‘Was a mouldy sausage roll under there.’
I stood up and turned around.
‘Wrapped in my best tea towel it was,’ Mum said with a smile.
‘What have you done?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Where are my things? Why’ve you changed everything?’
‘I told you. It’s a fresh start.’
‘A what?’
‘A fresh, clean start.’
‘Where’s my things gone?’
‘What things?’
‘My things, Mum, my bloody things.’
‘Bernice,’ she squeaked, ‘mind your language.’
‘Mum, please.’ I grabbed my hair and squeezed it until the skin on my skull burnt. ‘Mum, this is like torture. Please tell me where they are.’
‘Stop that, Bernice.’ Mum looked frightened. ‘Shall I run you a bath?’
‘Oh God, no. I bloody hate baths, Mum.’ I clawed my cheeks and tried to rip my skin off. ‘Don’t you know that about me? I hate them. Why are you always trying to wash me?’
‘Am I?’
‘Where’s my stuff? Where is my stuff, Mum? God. Where? Are you stupid? Are you deaf? What have you done? Where have all my things gone?’
Mum froze. My arms itched to grab her and shake her. I had to put my clenched fists somewhere, so I punched the wardrobe door. I thought I’d broken my fingers. I kicked it. I thought I’d broken my toes.
‘Stop that,’ Mum shouted. She tried to calm me, but I pushed her off.
I gripped the top of the wardrobe door. I pulled it.
‘Stop it, love.’ Mum tried to pull me back, to stop the wardrobe falling over.
I twisted the door to try and break it off.
‘Bernice, please,’ Mum begged.
I stopped.
She let go and, without saying another word, she turned around and walked off.
I sat on my bed and picked up the two cards from my desk.The first was from Liam. It was a flowery Get Well Soon card that my Aunty Margaret must have bought and got Liam to fill in. That was the first thing to go in the new plastic bin.
The second was harder to open; it was well stuck and it ripped when I tugged at it. The front of the card was a picture of a dog. A puppy with its head tilted like it wanted to ask, ‘What’s up?’ The neatness of the handwriting hit me first. Then the words: Dear Birdy. I’m sorry. I hope you’re OK. Love from Kat (the Gypsy Girl).
Chapter 12
I didn’t know Kat’s phone number and Mum wouldn’t let me out of the house. It was like prison. Kat followed me everywhere in my thoughts; Mum actually followed me. All around the house for two weeks, making sure I had water or milk or squash, giving me hot-water bottles or cool flannels, offering me a chair or a cushion and feeding me like I was a rescued kitten.
My bones and muscles grew back sturdier. I started practising boxing again. I read the Daily Telegraph every day, but I was itching to get away.
The walls in my room were too bright and clean, like the inside of a fridge, and they made me want to scrawl bad words and use my penknife to make carvings. Mum presented my tin back to me, and my shoeboxes and bags of things. She said sorry for moving them and she hovered like she had lots of questions but couldn’t find the best way to ask me. When she eventually left me alone in my room, I put everything back in order and checked that nothing was gone.
Mum liked me shut in the house ‘for my own protection’. She said visitors would come later. When I was stronger. Edna made me apple pies and rhubarb crumbles. Mum insisted that I put my feet up, let my body recover, have a sleep, watch some TV, take it easy, lie down. That made her feel better. It was better for her nerves, she said, when I was quiet, tucked up at home and in her sight. She said she couldn’t have me straying. It helped her sleep at night.
‘A grand morning,’ she said every day, and her smile was so forced we started to ignore her. We got reports of her night’s sleep. Not just any sleep, but the best sleep ever. She dreamt about sunny holidays and flying in a plane. A house like the ranch on Dallas but back in Ireland, with a snooker room for Noely and me and a view of Galway Bay and a garden big enough for horses that we’d ride and feed every day. Her favourite dream was winning the Football Pools. She day-dreamt and night-dreamt it. She dreamt about having dreams. She made up great stuff with those winnings.
I wanted to show her the card from Kat and tell her that all I really wanted was to have her as my friend.
‘You feel like you are still when you’re flying,’ Mum said. She’d never flown before, but somehow she knew and she promised it was true. She told me to imagine being on a roller coaster that kept on going, but higher and higher, and then floating like a bird for miles. Hovering above the world. Mum’s eyes lit up when she talked about flying. ‘One day you will,’ she said to me, ‘but not for a little while.’
When Mum wasn’t on night shifts, I heard her up and about during the night, shuffling, rearranging things, singing Dusty Springfield and Patsy Cline songs because she thought that no one was listening.
When Dad staggered home late at night or early in the morning, Mum threw saucepans at him. She closed the kitchen door and thought I couldn’t hear but I saw the dents in the cupboards and the chips in the tiles on the wall.
Eileen came home for one night, but left with clean clothes the next morning. Liam was the only visitor that Mum let in to see me. I hid in my room and pretended I was sleeping.
When it was extra hot, we took chairs from the kitchen to the garden and sat out until the sun’s heat made our skin prickle and you could almost feel the blistering. ‘Get as much as you can,’ Mum told us. ‘It could be raining in the morning.’ So my arms and legs became the colour of strawberry ice cream while my belly stayed the colour of vanilla.
Dad couldn’t find proper work. ‘Who knows what tires him – he does sod all,’ Mum said.
Instead of work, Dad repaired things in the house that didn’t need repairing and that made him exhausted a lot. He mixed up Polyfilla and went searching for cracks. He greased hinges that didn’t squeak with margarine, and he sharpened knives and tightened screws and tested drawers so they continued to open and close like they always did. He didn’t need my help like he did when I was little. There were no lectures on computers and the future of the world. He stopped telling me about being under someone’s thumb, or being your own person, or studying my schoolbooks hard. It was like his battery was flat, and we couldn’t find a way to jump-start it.
I wanted Dad to tell me his stories again. About great travellers and seeing the world and life beyond England in the jungles and deserts, and countries that were made of ice instead of earth.
Dad had no brothers but two sisters, and I wanted to know how that made him feel. I thought about Kat and how noisy her house must be. I wondered if all her sisters had the same dark hair and blue eyes and pale skin that she did. I wondered where she was and what she was thinking and whether she knew that I didn’t blame her for not stopping Martin, and I couldn’t bear for her to be hanging around with him and the boys, like I had never existed.
Dad had a mum and dad once, but not any more. Some-thing had happened. I wanted to know what they were called. I wanted to see a photo of Dad when he was a little boy. But I was never going to ask him. We sat for hours in the house saying nothing. I read my newspaper; he read his Daily Mirror. I wouldn’t say the first word. Mum said that Dad was stubborn, and I was even worse.
At the end of week two I thought of a plan to get out. Mum’s face sparkled when I asked if I could go to Sunday Mass. She agreed that it would help with my recovery and rebuilding and renewal and healing, and I didn’t know what she meant, but I put on smart clothes anyway and I was excited when the day came.
The church was not grand like I expected. Dad hated the Church because of all its gold, but this one was little and grey, not tall and echoey like the ones on Songs of Praise. There were no beams across the ceiling, no organ with tall pipes, or fat
chunky candles. It was a concrete building, like our community hall, but with a smell like bath salts and much nicer windows. Near the entrance there was a huge picture of a carpenter.
‘That’s Joseph,’ Mum said.
‘I know that, Mum.’
‘Isn’t he handsome?’
‘Kind of.’ I was looking at the tools in his hands.
‘You can see where Jesus got his good looks from.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Follow me.’ She took my arm as we walked down the middle of the benches. She nodded at old people, who stared back and looked me up and down. ‘Good morning,’ she said to the pale wrinkly faces. Some shook her hand.
Boys were dressed in suits, girls in frilly dresses. The boys had combed hair, shiny shoes and their suits were smart and trim. Their ties were done perfectly. My aunties and uncles sat in the front row; we sat two rows behind them. They turned and, when they saw me, their faces glowed. They waved, winked and smiled.
‘See, it’s not so bad, is it?’ Mum said and squeezed my arm.
‘Am I allowed?’
‘To be here? Sure you are.’
‘Will Dad mind?’
‘He’d hit the roof.’
‘Would he?’
‘He would. But what he don’t know won’t hurt him,’ she said, and I decided not to mention the men at the back, who were Dad’s mates from drinking.
‘Oh, hello, Liam, my love.’ Mum’s voice went high-pitched.
He was stood beside her in a pinstriped suit; his hair was parted in an exact straight line.
‘Don’t you look grand.’ Mum brushed his shoulders with her hand.
‘All right, Birdy,’ he said. ‘You look smart.’
I noticed his new blue tie and the hanky in his top pocket. I was wearing a blue Fred Perry T-shirt. I did the top button up and straightened my cardigan.
‘Are you coming back to school?’
‘No.’
‘Tomorrow, she is.’
‘Eh?’ I turned to Mum. ‘Says who?’
‘That’s brilliant.’
‘Shut up, Liam. Where’s that tie from?’
‘It was your brother’s.’
‘What?’ I turned to Mum.
‘Oh yeah.’ Liam steadied himself like he was an epic storyteller. ‘Did you hear – Mrs Cope did a special assembly about you?’
‘Why? I’m not dead.’
‘It was good. Well, it was a bit weird. She went through all the things you’ve done at school and read out a poem.’
‘What poem?’
‘A sad, strange one. It was kind of like a funeral.’
‘The whole assembly?’
‘Yes,’ Liam said. ‘For a whole half hour.’
‘Liam’s been looking for Murphy while you’ve been away,’ Mum said, like I’d selfishly taken a super-long holiday.
‘Has he?’ I looked at Liam; he looked away.
He pretended that he’d seen someone and held up his hand. ‘See you later, Aunty Martha.’
‘OK, love.’ Mum patted his back as he left.
‘What was he waving at the statue for?’ I said.
But Mum said nothing; she paused for thought. Then she took two sheets of paper from the bench in front and handed me one. ‘She is a bit forward, that Mrs Cope,’ she said. She took her gloves off, put them in her handbag and took her glasses out. ‘Don’t you think?’ Mum read the piece of paper while talking to herself. ‘I wonder, would there be school trip stories in her little tribute?’
I stared at the paper.
Mum nudged me. ‘Do you suppose?’ She raised her eyebrows.
My heart started to speed up. A man – the priest, I was sure – came out from a curtain with another man and two boys and everyone sat down.
‘Stories of fighting with boys, perhaps?’
The movement of the priest kept my eyes busy while my body pumped blood around. He shuffled about in his robe, like he was tidying up, and then he started to talk.
‘Mum,’ I whispered.
She put her finger to her lips. ‘Just copy me.’
‘Did Dad tell you?’
‘Be quiet.’
‘Or school?’
‘Listen to the priest.’
‘Who?’
‘Enough now.’ She put her finger to my lips. ‘Stop your fighting, that is all.’
The priest spoke for ages. Firstly about God and Jesus and the disciples, then something about Luke and John and giving forgiveness to everyone.
‘What’s he saying?’ I whispered.
Mum pointed to the piece of paper. ‘There, that’s the bit he’s reading out.’
‘From the Bible?’
‘You’re a natural, so you are.’
Everyone stood up.
‘And now we sing.’
‘Like Songs of Praise?’ I said, and Mum gave me a thumbs up.
The priest was an awful singer. His words crashed off the walls.
‘Good God,’ the old man to the left of me said. ‘Val Doonican won’t be out of a job.’
We sat down while an old man got up and read a story in a mumbled Irish voice, then everyone stood up. I stood up with them. We sang another song, then more sitting, so I sat down. Until there was more standing and I stood, and the rhythm of it was fun. Then there was handshaking and smiling with people that I didn’t even know.
‘Peace be with you,’ Mum said to me and squeezed my hand extra tight. As everybody resettled, she put her mouth close to my ear. ‘Did you hear?’
I nodded.
‘Find some peace.’ She tapped me on my head.
‘OK,’ I said, but I wondered what she was on about. I wanted to ask her, but then people started moving.
The priest was handing something to every person, maybe presents. Mum seemed dazed but she moved to join the queue. I followed her.
‘No,’ she snapped. She held her hand against my chest. ‘Not this bit.’ I stopped on the spot. ‘Stay here.’ She pointed at the bench. ‘Sit there,’ she said like I was a dog.
Mum joined my aunties, uncles and cousins. They all kissed and hugged. I sat on the bench alone. I watched as Mum tightened Liam’s tie, standing back to check it was straight. Uncle Barry said something that made her slap his arm. I pretended I was praying. I put my head down, unpicked some stitching on my trousers, straightened my socks and tightened my laces.
While I waited, Sunday shoes tip-tapped around me on the tiled floor. I tried to imagine what my peace was. When my neck started to hurt, I looked up. The queue was moving slowly; the priest was putting things in people’s mouths. Amongst the people moving along, Mrs Cope’s head stood out.
My insides flapped like trapped birds were trying to get out. She went up to the priest and curtsied, leant over, shuffled to the side, took a drink from another man and turned around. She smiled and stopped and talked to Mum and my heart hurt from beating so fast and as she turned and walked in my direction I thought my newly healed ribs would crack. She got to my row and walked on. It wasn’t her. Or was it her in a different coat? I looked hard. She was different, I was sure. Shorter, I thought. I looked away, to the ceiling and the windows, to baby Jesus in his mum’s arms. She didn’t look too happy with everything that was going on.
‘Move up,’ my mum said.
The benches creaked with heavy bodies and I was itching to turn and run, but frightened to leave my seat.
‘I don’t feel well.’
I couldn’t sit still. I undid my top button. Salty sweat sat on my top lip. My right foot started tapping.
‘Pack that up.’ Mum smacked my leg.
After the last prayers, they opened the doors at the back and everyone shuffled along. Father Cooley was there, in the bright light of outside. There were no guards to protect him. It was like anybody could just go up and touch him. He was handing things out to a line of children.
‘What’s he giving out, Mum?’
‘He’s giving them the key to Heaven,’ she replied, pattin
g me on the back.
We got closer.
‘He’s not.’
‘He is.’
‘He’s giving them Maltesers.’
‘Move on.’ Mum gave me a shove.
All my cousins were in that queue.
‘Can I get one?’
‘No you can’t,’ Mum said, and I felt like a stranger. Not part of my own family. I belonged in the hospital more than I belonged there. I told Mum I was going to the car park to get some fresh air.
Through the dawdling people I did zigzag moves. ‘Excuse me, excuse me.’ I walked through.
After the people I went through the car park and straight across the road. When I got to the other side I turned and looked. But it was just a load of faces of people I didn’t know. I waited for Mum to come out of the crowd, but she didn’t. I stood nearer, at the edge of the traffic. She didn’t appear. Everybody merged. I waited. One step forward and the next car would kill me. I told myself to go.
Home was the last place I wanted to be. So I followed the route where people walked their dogs. I counted twelve molehills on the field where boys were playing football and I kicked each one so hard my socks got filled with soil. I crossed the Sandymount Green, where Noely had taught me karate-style sliding tackles. I followed the brook through the Waterloo Estate, under three bridges, past the old glue-sniffing bags and the rubbish graffiti. Along the top path I stopped at the huge garden with the giant aviary. On tiptoes I stretched to look over the fence and watched the little multicoloured birds fluttering about. Dad was ‘going to get his wire cutters to that cage’ since I was little. Mum said the budgies would die in the wild. Dad said that caging them was evil.
The brook looked different. After the rain, it had back its flow. The dirty smell had gone and the reeds were high and shiny and strong. Sprouting up between them were wild white flowers I’d never seen before. The water gushed under the bridge that held the railway line that took trains through our town, from London to the seaside.
Mum would be fuming, I thought, as I pulled myself up a huge weeping willow that was leaning over the water. The stretching made my stomach muscles hurt, so at the firmest, thickest branch I stopped. I looked down below and saw where Murphy died. I could see how the water would have taken her, and where she must have gone, under the bridge to the other side and beyond. The water looked bright in the afternoon sun; where it caught rocks and objects, it swirled and sparkled. It looked good enough to swim in, and one day, I thought, I would learn.
Birdy Flynn Page 18
