Father Scanlon wanted to be at his meal, a good stew washed down with a glass of red wine. Involuntarily he licked his lips. Saturday evening confessions were always difficult: the trivial sins of his flock comingling with his sharp pangs of appetite.
His attention returned to the penitent behind the grill. The fellow was rambling, unable or unwilling to name his sin. It was the mortal sins that mattered, and the priest couldn’t judge the sins’ gravity.
‘The thoughts Father, impure they be, when I see the neighbour, y’ know. I’ve tried not looking out the window, but when she’s in the garden, when it’s sunny like, and why wouldn’t you look out in sunny weather, well I…’
‘What impure thoughts, my child?’
‘Bad thoughts, y’ know. When she’s bent over that basket of washing, a rake of bad thoughts.’
‘Sexual thoughts?’
‘That’d be the guts of it.’
‘Are there impure actions.’
‘There are.’
‘Actions with yourself?’
‘No Father. With the wife.’
‘Sexual activity with one’s wife isn’t impure, my son.’
‘Amn’t I thinking it’s the neighbour I have in bed with me, and not the wife.’
‘You fantasise?’
‘That’d be the nub of it.’
‘God is forgiving. You may be being disloyal to your wife in thought. But you are still with her?’
‘I am.’
‘You are not in a relationship with this neighbour?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then your sin isn’t one of act but thought. Say three Hail Marys and pray for me.’
The fellow departed. A fellow from the island, no doubt. Decent country people with a tinge of their barbaric ancestors in their veins. The thin constraints of civilisation thankfully prevented them from regressing: the law, the word of God, and sometimes the word of the priest.
Two more came in, confessed, departed. The priest put his head out of the box. One remaining penitent, and then he would finally have his supper. He licked his lips again, imagined the stew, hot in his belly.
The woman was nervous but he teased out she was another with egregious thoughts.
‘When I put my washing on the line, Father, I’m aware I may be tempting others. My smalls, Father. I try not to peg them out in a manner that’d catch the eye of…’
‘Of whom, my child? The neighbourhood? Or one in particular?’
‘There’d be one I believe who… watches.’
‘And do you have impure thoughts about this one?’
‘I do. I’m ashamed.’
Father Scanlon sighed to himself, like one discovering how a story ended before reaching its conclusion. Another islander.
‘Do these thoughts extend to the marital bed?’
‘They do.
‘Do you imagine your husband is your neighbour?’
‘I do.’
He gave her three Hail Marys, and went to his meal served by the cook, Mrs Connelly. He eyed the meal appreciatively, then Mrs Connolly’s buxom body, pleasant on the eye. Momentarily he wondered if she thought of him when abed. The idea was too astonishing to give brain-space to. He ate his stew enthusiastically.
