Bless Me Again, Father

by Neil Boyd

‘Tell me,’ he insisted, threateningly.

  ‘I wish I could. The only thing I can tell you is, Molly loves you very much and only you.’

  He looked incredulous at first until, to my relief, a thought struck him. ‘She doesn’t think I’ve got a fancy woman?’

  I shrugged, not committing myself.

  ‘How could she think that?’

  ‘How could you think nasty things of Molly?’

  Johnny was silent for a long moment. Then he stood up. I backed away in case he let fly. He merely wanted to shake my hand.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve been a ripe bloody fool.’

  Before I could utter another word, in burst Mother Stephen with Fr Duddleswell in hot pursuit.

  ‘Father Boyd, there is something I wish to say to you.’

  ‘You’ve got a nerve coming in here without knocking,’ I said sharply.

  Any further rebuke from me was unnecessary. She had recognized my guest.

  At the door, Fr Duddleswell was making warning signals over Mother Stephen’s shoulder. I stepped across to him and whispered, ‘It’s all right, Father.’

  ‘Is it?’ he whispered back.

  ‘Leave it to me.’ I said aloud to Mother Stephen, ‘You want a word with me. Go ahead.’

  ‘In private,’ she said, shuffling her flat-heeled shoes uncomfortably.

  ‘You may speak quite freely in front of my two good friends here,’ I said.

  Mother Stephen indicated she could not do that.

  ‘Is it about certain rumours, Mother?’

  She looked chillingly at me. ‘It could be.’

  Maybe because he had a load off his mind, Johnny joined in the fun. ‘As an interested party, Mother, I do assure you these rumours are only being spread by nasty-minded females.’

  ‘I never doubted that, of course,’

  ‘Did you not?’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘You gave me quite the opposite impression.’

  ‘Thanks to Father Boyd,’ Johnny said, ‘my marriage is as safe as houses.’

  Mother Stephen, far from convinced, said, ‘That is very good to hear.’

  Fr Duddleswell was already edging her towards the door. ‘And it was very, very good of you to come.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mother,’ I called after her. ‘My love to the Bishop when next you write.’

  ‘Now that busybody has gone,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘would you mind telling me what this is all about?’

  Johnny almost laughed with relief. ‘You see, Father, before I got married, I had a girl friend called Bella.’

  ‘Ah,’ I put in, ‘Bella’s an old flame.’

  ‘Yes. And a few months ago, Bella’s private life was in such a mess I introduced her to Tom Charlton.’

  ‘He’s a priest in my year, Father,’ I explained.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Johnny went on, ‘Tom and Bella fell for each other and I felt sort of responsible.’

  ‘So, Johnny, that’s why Bella’s been writing and phoning?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve been trying to help them break it up. I think I’ve succeeded at last.’

  Quietly, Fr Duddleswell said, ‘And you did not tell your wife about this?’

  ‘I tried to kid her I was in touch with police informers. Besides, Molly was educated in a convent.’

  ‘So was that lady who just left,’ Fr Duddleswell said.

  Johnny smiled self-consciously. ‘I thought Molly might be scandalized, that’s all.’

  Fr Duddleswell put on his wise-old-man’s look. ‘Youngsters!’ he said.

  That evening, at cocoa-time, I said to Fr Duddleswell:

  ‘I seem to have made a real mess of things.’

  He waved my apology aside. ‘Don’t we all, lad?’

  ‘I can’t think why I kept going round to the Downes’ place when Johnny wasn’t there.’

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘Perhaps deep down,’ I said, probing a sore spot within me, ‘I just liked talking to Johnny’s wife.’

  ‘Never mind, lad. Look you here.’ He handed me a bottle of red wine. ‘Mother Stephen sent it round.’

  ‘A pint of her blood?’

  ‘She did her best according to her lights, God help us all. Mind you, I do not reckon for one minute she would have gone to the Bishop.’

  I agreed with him.

  ‘I have a little present for you meself, Father Neil.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be throwing five bobs around like this,’ I said.

  He bent down beside his desk. This time, he picked up a brilliant blue leather bag. Out of the top protruded gleaming golf clubs, the heads of them hooded like hawks.

  ‘Father,’ I gasped. ‘For me? Why?’

  ‘To help you give up the pub crawls and all those naughty land-army girls.’

  I drew out one of the dubs and removed the cover. ‘Things are never as bad as they seem, Father.’

  ‘Not even me?’

  I practised a stroke with the club. The balance was perfect. ‘A superb putter, Father.’

  ‘Left-handed, y’notice.’

  ‘Marvellous. Marvellous.’ I replaced the putter and chose a second club. I examined it closely, unable to believe my eyes. ‘Two putters?’ I said. ‘Why two?’

  ‘Oh?’

  I went through the rest of the clubs and found they were all left-handed putters.

  ‘Dear God in heaven,’ Fr Duddleswell exclaimed miserably. ‘Is that why the store gave ’em to me at a knockdown price?’

  8 Anyone for Tennis?

  ‘You are very welcome in these parts, Bert.’

  Mr Albert Appleby, devout parishioner and Mayor of Fairwater for the past twelve months, returned Fr Duddleswell’s greeting with a smile.

  ‘Nice to be back, Farver.’

  When I said hello, the Mayor told me that when he’d first seen me I was thin as a Communion wafer.

  ‘And look at him now, Bert,’ Fr Duddleswell laughed, ‘beginning like the rest of us to wave a bit of flab at the world.’

  The tea Mrs Pring had prepared to honour Mr Appleby was not designed to do my burgeoning waist-line any good.

  ‘Not exactly bread and scrape, is it?’ our guest said, surveying the mounds of everything.

  ‘There’s always lashings and leavings for such as yourself, Bert,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘Most of it starch, mind. In this house, ’tis a classic case of being overfed and undernourished.’

  ‘Watch him smile, Councillor,’ Mrs Pring said, pouring tea. ‘You can hardly tell it from the real thing.’ Her final request, as she was leaving, was, ‘Don’t ask him to swim in the clergy race this year, will you?’

  It brought back painful memories of the last time Mr Appleby came to tea at St Jude’s. Newly appointed Mayor, he had pressurized us into swimming in the medley race against the Anglicans. But for the prompt action of Mr Probble, the Anglican Vicar, Fr Duddleswell would have drowned.

  Fr Duddleswell’s genial mood suggested that the Mayor had accepted in advance that we were not taking to the water again.

  ‘Who, Bert, might your successor be when your term is up?’

  ‘From next month,’ Mr Appleby said, ‘the new Mayor will be, er, Mr Tony Biggins.’

  Fr Duddleswell’s face almost fell on his plate.

  ‘Bert,’ he exclaimed.

  At the reception to honour Mr Appleby’s investiture, I had heard Mr Biggins style himself a free-thinker.

  ‘That strutter and swaggerer does not believe that two and two make four, Bert.’ Fr Duddleswell munched away miserably. ‘Unbelievers. These days, they are everywhere. Like blackberries in autumn.’

  ‘’E’s not such a bad chap, Toby.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘The last time I met him ’twasn’t me blessing I left him with.’

  ‘’E’s seeking for the light, Farver.’

  ‘I tell you, Bert, when he was last here, blaspheming in this very room, I had to call to mind our Blessed Lord’s words, Let him who is without blame throw the first s
tone.’

  ‘I wondered why you heaved a brick at him,’ I said.

  ‘Remember the lines of Coleridge, Farver.’ And the Mayor recited them for our benefit: ‘He prayeth best who loveth best/All things both great and small/For the great God who loveth us/He made and loveth all.’

  ‘Ah, Bert,’ Fr Duddleswell said, penitent, ‘’tis yourself should have been ordained priest and not meself.’

  ‘I was only trying to tell you Tony Biggins is doing ‘is best.’

  ‘I am sure he is. I am sure the benighted feller is.’

  ‘’E’s even taking instruction from the Vicar with a view to becoming an Anglican.’

  ‘Jasus,’ Fr Duddleswell spluttered, swallowing a mouthful sooner than was good for him. ‘This Biggins is more of an eejit than I thought. Now I know his loaf was never properly baked.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Mr Appleby said, ‘that the Anglican victory in the swimming last year didn’t ’ave something to do with it.’

  The Mayor, fine strategist, was leading up to another request, 1951-style.

  King George VI had inaugurated the Festival of Britain on the steps of St Paul’s in early summer.

  ‘I was wondering, Farver, if you’d care to play your part in the Festival.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Fr Duddleswell had great respect for King George for not abandoning the country during the war. He also admired the King’s exemplary family life and his humility, arising to some degree out of his pronounced stutter.

  The Mayor wanted to know if the two of us wished to restore our honour and that of the Catholic Church.

  ‘How, Bert?’

  ‘By taking on Mr Probble and his curate, Mr Pinkerton, at tennis. Doubles, of course.’

  Fr Duddleswell laughed at the ceiling. ‘If Fatty Pinkerton played me that’d be a doubles match worth watching in itself.’

  ‘I thought you’d jump at the chance of putting those foreign clergy in their place.’

  ‘You are twisting me tennis arm, Bert.’

  ‘You, Farver,’ the Mayor said to me, ‘do you play at all?’

  ‘Quite well,’ I had to admit.

  ‘I gave me racket away years ago,’ said Fr Duddleswell, who saw that things were getting serious.

  ‘So you can play, Farver.’

  ‘Not for many and many a year. God Almighty, I tell you, if I only stepped out on a court today ’twould pluck the sight from your eyes.’

  ‘I’ve got a spare racket, Councillor.’

  Instead of reprimanding me, Fr Duddleswell sank into a trance as he contemplated getting his own back on Mr Probble for saving his life and, something almost worse, stealing a prospective convert from under his nose.

  ‘We’d keep it a secret,’ Mr Appleby promised. ‘At least until the last minute.’

  ‘You would as soon keep secret an eight-month pregnancy,’ Fr Duddleswell replied, without heat. He was still lost in his thoughts.

  ‘Mr Probble is advanced in years, Farver, and that curate of ‘is is about two curates overweight.’

  ‘True,’ Fr Duddleswell admitted. ‘Ah,’ he said, turning to me, ‘what a pity that the sweetest thing in life is so bad for you.’

  ‘Sugar, Father?’ I asked, offering him the bowl.

  He shook his head and grinned. ‘Revenge, Father Neil.’

  ‘’Tis a grand evening altogether.’

  Revenge was very sweet if we were allowed to practise at the Fairwater Tennis Club on such a summer’s evening. Quietness with leafy oaks and chestnuts all around us. A sky still blue for all the lateness of the hour was lit up by a warm, orange sun.

  I was wearing a smart white shirt and shorts pressed by Mrs Pring. My partner was clad in his usual black, even to his black shoes.

  I stood on the service line and held up a ball. ‘Ready, Father.’

  He crouched down, ready to receive.

  ‘I don’t suppose, Father,’ I called out, ‘you’d like to dress a bit more casually.’

  ‘I would,’ he said, and walked to a green chair by the side of the court. There he took off his jacket. Still clothed in a thick, black cardigan, he prepared to receive.

  ‘Ready, Father?’ I called again.

  He gestured me to join him at the net. There he said, ‘I am thinking we ought to decide the most important thing before we begin.’

  ‘What’s that, Father?’

  ‘Who is going to keep the score?’

  ‘I will, if you like.’

  With exaggerated politeness; he asked, ‘You do not trust me?’

  ‘I do, Father, I do.’

  ‘Uh, huh. Then why are you so anxious for me not to keep the score?’

  ‘I’m not bothered,’ I said, smiling weakly. ‘I just didn’t want to give you the trouble.’

  He muttered to himself, ‘He thinks I am so ancient ’twould tire me out keeping a tennis score.’

  ‘Father,’ I begged him, ‘you keep the score.’

  ‘Young man,’ he said, still more haughtily, ‘I would take it as a great kindness if you would stop telling me what to do and what not to do.’

  The evening was fast losing its enchantment.

  ‘Please, Father. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it.’

  He fixed me with soft, sad eyes. ‘Do you have to be so impertinent to your elders? You keep the score, if you would be so gracious.’ With that, he retired to the baseline as if he were following a funeral.

  I held up the ball for the third time. ‘Ready, Father.’

  ‘Will you get on with it, Father Neil.’ He spoke in a tone implying I was to blame for delaying the start.

  I served. As soon as I felt the ball on the racket, I knew it was an ace. It left him standing.

  ‘Fifteen-love,’ I called out, and walked across to the left-hand serving area. For Duddleswell did not budge. This puzzled me.

  ‘Father?’

  Once more he indicated he wanted to parly at the net.

  ‘My point, I think, Father Neil.’ He was courteous but firm.

  ‘It was smack on the line.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, his eyes popping, ‘you saw it kick up the chalk, I suppose.’

  I pointed out that it was a hard court and there wasn’t any chalk.

  ‘With the utmost charity,’ he ground out between clenched teeth, ‘may I suggest the reason your ball did not kick up the chalk dust is that it landed not on the line but over it.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  He softened at that. ‘There is no need to apologize, lad. These things happen to the best of us. Besides, ’tis only a game when all is said and done.’

  I relaxed. ‘Love-fifteen, then.’

  He tapped the top of the net with his racket. ‘Fifteen-love. I am giving you the point.’

  He was walking away when, foolishly, I called him back. ‘Father, I’d much rather play the point again if there’s any doubt about it.’

  ‘Father Neil,’ he snapped, ‘are you saying there is something the matter with my eyes?’ Before I could reply: ‘Or perhaps you are calling me a liar?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘There is no doubt about it, I am telling you. ’Twas definitely out. That is why I am giving you the point.’

  ‘But, Father—’

  ‘Father Neil,’ he said, breathing heavily, ‘I am sure you are not intending it, but you are putting me off me stroke.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, as a poor substitute for what I meant.

  ‘I am giving the point away as our Blessed Lord Himself would do, and that is the end of the matter. The score now, if you please?’

  Flustered and annoyed, I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I tossed him the ball. ‘You serve.’

  The ball barely touched his chest, I thought, but it may have hit him elsewhere and had more steam in it than I intended. In any case, he promptly dropped his racket and doubled up, rubbing himself where he was wounded.

  ‘Father Neil,’ he gasped. ‘How could you?’

&n
bsp; I didn’t know what to say but managed a sort of sympathetic noise. After a few moments of vigorous rubbing, he picked up his racket with a slight moan.

  ‘Never mind, I will play on. I do not want to interrupt your fun.’

  I was walking away, when I heard, ‘And you really do not know the score?’ I had forgotten all about it. ‘’Tis fifteen-forty in my favour.’

  ‘So it is, Father.’ Anything for peace.

  ‘Should be my game to love,’ he said, rubbing his chest, ‘only, I conceded you the first point.’

  ‘That’s too kind of you.’ I kept irony out of my voice to get the match moving again.

  ‘Well, let us get on with it, shall we?’

  I threw the ball up and served at the very moment he took it into his head to bend down and tie his shoe lace. The ball went into the net.

  Without looking up, he said, ‘First service.’ He stood. ‘You are sure of that score, now?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘I do not wish to deprive you of any point you have a right to.’

  I threw up my second ball, when, ‘Father Neil.’

  Distracted in mid-stroke, I whacked the ball so that it went high over his head and out of court altogether.

  ‘Yes, Father?’ I said grimly.

  We met at the net again.

  ‘I was merely going to suggest to you, Father Neil, that you get a bit more height on your serve. But I see there is no need.’

  I strained my eyes but there was no sign of the ball.

  ‘No need,’ I agreed.

  ‘Anyway, lad, let that be a lesson for you.’

  ‘Lesson?’

  ‘Indeed.’ He tapped my arm in a fatherly way across the net with the strings of his racket. ‘To win at tennis, you do not have to touch the ball.’

  Apart from being a marvellous cheat, Fr Duddleswell played quite a good forehand. He was being a trifle modest when he declared one evening, ‘Delighted I am to find after all these years I have not deteriorated in the least. I am just as bad as before.’

  One thing certainly deteriorated: the weather. We constantly had to put up with what he called the weather of the three elements: wind, rain and unseasonal sleet, all during one evening’s knock-up.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ he said once, when Mrs Pring was serving us cocoa at bedtime, ‘that wind was keen enough to slice the ears off your head.’

  ‘It got dark early,’ Mrs Pring remarked.