Our Lady of Everything

by Susan Finlay

  ‘Well goodness me Margaret,’ she said, admiringly. ‘It looks like you’ve brought quite a crowd.’

  Margaret whistled, picked up one of the hymnbooks, and nodded, first of all, at Kathy.

  ‘Well this here is Eoin’s fiancée, Kathy, and Kathy this is Sinead.’

  Sinead turned to her, and said, ‘Good to meet you Kathy. We’ve all been remembering Eoin in our prayers.’

  ‘That’s very kind. Thank you.’

  ‘And this here is her mother, Iwona,’ Margaret continued, ‘and her father, Stan, who has been doing great work fixing my doorbell.’

  ‘Hello Yvonne,’ said Sinead, now turning to Iwona, and then, ‘Sounds like you’re a good man to have about the house Stanley.’

  Stan tugged at the collar of his shirt.

  ‘I am good man, yes. So tell me, why have my family decided to put this noose around my neck?’

  Sinead looked confused and Margaret quickly said, ‘They’re Polish,’ which was her way of saying without saying that Stan’s behaviour was because he was foreign as opposed to rude or strange, and then, ‘and they live in Sneinton,’ which was her way of saying that although they’d never been to St Flannan’s before they were still nice, good, church-going Catholics.

  ‘Ah so I see . . . ’ said Sinead, which was her way of saying without saying that she understood. ‘So I see Margaret, so I see.’

  Margaret checked her watch which, unlike the clock at home, was silent and so did not remind her quite so explicitly of the irregularities of her heart. She could already hear the organ beginning to groan, and see the two new black altar boys fidgeting beside it. She knew that Father Jonathan had picked these particular boys to be altar boys because Danny, God bless him, had refused to shake their mother’s hand due to its darker colour; and yet she also knew that it would be wrong to be too hard on Danny just because, even if it came out a bit skew-whiff sometimes, he was protective of all they’d fought for . . .

  ‘So we go in now Margaret, yes?’

  ‘Oh yes Iwona. Yes of course.’

  Stan again held out his arm, which Margaret was pleased to take hold of, and the four of them went inside and found four seats right up at the front together. As soon as they sat down Margaret took off her hearing aid and put it in her pocket – because it wasn’t as if she didn’t already know when to stand, or sit, or kneel, or when to stand again, just as she already knew the words to all the hymns, and when to put her money in the little wicker basket, and when to expect the rustle of ‘peace be with you’ followed by communion . . .

  Margaret stood up, ready and waiting to go through all the motions, which to her were so much more than motions, until, forgetting her hearing aid and thus forgetting the tune, she burst into quavering song. And as she sang she looked at Kathy, and Stan and Iwona; and Danny and Padraig and Sinead; and one of the new black ladies from Rwanda, whose boys were now altar boys; and the new black lady from Malawi who was called Blessings; and then last of all she looked at the statue of Mary, which this time was life-size, and had a little red light placed at the bottom of its painted plaster feet that, regardless of the day or night, was always burning.

  Votus

  DR DAVID GOLDSTEIN PUT ON his jacket and, as an afterthought, slipped The Kaosphere into his pocket. If pressed he would have been forced to admit that it was rather a poorly written, perhaps even superficial piece of literature, and yet the idea it explored, that there was no purpose or grand cosmic scheme to life beyond what one chose to believe, struck him not so much as cynical, but freeing. With this in mind he said goodbye to his parents, both of whom mumbled something back at him from behind the Sunday papers, and then let himself out of the house, walking up through West Bridgford and towards the city centre, where he was meeting Meg, supposedly for brunch, but actually for drinks that started early.

  Although he had only ever intended the move back home, like the job at Games Workshop, to be temporary, he knew deep down that things were already too comfortable. As he passed through West Bridgford and into The Meadows, which had always struck him as an ugly part of town, he thought about how much the house he’d grown up in, like all of the other houses in that part of Nottingham, differed from the buildings that now surrounded him. His parents’ house was detached, and had a garage and a garden. Inside, it was painted in pale Farrow & Ball colours, and had framed posters from classical music concerts on the walls. He wondered, in the liberal-minded manner of the liberal-minded middle classes, just what it would be like to live in one of these dense, low-ceilinged buildings, and to be dependent not on his mum and dad but on the council. In some ways it struck him as a romantic way to live because it complemented the view of working-class and immigrant life that had informed his doctoral studies and in some ways it was easy to picture himself, the former Cross-Cultural Identities Group convener, staring out across the crumbling satellite dishes with Moleskine notebook, fountain pen and The Kaosphere in hand . . . But in reality he knew that he preferred to view the scene from the shadows of academia, and that were he ever to see this portrait, that he had painted in the fading light, up close and personal, then he would also see the cracks that marked the oil’s surface.

  ‘Dave!’ came a loud foreign voice from behind him. Then, even more insistently, ‘Dave! Dave! Daaave!’

  David turned round, but the only people he could see were a large, fat man in a tight shirt and tie, an old lady he took to be the man’s mother and a surprisingly smart-looking woman he assumed must be someone else’s wife. The three of them were standing in front of a church, which, like everything else in the immediate vicinity, was built from a serviceable yellow brick, and which he knew from his case studies must be St Flannan’s – but still he couldn’t place them.

  ‘Dave?’

  This time it was a woman’s voice, and when he turned the other way he saw Kathy. Instinctively he raised his right hand to cover his Stop the War Coalition badge, and waved awkwardly at her with his left.

  As if registering his confusion, Kathy said, ‘We’ve just been to mass.’ And then, going over to join the trio, she half-pointed at the smart-looking woman, ‘This is my mum.’

  ‘Hello,’ said David.

  ‘And this is my dad.’

  David nodded automatically, before registering who it was.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t, err—’

  But Stan was already slapping him, a little too hard, on the back.

  ‘You recognise me now, yes Dr Dave? Even without my funny tee-shirt?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course, I just wasn’t, err, I just wasn’t expecting to—’

  ‘And this is Margaret,’ Kathy continued, as if it was perfectly natural that he and Stan should know each other. ‘Margaret is Eoin’s grandma.’

  ‘Oh, err, right, err, hi . . . ’

  Stan delivered another slap to David’s back and said, ‘You are ready for the beer, yes Dave?’

  ‘Well, actually yes. I mean I’m already going for one actually. With my, err, with my, err, my friend, Meg.’ He looked back at Kathy again. ‘But I mean I’m sure she’d love to see you too. I mean, yeah you’re welcome to join us. Both of you. All of you, err . . . ’

  ‘Kasia, Dave is asking you out for the beer,’ said Stan.

  ‘Well it’s more like brunch really,’ said David.

  ‘Brunch?’ said Iwona, perking up. ‘The brunch sounds very nice.’ But then catching Margaret’s eye she added, ‘Although perhaps you wait and go for the brunch with Eoin?’

  ‘Well, err . . . ’ said David.

  ‘I mean I wouldn’t want to intrude,’ said Kathy. ‘But you really wouldn’t be in the way,’ said David, who was suddenly very keen to leave them all and, having never thought that he would actually be expected to expand upon his offer, now very much regretted it. ‘I mean, all of you. You’re all very welcome. Please, err, please come.’

  ‘Actually . . . ’ said Kathy, pulling up the zipper on her tracksuit top. ‘I think that I will come with you. Ju
st for one.’

  ‘Oh, err, right,’ said David.

  ‘Good. Good. Live your life!’ shouted Stan.

  ‘But the teas?’ said Iwona.

  ‘More teas?’ said Margaret.

  Kathy bent down and kissed Margaret on the cheek, then ran off across the church car park before Iwona had time to stop her. David watched, almost admiringly, as she leapt over a small clump of shrubbery and into the road, before remembering that he was meant to be going with her. For a moment he remained where he was, standing stupidly between the various members of her family until, figuring there was nothing else for it, he also started running.

  ‘So how come you know my dad?’ said Kathy, when he eventually caught up with her.

  David stopped and took a few deep breaths, filling up what were still smoker’s lungs.

  ‘He came to fix some stuff for us up at the Games Workshop. I didn’t realise he was your dad though, even though you’re both Kwiat . . . Kwiaro—’

  ‘Kwiatkowski, or ska. It’s a bit like Smith in Polish. Except that in Polish it means flowers.’

  Kathy Flowers, thought David, patting his pockets in search of his nicotine gum. Kathy Flowers, who lived in Forest Fields, where Meg, a former Cross-Cultural Identities Group attendee, also lived, as a tourist. Kathy Flowers, who wore a pink velvet tracksuit and went to church in The Meadows.

  ‘Flowers in the meadows and the forests and the fields,’ he said, without thinking, and then, worried in case she thought that he was coming on to her, he quickly added, ‘I’m sure Meg will be pleased to see you.’

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah I want to talk to her about the caves.’

  ‘The, err . . . ? Oh yes, the caves.’

  ‘It’s funny, I always used to think of caves as being exclusive to Nottingham somehow, but since, you know, the Middle East and everything, I always picture the battle of Tora Bora,’ Kathy continued, blithely.

  ‘I’m not sure that I follow . . . ?’

  ‘When the American troops first went into Afghanistan? Everyone was convinced that Osama bin Laden was hiding in a complex of caves that ran underneath the mountains.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Yeah of course.’

  ‘It’s funny to talk about a complex of caves isn’t it? It sounds like the caves have emotional problems.’

  ‘Yes I suppose so.’

  ‘Or actually no. It sounds like the mountains have emotional problems and their emotional problems have taken the form of a fixation upon the caves.’

  ‘Err . . . ’

  Dave half swallowed his piece of nicotine gum, and then spat it out again, while Kathy, seemingly oblivious to this fact, wittered on. He held the wet squidgy blob in his hand and then, when he was sure that she wasn’t looking, dropped it into the gutter. Momentarily he felt ashamed, but at the same time also pleased, to be rid of the gum. He was looking forward to seeing Meg, who had always been able to discuss abstract concepts in a sensible, practical way, as opposed to the touchy feely kind of conversation that was taking place now. It made him remember that Kathy was a conventionally beautiful woman and that he was a geek, whereas Meg was a geek, who also happened to be beautiful – and thinking of this, he smiled.

  ‘And you don’t have to hide your badge Dave,’ said Kathy, smiling back at him. ‘I’m the last person that wants this war.’

  Heresy

  KATARZYNA KWIATKOWSKA CARRIED ON SPEAKING her thoughts out loud. This was partly because it was such a relief to be rid of them, to clear out her overcrowded brain which, ever since Eoin had gone, had gradually filled up with the pointless trivia of The Post and of New College, and then mixed it all up together in an ever-rising panic; and partly because she couldn’t have said them to her parents, who wouldn’t have understood, or worse still to any of her friends, meaning Meg, who might have. Dave was different though, in that he seemed sympathetic but also slightly distant, as well as being the only man besides her father who was able to look at her and not her breasts.

  Katarzyna thought and spoke simultaneously about the start of her name, ‘kwiatow’, which meant flowers, and also the end of her name, ‘ska’, which meant that she, in the feminine sense, belonged to it. Which meant that she was the daughter of flowers, or more simply, that she was of flowers. Katarzyna Daughter of Flowers. Or Katarzyna of Flowers. Either way it made her sound like a saint, or The Virgin, all of which sounded very romantic and poetic but also very far away from her life at the Evening Post, or her life at New College, or what had, until recently, been her life with Eoin. In fact, whenever she thought about what had, until recently, been her life with Eoin she ached, physically, for it in a way that wasn’t remotely flowery or saintly or virginal, just as she ached for it now . . .

  ‘So do you always go to Church?’ said Dave.

  ‘What? No. Only sometimes.’

  ‘And the church in The Meadows, St Flannan’s, that’s Margaret’s church?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And which church do you go to when you sometimes go?’

  ‘Well I’m a fan of Gothic Revival so I like the Cathedral,’ said Kathy. And then because she was aware that Dave was the sort of middle-class man who might assume she wasn’t really clever, she added, ‘Gothic Revival is a Victorian version of the middle ages.’

  ‘Oh. Err, right, well . . . ’

  Katarzyna did up the zipper on her tracksuit top, thinking that what she had meant by being a fan of a Victorian version of the middle ages was that she was a fan of fiction and horror and death – and sometimes romance too – except that, once again, she didn’t quite dare to say so out loud. Because despite leaving school at sixteen, or even before leaving school at sixteen, she had filled her absorbent, retentive, then not so overcrowded brain with novels from the classics section of Sneinton library, which was mostly Gothic literature with Caspar David Friedrich reproductions on the covers. They had all been set in dramatic, not-too-unbelievable landscapes, which one could imagine translating, very easily, into film. When she had exhausted the fiction section she moved on to art and architecture, and general histories of both the Victorian period and whatever sections of the even more distant past it wished to ape, and she knew that having encountered these books outside of school she was free to indulge her intelligence and the melancholy daydreams that it produced to the full. Or alternatively to enjoy them.

  Katarzyna continued to pull, absently, at her zipper, because if everyone was always going to think of her as some sort of chav then she might as well dress the part, even if it annoyed her mother, especially if she was going with her to church. She thought about the last time Eoin had called her; she’d been in the bath, which meant that he’d had to leave a message, which she had then played back, over and over again, listening to him state who he was and how he would try again later, and then just before he hung up: ‘I miss you Kathy.’

  Except that he had said, ‘I miss you Katheh.’ Because he had grown up in the same place she had.

  Katarzyna continued to pull, absently, at her zipper, still, and remembered how, after listening to the message, she had touched her cheek the way he used to, and shut her eyes and pretended. First, that she was lying with her face buried in the warmth of his armpit, except that because it was his armpit, it wasn’t gross, and then that they were talking to each other. Botany and zoology had never really interested her, but she liked to listen to Eoin talk about them because of the care and passion that resonated in his voice when he did. She loved the way he said her name with an accent that, like her own, was generally seen as common, even though he had a way of saying things, and seeing things, that wasn’t common at all. She remembered all of this, and kept on remembering, until after ten days the message had been automatically deleted – and how much longer could she pretend that he was here?

  ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing at the book in Dave’s back pocket.

  ‘This?’ He took out The Kaosphere, and then, rather awkwardly, handed it to her, ‘It’s called The, err, Kaosphere.’
<
br />   ‘And what’s it about?’

  ‘Well . . . it’s about a kind of occult anti-system in which eight arrows representing all possibilities, and one—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Actually it’s about magik – with a “k”.’

  ‘Oh right. So like, serious magik?’

  ‘Postmodern magik.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The belief that belief itself is a tool, an active force. It means that you can choose what to believe or not to believe depending on what system will best serve you at any particular time.’

  ‘So I could be a Christian one day and a Muslim the next?’

  ‘Yes. Or the Games Workshop Manager one day, and an almighty wizard the next. Or a PhD nerd one day and the world’s greatest lover the next. Or—’

  ‘But what if I can’t find anything that I want to believe in?’

  ‘Well you don’t have to just go from one religion, or occupation, to another. You can mix and match. The Kaosphere represents a kind of collage almost. You could take parts from Christianity, Islam, Jedi, even Tzeentch—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. But you could take parts from all of these other religions, or science fictions or fantasies, or romances even, their beliefs and rituals, and then create new beliefs and rituals for each occasion. It doesn’t matter where they come from or how often they change as long as you believe it when you do it.’

  I believe in you, thought Katarzyna, thinking of Eoin. I believe that I remember you. I believe that I will continue to remember you and I believe that you will continue to remember me . . .

  ‘. . . And the best thing about it is that we, the magicians, don’t even have to inhabit the same physical space anymore. Lots of people use Skype or even email to communicate with each other. In fact, I read about a ritual performed by a group of magicians, one of whom was in the UK, one of whom was in Germany, and one of whom was actually in the middle of the ocean but who, between them, had managed to utilise a series of electronic devices which—’