2004 - Dandelion Soup (29 page)

Beyond the narrow window the sky was a deep indigo bowl, peppered with stars, the moon a waxy orb spinning high over the mountains. In the far distance the hazy lights of Los Olivares and Camiga blinked lazily. A keen sea breeze blew up the deep valley, whimpering through the pine trees, murmuring through the long grass down by the river.

Nancy Carmichael shivered with pleasure.

The sheer drop down into the valley was both terrifying and yet exhilarating. She felt like a princess in a tower looking down on her fairy-tale kingdom. Like Rapunzel waiting for her prince! She giggled at the thought and told herself not to be so silly. A princess at her age indeed. Besides, she didn’t have long enough hair to let down!

She was just a slightly tipsy woman in her forties letting her imagination run away with her.

Turning to the right she could see the rough cart track that led up from the tiny ruined hamlet to Santa Eulalia. The track was dappled with moonlight and Nancy could just make out the statue of the Blue Madonna. Tomorrow, she thought she’d take a walk down there and leave a prayer at her feet.

As she stood there she felt unaccustomedly at peace with herself; indeed, undoubtedly the happiest she had ever been in all her life. She felt like shouting out to the sleeping world below. Quite what she would shout out she wasn’t sure. It was as though, especially since Miss Drew had gone, this pilgrimage had opened her eyes to enjoyment, and she was freeing herself little by little from her troubled past.

She was about to close the window shutters in case something unpleasant flew into the room while she slept; there could be bats, bugs, huge moths on the loose. Then she changed her mind; she was sick and tired of being afraid of things, always living on the edge of real or imagined fears. Bugger it and sod it! For once she’d let the sweet cool air roll over her while she slept.

She undressed slowly and then looked down at the pile of her clothes. They really were most unsuitable for this climate. They were drab, old-fashioned garments that made her look years older than she really was.

As soon as she could she would buy something more summery. A cool cotton dress or skirt maybe, in a nice bright colour, maybe a pair of those rope-soled espadrilles. She’d throw away her stockings and go bare-legged, let the sun brown up her legs a little. She picked up her flannel nightdress and was about to pull it on over her head, then changed her mind.

Usually, last thing at night she got down on her knees and went through the long list of people to pray for. Her mother, Aunt Maisie and Uncle William, Grandmother Jones…All of them long dead and buried. And lastly but not least for poor dead Henry William Fitzallen.

But tonight, damn it, she wasn’t going to pray for any of them. They could do without her prayers for once. Henry William had dogged her daylight hours and her dreams for too many years. Henry, the little child from Kilgerry who had killed himself. The poor sweet boy whom her mother had found hanging by his slender neck, eyes bulging, a puddle of still-warm urine on the floor beneath his dangling sandals…

She was filled then with such a rush of emotions: fury, sadness, frustration, loss. She had carried that little boy on her conscience, been made to pray for his soul, pray for forgiveness for as long as she could remember.

Sometimes when the madness was upon her her mother had shut Nancy in the trunk and slammed down the lid. I will let my own child suffer to assuage his sin, she had said.

Nancy began to tremble now at the memory. Her breathing grew tense and erratic. Her ribs felt like an iron cage, her heart a trapped moth, fluttering frantically. She had always hated the dark.

“No, Mammy, please, Mammy, no!”

But her frantic pleas always went unheeded and the lid would slam down and she would be trapped alone in the terrifying darkness. Beyond the lid she would hear the sound of her mother’s rosary beads clacking, the deranged muttering of fervent prayer. The sound of her own fingernails scratching the lid of the trunk, her own muffled screams.

Dear God, she had been a little child, much younger even than Padraig, a child shut up in the suffocating darkness because another poor child had killed himself in fear and despair.

For a long time she had thought it was because her mother felt guilty for not preventing his suicide. It was only years afterwards that Nancy had found out the awful truth.

She had listened to her mother’s ramblings during the last days before she died and eventually pieced it all together. Henry had seen something, something awful, something no child should ever see. He had come upon them together in the attic bedroom. His father and his nanny. He had caught them in the act.

Nancy’s mother had begged Lord Fitzallen not to beat the boy, but he’d said that he would shut the boy’s mouth for him. She’d said that in loyalty to his mother and fear of his father the boy had killed himself. He couldn’t live with what he’d seen and keep a secret of it.

And after her mother’s death Nancy had found the hidden letters, the ones that had disappeared from her trunk. Dear God, if they got into the wrong hands her secret would be out. She should have left them in Ballygurry, they’d have been safer there.

Nancy had always been led to believe that her father had died when she was a year old. According to her mother he was a good, kind man who had worked on the railways. He’d had a heart attack at the age of forty and died. It had all been a pile of evil lies. The good, kind man who had supposedly stood over her crib and sung softly to her was the figment of her mother’s warped imagination. A made-up man. She was illegitimate. Her mother had already been pregnant at the time Henry had taken his life. After the boy’s death, when she found out she was expecting a child, she’d had to leave. She’d gone to Dublin until Nancy was born, stayed there a few years, concocted the story about dear Mr Carmichael and then set up home in Ballygurry. Nancy held back her tears. Well, tonight, sweet child Henry, you and I must be parted. We never even met, did we? We were both innocent children and didn’t deserve to suffer so at the hands of adults. She, for one, was sick of sin and suffering…

She eventually fell asleep to the echoes of owls calling across the mountains. As she slept the moon cast a soft shadow across her smiling countenance, a naked woman coming slowly towards peace.

The clock down in the refectory chimed the midnight hour and Brother Anselm awoke from a troubled sleep. He lay still for a while thinking that perhaps he’d dreamed seeing the frightened boy looking in at him from the doorway. Then he remembered how Brother Bernardo had been wittering on for days about the Irish pilgrims who were due to arrive.

He’d thought that it was queer, that after all these years pilgrims should decide to come to Santa Eulalia again. Apparently, though, it was something to do with that meddlesome Leary fellow.

He looked across the room at Brother Bernardo, who was supposed to be keeping a vigil at his bedside. There always seemed to be someone watching him these days. It was as if they were afraid he was going to do something outrageous.

Brother Bernardo was soundly asleep, his chin resting on his chest, candlelight sending shadows skittering across his nodding bald head. In another hour Brother Tomas would arrive to take over from Brother Bernardo and Brother Tomas would remain awake until the dawn.

Brother Anselm struggled to a sitting position and swivelled his legs round to the edge of the bed. His head felt too heavy for his body. His tongue was swollen, like dough proving. Rancid saliva filled his mouth, his few remaining teeth ached and his breath was hot and fetid. His swollen belly was full of turbulent gas and even his piss was peculiar, the colour of cabbage water, the stink of it as rank as compost.

He got slowly to his feet, steadied himself and crossed the room shakily. Beneath his cotton nightshirt his testicles swung like pendulums.

Despite the darkness of the corridor he made his way without stumbling, feeling his way along the walls. He knew every inch of the monastery, every hidey-hole, every nook and cranny.

Turning the handle on the guest bedroom door, he opened it without a noise. He stood quite still, gathering his strength, then he stepped cautiously inside the room and listened. Someone was breathing heavily, someone sleeping very deeply. The softer sound of a child’s breath…

Moonlight flooded the room through the opened shutters. He shuffled over to the side of the bed and looked down at the sleeping occupant. His heart jumped painfully. The sight of a child sleeping had always moved him; there was something so innocent in their complete abandonment to sleep. He brushed a sudden angry tear from his sunken cheek.

He stooped closer to the boy, holding his breath. Holy St James! He began to tremble and had to put out an arm and lean against the wall for support.

The boy called out suddenly in his sleep and Brother Anselm stiffened with fright.

Dear God, he’d only got a fleeting glimpse of the boy in the doorway. Now he caught his breath. This was a ghost of a boy come back from the past to haunt him. Come back to sniff out his inheritance, no doubt. He put out his hand towards the child’s face, felt the warm skin, the whisper of hot breath on his hand. He withdrew his hand quickly. No, this was no ghost, no figment of his imagination.

Who the hell was this boy? His arrival could mean nothing but trouble. He had to think of a way of getting rid of this boy before he ruined everything. But how?

He glanced round the sparsely furnished room. On a rush-backed chair beside the sleeping boy’s bed lay a sketch-pad. He picked it up and turned the pages. His heart juddered painfully as he looked at the beautifully executed sketches.

There was no mistaking the girl! Although he hadn’t seen her for many years he would have known her anywhere. The marks of her ancestry were there, stamped on her face, especially those eyes. She had the look of her grandmother, and someone else besides…

What was this boy doing with a sketch of the girl? Where had he seen her? Pepita had told him that they were off to America to begin a new life together, that she would never trouble him again. Dear God. Like mother like daughter. He felt his heart contract painfully. Reminders of the past were there on these pages bringing the dead to life, a past from which he knew only death would afford him escape.

He replaced the book on the chair with a quivering hand.

The boy whimpered from the depths of his dreams.

Brother Anselm returned to his bed but he could not sleep. He listened to all the usual night-time sounds of Santa Eulalia, the screech of the owl scouring the meadow for mice, the cluck of a rattled hen in the tumbledown barn, Quixote the monastery dog tottering on his three arthritic legs sniffing feverishly for rats. The careful footfall of ghosts stepping back through the centuries to tell their tale.

Padraig dreamed that he was back in Pig Lane, standing on the balcony at Sefiora Hipola’s house. There were people standing on all the balconies in Pig Lane, as if they were waiting for a grand parade to start. Suddenly a shout went up and the people pointed excitedly towards the sky.

Padraig looked up. There in the turbulent sky the huge wedding dress that had hung on the line in the courtyard was floating high above the church tower. On its lofty nest on the tower the startled stork was screeching, flapping its wings in fury…

As Padraig stared in fascination he realized that someone was trapped inside the dress. As he watched he saw that a string hung down from its hem, trailing towards the earth. It was like a giant dress and a kite at the same time. The dress whirled and twirled, swooped and plunged towards Pig Lane. The onlookers on the balconies shrieked with glee and ducked as the dress hurtled towards the lane.

Padraig recoiled as a face appeared amidst the billowing lace. Sister Veronica! Her eerie grey-brown eyes were wide with fear, her large teeth bared in terror, the mole on her cheek sprouting a clutch of fierce black hairs.

Up went the dress and Sister Veronica. The onlookers clapped and cheered. The stork screeched.

Then Padraig had looked down over the balcony and seen her. Sister Immaculata! She was holding on to the kite string and dancing up and down Pig Lane, a look of utter glee on her wrinkled face. She was reeling in the kite, letting it soar…

Then suddenly a boy came running down the lane behind her. It was the boy statue come to life, the naked boy stepped down from his place in the fountain and chasing behind Sister Immaculata.

Fearless, eager to join the fun, without a thought for his safety Padraig leaped over the balcony and floated down into the lane. The onlookers cheered and Padraig joined in the chase. The statue boy looked back over his shoulder and winked at Padraig. He followed the boy and Sister Immaculata, skipping and laughing along statue-filled alleyways, until he realized that they were in the grounds of the monastery. The sky grew suddenly darker and it began to rain.

High above them the wedding dress kite lost height and then came crashing to the ground. Padraig looked down at the crumpled dress lying amidst the dandelions and daisies, but there was no sign of Sister Veronica among the muddied bundle of torn lace.

Sister Immaculata let go of the kite string like a disgruntled child with a broken toy. She was standing beside a grave and she rapped on the headstone with her knuckles as though it was a door. To Padraig’s horror and amazement the headstone creaked open slowly. The statue boy and the nun stooped down and stepped inside and beckoned for Padraig to follow, but he shook his head sadly. Then the door closed with a click.

When he turned round Sister Veronica was standing behind him beckoning him to come to her. He backed away from her, turned to run, but his way was blocked by the hook-nosed Brother Anselm, who was brandishing a smoking shotgun. There was no escape. He turned again and Sister Veronica was upon him, slapping her enormous hand across his mouth, stopping him from breathing…the sound of gunshot echoing inside his head.

He awoke screaming and thrashing round in the bed. Suddenly someone was wiping his forehead, cradling his head, talking to him softly…He could smell her perfume, the softness of her breasts, the tickle of her hair on his face…