The Girls' Book of Priesthood

by Louise Rowland

  She turns away to reach for some paper.

  ‘Forget it.’

  The amusement in his voice makes it even worse.

  ‘I’m just so late and, well, you know, a bit all over the place.’

  She turns back to look at him.

  He hands her another paper towel.

  ‘Here you go.’ He smiles. ‘Nothing ever runs on time in this place.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s my job to knock us into shape.’

  She waits, unsure.

  ‘Felix Porter. Deputy head. Good to meet you.’

  She looks down at his hand and then takes it.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Margot. Margot Goodwin.’

  ‘Wish me luck,’ he adds.

  She glances back up to meet his smile.

  ‘The RS teacher was still in the staffroom two minutes ago, probably finishing off some urgent business on Paddy Power.’

  ‘I’d better––’

  The door behind her slams open.

  ‘Oopsy.’

  A teenage boy takes a pantomime step back.

  The door bangs closed again behind him. Margot stares at it.

  ‘I’ll deal with him later.’

  She shoves her make-up bag into her backpack.

  ‘Nice meeting you.’

  ‘You too, Margot. Have fun in the bear pit,’ he deadpans.

  She keeps her eyes trained on the middle row while she settles on the edge of the desk. So much for the personality she’d tried out in advance: a bit witty, a bit tart, a bit ‘I used to be/am one of you’. She hopes they won’t notice the bullseye of spit on her chest.

  ‘Hi, everyone. Great to be here. Thank you, Mr Cooke for inviting me.’ Six or seven rows of studied indifference. ‘I know what you’re thinking. What kind of weirdo would want to dress up like this every day?’

  A few look up from their phones or picking at their nails.

  ‘Wouldn’t I rather be working for Zara or Google or some fintech start-up?’ She pauses. ‘I mean, not exactly cool and sexy being a priest in 2016, is it?’

  A couple more are interested now.

  ‘Because if ever two words go together – like vodka and Coke or Posh ’n’ Becks – it’s religious and nutter, right?’

  One or two of even snigger a little. Her breath is coming easier now. She shifts further back on the desk, pushing some lever-arch folders to the side, black lace-ups dangling a few inches from the floor.

  ‘So I thought I’d just spend the next few minutes telling you what I do and why I do it.’ She clears her throat. ‘What it means to live well and act wisely and, yes, to really love our neighbour.’

  Several pairs of eyes roll upwards like fruit machines. Slow down. Slow down.

  ‘I’m hoping to try and convince you that I’m not a weirdo. Or if I am, not because I’m training to be a priest.’

  The RS teacher laughs a touch too heartily.

  ‘Just popping out for a sec, Margot.’

  He gives a little wave as he pulls the door shut behind him.

  ‘And then you can shoot some questions at me at the end. So I thought I’d start off by reading something just to set the scene. You may recognise it.’

  ‘“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”’

  She knows every word by heart, but can hear the tremor in her voice.

  ‘“If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”’

  She takes a swig from her water bottle.

  ‘“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”’

  She breathes in and looks up from the sheet of A4.

  ‘It’s just all about sex, isn’t it?’

  It takes a moment to locate her. A girl sitting on the radiator at the back, long dip-dyed brown hair, Facebook skin, black-ringed eyes.

  The room stiffens. Margot reaches for the water again. The air in here is chalky and dry.

  ‘What is, exactly?’

  The girl smirks, folding her arms tightly.

  ‘OK.’ Margot picks at a thread on her jacket. ‘Let’s think about that a moment. It’s an interesting point – sorry, I don’t know your name?’

  The room ticks in silence.

  ‘Cyd,’ a boy shouts from the other side of the room.

  ‘Twat,’ Cyd snaps, twisting round.

  ‘Short for Cydney, right, with a C, I’m guessing?’

  ‘OK, well, Cyd, it would be great if you could tell us a bit more about why you think Christianity, the Bible and all the rest of it, is all about sex? Flesh it out for us a bit, you could say.’

  Half the room groans. Get a grip. This isn’t the Comedy Store. She’s in a roomful of toxic teens with ADD, in full Christians-to-the-slaughter mode.

  Cyd twists her foot over her knee, and yawns. She winds a strand of hair around her index finger.

  Margot waits. She can do this.

  ‘The whole thing’s about who you can fuck,’ Cyd says at last, ‘or, more to the point, who you can’t.’

  Several of them double up with laughter.

  ‘You, for example.’

  More cackles erupt. She’s grown used to stares, but this is taut with danger.

  Cyd looks like she’s enjoying every second.

  ‘Bet you never have, because you’re not allowed to, being a nun.’

  Laughter is now ricocheting off the walls like sniper fire.

  ‘You reckon?’

  Stupid.

  ‘You mean you are allowed to have sex? Fuck me.’

  The volume cranks up even further then switches abruptly to complete silence. Margot whips around.

  ‘All right, 10 G, dial it down. Some of us have work to do.’

  ‘The vicar was telling us about her sex life, sir,’ someone yells.

  ‘Well, I can see that would be riveting.’

  He’s looking at her, but her head has emptied. A small frown creases his forehead and he turns back to the class.

  ‘OK, well, fun over. If I have to come in again, it’ll be detentions all round. Got that?’

  She can’t look at him as he leaves. The moment he’s gone, a couple of the boys start to kick each other and the turbine of noise threatens to start up again, but Margot steps forward and claps her hands as hard as she can. They’re taken aback.

  ‘Right, we all heard what he said.’ She digs her nails into her palm. ‘Let’s see if anyone else has any questions before we wrap up.’

  A pimpled face ginger by the wall offers her a life raft: a question about the Big Bang. Four, five, minutes later, after she’s raced through evolutionary theory, intelligent design and the teleological principle, just to keep talking, the buzzer finally goes off and they’re all up and shoving past, leaving her alone like a piece of driftwood.

  She sits still for a few moments, eyes closed. Then she hears someone by the door. Cyd. Watching Margot, a look of triumph on her face.

  Could this day get any worse? she thinks, as she walks back to St Mark’s. The incident on the bus; her own inadequacy in the face of such suffering; the fear and disgust she’d felt towards someone so lost, so clearly on the margins. Whoever despises his neighbour is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor.

  And as for the school. She shudders. Jeremy seemed to think she would turn up as some sort of hip brand manager for the C of E, cooler than a glass of Aperol Spritz. A handful of lippy teenagers and she’d crumpled.

  All capped by
that full-frontal humiliation in front of the deputy head.

  Her phone starts to tremble in her bag.

  Jeremy.

  She hesitates, then reaches for it.

  ‘I’ve got a solution for us, Margot.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mildmay Grove won’t be habitable for at least six months, they tell me, maybe more. Though at least we were up to date with our insurance payments,’ – he clears his throat – ‘which hasn’t always been the case.’

  She senses danger.

  ‘Though as St Luke reminds us, life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’

  Fat chance of that on a curate’s stipend.

  ‘So I’ve just heard that a family near the church have a spare room they may be looking to rent out for a few months. It’ll be free in two or three weeks. That can tide us over for a while. Much cheaper than the B and B, which makes your incumbent happy.’

  Margot’s mouth falls open.

  ‘Not one of our families, sadly, but Nathan and I go back a long way.’ She hasn’t heard him sound this excited since someone left a £50 note in the plate a few weeks back.

  ‘He’s an architect – private houses, arty, cubey stuff, you know – but things have been a bit choppy recently, one way and another. Between us, I think they could do with some extra cash. There are a couple of kids, twins. It’s one of those big rambling places about five minutes’ walk from here.’

  ‘Yes, well, we—’

  ‘Great news, isn’t?’

  She doesn’t trust herself to answer.

  ‘Oh, yeah and one other thing. The mother, Elspeth, left a while back. I haven’t, you know, asked for all the details. But she’s not coming back any time soon. Thought you’d be able to relate to that, given, your own, you know,’ – he pauses – ‘hinterland.’

  She stares at the phone.

  ‘Family life, can’t beat it. What better medicine than to walk through the front door of home?’

  ‘It’s not my family, Jeremy.’

  ‘They’d be doing us a favour and who knows? Maybe it’s mutual?’

  House-sharing with one father, two kids and no mother?

  Chapter 5

  Mid-October

  Forty-nine Aberdeen Avenue scowls down at her, hunched and haunted-looking. A rambling gothic monster, complete with weather-distressed exterior, grudge-ridden ivy, the skeleton of a buggy on its side on the mossy basement steps and a sodden stack of takeaway-pizza flyers on a ledge by the front door.

  Does anyone even live here? She still holds out the hope that they don’t. It looks like a house abandoned by love.

  ‘Get the doorbell, will you, Margot?’

  Jeremy is puffing up the steps behind her, balancing a sausage bag and a couple of carrier bags containing the entire sum of everything she managed to salvage from the rubble.

  She presses a couple more times and is about to lift the tarnished lion’s-head knocker when the door opens.

  A tall man in his fifties with thinning blond hair beckons her in and motions to the phone at his ear. The apron around his waist a map of grimy stains.

  He finishes his call and turns back to her.

  ‘Sorry about that. You must be, er…’

  ‘Margot.’

  The vicar got there first.

  ‘Nathan’s worse than me at names.’

  Both men laugh.

  ‘Nathan Armstrong. Good to meet you, Margot. Come on into the hovel.’

  Margot steps into the dark interior, eyes adjusting to the tidal wash of debris in the hall. The place looks like it’s been hit by some natural disaster. Which, she remembers, it has.

  The three of them walk down a narrow corridor into the kitchen. She stares through the door at the half-emptied shopping bags disgorging things all over the floor, at the upended saucer of cat food below a hamster cage balanced precariously on a stool, and curling school notices stuck haphazardly all over the fridge. Through the window she can see a patch of muddy scrub and a child’s swing, its seat dangling off a broken chain.

  She walks further into the room and stops.

  Two tangle-haired boys are sitting the table to her right, books, crayons and the remnants of a snack spread out in front of them.

  ‘Are we interrupting your homework, boys?’ Jeremy asks, waving.

  ‘Come off it, Jeremy,’ says Nathan. ‘The boys view homework as a crime against humanity. Right, guys?’

  Both heads have swivelled towards Margot. Identical right down to the chocolate smears on their chins.

  ‘Sam on the left, twenty-eight freckles, Josh on the right, twenty-nine,’ says Nathan. ‘Cuppa, anyone?’

  Jeremy’s never knowingly turned down that particular invitation.

  ‘So boys,’ says Nathan, emptying the teapot into the sink, ‘Margot here is going––’

  ‘The girl vicar,’ says the one on the right. Just as well she came in civvies.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Sam.’

  ‘Josh.’

  They both scowl. She’s being evilled by a pair of chocolate-coated basilisks. Then, after a few seconds, they both look away at the same time, the novelty already over.

  ‘We’ve allocated you the downstairs berth, Margot.’

  She catches a quick look between the two boys.

  ‘There’s plenty of space down there, plus a shower next door. More private for you as well.’

  ‘Your very own priest’s hole,’ the vicar chuckles.

  ‘It’s bedlam in here sometimes,’ Nathan adds.

  She’s heading out to the hall to pick up her coat and a couple of things from the car, when there’s a thumping on the stairs to her left. Margot looks up, surprised. Both twins were still in the kitchen when she left it. She has no time to move aside before someone crashes into her, scattering toiletries and magazines all over the floor.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Are you OK? Here, let me, oh, you’re—’

  Margot stares in shock. The girl with the dip-dyed hair from Highbury High, now glowering at her with thermal intensity.

  Margot pulls her arm back and flattens against the wall, still holding some of the magazines.

  ‘Cyd, the vicar’s here,’ yells one of the twins, skidding to a halt next to Margot.

  Jeremy walks up and glances at Margot.

  ‘We’ve met,’ she explains.

  ‘That’s a coincidence.’

  ‘You’ve taken my room.’

  Margot’s mouth opens and shuts.

  ‘Dad said she had to, even though Cyd said why do we have to have a nutt––’

  ‘Josh,’ snaps Nathan, now standing right next to Margot. ‘I hope it’s clean down there, Cydney?’

  Cyd snatches the magazines out of Margot’s hands and charges back up the stairs.

  Six months of this? Jeremy’s taken leave of his senses.

  Later, after the vicar has left and Margot has reluctantly unpacked her belongings – for now – placing aside all the clothes and jewellery and make-up Cyd has yet to collect, Nathan knocks on the door to offer the guided tour.

  It doesn’t take long. The ground floor with its scruffy living room and musty, chaotic study. The floor above with the mint-green bathroom littered in waterproof toys, Nathan’s bedroom, and the boys’ rooms, Arsenal posters plastered over one and Spurs posters over the other, and a couple of other bedrooms whose only function seems to house yet more spill-over mess.

  ‘So there you go. Welcome to Chateau Armstrong.’ He shrugs.

  Margot glances over his shoulder at a narrow wooden staircase leading up to the attic and its mad-as-hell inhabitant.

  Nathan follows her glance.

  ‘Don’t worry about Cyd, Margot. She’ll adjust. It’ll be good to have another woman in the house.’ He clears his throat. ‘You know, a role model, of sorts.’

  Margot’s cheeks tingle. That little speech prickles with so many thorns, she’ll be picking them out of her flesh for days.

  ‘Feel free to snoop
around,’ Nathan says, heading off into his bedroom.

  She looks back up at the attic stairs and turns away, a leaden weight in her chest.

  Every object on this landing simmers with intent. The fading print of a Monet landscape in the silver frame above the banister. Had Elspeth chosen it? The dimpled vase full of shrivelled peonies on the bookstand: a forgotten wedding present, maybe? And who do the twins take after? Those freckles, that level stare? And what about Cyd?

  She walks slowly back down to the basement, unable to believe she’s here in this place. She collapses into the lumpy bed half an hour later, evidence of the room’s previous occupant all around her. Old film posters still up on the walls. Fading magazines in the bottom of the wardrobe. The stubborn tang of pina colada body spray. She yanks the curtain closed to block out the orangeade glow from the street lamp outside.

  And then, right on cue, as if he’s laser-attuned to maximum angst, a text.

  You’ve not forgotten dinner on the 20th? I’ve booked our usual. Danny can make it for 8. Dad.

  Forget? She has to take a running jump at it every year. She pulls the duvet over her head.

  Help to understand why I’m here, what the point of all this is. I know how you weave in and out of all our lives, making your presence felt. But this, this, just feels so wrong. Give me the patience – the strength – to cope in this messy, messed-up house as long as I’m here. Help me somehow make it through in one piece.

  And please get me through this dinner, she adds, as she pulls the duvet up to her chin, shivering.

  This unhappy house is webbed with memories.

  Her own.

  The train pulls out of Waterloo in an agony of creaks.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gents. This is the stopping service to Weymouth, stopping at Woking, Winchester, Southampton, Brockenhurst, New Milton, Christchurch and Bournemouth.’

  Margot’s breath catches at the familiar litany. She watches the tangled trackscape of Clapham Junction slip by, followed rapidly by the stations at Wimbledon, Surbiton, Weybridge; the lights from the houses backing onto the track beckon in the dark, the pitch-perfect domesticity of suburbia, or so it looks to her.