The Glorious Heresies (15 page)

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been decades since my last confession.”

“Decades?”

“Oh, aeons. Can you imagine what a burden it's been, Father? Carrying all that sin around, like saddlebags on the back of an ass?”

“Well…You're here now. It's the contrition itself that's important, after all.”

“Yes, and there's sins here I'm only dying to be rid of. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

“I killed a man.”

“…Are you joking?”

“Do I sound like I'm joking? What do I sound like? A sixty-year-old woman, if your ears are sound, forgive the pun. Do you think that's how the bingo brigade get their kicks? Confessing crimes to priests?”

“When did this happen? How did this happen?”

“It was a long time ago. Didn't I tell you I hadn't been in decades?”

“But it's playing on your mind now.”

“I live on my own and one day a man broke into my flat. I crept up behind him and hit him in the head with a religious ornament. So first I suppose God would have to forgive me for killing one of his creatures and then he'd have to forgive me for defiling one of his keepsakes.”

“And did you involve the Gardaí?”

“Indeed I did not. You'll have to add another Hail Mary on for that. I didn't involve the Gardaí at all; instead I called up my son and he cleaned up the mess on my behalf.”

“He contacted the Gardaí?”

“No. He has his own ways of dealing with things, I've discovered. And that would be his sin on the face of it but unfortunately it looks like we can attribute that to me too. Another Hail Mary! Will I tell you all about it, from a mother to a Father?”

“If you are truly repentant, God is always here to hear you.”

“God is great that way. He has massive ears and a mouth sewn shut.”

“Well, that doesn't sound in the least bit contrite.”

“I've always had an attitude, Father; you'll have to forgive me for that yourself. It was my attitude that brought me all the way up to your lovely old-fashioned confessional here today. You see, I had a son. But I had him illegitimately because I had an attitude and therefore no respect for myself. He was reared by my mother and father who were very much in cahoots with the Man Above so between my bad attitude and my parents' piety the poor lad was spent, and so now he has no morals at all and he's turned to a life of crime. And you might say that's his own sin, Father, but surely his circumstances had something to do with it?”

“Well…Well I suppose we never act entirely alone. Our actions are informed by everything around us. And there is much temptation in the modern world.”

“Temptation that leads young girls into sin, you could say.”

“Times change. There are unique challenges for God's children in every age.”

“Oh indeed there are. And I suppose God was challenging me to deny my son's father his hole. But the Trickster was having none of it, so off my drawers came.”

“This is entirely the wrong tone for the confessional! You must be respectful…this is a Sacrament!”

“Is the Sacrament as revered in God's house as the miracle of birth?”

“Well, one is divine, and the other very much an earthly thing…”

“So do you think God could accept my contrition when all I've done is put to ground one of his earthly things? I killed a man, Father. Now surely that's a story fit to stretch the Seal of Confession?”

“Nothing can break the Seal of Confession. All I can do is encourage you to approach the authorities; it is the moral thing to do. Not doing so would only add another sin and call into question your remorse for the first.”

“So you won't absolve me unless I go to the guards.”

“I cannot put stipulations on God's grace. You will know yourself what should be done.”

“It's a funny thing that the ritual is more powerful than the killing. What's tied to the earth is less important than what's tied to the heavens. You're crosser about my language in the confessional than you are about the fact that I killed a man. An unpleasant man, a waster man at best. A man maybe as born in sin as my son was and therefore an expendable man. Who knows?”

“I sense you're struggling with guilt, and again I must tell you that while God will absolve all who repent with an honest heart, perhaps the only way for you to find peace is to tell your story to the Gardaí.”

“Ah, Jaysus, they must have you on commission or something. No, I'm not going to go to the guards. Not a condition of my telling God how sorry I am.”

“You don't sound very sorry.”

“Well look, Father. There are a lot of things I'm sorry for. Indeed, when I think about it, it feels like I've been sorry all my life. First I was supposed to be sorry for having a child out of wedlock—and if it weren't for the Magdalene Laundry being on its last, bleached-boiled legs I would have been up there scrubbing sheets for the county. Instead I was exiled. I went away to have the baby and then I gave him up as my penance and was sent away again. Your kind had my mother and father's ears; I didn't stand a chance. So if many, many years later my son has found me and brought me home, only he's turned into a thug and my hands are so shaky I accidentally kill fellas, don't the amends I've already made mean anything to the Man Above?”

“It seems you don't want to be absolved at all.”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn't I? I have a son; why wouldn't I feel bad about taking another woman's? I was a wretch; why wouldn't I feel bad about doing in one of my own?”

“Are you really asking me if the punitive measures you felt were forced on you back when you had your child exempt you from guilt now that you've done something you feel is worth God's attention? We are all born in sin; no one gets respite from the nature of their soul.”

“I found out his name, Father. The poor eejit I killed. That was accidental, too, but it was something I held on to, like rosary beads. When I got the chance to tell my son what the man's name was, I seized it, because I couldn't wait to see the look on his face. Oh, Father; he was livid. He has no mercy in him. He wasn't made to examine his actions by the fact the corpse had a name; he was furious that the name provided a complication. He doesn't want to have to deal with his mother's conscience. He's a bully, Father. And who's to say I couldn't have raised him right? Propriety did nothing for him.”

“Well, times were different—”

“Oh, they were. Times were tough and the people were harsh and the clergy were cruel—cruel, and you know it! The most natural thing in the world is giving birth; you built your whole religion around it. And yet you poured pitch on girls like me and sold us into slavery and took our humanity from us twice, a third time, as often as you could. I was lucky, Father. I was only sent away. A decade earlier and where would I have been? I might have died in your asylums, me with the smart mouth. I killed one man but you would have killed me in the name of your god, wouldn't you? How many did you kill? How many lives did you destroy with your morality and your Seal of Confession and your lies? Now. For the absolution. Once God knows you're sorry he lets you off the hook, isn't that right?”

“How can I believe that you're sorry when you're—”

“Me? Oh, Father. I know I'm sorry. What about you?
Bless me, Ireland, for I have sinned.
Go on, boy. No wonder you say Holy God is brimming with the clemency; for how else would any of you bastards sleep at night?”

The weatherman said that this April had been warmer than usual, but Georgie had trouble believing it. She stood on the corner of the Maltings and the Mardyke; not the first time she'd been standing on street corners in dismal weather, but this time she was accompanied by Clover, which discouraged bitter memories.

They had had a busy morning. They'd been up at the Lough going door to door to spread the Good Word, Clover with calm determination, Georgie in abject mortification. Clover had insisted on their returning to town via the university, where she managed to pass on a few leaflets outside the back gate. Most of the students who took a leaflet immediately bunched it up and carried it just as far as the next dustbin, but a few had absent-mindedly stuck them into pockets of rain jackets or baggy tracksuit bottoms. If only one of them was moved, Clover pointed out, that would be worth the whole excursion. Georgie thought that if only one of the students was moved it would be a waste of their very meagre printing budget, but she kept it to herself.

They had carried on down the Western Road and towards the Coal Quay, where William had parked up the minibus for his own mission across the river on Shandon Street—and excited he was about it too; “So many Africans!” he'd enthused, mysteriously. It was on the Mardyke, just around the time a relieved Georgie could once again taste sweetness in the air, that Clover got the notion they should visit the few houses in and around the quay.

So they stood on the corner, Clover running over the strategy, Georgie exhausted and close to tears. She'd already been told to fuck off, to get off the doorstep before the dog was called, to get a life, to burn in Hell, and to stick her propaganda up her shapely hole. She had no mind to repeat the process.

Especially not around here. The old brothel was only around the corner; she was nervous, even though it had been two years, even though the enterprise had moved on since. Jesus, it may have moved only in a loop; the building couldn't have been sold in the interim, not in that dilapidated row, not in this dilapidated economy.

“It's only a few more,” said Clover. “And then our rest will truly be well-earned. Hmm?”

“We haven't earned a rest yet?” Georgie despaired.

“Come on, Georgie, what would Jesus do? Besides, we can't meet William with so many flyers left.”

“Throw them in a bin then,” Georgie said. “He'll never know.”

Clover darkened. “William's not omnipresent. The Lord is.”

Suggesting they dump the flyers was a serious mistake. Clover was as rotund and twinkling as a fairy godmother, but she treated Georgie like a puppy she'd brought home from the pound for the sole reason that the authorities would otherwise have put her down.

Georgie knew she'd let her rescuers down time and time again. Breakdowns and escapes and more than one interlude where she claimed not to care about what she was doing to them, the poor, gullible eejits; any other collective would have been tested up to and over the line, but William and his disciples were made of more resilient stuff. She had been sure her last blunder would have guaranteed her exile, but that wouldn't have been their style. These days there was so much more of her to save.

Now she and Clover deposited some of the flyers into the limp hands of those fretting outside the hospital and continued around the corner.

“Go on then,” said the newly-stern Clover, and pointed towards the old brothel steps.

The door had been painted; the front windows looked new. The intercom, which had once signalled appointments with gutting regularity, was gone. The building seemed to have been reassigned. Apartments now, maybe, housing underpaid professionals who ambled round ignorant to the shadows. God, maybe even young families.

Georgie stood in the archway and tapped on the door.

“They won't have heard that,” Clover said. “Give it a good rap.”

“I don't think anyone's home.”

“Oh come on, Georgie,” said Clover, and moved as if to join her, so Georgie gave it another go; she rapped on the door and stood back and felt tears even under the damp on her lashes. She couldn't explain this to Clover, though there was little doubt that William had divulged her origin to his wife. There were some parts of her story that she could simply not vocalise, held to silence by shame and by expectation of judgement, and, really, William's group were accommodating but they operated entirely on judgement; who can forgive what they haven't already judged? Ryan had been right—their grace could only come from a pitying verdict.

So when the door opened she could neither bolt nor smile.

The resident was a woman in her sixties or so, too dishevelled to make an apposite gatekeeper, but healthier than the nubile corpses who'd toiled here two years ago. Her hair, still thick but hued entirely in shale and snow, came most of the way down her neck and stood out in waves. She said nothing, and scowled.

“I'm here…” Georgie said, and faltered, and the woman raised her eyebrows.

“Have I been expecting you?” Her voice was a tart growl.

To Georgie's right, Clover made to move.

“I'm here,” Georgie began again. “To spread the word of…of Jesus Christ.”

“You'd think He'd send someone less scatty,” said the woman. “But fine. What has He got to say for Himself?”

Georgie thrust one of the leaflets at the woman. Clover shifted her weight.

“Oh, He's written it down for you,” said the woman. “Handy.”

“He says…He says:
Go unto…go into the world and proclaim the gospel to…creation. Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
”

“Harsh fecker, isn't He?”

“He's loving,” said Georgie. “He's…
We love because he first loved us.
”

“What a pile of shite,” said the woman.

Georgie wilted and Clover beckoned her away, but the woman said, “What are you doing out preaching on a day like this, anyway? And in your condition? What are you doing? Walking off your sins?”

“We have prayer meetings every week—” Georgie began.

“Era, balls to your prayer meetings,” said the woman. “You want to convert me, you better do it now, because this missive is going in the bin as soon as I close the door. Do you want to talk to me about the Lord God Almighty or not?”

Georgie looked at Clover, who gestured towards the door.

“I'm not an expert,” Georgie admitted.

“Let me tell you this,” said the woman, “neither is yer wanno with you. Anyone who claims to be an expert in the mysterious waftings of Himself is talking through their arse. Are you coming in or not?”

Clover nodded.

“There's so much in the leaflet,” Georgie said.

“Are you going to deny an old lady her consultation, little preacher? Who goes door-to-door and declines the first invitation they get to pontificate?”

“I don't know what I could answer,” Georgie said.

“Give it a go.”

The woman turned and walked back into the building. Clover came to Georgie's side, and said, softly, “I know she seems a little off but think of it as good practice, and if I don't see you by the time I've covered the rest of the houses I'll come back and get you, how's that?” She walked on before Georgie could answer, and so she went through the door and into the hall in which she used to hear her heart snap, every single time.

The place had been done up. Even from her tiptoed spot in the downstairs hall she could see that. The walls had been painted cream and there was a new floor; when she closed out the door behind her, gingerly, she noted that it had been painted on the inside, too, and the old bolts and chains removed for a single modern lock.

“Come through,” called the woman, and Georgie followed her voice into a downstairs kitchen, a room she'd never seen when she'd worked there, as her company had only been required in the bedrooms upstairs.

The kitchen was new, too. Cream units around a sleek oven and hood, a breakfast bar, a shining sink before a window that looked into a quaint, ivy-draped yard. The design was defied in magnificent fashion by the proliferation of religious keepsakes on the windowsills, on the shelves and in the corners of the worktops: crosses, statues, rosary beads and sombre brass busts.

The woman clicked on the kettle and took two mugs from one of the presses. “Tea, I assume?”

“Oh, I'm grand.”

“You'll have tea. And for God's sake will you sit yourself down?”

She sat at the table, and the woman stared over with one hand on the counter and the other on her hip.

“You haven't a clue about the Good Book, have you?” she said.

“I told you,” said Georgie. “I'm not an expert.”

“You're an actress is what you are, and you haven't learned your lines. What's your name?”

“…Georgie.”

“Mine's Maureen,” said the woman. “And, Georgie, what are you doing wandering around Cork trying to convert people when you haven't completed the process yourself?”

“I haven't been doing this long.”

“That's not what I asked.”

Georgie faltered. “It's that obvious, is it?”

“I just don't know what your pudgy friend was at, letting you doorstop heathens when your words don't have a backbone. Not to mention how tired you must be.”

“They think the Lord appreciates physical labour.”

“You'll be going into labour if they're not careful. Who are they, anyway?” She turned over the leaflet. “Christians Active In Light. Ha! Christians Active In Lumbago.”

“They've been really good to me.”

“Is that before or after you blossomed out to here,” she said, with a flamboyant gesture. “How long are you gone, anyway?”

“Six months.”

“You're big for six months. I suppose you're very short, though. I was the same. So when did they recruit you? With sin or without?”

“Ten months or so ago.”

“Lord almighty. A sex cult, are they? Christians Active In Lovemaking? How did you manage to get into trouble if your soul had been saved? Married off already?”

“No.”

Maureen dropped teabags into the mugs. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Yes, please. One.”

“Christians Active In Lactose,” Maureen muttered, and Georgie said, “Are you going to keep doing that?”

“Up until it stops amusing me.”

She got a spoon and started jamming the teabags against the sides of their mugs.

“I met a man through them,” Georgie said. “That's how.”

“One of their number? I take it they approved.”

“They didn't. He left and I had nowhere to go.”

“And does he know?”

“Yes, he knows. He's from a well-to-do background. It'd be awkward if I went with him. He'll be back to me once he sorts things out.”

“Are they still telling the girls those stories?”

“He will,” said Georgie. “It's complicated. He's in recovery too. So…It was just decided it would be damaging to both of us to deal with this together. We can't focus on our recovery if we're focused on each other.”

“How practical. And what are you recovering from, if it's not virginity?”

“Drugs,” Georgie said. She was too tired to snap.

“What kind of drugs?”

“I don't mean to be rude, but what's it to you?”

Maureen placed the tea in front of her. “Would you rather we talked about the Lord Jesus Christ, so? We can do. I fell out with Him myself.”

Georgie cupped her hands around the mug and slumped.

“I don't know much. They say you have to be open to letting Him in. They say that He makes everything clearer. That you get a purpose. That it's…I guess that it's a load off. I haven't found Him yet.”

“Have you checked under the bed?”

“I'm trying to take this seriously.”