The Field (ACHUKAbooks)

by Bill Nagelkerke

  ‘Like a referee,’ Dad had joked.

  ‘Someone has to hand out the red cards,’ Mum had said.

  Dad had snorted, insulted, as if he didn’t want Mother Mary there, and he didn’t believe in her protection, or something. But she was still in place a few years later and they’d never had another accident since.

  Josh was right, though, about the way Mother Mary faced into the car. But “The Mother of God” was one of Mary’s names. According to Mrs Prentice, God could do anything He wanted, so that could easily include giving His mother eyes in the back of her head, an extra pair of eyes that were covered by her white veil.

  Mother Mary might have been inexpensive (‘Cheap as chips,’ Josh had whispered irreverently to Jacinta once) but Jacinta thought the little statue had a lovely face, and she often wished her own hair was as long and as shiny-black as Mother Mary’s (what you could see of Mother Mary’s hair, since most of it was hidden by the veil.)

  After that very familiar conversation, Dad seemed to forget to wonder why Jacinta was so unusually silent. Jacinta was relieved. She could have told him why she was behaving that way but she didn’t want to, not just yet. She needed time to make sense of what she had experienced in the Crow’s Nest.

  The statuette of Mother Mary had complicated things enormously, that was the weirdest thing. Mother Mary looked straight at Jacinta. Like Jacinta, she was also silent and still. What had struck Jacinta immediately on getting into the car, was that Mother Mary’s face was exactly the same as that of the lady Jacinta had seen on the television screen in the Crow’s Nest, just a short twenty minutes before. The same. Exactly.

  The face was the same, but had the television lady been veiled in white and dressed in blue? Jacinta found she could not visualize those details. All she remembered clearly was the lady’s face.

  She supposed she should not be so dismayed at just being able to half-remember the details of something so startling, strange and unsettling. But nevertheless, she would try to do better when they saw each other again tomorrow.

  The following morning they left home later than Dad would have wanted. As a result he drove rather too quickly, but Mother Mary must have been looking after them again and they reached the Field without mishap. On the way Josh asked Dad what he had planned for the morning.

  ‘I have to repaint the lines,’ he said. ‘While the weather holds.’

  ‘Neato!’

  Painting the lines was something Josh liked just as much, or even a little more, than grass cutting. The process involved another machine, smaller than the lawnmower and one that had to be pushed rather than ridden on. It sprayed a non-toxic paint onto the grass.

  Josh had a particular job to do when Dad repainted the lines. He had to follow Dad and the machine and alert Dad as soon as the paint stopped coming out evenly. The machine was an old model (‘If it wasn’t for the new arena we’d have been due an upgrade,’ Dad had grizzled) and, because of that, the nozzle often blocked. Then the stream of paint thinned and left a coating on the grass that was far too pale. Dad had to turn the machine off and unblock it.

  Jacinta almost asked Dad if he thought it was really worthwhile repainting the lines, considering the fate of the Field, but she stopped herself in time. She knew, deep down, that even if the lines didn’t need to be repainted, then repainting them was a sort of way for him, and them all, to hang onto the Field for as long as possible. Someone in charge, one of the bigwigs maybe, would come along and say, ‘Those lines are the best ever. We’ll have to keep the Field just for the sake of keeping the lines.’ This was never going to happen, of course, but it was comforting to fantasize about.

  Leaving the paint machine to begin its warm-up puttering and puffing, Jacinta hurried up the stairs to the Crow’s Nest, torn between not really wanting to be there if the lady did reappear, yet very curious to know if she would indeed turn up as promised. Because of the uncanny resemblance between the TV lady and the plastic statue of Mother Mary in the car, she had started thinking of the lady as ‘Our Lady’, which was a funny choice to have made since the Lady was just hers so far, not anybody else’s.

  She couldn’t possibly be the real Our Lady, though, could she?

  For the first time ever Jacinta found it impossible to fully enjoy the view of the Field, and quite impossible to play at being a little god by manipulating her brother and father as they chugged their way behind the paint sprayer, around and up and down the Field. Her eyes kept turning towards the suspended television set.

  Would it turn itself on again? Would Our Lady’s face appear a second time? To begin with nothing happened and the morning slowly, yet far too speedily, moved towards midday and going-home time. Eventually Jacinta realised she had been needing to go to the toilet for quite some time. She began to edge reluctantly, but out of dire necessity, towards the door.

  The second apparition

  Before I had time to go more than a few steps, the television burst into hissing static, and came to life.

  I didn’t know I would react the way I did.

  I stood there, mesmerised, looking up at the screen. My legs felt stiff, almost as if they had become paralysed.

  I was still desperate for the toilet, but the best I could hope for was to be able to ignore the need to go.

  I waited.

  Gradually a picture formed itself on the screen.

  Although I was sure I knew who it was going to be, I was still awed and amazed to see the lady appear. And it was her. Mother Mary. Our Lady.

  I made a point of looking to see what she was wearing. She wore a white veil and a blue gown.

  Our Lady knew I was in the room, because she looked straight at me.

  At first she didn’t say anything. I felt anxious, and a little bit impatient. I knew there was something I had to do. I wondered if I would be able to manage, but I did. I genuflected, just as if I was in church, although I have to admit it felt strange, somehow, kneeling down to a television set.

  ‘Am I going crazy’, I muttered to myself as I straightened up.

  Our Lady smiled. Then she said my name.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked her, although by now I knew perfectly well. ‘And how do you know who I am?’

  ‘You know me,’ she said. ‘And I know you.’

  ‘But you can’t be. Can you?’

  The lady smiled again, the exact same unknowable smile that Mother Mary in the car always carried on her face. That was her answer to my question.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ I said to her. ‘How? Why?’

  By those words I meant a lot of things, including:

  ‘How did you get the TV to come on by itself?’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Why have you picked on me?’

  Our Lady inclined her head, a kind of nod I supposed it was, meaning she was aware how baffled I was about everything.

  She didn’t answer the ‘how’ question, just the ‘why’ ones.

  ‘I want people to come to me,’ Our Lady said.

  She paused. Before I had the chance to ask what she meant, Our Lady continued. ‘I want them to come here, to the Field, to the Field of dreams where, through you, I will tell them what they must do.’

  ‘People? Here? To the Field?’ I had more and more questions I needed to ask. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘You do not need to understand,’ Our Lady told me. ‘You will be my messenger. My . . .’

  She used a word that sounded like angel but wasn’t.

  ‘My angelos. You will tell them.’

  ‘But who am I supposed to tell?’ I asked the lady. ‘And what do I tell them?’

  It was too late, however. Our Lady was pixilating.

  ‘Come back tomorrow,’ her voice said, before that, too, faded away.

  I didn’t know how long I would have stayed standing statue-like in front of the television set because, almost immediately Our Lady had gone, Dad’s voice filled the emptiness left by her departure
.

  ‘What’s going on Jacinta? We came to fetch you home for lunch and heard you talking. Who’s here?’

  ‘She turned on the TV, that’s who’s here,’ said Josh, a small note of triumph in his voice. He didn’t often manage to score over his older sister. But now he had two good reasons for sounding smug. ‘And she’s wet herself,’ he added, in his most disgusted voice.

  It was absolutely ghastly on the way home, with soggy pants and jeans, and Dad going on and on about Jacinta having done what she shouldn’t have.

  ‘You’re twelve years old now, not a baby,’ he’d said, which left Jacinta unsure if he was referring to the pants wetting or the television. Probably both. He’d fetched paper towels from the big-wigs’ toilet and made her wipe up the Crow’s Nest floor herself. Watching on, Josh sniggered unsympathetically and unhelpfully.

  None of this was fair. She hadn’t asked for any of it.

  Jacinta resolutely fixed her gaze out of the car window, determined never to speak again, except in the end she got so fed up and distressed by the ongoing accusations that she said loudly and angrily, ‘I never touched the blasted TV!’

  ‘So what was it we were hearing?’ Josh retorted.

  ‘It was me, just like Dad said! I was talking to myself.’

  Jacinta was still not going to mention Our Lady. Firstly, it didn’t seen the right time to do so. And secondly, in the moods they were in, neither Dad nor Josh would believe her if she did.

  ‘And even if I had turned the TV on,’ she added, ‘so what, it’s only a machine.’

  ‘So you admit it?’ Josh again.

  ‘I don’t admit it. I didn’t do it!’

  But the television had come on. By itself. Twice now.

  Dad said, ‘The point is that it doesn’t matter if it’s only a television, it’s all about trust. It seems I can’t trust you anymore when you’re alone in the Crow’s Nest. From now on you’ll have to stay down below with us.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Jacinta said, out loud this time.

  ‘Fair or not, the big-wigs would take it out of my hide if they knew what was happening. I should never have let you stay up there by yourself in the first place.’

  But you did, Jacinta thought. And this is what’s happened. Our Lady had said she would speak to Jacinta again tomorrow. So she had to be there again the following day, in the Crow’s Nest, waiting for her. But clearly there was only one way that was going to happen now. She would have to spill the beans, even if the timing seemed completely wrong.

  ‘I’ll tell you all what happened, but you probably won’t believe me,’ Jacinta said, as Dad pulled into the driveway

  ‘Try us,’ said Dad.

  ‘I won’t believe you,’ Josh said, ‘whatever you say.’

  ‘You don’t really count anyway,’ Jacinta replied.

  But Jacinta had to wait until that evening to tell what had happened. First she had to change her clothes and put the soiled ones into the wash. By the time Mum arrived home the machine was chugging away.

  ‘I had a little accident,’ Jacinta mumbled in explanation, flushing with embarrassment.

  ‘Little!’ smirked Josh.

  ‘We can talk about it later on,’ Mum told Jacinta. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  Then it was time to eat. Instead of sitting down to lunch with them as he usually did, Dad had decided to do a quick turnaround. He ate quickly, standing at the bench. ‘I need to finish a few small jobs I didn’t get done this morning, before the weather changes. Keep myself in the big-wigs’ good books. See you all later.’

  ‘You will get a job at the new arena, won’t you?’ said Jacinta, looking down at her plate.

  It was bad enough that Dad was going to lose his job at the Field, and that the Field would eventually disappear, but for him not to have a groundsman job at all. Until the night she had overhead her parents’ conversation she had never really contemplated the possibility. Why hadn’t she, she wondered? Was it, as her parents so often said, because she seemed to live with her head in the clouds? Well, maybe that explained why she loved being up in the Crow’s Nest.

  Dad didn’t answer her question and Jacinta realised she must have asked it when he was already half way out of the door and her hadn’t heard her.

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ said Mum, seeing her anxious gaze. ‘Let’s not bother trouble until trouble bothers us.’

  Josh went off by himself, and Mum turned to Jacinta. ‘Now, lets have a chat about your “little accident”, she said.

  ‘Can it wait a bit longer?’ Jacinta asked.

  ‘I suppose so. I just assumed that with Josh out of the way . . .’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Jacinta said. ‘It’s all tied up with . . . with something else. Dad has to be here as well. I promised I’d tell all of you. At the same time would be easiest.’

  ‘Well, all right, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Thanks Mum. It is,’ she said.

  Jacinta felt unsettled for the rest of the afternoon. Now that she had made up her mind to tell her family what had happened, she would really have preferred to get it over with. The afternoon dragged. She tried escaping into one of her favourite books, but she could barely concentrate on it for more than a few minutes at a time.

  How on earth did you tell your family that you’d seen . . .

  . . . Our Lady . . .

  . . . The Virgin Mary . . .

  . . . The Queen of Heaven . . .

  . . . The Mother of God. (The Mother of GOD!)

  And that she had spoken to you.

  And that she was going to speak to you again.

  Up in the Crow’s Nest.

  Tomorrow.

  And that was why you had to be there.

  (And that’s why you’d wet yourself.)

  Jacinta started her story when they were all sitting down to tea. She’d pondered how to begin. ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me today,’ sounded all wrong, but it was the best she could come up with.

  ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me today, and yesterday . . .’ she started, but her mother shushed her before she could get any further.

  ‘Let’s just say grace first.’

  Just as with prayers at school, they sometimes skipped grace before tea when they were in a hurry, but today wasn’t going to be one of those days.

  Jacinta sighed with impatience, frustration and a growing dread. And now, because it had taken so long to get to the point of explaining, she didn’t feel absolutely sure anymore that she had actually experienced what she originally knew for certain she had. How could she convince them that she was speaking the truth, especially when she found it hard to believe herself? Everything was so complicated. But Dad had given her no choice in the matter. She had to speak now.

  Grace over, she had just taken a deep breath, ready to begin again, when Dad got in first. ‘Right Jacinta, you’ve got something to tell us,’ he said.

  ‘I know, I know I have! I was just going to but I keep on being interrupted!’

  ‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘We’re listening.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Josh. ‘We’re listening, so don’t get your knickers in a twist, sis.’

  ‘I was in the Crow’s Nest yesterday,’ Jacinta said, ‘and then again this morning, when I heard something. At first I didn’t know what it was and then I realised the television had gone on.’

  ‘By itself. Yeah right,’ Josh said.

  ‘Shush,’ said Mum.

  ‘Well, that’s what happened,’ Jacinta told them. ‘It came on, I didn’t touch it, I swear. And then a lady appeared on the screen, and she started talking to me.’

  ‘A lady. Talking to you? What do earth do you mean?’ Mum asked. She put down her knife and fork.

  Jacinta had their attention now

  Josh raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. He didn’t have to say anything but Jacinta knew he was communicating the message that she was digging a bigger and deeper hole for herself.

 
‘She was speaking right at me, and to me,’ Jacinta explained, trying her hardest to ignore her brother.

  ‘What did she say?’ Mum asked.

  ‘The first time she said that she wanted to speak to me again the next day. That was today. And today she said I was going to be her messenger. She called me,’ - and here Jacinta had to dig deep to recall the word the lady had used to describe her role – ‘her angelos, I’m pretty sure it was. She wants people to come to the Field. She wants to tell them something.’

  Jacinta noticed the look that passed between her parents. ‘It’s true,’ she insisted. ‘Every word.’ And as she said this any doubts she might have had vanished. She knew it was true.

  For her, if for no one else yet.

  ‘So, who was this mystery lady?’ Josh asked sarcastically. ‘You make her sound like she’s someone you know?’

  ‘Well, I do, sort of.’

  Jacinta hesitated. ‘She looked like . . . well, she looked like Mother Mary. Our little statue in the car, I mean.’

  There was a long, long silence around the dining table. Clearly nobody knew what to say.

  Finally Dad said, ‘It’s not just me who’s stopped eating. Come on, let’s carry on, before the food gets cold.’

  There was no way Jacinta could carry on eating, just as if nothing had been said.

  ‘This sort of thing has happened before,’ she continued quickly, not addressing anyone in particular. Instead, she tossed her words up into the air, like juggling balls, letting them fall where they would. ‘It’s happened to other kids. Lots of kids. We’ve learnt about them at school.’

  ‘Not lots,’ said Mum.

  ‘Enough,’ Jacinta countered.

  ‘But it can’t be true,’ said Josh. ‘It couldn’t happen here!’