My experience of hearing confessions never did match Hollywood’s. In the movies, it’s nearly always someone with a dark secret, say, a kidnapper or a murderer, who confessed, often with dire consequences for the priest. The worst that happened to me was boredom, a sore neck, and the occasional minor surprise.
I was not long at St. Jude’s, still downy as a peach, as Father Duddleswell put it, when I went into my confession one Saturday morning in the early 1950s. After a lull, peculiar noises came from the penitent’s side of the box. It sounded less like an individual than an invasion. A couple of scamps up to their tricks?
When the coughing, stamping, and suppressed laughter had gone on for half a minute, with no mention of a sin, I got up and whipped open the penitent’s door.
It was kids all right but not a couple. There were five little ones, ranging from three months to six years, clinging to their mother.
This was my introduction to Meg Mavin and her family.
It was quite a crush because Meg herself was, in the words of my parish priest, “a right double-decker of a woman.”
Seeing her startled look, I apologized and closed the door on the six of them.
After hearing Meg’s confession, I said, “Would it help if next time you left the kiddies with someone?”
“Who with, Father?” Meg asked in a stifled voice. The baby must’ve had his fingers in her mouth.
“Your husband?”
“Ah, Bert’s at home, Father, looking after our other six.”
I cleared my throat but found nothing to say.
“What about my penance, Father?”
With eleven children, what more did she want?
I said, “Three Hail Marys,” adding under my breath, “if you can find the time.”
“You were asking after Meg Mavin, Father Neil. A saint of God,” said my parish priest. “She married young and just kept laying.”
Meg was thirty-five so there was no telling how many she and Bert would end up with.
Father D was proud of that family and almost licked his lips when he quoted scripture that likened babies to an archer’s quiverful of arrows and olive shoots around the table.
Their house resembled a village on market day. The first thing to greet the early caller was a dozen bottles of milk on the doorstep. Inside was a regiment of shoes, all polished and graded according to size.
Bright-eyed children with trilling voices were moving in all directions. They never walked but ran as if they had just been let out of school.
Father D warned me to always wear my oldest clothes when visiting the Mavins. I not only had to take turns burping the baby, jammy fingers were likely to be pressed against my jacket and into my pockets.
Father D’s chief warning was, “Never visit them early on a Saturday morning. And for why? Because, don’t you know, Meg doses the entire family, Dad and all, with castor oil every Friday before bedtime.
“So Saturday’s payday?”
“You are quick on the uptake, lad.”
Bert was small, calm, and quiet, with turned-up mustaches like a tame warthog. I rarely saw him. He was mostly out of the house doing part-time jobs to bolster his wages at the co-op.
Once he whispered in my ear, “Sleep is the only holiday my Meg gets, Father, and not near enough of that. To listen to her sometimes, she must be still doing the ironing in her sleep.”
Meg never had a washing machine, dryer, or a fridge. She did her regular wash in a garden copper and made do with a scrubbing board and a hand-operated mangle that she turned like a hurdy-gurdy. The clothes were pegged out on a line propped up by the dead branch of a tree. When they were dry, Meg set to with a couple of heavy black flat irons heated on the kitchen range. It was nonstop action. Her broad arms moved with the strength and skill of a truck driver’s.
After all these years, she remains in my memory as a kind of archetypal mother. The first time I saw a Henry Moore carving of a woman, my immediate reaction was, “Gosh, Meg Mavin.”
She was big, bouncy woman who, on her own admission, would never make a jockey. Her legs were like packed Christmas stockings. She had almost permanently doughy arms and flour on her skirt from constant kneading and she smelled healthily of carbolic soap, cooking fat, and jam. Her idea of luxury was a pot of jam she hadn’t made herself. She was delighted whenever I presented her with a jar of homemade preserves, courtesy of Mrs. Pring.
Bert said proudly, “She keeps this place spotless like we was moving.” Once, he touched my arm and made this improbable plea: “Keep the kids at their catechism, Father. Catechism and castor oil is our family Bible.”
One Sunday, I preached on the joys of heaven, suggesting in vague but glorious outline the spiritual blessings that await us there.
As she left the church, Meg said, “Heaven’s where there’s no more washing and ironing, Father.”
She was placid as a grazing cow. She never smacked a mischievous child, or, worse, resorted to ridicule. When Tommy threw a stick and broke two bottles of milk, I suggested, “Why not give him a tap?” “I would, Father, but I never seem to have a spare hand.”
Children would chase one another through her kitchen, throwing paper darts, and she’d say, “They cheer me up just by looking at them. Even when they make me flaming mad inside, like now, I’m so happy.”
When one child hurt another, she first soothed the wounded one on a lap as comfy as mattress. Then she cuddled the offender with, “Aren’t you a silly chap, then? You’ll have a bit more sense when you grow up, please God,” and the little chap is saying, “I’m sorry, Mummy. I didn’t mean it.”
The children were a handful in spite of their training.
Jessica was at the stage of always moving in circles. “Go and get Daddy his paper, please,” said Meg. Off went Jessica to the door in tight circles and gaily down the road, the circles widening. It didn’t matter to her that she knocked into other pedestrians.
Johnny was seven. He used his pants as a towel and his sleeve as handkerchief.
Tommy, aged six, suffered from asthma. He graded everything. “Are you,” he asked me, “older than Father Duddleswat? Is ’e your granddad? Do you spend more on shirts and pants than him? If you had a fight with him, would you knock him out? In what round?”
Rick, aged four, couldn’t get to sleep at night because there were butterflies in his bed. I prayed that the butterflies would go away and they did for all of three minutes.
Billy, aged ten, had an old powder compact. It served as a flycatcher. He held it open till a fly settled on the mirror and he snapped it shut.
“How do you do that?” I asked him.
“It’s easy, Father. The fly sees ’isself in the mirror. ’E thinks it’s ’is pal, see, so ’e comes and says, ’Ello. That’s when I get ’im.”
I was there the day a new lodger arrived: a monkey. It was bequeathed to the Mavins by Luigi, an Italian organ grinder.
Whenever Luigi had turned out a tune down their road, Meg had given him a copper or two. He seemed to know when Meg was about to deliver. She always gave birth at home so as to be with the family.
Without fail, Luigi pushed his barrel organ under the lamppost nearest to Meg’s window and played on cue, “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.”
Mario the monkey was a sad, ragged-looking little thing, missing his master, no doubt. He didn’t take to me. Meg said, “It’s only your black clothes that bother him, Father, nothing personal.”
He showed his dislike by pelting me with everything he laid his hands on. Once it was a blancmange.
Bert built him a trapeze suspended from the ceiling. I never could be sure from which direction Mario would attack me.
Occasionally, Meg would mention the last time she and Bert went to the flicks together.
I said to her, “If you want to go see a movie, I’ll mind the kids for you.”
“I couldn’t do that,” she said, giggling.
I persuaded Bert that an evening off would do Meg a world of good. They discussed it and got back to me. They’d like to risk it.
When the time arrived, I told Father D he would be eating supper on his own. When I explained why, he looked at me with pity.
“Ah, me poor little lad, me weeshy gossoon, you haven’t a titter of sense in you.”
“Meg liked the idea,” I said.
“Her lips said one thing but what said the corner of her eye?”
“An act of kindness, Father.”
“An act of lunacy, more like.”
There was an air of excitement at the Mavins’ house when I arrived. Bert looked smart in what was probably his wedding suit. He wore a dotted tie with the knot under his left ear. His scrubbed face had the varnished look of a new piano and he smelled of mothballs.
He pointed to Meg. “Ain’t she giddy, Father?”
Assuming this was a compliment, I agreed with him.
A crisp flowery frock had replaced the shapeless one she usually wore. Her stockings no longer spiraled up her leg. She wore pink ribbon in her hair and a string of paste pearls around her neck. She was in her way quite beautiful.
She issued last-minute instructions, most of which I failed to take in. In the kitchen she showed me a cherry pie, big as a tabletop, in case I got peckish.
You would have thought we were seeing off the Queen Mary, what with the waving and earsplitting good-byes. They’d never seen their mum and dad go out together on their own. In the end, Bert had to shoo Meg out of the house like a flock of geese.
Only when the door closed behind them, did I get cold feet. The place was no different: it smelled as hot and fertile as a greenhouse. But without Meg there, it seemed somehow menacing. Yes, my boss was right, as usual. I was out of my mind.
I was supervising three children doing their homework when there was a commotion. Siamese twins were coming down the stairs. A boy and a girl had climbed into their dad’s working pants.
Next, Paul was being pursued on the landing when he slipped and banged his head.
I ran up and tried to console him as Meg would have done. “It’s all right, sonny,” I said, wiping his tears away. “You’ve got a hard head,” which made him squeal all the louder.
Minutes later, I was chasing snakes out of Tommy’s bedroom. I gave him a piece of chocolate to settle him.
“How long’s my mum been away?”
“Not long, Tommy.”
“Three hours? Six hours?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“When will she be back? Two hours? Six hours?”
“Yes,” I said firmly.
I was about to turn the light out when Tommy blathered, “I don’t feel well.”
“Nonsense,” I said crossly.
To my astonishment, his face had turned blotchy and started to swell like a balloon. Never was I so scared. Was the kid dying? His eyes had almost disappeared and he was breathing with great difficulty.
I phoned Dr. Daley, taking care not to alarm the other children. What would Meg think if she came home from seeing Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver to find her Tommy dead.
I put a cold flannel on the boy’s forehead and prayed hard he survived until Doc came.
Dr. Daley hummed to himself as he fumbled in his waistcoat like a best man searching for the ring. The waistcoat was speckled from a thousand breakfasts. “But not a single stain of liquor on it,” he used to say, proud of his steady hand on the really important occasions.
Eventually, he tracked down his thermometer and took Tommy’s temperature. All I wanted to know was would he live.
“Why ever not?” he said, puzzled. “There’s nothing much the matter with him.”
Slowly, he wrote a prescription for the morning in his usual hieroglyphics.
“What do you mean, Doctor? Look at him.”
“He’s been eating peanuts, that’s all, and he has a slight intolerance to ground nuts.”
I turned to Tommy. His face was already going down. “Have you eaten peanuts?”
He nodded.
“Who gave them to you?”
“You did, Father.”
It was true. The piece of chocolate had tiny bits of nut in it. If I hadn’t panicked and asked the kids, they would have told me.
In the middle of this crisis, Mario the monkey had done something he shouldn’t. Without thinking, I grabbed him by the collar and dropped him outside the front door as if he were a cat.
There was a commotion outside and when I checked, a stray dog had pounced on Mario. He had escaped by climbing up the drainpipe.
Soon everyone but the baby was on the pavement pointing at the roof.
No amount of pleading persuaded him to come down. Dr. Daley parked his rump on the curb and took out his hip flask hoping for spiritual inspiration.
It came in the person of Father D who strode into view with his I’ve-been-through-two-world-wars-but-this-takes-the-biscuit face.
Seeing the children, many of them in their pajamas, cramming the pavement, he said, “Ah, me Rin-Tin-Tin of a curate. Did I not say you are as thick as two small planks?”
I pretended I took little problems like this in my stride.
“I reckon,” he said, “that monkey must’ve evolved out of the likes of you.”
“Call the fire brigade, Charles,” Dr. Daley counseled with a burp. “They get kittens out of trees, do they not?”
Father D waved aside the curbside advice. “Fetch me a ladder and I will sort this out meself in no time at all.”
A neighbor brought a ladder, extended it, and angled it against the front wall of the house.
“You are so brave, Father,” I said, really impressed.
“No one knows that better than meself, lad, but I am not crazy. If I climbed up there, I’d fall flat as a plate.”
His faithful drinking partner sided with him. “Indeed, Charles, as your long-term physician I can testify that you have a wobbly in your knobbly.”
Muggins began the ascent in the best Harold Lloyd manner, clasping an orange. In those postwar days, you couldn’t get a banana for love nor money.
Mario, who never liked me, thrust a paw in the guttering and pulled out mud pellets to throw at me.
Below, a crowd had gathered. The local bobby on the beat was writing in his notebook. The kids were shouting advice. Doc had resumed his seat on the curb, blowing smoke rings like a Red Indian. Father D was holding on to the ladder like grim death, mine, and calling on me to get on with it before he injured himself.
I lobbed the orange for Mario to catch. He didn’t. Instead, it dislodged a loose tile that fell off the roof just missing the copper. That incident too found its way into his notebook.
Mario was just about to throw another lump of mud at me, when someone called out, “Drop it, Mario.”
It was Meg. She had so missed her family that after half an hour she asked Bert to walk her home.
At the sound of her voice, Mario dropped his lump of mud.
“Good boy, Mario, now come down here this minute.”
The monkey climbed past me, down the underside of the ladder, nipping my behind, and settled on Meg’s arm.
When I was back on terra firma, she said, “You only had to call him nicely, Father.”
“’Tis nothing to widen your eyes about,” Father D said when I told him that Meg’s number twelve was on the way.
Doc had joined us for lunch and I was relying on his support.
“You are about as sharp as a spoon,” Father Duddleswell said, seeing I had reservations about Meg being pregnant again. “Do you not agree that God gives the necessary grace to a woman if he sends her a child?”
Doc said, “Women are different, Charles. Perhaps you never noticed.”
“How different, Donal?”
“Two kiddies can be too much for one and a dozen too few for another.”
“That’s as may be, but Meg Mavin was surely anointed by God for motherhood.”
“Doesn’t there come a point,” I said, “when a couple simply cannot give the children the attention they deserve?”
“Are you saying, Father Neil, a new child would prefer not to be born if it means having a little less attention from his parents?”
He proceeded to tell us what Meg had told him long ago. The first babe is a cinch, the second ten times as bad, the third is impossible. From then on, it gets easier all the time. The older ones help the younger and become little mothers and fathers themselves.
I wasn’t convinced; besides, a mother is entitled to a life of her own, too. Meg told me she’d been taking swimming lessons, a lifelong ambition, when she found she was with child again and had to stop.
“The likes of Meg are different,” said Father D. “They’re special. Once she recited a verse for me that summed up all she felt about motherhood. Let me see if I remember it. Yes, ’tis coming to me.
You are the trip I did not take
You are the pearls I cannot buy
You are my blue Italian lake
You are my piece of foreign sky.
To Meg’s delight, the gynecologist diagnosed non-identical twins. However, one was lost quite late in the pregnancy. Meg was upset and afraid of losing the other.
“Take things easy,” the specialist said with unconscious irony.
He promised to monitor her progress and take her into maternity well in advance of the birth.
That was what Meg was dreading.
Doc Daley said the baby would be born around Christmas time.
“On Christmas Day itself?” Meg wanted to know.
Doc said, “It’s been known before. And wasn’t Our Blessed Lord considerate to see he was born on one bank holiday and die on another?”
She said, “I always wanted one of mine to be born on Jesus’s birthday.”
Father D promised to get a manger ready just in case, with his curate playing the part of the ass.
Privately, Dr. Daley thought they might have to intervene at some point to do a cesarean. But as the weeks passed, Meg’s luck held.
A fortnight before Christmas, she was taken into hospital for observation.
I asked the doctor in charge of the maternity unit how she was progressing.
He looked at me above his half-moon spectacles.
“She’s given birth before, I believe. More than once. She’s a perfectly healthy woman, why should anything go wrong?”
Late on Christmas Eve, having finished hearing confessions, I went to have a chat with Bert. The whole family was up. The strange thing was the house that was usually as noisy as an indoor swimming pool was completely silent.
Jessica had stopped moving in circles, Tess’s yo-yo was still, and Billy was no longer using the powder compact to trap flies. Even the monkey looked under the weather.
Tommy said, “What if our mum has a dog this time?” and Teddy said he didn’t want his mum to die and become a statue.
At eleven thirty, Bert called the hospital and learned Meg had just gone into labor.
“Congratulations,” I said, trying to cheer them up. “The baby’s sure to be born on Christmas Day. I bet the rest of you are jealous.”
There was no response from any of them.
Father Duddleswell celebrated Midnight Mass. He was at his funniest and most affectionate. I went to bed in a contented frame of mind.
At 5:00 a.m., my phone rang. Bert said the baby was still not born. Something was wrong. After the first, Meg never had a problem. “Like shelling peas,” he said.
I promised to go to the hospital to check on it. I took my case with me in case of an emergency.
At maternity, I ran into the doctor with the half-moon specs. He snapped at me like a watchdog, wanting to know what the fuss was all about and, incidentally, “Happy Christmas, Padre.”
“Happy Christmas,” I whispered back, relieved by his business as usual approach.
I was permitted a brief word with Meg. “It’s to be a Christmas baby after all,” I said.
“I’m so hot, Father. If only I could take my skin off.” She did look uncomfortable. “They’re making me lie on my back, Father. I always sit up when I have my babies. This way gives me terrible backache.”
To cheer her up, I said I’d seen the family the night before and they were in great form.
Her face dropped. “You mean they were still up?”
“Bert and the two eldest,” I said, crossing my fingers. But she knew.
“I can’t relax,” she said. “I’ve never given birth in a place like this.”
I blessed her and the unborn in her and apologized for having to rush back to St. Jude’s to say mass. I assured her the hospital doctor was pleased with her progress and I’d be back straight after my mass.
All the Mavins were in church. I gave the shortest of sermons, ending by asking the congregation to pray for all mothers having babies today.
At the church door, I paused for a word with Bert, intending to go back to the hospital without delay.
Bert said, “We’re coming, too.”
“You can’t, Bert. No visitors are allowed in this time of day.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a chaplain. Authorized.”
“So are we authorized,” he said stubbornly. “I’m the hubby and these are our kids.”
“Believe me,” I said, talking like a hospital spokesman who doesn’t know what’s going on. “Meg’s doing really well.”
Bert showed his mettle. “Look, Father, Meg’s not used to having babies without us lot around. I should never have let her go to hospital in the first place.”
We were wasting time. If they wanted to tag along, I wasn’t stopping them. The porter would do that. It did cross my mind, though, that the Mavins had the advantage of numbers.
On this fine, almost spring-like morning, we walked in convoy, with Bert holding the youngest in his arms.
On the way, we passed their house. Paul let himself in for what I took to be the obvious reason. It wasn’t. When he caught us up, he was carrying Mario.
It was beginning to look like a circus. I was thinking they might let Bert in but not the kids and certainly not a monkey.
The main hospital door was always locked overnight. I strode into Casualty, trying to act normally and disassociating myself from the Mavins.
Casualty was not its normal disciplined self. There were decorations up and a Christmas tree was winking on and off. Nurses were chatting to a background of piped carols.
Bert touched my arm. “Where’s the problem, Father?”
A young nurse asked which one of us was in need of attention. Seeing Mario, she tickled his chin. “Isn’t he a sweet little thing?” she said.
“See,” Bert whispered, “they even like monkeys.”
It’s anybody’s guess what would have happened had not an ambulance driven up with its siren blaring. The medical staff lost interest in us and raced toward the exit.
We had cleared the first hurdle.
I marched ahead of the Mavins into the interior of the hospital. I had not gone far when I ran smack into Sister Crighton, a nurse of the old school, the hospital’s equivalent of Mother Stephen.
“Happy Christmas,” she said and, indicating the crowd, “would you be so good as to explain?”
The situation was saved by the appearance of Dr. Daley, who after celebrating at Billy Buzzle’s nightclub had come to offer Christmas greetings to his patients on his way home. He summed up the situation in the time it took him to drain a glass.
“Thanks a million, Father Boyd,” he called out from the other end of the corridor. “Good of you to bring the choir along.”
“We’ve just finished mass in Saint Jude’s, Doctor, so it was no trouble.”
“A little early in the day for carols,” Sister said suspiciously. She poked the baby in Bert’s arms. “The boy soprano, I take it.”
Doc Daley pointed upward. There was a sprig of mistletoe above the sister’s head.
“I do believe,” Doc said, “you are standing there, Sister Crighton, on purpose.” She blushed. “Father Neil, will you do the honors or shall I?”
For the good of the cause, I pecked on Sister’s cheek. She fingered the spot like an adolescent and, murmuring “Happy Christmas” to each of the children in turn, she walked thoughtfully away.
Doc nudged me in the ribs. “The biggest Christmas miracle I have yet seen. What a kiss you have on you, Father Neil. More potent than ether.”
We’d had incredible luck thus far but getting into maternity was going to test us to the uttermost.
Even here, fortune favored us. Only Meg was due to give birth.
I had a word with the sister in charge, a member of our parish. She told me there was no emergency in Meg’s case but, for some reason, she wasn’t getting on with it.
I went in and checked that Meg was all right and told her the whole family was outside, including Mario. It lifted her heart.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “I start up and then stop.”
I’d given Bert instructions that if there was trouble he and the kids were to start singing. They now struck up with “See amid the winter’s snow.”
Meg was thrilled to hear those familiar darling voices.
I left her, only to find that the assistant matron was nosing around. To prevent her interfering, Doc, not too steady on his feet, was conducting the choir. A group of medical staff and patients had gathered, all smiling. If Father D were there, he would’ve taken up a collection.
No sooner had Bert gone in to see Meg than I realized what had to be done. Mario reminded me of how Luigi had always played his barrel organ under the lamppost outside Meg’s bedroom when she was in labor.
I stepped forward. “I’d like you all to join in the next carol,” I said. “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag.”
I got some strange looks but this was Christmas so everyone obliged with gusto.
A few minutes later, Bert came rushing out of the labor ward. “It’s started,” he said excitedly, “I know the signs.”
Thirty minutes later, we heard the shrill cry of a newborn. Next to me, Bert shivered.
“Nothing like it in the world,” he said. “The first noise your kid makes finds your heart.”
I wasn’t related to the Mavins, yet that cry went through me, the cry of a new fellow human being.
Doc Daley put out a tongue as big as a dog biscuit. “I must celebrate,” he said. He poured himself a small one, unbaptized, of course.
Another few minutes passed, and Sister came out of the delivery room.
“Is the mum okay?” Bert asked on behalf of us all.
She nodded and crooked her index finger to invite him in to see his wife and child.
He came back radiant to tell us, “It’s a lovely little, no, a lovely big baby boy.”
We all laughed and shook our heads with relief. After we sang “Silent Night” in thanksgiving, I walked the Mavins home.
At St. Jude’s, we ate our Christmas meal, after which Father D said he was feeling tight around the equator. To help us digest our food, I suggested a walk to the Mavins’. Mrs. Pring gave us a box of minced pies for the kiddies.
When we knocked on their door, we received no answer.
“They must have gone back to visit Meg,” I said.
The front door was open. A silly thing to do even on Christmas Day.
Meanwhile, Father Duddleswell was sniffing like a retriever.
“A powerful smell hereabouts, Father Neil. They must have burned the turkey.”
It’s hard to explain but sometimes even the walls of a deserted place seem to be trying to tell you something.
We went inside, calling, “Anyone home?”
No reply.
In the kitchen, the table was laid for lunch. Christmas crackers were on the side plates. The cutlery had not been used.
The turkey was still in the oven and the vegetables had been cooked almost dry.
We passed to the living room. Christmas stockings and gift-wrapped presents were untouched under the Christmas tree.
It was eerie. “Like the Mary Celeste,” Father D said in a whisper, “that ship drifting without a crew.”
Fear took possession of me. The only explanation I could think of was that Bert had received news of complications and the whole family had gone off in a hurry to the hospital.
That moment, we became aware of a sinister drone coming from upstairs.
“Hello,” we called out. “Hello, anyone there?”
Nothing but this unearthly vibrant sound.
We crept up the staircase and followed the noise to one of the bedrooms.
There was Bert, stretched out, fully clothed, snoring loud enough to crack the ceiling.
In the other rooms, the children were also dead to the world. Even Mario was curled up like a kitten at the foot of Paul’s bed, an empty chocolate box by his side.
They must have come back from the hospital exhausted by worry and fatigue. Bert had put the meal on and then, like the kids, he had flaked out without having the energy to undress.
We tiptoed down to the kitchen. Father D took care of the turkey while I salvaged what I could of the vegetables. I telephoned Mrs. Pring, asking her to come and join us and bring the remains of our meal with her. It was five o’clock by the time we were ready.
We woke up the Mavin family with the clapping of hands and cries of joy and relief.
“Merry Christmas, everyone. A very merry Christmas.”