Читать книгу Monica's Overcoat of Flesh - Geraldine Clarkson - Страница 20

A friend said my convent-name sounded like a boat. Catherine, at first, in England, had notes of catharsis, of being emptied then restored, like a padded Queen Anne armchair. After name-dysmorphia—birth-name out of kilter with scuffed knees and Beryl-the-Peril manners—I liked the teenage family monikers, Gel, Ger, Germolene; my new nephew’s faltering French-&-Sunday-teatime-sounding Jelladeen: these soothed through storms. Enid Lareg, reversed nom de plume, sent me off round high seas & treasure islands. I held back Brigid, second baptismal name, for years, then took refuge in its stolid Celticness—Mary of the Gael, or ‘Gaol’ as I imagined. GB, my signature, felt functional and true, redolent of Olympic swimming teams and medical abbreviations. On holiday, I hitchhiked with my sister to the city for grown-up cakes and coffee, and recognised myself in the Galway Baking Company. At Confirmation, Catherine slinked in—unliked and unbidden, a seeming waste of a new name... Strange, then, to opt for her again as an adult, when a new name—like a password—was required for entry to the novitiate: once more she came unbidden, the cathartic one, reconfirmed. Not long behind bars, before Clothing, a bereavement had me ransacking crooked novitiate library shelves for comfort, unearthed finally in one of the Italian Catherines whose teachings on Purgatory deflected the pain like an arm pinched to dull a toothache. Going down the stairs, prior to the naming ceremony, I met an elderly Mother, who asked—laconic—‘Siena?’, to which I countered ‘Genoa’, suppressing a half-urge to share my father’s story of when he’d asked a passerby in Athlone ‘D’y’know a cafe?’ & been tickled to receive directions to the very Genoa Cafe (‘just over the bridge’). An abrupt shift of continent and a spell as Spanish Heraldine, hollow herald, before I was anchored as Catalina. It was good enough and I had a fierce leper-licking patron I was happy to sail a decade by.