“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 priest 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.”
I was unable to say a word to help him. I hadn’t expected anything like this.
When he spoke again, he said, “It was the happiest and the unhappiest time in my life. You would understand that.”
I nodded.
Chick was working in a bakery. He worked all night and took on any extra jobs he could find by day to make ends meet.
“Then, one morning, Neil, it was about nine o’clock, I’d finished my stint in the bakery and was taking a breath of fresh air. The street was in a panic. A big draft horse pulling a cart ran amok. Something had driven it crazy, I don’t know what. I was reared on a farm and was always good with horses. I jumped up on the cart and gradually brought it under control, but the poor horse had to be destroyed later. I felt it was my fault.”
I let that pass. It was as if he were speaking a foreign language to me.
“As I handed over the reins, the driver said, ‘Thanks, mate. Pity about the girl, she didn’t stand a chance.’”
“‘Any idea who it was?’ I said. “My boss grabbed me by the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t you know, Chick?’ ‘Know what?’ ‘It’s your missus.’
“I wrenched his hands off me and I wanted to knock him down and stamp all over him. Those around had to stop me doing it.
“Everything went silent as I began searching … She was lying on the pavement, the pram next to her. An elderly woman, I don’t know who, whispered, ‘The kid’s okay, mister.’ Philip, a few weeks old, smiled when I looked down on him. I picked him up and held him tight, and he gurgled in my ear. ‘Thank you,’ I said to the woman. ‘Look after him, please.’ I put him back in his pram and turned to Emma. She was still conscious. I wanted to pick her up, but they wouldn’t let me, not till a doctor came. So I knelt beside her. I remember how flour from my apron fell like snow on her face. The cart, laden with kegs from the brewery, had gone right over her. ‘Don’t die, Emma,’ I said, ‘please don’t die,’ and, in spite of the pain, she smiled up at me. ‘Silly boy,’ she said.”
The old priest paused as a mallard duck and its mate landed in our pond and swam around before taking off. I had to prod him to go on with his story.
“Inside, she was all … inside, she … Someone offered to take care of Philip while I went in the ambulance to the hospital. I had seen many people die but, oddly, I didn’t recognize death on Emma’s face. You just can’t believe your love can die.”
Rufus lifted his head and gently whined so a flicker of a smile passed over Chick’s face.
“Doctors told me there was no hope, but I still refused to believe them. Emma was still smiling and it made her look, well, immortal. After a few days, I finally saw what everyone else saw from the beginning. I’d brought Philip with me the day I said to her …”
He paused for a long while as if he had forgotten I was there or he was somewhere else, far away.
He suddenly jerked to as if he had become aware of my presence again.
“Emma, I said, I want you to do something for me, and she said she knew what it was but I won’t, I can’t. Emma, I said, you have to, for me, for Philip, too. She beckoned me to lower Philip so she could kiss him. Not even for our little baby, she said.”
He took out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.
“Emma, I said, please, I want you to confess your sins so you can go straight to heaven and pray for us both. She kissed my hand and said, I’m already in heaven, silly. Please, Emma, please, you must. I can’t, Chick, I can’t speak to anyone about us, only to you. All right, I said, confess to me. I’m still a priest, a bad one, but still a priest. This is an emergency, confess.”
I waited a while before asking, “Did she?”
“Yes, but she didn’t mention marrying me. You must say it, Emma. She said, I will if you like, but I won’t mean it. I can’t be sorry for the best thing I did in my life. Look at Philip. Are you wanting me to say sorry for him, too?”
For a while, the agony of that moment came back to Father Dawson in all its vigor.
“She was as innocent as a lamb, you see. I was the guilty one. But I could never have lived with myself if I had absolved her from a sin that was, for her, no sin at all. I told God to blame me, only me.”
“You didn’t give her absolution?”
He shook his head. “I held up my hand and prayed in Latin over her but no absolution.”
I mumbled something to the effect that I understood.
“I prayed, Lord, let Emma live and I’ll go back to being a priest. I wasn’t being honest, Neil, not really. If she lived, I wouldn’t go back; only if she died, I might.”
“Then?”
“The next day, I brought Philip to see her and, five minutes later, she was holding his hand when she went to God.”
There was stillness in the garden, not a breath of wind, not a leaf stirred.
After a while, he was composed enough to continue.
“I’ve always believed Emma didn’t die. She simply transferred her life into our son for his safekeeping until we all meet again.”
I said I liked that idea very much.
“When she was buried, I wrote to her mother. She and Emma’s sister came to see us. Jane picked Philip up and held him to her breast. I had to admit to myself, grudgingly, he looked very comfortable there. She said she had no children of her own and she and her husband would like to adopt Philip. She would bring him up in Roquebrune in the south of France where she lived. I didn’t like her all that much but she was the best person for the job, or so I persuaded myself. My son would grow up seeing with his own eyes what his mother looked like, you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Jane was a strict Catholic and didn’t approve of me but that was in her favor, don’t you think?”
I made no comment.
“She knew right from wrong, anyhow. I thought if she takes Philip, the only thing he’ll lack is me and that’s no loss. Without my wife and never wanting another, I knew I couldn’t cope. Especially as I was feeling the pull back to the old life. And guess why?”
“Tell me.”
“So I could offer mass for Emma’s soul.”
“You confided in Father Duddleswell?”
“Ah, my precious Charles. Newly ordained he was, your age, but the soul of kindness. Not one word of reproach. He promised to stand by me whatever I decided and help me come home if I chose that. He was the only priest I could trust.”
“And the baby?”
“I told Jane she could take Philip with her. ‘On one condition,’ she said, knowing she had won.”
“Which was?”
“That I promised never to try and see him or contact him in any way. She said let him remain in ignorance of you. She made me swear on the Bible. I said I’d swear on my wife’s grave, but she preferred the Bible. ‘Only one thing I ask, Jane,’ I said. ‘Will you tell my son I loved his mother with all my heart.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.’”
“It must have been hard giving him up—”
“I was getting fonder and fonder of him. At the last moment, it hurt so much I nearly changed my mind, but Charles was with me, steady as a rock. ‘It’s best for the boy,’ he said. My last words to Jane were, ‘Will you tell me if he gets seriously ill?’ She nodded. It was foolish of me. Day after day for many years, I expected a letter in the post, telling me my son was dying or dead.”
“You never contacted him?”
“No.”
“That was very brave of you.”
He shook his head vigorously. “To be honest, I did make one crazy attempt to look for him. I went on my own to the South of France for a vacation. I hadn’t realized there are two Roquebrunes, one part by the sea, the other in the hills. Which was his Roquebrune?”
“And?”
“I wandered everywhere in both of them, not knowing what my son looked like. I’d never seen his picture, you understand. When I had him, I never thought to take his picture or snip a lock of his hair, not that he had any. I had nothing left of him, nothing. But I thought he might resemble Emma.”
“Or you.”
“I wished not for that. I waited outside schools and churches. Maybe I saw him, but if I did, I never knew. I came back to London more unhappy than ever.”
“When did you return to the priesthood, Father?”
“Father.” He repeated the word as if had a magical ring to it. “A father twice over? Ah, I returned eighteen months to the day after leaving. Only Charles and my bishop knew, and the bishop, God rest him, is long since dead.”
“You must have been deeply depressed.”
“For years, I was an abysmal priest. I cold-shouldered the world. I wasn’t happy, and self-pity is a terrible affliction. I didn’t love God or anyone else. Least of all myself. I felt my soul was gangrenous. I prayed Our Father, and what sort of an image of God was I? A father who had given up his son.” He sighed deeply. “Suffering sometimes make you sympathetic, sometimes the opposite. Guilt is the wickedest thing. I felt I’d caused Emma’s death.”
When I tried to object, he briskly silenced me.
“You know the story of David and Bathsheba, how they sinned and the baby born of them died. David said it was because of his sin. It was like that with me. Only, I lost my wife, she was the innocent one. I didn’t lose my son, I gave him away. That’s why I resented the people I was supposed to serve. In particular, the children—can you believe that? If I saw a young mother wheeling a pram, I’d cross the road so as not to meet her. In the end, my parishioners sensed my loathing and didn’t even ask me to baptize their children anymore, they took them to another church. God took my wife and I could bear that. I had nothing but fond memories of her. But my son I had deserted, and for that I felt only guilt and misery. I found myself thinking, Philip is nine months old now, one year, two years old. And I don’t even know his face and he doesn’t know mine. I was forbidden to send him a card at Christmas or his birthday.”
He lapsed into a long silence. I broke it by saying, “Your illness changed all that?”
“Not my illness, no.” He smiled at the thought of that. “Something else. First, let me tell you I tried to kill myself. Not in any conventional way. I had a heart condition, so I started cycling madly all over the place. Imagine, suicide by riding a bike!”
It was such a ridiculous idea, I couldn’t help laughing.
“It nearly worked, too. Once, I fell off my bike, nearly under a bus.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, Father.”
He took my hand in his. “So am I, lad.” After more reflection: “I was dying. Everybody said that. Charles, who was now in charge of Saint Jude’s, was sent for and he anointed me. I didn’t want to live on merely to increase the misery of the world. I’d lived too long already. I’d given up my little boy for a ministry that bore no fruit.”
“I heard the opposite.”
“As I was dying in hospital, Charles visited me. He said he’d received out of the blue a letter from France. A lawyer was on his way with news about my son. All Charles had been told was that it was not bad news.
“Within the hour, a young man came to see me, a tall fair-haired stranger with a thin pencil mustache. ‘Tell me about Philip.’ These were the first words I addressed to him.”
“And?”
“He said, in broken English, ‘I am he.’”
“Ah.”
“I hadn’t been able to imagine him as a grown-up, still less a lawyer. He was still a little boy to me. My mind, I suppose, was in a kind of time warp.”
“I can understand that.”
“For years, sometimes for hours on end, I’d wanted to kiss his hand. It was, you see, the last thing Emma had kissed. His hand was little then and so much bigger and stronger than mine now, I felt it represented all the years we’d been apart. He let me, let me put my lips to his hand, and a thrill went through me and my whole life came together in one precious moment.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
“I managed to convey to him that once, when he was a boy, I went to Roquebrune and my eyes got threadbare looking for him. To show he understood, he bent over me and kissed both my eyelids, the way, though he did not know this, the way his mother kissed them before we went to sleep at night. It was as if he knew.”
“Tell me, did he look like your wife? I’m glad. You must’ve had a lot to say to one another.”
“I was like a starving thing. I wanted to know everything that had happened in the lost years, my lost years, everything. We spoke, he in bad English, I in bad French. It was best like that. It meant we had to work hard to understand, to reach out to the other.”
“And?”
“We succeeded, we were the same flesh and blood, after all. He who was once my little boy was strong enough to repair all the gaping holes in the long road of my life.”
“Who else could have done that?”
He shook his head.
“He brought me pictures of his wife and two little boys.”
“How did he learn about you?”
“Charles had contacted him. Maybe he made recent inquiries. More likely, he knew from Jane all along where they were living and didn’t tell me. Never so much as hinted, even in my darkest days.”
“Did he bring you a letter from Jane?”
“Better than that.”
“Better?”
“Philip handed me an old, faded letter. My wife had written it to her sister just before she died. Without me knowing, a nurse had taken down the words and she had signed it, Emma Dawson. In it, she begged Jane, for her sake, to adopt the boy so I could return to my first love, the priesthood. She wrote, ‘Tell Philip when he is old enough to understand, that his father gave up everything he ever loved for me and he is the finest of men.’”
The old man lifted his bewildered eyes to mine. “You see what terrible things love does to one’s judgment, Neil?”
“Tell me about Philip,” I said.
“Just like his mother, no bitterness toward me at all. Times had changed, I suppose. Anyway, the young don’t blame the old the way the old blame the young. They have better things to do. He told me I had done the honorable thing and thanked me for providing him with such a wonderful second mother.” Chick wiped his eyes. “I walked out on him when he was a few months old and even so he said that.”
To ease the tension, I said, “He helped you get well?”
“Oh yes. Mind you, I had to get well, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to die, not even to please God and his holy angels. I persuaded the Almighty to postpone my death.”
I said I was pleased God was so flexible.
“Me, too,” he chuckled. “What a lot I had to live for. My parishioners whom I’d neglected prayed for me and sent me flowers. My son liked me and might one day learn to love me. It was a second life. I was born again. Resurrection. An Easter of my own.”
“Have you seen Philip since?”
He smiled broadly. “The whole family. My daughter-in-law, my grandchildren, all of them French, though I don’t hold that against them. And Jane, beautiful Jane, looking just as Emma would have looked.”
“But not quite as beautiful.”
He accepted my correction gratefully.
“Jane had borne six children, but she confided in me that Philip has always been the apple of her eye. She was convinced that if Philip hadn’t been given her she would never have had children of her own. For years, poor girl, she was terrified I would suddenly appear and take him home. They were living in Grasse, not Roquebrune. I didn’t stay long the first time—it was that hot summer just before the war—in case my heart should break completely with the joy of it all. But I went back there when the war was over, twice. I have three grandsons now.” He broke of abruptly. “That’s all there is to it, really.”
I said it was quite a story.
“I’m an old man now,” he said softly, “but every morning I wake up thanking God for the gift of my wife and son. Isn’t that a strange thing for a priest to do?”
I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t know whether to pity or envy him.
“I have to admit to you, too, lad, if I had a hundred lives I’d marry Emma in every one of them. If she’d have me. Not that I’d ever be a priest again. I haven’t the right, you see.”
I tucked his blanket in to give myself something useful to do.
“Emma is the one perfect thing in my life. I am always sad when I come across a man, woman, or child who hasn’t one perfect thing, someone to love and rely on.”
He withdrew into himself for a while before adding, “I suppose, Neil, you could say I’m the unrepentant thief. I have never been truly sorry for loving and marrying Emma.”
“How could you?” I replied instantly.
He eyes me curiously. “That’s exactly what Charles said to me. I used to worry that I couldn’t be sorry for what I did when I went to him for confession.” He paused. “I’m allowed to break the seal of my own confession, aren’t I?”
“I suppose so.”
“Charles said, ‘Chick, I want you to say sorry to God.’”
“I said, ‘I can’t.’”
Chick caught me smiling at that. He had been through all this with Emma years before and we knew how she responded.
“Charles said, ‘You can and you must. Say after me: Dear God, I’m sorry.’”
“I said, ‘I’ve tried a thousand times and I still can’t.’”
“Then Charles pounded his breast enough to break a couple of ribs, and admitted, ‘If I were you, Chick, I couldn’t say it, either.’”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said.
“So I said to Charles, ‘What do I do now, then?’
“He said, ‘Say after me, Dear God … c’mon, Chick, after me, you hear? Trust me, y’hear. Dear God, I am heartily sorry for not being sorry.’
“I said, ‘I can say that,’ and I did.”
I shook my head to clear it. “That must be the oddest confession God has ever heard—from a couple of priests, too.”
“He must still be trying to puzzle it out.”
“It explains,” I said, “why so many parishioners go to him for confession.”
Chick laughed. “True. Now I just accept it as a great mystery and leave it to God to explain it to me some day if ever we meet.”
As an afterthought, he said, “Today is my son’s birthday. I sent him a card, of course.”
I was wondering why he chose that day to confide in me.
Though frail, Father Dawson delighted in June and roses and the prospect of the children’s First Communion.
Sad to say, on the Sunday after Corpus Christi, he wasn’t up to it. I had to step in and take his place.
In the middle of the ceremony, Rufus appeared, bearing a letter in his teeth. I read it to the packed congregation. Father Dawson wanted to see all the new communicants in his room after mass. Everyone clapped, a rare thing in those days.
After mass, I led the boys and girls into his room in pairs. From his bed, he blessed them and gave them each a medal of the Sacred Heart.
It tired him and he was dozing when music filled the room. The children had gathered in the garden to sing him a few communion hymns.
He came to with a start. “What’s this, Neil? Am I in heaven already? I never thought I’d skip Purgatory altogether.”
Chick’s golden jubilee as a priest was approaching. Bishop O’Reilly wrote to say he would preside at the celebration mass. But he had decided it was time for the old warhorse to retire. He had already appointed a successor.
Father Duddleswell said, “The sturdiest bucket gets broken in the end.”
Chick took the news well, but he was obviously upset, especially as he had lost his dog only a few weeks before.
Rufus received an interment in keeping with his status. I dug his grave and buried him in the garden in sight of Chick’s bedroom. More than a hundred parishioners attended the obsequies with their children who carried lighted candles and covered the grave with flowers. At Chick’s request, I put on top of the flowers his old biretta.
“It’s time for me to retire,” Chick said. “My parishioners deserve someone younger and fitter to look after them.”
I said to Father Duddleswell that this could be the end of Chick. He didn’t agree.
“Dr. Daley maintains, Father Neil, provided a man does not get bored he can go on living almost as long as he likes.”
He went on to tell me the story of one of Father Dawson’s congregation. George Rowan, whom I’d met, had lost his wife and was for throwing in the towel. He sent for Chick to come and anoint him.
“Chick came, of course. But would he anoint him? He would not. Instead, he took out a newspaper and started teaching him to read.”
George had left school at thirteen, illiterate. For more than fifty years, he wanted to read and write. When Chick offered to teach him, George took on a new lease of life. He wasn’t going to peg out, he said, until he mastered “this reading and writing lark.” He was still going strong five years later.
I appreciated the story but, I said, “That’s just the point. Now that Chick is separated from his people, he has nothing to live for anymore.”
“Is that so, lad?” he said in a tone that suggested he was up to something.
The jubilee mass was joyful but inevitably tinged with sadness.
After seeing the bishop to his car, I went to Chick’s room to settle him in for the night. I was utterly exhausted, ready to drop.
I was concerned to find that a man and three lads were gathered around the bed. Didn’t they realize the poor old fellow had had enough for the day?
I began to usher them out, saying, “Father Dawson’s very tired.”
Chick, his face shining, said, “My son and grandsons have come to take me home.”
For several Christmases after that, I received a card from Grasse. “I am so happy,” Chick wrote, “the danger is I might never die at all.”
It is all so long ago. I can’t tell you how many times in the meanwhile I’ve said to my penitents, “Tell God, my dear, how sorry you are for not being sorry,” and to myself, too, I have said it.
Ah, if only devout Catholics knew the frailty of those they depend on and hold in high regard.
I am as old now as Chick and Rufus were then, no, I’m older. I have known trials and tribulations and had my ecstatic moments, too.
In all those years, I felt it was a special privilege to have known a man who, in the truest sense, lived happily ever after. May his great soul rest everlastingly in the peace he finally and deservedly found.