To the Devil - a Diva! (3 page)

One night, Katy said, ‘They go on daft with us because they can't have kiddies of their own. That's what I reckon.'

I scoffed at her. ‘Of course they can't. They're brother and sister.'

‘So they can't,' said Katy. She left a little gap. ‘And they're too old as well.'

Something in her words made me feel a bit funny. For a few days after that I watched the Figgises closely. I never had a brother or a real sister, so I didn't know what was normal. I watched them as they cooked our meals together, as we went around the shops on the high street. I watched Isla's devoted face, listening to Michael as he read to us in the evenings. She would hug the two of us girls to her tiny form and we would gobble up every word that the bluff old man read aloud. Ghost stories mostly. Very strange ones indeed, which he read from the paper-covered volumes he took down from his shelves. Those books were the only things in the house we weren't allowed to touch. Only Michael himself could take them down, and he would share fragments of them with us all: his deep voice trembling through that ragged beard. Aunt Isla's thin fingers clutching our newly-plump arms at all the scary parts.

In the end we couldn't help congratulating ourselves on our good luck. We saw that the Figgises were soft touches. We had landed on our feet. They were so keen to please us, to look after us and give us everything we needed. We knew this wasn't the case with other children who'd arrived on
our train. Once or twice we saw the girls who'd sat in our carriage with us. The girl with the blonde pigtails and the fat ginger girl. They were in the butcher's with their new mother, a pinched-face woman who was causing a ruckus over the counter, claiming she was being diddled again. The two girls looked like they'd lost all their spirit. Their hair had been hacked right short and they both wore these awful woollen caps on their heads. They glared at us morosely as we stood behind them in the queue, either side of Isla. Katy and I looked at each other and thanked our lucky stars. We felt proud of our tiny, fairylike adopted mother in that moment.

You'd hear such stories about what work the other kids were put to. People exploited them, used them like servants. We really were at the mercy of whoever we went to. The most that Katy and I ever had to do was work Michael's allotment with him. He was growing vegetables for his
war-work
and we went early in the mornings with his barrow. We'd spend the mornings turning over the earth and tugging out these frozen cabbages and beets. It was this work, as much as anything, that put the colour in our cheeks. We'd have a break and sit outside his dilapidated shed, drinking tea from his flask. Nettle tea, which Isla stewed up on her great big pot on the hob. The result was dark green and tarry and, gradually, the two of us got to like it. We never quite got to like the beetroot soup our new parents loved. It was worth waiting for those days when they would produce those magical chocolate bars, suddenly, out of the blue. That happened sporadically, all unannounced, and our guardians gobbled up the chocolate with the same relish we did.

Another of mine and Katy's tasks was collecting up the nettles from the woods just outside of town for Isla's
specially-brewed tea. We would go soon after it was light on those spring mornings and we took a basket and thick, heavy gloves, to protect our hands from stings. These occasions were another time that we had free from the Figgises. We were growing to love the two of them, but they could still be overpowering sometimes. I think the Figgises realised this, and so sent us out on these errands.

We were coming back one day when we saw those girls again. It was on a little lane and the two of them looked just as pale and miserable as they had in the butcher's. Their hair was growing back, and it stood out in nasty tufts on their heads: one ginger, one pale yellow. We said hello and they sneered at us.

Samantha, the blonde one was called. ‘What've you got in your basket then? Are you eating weeds in your house? Dandelions to make you piss in your bed?'

Katy stopped in her tracks and, because she was carrying the other handle of the basket, I could feel her start to tense up. ‘Don't talk to them,' I told her. ‘They're just baldies.'

‘It's nettles we've got,' Katy snapped back. ‘And we're gonna stew them up into a magic potion. And it'll do worse than make your hair fall out.'

This retort was a bigger success than either of us had expected. The fat ginger lass looked alarmed. She grabbed hold of her friend's arm. Samantha shook her off. ‘Aye, I bet it will, as well.'

‘What's that meant to mean?' I knew Katy was really bridling for a fight. She'd been denied any outlet for her anger for weeks. The Figgises were just too good to be angry at. Katy was spoiling for a row by now. She dropped her side of the basket and was clenching her fists.

‘I just said that brewing up potions and spells is just the thing round your house. With them two.'

‘You what?' Katy thundered. I was secretly pleased she could get so worked up on the Figgises' behalf.

‘Our new mammy has told us all about them two,' Samantha said. She rolled her eyes. ‘All about them. She says you two are in the right place. In their midden. In all their muck.'

That was when I found my own voice. ‘Their house is immaculate! You don't know anything!'

‘Yeah,' Katy jeered. ‘At least they didn't have to cut off our hair. At least we weren't infested.'

Samantha lunged at Katy then and, the next thing we knew there was a fight on. It didn't last long, because me and the ginger girl were there, momentarily allied, in pulling the two of them apart. The blonde girl had tight hold of Katy's long hair. She was really scragging her. Katy had nothing to get a grip on, but she was lashing out with those deadly feet of hers. That little lane rang out with our shrieks.

Then suddenly it was over and we were all panting, glaring at each other. All of us were shocked at the violence that had broken out. Our nettles were strewn all over the rutted road.

‘She told us! It's true! Our new mammy said!' Samantha started shrieking.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘That dwarf woman lets the devil suck her titties of a night! And that old man puts his thing in her bum! Everyone in town knows all about it! They've seen it! My mammy's seen it happen! All of it's true!'

Katy was frozen. The language coming out of that girl had brought her to a standstill.

Then the two of them were running away. Their voices came floating back, mocking and scared.

‘You two are in the right place! You're in an evil midden! That's where you live!'

They were gone. Katy and I looked at each other and then at all our nettles lying everywhere. All our morning's work. We didn't know what to say.

We were left feeling very odd. And resentful, too. We hated those two girls. Who were they to go shouting things out about our newfound adopted parents? We could shout back and we could drown out the gobshites. But something about what they had said stuck with us. We couldn't stop thinking about it, or going over it at night when we whispered across the space between our beds. We were at that point where your imagination goes a bit funny. We were ripe for that. And the two of us kept seeing, in our minds' eyes – lurid and childlike as they were – that picture of Michael Figgis putting his thing up Isla's bum. And then Isla with a devil suckling at her breast. That was the kind of picture that stayed with you, that no amount of chocolate bars (just where did they get them from?) in their sunny dining room could dispel.

We knew what devils were like. We knew what they looked like and all about them. Short, oily-skinned and lizardy things. Grinning imps and gimps of the perverse. We picked this up from the nightly readings that Uncle Michael treated us to. When we sat by candlelight with Isla and she clutched our hands in fright: that was the kind of stuff he read aloud in his husky voice. All about the demons, the
good and bad ones, that lurked out there, beyond the strong protective charm of the homestead. He gave us their
strange-sounding
names in old-fashioned languages and made us repeat them like prayers. And we did so, in time with Isla's high, smooth voice, because we didn't want to upset them both. We knew we were guests in their tall skinny house and so we'd better do what they said. We learnt the names and habits of made-up beasts and monsters and we intoned them back in all innocence.

Michael told us that these imps and gimps roamed the dark countryside, and all the hills and dales, and they were looking for souls such as ours. Stainless, the two of us, and apt for the taking. They could nip in like a wolf into the sheepfold. We were lucky to have the Figgises to warn us. To shoo the bad devils away. And we nodded, and agreed, and again we counted up our lucky stars.

‘They're just crackers,' is what Katy said, hissing across our dark bedroom. ‘Harmless and crackers.' With her Irish connections, Katy knew all about superstitions. She thought the Figgises simple country people.

‘Do they ever come to town, these demons?' she asked Uncle Michael one night, interrupting his tale-telling. He looked startled, silhouetted by the fire, this bulky old dog of a man. He had one of his treasured books open on his lap. His face creased as he stared at us, and I wanted to nudge Katy for breaking into his flow. But then he smiled gently, and looked glad that she was taking an interest.

‘Oh, they do,' he said. ‘Of course they do. Cities are full of corruption and blasted hope. The people there came from the countryside and they went to work in those evil factories and mills and lived in those tiny, dirty houses. And when
despair sets in, that's when the demons seize their chance. The demons love all that muck and disaster. The narrowness of those lives. Where you've been living is full of that kind of evil. And just think about what is going on there now, in those great big powerful cities of the world. The bombs falling on them; the lights switched off; the wailing sirens in the night and whole houses collapsing in flames. It's the very image of hell, girls. Of course there are demons in your cities.'

He had to stop then. Shushed by Isla, who had started up in concern: her silver eyes flashing. Because I had burst into tears. Before I knew it I was sobbing and heaving: great jagged wails came gasping out of me and I threw myself into our tiny aunt's arms. I was shouting something about my mam, my poor mam, left behind in that wicked city. And the bombs falling on her and I could see our whole street doused in fire like hell itself and I knew that she was dead.

‘You've scared the child, Michael,' Isla said levelly. My face was buried in her neck, I was almost suffocated in her yards of crinkly hair. She gripped me hard and sounded furious with her brother, though she didn't move from her dining room chair. Beside us, Katy was quite still. Fascinated and probably disgusted, too, with this show of emotion from me.

‘They need telling, Isla,' was all Michael Figgis said. ‘They need warning. You know that. The young have to toughen up. They have a lot to face in the future.'

His words hung over us. A ghastly benediction. Katy said later, much later, that it was as if Michael Figgis had known exactly what the future held for all of us. That he
had read all about it in those strange old books of his and he'd absorbed it, horrified, line by line. As for now, though, he just got up, as I tried to regain my breath and composure in Isla's tiny grip, and he pulled on his old coat and plucked up his walking stick. I heard Katy's quick, indrawn gasp. She thought he was about to beat us. But he flung open the door into the alley and muttered that he was off to walk the fells. It was nearly midnight. But it was spring and the moon was bright on the hillsides.

‘You mustn't mind him, my pets,' Aunt Isla told us both. ‘He has his set ways. He believes in what he believes in and he always has. We both do. All he says and does is because he loves us all very much and we are under his care. He wants the best for us.'

‘But he really thinks demons and stuff are real. And the devil.' This was Katy. Calmer than me. Answering back. Wanting to know more.

‘So does your great Roman church,' said Aunt Isla. She talked to Katy almost like she was a grown-up, I noticed. In the Figgises' eyes, it was me who was the child. They looked at Katy more keenly, more appraisingly, as if they both recognised something there. I didn't know what. I was surprised they didn't think her cheeky.

‘There's no Bible up there,' Katy said, nodding at the shelves that were crammed with all of Uncle Michael's precious things. ‘There's no good book.'

‘No,' said Isla flatly. ‘There isn't.'

Then she shooed us off to bed and, exhausted, I must have slept straight away, because I never heard Uncle Michael come back from his walk.

I got the occasional letter from home. The postal service was shaky, of course, but I longed for those days when there would be a crumpled envelope on the hairy green tablecloth. Mam's writing, large but unsure, spelling out my name and my new address. It struck me she was writing the name of a house that she had never seen. She didn't know the rooms that I lived in now, and that upset me, even as I hurriedly, excitedly, ripped open her letters.

Her tone of writing to me was rather polite, quite formal, really. It was the tone of someone unused to writing, I suppose. I was coming on in leaps and bounds with my education under the Figgises' roof and I'm ashamed to say that I read Mam's letters and I frowned at the phrasing, the spelling, the grammar. That was me at nearly ten. Within a few years I'd look back on those letters and see, underneath all the awkwardness of the language, the writing that went big and then small as if in relation to her confidence in spelling out these lines, and I would see the love there. The determination to remind me where I came from and who my mam was. Bless her.