"Bless me Father, for I have sinned....."
Awakening.
The priest had heard the door shut quietly and settled into a comfortable position, ready to hear the usual liturgy of minor transgressions that would be forgiven with his scale of "Hail Mary's" by way of absolution. Twenty minutes later, and having received an education in the emergence of one of his parishioners from drudge to the exalted woman she now was, he was, for the first time in his life, unable to dispense a suitable punishment and suspected that the occupant of the booth, was not looking for forgiveness. The story he had listened to in silence, had taken him unprepared and, in truth, had found that little private place where he kept his erotic thoughts. Father Patrick, had a hard on, but forgave himself.
Mary had had a strict Catholic upbringing. As a child, she had grown up in the tied cottages of Enniskillen, third daughter to her Guinness loving Father and sixth child of her god-fearing mother. They never had much of anything. The money her Da' earned provided a meagre diet and just about kept a roof over their heads, although it leaked as did the second hand shoes, she and her siblings wore.
Mary somehow survived the afflictions that ravaged the population of Ireland and, apart from the inevitable tape worn and head lice, the skinny body, grew into adulthood.
The transition from child to adolescence wasn't without trauma. Mary had little in the way of formal education, only attending the Nuns charity classes at irregular intervals. Her knowledge of bodily functions, menstruation or anything at all to do with the mechanics of sex was sketchy, gleaned only from dirty photographs that did the rounds and innuendous conversations that alluded to the function of sex.
When her first period happened, she thought that her time was up, that God was punishing her for some misdemeanour. She thought she was going to die. It was a sister that noticed and tried to give her a quick biology lesson. Mary would rather have died than admit to her mother that she had a problem.
Approaching her seventeenth birthday, Mary visited her eldest sister in the Mercy Hospital after she had given birth to her third child. Teresa was only a year and a half older than Mary, but had developed a worldly knowledge of things carnal at an early age. She was cursed with good looks and found she liked the attention of the opposite sex. They may have been sisters, but there was a world of difference between them.
Mary had not inherited the striking eyes and hair, but looked dowdy, with mousy hair and a non-descript figure. It appealed to Tom, a porter at the hospital. Mary and Tom were married in a few months. All she had succeeded to do was replace her stern and often inebriated father with Tom, who was also often inebriated and beat her for the smallest things.
The beatings were never too harsh, a few bruises perhaps and once, a broken wrist when she had fallen, trying to protect her unborn child by instinctively putting out her hand and falling on top of it from the recoil of his slap. She fervently believed that God was still punishing her and would come up with any amount of sins to justify the harsh treatment. She must have deserved it, she reasoned, otherwise, why would it happen?
By the time Eileen was six, Tom had gone, taken off with a woman from out of town. Last Mary heard, he was heading towards England. Stoically, she found fault with herself and raised the shutters in her mind. Her energies were spent entirely on Eileen and the child's welfare.
They lived in the council flat that was a breading ground for cockroaches and every manner of ailment that a close community can engender. Mary worked part time, filling shelves at the supermarket and earned what few pence more she could, taking in laundry. Eileen was clean, her clothes were always clean and she gained an education of sorts at the local comprehensive. They were only separated once, shortly before Tom left, never to return. Mary suffered a miscarried pregnancy that resulted in the need for her ovaries to be removed. Mary blamed herself for the problem and thought that Tom had every right to leave as he did.
They managed to survive reasonably happily. Eileen grew into a striking young lady and then a beautiful teenager who found work and tried to ease the burden on her mother with a few pounds from her small wage.
But it all changed one day, it was this that the priest had listened to, hardly daring to breathe while it poured out from this woman he had known since his childhood.
Mary didn't get to go on the supermarket checkouts too often because of her lack of schooling. Although the automatic reader totalled up the balance and electronically told her how much she should take and what change she should give, Mary still struggled to count the right money and often made mistakes. This day however, that was to change her life irrevocably. Mary was sat at the express lane for baskets only.
She glanced at the customer, noticing only that he was male and his shopping was for one. He was unremarkable she processed his goods through the scanner and packed them into a carrier bag as she went. Took his money and offered the change. She would have instantly gone on to the next customer, but a rich vibrato voice informed her she had made a mistake and the hand that belonged to the voice was trying to return some coins that she had given. Mary began to fluster as she always did in these circumstances and in her panic, couldn't find the key to open the cash drawer.
Eventually, she fought for control of her senses and thanked him for his honesty while shutting the errant drawer. That was it really. Mary sat at the till for the rest of the day. Her unflattering light blue uniform covering her, with her hair savagely pulled back in a tight bun, unremarkable in her self and mostly unnoticeable to any observer.
Mary had taken to allowing herself the luxury of a cafe latte on her way home. It was perhaps, the only luxury she did have. Her usual table was empty and her conversation with the serving girl was restricted to her request for the foamy beverage. Mary revelled in her private thoughts and was oblivious of the rest of the world as it went about its business.
"Mind if I join you." There was something familiar about the rich tenor of the voice, but Mary merely nodded her consent and didn't look up.
"Looks like rain again." He remarked causally, "I don't know when summer is going to start do you?"
Mary looked up at the direct question and shook her head. She had never learned the niceties of conversation and preferred to stay quiet.
"Ah! I almost didn't recognise you. You're the girl at the checkout aren't you?" His smile creased his eyes and deepened the azure quality of the blue.
Mary blushed furiously, remembering him now and then associating him with her error.
"I...I'm sorry for the mistake." Her tremulous voice was barely audible over the hubbub of the coffee shop and nervously, she wrung her hands in her lap below the level of the table and beyond his sight. Her own eyes remained downcast and she wished that the floor would open up and swallow her, whole.
"Ah! No worries." He said easily, "We all make them don't we?"
She caught the movement of his hands as he used them to emphasise his words. She flinched, thinking he was about to strike her, he noticed the involuntary spasm and dropped his hands so they lay flat on the table, he consciously kept them there.
"I didn't get you name."
"Mary."
"Well hello Mary, it is a pleasure to meet you." She looked up sharply to see if he was making fun of her with condescension, but she met a pair of smiling eyes that, although creased with a smile, were not cruel in anyway. Her flush of anxiety was becoming one of something else and she started to fluster again.
"Where does Mary come from I wonder?" His question could have been taken in a mocking sense, but his smile told otherwise. "And I wonder what Mary is like away from the Supermarket?"
"I'm sure I don't know." She answered and then continued, "I have to go now."
"Ah! Now that is a shame so it is. Wouldn't you stay for another and keep a lone man company?" He indicated her half empty coffee cup as he asked the question.
Mary was mortified. Her total experience of men talking to her was her father, usually angry; her husband, also angry and usually drunk; her priest and the doctor, but him, only when she absolutely had to go. The Manager at the supermarket rarely said more than one or two words and that was it for verbal contact with the male of the species. She rushed from the table, colliding with the next in her haste to get away and leaving behind, a carrier bag with that night's dinner and a bemused man who wondered what on earth had gotten into the woman.
That night, as she lay in her bed, covered from head to toe in a flannelette nightgown and blankets pulled up to her chin, Mary dreamed. She dreamed of this stranger and in a completely naïve innocence, dreamt of his holding her in his arms, warm and protective. Sex was not part of her subconscious. It was an event that had happened on a few occasions when Tom stank of Guinness or whiskey. It had resulted in her lovely daughter and the removal of her ability to have children. Sex had never been a joyous explosion of feelings and nerve jangling climaxes. Sex was a sordid and shameful subject, only to be done to create a child. That was why Tom was right to leave. She couldn't give him children. It was all her fault.
"Hail Mary Mother of god..." Even in her sleep, Mary was completely subjugate to her religion and fervently believed herself to be the most loathsome woman ever to have disgraced his garden.
