Father Neil's Monkeyshines Page 15

  Cindy was a red-haired beauty with big green eyes and sensitive features. She had made their small home full of light and color. Her mother was a GP, her father a consultant physician, and she herself was always reading a book.

  I had visited the couple several times and never picked up any hint that their marriage was on the blink.

  Father Duddleswell was no help to me. “I did hear the odd rumor,” he said, gesturing vaguely.

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “You never asked, as the tattooed lady said to her new husband.”

  When I spoke to Cindy, she was equally evasive.

  “I suppose,” I said, “Bill’s taken a passing fancy to—”

  Cindy cut across me. “There’s no other woman, I’m sure of that.”

  “I didn’t mean anything serious,” I said, backtracking. “Just a lovers’ tiff, I suppose.”

  “We didn’t quarrel, Father. We never do.”

  I was left wondering how this could be true. Like Father Duddleswell, I distrusted so-called civilized separations. A flaming row with crockery and milk bottles flying through the air meant there was love and concern in a marriage, some feeling, anyway. But that was the point. Bill and Cindy did care for each other. Why, then, separate?

  Bill’s place of work was not ideal for a confrontation. He was pulling huge levers and answering the phone. Lights were winking on and off on a console, bells were ringing as he closed the gates, and a minute or so later an express train shrieked by.

  Seeing me, he called out, “No one’s allowed in here.”

  “I’m already in,” I said. “I heard you left home.”

  “That’s right,” as he yanked down a lever.

  “Care to talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where are you living, Bill?”

  He mentioned a block of flats. I knew it. A seedy place.

  “I’ll pop around some time.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  He said it roughly but when I looked in his eyes I saw not defiance or arrogance, only a deep hurt.

  “Please,” he said.

  I respected his wishes.

  It came back to me that Cindy had been ill a month or so earlier. My impression was that she had suffered a miscarriage. I decided to check with Dr. Daley.

  “As soon as I see a clerical collar,” he chuckled, scratching his peeling garlicky head, “I have to reach for reinforcements.”

  He genuflected before there was a loud pop as he uncorked the morning.

  “What’s on your mind, Father Neil?”

  When I told him, he said, “As a matter of fact, Cindy is on sleeping tablets and she, well, she—”

  “Attempted suicide?”

  “Dear God,” he whistled, vacuuming his glass. “What a dramatic young man you are, to be sure. She took a couple too many, by mistake, boy. It happens all the time.”

  I left feeling that between him and Father Duddleswell there was a conspiracy of silence.

  Sleeping tablets. So Cindy was a victim of insomnia, probably because Bill had threatened to leave. No sooner had she recovered from an overdose than he had carried out his threat.

  I was furious with him. Cindy was a class above him. He didn’t know his luck. But Cindy apart, how could he bear to walk out on his two lovely kids, Wendy and Bobby, who was only five?

  Whatever Cindy said, a woman was behind this.

  A few weeks later, I took Wendy aside in the school playground. She was very upset.

  “Does your daddy come to see you?”

  “Every Sunday, Father. And he brings us lots of presents.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, thinking it was Bill’s guilt offering.

  “What did I do wrong, Father?” she said, tugging on her ponytail.

  “In what way, dear?”

  “I must have done something wrong or Daddy wouldn’t have gone away. I think it’s because I took a bag of sweets from Woolworth’s.”

  I wanted to take the little girl in my arms to comfort her.

  “It’s not your fault, Wendy.”

  “It can’t be Bobby’s, he’s a baby. And Mummy and Daddy never do anything wrong.”

  “It’s no one’s fault,” I said. Seeing her tears flow, I smiled reassuringly. “You must miss him.”

  “Oh yes, Father. It’s like our house is empty now. Mummy brought us a kitten each, but it’s not the same.”

  “I’m sure your daddy loves you very much.”

  “I know, Father. He cries every Sunday when he leaves.”

  “Does your mummy know?”

  “He made us promise not to tell.”

  “And how is Mummy?”

  “Some nights, she don’t sleep. Cries all the time, so I get in with her and cuddle her.”

  Cindy was being naive, I thought. Bill must have found someone else. What other force was capable of making him desert a son and daughter whom he adored?

  I felt sorry for him but I couldn’t help blaming him. If a mother were to do what he had done, she would be called all sorts of names, of which bitch would be the nicest.

  One evening, Father Duddleswell and I were driving home from our dinner out when we almost ran over a drunk in the road. Father Duddleswell hit the brakes.

  “Jaysus,” he cried, “’tis Bill Cooper.”

  We shot out of the car and grabbed him at the very moment that a policeman jumped off his pushbike to investigate.

  “Trouble, Reverends?”

  “Not at all, Officer,” Father Duddeswell said. “Our friend here has taken a turn for the worse. We are about to take him home.”

  By home, he meant the presbytery. We undressed Bill and Father Duddeswell gave him his bed for the night. He settled himself into an armchair in his study.

  “Drunk as a monkey,” I said. “Bill’s really cracking up.”

  He stopped me with a podgy finger.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “Judge not and all that.”

  He gave me the impression he knew things about Bill that even God wasn’t aware of.

  “I know I’m thick as Scotch porridge,” I said, “but—”

  His theatrical snores put an end to further questioning.

  Before he left for work in the morning, Bill said to us, “You won’t tell Cindy about this, Fathers?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Father Duddleswell said. “I am sure you will not be touching the liquor any time soon.”

  “Never again. You have my word on it,” Bill said.

  When he’d gone, I hissed, “The guy’s dangerous. If he drinks while manning that level crossing—”

  “Did you not hear him promise not to touch another drop?”

  I laughed in unbelief. “A man walks out on his family and you trust him when he says he won’t drink again?”

  He touched the side of his nose.

  “That is no answer,” I growled.

  “’Tis all you are getting, lad, so make the most of it.”

  Usually, when a couple broached the subject of a marriage breakup, he read them the riot act. This sweet reasonableness was out of character.

  After Bill’s drinking bout, I put pressure on Cindy to try for a legal separation.

  “Whatever for, Father?”

  “To make sure you get a regular allowance.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Bill’s very generous.”

  I was growing tired at constantly hearing of Bill’s fine moral qualities.

  “He’s able to be generous at present, Cindy. But sooner or later, he may have, well, other commitments. Who knows what he’ll do then?”

  Cindy burst into tears. “Why do you keep assuming it’s his fault? Maybe I failed him in some way.”

  “Did you ask him to go?”

&n
bsp; “No.”

  I put it to her bluntly. “Have you fallen for someone else?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  I was getting more and more baffled. Almost invariably, couples who break up slang each other unmercifully. In this case, both parties resented any criticism of the other. How in the name of God does a perfect marriage break up?

  With my mind in turmoil, I went around to Bill’s digs. There was no sign of a woman’s touch there. Surely, I thought, dingy lodgings like this will soon bring him to his senses.

  “How’s things?” I spoke lightheartedly to stop my antagonism showing.

  “I’m grateful for what you did for me the other night,” he said humbly. “It was unforgivable. I haven’t touched a drop since and I won’t.”

  “Bill,” I said, coming briskly to the point, “I know you love your kids. If you’ve rowed with Cindy—”

  “We never rowed.”

  Here we go again, I thought.

  “You must have,” I nearly yelled.

  “Look, Father, you’re a nice chap and you mean well. But—”

  “I’m out of my depth.”

  He nodded.

  “You won’t even go and see a marriage counselor?”

  He was already opening the door for me.

  “It’s too late for that. Good-bye and thanks.”

  On Monday morning, I found out from Wendy what Bill meant by too late.

  “Our daddy’s going away.”

  “Where?”

  “Far, far away. We all said good-bye yesterday.”

  I rushed back to St. Jude’s to force Father D to come clean. He looked as if he’d just been beaten up.

  “If you must know, lad, Bill is catching the nine o’clock boat-train tomorrow morning.”

  “Where to?”

  “New Zealand. He is emigrating.”

  “I think it’s wicked,” I said, shaking all over. “Wicked.”

  He gripped my shoulder fondly. “Have it your own way, Father Neil.”

  I didn’t sleep a wink that night.

  In the morning, I canceled my mass to be at the station early.

  After a quarter of an hour, I caught a glimpse of Bill. He was threading his way through the crowd, carrying a couple of small, battered suitcases. I wanted to beat him up.

  “Is that all the luggage you have?”

  I’d surprised him.

  “The rest is coming on after,” he said.

  I knew that was untrue. Everyone was telling me lies and I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Why, Bill? For God’s sake, why?”

  “A sheep farm, Father,” he said brokenly. “Wide open spaces. Never could bear being cooped up in that signal box.”

  All this while, he was anxiously peering around as if he was expecting someone. A woman, I had no doubts about it. Maybe his fancy woman was going with him, or she had arranged to join him later.

  “Sorry,” he said, “there’s someone—”

  He was imploring me to go.

  “I only came to wish you Godspeed, Bill.”

  I held him for a moment as fondly as I could manage. I had once liked him a lot. “I wish you’d stay.”

  “So do I,” he said, blinking.

  I had gone thirty or forty yards when I turned to give a final wave. And yes, there was a woman advancing toward him and he brightened up. A young woman in a pink outfit, with a shapely figure, was holding out her arms to him.

  I continued on my way, disgusted. My instinct had been right all along.

  Then I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew that walk, that figure.

  Feeling like a voyeur, I walked back a few paces. There they were locked in one another’s arms.

  “But they still love each other,” I hissed. Then why is he going to New Zealand? Is he wanted by the cops? Has he committed some terrible crime? Has he discovered late in life that he’s gay and is leaving Cindy for a man? Perhaps he won’t go away after all and Cindy will persuade him to stay.

  The couple broke up and Cindy, a handkerchief to her mouth, waved till he was out of sight.

  “Cindy.”

  Startled to see me, she rapidly wiped her eyes.

  “May I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  We went to a nearby hotel.

  When she was composed, I said, “I’m so sorry, Bill, well, walked out on you.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “He didn’t.”

  I wondered if I had misheard her. “Sorry?”

  “I walked out on him.”

  “But, Cindy, I just saw him go with my own eyes.”

  She shook her head and began, for the first time, to open out to me.

  When she first met Bill, she was at medical school. Her lifelong ambition was to be a doctor. Then she found herself pregnant with Wendy, and they rushed into marriage.

  “It was a horrid mistake, Father. For ten nightmare years, I felt as if I never existed. I belonged in the milk crate with the empties.”

  “But you seemed to love each other.”

  “We do. I love and admire Bill more than anyone else in the world. As a brother, a saint, even.”

  “Not as a husband?”

  “Or a soulmate. He made me so lonely, you see. We had no common interests, no deep thoughts we could share. He’s my favorite person, but when he talked to me, simple things, I had to fit the words together like a jigsaw to make sense of them. I know it sounds silly, but our souls never matched.”

  “But the children, Cindy?”

  “Not enough. Not enough for me, nor for most women, though most men think they should be. Children are never enough for men, are they?” She lowered her gaze. “I stifled all my feelings, tried to last out till the children were grown up. But I couldn’t make it, Father. I ran out of air to breathe.”

  In sheer despair—she called it cowardice—she had attempted to take her life. When that failed, she had offered in fairness to go away on her own.

  “Bill wouldn’t hear of it. He said the kids needed me. He wasn’t so important. So he moved out. It nearly broke him every time he came to see them. The kids, too. That’s why he decided to go as far away as he could. To convince Wendy and Bobby that he was never coming home again and stop them hoping for something that was not going to happen.”

  As she was telling me this, I grasped something of the agony she had been through over many years. I sensed her guilt at not being able to give Bill the affection he deserved, her frustration at not being able to live her own life and find the person that she was meant to be.

  As to Bill, what an idiot I was. To mistake courage for cowardice, unfathomable love for indifference. I honestly wanted to bang my head on a wall. When would I ever learn?

  But I kept coming back to the children.

  I was right about one thing: Only the love of a woman could have made Bill leave home, but it was love of a superhuman kind.

  Finally, Cindy wiped her eyes and said, “You don’t really understand, do you, Father?” I shook my head. “Will you ever?”

  “I doubt it, Cindy,” I said. “But then, I’m only a dim-witted curate.”

  Father Duddleswell was waiting for me at St. Jude’s.

  “Don’t say it,” I groaned. “Judge not and you will not be judged.”

  He knew the whole story, of course.

  “The funny thing is, lad,” he said, adding the final touch to my confusion, “if only Bill hadn’t loved Cindy so much, she could have gone on living with him.”

  9. Poor Little Rich Boy

  Tom, or to give him his full name, Thomas Henry Barwell-Clarke, came to school by limousine. While the rest of the ten-year-olds in St. Jude’s Junior School were worm-tugged on foot by their hair-netted mums and grannies, Thomas was driven fifteen miles in style by a chauffeur.<
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  Apart from the fact that he could play the piano and write essays in Latin and Greek, the outstanding thing about him was that he was the only child who wore the school uniform, specially tailored, of course.

  Thomas’s mother, Lady Penelope, had been recently converted by a famous Jesuit intellectual, Father Martin D’Arcy. Until then, Thomas had been educated at home by tutors. Now his mother insisted on him being sent to a Catholic day school while she was arranging for him to board at Downside or Stonyhurst.

  Father Duddleswell and I were in the playground when Her Ladyship brought Thomas for his interview with the head.

  My boss’s comment, as he cast an expert eye on the fur-wrapped Lady Penelope, was swift and precise.

  “That lady expects instant obedience like a red traffic light.”

  I agreed with him.

  “If the little lad cries on her shoulder, Father Neil, the tears will freeze his spine.”

  At first, Thomas, with black curly hair and thin, knobbly knees, stood alone in the playground looking lost.

  The combination of his private limo and double-barreled name, I thought, would make him unpopular. I was wrong. The other kids took pity on him and, miraculously, even forgave him for being clever.

  Fred Turnbull, the barber’s son, was especially protective.

  Fred said to me, “We feel sorry for the Tom”—that was how they referred to him. “When we grow up, we can choose what we wanna be. The Tom has to be a millionaire.”

  Fred took it on himself to make sure the Tom wasn’t diddled.

  “He’s got more pocket money than my old man gets wages,” Fred said, “so we gotta give him protection, see.”

  That was soon after Thomas had parted with a big white fiver for two dog-eared copies of the Beano comic, which he needed to complete his collection.

  I was present the day Thomas fell over and badly grazed his knee in the playground.

  I escorted him to the staff room to give him first aid.

  He really liked St. Jude’s, he said. At home, he had no one to play with. His father, Sir Basil, was a knight, though he didn’t wear armor, and he rode no horse except to hunt little foxes. His father was also a colonel, but his mother gave the orders.

  “I do have a rather splendid ginger cat,” he told me in cultured tones. “I once had Goldie, she was a retriever, you know. But she suffered a frightful nervous breakdown picking up pheasant after pheasant, and the vet advised Papa that she should be put in an old people’s home.”