“Catholic,” I wrote firmly in the space.
“So you’re one of us,” smiled Sister Ursula when she took the form and checked it.
One of us — a beautiful and healing phrase. I gazed triumphantly at Sister Ursula’s billowing white veil, the small gold ring on her engagement finger. One of them — white-robed, rustling, gentle-fingered, betrothed to Christ Himself.
“Still practising?” she asked.
I nodded. Not many other non-Catholics knew every Catholic church from Walton-on-Thames to Welwyn Garden City.
“Would you like to take Holy Communion in the morning?”
I shut my eyes. She was going too fast. I hadn’t even been baptised. But if I didn’t say yes, she’d assume I was in mortal sin. I shuddered. I remembered all those phrases from my schooldays — mortal sin, Holy Souls in Purgatory, flames of hell.
“You could have a talk with our chaplain, first,” she suggested. “Father Laurence Sullivan. He’s very nice.” Her head-dress was awry and a strand of grey wispy hair straggled through a gap in it. It made her look still holier.
“Yes,” I mumbled. “Please.”
When she’d gone, I lay and trembled. A priest, a real Catholic chaplain, all to myself, a private audience. I’d never lost my respect for priests. I might mock at their intolerance or stinginess, in deference to Adrian, or make witty remarks about Papism when Leo’s friends were listening, but secretly, I all but worshipped them. At my convent school the priest had been like a pop-star — mobbed and famed and dazzling, with his own private fan-club. I never got as close to him as his other three hundred fans — I was the leper, remember — but I prayed for cure and conversion as fervently as my classmates prayed for ponies or pierced ears or Rolling Stones records. My mother was the stumbling block. Catholic to her spelt Irish, traitor, slut. She’d only sent me there for the gloss and cachet all convent girls acquire, and because the fees were lower than at other private schools and the brochure mentioned ‘discipline’ eleven separate times and the place itself was miles away and difficult to visit. (The further away I was from her the better, since I reminded her of my father which was crime enough itself.)
She was highly disconcerted when I fell in love with the Faith. I could hardly fail to do so when the nuns put a Sunday shine on all the dreary weekdays and gave Life a capital L and loss a small one. Catholicism was all the swoony, soul-enchanting things life had lacked till then — the blaze of candles and the choke of incense in a hushed and shimmering chapel, the body of Christ exploding in a stomach or slithering down a throat, guardian angels following you around like faithful dogs, folding their wings around you when you went to sleep, priests in fancy dress dishing out God from gold and silver cups. Leo’s music was in the Catholic church, his violence and his tenderness, and Adrian’s history and all those early kings and queens. Joining that church meant receiving all the sacraments — birth and death and life and marriage duly sanctified. Water on your head and chrism on your brow, Christ’s ring around your finger and His head against your breast, grace swirling through your soul like milk and honey. Being a Catholic meant going to confession — for me the most feared and envied thing of all. The prickle of terror as I knelt lonely and longing in the pew and heard the other girls’ faint, scared voices whispering from the private pallisade of the confessional box. Dredging up their sins. Fingers trespassing through knicker elastic, fumblings and touchings in the bath, magnifying mirrors shoved between their thighs to see if they looked the same as their best friend. The thrill and horror of telling a man such things, a man in a black frock, who had nothing between his legs except the godhead. I spent my whole three years squeezing out the secrets of the confessional from all my friends. I swapped sweets and comic books for sins. I practised my own confession a thousand times over. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …”
It made me sin much more, of course. Every time my hand went down, I imagined telling Father Murphy — his pursed, disapproving lips, the three small warts underneath his eye. I filled in all the details, almost drew him diagrams. He was the only man we had. There were no male teachers and boyfriends were taboo. Most of our sex-life was swept into the chapel. You could get an orgasm just by staring at the Blessed Sacrament. One of the girls even tried it with a candle, one of those long, fat white ones you were meant to light in front of the statue of the Immaculate Conception and which had been blessed by the Pope himself. She felt it was so holy, it would cancel out the sin. I only hope it did, because she never dared confess it. Father Murphy was very narrow-minded. Most of the time, the girls just whispered generalities: “Father, I’ve had impure thoughts.” “Father, I’ve committed sinful acts with myself.” I was committing more of those acts than anyone, yet I was the only one barred access to confession. I saw it as a violent deprivation. The more I gasped for the church, the more I felt excluded from it. God was deaf to my pleadings for conversion. Instead of finding a Father and joining His home and family, I returned to my mother’s house and joined nothing more than a gang of blue-jeaned layabouts at the local (co-ed) College of Further Education. My mother told me she’d quarrelled with Reverend Mother over what she called religious propaganda, but I suspect it was rather the fees she quarrelled with. They went up as her maintenance went down. (My father’s money was pouring into Another Woman, so I found out later.)
Anyway, that was the end of throbbing candles and bleeding hearts, of secret gropings with the butts of crucifixes, or rosaries trailing cold across my naked breasts. Now it was straight (short) sex in the backs of clapped-out Fords, or heavy necking under railway bridges. But I never lost my craving for confession. Often, I would enter a church and make straight for the confessional box. I never dared go in, just knelt in the pew beside it, feeling again that scorching mix of terror, lust and longing. Whenever I had it off with any man, half of the pleasure was confessing it afterwards to some imaginary priest. I never spared the details — which way up, how many times, had we used contraception?
And now, here was a real, substantial, unimagined priest, tapping at my door, shaking my hand, drawing up a chair. A priest in a stern black suit and a stiff white collar, actually leaning over me in bed. He was much better looking than Father Murphy, tall and thin and spiky, with hair the colour of a London pigeon.
Suddenly, I shut my eyes, turned away. I couldn’t bear him to see me smashed and battered and hideous. I wanted to draw the sheet up right above my head, as if I were already dead. This was the first man I’d seen since I’d been here (bar the doctor), and the very first priest I’d had entirely to myself, and there I was, with a gap in my teeth, a hole in my face, a fright, a failure, a laughing-stock. The curtains were drawn close around the bed. We were in our own private confessional box. There was only a thin white nightie between my naked body and this living, breathing Father. And what a nightie. A hospital-issue one, which prickled my throat and imprisoned my ankles. He’d feel nothing for me, nothing. He’d laugh, puke, turn away.
He was already bending over me. I didn’t know how he could bear to be so close. “It’s Thea, isn’t it? That’s a very beautiful name. It means ‘Divine’, you know. You must have a very special relationship with our Blessed Lord.”
I could feel myself blushing. Was he being sarcastic? Had he guessed already I wasn’t a member of his flock? It hurt to blush. My face was flushed and swollen enough, already. I hadn’t dared to look at it. I’d shunned all mirrors, tried to forget I had a face at all. The nuns kept saying looks were of no importance, and I’d done my best to believe them. But this was a man. My body was on fire for him, sweat seeping between my breasts, trickling down my thighs. I had to see myself, check that I was still a woman. I’d been shocked enough when I looked in Leo’s mirror, but his mirror often lied, and in any case, I might look better now. The nuns had spent a whole day and a night mopping me up and ministering to my mouth.
“I want a mirror,” I suddenly blurted out.
You don’t ask priests for mir
rors. That’s a nurse’s job, a menial’s. It also smacks of vanity. You can beg a priest for Holy Communion, or a plenary indulgence, but not the tools and trappings of the sin of pride. Father Sullivan was looking round the room, but there was no mirror on the wall, not even above the wash-basin. Eventually, he rang for one, and Sister Anselm brought it. He wouldn’t let me hold it but trapped it wrong side up against the counterpane. “Now listen, my dear,” he said. His fingers were almost greyish against the stiff papal white of the bed-linen. I noticed they were trembling. “You don’t look too pretty at the moment, but they can do wonderful things these days. I know there’s a lot of swelling, but you often get that round the face. It goes down very quickly. In a day or two, you’ll hardly even …”
I wasn’t listening. I had slipped the mirror from underneath his fingers and was staring at the strange, mottled, misshapen thing reflected in it. It wasn’t a face. Its nose and lips were so swollen, they had merged into each other, its eyes were almost closed and ringed with deep purple bruising, its mouth was a car-crash.
I dropped the mirror back on to the bed.
Father Sullivan was trying to stuff comfort in his voice, like baubles in a Christmas stocking. “Look, my child, it’s really not as bad as it appears. A lot of that swelling is simply superficial bruising. It’s a shame about your two front teeth, but the dental surgeon here is quite remarkable. He’s a Catholic, of course — a knight of St Gregory, actually. He really does take trouble. Sister’s spoken to him already, on the telephone, and he’s coming to see you first thing in the morning. He’ll make you look like new. Dentures today are so well made, you can hardly tell the difference.”
I touched my mouth, very gently, as if it was a foetus in a jar, some half-formed, wailing thing which still needed its mother. I wondered if you could kiss with dentures. I glanced across at Father Sullivan. He had perfect teeth himself.
“Try and remember, Thea, how Our Blessed Lord suffered. They crucified Him, pierced His side. We must strive to bear our sufferings as He did. In patience and resignation. Offer them up for the sins of the world.”
I must have sinned a lot — that was obvious, with a face like mine. It wasn’t a dentist I needed, but a priest. I had a priest and all I was doing was wasting my time on mirrors.
“Father,” I whispered. My voice was a little black insect, crawling on the floor.
“Yes, my child?”
I paused. I could feel the earth turning slowly, very slowly, on its axis. “I wondered if … I mean, would it be OK … ? Hell! Look, will you hear my confession?”
I think I expected a flash of lightning to strike me blind, a disembodied hand to write “Not a Catholic” on the trembling wall. But Father Sullivan only nodded, then fumbled in his black vinyl hold-all and brought out a prayer book and a purple stole. My heart was beating so hard, it must have set up earth tremors twenty miles away.
This was my First Confession. The girls at school had spent months preparing for it. I had been banned from all those secret sessions, private instruction with the priest, blushing and whispering through the grille. Now I was a child again, face perfect, teeth untouched, no longer banned, alien, isolated, but one of the three hundred sanctified. Father Sullivan had called me child himself. I could see my short blue gym-dress, the ridged pattern on my bare pink knees where I had knelt too long, the warm virgin itch in my interlock knickers.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” I whispered. I was sitting up in bed, head bowed, hands joined. There wasn’t a grille, but there was a real, God-blazoned priest, and we were closer even than in the confessional box.
Father Sullivan was praying aloud, hands on his two black knees. The girls never saw the priest at school — well, not his lower parts — only an ear and a profile through the grille. I had all of him.
“May the Lord Jesus who learnt to obey through suffering, strengthen you, so that you may humbly confess your sins.”
I could feel myself going wet between the legs, my nipples swelling and stiffening. I remembered the fingers in the crotch, the crucifixes and the candle ends, the mutual masturbation with my twelve-year-old best friend.
Father Sullivan’s voice was soft, like blue school knickers. “The apostle Paul once said, ‘I am content with my weakness, for it is when I am weak, that I am strong.”’ He paused. He was waiting for me to speak, to tell my sins.
He tried to prompt me. “How long is it since your last confession, Thea?”
I remembered now, you were meant to tell them that. The girls at school always said a week (or a fortnight, in the school holidays, when Reverend Mother wasn’t there to chivvy them). I mumbled something indecipherable — twenty years, a century, half a dozen lifetimes. He must have thought I said ten days. He nodded, bowed his head. He was waiting for my mea culpa.
The pause was so long, I could feel a whole new continent forming in it, forests flowering, oceans drying up.
“And how have you offended Our Blessed Lord since then?”
I thought of the under-age waiter, the buggery under the railway bridge, the girl at work I’d paid to let me watch her. I shut my eyes. My hands were clasped so tightly, I could feel the knuckles crushing. I could see the keeper in the recreation ground, the fat pink knees of my best friend’s little brother. My palms were clammy with sweat, my thighs sticking together underneath the sheet. I cleared my throat. “I murdered Janet’s baby,” I whispered.
There was a tiny pin-drop silence.
“You committed murder?” he said.
I nodded. I felt awesomely important. My schoolmates’ first confessions had all been trivial stuff — talking in the dormitory, stealing chocolate bars. I was something different, someone outrageous and distinguished, a sinner he’d remember.
“I slept with a waiter,” I continued. “At the Café Royal. Well, we didn’t do it there. That’s where he was working. He was only twelve and a half.” (The priest wouldn’t know if I knocked a couple of years off. I had to make him listen, had to keep him there.) I opened my eyes, saw a little drop of saliva bubbling at the corner of his mouth.
“Just a minute, Thea. I believe you said murder …”
“Yes,” I repeated. “Murder.”
I liked the word. It had smooth, rounded syllables which slipped out softly like blancmange and didn’t hurt my mouth.
“Murder is a very serious sin, my child. And a public crime. Does anyone know you killed this baby?”
He was frightened. I could hear it in his voice. He was worried about the police and public prosecutions, and getting mixed up with something he couldn’t handle. He’d had thirty years of nuns’ confessions: “Father, I dropped my rosary in chapel.” “Father, I ate meat on Friday.” He’d never met a crime before. His purple stole was clanging against my eyes. I shut them again. I’d had enough of purple.
“I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened, Thea. How old was the baby? Where was its mother?”
“I stole a duvet cover,” I stuttered. “From Swan and Edgar. I trained Leo’s dog to lick me when we made love.” I started to laugh. Karma would never lick me. He hated the smell. He only sniffed and retreated. If it hadn’t been for Karma, Leo might have loved me, might never even have hit me. No, he hadn’t hit me. I only fell downstairs.
“I fell downstairs,” I shouted. “On to stone.” I was crying. I didn’t want to cry. It hurt my face. I wanted Leo. Leo’s arms around me, Leo picking me up from the cellar steps, Leo’s dog licking me between the legs.
Father Sullivan had sprung up from the chair. His face was sickly pale. His eyes had disappeared into two little slits, the frown lines above them cutting deep like cart-tracks. I hoped he’d put his arms around me. I wanted him to change me from a little black insect to a born-and-bred Catholic who’d been baptised with water and the Holy Ghost, and had swallowed God in a white Communion dress with roses in her hair. I longed to sob in his arms, collapse on his breast like John.
“I’ve committed the sin of vani
ty,” I whispered. “Taken too much interest in my personal appearance. Asked for a mirror. Worried about my looks. Wanted people to touch me.”
The priest had slumped down in the chair again. He looked like a grounded puppet with its strings snapped. He opened his mouth and shut it, tried to mumble something, choked on a word and spat it out. I clung on to his arm. I could feel my nails sinking into his flesh through the thin black cloth of his suit. If he wouldn’t hold me, I would hurt him, murder him. I could still see his perfect teeth.
“I’ve murdered a priest!” I shouted.
He sprang away from me, dashed to the door and opened it. “Sister!” he called. His voice had gone high like a woman’s. He was a woman. There was nothing there between his two black legs.
Sister came in seconds. She must have been waiting just outside. They spied on us like that, at school. Hovered outside dormitories, peeked through keyholes, caught our private lives in butterfly nets and then stuck pins through them.
He held me down while she jabbed the needle in my arm. The room smelt of sin and surgical spirit.
I struggled to sit up. “I haven’t had absolution,” I gasped. I craved his hands on my head, the whispered words of pardon, the “go in peace”. None of the girls at school had ever been refused forgiveness. Three hundred girls multiplied by fifty-two. Week after week after week of absolutions. Sins wiped out, knickers washed clean.
“Father,” I whimpered. “You haven’t said the prayers.”
Something was happening to my voice. Black soot was muffling it, soft black snow falling on my limbs. I tried to shake if off, but my hands had turned to tissue paper.
“Father,” I mouthed. “The absolution. Please.”
As I went under, I saw his thin black back dwindling towards the door.
Chapter Nine
‘Oranges and Lemons,’
After Purple Page 10
