2001 - Father Frank (18 page)

“Saint Who?”

“Saint Petronella. Early Roman martyr, allegedly. I say allegedly because nothing’s known about her life and death but somebody said she was a martyr and that was that. Canonised, feast day thirty-first of May.”

“Why are you celebrating it?”

“Well, we have this little custom here called the Any Excuse Club. And a little-known saint’s feast day seems a good excuse for a knees-up. I mean, we all celebrate the feast of St Valentine.”

“You celebrate Valentine’s Day? But you’re a priest.”

“Well, I don’t send cards out or put a message in the
Sun
to my huggy little snuggle bunny. But we’ll have a big dance here on the night.”

Frank’s mind had flashed back to the freshers’ fair at Oxford, with all its weird little societies. He had just invented the Any Excuse Club, but the more he thought about it, the more it struck him as marvellous, cash-generating idea.

“Look,” she said, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Well, if you can hold on for ten minutes, I’ve got a diocesan meeting in Westminster. I’ll drop you off at Golden Square. Or did you drive?”

“No. I came on the tube. I wouldn’t have known the way.”

“Great. On the house this time. No donations, please. I was going anyway. I’m a bit early, but at least I won’t have to rush.”

Another cab ride. They didn’t stop talking, they didn’t stop laughing, neither of them wanted the journey to end—Frank was driving slowly for that reason. He was even overtaken by an old man in a hat driving a Daewoo. This was becoming a problem. It was more than physical attraction, more than mental stimulation, far more than the initial intrigue of infatuation. Foundations were being laid, and concrete was being poured into the footings. Something was going to be built on those foundations but neither Frank nor Sarah quite knew what. When the journey ended at Golden Square, they each gave the other three numbers—home, work and mobile. Neither could bear to lose touch again. Frank pulled out on to Regent Street and was hailed by two Japanese tourists whose command of English was rather rudimentary. ‘Hallods’ was all they seemed capable of saying.

“Harrods?” asked Frank, just to be sure.

They nodded. “Hallods.”

There was absolutely no point in going through the I-am-not-a-cab-driver-I’m-a-Roman-Catholic-priest routine. They wouldn’t understand. Just take them to Knightsbridge and get a tenner in the box.

The diocesan meeting in Westminster was, of course, nonexistent but since Frank was now in the West End, he decided to spend a couple of hours cabbing.

And when Sarah got back to her desk, she was troubled by one thought: how on earth was she going to get up to Wealdstone tonight to get her car back?

D
r Geoffrey Clarke finished his cursory examination and gave his considered opinion. “Danny,” he smiled, “you’re the perfect weight.”

Danny Power, suffering from sporadic chest pains, was standing in the surgery in vest and underpants and smiling nervously. He was certain this couldn’t be true.

“The perfect weight,” the doctor continued, “for a man of approximately thirteen feet tall.”

Danny felt himself blush. The gaffer, a huge, powerful man, who could strike terror into anyone who worked for him, was standing there, fat and vulnerable, being ticked off like a naughty schoolboy. It is often said that the best way to tell people’s social class is from the way they treat their doctor. The working classes are respectful, deferential, almost in awe—yes, Doctor, no Doctor, anything you say, Doctor. The middle classes see the doctor as an equal—“John’s a friend. He comes round for supper”—and the upper classes regard him as a mere tradesman who comes round to fix them when they break. Despite everything, Danny Power was still in the first group. Dr Clarke liked and respected him. He’d known him for years: Danny had replastered his whole house and surgery, and done a fabulous job. Even with five children to feed and clothe, Danny’s disposable income was at least three times his own. And yet, despite all this, he called Danny ‘Danny’ and Danny called him ‘Doctor’.

“Danny—for God’s sake, for your sake, for Rose and the children’s sakes—this over-indulgence has got to stop and it’s got to stop now. If you continue eating, drinking and smoking the way you do, you’re going to die. Quite soon.” He paused. “You’re not actually fat.”

“Am I not?” said Danny, confused now.

“Oh, no,” the doctor went on, “you’re not fat, you’re now clinically obese. Twenty-two stone eight pounds, Danny. Twenty two stone eight. You’re a big man but the very most you should weigh is sixteen, maybe sixteen and a half. You’re going to have to lose six and half stone immediately, or you’ll be dead by Christmas.”

This frightened the life out of Danny, although Dr Clarke hadn’t mentioned which Christmas. “Six and a half stone, Doctor. How am I going to do that?”

“It’s very simple. I’m not saying it’s easy but it’s straightforward. There are a lot of faddy diets around by which you can lose weight very quickly but for you, and for most people, the best and most reliable way is just calories in, calories out.”

Danny had a rough idea what calories were but had never seen fit to count them.

“Put simply, if you burn up more calories than you consume, you’ll lose weight. If you burn up fewer, you’ll put it on.”

“But, Doctor, it could be my glands.”

“I think you know perfectly well that it isn’t. Glandular problems are responsible for obesity in about two per cent of cases. I’m afraid you’re one of the other ninety-eight.”

“Worth a try, though, wasn’t it?” said Danny, with a wink.

Despite affecting his most serious schoolmasterly manner, Dr Clarke couldn’t help laughing. His features then had to rearrange themselves into a mask of stern concern. “Danny, I’m not joking when I say that this obesity is putting your life at risk. There is now so much fat around your heart that it’s being pushed out of position, which will severely weaken it. No wonder you’ve had chest pains. Six and a half stone, Danny. Now.”

Danny looked at the doctor. He was pushing sixty, but trim, tanned, and with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. He looked a picture of health, a splendid advertisement for his profession, a man who clearly practised what he preached. He wasn’t a fat, wheezing alcoholic like Dr Griffiths, and because of this, Danny would take heed of what he said.

“If you’re sensible and determined, the first four stone will just fall off. The last bit’s always the hardest. Now, you’re not silly, you know all the things that are bad for you—the beer, the fry-ups, the eating late at night. That’s the great tragedy with builders. From a physical point of view, you all lead extremely healthy lives—plenty of fresh air and vigorous exercise—but you negate all that with your dietary and drinking habits. And
you
, without doubt, are the worst example I’ve ever seen. Cut out the red meats. Grilled chicken or fish instead and plenty of fruit and vegetables.”

Danny nodded obediently.

“And remember the old maxim,” said the doctor, teeing up a truism he had teed up many times before, “breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord and dine like a pauper.”

“What about exercise, Doctor?”

“Well, as I said, you get quite a lot in the course of your work, but a bit more wouldn’t go amiss.”

“I don’t have to join a gym or anything like that?”

“No, but didn’t you once tell me that you did a lot of cycling in Ireland?”

“I did, yes,” said Danny, meaning, “I did tell you that, Doctor, but I was lying.”

“Good, well, why not take it up again? I want you to come back and see me in a month’s time, and if you’re not at least a stone lighter, I’m going to kill you myself.”

The following day was the first of Danny Power’s new regime. Never one to do anything by halves, he’d driven his van straight from the doctor’s to Bunting’s bike shop in Wealdstone and bought himself a brand-new twenty-one-speed racer. When he got on to it, the saddle, and indeed the whole bike, almost disappeared up the crack of his arse, but after a few weeks, he assured himself, this would not be the case. He slipped on his jogging pants, pulled on a T·shirt the size of a marquee and thought of how much the apparel of the builder had changed in the thirty-odd years he’d been one.

When he’d started it was normal to see a navvy digging the road wearing a suit. Old, threadbare and covered in muck but a suit. This had given way to jumpers and jeans, and now it was sweatpants and fleeces. So much more comfortable especially if, like Danny, you had a slightly fuller figure.

At 6.40 a.m. he was, as usual, in Jack’s café in Masons Avenue.

“Morning, Dan,” said Jack Sands, the proprietor, who, judging by the size of his girth, was his own best customer. “Usual, is it?”

‘The usual’ was four sausages, about half a pound of bacon, black pudding, three fried eggs, beans, fried bread, mushrooms and fried tomatoes, all drenched in brown sauce and served on a plate the size of a satellite dish. Cholesterol at Jack’s was measured in hectolitres.

“No, thanks, Jack. Thought I’d try something different. Just beans on toast. Wholemeal toast, no butter.”

Jack waited for him to continue.

“Beans, wholemeal toast, no butter,” Danny repeated. “That’s it, Jack.”

Jack stood motionless. “I’m a bit slow this morning, Dan,” he replied, scratching his head. “Is it April Fool’s Day or something?”

“No, Jack,” said Danny, his iron resolve already wilting under a vicious assault from the smell of frying bacon. “I’m on a diet. Strict one.”

“You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? Danny Power on a diet? Next you’ll be telling me you’ve given up the booze.”

Danny couldn’t bear to think about this. He
had
given it up and the fortunes of the Guinness family were about to plummet as a result.

Still, he was determined to do it, buoyed up by his wife’s back-handed compliment. “Danny,” she had said, “this diet of yours is like when you and the lads go in to restore an old house. You often knock away a lot of the old shite and find some lovely original features underneath. Well, you’ve got some lovely original features too. Buried under that mountain of flab, there’s a very handsome man.”

Whenever this handsome man got the urge for a pint of Guinness or a family-sized pork pie, he’d get on that twenty-one-speed racer and pedal it for all he was worth. His big, powerful legs were going like pistons one evening as he raced down a little country lane in Bushey. Perhaps it was because he was cloaked in the half-light of dusk but the driver of the Volvo estate didn’t see him. It would be easy to dismiss the man as a typical Volvo driver, cocooned inside the tank-like security of his own vehicle, oblivious to the plight of other road-users, particularly cyclists, but this might be unfair. Even his ABS brakes couldn’t stop him in time, and for months afterwards he would wake in the night, sweating and screaming at the horrific memory of the mangled bike and the huge innocent cyclist being smashed up into the air.

As Danny’s head hit the kerb, the lives of one wife, five children and innumerable friends and relatives just didn’t seem worth living any more.

A
gain, Frank was alone in the back office, having one of his early-evening single sessions before going into the parish centre to open up. This time he had with him a large yard broom, a prop he had been using since 1971 for his secret impressions of Rod Stewart and The Faces. Their bluesy classic ‘Stay With Me’ was the best track for this performance. He placed the needle on the original green Warner Brothers single and waited for the guitar intro to begin. At this point he put the head of the broom down by his hip, pole in the air, and really believed he was Ronnie Wood. Then, as Rod’s rasping vocals kicked in, the broom turned up the other way and his gravelly impression of the plume-haired singer—who, in the early seventies, had been the zenith of cool—began. He’d whacked up the volume fairly high and only just heard the phone.

Twelve minutes later, he was sprinting through the swing doors of the A&E department of Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital. Danny was still alive but wasn’t expected to remain so for much longer. Unable to look at his friend’s body, bloody and maimed, Frank gave him the Last Rites, anointing his head, his lips and the palms of his hands. Rose, Danny’s soon-to-be-widow, seemed relieved: at least the big man was in a state of grace, ready to meet his Maker.

She fell sobbing into the priest’s arms, and he held up his neck to accommodate her head beneath his chin. He bit his lip and tried to choke back a flood of hot, salty tears. He had to be strong, he had to assure her that everything would be fine, Danny was going to a better place, but it was hard. He couldn’t do the standard soliloquy about suffering being over because, until about twenty minutes ago, Danny hadn’t been suffering. He’d never suffered. He was a maelstrom of garrulous bonhomie, eating, drinking and laughing to excess.

Frank’s father had always said that the human race was made up of drains and radiators. The drains were the takers, the people who sapped your emotional resources and gave little in return. Danny Power was the archetypal radiator, dispensing kindness, coarse humour and rounds of drinks to everyone who knew him.

Frank closed his eyes and begged God to intervene. Don’t let this man die. No purpose will be served and so many lives will be decimated. Danny was clinging to life by his fingernails, with the other twenty-odd stone hanging over a sheer drop into the eternal abyss. His chances did not look good. He’d fractured his skull, broken both arms, a leg, several ribs, and, most worryingly, he had suffered massive internal haemorrhaging. The doctors said nothing to Rose, but confided to Frank that they didn’t expect him to last until morning.

Frank stayed at Danny’s bedside all night—Rose had asked him to. She drew comfort from his presence, somehow believing that if the good Father Dempsey was there, then the good Lord was too. Together, they prayed. Frank wasn’t convinced that this would do any good but it certainly wouldn’t do any harm.

When dawn broke, Danny was still breathing. The life-support machine was still switched on and nobody had approached Rose to tell her in hushed tones that it might as well be switched off.