2004 - Dandelion Soup (27 page)

In the cupboard Siobhan clutched Denny’s hand tightly.

“This is all because of me and my big mouth!” she whispered. “We have to get there first and warn him.”

Donny nodded reluctantly. Siobhan thought that he looked as if he was about to be sick.

Solly Benjamin was sitting in a wicker chair under the horse chestnut tree in the garden. Beside him on a plaid rug Dancey Amati was playing happily with an old saucepan and a few old spoons.

Occasionally, Solly glanced down at her. She was a contented child and played happily for hours on her own. This was her favourite game, making pretend soup.

Dancey whispered quietly to herself, “Take a fistful of garbanzos.”

She wandered over to the drive, picked up a pile of gravel and laid it on the rug.

“A clutch of white beans.”

For beans she had selected a mixture of odd-shaped white pebbles.

“Two wide-brimmed hatfuls of spring water.” Water from the garden tap had to do. For olive oil she squeezed the sap from buttercup petals.

Slivers of monastery beef were wrinkled leaves that she picked from the flowerbeds.

Honesty leaves for silvery garlic.

The tomato was a red rubber ball she had found close to the high wall.

She picked dandelion leaves with care, and though she didn’t know which way was west she had a guess.

She put all her ingredients into the saucepan and stirred them thoroughly with a stout stick she found lying in the grass.

Dancey looked up at Solly and smiled. She had a wonderful smile that transformed her whole face. Solly wondered had she played this game in her previous life. She stood up now and wandered round the garden carefully examining clumps of dandelions. She had a thing about dandelions. She came back to the rug and placed the dandelion leaves she had selected carefully in the saucepan along with the other ingredients.

Now came the cooking. She had made a pretend fireplace from large stones she had gathered from round the garden. She put the saucepan on top of the fire and sat cross-legged, occasionally lifting the lid and peering inside.

After a while she picked up the saucepan, spooned the liquid and pebbles into two cups and held one up for Solly. At this point he always joined in the game and smelled the soup, smiled with appreciation and pretended to drink it.

He was just about to take a pretend mouthful when he was startled by a shout.

“Hey, mister! Over here!”

Solly looked up from his soup and was flabbergasted to see two small children standing on top of the high wall that bordered the Dark Wood. They were jumping up and down and waving at him madly.

He squinted in the bright sunlight. One of them was Siobhan Hanlon. The other one a little boy who looked terrified out of his wits.

“Hey, mister!” Siobhan yelled. “Come quick!”

Solly stood up and hurried over towards the wall.

“What is it? Are you safe or is there a grizzly bear after the pair of you?”

“I’m real sorry and it’s all my fault,” said the girl.

“What is?”

“I told them you’d a child up here and they’re coming to get her. I’m real sorry, mister.”

Just at that moment the gates to the garden opened with a clank and rattle and Solly stared towards them in dismay.

The big beefy nun from St Joseph’s was striding purposefully up the path, followed by the ferrety woman from the sweet shop and a petrified-looking Mrs Cullinane. Bringing up the rear was a thin-faced nun with a smug smile.

Dancey stood up in alarm and knocked the saucepan of soup all over the plaid rug.

She ran across to Solly and took hold of his hand.

“Feckin’ hell!” shrieked Siobhan. “We’re too late, Donny, the old bitches are here. Scarper!”

Siobhan, in panic, grabbed hold of Donny by the arm. There was a screech and the sound of rustling leaves as she pulled him off the wall and they plunged headlong into the Dark Wood.

Solly thought that they looked like two angels falling from grace. Listening for the sound of breaking bones, he was relieved to hear the crashing of undergrowth as they fled through the wood.

Then he turned to face the delegation of hard-faced women who were marching up the gravel drive towards him and Dancey.

Sister Agatha waylaid Siobhan and Donny as they crept out of the Dark Wood. She took hold of an ear of each of them and yanked them across the road and up the drive towards the orphanage. Siobhan squealed and struggled to escape but Donny went quietly, speechless with fear.

Sister Agatha dragged them in through the front door and down the dingy, reeking corridor. Beneath her habit her keys clanked as though she were a jailer taking prisoners to the dungeons. She opened the door to Sister Veronica’s study and pushed the pair of them roughly into the room.

A clock on the wall flinched and yelped a dissonant chime, pulled itself up short and ground to a halt.

Siobhan and Donny stood side by side on the rug. Siobhan shivered and glanced sideways at Donny. The state on him! Shite! His knees were banging together and his teeth were chattering so loudly they sounded like castanets being played by a drunk. Oh, hell’s bells, it was all her stupid fault. She should never have dared him to get into the cupboard.

Siobhan stood stiff backed, biting her lip, her sweaty hands clasped in front of her as she looked up and up at the enormous nun.

“What do you think you were doing, Donny Keegan?”

“T-t-trying t-to warn him,” he stammered.

“And why may I ask?”

Donny tried to speak but couldn’t get the words up over his quivering tonsils.

“We were trying to warn the Black – S-Solly Benjamin that you were coming for the little girl,” said Siobhan.

“You speak when you’re spoken to, my girl!”

“There’s no point asking a boy to speak when he’s too afraid to open his mouth.”

With that Sister Veronica slammed her fist down on to the table and Siobhan jumped in fright. An old cat who had been happily perched on the window-sill woke with a start, arched his back and spat in alarm.

Donny Keegan gulped. Siobhan sucked in her breath with a whistling sound.

“Well, your silly prank will backfire, Miss Clever Clogs, because very soon the guards will arrive and the child will be brought here to me.”

“Won’t that be just grand for her?” muttered Siobhan.

Why doesn’t she keep her big mouth shut? Donny thought, but there was no point hoping, Siobhan always did what she thought was right.

“I would dearly like to slap that silly face of yours, Siobhan Hanlon, for God only knows you’re in need of a good hiding, but when I’ve finished with Donny Keegan 111 have your mother up here and let’s hope shell knock some sense into you.”

Then she lifted a leather strap from a nail on the wall and slashed it down across the table. A china statue of a saint on the bookshelf leaped up in the air and landed with a clatter.

Siobhan was frightened almost witless but dying to laugh at the same time. Sister Veronica was off her rocker, nutty as a feckin’ fruit cake.

“Hold out your hand, Donny Keegan.”

Donny flinched.

His tiny dirty outstretched hand shook. Siobhan glanced across at his face. His eyes were wide and his eyelashes glittered with tears, his chin was wobbling with fear.

Siobhan bit the insides of her mouth. She closed her eyes each time the strap was raised and winced as the leather made contact with the soft flesh of Denny’s little hand.

Siobhan felt misery and fury ballooning up inside her at the unfairness of it all. She swallowed hard. Denny’s hand erupted in lines of angry red weals. He was desperately trying to hold back his tears but he couldn’t His nostrils bubbled with snot and tears began to run unchecked, making tributaries of grime on his grubby face.

As Sister Veronica raised the strap again, there was a great banging on the study door.

“Wait!” screeched the nun. But the door opened and then seconds later all hell broke loose.

When the women had marched back down the drive Solly Benjamin had taken the child inside the house and bolted all the doors. He was paralysed with indecision and panic. Dancey was white with shock and would not leave his side. Solly tried his utmost to keep calm; he didn’t want to alarm the child but he wasn’t sure what to do next. He’d no doubt that Sister Veronica meant what she’d said about calling out the guards and having Dancey removed to St Joseph’s. He didn’t have a leg to stand on, either. He had no proof of who the girl was or what she was doing there.

He hadn’t liked the look of Sister Veronica at all. She was a big domineering bully of a woman. No wonder that little Padraig had wanted to get out of there.

Solly knew that he had to make plans, but for the moment he was unable to make a rational decision. He thought of ringing Uncle Sammy in London but he wouldn’t be able to help from that far away. Maybe, though, if he could get to Uncle Sammy’s he’d know what to do for the best. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t putting her in the care of those vile beings at St Joseph’s.

Oh God! Someone surely would have made contact if they wanted the child back. Why the hell hadn’t they?

Hurriedly he packed a travelling bag with essentials. He had plenty of cash on him and access to money was no problem. He began to pack the child’s clothes in another bag but when he turned round she was standing there silently looking at him, holding her battered brown suitcase out towards him. He kneeled down and spoke to her even though he knew she couldn’t understand a word of what he said. He tried desperately to sound confident and in control.

“I don’t know if you can understand any of this, Dancey, but I promise you that I am going to keep you safe. I know you are afraid but please don’t be. Well go away for a while just the two of us. Trust me, Dancey.”

And he held the child close, feeling the beat of both their hearts.

In her bedroom Siobhan lay on her belly and smiled grimly through her tears. Mammy had paddled her arse with the hairbrush when she’d got her home from St Joseph’s. But that was nothing to the way those bloody cows had thrashed little Donny Keegan. Still, hadn’t he had the last laugh!

Sister Veronica’s door had burst open just as the strap made contact with Denny’s hand. Jeez, it was like something out of a film except it wasn’t in black and white.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing bursting in here uninvited?” Sister Veronica had screeched.

“I’ve come for my son, Donny Keegan,” the tiny glowering man in the doorway had said.

Honest to God. Just like that.

That’s when Donny had fainted.

Out like a bloody light. Face down on the mat and arse towards heaven.

Siobhan giggled just thinking about it, and winced. God, her own arse was hurting but it had been worth it. Padraig would have loved it. Oh, you should have seen Sister Veronica’s face. Bloody lovely it was! And the air in the room was blue. Denny’s dad could swear like…like a bloody good swearer.

“Get your hands off that child! What’s a bloody big lump of a woman doing battering a small child like that? You’re nothing but a bleeding savage. He’s been through enough already. Touch him once more and woman or not I’ll put you flat on your bleeding arse!”

For a minute Siobhan had been worried because Sister Veronica was enormous and could probably have pasted the daylights out of the fellow, but she was so shocked at the interruption that she just stood with her trap open, feet splayed and the pulse in her neck doing overtime.

Holy hell, it had been marvellous!

Lying there on her bed as daylight faded Siobhan suddenly remembered the papers in her pocket. While she and Donny had been in the cupboard at St Joseph’s she’d stretched out her hand and found a pile of papers. Unable to see what they were in the dark, she’d slipped them into the pocket of her skirt.

She got up from the bed now and pulled out the papers from her pocket. They looked like letters that had been ripped up.

Outside her room a floorboard creaked. Shite! Mammy on the prowl. If she got caught with a pile of stolen letters she’d have another pasting. She hurried across to her school trunk, bent down and slipped the letters carefully into a rip in the lining of the trunk, covering it with a pile of regulation pants and itchy-looking vests.

Solly wondered how long it would take for the Guarda to get to Nirvana House? They’d have to come from Ross-macconnarty, which was a good hour away. An hour! He’d never do it. How he wished now that he’d learned to drive and bought himself a car.

Outside the sun was sinking fast and golden-winged gulls screamed and soared in the last red light before night fell on Ballygurry. At least soon they’d have darkness on their side. If they made their escape through the Dark Wood, they could come out further down the road closer to the station. Maybe someone, a stranger, would pass through in a car, a tractor, anything.

They made it past the station and down to the crossroads, turned right towards Rossmacconnarty. They had travelled about a half-mile or so down the road when they heard the sound of an engine. Seconds later a black car overtook them.

Further down the road the car turned round and Solly and Dancey were blinded by the glare of headlamps. There was a shout and the sound of car doors slamming. Two men in dark clothes leaped out of the car and ran towards them.

Solly Benjamin bowed his head in despair and held tightly on to Dancey’s hand.

The Ballygurry pilgrims were over three hours late arriving at the monastery of Santa Eulalia. The storm that had raged fiercely for most of the day had passed and the night air was fresh and cool.

The mule cart wound its way slowly up the steep mountain track. Padraig, who had slept for most of the journey, with his head resting in Father Daley’s lap, was jolted from sleep as the cart hit a bump in the road.

“We’re nearly there, Padraig,” Father Daley said and yawned tiredly. “Just around the next bend.”

Padraig sat up and rubbed his eyes. Pale moonlight drizzled the track and he was aware that they were passing through a small cluster of dilapidated houses. A donkey brayed fretfully somewhere close by and a dog ran out of the darkness, barked lackadaisically at them as they passed by and then disappeared back into the shadows.