A Swift Pure Cry

by Siobhan Dowd

  She jerked back, jellified.

  'Not bad,' Declan said. 'For starters.'

  She clouted his head and ran.

  'Never mind,' he called after her. 'There's always Bridie.

  Hickory, dickory

  Bridie Quinn

  Ring the bell

  And let yourself in,'

  he sang. Shell had no idea what he was on about. As she rounded the hut, she saw Bridie herself. She was looking on from a distance with a face to turn milk, then she turned away with a jerk and strode back into the sea of maggot-green. Shell raced off in the other direction, towards the entrance to the school. She didn't stop running until she'd landed safely in her classroom.

  The other pupils dribbled in after her. Of Bridie there was no sign. Lessons started. Up and down her trunk, the lightning inside her darted, coming and going all day long.

  Nine

  The last day of term, Friday, Father Rose came to say Mass in the school hall.

  A shaft of light toppled in from the high window. Shell imagined it was Jesus in disguise, gliding down from heaven, straight into the tabernacle. 'Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed,' the school chorused.

  She went up to take the Host. Father Rose placed it upon her outstretched tongue. He loomed tall in his vestment of cream and green.

  'Body of Christ,' he said.

  She nearly forgot to say Amen.

  The thin papery wafer went down softly, exploding like fifty fruit-chews in her tarnished soul. She shut her eyes to blot out the sight of Declan Ronan in the white surplice. He was altar boy again. But she kept picturing him with her, scooting around naked in Duggans' field.

  When she opened her eyes, the after-Communion silence had descended. Father Rose cleaned the chalice out with a white cloth, handed to him by Declan. Declan was as tall as him. The two's shoulders almost touched. They could have been brother apostles, had Declan an ounce of religion. His altar-boy job was a ruse. His mam and dad drafted him into it when he was seven and knew no better. Now he did it, he said, because he'd always manage a good few swigs of the communion wine in the vestry when no one was looking.

  'The Mass is ended, go in peace,' Father Rose said.

  'Thanks be to God,' the pupils responded.

  They filed out back to class. Soon after, just before lunch, the school finished early for the Easter holidays. Shell got her things and wafted through the noisy throngs of pupils in the corridors and playground in a state of grace.

  Out on the street, Bridie Quinn was waiting for her.

  She sprang, arms flailing. She tugged at Shell's hair and punched her face.

  'You,' she said. 'You.'

  Shell put her arms up, thinking of Jesus expelling the fiends from the man possessed.

  'Bridie,' she shouted. ''S me. Only me.' She caught Bridie's hand, but Bridie wrenched it back, struck her, and started to cry.

  'What's the matter?' Shell said, trying to touch her.

  Bridie shoved her off. 'You're the matter. You. You cheat. You whore. You.'

  Shell nearly cried too. 'I'm not.'

  'You are,' Bridie said. 'I saw you. Yesterday. Saw you with him. You made him do it. Kiss you. And him going with me.' She lunged at Shell's shirt, tearing at it. 'After I'm giving you that bra. I'll have it off you.'

  Bridie rained down blows and kicks. A button came off. Shell knelt on the pavement, her hands protecting her head, praying Jesus to make her stop.

  He did. Father Rose appeared from nowhere.

  'Whoa--' he said. 'What's this?'

  Bridie stopped. She gave Shell a final kick and fled.

  Shell slowly unfurled. Father Rose's eyebrows rose when he recognized her.

  'Shell,' he said, in his thoughtful way. Shell stood up, sorting out her gaping shirt.

  'Are you all right?'

  She nodded.

  'Who was that fighting you?'

  She nearly said Bridie Quinn. Then she remembered the years of their friendship. 'Just a girl.'

  'Does she often hit you?' he said.

  Shell shook her head. 'We're friends really.'

  'Sure?'

  'Sure.'

  They stood on the street. Shell felt a bruise on her elbow coming, where it had hit the pavement. She bit her lip, trying not to cry. Father Rose looked at her with a crinkle in his face, his hand rubbing his stubbly chin. Cars passed. Rain started spitting.

  'Come on,' he said. 'I'll give you a spin home.'

  'I've to pick up Jimmy and Trix from national school.'

  'I'll give you a spin there then.'

  He led Shell in silence down the kerb to where his car, an ancient wreck of purple, was parked. 'Don't laugh,' he said as Shell goggled at it.

  'I thought it'd be black,' she said.

  'Why so?'

  'Like your clothes. Or white, maybe. Like your collar.'

  'It was a bargain, going for a song. I didn't like the colour at first. But it's grown on me. It gets you noticed.'

  'True for you.'

  'It's not too lurid, d'you think?'

  Shell wasn't sure what lurid meant. She frowned as if considering hard. 'I think it's fine, Father. Like a pop song.'

  Father Rose laughed. The rain got harder. 'Come on,' he said. He opened the passenger door, took Shell's school bag from her and built that bridge of his with his spare arm over the door, so she'd to wriggle under it to get in.

  'There you go.' He closed the door after her.

  On the seat she'd to remove chewing-gum wrappers, a map of Ireland and his driving licence, so as to sit down. She gathered them onto her lap while he rushed round the other side and clambered in, putting her bag in the back. Shell felt as if a massive pony had got on board a wheelbarrow. His hair was brushing the top of the car, his knees were an inch from the steering wheel. 'Now,' he said, closing the door. The sound of the rain changed. It kataplunked on the roof. The warmth of their breath misted the windows.

  He started up the engine. It chugged and wheezed, then died.

  'Don't do this to me, Jezebel.'

  Shell turned and stared. 'Jezebel?'

  'It's a joke of a name, I know. But Jezebel she is, for she's a devil in her.'

  He tried again. The car spurted, nearly started, died again.

  'She hates the damp.'

  Third try, the car started. Shell stared at the contents of her lap, wondering what to do with them. Father Rose pulled out, nearly colliding with another car. The side mirrors had water streaming off them. You could hardly see a thing. He didn't seem perturbed. He was trusting to the Lord.

  'Will we go the straight road, or round the coast?' he asked.

  They'd no car in Shell's house since Mam died. Mam had been the one with the driving licence. Dad owned one years ago, she had heard, but it had been taken from him for reasons Shell didn't know. There was never enough time these days to walk the three miles down to the strand on Goat Island. Mam used to run them there most days in the summer, and-also in the winter-after church on a Sunday. She'd loved to watch the waves rearing high as steeples.

  'Let's go the coast road. Please.'

  'The coast it is,' said Father Rose. 'If we can see it for the rain.'

  They drove through the town. Mrs Fallon, the doctor's wife, waddled down the street with a plastic bag over her head, joining Mrs McGrath under the shelter of the bank doorway. Shell waved at them. They stared after her and Father Rose in open-mouthed surprise as they careered down Main Street in the purple saloon. At the grotto, Father Rose turned left and headed out the C-road. The rain hammered it as they topped the hill. A sheep with a blood-red smear of paint on its side ran out onto the road before them, as if eager to be killed. Father Rose swerved. The sheep leaped back into the open field. 'There but for the grace of God, Shell,' Father Rose said, straightening up. The car jerked into a pothole. Shell's head nearly hit the ceiling. She nearly lost the contents of her lap. She grabbed the licence just as it slipped off her knee.


  She couldn't help looking at it. Gabriel Rose, it said.

  'Gabriel?' she wondered aloud.

  Father Rose looked over and saw the licence. He chuckled. 'For my sins,' he said. 'My mother called us Michael and Gabriel and prayed for us both to be priests.'

  Shell pictured Father Rose as Archangel Gabriel in his shining raiments, come to tell the Virgin that she was with child. 'I've never met a Gabriel before,' she mused. 'But plenty of Michaels.'

  'It's not such a common name.'

  'What about your brother? Did he?'

  'Did he what?'

  'Did he become a priest, like you?'

  Father Rose's lips went flat. He stared through the windscreen, into the washed-out view, as if he were blind. He sighed, then changed down a gear as a bedraggled dog came barking out of a bungalow's front yard.

  'Well, Shell, he didn't,' he answered. 'He died of meningitis as a boy.'

  'Ming-ing-ji-tus?' She'd heard the word before but couldn't place it. 'What's that?'

  'It's a kind of bad flu. It gets into your brain.'

  The rain came down in such sheets the windscreen wipers could not cope. 'We didn't get him to the doctor soon enough.'

  They drove over the high ground in a roll of cloud.

  'I'll pull in here, Shell. Until the worst of this passes.'

  He stopped in a lay-by. The rain got harder still. She smelled the damp seeping into the car. It made her yawn. She looked back to the licence and saw the year of his birth. She worked out his age in comparison to hers.

  Shell's age = 15 going on 16

  Father Rose's age = 25

  Shell's age + Jimmy's age = Father Rose's age.

  'Shell,' Father Rose said. 'Would you say you're happy?'

  Nobody'd ever asked her that before. She didn't know what to say. She put the licence on the dashboard and scrunched up the chewing-gum wrappers.

  'Happy,' she repeated.

  The rain eased a fraction. They waited longer.

  'I mean in your life,' Father Rose resumed. 'At home-at school?'

  'School's boring,' she said.

  He considered this. 'I used get bored at school too,' he said.

  'Did you?'

  'Often. Specially in triple Irish.'

  She slapped her knee. 'I hate Irish too.'

  'So we've something in common?'

  Shell nodded. She held out a chewing-gum wrapper. 'And the chewing gum, Father. I like it too. Just like you.'

  'I'm addicted to it,' he said. 'Since giving up the fags. But let's keep that a secret, huh? Coolbar isn't ready for a gum-chewing priest.'

  Shell giggled. The rain was only spitting now. He started up the car and pulled out onto the road. The fog thinned and the hillside emerged once more.

  'Father,' Shell said, 'I'm sorry about your brother.'

  He nodded. 'He was a year older than me, Shell. He'd have made a better priest than me, if he'd lived.'

  As they came down the hill, the sun broke over the inlet. The watery air shimmered and blue sky truckled over from Goat Island point. Shell could hardly believe what happened next. It was a holy visitation, an answer to a prayer: a rainbow appeared, half out to sea, half dangling in land. Its colours deepened, pulsating into jostling strands.

  'My God,' said Father Rose in hushed tones. He stopped the car dead, in the middle of the road. The light grew strong. White horses ran races across the bay. Father's Rose's hands floated off the steering wheel, as if doing homage.

  'When the sun shines in Ireland, Shell, is there any place on earth more beautiful?'

  Ten

  He let her off at the national school. She fetched Trix and Jimmy and brought them home.

  Jimmy was unusually quiet. He'd no interest in the tinned soup she warmed. She felt him. Cold beads of sweat were on his forehead.

  'You've to go to bed,' she decreed.

  'No,' he said. 'Won't.'

  'You must. Now.'

  'No.'

  'If I say you're to go to bed, you've to go.'

  He stuck out his tongue and went pfffthrwphff.

  Her right hand itched to slap him, as she'd done before. But he looked at her with such a small, white face on him the itch evaporated.

  'Go on, Jimmy,' she pleaded. 'Please. If Mam were alive, she'd tell you to go. Y'know she would.'

  Jimmy's face cracked like a smashed saucer. 'You're not my mam,' he wailed. 'I want her. Not you.'

  Shell had heard it before. She sighed. She dragged him by his collar out of his chair. He fisted her on the arms but not so it hurt. She marched him to the back bedroom where they all slept, army like, in a line of three thin beds, crushed in tight. His bed was at the far end. Over the headboard were his colourings of black and orange felt-tip scrawled straight on the wall. He'd done them as Mam lay dying. They weren't of anything, just busy spirals warring with each other.

  When she laid him down, the fight went out of him. She put the blankets over and stroked his cheek. He pushed her hand away. Trix came up to the bedside too and gave him Nelly Quirke, the chewed-up toy dog that had once been Shell's.

  'There,' Shell said. 'Fine man.'

  He took Nelly Quirke from Trix but pulled away from Shell, curling in a ball with his face to the wall. 'Want Mam,' he said. But now it was more of a mutter.

  Shell and Trix returned to the kitchen. Trix took to the floor with some paper dolls Shell cut out for her from an old Examiner. The rain returned. The long afternoon passed. Shell did the dishes. She tidied out the fridge. She dusted down the piano. Then she made tea. Jimmy made no sound. She checked in on him, but he slept the day away.

  Dad was due back from the collecting. He'd be hauling Jimmy out of bed, she thought, for the next decade of the rosary. They were onto the Glorious Mysteries now, the one where flaming tongues come down on the heads of the Apostles, making them speak loads of languages.

  Six came and went. Dad didn't come. Shell put a saucepan lid over his tinned fish.

  'I wonder where he is,' she said, more to herself than to Trix.

  Trix pushed a tomato quarter off the side of her plate onto the plastic tablecloth. 'He's here,' she said. She flicked the tomato off the edge of the table onto the floor. 'Now he's dropped down a bog. He's deaded.'

  Shell chortled.

  She picked up the tomato and popped it under the saucepan lid onto Dad's plate. 'He's probably delayed in town,' she said.

  Trix helped Shell clear up. Then she sat at Shell's feet so that Shell could brush out her matted brown curls. The job hadn't been done in days, and the nits were back. As she combed, Shell told another story about their made-up fairy, Angie Goodie. She was the size of pea but always managed to stop the bad things happening. Tonight, Shell made her fly up onto the church steeple in an electric storm and hover over the top of the iron cross. She saved the church from being struck by raising her arm with her wand at the ready. The lightning bolt hit the wand, not the church. Because she was a fairy, she didn't die. Instead her wings shone brighter and when the rainbow came out after the storm, she went sliding back down it to her nice warm bed. Trix went off like a lamb. Jimmy slept on.

  Shell went to the front door and watched the darkness settle in the yard. She walked out as far as the road. She thought of Bridie Quinn in her fury. She thought of Father Rose, the rainbow and Nelly Quirke the dog, her ear in Jimmy's mouth. In the brown hush of the country road, she thanked Jesus for the good and bad of her day. It rained again. There being nothing else to do, she went in and made some scones.

  Eleven

  They were out of the oven and cool when the front door burst open. Dad stood before her, a man of the night. The rain flew in around him. His old jacket flapped, his chin bristled with growth. The collecting box was around his neck, tipped upside down, with the cord dripping. His tie was askew.

  He blundered in.

  'Where's tea?'

  Shell put the plate before him, removing the lid.

  He ripped the collecting tin from around hi
s neck and dropped it to the floor with a curse. He ate in silence.

  Shell watched in wonderment. His routine was broken. What might that mean? He'd never come in before like this on a Friday. Only Saturdays and Wednesdays. As he munched, she seemed to see a tear fall down his cheek and off the end of his red, wide nose, onto the plate of pilchards. She picked up the collecting tin and gave it a gentle shake. It was empty. Jesus tugged at a little string she'd never even known was in her heart. Father Rose was right: anger and love must go together.

  'Are you feeling all right, Dad?' she asked.

  He pushed the plate away and the cutlery fell from his hands to the table. His head dropped in his hands.

  'Shell,' he said. 'You're a good girl.'

  His forehead wagged. There was a moistness in his eyes.

  'A good girl, praise God.'

  She didn't like it. She'd almost have preferred the usual recriminations. Perhaps he'd got a touch of whatever Jimmy had.

  'Ah, Shell. I'm a disappointed man.' He picked himself up and stared at her. 'Make me a cup, would you?'

  She got the kettle boiling and the teapot warming.

  'A disappointed man.'

  She set the cup down before him. 'Why's that?' she said, passing him the sugar.

  He put three spoons in and blew on the surface, then belched. The reek of Stack's was high upon him.

  'You're old enough to know, I s'pose. I went courting tonight, Shell.'

  Shell stared, thinking, Courting? Him? He's out of his wits.

  'I asked a lady of my acquaintance out for a walk.'

  Shell wondered who he meant.