The God Squad (11 page)

‘What are they?’ I asked. She looked at me.

‘Do you not know?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Rasher, sausage and egg,’ she said. ‘Now go over to the table and get yourself some cornflakes.’ From a box on the table I spilled some into a bowl and began to eat them.

‘Why didn’t you put some milk and sugar on them?’ she asked as she poured some from a white jug with a blue line around the neck of it.

‘I never had these before,’ I said. She took little notice of what I said. I had difficulty trying to eat the fry as I had never used a knife or fork before. Everything I had eaten up to now was taken off a spoon. My aunt offered me tea which I took out of curiosity, before deciding I didn’t like it. She gave me a glass of milk instead. As we walked to church she told me that every morning for twenty years, since her husband died, she had gone to Mass, no matter how bad the weather was. She didn’t always go to communion because she found the long fast beforehand ‘a bit much’. She was dressed in a heavy black coat and hat with a huge pin through it. She explained to people she met that I was an orphan staying with her for a fortnight’s holidays. They patted my head and remarked that I was a great boy all the same.

After Mass she did her shopping, calling to the butcher’s first and asking him for a ‘nice piece of bacon’. He wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with string, then handed it to me. I was glad to get out of the shop. I felt sick at the sight of carcasses of cows and pigs hanging from hooks on tubular steel bars, and the bloodstained aprons of the men serving behind the counter. Next we went to the greengrocers where she spent a long time talking to another woman about me. Every few seconds the women looked down and when my aunt realized I was listening, she reprimanded me. The woman asked her what my parents died from and she replied that my mother had died of a heart attack and my father the same way shortly afterwards.

This was the first time I heard how my parents died, and though it seemed to have great significance for the woman it made no impact on me.

In the newsagents my aunt was greeted by name. Without having to ask for anything, the girl behind the counter handed her a copy of the
Wexford People
with her name written in biro in the top right hand corner. A woman who noticed me looking through the comics asked me to pick one.

My aunt interrupted saying, ‘Pat doesn’t mind what he gets.’

The lady pressed me again to choose a comic.

‘
The Eagle
,’ I said.

‘Did he say thanks?’ my aunt asked.

‘Of course he did.’

There was a steep hill from the town up to my aunt’s house, and she had great difficulty in walking up. Every few minutes she stopped to catch her breath. I became worried at one point because she seemed to be a long time holding on to a railing and my anxiety must have registered with her because she said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just that I’m not as young as I used to be.’ I was carrying all the messages but I didn’t mind. I would have done anything to ensure that nothing happened to her while I was there. When we got back to the cul-de-sac where she lived she told me to go and play with the rest of the children who lived on the street. I was reluctant and, pretending I didn’t hear her, opened the gate leading to the house and walked quickly up the narrow concrete path. I waited for her to open the hall door.

‘You go out and play,’ she said again. ‘I’m going in to have a rest and I’ll call you when dinner is ready.’

I watched the other children. A boy on a tricycle was racing a girl on a scooter. There was a lot of noise as the boys cheered for the boy and the girls for the girl. When the
race was over and they had crossed the imaginary line they began to jeer at each other, disputing who had won.

A dark-haired, fresh-faced girl approached me. ‘Did you see the race?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Who won?’ she asked.

I pointed to the girl on the scooter and the girls cheered. The boys, annoyed at my judgement, began to jeer.

‘Look at the stupid clothes he has on him,’ they laughed.

The girl who had spoken to me in the first instance told them to ‘shut up’.

‘Look at his big farmer’s boots,’ they jeered again.

‘Shut up,’ the girl pleaded again.

‘He’s just a sissy,’ they taunted.

I was so different from them. I was dressed in a grey heavy suit which I was given in the Industrial School. It was dreary and drab-looking compared to their bright cotton colours. Many of them were in their bare feet or in leather sandals. Eventually they agreed to let me play with them. The boy who owned the tricycle asked me if I would like a go on it but I declined. I didn’t want to make a total fool of myself by demonstrating my inability to ride it. Then they wanted me to race with them but I refused even though I was a good runner and had won races in school. I often ran in heavy boots before but was not prepared to do so now in case they jeered again.

‘What’s your name?’ the dark-haired girl asked.

‘Pat,’ I said.

‘Does everyone call you Pat?’

‘Mostly.’

‘My daddy’s name is Patrick but everyone calls him Pat except my mammy. What’s your daddy’s name?’

‘He’s dead,’ I answered, and before she could ask any more questions told her that my mother was dead too and I
was just on holidays with my aunt Mary for a fortnight.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘my real name is Maria but everyone calls me Ria.’

‘Where do you live?’ she asked.

‘In an orphanage. It’s a good bit away from here, my uncle said it was about ninety miles.’

‘Who minds you?’

‘Nuns do.’

‘I hate nuns, they’re always giving out,’ she said.

‘Sometimes they’re cross and sometimes they’re all right.’

My aunt called me for dinner and I left Ria, promising to be out again later. As soon as I got into the house I asked my aunt if I could go back out when I had my dinner eaten.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I want to bring you up to the convent to see your sister Ann.’

It was the first time in my life that anybody had ever told me I had a sister.

My sister was just over two years old when my mother died, aged forty-two, from cancer of the breast. She was taken into an orphanage in Wexford, run by the Sisters of Mercy, where she remained until her mid-teens. She would have been five the first evening I saw her.

Having washed up after dinner my aunt brought me to the bathroom where she cleaned my face and combed my hair. She told me to sit in a chair in the parlour and wait until she was ready. I watched her check in the mirror over the mantelpiece to see if her face was all right and her hat was on properly. As she was tidying loose strands of her hair she muttered about my uncle never being around when he was needed.

‘How far is it to the convent?’ I asked.

She sighed wearily. ‘A mile, or maybe a bit more.’ It was a hot sunny day and I knew that she did not like having to walk so far. I hoped she would decide not to go.

We walked along a country road, bounded by hedgerows and broken occasionally by a half-built house or an old-fashioned bungalow. My aunt hardly spoke at all. She allowed me to walk ahead of her and as I did I wondered again what my sister was like. Would she know me or I
know her? What would I say to her? I didn’t even know then if she was younger or older than me.

The green bushes of the country road merged into a high granite wall. My aunt called me and brushed my suit down with the palms of her gloved hands. She took off one glove and spat gently onto her hand before pressing my hair down. She warned me to be on my best behaviour. I could hear the sounds of children playing, their screams breaking the silence of the countryside. My aunt held my hand firmly and walked through the wrought iron gates of Saint Mary’s Orphanage for Girls.

As we crossed the yard everything became quiet. The girls stared at us.

‘Who are you looking for, Miss?’ one of them asked.

‘The nun,’ my aunt answered.

The girl ran off and I felt embarrassed standing in the yard with so many girls watching me. I wondered if one of them was my sister. A nun in the familiar habit of the Sisters of Mercy rushed out of a single-storey building to one side of the yard and came towards us. As she walked I could hear her telling the girls to get on with whatever they were doing. She shook my aunt’s hand warmly and after some minutes of conversation between them, the nun told one of the girls to get Ann Doyle.

‘Come to see your sister, have you?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I said.

As we walked towards the convent door two girls approached us. The nun indicated to one of them to go away. Then she smiled at me. ‘Well, this is your sister, have you nothing to say to her?’

We stared at each other.

‘Are the pair of ye just going to stand there gaping at each other or have ye lost ye’re tongues?’ the nun said.

She suggested to my aunt that we be left together and
both of them went into the convent.

In the school yard we tried to say something to one another but it was difficult. We did not know each other and were conscious of the girls watching us. My sister was very pretty. She had fair hair which had been put in ringlets. She wore a lovely daintily patterned dress and a white cardigan that was a few sizes too big for her. We didn’t speak but when someone suggested a game of chasing we both joined in. The girls yelled as I pursued them. I ran after my sister and, when I caught her, shouted: ‘You’re out.’ She looked disappointed and was on the verge of tears. A bigger girl suggested that she should have a second chance because she was my sister, and was smaller than me. I was pleased.

The nun and my aunt came out of the convent and the game stopped immediately. She called my sister and I to her and asked if we had found anything to talk about.

‘Not really, Mother,’ I said.

‘You don’t mean to tell me that you have nothing to say to your sister after all the years ye have been away from each other.’

My aunt tried to encourage me to say something but the words would not come. The years had created a great distance between us and we were being asked to bridge it in a short time. My sister’s pale, freckled face reddened shyly as she smiled revealing two prominent front teeth.

‘As sure as God,’ the nun said, ‘there’s no doubt but they are brother and sister.’

‘Oh without a doubt,’ my aunt agreed.

A sudden shower sent the girls scurrying for cover into the sheds on either side of the yard and instinctively I followed them. The nun and my aunt dashed back into the convent. In the rush to get out of the rain I sat on a bench beside my sister and, without realizing it, we began talking to each other.

‘Do you like it here?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘sometimes.’

She and some of the other girls remarked on how I addressed the nun as ‘Mother’. They laughed and said they always referred to the nuns as ‘Sister’.

‘Do you ever get hit or sent to bed without any supper?’ I asked.

‘Only if you’re really bold.’

‘I’m always getting hit and locked in the coal shed. Once I got locked into the boiler house.’

‘The big girls get slapped sometimes,’ she said, ‘but not the little ones.’

‘It doesn’t matter if you are big or small in our school, you still get slapped,’ I replied, before a group of bigger girls joined in our conversation.

‘I got slapped once for not having the laces of my shoes tied right. I wouldn’t like to tell you where they slapped me,’ one girl said, laughing.

She didn’t have to. I knew.

When the rain stopped we played chasing again and in the middle of the game the nun and my aunt Mary emerged into the bright sunlight. I walked towards them and the nun insisted that my sister come with me.

‘Have the pair of ye made friends?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Mother,’ I answered.

‘And will you come and see Ann again before you finish your holidays?’

My aunt said that I would. As I was about to leave St Mary’s the nun suggested that I kiss my sister goodbye. I was embarrassed and very conscious of the older girls giggling. I refused to do so.

‘Sure he has a girlfriend across the road from me,’ my aunt said.

‘Is that what he’s up to? Wait till I tell Mother Paul.’ Both
of them laughed but I was terrified that something would be said about my friendship with Ria.

‘Now he’s no good, Mrs Boyle, is he? He wouldn’t even give his own sister a kiss.’

The old woman nodded her agreement, exchanged a few more words and then took my hand to leave. I turned and waved to my sister, happy to have met her.

That evening before saying the Rosary and going to bed I went out into the back garden of my aunt’s house. Overgrown blackberry bushes stooped under the weight of fruit and the air smelled sweet. Having eaten some berries, I reached cautiously through a gooseberry bush and plucked some of its fruit, and though they were not quite ripe I ate them. The bitterness reminded me of Mr O’Rourke and the garden at St Michael’s. I rolled the fruits around my mouth, enjoying their taste and the feel of their hairy texture on my tongue.