2001 - Father Frank (10 page)

Frank’s new church was St Thomas’s in Wealdstone, a drab North London suburb not far from Wembley with a big Irish community. It is not to be confused with Willesden, a drab North London suburb not far from Wembley with a big Irish community.

All Frank knew about Wealdstone was the Railway Hotel, which had been for The Who what the Cavern Club had been for the Beatles. Somewhere among the thousands of singles and albums in the back of his taxi was an old copy of The Who’s
Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy
, which featured an old shot of the Railway Hotel in the middle of its gatefold sleeve.

With its scruffy old factories and
Coronation Street
terraces, Wealdstone has always looked like a little chunk of the north of England, transported to the north of London. When the Irish arrived there looking for work, they found plenty: Whitefriars Glass, Hamilton’s Brushes, Winsor & Newton and Kodak all had sizeable plants in the area, and as Frank drove his taxi full of records to his new home, the atmosphere seemed to be doing its utmost to dampen his enthusiasm. Acrid, asbestos-filled smoke belched up from Winsor & Newton into a slate-grey January sky, and the rain fell on a high street that boasted branches of both Kwik-Save and Cash Converters, both sure signs that house prices in the area are not about to soar. The
Evening Standard
’s property section had never touted Wealdstone as an up-and-coming area, concluding that it had too far to up and come.

Never mind. St Thomas’s church was beautiful, if a little run-down, as was the priests’ house set just behind it. Frank knocked on the door and was ‘welcomed aboard’ by his two assistants, the semi-retired Father Lynam, almost seventy and for whom the duties of parish priest had become a little too onerous, and the recently ordained Father Conlon. It seemed absurd to call a baby-faced youth of twenty-six ‘Father’ but Liam Conlon—gentle, Irish and wholesome—could never have been anything other than a priest.

Frank was struck by the aura of goodness, almost holiness emanating from both men. It was something he envied, something he’d never managed to acquire. There was no side to them, no scepticism, just undemanding goodness. These two were like priests from Central Casting. Standing between them, their new boss was going to look like the Devil incarnate.

Both were delighted to see him: Father Lynam had been desperate to relinquish the reins to a younger man but such was the paucity of suitable candidates that he’d had to hang on for far longer than he’d intended. Father Conlon had heard so much about Frank, the charismatic Oxford theology graduate with his Suzuki X7 and his legendary sermons. Here was a man from whom he could learn, a man already at the helm of a big, challenging parish long before his fortieth birthday. “Er, Father Dempsey,” he said nervously, “the taxi still appears to be outside. You want me to go out and pay it?”

Frank chuckled. “The taxi is mine. It was left to me by someone at my old parish who just died. Far more fun than a motorbike. Anywhere you want to go, just let me know. Do you drive?”

“Well, I’ve passed my test,” said Father Conlon, “but I’ve never owned a car. Hardly ever driven one.”

“Well, you can drive this one,” said Frank. “I’ll get you insured.”

Father Conlon flushed with pleasure. Friend for life.

The house was fairly basic, though it seemed to have been freshly decorated. Magnolia woodchip and cheap brown carpet throughout. Anything more lavish would be decadence. However, thanks to Mrs Ruane, the housekeeper, it was immaculately clean and tidy. Frank wasn’t bothered either way: he wouldn’t be spending much time there.

S
arah Marshall clambered into the back of the taxi on the west side of Golden Square. “Farringdon Road, please.”

Instead off setting off, the driver turned round. “Before I take you,” he said, as he had said a hundred times before, “you ought to know I’m not a licensed taxi driver. I’m Father Frank Dempsey, parish priest of St Thomas’s in Wealdstone. I’m happy to take you to Farringdon Road, if you wouldn’t mind leaving a small donation in the box there.”

Sarah then noticed that there was no meter. The driver was gesturing instead towards a collection box, where the meter would normally have been. It was bolted securely to the floor.

“Because your donation is strictly voluntary,” he told her, “you are fully insured, but if you want to get out and hail a proper taxi, I quite understand.”

Sarah didn’t get out. Nobody ever did. It crossed her mind that ‘Father Dempsey’ might be a serial rapist but, then, so might anyone. “No,” she said. “If you can get me to Farringdon Road in ten minutes, I don’t care if you’re the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

Frank smiled at her and headed out on to Regent Street. Sarah simply stared at him. People always did. A priest driving a taxi—well, you would stare, wouldn’t you? But Sarah was staring for a different reason. God, what a handsome man, she was thinking. And what a terrible waste. Why the hell is he a priest? Look at him—tall, square-shouldered, short dark hair, navy blue eyes.
God
, what a waste. He reminded her of pictures she’d seen of Dean Martin in his Rat Pack heyday, standing outside the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. She angled her head to get a better view of his face. “Look, I know everyone must ask you this but, well, this taxi…er…why? How come?”

“The taxi was left to me by a parishioner. I couldn’t bear to sell it so I thought I’d put it to good use. I have to come down to Westminster two or three times a week on diocesan business, so on my way home I do a little bit of fund-raising.”

“Only when you come down to Westminster?”

“Depends. Sometimes on my day off, or if I’m a bit quiet, I just get in the cab and come into the West End. It’s a fantastic way of raising money.”

“What do you do with it?”

“Well, the church and the parish cost an awful lot to maintain, and rather than organise endless coffee mornings and bring and buy sales, it’s quicker and easier to go out cabbing.” Frank had given this schtick hundreds of times before, often to beautiful female passengers, literally without turning a hair, but this time was different. He found himself feeling deliciously queasy, as though a little demon was pumping red-hot lead into his stomach. He felt the way an excited five-year-old feels at jumping into bed on Christmas Eve. Something strange was happening. That magical conspiracy of factors that sometimes combine at the right moment to produce a thirty-yard free kick straight into the top corner or, in Frank’s case, a perfect right hook on the point of the jaw. He was reeling, dazed, flat out on the canvas, taking the mandatory eight. God help me, he thought, and he meant it.

God ignored him, leaving the poor wretch to experience the ache of desire in a way he never had before. Of course, priests are only human and their vows of celibacy can never eradicate the natural urges of an ordinary man. But over the years, it becomes easier to keep them in check. You get used to celibacy. After all, nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to forgo these pleasures. It was your choice. You must have thought you could do it. And, anyway, one of the human male’s great secrets is that his sexual appetite is not as great as he pretends it is. A lot of men can’t admit this, even to themselves. They’re pre-programmed, almost duty-bound, to react at the sight of a good-looking woman. “Phwoarr! Look at the tits on that! Wouldn’t mind giving her one!” Etc., etc.

They don’t even mean it. And, as most priests will tell you, once the decision has been made to live a life of chastity, it’s not as difficult as you’d think. Human beings simply don’t have sex as often as they claim to. When surveys are conducted, people lie. Couples claim to have sex seven nights a week because they think everyone else does. If a man says he’s slept with ninety-two women, his mate will say he’s had ninety-three. No one can ever prove otherwise. If
Homo sapien
’s physical desires were as consistently great as he says they are, nobody would become a priest or a nun, and if they did, their vows would be broken daily.

In every parish where Frank had worked, there had been attractive women. Some seemed to have been planted like landmines to test the strength of his vows. One or two members of the Young Wives Guild had been particularly hard to resist—devout Catholics ostensibly, but quite taken with the idea of seducing a handsome young priest.

But for Frank, today was different. His desires had been sealed and buried for years like radioactive waste. But, oh, God, the canister hadn’t been sealed as firmly as he had thought. He adjusted his rear-view mirror to get a good look at his passenger without appearing to gawp. Sarah would tell you that she had ‘footballer’s legs’, that her nose was too big and her boobs were too small. She’d like her bum to be half its size and her mouth to take up just a little less room on her face. However, it would be almost impossible to find a man with a pulse who’d agree with her. Frank was a man with a racing pulse and, from where he was sitting, Sarah Marshall was vow-breakingly gorgeous. Her wide, generous mouth occupied centre stage in the rear-view mirror and it was still asking him questions.

“So, you’re not like a minicab firm, you don’t take telephone bookings?”

Frank didn’t, never had, but decided to institute a dramatic change in company policy. “Yeah, sometimes,” he lied. “Why?”

“Well,” said Sarah, “I’ve got to fly up to Edinburgh next week—only for the day—and I’ve got to be at Heathrow for seven fifteen. So I was wondering, you know—I’d rather give the money to your church than to some dodgy cab firm.”

“Okay,” said Frank. “Where do you live?”

“Fulham.”

Oh, God, it could hardly have been further from Wealdstone. “Fine. What day?”

“Wednesday.”

“Give me your address and I’ll pick you up, say, half six on Wednesday morning. Take my mobile number in case there’s a change of plan.”

Sarah pulled a tenner from her purse, folded it then slotted it into the St Thomas’s of Wealdstone donation box, flashed an awkward, rather coy, and more than slightly sexy smile that almost gave the poor priest a cardiac arrest. She hurried into the fashionable Clerkenwell eaterie, with the words ‘Helen, Helen—I’ve just had the most surreal taxi ride’ all ready to tumble from the tip of her tongue.

I
t was all right for Sarah. She could tell Helen—she could tell anyone. For Frank, however, it was as if he’d eaten a huge, delicious steak on Good Friday. Who he was he going to tell? Father Lynam? Father Conlon?

He turned the taxi round, headed towards Islington and tried to expunge Sarah Marshall from his mind. He thought instead of the ten-pound note she had dropped into the box. That was about twice what she would have paid for an ordinary cab ride from Soho to Clerkenwell but his passengers always overpaid. He was reminded of that French restaurant on the Finchley Road where no prices were displayed on the menu. Diners were told to leave what they thought the meal had been worth. You’d have thought this would be open house for the mean and greedy and that the place would be besieged every night by freeloaders ordering four-course meals with wine, coffee and liqueurs and only leaving a fiver. But apparently not: when interviewed, the owner said that this had never happened. If anything, most customers tended to overpay. And in Frank’s taxi, once his passengers knew they were donating to a registered charity, they felt noble and virtuous at paying twenty pounds for a six-pound ride.

He immersed himself in the busy London traffic. Driving a taxi did have its advantages: he could whiz up and down the bus lanes for a start, though he always felt guilty at doing this, not because his vehicle wasn’t a
bona fide
black cab and he was therefore breaking the law but because he felt that bus lanes were intrinsically wrong—undemocratic and monstrously unfair to the vast majority of road-users. At least 90 per cent of them were ordinary car drivers and yet, at the busiest times of the day, their road space was sliced in half, leaving them fuming, squashed up and stationary while the bus lanes lay virtually empty.

Still he could not remove Sarah from his thoughts.

He turned his mind instead to the speed bumps that had appeared like a malignant growth all over London. Their height was often illegal. On most roads you had a perfect right to proceed at thirty miles an hour, yet on many highly humped highways, you’d lose your sump and half your exhaust if you ever attempted that. The idea, surely, was to keep traffic flowing as freely as possible, but speed bumps had the opposite effect. Although, according to the unctuous arguments of some, they were essential because they saved lives.

If anything, the reverse was true. Ask any fire-fighters or ambulance crews how many lives these bumps had cost. How many ambulances have been delayed in reaching patients or hospitals because of them? How many fire engines could have been at blazing houses those vital few minutes earlier had the bumps not slowed their progress to a crawl?

And the money! Millions of pounds had been spent on these ‘traffic-calming’, though hardly motorist calming, measures. Think of the good that St Thomas’s or any other charity could have done with that money—the good that London Transport could have done in fantastic improvements to the tube. How much happier everyone would have been.

Within a nanosecond, Sarah’s sultry smile had resumed its place at the front of his mind. He forced himself to fantasise instead about the punishments that should be meted out to those who had vandalised London’s streets in this way.

At this point in his private rant, the face of Kevin Stott usually flashed into Frank’s mind’s eye. Kevin Stott had been in his class at St Michael’s and had never been the brightest star in the firmament. He and thousands like him, deemed too dull for most careers, would have ended up working for the local council, in the Highways Department. Suddenly, with real power and a seemingly bottomless budget, the Kevin Stotts of this world get creative and introduce ludicrous and unworkable traffic schemes designed to make motorists miserable. All over the country ordinary people’s lives were being blighted by Kevin Stotts. Trouble was, today Kevin Stott was nowhere to be seen. His ugly face had fought and lost the battle for Frank’s attention with Sarah Marshall’s altogether more appealing features. And no amount of righteous railing about bus lanes or the flattening of speed bumps or a fantasy of the Secretary of State for Transport being flogged publicly on the steps of the Houses of Parliament could do anything to dislodge her.