2004 - Dandelion Soup (19 page)

Padraig hadn’t looked too convinced, and, soon after, they had said goodnight to Señora Hipola and gone to bed. Now, Father Daley looked over at Padraig in the next bed. The boy was exhausted and slept the sleep of the truly content. Talk about out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! When he’d mentioned the Irish virgin you’d have thought he’d pissed on the Holy Father’s boots. And the testicles!

Oh God, that was hilarious. Miss Carmichael had looked positively murderous.

They’d been a strange band of dinner guests. The peculiar chap with the fancy clothes had said something very odd about going off to kidnap a monk and take him down south. They’d hardly got a word out of the woman with the bruised eye other than to say she was visiting a sick aunt, although she did make some quiet conversation with the bride to be, Marta. Marta had a face like a slapped arse throughout the entire meal; she didn’t look exactly ecstatic considering she was soon to be married.

Eventually, overcome with restlessness, he got out of bed, crept quietly across the room and stepped out on to the balcony.

A honey-coloured moon glowed above the church tower where the stork made an eerie silhouette against the sky. The night air was cool and musky with the scent of fermenting seaweed, of sweet pine and candle smoke.

He sat down on an ancient wicker chair and looked out across the rooftops of the sleeping town. Then he realized that someone was talking quietly on the balcony below.

He strained his ears to listen. He wondered if it was Miss Drew and Miss Carmichael but then he remembered that their room faced out on to the courtyard at the back of the house. Besides, by now those two old bats would be hanging by their feet from the rafters.

He realized with surprise that it was Marta and the other, older woman with the black eye who were talking quietly together.

He really ought to go back to bed, it was wrong to eavesdrop on a conversation, but even so…

“Where will you go tomorrow, Piadora?”

“Back to my aunt, I suppose. I’ve no choice. I have very little money and nowhere to go.”

“Have you no other family?”

“My father is dead. I have a mother and a younger half-sister who I’ve not seen since she was a baby. They’ve had nothing to do with me for years.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s a long story. A story woven with so many lies that it’s sometimes impossible to separate the truth.”

“Do you miss them?”

“I missed my father dreadfully but he’s been dead a long time-now and there’s no going back.”

“And your mother?”

“I don’t miss her at all. And as for my sister, I hardly knew her,” the woman said and her voice was tight with bitterness.

There was an awkward silence then between the two women.

Father Daley wondered what could have happened to make her feel that way towards her own mother? She was heartless if you asked him. He still missed his own mother even after four years, and not a day went past when he didn’t feel that interminable ache of loss in his belly.

“Do you have any family, Marta?”

“Just my father still living here but he’s drunk most of the time. My brothers both went to live in South America, married over there and never came back. My mother died two years ago. Life’s never been the same for me since. If she were alive, none of this would have happened. God, I’d give anything to get out of here.”

“Won’t your father listen to you?”

“No, he doesn’t listen to anyone. He’s deaf to everything except the pop of a wine cork. He thinks this marriage is a good proposition. It is, for everyone except me. Ramon is from a good family with plenty of money. My aunt has her eye on his father, as a future husband and a pension all rolled into one. Did you ever want to marry, Piadora?”

“There was a young man once, a long time ago, but it didn’t work out. My family disapproved.”

Father Daley swallowed the lump in his throat. The way she’d said, there was a young man once…her words were so full of regret and loss that they moved him close to tears. Perhaps she did have a heart after all. He closed his eyes, brushed away a tear and tried to keep his mind off his own past, his own lost love.

“See, you and I, we are opposites,” Marta went on. “Your family stopped you marrying the man you loved and mine are making me marry one I don’t.”

Father Daley sat quite still. The night lay so beautifully around the old town and yet the conversation was so poignant, so helpless that he was filled with an overwhelming sadness and despair.

“What will happen, Marta, if you refuse to marry this Ramon?”

“Refuse! There’s no question of my refusing. My feet wouldn’t touch the ground. They’ll have me shut up with the nuns somewhere. And yet, you know, I think I would prefer even that to marrying a man I don’t love.”

“Does Ramon love you?”

“Poor Ramon, he doesn’t know whether it’s Easter or Christmas half the time.”

Father Daley sighed and crept sheepishly back into the bedroom. He closed the window shutters quietly, blotting out the moon and the stars and the sad conversation from the balcony below.

When Padraig awoke, the shutters on the window were closed but shafts of watery sunlight pierced the gaps in the slats and made patterns across the bare floorboards.

Padraig yawned and stretched and wriggled his toes with pleasure.

One of the best things about being away from St Joseph’s was waking up in the morning and not having Sister Agatha ring a bell next to your earhole, not having to hop about on the cold lino and wash in freezing water or queue to use the lav.

Spain was grand. Tip-top. He loved everything about it, the noisy excitement of the people, the colours and the smells, even the horrible ones. He didn’t know how he was going to do it but he was never going back to live in St Joseph’s, that was for sure: On the way back from Santiago he’d have to give them the slip.

He wondered, though, how Sister Immaculata was and little Donny Keegan. Tomorrow he’d buy a postcard and tell them both about all that had happened to him so far. He’d send it to Mr Leary and ask him to pass it on to Donny; he didn’t trust Sister Veronica as far as he could throw her, and that wouldn’t be far, she was the size of a house. He’d left Donny in charge of sorting the wet sheets out if anyone peed the bed.

Sister Immaculata had always given Padraig a secret pile of clean sheets that he’d hidden beneath the floorboards under his bed. She’d taken away the wet ones and washed them without anyone knowing so that Sister Agatha couldn’t give anyone a beating.

He looked across at Father Daley, who was still fast asleep. He liked the priest; he was a good, kind man, and up for a bit of fun. He looked different when he was sleeping, without his priest’s collar, more like a boy than a man. There was a pink flush of sleep about his face, the faint flickering shadows of his eyelashes sweeping across his cheeks. The planes of his face were washed in a mixture of early light and shadow. God, he wished he had some paper and a pencil. He’d like to draw Father Daley while he slept.

Suddenly he remembered the money that Mr Leary had given him. He had quite a bit of money in the pocket of his shorts for the first time, foreign money. He’d buy a drawing pad and a pencil and he’d sketch. God almighty. There was no one to stop him. He could do anything he liked.

Padraig got out of bed. He stood up and stretched his arms towards the ceiling and enjoyed the sensation of every bone in his body unfurling, the click of sleepy tendons and ligaments, the quiver of waking muscles. He felt his blood stirring itself and he thought that it was wonderful to be alive. And he was alive, more than he’d been for ages.

It was so good to wake up slowly without having to throw himself down on to his knees, to feel the judder through his cold bones. It was good not to hear the whistle of dormitory prayers through chattering teeth.

There was no smell of piss or fear in this room. No smell of carbolic soap or damp toast.

I am alive and I’m not afraid. I am not angry, he whispered to himself.

And outside this lovely room the sun was warming the roofs of the town and filling up the world with colour and light.

I didn’t say my prayers last night and yet I didn’t die in my sleep. Thank you, God. I don’t have to eat porridge and burned toast. I don’t have to feel the icy eyes of Sister Agatha and Sister Veronica boring into the back of my head.

He touched his head. His hair was growing back fast; he could feel the kink of a curl fighting its way through his scalp. He remembered his mammy making corkscrews of his curls with her fingers, cutting one thick curl off and keeping it pressed between the pages of a book.

He felt sad for a moment. If he did run away, the few things that he’d been allowed to bring to St Joseph’s he would never see again. The small shoebox would be thrown away. Inside the box was the photograph of his mammy in a silver frame, the book with the lock of his hair between the slippery pages, the letters tied up with blue ribbon. Hastily he pushed the thoughts from his mind, and crossed the room quietly. He squeezed his bare toes against the wooden floor; beneath his feet the floorboards were worn and warm. A thousand people could have crossed this room before him but none was as happy as he.

He picked up Father Daley’s gold watch from the washstand and turned it over. It was smooth and cool to the touch. He turned the watch over. It was a lovely watch with faded Roman numbers on the face. It was six o’clock. There were two hours before breakfast.

He dressed quickly, looking down sadly at his grey clothes. He hated grey; it wasn’t a colour, it was a feeling. It reminded him of gloomy rooms and miserable faces. If he had enough money, he’d buy some new clothes. Maybe he’d buy a blue or yellow shirt purple or even pink? Not feckin’ grey or brown. He was sick of shit colours in shades of bloody drab.

He picked up his camera, closed the bedroom door quietly and tiptoed downstairs. The lobby was deserted and quiet except for the tick of the lazy clock. The front door was already open and the metal fly curtain in place over the doorway.

Miss Carmichael’s empty trunk was still in the lobby. He walked round it slowly and carefully, hands behind his back, the way he thought a detective might look at the evidence. The hinges at the back of the trunk had been broken, so all the thief had had to do was lift up the lid from the wrong side, no need for the key. It was funny though, who would have wanted to steal all those tins of food? And how would they have carried them away down Pig Lane without being seen?

Kneeling down he lifted off the lid and stared at it in alarm. There were scratch marks on the inside as if someone had been shut up in there and been trying to get out. He shivered. He’d read stories where people were buried alive in wooden coffins and had worn down their fingernails trying to get out. He replaced the lid hastily and stood up.

Señora Hipola was clattering about and singing tunelessly in the kitchen at the back of the house. Padraig winced. She had a voice like the screech of chalk on a blackboard, making his teeth squeal with pain.

The smells of fresh coffee and warm bread wafted out from the kitchen. Padraig’s stomach rumbled noisily. He passed swiftly through the curtain, barely making a noise.

As he stood in the early morning light, the air in Pig Lane seemed to hum with a peculiar excitement, as though something unusual was about to happen at any moment.

Pig Lane was deserted. The shutters on most of the houses were still shut fast. Far above his head the fiesta bunting flapped gaily. The faded colours of the triangular flags seemed much brighter than yesterday. The cobbles of the lane were strewn with velvety petals that had blown down from the flowerpots on the balconies. He stepped carefully to avoid crushing them.

A fresh breeze was blowing up from the sea and the curtains on the doorways began to jingle as though unseen ghosts were passing through them. The sign above the Bar Pedro creaked knowingly.

Padraig sniffed. The breeze was sharp with the salty smell of the sea, the whiff of freshly landed fish mingling with the sweet perfume of the balcony flowers.

He looked up through the narrow gap above the clustered houses. The sky was the palest of pinks and the sunlight outlined the stark chimneys with a glimmer of buttercup light. The wings of the reeling gulls were tinged with gold.

Someone was playing the guitar softly up in one of the attic rooms.

The Bar Pedro was already busy and tobacco smoke drifted out through the barred windows and tickled his nose. He could smell hot oil, aniseed, beer and wine, onions and chocolate.

The bar window was curtained with smoke so he crept up to the door and peeped warily through the fly curtains. A group of men were standing at the bar. Tall knock-kneed men with sharp elbows and tongues. Short wobbly fat men with bellies of dough. The smoulder of sucked cigarettes pricked the air like floating glow-worms.

Padraig carried on down Pig Lane and stopped outside a shop. From inside, the smell of warm bread and cakes wafted out into the lane and his belly rumbled noisily. Feeling in his pocket for the money Mr Leary had given him, he took out a handful of Spanish coins, potatoes they were called.

He peeped in through the doorway of the shop. He felt nervous about going inside. What should he say? How much would things cost? He didn’t know the words for bread or cakes.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed through the curtains. He loved the noise they made as he passed through them. One day when he was a grown-up he was going to have fly curtains over the doors of his house and shutters on the windows and flowerpots instead of curtains. And he was going to buy an easel and a paint box like Mr Leary’s and he would paint pictures that made your head spin and your heart turn over.

It was as warm and dark as a cave inside the baker’s shop. Behind the counter an old woman who was as fat as a pudding stood with her back to him, humming happily as she stacked sticks of bread into a basket. From a shelf above the woman’s head a virgin looked down sorrowfully on all the cakes she could never eat. She was dusty with flour and a cobweb hung round her shoulders like a lace shawl.