She did not reach the gates. Just outside the heavy door stood her mother. Brigid closed her eyes to make sure this was not a dream and, by a miracle, when she opened them, she was still there. She had come back for her. That was all that mattered. Relief made Brigid so weak that she did, finally, begin to cry, and she was not asked why, and she was grateful. Her mother’s hand had never felt so warm, or so safe.
On the bus, Brigid did not even look out of the window, did not talk, was glad not to be asked a single question, glad to have her mother’s hand pat hers now and again.
It was her father who opened the door to them. He reached down and ran his hand through her shorn hair. “Tommy-Go-My,” he said, as Uncle Conor had done in the barber’s shop. Now she knew it was meant to be funny, she also knew to laugh. “How was school, girlie?” he went on, adding, to Brigid’s puzzlement, “Any slaps?”
Above her, Brigid felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. “Maurice,” she said, and her voice held its low warning note. Her father seemed not to recognise it.
“Slaps,” said Brigid, her own voice sounding to her as if it came from far away. “What are slaps?”
Her mother said: “Maurice. Please. Leave well alone.”
But her father ran his hand again through her crop and said: “They slapped when I was at school. With a leather strap, too.” He laughed a short laugh. “It did me no harm.” Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned away with his paper.
Brigid, watching his stooped back move slowly to the comfort of his chair, understood. Someone in that school might hit her.
All through the lunch she could hardly touch, all the time as the long strange day went on, she could not settle to the comfort of usual occupations. It was as if she had, indeed, left home, or home had left her, and she did not know how to find her way back. She longed to see Francis, yet it was late in the afternoon before he came in, and Brigid knew, by the heaviness of his tread in the hall, that his first day had been no better than hers.
When they sat down at five to their programmes, he said: “How was it? Are you all right?”
She said: “I’m afraid.”
“Of school? It isn’t as bad as it seems. It’ll get better,” and he laughed without smiling. “Or rather, you’ll get used to it.”
Brigid said: “It’s Miss Chalk I’m afraid of, more than school.”
Francis looked at her for a long time. “Because of what Bella said? She didn’t mean it.”
Brigid shook her head. “She comes in the night. Miss Chalk. She comes out of the chimney.”
Francis was quiet. His face looked quite sad. “Brigid, if she comes again – and I hope she won’t – you get me.”
“What if I can’t?”
“I’ll stay up until you go to sleep. Call me. I’ll come. I’ll not let her get you.”
Brigid felt the dark weight ease a little. She sat back in the sofa, and she was glad of his warmth near her. On the screen, the Cisco Kid rode away, his sombrero flat back in the wind.
“What are slaps?” she said, after a while.
Francis sighed. “You learn to avoid them. It’s when you get something wrong, or don’t do what they say. The teacher hits your hand.”
“Daddy said, with a leather strap.”
Francis shook his head. “No. Not in a girls’ school. Anyway, don’t give them the chance. Do what they tell you, and keep your head down. That’s the best way through.”
The Cisco Kid had ridden away with his sidekick Pancho, his sombrero even bigger and wilder in the wind. Soon it would be time to face her again.
“You call me, if you have any bother tonight,” said Francis, which helped her through teatime, and the mystery of backing the books. She watched as her mother and Francis folded and wrapped them like presents, and she nearly did one by herself. When she climbed the stairs to bed, she was almost happy. That night Miss Chalk did not come, and Brigid slept till morning.
Francis was right. She did get used to it. Reading was no longer a game with her mother, but part of a new thing called homework. There was writing, which she liked, and there were numbers, which she did not. There were slaps: they happened to other people until one day, to her surprise, all the infants were lined up outside their room and slapped, one after the other. The long wooden rule stung like a wasp. Brigid did not know why they were slapped, and no one else in the wailing line of children did, either. Miss said what happened in school was to stay in school, that they were not to tell at home anything that went on within those four walls, and that if they did she would know. So, Brigid did not tell, though her hand hurt all day.
That night, Miss Chalk came back, her eyes dark holes, her white legs bent, creeping towards her, but she got only to the edge of the fireplace before Brigid called Francis, softly, urgently, and Francis came. He sat on the chair where Brigid had found the cowgirl suit on the day their parents came back. He stayed there till Miss Chalk went away, and Brigid fell into sleep, her last sight Francis in his dressing gown, reading by the light of his torch.
September meant school every morning. There seemed no possibility of escape. Brigid was slapped when the numbers on the board were not clear to her. She did not know how to explain that they were blurred, that she could not make them out. Her sums were wrong. Her father tried to help her, but he explained too quickly. He understood numbers. That was his job. He was a man who counted numbers. Foolishly, Brigid one day told Miss that, and saw that she laughed, saying something to another teacher who had come in with the long book of names. They looked at Brigid, curiously. Brigid waited all that morning to be slapped, but nothing happened. She saw there was no method to understand school, no means of knowing what would keep her safe and what would not. Increasingly, imprisoned at the wooden desk, she went into her own world, and thought of home, the back garden, Francis, Dicky, even Ned Silver. She thought herself back to the trees at the back of the plot, living again the summer days. She was careful not to go too far away, coming back in time to gather what was happening, and save herself a little longer.
September became October, and the new life settled round them. Brigid’s father got slowly better, and began again to read from the paper as he used to do. Now, however, he read only the stories which worried him. He read that there was an outbreak of typhoid in Antrim, and their mother said they had no plans to go to Antrim. He said two men had been named as spies, and they had attended the University of Cambridge, and his wife must not think of Cambridge for Francis. Brigid’s mother said she was not thinking quite that far ahead. He began to drive again, opening the garage doors in the morning as he used to, backing the car down the passage, and going off to the office. The trees shed most of their leaves, and all Brigid could make out when she looked out at the plot were branches like the ribs under her own cold skin.
One morning she woke suddenly. No one had called her. They had forgotten – had they forgotten? She jumped out of bed, pulled on her clothes any way she could, and ran downstairs out of breath. There, she found Francis sitting at the table in everyday clothes.
“Why are you dressed for school?” he said. “It’s a holiday – didn’t they tell you?”
“No,” said Brigid. “I heard Miss say something about today, but I think she said . . .” Brigid searched about in her mind. All she found was: “Remember, children, what I told you about school tomorrow,” but what that was she did not know.
“Well, there’s no school for me,” said Francis.
“Are you sure, Brigid?” said her mother, coming through the door with a teapot. “I was going to let you have a sleep.”
“Maybe it’s just the College,” said their father. “I’ll take Brigid on my way to the office,” and he put on his new glasses, thick as the bottoms of milk bottles, and no one said anything more.
Even if she did have to go to school, Brigid was glad to be driven by her father. When she went to school with her mother or, more usually these days, with Isobel on the bus, it was different. It took a
long time, and sometimes they had to stand, jostled by other people, bringing in from outside their own cold and damp. Some days, for no reason, her father would take her, settling her into the front seat, and on those days, gliding down the road in comfort, Brigid was sorry at how quickly the journey passed. Sometimes he would converse with her in the car but today he did not speak. He looked straight ahead at the road: she knew that he could not see her out of the sides of his eyes. Without his thick glasses, he was still blind as before. Only in the evening, when he was resting, sitting with no glasses in his chair, or in the morning, if he was coming from the bathroom, a towel over his shoulder, with his eyes creased as he tried to see her, did he really seem himself again.
Yet, quiet though he was today, and far away as his mind seemed to be, Brigid was surprised that he did not take her up the side street where the school was. Instead, as never before, he stopped the car at the junction of the main road and the hilly street, waited for her to climb out, then left her and, when she turned round to wave a final goodbye, he was gone. There was nothing where he had been. There was nobody on the street. It was all quiet, except for a dog barking somewhere far off and the sound, in one of the neat, narrow houses, of a baby fretting. Even the trees on the street looked lonely, sparse autumn leaves drifting like pennies towards her as she walked, listening to her own footsteps, up to the school gate.
At the entrance, she saw why there was no one. The high, black gates were wrapped round with their chain. The schoolyard, cold and bleak, was deserted. Brigid’s heart began beating in her throat, in her ears. She did not know how to get home by herself. She had no money. She had never stood on a street by herself, and she did not know anyone here. It began to feel difficult to breathe, and the breaths that got through were ragged and scratchy. She started to run, this way, that, up the street, down, trying to get away from herself, from the fear and the painful beating. She said what she remembered of the only prayer she liked in school: “Oh, Angel of God, My Guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here,” running again, saying it over, down the way she had come, towards the main road where her father had left her and, then, in an instant, she stopped. Her heart turned over. She saw, standing on the other side of the street, plain as could be, in his long tweed coat, her own father. Brigid did not hesitate. She held up her arms and threw herself towards the far side of the road.
Brigid did not see anything, not the woman opening her door, with hands to her face in horror, nor the great lorry trying to stop, screaming with effort as Brigid ran blindly across its path. Only as it managed to halt, an inch from her, did she finally see it, finally hear its screech, towering above her like a panting animal, a smell of burning rubber from its tyres, each one bigger than she was. She looked up, and up, as far as the sky. She saw a man’s face flat, wild, almost grey, his eyes filled with terror, his eyes closing, opening, his head sinking down. He was leaning over his steering wheel, staring at her, as she stood, still and surprised, in the middle of the road.
When she moved, it was not of her doing. From the corner of her eye, she saw the tall figure in its long tweed coat standing above her. Sure that it was her father, she suddenly realised that it was not and she was flooded first with despair then, immediately, with joy, as she saw who it really was. She knew this face, this dark hair with its silver wings. She knew these kind eyes. When he said, “Whoa!” she knew his voice too. The man bending down to her with arms outstretched was George Bailey, George Bailey himself, straight from Bedford Falls. Brigid relaxed as he lifted her away from the lorry, spoke to the driver, carried her to the other side of the road, and set her lightly down. Brigid, far away now from his great height, looked up at him. His hands still on her shoulders, he bent to her level, easily, long, strong legs hunkered on his heels. His voice low and gentle, he asked: “Why did you do that?”
Brigid lifted her shoulders and let them fall. His hands rested on them, steadily, without weight. “My daddy went in his car,” she said. “The school is closed. I thought my daddy had come back.”
He said nothing. His face was quiet, listening, the lines round his eyes kindly, a man who liked to laugh. Yet, he was all stillness. He looked at her so long that she thought she might fall inside his eyes, deep blue, now grey, full of light, eyes like the sky or the sea. Since her father had gone away to have his eyes healed, since Francis had gone away every day to his school, Brigid had never felt so sure of anyone as she did of George Bailey. She reached out and took his hand.
He held her lightly, safely. He said: “Brigid.”
She said: “You know my name.”
He smiled a little, and the lines around his eyes deepened. “I know quite a bit,” he said. “You live in the house near the lemonade factory, right at the edge of the town: the house with the plot and the trees behind.”
Brigid nodded. She felt her heart slow down, the sadness ebbing away. She knew how he knew, because she had prayed for an angel and got George Bailey himself. No wings, no white. Her angel was George Bailey in a tweed coat. He stood up and reached out his other hand to her. Lying in the palm were two shiny chestnuts, polished like wood, one with a rough pale piece in the middle, the other a smooth deep chocolate that she could almost taste.
“Conkers,” said Brigid. “Thank you!”
“I’ll take you home now,” he said.
She slid her hand once more into his, and stood with him in the sharp morning until the trolleybus, its bland face impassive, slid alongside them. Brigid and George sat at ease together on the long leather seats inside the door and, this time, Brigid was close enough to the forward-facing benches to hold, as Francis had done, the smooth knob at the edge of the first seat. The silver knob beneath her hand, and the warmth of George Bailey beside her took away all fear. She relaxed as they climbed the hill, watching the road dip down to where her house was. They passed the convent and the junctions for the roads to the mountain and the city, just as she had done with her family the day they had gone to buy shoes. All was the same – the park’s green revolving gate, its sparse firs and poplars, the depot, the barracks – and Brigid felt content, at peace, as if she were with Francis. George Bailey did not speak, but to Brigid it was as though he had wrapped her in calm, so that she had no more worries. In her pocket, her hand turned over and over the silky chestnuts he had given her.
At the lemonade factory, they got off the bus, Brigid reaching her hand to him as if he were her father. He held her hand firmly as they crossed the wide road. She heard the cows in the farm’s cowshed, contented now. She too was contented: she was safe. George Bailey had saved her.
As they reached the gate, he said: “Brigid, will you promise me never to run out on the road again, whoever you think you see?”
Brigid said: “Yes. I’m sorry.”
He said: “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do that again. Promise me.”
Brigid nodded. “May I ask you something?”
George opened the wooden gates, and handed her in before him.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Are you really George Bailey?”
He smiled, and the kind lines deepened at his eyes. “George Bailey,” he said, and he laughed, softly. “Yes. Okay, then. I’m George Bailey.”
They were almost at the front steps.
“I knew it,” said Brigid, as he walked with her before him up the steps at the side of the house, and rang the doorbell. He was standing with her, a little behind. She could feel his warmth, the protection of his whole body. She could hardly wait to show him to her mother. Perhaps they could keep him.
The door opened. She looked up at her mother’s face, and saw that it was puzzled, surprised and afraid, all at once. “Brigid,” she said. “What on earth . . . ?”
“It’s all right, Mama,” Brigid said, happily. “The school was closed. George Bailey brought me home.”
Her mother looked hard at her, reaching out and drawing her into the house. She closed the door.
“Mama!”
cried Brigid. “You shut the door on George Bailey!”
For the second time that morning, someone bent down in front of Brigid and looked deep into her. “Brigid,” said her mother, “there was no one with you.”
Brigid opened her mouth but, still holding her firmly by the hand, her mother opened the door.
“Look, Brigid,” she said.
No one was there. Brigid twisted round to look up at her mother. “He must have gone when you closed the door. He was there, Mama. He brought me home. He’s my angel. And look what he gave me!” She reached into her pocket for the chestnuts, but they were no longer there.
“Brigid,” said her mother. “I’m going to get you to bed and call the doctor. I don’t know where you’ve been, or what’s happened to you, or how you got home, but I do know when I opened that door you were by yourself on the doorstep.”
The Friday Tree Page 7
