by David Almond
“Who can tell?”
“Our Lady told Loosa secrets.”
“So it’s said.”
“That’s what she did at Fatima. Told the children secrets.”
“That’s true.”
We turned off the bypass and went into our street. I looked at the pebble-dashed houses, the little gardens. I thought of Loosa and her poverty and her awful mother. I recalled her lying gurgling and out of control on the pavement in Rydal.
“I think I believe it,” I said.
“You must remember Loosa’s a sick girl,” said my mother. “She’s almost a woman but she’ll always be a little child.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what saints are like.”
In the afternoon I went to see if there was anything Mrs. Worley needed. Peace of mind, she said. She gave me a prayer card and a tiny phial of water. Enough for three colds and two doses of the runs, she said. I asked how Loosa had been. She looked at me and pursed her lips.
“Little madams,” she said.
She kept watching me.
“You just keep away from Loosa Fine, lad.”
Later I crouched with James on the line. We saw Loosa and her mother and another in the house. “Doreen,” I whispered. She was tall and blond. She kept coming to the window, looking out. We kept ducking down. Then we saw Father O’Mahoney with them, and we heard Loosa’s mother yelling. He came outside with her, into the garden. He held her arm and his voice was firm but sympathetic. We heard him telling her that Loosa needed help, that he could help to arrange it. Loosa’s mother shoved him away. She spat into the weeds.
“Damn priests!” she yelled. “Damn church! Get back to Hell!”
Doreen stayed. We watched them all at the table together. When we went back we saw the little bunch of kids sitting on the front wall and looking in, adults in their gardens watching from a distance.
At school next day it was said that Loosa had a total of seven visions. Our Lady had given her the dates of the next war and of the end of the world. She had given her a message that could only be repeated to the Pope. Doreen had been chosen as her interpreter in this task. Loosa had been told that she had borne her troubles with great strength and that a place at God’s side was reserved for her in Heaven. Claire was asked if this was correct and she beamed and said it must be. She had seen a miracle, she told us. She had been in Lourdes with a saint.
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 fledg
lings 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
THE 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 f
loor 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!”