After a while, Nancy asks my mother if she’s heard the latest.
‘What’s that?’
‘About a certain young lady who doesn’t live a hundred miles from your front doorstep.’
‘Who?’
Nancy glances at me, winks and says, ‘I’ll fill you in later.’
But later isn’t soon enough and my mother tells me to be a good girl and make a start on the dishes. I leave the room without a grumble, delighted with the opportunity to make her proud of me twice in the one day.
When I’ve finished the dishes, I go into the living-room to watch TV.
‘Ah now, that’s a living dread, the poor unfortunate lassie,’ I hear my father say as he leaves the sitting-room a few minutes later.
‘Well, you know what they say,’ my mother says. ‘If you lie down with dogs, you can expect to get up with fleas.’
Dying to know who has fleas, I stand like a spy by the living-room door and listen. I hear my father climbing the stairs and muttering something about my mother always having to throw in her twopence-ha’ penny’s worth. I wait until he returns to the sitting-room before I turn off the TV and ease the door open. I don’t manage to get the whole story, but apparently a girl in the village is in some sort of trouble and, judging by their tone, there’s not too much sympathy going to waste. It’s the parents Nancy feels sorry for, though; according to my mother, they’re far too lenient. I don’t catch the next bit.
Then, as if he has somehow sensed my sneaky presence lurking behind the living-room door, Father Vincent says in a booming voice, ‘Frances is a fortunate lassie to have parents like ye, to keep her on the straight and narrow throughout her teenage years.’
I can almost hear my mother’s lungs fill with pride. I am, according to Nancy, a credit to her.
‘Poor Missus Mooney,’ my father says. ‘I’d say now, in fairness, she does her best by those kids. It’s no picnic, having a family that size.’
‘She keeps no dick on them at all, Joe,’ Nancy says. ‘They’ve been running the roads since they were knee-high to grasshoppers, every last one of them. She’s far too soft for her own good.’
‘I think she’s a grand wee woman myself,’ my father says, ‘very warm.’
‘A bit more of the cane, a lot earlier on, wouldn’t have gone amiss in that house,’ my mother says.
‘Wise words, Rita,’ Father Vincent says. ‘I’ve no time for the softly softly approach myself. It’ll get parents nowhere in the long run.’
So that’s why my mother does it – to keep me on what Father Vincent calls the straight and narrow. All that lying across her knee submissively and taking the scorch, it’s going to pay off. I’m well trained. Thanks to my mother, I’ll sail through my teenage years unscathed by sin.
Perhaps I should be grateful.
12 October 1999 (evening)
When I returned from a walk this morning, I noticed that Aunty Lily’s wedding ring had slipped off my finger. Three times I retraced my steps down the path that cuts the front lawn in two. I got down on my hunkers several times and rummaged through the leaves with teary eyes. A shower of rain urged me back inside to the warmth of my room, where I lay down on my bed and wept.
A couple of hours later, I found it under my bedside table. It must have fallen off while I was dressing the bed. I’m going to wear it on the chain around my neck now, like she did when she lost all the weight before she died. How I miss her.
Rest in peace, Aunty Lily
My mother is pacing the living-room floor, hands deep in her apron pockets. Her cheeks are pulled back tight and her mouth looks like the opening of a letter box. Aunty Lily and Xavier aren’t long gone. They’re living in Sycamore Street now.
‘That man,’ my mother says, ‘sang one too many rebel songs for my liking; he could be an IRA man for all we know. And as for Lily, she can’t even pass an afternoon without resorting to alcohol.’
My father is trying to watch the six o’clock news to see how the Catholics are getting on in Derry. I know all about the North, how the Catholics are out marching because the Protestants are treating them badly. I’m sitting beside my father and taking it all in. There are girls as young as myself out on the street with their parents, who are shouting at the police and throwing things at them. I wonder which is worse: being a persecuted Catholic or having the wrong religion.
My mother paces in front of the TV, obscuring our view, while my father sways his upper body so he can keep his eye on the screen.
‘I blame London,’ my mother says.
‘I couldn’t agree with you more; they give them Unionists far too much clout.’
‘No, not for that hooliganism! For Lily. London’s changed her.’
‘Lily was Lily,’ my father says, ‘before she set her sights on London at all.’
‘Maybe so,’ my mother says, coming to a halt and standing directly between my father and the evening news, ‘but she wasn’t always an atheist, was she?’
My father sighs, gives up on the Derry Catholics, and looks at my mother. ‘And who says she is?’
‘I do. She’s not seen the inside of a chapel since she came home from that godless metropolis.’
‘Isn’t she on her way into evening Mass as we speak?’
‘She is my eye. Wait till you see. Come morning, she’ll not be fit to tell me one thing about the readings or the homily. The girl is lying through her teeth.’
‘Well, whether she is or not, it’s not up to you to get involved. Be careful what you say. She’s a married woman now, with a husband to look after her.’
‘I told you before, Joe Fall, that I promised my mother I’d take care of her, and I’ll be damned if I let her down now.’
An hour later I’m on my knees, hands joined and leaning into the sofa where Aunty Lily had been sitting all afternoon. I can smell the dregs of cigarette smoke off the cushion. My mother offers up a decade of the rosary for those misguided people who have foolishly turned their backs on God, that they may see the error of their ways and ask for His forgiveness. I think that Father Vincent couldn’t have put it better himself. With my eyes shut and my face scrunched in serious contemplation, I pray for my aunty’s redemption.
The next time Aunty Lily visits us, my mother fires questions at her.
‘Still going to evening Mass?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Does there be many at it?’
‘A fair crowd.’
‘Any choir?’
‘Sometimes.’
The three of us are playing Ludo at the kitchen table. After a few minutes, my mother has dropped out to make the tea. I’m taking her turns for her.
She lifts the saucepan of custard off the hob. ‘Who did you tell me says it?’
‘Says what?’
‘Evening Mass.’
‘Oh. Father eh … what do you call him, Xavier?’ Aunty Lily shouts out to her husband, who’s in the living-room chatting with my father.
‘Who?’
‘The priest that says evening Mass.’
‘Isn’t he Higgins?’
‘That’s right, Higgins.’
‘God, isn’t that odd?’ my mother twitters, placing a plate of steaming apple tart and custard on the table in front of her sister. ‘Nancy was just telling me the other day how Father Vincent has been saying the evening Mass in Castleowen this past month.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Aunty Lily reddens and reaches into her handbag for her cigarettes.
‘And why would I do the like of that?’ my mother asks, turning to cut another slice of the tart. ‘Sure, you know as well as I do that Mammy’d turn in her grave if either of us strayed from our Christian duties. Said so herself, on her deathbed, if I remember rightly. I hardly think that you’re denying the good woman her final wishes.’
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘There you are, then; it’s just a bit of a mix-up. Maybe Father Vincent is the concelebrant.’
Aunty Lily tightens her
grip on the cigarette with her lips and sucks on it so hard, the entire tip disappears into her mouth. When she inhales, a curly whiff of smoke escapes and disappears up her nostrils.
‘Here, love,’ she says, pushing her plate over to me, ‘you can have that. And will you take my turn for me too, till I smoke my fag in peace?’
‘Not hungry?’ my mother asks.
‘Not any more.’
‘I’ll wrap a couple of slices in tinfoil. You might feel like having it for your supper.’
Licking the custard-coated spoon, I shake the die in the cup and throw it on to the Ludo board – two. I move the yellow counter – that’s Lily – two spaces.
‘Who’s winning now?’ Aunty Lily asks.
‘Still Mammy,’ I sigh.
Then I take my mother’s turn.
The following Sunday morning, my mother and I are clearing up after the breakfast when the doorbell rings. It’s Aunty Lily and she says she’s coming to Mass with my parents and me in Crosslea chapel.
My mother sweeps her eye over her sister’s outfit. ‘Is that all you’re wearing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’ll be skinned alive. There’s fierce cross-winds up at that chapel. It’s a day for a coat and scarf.’
‘It’s April, Rita.’
‘April or not, you’ll catch your death in that flimsy get-up.’
‘It’s a trouser-suit.’
‘Oh, is that what you call it?’
My father comes in from the shed with a full basket of briquettes.
‘What do you think, Joe?’ Aunty Lily asks, twirling in the middle of the kitchen floor.
‘Oh, very swish, Lily, very swish,’ he splutters, looking over his shoulder at her as he slams the back door shut with his foot.
‘See, Rita – even Joe approves,’ she says, lifting a slice of leftover buttered toast from my side plate and taking a bite.
‘Spit that out,’ my mother shrieks. ‘What about Holy Communion?’
‘Arragh, it’ll be all right; it’s only a scrap of toast. Besides, I’m starving.’
‘Well, you’ve broken your fast now. You won’t be able to receive the Host.’
After leaving the basket of briquettes by the living-room fire, my father comes back into the kitchen to wash his hands.
‘It’s time we were making tracks,’ he says.
In the hall, my mother, tying her headscarf in a knot under her chin, looks down at Aunty Lily’s feet. ‘Them narrow heels will make an awful clatter going up the aisle.’
‘Isn’t it a good job I’ll not be traipsing up to the altar for Holy Communion so?’
Sometimes when my father is busy gardening, my mother and I get the bus into Castleowen.
‘No Joe today?’ Xavier asks, and I know by the way his voice drops on ‘today’ that he’s disappointed.
‘Arragh,’ my mother says, ‘I don’t like to disturb him when he’s half-way through a job. It’s as well let him get a good run at it while the weather lasts.’
One afternoon, early in autumn 1971, Xavier doesn’t ask about my father and Aunty Lily isn’t calling me into the kitchen to give me my usual bar of chocolate. Instead, Xavier tells my mother that her sister wants to have a private word with her upstairs. I don’t mind because Xavier gives me a glass of orange and a plate of biscuits and my mother isn’t there to say ‘You’ve had enough’ after two. Then he lets me help him with the ‘Spot the Ball’ competition in the Sunday Press and promises to split the winnings with me.
There are two pink spots on my mother’s cheeks when she comes back down to the kitchen and her eyes are swollen. Aunty Lily looks just the same. But then I don’t see her again for several weeks and I don’t win ‘Spot the Ball’.
I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with Aunty Lily, only that she’s sick. And because my mother is helping Xavier nurse her, she can’t always stay with me during my Irish dancing lesson. But that’s good, because I get to play with Lesley. When I tell her that my aunty’s sick, Lesley says that she’s probably up the pole.
‘Don’t forget your night prayers,’ my father says when I bid him goodnight. ‘And offer one up for Lily.’
‘Is that because she’s up the pole, Daddy?’
He shouts at me not to be so impertinent and threatens to give me a clip on the ear if I don’t get out of his sight.
At school on the Monday morning, I tell Attracta Reilly that I think my aunty is up the pole and she tells Master Fitzgibbon in front of the rest of the class.
‘My mammy said her aunty has cancer and had one of her tits cut off,’ a sixth-class girl says from the back of the classroom.
When I burst into tears, Master Fitzgibbon takes me out into the corridor and says that, as far as he knows, my mother’s sister has had an operation and is recovering well, but why don’t I talk to my parents about it? But I don’t because if I say ‘tit’, I’ll surely get a telling off. Besides, my mother says that as soon as Aunty Lily is out of hospital, we’ll go to see her together, so I’ll know myself soon enough if the tit thing is true or not.
My legs feel like mush as I climb the stairs on my way up to see her. She’s propped up in her bed, her hair combed back and tied in a ponytail. Her knees are bent and the blankets are pulled up under her armpits so I can’t see her shape. When I sit down beside her, she holds my hand and I play with her rings the way I always do when she comes to Mass with us in Crosslea chapel. She asks me how I’m getting on with my dancing and I offer to do a reel for her.
‘Not today, Frances,’ my mother says from the bedside chair.
‘Let her dance away,’ Aunty Lily says, waving a dismissive hand at my mother, so I slide down off the eiderdown and start one two three-ing around the bed. The floorboards are creaking underneath the carpet and my mother insists that I stop before I knock the chandelier off the sitting-room ceiling below.
‘I couldn’t care less if the stupid thing smashed to smithereens,’ Aunty Lily hops off her. ‘I’d rather see her dance.’
From Christmas on, I see less of my mother and more of her friend Nancy, who looks after me until my father comes home from work. There’s talk of doctors’ visits, hospital appointments, holy water from Lourdes, miraculous medals and green scapulars. But, despite it all, they’re still frowning, whispering or pulling handkerchiefs from their pockets. And it’s those quiet things that bother me most.
I don’t ask if Aunty Lily is dying. Instead, I think of reasons why she couldn’t be. She’s way too young for starters. All the people I know who’ve died are old. Hasn’t my mother dragged me to all their funerals? She rarely misses a local funeral. We have a drawer full of in memoriam cards in the dresser to prove it.
I take them out and examine them one by one – Aged 72 RIP and a horrible wrinkly face to prove it, Aged 79 RIP and looks like a skeleton, Aged 82 and not a hair on his head, who died on 3 February 1970; no age given here, just a face that tells you – I have all my living done. Then I think of Aunty Lily’s face and smile.
After I go to bed, I hear my father make a call to Australia to tell my grandfather that Lily’s suffering will be all over in a matter of weeks.
Better in weeks! Sure that’s no time at all.
It’s a Saturday. I’m surprised to see my mother coming in the hall door to collect me after my dancing lesson. I’d been expecting my father. She sits at the end of a bench and doesn’t speak to Miss Jackson. I take down my coat from its hanger and walk over to her.
‘Where’s Daddy?’ I ask, sitting next to her.
‘At Aunty Lily’s house,’ she says. ‘Stand up till I button up your coat; it’s very blowy out.’
When she’s finished, she loops my hair behind my ears, pulls my hat out of my coat pocket and puts it on me.
‘There,’ she says quietly, ‘we’re all set.’
Hand in hand, we walk down to Main Street and through the town. A pair of nuns from the Mercy Convent greet us with a nod as they pass and I nod back twice, once for myself a
nd once for my mother because she’s looking at the ground and doesn’t see them. When we turn the corner into Sycamore Street, the wind catches my breath and makes me cough. My mother lets go of my hand to push back a strand of hair that’s escaped from under her headscarf and is flapping across her face. I take off down the footpath, dancing through the wind with an empty brown paper bag that has blown out of a dustbin. I stop at the yellow door, but don’t ring the doorbell because Aunty Lily might be sleeping and, anyway, my mother has a key.
‘Here she is now, pet,’ Xavier calls out to his wife when he hears us enter the hall.
I like the way they always make a fuss of me.
‘Frances,’ Aunty Lily says, holding out her arms.
She’s sitting in an armchair by the fire with a blanket over her lap and her feet resting on a pouffe, but even with all that cosiness, she still looks uncomfortable. When I bend down to give her a hug, she grabs my wrists and pushes me down on her knee, and I think her strength must be coming from her head and not her arms because they’re as thin as sausages. There’s panic in her eyes as she pulls off my hat, scans every inch of my face and combs my hair back with her fingers. I can hear my parents and Xavier talking in the kitchen.
‘You’re up today,’ I say.
‘I am.’
‘Are you better?’
‘I always feel better when you’re here.’
We talk for a while about ordinary things: school, homework, dancing.
As soon as I mention dancing, she asks, ‘How’s the girl who dances like the French tart doing the cancan?’
‘Fine.’ I’m not sure if I should say any more. What if she tells my mother?
‘Do ye have fun?’
I nod.
‘What kind of divilment do the pair of ye get up to?’
I hesitate.
‘Go on,’ she nudges me, ‘tell me. I’ll not breathe a word to your mother. Don’t forget: I know her better than anyone; the woman wouldn’t know a good time if it came up and bit her on the arse.’
After we share a conspiratorial smirk, I tell her that Lesley is teaching me a new reel for the Feis at Easter, and about how sometimes the two of us stay out in the car park and dance in the rain.
The Fall Girl Page 6