AN: Thanks for the reviews. Hopefully getting back up to speed, but not spending much time redrafting...
Padraig couldn't remember ever feeling this miserable. School was the same, the name calling the same, but now he had real guilt of his own. The kind that ate at him, day in, day out, that wouldn't leave him be even for a moment.
His Dad had sent them home early. He'd told them he would miss them, like he always missed them, but Padraig was terrified of that look in his father's eyes.
It wasn't anger. Padraig would have preferred anger, then he could have shouted back all the ways he felt betrayed by his Dad, all the words the other boys shouted at him, demand why he was the last to know, why he never got to visit. But that never happened, because Dad wasn't angry. He was just so very sad.
Declan was angry though. He didn't talk to Padraig for weeks, except to tell him to get lost.
Mam took a long time to get any answers to her questions. Padraig wasn't going to tell her, and he assumed Declan still had a vague sense of honour and didn't tell on him. Eventually, Mam shouted at them to sort out whatever it was that was making family meals unbearable.
When that didn't work, she took Padraig to Church.
And so, weeks after being sent home, Paddy found himself sat in the old church on the next street, next to a Priest. Father Francis, a middle aged balding man, had a forbidding face, and Padraig knew, instantly, that there was no way he was telling this man anything he'd done wrong. He would burn in hell for all eternity if he did. So, instead, he told the father that he'd had a fight with his brother about boys at school who called him names.
With a frown on his face, the father instructed him to repeat the Hail Mary five times and talk to his brother, then trotted off, presumably to tell Mam, or maybe to let him say his Hail Marys in peace.
Paddy stayed where he was, and glared at the altar. Everything was so confusing now. What was right and what was wrong had got all tumbled in together, and confused, and wrong. He'd been so sure it was Granddad who knew what was right, because Granddad said the same as the priests and the RE teachers at school, and that it was Dad who was in the wrong, because he was a filthy queer. But now the world was on its head.
He knew one thing; Granddad was a liar, and a frightening one, and what he did to Ste was wrong. And Padraig hoped he would never see the old man again. But did that make what Ste and Dad did OK? He was sure that if he asked Father Francis, he would get the answer no, but then why did Declan seem Ok with it?
Then there was Ste and Dad. When they were together, Dad had been happy. Ste had made him happy. Was that enough though? Did that mean it was OK to ignore the priests?
There was a clatter behind him. He twisted in his seat in time to see an old lady struggling with the heavy church door, a vacuum cleaner and a large box. Paddy looked around for anyone else, but when he realised he was alone, he jumped up to help her. He grabbed the door to push it open, and when she was through, offered to take the box.
"Thank ye very much, young man, that's very kind," she said, and gave it to him, "it's just this way, thank ye. I'm just helping to clean the place today."
Padraig's heart sank a little. Was she expecting him to help clean this huge old building now?
"If you could just rest it on a pew there, young man, that's very kind. I don't suppose you could help me get the hoover up those steps there? It's very heavy for one person."
"Er…" Paddy tried to think of an excuse. "I'm meant to be saying Hail Marys…"
"Ohhh," said the old lady, elongating the word, with a twinkle in her eye, "been confessing your sins to the father? Not that they call it that anymore. Bet they didn't even make you sit in the box."
"No, we just sat here."
"And I bet it wasn't much of a confession. Did you tell him the truth?"
Paddy didn't answer. The old lady tutted "see?" she muttered, "who's gonna confess to anything when he's right there next to you like that?"
Paddy shrugged, feeling sadder by the minute.
"But it's not the Priest we make peace with in the end, I suppose. It's the Lord our God who decides if we've been sinners or not. He alone knows the contents of your heart, and he alone shall judge us."
Paddy watched the old lady quietly as she started polishing the choir stalls. "How do you know what He thinks, though?" he asked.
She stopped and looked back at him, quizzically. "Jesus Mary and Joseph, you go straight for the hard questions don't ye?"
Paddy wasn't sure if she wanted an answer to that, but she was looking at the vaulted ceiling. "I suppose, there's the bible, that tells us a lot, but I can't say I've read it all, myself."
"So?" Paddy prompted, "how do you decide?"
"Me? Hmm," she thought a little more, "well, I think you know if something's really wrong. You can see it hurt people. And I think you can tell what's right, too, you know, in here." She tapped her chest, over her heart. "If you make people safe and protected and happy. Without hurting other people, them that's good, isn't it?"
Padraig let that sink in, thinking about her words.
"Like cleaning the church. I volunteer once a week, and so do a lot of other people, and together we make sure it's clean and nice so people can find peace here. That's what I do to be good. Or I let my friends talk to me when they're sad, and help them when they need, so they can find a bit of happiness when they lose it."
Ideas were forming in Padraig's head.
"Help them find a bit of happiness," he repeated.
"Oh, aye, happiness is easy to find, but easy to lose too. Sometimes the right word at the right time is enough to help someone get back on their feet. Sometimes it's much harder. I taught at the girls' school there for forty years, watched them making each other unhappy, but you can only be happy if you help make the people around you happy. Took some of them a long time to work that out."
"Thank you Mrs!" said Paddy, and sprinted to the church. He ran right into Mam who was on her way to find him, and dragged her to the car, so she had to call her good byes to Father Francis over her shoulder. When they were in the car, he sat beside her fidgeting and plotting.
"So…" Mam said, cautiously, as they started the car, "talking to Father Francis helped, Padraig?"
"Er, yeah it was great," Paddy said, grimacing slightly at the untruth.
"Really?" asked Mam, "because the father said he thought you weren't telling him everything."
"No," Paddy said, "but then…" he didn't want to tell her about the old lady, and he wsn't sure why, "but then I prayed, and that, and now I know what to do."
"Er… right," his Mam answered, slowly and thoughtfully, "You know, I'm not sure if I like the sound of that."
"Oh, it's fine," he replied, "I'm going to make it right."
"Make what right?" his Mam asked in confusion.
Paddy grinned.
