Father Neil's Monkeyshines

by Boyd, Neil;

“Donal, you are joking me.”

  “Indeed, I am, Charles.”

  “It is, Love your neighbor as yourself.”

  “To be honest with you, I’d never have thought of that in a month of Sundays.”

  I chipped in with, “When Will Evans started up, I almost dialed the cops, Father.”

  “Did you, now? ’Tis all your fault,” he roared at me, cross as a sackful of cats. “’Twas you persuaded me to appoint him choirmaster.”

  True. But what a superb one he turned out to be. Under his direction, the St. Jude’s choir was recognized to be the best in the diocese.

  Will Evans had lived most of his forty or so years in a mining village in South Wales. During the Blitz, he had brought his young family with him so he could do duty as a fireman in the capital. He’d only moved to our parish six months before.

  I had fallen for the couple in a big way. Especially Gwen.

  “My Will,” she warned me, “is not a cradle Catholic like me.”

  “What made him join us?”

  “It was my beautiful bosom, he said, that converted him from chapel to church.”

  “Did he find the switch easy?”

  “Not at all. It was ’ard for ’im pinning to his chest a picture of the Sacred Heart instead of a leek or a daffodil.”

  “What convinced him in the end?”

  “I told you it was my breast, meek as milk, he said, or was it Dylan Thomas, God rest his troubled soul.”

  “That explains it,” I said, jokily. “Will is still a Methodist at heart. Maybe you could do Father Duddleswell a favor, and convert your husband back to chapel?”

  Gwen laughed. “I can’t deny he doesn’t like seeing clergymen hold services dressed in frilly nighties and colored sacks. And there’s no singing to speak of in Catholic churches, is there? That’s what ’urts ’im most. Where else in the world but Wales, he asks, do men sing hymns to God in a bar at closing time? Even the coppers, supposed to stop drinking after hours, join in singing ‘Myfanwy,’ our greatest love song, and ‘Were You There When They Crucified My Lord’? with tears running into their pints. Sometimes the pennaeth yr heddlu (chief of police) listened outside, not knowing whether to join in or lock the men up for the night.”

  Will confirmed all this when I next visited their basement home.

  “I do miss the fiery sermons, Father, oh, I do, I do. When the preacher got going you could smell the sulfur in the air. You felt you were in a rugby scrum and the minister’s words shook your innards like a gambler’s dice in a cup.”

  St. Jude’s must have seemed tame in comparison. Our people took as much interest in sermons as a china dog. Until Will’s intervention, that is.

  “Not being funny,” Will said, “but your parish priest is a tad crazy, don’t you reckon?”

  “Now you come to mention it, Mr. Evans …”

  The next Saturday evening, I was in the church when I heard Will’s confession without meaning to. His Big Ben voice was coming from Father D’s box. Whoever broke the seal of confession, it wasn’t my boss. He squeaked a bit but didn’t utter a word.

  “I stood up to my parish priest, Father,” Will said, “and I holed him like a doughnut, see, and I am terrible sorry for it but not so sorry, mind, I wouldn’t do it again if I am sore tempted.”

  It sounded like a new threat to me.

  In Father Duddleswell’s opinion, it wasn’t long before I put my foot in it a second time. Will Evans was again the occasion of it.

  Will told me he would like to extend the artistic activities in the parish. He wanted to start by dramatizing Dylan Thomas’s play Under Milk Wood in the church hall. Dylan was only dead a year and this was to be his tribute to the great Welsh poet.

  I’ve been a fan ever since my granddad died after a long illness. At his funeral, my father read out one of Dylan’s poems. My flesh tingles to this day as I recall the opening lines:

  Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  For my next birthday, my father bought me all of Dylan’s books but I have always loved Under Milk Wood best.

  How I laughed when the glorious Reverend Eli Jenkins dips his pen in cocoa to write his sermons. Mr. Waldo, in bowler and bib, swigs from the sauce bottle. And Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard tells her henpecked husband, “Before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.”

  When I told Will I was a fan of Dylan’s, he praised my good taste. “But,” he added, “more’s the pity Dylan never learned the Welsh. If ’e did, his poetry would be even more sublime than it is.”

  In spite of Will’s trade unionism, Father D had a soft spot for a fellow Celt, but he would bite his tongue off before admitting it.

  “That feller sees injustices everywhere,’ was his chief objection. “If ever he gets past Saint Peter, he will immediately agitate for bigger pensions and softer pillows for all in paradise.”

  My boss was reluctant to consent to staging the play, though Dr. Daley’s view was that Dylan Thomas was worthy of honor, seeing the darling man had martyred himself for the drink.

  “It was not his fault,” the doc insisted. “It was those Yanks did for him. He went all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, were even more enthusiastic about railway development or the modern Turkish essay. Who wouldn’t turn to the brown stuff for solace after that?”

  I told Father D, “If you don’t let Will have his way, he might stand up in the choir loft and persuade people not to put money in the plate till you give in.”

  That gave him the license to allow it, which secretly he wanted all along.

  However, as soon as Will got the go-ahead, there were more demands.

  He insisted on improving the fire precautions in the parish hall.

  “It’s not too safe,” he said. “You need another bigger exit, a proper alarm, and a new safety curtain.”

  To help fund the improvements we decided to charge two shillings admission. I sold fifty tickets and a committee sold two hundred more. If all the ticket holders turned up, it would be standing room only.

  Father D was already boasting of his sensible decision to support Will’s play.

  I asked the Church of England vicar, Mr. Probble, to lend us some chairs. Ever the gentleman, he not only agreed, he bought fifty tickets and gave them for free to his congregation.

  Father D’s reaction was mixed. He praised the vicar’s kindness, and only wished he didn’t keep meddling with things he knew nothing about, for instance, religion.

  In the event, the hall was crammed with empty chairs. The cast, with the Evans family taking the lead parts, was nearly as big as the audience. Apart from the three Anglican clerics, Father Duddleswell, Doc Daley, and me, only four elderly ladies appeared.

  The worst was not behind us. When the new fire curtain was let down, it refused to rise. After repeated tugs on the cords, Will appeared out front to say that the show would go on as promised behind the curtain. He reminded us that the play was written for radio anyway.

  In spite of the drawback, the performance was magnificent. Will played the parts of the first narrator and the Reverend Eli Jenkins.

  “To begin at the beginning.”

  Will spoke in a whisper that seemed to penetrate our skulls. Not Richard Burton or Dylan Thomas himself could have matched its impressiveness.

  “It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crow-black, fishing boat–bobbing sea.”

  Our embarrassment at the small turnout vanished. We were all hooked. We were no longer in the grimy London parish of St. Jude’s. We were transported to the little Welsh seaside to
wn of Llareggub. Read its name backward, and you will know what Dylan Thomas really thought of it.

  We laughed and we cheered, shook hands with our neighbors and shed many a tear.

  Father Duddleswell nearly burst with delight at the Reverend Jenkins hurrying through the town to visit the sick with jelly and poems.

  The triumphant performance and the splendid profit might have endeared Will Evans to my parish priest, had he not started another hare. This time, he was intent on unionizing the church.

  First, he demanded that church cleaners should be paid.

  To Father D, this was anathema. From time immemorial, the good ladies of the parish had given their services free. A labor of love, he called it, and he promised them a special place in heaven as a reward.

  Heavenly rewards, Will retorted, are like indulgences, cheap to hand out at no cost to the clergy.

  He wanted earthly cash for earthy women who found it hard to make ends meet. They could earn good money in shops and offices to feed and clothe their little ones in those austere postwar years when even tea and butter were rationed.

  “Soon,” Father D. complained to me, “that Welsh dragon will be wanting me to raise Mrs. Pring’s wages.”

  “Pobol annwyl,” I exclaimed. “Good heavens, Father, what next? Raise mine, too? But that’s preposterous. However much you twist my arm, I will NOT have you raise my wages ever.”

  When Will dropped in to the presbytery, his next proposal was even more unwelcome. Every member of the choir should be remunerated for special occasions, and not with thanks only. Soloists already received two pounds, as did Miss Hales, the organist.

  “Where’s the fairness in that,” Will wanted to know. “The choir work as ’ard as them, for nothing.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Not even jelly and poems.”

  “Why,” Will went on, ignoring me as if I were the cat, “why victimize working-class women?”

  “Victimize!” Father Duddleswell gasped.

  “Victimize,” Will repeated, his eyes blazing like headlights on a dark night.

  “Shall I tell you why we pay them nothing, as you call it, Mr. Evans?”

  “Try me, Reverend.”

  “’Tis because God is love, not justice, and that is the currency in the Church of the Poor Man of Nazareth.”

  “A nasty and petty argument, Father, to stop you putting your ’and in your pocket.”

  My boss, needless to say, would not budge. He pointed to a crucifix on the wall.

  “See the good Lord there, Jesus on the cross, his head bowed like a tired mule. Did he ever ask anything for his deeds of kindness?”

  “Ask me, Father Duddleswell, your God still has a white beard.”

  “Meaning?”

  “God is not old, ’e is the eternal Child, always seeing the world anew.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Your ideas are old-fashioned, Father.”

  “They surely are, Mr. Evans. The trouble with most novelties is they don’t last long enough to be old-fashioned.”

  That week, the choir walked out in protest, including Miss Jenny Mason, a tiny soprano. There were only a few handfuls of her. This may be why she’d never protested anything in her entire life. She wouldn’t have complained, Mrs. Pring said, if Father D banged her on the head with a hammer every time she came to mass.

  “Imagine Jenny Mason becoming a suffragette,” I said, enjoying my mentor’s misery.

  “You don’t think she will throw herself in front of my car?”

  “She might, Father, if Will has anything to do with it.”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  I winked at him. “If I were you I’d keep your car in the garage.”

  “Who needs a choir, anyway, lad?”

  “The bishop might appreciate it next month, Father, when he comes for confirmation.”

  I left before he bawled me out of his room.

  We were discussing Will Evans’s behavior during dinner at Doc’s place when he received an emergency call. There was a fire at a nearby warehouse and his presence was requested. Since he had drink taken, we drove him in our car.

  As we arrived at the scene, a fireman was being stretchered out of the burning building. After a brief examination, the doc said the poor lad had swallowed plenty of smoke and his left leg was broken.

  I heard a colleague ask the injured fireman if anyone else was trapped.

  He managed to gasp, “One still inside. Beam collapsed on him. Will Evans, must be.”

  For ten anxious minutes, the hoses played on the fire till it was extinguished and the team were able to tread gingerly among the smoldering ruins.

  I was praying madly that they would find Will unharmed and Father Duddleswell said, “Ah, didn’t I always say to you, that Welshman is a grand feller,” when the air was rent with the sound of a trapeze-like voice:

  “To begin at the beginning. It is spring, moonless night.”

  There was no trouble locating him. When his colleagues dug him out, he hadn’t a scratch or a blister.

  Noticing Father D at the front of the crowd, he waved cheerfully from the stretcher before removing his helmet with a flourish.

  “Evening, Brother,” he said as Father Duddleswell made the sign of the cross on his forehead. “I ’ope you get paid double-time for working unsocial hours.”

  Bishop O’Reilly was due within a week. There was still no sign of resolving the dispute. Without a choir or an organist, Dr. Daley suggested it would be like offering His Lordship a glass of water.

  “We can hire musicians and a choir from outside,” Father D said defiantly.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Father,” I said. “Will and the choir might picket the church. Jenny Mason holding a placard with your face on it, that sort of thing. She might even lie in the road in front of His Lordship’s Rolls-Bentley.”

  “What am I to do?” Father Duddleswell sighed, polishing his specs.

  “The solution is simple, Father.”

  “Simple, you say. O me dear one, me little duckling, tell me, pray, what is it I have missed.”

  “Give them the money.”

  “I run this parish my way,” he growled. “God is not a democrat.”

  “Is that so,” the doc chipped in. “Why, then, Charles, did he give us all free will?”

  “Too much of it, if you ask me,” Father D responded.

  There was a knock on the door, and Mrs. Pring showed Will Evans in.

  Will said, “It was nice of you to drop me a line about that strike by the refuse collectors.”

  “What’s this all about, Father?” I said.

  He reddened. “’Twas just that I went more deeply into that strike. They had a case, I put it no higher than that.”

  A small gesture but Will had reacted magnanimously.

  “As regards the bishop’s visit,” Will said, “I suggest a compromise.”

  I said, “What’s that?” and the doc whispered, “Did you ever hear of any such blasphemious thing, Charles?”

  He obviously had and didn’t like it any more than free will. His only answer was to firm his lips belligerently.

  “You won’t ’ave to pay us before we sing,” Will said.

  “Seems fair to me, Mr. Evans,” Father D said. His relief was evident.

  “But you will pay the twenty-five of us a quid each afterward?”

  Dr. Daley rubbed his glowworm of a nose and said it sounded reasonable to him. After all, Bishop O’Reilly set the tone by never going home without his honorarium.

  Father D silenced his old buddy with a scowl.

  Will Evans left without any promises.

  The bishop preached from the pulpit. He had a remarkable talent for making the Sermon on the Mount sound like a series of mottoes out of cheap Christmas crackers. I ferven
tly prayed for our neighbor Mr. Buzzle the bookie to appear and order his black Labrador Pontius to bite him.

  But, ah, the choir was in splendid voice. Even the bishop seemed to appreciate it.

  As he was leaving, and Father D was slipping an envelope with a check to his monsignor assistant, His Lordship asked him to convey his special thanks to the choirmaster.

  “A choir of angels,” he said. “No better do I hope to hear this side of paradise.”

  If you ever get there, my lord, I thought but didn’t say.

  No sooner had he left than the chief angel came to claim the loot.

  After the bishop’s compliment, Father Duddleswell could hardly refuse. But he did his best.

  Slowly, grudgingly, he counted out twenty-five pounds in singles into Will’s gnarled hand. It seemed to take five minutes.

  “This is right ’andsome of you, Father.”

  “’Tis against me principles, all the same, Mr. Evans. When rules and rule books take precedence over love, the world had better watch out.”

  Will nodded. “Well said, Father.”

  “You agree with me?”

  “Indeed, I do. Always ’ave. What was it the blessed Dylan said, ‘Though lovers be lost, love shall not’?”

  Will Evans handed Father D an envelope, which he eyed suspiciously.

  “What is this?” he groaned. “Not another of your ultimatums.”

  “Twenty-five pounds, in fivers. A gift from the choir.”

  “But—” Father D tried to close his mouth but couldn’t.

  “If you don’t treat us like lackeys,” Will said, taking Father Duddleswell’s arm in a fraternal embrace, “we can treat one another like equals, can’t we, boyo?”

  8. When Lovers Part

  Nine-year-old Wendy Cooper cried all through my catechism class. Her teacher, Miss Wren, whispered to me, “Her dad’s just done a bunk, Father.”

  It was hard to believe. Bill and Cindy Cooper, both about thirty, seemed an ideal loving couple.

  Bill, a railwayman, operated a signal box at a busy level crossing. He was a bit of a rough diamond but very warm-hearted. Though not a Catholic, he was over the moon, I recalled, when Wendy made her First Communion.