myself for something my mother ended up coveting? Hmm? And if I’ve done all my redeeming, forty bleddy years of it, why in God’s name do you think I should be seeking redemption for you?”
Lacking the necessary equipment to answer, the ghost of Robbie O’Donovan said nothing.
“I’ll atone,” grumbled Maureen, “but I’m not taking any more punishment. Up to me armpits in punishment I was, for doing feck all. Do you hear me?”
Her thirst for redemption unquenched by the wraith’s sullen insubstantiality, Maureen was left picking through more indirect routes.
The church seemed like the obvious place to start. The clergy were self-professed experts in bestowing grace on behalf of the absentee landlord. Then there was the notion of being pre-cleared of the burden of Robbie O’Donovan’s death by dint of her suffering years of penitence with no sin to show for it. If the church that condemned her to childless banishment forty years ago could offer her something in the way of a consolation prize, well, she was interested in hearing it.
The church nearest her was across the river and ten minutes down the quays. The morning after she told Robbie O’Donovan his bedtime story, she took a walk.
It had been a nasty April so far, the weather weak and wet, and bitter. She had wanted to wear white for the occasion, but the rain dissuaded her; she swapped white trousers for a black pair, and her sandals for sturdy dark shoes, and her cream cardigan and white shirt gave her the look of someone who’d only sinned from the waist down, which was generally where it manifested on nineteen-year-olds in the seventies.
It was an old church, imposing in a way they’d discourage now that the country was wide to their private flamboyances. Maureen strode up the steps and through the colossal doors and inside spied grandeur good-oh. Gold and marble and wall-mounted speakers so as to better hear the word of the Law-Di-Daw. She chortled, loud enough to upset a couple of biddies sitting in one of the end pews.
There were confession boxes in the corner. She ran her hands over the outside of the left-hand door. Hardwood, varnished over and over again; all veneer at this stage, she thought. There was a black grille on the top half. The priest’s station in the middle was hung with a velvet curtain.
Maureen slipped inside and stood in the dark, remembering all that time ago, when you’d be waiting on the priest to slide the hatch open, enjoying the stuffiness, the pomp of the ritual, even the smell of the thing, rich and musty, something of the bygones…
The hatch slid to the side and a voice said, “We’re not scheduled for confessions now, but I saw you come in.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“ ‘Bless me father for I have sinned’ is the customary salutation.”
She shoved the door open and hurried to the exit, and behind her the priest, bespectacled and white-haired as uniform dictated, opened the door of the confessional and hung out on one foot.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he called.
Robbie O’Donovan was waiting for her when she banged shut the door of the brothel. His face, elongated this time, mouthless and sallow, stared her down from the end of the corridor. He was standing at the kitchen door, blocking entry.
“I’ll get them,” she said. “Not today, obviously. But you’ll see at the end of it: you, my lad, have no right to be here.”
She wanted a cup of tea and to sit down, and so she blinked hard, and when she opened her eyes again he was gone.
Maureen sat on it like a bird of prey fluffed up on an egg. She guarded it closely at first, but as soon as Jimmy gratefully consigned the deed to history the air around her turned viscous with her glee, and Jimmy watched it bubble into thick sighs and snorts and unspent exclamations until she decided it was time to tell him what she’d learned.
That gowl Cusack had let slip the name of the corpse.
What harm?
Dougan might have asked, if he’d been
Lacking the necessary equipment to answer, the ghost of Robbie O’Donovan said nothing.
“I’ll atone,” grumbled Maureen, “but I’m not taking any more punishment. Up to me armpits in punishment I was, for doing feck all. Do you hear me?”
Her thirst for redemption unquenched by the wraith’s sullen insubstantiality, Maureen was left picking through more indirect routes.
The church seemed like the obvious place to start. The clergy were self-professed experts in bestowing grace on behalf of the absentee landlord. Then there was the notion of being pre-cleared of the burden of Robbie O’Donovan’s death by dint of her suffering years of penitence with no sin to show for it. If the church that condemned her to childless banishment forty years ago could offer her something in the way of a consolation prize, well, she was interested in hearing it.
The church nearest her was across the river and ten minutes down the quays. The morning after she told Robbie O’Donovan his bedtime story, she took a walk.
It had been a nasty April so far, the weather weak and wet, and bitter. She had wanted to wear white for the occasion, but the rain dissuaded her; she swapped white trousers for a black pair, and her sandals for sturdy dark shoes, and her cream cardigan and white shirt gave her the look of someone who’d only sinned from the waist down, which was generally where it manifested on nineteen-year-olds in the seventies.
It was an old church, imposing in a way they’d discourage now that the country was wide to their private flamboyances. Maureen strode up the steps and through the colossal doors and inside spied grandeur good-oh. Gold and marble and wall-mounted speakers so as to better hear the word of the Law-Di-Daw. She chortled, loud enough to upset a couple of biddies sitting in one of the end pews.
There were confession boxes in the corner. She ran her hands over the outside of the left-hand door. Hardwood, varnished over and over again; all veneer at this stage, she thought. There was a black grille on the top half. The priest’s station in the middle was hung with a velvet curtain.
Maureen slipped inside and stood in the dark, remembering all that time ago, when you’d be waiting on the priest to slide the hatch open, enjoying the stuffiness, the pomp of the ritual, even the smell of the thing, rich and musty, something of the bygones…
The hatch slid to the side and a voice said, “We’re not scheduled for confessions now, but I saw you come in.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“ ‘Bless me father for I have sinned’ is the customary salutation.”
She shoved the door open and hurried to the exit, and behind her the priest, bespectacled and white-haired as uniform dictated, opened the door of the confessional and hung out on one foot.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he called.
Robbie O’Donovan was waiting for her when she banged shut the door of the brothel. His face, elongated this time, mouthless and sallow, stared her down from the end of the corridor. He was standing at the kitchen door, blocking entry.
“I’ll get them,” she said. “Not today, obviously. But you’ll see at the end of it: you, my lad, have no right to be here.”
She wanted a cup of tea and to sit down, and so she blinked hard, and when she opened her eyes again he was gone.
Maureen sat on it like a bird of prey fluffed up on an egg. She guarded it closely at first, but as soon as Jimmy gratefully consigned the deed to history the air around her turned viscous with her glee, and Jimmy watched it bubble into thick sighs and snorts and unspent exclamations until she decided it was time to tell him what she’d learned.
That gowl Cusack had let slip the name of the corpse.
What harm?
Dougan might have asked, if he’d been
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