A Swift Pure Cry

by Siobhan Dowd

  'And grow up wonderful?' Shell suggested.

  'You've got it,' he said, passing her the fag.

  She took a long drag and passed it back. They sat together in the sun. Theresa Sheehy poked her head round the corner as if to join them but Declan shooed her away.

  'Why don't you let her join us?' Shell said after she'd vanished.

  'Her legs are too fat.'

  Shell clouted him. He gave her another go on the fag, then clamped his hand on her calf. 'Not like yours.' He ran his hand up to behind her knee and tickled.

  'Gerroff.'

  'Good and skinny.' He took his hand away and smirked. 'Miss Shambles.'

  'You, Bridie and me, Declan,' Shell smiled, blowing out the smoke. 'We're the Coolbar Club, aren't we?' She remembered Declan as a familiar torment down the years. In national school he was forever chasing the girls around the playground, yanking up their skirts. In secondary school he'd sometimes ride the bus home with her and Bridie, taking it in turns who he'd sit next to.

  He took the fag from her and snorted. 'Coolbar,' he said, 'is an excrescence on the face of the earth.'

  'Too right.' She nodded sagely, though she didn't know what an excrescence was.

  Six

  Stealing the bra from Meehans' didn't feel like a sin, even though it was. Bridie did it on Shell's behalf. She picked a bra out its box when nobody was looking. It was white, with a criss-cross back. She slipped it between her homework books, and then investigated the nightgowns. She nearly stole a skimpy robe of pink, but Shell stopped her. They made their getaway. They nearly died laughing all the way up the street to the town clock. Over the way, near the garda station, was Dad, standing on his own, shaking the can. Shell saw a shopper crossing the road to avoid walking past him.

  'Not that way,' she gasped, falling back before he could spot her.

  'Rather no dad than a dad like that,' Bridie said, raising her eyes to heaven.

  'Too right,' Shell said. They slipped down a side street to the quays and headed the back way to the bus stop.

  Bridie passed her the bra. 'I'm not going home yet,' she said.

  'Why not?'

  'I've a date. In town.' She sounded just like a character from one of the American soaps she was always going on about.

  'A date? Who with?'

  Bridie jerked her chin out and tossed back her hair. ''S secret.' She waved goodbye and walked back towards the pier.

  Shell couldn't wait to try the bra on. There was no sign of the bus. She dived into the nearby public toilets. By the time she'd figured out how to do the hooks and clasps, she was hot and bothered. When she emerged, the bus was sailing off from the stop without her. She'd a long wait for the next.

  When it came, she climbed aboard with a straight back and her chin tilted up. The driver took her fare in slow motion, staring straight at her front. She took her seat with a regal smile. It was a coming of age. Her baggy old shift-shape had been annihilated.

  She was nearly an hour late picking up Trix and Jimmy from primary school. The head teacher, Miss Donoghue, had them sitting in her room on hard, grown-up chairs. Miss Donoghue was a Coolbar fixture, having taught Shell and many a Coolbar child before her. She looked like she'd been nearing retirement for ever but it never arrived. Trix's grey socks swung between the long iron legs. Jimmy pulled a face at Shell as she came in.

  'Shell's h-e-r-e,' Jimmy said. He looked over her head and mimed a bored whistle.

  'Shell!' Trix said, leaping down. She ran up for a hug. 'I thought you'd forgotten us, Shell. Like that other time.'

  'No, I didn't. I'd messages to do in town.' A great love descended upon her heart. She stooped and gave Trix a kiss.

  Miss Donoghue opened her mouth as if about to say something, then shut it. She sighed. 'You young Talents,' she said. 'You'll be the death of me.' She smiled, then got up from behind her desk and gave Jimmy a nudge.

  'Off you go,' she said. She held the door open, but not like Father Rose had done. Instead of going under her arm like a bridge, they had to walk past her. Shell still felt about seven years old as she sloped by.

  'Good evening, Miss Donoghue,' she murmured.

  'Good evening, Shell,' Miss Donoghue said. Her hand suddenly landed on Shell's shoulder. 'Where is your father anyway?'

  Shell considered. 'He's probably collecting in town still. For the Church.'

  The head did a tiny tchtch sound with her tongue and teeth and let her go.

  Dad wasn't in when they got home. Shell got the tea. Still Dad didn't appear. Then she remembered it was Wednesday, his drinking night. That meant they'd hours of freedom, space and games, Jimmy, Trix and herself. They ate the tea. Shell put a saucepan lid over Dad's share of ham and cheese triangles. Jimmy opened the lid of Mam's piano. Dad had tried to sell it after she'd died, but the man from town said it was so clapped out Dad would have to pay him to take it away. The tune had gone clean out of it. Mass cards for Mam still sat on top.

  Jimmy stood at the piano, with one foot on the right pedal. He played strange, jarring chords that mushed together. They hung in the house like sighs from a spirit world. As he played, Shell shut her eyes. She saw colourful fish, swimming in underground caves, bubbles floating up, strange weeds rippling. Then he lifted the pedal and started over. He pattered at the top notes. It was sparrows hopping in the snow. Then snow falling on car roofs. He finished his concert with loud chords of bass notes. They rang through Shell's flesh like doom-laden giant trees stalking the earth. She and Trix laughed and clapped.

  Next, they went out to play Scarecrow Chase in the back field. It was her made-up game from years back; she'd shown it to the others. There were no winners, only a loser. You started with six clothes pegs, and had to clip them onto other people and not let any be clipped on yourself. Once you got rid of all six you were out. One person ended up with the pegs dotted all over, and whoever that was was the Scarecrow Loser. But now she'd grown out of it. She let Jimmy and Trix stitch her up with pegs everywhere, then handed the lot over and went indoors to the bathroom. She stripped off the school dress in front of the cabinet mirror and examined the bra, craning over her shoulder to see the criss-cross at the back. The mirror was too high, so she crept into Dad's room and played the Eternity game. This was a game of magic mirrors at the dressing table. It was a broad, wooden chest, with three mirrors attached on top: a large fixed one in the middle, and two smaller ones on hinges on the sides. She could swivel these in and out to form angles. Then a chain of Shells going on into infinity appeared. In past games she'd always tried to chat with them, to ask them what life in the mirror was like. But although they made faces, they never gave much away. Today, she ignored them. Instead she squeezed the mirror angles up tight to see what the bra looked like from behind.

  She prayed to Jesus to forgive her and Bridie for stealing the bra. She listened hard for a reply. The room was quiet: no sign of hissing snakes or thunderbolts. Perhaps she was forgiven.

  Then she'd an idea. She opened the wardrobe door. Inside, a sigh of polythene escaped from Dad's best suit, back from the dry cleaner's after Mam's funeral and never worn since. His other clothes jostled as she looked through the contents: shirts he pressed himself for church; pants and braces; eleven pairs of shoes; more ties than she could count, three of them black.

  Dad had thrown away Mam's things long ago. But, tucked away on a hook at the back, there was one thing of hers he'd kept-why, Shell didn't know. It was a pink, sleeveless satin dress, cut short at the knee and slim-waisted.

  She reached in and took it from the hanger.

  Did she dare?

  She did. She tried it on.

  It covered her kneecaps but only just.

  It fitted just right on top.

  The colour set her cheeks singing.

  Shell waltzed in front of the mirror. She sat on the velvet chair her mam had perched on every morning to do her make-up and looked into the triptych of reflections. She rested her chin on her hand as Mam used to do. Shel
l's face was slim and freckly. She undid her ponytail and shook out her foxy hair. She batted her eyelids. She began to hum Mam's favourite hymn: 'Come Down, o Love Divine, Seek Thou This Soul of Mine'.

  In the gathering gloom of the spring evening Mam's spirit returned briefly to earth. She hovered between Shell's eye and the eye of the image in the mirror.

  'Mam?' Shell gasped.

  It was as if a hand had reached out and touched her shoulder. One of the images furthest away in the mirror smiled-it wasn't Shell's image, because the other images didn't smile at all.

  'Mam!' she called to it. 'Don't go!'

  She hummed the tune harder to make her stay. She didn't notice the bedroom door opening behind her.

  'Jesus!' A harsh, pained voice. A dark figure hovered in the reflected corner of her field of vision. She froze. Mam's spirit fled back deep into the mirror world. Shell turned. Dad was staring at her like a stranger. She'd no idea it had got so late.

  'Sweet Jesus. Is it really you?'

  He stepped forward into the room. He put out his right hand and it hovered palm-upward over her left cheek, fluttering. She braced herself for a slap.

  It did not come.

  His big hand shook, drawing closer. She could see the swirls of his finger pads in the corner of her eye. It landed on her face, quivering like a leaf in wind, stroking her cheekbone. 'Moira,' he whispered. 'My Moira.'

  Shell smelled whiskey and sweat. Her stomach somersaulted. He burped.

  'It's me. Shell,' she shrieked.

  She darted past him and ran to the door. As she passed through it, she looked back. Dad was standing where she'd left him, arm outstretched, as if the Moira he'd seen were still standing there, letting him stroke her face. In the triptych of mirrors was the image of him standing there, again and again, into infinity, reaching out forlornly into another world, a world to which Mam had gone and the living could not follow.

  Seven

  She fled to her own room, the one she shared with Jimmy and Trix on the far side of the kitchen. She shut the door behind her and stood against it, panting, regaining her breath. Her father didn't follow. There was no sound of him. After a moment she tore off the pink dress and hid it under her bed. She changed into her old dungaree jeans and T-shirt.

  She crept through the kitchen, into the hall. Dad's door was shut. Please God, he's gone to bed, she thought.

  She went out into the dusk to fetch in Trix and Jimmy. It was the time when the blackbirds stop singing and the bats come out.

  'Quick,' she called to Trix, who'd gone into hiding. 'Or the bats will land in your hair, and we'll have to chop it off to get them out again.'

  Trix screamed and ran from behind the dilapidated log shed. Jimmy blew up the bubblegum he'd saved from the morning. It burst.

  'They don't do that,' he said coolly. ''Cos they have sonic vision.'

  'Never you mind,' Shell said. 'Off to bed. Dad'll have the washing line down to you if he catches you still up.'

  They did as they were told and went to bed.

  The house went quiet, with no sound from Dad's room. She walked out into the back field. The bats skimmed up close. She stretched out her arms and fingers and made a high-pitched whine, hoping one might land. But the sonic vision worked too well and they wouldn't. The air was soft and smooth to the feel. The moon rose like half a silver coin from behind the mountains. She climbed the gate and crept around Duggans' new-ploughed field to the copse above. A barbed wire fence was around it, but she squeezed between the lower and upper rungs without getting caught.

  In the copse, the wild things of the night had started. A scuffle, then a flap. A zzzz, a rustle, a tap. A tree moaned like a rusty hinge. 'Jesus,' she intoned aloud. 'I am no angel. But hear my prayer. Please take my mad father to your holy bosom, even as you took my own dear mam. For his life is a torment to him and to all of us.' An owl hooted. Shell listened. It hooted again, nearer, then again, further off. She frowned, trying to catch its meaning. It hooted again, a little nearer. But however hard she strained to hear, the message escaped her. The wood grew quiet. A fifth hoot came from almost overhead. She jumped. Then she knew.

  Wa-ai-ai-t, the owl had said.

  Jesus was telling her to wait. So wait she would.

  Eight

  The next day, Shell put on the winter uniform even though the sun shone.

  She got to school to find the place alive with maggots. All the girls had come in their shifts of shapeless green. They'd taken a leaf from her yesterday, while she'd switched back. She stuck out again like a sore thumb.

  Bridie was nowhere to be seen on the playground. Shell walked around the perimeter fence, her eyes half shut. She was with Jesus and the other Apostles, heading into Jerusalem. Crowds were gathering. Palm leaves were appearing. There was a bustle around her, a sense of growing expectation. Jesus turned to her and beckoned. 'Shell,' he said, smiling. 'Would you ever run ahead and fetch me a donkey?'

  Declan grabbed her by the ankle as she walked past his smoking post behind the hut. He sat there, hunched up on the ground like a gnome. He'd a new poem for her.

  'Shell smells

  of flea balls

  on the dirt floor,'

  he chanted.

  She smiled at him, thinking, Here, Lord, I have found you your donkey.

  He wouldn't let her ankle go. The road to Jerusalem dissolved from her head.

  'Sit down, Shell,' Declan coaxed. 'Sit here and have a drag of my fag.'

  She sat down. He inched up close and handed her the fag. She inhaled, then coughed.

  'These are wicked strong,' she said.

  'They're my gran's. I pinched some last night when she was over. They're high-tar, non-tipped. The ones with the sailor's face on the pack.'

  She took another drag. 'Jakes!' She gave it back. He took three long drags.

  'Mam says they're the devil's own curse of a fag. Only sailors and whores smoke them.'

  'Whores?' Shell said.

  'You know. Ladies of the night.'

  'Ladies of the night?'

  'Ladies who sell their bodies.'

  'Who what?'

  'You're having a rise with me, Shell Talent. You know a whore as well as I do.'

  She didn't quite, but a small inspiration made her say, 'Like Mary Magdalene, you mean?'

  'A whore of the first water.' Declan blew a smoke ring and together they watched it waft into the blue air. 'That reminds me,' he mused. 'I've just read this book my cousin over in London gave me. A big thick book. The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Not by one scholar, not by two, but by three. And d'you know what they said?'

  'What?'

  'They said Jesus married your woman, Mary Magdalene.'

  Shell's eyes opened wide. 'Never!'

  'Too right. And they had a child.'

  'A child?'

  'Yeh. A girl. Apparently after your man Jesus snuffed it, Mary M. ran away with the child and crossed the water. They say she landed in France.'

  'In France?'

  'France.'

  Shell imagined a boat landing on a vast tract of empty sand. Mary Magdalene and her toddler climbed over the side and walked silently through the gentle tide towards the whistling dunes, into the new country.

  'Maybe she went north to Roskoff harbour,' Declan mused. 'And took the Brittany line over to Cork.'

  Shell clouted him. 'You're making it up.'

  'No. Honest.' He handed her the fag. This time she declined it, calling to mind the holy abstinence of Father Rose. Declan took another short puff. 'Well, the bit about coming to Ireland I am. But the rest is in that book. They claim the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church covered it up. They're in cahoots with the freemasons.'

  They sat together in companionable silence, Declan smoking and Shell thinking about the hidden life of Jesus. She saw him at the carpentry, barefoot, with his small child, a girl, pulling at his robe. Mary Magdalene was kneading the bread for the tea off to one side. His piercing blue eyes looked upon her. He picked up
a plane to finish off the surface, murmuring sweet words of love.

  'Would you or wouldn't you, Shell Talent?' Declan said suddenly.

  'Heh?'

  'That's the question I've been asking myself.'

  Shell frowned. 'Would I what?'

  'You know.' His hand did a few cartwheels in the air. 'That.'

  'What?'

  'Was she born yesterday? Go into a field, Shell. With me. Do a Mary Magdalene. Take off your clothes.'

  'And why,' Shell said, 'would I do that, Declan Ronan?'

  He whistled through his teeth. 'I'd never call you smelly again, Shelly,' he teased.

  'You're a right one.' She got up and gave him a kick on the thigh. He caught her ankle again. She looked down on him, lanky and brown, with a curly top and a blue flash for an eye. She pictured them both in Duggans' field with the barley up, stark naked, scooting around on all fours. 'A real, right one,' she snapped, wriggling her ankle.

  ''S that a yes?' Declan's hand inched up her calf.

  'No!'

  'You mean it's a no?'

  'No.' She slapped his hand away from her leg.

  'So it is a yes?'

  'No, it's no!'

  He grinned up at her. 'Only codding,' he says. 'I wouldn't go with you if you were Mary Magdalene herself.' He ground out the fag on a stone before it was spent.

  'Bye, then,' Shell said.

  'Bye-byes, Shellies,' he sang. He started again:

  'Shell smells like--'

  Then he stopped. He pouted and shrugged, throwing away the fag butt. 'Ah, don't go, Shell. Give us a kiss,' he pleaded. 'Go on. Kiss and make up. I didn't mean what I said.'

  A kiss could do no harm, she supposed. She knelt down beside him and pushed out her lips. She closed her eyes.

  His hands came round her, one on the back of her neck, the other on the small of her back. His lips came up to hers. She expected a little putter on them, like she gave Trix at night-Jimmy had grown out of them-and when it didn't happen she puttered him instead. But his two hands got tighter and his lips stayed hard on hers, until a soft sliver snaked into her mouth through the crack. She jumped. He didn't let go. He got his tongue further in and ferreted round as if he was looking for a gumboil or sore tooth. The tip of his bumped into the tip of hers. The picture of God bringing life into Adam through a meeting of fingertips flashed through her brain. Lightning forked from her throat to her toes. He let her go.