by Neil Boyd
‘Me, sir,’ Mr. Williams admitted.
‘What did you use, a threepenny bit?’
‘My old army belt.’
‘Another economy,’ I said to Fr. Duddleswell.
‘You …’ the Skipper said, ‘you are a very silly man.’
‘That is perfectly justified from your point of view,’ Mr. Williams conceded. ‘But, believe me, we’re always willing to learn at the Co-op.’
The next forty-five minutes were worse than what had gone before. The tug, dipping and rolling in the heavy sea, circled the Sack repeatedly until the Skipper and his mate were able to get the grappling hook in it and haul it aboard.
The Skipper was afraid, apparently, that the corpse would be washed ashore or picked up by another boat. As a result, a bather on a quiet beach might suffer a heart attack and Scotland Yard launch a murder hunt.
Naturally, this is a free translation of what the Skipper actually said.
He ordered his mate to fetch some chains. ‘Thirty quid,’ he yelled, ‘these chains cost me and I’m not footing the bill.’
‘Of course not,’ Mr. Williams said understandingly, ‘why should you?’
Down goes Fr. Duddleswell’s profit margin another peg, I thought.
At length, the corpse was trussed up and weighed down. ‘Rest in peace,’ Fr. Duddleswell pleaded, as the body was dropped overboard for the second time. ‘Please rest in peace.’
This time, James Driscoll did the decent thing and sank as he was supposed to do.
‘Thank you kindly, God,’ I heard Fr. Duddleswell say.
The return journey was not so bad. Had we not already given our all and more to the sea?
I sat next to Fr. Duddleswell on the bench in the bridge house and closed my eyes. I did not think a thought or utter a word. From time to time, I may even have dozed off.
It was pitch dark when we docked. I got to my feet. They felt like someone else’s borrowed for the occasion. Someone shook my hand. A voice that sounded vaguely like the Skipper’s said, ‘Never again.’
I was bundled into a car and it moved off. I wasn’t sure who was driving. If we crashed, did it matter? You don’t have to face a firing squad like the young Dostoievsky to grasp the futility of all things human.
‘Will you come in, Freddie?’
‘Just for a minute, Father.’
‘They’re back,’ I heard Mrs. Pring say as we walked in, frozen.
Dr. Daley was sitting by the fireside, sipping away.
Seeing him there, Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘Be with you in the turn of me hand, Donal.’
‘God, Charles,’ Dr. Daley exclaimed, ‘I’ll light my next fag off the tip of your nose.’
Mr. Williams gave Fr. Duddleswell an envelope. ‘The bill, Father.’ A shivering hand took it. ‘I’ve altered it to £335.’
‘But we agreed three hundred.’
‘Thirty pounds for the chain, Father.’
‘And?’
‘Five for my hat.’
Fr. Duddleswell rubbed his hands together. ‘Mrs. Pring, will you pile some more turf on that fire and give it a good blow.’ To Mr. Williams: ‘I will write you a cheque tomorrow when this’—he held up his right arm—‘is thawed out.’
‘The dividend stamps are in the envelope too.’
‘Fine, Freddie, fine.’
‘To the value of £40.’
That shook him. ‘Only forty?’
‘That’s all the Co-op charged for the funeral,’ Mr. Williams explained. ‘Be fair, Father. You can’t expect divi stamps for the hire of a tug.’
‘Nor for a top hat,’ I said. For some reason, it made me feel much better.
‘You are a cheerful lad,’ Mr. Williams said. ‘Now I’m off home to my Doris. If I’m late she’ll tell all the neighbours I’ve drowned, and when I turn up, she’ll blame me for ruining her story.’
‘Give her my love, Mr. Williams,’ I said.
He stopped by the door, all sad. ‘It’s hard enough giving her mine, Father.’
As Mrs. Pring went to show him out, she winked at Fr. Duddleswell. ‘Thanks for the stamps, all the same.’
Fr. Duddleswell madly fanned the fire with his hat, muttering that the fireside is the only safe port and never would he be able to take a tub again without recalling this cantankerous day.
‘Dear, dear, dear, Charles,’ Dr. Daley said ‘you look as full of misery as an empty bottle. Shall I call a priest to read over you?’ No answer. ‘I don’t suppose I can pour you a stiff’ un.’
‘You can. It will suit me condition.’
‘You are a wild card, Charles. The trip’s done you good, I can see.’
‘You’ll catch Daley’s Disease,’ I said.
‘Turn your back if you are scandalized, Father Neil. I have a chill on me that is not meagre.’ He hunched his shoulders like a cat. ‘Jasus, that wind would have skinned a dogfish.’
‘Ah, it’s well for you, Charles, that the corpse didn’t have you killed. Still, you did your duty by him as you saw it.’
‘That I did. I was ordained to consign Catholics to eternity and I would do it again any day of the week.’ He swigged his drink. ‘And you, Father Neil?’
I hugged a blanket Mrs. Pring had provided. ‘Any day of the week, Father. Except Sunday to Saturday inclusive.’
‘Remind me to tell Mrs. Pring,’ he said, ‘I forbid her to shop at the Co-op in future.’
‘Has the whiskey lessened the shock for you?’ Dr. Daley asked.
Fr. Duddleswell took a deep breath. ‘I am over the worst of it by now.’
‘Indeed you are not.’
‘What d’you mean, Donal?’
‘I was at the Seamen’s Home at midday today and Captain Kent asked me to give you the bad newses.’
‘Tell it me all, straight and crooked.’
‘Driscoll’s insurance company went broke forty years ago.’
‘God help us. That’s the crookedest thing I ever did hear.’
‘God help us say I also.’ Dr. Daley raised his glass for a toast. ‘Cheers to the divil.’
‘I will drink to that, Donal. He has buffeted me all over today like Billy Buzzle’s goat.’
‘No matter, Charles. Driscoll was one of your flock, however wayward, and you owed it him to have him buried according to his heart’s wish.’
‘True.’
The telephone rang. Fr. Duddleswell answered it and handed it to me.
I spoke up for Fr. Duddleswell’s benefit. ‘Fr. Blundell, the curate of Shelwell … Yes, Father, I did ring you a few days ago about a James Driscoll … Really? His name wasn’t Driscoll at all?’
‘Oh?’ Fr. Duddleswell said.
‘But Driscott.’
‘Oh?’
‘What did you say? When you asked him if he wanted you to hear his confession, he hit you over the head with a what?… A bottle? Was he drunk?… Perfectly sober.’
Dr. Daley said, ‘That fits.’
‘You mean,’ I said down the phone, ‘he wasn’t a Catholic at all but a what?’
Dr. Daley was shrinking in his chair. ‘An Orangeman. He did have a brogue of a sort, you see.’
I thanked Fr. Blundell and said goodbye.
Fr. Duddleswell was in a daze. ‘You may as well wash me, I am done for.’ He looked up. ‘Not Green Irish at all.’
‘A Prod,’ Dr. Daley said.
‘Jasus, ’tis meself not Pinkerton who is guilty of body-snatching. Fancy, burying an Orange Irish.’ He was shaking all over again. ‘’Tis bad enough having to love your enemies, without risking your bloody life dropping ’em in the ocean during a storm.’
‘Dear, dear, dear,’ was all Dr. Daley could manage.
‘Imagine, Donal. The first pap he sucked was hatred of papists. His one ambition to silence the harp of Old Ireland.’
‘God rest him,’ I said.
‘Indeed, Father Neil. God rest him. The dead are all brothers. They even look alike.’ Yet still his mind turned to the theological gravit
y of the situation. ‘Mark you, Father Neil, there was no sin on our part. We did not know he was not one of us when we buried him.’
‘I think you’re very lucky, Father.’
‘How so?’ he said, as he picked up the phone and dialled.
‘You might have buried him in consecrated ground. Then you would have had the bother of getting him exhumed and planted where he belonged.’
He smiled. ‘You are a great wit, you know that, Father Neil.’ He got his connection.
‘Jack Drabble?’ he said. ‘Good. That headstone you are doing for me. I’ve changed me mind about the inscription. Instead of “Rest In Peace”, I’d like you to put “God Bless Our Pope”.’
Nine
THE PIOUS PRISONER
Mrs. Nelly Grourke, a widow in her mid-sixties, lived in a sixth-floor Council flat with a budgie and a tabby cat. ‘A lovely lady,’ was all Fr. Duddleswell had told me about her. ‘She has two five shilling Masses said for the Holy Souls each week.’
After Benediction one Sunday evening, she asked me to visit her as a matter of urgency, so I fixed up to have tea with her the next day.
At four, she drew back the latch to let me in. A slight, bowed woman was Mrs. Grourke, always in black from her shoes to her shawl and lace mantilla. A kind of professional widow.
‘Come in, Father dear,’ she whispered in a soft, attractive brogue, ‘it is an honour you are doing us.’
She dipped her fingers in the Holy Water stoup by the door and brushed them against my fingers. From her left hand dangled a large olive-wood rosary.
Her modest well-kept living room was like a shrine. There were statues of the Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Lourdes and Sainte Thérèse of Lisieux on separate shelves, each with a red votive lamp burning in front of it.
On the wall there was a picture of Our Lady of Sorrows. It seemed to me that Mrs. Grourke was not unlike the figure of Our Lady in the painting: the same grey hair, intelligent eyes and fine distinguished nose.
‘It’s my boy, Father dear.’
I nodded, not sure what her tone denoted.
‘I was into my forties when he came along. And after all that time, he was born six weeks premature, if you would believe that. A tiny wee mite he was, so my husband, God rest him, and I called him Zachary. Like the feller in the Gospel who was so small he had to climb a sycamore tree to see our Blessèd Saviour.’
‘A nice name,’ I said.
‘And a nice lad, too.’
From a table beside her, she picked up a photo of a young man with sleek black hair parted in the middle, admired and kissed it. ‘A nice boy, Father dear, a sweet boy.’
‘He looks it,’ I acknowleged, not able to see too well in the February half-light.
‘It warms my widow’s heart to hear you say that, Father dear.’
‘Is he married, Mrs. Grourke?’
‘Married?’ The thought had never struck her before. ‘But he’s only twenty-four years old.’
I had obviously put my foot in it. ‘He seems so mature for his age,’ I said.
‘Indeed, but with his entire life ahead of him, why should he plunge headlong into matrimony?’
‘Does he live with you?’ Mrs. Grourke had said, ‘It is an honour you are doing us.’
She touched her heart. ‘I have him locked in here. All the time.’
‘Where’s he living, Mrs. Grourke?’ I pointed to her chest. ‘Apart from in there, I mean.’
‘At the moment, my Zachary is living in Wormwood Scrubs.’
I knew Wormwood Scrubs was a prison but I wasn’t sure if it was a district as well like Dartmoor and Brixton.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said non-committally, ‘does he, um, like it there?’
‘He is not a Carthusian, Father dear. No, he is lonely as the big bead between two decades of the rosary.’
Thinking he might be in a bed-sitter, I said, ‘A warder, Mrs. Grourke?’
‘A prisoner, Father dear.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s all right. I know you didn’t mean to give offence.’
I chose my words even more carefully. ‘What is he doing there, Mrs. Grourke?’
‘Six months, Father dear.’
I loved old Mrs. Nelly Grourke. She was a daily communicant and, though she never seemed to speak to anybody in the parish, she spread about her an atmosphere of kindness and good will. All the same, my guess was that Zachary had had a long experience of being locked up. His mother’s story didn’t bear this out.
Zachary dealt in cars. Buying and selling. From the age of ten, soon after his father died, he had shown an interest. He left school at fourteen and now, ten years later, he was running a nationwide business.
‘My Zachary is always wanting to buy me a grand house in the suburbs, Father dear, but I operate better here.’ She explained what she meant by ‘operate’. ‘Being near my church, you see that. I was wed here and my Zachary was dipped in the Holy Well here.’
As she toasted muffins and served tea, I fell to wondering how such a pious youth as Zachary came to be behind bars.
She read my thoughts. ‘Jesus was condemned and crucified though He was perfectly innocent, isn’t that so, Father dear?’
‘He was.’
‘My boy, too, is as honest as the day is long.’ Not an apt image for an early afternoon in winter. ‘As guiltless as Father Duddleswell himself.’
‘Uh huh. How, then, did Zachary …’
‘Get into trouble?’
‘Um, yes.’
‘A frame-up, Father dear.’ That didn’t sound quite right coming from Mrs. Grourke, nor did the rest. ‘Two filthy crooks gave false testimony.’
The parallel with Jesus was closer than I’d thought.
‘Wait a little minute till I tell you.’ She brushed a tear away. ‘They said my sweet darling boy had broken into their car.’
‘Sad, sad,’ I murmured.
‘My Zachary is in good circumstances. He doesn’t need to break into cars these days, Father dear. He told me on his Catholic’s honour he did not break into those cars.’
‘It’s a scandal,’ I said sympathetically.
‘They just wanted to get him striped. Behind bars, that is. But with full remission for good conduct, he will be out in less than a month.’
‘Would you like me to see him after he comes out?’
‘Before, Father dear. I’d like the prison authorities to see my Zachary has a holy priest for a friend.’
‘I don’t know about the “holy” bit,’ I said modestly.
‘Tell my boy that every day I am reciting his favourite hymn here before the Virgin’s statue.’
‘Which hymn is that?’
‘Sweet Saviour Bless Us, Father dear.’
‘One of my favourites, too, Mrs. Grourke.’
‘Who wrote it?’
‘Faber, I think.’
‘Ah yes, Father Frederick Faber. Beautiful hymn. Be sure to tell my Zachary I bless the very year the writer of that hymn was born. And please don’t breathe a word of this to Father Duddleswell.’
‘No?’
‘My Zachary was once his favourite altar server and Father Duddleswell taught him all he knows. It might break his priestly heart.’
‘Mustn’t risk that,’ I said.
‘There was a time,’ Mrs. Grourke went on, ‘when my Zachary was tempted by Satan and a brand new car. Thank the dear Lord, Father Duddleswell spoke up for him.’
I lowered my gaze. ‘A fine priest in many ways.’
‘Then do not break his lovely heart.’
‘I’ll go next Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Grourke.’
‘Tomorrow, Father dear. It’s not a regular visiting day, that I know, but they’re bound to let a holy priest in, are they not?’
‘I hope so.’
She went to the sideboard, took two half-crowns out of a chipped china bowl and handed them to me. ‘Five shillings for a Mass for my Zachary’s imminent release from the nick, Father dear.’
/>
‘Thank you,’ I stammered, embarrassed at having to take the widow’s mite.
‘When you get to the Scrubs, Father dear, be sure to ask for Emilio Zaccharone.’
I blinked.
‘He changed his name by deed-poll, you see that, Father dear.’
Getting to see Zachary out of hours meant not only a check of my credentials but a body-search as well.
They flipped through my breviary to make sure it wasn’t hollow and examined the spine, I presumed, for a file. They even gave me a receipt for my rosary and held on to it till I left.
If Zachary was such a sweet, good boy, why all this fuss? There’s more to him, I thought, than his poor old mother is aware of.
I had never been inside a prison before and I looked forward to it very much. My expectation was heightened by my reading of Dostoievsky. I had worked my way laboriously through Crime And Punishment, ten pages at a stretch, and was currently in the middle of his prison experiences in The House of The Dead.
An extraordinary world was opened up to me. It was peopled, perversely it seemed to me at first, with honest crooks and villainous saints and some characters ten times life-size. On reflection, very like the parish of St. Jude’s. There a bookie fell madly in love with a pig, a rich respectable Catholic widow was a kleptomaniac, a former convict was the only person I could entirely trust and Fr. Duddleswell was … Fr. Duddleswell. I was so ‘wised up’ by now, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if Mrs. Pring turned out to be a call-girl.
I was led through four enormous iron gates, each of which had to be unlocked and clanged to before the warder accompanying me and I could proceed. The place reminded me of the seminary.
Emilio Zaccarone sat opposite me behind a small-meshed grill. Under his black greasy hair, the roots and first two inches of which were ginger, was an unmistably Irish, freckled face.
‘Thanks for coming, Father.’ The accent was London, not Irish except in snatches, and certainly not in keeping with his assumed name.
I gestured around me. ‘What’s it like in here, Emilio?’
‘Like a prison.’
‘Not as nice as home.’
‘Wouldn’t go so far as to say that.’
I gave Emilio his mother’s message about the hymn and repeated her tribute to its author.
‘Nice, real nice. Tell her from me, I’ll recite that hymn for her every day and twice on Saturday, Our Lady’s day.’
