Only Strange People Go to Church

by Laura Marney

  The main hall is a factory of creativity with multiple simultaneous rehearsals taking place amidst the busy bustle of the café. This is going to be terrific experience for Blue Group. A primary class is practising a puppet show where the older kids use smaller ones, with thick cords tied to their wrists, as live puppets. Amidst the mayhem the teacher is untying one of the small ones. He’s crying from the rough treatment he’s receiving from the excitable girl yanking his strings.

  The school choir are using the stage to rehearse their Madonna tribute. It’s strange to see them in rows, identical in their smart school uniforms, singing Papa Don’t Preach with such regimented formality. A month ago, who would have thought it? This show is positive evidence that dreams can come true. The way everything has taken off, the café, the work experience and her relationship with Dezzie, especially her relationship with Dezzie, these things are all compelling evidence of the power of positive thinking.

  In the kitchen the ladies from Autumn House, about eight of them, are busy getting in each other’s way, banging pots and producing steam from urns. The café is mostly patronised by mums waiting to pick up children although Maria recognises and waves to a group she recognises from the Motorway demonstration. They are busily folding leaflets and have recruited a table of mums to help stuff envelopes.

  There is a table of Pastor McKenzie’s Victory Singers, sitting with cups of tea before them. They are a peculiar looking bunch of oddballs and misfits; the only thing they have in common is a dreamy religious haze that hangs over them.

  Maria smiles when she thinks of what Mike would make of this. He’d have a good rant about how he knows very well what the Victory Singer’s agenda is, she can hear his voice in her head right now. Don’t kid yourself Maria, he’d say, McKenzie’s mob aren’t here for the soup. They’re feeding off the misery of the redundant, the suicidal, the recently bereaved. They’re scavenging people’s souls, sniffing out life crises. They try to catch them at a low ebb and ensnare them. Another soul saved, another notch on their crucifix. They probably have league tables, he’d say.

  Mike’s a cynic but he’s not alone. She knows plenty of people who have an open animosity to organised religion. She suspects there are others who don’t mention the lack of community and spiritual void they feel in their lives. To do so would be an admission of weakness, of failure. Maria knows this because it’s the way she felt.

  Her experimentation with Christianity began after she woke up one morning with her tights dangling from one leg and an unknown boy from the other. There had to be more to Sundays than self-revulsion and killer hangovers.

  The Kelvin Street Kids tight foursome, (all four one and one four all!) was no more. Those days were gone. The rest of them were hooked up, going steady. Over time this new larger crowd diffused to become bigger, less focused, subsets of girlfriends and boyfriends, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, parents and children.

  Maria still saw them, but it wasn’t the same. Even Colette, her Best Friend, gently faded her out. Nights out at the pub became dinner at Colette’s with Colette’s husband, and not long after that, Colette’s kids. A new social scene had been established, a scene which Maria was unable to penetrate; the mother and toddler group. She missed the girls, especially Colette, she missed the laughs and the mad nights out. They were all baby bores now, ‘ooh,’ they’d cry, ‘Katie’s on solids!’ or ‘Oliver did a poo in the potty all by himself!’

  Maria knew nothing about breast pumps or sterilising solution. Without a baby she couldn’t be in that club. So she began, on the QT, going to church. Or rather she began the process of selecting a church, one that could provide her with a club membership but also anonymity.

  She wasn’t ready to tell her friends. Although she didn’t know Mike at the time, she knew plenty of people like him. In the social circles she moved in it was deeply uncool to hold faith in God. Anyone ingenuous enough to come out as a Christian was regarded with suspicion. The word itself was almost a dirty word, a word with judgmental or hypocritical overtones. Going to church was perceived as questionable behaviour.

  So it couldn’t be anywhere too close to Kelvin Street or where she worked. It couldn’t be anywhere too nosey, where the minister invited you to stay for tea and a half-hour interrogation. It couldn’t be anywhere too sad. With her usual optimism she had begun with high hopes of perhaps finding a nice decent unmarried man but most churches she tried had only a pitifully small congregation of old or strange people. Eventually she found one which met her rigorous standards.

  This one, St David’s, had a sign outside which said, Those who choose to worship in private will not be disturbed. It was good marketing.

  The minister wasn’t young or trendy but he seemed nice and he did have his finger on the pulse. The church was equipped with PowerPoint. The words of the hymns were projected on to a large screen, animated, sometimes dancing or in flames, under a bouncing ball that kept the beat. The hymns had sweet sad tunes or lively rousing ones. There was a wee choir but the minister encouraged everyone to sing out. Maria, hiding amongst their unsteady voices, joined in. Towards the end of the service there was karaoke. Anyone could choose a hymn from a list of about forty and step up to the altar with the microphone.

  Every week there was The Sign of Peace. She shook hands with everyone seated around her and was touched and surprised by their warmth and generous fellowship. These people didn’t know her or want anything from her.

  When the minister said, ‘now let us pray’ Maria put her head down and closed her eyes.

  Except for family weddings or funerals her parents never took her to church. At school there was the odd service at the end of term, but really the only pupils who practiced religious devotions were the Muslims kids. Maria didn’t know how to pray. The first time she did it she felt self-conscious, panicky even, but she bowed her head, screwed her eyes closed and concentrated.

  She became aware of the smells of incense and damp. The opulent fustiness of the church comforted her; it was the smell of serenity. She started to get a light-headed feeling. A current of something: contentment, grace, buzzed through her,– getting stronger every time. Was this a spiritual high? It seemed like everyone in the church was getting it, she could feel it in the atmosphere.

  Before now she’d never understood communal prayer. Just for a few minutes, while she had her eyes closed, while there was silence and they all prayed together, Maria felt an outpouring of love for everyone in the room. It was a great feeling; she only wished the church was full. Now she realised why churches were built to accommodate so many people and why Christians spent so much effort proselytising. These few minutes of enlightenment would sustain her for days. But just as she was beginning to enjoy it, it all went wrong. She got caught.

  She’d been attending St David’s for about four weeks when she ran into Colette. She’d just come out and bumped into Colette pushing Oliver’s buggy. Colette was on her way to a baby swimming class with Oliver.

  ‘I’ve got to do something,’ she said, ‘I’m getting cabin fever sitting in the house all day staring at four walls.’

  Maria could pray for a miracle to get out of this and she would have, but she felt it was hypocritical to ask God’s assistance in denying him.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d gone happy clappy.’

  Colette said it enthusiastically but Maria saw the pity in her eyes.

  God forgive her, Maria could only think of denial.

  ‘Me go to church? Don’t be ridiculous!’

  Colette sniggered at the misunderstanding.

  ‘I thought you’d finally let Jesus come into your life.’

  This was a reference to an incident from years ago.

  Maria and Colette had been in a club with the other KSKs. They were finding it difficult to shake off two boring but tenacious boys. With a straight face Colette told the boys that she and Maria had let Jesus come into their lives. Maria joined her in pretending to try to convert them, bowing her he
ad every time she said the word Jesus. The boys soon made their excuses.

  ‘Well, what the hell were you doing coming out of a church on a Sunday morning, then?’ asked Colette, still hooting with laughter at her own joke. She obviously needed to get out of the house more often. It wasn’t that funny.

  Maria couldn’t tell her. Not now, not after the let Jesus come into your life remembrance.

  ‘I went in to ask about a yoga class that runs there.’

  Maria knew it was blasphemy. But although she had covered her tracks, the game was up.

  It turned out that with the baby swimming class Colette would be passing the church at this time every Sunday. Unless St David’s had a back exit Maria would no longer be able to come. She didn’t have the stamina to start again at another church. But more importantly – and it was an ugly revelation – she hadn’t the moral rectitude to make it as a Christian. She’d much rather deny Christ than endure her friend’s pity.

  But that was a long time ago. She doesn’t beat herself up about it anymore. Since then she has accepted and forgiven herself for her moral failings. Now she has honed and perfected that spiritual high in the privacy of her own home.

  Good luck to Pastor McKenzie and the Victory Mission; whatever floats their boat. It can’t be easy standing every Saturday night outside The Hexton Arms singing off-key whilst being pelted with kebab containers. They must go home dripping in chilli sauce but that’s the price they pay. And if they can comfort a few people and help them to make some kind of sense of their personal tragedies then, why not? They’re not doing any harm.

  Pastor McKenzie, with his good looks and easy charm must be a super-smooth salesman of Christianity. If they do have league tables, he must be premier division.

  The Pastor is playing snooker with one of the men from the orchestra. The orchestra are not due to rehearse today but perhaps the musician has come for the soup or the snooker or the vibrant atmosphere that now fills the church. Maria overhears what sounds like a philosophical debate between the two of them as she herds her group past.

  ‘But you know, Arnold, it’s not possible to achieve permanent happiness,’ says Pastor McKenzie, ‘the best we can aim for is to be good.’

  ‘Life is hard,’ says the musician, ‘I accept that. And once you do, it makes things a bit easier, but I really miss her. Brown in the top left pocket.’

  Chapter 40

  At the far end of the café there is an electric sewing machine on a table festooned with bright yellow, red, blue and green shiny material. These must be the Can Can costumes for the Golden Belles that Alice was talking about yesterday. There is a casting of coloured threads littering the floor all around. Some have been carried by through-traffic to different parts of the café floor and a few remain stuck in the grooves of customers’ shoes.

  The face of the woman operating the machine is not visible as her head is down, her eyes following the line of thread and the fast pneumatic action of the needle as she feeds the material through. She’s concentrating on what she’s doing. Maria can only see the crown of her head, her thin hair neatly sectioned and rollered. When she lifts her head she looks very professional. She’s wearing an overall, buttoned all the way up and a pair of glasses on a chain.

  Alice Boyd does not look happy to see Blue Group shuffling nervously around the noisy cafe. They’ve not yet got used to this social interaction with strangers but, although it may be uncomfortable for them, Maria is committed to pushing her clients out of their comfort zones. These experiences will be a positive step in their development.

  ‘Here we are then, Alice, I think you know everybody by now: Fiona, Jane, Brian, Martin, and my colleague, Dezzie.’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ Alice says.

  Dezzie nods but stays in the background behind Brian’s chair, for which Maria is grateful. This is her team, her work experience triumph. But although Dezzie’s quiet, his T-shirt is a conversation piece.

  ‘I hope you don’t do them all at the same time,’ says Alice.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Drink and ride and talk, I mean, you’d spill it all over the place!’

  It takes a second before Dezzie and Maria catch up with her but when they do, they laugh enthusiastically. This naturally radiates out to Blue Group.

  ‘I like your T-shirt, but there’s someone here who can top that. Would you like to see the slogan the Seniors are wearing this season?’

  Dezzie looks to Maria for approval. Maria isn’t sure what Alice means and begins to worry that Alice is using Dezzie’s T-shirt to usurp her work experience plans. They’re not here for a social call.

  Alice doesn’t wait for a reply but calls to one of her kitchen assistants.

  ‘Jean? Could you ask Jean Stevenson to pop out for a minute, I want to show off her jumper.’

  One Jean calls another and Jean Stevenson emerges from the kitchen, preceded slightly by her big, pointy, rather low-slung boobs. It always depresses Maria to see old women with such impressive racks. What good are they to them? It’s such a waste. Jean Stevenson employs hers to buttress a lilac-appliquéd sweatshirt. She’s laughing; mock-embarrassed to be summoned in this way.

  Jean, though elderly, is a smart looking woman, pink-lipped and fully made up. Her shoulder length hair is thick and shiny, a shade of auburn that begins dark and rich on her shoulder and gets lighter towards her head. At the roots it’s a light pink colour. Her turquoise eye shadow has been smudged by the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes, but the overall effect is bright and cheery.

  ‘Go on then, Jean, give us a twirl,’ says Alice.

  Jean obliges, she smiles and turns with the careful deliberation of a schoolgirl with a stack of books on her head. In this elaborate fashion, she models her sweatshirt.

  Around appliquéd butterflies, flowers, teddy bears and rocking horses, in a feminine and florid script, are the words:

  Old Ladies are just Antique Little Girls

  ‘I got it on holiday in Florida,’ Jean explains. ‘It’s a nice way of looking at it, isn’t it?’

  Maria doesn’t want to be disagreeable, she nods vigorously, eliciting baffled nods from Blue Group.

  ‘Thanks Jean,’ says Alice dismissively.

  As Jean sashays back to the kitchen Alice turns back to Maria and Dezzie.

  ‘Bliddy creepy, isn’t it?’

  Maria and Dezzie quickly agree.

  ‘Jean’s single at the moment, she’s looking for an antique paedophile boyfriend.’

  Alice cackles at her own joke and Dezzie hesitantly joins her, causing another wave of tittering from Martin, Jane, Fiona and Brian. Maria is unable to laugh, she’s getting anxious. This is all very well, but she’s not here to laugh at deluded pensioners. She wants to crack on with the work placements but yet another Jean approaches the table. Alice is in big demand here today and Maria can see she’s loving it. It’s the seamstress, Maria recognises her as the ditzy receptionist at Autumn House.

  ‘Alice, did you manage to get the Broaderie Anglaise?’

  ‘Yes, I got a big roll of it. It’s in the back kitchen, I’ve left it on top of the fridge.’

  Arnold, the musician who was playing snooker earlier passes and softly puts his hand on Jean’s back.

  ‘Thanks Jean, very much appreciated,’ he says.

  ‘He needed all his trousers taken in,’ Jean whispers loudly in explanation once he has safely passed. ‘Och, it wasn’t any bother, two minutes through the machine. He’s lost a lot of weight since she’s gone. A shadow of his former self, so he is, a shadow.’

  Jean and Alice share a pensive look but after a few moments they both recommence as if Arnold had never interrupted.

  ‘There should be plenty of lace there for you, Jean, but let me know and I’ll pick up more on my way home tonight if you need it.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  As soon as she moves off Alice shifts back into a gossip huddle and Maria and Dezzie are obliged to lean in and listen.

&n
bsp; ‘I’ve got them all working here now. That’s Jean Scott, the relief receptionist at Autumn House. She’s good hearted. She’s never done sewing buttons on for the men, anything they ask her. She’s just a girl who can’t say no. One of they homeless fellas that Ray lets doss in the back room came up to her with a button and said ‘hey missus, could you sew a shirt on that for me?”

  Alice is slapping the table as she laughs.

  ‘The worst receptionist we’ve ever had but a great wee seamstress. Worked at it full-time all her days she did, never married, the wee soul, God love her. Worked there until the place shut down. Stuart’s the Kiltmaker. They moved the business abroad, Far East somewhere I think. She’s done a smashing job on our outfits, and for next to nothing. I got white pyjama bottoms and she’s putting a wee bit of lace on them, there you go: authentic Parisian cancan bloomers. The pyjammy trousers were cheap made, right enough; you could spit peas through the cotton, but guess how much I paid for them at that Primark?’

  It is a few seconds before Maria realises that Alice is looking for an answer. She has absolutely no idea how much pyjama bottoms cost, in Primark or anywhere else. Since she took out her mortgage she has become out of touch with retail prices and buys bargains in charity shops.

  ‘Eh, five pounds?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Maria’s hand presses hard against her breast bone. Really, she could do without the guessing games. Blue Group are here, ready and waiting to work. Normally she enjoys the buzz in the church but today she’s picking up their nerves and amplifying them. She’s probably more nervous than they are now.

  ‘Fifty pence. Fifty pence a pair. You wouldn’t credit it, would you? You wonder that they can make a profit on them at that price, and all the way from Indonesia, that’s where they’re made you know. Probably in a wee sweat shop owned by Stuarts.’

  Alice is at it. No doubt, because they work in a centre for people with mental disabilities, Alice has taken Maria and Dezzie for activist socialists. She’s deliberately timewasting, trying to lure them into what would no doubt be a stimulating debate on the decline of British manufacturing, the exploitation of cheap labour and rising consumerism.