A Father Before Christmas

by Neil Boyd

  My smile was a bit jaded by this time. ‘You’ve got it, Mrs Rollings,’ I said cheerily. ‘Well done. Now I really must keep my appointment.’

  ‘Where will Hell be after souls get their bodies back?’

  ‘Er,’ I said in my most eloquent fashion, thinking that there’s nothing like an inquisitive woman to bring Hell home to you. ‘God hasn’t told us.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. So there, Mrs Rollings, I hope that’s answered all your questions.’

  Seeing she was starting to open her mouth again, I ran.

  ‘Kippers again, Mrs Pring,’ said Fr Duddleswell, holding out his breakfast plate.

  ‘Your sermon on Hell last night jogged my memory,’ said Mrs Pring. ‘Besides, I thought it was the right sort of food for Guy Fawkes Day.’

  ‘Mrs Rollings was at Benediction last night, Father.’

  Fr Duddleswell sniffed simultaneous approval of that piece of information and the kippers. ‘She was suitably impressed by me sermon, I hope.’

  ‘It frightened the life out of her, Father.’

  ‘Fine. I thought meself I was in top form.’

  ‘Talking of Hell, Fr D,’ put in Mrs Pring, ‘that reminds me. Winter’s coming on. Have you ordered the coal?’

  ‘Holy mackerel and smoked herring. That woman would complain of the cold if the sun was splitting the trees.’

  Mrs Pring pulled her cardigan defiantly across her shoulders. ‘If I go to Hell, Father Neil, after twenty years of him it will be a gross injustice.’

  ‘And if I go to Hell,’ Fr Duddleswell retorted with a laugh, ‘after twenty years of you ’twill be a blessed relief.’

  Mrs Pring timed her exit line for when Fr Duddleswell was putting a forkful of kipper in his mouth. ‘I hope you find a bone just big enough to stick in your throat.’

  Fr Duddleswell examined his fork carefully, removing a bone or two. ‘That woman,’ he said, ‘could bring down the walls of Jericho just by blowing her nose.’

  ‘Mrs Rollings was saying, Father, it doesn’t seem right of God to send someone to Hell for all eternity merely for getting drunk.’

  ‘Was she, now?’ He paused to pick at his teeth to make sure he thwarted Mrs Pring’s parting prayer. ‘Listen to me, Father Neil, if Mrs Rollings wants to found a church of her own I have no objections. Only, tell her what Voltaire said.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Tell her to get herself crucified and rise again the third day.’

  ‘I’d better not,’ I said. ‘She might try it.’

  After breakfast, Fr Duddleswell drove off to an unknown destination. He was back well in time to transport Canon Mahoney and me to the Vicarage.

  In a committee room, we drank coffee before grouping around the table. The three Anglicans wore cassocks with capes which we always held to be an affectation. Of the two Methodists, Sobb was bearded and Tinsy was clean shaven. At the end of the table opposite Mr Probble sat Rabbi Epstein. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat on the back of his head, a bushy beard and spectacles that covered the rest of his face. He was still in a frayed black satin overcoat and, for some undisclosed reason, he had another draped across his knees. He came from somewhere east of Dover.

  The Rev. Mr d’Arcy, the Senior Anglican curate, read a thirty-minute position paper on ‘Life after Death in the Old and New Testaments’. It contained frequent references to zoè aiònios which at first I thought was a girl’s name until it dawned on me that it was Greek for ‘eternal life’. Mr d’Arcy had read Greats at Oxford and his classical learning put most of what he said beyond my reach.

  The first comment was made by Rabbi Epstein. Very politely he objected to the use of the Old Testament. ‘You must remimber well,’ he said in his broken English, ‘that for us it only is the Jewish Bibble. You call him old because you think your Bibble is newer. For us, the Jewish Bibble is always newest.’

  The Rev. Mr d’Arcy apologized profusely for his careless use of terms in the present company.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Rabbi—his ‘th’ was pronounced like a ‘z’ in the Slavonic fashion. ‘Now where Heaven is? I ask myself.’ Nobody round the table was anxious to help him answer his question. ‘Where God is, there Heaven is.’ He tapped his outstretched fingers together as if applauding himself. ‘Heaven has not a place,’ he went on in a semi-mystical vein. ‘God is, as we say in Talmud “ha-Geburah, The Might.” He is the place where the world is. That is what we Jews think.’

  Canon Mahoney scratched his bald head and exchanged a glance with Fr Duddleswell indicating that it is not easy looking for the invisible wee folk in the pitch dark.

  ‘We Jews,’ went on the Rabbi, his eyes so radiant it looked as if two lighted cigarettes had been sunk in the sockets, ‘we Jews believe passionately in gehenna, the pit of the fire.’ Fr Duddleswell nodded approval. ‘Also Gan Eden, the Garden of the Bliss and the Delight.’ The Canon and Fr Duddleswell both saw signs of hope in that. ‘In the pit of the fire,’ continued Rabbi Epstein, ‘the naughty boys go.’ I could see my two colleagues beginning to wonder what differences remained between ourselves and our Jewish brethren when the Rabbi said, ‘What more certain could be than that Jesus in the Garden of Delight is? He was a good Jew. But,’ he swung his head like a pendulum, ‘some of his followers, aaaah.’ That ‘ah’ went down his throat like the last of the bathwater, in a noisy vortex, down the drain. Well, this was a curate’s egg. The rest was all bad. ‘The very naughty boys sometimes spend a whole year in the pit of the fire before they enter the Paradise.’

  Everyone at the table disapproved of that, and the Rabbi, not wishing to proselytize, said nothing after that except, ‘We Jews believe there are no ghettoes in Heaven and no pogroms in Hell.’

  The fat Rev. John Pinkerton, puffing on his cigarette without ever removing it from his mouth, delivered his opinion on Hell. Anyone with a grain of sense could see the fire was a symbol. Like the worm that never dies and the teeth that gnash on endlessly. Like Christ’s command to pluck out your eye rather than let it look on wickedness.

  Canon Mahoney, sucking his dead pipe, launched the counter-attack, ably supported by Fr Duddleswell. The Church has taught for nigh on two thousand years the reality of the fires of Hell and the eternity of the roasting prepared for those who die unrepentant, laymen and clergy. In this the Church was simply reinforcing the teaching of our Blessed Lord who five times in the course of the Sermon on the Mount stressed the everlasting pains of the damned.

  The Rev. Mr Pinkerton stubbed out one cigarette and lit another before commenting caustically on the arbitrariness of the Catholic God. Why should He cut off one man’s life immediately after mortal sin and another’s immediately after he had repented of mortal sin?

  Canon Mahoney handled that with ease. God in His divine foreknowledge sees how both of them would behave whatever opportunities for repentance He offered them.

  I was very glad the Canon was in my team. But, objected Fatty, did we really think God was so cruel as to punish eternally an evil deed done in time? Fr Duddleswell drily asked the Rev. Pinkerton if he expected to be rewarded eternally for some good deed he might do in time.

  ‘Okay,’ wheezed Fatty, blowing out and filling the room with a pillar of cloud, ‘tell me how parents can possibly be happy knowing that their children are burning for ever in Hell?’

  ‘It is the very sweetness of divine justice,’ replied Canon Mahoney, ‘that will obliterate the pain; as will the vision of the beatific God.’

  Mr Probble was becoming increasingly agitated as the temperature of the discussion rose. He was smiling and murmuring words about keeping the ecumenical spirit alive and how the good Lord bids all Christians to love one another. Especially clergymen.

  ‘Our Lord,’ Fr Duddleswell said firmly, ‘bids us love truth before foreign clergymen.’

  Mr Tinsy, an alto, demanded to know if, in Catholic dogma, children were eligible for Hell. Fr Duddleswell replied that naturally they were, provided they had reached th
e age of reason.

  ‘Which is?’ peeped Mr Tinsy.

  ‘Seven or thereabouts,’ answered Fr Duddleswell. Catching sight of Fatty almost swallowing his cigarette in a rage and mouthing the word ‘sadists’, he explained that Catholics respect the dignity of choice even among God’s little ones.

  Mr Tinsy remarked that ‘sevens’ were not even old enough to play with fireworks.

  The bearded Mr Sobb asked how fire could burn bodies and souls, and burn them for ever without consuming them.

  It was just the question I was hoping for. ‘May I?’ I began.

  ‘Certainly not,’ snapped Fr Duddleswell, turning to Canon Mahoney for the official answer to that conundrum.

  ‘Let the lad say his piece, Charlie,’ the Canon said kindly.

  I opened my Scheeben at page 693 and read in a trembling voice:

  ‘Hell fire differs from natural fire in this respect, that its flame is not the result of a natural, chemical process, but is sustained by divine power and therefore does not dissolve the body which it envelops, but preserves it forever in the condition of burning agony.’

  I don’t know if that answered the Methodists’ objections, it certainly silenced them. It even seemed to precipitate the end of the Conference. There was only small talk after that.

  We Catholic clergy repaired to the Clinton Hotel. The consensus was that there was no value in such conferences and the Canon would report this to the Bishop. Jews were as incomprehensible as a woman’s tantrums. The Protestants, especially ‘that fat twerp’, were so stubborn in their unbelief that there was little chance of converting them.

  ‘You’d as soon convert a cock into a hen,’ suggested Fr Duddleswell.

  Canon Mahoney peered moodily into his empty wine glass, proffered it to me to replenish and sighed, ‘They went into a skid 400 years ago at the Reformation, Charlie, and they’ve been facing the wrong way ever since.’

  It was a matter of amazement to us that men of the cloth could doubt the everlasting flames when they were written large and clear in the Holy Book.

  The Canon savoured the wine on his tongue and smoothed out a crease on his head. ‘No reverence have they, Charlie, for the Undebatables.’

  ‘’Tis the ultimate proof, Seamus,’ said Fr Duddleswell, downing his last drop of heavy wet, ‘that only the Catholic Church has the authority to keep the harsh truths of the faith alive in their pristine purity.’

  Mrs Pring accompanied us in the car to the Orphanage. It was a clear, crisp, windless evening lit by moon and stars.

  The Convent lawn, between bare trees, formed a kind of amphitheatre. My shoes were crunching acorns as we approached a huge bonfire built in a clearing with a Guy on top not easily distinguishable against the sky. Mother Stephen, for all her hesitations, had done us proud.

  A few feet from the bonfire was a crate of empty milk bottles for the rockets and there were large flat stones for the crackers and the Roman candles.

  A bell had been rung on our arrival and the children were parading in noisy expectation behind a rope at the opposite end of the lawn.

  Fr Duddleswell crossed to greet them and they cheered. A group of them came up to me holding their right hands aloft and telling me their ages, 5½, 6¾ and so on. One little girl said, ‘I’m six but my baby brother’s nothing.’ A minute fellow in a dwarf’s cap and Wellington boots trod on my toe to attract attention and crooked his finger to make me bend down. ‘A secret, Father. You won’t split?’ I promised. ‘I’m two and four quarters,’ he whispered.

  I patted him on the head. ‘Congratulations.’ He crooked his finger again. ‘Yes, son?’

  ‘Can I have sixpence?’ he said.

  As soon as the nuns were present I shone a torch on to Fr Duddleswell’s paper to enable him to read the Holy Father’s blessing. Two sisters brought forward the fireworks which had been stored in a tin tub. These, too, he blessed. While the children sang two verses of Faith of our Fathers, he and I carried the tub towards the bonfire.

  Fr Duddleswell wanted to begin spectacularly with a rocket. He put one in a bottle, lit the blue paper and we retreated to a safe distance away. The rocket rose about two feet in the air and nose-dived into the fire. Groans and ironic applause from the children. Mother Stephen’s voice could be heard above the din asking for more respect for ‘our parish priest’.

  He tried again. After using five or six matches, our parish priest could not so much as set the fuse alight. He bade me shine the torch on the fireworks. They were standing in at least eight inches of water. Sabotage.

  Mother Stephen crunched her way solicitously across the grass. ‘Having trouble, Fr Duddleswell?’

  ‘A temporary inconvenience, Mother, nothing more.’ He motioned to me to join him. We returned to the car, to groans and catcalls from the Lord’s little darlings.

  Fr Duddleswell opened the car boot. There was a box of fireworks even bigger than the first. ‘Never underestimate the opposition, Father Neil. As innocent as doves we must be but as wise as serpents, besides.’

  The children adored the display. ‘Oohs’ and ‘ahs’ and spontaneous applause from them with the sisters dancing around as excitedly as anyone. Fr Duddleswell and I stuffed our pockets with ‘lethals’ and ran here and there letting off rockets and jumping-crackers and the catherine wheels which we had pinned to the trunks of trees.

  Mother Superior reappeared out of the gloom with two sisters who were carrying an enormous iron grid on which were laid vast quantities of potatoes already half baked. ‘With the compliments of the Convent, Fathers,’ she said.

  We put the jacketed potatoes at the base of the bonfire and Fr Duddleswell waved to the children, held up a lighted match and applied it to the tinder. It flared up at once, illuminating the Guy who, I had to confess, looked very much like our parish priest. Black sacking did for a cassock. Its head was a kind of white soccer ball with spectacles inked on, and a few strands of a yellow mop were plastered over the top for hair.

  Mother Stephen, who had remained in the vicinity, said above the crackle and splutter of the fire, ‘The only authentic replica of you, Fr Duddleswell, at present in existence.’ Fr Duddleswell went closer to the fire to examine the insult. ‘I do agree with you, Father,’ his underestimated adversary went on. ‘There is something terribly Catholic about burning somebody in effigy.’

  Fr Duddleswell had approached too close to the blaze. The heat must have ignited the fireworks on his person for he suffered the same fate as Mr Bottesford. Smoke and sparks flew out of his right cassock pocket and loud rumblings were heard.

  Mother Stephen and I had the same thought. I snatched the first box of fireworks out of the tub and we each took a handle and threw the contents over Fr Duddleswell. The fire on him was extinguished with a swish. He jumped up and down, damp, frightened and miserable. The children roared more delightedly than ever as he gave a good imitation of the Danse Macabre, etched as he was against the red flames.

  ‘Was I not branded like a steer, now, Father Neil?’

  In spite of the early hour, Fr Duddleswell was in pyjamas and dressing-gown in front of the fire. Mrs Pring had brought us both a cup of cocoa. ‘’Tis a good job me foundations are firm, like.’ The same foundations were turned to the fire in the grate but not as close as before. ‘Next year, I have no doubts, I will appear in Mother Stephen’s statistics with the under fives and under tens. Imagine, now, “One under sixty with a burnt bum”.’

  I told him to have no regrets. Mother Stephen was so impressed with his performance she might demand a repeat next year.

  ‘Ah, me one consolation in me hour of need was having a curate to stand by me come Hell or high water.’

  As I sipped my cocoa, it burned my lip. ‘Father,’ I said, referring back to the morning, ‘do you really think God will allow a son or daughter of His to burn in Hell for ever and ever?’

  ‘In some cases,’ contributed Mrs Pring, indicating her boss, ‘the Almighty has no other choice.’

  �
�But, Father, do you really believe that Scheeben stuff I read out at the Conference?’ Fr Duddleswell puffed and blew and touched his scorched thigh. I persisted: ‘People, ordinary people like you and me and Mrs Pring?’

  Fr Duddleswell looked at me witheringly. ‘Father Neil.’ A pause, a deep sigh and a new beginning. ‘Father Neil, Holy Mother Church bids us believe docilely in the reality of the eternal fires of Hell. Yet who but a raving lunatic would claim there is anybody there?’

  VI One Sinner Who Will Not Repent

  In early September, Fr Duddleswell had shown me how to make the rounds of St Jude’s Junior School. It began in the playground before morning lessons. He crouched down to play marbles with a group of children. He cheated outrageously, kicking the marble in the right direction if his hand had ‘not dealt kindly’ with him. He always won. Afterwards, he sold the losers their marbles back at a reduced rate and gave the proceeds to more needy children—‘like Robin Hood, you follow?’

  In each class it was the boy or girl who could answer three Catechism questions in the shortest time without hesitation who received a silver threepenny piece. The winner had to go to the front of the class and fix it on his upturned nose. Failure to keep it there until he was back at his place meant Fr Duddleswell confiscated it on the spot.

  He was convinced of the value of The Penny Catechism. It had served the Church well since Victorian times. It contained in a brief and eloquent form the main tenets of the Catholic faith. The child may not grasp all its subtleties at once, but in the years ahead, with maturity, would come recognition and guidance. Remembrance was guaranteed by the sheer music of the words.

  ‘God made me to know Him,’ he recited for my benefit, ‘to love Him and to serve Him in this World, and to be happy with Him for ever in the next.’ He dared me to suggest that Shakespeare himself ever penned more memorable lines than those.

  His final word of warning was: ‘Do not let the kids ask you any questions, Father Neil. Just give ’em all the answers.’

  I started with the best of intentions one Monday morning armed with two hundred assorted marbles from Fr Duddleswell’s collection in a canvas bag. Unfortunately, I was no great shakes at marbles and worse still at cheating. I made little contact with the children because I lost every one of my marbles in the first twenty minutes.