We present an extract from Ordinary Saints, the debut novel by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin.
Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood, and herself...
The first time I kissed a girl my brother died. I was sixteen and at a party in a big house overlooking Dublin Bay. My brother was in Rome, studying to be a priest. For most of the evening, though it was only Saint Patrick's Day and still cold, I sat alone on an elaborate wooden patio chair, getting drunk and staring at the glimmer of the coastline, following the slow ferry’s lights as it pulled out to sea.
'Do you mind if I sit with you? I’ve brought supplies.’ It’s Aisling, a friend of a friend from the Irish-speaking school across town.
‘Oh yeah, yeah, of course.’
The words gurgle a little in my throat so I gesture at the other chair in the set to confirm. Aisling, carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and a small basket of garlic bread in the other, lowers herself down.
‘It’s so sweaty inside,’ she says. ‘And loud. I was looking for somewhere I could rest for a minute and then I saw you out here.’
‘I’m being pretty anti-social,’ I say, which is true. I realised too late that I was in no mood for Síofra’s house party, with all its shouting and spilling drinks and close, hot breath. My humour was all right when I left home in the afternoon but around seven or half seven something shifted. I felt myself hating every new face that came through the crystal-paned front door. Later, after I find out, I try to track my movements against my brother’s, to figure out if this abrupt emotional unmooring is a tele-pathic reaction to his energy being suddenly and improbably sucked from the universe. But the timings don’t match up. I’m just in a mood.
‘Fair enough,’ Aisling says, pouring wine into the mug I’ve balanced on the arm of the chair. Lady Golfers Have More Drive, it reads in cartoon letters. She looks up and smiles, her teeth so straight and white that they catch the moonlight. ‘Though I have been wondering why you never talk to me.’
I don’t know what to say. It’s never occurred to me to speak to Aisling, who’s a year and a half older than me and half a foot taller, plays football for Dublin and looks like a warrior queen from ancient mythology: big joints, pale skin, a tumble of reddish hair.
I smile back. ‘I’m shy.’
Inside, there’s the sudden sound of girls screaming and we both turn, thinking something’s happened. But then someone turns the music up and they all shriek again, the noise breaking through the patio doors and spilling across the lawn.
‘Jesus Christ,’ murmurs Aisling. ‘If I never hear "Mr Brightside" again in my life it’ll be too soon.’ I laugh, a bit too loud. ‘I hate them too.’
‘Yeah? What kind of music do you like?’
The garlic bread becomes very dry in my mouth and I have to force a scratchy swallow. ‘Oh, a bit of everything.’ Aisling raises a fair, almost invisible eyebrow. ‘Cool. I love everything too.’
‘Nick Cave!’ I nearly shout, though I’ve only heard one of his songs – last week, on the radio in my father’s car – and can’t even remember what it was called.
‘Hmm, OK. That is cool.’ Relief floods my body, so powerful that I think it might knock me out. ‘It’s a bit rubbish though, isn’t it, liking different music to everyone else? It kind of makes you feel like an outsider.’
I say nothing. We watch two trains curve silently along the bay, their lights getting closer and closer, looking like they might crash.
‘You know, any time I see a train, even if I know it’s only going to Bray or whatever, it makes me jealous of the people on it. That they’re going somewhere and I’m not.’
It sounds stupid as I say it, but Aisling doesn’t laugh. Instead, she reaches out and takes my hand, dreamily, sympathetically, like other girls sometimes do when they talk. The world begins spinning faster then, the stars and the darkness of the sea and the sounds of the party all swirling together, catching fire and extinguishing from one moment to the next so that the two small islands of our patio chairs are the only points of stillness in the universe and our hands the bridge between them. I wonder if this is what a mystical experience would feel like. I wonder if I’m being called by God.
We stay there talking in the darkness for hours until Aisling says that she’s sorry but she absolutely has to go to the bathroom.
‘But please don’t leave,’ she says and I shake my head, even though I’m freezing, my lips so numb they’re slurring over words.
Once she’s gone, the silence and intensity of my feelings are too much to cope with. I look at my phone. Four missed calls, two from each of my parents. My chest tightens. How do they know? A text appears from my father:
Please call us back as soon as you see this. We urgently need to speak to you.
Ordinary Saints is published by Bonnier Books
