Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  Another whisper from the policeman. ‘Lucky for us they don’t seem too dangerous.’

  Iris came in with a couple of sleeping bags and an armful of pillows. She sorted the situation out in no time.

  ‘Say Mass for us, Fathers,’ she said.

  ‘We cannot until the hour before dawn,’ Fr Duddleswell replied, quoting canonical regulations.

  Iris smiled. ‘I meant the words.’

  Fr Duddleswell, catching on, intoned, ‘Introibo ad altare Dei’ in his best ministerial manner, and I responded with, ‘Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam’ – and so on to the end of the introductory psalm of the Mass.

  Afterwards, the Sergeant wiped his forehead. ‘Pour us out a glass of water, Tom.’

  The Walrus handed all of us a liberal dose of something stronger and the Sergeant gave us a toast, ‘To Mother Church.’

  We were on the point of swallowing when the clock in the village square chimed midnight. We priests knew that if we were to celebrate Mass next morning, not a drop of anything must touch our lips.

  ‘You’re the genuine article, all right,’ the policeman said.

  ‘I hope you’ll be very comfortable here, Fathers.’

  ‘Thank you, Iris,’ Fr Duddleswell said, casting a miserable glance around the bar.

  ‘You don’t happen to have mice,’ I said.

  ‘Have a heart, Father,’ Tom replied.

  ‘Of course, living in the country, we have had the occasional rat,’ Iris contributed, out of a mistaken sense of honesty. ‘But not for fully six months.’

  Tom promised to call us at eight, then he and Iris left us. We settled on where to park our sleeping bags. The most secluded spot was under the billiard table.

  I placed a towel from the bar counter under my hip, knowing from experience that the hip hurts a lot after a night on a wooden floor.

  ‘Goodnight again, lad, and may you sleep like a sack in a mill.’

  Not much hope of that. It was well after midnight and, as Fr Duddleswell had wryly observed, ‘Perhaps the Holy Family were lucky there was no room for them in the inn.’

  I lay awake for what seemed like hours, listening to the distant hooting of owls and any suspicious scrabblings on the floor around me. I could tell from Fr Duddleswell’s restless movements that a long day was ahead of him as well.

  Against all expectations, I slept. I was awakened all of a sudden by pounding feet and hushed voices. It can’t be morning, I thought. It’s not light yet. Am I dreaming? Where am I? It dawned on me that I was under a billiard table in a bar with the curtains drawn. I groped around for Fr Duddleswell. Not there. He had deserted me but why?

  The pilgrims, I could tell, were already assembling in the bar for Mass. I could make out the shapeless legs of the Miss Flanagans and the habits of Mother Stephen and Sister Perpetua as they placed the altar stone on the counter and laid out the Mass vestments. My watch showed 8:50. I prayed devoutly that Fr Duddleswell would come back soon and fish me out of this mess.

  I listened intently. What was that sizzling sound over my head? Could it be himself? I crept to the far side of the billiard table and raised my head. There on the green surface was the prone figure of Fr Duddleswell, his lungs swelling and shrinking in sleep.

  I poked him awake rudely with thumb and forefinger. When he had taken in the unpromising situation, he slid silently over the edge and joined me beneath the table.

  ‘That bloody publican,’ he growled, ‘has overslept himself.’

  Like us, I nearly said. Instead: ‘You can’t say Mass in here, Father.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because,’ I joked, ‘canon law says the one place you can’t offer Mass is a bedroom.’

  From the look on his face he was swallowing swords. ‘D’you want me to close your ogles for you?’ he hissed, holding up his fist.

  The publican who appeared then must have been reading the same canon as myself. He said:

  ‘Not in here, ladies and gentlemen. Mass will be next door in the private bar.’

  As the congregation trooped out, we heaved a sigh of relief, especially when we heard Tom Foyle adding, ‘Leave the vestments, Mother. The Father will be vesting at the bar there.’

  Moments later, the Walrus poked his head under the billiard table.

  ‘Thank you kindly, Tom,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘Have you asked Miss Eccles for the spare keys?’

  ‘She’s had to go home for them, Father. It’ll take her about a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Why don’t you start Mass, Father?’ I said.

  Fr Duddleswell thought it a good idea. Tom snatched the vestments off the counter while the pilgrims were busy singing the Lourdes hymn and carried them to the Gents. Fr Duddleswell followed him on his belly like the serpent in Genesis and emerged three minutes afterwards ready to celebrate. The only thing likely to give him away was his slippers and the ends of his pyjamas protruding below the alb.

  He preached an impromptu sermon of prodigious length for my benefit, only bringing it to an end when he saw that Miss Eccles had returned with the keys.

  The publican slipped them to me but I waited all the same until Fr Duddleswell reached the consecration. When the congregation was bowed in adoration, I rose from my hiding place. Using my sleeping bag as if I was in a sack race, I hopped quickly out of the bar without attracting attention.

  Unfortunately for me, outside the pub, sitting under a coloured table canopy, was Miss Kathleen Flanagan.

  ‘I was feeling faint, Father,’ she explained. I didn’t doubt her, poor soul. Not with the memory of a bleeding mouse falling on her head.

  ‘I’m just doing my usual penitential exercises before Mass, Miss Flanagan,’ I lied.

  She rubbed her forehead. ‘I do think you’re a good and holy man, Father Boyd.’

  I thanked her for the kind word and hopped smartly home.

  I had hardly finished shaving and dressing when Fr Duddleswell hammered on the door. He unvested in his room and dropped the vestments on the landing. ‘Get your harness on for Mass as fast as you like, lad,’ he ordered.

  I hurried down to the pub and celebrated the second Mass for the pilgrims with Dr Daley as the acolyte. The Doctor joined us for breakfast in the local Hotel and, after that, we met up with the rest of the pilgrims in the square. Off we marched to the small Catholic shrine a mile and a half outside the village.

  Fr Duddleswell was in high spirits after our narrow escape. As he was to say later, ‘I do not mind being humbled, Father Neil, but I take exception to being humiliated.’ He never explained the difference.

  The sun was shining on cornfields still surprisingly green, fat pigeons heaved themselves like Abbots out of the oaks, sparrows and jays were chattering in the hedges lining the route, there was a flavour of cow in the air and trees showed up bright green against the blue.

  ‘Is not this a newly minted morn?’ Fr Duddleswell fairly sang. ‘The dew thick as butter, you could put it on your bread.’

  Then he switched to a bellow: ‘First Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary, the Annunciation. Our Father who art in Heaven.’ And we were launched on our prayerful way.

  We reached the half-mile mark. The tradition was for all pilgrims to remove their shoes at this point and walk the last mile unshod. I was feeling so much under the weather, I demurred. But Fr Duddleswell insisted that we priests should set the people a good example. ‘If Mother Stephen and Henry VIII can walk on naked feet, so can we, lad.’

  Dr Daley was muttering to himself, ‘My father, God rest him and give him peace, never wore shoes till the day he wed.’

  ‘Perhaps he only married,’ I suggested, wincing, ‘to ease the pain in his feet.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

  We set off again, less spiritedly and much slower. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace –’ Fr Duddleswell broke off in mid-prayer. ‘Bloody hell,’ he let out with a strangled cry.

  The procession came to a halt as the leader collapsed on to the seat
of his pants.

  Dr Daley, bare-footed, with his trousers rolled up to his shins, knelt down by his side, concerned.

  ‘’Tis me foot, Donal. I have trodden on a bloody nail.’

  ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ the Doctor said soothingly. ‘Wouldn’t you think a nail had something better to do than start crucifying our parish priest?’

  Ever the professional, he took out a bottle of disinfectant and a bandage. He cleaned the wound and bound it up for him as the patient sat grimacing on the grass verge.

  ‘Only four more holes, Charles, and you will be rivalling the stigmata of Padre Pio himself.’

  ‘Reminds me of King Aengus, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said, gritting his teeth as the disinfectant was applied.

  ‘King Aengus?’

  ‘Indeed, Father Neil,’ Dr Daley explained. ‘St Patrick baptized the royal feller in the Golden Vale of Cashel. St Pat was on the downward slope of life at the time, so he digs his crosier into the ground to support himself.’

  ‘Not too tight, now,’ Fr Duddleswell complained.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Well, Father Neil, after the christening, St Pat saw blood reddening the grass. And then his own holy face reddened when he realized he had driven the spike of his crosier clean through the king’s foot. “Why did you not say something?” says St Pat to the king. “Well, first, St Patrick, sir,” says the king, “did our Blessed Lord, the King of kings, cry out when He shed His blood for me? He did not. And, second, St Patrick, sir,” says he, “I thought it was part of the ceremony.”’ Dr Daley tied a knot in the bandage. ‘How’s that, Charles?’

  ‘Ouch,’ Fr Duddleswell replied with a grin and proceeded to put his shoes and socks on.

  ‘That’s cheating,’ I said.

  He looked up at me indignantly. ‘Haven’t I a martyred foot and all?’

  Dr Daley was busy rummaging around in a ditch until he found a suitable stick. ‘Here, Charles,’ he said, offering it, ‘a third leg for you twenty years or so ahead of your time.’

  ‘Thank you, Donal. More like a crosier, isn’t that so? ’Tis fitting for me, the Lord’s anointed, to continue guiding you all heavenwards.’

  Our heavenly guide promptly wriggled this way and that like someone about to fall into an apoplectic fit.

  ‘What ever is the matter with yourself, Charles?’ Dr Daley asked anxiously. ‘Even if the nail was poisoned, gangrene can hardly have set in as soon as this.’

  Fr Duddleswell, holding his backside, managed to point to the anthill he had been sitting on. ‘A fairy mount’ was his word for it.

  ‘It must be red ants,’ Dr Daley declared. ‘The black ants only eat Protestants.’

  The procession was held up for another twenty minutes while Fr Duddleswell ‘went behind’ a convenient haystack. There he divested himself of his clothes and got rid of the ants.

  ‘God,’ Dr Daley said when Fr Duddleswell was restored to us, ‘isn’t Providence a queer business altogether?’

  ‘How is that, Donal?’

  ‘With the entire world to feed on, them ants preferred to take bites out of your tough little bum.’

  In my heart, I felt the incident had answered one of my mother’s constant teasers: ‘Why did God in His wisdom make such horrible things as ants?’

  ‘I insist, Father Duddleswell.’

  Fr Duddleswell was stiffly refusing to accept Mother Foundress’s tibia encased in its golden reliquary. ‘I will not allow veneration of that thing at our Lady’s shrine,’ he said shrilly.

  ‘Then, Father,’ Mother Stephen said, ‘to use a vulgar expression, I will spill the beans.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Mother?’

  ‘I think the Bishop will be most interested to know that one of his senior parish priests spent the night of a pilgrimage carousing.’

  ‘Carousing?’

  ‘In a drunken debauch.’

  ‘Mother,’ Fr Duddleswell spat out, ‘I have not so much as had a drink taken in the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Then why did you sleep on a billiard table with parts of you bared –?’

  ‘Which parts?’

  ‘In a public bar,’ Mother Superior concluded.

  ‘I can, um, explain, Mother.’

  ‘I am listening.’

  When it came to it, he found he could not explain. Not at the shrine of our Lady of Becksbridge with some of his most devout gossip-mongers within earshot.

  ‘Perhaps you will also be kind enough to tell me, Father Duddleswell, why you celebrated Sunday Mass in your bedroom slippers and pyjamas, having first put on the sacred vestments in the Gentlemen’s, I can hardly bring myself to say the word, lavatory.’

  ‘That is a long story, Mother.’

  ‘And, doubtless, a tall one. Did you know that those vestments are the property of our convent?’

  ‘I had not realized you had loaned them to us, Mother,’ Fr Duddleswell said humbly.

  ‘Will I be able to see them used at Mass again without them conjuring up the most unholy associations?’

  Fr Duddleswell took the tibia of Mère Madeleine and kissed the reliquary containing it as an example to all his parishioners.

  ‘Did I ever tell you, Mother,’ he said, squaring his jaw, ‘of the intense devotion I have in me heart’s core for your holy Mother Foundress?’

  The winds and tides of fortune turned. Or perhaps we had merely exhausted our ration of ill-luck. We returned home that Sunday evening with the minimum of incident, Fr Duddleswell both driving and navigating. He had slowed down, it is true, as we passed almost every pub but his silent appeal left us unmoved.

  Dr Daley shared a light meal with us which Mrs Pring had prepared. Fr Duddleswell was hobbling. I was aching in every limb from impending ’flu. As for Dr Daley, he was as spry as a sparrow.

  Mrs Pring had been unpacking Fr Duddleswell’s suitcases. She came to ask where his dressing gown was.

  ‘In the Gents of a public house,’ he said.

  ‘And I was hoping,’ she sighed, ‘the pilgrimage would do you good.’

  After the meal, the leader herded us into his study. He rubbed his hands enthusiastically.

  ‘Well, now, Donal, the days of penitence are over and I can offer you a drink.’

  ‘Thank you, Charles. No.’

  ‘No?’ It was the most poignant appeal yet for clemency.

  ‘I have decided, Charles, to be as brave as your holy self. While you abstain, I will not permit a cigarette or sup of whisky to defile my lips.’

  Fr Duddleswell’s left cheek twitched irritably. ‘Father Neil?’

  ‘In the seminary, Father, the spiritual director advised us not to take whisky till we’re forty. That way, he said, we’ll be sure not to bury our youth.’

  ‘He did, did he?’ was all he could reply to that.

  ‘Yes, Father, I believe he once had a priest friend who killed himself with drink. At about your age.’

  ‘A clear case of euthanasia,’ Dr Daley said, his hand on the door. ‘Thanks for the lift, anyway, Charles, and for your towering example.’

  He went and we heard the front door close after him.

  ‘So there, Father Neil, it was all worthwhile if it has made Dr Daley go on the wagon.’

  ‘He went home as pious and sober, Father, as if you’d just anointed him for life everlasting.’

  Fr Duddleswell laughed hollowly. ‘I have had a rough time of it, what with a night spent on a billiard table, a puncture in me foot and then being cannibalized by a nest of ants.’

  ‘Have you?’ I said, not encouraging him.

  ‘There is nothing,’ he murmured, steaming towards his cupboard, ‘like a quiet drink in the heel of the evening.’

  He poured himself a double whisky and was about to drink it when in marched Dr Daley, his eyes gleaming gratefully and a cigarette already alight in the corner of his mouth.

  ELEVEN

  Little Sinners and Little Saints

  Corpus Christi, one of Fr Duddleswell’s favourite feasts, was
fast approaching. In his study, he outlined plans for first Communion, always held at St Jude’s on the Sunday nearest the feast.

  Each child was to have his picture taken individually with the girls dressed up as little brides and the boys sporting white blouses with white shoulder bands and grey flannel trousers. Each would receive a certificate, a rosary and a prayer book.

  ‘The kiddies are the best evangelists in the parish, Father Neil. Lapsed parents come to church to see their little ones make their first Holy Communion. We can even expect a convert or two.’

  ‘That’s good, Father.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, rubbing the side of his nose, ‘in preparing for this great event, you will take a hand at the churn.’

  I promised I would do my share.

  ‘Fine, fine. Kind of you to offer.’

  ‘Tell me what to do.’

  ‘I suggest you instruct God’s darlin’ little ones in the sacraments of penance and Communion.’

  ‘Who will hear their first confessions?’

  ‘The experience will do you good.’

  ‘What will you do, Father?’

  ‘I will distribute first Holy Communion, naturally.’

  He beamed as he said it, aware that nothing had been shared out so unevenly since the lion ate with the lamb. Not that I minded. Giving seven-year olds their first Communion was the parish priest’s privilege. In the years ahead, my turn would come.

  I had recently attended the lectures of a nun, a specialist in religious education, on preparing children for the sacraments. Her common sense approach impressed me and I was keen to put her teaching into practice.

  ‘Would you mind, Father, if I heard the children’s confessions in my room?’

  Fr Duddleswell was as shaken as if I had said I was turning Jewish or wanted to open a bordello.

  ‘Educational psychologists,’ I explained, ‘think it’s better for children to confess in an informal atmosphere to someone they know and can see.’

  ‘Is that so?’ he said defensively.

  ‘In my room, they won’t be afraid of the dark. They can relax and tell me what is really worrying them and not just rattle off sins their teacher’s taught them.’