Bless Me Again, Father

1 A Very Big Fish

‘It’s a grand-looking job, Charles.’ Dr Daley slapped Fr Duddleswell on the back, raising the dust. ‘No wonder you’re as proud today as a whitewashed pig.’

At the roadside, Fr Duddleswell breathed on the windscreen of the Ford he had bought to replace his ancient Chrysler and polished it with the sleeve of his cassock. The Ford was in fact a few years older than its predecessor but its moving parts seemed to be confined to the engine.

‘Tell me honestly, Father Neil, what do you think of her?’

Whenever Fr Duddleswell, his eyelids fluttering behind his round-rimmed glasses, solicited my honest opinion of anything I had to watch my step.

I admired the Ford from every angle. ‘A spectacular piece of engineering,’ I said afterwards, not quite knowing what it meant.

My parish priest smiled vainly, displaying his dolphin-like teeth. ‘How would you like a trip into the country tomorrow? Dr Daley is coming.’

‘If you want to run it in,’ I said, ‘I’m game.’

The two old-timers had made plans to go fishing in the grounds of some friendly nuns. When, next morning early, we set off for Surrey it was a cloudless, windless, summer’s day.

I was sitting in the back, surrounded by gear. There was a holdall with the rod, a triangular landing-net—rather like a butterfly-net, only heavier—a rod-rest, a couple of stools, an assortment of Wellington boots and a huge hamper prepared by our housekeeper, Mrs Pring.

The evening before, she had parboiled a batch of potatoes which, Dr Daley swore, was the best bait for carp.

‘Heavens,’ I had said to her, ‘he even fishes with spuds. What an unpredictable race, the Irish.’ Mrs Pring merely laughed and, from her twenty years’ experience of Fr Duddleswell, declared, ‘An Irishman only feels like everyone else, Father Neil, when he’s different.’

On the journey, while Fr Duddleswell wrestled with the strange gears, Dr Daley, his trilby on the back of his head, prophesied the pleasures to come.

I had only enlisted for the sake of the ride and for a brief respite from the stuffy atmosphere of the city. Fishing did not appeal to me. I remember as a boy catching a trout with a rod, a piece of string and a small pin baited with bread. When I pulled the fish out it was sighing deep in its throat and moaning so that I had to dash its head quickly against a stone. Dr Daley had assured me that fishes are cold-blooded creatures and haven’t the nerves or the brains to feel pain but I knew otherwise.

The Doctor held up a pair of forceps in front of his round, grizzled face.

‘What are they for?’ I asked.

‘I tell you. Carp is mighty sturdy fish with powerful jaws and lips like a woman.’

‘So?’

‘The forceps here is to pull the hook out of the blighters that we land.’

‘Expecting a big catch?’ I said, hoping he would notice the irony in my voice.

For answer he turned to the driver. ‘Remember that eight-pounder we caught in the sandpit in Connemara, Charles?’

Fr Duddleswell, still battling with the gears, nodded brusquely.

The Doctor took a pouch out of his pocket. Inside was a series of vicious hooks with rounded tops. ‘Size two,’ he said, ‘for the big’un.’ He gave me a sly wink. ‘Sharper these than even the tongue of our chauffeur.’

‘Cruel, if you ask me,’ I said.

‘Don’t be such a great ninny,’ Fr Duddleswell said. ‘Didn’t our Blessed Lord choose fishermen for his first disciples?’

‘They didn’t use hooks,’ I said. ‘Besides, I don’t mind killing fish for food. Killing them for sport is what I object to.’

‘You must admit, Charles,’ Dr Daley said ‘that is sound Catholic teaching.’

‘How so?’

‘It doesn’t much matter what you get up to, provided you don’t take pleasure in it.’

The lake was tree-lined and perfectly sited in a quiet, sloping meadow. It had a muddy bottom and plenty of undergrowth in it which, my companions told me, carps prefer.

Dr Daley baited his hook with a potato—an Irish apricot, he called it—and cast off with a thick rod and strong line. With that, he sat on a stool by the water’s edge, placed his rod on its rest and drew refreshment out of his pocket.

He offered the flask to Fr Duddleswell. ‘Give everyone his dew, I say.’

Fr Duddleswell brushed it aside. ‘Where in the name of God is the keep-net?’

‘I have brought a sack, Charles. It serves as well if you keep it out of the sun and in deep water.’

I can scarcely recall a more peaceful morning. A kingfisher hovered over the lake for a few seconds like an angle on tiptoe before swooping down with lethal effect on turquoise wings.

Fr Duddleswell was striding up and down the meadow, reciting his breviary among buttercups and nibbling sheep. I lay on my back on a grassy hillock under a broad-spreading cedar tree, imagining myself under the embossed vault of a mediaeval cathedral.

It was a good feeling being a curate at St Jude’s in west London now that the first year’s cycle was over. Next time round I wouldn’t be so raw. It wasn’t possible.

Occasionally I rested on my elbows among cowslips that smelt of oranges and caught sight of a cautious carp flipping its tail and opening huge, leathery lips.

Dr Daley must have dozed off because suddenly he called out, ‘A catch. Help me, Charles. A real rod-bender, this.’

Fr Duddleswell came bouncing down the slope like a spring lamb. He had taken off his glasses and didn’t notice me lying there. He stumbled and went crashing headlong to the water’s edge. Unhurt, he scrambled to his feet to assist Dr Daley with a sturdy arm and much expert advice.

‘Play it carefully, now, Donal. Tight but not too tight.’

‘I can’t shift the beggar, Charles.’

‘Perhaps, ’tis caught in the weeds.’

‘Shall I give it a tug?’

‘Not for the present, Donal. Slacken the line. He will possibly find his own way out.’

In spite of my distaste for it, I had a fascination for fishing. I joined them to find out how big the catch was.

Seeing there were no more ripples on the surface, Fr Duddleswell suggested that the fish was tiring.

‘Pull him in now, Donal.’

It took all three of us together to haul the thing in.

‘God Almighty,’ Fr Duddleswell exclaimed delightedly, ‘we have never caught one this size before.’

‘It must weigh ten pounds or more,’ the Doctor said. ‘Let’s hope the rod takes the strain.’

Slowly we were winning the battle. Fr Duddleswell left off heaving to lower the landing-net in readiness.

‘Easy does it,’ he said.

A final pull, and out of the dark waters, we lifted an old black kettle full of gravel.

Fr Duddleswell tossed the net like a caber ten yards into the meadow, scattering the sheep.

‘Will you keep away from the whiskey in future, Donal.’

‘I have barely wetted my tonsils all day.’

‘Me dear man, you are lit up like a lighthouse.’

Fr Duddleswell returned to his prayers and I sat on the second stool, contemplating the delicate patterns on the lake brought on by the gentlest breeze.

Close to my ear came a sound like a bullet whistling by. Dr Daley had narrowly missed me as he cast off. A few seconds later, he tried again and this time I felt the line almost part my hair in the middle. I retreated to a safer distance where I could look up at the limitless blue without alarm and enjoy the song of birds.

At midday, a young Sister from the Convent, as beautiful as Ingrid Bergman, brought us sandwiches, tomatoes and a bottle of red wine to supplement the immodest pile of food we already had.

Seeing a solitary magpie flying by, the Doctor, still munching, said, ‘Our Charles visiting his parish, don’t you think? One for sorrow.’ He looked around for any sign of a second magpie. There was none. Whereupon he rose to his feet, took off his hat and bowed the winging bird out of sight as part of some rustic ritual.

Not much fear of sorrow intruding into that harmonious setting. Not a single ingredient was present. Fr Duddleswell shook his perspiring bald head wonderingly and muttered. ‘Paradise, Father Neil. Like the Garden of Eden.’

After lunch, Dr Daley found a place in the shade for a snooze while Fr Duddleswell did duty at the lakeside. I was intrigued to see what sort of a fisherman he was.

I shouldn’t have stared at him. It made him more determined to give a virtuoso performance.

He cast the line but it plopped a mere fifteen feet away. A second attempt. This time a monumental heave. I looked waterwards, convinced he had trebled the distance, so great was the effort he put into it.

I strained my eyes but could see neither line nor float. Instead, I heard two almost simultaneous screams of pain.

Dr Daley first by a whisker. The potato had flown off the hook and hit him squarely on the head while he was dozing. Not that he was badly injured.

The same could not be said of Fr Duddleswell. Somehow he had managed to hook his own backside.

The Doctor was up in a wink. He approached his old buddy, squeezing his lower lip with thumb and forefinger to stop himself laughing.

‘Don’t touch it, Charles,’ he managed to say.

‘Leave me, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell replied, fingering himself where the hook had found a wonderfully soft spot.

‘If you touch it, Charles, I’m warning you, you will only drive the damned thing in deeper.’

That was what happened. The more Fr Duddleswell tried to wrest himself free, the more the hook bit into him.

Dr Daley spluttered, ‘Our beloved P.P. has harpooned his own holy bum.’

Hurt in more senses than one, Fr Duddleswell gave him a gentle prod to keep him out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, the Doctor was off balance. He stood, bulge-eyed and slanted on one leg, for a second or two before toppling over into the water.

I jumped in and fished him out before he drowned.

The idyll of a summer’s day was shattered. There stood Fr Duddleswell on the bank, petrified, afraid to move, with a number-two hook in his backside. Dr Daley was completely soaked and shivering, while I was wet to the waist.

The Doctor, forbidden under threat of excommunication to touch the hook itself, was finally permitted to cut the line next to it with a penknife.

‘You got your eight-pounder anyway, Charles.’

‘Now I know what our Lord meant,’ I said, ‘when He gave His disciples their marching orders.’

‘What was that, lad?’ Fr Duddleswell said grimly.

‘Henceforth you will be fishers of men.’

We decided not to bother the good Sisters with our predicament but to head straight home. Speed was of the essence because Dr Daley’s right hand was shaking too much from the cold for him to operate on the spot.

‘It’ll take more than a tug on a cow’s teat to get that one out,’ he warned.

He drove furiously with water dripping all round him while he hummed Bucket Of Mountain Dew. Fr Duddleswell knelt on the front passenger seat with his back to the windscreen.

‘Say one for me, Father,’ I said, touching my forelock.

After an hour, we arrived back at the presbytery. Mrs Pring, not realizing which of us was wounded most, offered Dr Daley a glass of whiskey.

‘Terrible, terrible,’ he muttered, clawing at it gratefully. ‘All my life, my dear, until today I have managed to keep my head above water.’

‘Did you catch anything besides a cold?’ Mrs Pring wanted to know.

‘Father D. did,’ I said.

‘Where is it?’

‘Show it her,’ the Doctor said through chattering teeth.

‘Humph.’

Mrs Pring turned to the source of this gloomy sound. ‘How big was it, then?’

‘Never you mind how big it was, Mrs Pring.’ He held up a podgy hand to her. ‘May it happen to you when your guardian angel isn’t looking.’

‘What’s got into that one?’

‘Don’t ask, Mrs P.,’ I said.

He was still trying to remove the foreign body when I escorted Dr Daley upstairs. Mrs Pring provided the Doctor with a bath towel and showed him to the bedroom where she had laid out one of Fr Duddleswell’s spare suits.

I changed and waited until Dr Daley indicated he was ready. He emerged wearing not only a black suit but a clerical stock and collar as well.

He looked at me mischievously. ‘Might as well go the whole hog, Father Neil.’

‘Let’s go, Bishop,’ I said, bowing.

I was laughing so much I did not notice that Mother Stephen and Sister Perpetua had been let in by Mrs Pring. The nuns had brought flowers for Our Lady’s altar.

‘This is an outrage,’ Mother Stephen said, seeing Dr Daley dressed as one of us.

‘I can explain,’ I said, but wasn’t given the chance.

‘I must talk to Father Duddleswell at once.’

Without knocking, the Superior entered the study with me on her heels.

‘Quick,’ Fr Duddleswell called over his shoulder, thinking it was Dr Daley. ‘I have a fierce toothache in me backside. I’d be obliged if you would attend to it at once.’

Mother Stephen turned round, shocked. She looked daggers at me and walked out without a word.

‘What was that?’ Fr Duddleswell hadn’t seen a thing.

‘Mother Stephen,’ Dr Daley said.

‘Quit your joking, Donal. And will you take that collar off and get to work.’

Dr Daley closed the door behind him. ‘Well, now, Charles, you have three choices. We have used those number twos on carps often enough so you know what they are.’

‘Repeat ’em to me,’ Fr Duddleswell said, grimacing. ‘I could push the hook through till it comes out the other side. Or file through both sides of it. Or pull it out with my forceps here.’

He held the rusty instrument up.

‘I choose the last of the three.’

‘You are a wise feller,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘Now ease that fine belly you’re wearing on top of the desk there.’

As the patient obeyed, Dr Daley was saying, ‘It’s a good job you hooked the west side of yourself and not the east, I’m thinking.’

‘What next, Donal?’

‘I won’t ask you to take your trousers off but I will have to cut a patch out of them to see what I’m doing.’

‘Must you?’

The Doctor nodded. ‘My guess is, by now your behind has a tighter grip on this hook than any carp.’

He whispered in my ear, ‘Go borrow a pair of scissors and a mirror from Mrs Pring so himself can see the extent of the damage.’

Naturally, Mrs Pring wanted to know what we were up to.

‘This mirror,’ I said, ‘is about to see something no mirror’s ever seen before.’

Dr Daley first cut out a black circle from the pants, then a patch out of Fr Duddleswell’s long-johns. It left a dazzling white zone of flesh in the middle of which was a cruel, jagged tear with blood oozing out of it. It looked as savage as a whale’s eye.

‘Would you care to see it, Charles?’

‘Have I eyes in the back of me head?’

Dr Daley held the looking-glass over the wound so that the patient by swivelling round, could view it.

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,’ Dr Daley began, before being silenced with, ‘That is enough, thank you, Donal.’

Fr Duddleswell turned to me. ‘Thank you, too, Father Neil.’

I was expected to depart. Dr Daley wouldn’t allow it. ‘I need him to assist me in the operation, Charles. Unless, of course, you would prefer Mrs Pring.’

‘What shall I do, Doctor?’

‘Fill up the glass, Father Neil.’

‘Listen to me, Donal,’ Fr Duddleswell said, lifting himself up on his belly, ‘you should not be drinking while you are operating.’

‘Not for me, Charles. For your holy self.’

‘An anaesthetic, you mean?’

‘What else? Why, when I was a lad in Connemara, the hard stuff was all we had whenever we had to give up a tooth or an appendix.’

I filled the glass. Dr Daley held it up to the light. ‘Too much,’ he said, and drank half of it. ‘The rest is for you, Charles.’

Fr Duddleswell sipped his share to gain time, eventually lying prone again. He gritted his teeth and mouthed a Hail Mary.

I gripped his shoulder sympathetically. ‘I hope you suffer no more than a fish, Father.’

Dr Daley signed himself and called to me, ‘Forceps.’

He took a firm hold on the hook and muttering, ‘Anchor’s away,’ gave a mighty tug.

2 Dr Daley Takes the Pledge

Dr Daley telephoned to say he was confined to bed. He had twisted his knee when he fell into the lake the previous day.

His housekeeper let us in to see him. We groped our way through a haze of cigarette smoke to his bed. Beside him, on a table, was an empty whiskey bottle.

‘Thank the good God you’ve come,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on the wagon since that bottle went empty on me ten minutes ago.’

Fr Duddleswell removed the cigarette from the Doctor’s mouth, read off it ‘98.4’ and put it back.

‘I will not be using you to fill a hole with yet awhile, Donal.’

‘Not unless I die of misery.’

‘True enough you look as happy lying there as a porcupine in a pail of water.’

I handed over a basket of provisions packed by Mrs Pring. Bananas, apples, oranges and much else besides.

‘Tell Mrs Pring thank you for me.’

I asked if he had called in a doctor.

‘Remember that old saying in the Gospel,’ was his reply.

‘Physician, heal thyself.’ He thumped his barrel of a chest for effect. ‘I am my own medical man. Always have been and always will be. Never forget that, young man.’

‘You don’t trust doctors, either,’ I said.

He screwed his eyes up and pursed his lips to signify no. ‘And how’s your wound, Charles, not festering, I hope?’

Fr Duddleswell grunted that it wasn’t.

‘Don’t forget to keep it clean. Plenty of disinfectant and, if need be, a poultice hot as hell.’

‘I heard you,’ Fr Duddleswell said, not wanting to pursue the subject.

‘Were you intending, Charles, to buy me …?’ He indicated the empty bottle.

‘This is a golden opportunity for you to go on the dry.’

Dr Daley guffawed. ‘Teetotalism is against nature. Like a bishop waiting at a bus stop or a hen laying eggs at midnight.’

‘Listen, me old friend,’ Fr Duddleswell said, trying to look earnest. ‘You fell in that lake because you were stocious.’

‘But you knocked me in, Charles, and you know it.’

‘You had drunk yourself footless and if you had drowned you would now be being licked all over by the flames of hell.’

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Dr Daley groaned, ‘you have a heart inside you tough as teak.’

Fr Duddleswell acknowledged the compliment. ‘You will get no rotgut from me.’

‘Very well, then, Charles. The curse of the Seven Snotty Orphans be upon you.’

‘And with thy spirit,’ came the retort.

‘Before you go, Charles, would you fetch me a fresh packet of fags out of that drawer over there?’

I was nearer. ‘I’ll get it,’ I said.

As I turned, I saw Dr Daley’s reflection in the mirror. He drew a bottle of whiskey from the bottom of the basket. It must have been hidden under the fruit. When I returned with the cigarettes there was no sign of it.

With a last conspiratorial wink at the Doctor, Fr Duddleswell left to visit the parish. I stayed for a chat.

‘Put your bottom dollar on the chair beside me so.’

I drew up my chair in anticipation. These quiet talks with Dr Daley were precious to me. He was a fund of wisdom and humanity.

No sooner had we heard the front door close than he said, ‘What our Charles did not realize is that I always carry a spare tyre.’

‘Oh?’ I said, not letting on.

‘Mustn’t let the cobwebs grow around it.’ He pulled the bottle out from under his pillow. ‘Be sure not to tell his Reverence, now.’

I put my hand to my heart.

He was in a nostalgic mood. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, ‘but to my eyes that little priest is tall as a round tower.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Outwardly, mind, he’s not unlike Goldsmith’s schoolmaster, A man severe he was and stern to view.’

‘When he refuses you whiskey.’

‘A good for instance.’ The Doctor’s musing gave him an unusually distant look. ‘I never did tell you, did I, how he took care of my wife.’

I shook my head. Neither Dr Daley nor Fr Duddleswell had ever spoken to me of his wife.

He poured himself a drink. ‘Maureen had this cyst on her spine, y’see. The specialist said it was nothing to worry about but too delicate to operate on. But she was cheerful, was Maureen, though gradually losing the use of her limbs.’

I sighed to express my sympathy.

‘But we were happy, so happy.’ The glass was forgotten momentarily in his hand. ‘As if our happiness would last for ever.’

‘And?’

‘Oh,’ he said, taking a sip, ‘I myself diagnosed she had this growth in her throat.’

‘Was it …?’

He nodded. ‘I watched her as she grew thin as a piece of string, the poor dear. It took months. The cords of her neck became taut like the necks of baby birds, you must have