FATHER FIELD

Once upon a time
I was an altar boy
y'know Sunday service,
reading the epistle,
tinkling the bell
when the priest raised the host
or the chalice
or the cross
or whatever it was
he hoisted aloft

I 'worked' for
Father Field who was getting on
and wasn't really a very happy bunny.
I remember he thought priests
should be able to get married
which seems to go against some
of the basic tenets of catholicism
if you ask me
not that I'm one to be asked

Anyway
one evening
after mass
Mrs Moynahan entered
the sacristi
where we were winding down,
Father Field, me and another
slightly older, blonde-haired altar boy:
Mrs Moynahan who had a fair amount of money
who lived in a big house on the London Road
whose husband committed suicide by
gassing himself in a car which got in the local paper
whose son was around my age and I knew a bit

She went up to the doddering
old curate and said
"Did you get the ten pound note
I put in the collection?"
Well, this, this is utterly against
episcopalian dogma.
The collection is an anonymous donation:
during mass
a bag is handed round the congregation,
they place their financial offerings within it,
sometimes in a prepaid envelope type thing,
the contribution is obviously nameless
otherwise
well you know, people might think
the church favoured the rich or something

I don't know if Father Field had already
peered within the collection
but as I recall he was pretty quick in
replying that a ten pound note was
not amongst its contents.
Consternation!
Father Field and Mrs Moynahan
were close,
no, no, not like that,
at least I don't think so,
just in a sort of mediaeval,
powerful aristocratic noble
patronising
an ecclesiastic sort of way.

The tired old priest
must have apologetically asked Mrs Moynahan
to leave
and then confronted us.
Now I think about it
there must have been another altar boy
'cos it wasn't like a fifty-fifty type scenario.
"So, which one of you stole the money?"
he barked or something along those lines.

Why he immediately jumped to
the conclusion that one of us nicked the tenner
(which was worth quite a bit in those days)
I do not know,
to be honest, I was just into reading the epistle,
I enjoyed getting up on the lectern,
performing,
the adrenaline.
Now I was in a crime drama.
It had never occurred to me to pilfer
that church money,
I was puzzled,
there was a moment of heavy
interrogative threatening silence
I was perplexed and put-upon

Then,
the blonde-haired altar boy
got up
threw the tenner
on the table
muttered "I'm sorry, father,"
and rushed out.
I sort of blew a sigh of relief
no-one likes to be unjustly accused

Looking back
I reckon
Mrs Moynahan was just as much
to blame
as the altar boy,
who simply fell prey to temptation.
Aren't we meant to forgive him
or something?
Shouldn't he have been embraced
by the overwhelming
compassion of Christ?
Shouldn't he have been once
again welcomed back into the bosom of the church,
encouraged and pardoned (after some contrition),
possibly allowed to read
the epistle instead of me?

Well he wasn't
I never saw him again

Mrs Moynahan
on the other hand
sinned big time
loads of sins,
and she got off scot-free,
her reputation intact,
her magnanimity
demonstrated.

If that doesn't say something
about something
I don't know what does