A Swift Pure Cry

by Siobhan Dowd

  She switched on the electric-bar fire and held the card to the filament. The paper wilted then latched into flame. She put it on the tiles and watched the robin, the cabs, the Singapore Slings burn. Declan Ronan, the man for the main chance. Would she ever in this mortal life set eyes on him again? Toodletits, Shell. Tarala, Declan. Did it even matter?

  She threw the remains in the bin and dusted down the piano and the sills. Then she made the beds up clean with brand-new sheets.

  Fifty-two

  The bedrooms aired and the place dusted, she fetched Jimmy and Trix home from school.

  'Why can't he stay in jail?' Jimmy moaned when they got in.

  'I want to stay at Duggans',' Trix grumbled. 'And watch TV.'

  'Whisht, the two of you,' Shell said. 'I'll buy you sweets if you'd only stop.'

  She sent them out to play in the back field.

  She cleaned the grubby windows.

  She made a batch of scones.

  A car drew up outside, ahead of time. She froze. Mr Duggan was driving Dad home from Castlerock under strict instructions to elude the lure of the bar. Will his hands still shake? Will he open the piano and hit me when he finds the whiskey gone? Will he shout if I break the egg yolk for the fry? She looked out of the window with floured hands and pinched face. But it wasn't Dad. A familiar purple drew up: Father Rose and Jezebel.

  He came in the door with a soft 'Hulloo, are you within? ' and that same smile of his. She offered him the chair and washed off her hands. 'Can I get you something, Father?'

  'I can't stop,' he said. He perched on the piano stool, his back to the keys. His jacket flapped open to reveal a sweater with a polo neck obscuring the dog-collar. He looked different without the little square of white: a man of small concerns, walking the same crust of earth as anyone. She made conversation, but the words meandered down blind alleys. Father Rose sat there staring into the middle distance, a little like Dad used to do.

  'I'm leaving, Shell,' he said at last. 'I've come to say goodbye.'

  'Goodbye?'

  'I'm called away.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I'm called away by the Church.'

  'Are they sending you to another parish? Already?'

  He shook his head, smiling.

  'Where then? Abroad?' She imagined him in the heart of Africa, walking among the poor, lifting up sick children to the mercy of the Lord.

  'County Offaly.'

  'County Offaly?'

  'Yes, Shell. There's a house up there for priests with sick vocations. For those of us whose callings have gone sour.'

  She stared in bewilderment.

  'It's a retreat for doubting priests.'

  'Is that what you are-a doubting priest?'

  'I'm in spiritual crisis, Shell.'

  She remembered him in the dark church, the day the pains started. Have you come to shelter, Shell? A church at least has that use. 'I don't understand,' she said, frowning. 'What is it you doubt about?'

  'Do you really want me to tell you?'

  'Yes, Father,' she whispered. 'If you will.'

  He leaned against the piano and ran his hand soundlessly over the keys, newly dusted. 'When I used walk into a church, Shell-any church-I'd feel a presence. The smell of the divine, something more than just the bricks. Always I'd feel it and always I'd be glad. But this past year, in Coolbar, Shell, the feeling's dwindled.'

  'Dwindled?' My own stupid state of grace. 'How d'you mean?'

  'I've sat in that church for hours. I've hunted in my mind, into the alcoves, around the statues, across the pews and up by the tabernacle. I've stared into the light perpetua. But all I've heard is the wind. All I've smelled is the wood polish. All I've felt is myself, alone in a universe of loneliness. And in the faces of the parishioners I've not seen the image of God like I'm supposed to. I've seen something brittler. Something more impermanent.'

  'Father-Father Rose...' she faltered.

  He raised a friendly brow.

  'I used to feel that. Me too. The wood and the wind in the church, and the nothingness. Then you came, and it was different. You made it different. You made me believe again. In Jesus. In heaven. And then Mam came back. From the spirits.'

  'Did she, Shell?'

  She nodded. 'She still comes odd times. She sits at the piano, where you are now. When Jimmy's here, she's inside him, guiding his fingers over the keys. I know it.'

  He smiled at her.

  'You did it, Father. You made her come back. It was after hearing you talk I began to feel her round the place.'

  He shook his head. 'If she came back, it was yourself brought her,' he said. 'Not me.' He took from his pocket a folded slip. 'There's an address for you, Shell. My mother's house. A letter there will always reach me, wherever I am.'

  He handed the paper over and stood to go.

  'Father'-she searched for a question, any question to delay him-'how long will they keep you in Offaly?'

  'Days, weeks. Months maybe. Until the way becomes clear. We've to agree, me and them. We've to arrive at the one mind.' As he spoke, he made for the door. Shell followed him out to the yard and watched him get in the car. She saw the passenger seat, littered with familiar clutter. The fags. A map. The licence. He wound the window down.

  'Father...' She stumbled as he started the engine.

  'What, Shell?'

  'D'you ever feel, Father...' she blurted. 'D'you ever feel Michael like I feel Mam?'

  The engine spluttered, died. 'Michael?'

  'Your brother.'

  He rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared at the smooth back field, rising. The remnants of the yellow tape marking where the baby had been exhumed fluttered in the breeze. Trix and Jimmy's figures were huddled among the top trees. 'It's funny your asking that. I used to, once. Just after he died. Michael always longed to be a priest, not me. I was the daft, harem-scarem one. It was as if he was telling me to take up the call where he'd left off. But somewhere in my teens he went quiet.'

  'Did he?'

  'Yes. Perhaps he'd nothing more to say. I'd done what he wanted: gone for Holy Orders.'

  'Perhaps now-perhaps-he'll come back again.'

  Father Rose smiled. 'Maybe so, Shell. I could certainly use the help.'

  'When you're in Offaly, Father, you could pray to him instead of God. Perhaps he'd be closer. Perhaps he'd tell you what to do.'

  He considered it. 'I could try.' But he didn't look convinced. He turned the ignition on and the one time when she wished it could have broken down, the engine started fine. He gave a final smile, breaking up the shaving shadow across this face. 'We'll surely meet again, Shell,' he said. His palms drifted briefly above the steering wheel, the wheels slid forward. 'Somewhere in this benighted isle.'

  The car edged off the verge onto the road. 'Goodbye, Shell. God bless.' The words were muddled somewhere in the engine noise.

  'Goodbye, Father Rose,' she whispered back. As the car took a bend in the road, she shut her eyes. She could see the field, the grave, the remnant of yellow tape, but in the middle, surrounded by streaks of light, was the man, or rather the yawning absence of him. And then a crucifix with nobody on it, groaning in the wind. She opened her eyes. She stared at the place where the purple car had vanished around the bend, hardly believing he'd really left. In its place, another car appeared, a sleek estate: Mr Duggan, with Dad beside him.

  'That eejit of a curate,' Dad said as he got out. 'We nearly collided.' He closed the car door and smiled.

  Shell sucked her lips between her teeth and bit into the gums. She nodded at him. 'Hi, Dad.'

  'Shell,' he said, approaching her and extending his arms. 'My own girl. It's good to be home again.'

  Fifty-three

  Dad wasn't a different man, only quieter. He was mad for the playing cards now, not the drink. He was down in the village playing Forty-five most nights. He still read like a demented prophet from the pulpit every Sunday. After tea, he rattled round the rosary mysteries like a train h
urtling through the night. He stopped the collections and went back to his farm-labouring. He'd groan about the state of his bones, pouring the distalgesics down his throat. She'd a job to manage him. But she persuaded him to replace the ancient broken twin-tub Mam had used with a newer automatic model. Before spring came, she sowed the back field with grass and put up a brand-new washing line, one that folded down like an umbrella and twirled around in the wind. She left the cairn of stones where it was. It was like a beacon, collecting weeds and lichen.

  Shortly after Father Rose left, Father Carroll said a funeral Mass for Baby Paul, as he was named, and her baby. When they asked her what she'd called the little girl, she lied. She didn't want any more gossip. So she said the name was Mary Grace, not Rose. The babies were buried in the churchyard in two small coffins in the far corner reserved for unbaptized souls. They'd a long wait in Limbo until the end of time. 'I'm sorry for your trouble,' Mrs McGrath said afterwards, her hat lurching off to the side. 'I'm sorry for your trouble,' said Mrs Fallon, her hands folded over her bag of wrinkled crocodile. 'Come round for a slice of coffee cake sometime,' said Nora Canterville. Shell shook their hands and nodded, her cheeks sucked in and her eyes staring down at the thick tan tights around their lumpy ankles. Suffering Saviour. Spare me from legs like theirs.

  Mrs Quinn came to the Mass too, but on her own. She sat up in the gallery and said nothing to nobody. She watched the interment from the church porch and left the moment the prayers over the grave were finished. Shell saw her walking up the hill, hunched over on herself. Only she and herself knew it was her grandson being buried that day.

  The following Sunday, Father Carroll announced that a new curate would be with them by Easter, a widower who'd retired from business and taken to the Church late in life. People in Coolbar never mentioned Father Rose, but in Shell's mind the memory of the man did not fade, but grew. His words, his smile, his gestures wove in and out of her days. We'll surely meet again, somewhere in this benighted isle, Shell. She thought of him in County Offaly, kneeling before the light perpetua, and she prayed for his path to be made clear. She kept the address of his mother safe in her powder-blue mass bag.

  Her old primary schoolteacher, Miss Donoghue, called round one evening and pleaded with her to go back to school. 'You're not stupid,' she said. 'You never were.' Shell refused. She'd done with the place, she said. But in the end she agreed to Miss Donoghue's offer of an evening grind. Miss Donoghue insisted on not being paid and Shell could not say no. She began to go over every Tuesday, Dad's night off from the cards.

  One fine week at the end of winter, the funfair came to town. The year before, Jimmy and Trix had been devastated at there being no money to go. This year, Shell made Dad give her some money for a few rides. The three set off together into town on a Saturday afternoon.

  The whole of the park by the pier flashed and blared as they approached, bursting with mad machines. Stalls glittered. The air pulsed with heavy rock. They plunged into the crush.

  'Can I've some?' Trix shouted, pointing to the candyfloss stall. Shell bought three fat spools and they licked them clean. They rode the dodgems and the ghost train. Soon she'd little money left. They wandered around the rides, trying to choose their last go.

  A woman walked past them, brushing Shell's sleeve. Shell turned to look at her, but all she could see was her retreating back. Her hair was tied up with a chiffon scarf, like the olive-green one Mam had used for strolls on the beach. Hands in her pockets, she was heading towards the pier, a familiar lilt in her stride. Her head was off to the side as if she was thinking of faraway times and places, just as Mam did when she strolled along the strand or played the quiet piano pieces. The people on either side bobbed around her, but she never paused, picking her way forward. As she stepped away, the sound of her singing began in Shell's head. But this time she recognized the song:

  She stepped away from me

  With one star awake

  As the swan in the evening

  Flies over the lake...

  Then the tune faded. Mam. Don't go. Shell grabbed Trix by the hand and rushed after the figure, but she'd already vanished into the crowds. No. There was her head again, her elbow. She'd the smooth leather coat on, the black one, her best.

  'Shell,' grumbled Jimmy. 'Where are you going?'

  She'd landed them by the Big Wheel. There was no sight of the woman anywhere. 'Dunno. Here. I s'pose.' Her eyes roved the crowds.

  'The Big Wheel,' Trix said, her eyes alight. 'I'm not too small for it, am I?'

  I've lost her. Maybe I was imagining things.

  'Am I?' Trix's voice, almost a wail.

  'No, Trix. Hush. Not if we all go up together.'

  She bought the tickets with the last of the money. The man fitted them into the same carriage. He locked the bar down across their legs and the wheel spun round, inching them backward as more got on. When everyone had boarded, the wheel picked up its pace. Faster and faster, it spun up and back, knocking out their breath. Trix gripped her on one side, Jimmy on the other, their six hands and ankles muddled. Back and up, whoosh, with the wind flying through them.

  'Holy Mary,' Shell gasped. Her stomach somersaulted.

  'Look, Shell. Look.'

  They were at the top of the arc with the white of the sun bursting and the sea glittering. Then down and forward, and the fair running smack up to them again. And there, on the far pier, walking away like the librarian had done, was the woman in black and green, a living poem. Strolling down and away, her scarf unwinding. Shell blinked, squeezing her eyes, wishing she could see better. Whoosh. The wheel scooped her insides out like ice cream. The figure was further away. She craned her neck just as the woman turned. Her hand was in the air, her scarf afloat. She was flickering, a flame, growing thinner and drifting out over the soft seascape, her chiffon billowing like a wave until she was a slender match, hardly more. Mam. She called out with her soul in her mouth. A last farewell. But she was going, going for good this time, back to the place from which she'd come.

  The last slither vanished and there was the sea. Nothing but the sea. The whole mass of it, large and shining, restless, eating up the sky. Chasing the day to another continent. The wheel spun and there was the coast and the land and the dark hills faraway. The people, the houses, the sounds. The living and the dead. The dreams and laughs and tears. The here-and-nows and the here-afters. Bridie, white-cheeked, shaking the rain off her see-through umbrella as she walked away up the hill. Father Rose in Offaly, crouched in his evening shadow, waiting for God like a lighthouse beam. And Declan, up in a bulldozer with his rhyming slang, digging up the great city. Mam. Mam in the place of spirits, Mam in her memory, Mam in her blood. Jimmy yodelled as if from Alpen heights, his arms flung over her and Trix. They peaked and swooped the blue. Trix's hair and hers streamed together like tangled kite tails. Trix, Jimmy and she, a silent row going up the back field, picking up the stones. Together always. Free. And Mam's perpetual light shining on them. And their lives ahead of them, around them, spilling from them as they screamed Whoooooooooo like three demented owls. What joy it was to be, what joy.

  Acknowledgements

  I could not have written this story without the generous support of fellow-writers and friends Tony Bradman, Fiona Dunbar and Lee Weatherly. Warmest thanks also go to Tony Emerson, Helen Graves, Sile Larkin, Rosarii O'Brien, Carol Peaker and Ben Yudkin. My agent Hilary Delamere has guided me throughout with the clearest of vision, and my editorial team has been a joy-David Fickling and Bella Pearson at David Fickling Books, and Kelly Cauldwell, Annie Eaton and Sophie Nelson at Random House. And thank you to my darling mother, who has in her time picked up many a stone, and to Geoff, my wise and kindest critic.

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  Published by David Fickling Books an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the auth
or's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright (c) 2006 by Siobhan Dowd

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, in 2006.

  DAVID FICKLING BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dowd, Siobhan.

  A swift pure cry / Siobhan Dowd.--1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  SUMMARY: Coolbar, Ireland, is a village of secrets and Shell, caretaker to her younger brother and sister after the death of their mother and with the absence of their father, is not about to reveal hers until suspicion falls on the wrong person.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89155-7

  [1. Family problems--Fiction. 2. Fathers--Fiction. 3. Ireland--Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D7538Swi 2007

  [Fic]--dc22

  2006014562

  v1.0