Father in a Fix

by Neil Boyd

  ‘I will take you home again, Kathleen.’

  I snapped my fingers very convincingly. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I am practising, Father Neil, for the greatest festival of the Church’s year.’

  Is there an Easter concert?’

  He coughed. ‘I was referring, I’d have you know, to St. Patrick’s Day.’ He played a few more bars. ‘Well?’

  ‘Very.’

  He sniffed and repeated his question. ‘Well?’

  Not knowing what reaction was expected of me, I started humming the line, To where your heart will find no pain.

  ‘And why are you humming that,’ he demanded, ‘when I just played you the opening of When Irish eyes are smiling?’

  I had no plausible excuse ready to hand so I said, ‘What did you think I was humming, then, Father?’

  He scratched his head without answering. ‘This year, Father Neil, we are holding a monster meeting of the race. Bishop O’Reilly is himself threatening to preside at the evening service. Mind you, he is not such a bad feller really, when he forgets he is a bishop.’

  ‘How often is that, Father?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘About once in a decade.’

  ‘Religion,’ I said, smiling, ‘has spoiled many a nice man.’

  ‘True, true. The Bishop’s father, so I believe, was a carpenter in Kilkenny but his son had notions from the time he was a child of moving higher and becoming a Bishop.’ He put his fiddle to his chin. ‘After all, as the Bishop said once in a sermon, “Whoever heard of a carpenter who made his name in the world?”’

  He continued softly playing unrecognizable melodies that somehow stirred his soul. With eyes closed, he said, ‘Yourself has an important part in the proceedings, Father Neil, naturally.’

  ‘I’m not expected to preach the sermon on St. Patrick?’

  ‘Indeed not. I am asking Canon Mahoney to do just that.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I laughed, very relieved.

  ‘No,’ he said, his chin vibrating against the base of the fiddle. ‘Since I discovered your talent for it in the New Year, I am wanting you to tell a funny story at the evening concert.’

  ‘I am no good as a comedian,’ I protested.

  ‘Am I world class at the fiddle?’

  ‘Haifitz could learn a thing or two,’ I said, without specifying.

  He scowled at me. ‘You are right, Father Neil, you are none too good at the comicals.’ He put on his mischievous smile. ‘A chance for you to shine, lad, like a star on a frosty night.’

  ‘Galway Bay!’ I made a guess at the current noise in an effort to change the subject.

  He shook head and violin together. ‘By Killarney’s Lakes And Fells.’ He played on before suggesting, ‘You recognize it now.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, warily, in case he had switched tunes without warning. ‘A great favourite.’

  Mercifully, he fell to musing, to his own accompaniment, on the olden times.

  ‘Ah, dismal was the day’—scratch, scratch—‘me father left the happy land of the Troubles’—scratch, scratch—‘and took the emigration to England.’

  Dismal for some of us, I thought, wanting to plug my ears.

  ‘This is a pagan country, there is no denying it.’

  ‘It’s the people they let in,’ I said.

  ‘No, seriously, Father Neil, on a bus in this country, so I am told, not even the women will give up their seat to a priest.’

  ‘I’m astonished.’ I hoped he would notice the ambiguity of tone.

  ‘There is only one advantage in being English, as far as I know.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Unlike the Scots, the Italians and, above all, the Irish, English people cannot commit mortal sin.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it, Father, but tell me why.’

  ‘An Englishman’s motives are always too mixed.’

  More soul-stirring music before: ‘Father Neil, what is an Irishman? Tell me that, now.’

  I kept silent, sensing disobedience was demanded of me.

  ‘A white English-speaking negro, that is what.’ The violin gave off a plangent sound. ‘We do not belong to the native race of the place. Oh for that land God made across the water where all the fields are fresh and green.’

  I remembered the old saying, ‘Ireland is a very good country to live out of.’

  ‘You have only to contrast an Irish face with an English face, Father Neil. Mine and yours, to take a for instance.’

  ‘Yours is much prettier,’ I said, loud enough for him not to hear.

  ‘Someone once said, Father Neil, when God makes an Irish face, His kindly hand brushes straight up, y’follow?’

  ‘And the English face, Father?’

  He dipped his violin. ‘Downwards, lad, downwards. So the whole effect is one of, um, deceit’—scratch, scratch—‘and being closed like a clam.’

  ‘Was the “someone” who said that an Englishman, by any chance?’

  For reply, he almost poked his bow in my eye.

  I did my best to sound irritable. ‘Father, I really think you are the one to tell that funny story.’

  ‘Stop your whimpering, Father Neil, and I will buy you some ointment for your nappy rash.’

  At that moment, Dr. Daley was ushered in by Mrs. Pring. At the door, he lifted his right hand in a poetic gesture. ‘“If music be the food of love,” as Yeats has said.’

  Fr. Duddleswell placed the instrument down on the desk and sighed, ‘Donal.’

  ‘Charles,’ Dr. Daley said with an equal passion. ‘I would recognize that playing anywhere, even with my eyes closed.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Surely. I don’t want to flatter you, Charles, but I do not know anybody who plays the fiddle exactly like yourself.’

  ‘I am out of practice and that is the truth,’ Fr. Duddleswell replied coyly.

  ‘Tut-tut. The imagination is boggled at what it would hear, Charles, if only you took the fiddle out of its case more than once a year. Why even the stone lions in Trafalgar Square would not be able to keep their feet still.’

  ‘Too kind,’ Fr. Duddleswell purred, ‘you are too kind. But thanks to you for the good word, anyway.’

  Dr. Daley’s build-up was now complete. ‘You wouldn’t have by any chance a drop of …’

  ‘During the forty days, Donal?’

  ‘You are not wanting to take me off my life-support system simply because it is Lent? Dear, dear, dear. Besides, Charles,’ he undid the top button of his shirt, ‘I have a hair-shirt on underneath that scratches worse than a fiddler’s bow.’

  ‘What is wrong with water, Donal?’

  ‘Apart from everything, Charles? Well, now, to be scientific about it, I’m sixty per cent water already and I don’t want myself diluted further. Anyway, didn’t St. Pat himself say, It’s a Christian thing to relieve the first necessity?’

  ‘Donal, for the last time, can you not give up the whiskey at least during Lent? Yes or no?’

  ‘I am surprised at your unpatriotic fervour.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You know as well as I, Charles, that Irish has no words for yes and no.’ The doctor shook his benign head. ‘Not words that spring readily to an Irishman’s lips, that’s for sure.’

  Fr. Duddleswell said, ‘Your eyes are that glassy, you could take them out and put them in again without damage.’ But, doubtless still feeling how well his old friend had just scratched his back over his playing, he relented.

  ‘God bless you, Charles, till the day the big bell rings slow for you.’

  As Fr. Duddleswell poured, Dr. Daley was saying, ‘Indeed, you play like an angel from Heaven, Charles.’ Whenever there was a hint that the dispensing hand might slacken or halt, he repeated, ‘Like an angel,’ until it rallied.

  When the glass was full Dr. Daley held it up to the light. ‘What a great stranger you are,’ he said. ‘Now Charles, to business. As you are aware, the St. Pat’s Day committee has elected me its chairman
again this year.’

  ‘Donal, before you go on, since I have just throttled me conscience and done you a disservice, would you care to do something for me?’

  Dr. Daley took a satisfying sip. ‘Anything, Charles. Anything.’

  ‘’Tis me knees, Donal. There is something the matter with ’em.’

  ‘That is the penalty, Charles, for trying to walk to Heaven on them during Lent. Good job I have brought my tool kit with me. Sit your holy fundament down there.’

  While Dr. Daley fumbled one-handed in his black bag for a hammer, Fr. Duddleswell sat down meekly on his desk. He lifted his cassock while the doctor tapped his knees, one by one. On the second, the foot kicked so violently that Dr. Daley’s glass went flying across the room.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear,’ Dr. Daley said gloomily. ‘That foot will have to come off, Charles. I cannot have it shamelessly destroying glass after glass of the liquor.’

  ‘Fill up again, Donal. And tell me your diagnosis. Housemaid’s knee?’

  ‘I have a furious thirst on me this morning that is drinking me dry,’ the Doctor said, as he replenished his glass. ‘It’s water on the knee, all right.’

  ‘Not so!’

  ‘I have been trying to impress on you over these many years, my consecrated friend, what filthy stuff the water is and now, will you believe me? it is flowing like the Irish Sea twixt your skin and your knee caps. Tut-tut.’

  ‘And the treatment, Donal?’

  ‘Stick to the whiskey, Charles, and for the time being pray humbly on your bum. It’s not fair on your charming little knees to place such a terrible burden on them.’

  When we were seated comfortably, Fr. Duddleswell explained why he had asked the Doctor round. ‘Y’see, Donal, this year St. Patrick’s Day falls on the eve of Palm Sunday.’

  ‘It does,’ Dr. Daley said, contemplating the contents of his glass, as if for him all drinking days were much alike.

  ‘Indeed, which is why I am thinking this year, out of respect for our Blessed Lord’s Passion, the concert—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ought to be dry.’

  Dr. Daley instinctively reached out for a refill to withstand the shock. ‘A thirst more or less sudden has seized me by the throat.’ He looked at Fr. Duddleswell incredulously. ‘Dear Charles, your ideas must have gone to your head. Shall I examine next your noble dome for you?’

  ‘Donal, I am not off me chump.’

  ‘Charles, are you expecting the Irish faithful to wet their throats with spittle?’ A heavy swig. ‘Are you wanting our concert hall to be melancholy as the graveyard of Clonmacnoise?’

  ‘The day before Palm Sunday, Donal?’

  ‘Next, you will be asking the kiddies to give up the sweets on St. Pat’s day.’

  ‘I am no saint meself,’ Fr. Duddleswell began.

  ‘Not even your severest critic would accuse you of being that, Charles.’

  ‘But, I am having no tearing drunks hereabouts as Holy Week begins.’

  ‘I will look after the bar myself, like I am its guardian angel.’

  ‘And the fox will look after the hens.’

  ‘Why, Charles, it is all right, I am telling you. I have a hundred helpers who can handle a shillelagh, any one of whom on his own could clear the fair.’

  ‘Have it your way, Donal. I am only the parish priest in this place.’ The irony being lost on Dr. Daley, he added, ‘But ’tis against me better judgment, truly. As I always say, “The family that drinks together, sinks together.”’

  ‘What else, Charles?’ the Doctor enquired, with the ease of a man who has won the major battle.

  ‘Dancing, Donal. Let everything be done decent, like.’

  To advertise my presence, I said, ‘Not cheek to cheek?’

  Fr. Duddleswell returned my look stolidly. ‘Not anything to anything,’ he growled. ‘I will not have the colleens in this parish being fingered feverishly like rosary beads.’

  ‘Understood,’ Dr. Daley said smoothly, as if at his advanced age this was a problem that was none of his.

  ‘A fresh lick of green paint, Donal, for the Saint’s statue.’

  ‘Surely.’

  ‘I am having Mrs. Joseph Arbunathy personally bring some shamrock over the day before the feast so ’tis fresh for the Bishop to bless. Does that about cover it, Donal?’

  ‘It does.’ And the Doctor sipped happily.

  ‘You are sure, Donal,’ Fr. Duddleswell said pointedly.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ Dr. Daley said. ‘The committee has asked me to invite yourself to—’

  ‘Uh huh?’

  ‘Kindly play the fiddle for us at the concert.’

  ‘On one condition,’ Fr. Duddleswell said, stretching his luck.

  Two worried weeks passed. Fr. Duddleswell was trying on a lovely old lace alb specially laundered for the Bishop to wear on the great day.

  ‘’Tis beautiful,’ Fr. Duddleswell said, admiring himself up and down. ‘What do you think, Father Neil. No flattery, mind, I am not one to be flattered by flattery.’

  ‘Beautiful, Father.’

  A conceited smile spread over his face. ‘You took the word out of me mouth.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I admitted, edging towards the door.

  ‘Now, Father Neil, what about that funny story you volunteered to tell?’ I pleaded ignorance of his meaning. ‘You remember how I blackmailed Dr. Daley and threatened I would not play the fiddle this year except you were allowed to tell a funny story.’

  The door was already open. Another second and I would have made my escape. Unfortunately, Mrs. Pring chanced to be barring the way, Fr. Duddleswell called her in.

  ‘Now Mrs. Pring, as y’know full well, I am not such a one as courts flattery.’ He indicated the precious alb. ‘Tell me truly, what d’you think?’

  She gave him a cold stare. ‘Arsenic in old lace,’ she said, and closed the door on me.

  ‘I knew she could be relied on to let me down,’ he fumed. ‘Oh, that woman is a load on me stomach. One day she will go to the bad place.’

  ‘See you later, Father.’

  ‘Stay, son of me praise,’ he ordered. ‘Cheer me up with your funny story.’

  It wasn’t the time or the place. ‘I can’t possibly,’ I said, before I began:

  ‘There was once a meeting of all the nations of the world.’

  ‘Where was this meeting taking place, Father Neil?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father.’

  ‘He does not know,’ he muttered darkly to himself. ‘This is a funny story, Father Neil. Make it Bognor or Blackpool.’

  ‘Blackpool, Father.’

  He laughed. ‘That is very comical. Who would ever have suggested that all the nations of the world should meet in Blackpool?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Oh, get on with you, Father Neil.’ He proceeded to pull the alb over his head.

  ‘And while they were there, they decided to ask God which of all the nations in the world is dearest—’

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ he cried.

  ‘You’ve heard it before, Father?’

  ‘I have just put my fist through the lace on the bottom of this alb.’

  I headed for the door. ‘I’ll tell you it another time, Father.’

  He signalled his intention to suffer on. ‘You were saying, Father Neil.’

  ‘They wrote a message to God: “Which nation in the world, God, is nearest to Your heart?”’

  Fr. Duddleswell was still examining the tear in the lace. ‘And how, pray, did they convey this message to the Almighty God?’

  I hadn’t given that a thought. ‘Perhaps they put it in a rocket, Father.’

  ‘Easier if they burn the scroll the query is written on.’

  ‘Thank you, Father. So they burnt the scroll the query was written on. And there appeared a dove.’

  ‘Not a pigeon,’ he exlaimed mischievously. ‘Only the other day, one of Billy Buzzle’s gave me a very interesting message
from heaven.’

  ‘In the dove’s beak was a piece of paper that fluttered down out of the blue. The President of the nations there assembled picked it up and—’

  ‘Of what nationality was this President?’

  ‘Er. Does it matter?’

  ‘It does, to be sure.’

  I couldn’t see why but I said, ‘Since the meeting is in Blackpool, the President had better be—’

  ‘Switch the meetin’ to Dublin, Father Neil.’

  ‘Of course, anything to make it funnier. So the President of the Republic picks up the divine message and reads: “All nations—”’

  He cut across me. ‘“Dear Mr. de Valera, All nations—”’

  “‘All nations are equally dear to my heart”,’ I took up.

  ‘’Tis too improbable,’ he declared. ‘God loving Russia and China the same as Italy and Spain and old Ireland?’ He bit off a loose thread from the alb. ‘You are sure you cannot play the piano?’

  I was getting fed up with his interruptions. ‘Wait,’ I insisted. ‘“All nations are equally dear to My heart. Yours, Almighty O’God.”’

  He lifted his glasses on to his forehead to inspect the torn lace more closely. ‘I am waiting, Father Neil.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

  ‘Is that, too, part of the funny story?’ He saw that it wasn’t only the lace alb that was the worse for wear. ‘No, dead serious, lad, that is very amusing indeed. Is that “Almighty O’God” meant to indicate that God—?’

  ‘Comes from Aberdeen,’ I said, slamming the door on my back.

  ‘Big Paws, you leave Father Neil’s food alone, you hear me? Or else.’

  Mrs. Pring gave Fr. Duddleswell this stern warning as he attempted to snatch one of my slices of toast at breakfast.

  ‘I’m not having the Law of the Claw in this house,’ Mrs. Pring went on, ‘not when Father Neil’s as thin as a wax taper already.’

  ‘God help us,’ Fr. Duddleswell cried; ‘I will get me tin hat and hide down the dug-out.’

  He had taken up the Lent fast in earnest, mainly to control his weight, I think.

  His resolve was first noticed on Ash Wednesday. He appeared at breakfast with a black smudge on his forehead and declined to eat as much as a boiled egg. Not a priest to do things by halves, he looked as if he had just climbed down the chimney.