A Swift Pure Cry (2 page)

'
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven...
' Shell sang at the top of her voice. She hadn't the voice of her mother but she could carry a tune. She caught Declan Ronan imitating her, shutting and opening his mouth like an anguished fish. '
Praise the everlasting King
'. She scrunched her nose up at him and looked away. Even when she remembered she'd to cook the mutton dinner, with Trix and Jimmy plaguing the kitchen like flies, and recalled the schoolwork that she wouldn't do, and the dark, heavy future of her life, nothing mattered. Jesus Christ had come back to earth in the shape of Father Rose. He was walking among them, the congregation of the church, in the village of Coolbar, County Cork.

Two

She floated on a cloud of Father Rose the rest of the day. His face-or was it Jesus's?-floated in the potato peelings in the washing bowl. It shimmered in the mirror as the light failed and floated in the dark as she drifted off to sleep.

The next day, they were up early to pick up the stones in the back field. Dad had been making them do it since the winter. He never gave a reason. If he was planning to plough it over, he gave no sign. By now, she, Jimmy and Trix had a great cairn growing in the north-east corner. Most mornings, they'd be three silent sentinels going up the hill in the half-light, stooped over with their loads.

Today, Shell picked up the old holdall they used to carry the stones. She was cold and hungry. It was spitting rain.

'Dad,' she said. He was sitting in his usual chair by the fire, with the poker resting loosely in his hand. He was staring into the flames as if they contained the answer to life's riddle. '
Why
do we have to pick up the stones?'

He glanced up. 'What's that?'

'Why do we have to pick up the stones, Dad?'

He frowned. 'Because I say so. Isn't that enough?'

'It's raining today, Dad. We'll be wet through all day at school.'

'Beat it, Shell. Go on. Double-quick.'

'Only--'

He dropped the poker and came towards her, his hand up, making as if to strike. 'Scram.'

'I'm off,' she said, scooting through the door.

Trix and Jimmy were already huddled over the soil. Shell joined them as they trudged up the hill. The stones always seemed to reappear overnight. However many they picked up, there were always more. Halfway up, Shell doubled right over and stared at the world upside down through the triangle of her white, thin legs. If anger and love went together, like Father Rose had said, it must mean that she loved her dad. She knew she had done once, long ago, when he'd swung her in his arms and let her climb up him like a tree. She could dimly recall it. She imagined all the hate pouring out of her brain, trickling out through her ears. Perhaps it worked, because when she stood up, she felt lighter. She looked over the field to the rusty gate, across the road, up the slope and into the yellow soup of sky.

'Thank you, Jesus, for the stones,' she said.

Jimmy threw one at her. 'Hate the stones,' he said. 'Hate Jesus. Hate you.'

The stone hit her right in the belly. Shell rubbed where it hit, and then looked Jimmy in the eye. His face was twisted up. The whiteness around the freckles stood out. She'd been sharp with him of late, she knew. Just the other day, she'd slapped him when she'd caught him stealing one of her new-baked scones from the cooling rack. Then when he'd asked to go to the funfair last Saturday she'd snapped a no. She'd have liked to go herself but there'd been no money. No mon, no fun, she said, and he'd stopped talking to her ever since.

She stretched out her arms. 'Throw another,' she said.

Jimmy looked at Trix, Trix looked at Jimmy. 'Go on,' she said. 'Both of you. For the love of God.'

They picked up two stones and threw them. One missed, the other grazed Shell's cheek.

'Go on. Don't be afraid.'
Scones
, she thought, smiling.
Not stones. Imagine them as soft, light scones.

They threw again. On the road, Shell heard a car trawling up the hill. On the third throw, she yelped despite herself.

'Go on,' she squeaked.

'No,' said Trix. ''S boring.' She ran off down the field, singing something. But Jimmy picked up a big stone, the size of three scones in one. He squinted, as if the devil was sneaking a peek out of his eye.

'This'll hurt,' he said.

'That's right, Jimmy. Fine man. Throw it.'

He heaved it up to his shoulder with both hands, a miniature Superman. He grunted.

'Ready,' said Shell. 'Do it.'

'Stop.' A voice, dark and deep, like an underground earthquake, called over to them.

Shell closed her eyes. 'Do it,' she whispered. A breeze fanned her fringe. Inside her eyelids, yellow rockets burst.

'Drop it, boy.' It was a command, urgent but not harsh.

She opened her eyes. The devil catapulted out of Jimmy in two shakes. She turned round. Father Rose had pulled up by the gate. She could hardly see him or the car in the strong early light that broke through the heavy clouds. He'd wound down the window.

'We were only messing,' Jimmy hollered, dropping the stone. He ran off down the hill.

Father Rose looked towards Shell. 'What was that about?' he asked.

Shell shrugged.

'You're the Talent girl, aren't you?'

She nodded.

'What's your first name?'

'Michelle. But everyone calls me Shell.'

He nodded back and started up his car. 'So long, Shell.' She thought he was going to add something, but he sighed instead. He let down the handbrake and took off up the hill. She blinked. The car flashed purple as he rounded the bend.

Shell sat down on the damp earth and breathed out hard. She stroked the lumpen stones of the Pharisees that had glanced off her mortal body. '
He who has not sinned
,' she murmured, '
let him cast the first stone
.' She took up the last stone, the one Jimmy hadn't dared to throw, and cooled her cheek with it. She lay back on the ground and was still. The cold spring morning went deep into her bones.

Three

She saw Father Rose again soon afterwards.

Dad had been collecting for the starving nations of Africa. One week it was flood victims of a sub-continent, the next it was refugees from a minor theatre of war, but when each week ended, he'd seal the money in an envelope and tell Shell to take it to the priests' house. It was the one job she liked: first, because she'd steal a few pence for herself and buy some gums at McGraths', and second, because if Nora Canterville, the priests' housekeeper, answered, she'd get a wedge of coffee and walnut cake.

Before she left, Dad grabbed her arm. 'If you steal it, even a penny of it, I'll know. Father Carroll'll tell me and all hell will be let loose.'

'Yes, Dad. I know.'

And she
did
know. The money he collected was always more than the money he sent in. She might be a thief, but he was a worse one. She'd seen him filching the larger coins, even notes, and dropping them into his pockets. The man was as mean as a blood-sucking midge. When he gave her the money for the shopping each week, he'd grab her wrist and tell her to bring him back the change down to the last penny and every last receipt. There was no such thing as pocket money in their house. And since Mam died, he'd made herself, Jimmy and Trix wear the same school uniforms three sizes too big, so as to save on having to buy new ones when they'd grown out of the old. They were the scarecrow pupils, the laughs of the townland. Shell's school had a song for her, courtesy of Declan Ronan, Coolbar's unholiest altar boy, and the cleverest boy in the Leaving Certificate year:

Shell looks worse than brambles

Or empty tins of Campbell's.

She smells of eggy-scrambles,

Her greasy hair's a shambles.

Whatever about his charity collecting, her dad had a black shrivelled walnut for a heart.

The meanest thing she'd ever seen him do was steal Mam's ring off her corpse. Mam had only the one, the gold band on her left hand that meant she was his wife. When married women die, Shell knew, they get buried with their wedding rings on, so that they can take their loving and faithfulness to the grave. There the rings stay until time ends, surviving the flesh and even the bone.

But her dad couldn't bear to see a good bit of yellow gold go to waste. The ring had loosened up in her final wasting. Before they put the coffin lid on, he'd said, 'Please: one last prayer, one last goodbye, on my own.' Everyone had left him to it. Everyone but Shell. She'd stopped outside the room behind the door that had been left ajar and peeked in through the crack. She saw him unravelling a portion of the milky white rosary from her mam's hand. She glimpsed a yellow flash dropping into his top waistcoat pocket. Then he fiddled with the rosary again.

'You can cover her over now,' he'd called to the undertaker. 'I'm ready.'

What he'd done with the ring, Shell didn't know. It wasn't in with his socks-she'd checked. He'd probably sold it when he was next in town.

Dad and his demented readings. Dad and the stones in the back field. Dad and the rattle of the collection tins. She trudged up the back field with the envelope of small change tucked underarm. The sun was out, strong and pale. The lambs had arrived. One skipped up to her and baa-ed, then darted off again, its legs like airy springs.
This is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
The thought of Dad faded. She reached the top of the hill. The clouds might have been lamb-cousins in their fluffiness. The trees brimmed with white blossom. She felt like a bride as she passed below them. Two fields on and Coolbar appeared before her in a fold of slope. She sat on a bank of grass and peeled the envelope flap open with a steady hand, watching the strands of gum stretch and shrivel as she tugged. She took out five pieces of silver and hurled them into the air for the poor of the parish to find in their hour of need.

'So there, Dad,' she shouted.

The coins sparkled, scattering to earth. She laughed and resealed the envelope, then walked down through the last pasture to human habitation.

She meandered along the village pavement. At McGraths' shop the sweet aroma of newspapers and cigarettes made her linger. They sold postcards and beach balls all year round, liquorice, ice-cream cones, plastic buckets and spades. She felt the money calling to her from inside the envelope and wished she'd kept the pieces of silver for herself. She didn't dare take any more. A ball of longing itched her belly. She'd only had an egg all day.

Mr McGrath saw her from within the shop. He beckoned, his bright red cheeks and big forehead wagging like a toy dog. Shell shrugged her shoulders, as if to say,
If only
. He came out with a handful of bubblegums. He gave them to her, putting a finger to his mouth.

'Our secret, Shell. Don't be going telling, or I'll have all Coolbar on to me.'

'No, Mr McGrath. I won't. Promise.' She blushed as pink as the bubblegum wrappers and went on down the street rejoicing. Jesus had surely rewarded her for the money she'd sprinkled earlier for the parish poor.

The priests' house was a little way up the street, beyond the church. Father Carroll had lived there ever since Shell could remember with his housekeeper, Nora Canterville. The curates came and went, but they two stayed. Nora, it was proclaimed, was the best cook in the whole of County Cork, famed for a consomme soup as clear as a newborn baby's soul. Dad always said that if you were invited for a meal, you'd leave half a stone heavier than you'd come.

Shell wasn't expecting to encounter Father Rose. She thought he'd be out on the parish rounds, up at the community hospital or out on Goat Island, the nearby peninsula, saying the mid-week Mass. She rang the bell, thinking of coffee cake, not him.

There was a long wait before anybody answered. She was about to go, when she heard steps on the stairs, then an approaching tread, sure and measured: too firm for Nora; too swift for Father Carroll. She held her breath. Her stomach fluttered.

The door opened. Father Rose looked upon Shell, an eyebrow raised, but said nothing.

'My dad,' she said, holding the envelope forward, 'said to give this to you.'

He took the envelope by its top, so that the money slid to the bottom. Her cheeks burned at the vulgar clink of change. Money and the Word of the Lord were far from fast friends, as he'd said last Sunday. He was surely thinking of the tables of the moneylenders.

'It's charity money,' she said. 'For the starving of Africa.'

'That campaign ended last month,' he said. 'Maybe it's for St Vincent de Paul? That's who we're collecting for now.'

Shell shook her head as if to say she didn't know.

'Your dad. He collects it in his spare time, doesn't he?' The money kept jingling. In devastation, Shell stared down at Father Rose's feet. With a shock, she saw they were bare. His dark priest's pants stopped short just above his white, long toes.

'His whole time is spare, Father,' she stammered. 'He's no job.'

'No job?'