“That’s it. That’s what she called it. Scapular. But the M’s for Mary. That’s the concern. The Mary bit.”
Jago nodded, but Selevan could see that a smile was playing round the corners of his mouth. This was a bit of an irritant to Selevan. Easy for Jago to have a bleeding laugh at the situation. Wasn’t his granddaughter wearing M for Mary round her neck. He said, “Something’s happened to the girl somewhere ’long the line. That’s all I can reckon from the mess she is now. I put it down to Africa. Being exposed to all those native women in the raw. Walking round the streets of wherever with their privates hanging out. ’S no wonder to me she’s got herself confused.”
“Mother of Jesus,” Jago said.
“That and then some,” Selevan intoned.
Jago laughed then, and he did so heartily. Selevan reared up. Jago said, “Don’t get yourself twisted, mate. You said yourself it’s M for Mary. On a scapular, that would mean M for Mary for the mother of Jesus. It’s a devotional thing, this is. Catholics wear them. You might see a picture of Jesus on one. A saint on another: St. Whoever of Whatever. It’s a mark of devotion.”
“Damn,” Selevan muttered. “No bloody end to this mess.” Tammy’s mum would have a seizure, no doubt about that. One more reason to pack Tammy up and send her on her way. In Sally Joy’s mind the only thing worse than being a Catholic was being a terrorist. “St. George and the dragon would’ve been better,” Selevan said. That image, at least, could have been seen as patriotic.
“Not likely to find St. George on one of these,” Jago said, allowing the scapular to dangle from his fingers, “dragons being the work of imagination which makes St. George himself something of a question mark, eh? But that’s the general idea of ’em. A believer in this or that holy person puts this thing round his neck?or her neck in the case of your Tammy?and I s’pose she ends up feeling holy herself.”
“I blame the effing politicians,” Selevan said darkly. “They made the world in the state it’s in today and that’s why the girl’s working to get herself holy. Trying to prepare for the end of days, she is. And, there’s no one been able to talk her out of it.”
“That what she says?”
“Eh?” Selevan took the scapular and shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “She says she wants a prayerful life. That’s her very words. ‘I want a prayerful life, Grandie. I believe it’s what everyone should aspire to.’ As if sitting alone in a cave somewhere and eating grass for your meals and drinking your own piss once a week is going to do one bleeding thing to solve the world’s problems.”
“That’s the plan, is it?”
“Oh I don’t know what the effing plan is. No one knows, and that includes the girl. You see how it is? She hears about a cult she can join and she means to join it because this cult?unlike the rest of the God damn cults out there?is the one that’s going to save the world.”
Jago looked thoughtful. Selevan hoped the other man was coming up with a solution to the problem of Tammy. But Jago said nothing, so Selevan had to speak again. He said, “I can’t get through to the girl. Can’t even begin to. Found a letter under her bed and they were telling her to come on by and check things out, have an interview here so’s we c’n take the measure of you and see if you’re suitable and if we like you and whatever else. I show her I found it and she goes off her chump ’cause I’m doing the snoop through her things.”
Jago looked thoughtful. He scratched his head. “Were, eh?” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You were doing the snoop. I’n’t that the case?”
“I got to. If I don’t, her mum’s all over me like melted cheese on the radiator. She says, ‘We need you to make her see the light. Someone’s got to make her see the light before it’s too late.’”