A Swift Pure Cry (3 page)

'Not since Mam died. He left off the farm work over at Duggans' on account of his bad back.' That was what Dad gave out anyway.

'He's the job of keeping house and being mother and father to you and your brother and your sister, hasn't he?'

'S'pose.' She could have said it was herself did most of that.

'He's a religious man, your father. So Father Carroll tells me.'

Shell shrugged. 'S'pose.'

'Do you want to come in for a glass of something? Nora's shopping in town, but I can rustle up something for you.'

Shell nodded. He didn't move to one side. Instead he made a tall bridge of his arm, so that she could walk under him, through the open door. As she passed beneath, she took care not to tread on his bare feet by accident. The smell of the woven wool carpet and the heavy velvet tick of the big wall clock made her feel the size of an infant.

'This way, Shell,' he said.

The way he said her name was like a blessing.

He opened a door to the best room, at the front, where Shell had never been before. He waved her onto a huge chair of dimpled leather. Then he got a cut glass from a cabinet, and took a small bottle of bitter lemon from a drinks trolley.

Shell had never liked bitter lemon until then. But as she sipped it now, it fizzed like sherbet on her nose and lip and slipped over her tongue, sweet and sour at the same time. He leaned against the arm of the matching leather sofa as she drank. He folded his arms and watched. He smiled. A slow warmth filled the room.

'I'm glad you called when you did,' he said.

'Why's that, Father?'

'I'd been having a struggle.'

'A struggle?'

'With myself. A terrible craving for the fags.'

Shell chortled, remembering his sermon. 'You're still off them?'

'For all Lent, I hope. Please God I last till Easter.'

'Will you go back on them then?'

'Maybe. Maybe not.' He shook his head. 'Desperate things, the fags. The hold they have on you. Don't
you
ever go on them, will you?'

She didn't like to say she'd already had a few. Declan Ronan shared one around at school sometimes, swapping it between herself and Bridie Quinn: a token of honour, he'd quip, for the founding members of his harem.

'I hope you don't mind me asking,' Father Rose said, as if he'd read her thoughts, 'but shouldn't you be at school?'

Shell held up the glass to her face. She peered through the diamond ridges. 'School?' she said. ''S nearly over. We break up soon.'

'I see.' He got up and walked the length of the room. He stopped at the casement window and stood for a long moment.

'The other morning,' he said with his back to her. 'In the field. Why were you letting your brother and sister throw stones at you like that?'

Shell almost drank the fizzing lemon the wrong way.

'As I came up the hill,' he continued, 'I saw you, standing with your arms outstretched.' He turned to face her.

Her eyes slanted over to the vase of silk flowers inside the fireplace. She finished the drink.

'For a moment I thought I was seeing things,' he said. 'A vision from the gospel.'

'We were only messing.'

'It seemed an odd game, Shell.'

There was something in the way he said the words that drew her eyes to his. A soft bowl of light sat in his look, so she told him the truth. 'I was praying, Father. I was making them hurt me so that I could feel the praying. Really feel it. Strong and hard.'

He got up and took the glass from her. 'Would you like another?'

'No, Father.'

'Well, on you go, so.'

'Yes, Father.'

He showed her to the door, but as she stepped back out onto the front path, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She felt it there, a firm, kind touch.

'Shell,' he said. 'Prayer doesn't have to be painful. Trust me.'

She looked up. The wisdom of ages was in his eyes.

'I do, Father,' she said.

He let her go. She hurried down the path, through the gate and up the road. She knew he was watching her as she departed, for she did not hear the sound of the front door closing after her.

Four

After tea that day, Dad led the usual decade of the rosary. They were on the first Sorrowful Mystery, the agony in the garden. Jesus was waiting in anguish of mind to be arrested. Jimmy had his tongue poked off to the side so that his left cheek was like a tent. He stared at the old piano longingly, and wiggled his fingers as if he was playing it. Trix sat back on her heels and stared up at the flypaper Dad had hung up earlier from the lampshade. The first trapped fly was stirring on it, dying. Shell closed her eyes. Dad's voice drifted away. Instead Jesus joined her in his trouble of mind. She walked with him along the gravel path of the priests' house garden. They approached the tall pampas grass, waiting for the soldiers to arrive, and sighed together to think of the coming cross and nails.
Jesus
, Shell said,
I wish I could have the nails instead
. He turned to her and took her arm. He had the face of Father Rose, but instead of priestly vestments he wore a long linen tunic of dazzling white. Beneath it, his feet were bare. His face was unshaven, his hair longer.
Shell
, he said in his dulcet Midlands tone,
your sweet love is all the comfort I need on this dark day
.

'Shell!' Dad's voice, stern. 'You've stopped praying.'

'No, I haven't,' Shell said. 'I was talking to Jesus in my head.'

'That's blasphemy,' he snapped. He thrust the rosary at her. 'You do the next five beads. And you, Jimmy, stop your wriggling, or I'll put an axe to that piano.'

In bed that night, after the light was out, she returned to her visions. She found herself in a boat. Jesus was on the far side of the lake, walking on the water. When she climbed over the side, the surface was elastic, like a trampoline. She crossed over, bounding like a spaceman on the moon. He took her hand and they traversed the lake as the sun went down and the stars came out. As she drifted into sleep, he turned and said something to her. She leaned towards him to catch the words and suddenly the surface of the lake shifted. She was falling into the grey-green depths below. Silence, thick and heavy, was everywhere. Then from afar came the steady tick-tocking of a clock.

Five

On Wednesday morning, after they'd done the stones, Dad said there'd be no more mitching off from school. They were to go in, quick march.

'I thought you said we could have the last week off,' Jimmy moaned.

'I don't
wanna
go to school, Dadda,' Trix said. She always called him 'Dadda' when she wanted her way but today it didn't work.

'You'll be at school in two shakes or I'll have the washing line down to the three of you,' he said. 'I'll not have any more interfering phone calls.'

Shell's ears pricked up. Somebody from school had been on to him again.

She helped Trix get ready and kept them both quiet with a bubblegum each she'd saved from yesterday. She hurried them over the field to the village and left them off at the national school. Then she caught the bus to Castlerock town for secondary school.

She arrived just on time. Bridie Quinn sauntered over to her before the bell went. She and Bridie were the only girls from Coolbar in their class. They were the two bad apples of the fourth year and fast friends, whenever they weren't mitching. Bridie's dad had vanished years back. She, her younger brothers and sisters and her mam lived in a mouldering three-room bungalow the other side of Coolbar, on the road to Goat Island. They'd a TV and calor gas, but no bathroom, and they washed in an outhouse. Nobody knew how they all squeezed in. Bridie had to share a bed with her mam, a fate worse than death. She'd a thistle for a tongue but was Shell's only friend.

'Shell Talent, you're a sight,' she announced.

Shell looked down at her grubby dress and around the playground. She was the only one in summer uniform, a maggot-green shapeless shift with a narrow belt, sleeves to the elbow and stripes of navy on the flat, wide collar. The weather was fine. She'd thought the whole school would have switched over from winter to summer by now.

'I guessed wrong,' she moaned.

''S not the
dress
,' Bridie said, waving a hand. The dangers of the morning guessing game at the change of the season were well understood. 'It's the cut of you under it. You've no bra on.'

Shell wriggled. 'So?'

'In that dress, I can see them drooping.'

'No!'

'I can. They're like two jellyfish.'

'Shut it.'

''S true.'

Shell sighed. 'I don't
have
a bra.'

'You should get one.'

'Dad'd never give me the money for one.'

'Will we pinch something from Meehans' stores? They'd never notice. I could pick you out a nice one. Lacy blue. Underwired. Whatever you fancy.'

Shell giggled. 'Would you?'

'I would. You'd have to tell me your size, first.'

'Dunno my size. I've never been measured.'

'Not even the size of your cup?'

'My cup?'

'
You
know.' Bridie clumped her two hands in front of her chest.

'I've no notion,' Shell admitted.

'Looking at you, I'd say you're a C for sure.'

'A C?'

'A C, Shell.'

A seashell. She liked the sound of it. She thought of the round creamy shells on Goat Island strand. 'A seashell,' she murmured like an incantation. 'Is that big or small?'

Bridie fluttered her eyelids as if Shell was Miss Ireland for Ignorance.

'Big enough that you need a bra,' she said. Her voice softened. She slipped her arm through Shell's, a thing she rarely did. 'I didn't like it when mine grew,' she confided. 'But now I'm used to them. A bra makes them stick out. People notice. I'm a thirty-four D, but don't be telling anyone.'

'I won't,' Shell promised.

'Come with me after school,' Bridie said. 'We'll pop into Meehans'. I'll slip it out of the box-into my school bag-and away we go.'

'You
sure
we won't get caught?'

'Sure. I've done it before. Often.'

The bell rang.

At break time, Shell resumed the conversation.

'Bridie. Did they have bras in the olden days?' she asked.

Bridie pondered the question. 'They must have,' she concluded. 'Otherwise, women would have wobbled all over the place. Like yourself.'

'D'you think,' Shell whispered, 'that the Virgin Mary wore a bra?'

Bridie hooted. 'You wait till I tell Declan that one. Maybe he'll think up a joke about it.'

'I'm serious.'

'Under all those loose blue robes and cloaks? She must have, mustn't she? When you've had a baby, you quadruple in size. I know. My mam told me. You've to carry around all the milk.'

Shell thought of the cows she'd seen with machines on their udders in the milking parlour over on Duggans' farm. 'How much milk, d'you think?'

'A good few pints, I'd say. There's Declan. I'm off.' She ran after Declan's distant figure. He was making for the games hut for a fag. Shell shrugged and turned away, pondering the mystery of the milk of various nursing mammals.

At lunch, Declan Ronan came up to Shell and invited her behind the hut for a drag on his fag. Bridie had to stay indoors and do a detention.

'I've a great one. What kind of bra did the Virgin Mary Mother wear when she was lactating?' Declan said.

Shell pondered. The word lactating puzzled her, but she wouldn't admit it. 'Dunno,' she said. 'Give up.'

'A thirty-three J Wonderbra,' he said. 'Get it?'

'Not sure,' she admitted.

'A three for the Holy Father, a three for the Holy Spirit, and a J-cup for your man, Jesus, so's he could drink his fill of the eternal life.'

'And grow up wonderful?' Shell suggested.

'You've got it,' he said, passing her the fag.

She took a long drag and passed it back. They sat together in the sun. Theresa Sheehy poked her head round the corner as if to join them but Declan shooed her away.

'Why don't you let her join us?' Shell said after she'd vanished.

'Her legs are too fat.'

Shell clouted him. He gave her another go on the fag, then clamped his hand on her calf. 'Not like yours.' He ran his hand up to behind her knee and tickled.

'Gerroff.'

'Good and skinny.' He took his hand away and smirked. 'Miss Shambles.'

'You, Bridie and me, Declan,' Shell smiled, blowing out the smoke. 'We're the Coolbar Club, aren't we?' She remembered Declan as a familiar torment down the years. In national school he was forever chasing the girls around the playground, yanking up their skirts. In secondary school he'd sometimes ride the bus home with her and Bridie, taking it in turns who he'd sit next to.