Lonie74

There was Confessional on Friday. It was as traditional, for the faithful, as no meat on Friday. Lonie didn’t much feel like singing or dancing, when he staggered out of The Piano bar, a corner-shop- type pub in High Street but there was a feeling in his gut that he did want to spill the beans –the poor man’s equivalent of fish on Friday. The rain was falling in fits and starts and the pubs along the way were busy and glowed ambient warmth. With money in his pocket, he resisted the many temptations of Sauchiehall Street and kept walking.

St Aloysius Church was a big and blowsy Gothic pile pushing out to Rose Street and advertising its wares. A bell tower soaring above the squat building, giving the finger, as a signal to the unfaithful, and Protestants even, that God was in the red-facing brick and watching over them. Lonie automatically dabbed his fingers in the Holy water fount at the door and made the sign of the cross. The dappled half-light of stained glass, in the nave, was like the rasp of a window being thrown open in the darkness. There were a few older women, wearing headscarves sitting tucked into the side pews near the confessional box. To the right of the altar a hoydenish girl, or it could have been a young boy, with long black hair, denim jacket and trousers, was stooped over lighting a candle. He took a seat on the pew and waited for the penitents in front of him to silently slide off the end of lacquered seats, into the confessional box and come out smiling. The click of the confessional door opening and shutting, and shoes shuffling towards the back rows behind him, alerted him, and his bum nudged along one. He glanced sideways. He’d been taught church etiquette. A jealous God’s eye bled out of the altar looking at you. It was bad manners, like farting in bed with your wife present, to look directly at anyone in church. In the church’s gloom, a woman with ginger hair falling from her forehead wore a pious Sunday face when she tripped out of the confession. Her hands were in a steeple of prayer. She looked lighter, as if she’d been to Weight Watchers and lost a stone. He was in no hurry. The quiet of church, the clacking of beads and mumbled prayers soothed him. Best of all he liked the underlying creation smells of beeswax and incense and the square plinths, rooted in the ground, but soaring into arches in the air, creating a space in his head to think. When he’d been an adolescent, he’d felt guilty about this, realizing incense was predominantly used only when someone had died. He was next into the confessional box. The door was left open for him at a regulation thirty degree angle by the last penitent

Lonie kneeled down on the prie-dieu facing a small wooden window, blocked off with coarse- dark-green linen with diamond patterns, a primitive intercom connecting God up, so the officiating priest couldn’t see him, nor he see the priest. He could hear the priest’s shuffling and breathing on the other side of the box. Mints and cheap aftershave combined to create another curtain of smells. A crucifix the size of his arm hung on the door, waiting for him to speak.

‘Bless me Father for Ah have sinned. It’s been…’ Lonie tried to think how long it had been. ‘Ah don’t know Father how long it’s been since ma last confession.’

He heard the priest’s chair creak and a small wooden block shuttled open, leaving a space in the bottom of the window. ‘Is that you Lonie?’

‘Aye Father.’

‘How have you been?’

‘Grand Father. Just Grand.’

‘So how long has it been since your last confession?’ The priest’s tone was friendly and no longer officious.

Lonie leaned forward and propped his elbows on a wooden shelf in front of the window, to try and help ease the pains in his legs and, in particular, his left knee. ‘Probably since we were at school.’

He heard the hard intake of breath. ‘Well, that’s about seventeen or eighteen years.’

Lonie's memory formed a picture of a blond-haired boy, three beds along, always smiling in dopey way that hid a mind that cut through ideas like a cut-throat razor. ‘Sure is Martie.’

‘Well, we’ll call it seventeen.’ He laughed; a choking sound through the gauze. ‘Make us seem younger.’

‘Ok then. Bless me Father for Ah have sinned and it’s been seventeen years since my last confession.’ He shook his left knee to try and get the pins and needles out of it. ‘Obviously Ah’ve no’ been to mass in that time…’

‘Why obviously?’

Lonie stood up and half crouched. ‘You should know that better than me. Whit they priests and nuns done to us…’

‘But I’m a priest Lonie… And you’re here.’

‘Aye. Ah’m ur. Ah’m here to see you. Ah’ve done something Ah’m no’ proud of and it’s eating up my insides.’ He tried kneeling on one knee, but it was no good, he leaned against the window. ‘And Ah know that you’re a good man. We were like brothers once. And sometimes something becomes too big to carry around and you’ve got to tell another human being. That’s something the church didn’t get wrong. And you believe in the sanctity of confession so you’ll no’ tell anybody else.’

‘Yes.’ The priest whispered. ‘Go on. Let God carry your burden.’

‘But Ah don’t believe in God.’

‘Well Lonie, tell me and I’ll believe in Him enough for both of us.’

Lonie had heard that before. Father Campbell had used those very words. ‘Ah killed a man.’ Lonie nodded as he spoke and leaned his cheek against the window. ‘Ah set him on fire and killed him.’

‘And you’re sorry?’

‘Ah think so.’ Lonie tried kneeling down again and then squatting. ‘Ah’m no’ sure.’

‘Why did you kill him?’

Lonie sighed. ‘He betrayed me, but worse than that he betrayed himself. He killed, raped and tortured young boys and girls.’ As he spoke Lonie grew angry again the spoken words breeding indignation and justification.

The priest cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Yeh.’

‘The church can’t condone your actions.’

Lonie’s right knee hit against the wooden panelling of the box as he tried to make himself comfortable. ‘Ah’m no asking it to.’

‘And you’re sorry?’

‘Yeh, Ah think so. There was worse than him. He got sucked into something that he couldnae handle.’

‘And are those others still out there?’ A more personal and probing note crept into the priest’s voice.

‘Yep.’

‘And what are you going to do about them.’

‘Oh, Ah’m goin’ to get them. Ah don’t know how, but Ah’m goin’ to do it.’

‘Good!’ The priest allowed himself a little chuckle. ‘God is on your side.’ He glided into confessional mode. ‘One Hail Mary for you penance and protection and now a good act of Confession.’

Lonie mumbled the confessional prayer, his knee giving him gyp. The priest on the other side of the partition rattled through his set of responses.

‘Thanks Marti. That’s me away now.’ Lonie tugged open the confessional door. An old biddy glared across the aisle at him, probably wondering why he’d taken so long.

‘Pray for me.’

‘Ah think that’s my line.’ Lonie’s feet tapped the slow steady beat of departure on the mosaic wooden floor. He looked up at one of the Stations of the Cross, displayed at regular intervals on the wall. It was Jesus stumbles and falls for the first time. He felt twelve-years old again. Glad to leave Marti behind him, he pushed on and out through the double doors, pulling his collar up. The wind and the rain revived him. His mind was a funny thing, throwing up pictures of turning left instead of right all those years ago. Of him being in the confessional box and Marti coming to him. He badly needed a whisky chaser. The Horseshoe Bar wasn’t far.