by Siobhan Dowd
Before she left, Dad grabbed her arm. 'If you steal it, even a penny of it, I'll know. Father Carroll'll tell me and all hell will be let loose.'
'Yes, Dad. I know.'
And she did know. The money he collected was always more than the money he sent in. She might be a thief, but he was a worse one. She'd seen him filching the larger coins, even notes, and dropping them into his pockets. The man was as mean as a blood-sucking midge. When he gave her the money for the shopping each week, he'd grab her wrist and tell her to bring him back the change down to the last penny and every last receipt. There was no such thing as pocket money in their house. And since Mam died, he'd made herself, Jimmy and Trix wear the same school uniforms three sizes too big, so as to save on having to buy new ones when they'd grown out of the old. They were the scarecrow pupils, the laughs of the townland. Shell's school had a song for her, courtesy of Declan Ronan, Coolbar's unholiest altar boy, and the cleverest boy in the Leaving Certificate year:
Shell looks worse than brambles
Or empty tins of Campbell's.
She smells of eggy-scrambles,
Her greasy hair's a shambles.
Whatever about his charity collecting, her dad had a black shrivelled walnut for a heart.
The meanest thing she'd ever seen him do was steal Mam's ring off her corpse. Mam had only the one, the gold band on her left hand that meant she was his wife. When married women die, Shell knew, they get buried with their wedding rings on, so that they can take their loving and faithfulness to the grave. There the rings stay until time ends, surviving the flesh and even the bone.
But her dad couldn't bear to see a good bit of yellow gold go to waste. The ring had loosened up in her final wasting. Before they put the coffin lid on, he'd said, 'Please: one last prayer, one last goodbye, on my own.' Everyone had left him to it. Everyone but Shell. She'd stopped outside the room behind the door that had been left ajar and peeked in through the crack. She saw him unravelling a portion of the milky white rosary from her mam's hand. She glimpsed a yellow flash dropping into his top waistcoat pocket. Then he fiddled with the rosary again.
'You can cover her over now,' he'd called to the undertaker. 'I'm ready.'
What he'd done with the ring, Shell didn't know. It wasn't in with his socks-she'd checked. He'd probably sold it when he was next in town.
Dad and his demented readings. Dad and the stones in the back field. Dad and the rattle of the collection tins. She trudged up the back field with the envelope of small change tucked underarm. The sun was out, strong and pale. The lambs had arrived. One skipped up to her and baa-ed, then darted off again, its legs like airy springs. This is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. The thought of Dad faded. She reached the top of the hill. The clouds might have been lamb-cousins in their fluffiness. The trees brimmed with white blossom. She felt like a bride as she passed below them. Two fields on and Coolbar appeared before her in a fold of slope. She sat on a bank of grass and peeled the envelope flap open with a steady hand, watching the strands of gum stretch and shrivel as she tugged. She took out five pieces of silver and hurled them into the air for the poor of the parish to find in their hour of need.
'So there, Dad,' she shouted.
The coins sparkled, scattering to earth. She laughed and resealed the envelope, then walked down through the last pasture to human habitation.
She meandered along the village pavement. At McGraths' shop the sweet aroma of newspapers and cigarettes made her linger. They sold postcards and beach balls all year round, liquorice, ice-cream cones, plastic buckets and spades. She felt the money calling to her from inside the envelope and wished she'd kept the pieces of silver for herself. She didn't dare take any more. A ball of longing itched her belly. She'd only had an egg all day.
Mr McGrath saw her from within the shop. He beckoned, his bright red cheeks and big forehead wagging like a toy dog. Shell shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, If only. He came out with a handful of bubblegums. He gave them to her, putting a finger to his mouth.
'Our secret, Shell. Don't be going telling, or I'll have all Coolbar on to me.'
'No, Mr McGrath. I won't. Promise.' She blushed as pink as the bubblegum wrappers and went on down the street rejoicing. Jesus had surely rewarded her for the money she'd sprinkled earlier for the parish poor.
The priests' house was a little way up the street, beyond the church. Father Carroll had lived there ever since Shell could remember with his housekeeper, Nora Canterville. The curates came and went, but they two stayed. Nora, it was proclaimed, was the best cook in the whole of County Cork, famed for a consomme soup as clear as a newborn baby's soul. Dad always said that if you were invited for a meal, you'd leave half a stone heavier than you'd come.
Shell wasn't expecting to encounter Father Rose. She thought he'd be out on the parish rounds, up at the community hospital or out on Goat Island, the nearby peninsula, saying the mid-week Mass. She rang the bell, thinking of coffee cake, not him.
There was a long wait before anybody answered. She was about to go, when she heard steps on the stairs, then an approaching tread, sure and measured: too firm for Nora; too swift for Father Carroll. She held her breath. Her stomach fluttered.
The door opened. Father Rose looked upon Shell, an eyebrow raised, but said nothing.
'My dad,' she said, holding the envelope forward, 'said to give this to you.'
He took the envelope by its top, so that the money slid to the bottom. Her cheeks burned at the vulgar clink of change. Money and the Word of the Lord were far from fast friends, as he'd said last Sunday. He was surely thinking of the tables of the moneylenders.
'It's charity money,' she said. 'For the starving of Africa.'
'That campaign ended last month,' he said. 'Maybe it's for St Vincent de Paul? That's who we're collecting for now.'
Shell shook her head as if to say she didn't know.
'Your dad. He collects it in his spare time, doesn't he?' The money kept jingling. In devastation, Shell stared down at Father Rose's feet. With a shock, she saw they were bare. His dark priest's pants stopped short just above his white, long toes.
'His whole time is spare, Father,' she stammered. 'He's no job.'
'No job?'
'Not since Mam died. He left off the farm work over at Duggans' on account of his bad back.' That was what Dad gave out anyway.
'He's the job of keeping house and being mother and father to you and your brother and your sister, hasn't he?'
'S'pose.' She could have said it was herself did most of that.
'He's a religious man, your father. So Father Carroll tells me.'
Shell shrugged. 'S'pose.'
'Do you want to come in for a glass of something? Nora's shopping in town, but I can rustle up something for you.'
Shell nodded. He didn't move to one side. Instead he made a tall bridge of his arm, so that she could walk under him, through the open door. As she passed beneath, she took care not to tread on his bare feet by accident. The smell of the woven wool carpet and the heavy velvet tick of the big wall clock made her feel the size of an infant.
'This way, Shell,' he said.
The way he said her name was like a blessing.
He opened a door to the best room, at the front, where Shell had never been before. He waved her onto a huge chair of dimpled leather. Then he got a cut glass from a cabinet, and took a small bottle of bitter lemon from a drinks trolley.
Shell had never liked bitter lemon until then. But as she sipped it now, it fizzed like sherbet on her nose and lip and slipped over her tongue, sweet and sour at the same time. He leaned against the arm of the matching leather sofa as she drank. He folded his arms and watched. He smiled. A slow warmth filled the room.
'I'm glad you called when you did,' he said.
'Why's that, Father?'
'I'd been having a struggle.'
'A struggle?'
'With myself. A terrible craving for the fags.'
Shell chortled, remembering his sermon. 'You're still off them?'
'For all Lent, I hope. Please God I last till Easter.'
'Will you go back on them then?'
'Maybe. Maybe not.' He shook his head. 'Desperate things, the fags. The hold they have on you. Don't you ever go on them, will you?'
She didn't like to say she'd already had a few. Declan Ronan shared one around at school sometimes, swapping it between herself and Bridie Quinn: a token of honour, he'd quip, for the founding members of his harem.
'I hope you don't mind me asking,' Father Rose said, as if he'd read her thoughts, 'but shouldn't you be at school?'
Shell held up the glass to her face. She peered through the diamond ridges. 'School?' she said. ''S nearly over. We break up soon.'
'I see.' He got up and walked the length of the room. He stopped at the casement window and stood for a long moment.
'The other morning,' he said with his back to her. 'In the field. Why were you letting your brother and sister throw stones at you like that?'
Shell almost drank the fizzing lemon the wrong way.
'As I came up the hill,' he continued, 'I saw you, standing with your arms outstretched.' He turned to face her.
Her eyes slanted over to the vase of silk flowers inside the fireplace. She finished the drink.
'For a moment I thought I was seeing things,' he said. 'A vision from the gospel.'
'We were only messing.'
'It seemed an odd game, Shell.'
There was something in the way he said the words that drew her eyes to his. A soft bowl of light sat in his look, so she told him the truth. 'I was praying, Father. I was making them hurt me so that I could feel the praying. Really feel it. Strong and hard.'
He got up and took the glass from her. 'Would you like another?'
'No, Father.'
'Well, on you go, so.'
'Yes, Father.'
He showed her to the door, but as she stepped back out onto the front path, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She felt it there, a firm, kind touch.
'Shell,' he said. 'Prayer doesn't have to be painful. Trust me.'
She looked up. The wisdom of ages was in his eyes.
'I do, Father,' she said.
He let her go. She hurried down the path, through the gate and up the road. She knew he was watching her as she departed, for she did not hear the sound of the front door closing after her.
Four
After tea that day, Dad led the usual decade of the rosary. They were on the first Sorrowful Mystery, the agony in the garden. Jesus was waiting in anguish of mind to be arrested. Jimmy had his tongue poked off to the side so that his left cheek was like a tent. He stared at the old piano longingly, and wiggled his fingers as if he was playing it. Trix sat back on her heels and stared up at the flypaper Dad had hung up earlier from the lampshade. The first trapped fly was stirring on it, dying. Shell closed her eyes. Dad's voice drifted away. Instead Jesus joined her in his trouble of mind. She walked with him along the gravel path of the priests' house garden. They approached the tall pampas grass, waiting for the soldiers to arrive, and sighed together to think of the coming cross and nails. Jesus, Shell said, I wish I could have the nails instead. He turned to her and took her arm. He had the face of Father Rose, but instead of priestly vestments he wore a long linen tunic of dazzling white. Beneath it, his feet were bare. His face was unshaven, his hair longer. Shell, he said in his dulcet Midlands tone, your sweet love is all the comfort I need on this dark day.
'Shell!' Dad's voice, stern. 'You've stopped praying.'
'No, I haven't,' Shell said. 'I was talking to Jesus in my head.'
'That's blasphemy,' he snapped. He thrust the rosary at her. 'You do the next five beads. And you, Jimmy, stop your wriggling, or I'll put an axe to that piano.'
In bed that night, after the light was out, she returned to her visions. She found herself in a boat. Jesus was on the far side of the lake, walking on the water. When she climbed over the side, the surface was elastic, like a trampoline. She crossed over, bounding like a spaceman on the moon. He took her hand and they traversed the lake as the sun went down and the stars came out. As she drifted into sleep, he turned and said something to her. She leaned towards him to catch the words and suddenly the surface of the lake shifted. She was falling into the grey-green depths below. Silence, thick and heavy, was everywhere. Then from afar came the steady tick-tocking of a clock.
Five
On Wednesday morning, after they'd done the stones, Dad said there'd be no more mitching off from school. They were to go in, quick march.
'I thought you said we could have the last week off,' Jimmy moaned.
'I don't wanna go to school, Dadda,' Trix said. She always called him 'Dadda' when she wanted her way but today it didn't work.
'You'll be at school in two shakes or I'll have the washing line down to the three of you,' he said. 'I'll not have any more interfering phone calls.'
Shell's ears pricked up. Somebody from school had been on to him again.
She helped Trix get ready and kept them both quiet with a bubblegum each she'd saved from yesterday. She hurried them over the field to the village and left them off at the national school. Then she caught the bus to Castlerock town for secondary school.
She arrived just on time. Bridie Quinn sauntered over to her before the bell went. She and Bridie were the only girls from Coolbar in their class. They were the two bad apples of the fourth year and fast friends, whenever they weren't mitching. Bridie's dad had vanished years back. She, her younger brothers and sisters and her mam lived in a mouldering three-room bungalow the other side of Coolbar, on the road to Goat Island. They'd a TV and calor gas, but no bathroom, and they washed in an outhouse. Nobody knew how they all squeezed in. Bridie had to share a bed with her mam, a fate worse than death. She'd a thistle for a tongue but was Shell's only friend.
'Shell Talent, you're a sight,' she announced.
Shell looked down at her grubby dress and around the playground. She was the only one in summer uniform, a maggot-green shapeless shift with a narrow belt, sleeves to the elbow and stripes of navy on the flat, wide collar. The weather was fine. She'd thought the whole school would have switched over from winter to summer by now.
'I guessed wrong,' she moaned.
''S not the dress,' Bridie said, waving a hand. The dangers of the morning guessing game at the change of the season were well understood. 'It's the cut of you under it. You've no bra on.'
Shell wriggled. 'So?'
'In that dress, I can see them drooping.'
'No!'
'I can. They're like two jellyfish.'
'Shut it.'
''S true.'
Shell sighed. 'I don't have a bra.'
'You should get one.'
'Dad'd never give me the money for one.'
'Will we pinch something from Meehans' stores? They'd never notice. I could pick you out a nice one. Lacy blue. Underwired. Whatever you fancy.'
Shell giggled. 'Would you?'
'I would. You'd have to tell me your size, first.'
'Dunno my size. I've never been measured.'
'Not even the size of your cup?'
'My cup?'
'You know.' Bridie clumped her two hands in front of her chest.
'I've no notion,' Shell admitted.
'Looking at you, I'd say you're a C for sure.'
'A C?'
'A C, Shell.'
A seashell. She liked the sound of it. She thought of the round creamy shells on Goat Island strand. 'A seashell,' she murmured like an incantation. 'Is that big or small?'
Bridie fluttered her eyelids as if Shell was Miss Ireland for Ignorance.
'Big enough that you need a bra,' she said. Her voice softened. She slipped her arm through Shell's, a thing she rarely did. 'I didn't like it when mine grew,' she confided. 'But now I'm used to them. A bra makes them stick out. People notice. I'm a thirty-four D, but don't be telling anyone.'
'I won't,' Shell promised.
'Come with me after school,' Bridie said. 'We'll pop into Meehans'. I'll slip it out of the box-into my school bag-and away we go.'
'You sure we won't get caught?'
'Sure. I've done it before. Often.'
The bell rang.
At break time, Shell resumed the conversation.
'Bridie. Did they have bras in the olden days?' she asked.
Bridie pondered the question. 'They must have,' she concluded. 'Otherwise, women would have wobbled all over the place. Like yourself.'
'D'you think,' Shell whispered, 'that the Virgin Mary wore a bra?'
Bridie hooted. 'You wait till I tell Declan that one. Maybe he'll think up a joke about it.'
'I'm serious.'
'Under all those loose blue robes and cloaks? She must have, mustn't she? When you've had a baby, you quadruple in size. I know. My mam told me. You've to carry around all the milk.'
Shell thought of the cows she'd seen with machines on their udders in the milking parlour over on Duggans' farm. 'How much milk, d'you think?'
'A good few pints, I'd say. There's Declan. I'm off.' She ran after Declan's distant figure. He was making for the games hut for a fag. Shell shrugged and turned away, pondering the mystery of the milk of various nursing mammals.
At lunch, Declan Ronan came up to Shell and invited her behind the hut for a drag on his fag. Bridie had to stay indoors and do a detention.
'I've a great one. What kind of bra did the Virgin Mary Mother wear when she was lactating?' Declan said.
Shell pondered. The word lactating puzzled her, but she wouldn't admit it. 'Dunno,' she said. 'Give up.'
'A thirty-three J Wonderbra,' he said. 'Get it?'
'Not sure,' she admitted.
'A three for the Holy Father, a three for the Holy Spirit, and a J-cup for your man, Jesus, so's he could drink his fill of the eternal life.'