A Swift Pure Cry (28 page)

Dear Shell. America is mad. New York is madder. I drive a big truck up and down the island. The sky's like candyfloss, I'm sure it's fake. We're building and drinking and gallivanting and there's no stopping us, me, Gerry and the lads. I'd my Christmas bonus pinched from me or I'd have sent you a new bra. Digs are in a place called Hell's Kitchen on Eleventh Avenue and you'll say it's where I belong. We're down the Irish bar most nights. The Shamrock, I ask you, worse than Dad's fecking leprechauns. But the stout's good. A man walked in just now with a ferret on a lead and it's not the drink talking. The girls are cracked. They drink Singapore Slings with ten shots in them and still want more. I went up the Empire State Building yesterday and nearly fell off. The yellow cabs bobbed down on the other side of the clouds like tiny abacus beads. They made me dizzy. But not as dizzy as you made me, Shell. I still remember. Love from u-know-who.

She saw him, crouched over the dark pint. The dollars flying out of his pocket. The muggers lying in wait. The clutter of glasses. The girls batting their eyelids at the world. The fag-ends. The man whistling at the ferret to jump through a hoop. The buildings lurching forward, toppling back. The cabs winking. And the cut of him, with the building dust in his hair and the Coolbar line to his face. And him writing the card, not looking at the girl opposite with the stars-and-stripes eyes, but moving the biro from west to east, like bread rising or a plane going home.
Shell smells of flea balls on the dirt floor.
And the trail of devastation he'd left behind him.

She switched on the electric-bar fire and held the card to the filament. The paper wilted then latched into flame. She put it on the tiles and watched the robin, the cabs, the Singapore Slings burn. Declan Ronan, the man for the main chance. Would she ever in this mortal life set eyes on him again?
Toodletits, Shell. Tarala, Declan.
Did it even matter?

She threw the remains in the bin and dusted down the piano and the sills. Then she made the beds up clean with brand-new sheets.

Fifty-two

The bedrooms aired and the place dusted, she fetched Jimmy and Trix home from school.

'Why can't he stay in jail?' Jimmy moaned when they got in.

'I want to stay at Duggans',' Trix grumbled. 'And watch TV.'

'Whisht, the two of you,' Shell said. 'I'll buy you sweets if you'd only stop.'

She sent them out to play in the back field.

She cleaned the grubby windows.

She made a batch of scones.

A car drew up outside, ahead of time. She froze. Mr Duggan was driving Dad home from Castlerock under strict instructions to elude the lure of the bar.
Will his hands still shake? Will he open the piano and hit me when he finds the whiskey gone? Will he shout if I break the egg yolk for the fry?
She looked out of the window with floured hands and pinched face. But it wasn't Dad. A familiar purple drew up: Father Rose and Jezebel.

He came in the door with a soft '
Hulloo, are you within?
' and that same smile of his. She offered him the chair and washed off her hands. 'Can I get you something, Father?'

'I can't stop,' he said. He perched on the piano stool, his back to the keys. His jacket flapped open to reveal a sweater with a polo neck obscuring the dog-collar. He looked different without the little square of white: a man of small concerns, walking the same crust of earth as anyone. She made conversation, but the words meandered down blind alleys. Father Rose sat there staring into the middle distance, a little like Dad used to do.

'I'm leaving, Shell,' he said at last. 'I've come to say goodbye.'

'Goodbye?'

'I'm called away.'

'What do you mean?'

'I'm called away by the Church.'

'Are they sending you to another parish? Already?'

He shook his head, smiling.

'Where then? Abroad?' She imagined him in the heart of Africa, walking among the poor, lifting up sick children to the mercy of the Lord.

'County Offaly.'

'County Offaly?'

'Yes, Shell. There's a house up there for priests with sick vocations. For those of us whose callings have gone sour.'

She stared in bewilderment.

'It's a retreat for doubting priests.'

'Is that what you are-a doubting priest?'

'I'm in spiritual crisis, Shell.'

She remembered him in the dark church, the day the pains started.
Have you come to shelter, Shell? A church at least has that use.
'I don't understand,' she said, frowning. 'What is it you doubt about?'

'Do you really want me to tell you?'

'Yes, Father,' she whispered. 'If you will.'

He leaned against the piano and ran his hand soundlessly over the keys, newly dusted. 'When I used walk into a church, Shell-any church-I'd feel a presence. The smell of the divine, something more than just the bricks. Always I'd feel it and always I'd be glad. But this past year, in Coolbar, Shell, the feeling's dwindled.'

'Dwindled?'
My own stupid state of grace
. 'How d'you mean?'

'I've sat in that church for hours. I've hunted in my mind, into the alcoves, around the statues, across the pews and up by the tabernacle. I've stared into the light perpetua. But all I've heard is the wind. All I've smelled is the wood polish. All I've felt is myself, alone in a universe of loneliness. And in the faces of the parishioners I've not seen the image of God like I'm supposed to. I've seen something brittler. Something more impermanent.'

'Father-Father Rose...' she faltered.

He raised a friendly brow.

'I used to feel that. Me too. The wood and the wind in the church, and the nothingness. Then you came, and it was different. You made it different. You made me believe again. In Jesus. In heaven. And then Mam came back. From the spirits.'

'Did she, Shell?'

She nodded. 'She still comes odd times. She sits at the piano, where you are now. When Jimmy's here, she's inside him, guiding his fingers over the keys. I know it.'

He smiled at her.

'
You
did it, Father. You made her come back. It was after hearing you talk I began to feel her round the place.'

He shook his head. 'If she came back, it was yourself brought her,' he said. 'Not me.' He took from his pocket a folded slip. 'There's an address for you, Shell. My mother's house. A letter there will always reach me, wherever I am.'

He handed the paper over and stood to go.

'Father'-she searched for a question, any question to delay him-'how long will they keep you in Offaly?'

'Days, weeks. Months maybe. Until the way becomes clear. We've to agree, me and them. We've to arrive at the one mind.' As he spoke, he made for the door. Shell followed him out to the yard and watched him get in the car. She saw the passenger seat, littered with familiar clutter. The fags. A map. The licence. He wound the window down.

'Father...' She stumbled as he started the engine.

'What, Shell?'

'D'you ever feel, Father...' she blurted. 'D'you ever feel Michael like I feel Mam?'

The engine spluttered, died. 'Michael?'

'Your brother.'

He rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared at the smooth back field, rising. The remnants of the yellow tape marking where the baby had been exhumed fluttered in the breeze. Trix and Jimmy's figures were huddled among the top trees. 'It's funny your asking that. I used to, once. Just after he died. Michael always longed to be a priest, not me. I was the daft, harem-scarem one. It was as if he was telling me to take up the call where he'd left off. But somewhere in my teens he went quiet.'

'Did he?'

'Yes. Perhaps he'd nothing more to say. I'd done what he wanted: gone for Holy Orders.'

'Perhaps now-perhaps-he'll come back again.'

Father Rose smiled. 'Maybe so, Shell. I could certainly use the help.'

'When you're in Offaly, Father, you could pray to him instead of God. Perhaps he'd be closer. Perhaps he'd tell you what to do.'

He considered it. 'I could try.' But he didn't look convinced. He turned the ignition on and the one time when she wished it could have broken down, the engine started fine. He gave a final smile, breaking up the shaving shadow across this face. 'We'll surely meet again, Shell,' he said. His palms drifted briefly above the steering wheel, the wheels slid forward. 'Somewhere in this benighted isle.'

The car edged off the verge onto the road. 'Goodbye, Shell. God bless.' The words were muddled somewhere in the engine noise.

'Goodbye, Father Rose,' she whispered back. As the car took a bend in the road, she shut her eyes. She could see the field, the grave, the remnant of yellow tape, but in the middle, surrounded by streaks of light, was the man, or rather the yawning absence of him. And then a crucifix with nobody on it, groaning in the wind. She opened her eyes. She stared at the place where the purple car had vanished around the bend, hardly believing he'd really left. In its place, another car appeared, a sleek estate: Mr Duggan, with Dad beside him.

'That eejit of a curate,' Dad said as he got out. 'We nearly collided.' He closed the car door and smiled.

Shell sucked her lips between her teeth and bit into the gums. She nodded at him. 'Hi, Dad.'

'Shell,' he said, approaching her and extending his arms. 'My own girl. It's good to be home again.'

Fifty-three

Dad wasn't a different man, only quieter. He was mad for the playing cards now, not the drink. He was down in the village playing Forty-five most nights. He still read like a demented prophet from the pulpit every Sunday. After tea, he rattled round the rosary mysteries like a train hurtling through the night. He stopped the collections and went back to his farm-labouring. He'd groan about the state of his bones, pouring the distalgesics down his throat. She'd a job to manage him. But she persuaded him to replace the ancient broken twin-tub Mam had used with a newer automatic model. Before spring came, she sowed the back field with grass and put up a brand-new washing line, one that folded down like an umbrella and twirled around in the wind. She left the cairn of stones where it was. It was like a beacon, collecting weeds and lichen.

Shortly after Father Rose left, Father Carroll said a funeral Mass for Baby Paul, as he was named, and her baby. When they asked her what she'd called the little girl, she lied. She didn't want any more gossip. So she said the name was Mary Grace, not Rose. The babies were buried in the churchyard in two small coffins in the far corner reserved for unbaptized souls. They'd a long wait in Limbo until the end of time. 'I'm sorry for your trouble,' Mrs McGrath said afterwards, her hat lurching off to the side. 'I'm sorry for your trouble,' said Mrs Fallon, her hands folded over her bag of wrinkled crocodile. 'Come round for a slice of coffee cake sometime,' said Nora Canterville. Shell shook their hands and nodded, her cheeks sucked in and her eyes staring down at the thick tan tights around their lumpy ankles.
Suffering Saviour. Spare me from legs like theirs.

Mrs Quinn came to the Mass too, but on her own. She sat up in the gallery and said nothing to nobody. She watched the interment from the church porch and left the moment the prayers over the grave were finished. Shell saw her walking up the hill, hunched over on herself. Only she and herself knew it was her grandson being buried that day.

The following Sunday, Father Carroll announced that a new curate would be with them by Easter, a widower who'd retired from business and taken to the Church late in life. People in Coolbar never mentioned Father Rose, but in Shell's mind the memory of the man did not fade, but grew. His words, his smile, his gestures wove in and out of her days.
We'll surely meet again, somewhere in this benighted isle, Shell.
She thought of him in County Offaly, kneeling before the light perpetua, and she prayed for his path to be made clear. She kept the address of his mother safe in her powder-blue mass bag.

Her old primary schoolteacher, Miss Donoghue, called round one evening and pleaded with her to go back to school. 'You're not stupid,' she said. 'You never were.' Shell refused. She'd done with the place, she said. But in the end she agreed to Miss Donoghue's offer of an evening grind. Miss Donoghue insisted on not being paid and Shell could not say no. She began to go over every Tuesday, Dad's night off from the cards.

One fine week at the end of winter, the funfair came to town. The year before, Jimmy and Trix had been devastated at there being no money to go. This year, Shell made Dad give her some money for a few rides. The three set off together into town on a Saturday afternoon.

The whole of the park by the pier flashed and blared as they approached, bursting with mad machines. Stalls glittered. The air pulsed with heavy rock. They plunged into the crush.

'Can I've some?' Trix shouted, pointing to the candyfloss stall. Shell bought three fat spools and they licked them clean. They rode the dodgems and the ghost train. Soon she'd little money left. They wandered around the rides, trying to choose their last go.

A woman walked past them, brushing Shell's sleeve. Shell turned to look at her, but all she could see was her retreating back. Her hair was tied up with a chiffon scarf, like the olive-green one Mam had used for strolls on the beach. Hands in her pockets, she was heading towards the pier, a familiar lilt in her stride. Her head was off to the side as if she was thinking of faraway times and places, just as Mam did when she strolled along the strand or played the quiet piano pieces. The people on either side bobbed around her, but she never paused, picking her way forward. As she stepped away, the sound of her singing began in Shell's head. But this time she recognized the song: