The Girls' Book of Priesthood

by Louise Rowland

  Cyd doesn’t reappear for the rest of the evening. Nor, to her intense relief, does Nathan quiz Margot about what happened. Should she take a tray of food up? Her arrival would be as welcome as a nuclear winter.

  She has no idea what’s expected of her here. The older boyfriend, the lie about the school friends, the assumption that Margot would cover her back whatever it was she was up to. Should she tell Nathan? He’s asked for her help, after all. Cyd could be at risk in all sorts of ways. Yet to open up to him would breach all kinds of boundaries. And in what way would getting Cyd into even further trouble help?

  She knows a teenage heart curdled with grief when she sees one. There’s no rule book here. She’s on her own.

  There wasn’t one moment when Margot realised that her relationship with her own mother had derailed. It was a slow-motion tearing away, like a house sliding off the side of a cliff after a storm. The loss of the bond they’d had when Margot was younger, intensified, somehow, by the fact they’d been allies for so long. Margot hit fourteen the same year her mother hit forty. The more she attempted to pin down an identity for her teenage self – the Destiny’s Child make-up, the Britney gear – the tenser things became. When Margot came back with her first boyfriend in tow, it seemed to flip the switch on all her mother’s buried frustrations. Margot understands that now in a way she didn’t then. Ricky either didn’t know about Annelie’s depression or didn’t care, so far lost was he down his own rabbit hole of shrivelled hopes.

  In the meantime, Margot fell off her mother’s radar.

  The tension in the house is now ratcheted up so high, she can hardly breathe. She decides to slip out mid evening for a walk, telling Nathan she just needs to clear her head.

  She walks fast, her breath smoky in the chill spring air.

  And now, at last, the thought that’s been tugging away at her for so long just beneath the surface breaks through.

  Married.

  Out of bounds.

  He lives in the parish. Two hundred people saw them together at the baptism. He’s deputy head at Cyd’s school.

  She’s insane even entertaining this kind of debate with herself. She’s four months away from her priesting. She’s endured years of gruelling preparation to get to this point. All those times at Wilhurst when she thought about quitting but something always kept her on track.

  Jeopardise all of that? She’s lost her mind.

  She turns around, crosses the road and walks as fast as she can in the opposite direction. She’s helpless. Hopeless. In the three weeks since she saw him, he’s colonised her thoughts.

  She can’t call him.

  She can’t not.

  She’s like that kaleidoscope someone gave her as a child. One small change and the world is transfigured.

  There are multiple Margots, all of them her.

  Her commitment to becoming a priest is total.

  Yet how can she not pick up the phone?

  Cars spray past her on Aberdeen Avenue. She squeezes her eyes shut. If the next one that passes is blue. She stands under a streetlight, breath suspended. The street is quiet for a few moments, then there’s a loud hiss on the tarmac behind her. A navy Golf speeds past, carving a large arc in a puddle.

  The sodium flickers over her head.

  Motionless, she watches the car drive out of sight. Her fingers reach into her pocket for the scrap of paper she’s worried into a nub. Hugo hadn’t even bothered to ask why she needed it when she called.

  Hey Felix. This is Sister Margot. Wondered if you still fancied that drink?

  Chapter 11

  Early March

  Margot yanks out one outfit after another and throws them onto the bed. Stepmother? Fairy tales were never her thing – despite what her father and Danny might think about her current job – but the very idea of a replacement mother comes with a whole theme park of associations.

  Every time she thinks about it, her stomach tightens. Has he given Linda her mother’s ring? A random stranger wearing the thin gold band Margot can picture gleaming in the night light as they read Little Women together before bed.

  If they met at a trade fair, she’ll turn up in a boxy suit, spiky heels and lots of bling. Margot stands defeated in her underwear.

  He’s only known her five minutes. Why the rush? Is she pregnant? Margot stares open-mouthed at her reflection, pale as a communion wafer.

  What possessed her to send that text?

  The bar in Earl’s Court is teeming when she arrives. She’s worried she might pass out before she even reaches the bar. Maybe they’re not here? But no, she spots them ensconced over in a corner: her father in an unlikely red paisley shirt, wrapped around a brunette not many years older than Margot herself, decked out in velvet harem pants and a plunging lacy blouse, hair stacked up like a palm tree. Margot looks down at her own Sunday-supplement-safe.

  Neither stands as she walks over.

  ‘Linda, poppet, meet Margot.’

  Patchouli suffocates her as Linda pulls her down towards her, amid the clink-clank of bangles.

  ‘You and I are going to be mates, Margie. Spirituality’s my thing too. Female divinity, Gaia, Virgin Queen stuff, you know?’

  Margot looks over at Ricky, sleeves pushed up like a mud-wrestling referee.

  ‘Get you two girls a drink? Campari and soda, poppet?’

  ‘Please,’ she and Linda both chorus. He’s never poppet-ed her in his life. Pet names were for other fathers and daughters.

  ‘Oopsy,’ giggles Poppet, stroking Margot’s elbow. Love me or else.

  Margot watches Ricky head for the bar, panic rising.

  ‘Richard’s so psyched about us meeting. Me too, Margie. A real-life priestess.’

  ‘Priest, actually. Or curate, in fact, as––’

  ‘I’m a healer too.’

  Margot frowns.

  ‘I thought you worked in the same line of work as Dad?’

  Linda leans in so close, she could be counting the flecks on Margot’s irises. ‘Knew I had special powers from when I cured my Nan’s lumbago just by running my hands across her back. A miracle, you’d call it.’

  Margot bites down on her lip.

  ‘I think of it as the universal life force coming to me as an intermediary. Like a satellite dish, receiving and transmitting the humongous energy of human love. Right?’

  What’s taking him so long?

  ‘We all have the light within us but need to learn how to ignite the inner spark.’

  Linda delves into her bag and hands over a glittery business card.

  Linda Roberts. Come and be healed. Dowsing, colour therapy, hot pebbles. Distance/Skype consultations available.

  ‘Insomnia, migraines, self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour, I do them all. Impotence is my speciality.’

  ‘Ladies.’ Ricky hands over two enormous glasses of something fluorescent red, topped by a paper parasol.

  ‘It’s all about spirituality without borders, right?’ Linda slurps. ‘The ancient handicrafts. Paganism is the UK’s fastest growing religion, yeah? What’s your spirit guide called, Margie?’

  Margot can’t afford to torpedo things within half an hour of meeting her. Ricky leans in, glass held high.

  ‘Bottoms up.’

  He clinks his glass against Margot’s. Is he on Prozac?

  ‘Knew you two would get on.’

  ‘Scorpios are hugely into family,’ says Linda, spreading her fingers across his thigh. ‘As well as being the most passionate sign.’

  Margot stabs her thumb with the parasol.

  He’s had other girlfriends. Casual things. But this is different. She must have some kind of tantric sexual hold over him. Or a malign form of hypnotism?

  Stop. She should be happy for him. Spread the love. Yet something about their in-your-face intimacy is clenching her heart. Did she ever see him show this much affection towards her mother, ever?

  This whole fizzingly sensual display is setting her teeth on edge.

  �
�Have you ever done any past-life regression?’

  Margo stares at her.

  ‘We’re all reincarnated, so that we can express our inner selves and evolve as beings, tapping into the memory of another soul. Just like it says in the Akashic records, right, Richard?’

  Linda starts stroking Ricky’s cheek.

  ‘The spiritual records of everything that’s ever happened, accessed through astral projection.’

  Margot can feel Ricky scrutinising her reaction.

  ‘Some people say it’s just memories passed down through our cell structure or DNA and stuff. But that’s bullshit. I know I was a poet in seventeenth-century Azerbaijan. I can see myself walking along the mud banks of the river Kur through the Shirvan plains; I can hear the cow bells tinkling behind me, my wife and six kids by my side. I can feel the midges brushing against my face. I don’t need any scientist telling me otherwise.’

  If she looks at her father now, the game will be up.

  ‘I just need to pop downstairs. Won’t be long.’

  She takes as long as possible and returns to find Ricky sitting alone.

  She drops back down in the chair opposite him.

  ‘So?’

  A flashbulb moment, every syllable worth multiples of itself.

  ‘She’s nice, Dad.’

  He juts out his lip. She looks away, regrouping.

  ‘I didn’t think you were into,’ – she hesitates – ‘all this alternative stuff?’

  ‘Old dog, new tricks.’

  Eight years belittling her most profound beliefs, harping on about finding herself a real job, anything rather the superstitious bollocks she’d tied herself to..

  Linda skips back, holding a bottle of wine and three glasses.

  ‘I could your aura read some time.’

  Margot realises she has no choice but to reply.

  ‘Not really my––’

  ‘Even vicars have an aura.’

  ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘Your aura is your energy field, Margot.’

  Margot whips round to face him.

  ‘When your emotions are out of balance, that’s when you get sick,’ says Ricky. ‘Right, Poppet?’

  This, from the man who didn’t bother to congratulate her when she graduated? Who helped create a home so fractured she and Danny are still unable to stick together the pieces?

  Love is patient, love is kind. It keeps no record of wrongs.

  ‘I bet Margie’s chakras aren’t letting enough light in.’

  An hour later, she’s leaning back against the tube train window trying to absorb the enormity of it all.

  It’s 9.30 p.m. An hour’s worth of PCC minutes to be written up by tomorrow morning’s meeting. She still hasn’t booked in that hospital visit to see one of the old ladies from the front row. Roderick is now not even bothering to speak to her when she walks into in the room. Oh, and her father is getting hitched to a reincarnated Azerbaijani poet.

  And then Felix.

  Felix, who’s chosen not to reply to her reckless, irresponsible, stupid text message, because one of them has a moral compass at least.

  There’s a text message when she gets off the train. Her pulse quickens. It’s her personal phone.

  Hello Margot, I’ve booked in our spa day for a week on Saturday. Your diary was clear. Gwen xx

  She must speak to Jeremy tomorrow. Gwen is starting to feel like a blob of UHU in human form. She’s also on the PCC, two of the sub-committees, the flower rota, the coffee rota, the reading rota, the intercession rota and the clean-up after the service rota. A twenty-two-carat, true blue parishioner.

  Jeremy is in one of his brisker moods when she tackles him the next day. Too preoccupied with the unexpected hike on the Q4 heating bill to focus on much else.

  ‘You’re not the first member of the clergy to get a love offering, Margot. It should be listed in the job description.’ He scratches his head. ‘I remember a widow once knitting me an apricot cardigan and I had to wear it to every Wednesday coffee morning for the next five years until she passed away. Lazing around in a spa for a few hours doesn’t sound so very hair shirt to me.’

  Surely there must be some Church rule about not accepting gifts over a certain value, like MPs having to register freebies in the Members’ Register?

  ‘We’re talking about kindly old ladies here. Think of taking her gift as an act of giving in itself. Maybe Gwen thought you looked a peaky and wanted to help?’

  ‘I’d really rather not––’

  ‘What exactly is it you’re afraid of?’

  Margot hesitates.

  ‘She’s one of our star performers, to be honest. We could do with a dozen more Gwens. Some retirees do golf, others do God. St Mark’s would be on its knees without people like her. If I remember rightly, she used to be a nurse or something, so she likes caring for people.’ He eyeballs Margot over his glasses. ‘Go on, spoil yourself. You never know, you might even enjoy it.’

  Her hypocrisy eats into her as she waits for the kettle to boil, picking at the strip of plastic detaching itself from the cutlery drawer. What’s a few hours of her life to make Gwen happy? She breathes in hard. Except that she’s installed Margot on such a lofty pedestal, she’s starting to suffer vertigo. She can’t shift the sense that what Gwen would most like to do is flip open the top of Margot’s skull, climb inside and slam down the hatch.

  She walks back inside with the tea tray.

  ‘Oh, yes, Margot, while I remember. There was a call for you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Roderick looks up.

  ‘From the deputy head at Highbury High.’

  ‘Really?’

  Margot keeps her eyes fixed on the tray, watching the liquid tremble in the mugs.

  ‘I said you’d call him back.’

  Did Roderick just snort?

  ‘Probably wants you to go and do an encore, I should think.’

  ‘Maybe Roderick could go this time?’

  ‘Very funny.’ Jeremy starts to chuckle, then clears his throat. ‘Why don’t you try him now? Excellent outreach opportunity for St Mark’s.’

  ‘Well, no, it’s fine, I’ll call him later.’ She rifles through some papers so as not to have to look up. ‘Just need to sort out a couple of other things first.’

  ‘I’d do it now while the iron’s hot. Here, I jotted down the number.’

  Her heart is pounding as she picks up the receiver.

  ‘Hi, is that Felix Porter? This is Margot Goodwin.’ She glances at the top of Jeremy’s head. ‘You know, St Mark’s.’

  ‘Oh, hey there.’ He laughs. ‘I hadn’t forgotten where you’re from.’

  Jeremy looks over at her, beaming.

  ‘No, right. I’m sure you hadn’t.’

  A couple of beats. Roderick’s now also interested, for some reason.

  ‘I was actually calling before to say sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yeah, I lost my phone – one of the kids probably stole it, but that’s another story. I didn’t have your number, so I had the brainwave of calling the church.’

  Her jaw is aching from the tension.

  ‘Good plan.’

  She looks back at her audience. Jeremy raises an eyebrow, inquiringly.

  ‘So we were wondering if you wanted any of us to pay another visit to the RS group?’

  The vicar does a thumbs up.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t thought about it, but sure, why not?’

  ‘Ok, well, maybe a conversation for slightly further down the line?’

  There’s another pause. Jeremy and Roderick are both waiting.

  ‘You’re not alone, are you?’

  ‘I can send you some course work ideas,’ she gabbles.

  ‘Ok, I get it. So, anyway, Reverend, are we still on for that drink?’

  She scrapes her chair back and steps towards the window. A fly is crawling up the windowpane.

  No, we’re not.

  ‘Sure.’

  Ch
apter 12

  Mid-March

  The entire family is in the kitchen. Nathan has organised a production line with the boys wiping and Cyd piling things on the table, customary scowl in place. Small puddles of foam sit on the tiles like a bubbling riptide.

  ‘Can I give you a hand?’ Margot asks, unclipping her collar.

  ‘Time this lot did their bit, right, Cydney?’

  ‘I’ll put things in the cupboard,’ says Margot.

  ‘Good day at the office?’

  ‘Very busy. We’re gearing up for Lent, so it’s all hands to the pump. Special services, talks, choosing the choral anthems, that kind of thing.’

  ‘What’s Lent?’ asks Sam.

  ‘It’s when people give up things they like for a few weeks every year,’ says Nathan. ‘In your case, boys, that would be guzzling Nutella from the jar, hogging the Xbox and staying up late watching brain-rot American junk.’

  Identikit scowls.

  ‘Why?’ asks Josh.

  Cyd wheels round, smirking.

  ‘Over to you, Margot,’ says Nathan.

  She blows her hair out of her eyes.

  ‘Well, it’s not just about giving things up. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Lent isn’t just some glorified excuse to go on a diet or detox. Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days to fast and prepare himself for what was to come.’ She ignores the snorting to her right. ‘So we think of Lent as a time to review your life and how you could be doing things better.’

  Her shoulders are starting to stiffen.

  ‘Weird,’ says Josh.

  ‘So weird’, says Cyd.

  ‘I guess it’s a bit like half-time in a football match, Josh, you know, when the teams go off to refuel with a drink and a slice of orange––’

  ‘Mars Bar.’

  ‘Mars Bar, and then come back refreshed and ready to win the game.’

  ‘Much as I’m enjoying this, I need to go and finish my history essay for that twat Porter.’

  ‘Cydney!’

  ‘He’s a total prick.’

  Margot crouches down by the pan rack in shock.