by Neil Boyd
‘Yeah?’
‘And I came here. And,’ I shrugged my shoulders, ‘here I am.’
Fr Duddleswell and Mrs Pring had been conspiring again. I sensed it as soon as I entered Fr Duddleswell’s study.
‘I was wondering, Father Neil, if you are altogether well.’
‘I’ve seen you wince,’ Mrs Pring put in, ‘even when he’s not around.’
‘A slight trouble,’ I admitted. ‘Nothing much.’
‘Down below, in the engine room?’ Fr Duddleswell wanted to know. I nodded. ‘Probably nothing more than her cooking, Father Neil.’
‘You could do better, I suppose,’ Mrs Pring said.
‘Woman, I could bake a better apple pie with nothing but potato peel.’
‘Heavens,’ Mrs Pring retorted, holding the back of her head, ‘I’ve got a crick in my neck from having to look up to you.’
Fr Duddleswell studiously ignored her. ‘Father Neil, I am asking Dr Daley to call to give you an overhaul.’
‘I’ll be glad to see him myself,’ said Mrs Pring, twisting her neck from side to side. ‘The pain’s getting unbearable.’
‘You can button up now, Father Neil.’
‘How am I, Doctor?’
Dr Daley removed his stethoscope. ‘Is that a new shirt you have on? It is? Then you’ll live to wear it out, never fear.’
‘The pain’s been pretty severe lately, Doctor. And I’ve been vomiting a bit.’
‘Your appendix is rumbling like a bull with bellyache.’
‘Appendicitis?’
Dr Daley whistled through his nicotined teeth. ‘Strange thing the appendix. It often causes people terrible trouble, yet nobody knows quite what its function is.’ He closed his bag. ‘Rather like our parish priest, isn’t that so?’
‘It’s got to come out, I suppose.’
‘Nothing to it, Father Neil,’ Dr Daley said soothingly. He gestured as if there and then he was performing the operation. ‘They’ll shave you. A small incision, skin and fat pulled aside, a neat slice through two layers of muscle and out it pops. As easy as pulling a cork out of a whiskey bottle.’
‘Sounds dreadful to me.’
‘It’s beautiful, beautiful. Shame they won’t let you stay up to watch while it’s going on.’
He opened my bedroom door to call Mrs Pring. It wasn’t necessary.
‘Mrs Pring,’ the Doctor said amiably, ‘what luck you happened to be in the vicinity of the keyhole.’
‘Just passing,’ said Mrs Pring.
‘If our Charles’ legs were only three feet taller he’d have his ear to the ceiling now.’ Dr Daley touched my shoulder in congratulation. ‘Good to know you are so popular round here.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Mrs Pring, when I leave I want you to put the lad to bed and keep him rested.’ He touched his side for her benefit and mouthed, ‘Appendix.’
Fr Duddleswell was already half way up the stairs. ‘How is the lad, Donal? Is it serious?’
We three men went into my study.
Dr Daley said, ‘I won’t ask you to provide me with a drink, Charles, seeing as this is an official visit and I don’t want to be struck off the Register.’ He took his own drinking equipment out of his bag. ‘Can I pour one for you, Charles?’
Fr Duddleswell shook his head as a matter of course.
‘Appendix,’ Dr Daley said. ‘I’ll arrange for him to have it out at once before it explodes in his face.’
Fr Duddleswell became instantly thoughtful. ‘You will see to it, Donal, that the hospital looks after him right.’
‘Indeed, Charles. He’ll have a bed, sheets, blankets, everything.’
‘I mean you will see to it he is not put in a General Ward.’
‘No?’
‘The language, Donal.’ I tried to object that a few months in this presbytery had prepared me for the trenches when Fr Duddleswell added, ‘You surely do not want to be responsible for the young lad coming to dire ruin.’
Dr Daley swallowed his drink in his usual economical way, without removing his cigarette. ‘I could put him where no harm will come to him,’ he offered, ‘in the children’s ward.’
‘Remember he is a priest, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said, holding on grimly. ‘He will need a quiet place to recite his breviary.’
‘Understood, Charles. I’ll see to it he has a room to himself and is in the best possible hands.’
The promise was amply fulfilled. I found myself in the very amenity room where I had healed Mr Bwani. And the hands were those of Nurse Owen.
The operation had come as a welcome relief to a long period of pain and uncertainty. After only two days, I was allowed to take a few steps.
Nurse Owen showed a very gentle touch as she changed my dressing. ‘How does that feel, Father?’
‘Very nice, thank you.’
‘You’re a model patient, Father. They said you were very relaxed under the anaesthetic, too.’
She put a thermometer in my mouth and started to take my pulse.
‘I didn’t say anything while I was out, did I?’
‘Say anything? Oh, you mean use bad language?’ She smiled. ‘No, but the theatre Sister did say you were telling funny stories.’
‘Funny stories?’
‘Harmless jokes. Unintelligible for the most part which is quite normal. But with an Irish brogue which isn’t.’
There was a familiar rat-tat-tat on the door and in marched Fr Duddleswell and Mrs Pring bearing gifts like the Magi.
Mrs Pring, noticing that the Nurse was holding my hand, halted suddenly.
‘Father Neil, great luck to you,’ Fr Duddleswell said cheerily.
Nurse Owen tucked in the sheets. ‘I’ll come back when your visitors have gone, Father,’ she said.
‘Charming, charming,’ Fr Duddleswell purred, as he waved her goodbye.
Mrs Pring’s attitude was the reverse. ‘Did you see that young hussy holding Father Neil’s hand and tucking him up in bed? Who does she think she is?’
‘A nurse, Mrs P,’ I told her.
‘And I say,’ Mrs Pring went on, ‘it should be a nun. It’s not right for a pretty little thing like that to be hovering round while Father Neil’s in nothing more than his pyjamas.’
‘What a prude y’are to be sure,’ Fr Duddleswell said.
He sat while Mrs Pring started to arrange the flowers she had brought in a vase.
‘Father Neil,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘you look as comfortable as a little mouse in a corn stack.’
‘It’s really nice here, Father.’
‘Oh, I nearly forgot.’ He opened up a paper bag and drew out a small bunch of big black grapes.
‘You shouldn’t, Father. They’re so expensive.’
‘Me generous nature getting the better of me again, Father Neil.’
Mrs Pring called out, ‘I hope the nurses aren’t interrupting your prayers, Father Neil.’
Fr Duddleswell was more interested in the grapes. He pointed to one he had his eye on. ‘May I?’
‘Help yourself, Father.’
He tried it. ‘Very good. You will like these.’
‘Have another, please.’
Mrs Pring muttered, ‘I brought you flowers, Father Neil, because I know he doesn’t eat these.’
‘By the time you leave here, lad,’ Fr Duddleswell said, his mouth full of purple mush, ‘provided they do not starve your plate, like, your shadow should be considerably fatter.’
He showed me the way by closing his mouth on another grape.
I began opening the Get Well cards sent by thoughtful parishioners.
Mrs Pring asked, ‘Had any other visitors, Father Neil?’
I put on my appendix face. ‘Only the Superior of the Convent.’
‘Mother Stephen?’ Fr Duddleswell looked as if his health was none too good. ‘What was the Big Penguin after coming for, to bring you a Bible and a miraculous medal?’
‘She insisted on reciting with me the first sorrowful myst
ery of the rosary. But I can’t help liking her.’
Fr Duddleswell reached for my hand to feel the pulse. ‘The poor young lad is worse than I thought,’ he said.
He popped another grape into his mouth to cheer himself up.
No sooner had this quaint, benign couple left than I got up and went to have a bath.
Fr Duddleswell had suggested I be transferred to the private hospital run by nuns where the sick clergy of the diocese were usually treated. I would not hear of him being put to any inconvenience. Besides, I thought, why should I be evicted from Paradise?
I was about to run the water in the bath when I heard Fr Duddleswell and Mrs Pring in conversation. Instead of leaving the hospital immediately, they must have called in at Sister’s Office hoping for a quick word with Old Barbed Wire. With their distinctive voices and only a thin partition between them and me I was able to hear almost everything they said.
Mrs Pring was still expressing anxiety about me. I had led a very sheltered life and was now being looked after by a pretty nurse who gave me blanket baths and held my hand all day long.
For his part, Fr Duddleswell told her not to worry but to trust the lad’s good sense.
‘Trust the lad’s good sense,’ Mrs Pring repeated with ferocious irony. ‘Just because no woman’s ever fallen for you. If anything happens to Father Neil I’ll mangle you like a flea, so help me God.’
The door of Sister’s Office opened and I heard Dr Daley’s voice. ‘You asked for me to meet you here Charles.’
Mrs Pring was dismissed and then I heard Fr Duddleswell say:
‘Mrs Pring is very worried about Father Neil, Donal.’
‘What cause?’
‘His heart.’
‘God, Charles, it was only his appendix that was wrong with him and that’s in the dustbin by now.’
‘Mrs Pring is thinking, Donal, a young lad like that lying on his bed is easily swept off his feet.’
Thanks, I said to myself.
Dr Daley asked, ‘Have you been at the bottle before I arrived? Which reminds me.’ And there was the sound of bottle on glass. ‘Be honest with me, Charles, it is yourself who is worried.’
‘I blame myself, Donal. ’Twas I that put temptation in his way by insisting he should have a room of his own.’
‘You mean, Charles, he is now in the intensive care of a lovely young nurse.’
‘I remember when I was a young priest.’
‘God, you’ve a great memory, Charles.’
‘He is vowed to celibacy, Donal, and I do not want to lose the best curate I ever had to a woman.’
‘I’ll drink to that and anything else you care to mention.’ A moment later, the Doctor’s glass, drained in a good cause, crashed down on the table. ‘He’ll only be in here a week all told.’
‘A lot can happen in a week, Donal. The Almighty God made the entire world in a week.’
‘True, and it’s amazing how little has happened since.’
‘Be serious, Donal.’
‘I am. Can’t you see me pouring myself another drink to cope with the gravity of it all?’ I heard the tinkle of tumbling liquor. ‘What can I do, Charles, that’s the thing? Put him in reinforced pyjamas? Plead with Matron to pull out the pretty nurses and change them for ones with faces like old boots?’
‘I merely want you to have a little chat with him, Donal.’
‘Me?’
‘You are a man of the world. He will credit you when you tell him that marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘Difficult, Charles. You know my unorthodox views: celibacy is as unnatural to a man as swinging from trees and a good wife is half of life. Besides, he’ll know you put me up to it.’
‘He is a complete innocent, Donal, and will not even suspect.’
Thanks again, I thought.
‘He knows well enough by now, Charles, that your head is a basketful of eels.’
‘One last thing, Donal. Do not breathe a word of this to Mrs Pring.’
‘Don’t tell Father Neil. Don’t tell Mrs Pring. Are you quite sure that you even want me to know what you’re just after telling me?’
‘I simply do not want Mrs Pring, a silly creature at the best of times, worrying needlessly.’
‘I won’t promise anything, Charles, but I’ll drink about it.’
Dr Daley must have thought and drunk a great deal because a few days passed and no sign of him.
I was well on the road to recovery when Nurse Owen came to my room one morning to take me for a walk.
It was a glorious morning, crisp and golden. Birds still sang in bare trees and bushes. I had never felt so important, so well cared for, never felt that life was so rich in possibilities. It was a young man’s morning.
‘Would you mind, Father, if we stopped in the grounds here for a while?’
‘Of course not,’ I said.
Nurse Owen sat on a bench with me in my wheel chair opposite her. ‘It’s nice here,’ she began shyly.
‘Very pleasant.’
‘I like it here.’
‘So do I.’
‘Nobody else around.’
I glanced quickly about me. ‘Except for the birds.’ A mild observation at which, for some reason, we both laughed, still shy of each other.
‘As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been an exceptional patient.’
‘Have I?’
‘No complaints when I changed your dressings.’
‘Why should I complain?’
‘Most do. You’d be surprised.’
I gulped. ‘I would.’ A brief silence. ‘Isn’t this your half day off, Nurse?’
‘Yes. But I volunteered for extra duty.’
‘Very generous of you.’
She shook her head. ‘On the contrary. Pure selfishness. You see, there’s something I desperately wanted to say to you. In private.’
‘Yes,’ I said, a strange mixture of hope and apprehension.
‘It’s so embarrassing because you’re a priest and I’m—well, I’m supposed to be a good Catholic and I don’t want to——’ She broke off with a shrug of her shoulders.
‘Shock me?’
‘Yes.’
I smiled as best I could and touched the rubber wheels of my chair. ‘Hardly an electric chair, is it? Don’t you think you ought to tell me?’
And, with many tears, she did.
At midday, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when Dr Daley turned up. The very sight of the man lifted my spirits.
Taking a leaf out of his book, I greeted him with, ‘Put your dimples down there on the chair, Doctor.’
‘I will,’ he said, and he sat without another word.
‘Care for a drink, Doctor?’ I pointed to his bag.
‘I will,’ he said.
To help him get over his embarrassment, I said, ‘Fr Duddleswell tells me you and he have known each other for thirty years.’
‘True.’
‘And you came originally from Connemara.’
A magic word. He opened his bag, drew out a bottle and a glass.
‘Tell me about it, Doctor.’
‘Is tuisce deoch ná sceál,’ he intoned. ‘First the ale and then the tale.’
‘Then drink up, Doctor, I’m waiting.’
He drank the first instalment and filled up again at once ‘to keep the glass warm.’
‘Connemara, now, you were asking about Connemara.’ He settled his bulk more comfortably into the chair by the side of my bed. ‘Wait till I tell you, my young boy, about Connemara by the sea.’
He shook his head slowly all of sixteen times.
‘Weather first, Father Neil. Blustery and sunny and wet by turns in a single minute. The weather of the seven elements, we used to say. When it was bad it wasn’t worth living and when it was good it wasn’t worth dying. You’d never know but one instant you would look west over the water and see New York, or further still the back of your head.’
I laughed as he thumped the back of his g
rimy bald head.
‘And the next grey second’—he had a look of amazement on his face—‘could you see the tip of your nose? You could not.’
He poured himself another generous drink.
‘A wet land, I won’t deny it, wet and wild with mostly a cap of mist on the granite hills and often a skinning wind coming off that bleak Ocean. But a green land, so very green.’
He raised his glass and sipped his way into silence. To arouse him, I said:
‘Were you an only child, Doctor?’
He smiled broadly. ‘That is an idea, Father Neil. Even my grandfather would have laughed at that.’ He shook his head. ‘I came like most folk in those parts from a long family. Not so’s we’d win any prizes, mind, but seventeen of us.’
‘The rabbits couldn’t keep up.’
‘Neither could they. The parish priest, a grand man Fr McEntee, he knew nothing at all about the world but he had a hand fat with kindness, Fr McEntee used to say to mother, “Mary,” says he, “what is the matther with you? Your man has but to shake his throusers at you and he gets you with child.” My mother, God rest her, didn’t mind about that, even though she saw her toes six months only out of every twelve.’
‘Where did you come in the queue?’
‘Me? Eighth. Four brothers priests.’ He pursed his lips. ‘They didn’t join up, my mother conscripted ’em, I believe.’
Silence again. Until with a lilt of the voice:
‘Connemara, what a country. God, a cosy place Connemara. The way it was. Different now, I don’t doubt. Thatched cottages with lime-washed walls and deep cool windows and half-doors. Ours with not a chimney, even. Inside, the walls all stained like nicotine from the blue smoke off the turf. Outside, ever a huge gallon of water by the door. Home.’
He winked but not at me. At himself, perhaps, as he once was, as once all good things were.
‘Sounds good, Doctor.’
‘It was that. But hard. Often we huddled round the range famished with cold of a winter. Eating potatoes with our bare hands, “forks is English,” we used to say.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Awful foreign things. The only seasoning salt. Or we’d nibble salted fish, green and yellow all of it, tough as tobacco and old boots. Or soda bread, that was nourishing enough, I’m telling you.’
I nodded my unshakeable belief in the goodness of soda bread.