We’re allowed to keep our clothes on this once, but we have to change our shoes for our polished black ones.
When we pull into the car park, everyone is getting out of their cars and walking towards the steps up to the church. I watch them all. The girls in their shiny shoes, frilly socks and dresses with belts on, and the boys in shirts and trousers. I’m happy I got to choose what me and Thomas are wearing, and I wonder why everyone always has to dress up on Sundays anyway. It’s only to go into Mass and sit on a bench and listen to boring Father Feathers go on about something I can’t even understand. His accent is so strong I don’t know if anyone can understand him, even though almost everyone is Irish, like Mummy and Daddy.
We go in, walk three-quarters of the way up like we always do, apart from when it’s really busy and we have to sit further back. Today Daddy sits between me and Thomas, and Mummy sits on the other side of Thomas, and on my other side is a gap and then another man.
Everything happens as it always does. Standing up, sitting down, kneeling, praying, queuing, bread on tongue without touching my teeth, more kneeling and more praying.
Father Feathers stands at the altar and crosses himself and we all have to stand up at the same time, then sit down at the same time and kneel at the same time. I know it all off by heart and try to do it a second before everyone else, just to show off. It’s the only thing I can do to have fun when we’re at Mass. I’m not allowed to sit next to Thomas because Mummy says we turn into giggling hyenas. Then we all get up and stand in a line and go up to the altar, and Father Feathers puts bread in our mouths. Only it’s not really bread. It’s a thin round wafer like the one you have with ice-cream, but it dissolves on your tongue and doesn’t taste nice. He always puts it on the tip of my tongue. I have to make sure it doesn’t touch my teeth or I’ll go to hell. His name is Father Francis, but we call him Father Feathers because he has these little wisps of hair that fly around over his head like feathers. Mummy says he really should get it cut off. She remembers when he had more hair, years ago when she first came over to London and met him. But she thinks he wants to hold on to the last little bits he has left. I think he should wear a hat to cover it all up. A baseball cap, to show everyone that we don’t have to dress up. Because all we do is go in and listen to him, and he doesn’t even tell us good stories – not like Daddy’s, which make me and Thomas giggle for ages.
When the old lady comes round with the basket, I get to put the envelope in. This is our donation. It says ‘Mr and Mrs Michael Reilly’ on the front, so that Father Feathers knows we gave money to the church. I think about putting it in my pocket and saving it for milkshakes for me and Thomas, but Mummy is looking. At least it looks like she’s looking, but her eyes are dark and shiny and I’m not sure if she’s looking at me. I don’t keep it, just in case. Anyway, that would be so naughty I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
A really old lady at the end of the bench in front falls asleep and I catch Thomas’s attention and point her out by nodding my head in the lady’s direction. Then the bell rings and she jerks awake, and Thomas wants to laugh so hard that he sits back so he can’t see me. I giggle inside and have to cross my legs, otherwise some wee might come out.
When Mass is finally over, we’re almost free until next week. All we have to do now is queue to leave the church, while everyone shakes hands with Father Feathers and says their goodbyes. It goes like this:
‘Goodbye, Father.’
‘Goodbye, now.’
‘Goodbye, Father.’
‘Bye, now.’
‘See you, Father.’
‘Bye, now.’
I don’t know why everyone calls him Father anyway. Daddy is right beside me and I don’t need another one. This is what I’m thinking when I reach the door with Father Feathers looking down at me.
‘Clare, say goodbye to Father Francis,’ Mummy says, pulling me forward by my elbow. She says it in a funny voice, and it doesn’t really sound like her. It’s high and kind of empty. I wish then that I’d put on frilly socks and a lovely dress and a ribbon in my hair, because Mummy likes me to look beautiful, and Thomas to look handsome. She says that her and Daddy didn’t get to dress up in nice things and play with nice things like us, and that we don’t know how lucky we are. I look at my nails, but the paint has almost come off from the bath. I wish I was all beautiful. Maybe then she would be smiling at Feathers, and wouldn’t care that I didn’t call him Father.
‘Goodbye,’ I say.
‘Goodbye, Father,’ Mummy says. She looks at Feathers and laughs.
‘Hello, Josephine, how are you keeping, my dear?’ he says to Mummy.
‘Hello, Father! Very well, thank you.’ She smiles like she just won a prize. ‘Getting ready for the holidays, now, for going home.’
‘How lovely,’ says Feathers, smiling.
She smiles back at him. She loves Feathers. She says he was like an angel to her when she was all alone and didn’t have anyone, all those years ago.
I can feel Feathers’s eyes on me. I’m holding up the queue – and everyone’s freedom – until next week. Next week! Maybe we won’t come because we’ll be packing and getting ready to go. And the week after that we’ll be at home in Ireland, and the week after that, too. I think of the crosses on my calendar and my heart beats quick. I’m dying to run down the steps and I suddenly realize we might get another milkshake for being good at Mass.
He smiles down at me, teeth twinkling in the sun, the wisps of his hair glowing, and I imagine him talking to God and doing all God’s work, and I wonder if he really is an angel. In my head, I ask him that the next time he talks to God, it would be good if he got God to look after Mummy, to keep the snakes away, to make everything better. I tell him that I don’t want more hot chocolate during the night, because then I have bad dreams and can’t sleep.
‘Goodbye, Father,’ I say, hoping he has heard the rest of it, even though I haven’t said it out loud.
‘Goodbye, now, Clare.’ He rubs the top of my head.
JOSEPHINE
19TH JUNE 1980
When I’ve finished doing myself up, I practise my smile, showing my top teeth but hiding the lower ones.
My stomach churns with hunger. I head downstairs with my passport and some money in my purse and sign the guest-book on the reception desk. Your man is awake now and dressed smartly in a shirt and trousers. He takes my passport and asks for ten pounds as a deposit for my stay, which I give him. He tells me his name is Mister Vish.
‘Thanks, Mister Vish,’ I say, and wave goodbye as I leave. He seems like a nice man, but I remind myself this is a foreign land and I will be cautious with all the men I meet.
A gush of wind takes my breath away when I step onto the street, the grit in the air slapping my face and the fumes making me cough. I contemplate the people rushing past in both directions, the cars and the red buses driving by in both lanes. What was deserted last night is now buzzing with life. The sky is blue, with clouds like cotton wool dipped in paint. Women rush along with small children in shirts and gold-and-blue striped ties, and grey trousers and skirts. I smile at the mothers, but they are in a hurry and don’t smile back. I check my watch; it’s a quarter to nine.
I turn right as if I know where I’m going and walk past several shop fronts, past a flower stall and a furniture shop and more bric-a-brac shops, and still the road doesn’t come to an end. The noise, the commotion, the contamination are everywhere. I keep my elbows close by my sides, so as not to hit the people walking so fast they’re almost running. It’s cool and I have no jacket; I hold my arms across my chest to conceal my nipples, which I can feel start to poke out. A nervous shiver runs down my spine.
There’s a market on the left-hand side, so I wait with other people gathered, until the lights change, and I cross the road and walk through the middle. It’s lovely, with flowers lined up in pots and fruit piled neatly on top of each other. Then there’s the butcher’s and fishmonger’s, and the smell on an
empty stomach drives me out the other side.
A green shamrock light over a café makes me laugh and I find myself walking towards it. A little bell over the door goes ‘ding-dong’ when I go in, so that everyone turns round to look at me. ‘Didn’t expect that, now,’ I mutter and smile, willing them to look away. I take a seat at the table in the far corner.
It smells of rashers and sausages and eggs and is strangely comforting. That’s what we’d have on special occasions, and if Daddy came into some money or it was his birthday. On our own birthdays we would have a boiled egg and toast, and that was treat enough for us. I would chop the top of the egg off carefully with a knife and pour in loads of salt and put lashings of butter in, and mix the egg all around in its shell. Everyone was quiet round the table then, eyeing your egg, and you’d have to be careful not to leave the table or look away, in case your egg was snatched from under your nose.
One year, I remember, Siobhan shared her egg with me. That must have been when we were very little and still close. Before there were favourites and we were pitted against each other. Mammy always hated me, and adored her. I never knew why. Siobhan’d be mean, copying our mammy, and of course I resented her for it. I was only young myself – sure, I didn’t know any better. So I’d be mean to her and wouldn’t let her come and play with me and Bernadette. Feck off, I’d say when she’d go to follow me through the hole in the hedge. You feck off, she’d say in a low voice, you dirty tinker, you.
It seems appropriate to treat myself to a full breakfast and a cup of coffee, like I’m on holiday. I have some money to keep me going for a few days, maybe even a few weeks; I haven’t properly worked it out.
A girl comes over and I order. She’s very beautiful, with her auburn hair in waves and black liner around her eyes. I feel silly, now I’ve seen her.
She comes back with my coffee. ‘There you go, now,’ she says, and I’m sure she has an Irish accent.
‘Was that an Irish accent?’ I ask her, blushing.
‘Yes, it was indeed,’ she says, and she smiles at me.
It turns out she’s from Wexford and has been here for six months. Her name is Joyce and she’s twenty-three. I like her immediately. She’s everything I’d love to be.
When she comes back with my breakfast she asks where I’m staying, and then she says she’ll leave me to eat in peace. I would love for her to stay and keep me company, but I don’t tell her that.
I wolf down my breakfast, adding plenty of ketchup and buttering the toast generously. As Mammy would say, I could eat a horse.
There’s an Irish paper on the side. I get it and have a flick through, and then I go to pay the bill. Joyce tells me her boss is looking for another girl because someone just left. ‘He’ll like you,’ she says, ‘a pretty young thing. And he likes the Irish because he says, despite what everyone thinks, we’re hard-working.’
‘Thanks so much,’ I tell her, ‘but I’m hoping to get some secretarial work.’
‘Well, good luck with that, but if you want this you’d have to be smartish about it, because it won’t take him long to find someone.’ Then a group of lads comes in and she has to get back to work.
I thank Joyce again for her kind offer and leave, the ding-dong of the bell sounding as I go.
Then it hits me like a hurricane. Doubt. I go towards the market, but my head is swirling like the eye of the storm. Go back in there and ask her to speak to her boss. Tell her you’d love the job. But you didn’t come here to work in a café. But you need a job. But they’ll laugh at you. But isn’t it better than nothing? They’ll all be laughing at you.
My head goes round and round until I’m dizzy and have to stand against the wall to let everyone rush by.
When it has passed, I buy a bunch of grapes and five oranges from a man at a fruit stall. Then I find a shop where I can buy a pen, paper and envelopes.
‘Hello,’ I say to the girl at the till, but she doesn’t look up at me.
She puts the things into a bag and takes the money, without so much as a word or a glance in my direction, then drops the change in my hand.
‘Bye,’ I say to her, but she makes herself look busy and doesn’t answer.
Outside, I wonder if it’s because I’m Irish. I hope I didn’t offend her in some way.
Doubt still claws at me, but I try to focus on the positive: I could have just landed myself a job. That’s great news, Josephine. Well done, you. I look at the rows of buildings on either side of me, running on and on and on. Their fronts are made of brick and their doors have round glass panels in them and brass knockers. I wonder who is behind them.
Mister Vish is sitting at the reception desk when I go in. I had hoped he wouldn’t be there.
‘Hello!’ he says. He’s all sprightly. ‘You like Shepherd’s Bush?’
‘Yes!’ I say in my high-pitched everything-is-great tone, and smiling as brightly as I can manage. ‘It’s very nice.’
‘What will you do here?’
‘I hope to get a secretarial job,’ I tell him. ‘I got the cert a couple of months ago.’
‘Cert?’
‘Certificate,’ I explain.
‘It’s hard to get job,’ he says, tutting and shaking his head, ‘very hard.’
I nod.
By the time I’m in my room, I am sick to the stomach. I have made the wrong decision. If there was the opportunity of a job, I should have taken it. What a fool, I tell myself. A stupid, good-for-nothing, worthless fool. Daddy was always right.
I wipe my face with the dry facecloth. It scrapes the lipstick off me and, when I look at it, it’s streaked pink and speckled black from my mascara. I sit on the edge of the bed and look around the room. My yellow dress is still hanging on the back of the chair. I pick it up and a moth flies up into the air. I go to the bathroom to wash it, together with my underwear. I use the soap sparingly, on the crotch of the knickers, the underarms of the bra and the dress. I wash them in the sink and rinse them in the bath, then wring them through.
In my room, I take some hangers from the wardrobe and stand on the chair to hang them on the window rail. I wonder where I’ll be hanging my clothes in the future; if it’ll be a rose garden or a little patio, or in the window of a nice room. The thought of hanging my clothes to dry somewhere else other than Mammy’s back yard fills me with hope, and I decide I’ll go back to the café first thing in the morning. I fasten my suitcase closed, so the moths don’t get in.
After a snooze, I set the fruit and the pen, paper and envelopes down on the table. The rooftops are getting darker now that the sky has clouded over and my dress hangs there in the middle, limp and dripping into the metal bin. The sky is purple like a bruise, and the pink blossoms whisper in the breeze outside the window.
I take out one of the oranges and peel it over the bin, licking the juice off my fingers. It is sweet and perfectly ripe, and the segments come apart easily in my hands. I eat it slowly, savouring it one piece at a time, having it all to myself. The smell of orange fills the room and a slice of sunlight breaks through the clouds and shines through my dress onto the floor.
CLARE
12TH JULY 1997
Faces smiling. Eyes twinkling. Mouths open, laughing. I want to jump in and be there right now. I would be in any one of the photos if I could, even the black-and-white one – the only one of anyone from Mummy’s side of the family, the great-granny I’ve never met, and won’t meet because she already died. I’d like to have met her, because Mummy cries when she talks about her. I know she’s crying out of sadness and love, because she pulls me and Thomas to her for a cuddle, and kisses our hair and rubs our backs. I can tell when she’s crying out of hate and anger, too, because she curls her lips into a horrible shape and shows her teeth.
I smile back at all the faces. They’ve been watching us ever since I can remember, from inside the frames. I took one down off the wall once to look at it close up and there was a white square on the wall underneath, like an open door waiting for me to
jump through, eyes squeezed tight shut and hand holding my nose.
The last week of school has finally arrived and there are six little days to go. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Time flies when you’re having fun. That’s what they say, Mummy says. I don’t know who they are, but whoever they are, that’s what they say. I am happy. It’s just in quiet moments, when I’m in the loo, or when no one’s talking at dinner, or when I’m doing my hair in the morning, that I see snakes crawling around in it, and fat worms with big, round black eyes coming out of my ears.
Last night I weed in my bed without meaning to. I woke up every time I touched the wet patch because it was so cold. I pressed myself up against the wall as much as I could, and put the pillow right behind me, so I couldn’t move back one little bit. Mummy doesn’t know and I’m not going to tell her. She’s still in bed anyway. I woke up all by myself, because she didn’t wake us, and Daddy’s not here because he goes to work when it’s still dark and we’re fast asleep. I’m ready and so is Thomas. I’m in the sitting room, looking at the faces smiling and their eyes twinkling, wishing I was there. This is the third day in a row that Mummy has slept in. I’ve woken up all by myself and got dressed and then I’ve woken Thomas, taken him to the toilet, got him dressed and brushed his hair, which takes ages because he always has electricity in it that gives me a shock. When he turns round and goes back to sleep, I’ve learned to pull the pillow from under his head. Then he’s got nothing to snuggle into and cries until I pull him out of bed.
The only thing I keep forgetting is to change our pants, and then I remember when it’s too late and we’re already dressed. I haven’t said anything because Mummy isn’t good and hasn’t even noticed. Sometimes I’d rather wear no pants anyway. Maybe tomorrow. I just hope Thomas doesn’t say anything, because then I’ll be in BIG trouble. I can’t tell him not to tell, because if I do that, he’ll definitely tell. Not to get me into trouble, just because then he’ll remember it even more and he doesn’t understand, like I do, that it’s better not to say some things. I’m like a fairy, I watch everything and you don’t hear a peep out of me.
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