Father in a Fix

by Neil Boyd

  After Mass, the congregation dispersed so rapidly we barely had a chance to bid goodbye to half a dozen of them. When we returned to the sacristy, the place was in turmoil. The altar servers were screeching, laughing and holding their noses and one of them was sick.

  Fr. Duddleswell’s demand for silence went unheeded. The source of the trouble was obvious. Two of the boys were locked in battle in the big brown cupboard that held the servers’ cassocks and cottas.

  He opened the door and called imperiously, ‘Come out, d’you hear me speak to you?’ And out came Porgy, his head sticking out of a cotta, smiling lewdly.

  Having no other instrument handy, Fr. Duddleswell tried to lassoo him with the vestment girdle but Porgy eluded him with ease and, making a mess on the cotta, strolled nonchalantly out of the sacristy. He scrambled through a new hole in the fence and homewards to his pen.

  ‘Sunday or not,’ Fr. Duddleswell rasped, ‘holy-day or not, enough is more than enough. That pig and his pong will drive me to the crazy-house.’

  I followed him in case he did something he might regret. He did not like my attentions. ‘Father Neil,’ he snapped, ‘must you be always following me around like me own backside?’

  He crawled through the hole in the fence into Billy’s garden and planted himself underneath the bedroom window.

  ‘If you want to make yourself useful, Father Neil, give me some beggar’s bullets.’

  I gave him a handful of pebbles over the fence and he threw two or three at the window pane. The window opened and Billy’s head and pyjama-ed shoulders appeared.

  ‘What the … Father O’Duddleswell? I was abed.’

  ‘I will put you to bed, you heathen, you. With a shovel.’

  ‘And if you don’t shift your plates of meat off my daff’ bulbs, I’ll come down there and tear out your shrivelled little trinkets.’

  With frosted breath that turned them into two dragons in argument, Billy called Fr. Duddleswell the son of a bachelor and Fr. Duddleswell retaliated with something meant to be far worse:

  ‘You, Mr. Buzzle, are the son of a policeman.’

  Billy tried the oil-technique. ‘All right, Father O’Duddleswell, all right, calm down and tell me what my Porgy’s done.’

  ‘Your pig is a swine.’

  ‘What has he done?’

  ‘I did not invite your blessed pig to become one of me choristers. Nor me gardener, come to that. I am claiming five pounds in damages.’

  ‘Okay, St. Francis, if you won’t talk sense.’ Billy withdrew his head and lowered the window.

  Fr. Duddleswell demanded more ammunition and I gave it. He threw the second pebble with more vigour than he intended and a big crack appeared in the glass.

  ‘Father Neil,’ he said accusingly, ‘I asked you for bullets not six pound shells.’

  Inside the room upstairs, there was a rumpus and Billy’s voice could be distinctly heard. ‘C’mon, Pontius old boy, follow me quick. I’m gonna give you clergyman’s backside for breakfast.’

  We scrambled.

  After the last Mass that morning, Fr. Duddleswell pleaded with parishioners to stay on to sign a petition for the removal of the pigs. I was detailed to put it through Billy’s letter box. Before lunch was over, it had been re-mailed to us in confetti form.

  Fr. Duddleswell threatened Billy with various things, from planting a lump on his head to making a centre aisle between his teeth. But for a few days the pressure was lifted from us. Porgy took to leaping over Billy’s garden gate and terrorizing the neighbourhood. There followed a chapter of accidents with many verses.

  First, Porgy was found entangled in the washing of Mrs. Martin who lived opposite us. Next, he held up traffic in the High Street for several minutes, frightened old ladies, causing one of them to faint, and ended up in the Gents’ lavatory next to the Fire Station. Fortunately for Billy, the firemen treated it as a big joke and reunited pig and owner without informing the police.

  Fate dealt less kindly with Fr. Duddleswell. Next day, when he chanced to park his old Chrysler car in the street, Porgy came bouncing down from the gate and, failing to stop in time, left a distinct impression of himself on the near-side wing. I was the only witness of the accident.

  ‘Definitely a court case now and I am off to the lawyers,’ was Fr. Duddleswell’s instinctive response when I told him. But he didn’t go. I suspect it was because he considered lawyers even more greedy and unwholesome creatures than pigs. He contented himself with sending Billy another demand, fruitless as before, for damages.

  Billy wisely doubled the height of his gate so that Porgy’s only recreation left was digging up our garden afresh. Billy did at least put up special wiring on his side of the fence.

  ‘What is the use of this?’ Fr. Duddleswell complained to me as we examined it together.

  He put out his hand to test the strength of the wire and received a terrific shock. He rebounded into me and his glasses fell off.

  ‘That … that cursed bloody Bookie has electrocuted me,’ he cried. ‘Why did he not tell—?’

  Porgy chose that moment to investigate the incident and one of his trotters smashed the left lens of the glasses.

  Fr. Duddleswell groped his way at manic speed to Mrs. Pring’s kitchen. ‘The carving knife, quick,’ he demanded, shaking all over.

  I took his arm and led him like a blind man with malaria to his study where he kept his spare pair of spectacles. His vision and temper restored, he said despairingly:

  ‘After a while of this it gets you down. B.O. is bad enough but P.O. Ugh.’

  ‘What I don’t understand, Father, is how Billy can stand it himself.’

  ‘When the breeze is westerly he takes up residence in “The Blue Star”, that is how.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  His reply sounded ominous. ‘Look, boy, if the wind blows your hat off, me advice to you is, Don’t wait for the wind to change. Run after your bloody hat.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, making for the door.

  ‘’Tis up to you, Father Neil.’ The tone of his voice stopped me in my tracks. ‘You are going to get rid of it.’

  What did he mean? Was he expecting me to murder the pig? I had a startling childhood memory of my father killing our three cockerels one Christmas. Instead of wringing their necks, he chopped their heads off and for several minutes decapitated cockerels were racing all over the yard, knocking things over. A murdered pig, I thought, can still kill.

  ‘Don’t expect me to kill Porgy,’ I said. ‘I’m too attached to him.’ It sounded a lame excuse.

  Fr. Duddleswell made a slurping noise through his closed teeth.

  ‘Who said anything about killing him?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, much relieved.

  ‘No, I just want you to help me kidnap him.’ I gulped. ‘Take him on a journey, like.’

  I protested strongly. ‘Do you expect me to ride my bike with a pig?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And I’m not taking him on a bus, either.’

  ‘Father Neil, will you at least allow me a speech from the dock?’

  Mrs. Pring was given leave that evening to attend the whist drive. At seven-thirty, the lights in Billy’s place went out indicating he had left for “The Blue Star”. Fr. Duddleswell called Billy’s number to make sure. No reply.

  We crept out into the garden. ‘’Twill be as easy,’ he whispered, switching on his torch, ‘as the road from your hand to your mouth. But watch that pig narrowly, mind.’

  The plan was this: corner Porgy, put a rope round his neck and a bag over his head, truss up his trotters, put him on his back in a wheelbarrow, wheel him to Fr. Duddleswell’s car, cover him with a blanket so as not to terrify passers-by and transport him to a friendly farm on the edge of town for safekeeping until Billy paid the damages owing.

  With such a spine-chilling scenario, we were extremely lucky not to get through the opening scene.

  Sleet was falling, and cornering Porgy was like try
ing to track down a clever ghost. Taking advantage of the fact that we only had Fr. Duddleswell’s ‘search-light’ to guide us, he led us a dance all over Billy’s garden, then all over ours. When, finally, I over-balanced into Billy’s swill-tub, Fr. Duddleswell called the chase off.

  I retired in my wrath to get out of my clothes and rid myself of some of the stench in the bath.

  When I emerged, powdered to the eyebrows, he confronted me.

  ‘There’s a scum mark all round the bath,’ I said defiantly. ‘I left it there specially for you.’

  ‘Father Neil before you start spitting at me like fat in hell’s frying pan, let us—’

  He was about to say, ‘Let us shake hands on it,’ but being downwind of me he thought better of it.

  ‘Let us forget about the whole thing,’ he said, turning sharply to go.

  ‘So, I’m a leper now, am I?’ I called after him.

  ‘No,’ he called back, ‘you are the Prodigal Son returned. And I am just off to inform your father.’

  For a while, even the all-suffering Mrs. Pring raised her nose in my presence. I consoled myself with the thought that kidnapping a pig was no longer on the parish agenda.

  My suspicions were aroused anew when Fr. Duddleswell adopted an entirely different attitude to the pig.

  Several times I caught him feeding Porgy over the fence. He offered him potatoes, beetroots, dandelions, even chocolate. I was afraid in case he had treated the food with rat poison. I need not have worried. Afterwards, Porgy romped all over our garden with his usual abandon.

  ‘Father,’ I suggested once, holding my sniffer, ‘don’t you think it’s about time you made peace with Billy?’

  ‘One Munich is enough in my time,’ he rasped back.

  A few malodorous days passed and on Mrs. Pring’s day off, Fr. Duddleswell said:

  ‘I am watching an opportunity for days to kidnap the enemy and now it has arrived. If the mountain will not come to Mohammed …’

  The revised plan was to strew Porgy’s path with the food he loved best: apples. By trial and error, Fr. Duddleswell had discovered that pigs find them irresistible. He intended enticing Porgy not into the car which he could probably demolish in two minutes but into an open truck. Fr. Duddleswell had consulted a farmer who told him that pigs are good travellers provided they can see where they’re going.

  I objected heatedly. ‘Look, Father, this is stealing and—’

  He stopped me and explained that he was only taking Porgy into custody until Billy paid all expenses owing. ‘Justice demands it, Father Neil.’

  This time the plan worked very well. Porgy chewed his way to the van and we drove under the stars to the sound of him munching contentedly a dozen more apples. The rumblings of his belly were sensational.

  ‘Jed Summers will look after him fine,’ Fr. Duddleswell assured me.

  The Summers’ farm was three miles away. Jed, Essex born and bred, lived with his son, Tom, who now ran the place.

  Jed was an old man. He wore a cloth cap, his eyebrows were long and yellow like stacks of straw and his eyes, deep-set though they were, shone with gentleness and humanity. His dialect, coming through thick grey moustaches and beard, was a strange, wonderful music. And difficult, but only at first.

  ‘There,’ Jed said, his face creasing into a smile of approval at seeing Porgy. ‘I’ll look after him like one of me own. Won’t be a case of self first, then m’wife, then me agin.’

  ‘I hope he will not be too much trouble for you, Jed,’ Fr. Duddleswell said.

  ‘I creak a good bit, true. And I can’t work hard like what I used to could. No diggin’ for me, I ain’t neither gristle nor grit fer it.’

  One of his teenage grandchildren, Bob, put in, ‘Gramps ain’t s’green as he’s cabbage-looking but still he works a lot harder’n most.’

  ‘Ay,’ Jed said, ‘I put my coffins on my feet, time to time, and muddle about and do a bit of gardenin’ an’ that. But I’m four score year, you knows, come next April.’

  Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘I am sure, Jed, I could not commend this pig into better hands.’

  Jed stroked Porgy’s back affectionately. ‘When he’s adry I’ll let him guzzle so he don’t suffer none from salt poisoning and I’ll see to it he has plenty to bite on.’ He examined the sack we had brought with us. ‘I sees you have a tidy lot o’apples for him. I won’t feed him no mucherooms an’ that sort o’rubbage. No, I’ll treat him jes’ like one of my.’

  He led us to the sturdy, high-walled pen where Porgy was to be kept.

  ‘Sixty degree in there. No draught come in at the winders here where he sleep and,’ indicating the dunging yard, ‘he’ll happy himself enough paddling away in his slaps o’wet there.’

  Jed explained he’d have to call the vet in to give Porgy crystal violet vaccine as a precaution against swine fever.

  Fr. Duddleswell willingly coughed up for the vet, the food and the daily care.

  As we left, we shook Jed’s hand. ‘Hap I’ll see ye agin soon,’ he said.

  The magnitude of the harm we had done only hit me when I next saw Billy Buzzle anxiously looking around his garden.

  ‘Porgy,’ he called. ‘Are you there, Porgy?’

  He examined our fence. No break there. We had mended it on our return the night before. When, in the dark, I had hit Fr. Duddleswell’s thumb with the hammer, my apology had in it less than the fullness of my heart.

  Billy got his car out and went, I presumed, on a tour of the town looking for his lost pig. He returned two hours later and started again his plaintive, ‘Porgy. Are you there, Porgy?’

  He asked Mrs. Pring if she had seen his pig and she, quite truthfully, said no. Billy took her word as Gospel and didn’t bother to ask Fr. Duddleswell or me.

  ‘It stands to reason,’ he told Mrs. Pring, ‘he’s got to come home some day. Like a pigeon or a dog.’

  But he didn’t.

  For three successive afternoons, Fr. Duddleswell visited the Summers’ farm and came back with glowing reports of Porgy’s progress. I really believe that he, like Billy, had taken a fancy to that mischievous pig. It explains why he became so aware of Billy’s melancholy.

  ‘I wanted to be upsides with Billy Buzzle,’ he confessed to me, ‘and now I feel guilty as a ’flu bug.’

  He had made up his mind to relent and give Porgy back when Tom Summers rang to say that Porgy was dead.

  ‘Rest in peace,’ Fr. Duddleswell said instinctively.

  Porgy might, I thought. We certainly won’t.

  We raced to the farm and there sitting alongside Porgy’s prone form in the freezing dunging yard was old Jed.

  He looked up at us, still stroking Porgy’s flank.

  ‘He ate plenty turnups. He were in the pink and nobbly in every way, he were. He don’t want for nothing, don’t Porgy.’

  We were too stunned at first to ask how it had happened. There didn’t seem to be a mark on the pig. He hadn’t been run over.

  ‘Me children’s childern comes and plays with Porgy,’ Jed said wiping his forehead with his sleeve. ‘He were good company and pretty-behaved. The bestest pig I ever do see. Could’ve come with mine any day and rest him by the coals.’

  Jed shook his capped head and sniffed. ‘He ain’t owd is Porgy an’ a rare’un, ever so rare. If ever anyone loves that pig, I’m him.’

  ‘’Twasn’t your fault,’ Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘that’s for sure.’

  Jed found difficulty in breathing. ‘You happen unlucky, I reckon, Fr. Duddleswell. The wicked Old Un must of put the kibosh on him. It’s shameful sad, though.’

  ‘How did it happen Mr. Summers?’

  He looked up at me momentarily and blinked.

  ‘Two hour ago, it were. I go t’light the lamp. It were jes’ gone eight. I came to give him a apple. I give him a many afore that. This time there’s a sickish smell to ’im an’ he acts wunnerful strange, wanky on his feet, he were.’

  Jed shook his head in unbelief. ‘He lays down
do Porgy an’ slips his wind. Jes’ like that. Dead as last year. Then my two gran’children come. “What’s up, Gramps?” they says. “He’s gone,” I says, “an’ that’s all about it.”’

  Jed took his cap off, scratched his head and finished his story.

  ‘Our vet do live hard near. I sent off the fastest of the two chilern. It were a rough mornin’ but Bob ain’t no watery-head. “I’ve gone a’ready,” says Bob. But he warn’t there, the vet warn’t.

  ‘The kids’ eyes is that sore, my childern’s childern. And I come over cold as what Porgy is now.’ He breathed in and released the air slowly. ‘An’ white as a hound’s tooth.’

  Tom walked up and told his dad to get up from the mire. ‘You do look like you’re reg’lar haggled, Da.’

  Jed didn’t budge. ‘The twinkle went out in Porgy’s two little eyes. Like stars turned to planets.’

  ‘Get you up, Da. Don’t want you followin’ that there pig.’

  Jed stood up. ‘I did all possibles for that pig. Every one of these things I tell you, Fr. Duddleswell, are true, God so help me.’

  Fr. Duddleswell took hold of his hand and arm. ‘I believe you, Jed. Every word.’

  ‘We shall have to bury him,’ Jed said, ‘shan’t us?’

  ‘What did Billy say, Father?’

  ‘Nothing much, Father Neil. One word, in fact. Repeated and repeated. ’Twas as if I had sung God Save The King in a Dublin bar.’ He became sympathetic. ‘But ’tis a miserable expression of countenance he has and no mistake.’

  In a more tranquil moment, he described the whole episode. He had knocked on Billy’s door and invited himself in.

  ‘“I am sure I beg your pardon, Billy, but Porgy has gone.” “Escaped again?” “By gone I mean gone.” “Dead?” “Dead as roast p … Dead as one of Mrs. Pring’s doughnuts.”’

  That was when Billy resorted to his single-word attack.

  Now long afterwards, I was in the garden. A disconsolate Billy was trying to get some Parish’s food, a red liquid concoction given to babies, down Bess’s throat.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Billy,’ I said.

  ‘I ain’t blaming any human being for it, Father. Only your boss-man.’ To console himself, he turned to stroke Pontius’s sleek black coat.