A Swift Pure Cry (29 page)

She stepped away from me

With one star awake

As the swan in the evening

Flies over the lake...

Then the tune faded.
Mam. Don't go
. Shell grabbed Trix by the hand and rushed after the figure, but she'd already vanished into the crowds. No. There was her head again, her elbow. She'd the smooth leather coat on, the black one, her best.

'Shell,' grumbled Jimmy. 'Where are you going?'

She'd landed them by the Big Wheel. There was no sight of the woman anywhere. 'Dunno. Here. I s'pose.' Her eyes roved the crowds.

'The Big Wheel,' Trix said, her eyes alight. 'I'm not too small for it, am I?'

I've lost her. Maybe I was imagining things.

'Am I?' Trix's voice, almost a wail.

'No, Trix. Hush. Not if we all go up together.'

She bought the tickets with the last of the money. The man fitted them into the same carriage. He locked the bar down across their legs and the wheel spun round, inching them backward as more got on. When everyone had boarded, the wheel picked up its pace. Faster and faster, it spun up and back, knocking out their breath. Trix gripped her on one side, Jimmy on the other, their six hands and ankles muddled. Back and up,
whoosh
, with the wind flying through them.

'Holy Mary,' Shell gasped. Her stomach somersaulted.

'Look, Shell. Look.'

They were at the top of the arc with the white of the sun bursting and the sea glittering. Then down and forward, and the fair running smack up to them again. And there, on the far pier, walking away like the librarian had done, was the woman in black and green, a living poem. Strolling down and away, her scarf unwinding. Shell blinked, squeezing her eyes, wishing she could see better.
Whoosh
. The wheel scooped her insides out like ice cream. The figure was further away. She craned her neck just as the woman turned. Her hand was in the air, her scarf afloat. She was flickering, a flame, growing thinner and drifting out over the soft seascape, her chiffon billowing like a wave until she was a slender match, hardly more.
Mam.
She called out with her soul in her mouth. A last farewell. But she was going, going for good this time, back to the place from which she'd come.

The last slither vanished and there was the sea. Nothing but the sea. The whole mass of it, large and shining, restless, eating up the sky. Chasing the day to another continent. The wheel spun and there was the coast and the land and the dark hills faraway. The people, the houses, the sounds. The living and the dead. The dreams and laughs and tears. The here-and-nows and the here-afters. Bridie, white-cheeked, shaking the rain off her see-through umbrella as she walked away up the hill. Father Rose in Offaly, crouched in his evening shadow, waiting for God like a lighthouse beam. And Declan, up in a bulldozer with his rhyming slang, digging up the great city.
Mam.
Mam in the place of spirits, Mam in her memory, Mam in her blood. Jimmy yodelled as if from Alpen heights, his arms flung over her and Trix. They peaked and swooped the blue. Trix's hair and hers streamed together like tangled kite tails. Trix, Jimmy and she, a silent row going up the back field, picking up the stones. Together always. Free. And Mam's perpetual light shining on them. And their lives ahead of them, around them, spilling from them as they screamed
Whoooooooooo
like three demented owls. What joy it was to be, what joy.

Acknowledgements

I could not have written this story without the generous support of fellow-writers and friends Tony Bradman, Fiona Dunbar and Lee Weatherly. Warmest thanks also go to Tony Emerson, Helen Graves, Sile Larkin, Rosarii O'Brien, Carol Peaker and Ben Yudkin. My agent Hilary Delamere has guided me throughout with the clearest of vision, and my editorial team has been a joy-David Fickling and Bella Pearson at David Fickling Books, and Kelly Cauldwell, Annie Eaton and Sophie Nelson at Random House. And thank you to my darling mother, who has in her time picked up many a stone, and to Geoff, my wise and kindest critic.

A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

Published by David Fickling Books an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright (c) 2006 by Siobhan Dowd

All rights reserved.

Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, in 2006.

DAVID FICKLING BOOKS
and colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

www.randomhouse.com/teens

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dowd, Siobhan.

A swift pure cry / Siobhan Dowd.--1st American ed.

p. cm.

SUMMARY
: Coolbar, Ireland, is a village of secrets and Shell, caretaker to her younger brother and sister after the death of their mother and with the absence of their father, is not about to reveal hers until suspicion falls on the wrong person.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89155-7

[1. Family problems--Fiction. 2. Fathers--Fiction. 3. Ireland--Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.D7538Swi 2007

[Fic]--dc22

2006014562

v1.0