Fanny Howe and M

I was having a cup of tea with my neighbour M. Two young cats were licking each other on the windowsill. M was sorting through her mail, occasionally tearing envelopes in two with a little 'dealt with that' sigh each time. In among the pile she found a card: Here, here's a prayer for you, she said. There's two. One from the pope before this one, the other from a local bishop. I read them both. She wanted to know what I'd say but I could see she was not going to comment, whatever it was. I've never prayed, I told her, not ever. You can't if you've never seen anyone praying and have no sense at all there's anyone to pray to. I might have pleaded to the void now and then.

This evening I began Indivisible by Fanny Howe. Billed as a novel, but really just writing, entre chien et loup, which is a rarity on bookshelves throughout Cork City. I found it in the Quay Co-op bookshop the other day. I'd never been there before. A considered and comfortable bookshop, run by volunteers, who contribute just that: willingness and public spirit. The books come in and go out in a semi-library flow. I could take a guess as to who brought in Fanny Howe, and why she might not have had patience with it. If this is about motherhood and catholicism it's even more of a mess than I thought.

A page or two into Fanny Howe, she is in Dublin, with a friend.

My friend was tall, aristocratic in his gestures — that is, without greed. He said the holy spirit was everywhere if you paid attention. Not as rewarded prayer but as an atmosphere that threw your body wide open.

I planted a packet of holy spirit beans but only one has germinated.

I met Fanny Howe in Cork once, I said I had one of her books, Holy Smoke. I can't remember, a novel or poetry. She couldn't remember either.

Indivisible is billed as a novel. It begins with a husband locked in a closet one fine winter morning with two pairs of shoes, a warm coat, a chamber pot, a bottle of water, peanut butter and a box of crackers. Halfway through, with a nonchalance rare in considerations of religion, she thinks about what God does to language.

I think the way they talk about God as "love" is a heresy unless the word "love" has no meaning but then all words about God have to have less meaning than the word God itself which, because it already has no meaning at all, places all words in a difficult situation.

I wonder if my neighbour M could relate to this; she put the prayer card, untorn, into the rubbish. I say the Lord's Prayer sometimes, she said.