Bless Me Again, Father

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Thank the good God you’ve come,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the wagon since that bottle went empty on me ten minutes ago.’

  Fr Duddleswell removed the cigarette from the Doctor’s mouth, read off it ‘98.4’ and put it back.

  ‘I will not be using you to fill a hole with yet awhile, Donal.’

  ‘Not unless I die of misery.’

  ‘True enough you look as happy lying there as a porcupine in a pail of water.’

  I handed over a basket of provisions packed by Mrs Pring. Bananas, apples, oranges and much else besides.

  ‘Tell Mrs Pring thank you for me.’

  I asked if he had called in a doctor.

  ‘Remember that old saying in the Gospel,’ was his reply.

  ‘“Physician, heal thyself.”’ He thumped his barrel of a chest for effect. ‘I am my own medical man. Always have been and always will be. Never forget that, young man.’

  ‘You don’t trust doctors, either,’ I said.

  He screwed his eyes up and pursed his lips to signify no. ‘And how’s your wound, Charles, not festering, I hope?’

  Fr Duddleswell grunted that it wasn’t.

  ‘Don’t forget to keep it clean. Plenty of disinfectant and, if need be, a poultice hot as hell.’

  ‘I heard you,’ Fr Duddleswell said, not wanting to pursue the subject.

  ‘Were you intending, Charles, to buy me …?’ He indicated the empty bottle.

  ‘This is a golden opportunity for you to go on the dry.’

  Dr Daley guffawed. ‘Teetotalism is against nature. Like a bishop waiting at a bus stop or a hen laying eggs at midnight.’

  ‘Listen, me old friend,’ Fr Duddleswell said, trying to look earnest. ‘You fell in that lake because you were stocious.’

  ‘But you knocked me in, Charles, and you know it.’

  ‘You had drunk yourself footless and if you had drowned you would now be being licked all over by the flames of hell.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Dr Daley groaned, ‘you have a heart inside you tough as teak.’

  Fr Duddleswell acknowledged the compliment. ‘You will get no rotgut from me.’

  ‘Very well, then, Charles. The curse of the Seven Snotty Orphans be upon you.’

  ‘And with thy spirit,’ came the retort.

  ‘Before you go, Charles, would you fetch me a fresh packet of fags out of that drawer over there?’

  I was nearer. ‘I’ll get it,’ I said.

  As I turned, I saw Dr Daley’s reflection in the mirror. He drew a bottle of whiskey from the bottom of the basket. It must have been hidden under the fruit. When I returned with the cigarettes there was no sign of it.

  With a last conspiratorial wink at the Doctor, Fr Duddleswell left to visit the parish. I stayed for a chat.

  ‘Put your bottom dollar on the chair beside me so.’

  I drew up my chair in anticipation. These quiet talks with Dr Daley were precious to me. He was a fund of wisdom and humanity.

  No sooner had we heard the front door close than he said, ‘What our Charles did not realize is that I always carry a spare tyre.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said, not letting on.

  ‘Mustn’t let the cobwebs grow around it.’ He pulled the bottle out from under his pillow. ‘Be sure not to tell his Reverence, now.’

  I put my hand to my heart.

  He was in a nostaligic mood. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, ‘but to my eyes that little priest is tall as a round tower.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Outwardly, mind, he’s not unlike Goldsmith’s schoolmaster, “A man severe he was and stern to view.”’

  ‘When he refuses you whiskey.’

  ‘A good for instance.’ The Doctor’s musing gave him an unusually distant look. ‘I never did tell you, did I, how he took care of my wife.’

  I shook my head. Neither Dr Daley nor Fr Duddleswell had ever spoken to me of his wife.

  He poured himself a drink. ‘Maureen had this cyst on her spine, y’see. The specialist said it was nothing to worry about but too delicate to operate on. But she was cheerful, was Maureen, though gradually losing the use of her limbs.’

  I sighed to express my sympathy.

  ‘But we were happy, so happy.’ The glass was forgotten momentarily in his hand. ‘As if our happiness would last for ever.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, taking a sip, ‘I myself diagnosed she had this growth in her throat.’

  ‘Was it …?’

  He nodded. ‘I watched her as she grew thin as a piece of string, the poor dear. It took months. The cords of her neck became taut like the necks of baby birds, you must have seen it when the mother bird feeds them. Except Maureen couldn’t eat a thing by this time.’

  I made a small gesture with my hands, expressive of fellow-feeling. A gleam in his eye thanked me for it.

  ‘Charles, now, what a stalwart he was, visiting her three or four times a week. Long visits, not at all like a doctor’s. Talking to her, reading to her, praying over her. Because, y’see, she couldn’t speak herself. Not with her voice, I mean. Always and always he left her happier than when he came.’

  ‘It must have been hard on you, Doctor.’

  ‘I went to pieces altogether, I can tell you. But Charles kept the both of us going. Sat me behind my desk in the surgery to do my work, sent me out on my rounds.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘There was one case I had in those days that took my mind off my own problems.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A young couple I had on my books, they only had an iron bath in the house. One evening, the poor mother filled it with boiling water from a few saucepans and went upstairs for half a minute to fetch a towel. When she came down, her two little girls aged three and two were in the bath, dead.’

  After a while, fortified by a drink, he continued.

  ‘Our Charles took my wife to the edge of the world. And Maureen, nervous as a filly usually, is ready to say goodbye to us any time, and not a feather of anxiety on her. And when the time comes, she can’t swallow the Viaticum. “No use, Charles,” says I, “it can’t be done.” But your man breaks off a particle of the sacred Host, puts it in a teaspoon of water and she manages it.’ The Doctor sighed shakily. ‘He did that for me.’

  I filled his glass for something to do.

  ‘He did exactly that, Father Neil. Filled my glass.’ Dr Daley blinked so that tiny tear-bubbles burst while still in his eyes, adding to their brightness. ‘Every time I take a drink I’m reminded of his Christliness when Maureen passed away.’

  ‘Is that,’ I said, smiling, ‘why you drink so much?’

  ‘Partly. But what a bond between us. I tell you, if no one else in the wide world loved him, no, not even yourself or Mrs Pring, I’d love him till the skies fell in.’

  ‘No accounting for taste, Doctor.’

  ‘Mind you, not a word to himself. Furthermore, there are some terrible days when I’d like to kick his fat little backside in for him.’

  That was one bit of information I felt I could hand on.

  ‘You had no children, Doctor.’ I took it for granted he was childless.

  But surprisingly: ‘One. A boy. In the early days.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Died of pneumonia at six weeks. A great waste, wasn’t it? It never would have happened today with today’s drugs.’ He shook his head vigorously as if to say, Enough of this. ‘We’ll be all three of us together some day soon.’

  ‘Too soon,’ I said, ‘if you go on drinking like that.’

  A characteristic grin lit up his face. ‘What a way to go to Glory.’ He held his glass aloft. ‘Slainte.’

  ‘Your health,’ I returned.

  The use of his native tongue released the usual flood of memories.

  ‘Did you ever hear tell, Father Neil, of what the old Irish doctor quoted in Holinshed used to say about the whiskey?’

  ‘Something complimentary, I suppose.’

  ‘Let me thi
nk, now. I used to know it by heart.’ He stroked his unshaven chin and began: ‘Aquavitae … it sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth.’

  I grabbed the bottle from him and pretended to take a swig.

  ‘It helpeth digestion, it abandoneth melancholy, it relisheth the heart, it keepeth and preserveth the head from whirring, the eyes from dazzling, the tongue from lis—, from lis—’ He succeeded at the third attempt, ‘The tongue from lisping, the throat from rattling.’ He broke off. ‘I’ve forgotten the rest.’

  ‘Sheer poetry.’

  ‘It is that.’

  ‘It’s a wonder, Doctor, how anyone could die after drinking the stuff.’

  ‘That’s a fact. D’you know, in the old days, where I was reared in the west, they even gave new born babies a sip of whiskey mixed with honey. If the wee ones were in distress, that is.’

  ‘Heavens.’

  ‘And when we had the toothache, what with the dentist not being due for six months or more, what could we take for it but a toothful of whiskey?’

  ‘Did it do any good?’

  He chuckled. ‘It could do no harm, anyway, and afterwards you hadn’t an enemy in the world. Mind you, poteen was a bit different. That did burn the gums and the inside of the mouth. But,’ he reflected, ‘wasn’t it worth the agony?’

  ‘When did you take it up?’

  ‘The poteen? I first tasted it as a child, I must admit that. It was my reward for sending the polis on a wild goose chase. As a lad, y’see, I was selected to light fires up on the moss, as we said, so the Revenue men would think the fires were from the poteen stills.’

  ‘You were a decoy?’

  He raised his eyebrows in an expression of delight. ‘What joy being up there on the mountainside at nights. Air as clear and colourless as the strong stuff itself. Under the purring stars. I tell you, Abraham himself never saw so many stars.’

  ‘Were you ever caught?’

  ‘Once or twice. “What’re you doing, lad?” these big, burly moustachioed fellers would say, clutching hold of my coat. “Camping out, sirs,” Isaid. “What’s your name?” And I tells them something like Thomas Smith. As frightfully English as I could make up.’

  ‘They believed you?’

  ‘They clipped my ear for me. And as I ran down the hill, I called after me, like I’d heard my dear father shout at them, “Go to the divil and shake yourself.”’ He repeated it, rolling with mirth. ‘Wasn’t I rewarded by the poteen-makers for that!’

  ‘You started really early.’

  It was a form of patriotism to drink poteen, don’t you see? The parliamentary stuff, as we called it, what was that but quickly brewed muck put by the foreigner in fancy bottles with fancy labels? Ours you could use to drive your car with, and we did when the need was on us.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said, making it plain that I did.

  ‘When the foolish Government outlawed poteen, Father Neil, they made most Irish families criminals.’ He tapped his coverlet for effect. ‘If you want to know why Irish folk are even today held up as heroes when they break the law, here’s the answer.’

  ‘Did the clergy support you? In making poteen, I mean.’

  ‘The priests were real patriots. They used to bless the stills as solemnly as they would a wedding. For a stipend, of course.’

  ‘Sometimes they were paid in kind?’

  The Doctor leaned across and softly punched my arm. ‘For a foreigner you have a shrewd sense of history, young fellow-me-lad.’

  ‘How did you move the poteen around once you made it?’

  He made a swift sign of the cross on himself. ‘Begging your Reverence’s pardon, but we often carried it in coffins at mock funerals.’

  ‘The way that Bottesford’—he was a local undertaker—‘carries his blackmarket meat?’

  ‘Indeed. But we went one further. Our men had the smiths make iron breasts for our women. Tailor-made to hold the poteen.’

  ‘Knowing the police wouldn’t search them.’

  Dr Daley’s face was a picture of bliss. ‘The perfect instance, Father Neil, of grown men imbibing the milk of human kindness.’

  Dr Daley made a speedy recovery. Whether it was because he cured himself with whiskey or because of public prayers led by Fr Duddleswell only God can tell.

  Not long afterwards, Fr Duddleswell made an onslaught on excessive drinking in the parish. It was sparked off by a wedding at which I was officiating.

  Maud Gibby, a local girl, was marrying a Lancashire labourer called Tony Ormrod. A priest in the north had done the paperwork and his accompanying letter warned me that Tony was an unsteady fellow.

  The bride walked up the aisle first. Not all that uncommon at St. Jude’s. But when, half an hour later, the groom and best man arrived, one of them was drunk.

  ‘Why choose a best man who gets drunk? I hissed to the man who could walk straight.

  Maud, a brawny girl, overheard me. ‘That’s my Tony, Father, God bless his little heart.’

  According to the best man’s unlikely story, Tony was under medication and had gulped down one brandy to give himself courage. Looking at Maud, I had to admit that a high degree of courage was required.

  ‘Pick him up,’ I ordered, ‘and follow me to the sacristy.’

  As I walked off, I heard a loud guffaw from the wedding guests. When I turned round, I almost bumped into Maud who was carrying Tony in her arms like a sleeping child.

  In the sacristy, Fr Duddleswell was impatiently waiting to perform the civil ceremony. Seeing Tony’s condition, he whispered to me, ‘Has she hit him, lad, or has he fainted from shock?’

  I explained.

  He lifted the groom’s eyelids. ‘Do’you think he knows what he is doing?’

  ‘If he knew what he’s doing,’ Maud said cheerfully, ‘he wouldn’t be here, would he?’

  Fr Duddleswell suggested black coffee. Dr Daley, who was visiting us that afternoon, gave him instead a slug out of his hip-flask. The groom came back to life as fast as Lazarus. Within five minutes he was able to say, ‘I will.’

  The upshot of this incident was a mission in the parish.

  It was conducted by a middle-aged Scottish priest, a member of an obscure religious order.

  Mrs Pring did not take to Fr McCabe at all. Her description of him having a bay-window belly and a French-loaf sort of face was exact. He also suffered from alopecia areata: long tufts of hair sprouted here and there out of an otherwise lard-like head.

  In the pulpit, Fr McCabe had an ear-shattering delivery. By contrast, in the house he spoke in the soft, self-deprecating whine of a Uriah Heep. I guessed he was a man deeply divided in himself.

  Each consonant at the end of a word had its shadow vowel and every ‘r’ was rolled like a drum-tattoo. His favourite quotation in the pulpit was, ‘Deparrrt frrrum me, ye currrsed, into everrrlasting firrre.’ His call to renounce the devil and all his works and pomps came out as ‘the divil and all his wurrrucks and pumps.’

  ‘Trrremendous,’ was Fr Duddleswell’s comment, and he and Mrs Pring, in conversation with each other, kept purring like cats.

  ‘This morning,’ Mrs Pring said, ‘I gave his Reverence burrrunt toast and frrrizzled bacon.’

  I was not amused. Every evening sermon was now practically a guided tour of the nether regions. As a rounded picture of the blessings of Christianity it was preposterous. My belief was reinforced when I heard Mother Stephen at the church door congratulate the preacher on his eloquence and sound teaching.

  ‘Kind of you, Sister,’ Fr McCabe said ingratiatingly.

  ‘Mother,’ the Superior reminded him. ‘And, Father, if only you could tell us of God’s love and mercy with the same eloquence and fire.’

  A strong hint, I thought. But, in spite of it, the missioner still only spoke of the fire.

  Fr Duddleswell was not concerned. For him, a bit of a religious shudder did nobody any harm. ‘Besides, when did the good people believe a word they heard from the pulpit?’


  At Fr Duddleswell’s insistence, the missioner delivered a special hot mid-week attack on booze. A pledge-taking ceremony was planned as the finale to the mission on Saturday night.

  Bishop O’Reilly was prevailed on to grant a special Indulgence to anyone who gave up alcoholic beverages entirely. He reminded us in a letter that the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916 were Pioneers, including Padraig Pearse himself.

  Fr McCabe’s exhortations to sobriety took the form of even gorier descriptions of Hell: gnashing teeth, flickering flames, undying worms eating at your entrails. I had never come across anything like it outside the writings of James Joyce. In addition, we had a long account of Fr Theobald Mathew’s crusade to curb drinking in holy Ireland where he ‘encourrraged five million men and women to honourrr the pledge’ I felt there couldn’t have been that many adults living in Ireland at the time.

  Dr Daley suggested that quite a few must have taken the pledge several times.

  ‘’Twould be a grand thing, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘if you took it but once. Remember, if you had drowned in that lake while you had the drink taken—’

  ‘I would have gone to God, Charles, with alcohol on my breath like our Blessed Lord after the Last Supper.’

  ‘Are you comparing yourself—?’

  ‘Simply saying that the Galilean was not ticketed in his day for teetotalism. Neither would His Holy Mother have been acceptable as Patron of the Pioneers.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Cana, Charles. Her only involvement in a miracle and she wasn’t for changing the wine into water.’

  ‘I still say if you had drowned—’

  ‘Charles, Charles,’ the Doctor interrupted him again, ‘you must know I have trained myself to make a final act of contrition even when I’m unconscious.’

  ‘You are a perfect eejit and no mistake,’ Fr Duddleswell snorted.

  Dr Daley took him firmly by the arm. ‘I presume you are going to give the parish a good example.’

  Fr Duddleswell backed away. ‘I’m sure I beg your pardon.’

  ‘We are expecting you to be the first to take the pledge next Saturday evening. Isn’t that so, Father Neil?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Ridiculous. I am a priest like our Blessed Saviour. I am obliged to celebrate Mass and ’twould not be valid without consecrated wine.’