Bless Me, Father

by Neil Boyd

  At 4.30 precisely, I phoned Tony. He had arranged to have Archie in his office at that time.

  ‘Fairwater 2321,’ said Tony, when he picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello, Tony, it’s me, Fr Boyd.’

  ‘Hello, Jim,’ said Tony breezily. ‘Nice to hear your voice again. And so soon. I thought your bronchitis would last a month or more.’

  I grimly held on to the receiver, wondering whether this fractured conversation was morally permissible.

  ‘That’s mighty good news, Jim. You mean the doctor said, he actually said, you can come back to work tomorrow? Great! I look forward to seeing you at 8 o’clock. And, Jim, give my love to the wife and kids.’

  Then Tony hung up on me and my family.

  At 6.30, Tony rang me again. ‘Thanks for your help, Father.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Like a charm. He took it without a murmur when I explained he wouldn’t be needed any more.’

  ‘I’m so glad. I feel I was mostly to blame.’

  ‘Never you mind, Father. Do you know, I think he suspected someone had ratted on him. Didn’t complain but looked real crestfallen, he did, as if this has happened to him before.’

  ‘Poor Archie,’ I said, for I had a curious fondness for the crook.

  ‘I felt really sorry for him myself. As the wife says, you can’t help being a wee bit on his side.’

  ‘You couldn’t have done anything else, Tony. Too much of a risk.’

  ‘Sure, Father, but I’m only saying I felt Archie really has turned over a new leaf, that’s the sad part. There was the purse he gave back, and another thing …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, when I paid him his wages—£10 as we’d agreed—I said, ‘Look here, Archie, I’m awfully sorry to put you to this inconvenience, you having to find another job in midweek and all, here’s an extra couple of quid to make up,’ you know what he said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“No deal, Mr Marlowe. We agreed £10 and not an extra farthing will I take.” And he wouldn’t. Ever known a crook turn down two quid when it’s been handed to him on a plate?’

  ‘Thanks for ringing me, Tony,’ I said in conclusion. ‘All’s well that ends well.’

  Naturally, things hadn’t all ended as far as I was concerned. I was troubled lest Archie thought I’d given him away. The day before, I’d taken his address in Begnall Street and I was sorely tempted to call on him and enquire how he was. But I was frightened he might throw me out or, worse, ask me to find him another job ‘under the seal’, as it were. On balance, it seemed better to let matters rest. But three days later, I was walking in the High Street when I ran into Archie. My feelings were mixed. I didn’t know whether to flee or commiserate with him for losing his job or accuse him of not telling me the truth about his record of violence.

  Archie was all smiles. ‘Come and join me in a cup o’ char, Father?’

  I agreed and we sat down in a little café in a side street. I offered to pay but he wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘Be my guest,’ he said.

  Seeing his pacific mood, I decided to get something off my chest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had convictions for G.B.H.?’

  ‘Why should I, Father? I’m not violent no more. I’m not a thief no more. Why should I tell all and sundry I’ve got me a record of crime?’

  ‘I’m not exactly all and sundry, Archie.’

  ‘True, Father, but you couldn’t ’ave put me in for a job if you knew, could you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There y’are then. You weren’t to know I’m now gentle as a lamb.’

  ‘One thing, Archie,’ I said, conceding the force of his argument.

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘I didn’t split on you.’

  ‘I know that, Father. It was a bloke called Peregrine Worsley.’

  ‘Has he split on you before, then?’

  ‘Father,’ replied Archie, ‘’e’s doing it all the time.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, my hackles rising again at the thought of Peregrine Worsley, Pharisee.

  ‘Nothin’ to be sorry about, Father. ’E’s my best pal. We’re confederates, always working ’and in glove.’

  ‘You mean this was all a con trick?’

  ‘Nothin’ like that,’ said Archie, horrified. ‘Let me explain, Father. Perry used to be an accountant earning five or six grand a year. But ’e got ’isself into ’ot water, embezzling a few thousand more, see? So ’e joins me in a job at a bank in Sunbury. ’E was only trying to straighten ’isself out so ’e wouldn’t ’ave to lead a life o’ crime. ’E was supposed to be my decoy, only he opened ’is big gob when ’e shouldn’t ’ave and nearly ruined everythin’. In the end, we got nabbed, thanks be to Gawd, and put away together.’ He looked up from his tea cup. ‘’E told you all that, I suppose.’

  ‘Not exactly in those terms,’ I said with understandable annoyance.

  ‘Anyways, Father. This is ’ow we earns our keep now. I reg’larly get a week’s wage for one day’s work, sometimes with luck, for ’alf a day.’

  ‘But, Archie,’ I cried, very vexed, ‘I resent being used like this. Don’t you realize you’ve implicated me in your crime?’

  ‘Crime, Father?’ asked Archie, aghast. ‘But where’s the crime? We didn’t even tell lies.’

  VI Breaking the Seal

  ‘Did you enjoy the roast beef, Fr Duddleswell?’ the busty young waitress asked.

  ‘Indeed, I did, Nelly. Me compliments to the cook. If he is in today.’

  I was lunching with my parish priest in the restaurant of The Clinton Hotel, a small place with a few tables and a bar, which had something of the atmosphere of a village pub. It was a little luxury we indulged in from time to time to give Mrs Pring ‘a holiday from the kitchen sink and ourselves a respite from her stirabout’, as Fr Duddleswell put it.

  I was dimly aware of Fr Duddleswell asking Nelly if she had managed to buy the house she was after but I was examining the Menu for a dessert and failed to pick up Nelly’s reply.

  ‘Father Neil.’ I jerked my nose out of the Menu. ‘Did y’hear what Nelly said?’ I shook my head. ‘Nelly’s got a flat.’

  At this moment Nelly was leaning over the table sweeping up the crumbs with a silver brush and pan. Her capacious bust was but a few challenging inches from my eyes, monopolizing the whole horizon, so to speak. Mesmerized, I could only repeat stupidly, ‘Flat? Flat? I don’t know what Nelly was shaped like before, Father.’

  Nelly gave me the stony eye, straightened up and asked, ‘Anything to follow, Fr Duddleswell?’

  ‘’Twould be difficult to follow that, Nelly,’ he replied with a grin. ‘The roast, I mean.’ He looked across at me. ‘How about you, now? Something exotic, Father Neil. Like, say, a hot cup of coffee.’

  I closed the Menu and handed it to the waitress. ‘Thank you, Father.’

  ‘The cream is extra, Father Neil,’

  ‘Black will be fine,’ I said.

  Fr Duddleswell touched Nelly’s wrist. ‘Fetch me curate a black coffee and one with cream for me, Nelly, if you would.’ As Nelly was adding his Menu to mine under her arm, he said, ‘I think Fr Boyd would appreciate a bowl of strawberries.’

  I gave a grateful gurgle which he acknowledged before touching Nelly’s wrist again. ‘Without cream.’

  ‘Strawberries for you, too, Fr Duddleswell?’

  ‘For me, no.’

  ‘I thought you liked them,’ Nelly said.

  ‘I do, Nelly, indeed I do. But the price has risen alarmingly of late and they are far too expensive for the both of us to be eating them.’

  As Nelly went on her way, Fr Duddleswell held up what was left of our bottle of Nuits St Georges. ‘More wine for yourself?’

  ‘Just a little, Father,’ I said, not expecting the fraction of an inch which was all I received.

  ‘Just a little,’ breathed Fr Duddleswell, ‘for your stomach’s sake, as the Apostle counselled Timothy.’ He then fil
led his glass with the remainder. ‘Cannot have you abstaining altogether,’ he said, ‘else Nelly will suspect you of being a Methodist preacher.’ In his estimation, that was a slander impossible to live down.

  He glanced sideways before putting his left hand to his mouth in what he took to be a surreptitious movement. From behind the barricade, he muttered like a gangster, ‘Over there, lad.’ He indicated two elderly ladies coming to the end of their meal at an adjoining table. ‘The two Miss Flanagans.’

  ‘Catholics, I presume.’

  ‘They turn up more regularly at Mass than Jesus Himself.’

  The ladies must have caught his eye because he smiled courteously and acknowledged them. ‘Miss Flanagan, Miss Flanagan.’ I half-rose and joined in with ‘Misses Flanagan.’

  Nelly brought my strawberries. ‘Coffee coming up, Gentlemen.’

  Fr Duddleswell, in one of his more mischievous moods, remarked, ‘I do not for the life of me know how someone shaped like Nelly will fit into a flat.’

  If this was some sort of a game, I wasn’t playing. I dug into my dessert.

  ‘’Tis a strange thing, Father Neil, the association of ideas. Some are good, and some of ’em are bad.’

  A meticulous observation, I thought.

  ‘A good association of ideas, now.’ Plucking a strawberry from my dish before I could rap his knuckles with my spoon, he held it aloft by the stalk. ‘’Tis when you look at a strawberry and it reminds you of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.’ He swallowed it.

  I had heard him crack that one before. To humour the likeable old chap I asked, ‘And a bad association of ideas?’

  As if he had prepared and rehearsed it well in advance, he drew from his inside pocket the relevant gaudy ‘holy’ picture and held it up for me to see. ‘’Tis when you see a picture of the Sacred Heart and it reminds you of a strawberry.’

  Poised to bite such a hallowed object, I set it down slowly on the dish. Right, so it was war.

  ‘I was thinking, Father.’

  ‘Very daring of you, Father Neil.’

  ‘What did you do with the money from the Bazaar?’

  ‘The money from the Bazaar?’ he echoed, as if it were news to him there’d been a Bazaar. ‘Why, of course, ’twent into the fund for the church hall.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘All of it?’ he said in a kind of minor key. I nodded. ‘All that was donated by the insurance company, that is.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Oh, the offerings of the faithful, too, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally. And Billy Buzzle’s contribution?’

  ‘The faithful were very generous in our hour of need, wouldn’t you say?’

  I looked at him without blinking.

  ‘Billy Buzzle’s contribution? Well, I could not advertise that, could I?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you stashed it away in a private account in Zurich,’ I said. The red wine was making me belligerent.

  ‘There is no secret about it, Father Neil. ’Tis gone into the Wallington Building Society where it brings us in a good three per cent per annum. The interest goes towards the expenses of the church.’

  ‘Precisely, and in my view we ought to spend some of that money.’

  Fr Duddleswell who, as Mrs Pring observed, was tight as a reefknot with parish funds, his bell apart, looked agitated. ‘What on?’ he asked.

  ‘You know the mikes in our church.’

  ‘Mike O’Leary, Mike O’Donnel, Mike …’ It was a brave attempt.

  ‘The microphone mikes,’ I said.

  He was very much aware he was being got at. ‘Ah, yes? Polish off those strawberries, now, and do not be wasting parish funds.’

  I refused the hint. ‘I think you need a new loudspeaker system. The one we’ve got gives off a terrible hum. The congregation can’t hear you. Not even your appeals for money.’ The last part registered, at any rate.

  As Nelly arrived with the coffee, I added, ‘You also need new confessionals, Father.’

  ‘Nelly,’ he said, ‘what did you lace those strawberries with?’

  With a puzzled expression, poor Nelly went back to her work.

  ‘Father Neil, what is wrong with the confessionals we have?’

  ‘They’re made of cardboard. Not sound-proof. I read in an old parish magazine that they were put up during the First World War.’

  ‘Things were better made in the old days.’ He spoke with a dreamy nostalgia.

  ‘In war-time, Father, there are always economy measures and the confessionals must have been one of them.’

  ‘Have they not served the parish well these last forty years?’

  I paused dramatically.

  ‘Well, have they not?’

  ‘Someone who shall be nameless, Father, walked past your confessional and heard a penitent confess to … adultery.’

  Fr Duddleswell nearly choked on his wine. ‘’Tis not possible.’

  ‘You mean there’s no adultery in your parish?’ I asked with a kind of tipsy irony.

  ‘Keep your voice down, Father Neil.’ He caught the eyes of the ladies again and smiled sickly. ‘Miss Flanagan. ‘Miss Flanagan.’ From behind his hand again: ‘I mean nobody, but nobody could possibly hear what is being said in my confessional.’

  ‘Father, with respect,’ I said, ‘could it be that your hearing isn’t as good as it was?’ Before he could object, I added, ‘And to be honest, Father, mine isn’t all it should be, either. I’m going to Dr Daley’s soon to have my ears syringed. I’m finding difficulty in hearing what penitents say to me these days. I keep having to tell them to speak up.’

  ‘’Tis hard to credit that what is said in …’

  ‘Mrs Conroy, Father.’

  ‘What about Mrs Conroy?’ he snapped.

  ‘Mrs Conroy, the butcher’s wife, and the undertaker,’

  ‘The undertaker is Mr Bottesford,’ he said, reduced to a whisper.

  ‘Rumour has it that Mrs Conroy and the undertaker are … you know.’

  ‘Father Neil, you are talking in riddles like the prophet Daniel. Know what?’

  I swallowed a strawberry with a gulp. ‘Having an affair.’

  ‘’Tis news to me,’ said Fr Duddleswell, biting his lip and tapping with his foot.

  ‘If you have heard of it in confession your lips are sealed, I know. You can’t say they’re committing adultery …’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he interrupted me angrily. Another polite nod and smile to the ladies. ‘Miss Flanagan. Miss Flanagan.’

  I insisted on completing my sentence. ‘And you can’t say they’re not.’

  ‘I am saying they are not.’

  ‘Father,’ I said in a hoarse whisper, ‘I’m not asking you to pass judgement on allegations of a parish scandal. I realize I’ll never know if what you’re saying now is a mental reservation or the plain, unvarnished truth.’ Before he could edge in, I continued, ‘Even if you say it’s the plain unvarnished truth, that too may be another quite legitimate mental reservation to defend the seal of confession as best you can.’

  ‘What is the point of all this?’

  ‘It’s this. The scandal, justified or not, has gained ground because parishioners suspect that the walls of our confessionals have ears.’

  Fr Duddleswell missed the last bit. He was distracted by two men who had come in through the back door and were making a bee-line for the bar. As they brushed our table, they said in unison, ‘Afternoon, Fathers.’

  Fr Duddleswell recovered quickly from what must have been a nasty surprise. ‘Fr Boyd, this is Bottesford, the undertaker.’ I shook hands with the big, burly man who wore a black tail-coat and carried a topper. ‘And this,’ Fr Duddleswell went on, ‘is Mr Conroy, husband of Mrs Conroy.’ Realizing the inappropriateness of such an introduction he tried to cover it up with, ‘And the best black-market butcher in the business.’

  Mr Conroy, smiling at the compliment, tipped his straw hat and took my hand. ‘Liking the parish, Father?’r />
  ‘It’s more interesting,’ I replied, ‘than I can possibly tell you, Mr Conroy.’

  Mr Bottesford took advantage of the chance meeting to criticize one aspect of my parochial performance so far. ‘You’ve not put any custom my way as yet, Fr Boyd.’ He handed me a black-edged card. ‘My motto is: “Go to the Lord, with Bottesford”. Ten per cent reduction for deceased Catholics, as you’d expect.’

  ‘Do not let us keep you gentlemen,’ hinted Fr Duddleswell, and the butcher and the burier went to the bar for a quick jar.

  ‘They seem good pals,’ I said guiltily.

  ‘The best, Father Neil. They are both in the meat-trade, in a manner of speaking. The butcher would surely know if he was drinking with a man who undressed his prime joint.’

  I acknowledged the force of that.

  ‘Mrs Conroy,’ he went on, ‘is very silly even as women go but she must realize that if she went into the undertaker’s parlour she would suffer a fate far worse than death.’

  ‘I’ll have to tell Mrs Pring there’s …’

  He cut across me. ‘I knew it was she.’

  Anxious for a change of topic, I asked, ‘Is Mr Bottesford married?’

  ‘He is. But his two children left home long ago and his wife just ran off with a commercial traveller.’ He drained his glass. ‘So he has a lot to be thankful for.’

  He jerked his chin at the last of my strawberries. ‘Did you by any chance intend to eat that?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Father.’

  He grabbed and swallowed it. ‘We will motor back to the church to experiment, like.’

  He rose, said a quick grace and pointed to Winston Churchill’s picture hanging on the wall a few yards from our table. ‘Astonishing man, Father Neil.’

  I drained my cup and got to my feet. ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘He has brains,’ said Fr Duddleswell, shaking his head with incredulity, ‘to lick the Hun and still not enough to become a Catholic.’

  ‘Time for the news, Father Neil.’

  It was ten minutes later and he had me standing in the pulpit with the heavy old-fashioned mike round my neck.