Only Strange People Go to Church

by Laura Marney

  I snogged the girl out of Hanson.

  Maria doesn’t understand.

  As far as she remembers the band Hanson was made up of three brothers.

  ‘I didn’t know there were any girls in the band.’

  The giggling peaks.

  ‘There aren’t,’ says Dezzie.

  Now she comes to think of it the brothers Hanson had long hair and were kind of androgynous. High fives all round in the boys club.

  ‘Oh, right!’ she says, relieved.

  Martin and Brian nod their heads and high-five her, bringing her in on the joke.

  ‘He’ll know!’

  ‘No, he won’t.’

  ‘But if he finds out. Somebody might tell him. He’ll realise you’re taking the piss.’

  Dezzie exchanges sly glances with his co-conspirators.

  ‘Not if Martin gives him it,’ he says artlessly. ‘Go on Martin, show her.’

  Martin stands, clears his throat, opens his eyes wide, shuffles forward and says in a fake ingénue voice,

  ‘Mike, I would be honoured if you would accept this gift. Hanson is my favourite band. It would mean so much to me if you would wear it at the show.’

  Martin the consummate actor is playing a character they all know well: a well-meaning mentally disabled person hero worshipping a member of staff.

  ‘You. Are. Beautiful. Man. Who. Could. Refuse. A. Face. Like. That.’ says Brian.

  Martin turns to Brian, his arms open in supplication, his face as vacant as a saint’s.

  ‘It’s a cracker though, eh?’ says Dezzie, ‘It was Brian’s idea.’

  ‘Mmm. Bop.’ says Brian’s machine. ‘It’s. A. Secret. No. One. knows.’

  Lyrics from Hanson’s one and only famous song. Martin joins in singing,

  ‘You say you can but you don’t know, oh oh

  you don’t know’

  ‘Subvert. Their. Expectations.’ the Dynavox says dispassionately, but Brian is bouncing excitedly in his chair. Maria joins in with the laughter. Until now it has never occurred to her to question her clients’ sincerity. Hats off to Brian, a typical chess player’s manoeuvre.

  ‘Who. Are. The. Dafties. Now.’

  ‘He’s going to look like a right daftie with this on at the big show,’ says Dezzie. ‘Serves him right for being rotten to my… to Maria.’

  Maria has a moment’s fear when it seems Dezzie might say the G word in front of the boys. It’s also a moment’s pride. She’d like the boys to know that she’s Dezzie girlfriend; then she might be accepted as an honorary member in the lads club. It’s a relief to know that Dezzie is on her side but she can’t approve of his methods.

  She is probably being old-fashioned but instinctively she feels it’s not right to denigrate a member of staff, especially the most high-ranking member, however much of a tosser he is. Respect for authority has to be maintained, for the clients’ sake as much as anything. It might have been Brian’s idea, but Dezzie has incited him to this sly mutiny. Dezzie’s full of surprises.

  Chapter 47

  Maria didn’t take Fiona to the pictures this week. Or last week, Fiona can’t remember about the week before. Maria shouted at Fiona and threw crisps at her and put soup on her and burnt her hand. Fiona doesn’t know why. Fiona forgave Maria and they are friends again, but still she has a scared feeling in her tummy. Something is wrong. She has been a bad girl. She wants to go to the pictures with Maria. Fiona thinks that Maria is going to the pictures without her. She is going with someone else. This is because Fiona was bad. She tried to take the soup back to the kitchen. Jane was a good girl. She brought the soup. The soup was rotten. It had too much salt. Maria shouted at Fiona and she was crying. She was a cry baby.

  Ray said Fiona was a good girl. She was a clever girl. She told everybody the soup was rotten. Ray told Fiona a nice story and she stopped crying. She wishes she could remember the story. Ray’s voice is quiet. Fiona likes Ray’s voice. He said she was brave when she got the plaster on her finger. She wasn’t a cry baby. Fiona likes the café. She is scared of the café.

  Mum doesn’t love Maria. She smiles when she speaks to Maria. Maria smiles back. Mum says Maria thinks she knows everything, she says Maria is a little Hitler. Fiona doesn’t know what a little Hitler is. She asked Martin but Martin doesn’t know. Mum is wrong. Maria doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know that Mum says she’s a little Hitler. Fiona is scared to tell Maria this.

  Mum doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know that Maria shouted at Fiona and threw crisps at her and put soup on her and burnt her hand. She doesn’t know that Fiona was a bad girl. Fiona is scared to tell Mum this.

  Maria is sorry. She said she is sorry because she shouted at Fiona and threw crisps at her and put soup on her and burnt her hand. Fiona doesn’t know why Maria was crying. She doesn’t like it when Maria is a cry baby. It makes her frightened. Maria loves Fiona. Maria gives Fiona crisps, nice ones. Fiona loves Maria. She wants to go to the pictures with her.

  *

  It’s been a long week, a long week and a very long day. The church hall has started to fill up again, not with rehearsals, there are no rehearsals tonight, the big rehearsal is planned for tomorrow. Tonight the young ones are in, Bob, Gerry and Aldo and all of them, as they are almost every night, playing snooker until Ray eventually throws them out. Aldo wants him to play doubles against Alice and Bob but Pastor McKenzie has asked to speak to him privately. ‘I wouldn’t want anybody put at risk, there’s a lot of vulnerable young people here,’ says Ray, gathering up the cards.

  ‘No, of course. With your help, supervision will be 100%. You have my absolute assurance on that. There’s nothing to worry about. I just felt you should know,’ says Pastor McKenzie.

  ‘But I think you’re right to keep it quiet, there’s no point in frightening people, or encouraging neighbourhood watch death squads.’

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate it,’ says the Pastor.

  In Ray’s office, due to the sensitive nature of what they have been discussing, the two men have kept their voices to a whisper. Now the conversation moves on and they speak at a more normal volume.

  They have also moved on to what has become their customary evening game of cards. It’s Ray’s turn to be dealer. Neither of them is ever in a hurry to get home. This is becoming Ray’s favourite time of day; Stuart McKenzie is a good card player and excellent company when he’s not trying to recruit converts to his mission.

  Before playing another hand Ray takes out his tobacco and rolls a cigarette.

  ‘You know, you’d make an excellent Pastor,’ says Stuart.

  Ray laughs. Here we go. Stuart is full of this kind of bullshit.

  ‘No, really, pastoral care these days is all about charisma. And, without inflating your ego too much, Ray, you’ve got it in abundance. People like you. Would you not fancy it?’

  Ray deals the cards, draws on his fag and thinks about this briefly.

  ‘Eh…No.’

  He can see the Pastor is slightly miffed by such a swift dismissal and so tries to soften the blow.

  ‘Stuart, you don’t need me. You’re doing a grand job.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ says McKenzie, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a fifty pence piece, looks at it for a moment, and puts it on the desk. So far the stakes have been twenty pence. He must reckon he has a good hand. Ray matches the fifty pence stake from his stack of ten and twenty pence piece winnings.

  ‘Stick or twist?’ he asks.

  The Pastor studies his cards and turns his hand swiftly as though he is removing a light bulb from its socket or wringing a chicken’s neck.

  ‘Hit me.’

  An ace. Excellent card.

  ‘Yes!’

  Stuart makes a triumphant fist and pulls it down.

  ‘Praise the Lord!’

  Ray watches as he scrapes the money over to his side of the table. Apart from his fixation with the Lord, Stuart seems such a normal bloke.

  ‘Are you not a bit old for a
n imaginary friend?’

  Stuart looks baffled and Ray has to explain.

  ‘I mean your imaginary wee friend, Jesus.’

  ‘Oh, right. He’s real to me, Ray, as real as you are. So that’s what puts you off, is it? Well, I suppose a belief in Our Lord Jesus Christ is a pretty central tenet of Christianity,’ says the Pastor ruefully, ‘We even named the religion after him.’

  He nods his head sagely before asking another question.

  ‘So what do you believe in then, Ray?’

  Ray shrugs and lets out a sigh big enough to blind himself with smoke from his roll up. He squeezes his eyes closed and puts two fingers to the inside corners of his eyes.

  ‘Nature: science ‘n’ nature, death ‘n’ disease.’

  ‘That seems very nihilistic.’

  Ray shakes his head sadly, ‘I don’t even know what that word means, Stuart.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t believe in anything, why do you open the church to everybody?’

  Ray looks at the cards in his hand. He looks at his fingers, conscious of the ring no longer being there. He’s left the past – everything from here is the future.

  Stuart continues with his line of questioning.

  ‘Why d’you do so much for the people who come in here?’

  ‘Faith ‘n’ community.’

  ‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. So, do you mean faith and community or faith in community?’

  Ray shrugs again but Stuart won’t let it go.

  ‘Is it the same thing? Is faith more or less meaningful when it’s communal?’

  Stuart looks ready to nag him to explain further but luckily Ray is rescued by Aldo knocking the door. There’s been a snooker dispute and he’s being asked to adjudicate. ‘Excuse me, Stuart, I’ll need to leave saving the world till later.’

  *

  It’s been a long week. Friday nights are not always good nights for Maria. Sometimes she is so caught up just getting through the week that by the time it gets to Friday she hasn’t had a chance to make plans for the weekend. If she hasn’t arranged to take Fiona out to a movie or something, the weekend can lie before her like an open grave. That’s changed recently; Dezzie has asked her out every weekend. Until now that is.

  They were so late leaving the centre today that when Dezzie offered to take Brian out to his bus she was forced to accept his help. She would rather have seen both Martin and Brian off herself as she normally does but she couldn’t keep the buses waiting any longer. She put Martin on his bus which took much longer than usual. Martin’s driver gave her a long and time-consuming telling off for keeping the bus late. Now he’d be caught in rush hour traffic, he moaned. Ten minutes delay at this end meant an hour’s delay in him getting home tonight. By the time the bus finally pulled away, Dezzie, and all the rest of the staff, had left the building. All except Bert.

  ‘Maria, can I have a word please?’ he’d said, in a tone that definitely meant trouble. Despite whatever weirdness he was up to in his office it probably hadn’t escaped Bert’s notice that Maria had assaulted Fiona with several bags of crisps today. Or that she returned to the centre without Martin and Brian. Or that they were so late for their buses. Or that they were drunk. Maria followed him sheepishly back into his office.

  This time there was no sign of the Virgin Mary bottle that had seemed, in that blurry blink of an eye, like a makeshift shrine.

  ‘I’m sorry that you had to see that, Maria.’

  Bert’s tone was embarrassed and apologetic.

  So it had escaped his notice, all of it; she’s not in trouble, after all.

  ‘Bert, I didn’t see…’

  ‘It’s come back. Worse than ever. Please don’t tell anyone.’

  Maria shook her head, unable to look at him.

  ‘I’d really appreciate it.’

  She nodded, head bowed.

  ‘I didn’t convert to Catholicism because my eczema cleared up; I know everyone thinks I did. Faith isn’t about results, you know.’

  Maria didn’t disagree.

  As soon as she comes home she closes her eyes and has a quick session with Arlene and Nelson. Amongst other things she needs to sort out the whole crisp-throwing incident.

  ‘Would you stop giving yourself such a hard time?’ says Arlene.

  ‘But I…’

  ‘Yeah, and you shouldn’t have, but it’s done now.’

  ‘We cannot change the past,’ says Nelson sadly, ‘but what we learn from the past makes our future.’

  None of this is very satisfactory. She still feels bad about what she did to Fiona and how things were left with Dezzie.

  After several hours of standing guard over a phone that doesn’t ring, Maria brings it with her into the bathroom, just in case, and has a long soak in the tub. She needs it; her neck and shoulders are as tight as piano strings. Three top-ups later, with her hands wrinkled and her neck as tight as ever, she gives up on the water therapy. A meditation, she decides, a good long one, there’s nothing else for it.

  The wind and rain are making her loose old windows shake tonight but she closes the curtains and puts on her meditation music. Within minutes she is sitting on the banks of the shimmering river, lifting her face to the sunlight. She reviews her day, acknowledging the positive work she did, mentally ticking off the tasks she achieved from her list. Routinely she selects five golden moments from her day.

  Even on the worst days she can always find at least five golden moments. Usually it’s the simple stuff like a bright morning when the bus turns up on time, or a smile from Brian as she changes his vomit-covered jumper for a clean one, chips at lunchtime, or teaching Blue Group something new, for instance the words to ‘Tainted Love’. Despite everything that’s gone wrong, today has had its share of golden moments: the walk in the park – like a family – with Dezzie and Blue Group, Jane’s waitressing triumph, the rehearsals going so well, the Victory Mission win-win solution, making space for the Madonna drag act in the show.

  After reminding herself of the nice things, Maria routinely forgives anyone who has annoyed or hurt her that day. She acknowledges the mistakes she has made, then asks for and humbly accepts forgiveness. Those she has to pardon and those from whom she must ask pardon will walk towards her out of the trees; the forgiving and the forgiven.

  Sometimes she is surprised by the people who emerge from the forest. Often is it not until they come out that she even realises there has been an issue between them. Fiona, her most regular visitor here in the golden forest, now walks towards her. This is not the Fiona she encounters at the centre, the difficult, demanding Fiona. This is a calm, loving, repentant and forgiving Fiona. Yes, Maria nods, she understands, and she lets the forgiveness flow. Both ways. She’s full of love for Fiona. She puts her arm around her.

  ‘I’m sorry for throwing the crisps.’

  ‘I know,’ says Fiona, full of grace, ‘I forgive you.’

  Maria begins to feel the familiar tingle.

  ‘But we’ve stopped going to the pictures,’ says Fiona, sadly.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry, I’ve been busy.’

  ‘The man’s got a strawberry but it wasn’t a strawberry today. You’re not busy now.’

  ‘I know, you’re right, I’m not busy now.’

  ‘It’s a strawberry but you can’t eat it.’

  ‘I know.’

  Something isn’t right. She’s not feeling it, the usual warm glow; the ecstasy of redemption. Something is niggling at her. It’s not the fact that Fiona keeps changing the subject, she does this anyway, though she’s usually more rational when she’s here inside Maria’s head. And it’s not the strawberry obsession, that doesn’t bother her, Maria accepts all of Fiona’s weird fixations and loves her for them.

  Perhaps it’s guilt. She dumped Fiona as her weekend movie date the minute Dezzie asked her out. Fiona’s probably sitting by the phone waiting for Maria the same way Maria’s waiting for Dezzie to call. But she doesn’t usually feel guilt. That’s the whole p
oint of the meditation, to practice good mental hygiene, to rinse guilt and anger out of her headspace.

  This niggle is preventing her having a good med but Maria knows not to dismiss it, thoughts like these have given her some of her best ideas, including the show and bringing in the orchestra. It never ceases to amaze her the insights that bubble to the surface from her unconscious mind. Things that, were it not for her meditation, might stay there buried deep in her psyche, poisoning her from the inside. The thing to do is to go with the thought and see where it takes her.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Simpson, it’s Maria.’

  It has taken nerves of steel for Maria to make this call. If Mrs Simpson knows about the crisp assault she might rack up the guilt factor: why? why? What did my poor innocent Fiona do to deserve such treatment?

  Maria has no explanation for this one.

  Mrs Simpson might of course not say a word, but wait until the centre opens on Monday morning to demand Maria’s instant dismissal. Or she might not know anything about it. Fiona might never tell her. Either way, Maria needs to know where she stands. And she has to make things right with Fiona.

  ‘Oh hello, Maria, love! It’s so lovely to hear from you.’

  This is a promising start but no guarantee that Mrs Simpson is not just keeping her powder dry.

  ‘We’ve not heard from you for ages.’

  She keeps the tinkle in her voice but Maria can hear the recriminations. Fiona’s mum is always overnice to Maria, not because she likes her, if the truth be told Maria reckons she’s jealous of her relationship with Fiona. But she pretends to be nice and to like Maria, it’s her modus operandi.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been a bit busy. Is Fiona there? I’d like a word.’

  Mrs Simpson delivers her delightful tinkle, ‘Of course she’s here, sitting in front of the telly, where else would she be?’

  She’s going for guilt and recriminations. This is good; this must be all she’s got.

  ‘Fiona? It’s me.’

  ‘Are we going to the pictures?’

  Maria feels a powerful ripple. Poor Fiona, waiting three weekends in a row for Maria to take her out.