by Neil Boyd
‘I thought you felt like that, Ross.’
‘I do. Yes, I do.’
‘I didn’t expect a Romany would like to see anything locked up.’ I smiled. ‘Not even a schoolboy.’
He smiled, too. His face was not used to it.
‘Mrs. Hughes told me, Ross, that when all the animals were released in the gardens, there wasn’t a sound. No bark from a dog, no cluck from a hen.’
‘That’s right. They knows I love ’em, see.’
‘Yes, I do see.’
‘If you put a bird in a cage, you might as well chop his wings off,’ Ross said. ‘There’s people’d learn rabbits their sums if they could.’
Sure I had Ross’s confidence, I told him I thought he was only partly right. Usually people lock up animals and put birds in cages for their protection.
‘Your dog under this caravan, Ross. What would happen to him if you didn’t look after him? And your horses, you put sacks on their backs to keep them dry and warm.’
‘We don’t lock nothing up,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Not even our dog is allowed in here. He don’t have no prison, him.’
I took the cardboard box from inside my jacket. It was wet and crumpled. I handed it to the boy.
Ross took the lid off. He stared first at the hamster and golden oriole lying side by side on the straw and then at me. ‘That’s life, isn’t it?’ A nerve twitched in his temple.
‘Try telling that to them, Ross.’
‘You try telling dead things in cages they’re alive.’ I said nothing. ‘Death’s not important, everything dies. But to be free—’ He broke off as if he could never make a Gorgio understand.
I rose to go. Ross walked with me to my bike. The rain had stopped. The sun was trying to pierce the clouds.
‘I don’t like what you say about being lonely,’ Ross said, as I stood my bike up.
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘I do, which is why I don’t like it. My mum is lonely.’ He pointed to the caravan, and, though perhaps I imagined this, to the black feather nailed to the door. ‘And so are you lonely.’
‘And you, Ross?’
He looked really puzzled. ‘I don’t never think of it.’
I lightly punched his arm. ‘See you, Ross. Bless you.’
Mrs. Pring was back. I could tell as soon as I opened the back door. I even knew before seeing her that her hair had been permed.
I placed my bike against the wall, ran into the kitchen and took her into my arms. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I began.
‘Whatever for, Father Neil? I’m the happiest woman in the world, don’t you know?’ and she cried to prove it.
We sat at the kitchen table opposite each other and I told her about Ross and the animals and his widowed mother.
‘Poor little chap,’ Mrs. Pring said, ‘and the poor mother, too.’
She promised to speak to Fr. Duddleswell about it. She was sure he would sort things out. ‘If he don’t, I’ll flatten him like a hedgehog on a main road.’
Half an hour later, she came to my room. She had persuaded him to phone the Aviary Director. Fr. Duddleswell had promised Mr. Brandon to pay the cost of replacing the birds if the police were kept out of it.
‘That man,’ she said admiringly, ‘could make the sun go from North to South if he liked.’
Fr. Duddleswell was so pleased to have his sparring partner back he would have done anything for her. Not that he gave any overt sign of it. At supper, he whispered to me, ‘She is not back above one hour and she comes rushing at me like a lobster.’
The neighbours whose houses backed onto the school stopped complaining. My sex education lessons were over. Peace of a sort descended on St. Jude’s.
The following Friday, Mrs. Hughes told me that Ross was leaving Fairwater. The incessant rain—three times the January average—had turned their camp-site into a quagmire. The gypsies were leaving on Sunday for another site on higher ground.
Early Saturday afternoon, I cycled to the encampment for the last time. Ironically, the sky was blue and an enormous sun almost warm.
Ross was lying along the bank of a stream to the north of the field, tickling a trout. Dr. Daley had told me he used to do it when he was a boy in Connemara but I had never seen it with my own eyes.
Slowly, Ross dipped his arm in the water and stroked the trout. The murmur of his voice came to me across the still waters and the wet grass. ‘Ek, dui, trin,’ he counted and then, flip, the fish was on the bank, jumping and somersaulting.
Seeing me standing there, the boy flipped the fish back into the stream. ‘Too small to eat, Father.’ I smiled. He stood up. ‘I am expecting you.’
‘I just come to say goodbye.’
His hands hung down clumsily by his side. ‘Goodbye, Father.’
That seemed to be the end of it. I had really come on an errand. I wanted to say to him:
‘Ross, you know you spoke hastily to God once. Well, you’re wrong, Ross. Not one tiny sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing it.
‘You remember, Ross, you said the dead baby in the box looked like a match? Well, one day, Ross, at the Resurrection, God will come and light that match with His Holy Spirit and that little baby’s face will glow like the face of Christ Himself.’
I had prepared it all. But when the time came, I couldn’t say it. This soul of mine, I thought, is so dull and prosaic while Ross’s is like sunlight and birdsong, pure poetry.
‘Can I walk to your bike with you, Father?’
I smiled. ‘Thanks, Ross.’
He came with me, carrying a kind of bell-shaped object covered with a cloth which he brought from the caravan. I stopped to put on my cycle clips and when I rose he held out his hand. ‘A present for you, Romany.’
I lifted the cloth. There was a cage and, on its perch, a golden oriole.
‘But, Ross,’ I protested almost angrily, ‘how could you do …?’
Ross was smiling broadly. The golden oriole was the one I had given him, now stuffed.
He opened the cage door. ‘See, Father, he don’t mind a cage, his sort.’
I placed my free arm round the boy’s shoulders. He smelled of wild garlic and damp green grass. A warmth went from me to him, from him to me.
‘Ross,’ I said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something.’
‘Yes, Father?’
‘You know the time you saw a baby born dead.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you said something … rough … to God.’
‘I remember. Want to know what He says to me?’
‘Well … If you like, yes.’
‘God says, “You don’t need to worry none about Me, Ross boy. I always is white all over with a black face.”’
Four
PORGY AND BESS
‘I will not allow the peace and quiet of me nose to be disturbed by Billy Buzzle’s pigs.’
It was surprising that it took Fr. Duddleswell three days to discover that Porgy and Bess were there. But I had received no visit from the Angel Gabriel. Why should I consider myself chosen by Providence for the unenviable task of breaking the news to him?
A big sty was built at the bottom of Billy’s garden in early January and a few days later the two pigs arrived, grunting and squealing, to take possession.
‘There is a startling odour hereabouts,’ Fr. Duddleswell remarked in my study, grossly understating the case.
From that moment on, I knew there was no sense in which peace and quiet would be a feature of our domestic scene.
His nose twitched like a rabbit’s as he attempted to sniff down the source of the smell. His quest led him to the window in spite of it being tightly closed.
Then he saw them. Bess’s silky, whitish back and the broad ringed snout and muddy forelegs of Porgy as he looked laughingly over the stye.
‘Did you have previous cognizance of this Father Neil?’ he snapped.
‘Um.’
‘Father Neil, I have told you a power of times before that yo
ur face is a postcard for everyone to read.’ And he stamped out.
A minute later, I heard Billy’s cheerful voice coming from the garden. ‘Morning, Father O’Duddleswell.’
I caught sight of my parish priest banging the fence with his fist. ‘The Third World War, Mr. Buzzle. Right here ’twill commence. Over this blessed fence.’
Billy flattened the kiss-curl above his right eye and slowly adjusted the cuffs protruding like white cylinders from his jacket sleeves. ‘What’s eating you, then?’
‘I will not tolerate oinks, slurps and stinks in the vicinity of me abode. They will have to go.’
‘Father,’ Billy said patiently. ‘Father O’Duddleswell. Pigs are beautiful, friendly animals.’ He pointed to the shining face peering over the sty. ‘Ain’t he lovely, now? Tell me if he ain’t.’
Fr. Duddleswell took a quick look at the pointed ears, the broad wrinkled snout, the dribbling chin and, for reply, turned his head towards his left shoulder. ‘Phew. The stench of it.’
‘Stench?’ Billy was really indignant. He breathed in air generously as if he were paddling up to his knees at the sea-side. ‘That’s not even a smell. That’s an aroma, that is, an agricultural perfume. It’s not fair to judge pigs by their reputation.’
Fr. Duddleswell pegged his nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘Why must you do this to me, Mr. Buzzle?’ he enquired nasally.
Billy shrugged and held out the fat, ringed fingers of both hands as if he was completely bewildered by such an accusation.
‘Why do you take divilish delight, Mr. Buzzle, in always being right-left to my left-right?’
‘Ooink, oink.’ Porgy seemed to side with his owner in the dispute before dropping into the mud and effluent of the sty with an almighty splash.
‘Look, St. Francis,’ Billy said, ‘I love all God’s creatures.’
‘Excepting me, Mr. Buzzle,’ Fr. Duddleswell roared.
‘Yeah, well, I’ve never been quite sure where you came from.’
‘Right, ’tis war. War bloody and horrible. I am taking you and your blessèd cloven-footed demons to court, God is me witness.’
Billy shouted after Fr. Duddleswell’s retreating figure, ‘If only people realized when they buy a house that the bloody neighbours go with it.’
Our garden door slammed to and I heard Fr. Duddleswell muttering, ‘Friendly creatures, he says. Harmless creatures, he says. The smell of ’em alone would register 6 on the Richter scale.’
There was silence as he retired to his study to recite the divine office.
I went on gazing through the window. Billy, joined by Pontius, his big black labrador, was leaning over the brick wall of the dunging yard uttering endearments.
‘Lovely girl, Bess. C’mon Porgy, old chap.’
He dangled potato peelings in front of their snouts, hoping they would beg for them like dogs. It was like watching the beginnings of an improbable romance.
Fr. Duddleswell’s attitude was quite different. ‘Mrs. Pring,’ he commanded at table, ‘for tomorrow’s lunch I am wanting roast pig.’
‘You’ll have to chop your own leg off, then,’ Mrs. Pring retorted, ‘we’ve got no meat coupons to spare.’
Dramatically, Fr. Duddleswell took two pound notes out of his wallet. ‘Get it, if need be, without coupons.’
He turned to me, shaking his head and tapping on the table with his fork in tune with the words: ‘’Tis sore hard on a peaceable man like meself. I was born, y’see with this quiet, loving disposition.’ On the last three words, his fork almost spiked the table.
When Mrs. Pring returned to her kitchen, I asked him if he really intended taking Billy to court.
Instead of answering, he fell to musing on why Billy needed the company of animals—a dog, pigeons and now pigs—to survive.
‘He has no wife or children, you follow? and no religion. He is thirsting for love and affection, poor misguided feller that he is. More to be pitied, really. Let’s pray the pigs teach him some manners.’
His New Year’s resolution still had some life in it.
At that moment, Mrs. Pring screamed hysterically in the distance and dropped a trayload of cutlery. I was with her only a few seconds later to find this grinning, porcine face pressed against the window pane.
I put my arm round Mrs. Pring’s trembling shoulders. ‘It’s only a pig, Mrs. P.,’ I said soothingly.
Fr. Duddleswell, in the meanwhile, had grabbed the carving knife and was scampering off in search of retribution. ‘Billy Buzzle. That Abomination of Desolation. Now his odious bloody pig is trespassing on me land.’
I left Mrs. Pring, caught up with Fr. Duddleswell and held his arm back to prevent him throwing the knife pig-wards.
In any case, Porgy, smelling danger, had trotted off to the safety of his own garden via a fresh hole in the fence.
‘There,’ Fr. Duddleswell cried, ‘did I not say the next War will start over that bloody fence?’
He went to the official border and called to Billy in his house as if he were Goliath summoning the Israelites to do battle with him.
‘Come out, Mr. Buzzle, before me axe flies off its handle and finds a home in your head.’
Billy immediately took up the challenge and showed himself. ‘What’s up?’
‘What is down, you mean, Mr. Buzzle. ’Tis me fence that is down, that’s what.’
‘You know what they say, Father O’Duddleswell, good fences make good neighbours. You should keep your fence in better repair, shouldn’t you?’
‘Dear God in heaven or wherever! I did not erect me fence to be proof against invasions by pigs.’
For the first time, Billy noticed the instrument in Fr. Duddleswell’s hand. ‘What’re you doing with that? You weren’t intending to stab my poor Porgy?’
‘There is a hog traipsing about me garden at his own free will,’ Fr. Duddleswell retorted, ‘nearly frightening me beloved housekeeper to death, and he has the nerve to ask me about me intentions.’
‘Father O’Duddleswell,’ Billy sighed, ‘why can’t we be friends?’
‘Mr. Buzzle, ’tis surely bad enough having you for an enemy.’
‘Can’t you be kind for once in your life?’
‘I will be kind as a brick wall to your head. You are a most complete rogue and no mistake, a most abandoned villain.’
‘Go away, you pompous little rotter,’ Billy yelled, realizing a peace treaty wasn’t on. ‘No air-raid warning from me. You’ll just get a bomb on your bloody house, you will.’ He reached forward to pick up the fallen piece of fence. ‘Don’t want you coming through here upsetting my pigs.’
Porgy, with a supreme effort, scrambled over the brick wall into the sty and squealed with what sounded suspiciously like mockery.
‘Out of me garden,’ Billy threatened, ‘before I give me foot a free hand.’
Fr. Duddleswell, a good match at mixing metaphors, growled, ‘You are as pig-headed as a mule.’
That was the first of Porgy’s many forays into our garden and he gave our fence quite a battering. His muscular snout, bull-ringed though it was, dug up our lawn, vegetable patch and flower beds. For his part, Billy accepted it with characteristic forebearance.
One day when Fr. Duddleswell was out visiting the parish, I asked Billy how he came by the pigs in the first place.
He was standing next to a huge tin bath he had sited in the middle of his garden. He dropped into it every species of food: carrots, parsnips, peas in their pods, acorns, horse-chestnuts, as well as barley meal, balancer meal and ground wheat. He was just about to drop in a bundle of nettles.
‘They need it for the iron, Father,’ he explained. ‘How did I get ’em? Sheer luck, if you ask me.’
A punter, unable to pay his gambling debts, offered Billy two pedigree pigs instead. Billy had hired a van to transport them and, for some reason, they had gone as berserk as Fr. O’Duddleswell and nearly kicked the sides in. But they were converted and calm after that. Unlike somebody he knew.
&n
bsp; ‘I never thought I’d grow so fond of ’em as this,’ Billy said, eyeing the pigs dreamily.
‘They look easy to feed, Mr. Buzzle.’
‘Yeah, well, they’ve got a digestion like you and me.’ He started stirring the mess up with a garden fork. ‘Can swallow anything but insults, pigs can. You tell your boss-man, if he wants to help this country, which he don’t, grow pigs.’
When Billy drew out a bucket of pig-swill from the bath and put it on a brick kiln to be warmed up, I excused myself saying I had very important things to do.
Up in my room, I took out my air-freshener and sprayed for five minutes.
‘Dear saints in heaven,’ Fr. Duddleswell exploded on his return, ‘the odour of pig is loud as a brass band. I do not know that I can put up with this much longer. Not when the west wind is whistling up me nose.’
He lit a bonfire in the garden. On it he dumped two whole packets of expensive incense-coals which we put in the thurible at High Mass and Benediction. Even that failed to sweeten the atmosphere.
Once, I saw him stamping up and down in the garden reciting his breviary with a gas mask on.
‘Not a fair nor a wake will I enjoy,’ he groaned, lifting his gas mask for a moment, ‘till I have driven those pigs to the knacker’s yard.’
By Sunday the smell of pig was stupendous. The congregation at the first two Masses, which I celebrated, seemed in purdah. Only their eyes were visible above their handkerchieves.
At the eleven o’clock Mass, Fr. Duddleswell ignored the prescribed Gospel reading for the day and chose in place of it a passage from Mark 5. It was the story of Jesus casting devils out of a man named ‘Legion’ and sending them into a herd of pigs which promptly rushed down the hill into the sea.
‘All of them drowned,’ he concluded, rubbing his hands. ‘Drowned.’
In his sermon, he developed the theme, not at any length because of the lack of air, of Jesus’ righteous hatred of pigs.
‘I want you to remember, me dear people, at this peculiar Mass which is High in every sense, how our Blessed Lord clearly indicated the best way to deal with this depraved, gluttonous and disgusting beast.’
