The Girls' Book of Priesthood

by Louise Rowland

  ‘Where’s Cyd?’

  They squint at her.

  She pushes further into the crowd.

  ‘Know where I can find Cyd?’

  The boy and girl next to her eventually pull away from each other and stare at her.

  Margot shoulders her way along the corridor towards the kitchen. Every inch of space looks trashed. One of the curtains in the study is hanging off its rail. Stubs litter the floor. A half-moon of pizza crust dangles from the crook of a table lamp. There’s a sticky patch of congealed vomit outside the cloakroom. She finally gets into the kitchen where half-a-dozen empty bottles are floating in the sink like discarded battleships. There’s a slick of something across the tiles that could be anything. A couple of girls to her right are attempting to make a smoothie in the coffee machine. Josh’s Superman drawing on the fridge now has a penis added to it.

  Cyd isn’t in here.

  She shoves her way back out into the hall, chucking rubbish into a black bag. The frame of one of Nathan’s pictures is smashed.

  There seems to be even more of them out here than a moment ago. Then, all of a sudden, she’s aware of a change in atmosphere. Two voices have risen above the welter of noise, one male, the other a woman’s, shrill but authoritative. The bodies in the corridor start peeling away on either side and she gasps as she sees a pair of police officers striding towards her.

  The man spots Margot and comes up to her. She’s briefly distracted by the ruddy cheeks and auburn sideburns, trying to place where she’s seen him before.

  ‘You in charge here, madam?’

  ‘Not really.’

  At least she’s not in her collar. He glances at the rubber gloves and the bin bag.

  ‘You live here?’

  She nods.

  ‘You are, then. We’ve had eight complaints in the last half an hour. I’ve just hauled about forty in from the pavement.’

  ‘Is this alcohol?’ asks the vole of a policewoman by his side, holding up a large bottle of vodka.

  ‘I’ve only just got here myself.’ A howl is welling up inside her.

  ‘You are aware that serious criminal damage may well have been committed on other residents’ property. They were like a pack of wild dogs out there.’

  ‘Her father’s away,’ replies Margot, hearing her own sullenness. ‘I’m the lodger.’

  ‘We’re not concerned with the domestic arrangements, madam. Send them all packing now or there’ll be trouble.’

  She watches them moving back up the corridor, heads shaking at the debauchery.

  Halfway up the stairs, she runs into Cyd. She’s two steps higher than Margot. the boyfriend at her side. He takes a long drag from his joint, eyeing Margot coolly.

  ‘I thought you were staying over at your friend’s place?’

  It’s the first thing that comes into her head.

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘OK, so you need to tell your friends to head off now. The police said that if—’

  ‘Maybe you’re the one who needs to head off.’

  The boyfriend takes a step down towards Margot.

  There’s a sudden hush around them.

  ‘We don’t want the police to come back, do we?’ she says.

  ‘Do we?’ mimics Cyd.

  ‘Cyd, seriously, everyone’s got to leave now.’

  ‘You’re just the lodger.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘What about him?’

  Sniggers break out around them.

  The boyfriend traces a finger down Cyd’s neck.

  The intimacy of that gesture sends Margot over the edge.

  ‘Everyone needs to get the hell out of here right NOW.’

  Her cheeks are burning. She turns away and closes her eyes to steady herself, but when she opens them again, an ant-trickle has started to move towards the front door.

  ‘There’s a lot of food in the fridge for one frigid curate,’ Cyd says, pushing past, the boyfriend cackling as he wraps himself around her.

  It’s almost 3 a.m. before she finally falls into bed. Four hours spent rubbing wine stains from the sofa, vacuuming up crisps and ash, picking out crumbs from Nathan’s speakers, trudging out bags to the bins.

  She turns over to the face the wall, lead in her veins. The worst thing entering the house tonight wasn’t the drugs or the suction-packed bodies or the lipstick-scrawled message on her mirror, No Sex Please, I’m Holy.

  The worst thing was seeing the abject loss of control. She was six years old, back in the lavender bedroom, fingering the blanket and staring at the hunched figure beneath the blankets refusing to get up and be normal like everyone else’s mum. A Polaroid that refuses to fade: the curtains closed against the late-morning light, yesterday’s clothes abandoned on the floor, the air stale. She was wearing her favourite dress, candy pink with the white Peter Pan collar, as though dressing up in something pretty would force them to be on their best behaviour. She knew, even then, that other homes, were not like theirs.

  She stares up at the parade of shadows on the ceiling. Their first night together sabotaged, almost as if by design. She turns over yet again at the thought.

  Finally, an hour or so later, just as a paler light is filtering through the curtains, she reaches for her phone and starts tapping.

  I’m so sorry. It’s all so complicated. Can we try again? xxx

  A few seconds later, her screen flashes.

  Sure you want to?

  She types rapidly.

  Totally. You were right. About everything. Xxx

  Chapter 16

  Early April

  ‘Looking forward to your sermon today, Reverend.’

  Betty. Or is it Betsy, or even Barbara? She still hasn’t quite nailed them all. One of the coffee rota, for sure. She has a wide smile on her face. Margot returns it with 100 per cent interest. All allies welcome.

  ‘It’s not me this morning, actually. Roderick’s turn.

  ‘Oh.’

  Margot tries not to gloat.

  One of the young mothers is trying to squeeze a double buggy past. Margot steps back to give her space.

  Betty or Betsy leans in and pats Margot’s arm.

  ‘Don’t worry, that’ll be you one day.’

  Even a throwaway remark feels like a torch shone in her face.

  Sal pulls a face behind her. Gwen also heard, judging by the way she’s beaming over at Margot from the Kool Gang refreshments table. There’s always an agenda spinning round behind those eyes. But at least Margot’s somehow back in favour after that testy moment in the supermarket. Friends close, frenemies closer.

  ‘Pity it’s not you today, though,’ Betty or Betsy mutters, wandering off towards her seat.

  Roderick’s been grumbling for ages about being relegated to the C list, Jeremy told her a couple of days ago. That’ll be C for curmudgeon, crotchety and Conservative, small and large C. She’d thought about passing on some notes to him about the Hockney exhibition at the Tate, in case he maybe wanted to do anything about God as artist of the universe. But she didn’t in the end. What was the point? Roderick would rather eat his own surplice than accept help from Margot.

  The church is full to the brim this morning, as sometimes happens for no apparent reason. Care Bears all present and correct, the full cohort of young families, even a sprinkling of new faces to keep the vicar happy.

  Jeremy is walking towards her now, looking far from pleased.

  ‘Someone just told me the Church Mole is in today.’

  She understands immediately why he looks pale. She glances up the side aisle. Roderick is already in place behind the choir, ready to process in. Should someone warn him? A negative write-up on the Pray Be Seated website can send a church’s reputation into a tailspin amongst those who know and care about these things. The readership is small but vociferous.

  ‘It’ll be OK, Jeremy,’ she says, unconvinced. ‘We’ll score well on the music and the M and S shortbread.’

  There�
�s an audible tremble in his normally jaunty baritone as he stands at the front welcoming everyone. Roderick, now next to her in the choir stalls, is serene. No point in telling him. Que sera. She scans the pews. It takes three seconds, tops. Mata Hari has planted herself right under the flower arrangement and is gaping around like a pigeon outside a Chinese takeaway: the Beast of Broadway in a grey-checked twinset.

  Margot keeps her eyes on her all through the first hymn, the prayers of preparation and penitence, the Gloria, the Collect and the readings from the Old and New Testaments. There’s a little smile each time she bites on her biro, waiting for the killer phrase.

  Jeremy walks down behind the servers and takes his place for the Gospel reading. He glances back over his shoulder as Roderick shuffles to the lectern, nodding to his front-row fan club as he goes. The vicar kisses the Bible with an extra flourish at the end of the reading and replaces it on the lectern. The congregation snuffles and coughs as everyone settles back into their seats. Margot holds her breath. She can see Jeremy doing the same.

  Roderick adjust the microphone towards him, then turns and gives Margot a quick, surprising smile.

  ‘May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Lord and Redeemer, Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ whispers Margot, fingers crossed beneath her robes.

  ‘I’d like to ask you all a question,’ begins Roderick. ‘What’s the most important job in the world? Prime minister? President of the USA? Captain of the England football team? In my opinion, none of these. Because is there really any more important job on earth than being a mother?’

  Grey heads shake like a bank of birches rustling in the breeze.

  Margot wonders if he knows Mothering Sunday was already weeks ago.

  ‘As Our Lord gave us life, so we cannot give enough praise and thanks for the women who brought us into this world, who succour and nurture us, whose shoulders are always there for us to cry on, who take pride in all our achievements, no matter how small. When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Paul McCartney wrote that, not me.’ He looks up and catches someone’s eye and actually winks. ‘What greater satisfaction can there be than to give life to another human being and steer them towards their future as a happy, successful adult. You ladies have been given the greatest gift on God’s earth.’

  A wheezy pause, while the hankie comes out to do its business.

  Margot looks out at the congregation. He’s hitting the spot in spades. The biddies are putty, as are the young mums, many of whom look as though there’s no one in the world they’d more like to mother right now than this cantankerous old grump with his missed-the-bus demeanour. Even Sal seems to have a tear in her eye. Traitor.

  ‘I don’t speak as a father, as most of you know. The Lord didn’t choose me for that role.’ He clears his throat. ‘But I know that if I was female, I would glory in this precious gift you all have been given.’ He smiles down as a newcomer in the third row struggles to control a trio of under-fives. ‘There can be no purer way of serving God.’

  On and on it goes, this encomium to the wonder of the womb. The sleepless nights, the home-baked cakes, the pushing of the little boats out on the pond until the wind catches and they sail off on a path of their own.

  ‘My own mother, Enid Morgan, God rest her soul,’ he stops, swiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘It’s been thirty-eight years since she passed on, but I’ve yet to find anyone who could match her toad-in-the-hole.’

  Gone, the impenetrable thickets of multi-clausal prose. Gone, the cul-de-sac non sequiturs. Everyone is lapping up this touchy-feely stuff like ambrosia. What’s he up to? The principal once asked them to compose a sermon without once using the letter ‘I’ anywhere. Roderick has done the opposite. Me, me, me.

  ‘Motherhood, the most worthwhile and fulfilling career of them all.’

  Then, all of a sudden, he’s wheeled round to face her, a hundred people looking on approvingly.

  ‘Isn’t that right, Margot?’

  What can she do but nod? Why stop there? Why not go the whole hog and wave a gnarled finger, quoting Thomas Aquinas, ‘woman is defective and misbegotten’.

  It wasn’t me, me, me, after all. It was her, her, her.

  One last tear-jerker about his old mum not making it to see his ordination and then he’s gathering up his spidery notes and billowing past her, surplice catching the breeze like a spinnaker.

  The Mole has to give that five stars: it was a tour de force in sugar-coated venom. She long ago gave up on any hope of an entente cordiale, but this feels like a shift into very dangerous territory. After this past twenty minutes, it’s just a question of when and how full-on hostilities begin.

  She wouldn’t have had the Armstrongs down as a Sunday-roast family, she thinks, sitting in the middle of them all later that day. Maybe it’s Nathan attempting some therapeutic family bonding over the sage and onion stuffing? She wouldn’t blame him for trying. She glances over at Cyd’s plate, barely touched. She often finds herself sneaking a look at the inside of her forearms.

  ‘We’re watching a movie this evening, Margot,’ Nathan says. ‘Fancy joining us?’

  Cyd’s knife scrapes through her gravy. But Margot hasn’t told Nathan, as Cyd knows very well. This house is fractured enough already, she decided. Yet that decision to hold her peace has put Cyd in Margot’s debt and she’s furious about that fact. She did it to save Cyd’s skin. But that’s not the only reason, a voice in Margot’s head taunts insistently. Cyd saw the cache of breakfast goodies in the fridge. The champagne. Something was exchanged between them in that moment, a shift in the burden of guilt.

  ‘What’s it called again, boys? Nanny MacDonald?

  ‘McPhee,’ they both yell.

  ‘Returns,’ clarifies Josh.’

  ‘What do you reckon, Margot?’ asks Nathan again.

  She and Felix were hoping to snatch a drink tonight. But there’s a look on Nathan’s face. And, in a different way, on Cyd’s.

  ‘We’re going to stuff ourselves with popcorn and Cadbury’s Roses.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  Squeezed on the sofa between the twins, with Nathan sprawling in the armchair by the fireplace and Cyd knotted into herself on the floor, Margot reflects on the mille-feuille layers of meaning within this room. A motherless family and motherless lodger watch a movie in which a stand-in mother waves her wand to make it all alright in the end. The perfect family movie, insists the box. Does the perfect family even exist?

  ‘Sam, if you stuff in any more popcorn, you’ll go pop.’ She nudges him in the ribs. He rolls his eyes and reaches for another fistful. There’s been a tacit bond between them since that night. She smiles to herself. The end of her first day with Felix.

  Emma Thompson is peeling away another layer of prosthetic make-up after Lesson Number Four, when the phone in the kitchen rings.

  ‘I’ll go,’ says Margot, standing. ‘I’ll make more coffee.’

  ‘Hello?’ The voice is guarded, suspicious, when she picks up.

  ‘Hi, can I help?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  The hostility takes Margot aback.

  ‘Margot, Margot Goodwin. Would you like––’

  ‘You my replacement?’

  Margot stares at the receiver. There’s a flash of purple nail varnish and Cyd is already out of the door, phone to her ear.

  Margot should walk straight back into the living room and leave them to it. Yet she stands, watching through the rain-stained window as Cyd paces up and down by the swing, head bowed under whatever weight her mother is placing there. Her heart squeezes at the sight.

  An hour or so later, Cyd still hasn’t reappeared, long after the boys have gone to bed and Nathan has buried himself in the Sunday supplements. Margot walks back into the kitchen and looks out. The swing resembles a gallows in the dark.

  She turns and wonders what she should do. She sighs and slowly climbs the stai
rs to the first-floor landing. She glances back down. It’s like entering a minefield without a map. She carries on climbing and stops outside the attic door, heart thumping.

  ‘Cyd?’

  There’s a pale strip of light beneath the door. Margot knocks again, louder, and starts to twist the handle.

  Cyd is standing by the skylight, her back to Margot. Something about her posture tells Margot she’s been crying.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She whips rounds so fast, Margot steps back in shock, knocking over something propped by the chest of drawers. It’s a pair of artist’s canvases. She reaches down to pick them up, but Cyd rushes forwards and snatches them out of her hand.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to––’

  ‘Mind your own fucking business.’

  Her eyelids are swollen, cheeks blotchy.

  ‘I just wondered if you wanted to, you know, talk about anything, because you were gone so long?’ She stops. ‘But if you’d rather not––’

  ‘You’re like some stalker.’

  Margot anchors herself by the wardrobe.

  ‘I don’t want to upset you, Cyd.’

  ‘Or have you come here to tell me to save myself for Jesus?’

  Cyd holds her eye. The threat of the moment empties Margot’s lungs.

  ‘I was just worried about you, that’s all.’

  ‘I think you’re enjoying this.’

  ‘What?’

  Cyd takes a step closer, heat in her eyes.

  ‘What exactly is the point of you?’

  Margot digs her nails into her palms. She can’t be intimidated by a fifteen-year-old.

  ‘I just wanted to say…’ She draws in more breath. ‘I think I understand what you’re going through right now, you know, with your mum.’

  Cyd’s face stills.

  Laughter explodes into the room from the garden next door. Cyd pulls a scrappy tissue from her pocket and turns away.

  ‘Just fuck off.’

  Margot starts to back away towards the door.

  ‘We’ve got more in common than you think, Cyd.’