The Jewel

by Neil Hegarty

  He slid a glance at his mother. She still had her face on, her public face, and yet she seemed shrunken this morning: though he supposed he did too. The very workmen appeared like ants and spiders, for – spectacular or not – there was an inhuman aspect to the whole operation. But his mother didn’t seem like a spider or an ant – but like a tiny version, suddenly, of a normal human being. Oh, she was attempting courage: she had squared her shoulders, he had watched her this morning, as they left to catch their bus, looking at the filth pooling on Regina Road and the boarded windows and the empty houses to right and left and opposite. The tears – of rage and humiliation – had risen once more, but that was the last time. It wouldn’t be Pepys and it wouldn’t be Lewisham and it might be Charlton, who knows where it might be, in the end, but she had accepted that it was her fate to live in the sky, and there would be no more tears.

  There was her public face.

  She was shrunken, and that couldn’t be helped.

  Now, she smiled back. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Now, where’s that dad of yours?’ They had both been gazing around, at the armies of spiders and ants, looking for the familiar shape of him, the broad shoulders and chest of a river man now washed up in this dusty place. They identified him, high on a scaffold: a tiny figure, very high, an arm flung wide in greeting.

  He descended slowly, carefully. He showed them around, and introduced them to all comers, and told them what was what; and after an hour or a little more, they went home again. An interesting afternoon, they agreed. It had set the seal on something; and now for a fresh life, a new beginning. They had seen one of these cities being built in the sky, in this very place.

  This meant that his mind was able to track and watch it all, when it happened. His physical absence was no proof against his imagination, when, several weeks later, the news came one afternoon that his dad had pitched from the scaffolding on the ninth floor of the grey tower, had fallen through the dusty air, had fallen on his back onto the turned-over ground.

  The sound, the dull thump of the body as it hit the ground. And imagining the sight, of what will happen to a body when it falls from a height.

  The men doubtless knew what to do. It was not as though falls, and deaths, and a variety of horrors, were uncommon in such places. In his mind’s eye, he watched as they screened his dad’s body – with their own bodies, before a man came, at a brisk trot, with a length of dark canvas to lay over the scene, to tidy it away. But the dark canvas made no difference to John. He could see white bones, and redness, and grey matter where his dad’s head was broken, and the small pool of almost-black blood that crept across the ground. He could see the scene a minute before: the set of his dad’s shoulders, the shape of his back, a small figure high on a scaffold, sure-footed and nimble. The moment of imbalance. Would he fall? Could he catch himself, right himself, shake himself, shake off the shock, put down the hammer he was holding, laugh a little to disguise the sickness in his stomach?

  Or would he fall?

  Would the second pass, and the rightness never come, and would he fall back instead, back first, and then head first, and then his shoulders seeming to lead the way, and all in a matter of seconds?

  He fell.

  He fell backward: his back first, and then his head, and then his shoulders, as though in these few remaining seconds his dad was straining still to right himself, to catch himself, to fend off death. And then his head again.

  John could see the fall, and the impact, and could hear it too. The doorbell on Regina Road, and the message, and there he stood, the blood rushing in his ears and his heart thumping fit to burst in his chest, all in a second before he set to managing his mother. He did not even remember hearing her scream.

  The third man to die that summer, they said later. On that one job. A shame: but all part and parcel. It went with the territory.

  His memory remained broken into pieces, as though it were itself a fallen body.

  Mica

  7

  ‘It’s a fact,’ Roisin said.

  Roisin had a head on her. She was combative, Miss Glackin had said to her parents right in front of her, as she stood looking down at the floor. ‘I see it in the course of the day. Every day. She has too much to say for herself, far too much, for an eight-year-old. She’s just like her sister was at that age.’ And, ‘opinionated,’ said Miss Glackin. ‘And we can’t be having that.’

  There was a knack. Roisin knew this. But she hadn’t picked up this knack, whatever it was, and the proof of this had been Miss Glackin slapping her legs with her long ruler.

  ‘What’s the knack?’ she asked Maeve. She brought up her school skirt a little, and her sister looked at the thin red lines that Miss Glackin’s ruler had left on Roisin’s legs.

  ‘There is no knack,’ Maeve said.

  ‘But you said there was. You did say.’

  Maeve frowned, and ran a hand through her red curls, and Roisin looked at her.

  ‘You just have to not say anything, I mean. That’s the knack. It’s not really a knack at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Roisin.

  ‘We don’t want people taking an interest,’ Miss Glackin had said, as Roisin looked at the floor, ‘there, in the town.’ Roisin looked up, as her mother shook her head. She agreed, so much was clear: she definitely didn’t want anyone taking an interest in Roisin. That was the last thing she wanted.

  And Maeve agreed too. When people took an interest, Maeve said later, it was a bad sign.

  But Roisin didn’t understand. She could say what she wanted, couldn’t she? She could speak up for herself.

  Maeve shook her head. ‘No. Nope. That’s what I mean.’

  And now here was Roisin, standing in the school corridor where she had no right to be at this time of day, taking in Holy Mary.

  For years – for twenty-something years, ever since the school had been built, they said, way back at the beginning of the 1950s, back in the olden days – the statue of Holy Mary had stood in the long corridor that ran from the classrooms to the assembly hall. The corridor was lined on one side with broad, rectangular windows that gave a view of the playground, and the handball alley, which wasn’t worth looking at, at all. It had grey, rough walls, and bright green moss grew there winter, summer, always. On the other side of the corridor, the walls were lined by more windows, this time of frosted glass, and on the other side of the windows was the assembly hall itself, with its stage and its curtains of dark red velvet – ‘like Hollywood,’ said Maeve – and its polished floor.

  Maeve knew about Hollywood. ‘I know about everything,’ she liked to say. She had a picture of Faye Dunaway pinned on the wall of their bedroom. The other girls told Roisin that she was lucky, that Maeve was the big sister they all wanted. The glamour of her!

  Halfway along the corridor, a recess, a sort of notch, its walls painted not custard-colour, like all the rest of the walls, but brighter-than-bright white: and in this recess stood the school statue of Holy Mary, all blue and white and crowned in gold, her hands held out in, said the nuns, benediction. Roisin knew that for twenty years now the town’s children had eddied past Holy Mary, day after day, on their way to morning prayers, on their way from prayers to their classroom, to and fro all day along. At the beginning of the school year, the waxed floor shone like a mirror, and squeaked underfoot; at year’s end, the floor was dull, its wax worn away. Holy Mary herself remained unworn. She was dusted daily, she caught the eyes of the children, she was unmoving and unchanging.

  Now, though, she had moved. Now she had changed. Now she had taken it upon herself to clamber down and walk the corridors of the school, in the evenings and by night.

  And Miss Glackin had given Roisin her golden chance.

  ‘Roisin O’Hara, come here please.’ And then, ‘I want you to run along and drop this note in to Miss Black. Go straight to her classroom and come straight back.’

  This was her chance – though she knew to keep her eyes looking at the classroom
floor. Head down, eyes low: anything else was what her mother called a red rag to a bull – cheek, or the possibility of cheek, made Miss Glackin’s face, her nose, go rag-red, and every girl knew it.

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ Roisin said, and looked at the floor.

  How she would swank it over the girls, later.

  She set off down the corridor, glanced at the custard-yellow shiny walls as she passed. She remembered what she’d thought when she first went to school – but of course that was ages ago, ages and ages, that was three years ago, she was just a little girl. She’d thought, then, that the paint, the walls, were made of seashells. They ground them up, the shiny seashells; maybe they stamped them into dust with big boots, and they mixed the dust with water, and Bird’s custard powder, and the dust became yellow paint, the colour of custard. That was the way it was done.

  Ages ago. That was on her first day in the school, and that evening, in their room, she’d said this to Maeve, about the seashells and the custard powder. ‘It’s just the paint they use,’ Maeve told her, ‘the shiny paint. That’s all. So, they don’t need to bother with seashells,’ Maeve added gently, ‘because the paint is already there, in big tins.’

  Maeve knew it all.

  Roisin had been glad about that, glad that Maeve had told her about the shiny paint before she said anything about seashells and custard powder to the other girls, before she’d been turned into what her daddy called a laughing stock.

  ‘A laughing stock, you are,’ he said sometimes, a lot of the time, to her mammy, ‘in the town. A holy show. Mooning around like that.’

  Roisin walked and walked down the long corridor – and now here was Holy Mary, standing on her stone that sparkled a little in the light from the windows. A pedestal, said the nuns, shining with diamonds. She stood in front of the shiny stone, the custard walls, and looked.

  Only looked.

  There was nothing at all that said that touching was strictly and absolutely not allowed, there was no rule – but Roisin knew. They all knew. Every girl in the school knew what was allowed and what wasn’t allowed. None of them needed a set of rules.

  A glimpse of Sister Immaculata’s long ruler was all they needed.

  Strictly and absolutely not. That was one of Sister Immaculata’s sayings. No, girls, she’d say, and she’d fix her little black glasses on her nose, strictly and absolutely not. In the playground, in the corridors, when she rang her big bell from the top of the steps. No running, girls! Strictly and absolutely not!

  How bold of me, how brave I am, how bold I am to stop just here. How bad.

  To glance over her left shoulder, her right shoulder – the coast clear, the school silent, no clipping of a teacher’s feet, no almost-silent pad-pad that indicated that Sister Immaculata was on the prowl. Sister Immaculata, they said, had her shoes made with special rubber soles, her feet cushioned in cotton wool, because that was the best way to catch a girl in badness. Red-handed.

  Sister Immaculata’s cotton-wool shoes were specially made in Rome, and sent to her by the Pope, they said.

  But today, nothing at all. Sister Immaculata must be in her warm office, beside her hissing, clunking radiator.

  The school was silent. Or almost silent: just a mist of noises in the air, a times table recited, a chair moved, scraped for a second. Lots of faraway voices, rehearsing a hymn. Christ all around me, shield in the strife. It was strange to be in the corridors at such a quiet time, it was almost creepy.

  And she was disobeying, too. Miss Black’s classroom was in the other direction.

  A holy show, standing there before the statue. Jars and jars of bluebells surround her, smelling of Heaven, and there she is.

  Roisin hugged herself, almost. This will be something to tell the girls during break.

  The statue wasn’t wearing shoes – or none that anybody could see. Only a dress, blue on top and white underneath, reaching all the way to the ground. But Roisin had never studied her – not really. There had never been time, or any reason to. The statue had just been part of the furniture.

  Not now, though.

  Roisin looked up. Holy Mary looked – not stern, not cross, but not sweet either. Not gentle, the way she was supposed to look. She didn’t much look like anything, did she? As though she felt a little bit bored, maybe.

  But how could she feel bored, the things she had been up to lately? – and now Roisin frowned a little. This was confusing, this didn’t really make sense.

  She remembered Miss Glackin, she remembered Miss Black, she had to go. Holy Mary was bored. Was that it? Was that why she was doing what she was doing?

  The sparkle caught Roisin’s eye. Holy Mary standing on her bit of rock – and the rock shining. Maybe the little girls were right, maybe there were little diamonds inside the rock – and the sun shining on them brought them alive.

  Roisin stood for another long moment, gazing at the rock, the diamonds, the bottom of Holy Mary’s long dress. She wanted to look longer, but Miss Black was waiting, and Miss Glackin was counting the seconds, was waiting to be cheeked. One more moment, one more look, and now Roisin stretched out her hand – and touched, not Holy Mary’s long dress, but the stone, the pedestal, on which she stood.

  It was cool, though not cold. It was rough, a bit splintery. But how did the glinting diamonds feel? She couldn’t really tell: it was hard to tell. She moved her hand away, turned on her heel, scurried back the way she came, off to Miss Black’s classroom. Quick, Roisin! Maeve’s voice sounded in her head – on the beach last summer, running races. At Sports Day, in the field, in the sprint. Maeve’s voice calling, the excitement of it. Quick, Roisin! Quick, quick quick!

  Roisin won the sprint.

  She felt – something, a difference. Back in the classroom, with Miss Glackin writing on the blackboard, tapping on her desk with her finger, tapping on Siobhan Reilly’s head with her ruler: Roisin was thinking about a sparkle, about the statue of Holy Mary waking, and stretching, maybe, and stepping off her diamond rock.

  8

  ‘Don’t let the food get cold,’ said Philomena.

  The family was at the table, and the meal had barely begun.

  A statue of Mary, another statue, had been seen walking, and weeping, somewhere down the country. So they were saying.

  ‘The country’s full of them,’ murmured Maeve. ‘An infestation, like bedbugs.’

  This moving statue had been on the news.

  ‘Surely one statue is enough,’ murmured Maeve.

  This piece of news would have been enough for Roisin – without their own statue, Holy Mary up at the school, getting in on the act too, walking too, and weeping too. She too had been seen by someone, caught as she strode the corridors. It was, said Roisin, a fact. And she had stopped to look at the statue herself, today, she said, while running an errand for Miss Glackin, so she knew what she was talking about.

  The girls, at break, had been ‘agog’, said Roisin.

  Philomena listened, and said nothing.

  It was a fact for her mother, too: Philomena had heard them yacking about it in the town. That day, in fact, that very morning: there were duck eggs for sale in Comyn’s, so she took herself off to buy half a dozen; and as she waited to be served, she caught up with the news. A prospective land sale, which had caught everyone unawares, two fields, and one of them the good one, which meant money problems; a bridge table, just the previous night, come almost to blows at the Masonic Hall – and now the walking, talking statue of the Madonna up at Holy Cross.

  It paid to be a daily Mass-goer – it had been on the steps of the church, following that morning’s Mass, that she had heard about the duck eggs – but there could be no question of Philomena believing this story of their own Holy Mary on the loose up at the school. The girls were a bit hysterical, agreed the women at the counter at Comyn’s: it was the way with girls, sometimes, for hysteria to spread like a winter germ; and old Patrick Comyn himself, over eighty now but still serving his faithful clients, agreed. Echoing
Maeve, if he only knew it.

  ‘One statue wandering around all over the place, in Tipperary or wherever it is: well, ladies, that’s enough to be going on with, if you ask me.’

  There was no question mark added at the end of his sentence – and Philomena, for her part, wasn’t about to disagree with him. She had watched the news, had seen the foreign television crews, had listened to their English (on the jeering side) and American (indulgent; they found it hilarious) accents, had been mortified.

  Had kept her counsel, needless to say. Instead, she smiled a little, an absent-minded smile, and looked up at the blue insect-repelling light that hummed above Mr Comyn’s head, and down at the blue veins in her thin hands. She allowed the conversation to eddy around her, and listened, and said nothing. She wondered, her shoulders set and tense inside her coat, what Roisin would say to such stories. What Maeve would continue to say, whether Maeve would be sensible enough to say nothing at all for once. Whether the subject would come up that evening, as her family gathered at the dinner table; and if it did, whether it would lead to a row. It would of course come up. Nothing more certain.

  A family of four: and this was strange enough. Philomena knew the way it went.

  Very strange: these two girls, this family of four. Surely not the Pill, people thought: well, a little mental arithmetic showed that it might be the Pill – but no, surely Philomena wasn’t the sort of woman to be so quick off the mark, to slide across the border to consult with some doctor or other, to have some obliging friend, some bustling, interfering Protestant it would be, to set the thing up. The notion was unthinkable, and anyway, Philomena wasn’t the sort of woman to have Protestant friends at all – even in such a place as this, where they were thick enough on the ground. Philomena feared God, the right variety of God. That was obvious. So the wordless thoughts went, and were set aside.