Grey clouds hang low above St. Dominic’s Church, blocking the building and surrounding grounds entirely from view. You’d have to pass through the thick grey mist and head earthwards to be able to see the place, even the spire. It isn’t raining, but it has been and it will again soon and the wind is wet and streaks noisily down the hill.
Against the tide struggles a tiny figure in a puffy red jacket. Though the clouds are barely any higher than the highest point of the church’s roof, from here the figure is just a blob of colour on the monochrome landscape, a glowing blip on a map, drawn inexorably to the cross in front of it. To see it clearly I’m afraid you’d need to descend even further. You’d need to be especially close to see how she is wrapped in on herself, her face lashed into a puckish grimace that she saves to show bad weather what she really thinks of it.
After entering the church Rebecca stands for a moment, savouring the still air. It is no warmer in here than outside but she is happy to leave the wind to wait on the front steps and her features unfold automatically. She attempts to wipe the dew from her face but her hands are just as wet so it makes little difference, and in any case, once she is done she dips her left hand into the small font mounted on the wall next to her, touching more water to her forehead, the zip on her coat and to each of its front pockets. The holy water and the water that fell from the sky merge and run down to the tip of her nose. She launches a droplet forward with a shake of her head and an upward blow then follows it into the nave of the building.
She much prefers the atmosphere in church during Confession to that of the Sunday services. Generally there are only a handful of other people scattered in the pews but you can tell that they all mean business. A high percentage of visitors on Sunday are distractedly pondering roast dinners or whatever they got up to the night before, you can tell. Confession is different. She decided so six months ago when she started coming along regularly; you can’t be passive about it. You can’t just sit there and say nothing. She had actually once tried this, just to be sure. She placed herself in the confessional box, stared through the mesh at the priest and said nothing for ten full minutes. Father Marsh stayed silent, too, occasionally meeting her eyes whilst she concentrated on the mysterious scratching noises that always seemed to accompany her time in the booth. She had wondered what kind of penance she would be offered for her soundless disclosure but Father Marsh was clearly happy to outdo her. She lost her nerve and fled before a word was spoken. A few Hail Marys on the bus home, just in case. She alluded to the episode during her subsequent visit the following week but the priest stuck to his script and offered no clue either way as to his opinion on the matter.
She makes her way to the row of seats where the other parishioners are queuing for their turn at absolution, making sure not to sit too close to or disturb the person next to her. Rebecca has a knack for reading facial expressions, at least those not obscured by a mesh, and can tell that her neighbour is occupied rehearsing her own list of transgressions, reading them back to herself, mindful that to miss out just one of them would render her pardon useless and void. Though five bodies from the front of the line, Rebecca knows that this woman will go over and over them in her head until she reaches the confessional door, moulding them to a smooth slip of scrutinized sin that will spew from her mouth, through the slats in the screen between herself and Father Marsh and settle in the priest’s lap.
Rebecca doesn’t disapprove of such rehearsals, not if they are necessary for a person to get the most out of a sacrament. She has no interest in critiquing one’s methods of requesting forgiveness, but prefers to save her own thinking until shut inside the booth itself. An ‘improv confessor’ as she sees it, although this was not a term that she would ever say aloud and has, on a number of occasions in the confessional, hinted, albeit cryptically, at this private usage of such a possibly borderline-sacrilegious term.
She instead uses her waiting time wisely, conducting her ongoing analysis of the facial expression on the figure of the crucified Christ above the altar, comparing and contrasting it, as always, with that shown on the twelfth Station of the Cross on the wall to her right. She always feels like she is really getting to something with these examinations, a truth stuck somewhere between the differences depicted in the countenance of Jesus but, as ever, it moves further into the distance at the same time as it reveals itself. It feels right but it also frustrates her. The Truth fully clothed and so close that she could touch it has nothing on The Truth dancing naked on the horizon. She just wishes that she had a telescope or magic glasses or something. She is all gazes and her faith all gauzes, or so she’d told Father Marsh once.
One out. The door swings open and the confessional booth spits another valetudinarian back into the body of the church. They make their way towards the altar, stopping in the front row to put in the required time on their knees.
Rebecca hears the scratching again, fleetingly, until the door swings back and seals the box. She realises that she is staring at the door and turns her head to concentrate again on Jesus’ faces.
One in. A small boy, no older than seven or eight you would presume, if you really were there watching, if you could bring yourself to get down close to look at him, gets to his feet at the front of the queue. He looks to his mother on the bench beside him, his expression suggesting that he is seeking permission for something, though whether he is asking to be told to enter or given leave to flee is hard to say. Rebecca could probably identify it but her eyes are elsewhere. The boy’s mother gives him the slightest nod. Only he knows if this is assent given or denied and he leans against the door with both hands and disappears inside. Between open and closed there comes a hint of the scratching again but this time if Rebecca notices the noise then she doesn’t react.
The boy’s mother shuffles along the bench to the spot her son just vacated at the end closest to the confessional. The rest of the queue, except Rebecca, shift in unison. The line remains the same length but the space between each of them is now wider.
It soon becomes apparent that the boy currently confessing is either oblivious to or happy to ignore the finer points of the building’s acoustics. As if he considers God to be a little hard of hearing and does not trust Father Marsh to correctly pass on any message, his confession does not come in the form of the guilty half-whisper that the adults outside choose to broadcast news of their transgressions, but in an enthusiastic sort of call. His mother turns her head to offer a smile to her neighbours as the sound of his voice bounces off the silent, sturdy walls; a murmured stream of recent misdemeanours ricocheting off statues and stained glass, curling the curve of the apse and back into the ears of the yet-to-be-absolved.
Rebecca gives up on her physiognomical study and tries to pluck words from the noise. She knows this list. It is similar to the one she used to recite herself as a child under pressure to confess. A little swearing; a certain amount of general disobedience; throw in some unprovoked fraternal abuse; low-level blasphemy and so on. As she listens she senses a slight change in the boy’s tone and is positive that he has come to the end of the list of things that he is sure that he has done and has moved on to a slightly less assured section regarding wrong-doings of which he is not entirely convinced at being guilty, but decides to mention anyway, both as an insurance against damnation and a way to fill the time that completing his original list has left hanging in the air inside the booth, it never seeming long enough once you finally say it out loud. Such an example of the logic of the young reminds Rebecca of her childhood conviction that making the sign of the cross before and after praying was a kind of signing on and off with God, no different from dialling his number on a telephone to start a conversation and hanging up to end it. She remembers the embarrassed terror that embraced her young self whenever, hours after praying, she could not recall whether she made the appropriate closing gesture and could therefore have basically left the phone off the hook and addressed every single word she had since uttered directly to God himself; a possibly damnable litany actually meant to be heard by much less omnipotent ears. The problem of being unable to recollect one way or the other meant that the obvious solution, simply making the sign of the cross now, risked merely opening a fresh line to God and damning yourself anew. Consequently, if you found yourself out of sync with your sign of the cross-ing you faced the prospect of a God who could hear everything that you said except the very prayers that you offered to him.
Rebecca pulls herself back into the present as the boy leaves the booth, crossing paths with his mother as she moves in for her turn, all the while accompanied by the subtlest scratching noise until the woman is shut inside. The boy hurries to a secluded spot so that he can race through his penance. In contrast to his sonorous confession, the voice he uses to make his verbal peace is soft and low, a buzzing susurrus that reminds Rebecca of a seasoned poker player or magician rifling a deck of cards. She believes that Father Marsh, his experience with children obviously extensive, fully understands a child’s need to perform any and all things at the highest possible speed and thus demands from them a much greater number of prayers of contrition than their adult counterparts. The boy relishes the challenge, speed-prayer being something he excels at; he is currently the second fastest boy in his class when it comes to saying the rosary and closing in on first place. Though he certainly finds the initial section of the confession ritual somewhat awkward, the latter stage more than makes up for it with a church-sanctioned chance to shave a couple of seconds off his PB for a Hail Mary.
He finishes even before his mother has exited the booth and is doomed to a further five minutes wait before he can leave; and we are, of course, talking five minutes in the outside world, a stretch of time that feels much longer inside a church, God’s gravitation pull affecting all timepieces within the walls of his house, as far as the boy can tell. His mother arrives and takes her place on the same row as him but is mindful to keep herself at a distance that enables her to say her prayers without being distracted by his bored feet turning a prayer mat over and over whilst he flashes her a look that, and this time there is no mistaking what he means, is willing her to please pick up the speed just a little mum please.
Rebecca scans the church for something else to consider whilst she waits. She has often wondered whether it would be inappropriate to ask why the church does not supply a selection of magazines, such as one might find in a doctor’s waiting room. She counts the number of votive candles that sit alight on the stand near the small side chapel, attempting to estimate the average length of time that such a candle may burn, and musing over the identity of each of the flame’s igniters. The tally of candles that burn outnumbers the amount of people waiting in line with her or still completing their penance. She cannot tell from the faces around her who is most likely to be a multiple lighter. She has a certain respect for the ritual and finds herself angry at what she sees sometimes as a flippant approach to it by others. It is possible, of course, that today multiplicity was in order; who knows the true weight of these silent prayers? It is just that she gets a little defensive sometimes when it comes to these things, casual passers-by or visitors to weddings or christenings, say, deciding that the votive candles are some kind of activity to occupy oneself with just because it is there, like a coconut shy or hook-a-duck stall at a fair. Without a thought they’re at the stand and fumbling matches, their meaningless flames often accompanied by a comically curtsied genuflection and then nothing, nothing else at all. They leave Rebecca praying for unexpected bursts of wind to find their way inside; dampening draughts that never arrive. She turns her attention to the ceiling instead.
The last in line, by the time her turn to enter the confessional box comes around there are only two others left in the church. She takes a few deep breaths, cracks her knuckles, and makes her way to the confessional door, looking, if anybody was watching, like a performer limbering up backstage as they headed for the wings. She throws open the door and is greeted not by applause but by the sound of scratching.
She makes herself comfortable on her knees and tries to make out Father Marsh’s face through the grid in front of her. The scratching has a mesmeric quality and when it occasionally halts she wants it instantly back.
Scrit-scrit-scrit.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession and these are my sins…”
Scrit-scrit-scrit.
Rebecca likes to pause briefly after the standard opening as if to acknowledge to Father Marsh that she is fully aware that this is confession even though some of her possibly upcoming tangents may suggest otherwise. She tries to catch his eye, the scratching noise ceasing when he finally looks back at her.
“Go on, my child”, he says.
“I’ve been having problems with my dreams lately,” she tells him. He looks away again. Scrit-scrit-scrit.
“Both kinds of dreams, I mean. The kind that come when you’re asleep and also the ambition kind of dream. I’ve never understood why they’re both called the same thing. That’s not my problem with them, though, that just occurred to me when I realised that I had to distinguish between them even though I am actually referring to both of them. Maybe that’s why they’re called the same thing. Maybe they are the same thing, I don’t know. What do you think?”
Father Marsh has a copy of his lines pinned to the wall on his side of the booth, just above the little window. He decided to place them there so that, if somebody were to concentrate on his face whilst he consulted them it would seem that his eyes were heavenward. He knows them by heart, of course; there are relatively few and he has been doing this for years, but whenever Rebecca enters his booth and opens her heart he cannot help but scan them, hoping for a new line to have appeared, one that makes sense in the context of her rambling, one that will solve everything for both of them.
“Please continue” is the best that he can do.
Rebecca waits for the scratching to recommence. “I know that what is in my head comes from God, that’s fine, I am very happy with that. But I don’t know how much I’m supposed to dwell on it. Am I letting it distract me from something that I should be paying attention to? Should I let it distract me? Does this make sense?”
Father Marsh says nothing, his eyes to Heaven.
“I know that my confessions are always a little abstract but I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m just trying to ask the questions that I feel like I’m supposed to ask. I still have problems with sin as a concept, you see, I know that I’ve told you this before. I have problems with the idea of forgiveness. Are these sins in themselves? I hope not.”
“If you are truly repentant then…”
“I know, I know, sorry to interrupt, I know that I am sorry, I am just not sure what for. Everything seems to be a sign. It’s as if every possible direction is being pointed to at once. I’m sorry that I can’t tell which is the right one to follow. I mean, let’s get back to the dream thing, which is what I wanted to talk about in the first place; they’re ethereal and abstract and that sounds fairly Godlike to me, but am I supposed to wade into them up to my knees, just to warm me up or should I lie down and let them drown me?”
Rebecca continues in this manner for some time, Father Marsh offering the most appropriate platitude where possible, the scratching coming and going. Her confessions are generally variations on a theme, everybody’s are when you boil it down to the essentials, but Father Marsh still looks forward to hearing them each week. He would prefer, however, that she was not looking to turn them into a dialogue. The dream thing is new, though, and he does want to ask her more about them. What is it that she dreams about each night? What is it that she asks of the future? He knows that if he shows too much of an interest then she will expect more in the way of an answer. He sticks to his script.
Finally, he feels her drawing to a close, caught in the net of her own thoughts, unable to escape for fear of having supposed to be trapped. The scratching noise goes away and does not come back.
”Is there anything else?” he asks her, hoping that she can offer some more concrete crimes to make his calculations with regards to penance more straightforward.
“Not really. Just the same stuff as everybody else, I suppose”.
“If you could hand it over, then. I’ll lift the weight for you”.
Rebecca holds the sum of her sin in her cupped hands, quietly waiting whilst Father Marsh slides open the drawer beneath the mesh that separates them. She places it carefully inside and slides it back into his half. He scoops it out and puts it with the rest of the sin that he has taken this evening. He weighs it in his palms and is thankful for the deep pockets under his cassock.
“You are absolved in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Go freely now, and know that you are forgiven”.
He immediately pulls a curtain across on his side of the mesh. Rebecca waits a brief moment and then knocks uncertainly on the wall. The curtain swishes back.
“Yes?” asks the priest.
“Am I not supposed to say some prayers?”
Father Marsh smiles. Rebecca is taken aback by how clearly she can see his grin. These meshes were obviously not designed with smiles in mind; they barely hide them. He mulls it over, one hand still on the curtain.
“Say half a Hail Mary and the middle-eight from the Lord’s Prayer”. The curtain is quickly repositioned and Rebecca presumes that even if she knocked again she would not get an answer.
She stands up and closes her eyes, asking herself if she can feel the weight that has been lifted from her body, just as Father Marsh had told her would happen. Maybe once she is outside again she’ll feel lighter, closer to the sky.
She leaves the box and kneels down at the end of the same row in which she had waited her turn. The church is empty now, just her and a few flames from the remaining candles she had been watching earlier. She usually said her penance at the foot of the altar but this time wanted to catch Father Marsh’s face again as he left. She had never seen him smile before. Where did this sign point?
Father Marsh emerges not long after she kneels down, his head bowed, his robes a purple flash at her side. She turns her head towards his shape as soon as she hears the door open but he is moving too fast for her to get a clear shot of his face and, in any case, she is suddenly much more interested in the brief view of the interior of his side of the confessional box that her position affords her as the door swings closed again. She sees it for only a second, and the lighting is not in her favour, but she swears that the walls of the booth were covered in etchings of some sort. She is reminded first of primitive cave drawings and then of the walls of prison cells in movies, with the mental picture that she now ponders as Father Marsh enters the vestry falling somewhere in between the two. It looked like such detailed graffiti; it looked like a whole new language. It looked beautiful but its many possible meanings scared her. She is desperate to see it again and, without finishing her prayers or remembering the sign of the cross, she wills herself the courage to try the door for a closer look.
Father Marsh stands with his back to the door inside the vestry, sighing. He much prefers the atmosphere in the church on Sundays when he can perform his weekly bit without anybody paying too much attention. There was too much in the way of limelight when it came to these confessional evenings, even though he was hidden from view. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. The same sins every week. Where was he expected to put them?
As he removes his vestments he thinks about Rebecca. If there was a way that he could arrange for her to confess to another priest and he could just listen in, that might make up for everything. He winces at the thought of having finished with a smile and a nonsense penance, but he could not help it. There was something about the expression on her face when she’d knocked and asked him if he hadn’t forgotten something. If you could offer Father Marsh the gift of foresight here, just let him for a single beat gaze into the future you've mapped out for him, and look upon faces he had yet to meet, he might notice a similarity between this expression of Rebecca’s and that of one that he will some day be very fond of on the face of his wife. When eventually he sees it on her he won’t remember Rebecca, though she is unlikely to forget him.
Without thinking he tidies his things a little, always feeling restless after taking Confession and finding it difficult to ease himself into the further business of the evening. His housekeeper has left a note for him on his desk and he scans it briefly.
“Father Burton – That man phoned again about painting the mural on the chapel ceiling. I told him that you would get back in touch with him as soon as you were finished with Confession. I hope that was okay. See you in the morning”.
Always something.
Presuming that he has given Rebecca enough time to say whatever prayers she decided to say and leave, he heads back to lock up for the night. As he enters the unoccupied church he notices fresh scorch marks on a wall near the vestry door. The paraffin held in the larger processional candles is seen as a challenge by some of the altar boys. They compete to see who can summon the tallest flame, to send a little fire up to the firmaments. He knows that he should probably say something to them but he is hardly without sin himself when it comes to defacing church property.
He holds the sleeve of his jumper and tries to clean the stain with the heal of his hand. He considers the shape of the marks, seeing faces in the black mess, rubbing them out one by one until there remains only one set of nebulous features that he cannot remove. Perhaps he can get that painter to give these old walls a fresh coat when he’s working on his mural.
Father Marsh surveys his church, walking slowly down the aisle towards the front doors. Once there he decides not to lock up straight away but to continue into the courtyard for a little fresh air. It is dark now, but not as dark as it was inside. The clouds that hung overhead earlier have moved on and the sky is clear and brilliant with moonlight. He stands on the wet grass, arms folded, looking up at the sky, contemplating each tiny star, the minute inconsequentials of infinity. When he was a boy he knew the names and positions of all of the constellations, he used to love nights like this. As an adult he still spends much of his time looking upwards but so very rarely at the stars. He tries to recall the names of the celestial lights, the mythical beasts, and the dead gods. He remembers the first one that he ever learned, The Triangle; deceptively simple since any three stars can be joined that way, but impossible to locate in the sky if you don’t know what you are doing. He thinks that he may have spotted Orion’s Belt but isn’t sure.
Instead, he attempts to tie the stars together himself, connecting the dots to form an astral shape of his own, the word Amen written in lights above his church. He finds it impossible, though, to hold all of the letters in his head at one time and keeps losing his place in the heavens. He gives up. It’s getting cold. It’s time to lock up and get back to his office.
As he enters the vestry again he remembers the weight in his pockets. He digs deep and pulls out the consolidated sin that was entrusted to him this evening by his penitent congregation. He stares at the mess of it in his hands. He looks up again, briefly, then down at nothing for a while.
One handed, Father Marsh turns off the lights in the vestry and opens the door that leads into his house. Before he leaves, he walks slowly back to one of the room’s small windows and places the burden of sin on the sill, careful that it does not topple. He opens the window next to it and leaves it slightly ajar, hoping that something will sneak in during the night and carry it away.
