Father in a Fix

by Neil Boyd

  Wanda was smoothing the bedspread as I entered.

  Richard coughed. ‘Come in, Father Boyd. You’re very welcome.’

  ‘Mr. Faber,’ I said, taking his hand. ‘Wanda.’

  Wanda said, ‘Nice morning, Father.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ I handed Richard the newspaper.

  ‘You haven’t just come to deliver the Sunday Express?’

  I felt awkward and couldn’t escape the conclusion he regarded me as some sort of crank.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Faber, and you, Wanda, that according to the law of England …’

  ‘Yes?’ Richard said.

  ‘You are not yet …’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not quite … married.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ he said, dropping like a stone into a chair.

  I sat on the bed. ‘I realize this must be something of a shock to you.’

  Richard was in a daze. ‘How can I be an unmarried husband?’

  I explained. ‘We celebrated the wedding outside the hours permitted by law.’

  He was too stricken to reply.

  ‘Believe me, Mr. Faber and Wanda, this isn’t a crime. In my view, what you’ve done, in the circumstances, isn’t even a sin.’

  ‘What we’ve done,’ Richard cried, ‘it’s what you’ve done that’s landed us in this mess.’

  I looked across to Wanda, expecting tears. Instead, she was helpless with mirth.

  ‘Richard,’ she laughed, ‘Richard, we started life together with the reception and now the honeymoon before the wedding. Our children are going to love this.’

  Richard was not yet able to see the funny side of things. ‘Are you in the habit,’ he asked testily, ‘of sending bridal couples away from your church unmarried?’

  ‘Very, very seldom,’ I assured him, without thinking.

  ‘But it’s hilarious,’ Wanda shrieked, her plump body vibrating all over.

  ‘I was under the impression,’ Richard said, ‘that the Catholic Church disapproves of …’ ‘Sex before …’ I said.

  This time, Richard laughed, too, and said to Wanda, ‘Darling, will you marry me?’

  Wanda, still overcome, nodded acceptance. I thanked God for that. If she had refused him now, we would have been in a terrible fix.

  Eventually Wanda was able to splutter out, ‘It can’t have been easy for you, Father.’

  ‘Rather, like being sent into the lions’ den to eat the lions.’

  ‘What is St. Jude the patron of?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Hopeless cases,’ I said.

  More laughter before Richard said. ‘Tell us what to do.’

  ‘The marriage licence is valid for three months. If you’d like to take a taxi to St. Jude’s, I’ll take another. The cab drivers can be the witnesses at your wedding.’

  ‘It is lawful on Sundays, I suppose’ Richard said.

  ‘Of course, Mr. Faber. Father Duddleswell wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I mean, would he?’

  The door to the sacristy was left open, according to regulations, so that the public could have right of access.

  ‘But if you let anybody in,’ Fr. Duddleswell whispered to me, ‘I will bloody murder you for a start.’

  Red-faced, he went through the civil ceremony. In two minutes it was over. ‘Bless the pair of you,’ he said, ‘and may you be as prolific as the fern.’

  I paid off the taxi drivers, Fr. Duddleswell made a few alterations to the civil register and handed Wanda a new marriage certificate. ‘Tear up the one I gave you yesterday, me dear.’

  ‘Father Duddleswell,’ Wanda said, ‘will I ever be able to forgive you?’

  ‘Wanda, darling,’ he said gently, going on his knees, ‘name me punishment.’ He touched his face. ‘As red as blood is me cheek and I am positively melting with shame like a cheap candle.’

  Richard took his bride in his arms and kissed her. ‘Third time lucky,’ he said.

  I put something in Wanda’s hand. ‘A wedding present from me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have, Father.’ She opened her hand and smiled. ‘A champagne cork.’

  Richard was delighted. ‘Just what we needed,’ he said.

  Fr. Duddleswell turned to the groom in his most efficient manner. ‘I want to atone for all the trouble I caused you.’

  ‘We hardly noticed, Father.’

  ‘All the same, I just want to say you do not have to worry about getting to the airport in time.’

  Richard looked apprehensive. ‘No?’

  Seven

  IS THE CORPSE A CATHOLIC?

  ‘He is one of us, I am telling you, so ’tis meself who will lower him into his grave no matter what Fatty Pinkerton says.’

  Fr. Duddleswell’s reaction to the news I brought from “Fishermen’s Rest” was as predictable as bellyache after little green apples.

  Had he know then what it would cost him to fulfil his pledge he might have insisted on his rights a good deal less.

  ‘How are you making out at “Fishermen’s Rest,” Father Neil?’ Fr. Duddleswell noticed my unease. ‘A problem?’

  There was. Earlier that Friday afternoon I had visited the rest home-cum-hospital for retired fishermen and merchant seamen on the edge of our parish. The Director, Captain Andrew Kent, told me that of four new crew members one had died within twenty-four hours of coming aboard.

  ‘A new inmate, Father,’ I said. ‘As soon as he came in, he, um, went out.’

  ‘Died you mean. God rest him.’ And Fr. Duddleswell signed himself.

  Mrs. Pring came into his study, brandishing an empty tray. ‘For the last time,’ she said in an exasperated tone.

  ‘I intend driving you there meself.’

  Already, Richard had taken his bride’s hand and they were backing towards the door.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Father Duddleswell,’ Richard said, ‘but really and truly there is no need to put yourself out.’

  The couple were at the door when Mrs. Faber burst in. ‘Father Duddleswell, I have come for … my … fountain … pen.’ She glared at her son out of one good and one black eye. ‘Richard, why aren’t you on your honeymoon?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Mother.’

  Fr. Duddleswell improvised at a furious rate. ‘I think Richard may be thinking about becoming a Catholic.’

  Mrs. Faber nearly exploded. ‘A what?’

  Richard surprised even his bride. ‘That’s right, Mother. As a matter of fact, ever since I met Wanda’—he held her closely for support—‘I’ve been trying to summon up enough courage to ask.’

  Wanda stretched up her face for a kiss.

  ‘But I’m a Protestant,’ Mrs. Faber said.

  Exactly,’ Richard said. ‘I mean, we all have our different roads to tread.’

  Fr. Duddleswell didn’t want a family squabble in his own back yard. ‘Run along, Richard,’ he urged, ‘and have your honeymoon first. Come and see me after.’

  The three of them departed, Mrs. Faber having snatched her gold fountain pen out of Fr. Duddleswell’s hand.

  Left alone, Fr. Duddleswell and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  I was first to speak. ‘God’s ways are certainly mysterious.’

  ‘’Tis true, Father Neil. Ah, but ’tis a grand relief to know Himself comes from Tipperary, after all.’

  ‘Will you be quiet, woman, so I can hear the church bell.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me say tea’s ready?’

  ‘I keep a special pair of little ears for what you say.’

  Mrs. Pring turned to go. ‘I’ll not call you any more, God is my witness. You’ll have to go without.’

  ‘This seaman who died, Father Neil, you did give him the last sacraments, of course.’

  ‘That’s the problem. I’m not sure if he’s a Catholic or not.’

  ‘Didn’t he have a card?’

  ‘All yellow and faded. He brought it with him from the Seamen’s Home at Shelwell which
has just closed.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, the entries were made originally in the 1930’s and never brought up to date. I could hardly read a word of it.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘According to his card, James Driscoll.’

  Fr. Duddleswell snapped his fingers. ‘He’s Irish. Driscoll is a Cork name. He is a Catholic, all right.’

  ‘Um, Pinkerton says he’s C of E. And he wants to bury him.’

  Fr. Duddleswell snorted. ‘An Anglican curate is not qualified to bury a dead sausage.’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘Listen here, no Driscoll is shipmate of a C of E parson,’ he said, coming over nautical, ‘and I will not have an Old Soak of ours voyaging to the other side, save in the Barque of Peter.’

  I nodded agreement.

  ‘Blasted Anglicans,’ he said. ‘First they pinch our churches and cathedrals and now they are scheming to pinch one of our Catholic corpses besides.’

  ‘I told Pinkerton that, Father. Not exactly in those words.’

  Fr. Duddleswell was on his feet, peeling off his cassock. ‘Let us go see Captain Kent and sort this thing out.’

  Mrs. Pring returned. ‘Where are you off to, Father D? The tea’ll be cold.’

  ‘Holy Moses,’ he said. ‘There is a Catholic corpse in mortal peril and all that woman can think of is that the tay will get cold.’

  ‘Jasus, Father Neil, this tay is stone cold.’

  We had parked ourselves on a wooden bench outside Captain Kent’s office. A tea-lady had supplied us with refreshment and I had bought myself a doughnut.

  ‘You did give Driscoll absolution at least?’

  I played for time. ‘Pardon, Father?’

  ‘Indeed, pardon for his sins.’

  I gulped. ‘No, Father. He was as dead as Porgy the pig.’

  ‘And who, pray, said so, the Angel Gabriel?’

  ‘Captain Kent. And a doctor signed the death-certificate.’

  Fr. Duddleswell put down his cup with a clash. ‘I do not doubt Driscoll is medically dead and will not breathe again. Is he theologically dead, that is the thing.’

  ‘You mean, has his soul yet left his body?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘He was stiff and cold.’

  Fr. Duddleswell took another sip of his tea. ‘At this moment, so am I.’

  ‘He looked dead to me, Father.’

  ‘God help us, every time I preach a sermon, I see what looks like rows of the departed. Eat your doughnut, lad, while I tell you some basic facts about corpses.’

  That so took away my appetite, I put the doughnut down on the bench beside me.

  ‘Did you know,’ he began, ‘that the muscles of a corpse continue to respond when you touch them? Like this.’ He made a clawing gesture at my arm which nearly made me drop my cup and saucer. ‘And the hair and nails keep growing.’

  ‘I’ve never noticed, Father.’

  The tea-lady came belatedly to offer me sugar. I was about to put a spoonful in my cup when Fr. Duddleswell said:

  ‘Also a corpse’s liver goes on manufacturing sugar.’

  ‘Sugar?’ I put the spoon back in the bowl and the tea-lady, bemused, went away.

  ‘This shows you, lad, that something is still alive inside dead people, does it not?’

  ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘Well, as a priest, you should. Furthermore, many people have been given their death-certificates, been buried and still they proved the doctor wrong.’

  In my amazement, I put my thunb to my mouth. ‘How did they do that?’

  He put on his Edgar Allen Poe look. ‘By biting through their thumbs in their coffins.’

  I hastily removed mine from the vicinity of my teeth.

  ‘So much for medical opinion, Father Neil.’ He winked knowingly as if the priesthood gave him secret sources of information denied even to scientists. ‘Now ’tis true, lad, that after a long lingering death, the soul of an old person may leave the body in a grand haste, but you should not have presumed on it.’

  Nor should I. I knew the drill. A dead person is entitled to the benefit of every possible doubt. The normal procedure is to give absolution from sins, Extreme Unction and the papal blessing, all conditionally. ‘If you are alive, I absolve you …’ The death of Mr. Driscoll and the dispute about whether his corpse was a Catholic or not had made me negligent.

  Fr. Duddleswell was maintaining that the only incontestable proof of death, theologically speaking, is decomposition. Not even decapitation or being blown to smithereens guarantees the soul has left for God.

  ‘It may still be hanging around somewhere for a few hours at least, Father Neil, if you’re still with me.’

  ‘I am, Father. I am.’

  ‘The largest lump of smithereen remaining should be absolved and anointed. What about someone who has been guillotined?’

  ‘The biggest bit, Father?’

  ‘Not at all. That was a catch question, lad. In that special case, you would go to work on the head.’ He proudly tapped his own. ‘The noblest part of the body.’

  ‘Even when it hasn’t got a body?’

  He glowered at me. ‘This is where the soul most intensely resides.’

  ‘In England, Father …’ I tried to tell him.

  ‘The English hang murderers, that I know. But I had in mind the case of someone losing his head in a motor accident or in wrath over his curate’s inefficiency.’

  My soul began to stir uncomfortably in my stomach as well as in my noblest part. I stood up.

  ‘What the divil are you up to, lad?’

  ‘Father, I’m going back to St. Jude’s straight away to get the Holy Oils.’

  He restrained me. ‘Tut-tut, O me baby sparrow, me lambling, me green young twig, finish off your tay first. D’you think the corpse will run out on you that you are in such a fanatical hurry?’

  Captain Kent came out of his office. A small, broad-shouldered man in a black blazer with brass anchor buttons. His reddish-blue face, topping a bushy ginger beard, was like a three-dimensional map with pock-marks and protuberances all over it.

  ‘Come aboard, gentlemen,’ he said, a twinkle in his eyes.

  Adorning the walls of his office were sepia coloured pictures of ancient schooners and steam boats. On his desk was a glass boat in a bottle. And there, seated comfortably, was the treacherous John Pinkerton.

  Fr. Duddleswell managed to whisper in my ear, ‘Fatty has come to steal a march on us.’

  ‘You know each other already, I believe,’ the Captain said, as he sat behind his desk.

  Pinkerton didn’t let our presence interrupt his flow. ‘You were saying, Captain, that Mr. Driscoll has no next of kin.’

  Captain Kent, his left hand cupping his beard, shook his head.

  Fr. Duddleswell, on the way, had given it as his opinion that sailors, in spite of their salty tongues, are generally a pious, sentimental lot. He asked:

  ‘Was there a string of beads on him, by any chance?’

  ‘No.’ The sound stayed in the air like the boom after a wave pounds the cliff.

  ‘A miraculous medal? A picture of the Sacred Heart?’ Receiving no for an answer each time, he muttered something about the poor feller dying naked as a Protestant.

  ‘There was a Bible in his case,’ the Captain said.

  Fr. Duddleswell looked pleased. ‘With an Imprimatur?’

  An Imprimatur is the Bishop’s permission to print a book after a theological adviser has assured him it is free from heresy.

  Another contented shake of the head from Captain Kent.

  ‘Of course, Andie,’ Fr. Duddleswell hastened to add, ‘there are Bible societies as would drop a Bible free of charge into the Kremlin or Hell itself if they only could.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Captain Kent said disconcertingly.

  Undaunted, Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘Driscoll, now. Did any of you gentlemen ever hear of a Protestant by the name of Driscoll?’


  Mr. Pinkerton, puffing away furiously at his cigarette, said in his high-pitched whine, ‘Could have been a convert.’

  Fr. Duddleswell obviously forgot he had often said to me, ‘There are some in our congregation as would turn Protestant to get a potato.’ He rounded on Fatty.

  ‘Do not be insulting to the Catholic Church, Mr.… Mr.…’

  The fact that he couldn’t remember his adversary’s name rather took the edge off his rebuke.

  Pinkerton, who knew how to look after himself, pointed out that many Protestants, even Anglican clergymen, sometimes mysteriously converted to Catholicism, and ‘Where’s the harm in that, Father.… Father.…’

  ‘There is none at all in that,’ Fr. Duddleswell retorted.

  One of his favourite stories, I remembered, was of a Catholic priest who, on leaving the Church, was asked if he intended to become an Anglican. ‘It’s my faith I’ve lost,’ the apostate priest replied, ‘not my reason.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Captain Kent broke in, ‘we have as yet no information on our deceased shipmate. But his corpse will be walking out of here on its own unless one of you padres does the honours.’

  ‘Let’s leave the matter entirely in God’s hands,’ Pinkerton drawled, with more in his cheek than his cigarette.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll toss for it, old sport.’

  ‘Andie,’ Fr. Duddleswell said, paying as much attention to Pinkerton’s intervention as to a dog barking, ‘have you tried the “Fishermen’s Rest” where Driscoll was before?’

  Captain Kent dialled a number and held up the earpiece for us all to hear the whine.

  ‘Disconnected?’

  Captain Kent, for reply, smiled with his eyes. With his reddish beard, he looked like a mischievous schoolboy, up to no good, peering over an autumn hedge.

  I reminded the Captain that Driscoll had arrived from Shelwell with three other ex-sailors. ‘Couldn’t we see them, Captain?’

  Without a word, Captain Kent rose and beckoned us with a horny hand to follow him.

  In a dormitory awash with murals of seas, rocks and lighthouses were the three men lying in a row.

  The first was clearly dying. Fr. Duddleswell was about to ask what his religion was when Captain Kent spoke one word, ‘Methodist.’

  The second man was propped up against pillows, his beard and hair were long and yellow.