2004 - Dandelion Soup (22 page)

Spain had been his salvation.

Now he spent several months of each year in different parts of Europe, occasionally he returned to England and Ireland, but only when he had to.

He sighed, dipped a sugary churro into a bowl of hot chocolate and ate it slowly. After breakfast he was going to go up into the mountains for a few days, explore a few places he had never been to before.

Last night he had stayed in old Antonio’s house near the church. He had woken early and left, the old man’s company he could stomach but not his breakfasts. Pigs’ trotters and bread fried in lard was more than a man could cope with first thing in the morning.

He watched the early goings on in the port but his mind was mostly consumed with thinking about the little boy he’d seen earlier.

After he’d left Antonio’s he had found a quiet place to sit near the church in the square to enjoy an early morning smoke. He’d been there quite some time before he’d looked up and seen the boy.

He’d watched the little lad with fascination as he had completed his imaginary tightrope walk round the wall of the fountain. He loved the way that children could become so engrossed in their own imaginary world, completely absorbed and unselfconscious in what they were doing. It was a childhood gift and didn’t last long.

He had sat quite still in the shadow of the church hoping the boy wouldn’t see him and stop what he was doing. He’d only just stopped himself from applauding when the boy had taken his final bows to his imaginary audience.

Then the boy had copied the pose of the statue. That was when he’d sat up in surprise and really taken note. The resemblance between the statue and this comical little boy was quite absurd. The likeness, albeit between tarnished metal and warm flesh, was quite remarkable. It had to be just coincidence, a trick of the light maybe. After all, the statue had been in Camiga for as long as he could remember and couldn’t have been modelled on this funny little fellow. And, yet, something stirred in his mind…a half-thought, confusing and somehow important.

This child wasn’t a local boy, that was for sure. His skin was pale; he wasn’t a child who had spent long hours playing under a hot sun. With his dull grey clothes and skinny white legs he looked out of place in Spain, a scruffy sparrow in a cage full of exotic birds. The Old Pilgrim smiled; he was a chrysalis of a boy waiting for his transformation into a butterfly.

Now he drained the last of his hot chocolate just as the cannery siren blared out across the quay. He’d better get a move on if he was to make it up into the mountains by nightfall. He paid for his breakfast, left a generous tip and then strode across the cobbled quay, aware of but unconcerned by the curious eyes of the market traders who watched him go.

D
onny Keegan stood alone in the cave they called the Giants Cakehole. It was cold and dank inside the cave, just the echoing plop of water dripping from the stalactites into the rock pools.

Plip

Plip

Plip.

He pushed his hands down into his pockets and whistled softly.

He wondered had Sister Immaculata stood right here where he was standing now when she’d decided to do herself in? Had she just sat in the cave and waited for the tide to come in and swallow her up?

He shivered violently. She must have wanted to die real bad to do a thing like that. He wondered did she maybe start to panic and change her mind but by then it was already too late?

It couldn’t have been an accident because everyone in Ballygurry knew that the cave was dangerous when the tide was coming in. The fishermen had shaken their heads and said that her body might not be washed up for many months, or maybe not at all.

One of the fishermen, Archie Cullinane, had found some of her clothes here in the cave the day after she’d disappeared. The grey habit and veil caught up in a tangle of seaweed and flotsam and jetsam amongst the rocks. Further down the beach one black sodden lace-up shoe lay half buried in the sand, and a woollen grey stocking was discovered hanging across the bows of one of the barnacled boats.

Donny struggled to hold back his tears. It was strange in St Joseph’s without Sister Immaculata. After Padraig had gone she used to bring him clean sheets in case of accidents and he’d hidden them under the floorboards just like Padraig had shown him. There were hardly any sheets left now, no escape from night-time terrors and beltings for a wet bed.

The attic room where Sister Immaculata had slept had been cleared, scrubbed, disinfected and locked up. It was as though she had never been alive at all.

Sometimes at night he woke up and thought he heard her up there still, pacing the boards restlessly.

A gust of wind blew inside the cave and Donny felt the goose-pimples prick through his tight skin. He imagined the icy water reaching up over her feet, her ankles and knees. Then the awful bit where it came over your mickey…she wouldn’t have had a mickey though. Women didn’t. What they had down there was a mystery. Up and up the water would have risen, up to her neck. Oh God, he felt sick at the thought of it. Higher and higher until her mouth and nose were full of salty water and she couldn’t breathe!

His nose began to run and he wiped away his snot and tears on the ragged sleeves of his pullover. The wet shrunken wool made the bits where he’d wiped sore and itchy. He wished that Padraig were here with him now because he felt afraid and Padraig had always made him feel so much braver. He stifled a sob. He couldn’t believe that the old nun had taken her own life. He knew that it was a terrible sin to do that. Now, she’d never be allowed to be buried in a Catholic graveyard even if they did find her body, and she’d go straight to hell where the really bad people went, swearers and spitters, murderers and thieves.

He thought that was wrong because she had been a really good person while she was alive. She was the only one at St Joseph’s who was kind to the kids. If she went to hell then he didn’t want to believe in God any more. If Sister Veronica and Sister Agatha went to heaven what sort of a place would it be?

He kneeled down on the floor of the cave and wrote carefully in the wet sand with a trembling finger.

SISTER EMMAKULARTA. RIP. RISE IF POSSIBLE.

Then he leaped back in alarm as a wave broke with a resounding crack at the jagged mouth of the cave. Another followed swiftly and white foamy water surged up over his sandals and melted away the nun’s name as if it had never been written at all.

A third wave swirled up round his knees. He waited for it to be drawn back, judged the timing and ran out of the cave. He raced headlong along the beach until he reached the boats. He rested against one to catch his breath. Then he took off his shoes and socks, tipped the water out of his shoes and wrung out his socks. As he dug his toes into the dry sand to warm them his big toe caught against something sharp. Pulling his toe back quickly in case it was a lurking crab, he bent down and dug in the sand with his hands. He lifted the necklace up, shook off the sand and looked at it closely. It wasn’t a necklace at all but an old battered rosary. He swallowed hard. He’d seen Sister Immaculata holding it in her hands when they were in church. It wasn’t like a normal rosary, it was a clumsily made thing and looked like it had been hand made, the beads were heavy and a milky blue colour, like blind people’s eyes. He slipped it into the pocket of his shorts. He would keep it for ever and have something to remember her by. Like a good-luck charm.

He put on his socks and shoes and made his way across to the slipway and then along Clancy Street.

As he came level with Dr Hanlon’s house a voice startled him and he jumped with fright.

“Jeez! You frightened me then,” Donny said, and breathed out with relief. He stared in fascination at Siobhan Hanlon, who had stepped out suddenly from the doorway of her house.

“Wett, what do you think? Gorgeous or what?”

Siobhan was dressed in a baggy grey gymslip that reached almost to her ankles, a blue stiff-collared blouse, a blue blazer with a red badge, grey tie and a grey pudding-basin hat.

“N-nice,” he stammered.

“Nice! Give over. Who are you kidding! I look a right bleeding eejit! And guess what?”

“What?”

“I have to wear two pairs of drawers at the same time! Can you believe that? White cotton underneath and blue regulation baggies on the top! And three pairs when we have games lessons. Imagine, all that rushing about and the blood will rush to my arse and 111 probably drop dead of heatstroke.”

Donny blushed with embarrassment Siobhan Hanlon didn’t care what she said or who she said it to.

Siobhan looked Donny up and down inquisitively. His socks and shoes were soaked and his grubby face was smudged with dirt and tears; he was doing his best to stop his lip from wobbling. Donny Keegan was sweet If she ever had a little boy she’d like one like him.

“What’s up, Donny? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Nothin’s up. I just had sand blow in my eye.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere much. Just up around the famine wall for a walk.”

“Can I come with you?”

Donny nodded half reluctantly; he was a bit afraid of Siobhan with her bold ways and her big gob.

“I’ll catch you up in a minute. I’ll just go and take this pile of shite off. I won’t be half a tick.”

Donny squelched away up Clancy Street.

A breathless Siobhan caught up with him just as he was passing Mankey’s Alley. They wandered away down past the silent station and climbed the rotten stile that led into the tinkers’ field.

It was quiet in the tinkers’ field as they walked side by side through the long prickly grass towards the famine wall. Poor, starving people in the great famine in the olden times had been made to build the wall. It didn’t serve any purpose, they were just made to do it to earn some money.

All around them dandelion clocks bobbed in the breeze and red poppies bent under the weight of early bees.

Over the years people had scratched their names on the wall. Along with the names there were dates and faded love hearts with arrows through them; and filthy messages that made Siobhan laugh out loud. Donny thought that she had a real dirty laugh for a doctor’s daughter.

SISTER VRONICKER IS A FLABBY ARSED OLD COW SO THERE. SISTER AGATHA STINKS.

They wandered slowly round the wall together.

“Look,” said Siobhan. “Theresa Patricia Drew. Ugh! Hey, Donny, did you know that the old witch is back?”

“Who, Miss Drew? From the pilgrimage? Are they all back?” he asked hopefully.

“No. Only her, worse luck. She got back yesterday morning and came straight to see Daddy, and guess what?”

“I don’t know.”

“She has a bruise on her ARSE the size of the whole of Ireland!”

“Siobhan! How do you know?”

“Because I looked through the keyhole when she was showing Daddy!”

“You did not!” Donny giggled.

“I did too. She’s shown him three times already. Do you want to know what it looked like?”

“No,” he said.

He did though. She was terrible rude was Siobhan but he couldn’t help laughing. He was never ever going to get married but if he did he reckoned it would be fun to be married to someone like Siobhan who made you laugh all the time.

“It was this big!” she said, stretching out her arms as wide as she could. “And her bum is covered all over in enormous pimples!”

“No way, you dirty devil!”

“And in between the pimples it was black and blue!”

“Give over! Why did she come back though?”

“Well, afterwards I heard her telling Mammy in the kitchen that she’d had the most terrible time out in Spain…She fell through a roof and was attacked by a mad donkey, and if that wasn’t enough she was forced to eat octopus and there was a robber on every street corner. And she was disgusted because the other pilgrims were more interested in an old treasure chest that fell through the roof than her injuries.”

“What sort of treasure?”

“I never heard because Mammy opened the door then and gave me a right crack around the chops for listening at keyholes. Look. There. Martin Sean Donahue. That must be old Donahue from the bar. I can’t imagine Donahue ever being a little boy. He’s a miserable old bastard.”

“Siobhan, shh. Someone might hear you!”

“There’s no one here to hear us. My name’s there, look.”

SIOBHAN MARY JANE HANLON. AGED 10 AND THREE QUARTERS.

Donny blushed. She had written her name as close to Padraig’s as was possible.

He had been going to scratch his own name next to Padraig’s with a penknife but she’d beaten him to it.

“When do you go off to your new school?”

“In a couple of days’ time. I’m going over on the boat and men a nun is going to pick me up on the other side. That’s if I don’t throw myself overboard on the way!”

“Don’t say things like that!”

“Only joking, but I don’t want to go. Donny, if I give you the address of the school will you give it to Padraig for me when you see him and tell him to write me?”

“Sure. If I see him. Why are you going so soon? I thought it was after the summer holidays.”

“Nope. Now the school is going to close I’m being sent early.”

“What do you mean the school will close? Course it won’t.”

“It will. I heard Daddy say that once you lot are all sent off to Australia there’ll be hardly any kids left.”

“I’m not going to Australia.”

“Sure, you’ll have to.”

“My daddy will come for me before then,” Donny mumbled.

“Where is your daddy?”

“In England I think.”

“How long since you’ve seen him?”

“I’ve never seen him.”

Siobhan put her head on one side and drew a circle with the toe of her sandal in the dusty bare earth.

“You’ve never ever seen him?”

Donny shook his head.

“You don’t even know what he looks like?”

“No.”

“How will you know it’s him when he comes?”

“I don’t know. Ah, sure hell just say I’ve come for my son Donny Keegan, won’t he?”