About Matilda (18 page)

When the house lights come up I see the Mad Kids sitting in their wheelchairs at the front. Mad Michael is waving up at me and for once managing to clap his hands without poking his fingers in his eyes. I can't help it and I have to wave back because, even though it doesn't help me, at least now I know there are worse things in the world than being an orphan.

Behind the Mad Kids, the convent kids are sitting with Gabriel. If I didn't already know them I'd know they were from the convent. They're the ones without the sweets. Gabriel gives me a wave and I know she expects me to wave back but I pretend not to notice her. Sitting beside Gabriel, fast asleep, is Lucy Flynn and that gives me an idea. I know now I have to get out of this Mad School. I have to help Sheamie find our mother and, if anyone knows how to help Sheamie get money for his escape, it'll be Lucy Flynn.

Lucy Flynn is a tinker. Lucy don't look like a tinker though, with coal black hair that shines all the way to her waist and cheeky pink cheeks that always make me think she's hiding something behind her back. She looks really pretty when the penguins finish scrubbing the dirt from her face every time Officer Flannery brings her back in the squad car. Lucy's mother steals Lucy from the convent because she needs Lucy for the beggin' and staelin' and the penguins are always ringing the gardaí to search for her. We all know Lucy was settled once and lived in one of the flat-roofed houses on Hennessy's Road but her mother couldn't stand living in a house so she ran down the street and around the corner to the tinker camp on the Tramore Road, dropping Lucy in the convent on the way.

I tell Lucy out in the playground we need money to help Sheamie escape and she says she'd do anything for Sheamie. She loves Sheamie so she does. She'd love to drag him into the bushes and do dirty things but Sheamie won't go near bush or tree when he sees Lucy.

I hope he's not queer or anything. Do you think he's queer, Matilda?

He's just strange, Lucy.

Lucy says she'd love to run away with Sheamie herself. They'd drive a van around the country gathering copper cylinders, lead, wire and car batteries. They'd make a fortune and have a dozen children for the big children's allowance and live on the dole in a caravan. She's certain Sheamie has a touch
of the tinker in him 'cos where else would he get that lovely red hair?

I'd like to tell Lucy my brother isn't a tinker but at eleven you know there're times you just have to keep your gob shut. Instead, I ask Lucy where we can get money and she says we can beg for it.

Beg? No way, Lucy.

Beggin's aesy, Matilda.

I don't give a shit if it is or not.

I just sits on a footpat' outside a chapel or a supermarka with me hand out sayin', Any money, mister? Gis a penny, missus. Ah, Jasus, for the childer, missus. 'Tis better now when I do haves me little cousin wi'me 'cos I waves the empty milk bottle and 'tis faerce hard ta pass a starvin' child tryin' ta get milk for the little shister. You could rob the money but robbin' 'n staelin's different though. Ya hav's to be trained to rob an stael. I can show yeh, but we'll have to go see me mother. If she's in a good mood she'll give us money. We can't go into the shops with nothin' in our pockets 'cos they'd know what we were up to and throw us out. When you have money there's nothin' they can do.

I don't want to go see Lucy's mother in the tinker camp for fear I'll be killed by the tinkers up there and by Gabriel if she finds out where I was. I don't want to steal either. I know it's a sin but I have so many mortal sins on my soul already, from flushing God down the toilet bowl, to not making a proper confession to Father Devlin and doing dirty things with my uncles, a few more hardly matter. When I'm big I'll find a kind priest who'll understand. Especially when I tell him I stole to help Sheamie find our mother.

A line of tinker caravans is parked beside the local tip and a warm January makes the place stink like a blocked drain. The tinkers don't seem to mind because their camp is destroyed
with rubbish, drying rags and shitty nappies tossed along the ditches. Lucy runs ahead and leaves me surrounded by dog shit and the mongrels that left it here. They growl and bark and show their teeth and a small girl with a sneaky grin and a dirty face stands blocking my way.

What di ya wants?

I look for Lucy but she's gone.

I asked yeh what yeh wants.

There's a gang of them, with sticks, walking towards me. I want to run but they're all around me now. A big freckled-faced boy leans forward and asks, What are yeh doin' ta me little shister?

Nothin', I'm sorry.

What are yeh sorry for then?

They're going to kill me no matter what I say and I don't know what to do. Then I hear Lucy saying, Fuck off, Miley, and laeve Matilda alone.

Is she with you, Lucy?

That's me friend. That's Matilda. Laeve 'er be.

Lucy walks back and catches my arm. Come on, Matilda. Nobody'll touch yeh.

Lucy's mother is sitting outside her caravan on the front seat of a burned-out car. The car is upside down in the ditch. She's big and bouncy like a beach ball. Her bottom lip juts out to hold the fag that's sticking up from one corner of her mouth and when she talks through the other corner she sounds like a foghorn.

Well, Lucy, she says as if she only saw Lucy this morning instead of the three months since her last spin in the squad car with Officer Flannery dragging Lucy out the back door by the neck saying, 'Tis a good kick in the hole I'd give that one… ah, excuse the language, Sister Gabriel.

We climb the three wooden steps of the caravan and inside
it's hard to keep my jaws together. It's spotless, cleaner than a nun's arse. Shiny copper pots and kettles hang from the ceiling while brass figurines dance along sideboards filled with cups, saucers and plates painted with white horses drinking from cool mountain streams and a cunning fox grinning as the hounds pass him by.

Lucy says, Yeh looks surprised, Matilda. Didn't yeh ever see inside a tinker caravan before?

For a second I think about it. About the mongrel dogs outside and the cunning fox inside but I don't know what to say to tinkers when they ask about their caravans. I'm saved when Lucy's mother walks in with the fag still dangling from her bottom lip and I wonder how she smoked it all without dropping a single ash and certain if she did she'd puncture herself and squirt around the caravan like a burst balloon. The ash is still hanging when she asks, Will yee have somethin' to drink, girls? And it's still there when she leaves two tumblers of lemonade on the table and wonders who I am.

Matilda, Missus Flynn.

Will yeh get outa dat with yer Missus Flynn and call me Maisy. Dat aul Missus Dis and Missus Dat is only for the settled people, so it is.

She laughs from the guts of her fat belly and blows ash into the air and all over the sheepskin seats. She lights another fag and sits under the copper kettles with her arms folded and her eyes closed and if it weren't for the occasional red glow from the cigarette I'd be certain she's dead. When she finally opens one eye it's to wonder why we're still here. That's what I'm wondering myself till she hands Lucy and me twenty pence each from the silver teapot on the cooker and tells us to don't be sitting in caravans all day with the lovely afternoon outside. And I can't help wondering if it's better to be like Lucy and have a mother like Maisy or be like me and have no mother at all.

Lucy wants to go to Grace's supermarket. They always send us bread they can't sell – brown, white, sliced or loaf. The broken Easter eggs at Easter. Crushed biscuits, broken bars of chocolate or anything bruised or stale in general and it's a known thing in the convent, if you're ever in Grace's supermarket, be sure to break as many bars of chocolate as you can.

We go in past the rattling tin cans of the boy scouts and the machine over the door blowing out air that heats you going in and cools you going out. Past the girl in the magazines booth and the racks of white blouses until we reach what Lucy came for.

Lucy says, Youse don't do nothin', Matilda. Youse just watch me 'cos youse never did it an yeh'll only get cot.

Lucy stands behind a woman with a shopping trolley. When the woman looks back Lucy smiles up at her. Lucy gets to the sweets and slides four packets of Rolo up her sleeve and walks through the checkout as if the woman with the trolley is her mother. I follow her outside.

Now, Matilda, she says, run, and the way she says it I'm sure there's someone following and even though I done nothing wrong I run and we don't stop till we're breathless inside the convent wall and all I want is to go back for more. Lucy says I have to practise stealing sweets for a while but when I get the hang of it we can steal things that we can sell to the traders down in the Apple Market.

The following week I'm with Lucy at the sweet counter trying to look innocent but my heart is pounding under my blue poncho. I feel guilty because it came from a bishop. A holy man. What can I do when it's the best thing invented for stealing sweets?

Uncle Philip's new wife, Rita, works behind the sweet counter and she gives me a pleasant, I-was-almost-a-nun smile.
The poncho is lying over the sweets and I wonder what I'm going to say to her. I only met Rita a few times in my grandmother's house.

Rita glances sideways at Lucy. She knows by looking that Lucy is a tinker and she's probably wondering why we're together, but Rita wouldn't understand what it's like in the convent even if she was almost a nun. She wouldn't understand I don't see Lucy as a tinker. She's Lucy, a Shep like me.

A man in a cap comes to the counter to be served and I wonder will Rita be in trouble if they count the sweets afterwards and find there's fistfuls of jellies missing. I can't put them back because getting caught putting them back is as bad as getting caught stealing them in the first place.

Rita turns to the till and I say, I'd better go, Rita. I'll see yeh.

She gives me a strange look over her shoulder that sends a shiver through me but maybe that's the way you look at people when you were almost a nun. I know all about nuns but people who were almost a nun are a mystery.

Lucy grabs my arm and pulls me away from the counter and we head for the door. When we near the door Lucy says, Remember, Matilda, don't run till we're outside. And don't look back. If yeh looks back they'll know youse was up to somethin'.

I won't, Lucy.

Walking back we meet Sonny waggling towards us on the footpath on a big red bicycle.

Matilda, I'm glad I met you, so I am. I wanted to remind you about the meeting in the park next week. You won't forget?

I won't, Sonny.

I hope you're eating the raw eggs?

I am, Sonny.

No, smokin'?

No, Sonny.

The fags is the worst. Stay away from the fags, Matilda.

I will, Sonny.

Sonny wobbles away reaching in his pocket for the box of fags and all I can think of is I need new runners. These runners are tatty and only the top two holes have laces left. Gabriel already bought me a new pair of jeans at Christmas so there's no way I'm getting runners or anything else for a long time. The meeting in the park is a special meeting and instead of medals you get Waterford Glass and I'd love to see the look on Gabriel's face if I gave her that. Maybe she'd give me a hug and say she was proud of me. Maybe she'd say I wasn't stupid and say she was taking me out of the Mad School. Maybe I should tell her I'd have a better chance of winning if I had new runners but she'll probably tell me Jesus didn't wear runners and Jesse Owens who won gold medals in the Olympics often ran in his bare feet and if bare feet are good enough for Jesus and Jesse Owens then runners with enough laces to tie the top two holes should be good enough for me.

That's the trouble with having nothing. The minute you want something, someone always wants to tell you why you're better off without it.

Gabriel has a small garden in the playground with a low red-brick wall around it and, when she's not talking to Polly the budgie or reading her red pocket prayer book or embroidering those white pocket-handkerchiefs, she grows lily of the valley. They're pinky white and bell shaped and Gabriel says they're holy. My father would say all flowers are holy. I don't bother trying to figure it.

I go over to Gabriel while she's clearing out weeds and dead leaves and hand her the biggest box of chocolates I could fit under my poncho. One with sad-eyed puppies on the lid. If that doesn't soften her up, I'm fucked.

Why thank you, Matilda. Tell me, where did you get the money?

I saved it from me pocket money, Mother.

Did you indeed?

I did.

She must know I stole them, she's not that thick. No one's that thick.

To change the subject I tell Gabriel, The garden looks lovely, Mother, even though there's fuck all in it this time of year, and hope she'll be so happy I noticed that she'll rush to town and buy me new runners.

I never knew you liked a garden, Matilda.

Only yours, Mother.

Isn't that a lovely thing to say?

Ah, Mother?

Yes, Matilda?

There's a race meeting in the park on Sunday and I need new runners.

She holds the chocolates under her arm and looks at me out the corner of her eye.

I see, she says. Tell me, what is wrong with the ones you're wearing?

They're scruffy, Mother.

Now, Matilda, you know pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

But I'd have a better chance of winning if I had new runners, Mother. There's glass and everything if I win. Can't you buy them out of the budget?

The budget is gone for this month.

Gone?

Spent. I account to Reverend Mother for every penny. Reverend Mother accounts to Mother Superior in Dublin. Mother Superior accounts to the Archbishop. The Archbishop
accounts to the Cardinal and the Cardinal accounts to the Holy Father in Rome.