2001 - Father Frank (14 page)

Bathed, shampooed, scrubbed and flossed, Frank put on his clothes, fresh from the laundry basket, impregnated with the divine smell of fabric conditioner, which he’d always found so appealing. Black T·shirt, black jeans, black socks, black Dr Marten’s shoes and black quilted Fl flying jacket. He gave himself a final check in the mirror and felt that, dressed like this, he should come crashing through Sarah’s bedroom window with a box of Milk Tray.

§

At 3.23 Sarah, too, was lying awake, alone under a crisp white duvet in her big wrought-iron bed. How had she ended up here? Not that ‘here’ was a bad place to have ended up—far from it—but how had she managed it? She hadn’t set out to have a successful career. She wasn’t particularly ambitious. She certainly wasn’t one of those awful ‘driven’ people, setting themselves goals and drawing up five-year plans. All she’d done, initially, was pass her A levels. This had led to the offer of a place to read English at Westfield College, London.

Three years later, with her graduation photograph perched proudly on her parents’ piano, she had been offered a job as a trainee account executive at a top London ad agency, where she proved herself bright, sassy and charming. Within a relatively short time, she was earning quite a lot of money and had a garden flat in a nice part of London, with a brand-new candy-blue Beetle parked on a resident’s permit outside.

Tonight she was alone. Her flatmate—Vanessa or ‘Nessie’—was just perfect—kind, generous and hardly ever there. Nessie was one of those fat vegetarians, who believe that not eating red meat gives them licence to consume every other comestible on the planet. Sarah could always tell whether she was there or not by the amount of food left in the fridge.

Nessie was an opera singer, not a big star—she seldom graced the stage at Covent Garden—but she worked regularly and was usually on tour. When she wasn’t, she usually stayed with whoever happened to be her current beau. Right now it was a rather effete set designer called Robert, who had a flat in Kentish Town. Sarah preferred it that way: there are few things in life as unpleasant as lying wide awake in bed listening to the couple next door having sex. Nessie had always been fairly unbridled in her lovemaking and she was, of course, an opera singer. At the moment of climax, you can just imagine what the noise was like. It was a miracle that Robert’s flat still contained any unshattered glass.

Sarah stretched her legs diagonally across the big bed. Sometimes she wished someone was in there with her; sometimes she didn’t. Anyone invited under that crisp white duvet now would have to be ‘right’—whatever that meant. There was a long list of applicants, an assortment of male friends, colleagues and clients, all waiting in an invisible queue outside her bedroom door.

How would she know when she’d met the ‘right’ person? Perhaps she’d met him already. Perhaps one of her ex-boyfriends was as ‘right’ as she was ever going to get. Not one, however, had proved ‘right’ enough. Her thoughts turned to her happily married parents, David and Valeric. How had they known? Or were they just lucky, like two golfers scoring simultaneous holes-in-one? Or were people a lot more easily contented back in 1962? They were lovely people, kind, well-balanced and normal. Yet at 3.23 in the morning, their marital nirvana was the bane of Sarah’s life. The children of happily married parents often feel like this: they have so much to live up to, such high expectations of any relationship and consequently such enormous scope for disappointment.

At 3.23 in the morning, Sarah’s parents would be sleeping soundly and peacefully together. David and Valeric Marshall each came from a long line of perfectly normal people. These are the people who seldom appear in books or magazines and about whom documentaries are never made. There was nothing remotely odd or sinister about either David or Valeric. No dark secrets lurked behind their privet hedge. Valeric was not a secret alcoholic any more than David was a weekend transvestite. They were not members of the local Satanic Society; David wasn’t even a freemason. Friends and neighbours, though frequently entertained, were not expected to throw their keys in the fruit bowl. Neither were they boring or dreary. Happy, well-balanced people generally aren’t.

David had worked for the Midland Bank for thirty years, ended up as branch manager at Alderley Edge. As such, he was a well-known and respected figure, a pillar of the local community, on a par with the doctor, the solicitor and the local headmaster, on first-name terms with everyone and genuinely concerned for their financial well-being.

Then, suddenly, it had all changed. Banking underwent a massive upheaval. Branches disappeared like red squirrels, David’s among them: it was far more cost-effective to subsume his branch and countless others into one gargantuan call centre on an industrial estate just outside Cheadle. David accepted a handsome redundancy settlement and that night, over a bottle of particularly good South African red, he and Valeric decided that it might be fun to sell the stuff as well as buy it. He took his own advice, applied for a small business loan and entered the wine trade. Now, at sixty-one and fifty-nine respectively, they were happier than ever, constantly off on little buying trips to California, Australia or the South of France.

Sarah suddenly remembered that they were off to Chile tomorrow—uncharted territory. She must phone and wish them good luck. If only her life was as exciting as theirs. Actually, at the moment it almost was: she was going to see that enigmatic, rather hunky priest. After twisting and turning a few more times, she decided to get up and get ready. After all, he’d be here in two hours.

§

Two hours later the sun was lifting its head over a deserted A40, Frank’s taxi was sauntering along towards Hammersmith and Fulham, its driver trying not to throw up with excitement. At six twenty-eight, he pulled into a street of handsome Victorian terraced houses just off the Fulham Road.

“Hello?”

“Taxi for Marshall.”

“Just coming.”

Once again, she slid on to the back seat of G339 YMC, and once again she brought with her that delicious smell of freshly washed hair. Frank raised a friendly eyebrow in his rear-view mirror and received that brown-eyed, wide-mouthed smile in return. Oh, God.

“Heathrow Airport, please, driver.” She grinned. “Terminal Three.”

Frank grinned back and pulled out on to Munster Road. Then he slid the interconnecting window all the way along so that their conversation wouldn’t have to be conducted through a two-inch gap in the glass. “So, how are you?” he began.

“I’ve been better,” she replied. “I can do without getting up at half five.”

Sarah, of course, had been up since half four, desperate to look her best to meet a Roman Catholic priest who drove a taxi. Hardly the most eligible of men.

Her pre-dawn effort had paid off. Frank thought she looked stunning, even sexier than last time. Masses of tumbling dark hair, very little makeup—just enough to accentuate the beauty of those eyes and lips—tailored black suit, little jacket, short skirt. When it came to positioning his rear-view mirror, Frank was spoilt for choice. In his mind, he was trying to fend off the Devil, mentally fumbling for a crucifix or a few cloves of garlic. The Devil was winning hands down.

Back to the conversation—getting up early.

“Oh, I’m used to it,” Frank said. “I sometimes take the cab down to Euston or Paddington around this time. Get a bit of money in the box before the real work starts. Anyway, look—you know all about me. Catholic priest, not married, no children. Hobbies include pretending to be a cab driver. How about you? What do you do for a living?”

“I work in advertising. I’m what’s known as an account director. I have to deal with the clients. When they need advertising, I have to advise them on the sort of ads they should be doing. Maybe press ads, posters, TV or radio commercials. Once they’ve decided, I brief the teams of writers and artists who create the ads. When they’ve done them, I go back to the clients with rough drawings or scripts and try to get them approved. I mean, obviously it’s more complicated than that but, well, that’s basically it.”

“What are you doing ads for at the moment?”

Sarah’s big brown eyes rolled up to Heaven. “Oh, don’t ask. A chain of fake Irish pubs called Slattery’s—you must have seen them, they’re everywhere, dreadful bright green places.”

Frank had seen them. There was one up the road from the church, and part of the reason he was so keen to open the parish centre was that he couldn’t bear the thought of his parishioners’ money going their way rather than his.

“They’re about to open a huge new one in Edinburgh and I’ve been asked to go up and have a look. I wouldn’t mind but it’ll be exactly the same as all the others. Horrible, patronising places. These people have no feel for Irish culture, no interest in it at all. Their only concern is how much money they can make. If there was a similar craze for, say, Italian culture, Slattery’s would be closed down, reopened and renamed Luigi’s. Never mind, it’s a job, I suppose.”

“Don’t you enjoy it?”

“Well, generally, yes. It wasn’t what I set out to do. Nobody thinks at university, I’d like to be an account director in an advertising agency. At least, I hope they don’t. I just fell into it, really, after college.”

“Me too,” said Frank, which surprised her. “I sort of fell into this.”

“How can you fall into the priesthood?” she asked. “Aren’t you supposed to get some sort of calling?”

“Well, yes,” agreed Frank. “And I did feel a calling, but only in the way that everything you ever do is in response to some sort of calling. You get a calling to go to the shops, to have something to eat, to go to the loo. That’s even described as a ‘call of nature’.” He was trying not to think of the calling he was receiving right now, which certainly wasn’t from God. “It wasn’t so much a call to the priesthood,” he went on, “as a call away from other careers like, I don’t know…accountancy.”

He’d hit the right button. “Oh, don’t,” said Sarah, with an exasperated laugh. “My friend Helen—it was her I was meeting for lunch that day when you dropped me off—she’s going out with this accountant, Graham. Fits all the accountant stereotypes although he tries his best not to. Anyway, she only wants to fix me up with his friend, another accountant—Jonathan, likes to be known as JJ. I hate him already and I haven’t even met him.”

“Fix you up?” said Frank, not sure whether he was delighted that she was single or panic-stricken at the thought of her being fixed up with someone. But why should he care? He was a priest. He could never go out with her. He’d taken a vow of celibacy, for God’s sake. “Are you going to meet him?” he enquired, trying to sound as though it didn’t bother him one way or the other.

“I don’t want to. Honestly, I’d sooner stay in and remove my own gall bladder—but, well, Helen’s been such a good friend, and she means well…and you never know, he might be the man of my dreams.”

“No! No! No!” Frank wanted to scream, but instead just raised a nonchalant eyebrow. He was giving an Oscar-winning performance as a man who couldn’t care less.

“Mind you,” admitted Sarah, “we both know he won’t be, don’t we?”

Behind his mask of casual insouciance, Frank wanted to weep with relief. He couldn’t speak. Sarah didn’t notice and carried on, “Got to go to supper over at Graham and Helen’s. Blackheath, wherever that is. I’ve heard of it—haven’t got a clue where it is, though.”

“South East,” replied Frank. “Near Lewisham.”

“Oh, God,” sighed Sarah. “Near Lewisham? Helen said it was really nice, really villagey.”

“It is…sort of,” said Frank. “It’s a bit twee. People who live down there like to think it’s South London’s answer to Hampstead but it doesn’t compare. It’s just a little oasis among some pretty scuzzy areas.”

“Of course,” said Sarah. “You’d know, wouldn’t you, being a taxi driver?”

“Well, a pretend one anyway,” said Frank, who at that moment was feeling like a pretend priest too.

“Yeah, but you still have to know where you’re going. People must get into your taxi and expect you to know every street. Black-cab drivers have to train for years, don’t they?”

“They do and I haven’t,” said Frank, “but I don’t come unstuck as often as I thought I would. I mean, I know where any general area is. If you want Clapham or Harlesden or Walthamstow, I can take you there but I probably wouldn’t know the street you wanted. Thing is, the passengers usually know the place they’re going. Mostly they’re going home or back to the office or over to a friend’s house so they can direct you. If not, I’ll get them to the area, then look in the
A-Z
. If the worst comes to the worst, I always tell them, as I told you, that I’m not a qualified black cabbie and they might prefer to take a real taxi.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Sarah, thinking about it. “I knew where Farringdon Road was and I know where Heathrow Airport is. In fact, that’ll be it over there.”

Their journey was coming to an end.

“Oh, I’ve really enjoyed this,” she said, then added, “I wish you could drive me to Edinburgh.”

“Well, of course I’d love to,” Frank replied, “but I’m off to a meeting of the Diocesan Financial Affairs Sub-Committee. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Anyway,” he concluded, with a most unpriestly wink, “good luck with JJ. When is this Blackheath dinner party?”

“Tomorrow night.” She sighed.

“Well, there’s a coincidence,” said Frank, in an ‘isn’t-it-a-small-world?’ sort of way.

“Coincidence?” said Sarah. “Don’t tell me Graham’s invited you too.”

“Sadly not,” said Frank. “Though, of course, I’d love nothing more than dinner in Blackheath with a couple of wacky accountants. No, I’ve got to over to Greenwich tomorrow night. Got to visit Father Conway, my old parish priest. Retired now but does a couple of days a week down there. I’m always promising to go and see him and I’ve had to keep blowing him out. Can’t put him off again, he’s such a lovely old boy.”

“Oh, right,” said Sarah, not sure where this was leading.

“So, what I was going to suggest was…”

“Yes?” she said, just a little too eagerly.

“…that if this dinner party really is a nightmare and JJ really is a—”