Bless Me, Father

by Neil Boyd

  ‘Water, Father.’

  Fr Duddleswell licked his hand before lifting his head in relief. ‘Thank God for that, ’tis only tapoline. Next, an important question, Father Neil. If a child is born premature, what would you do?’

  ‘Call a nurse quick, Father.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ he almost sang. ‘What if after the baby is born premature a nurse calls you to the incubator?’

  ‘I’d baptize it—him or her, according to the difference—in case the baby died.’ Fr Duddleswell nodded encouragingly. ‘With a syringe.’ Another friendly nod. ‘Not hydrochloric acid.’ He slowly shook his head.

  ‘What else would you not do?’

  As if to give the lie to my words I said wildly, ‘I wouldn’t panic, Father.’

  ‘You would not … light … any … candles.’

  ‘No, Father?’

  ‘No. Because with all that oxygen around, if you struck a match the poor little mite would go unbaptized—poof!—to Limbo.’

  It took me a second or two to recover from the explosion. ‘Father,’ I said.

  He was looking down paternally on all the infants in their cribs. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it nearly time for lunch?’

  It wasn’t. We stood side by side in the tree-lined cemetery gazing dreamily over the grassy and concrete beds with tombstones for headboards.

  ‘Our last resting-place, Father Neil,’ he whispered. ‘Before we go off to lunch, I am meaning.’

  Glad of a few moments’ rest, I murmured, ‘It’s very peaceful here.’

  ‘You would hardly expect it to be a riot,’ he said. ‘Not with all those corpses stretched out and decomposing six feet below.’

  I asked him if this was a special plot for deceased Catholics. He nodded gravely and gave it as his opinion that Holy Mother Church was wise not to allow mixed funerals. ‘At the Last Day,’ he proclaimed cheerfully, ‘St Michael will blow loud the Trumpet Blast, and winds wild as angels on horseback will blow from the four corners of heaven, and the Almighty God will start His resurrecting, like, in this sacred little plot of Catholic earth.’

  I was in no mood for questioning the Lord’s geographical preferences on Doomsday.

  ‘Stand up, Seamus Flynn, the Lord will cry.’ Fr Duddleswell’s evocation made me jump to attention. ‘Stand up, Mary Ryan. Stand up, Micky O’Brien, if you are yet sober.’

  Joining in the festive mood, I chanted, ‘Thigh bone connected to the hip bone.’

  He rounded on me. ‘And what will God say to Paddy Reilly who had no legs to stand on in life due to a motor accident?’

  ‘Sit down, Paddy?’ I suggested.

  ‘Where is your faith, Father Neil? At the resurrection, God will put on Mrs Pring’s thimble and the legless Paddy Reilly will have new ones sewn on. A marvellous sight to behold. One thing, though.’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  As he moved on, he called over his shoulder, ‘I only hope I am not around to see it.’

  A bit further on we came to the grave of ‘FR FREDERICK CONNORS, PARISH PRIEST OF ST JUDE’S, 1890–1938.’

  ‘Your predecessor, Father?’

  He nodded. ‘I remember well that day twelve years since when we buried Freddie Connors.’

  ‘Only forty-eight years old,’ I said, after a quick calculation.

  ‘Surprising he lasted so long, Father Neil. Always had trouble with his internals.’

  ‘Weak heart?’

  ‘No, his housekeeper was a really shocking cook.’ He became solemn again. ‘The whole parish of St Jude’s was here, living and dead. Oh, ’twas a gorgeous day for a funeral. A cold, gusty, end-of-the-year, end-of-a-life sort of day. The corpses were the warmest bodies here. Trees bare. The short grass faded, almost white. And not one bird sang.’

  ‘Did you officiate, Father?’

  He shook his head. ‘Fr McNally did the honours. Tall and lean. A beanpole of a man, draped in black, McNally. With a booming voice and a huge red beak on him like an eagle with ’flu.’ He stopped to pull up a weed and threw it casually behind him. ‘Same old clichés—no less true for that, mind. “Our beloved Brother, Frederick, departed this mortal life … ashes to ashes, sod to sod … vanity of vanities … what I am, he was, what he is, I will be.”’

  His head dropped on his left shoulder as if it was too heavy for his neck alone to support. ‘The pall-bearers slowly lowered the coffin and frozen earth dropped like thunder on the polished wood. I stood on the edge of the gaping hole there and looked down, dizzy-like, to pay me last respects to a dear old buddy. Wailings, loud as Jews’, all around me, but through me tears I just managed to whisper, “Thank God, you are dead, Freddie boy.”’ A heave of his chest and a loud sniffle. ‘“You would never have lived through your funeral.”’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘And now, Father Neil,’ he announced breezily, ‘I am sure you must be ready for a bite to eat.’

  At lunch on the dot of one, Fr Duddleswell said grace and presided under a gaudy print of Blessed Pius X.

  I shook out my table napkin in expectation of replenishment at last. ‘Is the food good, Father?’

  ‘’Tis foul as can be, but one consolation—there is plenty of it. In spite of rationing, herself still manages to provide us with three square meals a meal.’

  Mrs Pring arrived puffing and blowing, laden down with a tray. She asked if she had heard us discussing her cooking.

  ‘Indeed,’ confessed Fr Duddleswell, ‘I was on the eve of telling Father Neil there is nothing wrong with your cooking, provided we do not have to eat it.’ Mrs Pring started to serve a pot roast. ‘And why are we lunching late again?’ It was two minutes past the hour.

  ‘I’ve had trouble with …’

  ‘Always an excuse readier than an apron, Mrs Pring.’

  ‘The cooker,’ she finished.

  He touched my wrist as the plate was put in front of me. ‘Father Neil, you have made your will? Well, now, this evening your confessions are from 5 to 6.’

  I did my best to look unconcerned. ‘Fine, Father.’

  Mrs Pring interjected, ‘If he’s not been in the box before, he’s probably scared out of his wits is poor Father Neil.’

  ‘Rightly so,’ retorted the parish priest, unscrewing the top of the sauce bottle. ‘He is probably thinking you will come yourself and unload on him your own heinous sins.’ Turning to me: ‘’Tis better to have a fixed time for confessions because in that way you gradually build up your own clientèle, you follow? The good people get to know when and where to find you.’

  ‘And how to avoid the priests they can’t abide,’ said Mrs Pring.

  ‘Good day to you, Mrs Pring,’ the parish priest said, and, showing her the hairy instrument, ‘the back of me hand to you. I have now to discuss confessional secrets with me new curate.’

  ‘If you want something,’ said Mrs Pring before closing the door on herself, ‘just call and I’ll come bouncing back like an egg off the wall.’

  In a loud whisper, Fr Duddleswell confided to me, ‘Her husband chose the better part. He left her in the First World War, so he did.’

  I was shocked. ‘Divorced, Father?’

  ‘No, no, I mean he laid down his life nice and easy, like, on the field of battle.’ The essentially kind-hearted priest added, ‘God rest him,’ and made a sign of the cross so swift no angel would have recognized it.

  Not knowing quite what to do or say, I blurted out, ‘Amen’.

  ‘Now, he said, coughing and adopting a brisker tone once more, ‘about this holy sacrament which turns the sinner’s wages from death to life. First, a word of advice. Never let on you know who ’tis that is confessing to you. You must not say, for instance, ‘You really have improved since last month, have you not, Mrs O’Kelly?’ or ‘Leave the door ajar after you, Mr Tracey.’ Above all, you must not be querulous ever and say, ‘But Mr Jones, your wife just admitted to using contraceptives seven times, not five.’
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  ‘I promise not to be querulous, Father,’ I said, suspecting that one of my long legs was getting rapidly longer. ‘But does that sort of thing happen often?’

  ‘Using contraceptives?’

  ‘No, Father, lying about it.’

  Showing mild surprise, he asked, ‘Did I mention the word “lying”? ’Tis rather like on the golf course, Father Neil. The men are such marvellous proud creatures they tend to underestimate how many strokes they take to the hole. There is no malice to it.’

  ‘Just bad addition, you mean.’

  ‘And sometimes subtraction,’ he responded knowingly. ‘At the start,’ he said confidentially, bowing towards me a domed head over which was slanted his thinning brown hair and skewering me with his eye, ‘at the start, I am sorry to have to tell you this, you are likely to get the more …’ He reached for a word, missed and reached again, ‘hardened sinners.’

  ‘Hardened’ was accentuated but softly.

  My spine grew icicles but I tried to brave it out by joking, ‘Not you and Mrs Pring?’

  He pointed to my plate. ‘Take a mound of mustard with that and you might be lucky enough not to taste the food at all.’ I obeyed. ‘Some’ll think—quite mistakenly, to be sure—you are a greenhorn who’s not yet heard that sin has been invented. Others’ll take advantage of the fact that you cannot fix a voice to a face. But in two shakes of a black sheep’s tail you will only have your fair share of hardened sinners.’

  The thought of being initially saturated with more than my fair share of trouble was to be a lemon in my mouth for the rest of the afternoon.

  ‘Any questions, Father Neil?—apart from the time of supper.’

  ‘Tea-time, Father?’ I ventured. Since it brought no reaction, I tried again. ‘Is it interesting?’

  ‘Are you referring to the time-table of meals in this house or the holy sacrament? No, Father Neil, ’tis not at all interesting sitting there by the hour with harmless women and children spitting sins into your unprotected ear. ’Tis bloody tedious, if you want to know, especially’—he tapped his thigh—‘if you suffer from the occupational hazard. Mind you, if you have a nice juicy murder this very evening, that is another matter surely. Your first penitent perhaps.’

  I knew he was teasing me but I still gulped and said, ‘That’s not likely, Father.’ When he did not reply: ‘Is it?’

  ‘Oh, at a guess and on the basis of me own experience, at least four to one against. Sex, now, is another kettle of fish.’

  ‘Sex comes up more frequently?’

  ‘Well,’ he tutted, ‘since you brought the indelicate subject up, I tell you. If an Irish girl confesses to company-keeping, be sure to investigate that thoroughly.’

  ‘By questioning?’

  He looked at me as if to say, How else? ‘To a colleen, Father Neil, company-keeping can mean anything from holding hands in the park to multiple adulteries. And watch out for the way English people—not Americans who are decent and straightforward folk—slip their mortal sins into the middle of a pack of peccadilloes. Now, as to birth control.’

  To prove the adequacy of my seminary training I told him that scientists were reported to be working on a contraceptive pill.

  ‘And no doubt,’ he replied scornfully, ‘the same Lucifer-like fellows think that one day they will fly to the moon. To practicalities. Contraception is a grievous sin because there is interference with nature to make sure that one and one do not make three.’ I smiled, hoping it was expected of me. ‘The Lord said to our first parents, ‘Multiply’ not ‘Stultify’. And, by the by, what would have happened, like, if Adam and Eve had used contraceptives?’

  ‘Nothing, Father.’

  ‘Indeed. For a start, you and I would not be here conversing and the whole world would be one gigantic zoo without any keepers to look after the animals. Could anything demonstrate better the evils of contraception?’

  I shook my head to show his argument had convinced me.

  ‘Father Neil, what natural methods of birth control are permitted by the Church?’

  ‘Complete abstinence, Father.’

  ‘From what?’ he asked. ‘From the drink? From flesh meat? Fish and chips? Be specific, if you would.’

  ‘From sex.’

  He pursed his lips approvingly. ‘Complete sexual abstinence is pure. And effective, certainly. Especially if husband and wife take the precaution of sleeping in separate towns.’

  ‘The other method,’ I said, ‘is using the safe-period.’

  ‘But once the intercourse of man and woman has begun,’ he said, lowering his fork, ‘what may lawfully interrupt it?’

  That was the moment Mrs Pring chose to poke her head round the door to say, ‘Plum pudding and custard?’

  Fr Duddleswell told her with measured impoliteness that when he was ready for his plum pudding and custard he would let her know. He repeated his question about any exceptions to the general rule of not interrupting intercourse—‘apart from Mrs Pring’s dessert.’

  I played for time. ‘You do mean married couples?’

  ‘If they are unmarried, boy, they should interrupt it before they start.’

  I had never asked myself such an intimate question before and so I enquired distractedly if an earthquake would do.

  ‘Surely, Father Neil, but do you mean that as cause or effect?’ When he saw I had finished guessing he put it to me, ‘Suppose the children come unannounced into their parents’ bedroom.’

  ‘During …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For a drink of water, Father?’

  ‘For any reason whatsoever, whether to drink water or to pass it.’

  ‘Ah,’ I exclaimed, as my memory came into focus, ‘it’s all right to stop sex—in the middle—if the bed breaks, Father.’

  ‘Correct!’ He slapped his knee in applause. ‘Provided of course their intention is not to prevent conception but only to restore a semblance of order to the room.’

  When lunch was over, Fr Duddleswell led me into the church. After a prayer, he showed me my confessional at close quarters.

  ‘You will notice,’ he said, ‘I have seen to it there is a blackout curtain over the grille. The good people like to think you cannot tell them from Adam and Eve.’

  ‘And can you, Father?’

  ‘The priest in the confessional, Father Neil, is like a blind man: all ears. Consequently, his hearing becomes very acute, if you’re still with me. In a while you will recognize every voice in the parish. More,’ he spoke with a certain professional pride, ‘before they even open their mouths, you will know who is there from their footsteps, from how they open the confessional door, from the squeaks they make when they kneel down on the prie-dieu—even from the way they breathe.’

  My breath caught in my throat on hearing of Fr Duddleswell’s remarkable talent for detection.

  ‘Often, Father Neil, you will know their sins before they confess them.’

  ‘Even the mortal, Father?’

  ‘Especially the mortal.’

  I guessed he was finding me an audience very much to his liking.

  ‘Sometimes you will smell it on them like booze or garlic. But most horrible of all …’—I waited, my mind boggling at the prospect of what was to come—‘you know which of them should visit their dentist. The sins themselves are odious enough but bad breath! Phew. Now, finally,’ he seemed relieved he had got that off his chest, ‘deaf-mutes.’

  Disconsolate, I could only repeat the latest source of my troubles.

  ‘There are two problems with them,’ he said briskly. ‘They cannot hear you and …’

  ‘You cannot hear them.’ He was pleased I was so quick on the uptake. ‘How do you hear their confessions, then?’

  ‘Unless you can work a miracle, you cannot. See here.’ He entered the confessional and showed me a drawer under the grille which he pulled out. ‘It opens two ways. The deaf-mute writes his sins on a piece of paper and sends it to you. You then write his penance underneath, ret
urn it to him and give him absolution. If it says on the paper, “A pound of sausages and two lamb chops,” you know the butcher has just received a very interesting order.’

  ‘What,’ I objected, ‘if the deaf-mute can’t read or write?’

  He looked at me a little wearily. ‘Father Neil, must you be ever manufacturing difficulties for yourself? Whoever heard of a deaf-mute going to confession if he cannot read nor write.’

  ‘But suppose one does.’

  ‘Oh,’ he concluded, as if no solution could be more obvious, ‘you pull down the curtain, lad, and use sign-language.’

  Mrs Pring served tea at four and it lasted a quarter of an hour. I did not take in much of what was said to me. Immediately afterwards, I went to my room to prepare myself for the impending ordeal. I was quivering as, I imagined, a surgeon is before his first operation—except I know the harm I could do was far worse since it was harm to souls.

  I put on my cassock, recently purchased from Van Haigh’s, the clerical tailors, for my ordination. My parents, though not well-off, insisted I have it. There were no soupstains down the front. It had all its buttons. My hand trembled so, I had difficulty in fastening them up.

  Fr Duddleswell came to my study to lead me, as he said, ‘through the milling crowds’ to my confessional.

  I expressed gratitude for his support.

  ‘I only hope, Father Neil, that your dear knees are not knocking their heads together.’

  We descended the stairs and passed through the door connecting house and sacristy. Thence, apprehensively, into the church.

  It was empty.

  I had expected to find benchfuls of sinners waiting to make their confession. For some reason, the emptiness had a more damaging effect upon my constitution than if the place had been crowded out. It made me feel more isolated than Moses on the mountain top.

  ‘Good heavens, Father Neil. There is not an individual here. I should have placed an Ad. in the paper.’

  Genuflecting with a wobble, I walked with him down the side aisle to my confessional, our footfalls echoing as in a museum. There he shook my hand with emotion and left.