Operation Penance: A hilarious laugh-out-loud slapstick comedy drama about a priest with a guilty secret that leads him straight into temptation!

  Copyright © 2022

  Wife and Two Quids Ltd

  Oldbury, West Midlands.

  The moral right of Eddie Lancaster to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act. 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or on any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing

  from Wife and Two Quids Ltd.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organisations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information e-mail: allaggro@btinternet.com

  First Kindle edition February 2022

  Cover design by Eddie Lancaster

  Chapter 1

  Father Patrick Gallagher was more than a little itchy down below, a tad inconvenient when both his hands were busy presiding over a christening. He was finding it more than a little tricky to say all the right words in all the right places as the contents of his underpants radiated more heat than a bald, one-eyed gerbil munching a power cable. Still, mind over matter had seen him through, and now all that stood between him and a soothing smear of anaesthetic cream was the obligatory after-show party.

  Pat knew it wouldn’t be possible to consult a doctor regarding this recently discovered persistent personal irritation, given that his discomfort stemmed from a sensitivity to the spermicidal lubricant present in condoms. It was a poetic penance for this morning’s energetic bedroom aerobics session over the border in Harborne, an upmarket suburb of Birmingham conveniently positioned just two miles up the road from his altogether more ordinary parish and where Little Pat had recently begun enjoying illicit workouts whenever the seed arose.

  It was a heavenly distraction from his humdrum life spent serving the congregation of St. Mildred’s Catholic Church in Oldbury, an unremarkable working-class parish positioned just off the M5 motorway which, in recent years, had offered the surrounding metropolis of Greater Birmingham very little other than convenient access to a large branch of a now defunct American toyshop; a toyshop no longer able to fulfil its commitment to the region’s bursting landfill sites following the management’s continual failure to grasp that customers much preferred spending ten minutes on the internet in comparison to a road trip to the Venice of the West Midlands, eagerly avoiding customer service second to pretty much everywhere, including the soup kitchen in a North Korean forced labour camp. That left just a pocket-sized burger restaurant as the only reminder of the glory days when the rubbish strewn carpark played host to an armada of chocolate smeared family cars, from where overindulged kids led overindulgent parents to be asset stripped for the latest plastic must-have, closely followed by more sugar laden calories than a care home milkshake during a lockjaw epidemic. It was a double whammy of the American dream, leading down a well-trodden path to minimum monthly credit card repayments and a mounting threat of childhood obesity.

  The ever-fragrant Felicity was Father Pat’s only guilty secret, one he’d kept since they’d met quite by accident on a Wednesday morning at the small café set in the middle of Lightwoods Park in Bearwood. He’d just visited an elderly parishioner who enjoyed an enviable view from one of the large, terraced houses on its perimeter, a regular at mass for many years but whom a recent decline in health had left housebound.

  Unfortunately, the old lady had a faithful companion, a much-loved Cocker Spaniel with ears that smelt like Lucifer’s laundry basket. The pungent aroma of festering canine lugholes caught him completely off guard during his first visit, a difficult hour made far worse by the hound’s continual head shaking that distributed the foul odour in sudden bursts. The vile stench turned her prehistoric fairy cakes to doggie distemper as the sweet, stale mixture slowly churned in his greedy mouth, threatening to trigger his gag reflex.

  However, after a chance conversation with a local undertaker, he took his advice to dab some menthol vapour rub just beneath his nose to mask the smell. Regrettably, it took another visit before he settled on the correct dosage, spending the second sipping his tea with streaming eyes, which the old lady assumed to be sympathy for her plight. She spent the entire time sat tenderly holding his hand while the stinking mutt grovelled at her feet, defiantly swinging the cankerous lobes like two rotting rabbits as it waited patiently for the inevitable avalanche of dust-dry cake crumbs.

  Fortunately, the third call had gone far better, so a jubilant Pat set his sights on a flat white and salted caramel brownie at the café in celebration, which, until that point, were his only sinful indulgences apart from moist toilet wipes and a quick flick through the Daily Star. It was an occasional sweet treat that was guaranteed to raise his spirits before he swung back to counsel a grieving widow, who had just discovered exactly why her late husband spent so much time up in his shed after a kind offer to donate some of his tools to an apprentice carpenter uncovered a vast collection of transgender pornography. This threw new light on his lengthy solo trips ‘to explore Buddhist temples’ during their twice-yearly beach holidays in Thailand.

  After making his order at the counter he settled on his favourite table beside a large bay window, one that commanded a panoramic view out over the park and bathed the room in strong autumnal sunlight, successfully lifting the faux Victorian gloom a thoroughly uninspired interior designer had lazily sought to create.

  For once, Pat was savouring the simple pleasure of being just another customer waiting on a caffeine fix as he gazed at this vista of park life from his cosy vantage point. The unseasonal sunshine had tempted out droves of yummy mummies pushing three wheeled designer pushchairs in £150 sheepskin boots, who were firmly glued to their social media feeds whilst pretending to care about one another’s relationship problems, only breaking away from Instagram or Twitter to chastise their unruly offspring, now gainfully employed in creating more workload for the household washing machine. Laughing like tiny lunatics as they gathered up well-camouflaged dog eggs amongst armfuls of fallen leaves, an unmistakable faecal perfume that would only reveal itself during the warm car ride home. Just across the asphalt, beanie hatted truants on battered skateboards clattered backwards and forwards over halfpipes and ramps, still optimistic enough about their four-wheeled abilities to believe that a trip to the world championships might be their escape from failed exams and a lifetime spent on minimum wage.

  It was her voice that first drew his attention, notable even in this slightly more salubrious area of Birmingham. It amused him to hear her place an identical order to his, with a precise pronunciation that hinted of a privileged upbringing away from the urban sprawl. Her voice was cool and measured, like a female weather presenter using her rounded vowels and effortless sex appeal to soften the blow of a shitload of rain for the next day. Just the sound of her voice was enough to provoke lazy stirrings beneath his black Farah slacks.

  He’d always taken care of his appearance,
making him a popular dance partner at church socials in his youth. However, an unlimited supply of free homemade cake had seen him gain a fair few pounds since his hooley days, and now the strawberry blonde hair was greying at the temples. Yet, for a man in his late forties, he still set a few spinster hearts aflutter when their eyes locked as he delivered his weekly roundup of parish functions from the pulpit. Twinsets and pearls with well-thumbed copies of The Thorn Birds, bored spinsters who longed for a secret signal in the catatonic stare that accompanied a change to the advertised time for the bell ringing try-outs or a whist drive cancelled due to a recent flareup of the dealer’s leg ulcers.

  Predictably, a run-of-the-mill town like Oldbury had featured nowhere in Pat’s priesthood daydreams before he took the collar. Much like an aspiring footballer, he had his sights set on the Premiership of fashionable London parishes, hoping to enjoy a gold-plated career of glamorous society weddings and A-list funerals before he progressed to a regular slot on national radio, instead of slumming it in the lower leagues, desperate to be spotted by a scout and offered a free transfer to somewhere picturesque that didn’t require heavy wire netting over the stained-glass windows. But, as the years ticked by and reality set in, he accepted that was never going to be the case, eventually knuckling down to a life of collecting renally replenished beer bottles from around the graveyard and weekly bingo sessions with a roomful of passive-aggressive pensioners.

  Still captivated by the voice, Pat resolved to catch a furtive look at its owner the first chance he got, but in the end there was no need as, seconds later, a chair moved on the next table and she sat down, elegantly pushing back dark, shoulder length hair and adjusting the skirt of a fashionable business suit in one fluid motion. This pulled her crisp white blouse taut over an ample bosom, allowing the already captivated cleric his first glimpse of a very lacy white bra. As the thin silky material laid bare the deep two-coat spray tan that lay beneath, a cloud of Chanel No5 engulfed another of his titillated senses.

  The next half hour flew by with polite chit-chat after the chivalrous priest allowed her to take her identical order ahead of him, hoping that would provide an excuse to strike up a conversation and lengthen the time he got to spend admiring her. Pouring on charm he’d spent so many years honing on cake-baking old ladies, they covered topics as diverse as French Cuisine and 1980s pop music. He soon wished he’d left his dog collar in the car when the woman he now knew as Felicity responded so favourably to his well-practised jocular flimflam.

  When at last their cups were empty and crumbs were all that remained of the brownies, they rose and left together. Father Pat had parked in a space alongside the café, but he found himself walking straight past and up through the park to her brand-new Fiat 500, where they said their farewells and exchanged numbers on a shared pretence of Felicity offering work experience to a parishioner’s son. He watched as she turned left onto the Hagley Road and eventually disappeared into the early afternoon traffic. He tried his best to remain pure in thought and deed as he walked on air back to his tired Vauxhall Zafira, eager to keep any further trouser stirrings to an absolute minimum while he was still in a public place.

  Over the next few days the ensuing text traffic moved into an entirely different field of work experience, culminating in a rather nervous Pat parking his aging Zafira in a discreet corner of Harborne Shoppers Car Park before the first of his many trysts with Felicity. She always seemed to have a knack of making herself available at very short notice, which struck him as more than a little odd for a busy solicitor. It was a concern he readily brushed aside as he became an enthusiastic participant in everything he’d spent the last twenty-five years convincing himself he had no interest in.

  Despite being an eager pupil, his earliest efforts saw him back in the car sick with guilt after just half an hour of his ticket had elapsed, eventually squeezing every penny out the £1.50 he forked out for three hours parking as Little Pat became better acquainted with his recently revised job description, while Big Pat slowly relaxed into the stereotypical role of the wayward, bodice-ripping priest, even taking time to concoct a supermarket Best Ever Steak Pie cover story should anyone spot the Zafira parked outside its catchment area. After all, this wasn’t just sex, this was Scratch Marks and Suspenders sex!

  Back at St. Mildred’s he continued to project the persona of a diligent clergyman, ever the warm and discreet confidante, prolific fundraiser, friend to the poor and generally well-liked within the wider religious community, whilst still managing to regularly disappear over the border from Sandwell into Birmingham to sample forbidden fruit from the tree of lust, removing his dog collar and undoing the top button of his shirt as he crossed the traffic lights into Harborne at the top of the Wolverhampton Road. He imagined that this somehow saw him seamlessly transported into civilian life from that point on, a ritual that soothed his post-coital remorse with an enormous dollop of delusion by imagining he left his Lord and Saviour at that busy junction before collecting him again on the way home. After all, God didn’t seem to mind and never brought the matter up during his nightly prayers. Maybe he took the opportunity for a cheeky Bacon Double Cheeseburger at McDonald’s or popped over the road for a couple in the Amber Tavern and a sly tenner in the one-armed bandit? Either way, it was never awkward when he clambered back into the car on the return leg of the journey, so Pat saw that as a clear sign that He forgave his indiscretions. After all, he wasn’t putting it anywhere it wasn’t designed to go, that alone must make it a fairly low-level transgression in the eyes of The Almighty.

  By now the christening party was beginning to warm up, which meant it was almost time for Pat to go. He discreetly adjusted the resting position of his chafed crown jewels through the lining of a trouser pocket, before setting off on a final strafing run of the buffet. Rule Number One of other people’s family gatherings was to eat quickly and always leave early. A quarter of a century in the faith industry had taught him a clerical collar attracted the nutters in the room quicker than a game of naked Twister. A discreet early exit minimised any risk of getting cornered by someone’s drunken uncle keen to hear his justification for every natural disaster over the past fifty years, or suffering extreme boredom at the hands of an ultra-religious zealot who dropped obscure passages from the bible like metal dustbin lids in the hope of catching him out. No, being a priest was just like any other job, you worked your hours and went home. Only mugs and bishops did unpaid overtime. That was Rule Number Two; always leave them wanting more.

  Just as he was balancing another king prawn tempura on top of his other eclectic buffet selections, he felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket.

  Whatever it is, it can wait until I’ve got this lot chowed down, he thought, quickly returning to his standing position in the most sparsely populated area of the room, deliberately offering other guests an absolute minimum of eye contact as he sped by.

  That was definitely Rule Number Three - never sit down. It was a mistake you only made once before you realised that made it all too easy to get blocked in by a rival division of the God squad. He learned this lesson after his first ever funeral, when an ambush sprung by a roving gang of born-again Baptists saw him bullied into admitting the Popemobile resembled a second-hand Bedford ice-cream van. Now, whenever he felt the eyes of ‘away fans’ bearing down on him, he simply made his excuses and left, beating a retreat back to the rectory, clutching the tightly-folded doggy bag he always kept in his wallet in case he needed to make a quick getaway.

  Setting his plate down on a conveniently positioned yet seldom dusted piano, he felt another buzz against his ribcage. Quickly stuffing a whole mini sausage roll into his mouth rather than risk an embarrassing explosion of greasy crumbs when he took a bite, Pat reached his phone from his pocket to see a text from an unknown number. It wasn’t entirely unheard of, being a parish priest in the 21st century now meant entertaining enquiries at all times of the day or night, something only made bearable by occasional white lies about a fl
at battery or signal dead spot. Often they weren’t even for him, in which case he simply took the role of the parish main switchboard and palmed them off onto someone else.

  Clicking it open, he saw it was a video. The amount of naked skin frozen in the first frame immediately seized his attention. Now that was unusual! Whilst he knew some of his more liberal parishioners occasionally shared risqué content with select members of their contact list, it rarely included the clergy.

  Checking there was no one close enough to see the screen, he discreetly silenced the media audio and clicked play, secretly thrilled as the skin began to move. Realising it was almost certainly porn he quickly paused it again. Being caught with it on his phone was bad enough, but watching it at a christening party could be a career-ending indiscretion; #pervypornopartypriest definitely wouldn’t be an easy hashtag to live down. Instead, he wisely decided to save it for later. That way he could watch it alone, full screen, with the sound on, before furiously… praying for their souls!

  Twenty minutes later, with the last of his plate emptied, limp handshakes exchanged and insincere promises of future regular attendance at mass duly received, he made his escape. Now the rest of the evening was his own, the slice of christening cake in his pocket promising a welcome accompaniment to his evening cuppa. As long as nobody made a surprise job of shuffling off to meet their maker or experienced a late-night crisis of faith it was going to be telly, bath, jim-jams and bed for Father Pat.