Counting Stars (10 page)

It was Anthony O’Dowd who said the visions had come from Hell. His grandmother had been there. He said that as Loosa lay on the basilica steps his grandmother had sensed a dark angel hovering above them all. She had stepped back as the others leaned forward. There had been a scent of sulfur and a shadow had fallen over Lourdes.

“It’s true,” he said.

“It’s not,” said Claire.

“It is. Loosa was ensnared by the Devil. From then onward she spent her time consorting with his demons.”

We looked at Claire. She was crying. Anthony stepped toward her and pointed at her.

“And that Doreen?” he said. “She’s a black blasted bitch from Hell if ever there was one!”

Uncle Michael visited that week. He brought water and cigarettes and whisky. He sang “Bobby Shaftoe” in French for us. He asked if I was courting yet and told me of the lovely girls of France. He winked and said they’d spirit my heart away.

My mother asked him what the truth was about Loosa Fine.

“I saw one girl fall and another girl help her up.”

“And is it true what they say she said?”

“Yes. I heard her. She said that Our Lady had spoken.”

“Her has speaken to me,” I said.

“That’s right. And her has speaken God knows me and loves me. Her has speaken I will guard you always, Loosa Fine. Poor girl. She was ill and exhausted. She was kneeling at the grotto like a crazed thing. Her has speaken secret things, she said.”

“And did you believe it?” I said.

He sipped his whisky.

“I saw nothing but the girl. I heard nothing but what she said. We waited for a sign. We prayed for a sign, but there was nothing.” He shrugged. “Who can tell?”

He and my father drank again. My mother looked at the clock and then at me. I turned my eyes away and listened to them talk of miracles, how they were so difficult to believe, how they might be caused by a kind of madness, how they could be the tricks of the Devil rather than the works of God.

“This could be true of so much that we believe,” my father said.

Uncle Michael nodded and drank.

“Aye,” he said. “We live in darkness.”

They drank more whisky.

“In the deep deep deepest dark,” they said.

They giggled.

My mother eyed me again.

Uncle Michael reached out and touched my cheek.

“Let all boys be assumed into their beds,” he said.

He leaned over and kissed my brow.

Later I lay down and pressed my ear to the floor but could hear nothing of sense. The voices were muffled and mysterious. Uncle Michael told a long tale while my parents laughed and questioned and exclaimed. I heard how the men’s voices were loosened by the drink. I heard the names of Loosa and Doreen repeated many times. There were calls to Jesus and his mother for help. The end of the tale was somber in its telling, then there was a long silence, then sighs and muttered prayers, then much laughter again as Uncle Michael broke out into a noisy “Bobby Shaftoe.”

Next day I asked what had been told. Nothing I’d understand, my mother said, but I should pray for Loosa. What she’d been led to had nothing to do with Our Lady. At school Anthony O’Dowd said that after the vision Loosa went back to howling and screaming again. Doreen stayed with her in the hotel. They stopped going to the grotto. One afternoon they were seen with French boys in the outskirts of Lourdes. They were seen walking with them into the woods and vineyards outside. His grandmother herself saw Doreen on a bench with some boys in a park. She saw Doreen arguing in French and laughing with the boys and taking money from them. She saw Loosa in a shrubbery waiting, and the boys going to her one by one. The older pilgrims took over Loosa’s care, but Anthony said Doreen had still come home with more money than she’d taken, and had been seen counting a bag full of francs on the plane. That evening James came to find me. He said the boys from Springwell had started coming back again. Now they were coming through the fence and going into Loosa’s house itself. Did I want to watch with him? I gave him three cigarettes and stood at the window with him. I expected nothing, but as the light faded a boy in a green jacket emerged from the tunnel and came to the fence. Doreen appeared for a moment and called him. He pushed through into the garden and kept his head low as he hurried in. “See?” whispered James. I touched the Sacred Heart medal at my breast. We saw the boy leave in the deepening darkness. “Jesus,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

We saw Father O’Mahoney come again to Loosa’s door. Loosa’s mother stood with her hands on her hips in the doorway and yelled at him again. “Damn priests! Get back to Hell!” The kids on the front wall giggled. The adults in the gardens grinned. The priest tipped his head to us and called, “All right now, boys?” as he slipped back into his Ford Anglia and drove too quickly away.

Outside St. Patrick’s that Sunday it was said that Loosa should be taken from her mother and separated from Doreen. She should live with nuns like Bernadette. Only then could her saintliness be nourished and her sinfulness subdued. Some whispered there’d be no point to this: Loosa with her clumsy body and tangled mind was beyond our help. All we could offer were our prayers that God in his mysterious manner might look kindly upon his troubled child. Uncle Michael and my father continued to discuss the complexities of faith. “Could it be,” asked Uncle Michael, “that Loosa is sent to show that evil might be as innocent as goodness?”

In the afternoon I climbed onto the line. I moved slowly, stepping from tie to tie through the tall weeds and grasses. There were fledglings cheeping in the hawthorn. I closed my eyes, felt the sun, imagined this place as warm and bright as France. When I opened them I saw Loosa in her garden turning slow circles and staring up into the blue. I waded toward her and stood close to her fence. She saw me and started to giggle.

“Loosa,” I said. “What did she say?”

She blinked and gulped and licked her lips.

“What did she say, Loosa?”

She tilted her head back and giggled at the sky.

“What were the secrets, Loosa?”

She fiddled with the hem of her skirt.

“What did she speaken?” I asked.

“Her did speaken I is good. Her did speaken I is lovely Loosa Fine.”

“What else, Loosa?”

Loosa’s head rocked and her eyes blinked.

“What were the secrets, Loosa?”

Behind her I saw Doreen coming out of the house. She stood at Loosa’s side and smiled at me. She wore a blouse the color of Our Lady’s vestments. Her hair was held back by a golden Alice band. She put her arm around Loosa’s shoulder.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“Him has speaken to me.”

“Shall we ask him to come inside?”

Loosa giggled. Doreen gazed at me.

I said nothing. There was no one on the line. I looked up at James’s window and saw no one.

“Shall we?” said Doreen.

Doreen’s lips were red and shining in the light.

“Well?” she said.

I could see right through the house: Loosa’s mother inside, the pebble-dashed houses beyond, the children playing on the verges.

“Well?” said Doreen. She winked, and pointed to the breach in the fence.

I touched the Sacred Heart.

“What did Our Lady say?” I asked.

Doreen grinned. She licked her lips. “Her did speaken Loosa Fine is lovely,” she said.

Through the house I saw Mrs. Worley passing slowly by.

I touched the Sacred Heart again and turned away.

I went into the tunnel and threw stones at the bats and watched them flee into the light.

The next weekend a police car came. James ran through the neighborhood to get me. A crowd had already gathered outside Loosa’s house. We could see the great silhouettes of the two policemen inside. Their blue-and-white car gleamed in the roadway. The house was closed but we could hear the screaming of Mrs. Fine. Soon the door opened and the policemen came out with Doreen. She had a carrier bag with some clothes stuffed into it. She was smoking a cigarette and she looked at us all with scorn. Somebody shouted that they’d seen the Virgin Doreen and the kids screamed with laughter. Mrs. Fine yelled that all of us could get back to Hell. The policemen were awkward and embarrassed and there were big patches of sweat on their pale blue shirts. Doreen caught my eye for a moment and licked her lips as they drove her away.

“What’s that all for?” I asked James, and he shrugged.

“What’s that for?” I asked my father, who’d come to the back of the crowd.

“Leading into temptation,” he said.

We watched the crowd disperse. We saw Loosa come to the window and we could see that she was crying.

“Poor soul,” said my father.

We walked back together through the streets. The place was dry and bleached in the sun’s glare. The kids behind us went on screaming. I fingered the phial of water that Mrs. Worley had given me. I closed my eyes and imagined seeing through Loosa’s eyes, hearing through her ears.

“Could there be visions here?” I asked.

“Who knows what we might see? Who knows what might be shown to us?”

Nothing was done to Doreen. She was warned to keep away from Felling and from Loosa. We heard that she’d lost her faith, that she told her priest in the middle of Mass he was a hypocrite, that her family had always been a wild bunch, that she could be seen on Saturday nights wandering in Pink Lane in Newcastle. Loosa went back to sitting on the front wall of her garden, eating bread and jam in the heat, telling those who passed that she had been speaken to, that she was lovely Loosa Fine. The kindly reached out in compassion to touch her cheek or her shoulder. I watched her, tried to imagine the secrets that were lost in her. In church the faithful prayed for her and wondered what might be done for her. And then we saw her belly growing, and knew of the new life inside Loosa Fine.

It was late one Friday and the sun was huge and red above the bypass when Mrs. Fine let Father O’Mahoney in. He brought two women from the Legion of Mary with him. James and I watched from the line as the adults talked at the kitchen table. Loosa gazed from the window into the burning sky.

“Wonder who it was,” I said.

“Some Frenchie. Some Springweller. Nobody’ll ever know.”

“Would you have done it?” I whispered.

James shrugged. “Would you?”

The priest and the women left alone, but they soon returned and this time Mrs. Fine waved from the door as they took Loosa away. She went to Hexham, to the Little Sisters of the Poor. My mother said they were the sweetest and gentlest of all nuns. They would give her the best of care. They would find the best of homes for her little child. They would look after Loosa forever afterward.

At St. Patrick’s we continued to include Loosa in our prayers.

Soon the preparations for next year’s pilgrimage were upon us. This time it was decided to send a little boy from Stoneygate named Paul, who’d been born with no eyes.

The Kitchen

T
HE DRONE OF THE DISTANT CITY,
the clatter and hum of Felling nearby. In another garden, children sing a skipping song:
January, February, March, April, May
. . . An invisible lark high above. A blackbird calling from the apple tree. The scent of roses and warm grass. The sun burns at the center of the sky. Light pours down into the garden, through the window, through the gap of the half-open door, through dust that seethes, dances, glitters . . .

And Mam smiles.

“Hm. Just look at us. Right out of space again.”

Here she is on The Old White Chair With A Hundred Holes Like Stars. And Dad on the low stool at her side.

“We’d have moved on to a bigger place,” he says.

“I know,” she answers. “Yes, I know.”

And here we are, leaning against the worktops, the fridge, the sink, the little table. We drink tea and eat toast. We allow the toast to cool for a moment, so that the butter we spread melts only at its edges, so that much of it remains, bright yellow, half solid on the crisp surface. There is cheese, lemon curd, marmalade. So simple, so sweet, enough for all of us.

We breathe so gently, so carefully. We don’t stare. The light pours in.

Barbara wears cream trousers, a white blouse, white shoes. Her hair is cut short but it curls around her ears, it curls on her brow. Little silver earrings like teardrops. A narrow silver necklace. She stands with her left hand resting on the bench and her head tilted languidly to one side. She is so shy here, with us all around her. She keeps lowering her eyes, and her face colors gently as she smiles.

I look at Mam and she shakes her head and bites her lip: just give her time. We don’t stare. The light doesn’t change, the singing goes on. Catherine catches my eye.

“Nothing must happen,” she says. “Nothing.”

Dad touches Margaret’s hand.

“I was thinking,” he says. “Do you remember? One day you said to me, Where’s the smallest place in the world?”

She shakes her head.

“I don’t remember,” she whispers.

“You were young.”

He smiles at Margaret and at the memory of Margaret and for a moment we all see her as she was and as we were.

“I was thinking, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the smallest place in the world. Just enough for all of us.”

“What happened?” says Margaret. “Tell me about the day I asked you and what you said to me.”

“It was nothing much. You were on the floor with your head in the sideboard cupboard. I watched you climbing right inside. What you after? I said. I’ve lost Nancy in here, you said. The cupboard’s too small to be lost in, I said. But she’s so small, you said. I found the doll beside me on the settee. Here she is! I said. You ticked her off. Who said you could go off wandering all alone? you said. You came and sat on my knee and we looked at the open sideboard door and the dark cupboard. Could I have got lost in there? you said. Too small, I told you. You’d hardly get
in
it, never mind get lost in it. Look at the size of you and the size of that. We sat quiet for a while. The day was like this. Sun shining, blackbirds singing. After a while, you said, Where’s the smallest place in the world? Then you said, What would we find sitting all safe inside?”

“What did you say?” says Margaret.

“Isn’t it silly?” He smiles. “I don’t remember. But maybe this is it, this kitchen, and here we are, all sitting safe inside.”

Unchanging light, unchanging song: the lark, the blackbird, the children. The dust seethes and dances in the light. Catherine takes more toast from beneath the grill. We allow it to cool for a moment before putting the butter on.

“This one got lost,” says Mam. “Went off wandering on her own, the smallest of us all. Who said you could do that, now?”

Barbara blushes and smiles.

“That was the smallest place,” she whispers. “No room for anybody else but me in there.”

“I know,” says Mam. “Oh, I know.”

“Thought you’d all forsaken me. Thought you’d all forget me.”

“I wasn’t even here when you were here,” says Mary. “But I still remember you. I still don’t forget you.”

“I know that now,” says Barbara. “But I thought I’d be alone forever. Me so little and all of you so big. And so many of you, more of you even though I was gone. You’d have each other and the little memory of me would just get lost.”

“We never forgot,” says Dad. “And if we didn’t remember true, we just made bits up.”

Barbara laughs.

“Made bits up!”

“Yes. Truth and memories and dreams and bits made up.”

“Bits made up. But bits made up that kept me safe and real in all your hearts.”

We listen to the beating of our hearts.

Barbara says, “When I began to understand, I used to come among you. I knew you knew I was there. I knew you knew I was always there.”

“Yes,” says Mam. “We always knew.”

We smile at her. We listen to the blackbirds, to the children singing.

“Tell us about another day,” says Mary.

“Tell them about another day,” says Dad.

“We were at the beach,” says Mam. She touches Barbara. “All of us but you. South Shields, another day like this, all burning bright. Dad and I sat by the bandstand and spread the blankets and towels on the grass. Mary and Margaret were hunkered down at the sea’s edge with their buckets, pouring sand into the sea and sea into the sand. Catherine knelt building a castle. The boys were right in, diving and swimming and yelling at the cold. We sat on the warm grass and leaned back on the warm bricks. Dad put a kettle on the camp stove. We saw the fog coming in. It was white and thick and so sudden. The horizon disappeared, then the great boat that was waiting to enter the Tyne, then the waves. And the fog came closer, until the boys were gone. You remember?”

“I remember,” says Dad. “I ran down, and I called and called. I ran into the sea. The sea was icy cold and the air was icy cold. I stood there splashing, calling. You remember?”

“Yes,” says Colin. “We heard you shouting and it was like you were a hundred miles away.”

“I stood up and watched,” says Mam. “Dad in his soaking trousers, the girls behind him on the shore. I saw Dad running into the fog until he had disappeared, too.”

Dad laughs.

“Blundered into them, knocked them flying, tumbled into the sea myself. We came out icy cold and soaking wet.”

“Giggling and splashing,” says Mam. “You all came up to me, to the bandstand, the tea, the sandwiches. Soon everybody wrapped in towels. You’ll catch your deaths, I said. You will. You’ll catch your deaths.”

We drink tea, nibble toast, try to remember.

“It was me that saw her,” says Catherine. “The little girl standing in the fog, pale as the mist, knee-deep in the sea. I pointed. There! I said. There! We watched the fog going back as quickly as it had come in. In the water, I said. There, in the fog. There. Peel your eyes. I ran down to the sea, pointing. There! The fog went back, the sea was empty, just water, little waves. Not a soul in there. Dreamt it night after night. Little girl in the water. The missing one, the one who seemed always to be somewhere in the fringes. Catch her in the corner of your eye, then turn your head and she’d be gone.”

We turn our eyes to Barbara. She turns her eyes to each of us, eyes shining like the sea, complexion pale as sea fog.

“I didn’t make you up,” says Catherine.

“No,” says Barbara, and she reaches out and touches Catherine’s cheek. “And it doesn’t matter exactly what’s true and what’s made up. I was always there. I am always there, despite my death.”

We are silent at the word, but we sigh together, those of us who are in life and those of us who are in death.

“What’s death?” says Mary suddenly. Mary looks at Mam, at Dad, at Barbara. “You all died. What’s death?”

“Death is very big and very frightening,” says Barbara. “Death is being all alone and waiting for others to come to you.”

“Death is separation,” says Dad. “It’s when you’re torn away from those who have hardly known you, and who will have trouble in remembering you.” He touches Mary on the cheek. “Like you and Margaret,” he says. “You would always have difficulty in remembering me.”

“Death is knowing you’re about to die,” says Mam. “It’s seeing the dead and seeing the living all at once. It’s wanting not to die and not to live. It’s wanting to stay with the last breath when the dead and the living are all around you, and touching you, and whispering, It’s all right, Mam. Everything’s all right. But there’s no way of staying with the last breath. You have to die.”

“And then?” says Colin. “What happens then?”

Barbara smiles.

“And then the dead get together and tell stories about the living, just as the living tell stories about the dead.”

“Yes,” says Dad. “The dead begin with, Do you remember? or, Let me tell you about the time, or, There was once . . .”

We’re silent again. We listen to the birds, the children singing outside.

Mam laughs.

“I sang that,” she says. “
January, February, March, April
. . . Jumping the rope, running round to the line again. Time and again and time and again and time and again. There was once a little girl with lovely leaping legs . . .”

She hums the relentless tune and taps her toes on the floor.

“And anyway,” she says. “As well as life and death, there’s this.”

“What’s this?” says Mary.

“The kitchen. Just the kitchen, I suppose.”

“The smallest place in the world,” says Dad. “An impossible place. An impossible story. A kind of Heaven.”

“And what’s Heaven?” says Colin.

“Maybe it’s just this, an impossible afternoon when everyone is together all at once.”

We gaze out at the light, through the seething dust. The sun still hangs at the dead center of the sky. The children and the blackbird sing. No one speaks. Nothing happens. We look at each other, touch each other.

“Tell us a story,” says Margaret.

“Tell us a story,” we say.

“There was once . . . ,” says Mam.

We look at her.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Listen. This is true . . . Hm. There was once a little boy from Carlisle Street who lost his voice in the winter snow. You remember?”

“I remember,” says Dad.

“His name was Jack Law,” says Mam. “He had seven sisters, a loving mammy and a loving daddy, and nowt but sacking tied around his feet. . . .”

We listen to the truth, the memories, the bits made up. We gaze at each other. We eat warm buttered toast. We know that the sun will fall, that the children and the birds will be silent. We know that we will return to separate lives and separate deaths. We listen to the stories, that for an impossible afternoon hold back the coming dark.