Father Neil's Monkeyshines Read online

  Mr. Fellowes told him that from long ago the Russians had had success in this field. In 1936, when microscopes were improving and very fine sutures were being manufactured, a Soviet surgeon succeeded in a corneal transplant on a blind man and published the procedure in international medical journals. The cornea has no blood vessels so there’s no question of rejection. Sometimes a patient might need only a part corneal graft from a deceased donor. The surgery only takes about half an hour, usually by local anesthetic.

  I was getting more and more excited.

  “What was the specialist’s verdict, Doctor?”

  “He said Sam was likely to prove a good candidate for a corneal graft.”

  “Sam must be over the moon,” I said.

  The silence that greeted my outburst suggested Sam was opposed to the idea.

  Father Duddleswell said that Tessa was in favor but Sam was dead against it.

  “Why?”

  Father Duddleswell said, “Typically, Sam would not say. Which is where you come in, lad.”

  Now I understood why the doc was breaking the rule of patient confidentiality.

  I spoke to Tessa privately and she invited me to join them for a meal during which she brought up the subject of a possible operation. I pretended this was the first I’d heard of it.

  At first, Sam dismissed it out of hand but he eventually explained why.

  “When we married, love,” he said, “this was part of the bargain, wasn’t it?”

  “What bargain?” asked Tessa. “We took each other for better or worse. This is better. In sickness and in health. This is health.”

  Sam sat bolt upright shaking his head.

  For what must have been the hundredth time, Tessa explained to him that her experience of blindness was different from his. She had never known light or colors. To her, they were nothing but words.

  “You say, Sam, you live in darkness. I don’t. I’ve never known anything else so how can I miss light. Anyway, I’m long used to finding my way around.”

  When he stubbornly repeated he was not having any operation, she said, “You’re scared, Sam Walters.”

  He said in a steely voice, “Pain is nothing to me.”

  “You’re afraid that after the op you won’t like the look of me.”

  He grabbed her hand, “Of course not, love. ’Course not.”

  “Then do it, Sam. For my sake.”

  When Sam still wouldn’t budge, she left the room to calm down and have a good cry.

  “If you have this operation,” I said, “and its successful, you’ll be able to care for Tessa so much better.”

  “You’re missing something,” he said imploringly. “Our blindness is something we share.”

  “A hobby is it, Sam?”

  “You don’t understand, Father. I’m talking about our feelings for each other, our loyalty depends on it.”

  I reminded him of the day when he’d raged against his blindness, how he said it made him feel like a caged animal.

  “That was before I met Tessa.”

  “To be blind by a mishap,” I told him, “is one thing. To stay blind when you don’t have to is stupidity.”

  “But I do see,” he said heatedly. “The most important things. I see myself very clearly. And God is much nearer to me now. He shines inside me. Know what Milton wrote after he became blind?”

  “Milton!” I remembered he didn’t think much of his poetry. Nor did I, come to that.

  “He said God had implanted in his inward eyes that I may see and tell, Of things invisible to mortal sight.”

  “So,” I said, “when Jesus cured the blind, he was doing them a disservice, was he?”

  I was getting worked up. After years of battling, Sam had acquiesced in his blindness. He was speaking of it not as an affliction but as something precious. It occurred to me that he felt safer in his blindness as some convicts feel safer in jail.

  I went to the door, angry and bewildered. “You’re nothing but a coward,” I yelled.

  What an idiot I was. This was a man who had risked his life four times to save his wounded comrades and been broken in the attempt.

  I halted to make the sign of the cross over him. Maybe he guessed or saw shadows moving.

  “Thanks for the blessing, Father,” he said.

  Outside, I was ashamed of myself. It wasn’t wrong of him to refuse what was, after all, the right and privilege of a few.

  Maybe his blindness had given him a profounder experience of the world. I couldn’t deny that without it, he would never have met and fallen in love with Tessa.

  When I reported back to Father Duddleswell, he was quietly confident.

  “He will come around in time.”

  “How?”

  “Not through arguments. Life will convince him in the end.”

  Though the surgeon had offered his services free, it was still a costly business.

  “When the time comes, Father Neil, be sure the money will be there.”

  Tessa announced publicly she was expecting a baby. I was doubly pleased. In spite of my resolve not to put any more pressure on Sam, I went to see him again, accompanied by Nobby.

  Sam didn’t budge.

  “You really are a stubborn cuss,” I said.

  “Whose are these,” he said, pointing to his eyes, “yours or mine?”

  Nobby, himself close to being a father, said, “Surely, Sam, your kid needs a dad who can see?”

  “And,” he retorted, “a mother who can see, too? Should I divorce Tess so my kid can have two parents who see? Our kid, like yours, like everyone else’s, will have what he’s given. Besides, Tessa can do anything.”

  Tessa sat in the corner, her hands joined. She had given up trying to persuade him.

  I stormed out, saying, “Don’t waste your breath, Nobby, he’s blind twice over.”

  Nobby’s wife, Marion, gave birth to an eight-pound boy. They named him Samuel. They chose their best friends Sam and Tessa as his godparents.

  At the reception after the christening, I saw Father Duddleswell whispering in Nobby’s ear. Something was brewing.

  Minutes later, Nobby placed his baby in Sam’s arms. “Well, what do you think of your godson, then?”

  “Very nice, I’m sure.”

  “Ah,” Nobby sighed, calling everyone’s attention to his son and heir. “Look at his lovely blue eyes and rosy cheeks.” His cheeks, in fact, were the color of talcum powder. “And what about those pink fingernails and the little wrinkles around his wrists?”

  Everyone joined in the adulation. I heard, “He’s got Nobby’s chin, poor little thing” and “He smiles sweetly just like Marion.”

  Sam stood there rocking the baby, embarrassed as though he were the only person in the room missing the point of the banter.

  After mass the following Sunday, Sam collared me. “Father, I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Giving up the weaving, are you?”

  “Nobby was always my eyes, wasn’t he? He made me see I’ve been stupid about this op.”

  When a fresh offer was made a month later, Sam jumped at it. The donor had died in a car accident. Early the following morning, Sam was having surgery.

  After an anxious night, I escorted Tessa to the hospital. She wanted to be there when the dressing was removed.

  When the surgeon came in, I thought it best for me to leave the room. I paced the corridor like an expectant father until a nurse called me back in.

  “Nurse.”

  She silenced me by putting her fingers to her lips.

  As soon as I entered the room, Sam called out, “Hello, Father. Nice to see you after all this time.”

  “I hope you’re not too shocked.”

  He laughed. “I am a bit.”

  It was to be joy not sorrow, after all.


  “Does Tessa look as you expected?” I asked.

  “No, far more beautiful.”

  Before long, Sam, who preferred the outdoor life, was working alongside Nobby again. His sight was gradually improving. He was proud of his achievement and even prouder on Saturdays as he led Tessa, growing ever bigger, in and out of the shops. Not that she needed guiding. “But,” she said, “if it makes him feel good, I don’t mind.”

  Nobby and Marion were already earmarked for godparents when Sam had the privilege of being present at his daughter’s birth.

  Afterward, he said, “Without Nobby, I’d never have seen the most wonderful thing in the world.”

  “I hope you call her Nobby,” I said.

  After ten years, Sam had finally come through the dark tunnel of the war. In the deepest sense, he was a casualty no longer.

  “If I won a million on the pools,” he told me, “I wouldn’t be a fraction happier than I am now.”

  Sam and Tessa’s life would never be perfect, not even after Sam was fitted with an improved prosthetic arm. Their family was likely to grow and making ends meet would always be hard.

  Yet as the chattering group left the church after the christening, Father Duddleswell said, “Good old Sam. He gave more than most for his country. Does he not deserve his share of happiness?”

  “Except, Father, one day he will come gunning for you.”

  “What in heaven’s name for?”

  “Women, my mum told me, always keep their love letters. One day, Sam is going to find out that his were written by someone else.”

  “Dimwit, you are forgetting something, Father Neil.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Those forgeries were in your handwriting.”

  4. The Baby Boom

  Whenever I hear the old saying “Truth is stranger than fiction,” I’m reminded of a couple in their late twenties, Bob and Julie Tyson.

  Bob, a balding, bull-necked giant, owned a small building firm. He was quite successful and he deserved to be. He worked all hours from can see to can’t see.

  Julie, his wife and bookkeeper, was a person of outstanding kindness and game for anything. Mrs. Pring used to say that if the devil needed volunteers, Julie would be first to offer a helping hand.

  “A fine barnful of a woman is our Julie,” Father Duddleswell used to say. “You would think to look at her you had only to scatter a handful of seed over her in June to get an August harvest.”

  That was Julie’s trouble. Her bumper looks belied her. After a couple of miscarriages, a long time passed with no sign of another Christian on the way.

  They both came from a big family. Maybe that was why they were so keen to have a big one of their own. They owned a five-bedroom Victorian house a few blocks from us in an acre of land.

  “They have health and hands to start the world,” Father Duddleswell commented, “and they are surrounded by empty rooms.”

  It was sad, I said, seeing so many couples didn’t want kids and seemed unable to stop.

  “Never mind, lad,” he added. “Even without kiddies, marriage is a great sacrament. What could be grander than two people living under the same roof, loving and being kind to each other?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

  I suggested to Bob and Julie that they consider adopting. They mulled it over for a couple of weeks before coming to see me.

  Bob, his great head held high, said, “We would like to adopt, Father.”

  I rubbed my hands. “That’s very generous of you.”

  “Twin boys,” Bob said.

  “Jaysus,” Father Duddleswell exploded when he heard. “In the matter of kids, Bob is as odd as two left boots.”

  I said they seemed set on the idea.

  He made as if to spit. “They are crazy, so they are. If they had ever seen a couple trying to cope with twins, they would know the scale of the problem.”

  I believed him. Still, my job was to support Bob and Julie, not to undermine their confidence.

  I encouraged them to fill in their application to the adoption society, with a note about their special request.

  Weeks passed. They were vetted; they visited the children’s home many times. It was not the season for twins. They stubbornly refused to accept a boy or even two boys as a substitute.

  One evening, Bob phoned, asking me to pop round. He sounded worried.

  “A problem, Bob?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” was all he would say over the phone.

  They were waiting for me in their living room.

  “The adoption society,” Julie began, “have twins for us at last.”

  “Great,” I said. “Well, isn’t it?”

  What was the catch? Had they reckoned the cost and come around to Father Duddleswell’s point of view? Or were the children offered them older than they’d expected? Or did they have special needs?

  Seeing how perplexed I looked, Bob said, “They’re girls, Father.”

  I wanted to say, What difference does it make? But once people are sold on an idea it’s hard to shift them.

  “May I come and see them with you?” I said.

  The twins Emma and Donna were three months old, with blue eyes and wispy fair hair. Had anyone switched them behind my back, you would have fooled me.

  Julie’s maternal instincts were aroused. It was like seeing a field of wheat suddenly turning white at harvest time.

  She picked up one of the girls, and I placed the second in her other arm, to balance her.

  Motherhood incarnate!

  “Don’t rush things,” I urged.

  There was no chance of that. Adopting parents were obliged to make several visits before making up their minds. But my guess was, the decision was a foregone conclusion.

  On the Sunday that Bob and Julie brought the twins home, Father D told the congregation about their magnanimous gesture. From being as odd as two left boots, they had become heroes of the parish, the sort who, when they died, would find themselves in heaven before their feet were cold.

  “Think on it, me dear brethren,” he said, accusingly. “Two more wee Catholics for our grossly underpopulated parish of Saint Jude’s.”

  He could already look years ahead to when the twins were contributing to the parish collection.

  He invited the congregation to rummage round in their cupboards. Maybe they had a few “baby things” they no longer needed.

  Next day, we returned home at five after a clergy conference. It was hard getting in. The hallway was jammed tight with furniture.

  We thought someone had mistaken the date of the jumble sale until we noticed that everything was for babies. There were cots, children’s mattresses, high chairs, pushchairs, and three prams.

  Father Duddleswell’s eyes so misted up with emotion he had to give his glasses a rub. These were postwar days of austerity and clothing coupons.

  “Ah,” he sighed, “did I not tell you, Father Neil, that our parishioners are grand, lovely people?”

  “I don’t think you ever did, Father.”

  Mrs. Pring emerged from her kitchen. “You asked for it,” she called out over the pile of things, “you’ve got it.”

  He mistook her tone. “I am so grateful,” he said.

  “Wait,” she said saucily, “till you see your study.”

  The gifts in the hall were not the half of it. His study was a warehouse of nappies, feeding bottles, blankets and sheets, baby clothes and battered metal baths. I counted twelve cartons of concentrated orange juice and thirteen teddy bears in various stages of decomposition.

  “Holy mackerel,” Father Duddleswell exclaimed, “how stupid folks can get?”

  I said, “I do remember you saying that, Father.”

  “The Tysons,” Father Neil, “are adopting twins, not sta
rting a bloody orphanage.”

  In fact, our orphanage did inherit the gifts. Bob and Julie, a well-organized couple, had already bought everything they needed.

  “Are you sure you can manage, Julie?”

  There was nothing to worry about. An animal-like smile spread across Julie’s chunky face. “This is nothing, really, Father.” She set to, feeding one of the twins.

  “You will not be requiring a cock or an alarm clock now,” Father D said.

  I suggested he might like to help out by giving the bottle to Emma who was at that moment bawling from hunger.

  Before he could answer, in walked Mrs. Pring. She, too, was there on baby business.

  “What are you doing here, woman,” Father Duddleswell demanded. “Who is minding the shop?”

  “You said yourself,” Mrs. Pring returned, rolling up her sleeves, “that a young mother with twins needs all the help she can get.” She soothed Emma and gave her the bottle.

  Father Duddleswell and I cooed a bit, then left. I even got him to admit for the first time that there were some things women were best at.

  Only two days later, Bob phoned again. This time, there was panic in his voice.

  “We’d be much obliged, Julie and me, if you’d come right around.”

  Young parents, I knew, can lose their heads over the most minor ailments of their children.

  “Have the girls got a rash, Bob, or a temperature?”

  “Worse than that, Father. Much.”

  Now I was worried. Was it meningitis?

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “We’re in a real fix. I’m not sure we’re keeping them.”

  With that, he banged the phone down.

  I had awful visions of the biological parents demanding their children back. Father D told me it had happened to him once. The more likely explanation was that the twins were proving to be more than they could cope with.

  “Sacred Heart of Jesus,” I muttered again and again as I cycled around to the Tyson’s place.

  Julie let me in, all smiles.

  “Bob phoned you, then, did he?”

  Knowing that my voice would come out hoarse, I nodded.

  What was I to make of this? In the middle of what sounded like a family crisis, Julie wasn’t in the least upset.