Father Neil's Monkeyshines

by Boyd, Neil;

  “It’s about Sam, Father.”

  I said I’d guessed.

  He was looking bewildered at this time, as though he had lost confidence in life. His step had become hesitant. He had the air of a hurt thing.

  “He never goes out no more,” Mrs. Thom said.

  Never a great reader, he couldn’t take to Braille. He switched the radio on but never really listened.

  “You son visits him, I suppose.”

  “Of course, Father. Marion came, too, to start with. She likes Sam a lot and isn’t a bit jealous, bless her. It’s only Nobby comes now. Even so, Sam’s more miserable after than before. He told Nobby to stay at home with his little missus. His duty, he says, now she’s expecting.”

  Sometimes Sam complained he was only a bits-and-pieces chap, and it would have been better for everyone if he’d been killed outright.

  “Then there’s his nightmares,” Mrs. Thom went on, in a kind of wail. “Terrible they are, I can’t tell you. He keeps screaming, ‘I can’t see, I can’t see,’ or shouting that his eyes have caught fire or turned into yellow crocuses.”

  She’d offered to get him a dog, but he said he didn’t want to advertise he was blind. Anyway, he didn’t intend going anywhere, so why bother? When he goes to the local nowadays, Father, nobody cracks jokes with him, like he was a priest. No one’s brave enough to pull his leg now Nobby’s not there, and Sam says he can’t stand blokes propping up the bar oozing pity over him.”

  The poor old lady finally broke down. “My Sam’s breaking my heart, Father, he really is.”

  That evening, when I visited Sam, he was sitting vacantly by the open window of his spotless bed-sit.

  To my surprise, I found myself on the receiving end of an outburst of anger.

  “How’s life?” he said, repeating my opening question. “Like being a foreigner in my own land, a baby in a grown-up body, a wild animal in a cage. That’s what blindness is like, if you really want to know. That and being coffined up in the pitch-dark from morning till night.”

  What could I say to that?

  “Know what I hate, Father? Being so helpless, so dependent on others, so idle, so bloody useless.”

  He apologized for the bad language.

  One day, he said he felt possessed of superhuman energy one moment, all of it wasted. The next, he was as weak as an old man.

  “That’s what this does to you.” He punched his injured arm. “Turned me into an old ’un before my time. Yeah, I’m just an old man with a stick sitting by the fire or at an open window or on benches at street corners.”

  He loathed being seen without seeing; he felt a spectacle, always exposed and disadvantaged.

  “In the pub, to give you a for instance, they used to call me Samson. Good name, eh? I feel so bitter sometimes, I want to bring the whole world crashing down on top of me.”

  I muttered something foolish about understanding.

  “How can you,” he retorted. “Did I when I had sight? Now I’m angry cos I’ll never see faces again, roses, sunsets, spring. Except in my sleep or when I have memories that turn sour inside me when I think of them.”

  I was content to let him air his grievances, hoping he would feel better afterward.

  “I’m angry with myself most of all, Father. Angry that I took all those things for granted, like the air we breathe. Like being without pain for an hour or so. Took them for granted, that is, until they’re gone for good. I’ll tell you how life is, how my life is, blind and half a chap that I am. I feel proper stupid, like a dying man must feel who’s messed up. I’d like one last bloody good look at everything. So I can store it for the dark days ahead. I’m angry because when I could see, I didn’t even bother to look.”

  Sam’s injuries had given him a life of his own that it was hard for an outsider to penetrate.

  I crossed the room, hugged him for a moment or two, he was shaking all over, and left without a word.

  “Well, lad,” Father Duddleswell said, “what’re you doing about Sam Walters?

  “Praying for him.”

  “Ah, me brave, fine feller. I asked you what’re you doing?”

  “I haven’t the faintest what to do.”

  He gave me another probing look. “’Tis hard getting a good hook for a bad reaper. Can you not see Sam is badly in need of something?”

  “Such as?”

  His eyelids fluttered behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “Female felicities.”

  I repeated what Nobby had said: Sam didn’t think any girl would look at him twice, except out of pity.

  “True, lad.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It means you have to find him a girl who doesn’t even look at him once.”

  I took a deep breath waiting for him to make sense. Then it came to me.

  “A blind girl? I don’t know any, Father.”

  He rolled his sleeves up. “I have one here at me fingertips.”

  I looked at them but saw nothing there but fingers.

  He reached for the telephone and within five minutes, his friend the Canon Seamus Mahoney came up with the name of a likely lass. Tessa Diamond, aged twenty-three, a stalwart of his parish.

  He put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone to say, “And, best of all, Father Neil, guess what.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Tessa is blind from birth.”

  I wondered how that was a recommendation.

  “Pretty is she, Seamus?” Father D asked.

  “Pretty as a picture,” I heard the canon assure him. “Intelligent, too. By heavens, she is.”

  “Just the job,” Father Duddleswell said, winking smugly in my direction. “Will you get her to write to this feller of ours? You will, fine.”

  He gave Canon Sam’s name and address.

  “There,” he sighed, replacing the receiver. “Life is so simple, is it not, Father Neil? What makes people think it’s complicated? Sam now has a pen-friend.”

  “Why does she have to be pretty if Sam won’t ever see her?”

  “Because, you dimwit, other people will, and what husband wouldn’t want his pals saying, Don’t they make a fine-looking couple?”

  He amazed me. They hadn’t even met or written a word to one another and he already had them married.

  “What,” I said, “if Sam refuses to write back to her, he’s stubborn enough?”

  “He won’t, I guarantee. Or, rather, you will. You have to do something for your living, lad. Notice, I’ve chosen a wife for him who only lives a few miles away. Distance has blighted many a budding romance.”

  “Especially when they’re both blind,” I said.

  I informed Sam a blind girl in Harrow was badly in need of a pen-friend. “I hope you don’t mind me giving her your address.”

  Sam was actually keen on the idea. “Only I can’t ask Mrs. Thom to help me out, Father, can I?”

  I offered to be his secretary.

  A few days later, Sam brought me a letter posted, Mrs. Thom said, in Harrow.

  Tessa had typed it herself. It was warm and welcoming. She expressed the hope that soon they would be able to discuss their problems together.

  Tessa had enclosed a picture of herself. Yes, she was very pretty, I told Sam, but, I joked, pictures sometimes lie.

  “Why does she want one of me, Father?”

  How would I know? Maybe so she can prove to her family she’s not selling herself short.

  Sam didn’t have any recent pictures of himself and the ones before the war, he claimed, didn’t look like him at all now. He presumed, wrongly that he was badly disfigured.

  In spite of his reservations, he dictated a letter. I have to admit it was couched in cold and stilted language. Was this because I embarrassed him? Or was he afraid of the possibility of being hurt?

&nbs
p; I helped Sam sign the letter and promised to post it for him.

  When he left, I had to admit to Father Duddleswell that things were not off to a promising start. “When Tess gets this, she may not bother to reply.”

  “Let me have it, lad.”

  I was horrified. “I can’t possibly let you read someone else’s correspondence.”

  “You did, Father Neil.”

  “He asked me to.”

  “All right, he said, like one accustomed to shuffle, cut, and deal, “you read it to me.”

  Reluctantly, I did as I was told.

  He pulled a face. “Is that the best you could do?”

  “It was the best he could do.”

  “Take this.” He thrust a pen in my hand and dictated a fresh letter, brushing my objections aside with, “God’s help is always greater for our cooperation.”

  In his version, Sam was absolutely delighted to receive Tessa’s letter and highly appreciative of the photo that a close friend of his has described as “smashing.”

  “Who said she was smashing?”

  “Is she?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You did.”

  He went on dictating. Sam was now promising to have his own picture taken soon and, finally, he looked forward with keenest anticipation to hearing from her again in the very near future.

  After this pack of lies, I was made to forge Sam’s shaky signature. Under protest.

  “You are an astonishing man,” I bellowed.

  That really got his goat.

  “What d’you mean? Is that not what Sam really intended to say?”

  “Possibly but—”

  “Buts are for nuts, Father Neil. If this letter represents Sam’s true feelings, what right do you have, you villain, to stand betwixt him and his lady love?”

  Before I could stop him, he had torn the original letter to shreds. Now I had no choice but to post the forgery.

  A few days later, Sam came around, straight-backed, brisk and eager for me to read him what was in Tessa’s second letter.

  Good news. She thanked him for his generous reply and proceeded to tell him more about herself.

  “She teaches cookery in two girls’ schools?” he gasped. “She must be quite a girl.”

  Without prompting from me, he said he would like to meet her.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see Father Duddleswell smiling benignly and rubbing his hands.

  Sam said, “Got your pen handy, Father?”

  Hyde Park seemed as good a place as any for the first meeting. Remembering Jesus’s words, “If the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into the ditch,” I traveled with Sam on the bus.

  A couple of times, he threatened to throw himself off but I told him with all the experience at my command, “All fellows feel like this on a blind date.”

  Sam was so tickled by my slip of the tongue he forgot his nervousness for all of two minutes.

  I recognized Tessa from her photograph. As soon as I saw her, I knew my services would not be needed. From a distance, I saw her get off the bus on her own, ask directions, and start tapping her way expertly to where we were waiting outside a hotel.

  I had a moment to whisper to Sam that she was certainly very pretty with black curly hair and an hourglass figure, a phrase I’d picked up from a tabloid newspaper.

  She was wearing tinted glasses. As she approached, I could see the drooped lids over her eyes.

  Our hero was beginning to stutter that he was not feeling up to scratch. To stop the rot, I put his hands in Tessa’s with a word of introduction, led them across the busy road, and left them to stroll in the park under a warm spring sky.

  “Enjoy yourselves. See you back here in a couple of hours.”

  With that, I took off for a bout of window-shopping in Oxford Street.

  I returned to find them sitting on a bench, so deep in conversation I hadn’t the heart to interrupt. After a further forty minutes, I joined them with profuse apologies for being so late.

  That was the first of many such meetings. Usually, they took place at Sam’s place because Tessa was more used to traveling on her own.

  When they went out together, Tessa was the guide because, she said protectively, “He’s really only a baby as far as blindness goes.”

  My role as go-between was short-lived. Sam was becoming independent again.

  Mrs. Thom said Tessa was educating him. She was helping him improve his Braille. She was even teaching him the piano, Sam’s one-handed efforts adding to the fun of Tessa’s competent playing.

  They went swimming at the local pool. They enjoyed gardening and grew their own vegetables in a plot Father Duddleswell had rented for them in our parish. Sam told me they read poetry together. Milton was Tessa’s favorite but, nice though it was, it was too highbrow for him.

  Once I came across them in the park, smelling flowers and feeling the texture of the leaves, bark, and grasses, like children playing games in the dark. They were in an Eden of their own.

  Most weekends, Tessa came and cooked for Sam. Sometimes Nobby and Marion were their guests. Sam never ceased to be amazed that Tessa could cook without burning herself or the food.

  For all who saw them at this time, these were their golden days.

  Sam shattered my peace of mind by turning up expectedly in a somber and uncommunicative mood.

  “I want you to take down a letter for me, please. To Tessa.”

  It was brief and to the point. He thanked her for her help and all the trouble she’d taken with him. It was much appreciated. But he was unable to continue meeting her.

  “I am busy at my weaving in the foreseeable future. Kind regards, etc.”

  “You’re sure?” I gasped as he added his signature with a hand trembling more than usual.

  “Absolutely.”

  He turned on his heels and tapped his way out of the presbytery.

  I hurried to tell Father Duddleswell that Sam and Tess must have had a flaming row.

  “Wonderful, lad,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “So it has come to the point.”

  “What point?”

  “Cannot you see Sam is crazy about the lass and wants to marry her?”

  “That’s why he’s throwing her over,” I said sarcastically.

  “Sharp as a maggot, y’are, Father Neil. You have twigged at last.”

  He was right, of course.

  For a second time, he tore up Sam’s letter and composed his own. Sam told Tessa how much he missed her from one weekend to the next and begged her to come quickly next Saturday and cook not just his lunch but his breakfast, too.

  The following Monday, Sam came to tell me he had asked Tessa to be his wife and she had said yes.

  “Staggering.” He was full of wonder. “I wrote, as you know, to give her the brush-off and she just comes straight back for more. Strange creatures, women.”

  Putting on the airs of one very wise in the ways of the world, I said, “Sam, my lad, if you’re taking the plunge, you’d better get used to it.”

  At the wedding, Sam and Nobby reversed roles. It was Sam’s turn to be the groom.

  For me, the most moving part of the ceremony was when an ecstatic Nobby handed his pal the ring. Sam, all on edge, pledged his fidelity, and then had some difficulty finding the right finger.

  As the ring finally went home, Sam sighed, as if to say, “At last, my dream has come true.”

  After the wedding, Sam and Tessa rented Mrs. Thom’s two spare rooms till they were able to find a place of their own. While they were living there, they became patients of Doc Daley.

  One afternoon, the doc came to see his old pal Father Duddleswell. He usually came in the evenings so I assumed they had something special to discuss. I heard them talking in his study which was next to mine.
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  After a while, there was a knock on my door and they entered. Doc looked more serious than usual. I wondered if they were bearers of bad news.

  Father Duddleswell said Dr. Daley had something to discuss with me.

  I said, “It’s about Sam and Tessa, isn’t it?” The doc nodded. “Do they have a problem?”

  “Not exactly,” said Father Duddleswell, which convinced me that it was exactly.

  “Is Tessa having difficulties with her pregnancy?”

  Doc said, “So they told you she was expecting?”

  “No, Doc, but you just confirmed my suspicion.”

  He grinned. “The problem does not concern Tessa or her baby, not directly.”

  “So,” I said “it’s something bad about Sam?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Father Duddleswell. He turned to the doc, “You tell him, Donal.”

  He had been at a doctors’ reunion dinner in the West End a couple of weeks ago and ran into an old colleague from his student’s days in Dublin. He, unlike Doc, was a highflier and now a consultant in ophthalmic surgery.

  “I grabbed the opportunity, Father Neil, to ask him about the chances of a lad like Sam getting his vision back. I explained his condition as far as I knew it, and he naturally said he couldn’t give an opinion without investigating. Well, I persuaded Sam, or rather Tessa did, to go see this expert Mr. Fellowes.”

  “And?” I said.

  “Continue, Donal,” said Father Duddleswell who had brought a bottle of the brown stuff into my study to encourage him.

  He handed Doc a glass and poured him a stiff one, while Doc gave a toast:

  Here’s to a temperance supper,

  With water in glasses tall,

  And coffee and tea to end with—

  And me not there at all!

  “Good for you, Donal. Now down to business.”

  Doc said the results were promising. The consultant said no shrapnel had gone into Sam’s eyes. The likeliest explanation of his blindness was that the shell had shattered Sam’s rifle butt and wood splinters had scarred the corneas but not irrevocably.

  Doc admitted this was way beyond his expertise. In his student days, he’d heard of corneal transplants or tissue grafts, as they were called, but he’d not studied them since.