Father in a Fix

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Perhaps,’ I laughed, ‘my sex-education lessons are bearing fruit after all.’

  The next day’s surprises began with breakfast. There wasn’t any.

  ‘Mrs. Pring has not stirred this morning, Father Neil. Not even as little as usual.’ Fr. Duddleswell faced me across the bare board. ‘I will evict her like an Irish peasant, so I will.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s ill.’

  The thought had struck him already. I could tell by his worried look.

  ‘Would you care to risk trespassing on her parish, lad?’

  I went up to the top floor, calling, ‘Mrs. P., Mrs. P.’ There was no reply but I thought I heard a movement in her sitting room. I knocked and, receiving no reply, entered.

  Mrs. Pring was sitting in her dressing gown in front of a makeshift altar illumined by candles. There was no other light in the room but it enabled me to see the sheet of paper in her hand. On the altar was a crucifix, a tiny statue of the Sacred Heart and a faded photograph of a soldier in a silver frame.

  ‘Mrs. P,’ I spoke guiltily as if I was intruding on her only zone of privacy.

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned towards me and I could make out her puffy eyes.

  ‘Are you ill? Shall I call a doctor?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll be all right, Father Neil. In an hour or two. No,’ she anticipated my question, ‘there’s nothing I want.’

  Very worried, I left her and reported back to Fr. Duddleswell. I think he had guessed in a general way what was wrong.

  ‘I’ll ring her daughter,’ he said.

  Within the hour, Helen had arrived in her Morris Minor. She was with her mother for ninety minutes and afterwards went into Fr. Duddleswell’s study. Before he closed the door, I heard Helen say enigmatically and in a cracked voice, ‘My dad just spoke to her.’

  What did that mean? Mr. Pring had been dead over thirty years. He had been killed in the First World War.

  I couldn’t stay to unravel the mystery because it was time for my next sex-lesson at school.

  Things were in turmoil there, too. First of all, I was told that the hamster had now disappeared. Someone—Dean was the prime suspect—had unlocked the cage and Harry the Hamster had vamoosed. Not that I was particularly sorry to see the back of that cannibal.

  If Dean was the culprit he was devoid of any guilt feelings. ‘We lost our dog last week, Father.’

  I waited for the punch-line that was bound to come.

  ‘Yah, a truck run over ’im and now ’e don’t work.’

  Fat Frank said, ‘We can’t have a dog in our house, Father, because they’re allergic to my dad.’

  ‘I like dogs,’ tender-hearted, pig-tailed Lucy Mary whispered, ‘’cos they’re the only people who’re kind to fleas.’

  ‘Our dog’s eight years old,’ Patricia contributed, perhaps to prove she had forgiven me, ‘and he still only crawls. But ever so fast.’

  ‘We’ve got one in our garden, Father,’ Dean said in his best conundrum voice, ‘that barks so quiet you can ’ardly ’ear it.’

  I’m a sucker for punishment. ‘What have you got in your garden, Dean, that barks so quietly you can hardly hear it?’

  ‘A tree, Father.’

  Dean, encouraged by my straight-man act, broke into verse:

  Mary had a gold wrist watch

  She swallowed it one day,

  And now she’s taking laxative

  To pass the time away.

  The Headmistress interrupted the children’s groans by bouncing into the room. The boys and girls jumped to their feet as if God had just arrived.

  ‘Children,’ Miss Bumple, in aggressive tweeds, proclaimed as she breathed out the last of the smoke from her discarded cheroot, ‘something has happened, is happening but will not happen any more, which is excessively egregious.’

  Even Dean knew Miss Bumple meant that something intolerable had been brought to her attention.

  Neighbours whose houses backed on to the school playground and playing fields were making angry noises. Miss Bumple demonstrated with shivering effect.

  Someone—it might be one of her children, though she was not pointing a nicotined finger—had taken it into his or her tiny little head to enter the neighbours’ gardens.

  ‘And what has he or she done?’ Miss Bumple demanded to know. ‘Damage. Not to property but to defenceless animals. In short, some joker has let dogs off their leads, rabbits out of their hutches and chickens out of their coops.’

  She was absolutely certain this excessively egregious lark would stop but if it didn’t she would summon the police.

  With that, the Head stamped out benignly to trumpet her message, unnecessarily it seemed to me, to the class next door.

  I looked at the cage recently vacated by Harry and did point the finger—if only mentally—at Dean, the pest of the class.

  As soon as I returned to St. Jude’s, I hurried to Fr. Duddleswell’s study.

  ‘How’s Mrs. P.?’

  He shrugged and lifted his hands to heaven. There were creases about his eyes and his face was the colour of a burned out fire. Mrs. Pring was wrong, then: his skin wasn’t thicker than roast pork.

  ‘Can I pop up and see her?’

  ‘She has gone, Father Neil.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Only for a couple of days, to Helen’s, you follow?’

  I didn’t. I said:

  ‘I’m sorry, but I overheard Helen say something about her father communicating with her mother.’

  He explained.

  Mrs. Pring had only known her husband briefly. A penny wedding they had had during the First War. Yesterday had been the anniversary of his birthday. Mrs. Pring’s custom was on that day each year to take out her husband’s letters and read them through in the evening.

  One letter she always placed on the altar: her own last letter to her husband. It had been sent back to her unopened at his death. This was the letter in which she had written him that a child, Helen, was on the way.

  I said I did know that. Mrs. Pring had told me herself.

  ‘Well, y’see, Father Neil, last evening as she put the letter on the altar she noticed it had come open. The gum had given out at last on the envelope, she thought. Then, wisely or foolishly, who can tell? she decided to read the letter.’

  Fr. Duddleswell had difficulty continuing.

  ‘To her surprise, she found that her husband had read the letter and it had got re-sealed, I suppose. Before he went into battle.’

  ‘How could she possibly know that?’

  ‘Because,’ he said with an effort, ‘in the margin, next to where she told him of the awaited one, he had written something in pencil. Faded ’twas. Barely legible.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘“Wonder—full.”’ He lowered his eyes. ‘Just that. “Wonder—full.”’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, and left him there.

  We lunched at the Clinton Hotel. Fr. Duddleswell offered to cook for us next evening.

  He proudly drew up a menu: breast of lamb, peas and potatoes with sherry trifle as dessert. But while he was preparing it, there was a bang and afterwards a strong smell of burning came from the kitchen. I was not surprised when he served us poached eggs on toast, followed by tinned pears.

  ‘’Tis exceeding quiet with the screech owl of the house abroad,’ he said at table, breaking the silence.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I miss her like a lost leg, Father Neil, and that is the truth. She still pains me even when she is not here.’

  It was the nearest he had ever come in my hearing to expressing devotion to Mrs. Pring.

  ‘Her husband did know, then,’ I said tentatively, worried lest I touch a raw wound.

  ‘And herself had thirty lonely years thinking he did not.’ He had a far-away look. ‘When he fell face down in the mud, Father Neil, at least he was a happy man. I am pleased for herself. After the initial shock, ’twill be heart’s ease to her.’ He sniffed and came back to earth. ‘And wh
at is wrong with me cooking, you ingrate, that you are not eating it?’

  ‘Best breast of lamb I ever tasted,’ I said, filling my mouth with cold egg and water-logged toast.

  He asked how my day had gone at school.

  First, I told him I’d bought a couple of turtle doves out of my own pocket to illustrate the theme of ‘Mummies and Daddies’ and the differences between them.

  ‘And how did the kiddies react to that?’

  ‘Debbie said, “My dad’s bald but he wears a wig under each arm,” and Sean said, “I have to love mum more than dad ’cos she’s fatter.”’

  Fr. Duddleswell smiled and tapped his tummy.

  ‘Johnny stood up,’ I went on. ‘“Father, would you come round our place and put my mum straight. She will say cabbage is good for me even if it does make me always sick.”’

  ‘You are a first-rate mimic, Father Neil, you know that?’

  ‘And you’re a pretty good liar yourself, Father. Anyway, Rebecca told us, “An angel looks like my mum when she’s ready for bed.”’

  ‘Pity her poor father, then. And our friend Dean Smiley?’

  I turned grim. ‘Miss Bumple came in again today to say the neighbours are still complaining about losing their animals.’

  ‘Nuisance, Father Neil. What did Dean say to that?’

  ‘First he informed me that his dad always works as an unemployed builder and then that his sister has to get herself fixed up married before she has an illiterate baby.’

  Fr. Duddleswell laughed with an effort. ‘Dean may surprise you in the end. Remember, with children, there is many a wave ’twixt ship and land.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I continued breezily, ‘is my last day. Miss Bumple has agreed to let me take the whole class to the Aviary.’

  ‘And to the Apiary, when?’

  ‘The birds are enough,’ I chuckled, ‘I’ll give the bees a miss.’

  ‘Anyway, Father Neil, I am happy for you that your experiment has turned out so intensely well.’

  Was this irony? ‘How so, Father?’

  ‘It has proved beyond doubt, Father Neil, that this whole business of sex-instruction is utterly senseless.’

  I didn’t argue the point.

  Much against his will, I insisted on washing up. I found the kitchen ceiling spattered with potatoes and peas.

  ‘Dean’s been here as well?’ I asked.

  ‘You remember that pressure cooker I gave Mrs. Pring for Christmas …’ he said.

  When I reached the Fairwater Aviary at eleven, the children were already there.

  Mrs. Hughes took me aside. ‘Keep your eyes open, Father. This morning at school, someone opened the cage and the doves have flown.’

  I promised to do my best but how can you keep tabs on thirty boisterous kids? I decided to tail the prime suspect.

  I spoke to Patricia. ‘Where’s Dean?’

  ‘Don’t know, Father.’

  Trouble straight away. I left the main party to their own devices. I scoured room after room, outhouse after outhouse, and raced round every pond looking for Dean Smiley. I passed parrots and cockatoos, jays and blue rock thrushes, ducks, storks, egrets, an eagle, herons and hundreds of other billed species. But no Dean Smiley.

  I was comforting myself with the thought that Dean must have played truant when I was accosted by an irate keeper.

  ‘Are those kids in your charge, Reverend?’

  I said they were.

  He took off his black peaked cap and scratched his head. ‘Sabotage. That’s what it is. Sabotage.’

  Already he had found three valuable birds fluttering around outside their cages and God alone knew what further mischief was waiting to be uncovered.

  I excused myself, ran to Mrs. Hughes and told her to gather the children together quickly—Dean, I noticed, was not with them—and return to school at once. I promised to explain later.

  I accompanied the keeper on his rounds to find out the extent of the damage.

  Dean was a fast worker. Sixteen birds had been let loose and although seven were recovered, the rest, valued at over two hundred pounds, were given up for lost.

  The Director of the Aviary, Mr. Brandon, had been notified. He and I agreed that the police would have to be informed and if it were proven that one of ours was responsible the school would have to pay.

  ‘Just look at this,’ the keeper said. ‘Ruddy hooligan.’

  He showed me a golden oriole, still warm, with its neck broken by some predator.

  I asked if I could hold on to it to show my parish priest. The keeper put it in a small cardboard box for me.

  Before returning to the presbytery I went to Dean’s house in a fury. I prayed he had gone straight home so I could tear strips off him.

  His unemployed-builder father with a taste for saucy stories opened the door. He was wearing a once-white, now mustard-coloured vest, shapeless grey flannels supported by a boy-scout belt and his feet were bare. He was by no means the brutish sour-faced fellow I had been expecting.

  ‘Mr. Smiley,’ I snapped.

  He didn’t invite me in but neither did he appear to resent my visit. ‘Yes, Guvnor.’ He wasn’t a Catholic, I remembered.

  ‘I’ve come about Dean.’

  Mr. Smiley ran his fingers through a mop of greasy hair. ‘Bad news don’t half travel fast, don’t it?’

  ‘It does,’ I said. ‘Well, can I see him?’

  ‘No, Guvnor.’

  I gritted my teeth. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t want you to get it, do we?’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘The ’flu, of course.’

  Mr. Smiley explained that Dean had come home from school the day before with a temperature of 102. ‘I carted ’im off to the doctor and he ordered Dean to bed for a couple of days.’

  ‘So that’s what it was,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Nice of you to notice ’e was under the weather.’ As he closed the door on me, he said, ‘’E’s got no idea you’re so fond of ’im.’

  He didn’t fool me. Even if my New Year resolution, ‘Wise up,’ had worn a bit thin, I knew a cover-up job when I saw it.

  I phoned Dr. Daley. Though he admitted to being a little fuzzy in the head, he was quite sure he had not treated anybody by the name of Dean Smiley.

  I went to the school where Mrs. Hughes insisted that Mr. Smiley’s story was true.

  ‘Someone’s made a mug of you, Mrs. Hughes.’

  ‘My husband, Father.’

  ‘What about your husband?’

  ‘My husband’s the doctor who ordered Dean to bed for a couple of days.’

  ‘Oh, is he?’ I said, taken aback. ‘I don’t suppose your husband could get him to stay there for six months.’

  Outside the building, on the wet grass, I saw something that made me shudder but I picked it up with my handkerchief and placed it in the cardboard box alongside the dead bird.

  Fr. Duddleswell was not too upset about the incident at the Aviary. It was the least of his worries. As for me, I now had no doubts about who the culprit was.

  That evening I phoned Mrs. Hughes at home, questioned her about Ross and asked her for his address.

  Next afternoon, Saturday, I cycled to the small field reserved by the Council for gypsy encampments. It was raining hard but I was dressed for it in galoshes—a Christmas present from Mrs. Pring—cape and oilskin hat. There were a few early snowdrops and the tips of the first daffodils spiked the grass under dripping trees.

  Ross lived with his mother in a caravan on the edge of the encampment. It was of the old-fashioned sort, shaped like a huge barrel on its side with the horse-shafts protruding from the front. It had been bright green once but the paint was peeling everywhere. Under it, an old black Alsatian, blind in one eye, was lying on clean straw. He looked at me suspiciously but fortunately did not bark.

  Nearby were the smouldering remains of a wood fire; a bare washing line hung from two poles. Two horses, a mare and a colt, were nibbling the lank grass and s
hivering in spite of the sacking thrown over them as a protection against the icy rain.

  I knocked on the rear end of the barrel. Nailed to the door was a big black feather, a crow’s perhaps. The door swung open outwards and a striking-looking woman stood framed in the doorway. She wore a brightly coloured shawl almost to her knees. Her hair was jet black, parted in the middle, she wore ruby earrings and her eyes blazed above a long straight nose.

  ‘You’ve come for him, then.’ It was an affirmation not a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked alarmed. ‘You’re not going to take him away from me.’ The same tone of voice. ‘He’s the breath of my breath.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not a policeman. I’m a priest.’

  She relaxed. ‘Come in, Father.’ She took my hand and kissed it. ‘A wild colt makes a good horse, Father.’

  ‘Father Boyd,’ I said, introducing myself, as I brushed my shoes on the wire mat and shook my cape and hat.

  ‘My Ross speak of you.’

  The dim interior, with only a small box window, was lit by a kerosene lamp. I made out a bundle of dried leaves of which I only recognized burdock and serpent’s tongue. There were bunches of herbs, piles of seeds and two wicker baskets full of white wooden pegs. Ross was seated at a table holding a cup to his mouth.

  ‘It is me,’ Ross said, ‘I do it.’

  As I sat down beside a bunk, I thanked him for owning up. ‘I guessed it was you, Ross.’

  ‘I knows you would.’

  Ross’s mother came up and whispered in my ear. ‘He likes you, Father.’ She retired to a corner and said no more.

  I sensed that Ross had been confronted many times before for his misdemeanors by people he liked a good deal less.

  ‘It can’t go on, can it, Ross?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Opening cages. Letting out animals and birds.’

  Gorgio!’ Ross spat out. ‘Nothing should be locked up. ‘Taint natural.’ He softened towards me. ‘You’re a nice man, Father, our dog not bark at you, so why you let these things?’

  I shrugged. I had expected to be the one asking the questions.

  ‘Animals, birds, they should be free. Always. Like sparrows. Roam free they should, like a horse. Our horse eats grass when she’s hungry, drinks in the stream when she’s dry. There’s some as would lock air in cages if they could.’