Mandy Taggart, Coleraine Northern Ireland
BUTTERFLY CAKES
Damned, we are damned… in a place of shuffling, and Presbyterian hats, and stifled clearings of the throat. Rank upon rank we sit, each row of attendance noted by the pointed cedar end of a pew. Above our heads, in sweaty benediction, floats the fog from a hundred damp woollen coats.
On one side of me sits my mother, compact in a green wool suit with a tiny stain of toothpaste on one sleeve. On the other is Mrs John Campbell: usually in the choir but here today, diligently sucking her way through a fragrant roll of minty sweets. Out of the corner of my eye I see her, gradually unpeeling crumpled silver paper, extracting them one by one to pop between painted lips. I don’t think I’m going to get one.
Mrs John Campbell has long nails that you can feel scratching your skin when you look at them. I steeple together my own fingers and flex them up and down, pleased by the padded way their tips roll together. If Mrs John Campbell tried to do this, her nails would bend back, tugging at the quicks. They would click and grate and scrape. I press my nails, one by one, hard with the ball of my thumb.
For all eternity… the minister licks his teeth like a wolf. He leers over the pulpit, one ear craned towards the congregation as if expecting a secret or a naughty joke. He is telling us the same old story: that we will all burn in a pit of hell fire if we be not saved. I can tune him out so well now that I only hear the loudest bits.
There shall be weeping… My hairy woollen jumper is sending my neck and chest mad with rashes. I shrug up my shoulders and insert a hot finger into the neckline to air my skin, but my mother nudges me to keep still. I take her hand and twist her rings around and round on her fingers, pinch the skin at the back of her hand into egg-white peaks, let go and watch them sink back into shape. I lean against her arm and sigh heavily, swinging my legs forward one by one and accidentally clunking my heels against the back of the pew. She nudges me again.
Mrs John Campbell has one leg crossed over the other, her long farmer’s-wife dress draped daintily across her calf to form a triangle with the point of her shoe. One day, I will cast off my plastic sandals and sticky little skirt and evolve into a Real Lady, sitting like that. I’ll join the choir and order the Christian Irishman, which is called that even though all the names on the Biro list start with Mrs.
Repent, and be ye saved… All the adults are looking up at the pulpit, heads tilted sideways in an attitude of pious attention. I study the various angles, trying to work out whose head is tilted the furthest. Probably Mr Collins, over in the wing, who appears to be listening intently to his own right elbow.
For the time is drawing near.
This time, the nudge comes from the other side. I jump and turn to find Mrs John Campbell offering me the very last one of her minty sweets. She nods and smiles at me to take it. Uncertain, I extend my hand and pinch the sweet out from the foil, mouthing “Thank You” like I should. But the sweet drops from my fingers and rolls, loudly and interminably, under the foot rest into the dust. My mother gasps and pokes me hard in the arm. I stare down at my plastic toes.
Be ye prepared.
The minister licks his teeth.
The hairy prickling has spread, up to my chin and down into the crooks of my elbows. I close my eyes and watch green and brown shifting patterns swirl and reswirl, in viscous convections behind the lids. The shuffling and breathing seem to quicken into the clamour of angels or demons about my head. Maybe it’s the Spirit that the minister talks about, but I don’t feel spiritual, not at all.
No. The noises really have quickened.
Something has changed. The shift and creak of Sunday bottoms has become more urgent, the throat-clearings more frequent. A fresh tang of sweat is in the air. Even my mother’s arm, still pressed in firm reminder against my own, has brisked itself up inside her suit. Somewhere, in a distant field, the sheep that grew the green wool lifts its head.
I open my eyes and dart them around. Everyone has straightened in their seats, even Mr Collins. Heads have untilted, elbows preach unto deaf ears, eyes have turned from the pulpit and focused on a hundred individual spots of empty air. Mrs John Campbell is giving off a buzz which is almost electric.
The minister is working himself up to some kind of climax. I tune back in, and my stomach goes hot. For here in our midst, he thunders, there sits an unrepentant sinner, brazen in her defiance. And he’s looking over at me.
He knows.
I skim my eyes over the congregation, but everyone is making a great point of not looking at me. They’re making a point of not looking at anyone – the middle distance has never appeared so fascinating. But there’s a flicker – hardly there, but I see it – of eyes, over in my direction and away again, as if the church had filled with butterflies.
How does he know? It was weeks ago. Mr Boyle is nearly off the crutches again, and people were starting to forget. The police said it was probably a fisherman that left the gate open, and told the farmer to put a sign up. And Mr Boyle was just like normal when we visited him yesterday, gave me money for sweets and everything. My mother let me run off to the shop right away.
But behold, my sins have found me out, says the minister. For the one who had been my accomplice has repented, and last night confessed our wrongdoing before an elder of the Church.
I’ll never speak to Louise McCloskey again. It was her idea to let the stupid cows out anyway. Said they ought to be free.
And what, asks the minister, of that unconfessed partner in wickedness? Here I sit, in this very congregation, having believed – until this moment – that God’s judgement had passed over me. But no more. No more.
Mrs John Campbell is shaking now, something in her throat, vibrating the pew cushion under me as if to shake me off. I could swallow my heart if I tried. My mother’s arm is rigid under the stained fabric, and still the butterfly eyes whirl and flap around my impenitent head. Perhaps they will lift me up and carry me away.
God knows our hearts, concludes the minister, and that which I believed to be secret is known unto him. There is yet time for me to repent and confess my sin, but until that day there will be no welcome for me in this congregation.
I am banished, sent from this place, and shame must be my punishment. I start to shuffle forward on the pew cushion, ready to leave, but my mother grips my arm with witch fingers and fixes me painfully into my place. No-one comments. They all sit intent upon the middle distance, like robots on the TV.
Mrs John Campbell chokes one more time, then picks up her handbag and walks away down the aisle. The door bumps softly at her back. The butterflies do not follow her.
My mother doesn’t leave go of my arm all the way through the final hymn, not even as we stand for the Grace.
We file down the aisle, to the tune of the march that was played at the Royal Wedding. No-one speaks to us, but Mr Collins smiles down at me with sad eyes as we go through the vestibule. He alone must have been inspired by the grace and compassion of Our Lord, because nobody else wants to look at me. Even Mr Boyle doesn’t seem to be here today.
Mrs Norman Wilson, from the Ladies’ Fellowship, stands outside the door, graciously inviting everyone to gather in the Minor Hall for tray bakes and a sociable cup of tea. Her eyes skim over me, but we need her for the lift home so we have to stay.
I slip away from my mother quick, before she gets the chance to start on me. She doesn’t follow, and no-one bars my way into the Minor Hall – a fact which, now that the shock has died down, I find almost disappointing. Perhaps my punishment is to start next Sunday. Not having to go to church is the opposite of a punishment, so that can’t be all of it. I wonder what terrible things they have planned for me, on Sunday mornings, whilst everyone else is at church. Louise will have got off more lightly, for telling tales.
In the Hall, the Sunday School children have clustered beside the scones and jam, and turn their backs when I look at them. That’s no change, except that today nobody asks me where my Daddy is. Louise was marked absent – the Sunday School teacher said she had that bad cold, but who knows what is true? Maybe they have her tied somewhere.
The decorating tables, spread with white cloths, have been loaded up by the kind ladies, and their mothers and their daughters, and daughters’ daughters yet unborn, rank upon rank. The top hats and the raspberry ruffles. The peppermint squares. The shallow pastry cups where halves of tinned strawberries lie like tiny peeled hedgehogs, bleeding onto a nest of soft cream. Help yourself to sugar, there.
My mother doesn’t bake. I might as well make the most of things, while I’m still allowed to be here. I heap up a paper plate and carry it, sagging, past the whispering backs and out through the Hall door. Just outside, Mrs John Campbell is emerging from the Ladies’, all smudgy makeup and watering eyes. My Sunday School teacher is escorting her, with one hand under her elbow. They are agreeing that it’s a terrible cold, indeed it is, and Mrs John Campbell should have stayed at home in her bed with a throat like that. But a nice cup of tea will sort her out. They turn past me into the Hall.
I take my feast with both hands and settle myself on a bench in the vestibule, at the far end in case anyone sees me. The polished wood sticks pleasantly to the backs of my legs. I’m saving the sacrificial hedgehog for last.
Somebody is in the minister’s office, a few feet away from my bench. I stop, my mouth full of crumbs and cream, and listen to my mother sobbing as the minister prays over her head.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
I lick my fingers and wipe them down my skirt, leaving a chocolate smear. The tray bakes are all gone now.