Demons (19 page)

I parked the car, got out and made my way
hesitantly down the drive. I noticed a small caravan off to the
side, a wire running from its roof into the house. Washing hung on
the line, not the priestly kind but a woman’s dress, knickers and
bra.

Rebel? Hmm, I thought. Maybe even more so
than I thought. But no, even he wouldn’t be as obvious about it as
that.

I knocked on the door. And waited.

When no one came to open it I was surprised
at how frustrated I felt, not to mention relieved. Part of the
problem, of course, was the fact I hadn’t said anything to Chris
about what I was doing. It made me feel that I was betraying him in
some way, that he’d be deeply disappointed in me if he knew I was
coming to talk to a priest especially after all I’d said

about being finished with religion. And if
he knew what I was here to ask Father Mike about . . .

I was just about to knock once more when
Father Mike opened up. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Hoped I wouldn’t keep you
waiting when you came. Just had to pop over to the church and help
Gerry set up the slide projector.’

‘
Oh.’

‘
Father Gerry Brown,’ he
explained. ‘His sermon tomorrow’s about India. He’s going back
there in a few weeks time.’

‘
He did my Gran’s funeral
three years ago,’ I said. ‘She liked him. I was surprised to see
him at the meeting.’

‘
Gerry’s parents live
locally,’ said Father Mike, ‘and he comes home on sabbatical to see
them every couple of years or so. Nice guy. I have a lot of respect
for him. He does amazing work in India. You might enjoy his sermon
if you came along.’

‘
I haven’t been to church
for ages Father,’ I explained.

‘
Call me Mike,’ said Father
Mike. ‘Oh well, you’ll miss a good sermon. Never mind, come on in.
Drink? Coffee, tea, juice or water are at your disposal. Or,’ he
suddenly had another thought, ‘you’re not here because you want to
confess something, are you?’

‘
Not exactly. Not in that
way, anyway.’

I followed Mike into a
small dark hall and into a front room that had a few armchairs, a
table, book-case, crucifix. Plain as plain.

‘
A cup of coffee would be
nice,’ I said. ‘If it’s no trouble.’

‘
Wouldn’t ask if it was,’
said Mike. ‘Black, white. Sugar? Sugarless?’

‘
White, no sugar,’ I said.
‘Thanks.’

‘
Mine’s black,’ he said
reflectively. ‘Black and white. Makes the art of coffee making
sound easy even though the experts tell us differently. Lattes,
cappuccinos, flat whites, long blacks - it’s a mysterious process
unless you’re one of the initiated. A bit like religion I
suppose.’

‘
I’ve never thought of it
that way.’

‘
No reason to. But when you
have to give a sermon each week you’re always on the lookout for
relevant analogies and metaphors. I am, in any case.’

I nodded.

‘
Anyway, make yourself as
comfy as you can and I’ll make the coffee. That chair over by the
window has the least number of broken springs.’

So I sat down and waited.

‘
Only had ginger nuts in
the biscuit jar,’ he said when he returned. ‘Help yourself.
Probably don’t need to dunk them. They’ve gone soft of their own
accord. In fact, better check them for mould.’

‘
Thanks,’ I said, as I
checked. ‘They look fine.’

What was I doing here, I asked myself. Maybe
I could still go, before . . . before . . .

‘
What’s happening with the
South Bank?’ I found myself asking instead. ‘Any
progress?’

‘
A little. Seems as if the
parties are all willing to talk now. So that’s good. It’s a
start.’

‘
Did the candle vigil help
do you think?’

‘
Sure of it,’ he said. ‘And
I’m all ready for another if we need it. How about you?’

‘
I’ll be there,’ I
said.

‘
So . . .?’ he asked,
expectantly. And fell silent. Waiting for me to speak, no doubt
guessing that I hadn’t come here on a Saturday morning just to ask
about the South Bank restaurant.

‘
The other night,’ I said,
‘I started thinking. You know, those big thoughts you sometimes
get.’ (Did he get them? I didn’t have a clue. Priests were meant to
be sure and steady examples for the rest of us when it came to the
unanswerable questions). ‘Stuff about time. The end of time. After
time. I was remembering my Gran. I felt she was really
close.’

Father Mike nodded, encouragingly I hoped.
He might just have been drifting off to sleep.

‘
Eschatology,’ he said,
although I didn’t work out the word until much later.

‘
I decided that I wanted to
believe that there was life after death, you know?’

‘
You mean you’d stopped
believing that?’

‘
Yes. That and everything
else. I thought I’d tossed the whole thing in.’

‘
And . . .’

‘
Now I
don’t know if I ever did, not really, well not those
big
things.’

‘
Why did you give up the
Church in the first place?’ Mike asked. ‘Too much
nitpicking?’

‘
Partly. I also found out
that not everyone follows the rules,’ - I had sworn to myself not
to name names - ‘and they didn’t care that they didn’t but they
still went to church. So it didn’t make much sense, if you see what
I mean. And I didn’t like all of the rules myself. Some of them
made me angry. And then Gran died . . . she didn’t like rules much
either, well, not always.’

‘
It’s not really about
rules,’ Father Mike said.

‘
Isn’t
it?’ I asked, getting straight to the point before I lost my nerve.
‘What about the one that says women aren’t allowed to become . . .
well,
priests
?’

‘
Ah.’ He was a little
surprised but not much.

‘
I just wanted to ask . . .
well, it’s my reason for

coming here . . . to ask if you think . . .
what you think about . . .’

Father Mike took pity on me. ‘If you want my
opinion of how likely it is that Rome will ever change it’s mind
about not ordaining women I’d say predicting that event is even
harder than proving immortality, not to mention the existence of
God. I honestly don’t know. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked
the question either.’

‘
That’s what I was counting
on,’ I said.

‘
My answer, such as it is,
has always been not to give up hope. It may happen, one day. The
age of miracles is never past. But then ‘never’ is a long time
Andrea and there’s no point waiting for it to arrive. If you’re
serious about it, then you’ve got to stride out to meet it, drag
the never into the now.’

‘
How?’

‘
Perhaps pray about it for
a start,’ Father Mike smiled. ‘See where that leads
you.’

‘
That’s what my Gran would
have said.’

‘
But it’s a radical step,
don’t you think, considering that you’ve been away, as it were,
from the Church. What’s happened to make you think this way now? I
can’t believe it’s all down to the candlelight vigil the other
night.’

‘
That’s
just it,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t. It’s not really a radical thing at
all. I think it’s a feeling - a
knowing
- I already had way back
when I was a little kid. It’s been building up for
years.’

Mike looked thoughtfully at me. ‘Is this
about you or about God?’ he asked.

‘
I don’t understand . . .
isn’t it about both?’

‘
Ideally, yes. But I’m
asking if it’s more one than the other? I know your parents and
although I never met your grandmother they’ve told me about her.
I’ve

got an inkling of what sort of upbringing
you’ve had. The rich mix of piety and protest.’

‘
You make me sound like a
compost heap,’ I said.

‘
Perhaps you are, in a way.
That’s not an insult. Well-balanced compost heaps are full of
goodness and nourishment. But I guess what I’m asking you Andrea is
do you want to be a priest because you’re angry, disappointed and
want to turn the tables? Because if those are the only reasons,
they’re not good enough.’

‘
Aren’t they? Why
not?’

‘
They wouldn’t sustain you.
You’d be better off joining WKTP. Does that make sense?’

It did. ‘I guess I am all of those things,’
I admitted. ‘But not just those . . . it’s hard to explain.’

I told Father Mike
about
The Creation of Adam
and the thoughts I’d had about the meaning behind
the painting. ‘I want to be able to close that gap,’ I said. ‘And I
want to be the transformation when it happens. I’m sorry, I can’t
explain it any more clearly than that.’

‘
No need to,’ Father Mike
said slowly. ‘My advice stands. Pray about it. And don’t go gently
into that good night.’

‘
I’ve heard that before,’ I
said, amazed.

Father Mike nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I
know.’

On the way out I saw the caravan again.
‘What . . .?’ I began.

‘
Emergency shelter,’ Mike
explained briefly. ‘A safe house for anyone who needs
it.’

He didn’t say anything else about the
caravan and I didn’t ask more. I guess there wasn’t any need
to.

‘
See you,’ I
said.

‘
Bye Andrea. Good luck.
Come and talk again if you want to, or need to.’

We waved to each other as I drove away.

Inheritance

Pray about it. Yes I could do that much. I’d
been pretty good at prayer and not that very long ago either. Like
riding a bike or swimming freestyle, I guessed it was a skill that,
once learnt, would be easy to pick up again.

So.

I had discovered I couldn’t disinherit my
past, it was tied to me like my own shadow even when the sun wasn’t
shining. Perhaps religion was my demon.

I had to accept it was there and learn to
walk with it even if it meant hacking a path through virgin bush,
dragging the shadow or the demon of my past along behind me.

I hoped (prayed, actually) that Chris would
still want to walk with me, when I told him what I’d been doing,
who I’d been talking to, what I might end up becoming if the fates
determined things that way. I was scared he wouldn’t. I was pretty
certain he wouldn’t. But, for the first time in ages, I felt as if
I was really going somewhere.

STRANGE MEETING

‘You were right about the Greek salad,’
Chris says.

‘
Was I?’

‘
Yeah. It’s good. As good
as the real thing.’

‘
The real thing,’ I say.
‘Tell me more about that. Did you travel much?’

‘
A bit. But mainly I just
worked damn hard.’

‘
Like your father
wanted.’

Chris frowns. ‘It wasn’t just him who wanted
me to achieve. It was me too.’

‘
At our
expense.’

Chris nods, sadly. ‘I didn’t plan . . .’ His
voice reduces to a whisper.

‘
But you did,’ I whisper
back. ‘In the end. You were like Judas the Betrayer.’

‘
I know, I know,’ he said.
‘Do you think I haven’t regretted it ever since?’

‘
Still, I’ve got a lot to
thank your father for,’ I said.

‘
Do you. What for
exactly?’

‘
He made you show your true
colours in the end,’ I say.

‘
That’s not fair,’ says
Chris.

‘
Isn’t it?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t
you let your demons get the better of you? Another
coffee?’

Speaking with the dead and some random
thoughts

I wanted to visit Gran. I hadn’t been to St
Brigid’s since the funeral. I wanted to sit quietly beside her
grave and have a chat with her. Maybe say some of the Catholic
rosary together.

I rang Chris on Saturday night to ask if he
would come with me.

‘
Of
course,’ he said. Sounding
different
, I
thought.

‘
Something happened?’ I
asked. It was of course a question he could just as well have asked
me.

‘
Nothing much,’ he said.
‘Just a busy day at the library. I rang you this morning Andy but
your Mum said you were out.’

‘
Why did you
ring?’

‘
It’ll keep until
tomorrow,’ said Chris. ‘Where were you?’

‘
That’ll keep until
tomorrow as well,’ I said.

Chris was silent a moment. Then, ‘Shall I
collect you?’

‘
Yes,’ I said. ‘If you can
get the car? We haven’t been in the old Austin for a while. I’d
like that.’

‘
See you tomorrow then,’
said Chris.

‘
See you,’ I
said.

A little voice told me it was the beginning
of the end for us. In all honesty it was a voice I’d heard (but had
taken no notice of) at the candle protest vigil. It had whispered
again to me when I was talking with Father Mike. And I’m sure it
had spoken to me for the first time when we were up in Chris’ room
where the priest-thought had re-lodged itself in my brain.