2004 - Dandelion Soup (7 page)

He was woken from his pleasant reverie by a loud and pointed cough. He looked up and was caught in the glare of Sister Veronica’s icy eyes.

“As I was saying, Father, the annual pilgrimage to Lourdes takes place each year, but I expect Father Behenna explained all about it to you.”

Father Daley nodded and panicked. Father Behenna, his predecessor, God bless him, had barely been able to string a sentence together. He had been sloshed for almost the whole of the time they had spent together.

“I’ll refresh your memory, Father. Each year we plan a pilgrimage to Lourdes; the trip is open to any residents of Ballygurry who wish to go, although usually it is a small, select party. Miss Carmichael is, of course, a regular, as is Miss Drew. Mr Donahue is unable to go because of business commitments.”

Donahue nodded and immediately conjured up a sorrowful expression that made Father Daley want to laugh out loud. He’d bet Donahue would rather drink rancid bull’s piss than go on a trip to Lourdes with a priest and a few poker-faced spinsters who had taken the pledge.

“We always have the most wonderful time, Father, although the food isn’t always quite, well, what we’re used to. Miss Drew and I always take a few provisions with us. Some tins of corned beef, Spam and sardines. Just to keep body and soul together you understand.”

Donahue snorted and all eyes were turned towards him.

“I had an aunt once from Dublin. She went to Lourdes and was cured of her ingrowing toenails, but she ate some of the food over there and was taken bad. She’s never been right since. In fact, she’s dead now. Took the lining off her stomach. The food was disgusting. A pile of muck and the meat half raw, she said. Her guts were never the same again, God bless her soul. And she said there was no butter to go with the bread. Imagine dry bread! And the lavs, beg pardon, Sister, the toilets, well they were just holes in the ground. One pull of the flush and she was up to her knees in, well, you know. Jesus, them foreigners still live in the Dark Ages.”

Miss Carmichael coughed and Miss Thin Nose sniffed and twitched next to her. Sister Veronica glared at Donahue.

“Last year, Father, there were six on the trip including Father Behenna. Father Behenna will have already made and paid for all the bookings for this year and I’m sure Miss Carmichael and Miss Drew will run through with you anything that you need to know.”

Father Daley’s heart sank.

“And now, time is pressing on and we need to announce the lucky child who has been selected to accompany you to Lourdes.”

Father Daley watched Sister Veronica with interest as she picked up an envelope from her desk, slit it open with a paper knife and took out a piece of paper.

“Perhaps Father Behenna forgot to explain to you, Father Daley, but every year a child from the school is selected to make the trip. The child chosen is the one who has accumulated the most gold stars for progress at their school work and in sport.”

As she looked down at the piece of paper her face grew rigid with irritation; her mouth set into a thin vexed line while in her neck a pulse beat rapidly.

Sister Veronica cleared her throat with a sound like wet cement being shovelled.

“This year Padraig O’Mally has been chosen.”

Donahue started in surprise and stared at Sister Veronica as if she had uttered a string of filthy words.

Nancy Carmichael sat bolt upright in her chair.

Miss Thin Nose Drew gasped.

“Padraig O’Mally!” they chorused.

“Padraig O’Mally indeed,” said Sister Veronica, and her voice was like an easterly wind off an icy sea.

Donahue snorted.

“O’Mally,” he said. “Isn’t he the little bas – isn’t he the one who set fire to Siobhan Hanlon’s first Holy Communion dress with a magnifying glass?”

Sister Veronica nodded curdy and visibly stiffened, the enormous muscles of her arms rippled powerfully beneath her habit.

“Is he the same boy who interfered with the harvest supper drinks?” asked Miss Carmichael in a whisper.

“The very same. But it seems that Padraig has come out undisputedly at the top of his class. Indeed Mr Leary was asking me only this afternoon if it would be possible for him to take the examination for the Abbey School.”

“But, Sister, the Abbey School is not a Catholic school,” said Miss Carmichael in a scandalized voice.

“Quite so, Miss Carmichael. It seems that our erudite schoolmaster, Mr Leary, feels that education is more important than the keeping of our faith. Of course permission has most definitely not been granted. I have already told Mr Leary so this very afternoon.”

Father Daley cleared his throat.

“Is he a very bright boy, this Padraig?”

“The brightest boy ever to pass through the school here according to Mr Leary, but as we all know, Father, intelligence isn’t everything. Education may buy you a loaf of bread, but religion allows you to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Father Daley lowered his eyes and said nothing.

Suddenly Miss Drew leaped to her feet and began to screech like a madwoman.

“What the hell!” Donahue was roused from his doze.

“A mouse!” wailed Miss Carmichael. “It was sitting in Miss Drew’s lap as bold as brass!”

“Kill it!” shrieked Miss Drew.

Sister Veronica rose from her chair, picked up a fire iron, brandished it menacingly and began to stalk the room.

“It’s only a little mouse, for heaven’s sake, what harm will it do?” asked Father Daley.

The three women stared at him as though he were a halfwit He made his decision. He was going to get to the mouse before Sister Veronica did.

While Sister Veronica jabbed about under the table with the poker he caught sight of the little creature. It was halfway up the curtains and clearly in a state of abject terror.

Father Daley leaped to his feet, pushed past Sister Veronica, took hold of the curtain and flicked it. As he did so he offered up a prayer. The terrified mouse flew through the air and landed in the middle of the table. Miss Drew continued to screech like a banshee and Miss Carmichael slumped into her chair in a fit of the vapours.

Father Daley lunged at the mouse but it fled over the top of the table, slithered over the edge and hit the floor running. Father Daley got down on his hands and knees and followed it. The mouse scurried away through a crack into the cupboard beneath a large bookcase. Father Daley, panting now, opened the door and almost screamed out in alarm.

He stared in amazement at the sight before him. At the back of the cupboard an ancient wrinkle-faced nun and a small pale-faced boy sat huddled together. Father Daley gazed in astonishment. The boy looked terrified out of his wits. The nun merely grinned at Father Daley, winked and held a finger to her lips. The boy was holding the quivering mouse in his cupped hands.

“What is it, Father?”said Sister Veronica.

She was close behind him, her shadow a cold cloud across his shoulders.

The boy’s eyes widened with fear.

“Please, Father don’t kill it,” the boy mouthed.

The boy handed him the mouse.

“No one panic now. I have it,” Father Daley called over his shoulder.

Swiftly he closed the cupboard door on the boy and the nun, edged past Sister Veronica without looking at her, hurried from the room and away down the corridor, the small mouse trembling in his hands. He opened the front door and went out into the gardens. He could feel the frantic heartbeat of the mouse and also his own. Dear God in heaven, what sort of a lunatic place had he come to?

He stooped and put the mouse down on the lawn. It glanced up at him and then escaped into the long grass. He hoped that by now Padraig O’Mally and the queer little nun had made their escape too. He knew without a doubt that the boy was Padraig O’Mally. He liked the look and the sound of the boy. At least he’d liven up the trip to Lourdes a bit.

Solly Benjamin replaced his hat and smiled to himself and thought that Miss Nancy Carmichael would be quite a good-looking woman if she occasionally took the trouble to smile. Mind you, those drawers she was wearing were out of the ark! Another big puff of wind whistling up the legs of those gargantuan things and she might take off! He turned up the Astrakhan collar of his coat against the cold and walked briskly on down Clancy Street towards home.

When Solly arrived back at Nirvana House, for the first time in years he was filled with a feeling of hope. He was surprised to see the front gates ajar. He opened the front door and called out cheerfully. There was no answer. She must be still asleep. He climbed the stairs and peered nervously round the bedroom door.

The bed was empty and the girl was gone. Perhaps it was she who had left the gate open. Maybe when she’d woken she’d realized that she’d arrived at the wrong house, let herself out and was at this very moment on her way to St Joseph’s.

He went back down the stairs and into the kitchen. The brown suitcase was gone too. He sat down at the table and closed his eyes. He realized with a shock that he was disappointed that she had gone. On his walk back from the village he had been filled with an irrational happiness at the novelty of going back to a house where someone waited for him. Now he chided himself for his absurdity. What had he been thinking? That she was going to stay a while? That they’d play Happy Families? For God’s sake, it was a mystery that she’d arrived in the dead of night on his doorstep. He was a rational man most of the time. There would be a logical explanation. Full stop. Now he needed to get on with things, follow his usual routine. A strong cup of coffee and two pieces of toast while he listened to the wireless and got on with the humdrum pattern of his ordered life.

When Dancey Amati woke in the night she couldn’t remember at first where she was. She was lying in a huge soft bed with springy pillows beneath her head.

The last thing that she remembered was staring up at a peculiar man who had large startled eyes and a puckered mouth. He had stared at her as though he had never seen a child before in his life. And all the while as he stared he had hopped from one foot to the other as if the floor beneath him was too hot to stand on.

Then everything had drifted into a warm darkness where she was flying, then falling, falling then flying.

Now she lay quite still, looking out through a large unshuttered window that framed the night sky like a painting. A moon as delicate as a bauble bobbed above the black branches of shivering trees, a spinning moon throwing out stars into the inky pitch.

A highway of stars stretching out across the top of the world. The same stars that she and Mama had watched that night so long ago…

They had lain together in the big bed in Sefiora Hipola’s lodging house watching the huge moon float above the tilting houses of the town, trying to count the stars of the Milky Way.

And Mama had told her that one day soon they were going to escape from Pig Lane. They were going to run away to a place where there wasn’t danger round every corner and where they wouldn’t have to Worry about talking to strangers. They wouldn’t have to keep their wits about them or keep their eyes skinned because there were poisoners and lunatics in every town they’d ever been to. Towns and villages where there were cutthroats and pirates lurking in each dark alleyway. Where there were scar-faced bandits and madmen on the loose, who would slice out your tongue and cut out your heart as soon as look at you.

Mama said they were going to escape. They were going to walk beneath the stars of the Milky Way and follow them until they reached the gateway out of Spain.

Dancey remembered now how she had closed her eyes sleepily and listened as Mama said that they were going to cross the mountains on foot. Mountains that were as tall as the moon, and when they reached the top they would reach up and pluck a star from the sky and its light would last until they reached their journey’s end.

The mountains were beautiful but dangerous too, and they would have to take great care on their journey because enormous brown bears lived there. They ate up every bit of foolish travellers and spat out only the teeth and the toenails.

In the winter the snows were deep enough to drown in and people had been lost in the drifts and never been found. It had sounded scary and exciting to Dancey. Mama said that it would be a long hard journey but when they got to the other side, oh on the other side there were the most beautiful of places in the whole wide world.

They would live in Paris or New York and they would be rich. Mama would be a famous actress or maybe a dancer and she would buy beautiful gowns of silk and taffeta, velvet and organza, hats with misty veils, shoes with gold and silver buckles, expensive soaps and perfumes. They would drive down the streets in a fine carriage pulled by four pure white horses, and they would live in a grand house with its very own bath, and they would have servants to bring the hot water and kill the cockroaches…

After his late breakfast and an hour spent listening to the wireless after which he realized he had not taken in a single word he had heard, Solly had grown restless. By early evening the house was stifling him, the walls crowding in on him until he felt that he could barely breathe.

He went out and walked briskly down towards the village. The wind was keen and restless gulls were swooping and riding the currents above the huddled houses of the town, and he could hear the waves crashing with an almighty force on to the beach.

Solly Benjamin took a deep breath, pushed open the door and stepped into the semi-darkness of Donahue’s shop-cum-bar. Above his head a bell jangled lazily. He sniffed the air curiously. The place was a veritable bran tub of smells. Fresh beer and last night’s whiskey, potatoes softening in a saucepan out in the back kitchen that was curtained off from the bar. There was no Mrs Donahue to do the cooking. She had hitched up her skirts and taken off on the mail train three winters back, and rumour had it she was living in Dublin with a man who raced pigeons and was on the wanted list for impersonating an English Duke.

Solly sniffed again. Sacks of cabbages, yellowing sprouts and piles of damp newspapers were giving off a musty, fusty air.