Father Under Fire

by Neil Boyd

  He smiled courageously. ‘It was God’s will, Father. Besides, she’s happy now. At least, I hope so.’

  ‘I’m sure she is, Freddie,’ Fr Duddleswell responded.

  ‘Her heart, you see,’ Freddie said. ‘How was I to know? She never told me a thing.’

  ‘Steady,’ Fr Duddleswell urged.

  ‘To be honest with you,’ Freddie said, ‘I’m not altogether broken up. As you know, Doris and I never really hit it off and yet just as we seemed to be getting it together …’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Mr Williams,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll try not to.’ He poured tea for us. ‘It’ll take a bit of time to adjust. Twenty-five years is a long time.’ He thought again. ‘A very long time.’

  ‘Can I go and see her, Mr Williams?’

  He grabbed my arm. ‘No, Father, there’s nothing in the world will bring her back now.’

  Fr Duddleswell asked, ‘When is the funeral, Freddie?’

  Mr Williams had the usual glazed look of someone who has suffered a sudden and sharp shock. ‘Funeral?’

  Knowing the background, I felt the terrible irony of the question. Doris had never attended any of Freddie’s funerals on principle. It seemed she was about to break her rule at last.

  ‘He’ll do it now, won’t he, Father? Bottesford.’

  ‘When, Freddie?’

  Freddie gazed at Fr Duddleswell, bewildered. ‘When she dies, Father. That’s normal.’

  ‘Of course, Freddie. We mustn’t hurry things along.’

  A good effort from Fr Duddleswell, considering that no sooner was Doris dead, as far as he was concerned, than she rose again.

  That’s what Eddie McEvoy meant by his anonymous call. Doris had upped and left in the night and gone to live with Bottesford.

  ‘Anyway, Freddie,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘I only came to say that if you need anything after your wife’s departure, you can rely on me.’ And, looking daggers in my direction, he left in a hurry.

  ‘Wasn’t it nice of him to call?’ Freddie said.

  I resolved to take full responsibility for the calamitous course of events.

  ‘Mr Williams,’ I said, ‘this would never have happened but for my Family Group.’

  He came across and shook my hand solemnly. ‘I know, Father Boyd. I have to thank you most sincerely for the break-up of my marriage.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so,’ I said, edging away from the compliment.

  ‘I see it all now. Bottesford planned it all from start to finish. It wasn’t Eddie McEvoy who sent me the original invitation.’

  ‘Bottesford? How do you know that?’

  ‘Because when Doris left me last night, I went round to Eddie’s place and offered him ten quid for all he’d done for me. It was news to him and he wouldn’t take a penny. In fact, he must’ve felt a bit insulted.’

  I rearranged my thoughts rapidly. Bottesford had invited Freddie to the Family Group in the first instance so he could get at Doris. When Fr Duddleswell threw us out of the presbytery parlour, Doris did her bit by offering the use of hers. And Doris’s ogling of me was nothing but a front while she flirted with Bottesford.

  ‘The whole thing is utterly despicable,’ I concluded aloud.

  ‘Not to worry, Father.’ Never had I seen Freddie in such a buoyant mood. ‘I wish Bottesford the best of luck. My Doris was an iceberg to me but if he can thaw her out there’s enough of her to satisfy Solomon.’

  My eyes misted up at the generosity of the man. Until he added:

  ‘The fact is, Father, the reason I’m not cut up is because I’ve met a nice little widow.’

  ‘You didn’t meet her, how shall I put it, professionally?’

  He nodded. ‘I never thought I’d be so lucky.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather like a doctor falling for one of his patients?’

  Freddie laughed aloud at my innocence. It was a very strange sound. Like a goose. ‘No, Father. I’m not in competition with her former husband, am I?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘I gave him a good send off.’

  ‘I’m sure you did.’

  ‘That’s why she fell for me, I think. Now, the thing is, Father,’ – he winked at me – ‘and this will please you, the lovely lady in question is a Catholic. I’d like to be fully instructed as one myself. Which is where you come in.’

  ‘Let me have another think, Mr Williams,’ I said, and performed the feat frantically while he looked on. His infatuated smile didn’t help.

  First of all, I reflected, I break up Mr Williams’s marriage to Doris. Doris runs off to live adulterously with one of our parishioners, Bottesford. And now Freddie wants to marry a Catholic widow, which is not allowed, while Doris is still alive, and to become a Catholic himself, which, in the circumstances, is inadvisable, to say the least.

  Freddie cut across my thoughts just as it occurred to me that Fr Duddleswell was not going to be pleased with my performance.

  ‘Father, before you say another word, there’s something you should know about me. I’ve kept it dark for years but you’ve been so kind I don’t want to hide anything from you.’

  I returned to the presbytery prepared for another battering, this time from Fr Duddleswell. I allowed him to run through the litany of my failures, the most unpardonable of which was using my Family Group to break up a marriage.

  Marriage, even between non-Catholics, is binding, he lectured me in a cold theological tone. It is not a slip-knot that the couple can wriggle out of when it suits them but a reef-knot that only God can cut with the sharp teeth of death.

  It was straight out of a sermon of his which I had heard three times before.

  ‘Did I not warn you, Father Neil, to leave marrieds alone? Now you will realize ’tis perilous to get between the tree and its bark.’ He released an angry breath. ‘And all the while Bottesford was pretending to be interested in religion he was feeding Doris up with false music.’

  I heard him out, including his wry reflections on my youth and inexperience. Then, nonchalantly:

  ‘You are talking out of the top of your biretta, Father.’

  ‘What d’you mean, lad. Has Doris left Bottesford and gone back to Freddie already?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Father, Freddie and Doris were never married in the first place.’

  ‘Who fed you that nasty rumour?’

  ‘Freddie.’

  Fr Duddleswell sat back in his chair, stunned. ‘But Freddie is a model of rectitude, a pillar of Fairwater society.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Was he or Doris married before, then?’

  I shook my head, and, to be merciful, explained.

  ‘Mr Williams, Father, is a Catholic.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Doris’s dad forced him to marry Doris in an Anglican church. After that, he never darkened the door of a Catholic church again, except for funerals, of course.’

  ‘So,’ Fr Duddleswell inferred, ‘Freddie was never validly married in the eyes of the Church because, as a Catholic, –’

  ‘He should have been married in the Church,’ I said, like a lecturer, ‘and wasn’t.’

  ‘That puts an entirely new complexion on things,’ Fr Duddleswell admitted.

  ‘It means,’ I put in immodestly, ‘that I have not broken up Freddie’s marriage, merely stopped him living in sin with Doris.’

  ‘Not that there was much of that involved from what I heard. Not with herself keeping her legs crossed like a tailor.’

  I eased up. ‘Freddie actually smiled, Father.’

  ‘Must have been like a cat with a saddle on.’

  ‘It was, rather.’

  I was telling him of Freddie’s plan to divorce Doris and marry his Catholic widow when the phone rang.

  Fr Duddleswell answered it and said, ‘Yes, I will hold.’ To me: ‘Long distance from Spain.’

  ‘The Holohans?’

  He smiled at me in a self-satisfied way, as if to say we all have our lit
tle triumphs. ‘The second day of their honeymoon, lad. Let us hope the heifer is on heat, at last.’

  ‘You’re hoping, aren’t you,’ I taunted him, ‘that they’ll commit that wicked sin?’

  ‘Real wickedness is quite irresistible, Father Neil. Besides, I rang up their tour operator to tell them that the Holohans are a honeymoon couple.’

  ‘Why do that?’

  ‘Because honeymoon couples are entitled to a bottle of cheap bubbly and a double bed.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  He had got his connection. ‘Ah, yes, Dympna darlin’,’ he said in a velvety voice, ‘what a lovely surprise hearing from you.… You want me to dispense you from your vow of virginity on your honeymoon. Let me think carefully, now.’

  It didn’t take him long. But, then, it was a longdistance call.

  ‘Dympna, tell me, Batty did not force this decision on you?… Ah, I see, ’twas entirely your idea. Fine, fine.’ He smirked at me. ‘Well, Dympna, this is such a serious matter I will have to give you a stiff penance, but I did warn you about that. So before you go to bed next, whenever that is, I want you to kneel down and say three Hail Marys in honour of the Sacred Heart.… Don’t mention it, Dympna. Now would you put Batty on the line.’

  I couldn’t take any more of Fr Duddleswell’s smugness. I was at the door, ready to leave, when his smooth tone was replaced by one of utter agitation.

  ‘But, Batty, you cannot do that. You must let me dispense you from your vow … ’Tis ridiculous for Dympna to be free to … to do things when you are holding fast to your vow … I know you have the holy example of St Joseph, spouse of our Blessed Lady, but St Joseph did not go to the bloody Costa Blanca for his honeymoon.’

  My sides were splitting. When I left, Fr Duddleswell was still trying to convince Batty Holohan in Benidorm that it was imperative he renounce his vow of chastity for the sake of his marriage.

  SEVEN

  A Mixed-Up Marriage

  Before my first Christmas at St Jude’s, in company with Fr Duddleswell and Canon Mahoney, I had attended an interfaith Conference. It was held at the Anglican Vicarage of St Luke’s. Our doctrines on Hell and Purgatory had made little impression on the Anglicans and Methodists. Still less on Rabbi Epstein, an emigre Pole, who seemed already to have one foot in the Hereafter. We priests agreed such conferences were a waste of God’s good time and resolved not to attend any more.

  Bishop O’Reilly was of a different mind. After reading the Canon’s report, he told him that in England, every two weeks an Anglican clergyman was received into the One, True Church. What better forum for converting them than an inter-faith Conference?

  ‘What about the Rabbi, my Lord?’ Canon Mahoney had asked.

  ‘Didn’t our Blessed Lord Himself start out as a Jew,’ the Bishop reminded him, ‘before he turned?’ And didn’t He convert His Blessed Mother, a very pious Jewess, as well as His twelve lovely disciples, besides?’

  Canon Mahoney couldn’t deny that former Jews did have a big hand in getting Catholicism off the ground.

  ‘There, then, Canon,’ the Bishop went on, ‘if our Blessed Lord had adopted your defeatist attitude, where would the Catholic Church be today?’

  A second Conference was scheduled for the middle of May. The topic was a vexed one: Mixed Marriages. It was our turn to provide the position-paper, so the Canon handed over the task to Fr Duddleswell.

  For days beforehand, he was busy, consulting heavy tomes and scribbling madly. After which, he sent a draft of his talk to the Canon who returned it with a brief comment: ‘Courteous and charitable, Charlie. A model of intransigence.’

  As Fr Duddleswell let me read the note, his eyes misted up with emotion. ‘’Tis not every day of the week, Father Neil, I receive praise of this calibre.’

  The day before the Conference, the Canon cried off. His housekeeper rang to say he had gone down with ’flu. She had, she said, already telephoned his Lordship.

  Fr Duddleswell and I were discussing this serious depletion of our forces when Billy Buzzle’s voice floated in from the hall.

  ‘Cheerio, then, Mrs Pring. I’ll drop in again same time next week.’

  Fr Duddleswell was at his study door in a flash with, ‘Me dear friend, please come in, do.’

  Billy looked around him. ‘Talking to me, Father O’Duddleswell?’

  ‘The very man. Come in.’ And he almost dragged our neighbour in after him.

  ‘Short of cash or something?’ Fr Duddleswell shook his head. ‘I’ve just been having a cup of char with Mrs Pring. Anything wrong with that?’

  ‘Mr Buzzle,’ Fr Duddleswell said, ‘you wouldn’t be free to attend a Conference at two tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I would very much like to have the man-in-the-street’s point of view on a delicate religious topic.’

  Billy thumbed through his diary. ‘Well, there’s no race meeting. Okay, anything for a lark.’

  Fr Duddleswell slapped him on the back, nearly knocking the breath out of him. ‘That is the spirit, Mr Buzzle.’

  ‘Can I bring my dog along? He’s much better than me at religion.’

  Fr Duddleswell shook his head, smiling as if he meant it. ‘We will have the dog-in-the-street’s point of view another time.’

  ‘He’s real tame, my Pontius is. It’s all I can do to get him to bite a dog biscuit.’

  ‘He made a meal of my backside last Christmas,’ he was reminded.

  ‘Yeah, funny that. I always thought he had a sweet tooth.’

  ‘The answer, anyhow, is still no.’

  ‘Pity. But what are you discussing?’

  ‘Mixed marriages.’

  ‘Where one partner drinks and the other don’t?’

  Another benign smile. ‘Something of the sort.’

  ‘I’m all against ’em,’ Billy said.

  When he had left, I asked what Billy would add to the Conference.

  ‘Confusion, Father Neil.’ He explained that the Bishop didn’t understand it’s a waste of time talking to Protestants. ‘Billy will prove me point, you follow?’

  Mrs Pring announced the unexpected arrival of Mother Stephen.

  Fr Duddleswell leaped to his feet, whispering hoarsely, ‘Dear God, the Big Penguin.’ Aloud: ‘Mother Superior, an honour to have you visit us. Would you care for a cup o’tay?’

  ‘Our rules, Father,’ she said, sitting stiffly. ‘Firstly, I have come about our Foundress’s tibia.’

  ‘Have you lost it, Mother?’ I asked cheekily.

  The Superior evidently considered it her solemn duty as Christ’s representative to ignore me. ‘I would like you, Father Duddleswell, to put it on display here in the parish church.’

  Fr Duddleswell, uncharacteristically, was at a loss for words. ‘What for, Mother?’

  ‘To encourage devotion towards her, naturally.’

  He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Is it fitting, Mother, that a lady as refined and cloistered as your Foundress should be showing a leg, so to speak?’ Seeing a storm about to break on the Superior’s face, he added, ‘I speak with the utmost respect.’

  ‘The holy tibia is encased in a reliquary of gold and semi-precious stones,’ she said. ‘Her modesty will be preserved.’

  ‘All the more reason for saying no, Mother. The reliquary may be stolen, y’see.’

  ‘And Mother Foundress will only have one leg to stand on,’ I said. It was dawning on me that Mother Stephen was all bark and no bite.

  ‘I will discuss the matter with his Lordship, Father.’

  ‘Do that,’ Fr Duddleswell said, happy enough to pass the buck.

  ‘Secondly, Father Duddleswell, I will myself be attending the Conference tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Strange, Mother,’ he said, looking up the list. ‘I do not recall sending you an invitation.’

  ‘The Bishop did not forget, Father. His secretary telephoned the Convent half an hour ago, asking me to take Canon Mahoney’s place and to send him a detai
led report of the proceedings.’

  As before, the Reverend Percival Probble attended with Michael D’Arcy and the fat John Pinkerton, his curates. The Methodists, Tinsey with the tin-whistle voice and the bearded Sobb, were also there, as was the Rabbi Epstein, a tiny island of a man, bony and mysterious.

  Mother Stephen and I flanked Fr Duddleswell as he read his paper while Billy was next to me, slumped in his chair, devoutly asleep.

  A biting wind blew inside and outside the room.

  Fr Duddleswell explained clearly that the Catholic Church disapproves strongly of mixed marriages. She tolerates them between her own children and others, whether baptized or not, only on the strictest conditions.

  First, the ceremony must be conducted before the parish priest of the place. Otherwise, it is not a valid marriage and the Catholic party is held to be living in sin.

  Second, the bishop may grant a dispensation. The non-Catholic must however sign a document in advance promising not to interfere with the faith of the Catholic partner and to allow all children born of the union to be baptized and brought up as Catholics.

  When, after half an hour, Fr Duddleswell put his papers in order, Mr Probble had to restrain his junior curate. ‘Please, John, remember your resolution.’ He turned to Fr Duddleswell: ‘I personally find your views most interesting.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Probble. I take it that means you, too, disagree with them.’

  Mother Stephen’s icy voice intervened. ‘They are not Father Duddleswell’s views.’

  Thinking the Superior was impugning his orthodoxy, he insisted, ‘Indeed they are, Mother. Mine and the Bishop’s.’

  ‘They are,’ Mother Stephen affirmed, ‘the views of Almighty God.’

  ‘Precisely what I meant,’ Fr Duddleswell blustered. ‘And I trust, Mother, you will be so good as to tell his Lordship that in your report.’

  Mr Probble suggested that perhaps the Catholic attitude might be considered a trifle severe, seeing that Methodists and Anglicans were themselves Christians.

  The erudite Mr D’Arcy pointed out that in Victorian England it was quite customary for sons of mixed marriages to be brought up in their father’s religion and daughters in their mother’s.

  ‘I’m sure the Catholic clergy fought that tooth and nail,’ Fr Duddleswell said.