Fandango in the Apse! Read online

  Fandango in the Apse

  By Jane L Taylor

  Text copyright © 2012 Jane L Taylor

  All Rights Reserved

  For Billy Rankin, my own personal hero.

  My thanks to Ian Sutherland for the cover design and James Brailsford for formatting.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Surgery Day

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  Chapter One

  It never ceases to amaze me how the ordinary piles of crap that most of us build our lives on keeps growing. Of course, not all of it is outside influence; most of us are guilty of regularly adding to it. We are the architects of our own downfall. Well, I am… oh, yes, I’ve spent years building my pile and recently I reached the top, which is why I’m now sitting on a train hurtling towards London.

  To anyone looking at me, I must appear the picture of poise and calmness. My face is hopefully devoid of expression, there is no outward show of the raging emotions ransacking my head, and certainly no inkling of what I am about to do – of the huge step I am about to take. Good. It is my business and as far as I’m concerned everyone else can go to hell.

  I am a bad, bad person! I know exactly why I can say that with complete conviction. There are two reasons really, the first being that at the moment I am utterly hacked off for falling into the trap of thinking that I, Katie Roberts, a divorced, thirty-nine-year-old mother of two, might actually be loved. The second being the ubiquitous guilt that has underpinned my life, since the first time my mother said, “You little brat, no wonder your father left”.

  I was about four at the time, and quite unaware of the great gift my mother had unwittingly bestowed upon me. Now don’t think just because I mentioned the guilt, that I’m about to embark on a self-indulgent whine-fest about the unfairness of my life – I’m not, so just hear me out.

  Seventeen years ago, I shagged a Catholic priest. Ha! You didn’t see that coming, did you? Before I go any further, I have to stress in the strongest terms possible that it isn’t something of which I’m particularly proud. I’ve never told a living soul until now. Well... when I say never, I might have mentioned it once to fifteen women on a drunken hen night. However, I assure you other than that, my lips have remained sealed.

  In my defence, I have to say that there were mitigating circumstances, he didn’t put up much of a fight, and I had just watched The Thorn Birds on telly, and he really did have a look of a young Richard Chamberlain about him (only better). I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. I was a twenty-two-year-old mother of two, bored senseless and married to “The Pig”. That’s the name I use to refer to my ex-husband; you’ll hear more of him later.

  So yes, I “seduced” a young priest. He was the curate in my local church and I’d gone there to discuss the children’s baptism. They were both toddlers and their un-baptised status was beginning to – you’ve guessed it – make me feel guilty. Not that I’m a churchgoer, not since I was a child anyway, but you have to understand the Catholic religion is a bit like a curry stain on your favourite blouse. The harder you try to remove it, the more ingrained it becomes.

  I’m not going to go into the finer details, suffice to that say one thing led to another, and we ended up spending a glorious spring evening romping vigorously on a carpet of bluebells in a particularly secluded area. Halleluiah! Then another in a store room at the back of the church. Then another… no! I can’t go on. I know, I know, I’m going to hell.

  Now, everything would have been fine – that is, if you discount the fact that he was a priest and supposed to be celibate, and if he’d treated the whole thing for what it was; a quick fandango in the apse. And I do mean apse. However, not being an old hand in dealing with guilt like me, he broke down, told Father Gus the parish priest and quickly found himself on a retreat to evaluate his commitment to God. Me? Well, I kept my mouth shut and never set foot in the church again. By now, you may be wondering what this has to do with my trip. Well, in a roundabout way, quite a lot.

  Fast-forward sixteen years from my ecclesiastical hell-raising amongst the bluebells – that’s last year to those of you who can’t be bothered to do the maths – and picture this. As the co-owner of a fledgling flower shop, I have what I think is a brilliant idea to boost business. I will go to the next parishioners’ meeting in the church hall and have a quiet word with the priest about providing the flowers for the church free of charge. In return, I would leave my business cards, which he could pass on to anyone interested – weddings, christenings et cetera.

  With my plan in mind, I entered the hall only to receive a shock, which reverberated round my skull until I could actually see sparks in front of my eyes. Yep. You’re right there with me. Holy shit! I was staring straight at Richard Chamberlain. How unfair is that? And what’s worse, I can see he’s recognised me and I’ve a fair idea from the dull flush beginning to bloom from under his dog collar, he’s remembering lusty blow jobs amongst the bluebells.

  What are the odds after all those years, and a move of two hundred miles, of bumping into your guilty past? Pretty damned good in my case, obviously. Are you wondering what I did? I did what any normal person would do – I plastered my best Botox impression on my face, shook his hand and pretended I’d never seen him before in my life. Thereafter, I bolted to the last row of seats in the hall and hid until I could slink out unnoticed.

  After my unexpected meeting with the bluebell-stud-muffin (I really can’t name him), I had what I can only describe as an epiphany of biblical proportions. I experienced something profound for the first time in my life – genuine unadulterated guilt, coupled with a flash of insight into my character so disturbing, it almost had me ringing the doctor to demand special dispensation for another course of mind candy within the hour.

  What the hell had I been thinking – shagging a man of the cloth, a person who had made the decision to devote himself to the church? All those years on and the morality of that was only just hitting me?

  The trouble was, having felt the genuine article, I then realised that I had at some stage grown out of the guilt instilled into me as a child– thinking back, I was about twelve when it happened. I had come to the conclusion, that the woman I called mother had been using me as her whipping boy; an infinitely better option than admitting her vicious tongue and mean nature might have been the cause for my father’s quick exit to the other side of the world.

  Now here is the crux of the problem: as I say, I was twelve at that point of realisation, plenty old enough to have gone forward to live a life unfettered by the shackles of my mother’s bitterness; any normal person would have, but you have to remember we’re talking about me here. So what did I do? I deliberately hung onto the guilt, using it as a tool, a perfect excuse to behave exactly as I wished.

  My God, it was a shame I wasn’t still in counselling, because Patti would have had a field day with this. I haven’t told you about Patti, have I? She’s a lovely woman, a bit eccentric, but totally dedicated. I have an inkling she gave up on me about half
way through our sessions though. I “exasperated” her, she had said. I carried on going because she fascinated me. She had a look of Ann Widdecombe on speed (use your imagination), her bright, intelligent eyes always stoically interested in whatever bullshit I came out with week after week. God bless her.

  Where was I? Oh yes, I remember. So having made a conscious decision to hang onto my security blanket of guilt, I left it unhindered to wend its insidious way into my psyche, to remain there well fed and cared for until the cosmos or some higher power made the decision to smite me down with its memory.

  This epiphany, insight or whatever you want to call it, had an enormous effect on me. I could now envisage every bad thing I had ever done – and there were plenty – for exactly what they were. Without the gloss coat of inflicted guilt as a catalyst, they were shabby episodes of hedonistic greed and self-indulgence disguised as reaction.

  I am just about conceited enough to assume you want to know what I did with this insightful regression into my life. Well I’ll tell you – I went to Waterstones. Yep, that’s exactly what I did. I went to Waterstones and bought a book on the Ancient Art of Shamanism. I have to admit it wasn’t the book I went in there for, I was looking for Jilly Cooper’s latest offering, just to make myself feel better, as you do. However, as soon as I walked into the shop my eye was drawn to the fifty per cent off table, now extended to seventy-five, and there sitting on top, was the beautifully illustrated book.

  Being a sucker for books that will look nice on the coffee table, I perused the blurb. Shamanism was a new concept for me; of course I’d heard of it, although not in enough detail to want to add it to the rest of the bulging trivia already packed into my under-used brain. But beggar me, if synchronicity wasn’t working in full force that day. The blurb promised that upon reading the book I would – “Take a voyage into the wilderness within and find true freedom”. How could I resist that? Especially as it offered the bonus of finding my totem animal – guardian spirit to you and me – although I never quite got that far.

  Now, you have to understand that meeting my priest from the past wasn’t the only contributor to my present state. God no, things are never that simple, are they?

  You see, a few months prior to this unexpected meeting, and after years in the self-imposed dating wilderness following my divorce, I finally lowered my expectations of the opposite sex enough to start seeing one. Robbie Collins… strange to think there was a time when just hearing that name had the power to send my brain soaring off on any number of flights of fancy and now it makes me want to spit. Robbie, the man with a body hewn by hard physical work and features arranged in such a way that whatever his expression, he was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Robbie, the bloody commitment-phobe.

  Of course, I wasn’t aware of his aversion to commitment. Mind you, it has to be said, he hid it well. You see, I was at the stage of planning ahead, as we women tend to do. Which house would we live in – his or mine? Should we get a dog or a cat? How would the boys feel about their mother living with a man? That sort of thing. He, on the other hand wasn’t, but by the time my brain had assimilated that fact, it was too late – I had humiliated myself to such an extent I still cringe about it now.

  So you see, this combination of self-realisation and self-humiliation coming in such close succession – aided to some extent by the book – is what has prompted my trip today. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I read the book and reconnected with my soul or found my spirit guide, I might have done if I’d put some real effort into it, but I did reach a few conclusions. The main one being…I Had To Change…I Would Change! My whole life had been about trying to evade the impact of pain, denying who I really was…well, no longer. I damn well know who I am now, and I don’t much like what I’ve found.

  For once though, I’m not prepared to take the whole blame…I think someone else should have a share of it…and that would be…My Mother. I didn’t want to mention my mother again quite this soon, but on reflection I think I must. She was such an integral part of my formative years and as I’ve already said, I now feel her to be partly to blame for the shambles that has been my life thus far. So forgive me while I veer off at this point, I will return to the subject in hand, but in order to fully understand what I’m going to tell you, (unfortunately) you have got to meet my mother.

  Chapter Two

  I disliked my mother. Make no mistake about that, I really did, but after my aforementioned sessions with Patti, I now know that it’s perfectly acceptable. In fact, once the concept finally dawned on me, I felt so liberated that I went out and bought a fridge magnet that proclaimed in large red letters, “Friends Welcome, Family by Appointment”.

  Let me explain. Margaret Hessey, my mother, was a nasty person – actually, I really think the Third Reich suffered considerably by her absence. I can say that without fear of reprisal because she is now six feet under – I would say pushing up the daisies, but as nothing has ever grown on her grave, I won’t bother.

  She was also the meanest person I have ever known. I kid you not; she could peel an orange in her pocket and eat it before you knew she had it. You might think I’m being unfair to the deceased, but read on and you’ll see what I mean.

  My mother was a tall angular woman, not a soft edge in sight. Her countenance, I know from looking at pictures of her in her younger years, might once have been called handsome. It’s an old-fashioned description, but in this instance rather fitting.

  I mention the pictures because in my lifetime (she had me when she was forty), I could only ever describe her appearance as acerbic. She gave the impression she was permanently sucking a particularly sour sherbet dab. Add to this steel grey, perfectly coiffed hair and I’m sure you’re getting the picture.

  She was probably born nasty, but my father’s desertion to the furthest place he could find – Australia – didn’t help one whit. Left alone in our immaculate semi just outside Exeter, she festered until any residue of humanity she might once have possessed, curled up its heels and bid a fond adieu.

  I’ve pondered on that since, and I don’t think it was my father’s desertion that finally did the damage – I think it was the fact that he didn’t take me with him. You see, my mother never wanted children, I know this to be true because she rammed it home at least twice weekly.

  Using a method that guaranteed success – not partaking of the heinous act – she managed to get to forty, childless. You may be wondering, given that I wasn’t yet born, how I know such intimate details of my parents’ sex life. Well, it’s simple; I eavesdropped on a conversation. I’ll let you know about that shortly.

  In a way I can see my mother’s logic, no matter how off-kilter it appeared. You have to look at this in the context of my mother being a religious zealot. She was a devout Catholic, and I mean devout, in the strictest sense. One of her favourite rants, and I fully believe the nuns in her convent school instilled it into her, was that “the sexual act was for procreation only”. Therefore, having decided she didn’t want children, she was obliged to abstain.

  As you can imagine, this can’t have done much for my father, who I know from my eavesdropping had to make alternative arrangements with regard to his carnal desires. OK, I hope that’s my last word on my parents’ sex life, as thinking about it has the same effect on me as silver paper on a tooth filling – have you ever done that?

  So, there I am trapped in a pristine two-up two-down semi with a woman who loves the Gospels, but hates her child. Nice! My mother was obsessed with cleanliness. I think if OCD had been around then, she’d have been a prime target for diagnosis.

  The kitchen was a typical sixties style – bland cupboard doors and Formica worktops. One thing that always looked out of place was a pretty, glass-fronted wall cabinet, holding my mother’s collection of china. My mother liked china. She liked to drink her tea from a proper cup and saucer. A common or garden mug never saw the light of day in our house.

  ‘Mugs are for navvies and common people,’ s
he said, on numerous occasions. She liked to think herself a cut above; I think it was to do with her job as a senior planning officer for the council. She had power and knew how to wield it. I heard it said, in the first six months after her retirement there was an unprecedented flurry of new building and extension plans submitted to the planning office, followed by an unprecedented flurry of new buildings and extensions appearing around the town. It’s safe to say her job, combined with her Chairmanship of St Bartholomew’s Church Restoration Fund, gave her delusions of grandeur.

  The cabinet held two services, the ordinary everyday set and a hideous Royal Albert red and pink flowery creation, which she classed as “best”. The lounge was a perfect fifties throwback, all spotless nylon carpet, itchy sofas and G-Plan. Two lamps, their shades still wrapped in the original cellophane, stood either side of a brass crucifix on the sideboard.

  I can’t tell you the amount of times I wanted to rip off that cellophane, I mean, what is the point of buying two lamps with perfectly good shades and then keeping them covered? To me, it’s like having your hair done and then wearing a hat; mind you, old women do that as well, don’t they?

  I did my best to avoid my mother’s wrath, mainly because in full meltdown she was like a stealth bomber; you didn’t see her coming until you got blown away by the blast. I’ll give you an example or two, but before I do, you need to know my mother didn’t believe in outright violence. What she did believe in was far worse, and honestly, there were times when I would have much preferred a swift kick up the backside.

  Picture this… it was a Sunday morning; I was sitting in the kitchen dressed in my church clothes, trying to play with the cat while waiting for my mother to come downstairs. I didn’t like the cat; he was as cold and unsociable as his owner, but periodically I liked to make an effort to remind him he had once been a playful kitten.

  That morning he was particularly unresponsive and after a hiss of annoyance, he jumped from my arms. That would have been fine, except in his rush his claws caught the tablecloth and dragged it, and a jug of milk, down with him. The almighty crash had my mother in the kitchen in seconds. As she stood in the doorway taking in the scene, I couldn’t help my heart beating in time to the purple vein pulsating on her almost transparent temple. I was in deep trouble and stood transfixed by my mother’s distorted features, awaiting the inevitable.