Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

‘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 pup, 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 as the charcoal canopy was wrung out over the city and the hem of her dress sucked up the residue of a hundred days’ winter, no one could have convinced Georgie that it was balmier than Himself had intended. 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.