Thicker Than Water

Matt came forward into the room. He was wearing the scrimshaw cross that Mum had just given him: carved with bas-relief thorns to the point where it looked like a bramble thicket, and with the legend INRI inscribed on a scroll at its centre, it was an object both beautiful and grotesque. He took the whisky bottle from my hand. ‘I think you’ve probably had enough,’ he said gently.

I took it back and poured myself another large one. ‘Probably right there,’ I allowed.

‘Fix—’ Matt hardly ever used my nickname, so this was a sign of some preternatural unbending. ‘I know you could have done with having me around, the past few years. I just - felt that this was something I really needed to do. Something I was meant to do. They say if God wants you to be a priest he speaks inside you so you can’t mistake it. And it was like that, it really was. Like something pulling me, that I couldn’t refuse. But it was terrible having to leave you and Dad. I’m going to try to think of ways to make it up to you.’

‘You are?’ I asked. ‘That’s cool, Matt. You’re a prince.’ He looked pained at the sarcasm, which encouraged me to go on. But I was drunk as a bastard by this time, and it took me a while to think of anything good. I was about to ask him what sort of penance he thought was suitable for sodding off for five years and leaving us all up the Swanee, but the word itself - penance - set off a chain of associations that led to a better idea.

‘Take my confession, Father Castor,’ I said.

Surprise and consternation crossed Matt’s face, but only for a moment. He shook his head. ‘If you’re serious about that, Fix, go to St Mary’s and talk to Father Stone. You don’t want absolution from me. I want it from you, but that’s beside the point.’

‘I am serious,’ I persisted. ‘There’s something that’s weighing on my mind. It’s been troubling me for twelve years, and I can’t share it with anyone. Except you, Matt. Because you’re family and this is family business.’

I held him with my stare, like the Ancient Mariner. He wanted to leave - wanted not to have come in here in the first place - but I had him by the balls, from a clerical-pastoral-tragical-historical point of view. He couldn’t say no in case I meant it: and what with the booze and the baggage, that was a question that I couldn’t have answered myself.

Matt sat down on a barrel.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Do it properly,’ I slurred.

He took the hit with an impatient gesture. ‘Then stick to the script,’ he countered.

I spoke the familiar, disused words with a prickling sense of unreality. ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s been eight years and some odd months since my last confession. I have one sin on my conscience.’

‘Just the one?’

‘Just the one, Matt. I don’t want to keep you from your adoring fans.’

He didn’t answer, so I went on.

‘After Katie died . . .’

The words just hung crds. .there. Whatever I’d been about to say drained out of my head like oil from a cracked sump. Nothing came to replace them.

‘After Katie died?’ Matt repeated, prompting me. ‘Go on, Felix. What happened after Katie died?’

Why had I started this? What had been the point of the joke? I filled my glass from the whisky bottle, discovering in the process that it was still full from the last time. The pungent liquid ran down my fingers and spattered on the ground.

‘After Katie died . . . ?’

I couldn’t look at him, so I stared at the brimming glass: at the shivers and ripples chasing themselves across the meniscus. ‘I killed her again.’

‘What does that even mean, Felix?’ Matt’s voice was still mild, but I felt the tension underneath the words.

‘Her ghost. Her . . . spirit came back. She came into my room.’

‘You imagined she did. Your grief—’

‘No, Matt. Katie. Katie herself. You know I can see things that you can’t.’

‘I know you’ve convinced yourself that you can.’ The tightness was right there on the surface now. Matt had known about my death-sense ever since we were kids, but we’d never discussed it since he took holy orders. It was the elephant we danced arabesques around every time we talked.

‘And I made her go away by . . . singing,’ I went on. ‘By chanting. I think she just wanted to talk. I think she was scared, and she wanted to be where she belonged, with the family. But I sent her away. And she never came back.’

The silence stretched.

‘Go to her grave,’ Matt suggested at last. ‘Pray for her. Pray that she found her way to Heaven, and pray for her forgiveness.’

I turned the over-full glass in my hands and more whisky oozed over the rim of it to trickle down the sides of the glass like sweat or tears.

‘Do you hear me, Felix?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I hear you.’

He smacked glass and bottle out of my hands. The glass shattered, the bottle didn’t: it just skittered away across the floor, coughing up booze like a docker at chucking-out time.

‘Then say the Act of Contrition,’ he suggested.