The Gospel According to Luke

 

 

 

 

Emily Maguire is the author of three novels
– Smoke in the Room, The Gospel According to Luke
and
Taming the Beast –
and
Princesses & Pornstars
, a work of nonfiction. Her articles and essays on sex, religion, culture and literature have been published widely including in
The Sydney Morning Herald
,
The Age
and the
Observer
.

 

 

 

 

Also by Emily Maguire

Fiction
Taming the Beast
Smoke in the Room

Non-fiction
Princesses & Pornstars

EMILY MAGUIRE

 

 

 

 

First published 2006 by Brandl & Schlesinger
This Picador edition published 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Emily Maguire 2006

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Maguire, Emily, 1976–

The gospel according to Luke/Emily Maguire.

9780330424790 (pbk.)

A823.4

Typeset in 12/16pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed by McPherson's Printing Group

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

 

 

 

 

These electronic editions published in 2009 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

The Gospel According to Luke
Emily Maguire

 

 

Macmillan Digital Australia
www.macmillandigital.com.au

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com.au
to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

Luke begins preparing for Sunday's sermon on Monday morning. He scans his Bible, picking passages which relate somehow to world events or local concerns. There are always a few; the Bible has something to say about everything. It's the instruction book that people are always exclaiming they need and don't realise they already have. Luke decides on a scripture, prays about it, studies it, thinks hard, reads what others have said about it. He puts the Bible aside and gets on with the rest of his week's work – interviewing ministry candidates, inspecting the building site, proofing advertising copy. But the passage is always on his mind. He
notices everything, seeking a connection. He searches for illumination in every face.

By Tuesday he is wild with joy or crushed by despair. The text is ridiculously abstract, contradictory, irrelevant. Or it is brilliant, vibrant, containing the greatest wisdom, inspiring the most profound thoughts to have ever entered his mind. He is humbled by God's wisdom in guiding him to this scripture or frustrated at his own obtuseness in misunderstanding God's will.

On Wednesday he considers dumping the passage and picking a new one. It is the only way. This will never work out.

On Thursday he realises the passage is not the problem. It never is. He walks for hours, talking to himself, to the trees, to the Lord, trying to find the words that will make the story as alive to his congregation as it is in his heart.

Friday, he writes it all down, prays, puts it aside while he doorknocks another five streets to spread the word about the youth centre opening next month. When he reads the sermon again on Saturday morning he knows exactly what needs to be fixed and he does it easily and joyfully. He reads it to himself, over and over, adjusting his tone, altering his gestures, slowing down this section and speeding up another. He cannot sleep with the fear he will forget it all if he does not repeat it just one more time.

Sunday morning, early, he stands in the church
alone and preaches to the rising sun. His heart beats too fast, he feels queasy and unsteady on his feet. He wishes it was eight already. He wishes it was over. He wishes he had never been called to do this, to submit week after week to this torture, this crushing self-doubt.

And then suddenly, it is okay. He can see in their faces that they want to hear what he says; they are attentive, rapt even. When he is self-deprecating they laugh affectionately; when he is raw and transparent, they cringe and look away, but just for a second. Their eyes always return to him, searching for the truth they know he will give them. By the time he is finished, he is bathed in sweat and love. It is the only time all week he does not feel lonely.

Sunday is Aggie's only day off, but she goes in to the clinic anyway. Malcolm and Will spend Sundays sleeping late, brunching at some chic inner-city café, then making love in the antique four-poster bed Aggie gave them when they set up house together. The bed had spent eighteen years in the service of her parents and then ten years as a spare bed which was slept in only once, by Aggie's ex-husband, the night before he left her. So she was pleased for the bed; it must be delighted to finally be used as a love nest after all those empty years.

Mal, Will and the bed are together on this Sunday, and although Aggie's own bed is sinfully comfortable,
it is also depressingly large for just one woman. Even an unusually tall woman like Aggie. She cannot bear to lie in bed, contemplating the size of the empty space all around her. Instead, she goes to her office where there is almost no space at all.

Malcolm's desk is crammed into one corner, Aggie's into its diagonal opposite. A couch for waiting clients and three rotating stands holding pamphlets about disease and pregnancy and dangerous pleasure take up the rest of the main room. There are two small rooms out back: one is for confidential counselling sessions, and is just big enough for three folding chairs; and the other is a combined kitchen/laundry/toilet, which is far from hygienic, but what can you do? It's not like the government is throwing money at sexual health clinics in these ultra-conservative times.

Aggie spends Sunday in her tiny locked office, answering emails, reading last month's journals and health department reports, drinking instant coffee and eating cornflakes from the box she keeps in her filing cabinet. No one knows where she is or what she is doing. She never has to tell anyone where she's going or what her plans are or why she is eating dry cereal instead of going next door for a sandwich. She wonders whether this is independence or isolation, powerful or pathetic and she would like to ask her mother – that expert in power and independence – but has no idea where she is or how to find her. Aggie bets
her mother is not sitting alone in an unheated office reading about genital herpes.

To get the party started, rocket fuel. They spend a couple of minutes searching for a big enough bowl, before giving up and mixing it all in the kitchen sink. They can ladle it out with their glasses. It's a mix of white rum from Rex's place, Jim Beam Black Label and Johnnie Walker nicked from Steve's old man, two casks of moselle purchased with a pile of scrounged-up change, and half a case of Guinness that Honey stole from her step-dad while he was sleeping. If he finds out she took it, he will rip her hair from her skull.

It's a lot of booze for three sixteen-year-olds. Honey thinks they might die if they drink it all. But then some others arrive, friends of Rex's, slightly older guys who have pot and cigarettes which they give to Honey and the boys in exchange for access to the brew. The blokes are all over Honey, which she is used to, but she's there for Steve and he knows it. He pushes the hair out of her eyes when she bends her head to suck back on the bong. She hands him cigarettes lit between her lips. At some point, she kisses him and it's like pushing her tongue into the neck of a rum bottle.

Honey loves parties like this. Someone's parents' house. Communal booze and drugs. Touching and laughing and kissing. No sense is talked. No unanswerable questions asked. Music videos playing and the radio on and a CD blasting and some German
thrash metal band screaming from a computer which is flashing pictures of women in leather collars being assaulted by Alsatians and men in masks. Honey is cool with the noise and the porn and the smell.

The boys are shouting at each other, but Honey can't follow the argument. Something about cars or maybe boats. Engines, anyway. Steve's hand is inside her shirt, his tongue in her ear. On the TV, a girl rides a mechanical pony, her face twisted in ecstasy. At least, Honey thinks it's ecstasy; she has never experienced it herself, just seen it on others. Her glass clicks against her teeth and the booze dribbles down her chin, making Steve laugh.

Time has passed. Honey is on a bed in the almost-dark, and Steve's wispy blond fringe is in her eyes. Someone is pounding on the door.

‘It's locked,' Steve shouts, his voice cracking with the effort. ‘It's locked,' he whispers, breathing hot rum in Honey's face.

‘You and Ricky broke up, right?' Steve is removing her jeans.

‘Aha.' She struggles to stay awake.

‘So you're single, yeah?'

Honey says she is and his teeth flash white in the moonlight. She closes her eyes, aware of hands and moans and pounding on the door, in her head, on her skin.

She wakes up. Steve is gone and her thighs are sticky. She jumps up; her head hurts. Fast, she opens
the window behind her and yaks into the darkness outside. She hears the splash as her vomit hits the ground below. Her throat and vagina burn.

Blankness, blackness, a dizzy walk through empty halls and rooms. Then she's smoking a cigarette in the living room. More boys and a couple of girls have come. They stare at Honey as though she is still naked and vomiting.

The rocket fuel is gone, but someone has produced a case of beer. It's Toohey's New, her mother's brand. At this moment, Honey's mother is probably also drinking a Toohey's New and smoking a Winfield Red. She has also probably just been fucked. Honey does not want to think about that, so she starts a conversation with the boy beside her. She tells him her name is Mary; he kisses her hand and says he is Jesus.

All around her, people are shouting, their faces caught between laughing and crying. She thinks it's three in the morning, but the numbers on her pink plastic Swatch keep blurring, so she can't be sure. Steve is asleep, his head on her stomach, his mouth open. He looks like he fell and landed that way. He looks like it hurts to sleep.

 

 

 

Luke had been interviewed by the city dailies, the local weeklies, several university papers, a teen pop magazine and a local small business journal, and sooner or later, the same question always came. It was coming now, from the sweet red-headed reporter from
Parenting Monthly.
She was apologetic, shuffled in her seat, tucked her hair behind her ears, frowned as though she was about to deliver terrible news, and then nodded. ‘And what is your, ah, ethnic background, Mr Butler? Are your parents recent immigrants or . . .?'