I wondered hazily if this might be the start of a vision.  It had been my ambition to start having visions and so to take over from my Grandfather and follow in his footsteps, as it were.  But - despite a few promisingly unsettling sensations I had experienced over the years - I had never been privileged with such a visitation.  My Grandfather had told me that there were different ways to hear the Voice of God; one could calm oneself, prepare one's mind, meditate and relax and eventually know what it was God had said to one - the way everybody else in our Order did - or one could - as he had, in the past at any rate - just suddenly find oneself dumped willy-nilly, effectively at random, into one of those fit-like visions over which he seemed to have no control.  But that was God speaking to him too, so if what I was experiencing now was the start of a vision, I reasoned, then perhaps my attempt this evening had worked after all, albeit not quite as I had anticipated.

'Howyi, Isis; you all right there?' said a voice nearby, making me start.  I must have closed my eyes.  I opened them again.  I had no idea how much time had passed.

There was somebody standing by the side of my hammock, a tall shadowy shape looking down at me.  I'd recognised his voice. 'Declan,' I said, focusing with some difficulty.  What was it he had asked?  Then I remembered. 'Yes, I'm fine,' I said. 'How are you?'

'Ah, I just thought you might be feelin' a bit strange, you know?'

'Yes.  No; I'm all right.'

'Right,' he said.  He stood there for a moment, just visible in the light from the loft trap-door. 'You sure, now?' he asked, putting his hand out to my forehead and running his fingers through my hair.  He stroked the back of my head. 'Ah, Jayzus, Isis; you're a beautiful kid, ye know that?'

'Really?' I said, which was probably the wrong thing.

'Chroist, yes.  Anyone ever tell you you look like Dolores O'Riordan?' he said, bending closer.

'Who?'

'The Cranberries.'

'Who?' I repeated, confused.  Actually his hand was producing quite a pleasant sensation at the back of my head, but I knew that, as a man, Declan would be unlikely to regard that as an end in itself.

'Ye mean ye've never heard of the Cranberries?' He laughed gently, bringing his face nearer to mine. 'By God, ye have led a sheltered life, haven't you?'

'I suppose so.  Look, Declan-'

'Ah, ye're glorious, so ye are, Isis,' he said, and used his hand at the back of my head to lift my face up to his as he bent further forward.

I put my hands up to his chest and pushed. 'Declan,' I said, turning my face away to avoid his lips and getting an earful of wet tongue. 'You're very nice and I like you, but-'

'Ah, Isis, come on…' he said, putting one arm round my hammock and pulling me to him, his lips seeking mine.  I pushed harder and he let me go, leaving me swinging to and fro between my roof beams.  He sighed, then said, 'Ah, Isis, what's the matter?  Will ye not even-' as he leant forward and reached out again.

I extended my hands to push him away, but he stumbled, I think, and next thing I knew he was falling forward on top of me, forcing the wind out of me.  Declan went, 'Whoo!' Our combined weight swung the hammock out away from over the doors forming the floor; there was a creaking noise from somewhere beyond my feet, then a jerk, and in a moment of helpless horror I knew what was going to happen next.

'Oh, no!' I shouted.

The nail Brother Zebediah had bashed into the roof truss to take the foot of my hammock sprang out of the wood and sent Declan and me tumbling forward into the darkness under the slope of the roof.  Had Declan not had both arms around me, my hammock and sleeping roll, and had I not had my arms trapped for that same reason, one of us might have been able to save one or both of us, but instead the second nail at the head of my hammock gave way too and sent us crashing lengthwise to land neatly between two rafters onto the rough, grimily ridged surface of the plaster.  It broke like puddle-ice and we fell through into light, surrounded by dust and brittle shards of plaster with me screaming and Declan snouting, and somebody else screaming too.

We must have twisted in mid-air as we fell because I landed beside Declan with only his head thumping onto my midriff.  We landed half on the floor of the room below - which proved to be Boz's - and half on the double mattress which was Boz's bed and on which he was lying at the time, propped up by a couple of cushions and watching a video; we must have just missed landing on his feet.

He gave a surprisingly high shriek and pulled the bed sheet quickly up over himself as Declan and I bounced once and lay stunned under a rain of dust and more lumps of plaster.  I'd got just the vaguest glimpse of something black and purple Boz had been holding as we crashed down onto the bed in front of him.  I moved an arm to shift some plaster off Declan's head and my hip and caught a glimpse of Boz's video, being shown on another remarkably new-looking television set on the other side of the room.  I saw a woman sucking - in a somehow exaggerated way, and from a distinctly unnatural-looking angle - a man's erect penis.  I stared at this.  Two in one batch of seconds.  Life was strange.  Declan moaned and looked up, instantly aged thirty years by the grey dust coating his face and hair.  He looked at me and then at Boz.  He coughed. 'Oops,' he said.

I hardly heard.  I was staring with my mouth open and my eyes boggling almost out of their sockets at the screen of the television set.  The girl in the erotic video was now lying on her back by a sun-lit swimming pool while the man did something to her one could not see; her face contorted with what was probably meant to be ecstasy.

I couldn't believe it.  I pointed with one shaking hand at the television.  Declan followed my gaze to where the woman pouted and grimaced on the screen.

'That,' I exclaimed loudly, 'is my cousin Morag, the internationally famous soloist on the baryton!'

Declan watched the screen for a moment, looked back round at me, glanced at Boz - who still seemed stunned into wide-eyed silence - then shook his head, releasing a cloud of dust. 'Yer arse!' he laughed.  That's Fusillada DeBauch, the porn queen, and the only thing she's renowned for is playing the pink piccolo, pal.'

CHAPTER TEN

The next morning, in the living room, I studied the videotape Boz had been watching.

Boz had recovered his cool and then started laughing at us while the dust was still settling around his bedroom.  Declan apologised - to Boz first, I noticed, but then afterwards to me.  He repaired the roof as best he could with a couple of posters over the hole in the ceiling and one of the loft's door floor-boards on the other side.  Boz slipped into a pair of boxer shorts; he and I cleaned up the plaster.  My head was still spinning but I felt somewhat more sober for the experience.

Of the others, only Roadkill seemed to have either heard anything or thought there was aught untoward about what they had heard.  I told her Zeb's handiwork had proved fragile, to the sound of Declan banging the hammock nails back into the roof trusses.  I felt faint again and - waving away Dec's apologies -climbed back up to the loft, taking my hammock and bedroll with me.  I shook it free of dust and re-hung it, then collapsed into it and was asleep within minutes.

Next morning, with a head that felt stuffed with cotton wool and a cough that made me think I was coming down with the cold, I politely asked Boz for the videotape. (We will pass over my attempt by the laying on of hands to cure the sore knee which Declan woke up with and which was probably a delayed result of our fall, but what better proof is needed that all this clutter robs the Saved of their Holiness?) Boz seemed unembarrassed at my request, which was a relief, and went upstairs to get the video cassette.  He showed me how to work the videotape player then went to make some breakfast.