Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

‘Unlike whoring.’

The cocaine hadn’t kicked in yet, of course, and the line she’d given herself was more a taster than a parade, but she had always found the ritual very encouraging of conversation.

‘I don’t know how judgemental they’d be,’ she said. ‘Truthfully. Only the leader guy knows that I was on the game. The rest of them just think I’m a souse. But even if they knew and hated me, well, more to forgive, right?’

‘I didn’t mean you in particular,’ he said. ‘It’s just judgey bollocks all round, isn’t it? That’s the whole point.’

‘That’s not very fair,’ she said.

He shrugged.

‘They’ve been really decent to me. Free accommodation and all the veggies I can eat and all I have to do is renounce bikinis and not look bored when they’re going on about Jesus.’

‘And they’ve no ulterior motive?’

‘ That’s the motive. Saving my soul. And let them think they’re saving my soul, because in doing that they’re saving me from being abused by bastards who think they have a right to rape me.’

He winced.

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if Mr Punter Man’s bothered whether I enjoy it. And he can’t be a nasty, angry prick to his girlfriend so he hires a woman to pound his cock into instead. So if some cooperative of Jesus freaks want to give me an extended holiday that’s fine, and if they’re only doing it to hook me into their prayer circle that’s fine, let them; it has to be better than the alternative, doesn’t it?’

He looked at her.

‘But what if you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong?’

‘I have done something wrong. And I suppose I’d be directed to show Christian forgiveness to you for not knowing that because a: you’re male and b: you’re never going to be in a situation where you’re made cannon fodder for the appetites of people better off than you.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. Leave it.’

He stood up, making, she thought, to leave, but instead of heading for the door he went the other way, towards the lectern and the keyboard and the stacks of unsullied Bibles.

‘I know it’s not like I should expect you to care,’ she said.

‘It’s OK.’

‘It’s just, y’know, the Christians might be daft but they’re trying to do the right thing.’

‘Yeah, I get that.’

‘They might think short skirts are slutty but at least they’ve come up with an alternative.’

He picked up one of the books of sheet music.

‘You wouldn’t use a prostitute, would you?’ she asked.

It was a funny thing to ask a kid, even if he was your dealer. She chased this grown-up disquiet with ugly reminiscence: the younger men, booked in groups to sate the gang-bang fantasies unearthed by porn habits that stretched from pre-teen curiosity right up to the stoked cruelty of adulthood; the ones who were never satisfied; the ones whose displeasure reverberated in slaps and misspelt jibes.

‘I have a girlfriend.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘It is,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t because I have a girlfriend.’

‘That doesn’t stop your typical punter,’ she said. ‘Girlfriends have nothing to do with it.’

‘That’s as may be,’ he said. ‘I have a girlfriend. I’m not interested in anyone else.’

‘How long have you been with her?’

‘Year and a half.’

‘Jesus.’ And then a nasty thought, as she remembered their initial introduction. ‘It’s not Tara Duane, is it?’

He looked like he’d come down Christmas morning to find a box of bees under the tree.

‘What?’

‘The night she gave me your number, she let on that there was history between you. Which is partly why I got some fright when you rocked up in your school geansaí .’

‘That’s sick.’

‘She’s not your sugar mammy, then?’

‘That’s fucking sick, Georgie.’

‘I’ve seen weirder.’

He placed the sheet-music book on the stand over the keys and said, ‘If I’d seen weirder I would have gouged my fucking eyes out.’

‘So where did she get your number?’

‘She’s my dad’s next-door-neighbour. Happy? Seriously, Georgie, you’re giving me the gawks.’

‘Weren’t you her dealer?’

‘Once upon a time. I’ve gotten picky with age.’

‘Couldn’t be too picky, if you’re coming into Christian retreats to sell me coke.’

‘Maybe I don’t find you half as creepy, Georgie.’

‘That’s a compliment, is it?’

‘Statement of fact. Even with your new cult.’

She started to protest, but he hushed her with the first few notes from the keyboard; startling, in that she didn’t expect it, and certainly not from him. She didn’t know what it was, except that it was played with fluidity and grace, and she gawped, and tried to shout over it, but he ignored her, and by the time he got to the end of the piece she was muted but good, yes, getting there, feeling good.

‘Did you play that just to shut me up?’

‘It’s awful,’ he said. ‘Lazy, simple bollocks. But it’s the only instrumental in here.’

‘You don’t look like a musician.’

‘You don’t look like a God-botherer.’

He put the music book back where he had found it, and walked to the door, hands in his jeans pockets.

‘What’s your girlfriend’s name?’ Georgie asked.

For a moment he looked like he wasn’t going to tell her. He narrowed his eyes, and considered her, and conceded. ‘Karine.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Stunning.’

‘So what would she say if she knew you were doing coke in a Christian prayer hall with a prostitute?’

‘I’ve done worse.’

‘So she’s a saint.’

‘Higher up than that, I’d say.’

‘So where do I get one of those?’

‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘She’s one of a kind.’

He stepped onto the path and hesitated. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he said. ‘Seriously.’

She gave him an awkward smile. ‘Don’t buy prostitutes. Seriously. If I can’t change any hearts in virtuous Christian chests than at least I can change yours.’

‘I told you. Not going to happen.’

‘Good. And Ryan?’

He looked back.

‘You should probably avoid that Tara Duane, too.’

‘Give me fucking strength. Anything else?’

‘Go in peace?’

‘Go and fuck off for yourself,’ he said, and he was gone.

The day had gone without a hitch. She’d gotten to the city, she’d called a dealer who wasn’t a bullying bastard to bring her blow she had both mind and money for, she’d helped her new friends conduct their Bible study without yap-yap-yapping her true colours into their Christian ears. And when she got back to the farm in the late evening, David was delighted to see her, and over tea and biscuits in the common room she demonstrated, by way of smiles and winks, that she had been successful in her quest, that their midnight feast could go ahead.

David crept to her room when the others were asleep and as she watched him snort a line in childish glee, the day’s leftovers tangled in her head.

The rush in chopping up the lines, the unintended sacrilege of a hastily adapted base on which to do it. The thoughts that had come on considering her dealer’s frame: that she’d been doing it wrong all those years on the street and in the back bedrooms of crumbling townhouses, that boyhood was a state on which to take pre-emptive revenge.

Then as David came over to lie beside her, murmuring tactile promises on her skin, she knew, suddenly, lucidly, that what she was doing was a curse. She was the succubus aiding his fall. He’d come here, wide-eyed and broken, to mine some life from the depths of his failure and she was bringing him coke and pretty falsehoods.