Bless Me Father

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been a fair while since my last confession."

"Sit yourself down, Michael, and unburden the soul. What is it that's after weighing on you?"

"I lay with a married woman, Father. More than the once."

"Ah, that's a grave thing, so it is. A sacrament trampled. But the Lord's mercy is wide as the sea. Go on with you."

"There's more to it, Father, and I'd be ashamed to say it in the daylight."

"There's no daylight in here, lad, only the two of us and Himself above. Out with it."

"I kissed her in places a married woman should be kissing only her husband. I put my mouth to her, Father, low down, till she had a grip on my hair and was calling on the saints. And then the rest, the whole of it, twice over before the fire went out of us."

"I see. And you're sorry for it?"

"I'm sorry to my bones, Father."

"Good, good. The sorrow is the start of it. Now, Michael, the one question I must put to you. Who was the woman?"

"That I can't be telling you, Father."

"You can't? Sure you're in the confessional, man. There's nothing you can't tell."

"I'll confess my own sins gladly, Father. But hers are hers. It's not for me to be handing another soul over the wall to you, even here."

"That's a fine principle, I'll grant you, and I'll not pretend it isn't. But the parish, Michael. If there's scandal walking among us, the shepherd ought to know his strayed sheep. Was it Bridie Hanlon, the butcher's wife? Big handsome lump of a woman, hips on her like a Sunday and a chest she has to wrestle into the Mass dress, and they do say she's the sort who'd rake the back off a man and roar the house down, that she likes to be up above and looking down at the poor devil, and that she keeps the candle lit so she misses not a thing of it."

"I can't say, Father."

"You can't. Mm. Then perhaps it was Eileen Burke that runs the wee shop. Slight little thing to look at, narrow in the hip and small in the bust, but a still tongue tells lies, for it's said she does with her mouth what many a wife wouldn't, that she'll kneel to a man without being asked twice and not come up for air till he's begging, and that she'll have him on his knees in the back room with the door barely shut and the bell still swinging, no fear of God nor neighbour in her at all."

"Still I can't say, Father."

"You're a stubborn article, so you are. Would it have been Marion O'Reilly, the widow that's not behaving the least bit like a widow? Now there's a woman. Soft as the morning, that one, freckled all down the front of her, with a chest on her that's the ruin of stronger men than yourself, heavy and pale and spilling out of whatever black lace she keeps it in. They tell me her nipples go hard as river stones the moment a hand strays near, that she'll have you take them in your mouth till she's clawing at your shoulders, and that for all the cold front she puts on she runs wet as the Lee in flood, and that the lips of her, Michael, the lower ones I mean, are pink and smooth as velvet, the kind of thing a man dreams on after and curses himself for the dreaming."

"Father, with respect, that's an awful particular knowledge of the widow O'Reilly for a man of the cloth."

"I, ah. The confessional, Michael. You'd be amazed what comes over this wall in the course of a year. A priest hears everything. Everything."

"I'm sure he does, Father."

"Well. You'll not give me the name and I'll not be sitting here till Lent prising it from you. Three Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers, and have a care where you're laying yourself down in future. Off with you now, and God go with you."

"Thank you, Father. You're a great help, so you are."

The big oak door of the chapel swung shut behind him and Mick was out into the soft grey evening, fishing the phone from his coat before he'd even cleared the gate.

"Dec? Dec, are you there? You were right, boy, you were dead right. Best advice you ever gave me. I went in like you said." A laugh broke out of him, helpless. "I'll tell you what, Dec. I went in with the one sin on me and I came out with the names of three married women, what every blessed one of them likes done to her, and which way she likes the candle. Go yourself. Honest to God, go. The man's a saint."