Father in a Fix

by Neil Boyd

  I wasn’t letting Tim take the blame for me. I butted in with, ‘It’s all my fault, Father.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Father Neil?’

  I admitted I had initiated a rumour about a fire.

  ‘A further thing,’ the Bishop said, poking me in the back with his crozier, ‘who are you, Father, to alter the lines of the great hymn to “Ever bless and defend the sweet land of our birth, Where the chickweed still blooms as when thou wert on earth”?’

  ‘I’m sorry, my Lord.’

  To atone in part, I went into the house for some turpentine. I released the Bishop’s glove from the Saint’s statue and gave it back to him.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ he said, sniffing it, ‘but for the rest of this day I will be leaving my iron fist naked to the elements.’

  When things had calmed down a little, Fr. Duddleswell put his tiny teeth to my ear and grinded out, ‘You know the worst thing of all this, you Sean O’Clod?’

  ‘No,’ I said miserably.

  ‘There was no final bloody collection.’

  Dinner was not an outstanding success, though the charity of St. Patrick gradually made itself felt.

  ‘A famous crowd tonight, me Lord,’ was Fr. Duddleswell’s incautious opener.

  ‘At the start, Father, there was that. But’—he was remembering the antics of Billy Buzzle’s black labrador on his previous visit—‘stranger things have happened to me in your church.’

  Fr. Duddleswell held up a bottle of best Sauternes. ‘Me Lord, I do not suppose …’

  ‘Very, very kind of you, Father, but not in Lent. And tomorrow …’

  ‘Palm Sunday,’ I said.

  ‘But,’ the Bishop went on graciously, ‘far be it from me to prevent the rest of you from enjoying yourselves.’

  Fr. Duddleswell, Canon Mahoney and I bowed our heads. The Bishop’s secretary, Monsignor Patrick O’Connell bowed his, too, as he bent down to open up a leather bag at his feet. From it he drew a well-known brand of tonic wine, uncorked it and filled the Bishop’s glass.

  ‘You have brought your own wine, my Lord.’

  I shouldn’t have said it. I had resolved not to put another foot wrong. But somehow such a resolution always made me clumsier than ever.

  ‘It is not wine really,’ the Bishop said darkly. ‘It is a health food. The doctor makes me drink it for my liver and lots of other ailing bits and pieces of me.’

  I noted its high alcoholic content printed on the bottle but said nothing.

  Even so, we were on the upward slope.

  ‘Know what the Prods say?’ the Bishop asked. ‘Give the Catholics a Pope and a potato and they’ll be happy.’ He dug into his succulent roast duck. ‘There is a great deal of truth to that, Fathers.’

  We all nodded solemnly as we too stoked up.

  The Bishop turned approvingly to Mrs. Pring. ‘A wonderful meal, Madam.’

  Mrs. Pring smiled and curtseyed before Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘Three cats we have had, me Lord, and they all left home on account of her cooking.’

  Mrs. Pring was grateful for the guffaws that greeted the remark. It saved her blushes.

  ‘Me father, God rest him, had a saying, me Lord,’ Fr. Duddleswell went on. ‘Three sights may be seen on St. Pat’s Day in Spring; ploughing, sowing and harrowing.’

  ‘When I was a lad on the farm,’ Canon Mahoney contributed, ‘we always called the 17th “the day of twenty-seven works”. Those were the days, they were indeed.’

  A comfortable mood of nostalgia settled on the company. The Bishop, with sweet melancholy, said:

  ‘I cannot promise myself too many more St. Pat’s days like the present. Soon I am for that land lovelier than Ireland and further off even than America.’

  ‘Never’, ‘Do not say that, my Lord’, ‘’Tis a sin almost to say so’, came from the other diners.

  ‘True for you,’ the Bishop insisted. ‘Yet I am on the black side of sixty, is that not so?’ He was viewing life through the small end of the telescope. ‘Ah, I do remember twenty years past when I was made a bishop. The Apostolic Delegate called me to him and said, “Monsignor O’Reilly, the Holy Father asks if you will consent to be consecrated bishop”.’

  A deep sigh as if he still could not believe his luck two decades afterwards.

  ‘And I replied to the Delegate, thrice beating my breast, “Excellency, Domine, non sum dignus, I am not worthy, not worthy, not worthy.”’

  There was a pregnant pause before I blurted out, ‘But you did say yes, my Lord.’

  The Bishop looked at me sourly. ‘I did. It was a traditional command of the Holy Father couched in courteous question form.’

  ‘I’m very glad you said yes, my Lord,’ I said, braving it out.

  The Bishop ran his tongue over his teeth as if to test their sharpness. ‘For the life of me, I do not see why, Father Boyd.’

  That was when I made a quick decision against the English version of my funny story. A few moments later, I decided I wouldn’t tell the Irish version either. I might mess up my lines and drop another clanger so that the Bishop sent me to another diocese. Instead, I would do a recitation.

  ‘One thing I never could understand about St. Patrick,’ Fr. Duddleswell put in, rescuing me again. ‘When he preached and rich ladies threw their jewels at his feet, why did he throw them back?’

  No member of the clergy round the table was able to suggest an answer to a puzzle of that magnitude.

  Our group walked round to Tipton Hall. From it emerged the sound of pipes, fiddles, accordions and general merrymaking.

  Inside, the place was packed with Irish and fellow-travellers. I saw enough shamrock on the poles alone to fill a barn.

  As we entered, a hush descended, the dancing stopped and couples unclasped hands.

  ‘Please do not let us interrupt you,’ Fr. Duddleswell called out, and gradually the gaiety returned.

  Dr. Daley stepped forward and hurried us past the bar to a semi-circle of seats at the back where a plush red chair had been made ready for the Bishop.

  I had time to see a notice on the wall behind the bar giving the price of ‘Adults’ Shandy’. There were small bottles beneath another sign that said ‘Adults’ Lemonade and Gingerbeer’.

  ‘Doctor,’ the Bishop innocently said, ‘your shandy has a grand head to it.’

  With a masterly mental reservation, Dr. Daley replied, ‘We felt sure your Lordship wouldn’t want to see alcoholic beverages on sale the day before Holy Week begins.’

  Later, I managed to slip away and have a word with the Doctor at the bar. The shandy, of course, was Guinness, lemonade was gin and tonic, gingerbeer was whiskey and soda.

  ‘Where did you get all the little bottles, Doctor?’

  ‘Needs must when the devil drives, Father Neil.’ He hid his mouth behind his hand. ‘By courtesy of the National Health Service.’

  ‘Not bottles for …?’

  ‘You cannot legislate for necessity, my boy.’ He smiled. ‘They are new ones. But when I put them to their rightful use, I will get some interesting readings, to be sure.’

  I winked at him. ‘I’m glad you got your own way, Doctor.’

  ‘Was I not born and bred in Ireland, Father Neil, where all you need to know is written on the door?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Why, push and pull, that’s what.’

  Fr. Duddleswell sneaked over for a word. ‘Donal,’ he declared, ‘you have gone over me head.’

  Standing half an inch above him, the Doctor said good-humouredly, ‘Not so difficult, Charles.’

  ‘Donal, I will not have you back-seat driving me parish, d’you hear?’

  The Doctor banged his breast, drum-like. ‘I intended no offence, Charles.’

  ‘Do you not realize a lie goes on one leg only? If the Bishop finds out, I will be demoted to curate.’

  Dr. Daley winked at me. ‘What could be worse than that, Charles? Will I get yourself a glass of whiskey against the awful possibility?’
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  Fr. Duddleswell gritted his teeth and walked away in disgust.

  Dr. Daley called after him, ‘Neat, Charles, or with a dash of arsenic?’

  ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ I said.

  Dr. Daley put his thick arm round my shoulder. ‘Father Neil, I hear it was yourself that cleared the church this evening.’

  ‘Without even a shillelagh, Doctor.’

  Dr. Daley breathed alcohol fumes all over me. ‘Well, you have my profound thanks, anyway.’ He pointed with his free hand to some of the women dancing a jig to a pipe accompaniment. ‘Did you ever hear the saying, Father Neil, that Irish women have a dispensation from the Pope to wear their legs upside down?’

  I followed his finger. ‘Lots of them in this room seem to be wearing their thighs around their ankles,’ I said.

  He squeezed me harder. ‘It must be the shamrock next your heart, Father Neil, that is making you so irresponsibly eloquent.’

  ‘Do you dance, Doctor?’

  He relaxed his grip. ‘God, I couldn’t dance a jig now if you bought me a distillery.’

  ‘Not even with that incentive?’

  ‘Indeed not. My legs are stone deaf, they won’t do a thing I tell ’em. Mind you, I was once one who could dance till today was the day after tomorrow. In my bloom and with a drop in, I could move my legs faster than now I can move my fingers.’

  He moved his fingers there and then as if he was rapidly playing scales on the piano.

  ‘I’m not telling you a lie, Father Neil. At one time, these legs of mine could do anything but talk. Why, I could kick ’em so high even the birds had to get out of my road.’

  ‘Could you do the splits?’

  ‘Could I do the splits? Don’t remind me of it. So swell was I at doing that, the bystanders were afeared I’d slice myself in two from my crutch to the crown of my head. And, now, Father Neil, see what cruel tricks life plays on you.’ He pulled his paunch in to look down his baggy trousers. ‘My stilts complain at present if they only for a few yards have to carry me.’

  ‘Carry you and a few glasses of whiskey.’

  ‘D’you think that’s why they decline the weight of my body?’ He faced me, his red eyes popping. ‘Anyway, how did you know I like the occasional glass?’

  The Master of Ceremonies called a halt to the proceedings to announce the star turn of the evening. Everyone applauded in anticipation of Fr. Duddleswell’s annual performance. Mrs. Pring, who had just come in, nudged my elbow. ‘Didn’t I always tell you that man is only stage-Irish?’ she said.

  He stood out in front, fastidiously tuning his fiddle.

  ‘Believe me, Father Neil,’ Dr. Daley said ambiguously, ‘when our Charles starts to run his bow across the strings, even the Bishop will lose the power to sit still.’

  Cries of ‘Shush’, ‘Be quiet there’, as Fr. Duddleswell began in earnest.

  After a few seconds of unrecognizable wailing, Billy Buzzle, who had come to pick up bets and make new contacts, started up, In Dublin’s Fair City, and everyone joined in with, Where girls are so pretty.

  The singing tailed off as Fr. Duddleswell lowered his bow, heaved a monumental sigh of wrath and exclaimed, ‘That is the next tune, if you will have the patience. I am commencing me recital with, I will take you home again, Kathleen.’

  When he had finished what I presumed was a medley and the stamping and applause had died down, he made the next introduction himself.

  ‘And now the next to stand out on the floor is me curate.’ Applause. ‘Me curate who is a sayer of witty things, has a funny story to tell. Believe me, and you may have to take me word for it, ’tis exceedingly funny, coming from an Englishman. So make sure you do not hold his race against him and give him a generous round of laughs.’

  At which everyone laughed spontaneously and clapped while I, red-faced, took up my position in the centre of the floor.

  ‘’Tis not a funny story at all, at all,’ I said, mimicking without meaning to and nervously stroking the shamrock on my cassock.

  To my surprise, laughter hit me in the face.

  ‘Since tomorrow is Palm Sunday, I think it’s more fitting for me to recite a sacred poem.’

  The laughter, this time, was more hesitant as if the audience was not sure whether to believe Fr. Duddleswell or me.

  The poem I had chosen was one I had come across, while I was a seminarist, in an Anthology Of Irish Poems. It had a simple Christian theme which reminded me of Pascal’s famous words, ‘Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world.’

  ‘The poem is called, I see his blood upon the rose.’

  For a full twenty seconds, the audience whispered among themselves before they settled down, no longer in any doubt that this was serious stuff. I took a deep breath before—

  I see his blood upon the rose

  And in the stars the glory of his eyes,

  His body gleams amid eternal snows,

  His tears fall from his eyes.

  The people, seated and standing, were still as stones. Never had I been listened to with such rapt attention. It encouraged me to speak out more dramatically.

  I see his face in every flower:

  The thunder and the singing of the birds

  Are but his voice—and carven by his power

  Rocks are his written words.

  No question, they were eating out of my hand.

  All pathways by his feet are worn

  His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,

  His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,

  His cross is every tree.

  I bowed but to my surprise, after what I took to be a pretty good rendering, no one applauded. Nothing at all stirred except where a few women were dabbing their eyes with their handkerchieves.

  I walked over to where the Bishop’s group was seated. Still no movement. The whole concert hall was as quiet as the church after the congregation had left.

  The Bishop himself blinked to clear his eyes. Shaking his head mournfully, he took my arm and pressed it with obvious affection. ‘Beautiful’ A deep intake of air. ‘Perfectly beautiful.’

  His reaction set the pattern for the rest of the evening. People kept coming up to me and gazed gratefully into my eyes without words or touched their forelocks, saying, ‘T’ank you kindly, Father. A t’ousand t’anks to yer.’

  I was wondering if I had missed my vocation. Should I have taken up the stage as a career?

  It was enough for me that the Bishop had metaphorically put his kid gloves back on. He patted the chair beside him and sat me down.

  ‘Father Neil,’—so it was Christian name terms now—‘when I was a little lad in Kilkenny, this was before you were born, what was there for us to eat at home? Only praties and stirabout.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said sympathetically.

  ‘Happy days, Father Neil. My dear mother, may she be at God’s right hand, was at Mass each day and at all the Masses every Sunday. But did we complain if the Sunday lunch was cold?’

  ‘No, my Lord.’

  ‘Indeed we did, Father Neil, but we knew, all fourteen of us, that she was in the right.’

  ‘Of course, my Lord.’

  ‘Saints usually are, isn’t that so, Pat?’

  Monsignor Pat, who hadn’t been following the conversation, said, ‘You do, my Lord.’

  The Bishop looked at me and bit the inside of his mouth. ‘Do you know the real problem of Ireland, Father Neil?’

  I set aside the obvious answer, ‘The Irish,’ and shook my head to indicate the problem was unresolvable except by a Bishop.

  ‘Somebody said, Father Neil, all the troubles of Ireland spring from one simple fact: a very silly race ruling a very intelligent one for too long. Would you agree with that?’

  I drew my head back as if that needed a lot of thinking about.

  ‘Another thing, Father Neil, why do the ballad and the dirge characterize our luckless, green and lovely land?’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ I said, not daring to
propose a possibly unacceptable solution.

  ‘It is because, in a famous phrase, everything in Ireland, Father Neil, is too late, that’s why.’

  He released his grip on my arm. ‘Now, be a good lad, go across there’—he pointed to the bar—‘and fetch me a drink of Adults’ gingerbeer.’

  ‘Do you think you should, my Lord?’

  ‘Do you think I shouldn’t, Father Neil?’

  I shook my head and went to the bar to tell Dr. Daley the bad news. When he handed over the small bottle and a glass I turned round to see the Bishop and Fr. Duddleswell gazing challengingly upon me. The first seemed to be saying, ‘That’s right,’ and the second, ‘You bloody dare.’

  Fr. Duddleswell was King but the Bishop was Emperor. I returned and poured out the drink for the Bishop. He took it and raised his glass with, ‘To the little gentleman in velvet.’ Having sampled it, he said, ‘God prosper you, Father Neil. The best gingerbeer I ever did taste.’

  Fr. Duddleswell looked relieved. He and I presumed that Dr. Daley had cleverly had a harmless drink in reserve for just such an emergency.

  When nobody was looking, I smelled the bottle. It was whiskey, all right.

  The Bishop drank five gingerbeers on the trot. When he left on Fr. Duddleswell’s arm at nine o’clock, after once more demanding to hear, Hail Glorious Saint Patrick, he looked decidedly the better for wear.

  ‘Thanks for the apron, Father D.’

  It was the hour of our evening drink. We had left the concert soon after the Bishop, Fr. Duddleswell having given strict instructions to Tim Fogarty that everybody was to be out on the street before Palm Sunday.

  ‘You’re not so bad, considering,’ Mrs. Pring said, smiling.

  ‘Considering what, Mrs. Pring?’

  ‘Considering you’re so awful,’ she said.

  ‘Bring yourself over here,’ he said, ‘till I thicken your ear for you.’

  Mrs. Pring wished us good night and went to bed.

  ‘That woman has tongue enough for six sets of teeth.’ Fr. Duddleswell was in his most benign mood. ‘D’you know what the Bishop said to me on parting?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘“That assistant of yours,” says he, “is the most promising curate in the diocese”.’