once again. ‘Because it’s not true.’

  ‘What is not true, my Isaac? I am so happy. Can you not see my heart is full as moon on a night of great festival?’

  ‘I mean,’ Isaac said solemnly, ‘we are not married.’

  We all sat down again, the breath squeezed out of us.

  Isaac, holding Christine’s hand, told us that, after the previous meeting, they were so confused they agreed, like Solomon, to put priest and rabbi to the test.

  ‘You took such a cruel line,’ Isaac said, ‘or so it seemed to us, that we made up our minds to pretend we’d married in the Register Office.’

  ‘But why …?’ Fr Duddleswell asked.

  ‘Which ever one of you accepted our news more charitably, we would ask him to marry us.’

  Not a bad test, it seemed to me, if a test was needed. Christine and Isaac wanted to marry in the faith and obedience of the minister who represented the more merciful God. But whose God had won?

  ‘We know we lied,’ Isaac said, ‘but so did the pair of you.’

  Fr Duddleswell and Rabbi Epstein shook their heads simultaneously.

  ‘Oh yes, you did. You roar like tigers beforehand and then love like lambs. You threaten us with damnation and when we commit our unforgivable sin you reward us with the promise of paradise.’

  ‘We are a discredit to our religions,’ Fr Duddleswell said, which left all but himself and Rabbi Epstein laughing loudly.

  We three ministers of religion sat down to wash our hands, Jewish style. Fr Duddleswell stopped himself from making the sign of the cross over the table in the nick of time.

  Mrs Pring, unexpectedly cheerful, served a sort of vegetable soup. After the first mouthful, I decided God did not choose the Jews for their cooking.

  ‘One day,’ the Rabbi said, ‘you, Charoly, must eat Pesach with me.’

  ‘The Passover?’

  ‘I will invite all you both to my next seder.’ Before Fr Duddleswell could decline the invitation on conscientious grounds, the Rabbi said, ‘Jesus a good Jew. He celebrate Pesach.’

  ‘That,’ Fr Duddleswell said, gulping, ‘was before –’

  ‘He converted?’ I said.

  ‘Before He … died.’ Fr Duddleswell himself could not restrain his mirth at his unintended joke. He changed the subject with an apology. ‘Not much of a meal so far, I am afraid.’

  ‘I have not before taste food like this,’ our guest said ambiguously. ‘It has interested flavourings.’ He took another mouthful and rolled it round his tongue. ‘For me, a crust and an onion is paradise. If I eat here twice a week I weigh as much as five tons of coal.’

  ‘The dumpling is exceedingly hard to eat, Zorach.’

  ‘An absented dumpeling is harder to eat, still.’ The Rabbi was no doubt harking back to his war-time experiences.

  Fr Duddleswell tried unsuccessfully to spike his dumpling with a fork. ‘If Moses were here with his rod, now, he would get a stream of water from this, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Moses?’ the Rabbi said, glowing. ‘Blessed be his name.’

  ‘D’you know, Zorach,’ Fr Duddleswell said, mischievously leaning over the table, ‘you are almost – almost, mind – nice enough to be a Catholic.’

  ‘Thanks you, Charoly. And if you ever decide to become Jew, –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I will see you circumcized for free.’

  Fr Duddleswell ceased attacking his dumpling. ‘One thing,’ he muttered benignly, ‘how can you Jews be the c
hosen people when everybody knows we Catholics are?’

  The Rabbi replied with something which I had vaguely felt but was unable to express. He began:

  ‘You are like me, Charoly.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You are Na-v’-nad, too.’

  ‘A wanderer,’ I translated, as if Hebrew was my native tongue.

  ‘Irishmans are all emigrés, you agree, Charoly?’

  ‘True for you,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘For us, everywhere outside Erin is Egypt.’

  ‘Even,’ I said wryly, ‘when Egypt provides you with work and food.’

  ‘You even speak the English like me, Charoly,’ the Rabbi said sympathetically. ‘Funny foreign talk. More fluidly, of course.’

  Fr Duddleswell smiled graciously and intoned, ‘There by the waters of Thames I sat and wept when I remembered Ireland.’

  ‘Thames or Vistula or Tiber or Volga,’ the Rabbi said. ‘It all the same thing. Diaspora. We are dispersed, you and us, no?’

  Fr Duddleswell nodded. ‘Like members of the dog family.’

  ‘And, see, we joke the same, Charoly. We know how to laugh like drains because we suffer.’

  Fr Duddleswell agreed philosophically. ‘Mirth and sadness, as I always say, Zorach, are the same to us.’

  Mrs Pring, his most proximate and unrelenting source of persecution, came in. She removed the dirty dishes and was serving the second course when she made an admission.

  ‘I brought in a firm of Jewish caterers, Father.’

  Fr Duddleswell, not in the least upset, smiled gratefully. ‘You are a very wise woman, Mrs Pring, despite appearances. ’Tis better to call in the experts, after all.’

  He went on to chide the Rabbi good-humouredly for the plethora of Jewish dietary laws, for the weird things they had to do with their food and drink. One clear case at least, he suggested, of Jew and Irishman-going their separate ways.

  ‘D’you think, Rabbi,’ he said, ‘Almighty God really intended folk to get so steamed up about culinary matters?’

  Before the Rabbi could answer, I touched Fr Duddleswell’s wrist. ‘Father.’

  ‘What is it, lad?’

  ‘The next course is chicken.’

  ‘So? Fowl is kosher, isn’t that so, Rabbi?’

  ‘Today’s Friday,’ I pointed out.

  Fr Duddleswell pushed his plate from him, making it plain that, whatever suited the Rabbi, he wasn’t under any circumstances going to eat meat of a Blessèd Friday.

  ‘Mrs Pring!’ he roared.

  Three weeks later, we received by post a small packet containing a slice of wedding cake. The accompanying letter informed us that Isaac and Christine had plighted their troth in the Register Office.

  NINE

  The Pilgrimage

  The first hint I had that Fr Duddleswell was feeling footloose and fancy free was when I caught him reading the travel section of the Catholic press.

  ‘God Almighty,’ I heard him exclaim. ‘I was hoping for a trip to the Holy Land this year but look at the prices.’

  I had a glance and shook my head to indicate it was well beyond a curate’s means.

  ‘It seems to me, lad, that only those who are not disciples of Christ can afford to follow in the footsteps of the Master.’

  ‘Never mind, Father, remember the last thing it says about our Lord in the Gospel: “He is not here, He is risen.”’

  A few evenings later, I heard Fr Duddleswell and Dr Daley reminiscing about their 1937 pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick.

  ‘It’s a great high mountain in Connaught,’ Dr Daley said for my benefit, ‘overlooking the fairest of the fair hills of Ireland. Nothing as beautiful did I ever see with my two eyes, not before or since.’

  I refilled his glass.

  ‘With that one exception,’ he added, his small eyes twinkling. ‘Did I ever tell you, Father Neil, you are the very pink of a gentleman?’

  ‘You are speaking the blessed truth about Croagh Patrick, Donal, even if you are a long way down the corkscrew road.’ Fr Duddleswell had the look of one standing tall on a mountain peak. ‘Two and a half thousand feet below us the blue waters of Clew Bay. North, the mountains of Mayo. South, Joyce country.’

  ‘My country,’ Dr Daley put in proudly. He gestured with a sweep of his arm. ‘See them there, the twelve Pins of Connemara.’

  ‘Westwards,’ Fr Duddleswell went on in a lyrical vein, ‘the Atlantic that swallows up the evening sun like a firefly and further yet the capital of Connemara.’

  When I registered surprise, Dr Daley said, ‘Boston, Massachusetts, Father Neil.’

  ‘A green land no different from when the great St Patrick saw it,’ Fr Duddleswell said, and Dr Daley added, ‘As the good God made it.’

  I was told in detail how St Patrick fasted throughout Lent in 449 on Croagh Patrick. After which an angel promised him he would not rest in Heaven till all the wicked Saxons were driven from Ireland.

  ‘St Patrick,’ I ventured to say, ‘must be tossing and turning in his grave.’

  ‘The saint insisted, too,’ Fr Duddleswell went on, ignoring me, ‘that on the Last Day he would be the judge of all the men of Ireland.’

  ‘A hard man, right enough,’ Dr Daley said.

  Without difficulty, Fr Duddleswell squared the circle of his jaw. ‘Men of charity always are.’ When Dr Daley held out his glass again, he repeated himself and sighed, ‘Donal, surely you see a life of drink always ends in disillusionment.’

  ‘Oh it does, Charles, certainly, but think of the alternative. To be disillusioned all the way through.’

  ‘Have you ever given serious consideration to taking the pledge?’

  ‘Oh I have. And every time I have come to the conclusion I’d be better off alive.’

  ‘The weakness of the flesh, Donal.’

  Dr Daley thrust out his hairy hand with the empty glass in it. ‘If you ever had a thirst on you like mine, Charles, you wouldn’t talk any more about the weakness of the flesh.’

  ‘I am giving serious consideration to making another pilgrimage, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said, pouring him the milk of human kindness.

  ‘Safe journey,’ the doctor said, toasting him. ‘But what is your holy intention this time?’

  ‘Two-fold. Firstly,’ Fr Duddleswell said, inclining modestly, ‘I want to become a better person and a holier priest.’

  Dr Daley slowly shook his head. ‘Dear, dear, dear, Charles. Take away from you your vices and there’d be nothing lovable left.’

  ‘Secondly, to get you unhooked from the liquor.’

  ‘Have I ever caused trouble or messing through the drink?’ Dr Daley enquired heatedly.

  ‘I’ve always been as the histories describe St Pat himself: a steady and imperturbable man.’

  ‘Mind you, Donal, oftentimes your tongue sounds as if it has been stung by a whole swarm of bees.’

  ‘I can’t deny,’ Dr Daley agreed, ‘that I am well in with the drink.’ He glanced upwards at an unseen Observer. ‘My God, my God, why haven’t you forsaken me?’

  ‘Good, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said excitedly, ‘so you will come?’

  Dr Daley there and then grounded his glass and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I will.’

  ‘Father Neil?’

  ‘Can I come, too, Father?’ I had a lightning presentiment of a pleasant trip abroad. To Fatima, perhaps, or Rome or Compostela.

  ‘Indeed, you can. We will be going to Becksbridge.’

  ‘Becksbridge!’ Dr Daley and I echoed in unison.

  It was to be a parish overnight to Becksbridge on the southern tip of Lincolnshire. Our Lady is supposed to have appeared there to the wife of an inn-keeper in 1321. The statues of our Lady of Becksbridge, squat and blue, always reminded me of Toby beer jugs.

  Henry VIII, in his youth, made a pilgrimage to the Benedictine Abbey of Becksbridge and worshipped the statue of our Lady in his stockinged feet. Years later, grown into a gross heretic, he issued orders for the same monastery to be sacked. Al
l that remains of it is a beautiful Gothic arch, once part of the chapel transept, and the outline of the monk’s refectory.

  Fr Duddleswell announced the pilgrimage from the pulpit. Immediately, many parishioners wanted a place in the char-à-banc, among them Mother Stephen, the Superior of the convent.

  I heard Fr Duddleswell say to her at the church door, ‘That will be three pound for yourself, Mother, and three pound for your companion.’

  Mother Stephen agreed to pay only ten shillings for the fare since she was not wanting accommodation in the local hostelry.

  ‘We will be staying at a convent nearby, Father.’

  ‘And the purpose of your visit, Mother?’

  ‘To ask our Lady of Becksbridge to see to it that our Foundress is canonized at her earliest convenience.’

  ‘Very good, Mother. But I trust you will keep your intention private, like.’

  Mother Stephen straightened up so that she towered over him.

  ‘I am heading this pilgrimage, Mother, and I do not want you distracting me people from devotion to Mary by diverting their attention to your Foundress’s tibia.’

  ‘This is not Ireland, I would have you know. This, Father Duddleswell, is a free country.’ She turned to her companion, Sister Perpetua. ‘Follow,’ she said and stormed out.

  ‘Dear God, Father Neil,’ he said, ‘that woman has a face on her would trip a duck.’

  ‘I don’t know why you allow it, Father.’

  ‘Allow what?’

  ‘You let her slap you up and down as if she’s painting a wall.’

  He did not like the suggestion that she had bested him. ‘St Columba had the right idea, lad. When he founded the monastery of Iona, he would not allow so much as a cow on the island. “Where there is a woman,” says he, “there is bound to be trouble.”’

  ‘If I were you,’ I said, ready with advice if not support, ‘I’d assert myself on the bus on the journey there.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Don’t let the old Crow make any decisions about when to stop for lunch, when to recite the rosary – that sort of thing.’

  ‘I promise you one thing, lad. There will be no conflict of authority on that char-à-banc.’

  Neither was there. Fr Duddleswell, Dr Daley and I decided at the last moment to travel by car.

  We waved goodbye to Mother Stephen and companion, the two Miss Flanagans, Mrs Rollings, my only convert, and a whole busload of pious parishioners. Then we finished off our packing.