Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Travel light,’ was Fr Duddleswell’s advice. ‘Do not take the kitchen sink. Mind you, ’tis always wise to take a thick pair of trousers to keep your cylinders warm.’

  Into my small hold-all I put only one luxury: a mousetrap and a piece of cheese to work it. We might, after all, be sleeping in a thatched cottage and I’d heard tales.

  Fr Duddleswell appeared weighed down by three enormous battered suitcases which we only just managed to squeeze into the boot. Then came Dr Daley with only a toothbrush sticking out of his top pocket. It was obvious he hadn’t even a packet of cigarettes or a hip flask.

  ‘Goodbye to you, Mrs Pring,’ Fr Duddleswell said, his head sticking out of the window of his old Chrysler.

  ‘I hope you don’t miss my cooking, Father D.’

  ‘I’ve never eaten it for fun, that’s for sure,’ he said, grinning. ‘Bless you, I will pray for you at our Lady’s shrine.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ she said.

  ‘All right, Mrs Pring, I will pray only for meself that I reach Heaven.’

  ‘If you succeed, do let us know so we can warn others.’ There were tears in her eyes as she said it. She didn’t like to see us go even for one night.

  I looked through the rear window and waved until Mrs Pring was out of sight.

  ‘Ah, Charles,’ Dr Daley was saying, ‘I’m going to pray at Becksbridge for a weeshy bit of Home Rule for parish priests.’

  ‘Indeed, Donal, you would fancy that herself introduced tea and tobacco into Ireland.’

  ‘God, Charles, traffic should be forbidden.’

  We were having problems wending our way through suburbia. The pile-up of cars surprised us. I was sitting in the back with a map on my knee, relaxed, ready to navigate once we found ourselves in less familiar parts. In the meanwhile, I was content to listen to my elders and betters. Their philosophizing, nostalgia and occasional jibes.

  ‘Never mind the crush of cars,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘this is a pilgrimage and we must show charity.’

  Dr Daley was dubious. ‘Out of charity, Charles, I loaned my neighbour my lawn-mower, garden shears, spade and rake.’

  ‘Very commendable, Donal.’

  ‘Not at all. Now my own garden is like a jungle and he won’t even talk to me.’

  ‘Nothing like charity to turn a friend into an enemy, you mean?’ Fr Duddleswell tooted his horn angrily at a car that wouldn’t let him pass. ‘Holy God, this is hardly like the roads of Connemara.’

  For Dr Daley it was a magic name, conjuring up the smell of meadowsweet and sea-weed used as manure and the tangy smell of the peat fire. He turned round in his seat to talk to me.

  ‘Peat isn’t like wood at all, it gives no sparks. Neither does it break up like coal. It glows gentle like all things Irish.’

  ‘Bloody fool,’ Fr Duddleswell cried, as a car nearly went into our rear bumper.

  ‘Turf,’ the doctor continued, ‘gives no red hot cinders, only white ash.’

  ‘And you put it to sleep at night,’ Fr Duddleswell contributed, ‘just by covering it up with another blanket of turf.’

  ‘Do you remember, Charles, in that Summer of ’37 when we climbed the Holy Mount. An American asked us, “How do you light a peat fire?” and he pointed at the golden glow in the pub grate.’

  ‘Do I remember?’ Fr Duddleswell chuckled. ‘I told him, “How should I know how to light a peat fire? Nobody round here knows.” And the Yank looks real puzzled and says, “What about that fire there, isn’t that peat?” and I says, “Oh, ’tis, but, y’see, that fire was lighted before the Spanish Armada.”’

  ‘It’s true what our parish priest is telling you,’ Dr Daley insisted. ‘There were fires alight when Columbus set sail from Galway that are still burning there today.’

  ‘They have pulled houses down,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘and rebuilt ’em round a still smouldering turf fire. By the God that’s over me, I’m not lying to you.’

  ‘Ah, Charles,’ Dr Daley reminisced, ‘it all comes back to me. All nineteen of us in a small cottage and I but a scrapeen of a boy at the time with a mouth wide as a church door.’

  ‘The life did you no harm, Donal.’

  ‘The school was just as crowded. Seventy-five in our class, of all ages. And didn’t we learn our prayers and catechism.’

  ‘Else you got a whack from a stick, I bet.’

  Dr Daley nodded the truth of that. ‘No Irish spoken in school at that time, except when the master swore at us. And we paid him a penny each Monday morning for his tutoring. Or a jug of milk or two eggs or a sod of turf.’

  ‘Oh for the good old days,’ Fr Duddleswell sighed.

  ‘Myself,’ Dr Daley responded with a laugh, ‘I’m still waiting for the good old days to arrive.’ He swiftly changed his tune, though. ‘No, you are right, Charles. I remember the dodges we got up to, when, for instance, we wanted to sell a sheep. At the fair, we’d put the scraggy little feller on some eminence so he’d look bigger and more important than he was. Like yourself in the pulpit, Charles.’

  ‘Thank you for the kind word.’

  ‘D’you know, Charles, what my mother, God rest her, did to sell a few pounds of butter she’d made? She’d be up at three to walk eighteen miles to market, trade the butter for eggs and bacon and be back at dusk to milk a farmer’s cow.’

  ‘A saint she must have been seventeen times over,’ Fr Duddleswell murmured appreciatively.

  ‘And her mother’s mother, that’s another story again. I remember her when she was nearly up to a hundred years. The mill of her mouth was empty with all the grinders long ago gone.’

  ‘I have dropped a tooth or two meself along life’s way, Donal.’

  ‘But my great grandmother, she could crack hazel nuts with her gums to her dying day. And could she swallow the poteen!’

  ‘It runs in the family, then, like noses and little legs.’

  ‘Nearing the end, Granny says, “Before the shovels throw clay over me poor eyes for ever and ever, give me an eggshell of poteen.” And Father Pats anointed her and handed her what she asked and she says, “Thanks, Father dear, but isn’t death a damned nuisance sometimes.” She sits up, drains her glass conscientiously and expires with the sweetest smile that ever adorned a face.’

  ‘She died happy, then, Donal, with even her old throat anointed.’

  ‘I couldn’t ask for a happier exit myself. And someone said, “Didn’t she die well?” And another, “So well, you’d never guess she’d not done it before.” And still another, “She should be congratulated all right,” and he slapped her on the shoulder, saying, “Well done to you, Missis.”’ The doctor’s eyes were swimming. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘the laughter that was on us.’

  ‘Tell him about Michael McCarney, Donal.’

  Dr Daley lifted his head as if he wanted to examine the car roof. ‘God, what a man was Michael McCarney.’ He fixed me with his gaze again. ‘A real peasant, Father Neil. The first time he saw a double-track railway he thought he was drunk. Anyway, Michael had never a shilling to bless himself with. But one day, he came into ten pound and bought himself a buck goat. “And where will you be keeping him?” asks Father Pats. “Under me bed, Fairther,” says he. “Shure the smell will be powerful bad, Michael,” says his Reverence. “May be, Fairther,” says Michael, “but the goat will have to get used to it.”’

  An old chestnut, I was sure, but I rocked with laughter all the same.

  We hadn’t made much progress when we stopped at The Saracen’s Head for a late lunch.

  ‘I am ready to drink me shilling’s worth of wine,’ Fr Duddleswell declared at table, licking his lips. ‘It’ll help shorten the road.’

  ‘Not for me, Charles.’

  ‘I am sure I beg your pardon, Donal.’

  ‘Don’t let me ruin your pleasure, Charles,’ the Doctor said lugubriously, ‘but remember I’m a reformed character.’

  Fr Duddleswell coughed with embarrassment. ‘So you are, Donal.’ He looked at me, hoping
I would strengthen his hand for a drink. ‘How about yourself, lad?’

  ‘If the doctor’s eating dry, so will I, Father.’

  After that, he could scarcely go it alone. ‘A pilgrimage,’ he said morosely, ‘is not meant to be an alcoholiday.’ He stood up, went and banged his belly up against the bar, demanding, ‘A carafe of water, if you please.’

  ‘Don’t drink it for my sake, Charles,’ the doctor said on his return. ‘If the Almighty had wanted us to drink the stuff, wouldn’t He, in His wisdom, have given some taste to it?’

  Fr Duddleswell changed his order to three lemonades.

  ‘God,’ Dr Daley said, looking sourly at the fizzy drink, ‘my whistle is dry as the bed of a summer’s river and I’m condemned to swallowing this.’

  ‘You look like a hurler without a stick,’ Fr Duddleswell said sympathetically.

  We weren’t long into the afternoon when Fr Duddleswell called over his shoulder accusingly, ‘We seem to have lost the big road, lad.’

  It was true. Lately, we had been travelling on narrow winding lanes, dodging potholes and stray sheep.

  Dr Daley came to my defence. ‘There are no signposts hereabouts.’

  ‘They are rarer than nightingales or courting couples in Ireland,’ Fr Duddleswell was forced to admit.

  Dr Daley’s head nearly hit the roof as we came across a particularly vicious hole. ‘Jesus my Lord,’ he cried, ‘this road could do with a spot of darning.’

  Fr Duddleswell pulled up and peered incredulously through the windscreen. ‘And what, pray, is that river doing rushing across the road?’

  ‘A ford, I think, Father.’

  His tone turned nasty. ‘Is it marked on the map?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. I’m not sure where we are.’

  ‘Dear God in Heaven, you are babbling away like a bloody Protestant. Whoever heard of a major river bisecting a road and not being marked on an Ordnance map? Get away out of here and try out those rapids ahead.’

  The water was above my knees and in a moment would have reached my rolled up trousers when Fr Duddleswell had mercy.

  ‘Come back here, lad,’ he called. ‘I cannot risk me old banger floating downstream.’

  He reversed without looking and by the time I reached the car one of the rear wheels was turning wildly in a ditch.

  By building a kind of raft with fallen branches we managed to get the car back on the road. It took a curse-crammed half an hour.

  ‘God turn a deaf ear to your maledictions, Charles,’ Dr Daley said.

  Fr Duddleswell was apologetic. ‘You know how ’tis, Donal, a good curse cleanses the soul like a good spit does the bronchial tubes.’

  ‘On a pilgrimage, Charles?’

  Fr Duddleswell thought about that and came up with, ‘I am a skunk and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘We’ll think none the worse of you for that, Charles.’ Dr Daley patted his arm forgivingly. ‘Only Mary is immaculate, my dear friend.’

  ‘I am a skunk, a rat, a worm and a louse.’

  ‘Well, Charles,’ the doctor sighed, ‘if it makes you feel better to say so. Even though you don’t believe a word of it.’

  As Fr Duddleswell drove off to anywhere but the river he was cheerful again. ‘I know I am a hypocrite, Donal, but at least I don’t boast about it.’

  I began to realize what A Kempis meant in The Imitation Of Christ: ‘Those given to much travelling are rarely the holier for it.’

  ‘Get out and shoo them cows aside, Father Neil.’

  I carefully studied the herd that was blocking the lane. ‘They are not cows, Father.’

  ‘So,’ Fr Duddleswell said ironically, ‘you are become now an expert dairy farmer.’ He sounded his horn malevolently to no purpose.

  The great square-faced creatures came slowly towards us, like American tourists chewing gum. As interested as a congregation listening to one of my sermons.

  ‘They have no horns, Father Neil. They are cows, I’m telling you, and ’tis cow time.’

  ‘The lad’s right, Charlie,’ Dr Daley said. ‘They’re bullocks.’

  I rattled my map and examined it in order to pay back Fr Duddleswell in his own coin. ‘I can’t find them on this map, Father. Surely a herd this size ought to show up on an Ordnance map.’

  ‘Get out and move ’em on, Father Neil.’

  ‘They’re probably going home for milking, Father, don’t you think?’

  ‘I tell you,’ Dr Daley said, leaning out of the window, ‘they are bullocks that have been neutered till they are almost as harmless as curates.’

  Fr Duddleswell, losing patience, banged the outside of his door and started a stampede. The herd rushed up the bank and tried squeezing past us. One of them slipped and his flank brushed against the off-side wing making a colossal dent.

  ‘Heavens, Father,’ I exclaimed, amazed at the damage. ‘That could have been me.’

  When the dust had settled we drove on. After half a mile we came across a hamlet with a pub, The Green Dragon.

  ‘Anyone care for a drink?’ Fr Duddleswell pleaded. ‘I’m paying.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you, Charles,’ Dr Daley said prohibitively. His drinking had never annoyed Fr Duddleswell like his abstinence.

  ‘Nor me,’ I added. ‘Toss one back for both of us, Father.’

  He drove off in a fury. A hundred yards further on, I called out imperiously, ‘Stop!’ and he jammed on the brakes.

  ‘A signpost,’ I explained. I had to get out to examine it because it had gone to ground. ‘Would you believe it, Father. It says, “Becksbridge 43½ miles” on it.’

  ‘Which way is it pointing, lad?’

  ‘Downwards,’ I said.

  ‘It must be an Irish signpost,’ Dr Daley put in. ‘Over there they all point in that direction.’

  ‘They were all knocked askew deliberately to confuse the Black and Tans,’ Fr Duddleswell said by way of excuse.

  A half mile further on, a milestone said ‘43 miles to Becksbridge’, We were feeling cheered until the next sign post, a mile after it, also said, ‘43 miles to Becksbridge’.

  ‘Now there’s two explanations for this,’ Dr Daley decided. ‘First, either one or other or both these signs is misleading. Or, second and more likely, Becksbridge has just flown a mile northwards like the holy House of Loretto.’

  ‘Things have got to get better soon,’ I suggested, ‘because the bad has nowhere else to go.’

  ‘You are an optimist, young feller,’ Dr Daley said.

  In the distance I could see a man sitting on a stile. I proposed that we drive on and consult him.

  He was a long, thin person, meticulously dressed in black corduroy jacket, black trousers and white open-necked shirt. A brushed bowler was on his head. He had a small nose and huge, bifocal-looking eyes.

  ‘You’re lost, ain’t you?’ he said in a strange dialect before any of us could open our mouths. ‘As soon as oi sees you I knows. Only lost people are clever enough to foind this ould lane. Pretty, ain’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ Fr Duddleswell said politely. ‘Would you mind telling us where this road goes?’

  ‘Roight to the end, Reverend. Roight to the very end.’

  I realized immediately that he had escaped from somewhere.

  ‘We are going to Becksbridge,’ Fr Duddleswell said, not yet cottoning on.

  ‘Oh, Bucksbridge,’ the stranger said.

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘No, oi can’t say oi’ve ever ’eard of Bucksbridge. Where’s that?’

  ‘I hoped you might know,’ Fr Duddleswell said, beginning to have suspicions.

  ‘Oi was ’aving an evening sit-down on this ould stile. I didn’t expect no one to ask me about no Bucksbridge. If you asked me the way to ‘The Tin Kettle’ I could tell you where tha’ is.’ He peered through the rear window. ‘Ain’t you got no map, then?’

  ‘I have,’ I said guiltily.

  ‘But where are we?’ Fr Duddleswell asked. ‘What is this
place called?’

  ‘This place? I ain’t ‘eard no one ever call it by no name. It’s just the ould lane, i’n’t it? It ain’t Bucksbridge, I can telly you that.’

  ‘Well, thank you kindly, sir,’ Fr Duddleswell said, preparing to restart the engine.

  ‘Wait, now, Reverend,’ the man on the stile said. ‘If oi were you oi’d go to the crossroads.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘Go on for two moile or so, then left, then roight, then roight again by the ould church and then ask where you is.’

  ‘That is very helpful,’ Fr Duddleswell called out, as he put the car in motion.

  ‘Oi’m a stranger in these ’ere parts moiself,’ the man said finally. ‘Oi’ve only lived ’ere these past fifteen year.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Fr Duddleswell said when we were on the road, ‘if I wasn’t lost before I asked I am now. Did you get the directions to the crossroads, Donal?’

  ‘In a word, Charles, no.’

  In common with the other two, I had left it to someone else. Besides, it was a classical case of not knowing whether ‘right’ meant his right or ours.

  ‘You will find navigating a little easier in three hours time, Father Neil.’

  I waited for an explanation.

  ‘Because then,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘the bloody stars will be out.’

  A police siren sounded behind us. We must have been exceeding the speed limit without realizing it.

  Fr Duddleswell cursed incoherently and drew in. The police car stopped behind us and a constable alighted and, leaden-footed, came alongside the driver’s seat. He had a notebook in his hand.

  ‘I must warn you,’ he said, as if he was in a movie, ‘that anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.’

  ‘Right, Officer,’ Fr Duddleswell replied, far too mischievous for my liking, ‘stop hitting me like that.’

  The constable looked as bewildered as Dr Daley or I.

  ‘Will you write that down, Officer,’ Fr Duddleswell insisted. ‘Both Dr Daley and me navigator here are witnesses that I said, “Stop hitting me, Officer.”’