The Father Pat Stories

by Patrick Gossage

  “So it was your father who called that year and convinced mother to pack me off to Jasper for two days on the way to visit an aunt in Edmonton. He told me on the phone about you, and the trip, and I wasn’t supposed to let on to you. Deceit on deceit.

  “And I knew what you were thinking. Think about it, you were the adorable younger brother I would never have openly. No wonder that day was so intense … and such fun. What years we’ve missed … just to satisfy the moral code of our parents. Maybe that’s over. All that self-denial, all that denial of the truth.”

  Silence.

  “Do you mind this? Does it offend you? Do you forgive your father? Do you think it was awful of me to change my name to yours after my mother died?” Jill fired out the questions, looking anxiously at Father Pat.

  He found them unbearably difficult.

  “I don’t know what I think,” he said slowly. “There’s my father’s hypocrisy that I don’t like; there’s all that lost relationship, lost years that you had a right to — at least to know your own father. But it’s not for me to forgive. I feel God forgave him long ago. That you took the name you should always have had — how could I object? Anyhow forgiveness doesn’t enter into it. You said so yourself.”

  “Do you regret bringing me here?” Jill asked now obviously needing encouragement too.

  “What can I say?” Father Pat said quietly. He suddenly felt very, very tired. “I saw my old man happy, in love, I thought. Now I know he wants to be able … finally, to love you as a daughter … so much, so fully. I can’t blame him. I am very happy for him. I hope you’ll see a lot of him now. I hope I see a lot of you …”

  “You did take a big risk finding me, Pat,” she said. “Look, let’s break this for a while. I’ll take a cab to the hotel. We both have a bit of thinking and adjusting to do.” She smiled, got up, and Father Pat following, strode out the swinging doors of the cafeteria and past the couple of old vets from the Remembrance Day ceremony who were now dozing in the lounge chairs in the lobby.

  At the doors, she turned, and taking both Father Pat’s hands in hers, hesitated for a second, then said, “You’re not a saint, Pat, far from it, I’d wager. But I have to say you are a good man. Thanks for the reunion with my father. Imagine, I can now say … see you tomorrow.” And with that and a last flash of her wonderful smile, Jill was gone through the glass doors and into the first taxi in the waiting line.

  Father Pat had always had the idea of the “good man” as a simple sort of goal for his life. He had always been shy of saying openly that this was his real aspiration. It sounded faintly old fashioned, slightly wooden, a bit pretentious, even suspect. Yet today, a woman he now considered the sister he had never had, had told him that he was indeed what he had longed to be. He felt better than he had for years, and whistling a Gregorian Chant terribly off-key, he left the building. He couldn’t wait to tell Terry and Deirdre the denouement. But he wondered anxiously how in heaven’s name he was going to introduce the new stepsister to the rest of his weird family.

  A Threat to the Prime Minister

  “HELLO, OMEGA ELECTRONICS,” the person on the phone sounded like a teenage boy whose voice hadn’t changed. It broke Gayle Young’s concentration on her new Dell crossword book. It was nearly midday on a late spring Friday at the switchboard of Omega Electronics in Ridgewood.

  “I know Prime Minister Mulgrew is coming to Ridgewood next week to visit that factory,” the voice continued. “Well, I want to warn you guys that I hate that bastard and I don’t know what … but he’d better look out if he comes. I really hate Tories, really. And he shouldn’t come here. He better not … that’s all.” and the voice trailed off, followed by an ominous click and the dial tone. Gayle held the receiver a moment in amazement. Then, looking up over the black melamine counter, she was relieved to see the old Buick Riviera owned by Hans Schmidt, the company’s president and founder, pulling into its reserved place right in front of the double glass doors. She held her breath as the burly ex-Luftwaffe pilot pulled himself out of the car and clutching at his battered briefcase, trudged heavily into the tiny reception area.

  “Mr Schmidt I’ve just had a threat against the life of the Prime Minister,” Gayle stated portentiously. She’d seen lots of movies about assassination attempts on world leaders. Why should this be any different? “The guy just hung up. It’s pretty scary, if you ask me.” She started to pick nervously at her highly lacquered nails.

  Schmidt was used to Gayle panicking. “Calm down, Gayle, it’s probably some crank,” Hans said. “Try and remember exactly what was said. Oh shit, I guess I’d better call those guys from the Mounties.” A bevy of plainclothes RCMP had already checked out the small factory.

  “God in heaven, this is all we need,” he mumbled. “And I’ve got that Italian order for circuit boards that’s already late. Shit, shit, shit.” He repeated like a mantra as he went into his office.

  He slumped behind his crowded desk, his head in his hands. Winning the Prime Minister’s medal for export performance and being blessed in his busiest season with a prime ministerial visit to present it was rapidly becoming one fat headache.

  A FEW DAYS later — the following Wednesday, to be exact, Father Pat was in the upstairs study of the rectory. He was considering a particularly ungodly epistle from his bishop, which went on about the extraordinary expenses from the last winter and the need to conserve energy in large churches by lowering thermostats during the week, when his wife shouted from the landing that he had a visitor — an Inspector Love.

  “Send him up dear, always ready to deal with Love,” the priest answered loudly, knowing that this would pique the balding RCMP inspector. Love and Father Pat had had several run-ins, the latest being over a suspected drug dealer in the congregation. The Jamaican family, it turned out, had been getting packages of spices, not marijuana, from the island. The affair had ended in embarrassment all around. Now the inspector was on another case, and as they started to talk, it seemed as immaterial as the last.

  “Did you know the Prime Minister is coming to Ridgewood on the weekend to give an award to Omega?” Love started, pulling out his notebook officiously.

  “Yes, and I’m amazed that I’ve been asked to be on the platform with Monsignor Callucci of the RC church to lend the authority of the deity to the proceedings. I suppose I’ll go. But I thought it was being kept quiet,” Father Pat replied.

  “That was the idea. A quick, low-key visit — in and out — as I was told by the boys in Ottawa. Anyhow, one damned weirdo knows about it, and he made a threatening call to the plant. Have to investigate, you know. Any idea who it might be?” Inspector Love asked. He looked intently at the priest for some sort of reaction.

  “I suppose you think I’d know every Tory-hater in town just because I was the member from the opposition party here,” Father Pat said snidely. “Well, there were lots of them, but none that I know who are potential assassins!”

  “Well, let me read what he said and maybe you’ll understand, Father. This person was obviously a real Mulgrew hater. I just thought he might be a local Liberal, and that you could at least tell me if you remember any slightly weird, lefty or radical kids … well, you know what I mean.” Inspector Love realized this was getting a bit farfetched. But the people in Ottawa had insisted he talk to Father Pat, who had enjoyed the reputation of being a thorn in the side of the government when he was a member. Father Pat was on the “list.”

  The inspector read his notes of the conversation as Gayle had recalled it.

  “Weird, lefty …” Father Pat said. He had heard that kind of recital before from cops who protected government ministers, and pondered the words the officer had used. “I’m not sure what you mean. I can’t think of anyone who would make a real threat like that. But you’ve got an awful lot of people who hate the guy you have to protect, and a few who might enjoy making mischief like that. But rest assured, my dear inspector Love, I’ll put my mind to it. Wouldn’t want weird lefties running
around ruining a Tory event. No, certainly wouldn’t want that,” Father Pat said, getting up to indicate that this meeting with the forces of law, order and the protection of the sanctity of a prime ministerial event was over.

  Later that day, there was an important meeting in Omega’s modest excuse for a boardroom. The area was more of an extension of the cafeteria, and the Prime Minister’s staff who had come to advance the event felt distinctly uncomfortable, sitting on old folding chairs, looking suspiciously at a couple of shirtsleeved young computer programmers who were chatting good naturedly over a juice in the far corner of the L-shaped room.

  “We must have privacy, Schmidt,” Sam Sibbald, the only one of the three PM staffers with slightly greying hair, said coldly. Hans Schmidt assented reluctantly, rolling his eyes at Terry Wilson, who was sitting beside him. Schmidt had called his sometime public relations man, Terry to the meeting to help him handle the “guard dogs” as he tagged the increasing swarms of loyal RCMP, technicians, advance people and other PM staff who had descended on his small plant in the last week.

  The two programmers scattered, and the Prime Minister’s boys got down to their checklist. Sibbald talked and the other two took notes like school kids with silk ties. They rehearsed every step the Prime Minister would take from the time he got out of the motorcade to the ceremony on the presentation platform some local party members were building in the lot for the event, to the plant tour and back to the motorcade. At this point, Hans closed his eyes and nodded briefly as he remembered other motorcades he had watched as a young man training to be a Luftwaffe pilot outside Nuremberg.

  “So, got all that Schmidt?” Sibbald asked bluntly, noting that the older man was not paying attention.

  “Oh yeah,” Hans said, jerking to attention. “As long as I don’t have to salute. I did enough of that when I was young.”

  “Look, Schmidt, the ’boss’ coming out of his way to present the medal is an honour,” Sibbald shot back somewhat menacingly. “If you don’t want the PM to come, tell me now. We can easily scrub the Omega event.”

  Hans shook his head sheepishly. Having made his point, Sibbald leaned forward and said, “There’s one thing I want to underline, Schmidt. You already know we’ve had a threat. This isn’t that unusual. It’s the price of being a world leader who has taken unpopular stands. But the threat does cast a shadow on this event. Means more security. But, above all — and this concerns you, Mr. Terry Wilson — if you are having anything to do with the press, and this gets out, I want you to be clear that the boss personally has decided to go ahead with his Omega visit — in spite of it. And we do take every threat seriously, very seriously.” Sibbald said this ominously.

  “I TELL YOU these guys are like young Nazis, Pat,” Terry had driven right over to the rectory to give his friend Father Pat a blow-by-blow of the Omega meeting with the PM’s people. “Schmidt agreed. And if you ask me, I think they are trying to milk this threat thing to make Mulgrew look good. Disgusting. What do you know about it anyway?”

  “Not much, but for what must be a prank I did have a somewhat menacing visit from that officious Inspector Love this morning,” Father Pat replied. “Then this afternoon I dropped in for a haircut at Cartwright’s. You know Saturday is Brenda’s birthday and she insists I get the mop put in order. Her sister is coming over and … where was I? Oh yes, barber gossip. Well, this is good. Seems one of the young engineers from Omega was having a haircut earlier in the week and told George about the threat. Cartwright couldn’t resist telling Jim Day, the new young reporter for the Ridgewood Advocate about it. You know, give the new guy a break and the Advocate comes out Thursday. So I guess the PM’s people will have their way. Mulgrew’ll look like a hero and it’ll give the other media something to talk about. I’m sure they aren’t interested in Ridgewood.”

  “Wait a minute, Pat … maybe not,” Terry said, his face lighting up with a wicked idea. “What if, just what if we found whoever made the call and proved it was just a prank from a kid. The media would love that. And it would be a great story about how deeply Mulgrew is disliked. Even kids don’t want him to come into their communities. It’d blow the Prime Minister’s Office away.”

  “We don’t have much to go on, Terry,” Father Pat answered tentatively. “And what if the RCMP were rough on whomever it was. It’s like joking about a gun when you’re going through a metal detector at the airport. They don’t take kindly to that.”

  “What if, what if. Look, this has to be a kid. Who else would know or bother. Only local people know he’s coming here. Anyhow, if the RCMP are making inquiries, it might be just as well if we did too. At the very least we might get to whoever made the call before they do. Prevent it from getting nasty,” Terry said, feeling he was pushing it, but ready for a quick adventure. The PM was coming Saturday and it was already Wednesday.

  Father Pat’s curiosity was starting to get the better of him. After all, the accusation had been made that the miscreant was likely one of his own, a disgruntled Liberal. And if it was a local Liberal who hated the PM enough to try and throw a monkey wrench into his visit, that did narrow it down, since the New Democrats had traditionally had very little support in the area.

  “You’re getting to me, Terry,” he said. “And I have to admit the PM deserves to be embarrassed. But this has to be our secret game. If it leads to anything serious, I’m out and on the phone to Love right away. The PM’s a human being too, and if the threat is real, I don’t want to monkey around.”

  “OK, OK, Pat, Take it easy. The way Gayle described the call I don’t think we’re dealing with the Red Brigade. Now think, what family has good reason to hate the PM more than most of the rest of us?”

  Father Pat was left at the doorstep of the rectory, memories of his leader, the redoubtable Pierre 0’ Reilly flooding back. The tall charismatic with the sculpted face and unforgettably high cheekbones widely rumoured to be the result of his French-Irish-native ancestry, detested security, and had been known to make a game of shaking his bodyguard on a private evening out in the capital. A loner and an intellectual who liked canoing in the North in the summers, he was the exact opposite of the carefully packaged Mulgrew, Father Pat thought. He was glad the voters had made it unnecessary for him to be obliged to put up with the new Prime Minister on a day-to-day basis in Ottawa.

  AFTER SUPPER THAT evening, Terry and Father Pat paid a visit to Ridgewood Farm Supplies, or what remained of Ridgewood Farm Supplies. The formerly prosperous farm implement dealership was now a virtually vacant low building with gaping floor-to-ceiling glass displaying a dusty and empty showroom. A few rusty cultivators and a broken down tractor were growing out of the unkempt lawn. The owners, Rosemary and Bill Beasely, still lived in the bungalow which was an ungainly appendage to the showroom.

  They were there because Father Pat had a flash memory of Rosemary, a sometime parishioner, coming to him a couple of years ago after their federal small business loan was turned down and their business was about to go under. And they had young son.

  “If I ever see that goddamned Mulgrew, I’ll drive his bloody damned limousine right off the road,” he remembered her saying. “I’m that mad, Reverend. I tell you his government has ruined us. And I wrote his damned Minister, the one who makes speeches about how important small business is. Never even got a reply. That’s democracy for you.”

  As the door opened, Father Pat and Terry felt they had already solved the mystery of the phantom prankster and were ready to give the story to Deirdre. All they needed was Rosemary’s confirmation.

  “No, my son just went to live with my brother to go to a better high school than Ridgewood High. And we are having it very tough,” Rosemary said, as the two faces on the doorstep fell. “But damn right I’d love to shame that Mulgrew. He fixed us. I’ve been working nights at the hospital and Bill has to drive more than an hour to a plant where he works filling boxes with car parts. It’s humiliating …” Rosemary continued her diatribe while Father Pat and Terry nod
ded in sympathetic disappointment.

  ON THURSDAY AT Omega the same boardroom cum cafeteria was cleared in advance for the return of Sam Sibbald, this time accompanied by Inspector Love and the Prime Minister’s personal RCMP bodyguard, one Inspector Lavoie, a large, dapper man with highly polished shoes and equally brilliant slicked down black hair and mustache. Lavoie spoke first. A restless Hans Schmidt and sceptical Terry Wilson tried to take him seriously.

  “I regret to tell you people, in complete confidence,” the inspector addressed the small group, speaking from notes a young aide to the PM had pushed in front of him as he sat down, “that we have information which leads us to believe that the threat received here last Friday was indeed a real one. It was made locally, and we are closing in on the individual or individuals who made it.

  “This will require added security, and I also regret that since the existence of a threat has been printed in your local paper today, we have to deal openly with the story. The jackals that travel with us have to be fed,” he added referring to the core of journalists who accompanied the Prime Minister wherever he went.

  “Let me interrupt, Inspector,” Sibbald chimed in. “By ’jackals’ the Inspector means the reporters who glue themselves to the PM and shout irrelevant questions at him from behind the barricades we put up. If you’ve been reading the papers out here, you know we’ve been chased on this ridiculous story about the Prime Minister’s wife using RCMP officers to drive her to Montreal all the time to shop. Well, she has decided to come to the Omega event, and the fact that their lives may be in danger here should show that the security we provide is important and required — a real response to real danger. More than a joke for the media to play around with. Do I make myself clear? We’ll put out a press release this afternoon about the threat and the need for added security. I hope you people here will be onside.”