Father Neil's Monkeyshines Read online

  Father Neil’s Monkeyshines

  Neil Boyd

  I dedicate these previously unpublished stories to my friend and inspiration

  the incomparable comic actor

  Arthur Lowe

  Contents

  1. A Father Twice Over

  2. The Foundling

  3. A Soldier Back from the War

  4. The Baby Boom

  5. The New Curate

  6. A Man Has His Pride

  7. A Welsh Dragon

  8. When Lovers Part

  9. Poor Little Rich Boy

  10. A Murderer in the Parish

  11. Born on Christmas Day

  Looking Back Over the Years

  About the Author

  1. A Father Twice Over

  “Father Dawson’s dog is very religious, Father Neil.”

  I greeted this bit of local gossip with caution. “I’m sure, Father.”

  “I tell you, lad,” Father Duddleswell continued, “that blessed dog says mass, baptizes babies, and hears confessions, apart from taking up the collection.”

  “It sounds as if he practically runs the parish.”

  “Oh, he does.”

  Father Dawson, known as “Chick,” was due for dinner. Dr. Daley was on his way to collect our guest by car. It was a journey of minutes since Father Dawson’s parish of the Sacred Heart was adjacent to ours.

  Mrs. Pring was putting the finishing touches to the dining room. I saw her set a silver-plated dish on the floor by the hearth. If this was a hoax, it was an elaborate one.

  Father Dawson was known as an amiable eccentric of the old school. He had only a tin hut for a church connected to a bungalow “with no room for a rat to pass” between them. There lived the incumbent with his dog, Rufus, a golden Labrador. He had no resident housekeeper. A mother of six came in daily and “did” for him, but he cooked for himself, eggs mostly.

  I said to Mrs. Pring, “So the dog doesn’t actually clean up or cook.”

  “Don’t you be saucy, Father Neil.”

  By her tone, I gathered this dog was not to be taken lightly.

  As soon as Father Dawson entered the room, I fell under his spell. He had a warm, gentle, welcoming personality.

  At his heel was Rufus, an old gentleman not unlike his master. His collar accentuated the likeness. It was broad, white, and clerical looking. His coat was more white than yellow. His old legs splayed out, he moved at a slow jog, bleary eyed, with his belly close to the ground. The legendary Rufus walked, I thought, with the dignity and composure of a retired cardinal. We all had to shake him by the paw, a task the gentleman performed with a slight yawn as if it were a bit of a chore.

  Aged about seventy, Chick had arrived smoking a cheroot. He was wearing a cassock so faded by time and wear it was more chalk-colored than black. He was small with neat gray hair and a pearly smile. Mrs. Pring, a fine judge of character, adored him and considered him a saint.

  When we were introduced, he took my hand in both his and held it for a few moments. It was more than a formality; it was his way of taking me into his confidence.

  “You’ve met Rufus, I hope? Good. We are very close. If I die first, the vet will put him to sleep. If he dies first, Doc Daley here will put me to sleep.”

  As soon as Chick sat down at table, he took out a number of medicine bottles containing pills of all colors and sizes.

  “I’m a full-fledged hypochondriac,” he said, making a face at me as he swallowed one pill after another.

  Dr. Daley acknowledged that he had prescribed them for a number of complaints, including heart trouble. All the more surprising that our guest smoked even between courses.

  What I remember most about the meal was a series of interruptions. Several times, Father Dawson was called away from the table to the phone. Finally, after an urgent call from the hospital, he and Rufus had to leave us altogether.

  “Someone needs us,” he said.

  As he was going, he pressed my hand and said simply, “I like you, lad. Why not come and visit me sometime? I do a very tasty boiled egg.”

  “He’s very much in demand,” I said when he’d left, and Father Duddleswell said amen to that.

  Surprisingly, that judgment was not shared by everyone.

  That summer, I accompanied Father D, as Mrs. Pring called Father Duddleswell, and Dr. Daley on a day trip to Brighton-on-Sea. I chose to laze in a deck chair on the pier while they tried their luck at the racetrack. When it came over cold, I sought refuge in a small seafront hotel where I ordered afternoon tea.

  It turned out that the proprietor Les Ames had been a parishioner of ours before the war.

  “To be precise,” he said, “Jill and me belonged to the parish next to yours, the Sacred Heart, but we couldn’t stand the parish priest. No one could.”

  I thought he was mixing up Father Dawson with someone else, but he described him exactly and his wife confirmed it. Father Dawson, they said, was so appallingly rude and sarcastic that the parishioners petitioned the bishop to move him somewhere else.

  The couple didn’t seem malicious. I was puzzled.

  Jill asked, “Is that Father Doodles bloke still at Saint Jude’s? He is? What a character, eh? A rogue with a brogue, we called him.”

  “When he said the rosary,” Les said, “he threaded the beads through his fingers like a cartridge belt fed into a machine gun. Crafty old bloke, too, but his heart was in the right place.”

  When I went to pay my bill, Jill wouldn’t hear of it. One of the perks of the job, I supposed. There had to be some.

  On the way home to London, I asked Father Duddleswell to explain the conflicting opinions about Chick.

  He and Dr. Daley exchanged a knowing glance before he said, “’Tis true, Chick was once disliked a little by his good people but he changed, y’see.”

  I wanted to know what had brought the change about.

  “Well, now, Father Neil, didn’t he have a heart attack a few years back that made him see the light?”

  Doc nodded agreement, but I sensed they were keeping something from me.

  Out of irritation, I mimicked Father D: “Jaysus, nobody tells me anything around here. I might as well be living in the belly of a cow.”

  A few weeks after this came word that Father Dawson was unwell. “More water to him than whiskey,” as Dr. Daley put it.

  We all wanted Chick to die in harness, among his own people.

  Since it only took me ten minutes to cycle to his place, I volunteered to keep things ticking over for him until he regained his strength.

  “You like boiled eggs, lad?” Father Duddleswell asked with a grin that granted my wish to help out.

  Father Dawson was in bed, looking very pale.

  “So, Neil,” he said, “you offered to help a lame dog over a style. God bless you for that.”

  On and off, I assisted him for a few months. Sometimes he was well for weeks at a time, then tiredness forced him back to bed.

  Father Duddleswell never grumbled at my absences. He and Chick, he said, went back to Moses and beyond.

  During my stay at the Sacred Heart, I tried to check on the mysterious change that had come over Father Dawson a dozen years before. None of his flock could give me a satisfactory explanation. These days they kept writing to Bishop O’Reilly, begging him not to put their parish priest out to grass.

  Rufus was as old in canine terms as Chick. The parishioners gave me an entertaining account of how Father Dawson never went into the confessional without Rufus. It was a tight squeeze, but the old p
riest appreciated Rufus as a foot warmer, especially in the winter months.

  He would often say to a penitent, “Take no notice of my curate, my dear, he is vowed not to break the seal of confession. Nor will he be offended by anything you say. Mind you, he might growl at you a little if you’ve been very naughty.”

  At this point, he used to dig Rufus with his toecap, and Rufus responded with the kind of growl to be expected if the penitent’s sins turned out to be very bad.

  When a penitent mumbled his more serious sins, Father Dawson asked if he wouldn’t mind repeating them, louder this time on account of Father Rufus being hard of hearing.

  After the confessing of sins, Father Dawson consulted Rufus: “Tell me honestly now, Father dear, what you think. What penance shall we give this lovely person who has just told God how sorry he is?”

  The dog was trained to raise his nose to his master’s cheek, after which Father Dawson said, “I agree with you wholeheartedly, Father. Three Hail Marys is just about right.” To the penitent: “You heard, my dear, what the theologian beside me said, so promise him you won’t do it again, or next time it won’t be Hail Marys he’ll give you but a little nip where it hurts.”

  The penitent invariably gave his or her word.

  “And now, my dear, Father Rufus will join you in a sincere act of contrition.”

  The dog softly howled on cue as the priest began, “O my God, because thou art so good …” All the time Rufus was howling, his tummy growled like a refrigerator and his big liquid eyes gazed with all innocence through the grill to make sure the penitent was making an act of contrition.

  Afterward, Father Dawson said, “Bless you, my dear. Would you mind closing the door after you so my curate doesn’t complain of the draft?”

  No wonder the faithful had no fear of confessing to Father Dawson. The dog, they said, gave the sacrament “that human touch.” It took the edge off their nervousness.

  When I heard my first confession in that parish, there was no sound at all from the penitent. It was a little girl, completely baffled. She had never been to confession without the curate being present.

  Chick, I discovered, was a great fund-raiser. Strapping a box to Rufus’s back, he made the rounds of the entire district. No matter who was in trouble, Catholic or not, he and his dog went on their errand of mercy.

  From his sickbed, he told me he’d like me to continue the good work. Seeing I was none too keen, he explained what the present collection was for. A postman, Tommy Rawlings, had been climbing on his roof to fix the guttering. He’d fallen off and was now paralyzed from the waist down.

  “The poor lad will never walk again, Neil. So I’m sure you won’t mind walking around the parish with Rufus. He’ll show you the way. And you’ll surely rake in a few coppers for Tommy and his missus.”

  We had a staggering reception. Everyone welcomed me because of my association with the dog and sent greetings and best wishes to Father Dawson. I collected sixty pounds in notes.

  On our way home, a tramp stopped me. I expected him to beg for money. Nothing of the sort.

  “I ’eard,” he said, “the Father’s on ’is back again.”

  I nodded.

  He bent down, took a half crown out of his shoe and put it in our box.

  “Give ’im that from me. Tell ’im Black Joey is asking upward for ’is return to pinkness.”

  It also impressed me that when Rufus and I went shopping, I wasn’t allowed to pay for a thing.

  I took home Chick’s lunch of eggs and bread and butter with, “It’s on the house again, Father.”

  “Ah,” he said, spreading butter on his bread thick as cement in a wall, “they are gorgeous people.”

  Doc Daley called regularly to give his patient a checkup. The visit invariably ended with a drink and game of cards. What with the smokes from the doc’s cigarettes and the priest’s cheroots, it was hard to see across the room.

  I often heard them discussing the past and how speedily life passes so you don’t know you’re getting old until you are, and even then, you don’t feel old.

  “It’s like,” Chick said, “you are still an eagle but with sparrow’s wings.”

  Doc invariably left saying, “You’ll live, Chick.”

  “I don’t care if I do or I don’t,” he said. “Dying’s my only chance of becoming young again,” to which Doc said a loud amen.

  After one of the Doc’s visits, Chick gave me a little homily that I still cherish.

  “When you’re young, Neil, you pray, ‘Don’t let me die, Lord, I’m not ready yet.’ Then you grow older and find you’re less ready than ever you were. ‘More time, Lord,’ you pray. Finally, at my great age, you realize being ready is not important, whatever the spiritual writers say.”

  “What is important, then, Father?”

  “Is God ready, that’s the thing? Holy Moses, if God waited till I was ready, he’d have to wait beyond the Day of Judgment. He’d have to say to his holy angels, ‘Off with you from the four corners of the earth and blow those bugles loud. But be sure to leave old Chick Dawson alone, he’s not ready yet.’”

  He laughed heartily at his own little joke.

  “Ah, Neil,” he said at length, his eyes watering, “you’re only ready to die when you accept you never will be ready.”

  “Have you reached that stage yet?”

  “Long, long, long, long ago,” he said.

  One day, a perfect afternoon in early June, I was at the Sacred Heart when I asked Chick if he would care to sit in the garden. He would, he said.

  I wrapped him in a blanket and helped him to a garden seat in the shade of a giant elm. It was a peaceful setting for a man of peace in the Indian summer of life.

  Rufus was lying in long grass studded with buttercups. The hawthorn bushes at the garden’s edge shone creamy white in the sun. Grape-like clusters of yellow flowers dangled from the laburnums. Fuchsias, roses, and scarlet rhododendrons were in bloom.

  We sat in silence for a long time, with a blackbird in fine voice above us and, in the distance, the throaty echo of a wood pigeon.

  I was reading my breviary; he was thinking and fingering his rosary.

  I glanced at him now and then. His face that day seemed to me like a leaf fallen in crisp autumn weather. The flesh had fallen away and what was left was the leaf’s veins, the underlying structure a tracery, fragile and beautiful.

  A gray squirrel headed down the tree and on to its bench. Father Dawson held out his arm and the squirrel clung to it and stayed a few moments, peering into his eyes.

  It was uncanny, seeing this man so much in harmony with himself, like a modern Francis of Assisi.

  The squirrel left and Father Dawson said, “Isn’t God a marvel?”

  I nodded.

  He said this was a very special day for him. “Did Father Duddleswell ever … ? No, he never would.”

  Seeing my puzzled look, he asked my permission to tell me a few things about himself.

  “Please do, Father.”

  “You will stop me whenever you like?”

  Rufus got up from the grass and nestled down beside him as if he, too, wanted to be in on this.

  As Chick stroked Rufus’s back, he said, “I once went through a very bad patch.”

  “Father Duddleswell did mention your heart attack and how it changed you.”

  “Ah,” he said, “our Charles is a tight one, all right.”

  I laughed. “He doesn’t spread his thoughts on the palm of his hand.”

  “It happened long ago,” Chick said. “I was a mere thirty years of age and, for some reason, feeling devilishly sorry for myself. As if I was old without ever being young.”

  “That strikes a chord.”

  He touched my arm. “If it doesn’t, it will. There is nothing you take more for granted, not even good health,
than youth. Then all of a sudden it walks out on you.”

  He sighed as he thought about that.

  “Well, Neil, I was fed up. I woke up and told myself today is only yesterday served up cold. I felt an urge to start moving like a lemming and to stop for nothing. Not for a lorry, a river, a brick wall, or the edge of a cliff. I just wanted to walk and walk till I could go no further.” He paused for a moment. “I guess everyone gets itchy feet at some time.”

  I said I did, too, but, to be truthful, as yet I didn’t.

  “In my case, Neil, I did something wicked.”

  I waited a full minute while he seemed to be pondering something that happened a lifetime ago.

  “I left the priesthood.”

  I was about to say, I’m glad you came back, when he added, “And I got married.”

  My jerk of surprise briefly unnerved him.

  “I’m so sorry, Neil—”

  It took a while before I could persuade him to continue.

  He put his hand to his forehead. Charles and he were curates together when he fell in love. Emma was twenty-one, straight out of teachers’ training college.

  One day, he called at her apartment.

  “The girl who came to the door was Emma and … not Emma.”

  Seeing I was confused: “This girl who was not Emma warned me, ‘Before you say a word, Father, I’m, Jane, Emma’s sister.’ She was older by two years but so very like—”

  Jane had been married two years to a Frenchman, but there were no children as yet. Seeing the ring on her finger, Chick thought he’d like to see a ring like that on Emma, his ring.

  “Isn’t the spirit inside each of us a strange and wonderful thing, Neil. I already loved Emma and yet Jane, her look-alike, did not appeal to me at all.”

  It was not something I’d thought about but I gladly admitted it was strange.

  “Emma was teaching in our parish school. She adored children and they adored her. So did I, of course. To cut a long story short, I left the priesthood and didn’t tell a soul. We just eloped. We had never held hands or kissed, but we understood each other. I said to her one day, ‘Will you come?’ She knew what I meant. ‘Yes,’ she said. We were married in a registry office in Poole, on the south coast, as far from London as we would afford to go. Nine months later, a bit premature, our Philip was born, our pride and joy.”