2001 - Father Frank (16 page)

As he spliced together this fabulous opening set, he grooved pensively around the back office of the parish centre, which was now his HQ, complete with five thousand boxed and shelved old singles and twin decks in the corner. He picked up the old Mel Torme single and was about to put it back into its original old London sleeve when he remembered that the B side was the original jazzy version of ‘Right Now’. Superb. He’d follow that with Sinatra’s peerless ‘Witchcraft’, which he had on an original purple Capitol 45 from 1958. This was shaping up into one hell of a tape.

It was then that he was struck by a terrible thought. What if all this effort—this seamless smorgasbord of aural delight is a waste of time? What if she was a big fan of Simply Red, Michael Bolton or the Lighthouse Family?

No, she couldn’t be. She just couldn’t be.

Sarah, no fan of any of the aforementioned, was standing amid a throng of commuters on the concourse at Charing Cross station. They were gazing like zombies at the huge overhead departures board, waiting for the letters of their own destinations to clatter into place—Chislehurst, Dartford, Swanley, Erith. Every face was white and pasty, waiting for its cue to be cringingly grateful to Connex South Central for deigning to provide a train to take them home.

Helen had made it sound so easy, like an episode of
Thomas the Tank Engine
. “Just hop on the train at Charing Cross.” She hadn’t mentioned the thirty-five minutes of departure-board gazing that had sent a dull heavy ache down her neck, spine and the backs of her legs. Suddenly the doors to platform six snapped open like a greyhound trap and the Kent commuters were galloping towards the train.

Having spent the entire journey standing about an inch and a half from a man who’d had garlic for lunch, Sarah was eventually deposited at Blackheath along with a few dozen City types. She seemed to be the only person walking out of the station who wasn’t wearing a blue stripy shirt and a red spotted tie. Presently, she arrived at Graham’s flat, and straightening the now slightly crumpled bunch of flowers, she rang the bell. Helen opened the door, kissed her friend on both cheeks, thanked her for the lovely flowers and bottle of Lebanese red and, with an excited and conspiratorial smile, ushered her through to the sitting room. “Sarah,” she gushed, “this is JJ.”

F
rank sat in the back of his cab, parked up by the river on Ballast Quay in Greenwich, reading
GQ
and sipping a bottle of Purdey’s. He hadn’t been to see Father Conway because Father Conway didn’t exist. But then, he thought, neither had St Christopher. The hero of a million medallions could not have carried the baby Jesus across the river because St Christopher wasn’t born until more than three hundred years after Christ’s death. It took the Holy See until 1969 to spot this little anomaly and confiscate his feast day. Frank often wondered how many other so-called saints were Christopheresque charlatans.

Still, this was no excuse for creating a fictive priest and a concomitant pack of lies about going to Greenwich to visit him. It was a plausible story, but as nine thirty became ten thirty, Frank was tormented by the thought that JJ might have turned out to be that highly unlikely species—a handsome, charming and interesting accountant. Stranger things had happened, like a parish priest who doesn’t believe in God.

At ten forty the phone rang, and Frank turned on the ignition, so that the distinctive sound of a taxi’s diesel engine would corroborate his story. Wrong number.

At ten forty-five, it rang again. He started the engine again.

“Father Dempsey?” enquired a husky voice, with a note of apprehension.

“Yes?” he replied, mock-cautiously.

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered. “Listen, I’ve got to whisper—I’m in the bathroom at the moment so no one can hear me. Not that they could anyway. They’ve put on
The Best of Thin Lizzy
—can you hear it? And they’re in the middle of a drunken accountants’ rendition of ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’. I’ve had one of the worst evenings of my life. I told them all when I arrived that I was feeling a bit dicky—stomach bug, you know—just to make my early exit a little more plausible.”

“I see,” replied Frank. Should he approve of this lie because of their shared loathing of accountants, or disapprove because he was a priest and lying was a sin? Perhaps this was just an unorthodox form of confession, and if so, it was probably the first time that a priest had heard a confession in a taxi from a bathroom via a mobile phone.

“So where are you?” she asked.

“Just left Father Conway’s,” lied Frank. “Heading up towards Tower Bridge. Lucky you caught me—another ten minutes and I’d have been across the river and miles away.” He paused for effect. “So…er…well, still want rescuing?”

“Oh, please,” she almost begged. “You’re not too far away, are you?”

“No,” said Frank, telling the truth for once. “Not at this time of night. I can be with you in ten minutes,” he said, even though he could have been there in three. “But how are you going to get out?”

“Helen’s called me a cab. I’ll take it as far as Blackheath station so could you meet me there at eleven?”

“Yeah, no problem,” said Frank, and headed off towards Maze Hill.

He was desperate to ask her why she wanted him and not Blackheath Minicabs to take her to Fulham but, remembering the axiom that nothing is as attractive as somebody finding you attractive, he hoped he knew the answer.

At Blackheath station, he saw the sexiest thing he’d ever seen paying off the driver of a white Ford Mondeo. He’d never seen Sarah at night, and nightfall lends a certain sexiness to anything, especially an assignation as wicked and clandestine as this one.

She slid into the back. Again he picked up the lovely smell of Supershine shampoo, this time tinged with cigarette smoke. The door clunked, the taxi pulled away. Frank tried to be calm. “So how was it?” he asked, with a grin.

Sarah, unable to find the words that would do justice to the full horror of her evening, screamed and kicked her gorgeous tanned legs in the air.

Frank gripped the steering-wheel and tried to get a grip on himself. “That good, eh?” he said, recovering enough to loosen a little colour into his tightly whitened knuckles.

“Well,” she explained, settling back into her seat, “I suppose a lot of it was my fault. I went in with completely the wrong attitude.”

“And how did this ‘wrong attitude’ manifest itself?”

“Well, this bloke JJ—I kept calling him Jonathan and he clearly didn’t like it.”

“Oh dear. Regarded himself as far too wacky to have an ordinary name like Jonathan?”

“Exactly,” said Sarah.

“So,” said Frank, asking the question he had been dying to ask, “what was he like?”

“Dreadful,” laughed Sarah.

A twenty-one-gun salute, firework display and full fanfare, followed by a celestial choir went off in Frank’s head. Yes! Yes! Yes! “Exactly how dreadful?”

“Well, he was one of those people who clearly considered himself to be a ‘classic personality’. A real hoot, a bit zany…”

“The life and soul of the Christmas party?”

“Oh, that’d be him. The office prankster. But he also had to demonstrate that he had a serious side. Not an intelligent, sensitive sort of serious side. More the ‘ruthless auditor’ sort of serious side, a guy not afraid to ask tough questions.”

“Mighty impressive, eh?” said Frank, with a grin.

“Well, I’d already lied about feeling sick but I needn’t have bothered.”

“Why not?”

“After the first twenty minutes of being regaled by JJ and Graham’s oh-so-hilarious rugger-tour stories, I really did want to vomit.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” said Frank. “Why do you think taxi seats are always wipe-clean vinyl?”

“Oh, no,” she said warmly. “I’m fine now. Anyway, how was your old priest?”

“St Christopher?” is what Frank almost said, before remembering that he’d called the non-existent cleric Father Conway. “Oh, he was on fine form. It was good to see him. Now he’s a proper old character, drinks like a fish. I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

“Alcohol’s a preservative,” observed Sarah.

“Well, that would explain it. Before I knew him he was a chaplain to the Royal Navy. Apparently when he went on board ship, they had to organise a rota of people to sit and drink with him. It was too much for any one man, even a hard-drinking sailor. One by one they would get up from the table, absolutely stocious, while old Father Conway would remain sober as a judge. The Whiskey Priest, they used to call him.” Frank was both impressed and appalled by the ease with which he could fabulate these stories.

“Doesn’t Tower Bridge look fabulous at night?” he said, trying not to gaze too dreamily into the rear-view mirror at something else that looked fabulous at night.

Sarah agreed. “Tower and Albert, my two favourite bridges.”

“Mine too,” said Frank. “At school, we had a sponsored walk over the bridges. We started by going south over Tower Bridge, then north over London, south over Southwark, north over Blackfriars and so on.”

Sarah had an idea. “Can we do that now?”

“What? A sponsored walk?”

“A sponsored cab ride—Tower Bridge to Putney Bridge. I have cash, and it’s all in a good cause, isn’t it?”

Cash or no cash, it was all in a very good cause. Making a parish priest, starved of the joy of female company, feel happy and human.

Together they crossed thirteen bridges: Tower, London, Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Westminster, Lambeth, Vauxhall, Chelsea, Albert, Battersea, Wandsworth and Putney, and in that time, they hardly drew breath. Frank wondered why he’d bothered compiling that tape of exquisitely cool night music when neither of them was listening to it.

“You seem to know London pretty well,” Sarah remarked.

“Well,” said Frank, “I’ve lived here all my life. Even the seminary I went to was in Chelsea. I’m what they call a diocesan priest, attached to Westminster, so all the parishes I’ve worked in are in London.”

“Do your parents still live here?”

“The old man retired about three years ago and they went back to Ireland. The house they bought in Kilburn for two grand they sold for three hundred. They only needed a fraction of that to buy a cottage in Connemara with about half an acre, so they’ll never have to work again. They really are living happily ever after.”

“Ireland’s a beautiful country,” said Sarah wistfully, recalling the business trips she’d taken there, the only pleasurable aspect of having to work on the Slattery’s chain of bars.

“When it’s not raining,” said Frank. “But Connemara’s fabulous—like a picture postcard. It’s where they shot
The Quiet Man
.”

“What quiet man?”

“
The Quiet Man
,” said Frank, with a chuckle. “The John Wayne film where he plays the ex-boxer who goes back to his Irish roots. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it?”

“No.”

“God, I think I spent most of my childhood watching
The Quiet Man
. That and
The Song of Bernadette
with Jennifer Jones.”

“Do you like old films?”

“I love them. I really miss going to the cinema.”

“Don’t you ever go?”

“Not really,” said Frank. “No one to go with. And I have a morbid fear of going to the pictures on my own. Thank God for the video shop. I get them all for nothing.”

“You get videos for nothing?”

“I get most things for nothing.”

“How come?”

“Well,” explained Frank, “look at the seats in front of you.”

On each of the flap-down seats in the taxi was an ad, rather crudely printed, one on bright blue paper, one on bright yellow. “Wealdstone Videos,” proclaimed the yellow one. “Free membership. All the latest releases. Open seven days till 10 a.m.”

“Jeanius,” said the blue one. “All makes of denim at discount prices.”

“Probably not quite as sophisticated as the ads your agency would come up with but they serve a purpose.”

“Which is?”

“Unlimited supplies of videos from one, T·shirts and jeans from the other. The less I have to filch from St Thomas’s for myself, the more we can give away. I change the posters every couple of weeks. Some shops pay in cash but most prefer to pay in kind.”

The conversation lulled for a moment and Frank realised he was as happy now as he’d ever been. Heading north over Westminster Bridge, he could see the towering majesty of the London skyline set against a clear, perfect night. In front of him, the sky looked like black velvet and the stars like a shower of uncut diamonds casually scattered all over it. As he wove the cab skilfully around the streets he knew so well, he was finally able to exorcise the ghost of punting.

At Oxford, a pretty sure way to bed a girl had been to borrow one of the college punts and take it along the Cherwell.

If you were any good at punting. Unfortunately, Frank wasn’t. Had it been a matter of brute force, he’d have been fine, but it was all about grace and style. Try as he might, he could never get the hang of it. Tonight, though, he felt as if he were punting with ease and elegance. He was, after all, guiding a vehicle along a river with the sure touch of an expert and a beautiful girl lounging lazily behind him. “What about you?” he asked. “Where did you grow up?”

“Just outside Manchester,” she replied. “A place called Wilmslow.”

“So you’re a northerner? You don’t have an accent.”

“We didn’t move there till I was eleven. Before that we were in Twickenham, then I came back down here to university in London when I was eighteen. Anyway, Wilmslow isn’t like ‘Oop North’—it’s very genteel, more like Surrey. Full of
Coronation Street
stars and Man United footballers.”

As they talked and laughed their way back and forth across the Thames, the attraction between them grew more powerful, perhaps because Sarah didn’t treat Frank like a priest. Possibly because she’d never seen him being one. To her, he was a bloke, kind, funny, intelligent, and different, so very different from anyone she’d ever met. These feelings, though she didn’t know it, were mutual. Since he’d become a priest, Sarah was the first woman—the first person—not to treat him as one. She wasn’t careful or self-censoring in what she said. She was open and friendly, and regarded him as a normal person instead of some sort of freak. Most people treated him with unseemly deference or unwarranted suspicion. They often assumed he was gay or a paedophile, whereas if he hadn’t been a priest it would have been perfectly clear to them that he was neither. He’d had to defend men of the cloth against this wearisome accusation many times. Of course, there were clerics with unorthodox sexual proclivities, but these were no more common among priests than among any other group of people. Such priests were, however, exposed ruthlessly by the media because a randy homosexual priest makes a far better story than a randy homosexual hairdresser.