About Matilda (12 page)

Yes, Father Devlin. Thank you, Father Devlin.

If you're half as fast in a race as you are around that playground, you'll have a grand time altogether. And if any of the other kids want to come down, he says to Sister Gabriel, then the more the merrier.

Gabriel holds her hands to her flushed cheeks, Oh, Father Devlin, there's no doubt but you are a marvel. Whatever would we do without you?

Monday night, the green in front of Our Lady's Grotto is bright from the streetlights and Father Devlin is there in his black overcoat. Mister Douglas is writing kids' names in a notebook. Mister Douglas has a long thin nose like looking sideways at a coat hanger and it's like every kid from the Cork Road is hanging from it. He has thin red hair, a lighted cigarette in his hand and he doesn't look like he can run far. The other kids call him Sonny and I wish I were like kids on the outside where you call a grown man you never saw before, Sonny.

Gabriel bought me new runners. She said if I'm going to do it I might as well do it properly. They're not for kicking and climbing, they're for your running, Matilda, and I don't want to see a mark on them. I can't hand out runners right and left. It's not made of money we are. I have to budget.

The runners are smashing. White-white, and there's a lovely smell of new from the inside. I'm pure faintin'. I have my red shorts from school, a red T-shirt, and I look just like the other girls here except for the shaved-up hair and the black eye. There's a girl in a blue tracksuit with three white stripes on the side and you'd hardly get stripes like that unless you were good.

Father Devlin pulls on his cap and tells us Mister Douglas will be taking care of us. He buttons up his overcoat and leaves in his car. I wish he'd stay. Father Devlin is all right when he's not asking us to sit on his lap, but Mister Douglas is a stranger and you never know what strange men will do.

We do sit-ups, press-ups and squats on the green then go on a run out the Cork Road past the glass factory. I look back to see if Mister Douglas is following, but he's sitting on the red-brick wall outside his house talking to his chubby-cheeked wife.

Stay on the footpath, he shouts after us. Stay on the footpath.

After a month of training we're travelling on a bus to our first meet. Sunday morning there're six kids from the Holy Shepherd. I'm wearing handed-in, hand-me-down blue slacks a hundred years old and a green boy's jumper with crazy black zigzags and I'm ashamed. The other kids know I'm from the convent but I hate the world seeing I'm a Shep.

I sit at the back of the bus. I wonder why my father hasn't come home. And about my mother. Where is she now, is she thinking of us, does she miss me like I miss her?

But part of me is excited and I can barely sit still. I'm going somewhere different, seeing new things. I drift away, lost in the mountains and fields. I'm swimming in rivers and diving naked into warm blue lakes, though after a while all the rivers and mountains and lakes look just the same. There's a boy in
a field flying a kite, his fingers clenched to the string. That's what I want to be. A kite. A kite without string dancing in the breeze and sun, soaring over forests and cities high up to the clouds away from the convent out over the sea to countries all over the world and never stop till I'm home in Australia where it's blue and warm and the white sand is soft beneath my toes. There's icy lemonade on the veranda and she's there in her bright white uniform like we were never gone, my Mum.

We park in a field and I change my clothes in the bus. The black eye is gone and my hair is almost to my shoulders and I look like everyone else. Mister Douglas has new red tracksuits for us. Real ones. Heavy ones. They make me feel like I'm a real runner. A real person.

The field is filled with people in boots and caps and scarves and kids in shorts and tracksuits. There are mini-buses, big buses, cars and vans parked in a line beside the ditch with their front lights facing outward. The ground is soft and the mud clings to the soles of my runners but the air is fresh and crisp and there's that sweet smell that comes after rain.

Perfect conditions, says Mister Douglas. There's not a cloud. The main thing, lads, is to enjoy it. Do yeer best and don't let yourselves down.

I line up with other girls for my race and I have to bend over and put my head between my knees. That's what Mister Douglas says to do.

Relax, girl, relax, sure you'll be grand.

The man with the gun fires and scatters the birds from the trees and I know if I can stay close to the girl who had the white stripes on her tracksuit when we were training, I have a chance. The race is three miles and after two I'm ahead of the girl. She looked really good with the number on her back. I thought she had a plan but now when I glance back I see
she's last. Up ahead there're girls in yellow and red and blue tops. Some are so far ahead I barely see them. I pass one girl, two girls. I'm not as nervous now and keep passing girls until there's more behind than in front but the finish is too soon and I'm only fourth but Mister Douglas says I done well.

Did I?

Yes, of course, you're in the final.

I'd like to smile but then he might think that I think I belong here when I know I don't. I turn my face away but the smile comes anyway.

The next race is for boys, then older girls, then it's my turn again. This time I go straight to the front and when I cross the finish line I'm dancing. I'm at the Olympics and the national anthem is playing while they hang my gold medal around my neck. I'm a girl floating up to Heaven on a cloud when Mister Douglas comes across to me smiling and tells me all the running will be like this. Long-distance and cross-country, if I keep it up I'll be very good. He lights a cigarette, coughs, and tells me I have great stamina. I'm eager and never give up and he likes that. I hope you don't smoke. Fags are bad for the running. And eat plenty of raw eggs.

I don't smoke anyway but I don't know where I'm going to get raw eggs. Any eggs. I couldn't tell Mister Douglas I get one egg a year, Easter Sunday. And that's hardboiled. That only the penguins, Doyler, and special visitors get eggs from the fat blue chicken in the fridge.

On the way home the bus stops outside a sweet shop and the kids from the outside go in. There're six of us from the Holy Shepherd sitting together at the back of the bus wishing we had mammies and daddies to give us money when we go away on buses. Mickey Driscoll and his sister Molly sit across from me. Their faces are blotchy like they're going to cry. Mickey won a gold medal too, but my race was over so I won
first. I wouldn't tell him that though. I wonder if they'll come next week. I wonder if I'll come next week, until Mister Douglas walks back and slips us money when nobody else can see and tells us not to be shy about taking it.

Us shy? You can tell Mister Douglas never had nothing.

We snap the hand off him. Thanks, Mister Douglas.

Would you lot ever stop this Mister Douglas business and call me Sonny.

We say, Thanks, Sonny, and chase into the shop after the others and it's great to be like kids on the outside where you call a grown man, Sonny.

Gabriel is sitting in her armchair by the sitting-room fire watching Andy Williams on television, while she's embroidering one of those little white pocket-handkerchiefs I often see her with. I'm bursting to show Gabriel my gold medal with the picture of a runner wearing a red top the same as mine but she says, Sit here, Matilda, on the seat beside me, those Osmond Brothers will be on in a minute. I sit beside her and listen to Donny Osmond singing ‘Puppy Love'. He's gorgeous and I'm so so gob-smacked when he's finished I have to remind myself what I came in for. I tell Gabriel I won and she says God was running with me and the Holy Spirit was giving me strength. I'm to hang my medal on the board in the kitchen with the holy medals the penguins give for our own sports day but I want to wear it around my neck like girls in school who win dancing medals. I ask Gabriel, Can I keep it for a while, Mother? She looks at me over her glasses and Gabriel has a look would strip the peel off an orange and even though you know you've done nothing wrong you just can't help wondering.

Until tomorrow, Matilda. Not a minute longer.

After school I hang my medal on the board in the corridor
and it's the first medal in the Holy Shepherd won on the outside. Gabriel comes along to check I have hung it there. She stands behind me and puts her hand on my shoulder. Well done, Matilda, she says. Well done indeed.

I don't know what to say when people say, Well done. I don't know what to do, especially now when I hear Doyler screaming from the kitchen like a woman gone mad. Gabriel rushes in and I follow. Doyler's pulling the presses open and slamming them after her, demanding to know where the eggs have gone. The room is full of kids and all of them staring at me and I say, I don't know why yee're all gawkin' at me. By Saturday there's a dozen eggs missing and Doyler sends for Reverend Mother, in case Reverend Mother thinks Doyler is taking the eggs home. She has us all in the kitchen, kids and nuns.

I don't know what's going on, Reverend Mother. There are eggs walking out of this kitchen by the dozen and of course, don't you just know, nobody here knows the first thing.

Now Doyler is gawking at me and I give my best gawk back and I know she'll think I wouldn't be brazen enough to gawk back if I had done it. Not with Reverend Mother ripping the kitchen asunder for missing eggs. Reverend Mother's eyes dart from face to face, the yellow-flecked eyes in a circle of white like two poached eggs in boiling water. I feel my cheeks burn till Gabriel's huge frame moves in front of me blocking Reverend Mother's view. Reverend Mother says she'll be keeping a sharp eye on her eggs and she'll soon discover the thief. We're sent out to the playground but from the corridor I hear Reverend Mother ask Doyler why someone would steal eggs. Are you certain the frying pan wasn't used, Missus Doyle? They're hardly eating them raw. It's only the lowest of the low or the most desperate class of a creature would eat a raw egg.

Next day I get a silver medal and a bronze medal and, by the time the parcel arrives at Christmas, the board is full of my medals.

Up in Reverend Mother's room, Uncle Edward's parcel is on the desk. Mona, Sheamie, Pippa, Danny and me stand in front of the desk. The string has been cut and the Christmas wrapping paper looks like it's been opened and wrapped up again. Reverend Mother has had a good look but she still tries to look surprised when she opens it the second time.

The parcel is packed with toys, games, new clothes and a huge sea chest stuffed with gold coins that dazzle and make us pant, but like every year we can only take one thing each. Sheamie says the coins are chocolate covered in gold paper, Not that it matters, we can't have any, can we, Reverend Mother?

No.

Sheamie smirks.

There's a blue poncho for me and that's what I take. Surely it can't be right that nuns take your Christmas presents. Especially when they came from a bishop but when I complain it's not fair Reverend Mother rants and raves.

You are a selfish girl. That box is going to the poor people who have nothing this Christmas. And you have so much. Look at what's in this box.

Pippa kicks my ankle and tells me to stop causing trouble or we'll all get kilt but Sheamie agrees it's not fair and now even Mona is complaining.

Reverend Mother says she can't have one family swanning around in new clothes while others do without. The Holy Family didn't have new clothes at Christmas. They were lucky to have a roof over their heads.

That's not our fault.

What?

Can't you buy the other kids new clothes too?

I knew before I said it I was saying the wrong thing but I couldn't stop myself.

Pippa mutters under her breath, You're for it now.

Sheamie covers his hands with his face. Danny laughs out loud. Mona didn't hear me; she's still complaining. Reverend Mother is out of her chair, a mad woman from the asylum hopping around the room chasing me with the walking stick. I keep telling her it's not fair, our Uncle Edward sent them things to us, and she keeps telling me, You'll come to no good. You're heading for the laundry, you are. She chases me till she collapses into her chair. Mona, Pippa, Sheamie and Danny are still standing at the desk. Mona is still complaining, only there's no one listening. Reverend Mother gets her breath. She puffs. Well, as it's Christmas, I'll let you have one coin each. Just the one, I said!

She slams the lid down after Danny takes his but she'll be over in the penguins' mansion Christmas night sprawled across the sofa watching Bing Crosby in
White Christmas
, stuffing her puss with Uncle Edward's chocolate.

Christmas Eve the sky flickers with stars. The air is sharp and smells of Christmas. On a radio somewhere in the darkness Louis Armstrong is singing ‘What a Wonderful World'. The houses in Trinity Park shimmer with fairy lights and the frosty white roofs wait for Santa. I sit across the road from them on the stone wall. Uncle Edward's blue poncho is soft and keeps me warm. It reminds me of my mother and I wonder if the parcels really come from her.

We've got to know some of the kids from Trinity Park. The others are not let to play with us, and taunt the ones that do.

Indjun lovers.

Mothers point as we come and go and I know they say it's
sad to see those children without a mother or father. I wish I could tell them I lived in a house once, a big house up on stilts, and my mother is a nurse and she loves us and some day she'll take us home. Then they'd know I'm just like them and wouldn't tell their children to keep away.

Beneath me, people struggle up the hill, holding on to the stone wall or just falling down drunk on the footpath. Their caps, scarves and bald heads pass under my sandals and they don't even know I'm here.