About Matilda (25 page)

A pretty girl with lovely white hair tied in pigtails is sitting on a blanket near the fire. She waves to us and calls out in a sweet voice, Don't stand back. Come in from the cold.

She's wearing a long yellow dress covered in flowers and looks about eighteen. She says her name is Sonya. Sonya has a friendly face and a smile warm like the fire, so we sit with her on the blanket. The whole camp seems cosy and warm and friendly, the way a camp should feel.

Are you on holiday too? Mona asks Sonya.

Life is a holiday, says Sonya.

Mona looks at me but I look away. You'd know Sonya was never in the Holy Shepherd after saying a stupid thing like that.

Your Daddy tells me you're only here for a few days. A pity really, we're having a wedding here next month, you'd have had a wonderful time.

She was talking to the five of us but she was looking over at my father warming his hands at the fire.

My father comes across and sits cross-legged between Sonya and me. His eyes are like moons in his skull and he's smiling at the five of us like we done something right for once. He
tells Sonya we're his children and he's proud of us. It breaks his heart to see us in that convent. He puts his huge arm around me and tells me he loves me, loves all of us. We're the most important things in the world, after Jesus. He's doing well in London. He's in business with Uncle James, buying old houses, fixing them up and letting them out. He's bought a big house in London for himself and he's taking us out of the convent soon. He'll have a house for each of us for when we're older. We'll be a family again.

Sonya says we're lovely children. We have lovely manners and we're blessed with our Daddy's good looks. She blushes at Daddy and turns her eyes away. Her cheeks are flushed and any fool can see there's more than the fire making Sonya hot.

After a while, Sonya and my father leave us alone. I see them holding hands as they pass on the other side of the fire, then vanish into the night. Mona has a hurt look. Part of me wants to reach over and hold her hand, but I can't. It's like saying, I know. Do you want to talk? There are some things you just don't want to talk about because there's nothing you can do. Mona turns her face away, only for a moment, then turns back to Danny. Danny is excited our father is taking us out of the convent and I feel sorry for him because when I was ten I'd be delighted to hear that too. We try to explain we're in the convent until we're sixteen and can't be taken out unless the nuns and the government agree. He sits quietly by the fire trying to figure it out only you can't figure anything out when you're ten and you've never seen anything in your life except walls and nuns. I see the tears on his cheeks but I'm proud of him because, even though he doesn't understand, he believes us, and somehow that makes us all a little bit closer.

We sit by the fire until the flames flicker and die and the ashes blacken and there's a cold dawn breaking over the island. The
sky is pink around the edges and every shade of grey overhead. The air feels thin and you can hear the birds chirping from the treetops to warm themselves. Sheamie stands up and stretches. He yawns. He has something to do and he'll follow us back.

Mona, Pippa, Danny and me trudge in a single file back through the damp fields where the cattle are stirring from the hedges and the lambs are bawling for their ma.

In the caravan, last night's candle is melted to its saucer. We wrap ourselves in blankets and make tea and toast and sit around the table. We're tired and want to sleep but worried over sausages and why Sheamie isn't back. Pippa says, It don't take an hour to piss. Maybe he's after cuttin' his willy off again.

We laugh. Even Mona laughs, till she says she doesn't think we'll be leaving this place. Not with the way our father was so friendly with the hippies and that Sonya. No way are we going on to Donegal. Forget Donegal.

Pippa glances over at me from inside her blanket. I don't know what to say. I can only worry about one thing at a time.

We wrap our fingers around our warm mugs and sip our hot tea till Sheamie bursts through the door. He's out of breath and littered in twigs and bits of green things.

The father is behind me. I had to cut through hedges to get ahead of him. Look at what I have under me coat. I robbed them offa the hippies.

You can hear the relief. Pippa is so relieved she farts and blushes but nobody laughs. Pippa says to Sheamie, Put them sausages in the press before he comes in. Hurry!

Don't say thanks, whatever you do.

Put them in the press and I'll kiss your arse.

I'd rather keep 'em under me coat.

Would the two of you ever shut the fuck up, says Mona.

My father comes in just as Sheamie is putting the sausages away. He warns Sheamie not to touch anything in there, he'll
cook it himself. My father's eyes look tired but the rest of him looks fresh, like he's slept all night in a big feather bed, and he smells like he's just got out of the shower. He opens the door and sends us out to wash. We stink.

It's raining again. There's no point going across the field for water when there's a deluge from the caravan roof. We strip to our underwear and stick our heads under the gushing water and scrub ourselves with the bar of soap. The water is warm and it's like standing under a drainpipe. We're washed in a minute. My father follows out and asks where's the bucket we used and we say we didn't need a bucket. We washed in the rain. He leans against the door and takes a puff of the cigarette. He says if we like rain so much we can wash ourselves in it properly.

We are washed properly.

I'll decide that. Run around that field until I tell you to stop.

The five of us look at each other then back at him drawing on the cigarette.

Are yee deaf ?

Mona is, says Sheamie, under his breath.

What?

Nothing, says Sheamie.

So you heard me?

Yes, Daddy.

We run in a group past the other caravans with Terry Wogan on their radios and their doors closed against the rain. I don't mind running. I'm used of it. But I don't know how the others will manage.

We turn at the concrete toilet by the gate and run alongside the hedge by the road then turn again towards the cliff. As quickly as the rain started, it turns to a deluge like tiny pebbles spraying our flesh and the wind so strong it's hard to breathe. We turn at the cliff edge and run towards the caravan. Already Pippa is gasping for air. I can't do it, Matilda. I swear I can't.

Keep going, Pippa. Come on, I'll race you.

She bends over coughing and spluttering and my father is shouting at her from the caravan door to keep going. He'll tell her when to stop. Pippa gets to the caravan door and drops to her knees in front of my father. She tilts forward as if her head is resting on a glass wall only there's no wall and she keeps tilting forward till her soft pink cheeks are caked in the muck and her arms are stretched out by her side like a nun lying before the altar begging God's forgiveness for her sins.

Now, my father says to Pippa, now you're clean.

Danny's jaws are purple and his arms dangle like he's carrying heavy bags and when he's told to get in he falls on top of Pippa in the doorway. There's only Mona, Sheamie and me, and I pity Mona with the soapsuds still in her hair, bits of it flying off or running down her cheeks. The third time around my father calls her in and she collapses beside Danny and Pippa.

Sheamie's legs are like bent spoons stirring in the mud and his bare feet sliding under him every time he turns a corner, and, when he passes the caravan for the fifth time, our father tells him to keep going, but when Sheamie stumbles and falls to his knees my father lifts him by the neck and throws him on top of the others like Sheamie's a wet sack. Now there's just my father and me in this muddy field and there's no way he's doing that to me.

He shouts after me, Keep going.

I wish he knew what a fool he is. Punishing me with my favourite thing in the world. I wish he knew how stupid he looks with his skin showing through his white shirt and rain dripping from his beard. Every time I see the wind blow his hair around his face I know I could run around this field for ever.

I stopped counting laps after ten, and that's a long time ago. I pass him again and turn my face away so he won't see me laugh. The wind and rain have turned his nose red; he looks
like a clown. He tells me to get in but I keep going. He shouts after me, I told you to get in, get in now. I keep going past the people in the other caravans who by now are looking out their windows. I see their faces at the glass and wonder why they don't ask, What the fuck are you doing out there in your underwear, girl? Is your father mad? Come in here out of it and we'll call the gardaí.

Does God see me? Is he up there hiding behind the rain clouds waiting for me to give up? I wish I knew so I could ask why we're the ones with a lunatic father. Gabriel would say I'm lucky because I have my faith and that's the greatest gift of all. It doesn't feel like a gift and it's easy for Gabriel to talk when she's not the one running around a field in her knickers.

I slow down by the trees. He'll think I'm tired, think he's beaten me. I speed up along the cliff edge and as I get near him he roars at me to get in. He runs after me and reaches out to grab me but I'm too fast and, when I look back and he's gone inside, I want to sing and dance in the rain, but I only do one little jump and punch my fist in the air. That's enough. I stop running and walk back to the caravan because there's no point running now when there's no one looking. I know my father might kill me when I go in. I don't care. It'll be worth it. I've beaten him.

I do care though when the caravan door is locked. I hear the others pleading, Please Daddy, let her in, and he threatens them to eat their breakfast before he throws it in the bin. I want to knock but if he was going to let me in he'd be out here making me apologize.

It's cramped under the caravan and I have to lie flat. The grass is turned yellow and everywhere smells of wet clay. The only sound is the others washing plates above me. I take off my vest and wring the rain from it but it still clings to my wet skin when I put it back on. I curl up in a ball behind the rusty
wheel where the icy wind doesn't blow in my face but it still creeps up from behind clawing the soles of my feet and the backs of my legs and sends a shiver through to my bones and I wonder how long before he lets me in. Did he keep something for me to eat? Did the others hide something? Maybe they'll drop a sausage or a slice of bread out the window. Maybe they already did. I crawl out on my stomach and root between the green blades. I claw, scratch and scrape the wet clay and find nothing and finding nothing I crawl back under the caravan, emptier, weaker and hungrier.

July days are long, longer in the rain, not long enough when you fear being alone in the dark. Sometimes I hear a scream or a cry from one of my brothers and sisters or his feet above my head kicking the table or a chair or one of them. Then the silence when they go to bed that's even worse. I watch the candles being lit in the other caravans. They're having supper, warm tea, toast, maybe a grilled rasher or a scrambled egg. I think about running for help but they wouldn't help. I crawl out and pull down my knickers and squat to piss in the wet grass like an animal. I think about knocking on our caravan door. I'd say anything now. Say I'm sorry a thousand times. Fall on my hands and knees in the mud and say anyone who prays to statues must be a screwball. Please, Daddy, let me in.

I crawl under the caravan again and try to shelter behind the rusty wheel. I've never heard wind so loud. Great chunks of it squeeze under the caravan screeching like a train in a tunnel. I put my hands to my ears and watch across the field as one by one the other caravans vanish in the blackness. I know he'll never let me in. He never let our mother in when he threw her out. That's the last time I saw her. In the back garden. She was naked. Her face covered in shit from where he held her head down in the septic tank. One arm across her breasts, the other between her legs, and in the morning she
was gone. Why do I only remember those things now? Remember how he was with her. I was too young, but still I knew. Inside I knew, and I feel a fool for thinking he could ever be different. Part of him is broken and can never be fixed. I know now why my mother left. Why she had to leave. Why she's never coming back. Nobody is ever coming for us because there's nobody to come. Maybe we had to come to this place so I could understand why. I feel angry. And I promise that when we're big and he's old I'll do to him what he's doing to us. I'll make him suffer. I'll stick hot needles in his eyes till he roars and begs me to stop and prays on his knees to statues for forgiveness, but I won't forgive and thinking that makes me warm. My eyelids are heavy but I'm afraid to sleep for fear I'll roll over the cliff. I pray, Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, and God answers me. I drift to sleep with dreams of escaping far from here to a place where there's a warm bed and hot food every day.

In the morning I feel the huge wet hand pulling on my ankle, strealing my face through the grass. My father sticks his beard in my mouth.

Next time I tell you to get in, you'll do it. Stupid bitch. Now get in and eat your breakfast.

I'd like to tell him to shove his breakfast up the highest part of his hole, only I'm hungry and, if we're going to escape, I need to be clever.

Every morning we do spellings. We swim in the ocean because my father says salt water is the best thing for any cuts or bruises we picked up playing.

Playing? Jesus, we haven't played since we got here.

In the afternoons we walk to chapels so my father can scream at worshippers, priests and statues. Some days we get fed, but every day the milk gets a little sourer in the bottle and it's plain to see Mona's right, we're not going anywhere.