The Funny Thing About Christianity...

...is that it really is the salt and leaven of human life. It's not just that the slightest tinge of Christianity tends to raise life, both individual and social, to a higher plateau. It's that even the enemies and the deriders of the Faith tend to communicate its fascination and its power, in spite of themselves.

Rationalist and secular "debunkers" of Christianity simply can't help presenting it as deeper and more compelling than their own vision of reality. One always gets the impression they are trying to keep the miraculous, the supernatural and the transcendent at bay-- and that they return to the topic so often because it haunts them.

I think, for instance, of the fanatical secularist biologist PZ Myers who desecrated the Eucharist as an act of supposed protest against organized religion. Why was this man driven to re-enact the drama of Calvary? Surely there could be few more powerful demonstrations of the psychological grip that the story of Jesus has upon us all?

But right now I am thinking of the various satirical sketches that Rowan Atkinson has performed, in which he makes fun of Anglican clergymen. This one, for instance, is a skit on the present Archbishop of Canterbury. It's not especially well-observed, or funny, or original-- it's rather juvenile and mean-spirited.

But my point is that, even in a sketch intended to poke fun, Christianity seems more appealing than anything else we will encounter.

We now have a centuries-long tradition of satire on the Church of England-- literally hundreds of hand-rubbing, stammering, desperately earnest, politically correct comic vicars and curates and bishops, forever straining to draw some "spiritual" moral or allegory from anything that happens, or to show that Christianity is still "with it". ("And in a way, we are all like that man in the Bob Dylan song...")

Catholics frequently complain that the Church of England has compromised what remained of its orthodoxy almost to vanishing point, and in this we are generally in agreement with secular satirists.

But here is my whole point-- that even the good old Church of England, that barely seems recognizably Christian to traditionalists, as seen through the distorting lens of unsympathetic satire-- even that seems infinitely more charming, humane and sane that anything the modern world has to offer, in all seriousness.

More tea, vicar? Yes, please.

Be Afraid. Be Mildly Afraid.

It's another trio of my Hundred Nightmares! Because a Catholic blog is just the place you come to read short and barbed tales of the macabre, the monstrous and the morbid, right?

(As a matter of fact, though quite a few of these tales are grislier and naughtier and bleaker than they would have been if they had been written after-- and not just before-- I started practicing my faith, there were only a couple of stories that I decided, after much humming and hawing, were just too risqué for a blog called Irish Papist. As for the other borderline ones, well, I plead artistic freedom!)

Nightmare Twenty-Three: The Corridor

She found herself standing in a long corridor, a thick green carpet underfoot, soft electric lights in the form of old-fashioned lanterns hanging on the walls.

The air was warm. It was uttery silent, but even the silence seemed gentle.

Katrina looked down at herself, and a tremor passed through her. She recognised what she was wearing instantly. It was the loose, grey baseball sweater she’d worn when she was seventeen. The soft black pants and the white runners were from the same time, too. The happiest time of her life, when everything seemed to glow with promise.

How old was she? What was the last thing she could remember? She strained her memory, but nothing came.

She stepped forward, looking at the doors on her right and left. They were varnished mahogany, with brass panels at eye-levels, and decorated brass handles. Each panel had a date inscribed on it, in florid script. The first said:

12 July 1968.

But I wasn’t even born then, thought Katrina. She grasped the handle (which was warm, as though someone had just been holding it) and opened the door.

A man and a woman were sitting at a kitchen table in a dark, crowded kitchen. For a moment, Katrina thought the woman was herself. Then, with a wrenching sense of dislocation, she realised it was her mother, aged eighteen or so.

But she didn’t recognise the man at all. It was not her father, but a curly-headed, wide-browed man who looked much older than Katrina’s mother.

The two were speaking in low voices. They did not look up at her. Katrina knew that they couldn’t see her, though she could smell the cooking in the air.

“Think of it, Katrina”, said the man, in deep, rich tones. “A little kid brought up in the atmosphere of scandal and resentment and blame. This is still a very puritanical society, though we like to pretend we’re liberated.”

Her mother’s eyes were red, but she looked as though she had cried all her tears. She was staring at the man, and her eyes burned with fury.

“You’re liberated, anyway, aren’t you?”, she said. “Aren’t you?”

Katrina closed the door. She didn’t want to hear anymore.

She walked along the corridor, her heart palpitating. A thousand images crowded into her mind, precious moments shared with a father who had never been her father at all. She began to run through the corridor.

She stopped before another door. It read 3 March 1986.

She opened it. There she stood, dressed in a denim shirt and tight jeans. She was at a concert. It was sparsely attended, and she didn’t recognise the bluesy guitar filling her ears. Judy O’Connor and Alison Burns were standing with her, and all of them were clutching cans of beer.

“The drummer is kind of cute” said the Katrina of 1986. The Katrina listening winced at the tone of studied nonchalance—- almost lethargy—- she used.

Alison and Judy looked towards the stage, and began to giggle. “Whatever floats your boat”, said Alison. “But I’d rather be capsized myself.”

Her two friends broke out in gales of laughter, and a moment later, Katrina joined in. For a moment, the Katrina was seized with pity for the Katrina of 1986, a pity that felt nothing at all like self-pity. The girl was so insecure, so utterly at sea. How had she ever been so lost?

“I need to go take a leak”, announced Katrina 1986.

Katrina thought that the scene before her would change to the bathroom of the concert venue, but her younger self walked out of view, and she remained standing before Alison and Judy. Their eyes followed her, and then Alison said—in a voice as low as the music would permit: “Do we have to tell Katrina about your cousin’s party?”

“Nah”, said Judy, with a promptness that was like a knife in Katrina’s guts. Judy had been her kindred spirit, her near-sister. Katrina had cried for weeks when she’d died in the car-crash.

“She’s great” said Alison. “I mean, she’s fun, but...”

“So needy” said Judy. “She’ll always be a little girl at heart.”

Katrina slammed the door shut, so hard she imagined her two old friends looking up in surprise, and moved on.

Scene succeeded scene, stage after stage in her life. Nothing seemed to be as she had believed it. She opened door after door, and the last showed two nurses drawing the curtains around the hospital bed of an old woman, her face grey, drips hanging from her arms. The nurse was crying.

“Some of them hurt you more than others”, said the red-haired nurse that Katrina had liked least. She’d thought her a moody bitch.

The corridor ended there, with two doors left before her. One had a brass plaque that read, “Return to the Beginning”, and the other, “Exit.”

Katrina stood there for fully five minutes, thinking.

Then she reached towards the handle of the door that read “Exit”.

It opened, and she heard—-

.....

Nightmare Twenty-Four: The Savage Night

It was the worst storm Francis had seen in years. It was the night of a full moon. It was just the night he’d been waiting for.

Sheets of rain were beating against his windows, as though outraged by any obstacle. The howl of the wind was like the wailing of some ancient god.

Francis whistled to himself, cheerfully, as he pulled his boots on.

He had once been the plainest of men. Perhaps not ordinary, because Grome was a tiny village, and village life was accounted odd by the wide world. Even in Grome, Francis had always been thought of as a man apart. In such a small village, nobody could be a recluse.

Not that Francis wanted to be a recluse. He was to be found in the Friar Tuck most nights, sitting with the others, even if he seldom joined the conversation. When he did join in, it was to supply some fact or piece of information; the name of a villager’s child, the year when a shop had been opened, the exact spot where a car accident had taken place some years before. He didn’t have any opinions.

Most of the time, though, he spent on his own. Eery weekend, he would explore Old Man Bentback, the mountain—the maps called it a hill—that overlooked Grome..

He’d grown aware of something there a long time ago. He would find the remains of rabbits and foxes torn to bloody shreds . He would find mysterious paw-prints in the soft earth, bigger than that of any animal native to Old Man Bentback.

And, eventually, he saw it, through his binoculars, scampering from place to place. What looked like a man on all fours, except that it moved with much greater speed and ease than any crouching man could.

Francis, a supreme realist, didn’t suffer from the kind of superstition that rules out the supernatural-— or anything else, for that matter. He remembered, as a boy, hearing Grome legends—- fading, even back then—- about something that the old folk called the Grey Man. The Grey Man had had been blamed for the slaughter of sheep, even for the disappearance of infants from their cots.

“Once Old Man Bentback was thick with Grey Men”, one old women had said, giving Francis a gummy smile. “Or so my mother told me.” It was one of his oldest, haziest memories.

And then there was the hut.

Francis often wondered if anybody in Grome even knew about the hut. Not that they would be very excited if they did, and who could blame them? It was the simplest of wooden structures, lacking even a window. Its timbers were rotting and it swayed in the wind, but it still stood, and it must have withstood hundreds of bitter storms already. No, it was nothing too remarkable.

Except for the fact that something lived there.

It had been in the hut that Francis’s life had changed, three years ago. On the night of a full moon. Then he had learnt all about the Grey Men. Then he had learned all about Old Man Bentback.

Once every month since that night, he had become a part of the mountain. His ears had been finally been opened to its savage music-- hearing it not as a distant melody, but plain and clear.

But, for all that, the life of a Grey Man was a bitter life. What could be worse than an existence torn between beast and man?

So here he was, climbing to the home of the creature that had ushered him into this new life, time and again losing his footing on the muddy earth underfoot, struggling against the furious wind.

The thing was standing before the hut when he reached it, a man-shaped shadow against the starlight.

“I thought you’d come back”, it said. Its voice was so rough that it took Francis a moment to realise that it was speaking English. He was close enough now to see that it was naked, despite the storm and the bone-piercing cold.

“I can’t live like this”, said Francis.

The thing watched him. Somehow, Francis imagined it was smiling.

“What makes you think I can do anything about that?”, it asked.

“I don’t know”, said Francis. “Ever since you...changed me...there are so many new things I understand. You can change me again, can’t you?”

“Maybe”, said the Grey Man. “Maybe. I see you brought me a gift.”

“I hope that it’s enough”, said Francis, passing the little bundle to the Grey Man.

“Oh, it’s more than enough”, said the Grey Man. He lowered his head and sniffed appreciatively, growled as a cat would purr, then drew back reluctantly. “And I can change you again. This world is no world for our kind, is it? I remain as I am, only for the sake of the bloodline. Maybe the world will change again. But you...you, I liberate.”

The thing leaned forward, and its fangs tore into Francis’s upper arm. The hill resounded with his screams, and once again, he began to change form.

Perhaps three minutes later, the naked man grinned benevolently —and enviously—as a grey wolf scampered from the bundle of clothes on the dank earth before him, into the welcoming night.

..........

Nightmare Twenty-Five: Pultergist

Dear Mum, Sandra and me love the house, the kitchin is so cozy and it’s all so specious, it’s warm too, it’s exciting owning my own house, and having Sandra makes it the bees knees. There is rumurs of a poultergist but I don’t believe all that rubbage. The last owner said she never heard anthing anyway and she was hear five years. Anyway I have to go I hear Sandra coming in I love you Mum take care now Bobby

After labouring over the message for ten minutes, Bobby clicked on “send”. The message would be in his mother’s computer a second later. He marvelled at the modern-day miracle, as he always did. He had first used the internet two years ago, and it still amazed him.

He wondered when his mother would check her email. Probably not for days. He loved his mother but she wasn’t very organized.

He got up from the computer table and staggered out to the hallway, stiff from sitting so long.

Sandra, still wearing her coat, gave him a look of mild surprise when she saw him walking through the living-room door.

“Is somebody here?” she asked, in a low voice.

“Only me” said Bobby.

“I thought you were in the kitchen”, said Sandra. She was a plump woman, pink-faced from exertion right now. Bobby thought she looked her cutest like that.

“No” said Bobby. “At least...”

They both walked to the kitchen door, slowly. Bobby pushed the door open, and stepped through quickly.

There was nothing there, but the window was open.

“Must have left the window open”, said Bobby. “Cats...”

“Oh well”, said Sandra. “I got something for the house, hon. Wait till you see.”

She reached into her shopping bag, and drew out a statuette of a soccer player. It was made of plastic and brightly painted.

“Georgie Best!” said Bobby, taking it eagerly. His eyes shone like a child’s, and Sandra smiled. He stood it on the table, leaned over, said, “It’s beautiful, babe”, and kissed her.

As they were locked in a kiss, the lights in the house flickered. Neither of them noticed. Their eyes were shut tight.

“Now I’m going to make a cup of tea and watch Ladies Don’t Faint”, said Sandra, drawing back slowly.

“What the hell is that?” asked Bobby.

“Oh, some costume drama thing....but, hon, the woman who lived here before us is one of the script-writers! Can you imagine that?”

“Wow”, said Bobby. “Maybe it’s a good luck house.”

* * *

Dear Mum may be I spoke to soon about the poltergust. We been decorating the house and strange things happen. Our picture of babys swimmin with dolphins kept falling of the wall, and my George Best statue went missing. The TV keeps cutting out too but Ralph says nothings wrong with it. I asked the last lady who lived here about the poltrgist she said it was a school teacher who fell down the stairs and hit her head I love you Mum take care

* * *

“Do you smell something?”, asked Sandra, her hand paused in the air, a length of sticky tape clasped between finger and thumb. It was three days before Christmas and they were wrapping presents in their bedroom.

Bobby sniffed once, and then leaped off the bed. “Smoke!”, he cried.

As soon as they were downstairs they could see thick clouds of it crawling along the ceiling. It was coming from the sitting room.

“The tree”, gasped Sandra. “Oh hon..”

Bobby leaped forward, pushed the living room door, and then flinched from the black fog that billowed out the open door. He reached up to Sandra, grabbed her hand, and shouted: “We’re getting the hell out, babe.”

* * *

Dear Mum DON’T WORRY everythings OK well we are both alive and the baby is fine and that’s the main thing isn’t it? I have to be honest the house is completely gutted. Everything was ruined all the stuff we’d got for the house. Something funny, the fire burnd all our books to sinders all my soccer and war books but all the books you ever bought me were OK. You know, Robinson Cruso and The Tree Mustkateers and The Man in the Iron Mask and all them. They werent even charred. Maybe God is telling me I shold read them!!!

Anyway we shud be able to move back in soon and Sandra is already making plans you know Sandra. She is going to start a book club. She even knows what the first book will be it’s something by Barbra Cartland I love you Mum Bobby

How I Didn't Write an Article on Blessed Columba Marmion

Sometimes commenters on this blog are kind enough to suggest I should write articles for Catholic publications. I have actually done this a few times, and I'd like to do more, but I can't help being amused by a recent effort of mine to follow this advice.

It's pretty obvious to anyone who's read more than a few posts here that my writing is, for better or worse, very subjective and autobiograpical and personal. This is the kind of writing I like to read as well as to write, as I've mentioned often before.

But I felt, if I was going to submit an article to the print press, I should strive for something more objective and informative and factual.

One day-- come to think of it, I can say for sure that it was last October 3rd-- I was interested to hear the priest in the church in UCD mention Blessed Columba Marmion, whose feast day it was, in his homily.

I was interested because I had never even heard of Blessed Columba Marmion. The priest mentioned that he was an Irishman who became abbot of a monastery in Belgium, but I had no idea if that was in the golden age of Irish Christianity or whether it was in more recent times.

I looked up Columba Marmion as soon as I got back to the library. It turns out that he died in 1923, and was beatified by John Paul the Second in 2000. He was the abbot of the Benedictine abbey in Maredsous, as well as a much sought-after speaker at spiritual retreats. A trilogy of spiritual works, based upon his retreats, became hugely successful in the last years of his life. Marmion was actually considered to be the most popular Christian spiritual writer in Europe, at one time.

What better subject for an Irish Catholic publication, I thought? I jumped into my research straight away.

Columba Marmion's writings have something of a "back to basics" appeal to them-- at a time when Catholic spiritual books were mostly tracts of rather dense Scholastic philosophy, Marmion's work was considered to be a refreshingly simple return to the Gospels. (Or so it seemed to contemporaries-- by today's standards, his works are quite dense and dry themselves. I don't know whether this is evidence of that much-discussed phenomenon, "dumbing down".)

I found them tough going myself. Or rather, I found the single volume I read, Christ the Life of the Soul, to be tough going.

Marmion certainly goes back to the Gospel-- in fact, the book is mostly a compendium of quotations from Scripture. There's nothing at all wrong with that, of course, and I found several passages very inspiring. But on the whole, the book didn't interest me greatly-- I felt I had encountered all the ideas in it before. And I wondered why so many readers in the early twentienth century (as I learned from my background reading) had been so galvanized by Marmion. The style was not at all compelling-- although to be fair, Marmion's books were originally written in French, and (as previously mentioned) drawn from lecture notes. His biographer has explained that the published writings don't do justice to the man's personality, or his playful sense of humour.

I don't mean any of this as a slight upon Blessed Columba Marmion's work. In fact, Blessed John Paul the Second, when he was announcing Marmion's beatification, called for a renewal of interest in his writings. So I have no doubt that I am simply missing something. Nevertheless, the fact remained that I couldn't really "get into" the book.

Even though I was only planning an article of five hundred words or so, I also read a short book-length biography of the man (written by Mark Tierney OSB) and quite a few journal articles. One of the good things about working in a university library is that I have access to a huge range of books and journals, academic and not-so-academic, in print and online.

When I had finished my research, I found myself putting off actually writing it. Whenever I did find myself thumping the keyboard, I always had other stuff to write about.

So I put it off-- and I put it off-- and eventually, I had to admit that I wasn't going to get round to writing it at all.

The thing is, I just couldn't think of anything to say on the subject. Nothing suggested itself. If I tried to draw some moral or elaborate some theme arising from Marmion's life and writings, it would be entirely contrived and forced. And I felt I would be doing the great man a disservice.

I suppose I could have written a purely informative, encyclopedia-style article with a garnish of a few personal observations. But reading those kind of articles is something of a purgatory to me, never mind writing them. This might be why I am so ignorant.

So if anyone thinks it is pure perversity that makes me write almost two and a half thousand words on the subject of titles, or a long post on the appeal of Star Trek to a religious conservative, I hope that little account might clear me of such suspicion. I find it hard to write on a subject that doesn't interest me. And I find it hard to stop writing on a subject that does interest me. And, yes, the things that interest me can be idiosyncratic. But trying to convey that interest is the challenge, and the fun.

Not that I've entirely given up on writing about things that don't positively send my fingers flying around the keyboard of their accord. I just find it tough, that's all. And I suspect the results would be as little fun for the reader as they were for the writer.

P.S. After writing this article, I remembered something Marmion had written that did really strike me and stick in my mind-- that every moment of every day should be a preparation for receiving the Eucharist.

I Agree with Mark Shea and not with Michael Voris

I'm a bit late coming to it, but I've just come across this Hallowe'en post on Mark Shea's wonderful Catholic and Enjoying It! blog, in which he defends the great Fr. Robert Barron from an attack by Michael Voris.

If you don't know who Michael Voris is, I advise you to keep it that way. He is a Catholic television presenter who runs an internet TV station called Church Militant and who specializes in attacking other Catholics, as well as the Church authorities (though cannily avoiding attacking the Pope-- both Benedict and now Francis-- even when intellectual consistency would seem to demand it).

To my mind, both Mark Shea and Fr. Barron are perfect examples of that dialogue with secular culture which Pope Francis has called for. Voris, on the other hand, seems to have nothing to say to anybody except a convinced Catholic, and a convinced Catholic of rigorist views at that. (And I don't mean orthodox. I mean rigorist.)

The whole tone and atmosphere of Voris's polemics are clearly contrary to that of the last forty or fifty years of Papal encylicals and Magisterial documents. If there is such a thing as a sensus fidelum, Church Militant TV and their like are clearly out of step with it.

Mark Shea and Fr. Barron have both been instrumental in consolidating and deepening my own Catholic faith. I'm with them, not with Voris.

More Nightmares

It's time for another triple bill of my Hundred Nightmares!

Nightmare Twenty: Get Well Soon

Amber was having a smoke in the hospital grounds when she saw him.

“Hey”, she said, callling over and waving. “Hey, over here.”

The man looked up, saw her, stopped, and then began to trudge towards the bench where Amber was sitting. He was dressed like an undertaker, except his suit was grey rather than black. At first he seemed of no particular age, but as he came closer, she saw that his face deeply lined. He looked sick himself.

“Hello”, he said, in a reedy voice. He seemed shy, even nervous.

“You left flowers for my mother”, said Amber. “Last week. I saw you.”

“How is she?”, the man asked, suddenly eager.

“Better”, said Amber, smiling. “She’s going to make it now.”

The man didn’t smile, but Amber could see the relief on his face. He looked as though some enormous weight had been momentarily lifted from him. Amber warmed to him even more.

“Won’t you sit down?”, she asked, patting the bench beside her.

The man seemed reluctant. Amber grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards the bench.

“How do you know my mother?”, she asked, as soon as he was sitting.

The man looked away, towards some pigeons who were pecking for food in the grass. He looked so uncomfortable that Amber felt a little guilty.

“I didn’t know your mother”, he admitted, almost furtively.

Amber was taken aback. The bouquet had been luxurious. The first explanation that occurred to her was that he’d been some old admirer.

“It’s very kind to give such lovely flowers to a stranger”, said Amber, not knowing what else to say.

The man laughed. It wasn’t a joyous laugh. It might even have been a bitter one. “Kind?" he asked. His voice was hoarse, almost parched. “That’s funny.”

Silence hung between them. Amber felt embarrassed, but more curious than embarrassed.

“You don’t look too well”, she ventured. “You should go to a doctor.”

“I hope to God I die!” said the man, with sudden and surprising vehemence.

He started to rise from the bench at that. But once again, Amber grabbed him by the wrist, surprising herself by the act. He looked at her with wide eyes.

“Sit down”, she said, her voice almost stern. “Talk to me. What you did was kind. It was.”

The man sat down again. His seemed overwhelmed, exhausted.

“You want to hear my story?”, he asked, still avoiding her eyes.

“Yes”, said Amber. “Yes, I do want to hear it.”

The man gave another mirthless laugh. “Well, maybe it’s time”, he said, looking into the middle distance. “Maybe...”

Amber said nothing. She sat there, watching the man, waiting.

“Nobody brought me flowers, you see”, he said. “I almost died in hospital. Many years ago now. I was living alone at the time. My wife had left me some months before. I had no friends. My parents were long dead.

“Those flowers”, he said, shaking his head, staring into the air as though he was seeing into the past. “They tortured me. All the beds beside me, they had flowers. I had none. So...so I started stealing them.”

It seemed a rather trivial sin, but he confessed it as though it was murder.

“Not from my own ward, of course”, he said. “From others, as soon as I was well enough to wander around. And...and then I started to get better.

“The flowers, you see...they’re love. They’re life. At least, somehow, I stumbled on a way to use them like that. Don’t ask me how. But I flourished, and...well, even after I got out, I kept going to hospitals and stealing them. It gave me life. It gave me power. I was never sick. I could work my will on anybody. I had everything a man could want, except..except for love.”

He closed his eyes at that, as though exhausted by the confession.

“And none of it is worth a damn, without that, is it?

So finally I began giving it all back. All the life-force I had taken. I began visiting strangers, leaving flowers...it seemed to make them better, most of the time.”

“Maybe they did make people feel better”, said Amber, moved to pity by this forlorn stranger. “But you never harmed anybody. You didn’t feed on anybody’s...anybody’s life-force. This is all in your head. That’s all.”

“Is it?” asked the man, his voice just audible, as though he was falling asleep. There was a smile on his face-- a sardonic smile, but one with a tinge of peace to it. “You see, I was taken into hospital just before the war. The Kaiser’s war…”

His voice trailed off, and a few moments later, Amber realised he was dead.

* * * *


Nightmare Twenty-One: A Quick Breakfast

Alistair loved the early train. He hated getting up early, but it was worth it to sit in an all-but empty train, staring out a world half-lit by dawn. It was a world of infinite promise.

And often, on the early train, he had the whole carriage to himself. That was the best part. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife and children. They were his entire world. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Now and again, you liked to step out of your world. Now and again, you wanted to become nobody.

Right now, he wasn’t Assistant Head of Marketing at a frozen food company. He wasn’t returning from a conference in Belfast. He wasn’t married to a woman (who he adored) called Penny, and he didn’t have two daughters (who he would die for) called Alison and Melody

He was a man, sitting alone, going from one place to another. That’s all anybody who walked down the aisle would see in him. But nobody had walked down the aisle. There were a few other passengers—- he had seen them getting on—- but they had all boarded closer to the front.

He had brought a book, just to have it—- a Western he had picked up in a second-hand bookshop, just before the conference—- but he didn’t expect he would open it. No, it was entertainment enough just to gaze out the window, to see mile after mile of green fields zoom past. It wasn’t scenic, but he didn’t need scenery. Empty fields were fine. There was something so cleansing, so revitalising in the very sight of them.

And then somebody did come down the aisle. Alistair looked up at him. It was a man who might have been in his late sixties. He was tall, weathered, stubbled. His hair was pale blonde and his clothes were worn.

He met Alistair’s eye, and smiled. Alistair knew he was going to sit opposite him. He returned the smile, perfunctorily, and stared back out the window, ignoring the man as he peeled off his coat and settled into his seat.

After three or four minutes, the man asked: “Have you had breakfast?”

He had a deep voice. He pronounced his words so precisely, so much against the current of his strong accent, that Alistair guessed he was mostly self-educated.

“Yes”, said Alistair.

“Care to join me in my breakfast?”, the man asked, pulling two lunchboxes out of his bag. “To be honest, one of them is my lunch, but I hate to eat alone. Let’s not have a tedious argument about it.”

“OK, then”, said Alistair, picking up the lunchbox, and hoping there were no ham sandwiches. “Thanks”.

The lunchbox was packed. A foil package of salad sandwiches lay at the top. Alistair began to eat them, while his intrusive companion asked him questions. He tried to fob him off with vague replies, but the man was insatiable. Within ten minutes, he knew most of what there was to know about Alistair’s life.

That was when Alistair, reaching down to the next foil package, touched something metallic. He looked up, and the man gave him an impish smile.

“There’s a surprise at the bottom of the box”, he said, chuckling.

Alistair lifted the foil package. It was heavy. He unwrapped it, and somehow wasn’t surprised to find himself holding a small black pistol.

He looked back up at his companion. The man was pointing a similar pistol at Alistair. And his grin had widened.

“You have sixty seconds”, he said, his voice perfectly even. “Sixty seconds to pull the trigger and plant a bullet in me. If you haven’t shot me by then, you’re never going to leave this train. One...two...”

Alistair stared at the man, at the gun, at the finger resting on the trigger. The fields, innocent and full of potential, sped past outside. A recorded voice announced that they were approaching the first stop.

The man had reached twenty when Alistair leaned forward and slapped him in the face.

Then Alistair punched him in the stomach, and as he doubled over, wrested the gun from his limp hand.

The man slowly rose back to a sitting position, staring at Alistair with wild and confused eyes.

“What’s the problem?” asked Alistair, dropping both guns onto the table between them. “Did I do something wrong?

"Were you expecting me to pull the trigger at the last moment? Was I supposed to be surprised that the gun wasn’t loaded? Were you supposed to give me a knowing smile, put your pistoal away, and get off at the next station? Was I supposed to be grateful for a new lease of life? Was I supposed to have learnt some kind of lesson? Were you going to shock me out of the banality of my existence?”

The man could only stare at him, the embodiment of shock.

“Let me tell you what I do”, said Alistair. “I flog frozen food. I go home to my wife and children every night. I watch situation comedies on television. Sometimes I host dinner parties. I fish at weekends. I read Westerns, history, a few classics. And every single day, I’m grateful for being alive. I chose a life and I’m living it. And I’m just fine with that.”

He pushed the pistols across the table, back towards their owner.

“One of us is lost and empty”, said Alistair. “But it’s not me.”

.....

Nightmare Twenty-Two: A Sketch

The queue stretched from the single cash register to the little stand of light fiction novels. The old woman at its head was laboriously searching her handbag for her purse. Mandy sighed, and wandered away from her mother.

She’d lost her job two months ago, and was still looking for a new one. This daytime world had been a revelation at first—- life actually went on while most people her age were in school or college or at work!—- but watching gameshows and sitting in empty pubs with her friend Cathy (who’d been thrown onto the dole on the same day as Mandy) had quickly palled.

No mon, no fun. She’d always hated that saying. Well, having no cash in your pocket was a real pain, but in the end, it wasn’t the worst part of life on the dole. Her parents were always there to tide her over, even to make sure she could afford the occasional night out or trip to the cinema.

No, it was the aimlessness. Life had to be going somewhere. So maybe working in a creche hadn’t been a career, but it had been...it had been a framework. There had been a reason to go to bed, to get out of bed, to hurry for the bus, something to complain about. There had been the drama of the other girls’ lives, their lousy boyfriends, their unsympathetic parents. Now the only drama she had was Day by Day and Northsiders.

She ambled to the stationery shelves, staring listessly at the coloured pencils, mathematical sets and staplers. There was a row of felt-tip pens jutting up through a cardboard collar. Idly, she drew one out, and scribbled a zig-zag line on the cardboard. The fine, dark line of ink that it left gave her more pleasure than she’d had all day.

She snapped the cap back on the pen, and looked for some paper. She plucked a drawing pad from the middle shelf, and went to join her mother. The old woman was still at the head of queue, counting her change.

* * *

When they got home, she took her purchases up to her room. She felt a strange but intense excitement.

She laid the sketch-pad out on the floor—she had no table—and sat cross-legged before it. She turned the cover, and uncapped the pen. She loved the faint click that it made.

Mandy stared down at the white page. She remembered how it felt to look out her bedroom window, as a child, and see a thick blanket of snow lying on the ground. It was beautiful and clean and untouched, but it still cried out to be used, to have its gleaming potential fulfilled.

She laid the tip of the pen on the paper, and drew a gently curving line. She had no idea what it was. It was the beginning of a road leading anywhere.

An hour later, her mother knocked on the door. “Cathy on the phone for you.”

Mandy swore under her breath, rose up—- pins and needles surging through her legs as she did so—- and walked to the door. She opened it a fraction, and whispered: “Can you tell her I’m asleep?”

* * *

“We should do something about Mandy”, said her mother.

Her husband grunted, and changed the channel to a motor sports programme.

“Paddy, it’s been months”, said his wife, her voice taut with anxiety. “First thing in the morning, to the last thing in the night, drawing. She doesn’t want to see anyone or go anywhere. Or even apply for any jobs.”

Paddy looked around. There was a defeated look on his face, the look of a man who wants to pretend nothing is wrong but knows that it’s futile.

“And then yesterday”, said his wife, pressing the advantage. “She went into town. I thought, wonderful, she’s coming out of it. But when she came back, she was carrying a huge sheet of paper, almost half her own size...”

“Yeah?”, asked Paddy, a little helplessly.

“And this morning I went up to her room while she was in the bath”, said Mandy’s mother. “She’d been drawing all day yesterday, and there was nothing on it except—- something—- in one corner. Maybe half an inch...”

* * *

“I’m so close”, said Mandy, leaning towards her friend. “I’m so close to the end. Maybe another month or so.

Cathy smiled at her, guardedly. She hadn’t seen Mandy since Christmas. Then, her friend had been gaunt, chalk-skinned, uncommunicative. She was still gaunt and pale, but now her eyes shone and she was full of a twitchy enthusiasm.

“Don’t you get it?”, asked Mandy, reaching forward and grasping her friend’s arm. Tightly. “I just have to finish it, and then—- and then—- and then I can do anything. My whole life is opening up to me again.”

Cathy took a nervous sip of her mineral water.

“Maybe you should just—“ she began, but at that moment, Mandy slumped forward, her head knocking her glass of cola to the ground.

Half a mile away, the picture she had laboured over for three months was curling into cinders on the living room fire, and her mother was gazing down at its embers, biting her lower lip nervously. It’s for the best, her mother was reassuring herself. It’s for the best.

Are you a Bellocian?

Are you a Bellocian? Do you think you might be a Bellocian? Do you suspect someone you know and love might be a Bellocian?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes", don't panic. Just take yourself to the Central Catholic Library in 74, Merrion Square, Dublin at 1:30 this Saturday. (The same place where my Chesterton Society has had most of its meetings.)

On that day, it is hoped that an Irish Hilaire Belloc Society will be formed. This is what I've been told: "It is hoped that a president and officers can be elected, and a winter reading programme, based on the writings of Belloc, can be developed."

I am only a Bellocian in a very small way, certainly as compared with my chronic Chestertonianism. But there is a Belloc quotation at the bottom of this blog, so I suppose I am a bit of one, after all. And I will be hauling myself down there, although rather late because I am working on Saturday morning. (I was at the previous get-together, which I suppose was a kind of pre-foundational meeting. It was a lot of fun.)

Go on. Think about it!

Snowfall Remembered in Snowfall

Except for the Chinese takeaway
That opened a year ago
The street looks just as it did the day
She walked through softly falling snow
Hand in hand with her mother, home to play
With her Barbies in front of The Late Late Show.

The snowflakes glow like icy fire,
Like sparks of an unearthly flame
And seem to burn with the desire
For all loved things to stay the same;
For time to freeze, death to expire,
And snow to whirl in an endless game.

But the footprints that her mother made
Were long gone long ago.
Only memory fails to fade
And only ghosts will never go
The way of the dolls with which she played
And yesterwinter's snow.