Our Lady of Everything

by Susan Finlay

  Jackson laughed, as though what she had said was a joke, even though it was actually not a joke but true, and Kathy smiled and said, ‘Although that also means that I’m a really cheap date.’ And this time she laughed as well because this time it was a joke, while Jackson carried on laughing because he was full, and sure of himself as well as nice and soft, and so hadn’t paused from his first lot of laughing before.

  ‘So does that mean you do or don’t want another glass of wine Miss Katherine?’

  ‘Katherine?’

  ‘Sorry. I was being stupid.’

  ‘No you weren’t.’ She put down her wine glass, ‘It’s just that my real name is actually Katarzyna.’

  ‘Kata – Katasss—’

  ‘Katarzyna. It’s the ‘zy’ sound that’s difficult.’ She pursed her full, pink lips, ‘zy, zy.’

  Jackson watched, and then pursed his thin ones.

  ‘Zy?’

  ‘That’s right. Kat-ar-zy-na!’

  ‘Kat-ar-zy-na.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Kat-ar-zy-na.’ Jackson resumed laughing. ‘You have a beautiful name. Kat-ar-zy-na. And much nicer than Kathy if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I don’t mind. In fact, I only changed it to try and fit in at school – not that it made any difference.’

  Kathy took another sip of wine and smiled and then finished her wine and smiled and realised that Jackson was even nicer and softer and also slightly hazier than before, as well as having changed from mildly to very good looking. Jackson leaned over and brushed her hair out of her eyes, which in one sense seemed slightly naff, but in another like something that someone in a film would do and therefore charming.

  ‘Kids can be so cruel,’ he said, softly.

  ‘Or indifferent. Or they can just stop answering your emails.’

  ‘Your emails?’

  ‘Umm . . . ’

  Jackson took another sip of wine while Kathy went back to watching all of the other inhabitants of the Broadway Cinema café-bar in the same way that she might have done had she been watching the animals in a zoo. They all appeared to be so full of themselves, these bona fide middle-class people, and so sure they knew everything about the arthouse cinema, even though it was she, not them, who was Jackson – the nice, soft, good-looking Access to Media lecturer’s – favourite, partly because she was pretty but also because she was clever . . .

  She realised Jackson was watching her, but only from the corners of her very hazy eyes. She could tell that he wanted to touch her again and the achy, prickly anticipation of it brought a rush of blood to her cheeks. It had been so long since someone had loved her, physically, that she had forgotten what being loved could feel like, and yet she wanted, with a desperate, passionate, somewhat hazy ache, for someone nice and soft and good-looking to try and make her remember . . .

  ‘But you never answered my question Miss Kat-ar-zy-na?’

  ‘Your question?’

  ‘Do you want another drink?’

  ‘What? Here?’

  ‘Well yes, unless . . . unless you want to go somewhere else?’

  Kathy paused, and then closed her eyes and remembered and then forgot everything that she was supposed to remember simultaneously. She wasn’t thinking of him or of Eoin or of anything that she could name, just the sensation of someone else’s fingers running through her hair, and the way in which it had ached and prickled down her spine . . . And then a clinking sound pulled her back into the remainder of the evening. She opened her eyes again and saw that one of the girls from behind the bar was collecting empty glasses, gripping each one by the stem, until she held a translucent bouquet.

  Heartache

  STAN WALKED DOWN THROUGH THE Meadows, past St Flannan’s, which was deserted, and then past Margaret’s house, where the curtains were still drawn; and then he thought, just as he always did when he walked through this part of town, of how much the architecture reminded him of Gdańsk, and in particular the meanly angled flat in which he’d spent his childhood, at first with his mother, father and older brother, but then only his mother, who, after his father and older brother were taken from them, just sat in the flat and cried . . .

  Stan carried on walking, across the river and into West Bridgford, which he preferred on account of its Englishness, and because of the way in which the houses grew and spread out around him until there were gardens and garages, and endless mock Tudor façades, each of which was edged by privet hedges. Then after a while he stopped, and placed his fat, pink finger very firmly on one of the new old-fashioned buzzers. Almost immediately the door opened and a neat blonde woman, who looked a bit like Iwona but older, peered round it and said, ‘Hello, you must be Stan. I’m Madeleine, David’s mother.’

  Stan shook Madeleine’s hand and followed her into the hallway, taking in the pale Farrow & Ball coloured walls, the bare wooden floorboards and the seagrass rug; and then he thought, as he always did when he visited these types of houses, that it wasn’t very warm, or cozy. Accordingly, he removed his jacket, exposing the ‘I Beat Anorexia’ tee-shirt that lurked beneath it, and Madeleine burst into tinkling laughter.

  ‘I am what you call the joker, yes?’ said Stan.

  ‘Quite. Now let me show you what needs fixing.’

  Stan followed her into the kitchen, which was a similarly bleak pale grey, and watched while she demonstrated what the problem with the drawer was.

  ‘Now can I get you something to drink?’ she said, and Stan thought, as he always did, when talking to these types of women in these types of houses, that it was no use asking for a beer.

  ‘The tea would be very nice thank you yes,’ he said instead, and then, ‘and if it is possible with the lemon and not the milk.’

  Madeleine laughed her tinkling laugh again.

  ‘Sounds like you’re quite the sophisticate!’

  ‘No just Polish.’

  He opened his toolbox and had just begun to rummage inside when Madeleine handed him a china mug. Out of politeness he stopped what he was doing, took a sip, and then with genuine surprise said, ‘This is good tea, very good, yes. Full of esencja.’

  ‘Eseni . . . ?’

  ‘Esencja. It is like the essence of the teas so you speak.’

  Madeleine tinkled one last time while simultaneously stepping back towards the hallway.

  ‘Well I’ll leave you to get on then.’

  Stan took another sip of tea and put the mug down on the side. Then he removed the drawer from underneath the hob and unscrewed the broken runner. It was a straight-forward enough job, requiring little concentration. Consequently, he hummed to himself as he worked, as well as listened, to the low burr of an older man’s voice drifting through from the room next door, and Madeleine’s higher one sailing over the top of it: ‘Yes well he seems like quite a character . . . ’

  Stan stopped and took another sip of tea, and then pulled hard at the remaining fragment. It broke away in sharp, oily bits that smeared his palms with black. Not wanting to dirty his surroundings he took one of the newspapers out of the recycling bin, unfolded it and laid it out across the worktop. He rarely used the Internet, which he viewed as a confusing fad, and he rarely read texts in English besides those he needed for his work, or, occasionally, the sports pages of The Sun, meaning that any news that came via anything other than a Polish radio station usually took a week or more to reach him. Now, however, he found himself looking at a photograph of an English soldier, whose expression was one of sulky, almost pouty, insolence. He reminded Stan of Ian McShane, in his Lovejoy days, and his likeness to him was so arresting that the whole image appeared to throb with technicolour panic. Looking at it he spluttered: ‘Panu Bogu świeczkę, a diabłu ogarek!’

  Which literally translated as:

  A candle for God, a stub for the devil!

  Which actually translated as:

  I knew it! I knew it! God help me!

  But despite Stan’s protestations the face that had kissed his Kasia, and mo
st probably more besides, continued to stare back up at him. And then, very gradually, it merged with the broken bodies in the background and transformed itself into a snake. And then it began, very slowly, to wrap itself around his chest. And then it stayed there, holding him and crushing him for what seemed like hours but which, according to his watch, couldn’t have been more than a minute or two at most – and then, just when he thought he was about to breathe his last, it left him.

  Nevertheless, Stan continued to remain where he was, unthinking and unmoving. And then, only when he had caught his breath, and blinked his eyes, and wiped the sweat from his brow, was he able to resume even a little of his former ease, carefully folding up the paper, and then putting it back in the recycling bin so that, for the present moment at least, Eoin no longer existed. And only then, when the world was reassuringly drab and safe and bleak, pale grey again, did he decide that, seeing as he had already done everything that he was meant to do he might as well finish up and go and get a beer.

  Headache

  MEG WATCHED HER REFLECTION IN the glass of the train window, lit by the carriage’s harsh, electric light. She knew that as soon as she arrived her mother would start berating her for her lack of hair, which she would equate with her lack of a husband, which Meg would in turn equate with the absence of Dave and their relationship, which, or so she believed, was already beginning to unravel . . .

  Although Meg’s extended family in India regarded their religion as something that happened in the background of their lives, her immediate family, in Leicester, kept it at the heart of their existence. Her parents’ marriage, which had the added glamour of being preceded by a courtship which had taken place in foreign climes – i.e. Nottingham – had not been arranged. Rather it had developed over time as they attended numerous lectures and parties together, as well as canvassing for the Red Rose Socialist Club, and, under her mother’s duress, the Leicestershire Black Sisters – a fact that both her parents now seemed, most conveniently, to have forgotten. Whenever Meg’s single status was mentioned, which had begun to happen with increasing regularity, it was always in relation to the sons of friends who ‘shared their values’ (a trait which appeared to refer as much to solid, dependable lifestyles as their ethnicity or religion). Consequently, her reluctance to visit the temple was not, as Dave had implied, a rejection of her Indian heritage, but of the banality of her English present:

  Meghana Budannavar almost exists between Nottingham and Leicester, but sometimes dreams of Bangalore, where her parents, the Budannavars Senior, hail from. In their youth, the Budannavars Senior aspired to be more British than the British but are now, as they near retirement, more Indian than the Indians. Unlike their children, or even their children’s children, the Budannavars Senior’s religion or belief is mainly Hindu (or, more specifically, Lingayat) but sometimes No Religion and sometimes Other (although they have never felt any obligation whatsoever to explain this, their last vague statement) . . .

  And then she began again:

  Meghana Budannavar almost exists between dreams of England and of India . . .

  And again:

  Meghana Budannavar almost exists between dreams . . .

  And again:

  Meghana Budannavar almost exists . . .

  And then she grew bored.

  The train drew into the station and ground to a halt. Meg put on her expensive new coat, and her buy-one-get-one-free red bobble-hat, picked up the same rucksack that she had had since she left the first of her homes, in Leicester, and wriggled into the straps. And as she clomped through the streets which, thanks to Diwali, then Christmas, plus the ongoing sales, never seemed to get dark, and towards her home that was Indian, and English, and a retro-English version of the former, her mind travelled also, until she was back in the temple with Dave – although this time she decided to avenge herself by redacting the memory until it contained only the holiest of thoughts, and sometimes even chanting . . .

  She took out her phone, saw that she had one new text message, and put it back again without reading what it said. It buzzed again, but this time she didn’t even bother to look at it. Instead she thought about whether Dave had ever really fancied her, or just an idea of her, or just an idea. And then about whether or not he had fancied any of the other women in the Cross-Cultural Identities Research Group, who had come in all sorts of colours. And then about whether or not he had ever really fancied anyone in any more than a half-hearted absent-minded way because that was about all his half-hearted absent-minded brain could cope with. And whether this was because he was too busy being ‘spiritual but not religious’. Or ‘religious but not spiritual’. Or ‘magikal [sic] but not religious’. Or ‘magikal [sic] and religious’. Or ‘magikal [sic] and no belief’ . . . And then she thought that, whatever he perceived his context as, and thus hers in relation to it, she would have to ask, and if necessary, challenge him, both with regard to this, his sexual predilections, and his magikal affiliations. Only in order to do so he would have to pay her some attention, and, at least temporarily, take a break from working on his stupid, sick-inducing blog. And then she thought that one night in Leicester was enough and that she would catch the first train back tomorrow . . .

  Eggs Louis IX: A Magikal Cleansing Recipe

  EGGS LOUIS IX APPROPRIATES ELEMENTS of infomagik and voodoo, and then repurposes them across both the physical and digital realms. By transferring the malevolent energy of The Media into the as yet unfertilised egg, the magician is able to release any form of hex that they or the person they are working on behalf of may have fallen victim to via The News on Paper and/or The News on Television and/or The News Online. The charged eggs can either be broken, and so destroyed immediately, or used as a component within other rites (although this would constitute an extremely strong and dangerous magik and should therefore only ever be attempted by the most highly experienced magicians).

  INGREDIENTS:

  3 large free-range eggs

  A selection of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers

  A television set tuned to the news

  A computer connected to the Internet

  STATEMENT OF OFFENCE:

  Committing a civil offence contrary to Section 70 of the Army Act 1955, that is to say a war crime contrary to Section 51 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001, namely inhuman treatment of a person protected under the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949 as defined by article 8(2)(a)(ii) of Schedule 8 of the said International Criminal Court Act 2001 and the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (Elements of Crimes) Regulations 2001.

  1. Take the first large free-range egg and roll it over the selection of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers saying ‘extract date of the offence’.

  2. Strongly visualise the words from the broadsheet and tabloid newspapers entering the egg and turning the yolk black.

  3. Take the second large free-range egg and roll it over the television set tuned to the news, saying ‘extract time of the offence’.

  4. Strongly visualise the words from the television set tuned to the news entering the egg and turning the yolk green.

  5. Take the third large free-range egg and roll it over the computer connected to the Internet, saying ‘extract, if appropriate, citation of relevant provisions’.

  6. Strongly visualise the words from the computer connected to the Internet entering the egg and turning the yolk red.

  7. Say the Statement of Offence.

  8. Either break the eggs into a bowl to release the malevolent energy, or store in a cool dry place.

  Erzulie Balianne/The Immaculate Heart

  MEG WALKED UP PAST THE still, silver lake, the pale-pink ice cream kiosk and the glossy-green rhododendron bushes, and towards the geography department. As she rounded the corner she saw two boys sitting on a bench, both of them wearing the same Stop the War Coalition badges as her. They were holding giant paper cups of coffee as if they were miniature hot-water bottles, and, looking at them, Meg laughed and said, ‘
This isn’t cold.’

  The boys held her gaze for a second, and then stared at the ground in front of them, while Meg carried on her way. Then, as soon as she arrived at the entrance she went inside, and then wound her way along the warm bureaucratic corridors until she reached the room at the far end. Then she knocked, and listened for the familiar squeak of floorboards, except that this time there was only silence until, without warning, Professor Woźniak flung the door open.

  ‘Ah Meg, good to see you. Come in, come in, sit down.’

  Meg started slightly, and then, regaining her composure, followed him inside. Then she removed her expensive new coat, and her new buy-one-get-one-free blue beret, and took up her usual position in the chair opposite his desk.

  ‘So Meg . . . ’ said Professor Woźniak stroking his moustache.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So, err, yes . . . ’

  ‘My thesis?’

  ‘Err, yes, your thesis.’

  Professor Woźniak took out a cigarette and lit it, an action that reminded Meg that different, in some ways more liberal, rules applied to the different, in some ways more liberal, world of the university, such as being allowed to smoke indoors, but also narrower ones, such as never being allowed to use the pronoun ‘I’, or to talk in terms of what you liked, let alone held dear . . .

  ‘Well, I think that it’s pretty much finished,’ she said, after a moment or so. ‘I mean I know that the final hand-in isn’t for a few months but . . . ’

  ‘But you’re happy?’

  ‘With what I’ve written?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  Professor Woźniak took a drag on his cigarette, and let his eyes rest upon Meg’s lack of hair. Then he took another drag, stroked his moustache and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but there’s a research post coming up.’

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of it.’

  ‘Well then I would encourage you,’ and on the word ‘encourage’ Professor Woźniak actually winked, ‘to apply.’