Authors: Graham Masterton
She let the curtain fall back and picked up the triangular cream-coloured scarf that was folded on the seat of her armchair and covered her head with it. She eased herself carefully down on to her knees on the thin maroon mat beside her bed, clasping her hands together and raising her eyes.
On the wall beside her bed there was a small shelf with a gilded icon of Saint Eustace on it. He was mounted on a grey horse with his red cloak flowing behind him, and surrounded by stags. On either side of the icon stood two plaster figurines, one of Jesus with his arms outspread and one of Mary with the Infant Jesus in her arms.
Sister Aibrean whispered her usual morning prayer and then a novena to Saint Eustace.
‘Almighty and eternal God! With lively faith and reverently worshipping Thy divine Majesty, I prostrate myself before Thee and invoke Thy supreme bounty and mercy. Illumine the darkness of my soul with a ray of Thy heavenly light and inflame my heart with the fire of Thy divine love, that I may contemplate the great virtues and merits of Saint Eustace in whose honour I make this novena, and following his example imitate, like him, the life of Thy divine Son.’
After five minutes of meditation she climbed stiffly to her feet again, opened her bedroom door and tiptoed to the bathroom, so that she wouldn’t disturb her granddaughter Fianna and her husband Paul. She wouldn’t flush the toilet until Fianna and Paul woke up, because the cistern made so much noise.
Once she had dressed in her nun’s vestments, she crept downstairs. She could see through the kitchen window that the rain was still lashing outside and so she put on her hooded black raincoat and sat on the stairs to pull on her black rubber rushers. Then she let herself out of the front door, closing it very quietly behind her, and started to walk up Waterfall Road. She didn’t take an umbrella. She liked to look up to the clouds so that God’s raindrops trickled down her cheeks, like the tears of those who had cried when Christ was crucified and when Saint Eustace and his family were so cruelly martyred.
The worst of the storm gradually passed over and the thunder made a crumbly sound as the dark grey clouds rolled away over Glanmire. Even though it was growing lighter the rain persisted, steady and soaking, and Sister Aibrean guessed that it was in for the day. She walked as far as Bishopstown Road and went into Mac’s Cafe, with its green-painted frontage and steamy windows. As usual at this time of the morning, there were only three or four customers sitting in there, a postman and two men in high-visibility jackets with Ervia printed on the back, which was the new name for Bord Gáis.
As she crossed over to her usual table, though, she saw that a squat, bald man in a shiny grey puffer jacket was sitting half hidden in the alcove next to the counter, underneath a photo-mural of Blackrock Castle on a day just as grey and wet as today. To Sister Aibrean, he looked like the hideous hungry troll who had been waiting under the bridge for the Billy Goats Gruff to come trip-trapping over. He grinned at her and winked as she took off her raincoat and she gave him a weak, distracted smile in return, feeling ashamed of herself for having had such an uncharitable thought about him. She would apologize later to Saint Eustace.
She sat down by the window and wiped the steam off it with her sleeve so that she could see out. Anna, the plump, ginger-haired waitress, came over and said, ‘Usual cup of tea is it, Sister? I have some of them Boland’s jam mallows in this morning if you’d care for a change. They’re fan
tast
ic! I’m desperate to sell them before I eat them all myself.’
‘We can only get to heaven by way of self-denial,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘I’ll just have my two plain oat biscuits, thank you.’
‘Well, please yourself, but I don’t think the Lord would exactly throw a sevener if you ate a couple of jam mallows, do you know what I mean? There’s nothing about eating jam mallows in the Bible.’
‘There’s nothing about running people over in motor cars, either,’ Sister Aibrean replied. ‘That doesn’t mean to say that we have God’s permission to do it.’
Anna shrugged and went off to fetch Sister Aibrean’s tea. As soon as she did so, the troll-like man stood up from his table and came walking, bandy-legged, across the cafe. Sister Aibrean glanced up at him and tried not to appear alarmed. He looked even more troll-like now that he was closer, with two silver earrings in his ears. He had a smell about him, too, of horses and balsamic horse liniment and stale cigarettes and body odour.
‘Buy you a cup of tea, Sister?’ he asked.
‘That’s very charitable of you,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘However, there’s really no need.’
‘Don’t mind if I join you, though?’
‘Forgive me, won’t you, but I usually use my time here to meditate.’
‘You don’t mind if I join you while you meditate, though?’
‘I won’t be very good company.’
The troll-like man grinned again and scraped out one of the chairs on the opposite side of the table. ‘I don’t mind that, like. I promise I won’t interrupt you. I’ll be silent as the gravy. Listen, all I want is to sit close to somebody holy. You know, so that some of your holiness might rub off on me, like. I’ve been a sinner all my life, Sister, I have to confess that to you. Ever since I first saw the light of day.’
‘Perhaps you should go to church and confess your sins to a priest,’ said Sister Aibrean.
‘Whoa, I’m not sure about that. Go to church! I’d be afeard to.’
‘There’s nothing to be scared of. God welcomes everybody in to His house, even sinners. In fact, sinners more than anybody else.’
The troll-like man sniffed and wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. ‘I don’t think that He’d welcome
me
, Sister – not after all the fierce terrible things that I’ve done. The second I stepped over the threshold I reckon he’d strike me down with a fecking great thunderbolt. I’d be nothing more than ashes to ashes, with a puff of smoke coming out of the top of my head, and I can’t say that I wouldn’t have deserved it. No – I’ll just sit here with you, if that’s not too much of a bother, and hope that I absorb some of the goodness that’s radiating out of you. You know, like sitting next to a sunlamp.’
Anna brought over Sister Aibrean’s tea with two plain oat biscuits in the saucer. ‘You still sure I can’t tempt you?’ she said, widening her eyes and licking her lips.
Sister Aibrean narrowed her eyes but said nothing. The troll-like man kept on grinning and flapping his hands towards his chest as if he were trying to wave more of her divinity into himself.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.
‘Dermot,’ he said. ‘After my father, and my father’s father, and my father’s father’s father, and so on. It’s been an interminable fecking line of Dermots in my family – as far back as the fecking dinosaurs as far as anybody knows. Dermot the Dinosaur. I’m sorry. Sorry about the language. I can’t help myself. Even my granny used to swear worse than Mrs Brown.’
‘I won’t ask you what your trespasses have been, Dermot,’ said Sister Aibrean. ‘Only a priest as a chosen representative of God has the power to grant you absolution. But I will say that today could be the day when you put all of your misdeeds behind you and begin a fresh and conscientious life. Today could be the day when you embrace Jesus and Jesus embraces you.’
Dermot sat back and pulled a face. ‘Is that right? Serious? A fresh and conscious life?’
‘Consci
ent
ious,’ Sister Aibrean corrected him, but nodded. ‘All you have to do is make confession and show how contrite you are.’
‘But that means going to church and I’ve told you what I think about that. I’d be shitting myself. God will strike me dead as I soon as I put one foot inside the door, I swear it.’
‘No, He won’t, Dermot. He’s not a vengeful God.’
Dermot thought for a few moments and then he said, ‘How about you coming with me? I’d feel a whole lot safer if I was with you. He’s not going to zap me if I’m with a nun, is He?’
Sister Aibrean thought to herself that there was nothing in the world she would less like to do than accompany Dermot to church, or anywhere else for that matter. On the other hand, perhaps that explained the ominous feeling that she had experienced this morning that something terrible was going to happen to her. If she refused Dermot’s request, perhaps in some unexpected way God would make her suffer for it.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I was going to the Curraheen Road Church later this morning in any case. Just let me finish my tea and after that there’s something I need to do back home. Then I could meet you here in, say, twenty-five minutes?’
Dermot gave the cafe window another wipe. ‘Look, it’s rotten out there. I have my car right outside. I could you drive you back to your house and wait for you, and then I could drive you to the church and you wouldn’t get wet at all.’
‘I’m not sure, Dermot.’
Dermot spread his hands wide. ‘This is the day that I embrace Jesus, Sister. This is the day that Jesus embraces me.’
‘All right, then. Thank you. Are you having another cup?’
‘No, Sister. If I have any more I’ll be pissing like a Belgian racehorse. I’ll just watch you. I’ll just sit here basking in your holy goodness. There – look at me – here I am, sitting back, basking. You take your own sweet time.’
* * *
Dermot gripped Sister Aibrean’s elbow as they crossed the road to the car park outside the Bishopstown Pharmacy. She tried to twist her arm free when they reached the opposite pavement, but he kept a tight hold of it and guided her towards a grimy blue Toyota Avensis estate.
‘Perhaps we could do this later,’ said Sister Aibrean, as he opened the passenger door for her. ‘There’s a jumble sale at the church starting at eleven o’clock and I have to be there anyway.’
‘No, come on, Sister, you’ve inspired me now,’ said Dermot. ‘Strike while the iron is hot is what I always say. Later on, who knows, the pubs will be open and I’ll be hearing Murphy’s calling me much louder than Jesus.’
The wind had risen so that the rain was sweeping across the shiny asphalt car park and Sister Aibrean had to admit to herself that she was feeling very cold. ‘All right, then,’ she agreed. ‘So long as you drop me off home first. It’s not far, only at the corner of Waterfall Road and Bandon Road.’
She climbed into the passenger seat and fastened her seat belt. The rear seats of the estate car were folded down and the back was crammed to the ceiling with cardboard boxes filled with dirty old sheepskin numnahs and saddlecloths and bridles, two racing exercise saddles, at least half a dozen large tins of Ronseal varnish, a bicycle with no wheels, three paper sacks of cement and a terracotta pot with a spidery dead umbrella plant in it.
Dermot sat in the driver’s seat, slammed his door and started the engine. ‘There now, off we go,’ he told her, grinning at her again, his face so close to hers that she could smell his bad breath and a speckle of his spit landed on the shoulder of her raincoat. ‘A journey in search of Jesus.’
He reversed out of the car park and turned left.
‘I have to say that I felt when I woke up this morning that something momentous was going to happen to me,’ said Sister Aibrean. She had decided now that God was testing her and that this was how she was going to prove her devotion. If she managed to bring Dermot into the bosom of the church, so that he confessed all of his sins and became a better man because of it, surely a golden star would be placed beside her name in heaven. Saint Eustace had suffered a thousand times worse than having to sit next to a malodorous man in a Toyota estate with worn-out suspension.
‘Well, I felt much the same, Sister,’ said Dermot. ‘And I have to say that you’re real stout for doing this. There’s many a woman who would have passed by on the other side.’
They had almost reached Bandon Road now. Sister Aibrean said, ‘Here – here – just here on the left is grand!’ She was relieved to see that Fianna and Paul’s bedroom curtains were still closed.
Instead of slowing down and drawing into the kerb, though, Dermot kept going and indicated that he was turning left down Bandon Road.
‘You’ve passed it!’ said Sister Aibrean, twisting around in her seat. ‘You’ve passed it! That’s my house, back there! The white one!’
‘I know where your house is, Sister,’ said Dermot.
‘Then, please! You have to turn around and go back!’
Dermot didn’t look at her, but reached into his inside pocket for a packet of cigarettes. He opened it one-handed and stuck a cigarette between his lips. ‘We have somewhere else to go first, Sister.’
‘Stop! Stop the car! If you’re not going to take me home, then I want to get out!’
‘Are you fecking deaf or something? I said we have somewhere else to go first.’
‘If you don’t stop, I shall throw myself out!’
‘The doors are all locked,’ said Dermot. ‘Now, just shut your bake, will you? It’s hooring out there and I’m trying to fecking concentrate.’
‘What are you doing?’ Sister Aibrean demanded. ‘Where are you taking me? How do you know where my house is? I have to go back! I have to go back!’
‘For the love of Jesus, Sister,’ said Dermot. He lit his cigarette while he steered erratically around the roundabout that would take them down to the main Cork Ring. The rain was pelting down so hard now that the Toyota’s half-perished windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with it and he was driving almost blind.
‘Please, if you sincerely repent of your sins, take me back,’ Sister Aibrean begged him.
‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’ said Dermot. ‘I don’t repent of them. Not a bit. If you want to know the truth, I’m looking forward to committing quite a few more.’
Sister Aibrean seized his left sleeve as he started to drive down the slip road to join the Cork Ring. The car slewed to the left, and then to the right, and a car close behind them blew its horn at them. Dermot lifted his elbow and jabbed Sister Aibrean hard on the cheekbone, just below her eye. She cried out and covered her face with both hands.
‘You stupid fecking cow!’ Dermot snapped at her, with his cigarette still in his mouth. ‘You don’t want to get to heaven that quick, do you?’
‘Please take me back,’ said Sister Aibrean, her voice muffled behind her hands. ‘In the name of God the Father and Saint Eustace, please take me back.’