A Long Way from Heaven

by A Long Way from Heaven (retail) (epub)

  A customer entered the store and Thomasin went to serve her. Reading the items from the list the woman said, ‘Half a pound of dried peas, a pound of butter, a pound of Cheshire cheese…’ As each item was reeled off, Thomasin placed it on the counter. ‘A box of matches, five candles, half a pound of… no, I said five candles, there’s only four,’ snapped the woman, then returned to her list as Thomasin mumbled apologies. ‘A box of shortbread, half a pound of tea and some of that soap, there. That’ll do, I think.’ She folded her list and replaced it in her basket. ‘One moment, you haven’t given me the matches.’

  ‘What’s that, a coffin?’ enquired Thomasin, stabbing at the box of matches.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ bristled the woman. ‘You need to learn a few manners I think.’

  ‘Silly bugger,’ muttered Thomasin under her breath as she turned away.

  ‘What did you say?’ The woman narrowed her eyes.

  Thomasin turned back. ‘I said, have you got your sugar?’

  Mr Penny rushed forward to intervene. ‘Nice morning, madam!’

  ‘Hmm! You wouldn’t think so to look at her,’ replied the customer. ‘I should be careful, she’ll be losing all your customers for you if you don’t watch her.’

  The grocer hastily wrapped two rashers of bacon and placed them in her basket. ‘A special offer just for today,’ he told her. ‘For our first customer of the morning. I do trust you will call again?’

  ‘I do not think so for one moment,’ replied the woman, though tucking the bacon out of sight so that he could not grab it back. She left, muttering about one never seeming to get good service nowadays.

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ he said to Thomasin. ‘You’ve got a face like last week’s rice pudding. Don’t you know that the customer is always right? Even if you can’t stand the sight of ’em you’ve got to be civil, lass, else I’ll not have any customers left. I think I’d best see to ’em this morning and you fill t’shelves while you get in better humour.’

  She said that she-was sorry. It was not fair of her to take it out of the customers.

  Arnold Penny bade her sit down and take a breather. He thought an awful lot of his assistant. From that first week when she had saved him from certain ruin by uncovering a scheme between the previous assistant and the carters who delivered the goods, he knew his decision to employ Thomasin had been a sound one. It appeared that the pair of embezzlers were inserting extra items on one copy of the invoice and not the other, and then splitting the pilfered goods between them while Mr Penny stood the charge. He had not noticed anything odd, for he had always allowed Joanna to attend to the bookwork.

  ‘She always seemed so efficient,’ he had said.

  ‘Oh, she was that all right,’ replied Thomasin. ‘So efficient that she’s now probably running a chain of shops on the proceeds.’

  Thomasin had offered to go through the books for him to help sort them out. Mr Penny’s claim that she might not be able to understand Joanna’s methods of book-keeping became swiftly apparent as Thomasin tried to unravel the reams of unintelligible figures. Not only were the books cooked, she had quipped, they were well and truly burnt to a frazzle. Mr Penny had been tremendously impressed by her integrity and her keen eye and since that time had praised her every good deed with ‘I’ll remember you in my will!’

  ‘I’d rather keep busy,’ she told her employer.

  ‘Well,’ he slapped her lightly, ‘then you’d best get some bloody work done.’

  She laughed, then the door burst open and an agitated child danced about in front of the counter.

  ‘Erin!’ Thomasin’s face lit up, but Erin did not give her time to say further.

  ‘Oh, Mam! ’Tis our Sonny, he’s had an accident!’ She waved her hands excitedly.

  ‘What? Where?’ stammered Thomasin.

  ‘Come on, I’ll take ye,’ cried Erin.

  ‘Here, get your shawl on, lass,’ said Mr Penny and helped her on with the garment. ‘Go on, off you go and see to your boy. And I hope he’s not too badly hurt!’ he yelled as she raced after Erin.

  * * *

  Sonny and Dickie had set off for school as usual, but only Sonny would be going in, for Dickie must be free to drag his father to the scene of the ‘accident’. At the end of the street they paused to press their noses against Mrs Swale’s shop window.

  ‘I wonder if she’s got any bottles round the back?’ said Dickie, his idea being to steal a couple of empty bottles and hand them over the counter to claim the deposit. ‘C’mon.’

  Sonny watched his brother cram the bottles in every spare pocket and himself picked one up thoughtfully. He grinned as a marvellous idea formed itself. Reuniting his parents was not the only fun he was going to have today. He pocketed the bottle and said goodbye to his brother, joining up with a crowd of schoolmates as they chattered and sallied down the street.

  Brother Simon Peter watched the boys drift unenthusiastically into his classroom. Today was another art lesson. He half hoped that Feeney would take it into his head to do something silly, so providing the excuse to give him a hiding.

  But Sonny was wise to his taunts by now and behaved impeccably. Then Brother Simon Peter spotted the ginger beer bottle which protruded from the boy’s pocket and seized upon this chance for some sport.

  ‘A moment, Feeney.’ He reached out as Sonny passed and withdrew the bottle, sitting it on his desk to read the lettering upon it. ‘Well, well, a present for his master. My word, the boy is learning at last.’ He waited for Sonny to put his objections, but none came – confound the boy, he raged. Was there no way to provoke him? ‘Where is your brother, Feeney?’ he asked as Sonny made his way to the bench.

  ‘He’s ill, Brother,’ replied the boy, then sat down.

  ‘Oh, nothing serious I trust?’ said the master. ‘Black Death? Cholera?’

  But still not a glimmer of defiance from the pupil.

  At the end of the lesson, before the boys returned to their own class, Sonny approached Brother Simon Peter’s desk and asked if he might have his property returned.

  ‘Return it, Feeney?’ blubbered the master. ‘But I took it to be a gift. Are you then the kind of person who gives with one hand and takes away with the other?’

  ‘No, Brother,’ answered Sonny and looked at his boots, running the toe of one of them over the other, an act which would have brought stern measures from his mother had she seen it.

  ‘Then the beer is mine,’ said the master.

  ‘No, ’tis mine,’ replied Sonny. ‘An’ ye’ll be sorry if ye drink it.’

  Ah, at last! sighed the master to himself. At last, at last. He stood imperiously and grasped the bottle of ginger beer. The other boys halted their exodus to stand and watch amazedly. Feeney had risen again!

  ‘So,’ commented Brother Simon Peter. ‘I shall be sorry, shall I? Well, boy, I think not, for I am extremely partial to ginger beer. In fact I think I shall consume it here and now and when I have thoroughly enjoyed it I can tell you that you are the one who will be sorry.’

  He removed the cork which Sonny had picked from the gutter that morning and gloatingly lifted the earthenware cask to his lips. His head went back, his thick lips smothered the neck of the bottle, his eyes closed in anticipated pleasure – then suddenly flew open as the taste of lukewarm urine hit the back of his throat. He spluttered and choked, gagged and retched as the boys burst into spontaneous laughter, hanging onto each other in undisguised mockery. The room became filled with their howls and the spitting and coughing of their enemy.

  Sonny’s victorious grin quickly disappeared as the master, still gagging, grappled for the boy’s collar. Oh no, the man was not going to beat him again. Let him take it out on that load of gibbering jackasses, they deserved it anyway. Quick as a flash he fled to the corridor and into the yard, pursued by the manic schoolmaster. Laughing and whooping and well out of range of Codgob he turned as he ran to thumb his nose at his persecutor, then darted out into the street and across th
e road towards the safety of home.

  He never knew what hit him. One moment he was giggling delightedly, the next… nothing. The man driving the hackney carriage bellowed a warning and tried to rein in his horse, but it was too late. The creature lost the rhythm of its high-stepping gait, reared with a frightened whinny and Sonny’s white face disappeared under the tangle of horseflesh.

  Brother Simon Peter shunted to a halt and supported himself in horror on the school gate, the tanginess of urine still on his tongue, then slumped to the low wall as a muttering crowd grew around him.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  The room was dark; the curtains had been pulled across the window so that the light would not hurt his eyes when he awoke. When.

  Thomasin, Patrick, their other two children and the priest, a host of outlines, grouped around the bed on which lay the inert form of their son, their brother.

  He had been unconscious for two days now. The doctor had said that there was nothing he could do to speed the wakening, that it was the body’s way of healing itself and the boy would wake in his own good time. But, he had added cautiously, there was always the possibility that their son could just slip quietly away, and they must steel themselves for such an eventuality. He had known cases, he said, where the child had lain in such a coma for many weeks then suddenly woken as if merely from a good night’s sleep. They must pray for such an outcome, for Sonny’s life depended on one more powerful than he.

  And they had prayed. Prayed and prayed. Liam had dashed over right away when Molly had explained the reason for the Feeneys’ non-appearance at Mass, and now stood at the foot of the bed fingering his rosary, his murmured supplications emulated by the boy’s family.

  The white face was minus a blemish, save the faint scattering of gold-dust over the bridge of his nose. Long, curled fringes of reddish-gold rested upon the mauvish hollows beneath his eyes. Thomasin from time to time leaned over to smooth an imaginary slick of hair from his forehead, laid her cool fingers upon the clammy skin. She could feel Patrick’s eyes boring into her as she stroked her son’s face – He’s blaming me, she thought painfully, but no more than I blame myself. Oh, Sonny, my baby!

  They had been together, if one could call it together, for forty-eight hours and in that time had exchanged few words, the bulk of their communication restricted to looks; accusing looks, hurt looks, needing looks. And how badly they needed each other at this time, with their son’s life dangling on a slender thread. But neither would make the first move.

  Patrick sat with his elbows resting on his patched knees, his fingers scratching worriedly at the black stubble on his chin. He was sober, yet with a jumble of thoughts that harrowed his brain – Oh, Tommy, Tommy, why did ye have to come back? Just when I was getting used to being without ye, without your sweet honey lips breathing hot jire into me, drowning me, without your body drawing me further and further inside of ye, sinking, warm, suffocating, joyous. Please, Sonny, don’t die, you’re all I have left of her now. Stay with me, love me. Mary would never have done this to me. Sweet, gentle Mary who never did a wrong thing or uttered an unkind word in all her short life, who personified the Ireland that I long for so badly now, who… who never had one ounce of passion in her young girl’s body. Ah, Tommy, Tommy!

  Erin, a waxen-faced urchin with her half-hair, like a fledgling sparrow, part-naked, part-dressed in a wispy covering of down over the vulnerable flesh, watched Thomasin’s eyelids droop. Her stepmother had not slept since the night before Sonny’s accident. Neither had her father. Though he had gone to his lonely bed, taking Dickie with him, Erin knew that it was only done so that he would not have to be alone with his wife. She wept inside for them both, and for Sonny. Poor, dear Sonny lying like a limp doll in that big bed, barely a swell in the patchwork quilt – Dear, Holy Mother, please don’t take him. It was all my fault. I let him be the one to pretend to have the accident, it should be me who is lying there now, not Sonny, whom everyone loves, not the baby.

  Dickie squatted on a footstool, hugging his grubby, knobbly knees which were dotted with scabs, relics of the playground. He applied his thumbnail to a crust, prising around the edges, lifting, exploring, trying to lever it off all in one pice.

  ‘Stop picking,’ said his father, without a glance in his direction.

  Dickie let his hand drop to his bootlaces and began to poke the loose ends into the laceholes. Anything to keep his mind from screaming out with boredom. Why did he have to sit here all day waiting for Sonny to wake up? Why couldn’t he go out to search for horse chestnuts or collect beechnuts? Still, Sonny had earned him a few days off school, he supposed he should be grateful for that. If only he weren’t so bored, and his parents weren’t so grumpy. They only seemed to notice he was here when he did something wrong – Come on, Son, hurry up and wake, then we can go to Heso and get conkers.

  Erin touched Thomasin’s arm. ‘Why don’t ye try to catch up on some sleep, Mam? Sure, ye’re nearly dropping off that chair.’

  Thomasin jolted, shuffled to bring her spine flush with the chair-back, then shook her head wearily. She would not move from Sonny’s side until he woke. Or didn’t wake – No, don’t think that way! she censured. He is going to get better, he is. But what then? He might as well be dead to Thomasin, for once the danger was over she knew that Patrick would tell her to leave. Oh, Patrick, please touch me. Hurt me, anything, so that I don’t feel so alone.

  ‘Shall I make a cup of tea then, Mam?’ persisted Erin.

  ‘I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m absolutely bogged down with tea. I can feel it slopping around when I as much as blink. Still,’ she added half-heartedly, ‘I suppose you’ve got to do summat to keep yer from goin’ mad, haven’t yer? Aye, go on, lass, put water on. Liam, will you have one?’

  Liam’s green eyes lacked the usual spark of vitality. He grieved deeply for them all, they were as his family – Have they not suffered enough, Lord, without You taking their baby too?

  ‘Thank ye, no,’ he answered dully, winding the rosary in and out of his fingers. ‘’Twill be time for Mass shortly, I must leave ye.’

  ‘Is it that hour?’ replied Thomasin half-surprised. ‘I seem to ’ave lost track of what day it is, never mind about time. Will we see yer later, Liam?’

  ‘If I’ll not be intruding,’ he answered, pocketing his beads.

  She raised a brief smile. ‘Yer’ll not be intruding, Father.’

  ‘Then I’ll come later this evening.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d like that,’ she said sincerely, then her eyes were slowly drawn back to her son’s face.

  ‘I’ll be off then. Keep your spirits up, ye hear? See ye later, Patrick.’

  ‘What?’ Patrick jumped. His mind had been taken over by that sickly, tumbling motion that precedes sleep. ‘Sorry, Father, I didn’t catch what ye said.’

  Liam returned to the bedside and gripped Patrick’s shoulder. ‘Ye’ll not give up on Him this time, Pat?’

  Patrick glanced up at him, then gave a slight shake of his head. ‘No, I’ll not give up, Father, that’s my son lying there. I’ll keep on praying ’til he comes back to me.’

  Liam patted his shoulder. ‘I’m thinking ye should try one or two prayers for yourself while you’re at it.’ He looked at Thomasin, gave a strengthening smile then moved to the door again. ‘Take care, God be with ye both.’

  Erin escorted the priest to the front door, leaving only Dickie to intrude on their silent grief.

  ‘Shall I fetch me soldier?’

  ‘Sorry, son – what did ye say?’ asked Patrick guiltily.

  ‘Shall I fetch me soldier for when our Sonny wakes up?’ repeated Dickie, his fingers straying back to his scabby knee. ‘He likes it.’

  ‘You’re a good lad.’ The rigidity of Thomasin’s face relaxed somewhat. ‘I’m sure he’d love that.’

  ‘’Tis only to lend, not to keep,’ explained Dickie hastily, then went to dig the soldier from a drawer, winding it up on his return and placing it on th
e bed.

  The door creaked and Erin admitted Brother Francis to the bedroom.

  ‘My dear people, do remain seated,’ he whispered as they were about to rise. ‘I would have come sooner but knowing how ill your son is I felt that it would not be appropriate.’

  ‘Why does everybody think they’re intruding?’ sighed Thomasin, sitting on the bed and offering her chair to the schoolmaster. ‘Yer get the feeling that nobody cares when they all stay away.’

  There had been two very noticeable absences, those of William and Hannah. On the evening of Sonny’s accident Thomasin had, without thinking, asked Erin to slip over to her grandparents’ house to break the bad news. They would be sure to be worried about their daughter’s failure to come home, and would have to be told about Sonny. Patrick had immediately lost his temper.

  ‘Is it not enough that I have to suffer your presence,’ he demanded, ‘without having your mother’s dictatorial prattling?’

  ‘Is my presence then so loathsome?’ she had answered quietly, watching that beloved face contort into a hateful, grief-consumed mask.

  He had swung away from her then and had started to open and shut drawers, lift ornaments and look underneath them as if searching for something so that he might not have to answer: ‘Yes, you are loathsome! But I want you, woman. Oh, how I want you.’

  ‘But they’ve a right to come!’ she had cried then. ‘They love Sonny, he’s their grandson.’

  ‘He’s my son!’ Patrick had rounded on her.

  ‘And he’s my son too! I have the right to say who sees him.’

  ‘Ye have no rights, woman! No rights whatsoever. This is my house and I say who comes into it. I will not have that woman here.’ – Because she’ll blame me, he thought, I know she’ll blame me. ‘Do ye hear me?’

  ‘But they’ll be terribly worried, Patrick,’ she had implored. ‘At least let my father in to see Sonny, yer know how he dotes on him, please, Pat.’

  He took a step towards her but did not touch her. He knew what would happen if he touched her. ‘Listen to me, woman. You are in this house because ye are the boy’s mother, though I pity him in having one such as you for a mother. But do not look upon my charity as a sign of weakness, or get any fool notions that by allowing ye in here I want ye back, because I don’t. And don’t think that your staying here gives ye any rights, because it doesn’t. As soon as that boy is well, ye’ll be through that door in a flash. Sure I don’t know what possessed me to ask ye in the first place, you’re doing no good here at all. Not to anybody.’