by David Almond
“You’re the one whose sister died, aren’t you?” she says to me.
I flinch.
“Aye,” I say.
“Any sign of her since?”
“What?”
She smiles.
“Never mind,” she says. “Look. That’s the broken window Joe told you about.”
It’s the narrow pane at the top of the kitchen window. I imagine a knife flying through it, or a fork.
“I should put Sellotape or something over it,” she says. “But it’s nice to have a bit of breeze in this heat. Joe, show them the plates, son.”
He opens the drawer in the table, and takes out some broken bits of cups and plates, and puts them in front of us.
“Ever seen owt like that?” he asks. He holds up a jagged bit in wonder.
“They were ordinary proper plates,” he says, “and then…”
There’s a record player on the kitchen bench. His mam drops a record onto the turntable. A voice and a guitar start wailing.
“You won’t have heard this,” she tells us. “They’re underground, from California.”
She starts dancing, swinging her arms around her head and her hair falls back and forward over her shoulders. She’s got her eyes closed, as if she’s in a dream. I can’t help watching. She’s not like any other mams I know. A slice of bread and butter flies over her head and slaps onto the kitchen wall. Geordie gasps and curses and looks at me, but nobody else says anything. It’s like Joe and his mother haven’t seen.
Soon the chips are done.
Mrs Quinn tips them into a bowl, leans over the table and puts them onto our plates.
“Tuck in,” she says.
I make a butty, a layer of chips and tomato sauce between two slices of bread. Lovely. Then another slice of bread and butter flies across the room.
Geordie bursts out laughing.
“That was you!” he says to Joe.
Joe just shakes his head and goes on eating. His mam leans over us. Her hair is yellow as corn. I can feel her breath on me.
“Maybe you have to believe that,” she says to Geordie. “But Davie, I think you’re different. What did you see? How do you explain it?”
There’s no way to answer. I take another bite of my butty. Geordie’s sniggering at my side. Mrs Quinn rests her hand on my head.
“Just be quiet for a moment,” she says to me. “Relax and try to feel what is happening in this place. Feel what Joe and I feel, even on a sunny afternoon in an ordinary house on an ordinary estate. There is a disturbance. We are passing through some kind of vortex. Can you feel it, Davie?”
I can feel that Geordie wants to get away but I can’t move.
Mrs Quinn moves her hand over my scalp and I go dizzy.
“Just imagine,” she murmurs, “what it is like at night, when the chairs are shifting and the doors are banging and…”
Geordie snorts.
There’s a dog howling somewhere. There’s the sound of something breaking upstairs.
Mrs Quinn takes her hand away. She stares at the ceiling.
“Did you sense something?” she says softly.
I don’t know how to answer.
“You did,” she says. “I know it. Only special people can. We are surrounded by strange forces.”
Geordie snorts again. He stuffs some chips into his mouth.
“Howay, Davie,” he says. “Time to go.”
“You’re a churchgoer, aren’t you, Davie?” says Mrs Quinn. “Yes, I know you are. You understand things like this, don’t you? Things beyond our ken.”
“Ken who?” mutters Geordie.
“And you have your priests,” Mrs Quinn goes on. “Maybe you could talk of this to your priest. Maybe he could come and rid us of our poltergeist and bring this house some peace. Maybe he’ll feel it’s his duty.”
I get up. A few chips bounce off the opposite wall.
She holds my arm a moment. She breathes into my ear.
“You’ll ask him, will you, Davie? Just for me?”
I try to imagine telling all this to Father O’Mahoney. I see him rolling his eyes at such nonsense, telling me to go for a good long run or to say ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be.
“Aye,” I mutter.
We head for the door.
“Duck!” yells Joe.
A plate or something crashes into the wall.
“It’s getting worse!” he cries.
“Begone!” shouts Mrs Quinn. “Begone, ye demon poltergeist!”
I run with Geordie past the footballing kids. He’s laughing his head off. I’m trembling in fright.
I dream that night, of course I do. There’s flying chips and bread and butter and knives and forks, and Geordie’s howling like a dog. Josephine’s hitting a tennis ball again and again over my head. Mam wakes me in the morning and I jump as if she’s a ghost come up from Hell to get me.
I ask her straight away, like it’s part of the dream, “Did she ever come back, Mam?”
“What on earth’s the matter with you?” she says. She strokes my head gently. “And did who ever come back?”
“Barbara,” I say.
“Barbara?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, son. What kind of dream were you having?”
“She couldn’t … could she?”
“No.”
“Could she?”
Mam goes still.
“There was just the one time…”
She looks away. She touches her cheek with her fingertip the way she does.
“What time?” I whisper.
“I felt her touch me, son, on my shoulder. A couple of weeks after…”
I wait. I watch.
“I heard her whispering, ‘I’m all right, Mammy. Don’t worry, Mammy, I’m all right.’ ”
“Did you see her?”
“No. And it was just the once. Maybe it was just a… But it felt like her, son. It made me feel… I didn’t feel so desolate.” She sighs. “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to upset you.”
Then her eyes are shining as she smiles.
“Look at that sun,” she says. “What a summer we’re having, eh?”
“Aye.”
“You’ll be seeing Geordie, eh?”
“Aye.”
She smiles again.
“She’ll always love us, won’t she?” she says. “And we’ll always love her.”
She leans down to kiss my cheek.
“Come on, then,” she says. “Up and out and off you go. Have fun.”
“Did you believe it, mam?”
“That she came back for a moment? I felt her and heard her so I suppose I have to. Come on. Up and out. The day’s already flying by.”
I head for Geordie’s but I keep scanning the streets for Josephine. I pass by the park and listen for the pop and thump of racquets and balls. When I turn the corner by the Co-op I bump right into Father Kelly in his long black gown. He’s the new young priest, straight from Ireland. He’s leaning against the wall of the shop like he’s been bliddy lying in wait for me. He laughs and takes a deep drag of his cigarette.
“Having a quick fag, Davie,” he says. “Getting up me strength to pay a visit to Mrs Malone.”
“Oh,” I say.
“She’d test the faith of St bliddy Francis himself,” he says. He makes a quick sign of the cross. “’Scuse the French. Off to Geordie’s, are you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good lad. Make the most of it.” He holds out his cigarette. “Want a drag or two?”
I don’t move. He laughs again.
“I know some of you boys get started early.”
He smokes then flicks the cigarette away. I want to move on but I can’t. It seems like he’s the same.
“You know her?” he says. “The Missus Malone?”
“A bit, Father.”
“They say she’s lapsed,” he tells me. “They say other things.”
He lights another cigarette.
“You�
�ve heard?” he asks.
“Dunno, Father.”
“Best not to. These things are sent to test us.”
He shields his eyes from the sun’s glare and looks around. I still can’t move.
“Father,” I say.
“Yes?”
“I think I’m starting to believe in things I shouldn’t.”
“Protestantism?” he says.
“No, Father.”
“Atheism?”
“No, Father.”
I hear kids laughing in the park.
“It’s never Sunderland!” he exclaims.
“No, Father.”
“Well, that all seems pretty safe. Your seat in Heaven is assured.”
He moves his hand through the air in blessing.
“Things like ghosts,” I blurt out. “Things like that.”
“Jesus, ye’d be at home in Ireland, lad.”
“Poltergeists.”
“They’re the best, eh? Flinging stuff here, there and everywhere.”
“So they’re real?”
“Real? What’s real? The air’s real. Can you see it? God’s real. Can you see him? And the Devil. Or mebbe God and the Devil is all of this. You and me and that tree over there, and those birds above and the wall of the bliddy Co-op.” He sighs. “That’s heresy, though. Forget I said it.”
I catch the scent of wine or something on his breath. Maybe altar wine from this morning’s Mass.
“Poltergeists,” he says. “Now I’d like to see one of those boys in action.”
“Would you?” I say.
“Who wouldn’t?”
He takes a deep drag on his cigarette, then drops it suddenly, stamps it out, and heads off to Mrs Malone’s.
Geordie wants to play football and we kick around for a bit in his front street, but I’m hopeless. I can’t help it. I’m drawn back to Joe’s. Can’t think about anything else. I tell him I think we should go again.
“Did you not see?” Geordie says. “It was Joe chucking all the stuff around. It’s just Joe bliddy Quinn being Joe bliddy Quinn. And she’s letting him.”
“There was something,” I say.
“So now you’re sticking up for him when you’re the one who always says he’s just a freak.”
“I’m not sticking up for him! It’s nothing to do with him. It’s—”
He snorts.
“Oh, I impugn you!” he mocks. “I am so sorry. We are surrounded by strange forces!”
He chips the ball into the air, knees it, heads it then lashes it into the front garden wall.
He leaps high and punches the air.
“Goaaaaal!” he yells. “Right into the top corner of the vortex!”
Then he turns to me.
“You won’t catch me in that damn loony bin again,” he says.
I turn away.
“Begone!” he yells, and he screeches like a demon.
I go up onto the top fields and lie there, and the long grass waves above my eyes. The sun’s bright, the sky’s blue, the larks are singing wild. Sometimes a thin cloud drifts by. I sit up and look down at everything: the town, its square, its streets, its new estates, its steeples and parks. Hear the drone of traffic and engines. The dinning of caulkers in the shipyards on the river far below. Kids squealing somewhere. I’m sure I can hear the pop of tennis balls. I see a lad and his lass walk through the grass a hundred yards away then lie down in it together.
The heat comes from the earth and from the sky. The distant sea’s dark blue. Is this everything, all this stuff around me? Is this where everything happens? I think of Barbara, the way she used to giggle and wave as I arrived home from school. I think of Josephine Minto, her eyes, her hair, the way her legs move as she leaps, the way Barbara would have turned out if she’d not died. I think of Joe Quinn’s poltergeist. I think of God. I watch the shadows getting longer down in the pale streets of Leam Lane. Somebody cries in joy or pain, and after an age I get up and move on. My body moves but I feel like I’m not part of it. What am I? Body, brain, soul, or all of these? Infant, boy, man, or all those things together? Or nothing, just nothing at all?
“Davie!” yells somebody, some kid playing with other kids on the playing fields. I wave but don’t know who it is.
“Davie!” he yells again, and keeps on yelling as I walk on, “Davie, Davie Davie!” till the word means nowt; is just a sound, just part of all the sounds around me and inside me. Davie, Davie, Davie…
Time’s flying and it’s already darkening as I enter Sullivan Street again. I don’t go to the house. I play football with the half-naked skinny kids till we can hardly see the ball and the lights in the houses are being switched on. It must be late. Mothers start calling and one by one the kids begin to disappear. I smell food cooking. There’re songs and laughter. I watch Joe’s house. Did a curtain move? Did I hear something breaking? Then the screaming starts. High-pitched, incomprehensible. It must be Mrs Quinn. I realize there’s someone at my shoulder, a woman, and other women and men gathering in the gloom, and knots of kids. Then there’s the sound of breaking glass.
“It’s a bliddy madhouse,” someone mutters.
“And wait till the bliddy bloke gets out,” another says.
A little girl starts crying.
Then Joe’s outside with us, hurrying from the house. There’s a dark patch on his brow that must be blood. He comes straight to me.
“Davie!” he gasps. “Come and see!”
I step back.
“Come on!” he says. “It’s like it’s getting wilder just for you!”
“What do you mean, for me?”
“I knew you must be here. It’s like you bring more energy or something. It’s like—”
Behind him there’s a crash, another splintering of glass. He tugs my arm. I break free, turn and run from Sullivan Street. I hear him calling my name and laughing as I go. Thrown stones skitter and skip around my feet.
I meet Father Kelly in the street again, two days later. This time he’s stepping out of the Columba Club, and this time there’s beer on his breath. He’s still in his black robes in this August heat. A wooden crucifix dangles from his throat.
He laughs.
“We meet again,” he says. “Mebbe the good Lord has a plan for us.”
He lights a cigarette.
“Missus Malone and I had a grand little meet,” he says.
“That’s good, Father.”
“Aye. She’s a one, eh? And how’s all that believing stuff you were on about?”
“The same, Father.”
“Don’t think too much. That’s probably the answer.” He winks. “Or have a pint or two.”
“I’ve got a poltergeist, Father,” I say.
“Have you now?”
“Yes, Father.”
“There’s a thing. And where might you be keeping this poltergeist?”
“In Sullivan Street, Father.”
He smiles. He pats my shoulder.
“Such lives you lads lead,” he says.
“Will you come and see it, Father?”
“Let’s see. I have to get the host to Mollie Carr. There’s Maurice Gadd that’s had the stroke. Catechism catch-up for a husband that’s decided to convert. And those wild McCracken bairns! They need to know the truth about the fires of Hell… But I’m sure I can fit in a poltergeist or three.”
“It usually starts late afternoon.”
He tousles my hair.
“Late afternoon. Sullivan Street. I’ll see you there.”
He winks and taps his nose.
“And we’ll not be mentioning this to the Father O’Mahoney, will we, Davie?”
“No, Father.”
“No indeed.”
I join in with a great football match on the high field. There’s dozens of us, from little kids to teenagers, rushing back and forward on the green. Must be twenty, twenty-five a side. We run, we yell, do long sliding tackles, leap high to try to head the flying ball. I take a shot that swerves jus
t past the post. Another wallops into Billy Campbell’s belly. I have a little run, beat one man, then two, rush on, tumble, jump up again. I lose myself. I’m not me – I’m a proper player. I’m at Wembley, at St James’s Park, and all the others are too. We struggle for our teams. One side leads and then the other, then the first fights back again. In dashing through the field and playing with the ball we change ourselves, we change the world. Our muscles ache, our hearts thump, our lungs are fit to burst. We laugh and groan and cheer and yell.
“YEEESS! YEEEESSSSSS! OH YES!”
And afterwards I walk with Geordie through the light. In the sky above the sea there’s something sparkling. The larks sing high over our heads. A butterfly lands on Geordie’s collar. I gently touch it free and we watch it fly away. He tells me that he heard Josephine asking about me, and that he sees why I say she’s beautiful. I tell him I’m trying to sort out the poltergeist.
“Sort it out?”
“What it is. Why it’s there.”
“It’s him. It’s her. That’s all.”
“Father Kelly is going to look.”
“To look and then to say it’s all a load of crap.”
“We’ll see.”
I hurry home and grab some bread and cheese, and hurry out again.
“No time to stop?” says Mam.
I shake my head.
“Places to go,” she sighs. “People to see. A life to live.”
I hesitate a second, catch her eye.
“OK?” she whispers.
“Aye. OK.”
“We quiver on the edge of an immensity,” says Father Kelly. We’ve encountered each other on the road down to Leam Lane. “It is outside us and within. I knew it as a boy, looking at the sky, looking at the starsh, looking at myshelf.” His voice is slipping. “I knew it looking out upon the ocean from the hillsh of Kerry.” He lights a cigarette. “Don’t get into theshe,” he says. He takes a little silver flask from his robe and sips from it. “Don’t get into drink,” he says. His hand is shaking as he points across the earth, the sea, the sky. “I shee it here as you do. I know you shee how it all quakes and shines and trembles, Davie. I know you hear how it hums and shings.”
We walk on. We come to Sullivan Street.
“And don’t get into God,” he whispers, as if he’s speaking to himself. “Don’t get into none of that.”
We are unexpected, of course. Mrs Quinn is lying on a battered sun lounger in the back garden with her skirt pulled up to her thighs. Underground music drifts from the house. Joe is nowhere to be seen.