All Souls Day

Don't Speak Ill

“Nan weren’t no bloody saint,” Luke hisses. “Why we here? Bad enough every Sunday morning, but Monday night too? Instead of youth club? I’ll fall behind in table tennis.”
Mum glares at him and I grin, happy he’s the one in trouble this time. It’s me often enough.
“You can take that look off your face, Cathy,” Mum whispers. “The angelic look isn’t convincing anyone. She was my mother and your Nan. Show some respect and to remember in quiet contemplation.”
Thing is, I’m here to remember Nan. That’s one reason I’m smiling. No point in saying that to Mum, though.
“It’s All Soul’s Day not All Saint’s Day.” I can’t resist saying this to Luke.
We’re sitting next to each other today, me and Luke. Usually we have to sit either side of Mum in church, because we misbehave, Mum says. But Mum’s out of sorts and she’s forgotten to separate us.
“They’re just feisty,” Nan used to say of me and Luke. “Like me. It skipped a generation, clearly.”
I had to look ‘feisty’ up in the dictionary. I liked it.
Mum would roll her eyes.
“I’m sick of feisty. I’ve lived with your Nan, and next door to her, for forty years. Quite fancy a bit of demure, nice and well-mannered.”
Time for me and Luke to roll our eyes. You see, sometimes we’re united.
Father McKenna sweeps past us, eyes forward.
Us - the Rafferty’s - and Father McKenna don’t get on. Never have.
“Nan said Father McKenna thinks the sun shines…”
“That’ll do, Cathy,” Mum interrupts.
I watch as his black cassock sweeps along behind him.
“I’m a thorn in that priest’s side,” Nan used to say. “Bit like Jesus was to the Romans. It’s important that someone keeps them on their toes; else the power goes to their heads. Papal infallibility; what a load of tosh. Humans they are, just like us.”
She told us with glee about the times she’d rung the Archbishop’s office when she’d seen things go awry. When the food gathered at the Harvest Festival one year made it only as far as the presbytery kitchen. The good stuff, that is.
“He visited, the Archbishop did, was seen taking stuff away. Mrs Jones told me she was on the receiving end of a nice hamper of goodies.”
Not that there appeared to be any repercussions for Father McKenna.
I could just imagine the Archbishop’s face when Nan called him about the need for women priests.
Mum tries her best with Father McKenna. She’s a minister of the Eucharist. I think Mum likes feeling important.
“Fancy,” Nan had said when she heard. “Who’d have thought, you having been dragged up and all that?”
Mum had made that claim about Nan’s parenting. Neglectful, she’d said. We’d reported back to Nan, as per usual.
“Neglect, my arse,” Nan had protested. “I gave them freedom. They made their own mistakes, and learnt from them. It’s good for kids, gives them a sense of moral responsibility, that way they develop good judgement.”
We’d said all this to Mum. We liked a bit of argy bargy did me and Luke. Kept life interesting.
“Indeed? Is that what she thinks?” Mum crashed round in the kitchen. “Well, I won’t ever make the mistake of being like your Nan, that’s for sure.”
Both my Da and my Grandpa had been a bit too fond of freedom, deciding that caring for a family was the sole responsibility of the mother, and hopping it before they got too weighed down. Nan had met Grandpa at a church dance.
“He gave me your Mum, and Uncle Stephen, so some good came from him,” Nan had told us.
Uncle Stephen lives in Africa. He’s out there Doing Good.
“You see,” Nan said when we received a letter and photos of the village where he taught. “Give people freedom, and they do the right thing.”
That hadn’t, strictly speaking, applied to Dad and Grandpa, but who was going to argue with Nan?
“Look at your Mum,” Nan had continued. “She lives a good life. A life of faith. Wish I could have been good like your Mum. Bit late now.”
Nan had always looked at Mum as though she was a jigsaw puzzle she couldn’t quite complete. Like some edges were missing. But I think she was secretly proud of her offspring.
We’d flirted with being Morgans whilst Da was around; then changed our names back to Rafferty after he’d left, and it was clear he wasn’t coming back. It seems to suit us better, the name Rafferty, although that hadn’t gone down well with Father McKenna. It hadn’t helped our case.
“Say a prayer, will you,” Mum pleads. “For Nan’s immortal soul.” Saying it like Nan’s soul was in desperate need.
Because we loved her, really loved her, me and Luke get down on our knees, rest our heads on the pew in front and mumble.
I’m sure Luke is repeating football scores, but Mum doesn’t seem to hear.
I’m not convinced this is what Nan would have wanted. She came to church most weeks, early morning mass on a Sunday. She watched Father McKenna; convinced he was up to no good.
“I see him eye up the ladies,” she said. “Have you seen how he holds their hands when giving them communion? Whips past the men?”
“He must be a living saint having you in his congregation,” Mum had snapped. “And he’s a man of God. You shouldn’t say such things about him.”
Mum finishes her prayers for Nan’s soul. It takes a while.
“You done, kids?” she finally asks.
“Think so, Mum. I added a bit extra. Hope that’s alright. Asked if United could win next Saturday, if God’s cool with that.”
Mum’s face is a picture, but Luke knows she won’t swear in God’s house.
“What?” Luke asks. “It’s what Nan would’ve wanted. She prayed for it often enough herself, I heard her.”
“I’ve told you once and for all not to speak ill of the dead, especially your Nan, so recently deceased too, God rest her soul.”
“I ain’t speaking ill of her, Mum. I’m telling the truth.”
We’d talked about souls, me and Nan, not long before she passed away. She said she wasn’t too bothered by an immortal soul, and heaven and all that, but what she wanted was to be remembered by the people she loved.
“Think about it, Cathy, in how few generations memories of us, our legacy if you like, will be gone. Sad, isn’t it? I think I want to be remembered for all the wrong reasons, to be honest. For being a bit of a trouble maker, when necessary.”
I liked that in my Nan. That she was a trouble maker. I want to be like her.
“D’you still believe in Heaven, Nan?” I’d asked, the last time I saw her.
“Nah, Cathy, love. Heaven’s spending time with the ones you love. Doing your best by people. Not caring what the great and good think.”
Made me think, that did.
“Sorry for your troubles Mrs Morgan. Father McKenna oozes past again, stopping at the end of the pew, right next to Mum.
“It’s Miss Rafferty.”
“My apologies. Miss Rafferty. I forget, sometimes, about your husband. Please, you must call on me if I can help in any way. Your mother was a good, if sometimes challenging, Catholic and member of our congregation. A little more humility, well that wouldn’t have gone astray. A fantastic Christian virtue, humility.”
His head was on one side. No sense of irony, Father McKenna.
“Challenging, Father, I’m not sure what you mean?”
Blimey. I look at Luke. You don’t often hear Mum speak like this. This could get interesting.
Father McKenna is stroking her arm, trying to calm her, I guess.
“A woman who knew her own mind, a strong woman, rarely kept her own counsel, even when it may have been wiser to do so,” Father McKenna went on, digging himself deeper still.
Now, there’s that thing isn’t there? Where it’s ok to criticise your own family, but for someone else to do so, well that’s well out of order? Nan always told us that. Family first. Isn’t that what the church tells us too?
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at, Father McKenna?”
Loving Mum’s tone.
He’s in close now. I take a step towards Mum.
“Please, Miss Rafferty, perhaps you will be so good as to join me in the vestry for a moment. Without the children. We could discuss your mother’s legacy.”
He’s reaching for Mum, about to put his hand on her waist, I think. I cringe. Mum brushes his hand away and marches down the aisle towards the door.
“We’ll be back, Father McKenna. And if I need to look up the Archbishop’s number in my mother’s phone book and get in touch anytime, so be it. I’ll do it.”
We follow, me glancing over my shoulder just before the door closes behind us. Father McKenna’s face looks like one of the statues of the saints lining the nave.
Looks like Mum is making the mistake of being like Nan after all.
I say a quick prayer of thanks, to Nan and to God.