I haven’t been sleeping well these past few nights, tossing and turning, with lurid dreams jolting me awake. Voices from the past shouting my name in accusation. Fabien! Fabien! Cross teachers and uncles firing dirty looks out of the darkness and disappearing again; a sensation of being on an operating table, the surgeons chatting about cold-water swimming and Porsche 911s, deaf to my locked-in screams. God smiling at me and wagging her finger.
And all this because of guilt. I had found a lottery ticket and effectively decided to commit a crime by telling no-one if I won money. My finders keepers, laissez faire attitude, a venal response to someone else’s misfortune. I had resolved to live life as a liar and a fraud and a thief.
But all the nightmares are over now because I didn’t win the lottery. I got one number. I snarled at my phone as the draw was made and cursed loudly. So, the deceit I was conniving ended in laughable nothingness. All I had left was the man in the mirror remembering what Freud said: true guilt lies in the intention.
As you can imagine, I was in a dark mood last Sunday morning when I woke up. “Morning sleepy-head.” It was the warm voice of Fionnuala opening the curtains. She had been out for a run. “I’m having a shower – you need to go downstairs to the wee ones and get them ready for Mass.”
Mass. I wasn’t in the form. Sitting there surrounded by holy Joes, saints staring down from the windows... “And wear something smart.” Fionnuala was closing the en suite door. “Why?” I shouted back. The door closed. “Because you are doing the readings.”
I had completely forgotten about the readings. Why, oh why did I acquiesce to Fr Austin’s request? Yes, I was an English teacher, and I knew how to stand and speak, but that was in front of a class. Not in front of a village. My sullenness continued throughout Mass, reading with a haughtiness fuelled by a “hung for a sheep as for a lamb” carefreeness. If you are present, God, strike me down!
“That was a very moving reading, Fabien.” Fr Austin was linking my arm outside the chapel. “Very spiritual. You have such a knowing tone. You are clearly close to God.”
He wasn’t the only one talking me up. A number of the parishioners nodded and smiled and a few came over and said well done. I had begun to calm down by now. Indeed I was on a little high when a car pulled up and a woman wagged me over.
It was Avril Beggs. “Fabien! You scrub up well. All set for the audition later?” I pulled a face. I had forgotten about that too, and I himmed and hawed and explained that I didn’t know the lines by heart.
“Well, you have another few hours to go over them again. Lines won’t learn themselves, Fabien, but thankfully they are not the issue this day. The issue this day is whether or not you have what it takes: the posture, the zest, the zeal, the truth.”
This place is insane – you know that? People smile and nod and pretend to ask you what you want to do, when really, they are telling you what you will be doing
Back at home I had to decline Fionnuala’s offer of going to the forest park. “I don’t mind you getting involved with Philadelphia Here I Come! Fabien, but Avril is obsessed and has neither chick nor child to hold her back from rehearsing day and night. The Bluepond Players are her family. You have responsibilities.”
“I don’t even want to get involved, Fionnuala. This place is insane – you know that? People smile and nod and pretend to ask you what you want to do, when really, they are telling you what you will be doing.”
Then they were gone, and I sat alone at the table with the script, attempting to learn Ned’s lines. “I meant to buy you something good, but the ‘oul fella didn’t sell the calf to the jobbers last Friday… and he could have the stupid bastard, such a bloody stupid bastard of an ‘oul fella.”
I could remember them. And my Donegal accent was coming along too.