Bless Me, Father

by Neil Boyd

  I opened up my side of the box and put on the purple stole that was draped across the chair, closed the door and sat down. At least I was privately alone there and not publicly alone as in the church.

  The door of the box had a top section of smoky glass. Through it, I saw amorphous shadows dancing in the flickering light of candles. The irreverent thought came to me that this was like sitting on an ancient lavatory.

  I had almost succeeded in pulling myself together when I became aware that I was not alone after all. There were noises.

  I imagined someone had either tip-toed into the penitent’s side of the box or been hiding there all along. I listened. I said, ‘Yes?’ in case there was a penitent waiting to begin. No speech, only noises.

  I felt some thing brush against the bottom of my cassock.

  With a yell, I pushed open the confessional door and jumped out of my seat with an almighty crash. It was a mouse—rodents always give me the creeps—a mother mouse followed crazily by two smaller mice. They must have been nesting there since spring behind the radiator. They scuttled away into the gloom.

  I could not follow their course because I saw another spectre. An elderly lady in a flowerpot hat had entered the church at the very moment I burst out of the box. Unaccustomed to such a wild display from an unknown clergyman, she screamed and ran from the church.

  There goes my first penitent, I reflected. I hoped she would not report me to the police.

  I returned warily to the box and saw that in my haste to escape I had kicked the chair from under me and smashed one of its legs. It hung on by a sliver of wood.

  I would have fixed it on the spot if I had been a practical man. But it so happens I’m what my father calls ‘maladroit’. Even my right foot is left-handed, so to speak. Guiltily, I crossed to Fr Duddleswell’s box carrying my chair and exchanged it for his.

  Back in my own box, I switched on the naked bulb above my head. Having assured myself there was no daddy mouse lurking in a corner waiting to pounce, I opened my breviary. This was a grotesque piece of self-deception. Prayer was impossible and I had already recited my office for that day in any case. But the black leather-bound book gave me a much needed feeling of warmth and security.

  In the seminary, our professor of moral theology, Canon Flynn, had advised us to copy out the Latin formula for confession in case we should forget it in a moment of crisis. I had written it out in capitals on a sheet of paper. When the penitent came in, the custom was to extinguish the light which meant the letters had to be large if I was to read them.

  I was grateful for Canon Flynn’s advice. By then I would have found it hard to recite even the Lord’s prayer without a prompter.

  Ages seemed to pass. My watch, which never panicked, told me it was eight minutes past the hour. Then came the sound of feet brushing hard on the rough mat at the entrance to the church. Someone knelt noisily and with a sigh near my confessional box but beyond my range of vision. I wondered if the lady with the flowerpot hat had summoned up enough courage to return, and, if so, what would I say to her? And what would she say to me?

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I am a sin.’

  In my relief, I could have given my invisible young penitent a big hug for making such a shambles of the opening formula.

  ‘Dominus sit in corde … May the Lord be in thy heart and on thy lips that thou mayest truly and humbly confess thy sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ I made the sign of the cross.

  The child’s voice went on, ‘Father …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is my second confession.’

  My first, I thought. I said, ‘And when was your first confession?’

  There was a pause before the voice answered. ‘Just before my first Communion.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Two weeks ago. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘Well,’ I explained, ‘I’m new to the parish, you see.’

  ‘Oh,’ the voice said, not very convinced.

  Another silence broken by the voice asking, ‘Are you still there, Father?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, grateful for some sign that my penitent hadn’t abandoned me. ‘What are your sins, dear?’

  I was pleased with that. ‘Dear’ was a good indefinite English word with which to address a child whose age and sex were undetermined. Of course, Fr Duddleswell would have had the edge …

  ‘I called the grocer a pig.’

  So it wasn’t only the Yanks who were frank about their faults. ‘Yes,’ I murmured non-committally. I didn’t want to appear either to condone the offence or be shocked by it.

  ‘Two times, Father.’

  ‘Why did you call him that?’

  ‘’Cos he deserved it. He was a pig.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, unable to test for myself whether there was a sufficient justification for the epithet. ‘What made you suspect he was a pig?’

  ‘He wouldn’t give me a chocolate marshmallow when I asked him to.’

  Another pause, so I said, ‘Was there something else?’

  After a silence broken only by the rocking of the prie-dieu, the voice whispered, ‘I committed adultery three times.’

  I blinked in the darkness. Was I dealing with an older person after all—say, a dwarf with a high-pitched voice? I managed to get out a question Canon Flynn had advised us never to put: ‘What exactly did you do?’

  ‘I took three pennies out of mummy’s purse.’ Then the voice corrected the mistake: ‘No, that’s the next commandment, isn’t it, the funny one? I know what it was, I stoled three times.’

  ‘Mummy trusts you, dear,’ I said, gently rather than reproachfully, ‘and you shouldn’t let her down, should you?’

  ‘She don’t,’ returned the voice.

  ‘Doesn’t what?’

  ‘She don’t trust me, she’s a wise ’un.’

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked, ready for a change of subject.

  ‘She owed it me for washing up.’

  ‘Anything else?’ I repeated.

  ‘She did, too.’

  No comment.

  ‘I committed an immortal sin.’

  ‘A mortal sin? How?’ I bit my tongue. Another prohibited question.

  ‘I didn’t go to Mass last Sunday.’

  ‘Why was that? Were you ill or something?’

  ‘No,’ replied the voice, sighing and blowing on the bottom of the confessional veil so it billowed and touched my ear. ‘Marge wouldn’t come with me.’

  ‘Is Marge your sister?’

  ‘No, Marge is my mum. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘I’m new …,’ I began but gave up. ‘Doesn’t your father go to church?’

  ‘My dad, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, your dad.’

  ‘He came to my first Communion.’

  ‘Not otherwise?’

  ‘He says next time he comes it’ll be in a bleedin’ box, Father.’

  I quieted my soul with the reflection that the child was only quoting. ‘Is he a Catholic?’

  ‘No, Father.’

  ‘Is he a believer, then?’

  ‘No, he’s a bus-driver.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, having sat in judgement long enough already on my first penitent, ‘for your penance I want you to go to Our Lady’s altar and say one Our Father and one Hail Mary for your mummy and daddy. Now make a good act of contrition while I give you absolution.’

  I spread out my sheet of paper on my knee and started to quietly read the absolution. I tried to be conscious of the solemnity of the occasion. For the first time in my priestly life I was forgiving sins in Christ’s name.

  ‘Misereatur tui, omnipotent Deus …’

  I had gone some way and still no sound of the act of contrition from the penitent. I halted and said encouragingly, ‘O my God, because Thou art so good …’

  The voice repeated, ‘O my God,’ and, satisfied it would continue under its own steam, I finished off the absolution.

 
At the end, I said, ‘Go in peace, dear, and pray for me.’

  There was a creak and a shuffle before the voice said, ‘I forgot my penance, Father.’

  ‘One Our Father and one Hail Mary.’

  The other side of the box banged open. I saw a pint-sized shadow flitter by and heard the clip-clip of a child’s feet going down the church.

  Someone else had entered the box with a heavy sigh and a creaking of the prie-dieu. I suspected I wasn’t going to be let off so lightly this time. I gave the blessing. I listened. No sound.

  ‘How long is it?’ I asked. Since there was still no sound I repeated my question, only louder.

  The clip-clip in advance of a shadow was already on the way back past the confessional. There was a light tap on my window and my first penitent said, ‘Bye-bye, Father.’

  ‘Goodbye, dear,’ I said, as tiny footsteps were swallowed up in the open air and the voice went home to Marge. Now I could concentrate on my second penitent. ‘How long is it since your last confession?’ I could hear heavy breathing continuing so I banged nervously on the box to get some reaction.

  Then the situation became painfully clear. A deaf-mute? Must be a deaf-mute.

  I opened up the drawer. Nothing there. Frantically I wrote on the back of my sheet of paper: ‘WHAT ARE YOUR SINS?’ and put it in the drawer. I waited for a few seconds until the sound of scribbling on the other side of the grille had ceased, then pulled the drawer out again. Underneath my question, written in the clearest hand, was the answer: ‘MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.’

  Angrily I pulled aside the curtain to see Fr Duddleswell’s cherubic face beaming at me through the grille like a fish in a net. ‘Do not forget to replace me chair when you have finished with it.’

  ‘No, Father’

  ‘And, Father Neil.’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘May your stay at St Jude’s continue as happily as it has begun.’

  II An Unusual Pregnancy

  My earliest impression of my parish priest was that, notwithstanding his bland exterior, he was a wily old bird. This impression was soon to be confirmed.

  We were standing side by side outside the church one Sunday morning. He was still wearing his vestments because it was his custom, immediately he had celebrated the late Mass, to leave the sanctuary while the choir was still busy chanting the prayer for the King and race down the aisle like a rabbit to greet the parishioners as they filed out.

  ‘We priests have got to be as sociable as sun and rain,’ he’d said to me, as the “good people” emerged blinking into the daylight, he shook their hands, spoke to each of them and wished them ‘God’s blessing on you and yours.’

  Fr Duddleswell introduced me to any number of the congregation, mentioning their names and addresses. It was like expecting me to memorize the telephone directory. But towards the end of the line, he introduced me to a couple whose name had a familiar ring.

  ‘Father Neil, I’d have you meet Mr and Mrs Macaulay, stalwarts of the parish.’

  They beamed at the compliment and shook my hand with Irish bonhomie.

  ‘And this,’ added Fr Duddleswell, ‘is their married daughter, Mary Frost.’

  I exchanged greetings with Mary Frost, a little alarmed as celibates tend to be, at the fact that she was so advanced in pregnancy.

  ‘Father Neil,’ said the obviously dominant Mrs Macaulay, ‘our Tim has often spoken of you.’

  Then I was certain I was being introduced to the family of Tim Macaulay who’d been my best pal in the seminary.

  ‘Our Tim’s turn next, Father,’ Mr Macaulay softly said to me.

  ‘And a grand priest he’ll make, too,’ said Fr Duddleswell.

  ‘It so happens,’ said Mrs Macaulay, telling me what she must have realized I knew as well as she, ‘our Tim is a subdeacon, but this time next year he’ll be celebrating his first holy Mass in St Jude’s.’

  ‘God willing,’ added the quiet Mr Macaulay.

  ‘And how is Mary?’ asked Fr Duddeswell, turning to the round and lovely daughter who reminded me very much, feature-wise, of her brother.

  Mary said blushingly, ‘As well as could be expected, considering, Father.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it,’ responded Fr Duddleswell.

  ‘Father married Mary and Patrick in St Jude’s a little over nine months ago,’ Mrs Macaulay announced to me in a volume more appropriate to a loudspeaker.

  ‘A great occasion,’ said the parish priest. ‘Will I ever forget it? I never will.’

  ‘And the power of Fr Duddleswell’s blessing will soon be made manifest to all the world,’ said the eloquent Mrs Macaulay.

  I thought the world had a grandstand view already.

  Next to me, Mr Macaulay shuffled his feet and whispered, ‘We’re very much looking forward to the happy event, Father.’

  ‘In a couple of weeks,’ said his wife, ‘Mary is going to present us with our very first grandson. Isn’t that so, now, Mary?’

  Mary blushed a deeper hue. ‘God willing,’ she murmured.

  Sharing Mary’s discomfort, I attempted to put her at her ease. ‘And how is your husband, Mrs Frost?’

  ‘Very well, Father, thanking you. He’s in Birmingham. I’m just down for the weekend.’

  ‘Mary,’ said Fr Duddleswell, ‘I think you are a very brave girl coming all this way from the Midlands on your own at this time.’

  ‘I’ll be all right, Father, and Pat’s going to pick me up at Birmingham New Street tonight.’

  Mrs Macaulay put in: ‘So it’ll mean another baptism for you not too long hence.’

  ‘I look forward to every christening,’ said the parish priest. ‘Now run along with you and do not keep poor Mary on her feet one second longer than she needs.’

  As the happy family group departed, Fr Duddleswell was repeating mostly to himself: ‘A lovely girl, a lovely girl that Mary, lovely girl.’

  At lunch, I remarked on the striking likeness between Mary and her brother, Tim.

  ‘Provided she does not take after her mother, she can count herself blessed among women.’

  ‘Her mother is a strong character, I could tell.’

  ‘Strong as Gorgonzola cheese and proud as a paycock.’

  I thought his tone uncharacteristically acid. ‘She seemed a pious sort of person,’ I ventured.

  As he flicked over the pages of the News Of The World, he said: ‘Oh, she is pious all right. A Pharisee of Pharisees, if you ask me.’

  ‘She’s looking forward to a little grandson, Father.’

  ‘Not this time round.’

  I was silent for a moment, wondering whether he were a prophet or gynaecologists were at last able to determine a child’s sex before birth.

  ‘Are you sure, Father?’ I said.

  ‘Quite sure.’

  Fr Duddleswell suddenly closed his newspaper with a swish, raised his spectacles on to his forehead and said: ‘Promise me you will not let on.’

  I promised, not knowing what this was all about.

  ‘Sub sigillo, I mean it,’ he continued. ‘Treat this as a confessional secret. The truth of the matter is: Mary Frost is not pregnant at all. At least, I hope to God she isn’t.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he might be mistaken. Each time he opened his mouth I was becoming more confused.

  ‘Father,’ I managed to say, ‘she looks pregnant.’

  ‘She is supposed to look very pregnant. But, in fact, Mary Frost had her baby a couple of months ago.’ He must have seen my look of disbelief, for he added, ‘And ’twas a girl, not a boy. Mrs Macaulay has a grand-daughter and that is more than she deserves.’

  ‘And why, Father, does Mary look pregnant when she isn’t?’

  ‘An old trick. Cushions, Father Neil, cushions.’

  Grudgingly he explained. ‘Mary Macaulay was made pregnant by Paddy Frost two months before they married. Mary’s no whore, let me assure you of that. The first and only time she went company-keeping, Paddy got her in t
he family way. Their proficiency was entirely due to inexperience, you follow?’

  ‘A popgun wedding?’ I asked.

  ‘A shotgun wedding is the more common phrase,’ he said, smiling faintly, ‘but I reckon, Father Neil, that your description is the more apt.’

  ‘I meant they had to get married.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, but they loved each other, mind. Paddy is your typical Irishman, not disposed towards marriage unless there is sufficient reason for it. His unexpected talent for paternity supplied the precipitating reason and they got wed without argument. Nothing like a child, as they say, to bring a couple together.’

  Fr Duddleswell went on to say he’d had to resort to subterfuge on account of Mrs Macaulay’s excessive pride.

  ‘Mary knew well enough the kind of mother she had inherited. If she had owned up to her condition, Mrs Macaulay would have shown her the door and used her timid little man for a doorstopper.’

  ‘Would she really?’

  ‘Not a doubt about it, Father Neil. Remember the woman comes from the heart of bogland. Did not she name her daughter after the Blessed Virgin herself? ’Tis a marvel to me she let her darlin’ Mary enter the lustful condition of matrimony at all. Anyway, the real light of her life is Tim, who is destined to be a priest and thus guarantee a place in heaven for all the family. Mrs Macaulay could not bear the thought of it being whispered abroad that her holy son has a harlot for a sister.’

  ‘I know the kind of thing you mean, Father. There was an Irishman entered the seminary with me who gave up after six months and …’

  ‘And he could not return to his native Dublin on account of him being ‘a spoiled praste’ and a disgrace to his bloody family.’

  ‘It was Galway, actually.’

  ‘What can you do with people of that mentality, Father Neil? Two months after the ceremony, before anything showed, I parcelled the newly-weds off to Birmingham. Paddy is only a bricklayer and he can lay one brick on t’other as well in Birmingham as anywhere else. They rented a room on the edge of town. They are finding it tough financially, you know how ’tis, starting with two mouths and two salaries and now three mouths and one salary. But they manage. They are contented just being away from Mother Macaulay.’