Father in a Fix

by Neil Boyd

  Just over a year later came Danny. When Jane was X-rayed, they found he was so contorted in the womb, the hospital kept the picture as a prize exhibit. The doctor in attendance afterwards admitted he thought he was dealing with a case of spinabifida. Fortunately, after the Caesarean, Danny was found to be a perfectly normal child.

  ‘The Kenworthy General is a progressive hospital, Father,’ Don said. ‘I was hoping to be present at the births but because of the complications, they threw me out at the last minute. Both times.’

  He gave me a grim look. ‘I saw enough to know why we call God “Father”. If He were a Mother, He would have planned some things differently.’

  ‘You’ll be back for the birth, Don. Let’s hope you’re in on the next one.’

  ‘Hope so, Father. My sister-in-law, Diana, is standing by to lend a hand if Jane needs it.’

  Don merely wanted me to be on the alert so that if there was an emergency I would administer the sacraments to Jane and baptize the baby.

  ‘I promise you, Don, I’ll call on Jane every day you’re away.’ Easy enough to say, seeing the Martins lived opposite the presbytery.

  As Don shook my hand in farewell, his eyes misted up. ‘Thanks, Father. It means a lot to me to know you’ll stand by my wife if anything happens.’

  I gripped his hand as firmly as I could. ‘Don’t worry, Don. It’ll be no trouble at all.’

  Four days later, Dr. Daley visited Jane Martin and ordered her into hospital immediately. Her ankles were swollen and she had high blood pressure.

  As soon as I heard, I phoned Diana Martin. She was very upset to hear the news because she wasn’t in a position to help out. Her husband, Don’s brother, had gone down with ’flu complicated by long-term bronchitis. She couldn’t leave the house.

  I told Fr. Duddleswell and he consulted Mrs. Pring about what to do with Francis and Danny. He reminded me of Monsignor Ronnie Knox’s definition of a child: ‘A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.’

  ‘Where’s the problem?’ Mrs. Pring said. ‘I am a mother myself, you know. I’ll take over the house opposite. And it’ll do the pair of you the world of good to see how the other half lives.’

  Jane thanked Mrs. Pring for offering to look after her home, including the boys. Mrs. Pring, she knew, was already very fond of them and was often dropping in with gifts of chocolate and home-made cakes. Mrs. Pring was looking forward to the challenge.

  She arranged for us to eat at the Martins and Fr. Duddleswell took on a young woman, Jill Bennett, to answer calls at the presbytery during meal times.

  As far as I was concerned, the next few days were golden. Jane was in no immediate danger, Dr. Daley told me, and I found being with the boys was a fresh and totally unexpected delight.

  The first evening when we went across the road for supper, the boys were already in bed but howling because they missed their mother.

  ‘A job for you two Fathers,’ Mrs. Pring said sharply. ‘Upstairs with you and calm the little ones while I get you something to eat.’

  Till then, my most vivid memory of the two children was of them swapping books and occasional blows in the front row during Mass. Danny hadn’t endeared himself to me by always shouting out as soon as I entered the pulpit, ‘Daddy, are we going home now?’

  The boys, looking alike with their blue eyes, round faces and brown hair cut in a fringe, were in adjoining rooms. Mrs. Pring introduced us first to Francis, a precocious child, whom Fr. Duddleswell was detailed to look after, and then to Danny, my charge.

  Danny, with a white moustache where his evening cup of warm milk had flecked his upper lip, was sitting up in bed. He was sucking his thumb which made him look like a dreamy squirrel nibbling a nut. I warmed to him at once.

  After a few moments, he said in a gruff voice comical in one so small, ‘Daddy, I want a cuddle,’ and I put my arms around him and started on a story. I had hardly spoken three sentences when his quiet, deep breathing told me he was asleep.

  I laid him down gently, blessed him and was about to leave when I caught snatches of the conversation in the next room. I sat beside Danny and eavesdropped.

  ‘Why are you cold, bed?’ Francis was saying. ‘Get warm soon, won’t you, ’cos the sheet is cold on Francis’s legs.’

  ‘Francis,’ I heard Fr. Duddleswell whisper, ‘you must not bite your nails.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they will scratch your insides, that’s for why.’

  ‘It’s all right, Father Doddles, I always chew them well before I swallow them.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, go to sleep, little feller. And that is an order from your parish priest.’

  ‘Could you go to sleep if I told you to, Father Doddles?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘It’s not as easy to go to sleep as some mummies think.’ There was a creaking of the bed before Francis added, ‘Going to sleep is very hard when it’s not easy.’

  ‘Try counting sheep,’ Fr. Duddleswell suggested.

  ‘One, two, three, six, four, eight, nine, ten.’

  ‘Go on, Francis.’

  ‘There’s too many for my numbers, Father Doddles.’

  ‘Close your eyes, then.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that you can see your dreams better.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dearie me, anybody would think you are a Protestant. You must close your eyes to save on electricity.’

  ‘Danny needs a light on when he goes to bed ’cos the dark hurts his eyes.’

  ‘Does it now?’

  ‘Danny says that when he goes to sleep he can’t remember what he’s been dreaming about.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Fr. Duddleswell was plainly lost for words on hearing such a deep thought.

  ‘Do you dream, Father Doddles?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Nice dreams?’

  Fr. Duddleswell was not keen to divulge the contents of his sleeping mind even to a three-year-old. ‘Sometimes,’ he repeated.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Francis said, ‘mine aren’t worth watching. And sometimes I drop off the top of big buildings.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘I’m lucky so far. I always fall awake before I hit the ground or my nightmares gets me.’

  ‘That is lucky.’

  ‘And sometimes I do funny things.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like doing as I’m told.’

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘I can’t cos you haven’t said my prayers.’

  ‘Nor have I.’ And Fr. Duddleswell rattled off the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. Afterwards, he said, ‘So there, Francis.’

  ‘But, Father Doddles, when are you going to say some proper prayers?’

  ‘You didn’t like the ones I said?’

  ‘Not very really.’

  Fr. Duddleswell made up a few impromptu prayers for Mummy and Daddy and Danny and Francis as well as a very moving one for Father Doddles.

  ‘You’re not very good at prayers, are you, Father Doddles?’

  ‘Am I not?’ He sounded grieved at a child questioning his professional competence. ‘You say your own, then.’

  ‘Please, God,’ Francis whispered loudly, ‘can I have a flat head?’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘So’s I can stand on it, of course. Shush, Father Doddles. I’m saying my prayers.’

  ‘I am sure I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Please God, I wish I could whistle without a whistle. Please God, I wished I was a millionaire so’s I could buy an ice cream.’

  ‘Wait,’ Fr. Duddleswell said. ‘Here’s threepence. For an ice cream.’

  ‘Please God, don’t bother about making me a millionaire till tomorrow night. Amen.’

  ‘I am sure the Almighty God will hear you, Francis.’

  ‘Course He will. He’s got ears and eyes all over His body.’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Like a dragonfly. Only you can’t see Him
’cos He’s got a infinite quite big towel over His head.’

  ‘I did not know that, truly.’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s got the biggest head there is.’

  ‘Bigger than mine?’

  ‘Much?’

  Fr. Duddleswell whistled. ‘Is that possible?’ I heard his feet scrape the floor as he stood up. ‘Now I am off to eat me rations for the night. Sleep well. I will turn off the light.’

  He crossed to the door and I heard the click as he switched the light off.

  ‘Father Doddles?’

  ‘Yes, Francis.’

  ‘I usually find sleeping don’t take long once you’ve started.’

  ‘God bless you.’

  ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holly Ghost. Amen. God bless you, Father Doddles.’

  Jane Martin’s condition continued to improve. Her ankles went down and her blood pressure was almost normal. As a precaution, the doctor decided to keep her in hospital.

  I visited her every day to assure her the children were well-behaved.

  ‘It’s very kind of you, Father,’ Jane said, trying to be brave.

  ‘I’m really enjoying myself,’ I told her.

  And it was true. Danny was teaching me things I had not grasped before. For instance, that the only way to get to love a small child is by making the effort of picking him up and holding him tight. In other words, by physical contact. Because of my isolation and training in the seminary this had been alien to me.

  More importantly, Danny taught me something new about God. It’s not too much to say that Danny fundamentally altered my religion. Up to that time, whenever I thought of God in Jesus’ terms as ‘Our Father’, I had automatically seen myself as a helpless child, resting in his Father’s arms.

  But now, as I cradled Danny to sleep each night in my arms, I felt I understood God better by identifying with Him in His infinite power and concern. I was so fond of Danny, I would defend him to the death, whatever wrong he did, whatever he became. So that’s what God is like, I said to myself with the thrill of a new discovery. And that must be what my priestly title ‘Father’ means.

  Mrs. Pring had so much housework to get through that Fr. Duddleswell and I took to bathing the children and getting them ready for bed. Danny wore a nappy at night. Mrs. Pring made me put it on him because she didn’t trust Fr. Duddleswell with a safety pin.

  The little boy fascinated me with his expressive gestures and the miracle of developing thought and language. When, for example, he said ‘Bye’ his right arm was extended in an exquisite curve and only his dimpled hand waved goodbye from wrist to fingers in a movement as perfect as a butterfly’s.

  He said to me one night:

  ‘You was good to me.’

  ‘No, Danny, you were.’

  ‘Yes, I were.’

  ‘No, Danny, I was.’

  ‘Was you, Daddy?’ At which point I gave up and told him the story of the three bears until he dropped off to sleep as soundly as if I had preached him a sermon.

  ‘Father Doddles,’ I heard from the next room.

  A trifle warily. ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘How can you see with those bits of glass over your eyes?’

  ‘Try them for yourself.’

  After a pause. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘I am able to see through them because I am a priest, you follow? And priests can do all sorts of wonderful things.’

  ‘Like wearing a little white collar.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘How do you get your head in that little white collar? Is that a miracle?’

  ‘I was born with it on,’ Fr. Duddleswell replied modestly, doubtless crossing his fingers.

  ‘Do you wear it in the bath?’

  ‘Not very often.’

  ‘Where do you keep your wife?’

  ‘I do not have one.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t want one.’

  ‘Why, Father Doddles?’

  ‘I am too ugly, you see.’

  ‘Yes, you are too ugly, you see.’

  ‘Besides, I’ve lost my hair.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It just disappeared.’

  ‘Is that a miracle too?’

  ‘It disappeared like magic, to be sure.’

  ‘Did the wind blew it away?’

  ‘Look you here, keep still, little feller. I want to get you dressed for bed.’

  ‘I’m busy at the moment.’

  ‘But I want to put your pyjamas on.’

  ‘They’re my pyjamas.’

  ‘I want to put them on you.’

  ‘I’m busy at the moment.’

  ‘You must go to bed, Francis. D’you hear me speak to you? You are tired.’

  ‘I’m not tired.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘Then you go to bed, Father Doddles.’

  ‘I bet you Danny is asleep.’

  ‘Danny is the best baby in the world now that Jesus is dead.’

  I remembered that Francis was responsible for killing off Jesus early that year.

  There was the sound of a scuffle before Francis said:

  ‘I have just caught a very, very, very good idea.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I have a piece of chocolate?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘I don’t like later. I’ve not cleaned my teeth yet.’ A few more seconds of rustling. ‘Is it later now, Father Doddles?’

  ‘No ’tis not.’

  ‘Chocolate, where are you?’

  ‘Here it is, you scamp.’

  ‘Where were you painted, Father Doddles?’

  ‘Painted?’

  ‘Yes. Where were you painted black like that?’

  ‘These are me clothes, not paint.’

  ‘My Mummy says you are not as black as you are painted.’

  ‘Before you gobble up that chocolatle, little man, let us say our prayers. Our Father Who art in heaven …’

  We found ourselves walking across the road earlier each evening to do our chores. Fr. Duddleswell liked Francis a lot. He said of him, ‘He will make a fine priest one of these days, that little feller.’

  He did not feel quite so friendly towards Francis the first evening we tried to coax the boys to eat their supper.

  Mrs. Pring had just ordered Danny to take his foot out of his mouth while he was at table when Francis filled his spoon with soggy, pink blancmange and catapulted it in Fr. Duddleswell’s direction. It plopped and made a huge splodge in the middle of his cassock.

  Mrs. Pring grabbed a damp dish cloth to sponge Fr. Duddleswell down but before she did so, she genuflected to him and muttered quickly, ‘O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I implore/The grace to love Thee daily more and more.’

  Ostensibly to help Mrs. Pring but chiefly because we so enjoyed it, Fr. Duddleswell and I joined forces in bathing the boys. We ourselves got a soaking, naturally. Once we even had to return home before our evening meal for a change of clothes.

  As luck would have it, there were the two Miss Flanagans at the front door. They looked at us, then at the cloudless sky, then at us again and asked, ‘Would it be too much to ask you, Fr. Duddleswell, to hear our confession?’

  After the bath each night, it was cowboys and indians. Francis parading in nothing but a policeman’s helmet, carried a six-shooter, while Danny in only a pair of Indian moccasins, brandished a tommy-gun.

  Then the unexpectedly arduous job of dressing them for bed. Once, when Francis had put his toe in Fr. Duddleswell’s eye for the second time, I heard my parish priest complain, ‘God Almighty, ’tis worse than putting trousers on a centipede.’

  On one occasion, after the bathing session, we were changing the boys on Francis’s bed. Danny was in his pyjamas and I was holding his hand when he began to cry. He tried to tell me something but because he couldn’t sound the ‘s’ and the ‘th’ at the beginning of certain words, I didn’t grasp his meaning.

  ‘Why’s he crying?’ I a
sked Francis.

  ‘Because you won’t give it back.’

  I pleaded not guilty. ‘I haven’t taken anything from him.’

  ‘Yes you have. Give him back his thumb.’

  ‘I suddenly realized what Danny meant by, ‘I want to ’uck my ’umb’ I released his hand and he proceeded contentedly to do just that. He took his thumb out a few moments later to tell us:

  ‘My Uncle Billy died but ’e’s very ’appy now.’

  According to Mrs. Pring, Uncle Billy was really their great-grandfather who had died in January aged eighty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Fr. Duddleswell and I said together.

  ‘He died like ’is,’ Danny said as he closed his eyes. ‘And then he ’miled,’—his rosy face lit up as he showed all his teeth—‘like ’is.’

  Francis hooted with laughter at Danny’s funny expression and immediately started to cry. It was one of those sudden and unexpected transformations from laughter to tears that I was reading about in Dostoievsky at the time. His characters always seemed to be subject to the sharpest switch of the emotions. I had thought this incredible until I actually witnessed it in the boys and saw that it took place in me, too, continually. What defence mechanism operated inside myself, I wondered, to have made me unaware over the years of something so obvious?

  Francis was crying because Uncle Billy, to whom he had been deeply attached, didn’t visit them any more. One set of the children’s grandparents had been killed by a bomb during the war, the other set had emigrated to South Africa. White-haired, white-bearded Uncle Billy was their favourite older person.

  ‘Did I ever tell you the story about Billy the Snowman?’ Fr. Duddleswell began.

  The children sat upright in anticipation of a story.

  ‘Well, now, one day not so long ago—’

  ‘Once upon a time,’ Francis corrected him.

  ‘Indeed. That is what I intended to say. Once upon a time, it started to snow. And it snowed and it snowed and—’

  ‘It snowed,’ the boys contributed.

  ‘And when it stopped, two little fellers called Francis and …’

  ‘Danny.’

  ‘Indeed. Francis and Danny made a snowman. They put some snow into their buckets and patted it down till it was hard as wood and built …’

  ‘A snowman.’