Three hours sitting in a cell, without so much as a knock, will get you thinking. I’ve tried not to think about this stuff but it has a way of coming back, time and again. You get Debs forcing it into the frame, you can’t avoid it…
It’s the words that do it for me: ‘Raise yourself, Dury, and depart from the Lord’s house… The pair of you offend the congregation with your very presence.’
I’m gobsmacked. ‘You what? And how would we manage that?’
Father Eugene stoops. He seems nervous before us, his top lip twitching and sparkling with sweat. ‘Now, Dury, we need have no trouble from the likes of ye in front of these good people,’ he says.
The Irishman has nothing on me. I’m only here for Debs — she’s the Catholic. Sure, it means a lot to her that I go through the whole church thing, but I’m not having this from anyone.
‘“Good people”. “Good people”, is it? There’s not one I would call “good” among that lot… Look at them. Every one of them’s had the knives out for us.’
Debs touches my arm but says nothing. She’s usually as fiery as me, the first to wag the finger and start shouting, but she’s done with the lot of them too. She’s more done than she deserves to be. I glance at her. She still looks beautiful, a knockout as they all say, but her face is hardened, no longer the image of a carefree young girl of seventeen. She’s a woman, searching for courage. ‘Come on, Gus,’ she says, ‘let’s just go.’
‘I will not. We have every right to be here,’ I blast out.
Father Eugene straightens his back and raises his voice. ‘Ye cannot seek forgiveness here, not now, not ever. Go, the pair of ye!’
Debs rises to leave and there’s a flutter of tongues about the place. I glance back and see her mother and father sat at the front of the church. Her mother flinches uncomfortably where she’s sat and turns towards Debs, but her ruddy-faced father lays a hand on her shoulder, jerks her round, eyes front, away from the daughter who isn’t fit to be looked at.
I run to Debs. She’s trembling as I place my arm around her.
‘And ye can stay away,’ shouts the priest at our backs, his voice emboldened. ‘The Holy Mother weeps at the sight of the likes of ye in the Lord’s house.’
I want to turn round, lamp him one in front of the entire church, but Debs grabs my arm. I want to shout, to show the blackness of their hearts, the falseness of their piety, but Debs leads me outside.
‘What did they want, us ruined?’ she says, her courage vanished now, the tears starting up. ‘Me barefoot and you begging to feed us?.. I can’t take it any more, Gus, I cannot.’
My heart sears in two. I know I’ve done this to her. I keep waiting, hoping her family will come out of the church, pick her up, take her home and tell her that’s an end to it, no more Gus Dury.
But it doesn’t happen. They leave Debs to me, abandon her to her fate. All I can do is hold her and hope the tears stop soon.