by Neil Boyd
The prospect of tea with a married cleric reminded him of the time he had been on a pilgrimage to Rome before the war. In his Hotel just off the Veneto was an Anglican bishop who was well and truly conjugally matrimonified. ‘Now, Father Neil, the waiters in the restaurant were so flabbergasted that the Bishop, il Vescovo, should have a family that they called his wife la Vescova and the kiddies i Vescovini.’ He was shaking with mirth.
‘Did they?’
My dry response dampened his ebullience. ‘I suppose, Father Neil, you would have to know Italian to appreciate the finer points of the joke.’ I kept silent to tease him further. ‘It seemed strange to them, you follow? that a man in a Roman collar should have a wife and bambini.’
‘Why strange?’
He said lamely, ‘They were not used to it.’
‘Is something “strange”, Father, simply because an Italian waiter in an Italian restaurant in Italian Italy is not used to it?’ He must have thought a little divil had got into me that morning. ‘Didn’t you, tell them, Father, that St Peter who emigrated to Italy had a mother-in-law and so presumably a good lady of his own?’
He was in rapid retreat. ‘I did not think of it, like.’
‘More’s the pity,’ I said, sucking in the air like soup. ‘Those Italian waiters would have been very droll on the topic, I’m sure. Imagine, now, the first Papa having a Papava and, who knows, even a few Papavini?’
He slid off the end of the conversation by rising to his feet and saying his Grace-after-meals in a single movement. ‘I’ve fixed tay for tomorrow at four. Sharp. And, remember, Father Neil,’ he bawled, ‘’tis the season of good will to all.’ He slammed the door behind him.
Mrs Probble over tea reinforced every argument I had ever heard in favour of celibacy. Obese and topped by a plumed hat of Royal Ascot dimensions, she was one long verbalized stream of consciousness.
When the Vicar managed to edge in a word and attributed Christ’s prayer, ‘That they may be one’ to Luke instead of John, Mrs Probble squawked at him, ‘Husband, I told you to leave the theology to me.’
She was intrigued to know how we made so much money each year on our Bazaar. She herself toiled like a Trojan to make a success of St Luke’s Garden Fête with the most meagre results. ‘How do you manage it, Fr Duddleswell?’ She pronounced it Duddle-swell.
My parish priest explained to ‘Mrs Prob-bull’ that we Catholic priests have more numerous female helpers than Solomon himself. ‘Their womanly hearts are so touched by our masculine ineptitude,’ he said, ‘that they rally round us without our needing to ask.’
Mrs Probble seemed to contemplate for an instant the possibility that she was a liability to her husband and not the huge asset she had always presumed. ‘Is that how you explain it?’ she said.
‘Now, it can hardly be sex-appeal, can it, Mrs Prob-bull?’
‘Evidently not,’ replied the Vicar’s good lady haughtily. If she replied less haughtily than she might have done, it was because she had a favour to ask for her husband.
On the last Sunday before Christmas, St Luke’s was to have a visitation from the Anglican Bishop of the diocese. A social gathering had been organized to greet him in St Luke’s Church Hall. Fr Duddleswell must know that Anglicans, for all their deeply held Christian beliefs, were not so good at attending as Roman Catholics.
And what Mrs Probble wanted to ask, as did the Rev. Mr Probble, of course, was this: ‘Would you, Fr Duddleswell, in the spirit of the season, bring some of your own flock to swell the numbers?’
As the request unfolded, I could see Fr Duddleswell’s goodwill being stretched to its limits. He disliked intensely the ascription of episcopacy to a ‘doubtfully baptized Anglican layman.’ He also loathed the idea of any remotely religious association with those ‘Church of England cuckoos who threw us out of our nest.’
The Rev. Mr Probble, sensitive to Fr Duddleswell’s religious scruples, assured him that they were cancelling Evensong. It was to be a simple fraternal with drinks laid on for those who wanted them. Fr Duddleswell’s Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was at 5.30, which would enable him to bring as many of St Jude’s congregation to St Luke’s at six o’clock as had a mind to come.
Fr Duddleswell listened in silence as the Vicar explained that to have three Anglican clergy present, and only the usual twenty to thirty of their parishioners, would not create a very fortunate impression on Bishop Pontin—another wince from my parish priest.
It was Mrs Probble who let the cat out of the bag. ‘It will so help Percival’s preferment, you see, Fr Duddleswell.’ She pronounced his name this time with meticulous accuracy.
The Rev. Mr Probble was man enough to admit that he had his eye on a Cathedral canonry, ‘but far be it from me, Father, to ask you to violate your Catholic conscience.’ It was a good pay-off line.
Fr Duddleswell eyed me to see if I was voting with him but I stayed disenfranchized. ‘You promise me, Vicar, no Evensong?’
The Vicar gave his word and made things easier by pointing out that our co-religionist Councillor, Albert Appleby the Mayor, had graciously accepted his invitation to meet the Bishop.
When the Vicar and his wife had left, Fr Duddleswell tried to make light of his defeat. ‘I am not one to renege on me debts,’ he said, ‘when there is no matter of principle involved. After all, there is never any question of us worshipping in the Anglican goat-fold.’
‘One way of putting it, Father.’
‘Jasus,’ he whistled, ‘being a priest is not all sweet pasties and playing at draughts but at least it exempts us from women like Mrs Probble. She makes Mrs Pring herself look like St Bernadette. As we say in Ireland, Father Neil, “If you wed at all, wed last year”.’
I couldn’t deny he had a point.
‘Didn’t she throw her weight around, lad? Dear God in Heaven, you would think she owned five hundred cows. “Such is the felicity of unbounded domesticity”.’
His laughter became somewhat less forced when I capped it with, ‘The Vicar, now, he is a regular Duke of Plaza-Toro and no mistake.’
Preparations for Christmas began in earnest. Paper chains and bells were hung in the hall and the dining room. Dangling from the ceiling above Fr Duddleswell’s chair, in hope forlorn, was a sprig of mistletoe. The large plaster figures for the crib were taken down from the organ loft and given their annual dusting.
Mrs Pring was stirring silver threepenny pieces into the Christmas cake-mix, as thick as cement, in an enormous bowl. I heard Fr Duddleswell tell her that he would provide the turkey, God willing and weather permitting.’
‘This is the season of good will,’ Mrs Pring exclaimed delightedly.
‘And if ’twere not, Mrs Pring, I would say that the only things a man cannot tame are a pig, a mule and a woman.’
When I joined them, Fr Duddleswell said, ‘Do not forget the funeral tomorrow, Father Neil.’
‘Has someone died?’ asked Mrs Pring.
‘Not at all, not at all,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘But I have taken a strong dislike to the milkman and I am thinking of disposing of him while his wife is not looking.’ He remembered his resolution just in time. ‘Oh, I do apologise, Mrs Pring, for me uncharitable remarks. In the spirit of the season, will you forgive me?’
‘Just to be nasty,’ Mrs Pring said, ‘yes I will.’
The carols on the radio attuned our minds to the peace and goodwill of the festive season. I had even arranged for Mrs Rollings to be received into the Church on Christmas Eve. She was not ready for it and never would be, but at least, with Christmas over, I could begin the new year without the prospect of instructing her every couple of weeks.
The mood started to change on Fr Duddleswell’s last day off before Christmas. In the afternoon, Mrs Pring went to Siddenhall to visit her daughter. Being at a loose end, I donned an old polo-necked pullover and gumboots and pottered around in the garden. The weather had turned mild and I put in a spot of digging with the garden fork. I was well stationed to hear
the telephone and the front door bell.
It was the side door bell that rang about 3.15 just as dusk was coming on. Standing there were two sturdy, clean-cut young men in dark suits. At first, I thought they were policemen in plain clothes. One of them put his foot in the door while the other thrust a huge open book in front of my nose. It was too black to see but I smelled it was a Bible. Having only a garden tool in my hand I was at a disadvantage.
‘May we come in, Brother?’ said Brother Frank, the Bible-bearer, in an American accent, pushing past me. I did not like being addressed below my rank but what could I do?
They carried me with them into Mrs Pring’s kitchen and deposited me in a chair at the table. Brother Frank and Brother Hank sat down opposite me and told me that they represented the Church of Christ Shepherd.
Was I a Christian? A Catholic, gee. Well, they wanted to tell me there and then that in their eyes nobody was beyond the mercy of God.
They had a beautiful message for me personally, from Jesus, if only my eyes were not blind and my ears not deaf.
There followed a long but speedy history of ‘the fastest growing religious movement in the history of this planet.’ I would be relieved to know that their beautiful Founder, the divine Father Shepherd from Scranton, Pennsylvania, had no hang-ups about sex, indeed he positively encouraged the exercise of ‘all these beautiful faculties’, and they could prove his assertions from this beautiful and holy Book.
Now to the nitty-gritty. In the Church of Christ Shepherd, every member had to freely contribute the biblical tithe of his salary. ‘So how much do you earn, Brother?’ asked Brother Hank, advancing keenly.
I was so surprised at being allowed to speak I couldn’t get the words out. After further encouragement, I said, ‘Forty pounds a year.’
‘Are you on welfare, Brother?’ said Brother Frank.
‘No, I’m a Roman Catholic priest.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ they exclaimed in chorus. I instinctively bowed my head, followed them as they raced to the door and bolted it after them. They couldn’t have made a quicker exit had I admitted to being a leper.
In the morning, Mrs Pring took me aside. ‘Any visitors yesterday, Father Neil?’
I said that two religious cranks had tried to convert me. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ she whispered, ‘the clock on my mantelpiece went missing.’
I apologized and promised I would buy her another for Christmas. She wouldn’t hear of it. It had never worked and was purely ornamental. If she raked around in the garden, she said, she would probably find it there. At least, they hadn’t stolen the new Hoover.
I thanked her for not splitting on me to Fr D. In my heart, I could not be sure the young men had taken the clock. I hadn’t seen them take it and they seemed sincere. What made me furious was their vicious method of evangelization. They muscled in, took over your castle and brought out the worst in you. I was glad Catholics didn’t brow-beat people like that.
Later, above the cooing of pigeons, I heard Fr Duddleswell talking to Billy Buzzle across the garden fence. ‘Seeing ’tis the season of goodwill,’ Father Duddleswell had tossed Pontius, Billy’s black Labrador, an enormous bone. Billy was maintaining that two of our flock had knocked on his door the afternoon before and tried to convert him. Fr Duddleswell replied that none of his parishioners was stupid enough to attempt any such impossible thing.
‘They had Irish brogues and they wanted to sell me a Bible,’ said Billy. This was proof for Fr Duddleswell that they were none of his. Orangemen at worst. Catholics rely on the teaching authority of the Church and do not go in for Bible-hawking.
‘Anyway, Fr O’Duddleswell,’ said Billy, ‘they didn’t succeed. I persuaded them instead to put £5 at 10 to 1 on Twinkletoes in the 3.00 at Plumpton. It came in last.’
He asked Fr Duddleswell if he would care for a little wager himself. It was already snowing in Scotland, Yorkshire and North Wales. Billy would bet £5 even money that it would snow in Fairwater in the next three days.
Fr Duddleswell said that, whatever the forecast, his rheumatics told him the opposite.
The final terms agreed were these: If it snowed within three days, Fr Duddleswell would fork out £5. If it didn’t, Billy would give Fr Duddleswell a fifteen foot Christmas tree for the church, and a ten pound turkey.
A large round thrush alighted on the fence in time to see the two men, in the spirit of the season, shake hands on it.
My mood darkened further when Mrs Rollings came for her final instruction prior to her reception. I had run through the ceremony with her including the mechanics of confession when she burst out, ‘I don’t know how to say this, Father.’
She found a way to tell me that, while she accepted without argument the Catholic doctrine on Hell, Indulgences, Papal Infallibility, the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and the Virgin Birth, she could not agree with the teaching on birth-control.
If she had broken the news to me three months before I would have rejoiced. I had not wanted her in the first place, but to lose her after all that agony was hurtful and humiliating. On reflection, was it naive of me not to realize that something might be wrong with her marriage when she had twins of eight and no more children?
I had to be true to my convictions. There could be no compromise on a matter of principle and I had no intention of brow-beating her in the manner of those phoney evangelists.
We shook hands on the doorstep and said our last goodbye. I would not have believed it possible but there were tears in her eyes as she left and not a few pangs in my heart, too.
I told Fr Duddleswell the bad news at the first opportunity. He treated it as a huge joke. As far as he was concerned there was no question of me losing my first scalp. He paid tribute to my long-suffering.
I wanted to know how he could take it so lightly.
‘Well, you see, Father Neil, in ethical matters I am far more concerned that she practises what the Church preaches than gives it her full-hearted consent. I have already assured the Bishop that she will be a model Catholic, at least in that respect.’
I said it was a mystery to me how he expected Mrs Rollings to practise what she did not believe in.
‘To tell the truth,’ he said, ‘’twould be needless expense on her part to contravene the Church’s law and ’twould require the operation of the Angel Gabriel for her to conceive again.’ He explained that ‘the necessary equipment’ had been taken from her after the twins were born.
He immediately got on the phone to the baker. ‘Wilf,’ he said, ‘get your woman over here on Christmas Eve at 8 a.m. sharp. Fr Boyd will do the drowning himself.’
Fr Duddleswell’s rheumatics proved an accurate barometer. A tall Christmas tree was duly delivered to the church and a turkey to the presbytery with a terse note attached to its neck: TO THE LUCK OF THE IRISH. Fr Duddleswell handed the bird to Mrs Pring. ‘Rejoice,’ he said gayly, ‘’Tis not every day Daddy kills a deer,’ then he pinched his arm and prophesied that God would not whiten the world before Christmas Day itself.
On the evening of Sunday December 22nd, Fr Duddleswell conducted a short Benediction with the three standard hymns, O Salutaris, Tantum Ergo and Adoremus. The hundred or so present were reinforced by members of the Legion of Mary, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and the Union of Catholic Mothers, as well as various unattached parishioners who had heard rumours of free Anglican beer.
By 5.45, Fr Duddleswell, Dr Daley, Mrs Pring and I were leading our well-muffled army through the streets of Fairwater. There must have been two hundred of us. Billy Buzzle and dog Pontius had got wind of the celebrations and joined us for an evening out. A thoughtful parishioner, Paddy Feeney was taking a collection as we went on our way, singing carols.
In ten minutes we were in the warm climate of St Luke’s Church Hall. The Anglican clergy and their wives and about twenty parishioners were waiting to greet us. On the stroke of six, the Mayor arrived and, soon, Bishop Pontin, modestly dressed by Catholic s
tandards in a black suit with a clerical collar above a purple stock.
The Rev. Mr Probble introduced Fr Duddleswell and me to the Bishop, adding barely coherent comments on the excellence of inter-Church relationships in Fairwater.
The Bishop, speaking Oxford English, thanked Fr Duddleswell for bringing along one or two of his parishioners.
‘Or three or four, sir,’ replied Fr Duddleswell.
After thirty minutes of eating and drinking in small groups, the Vicar clapped his hands at a signal from Mrs Probble to announce that the fraternal would have to close until the Carol Concert in the church was over.
Fr Duddleswell, who had no idea it was going to begin, was furious at the deception practised upon him by his opposite number. The Mayor, forewarned no doubt, took him by the shoulder. ‘Don’t be upset, Farver,’ he whispered. ‘It’s Mrs Probble’s doing. No ‘arm. I’m attending it myself.’
‘Well may you, Bert, but I have no official position to maintain, d’you hear? To enter that mausoleum would be tantamount to communicatio in sacris. ’Twould be to desecrate all within me that is holy.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘I am withdrawing meself, me curate and me entire flock.’
‘Farver, Farver,’ pleaded Mr Appleby, ‘you can’t do that in the season of goodwill.’ He argued that if angels could sing hymns for Jewish shepherds, there was nothing to stop Catholics singing a few carols for the conversion of Protestants. ‘Besides, Farver,’ he said, ‘I am officially deputing you to act in this civil function. You can give out the food parcels to the old-age pensioners.’ A bus load of them were at that very moment stepping down and trooping into the church.
That seemed to pacify Fr Duddleswell’s conscience. Before the Vicar invited him to accompany the Bishop to the vestry, I saw Mayor Appleby slip Fr Duddleswell his own small mother of pearl rosary.
Dr Daley, who had also heard the conversation between Mayor and parish priest, whispered to me, ‘God, but our Charles is old-fashioned. If he ever conceives a new idea, Father Neil, don’t bother to call me in. It’s bound to be a false pregnancy.’ He scratched the side of his red nose. ‘One thing is worrying me, all the same.’