Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

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.

‘Well, look,’ said Clover. ‘Let’s split up. That way we’ll get through them faster and then we can have a well-earned rest. 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.’

‘Fine,’ said Georgie. ‘I’ll go around the front here and meet you at the other end.’

She’d made a mistake in suggesting they dump the flyers. 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.

‘I should go with you,’ she said, ‘seeing as you’re so tired.’

‘I can manage. It’s the shorter route, you know?’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Clover decided, and marched on, with Georgie waddling after.

They deposited some of the flyers into the limp hands of those fretting outside the hospital, and while Clover was explaining her mission to a bemused pensioner with a Westie on a leash, Georgie desperately demonstrated intrepid spirit by dropping some of the leaflets into the communal postbox of an apartment complex.

Between that and the delay brought about by the pensioner’s heedlessness, Clover seemed more reluctant to continue her chaperoning. She stood with Georgie on the corner of the quay, only a couple of doors away from the old brothel, and relented, as if shrinking in the rain.

‘Maybe it would be quicker if I went the other way,’ she said.

‘It would be.’

‘Maybe if you continue along the quay and meet me halfway.’

‘Sure.’

‘Go on then,’ said Clover, and pointed towards the first door.

In Georgie’s day the house next door was empty. She moved towards it, doubtfully, and Clover stood where she was and watched.

‘I can do this, Clover.’

‘But what if they have questions?’

‘But what about the time?’

Another mistake. Clover frowned.

‘I’ll just make sure you’re grand with the first few here,’ she said.

‘Clover,’ Georgie cried, ‘let me do this. Honest, I can!’

The older woman’s aversion had not come from nowhere. Georgie knew she’d let them down time and time again; they had allowed ball lightning into their nest. 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 either made of more resilient stuff than she’d accounted for, or they had never encountered ball lightning before and as such hadn’t a clue what to do with it.

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.

There was no answer at the first door.

‘Just drop a couple of leaflets through the letterbox and move on,’ Clover advised. ‘Maybe they’re apartments. Try the next one.’

‘That’ll probably be the same.’

‘Try it anyway.’

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.

She stood in the archway and tapped on the door.

‘They won’t have heard that,’ Clover said, from the corner. ‘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 her 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 there. Anyone who claims to be an expert in the mysterious waftings of Himself is talking through their high hoop. 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.