Brigid was still puzzled. “He thought we were like the people he was fighting in a battle?”
“Not us, silly,” said Francis. “The ones who stampeded.”
“That sort of means us. Ned Silver was there. I saw him.”
“Was he?” asked Francis, and his face grew serious. “Are you sure? But he was here with us . . .”
“I saw him. I did see him, at the front of the crowd chasing Davy Crockett.”
Francis laughed then, but his smile had gone. “Ned,” he said. “Always in there. Sure as there’s trouble.” He put down the paper. “I suppose . . . I don’t know . . . he would have had time to get a bus and be down town the same time as us . . . but would he have been allowed?” He seemed to be speaking to himself.
“Ned Silver is allowed to do anything he wants,” said Brigid. “Anything at all.”
Francis, his brow furrowed, nodded. “He gets away with things, all right,” he said, “but I wouldn’t be him.” He folded up the paper. “I’d better take this back down. Anyway, Brigid, I wouldn’t worry too much about not seeing Davy Crockett. It was an actor playing him. He’s in this new film about him. I’m sure the real Davy Crockett wouldn’t have run away from a crowd of children.”
“No,” said Brigid, loyally. “The real Davy wouldn’t have. He killed him a bear when he was only three.”
“He did not,” said Francis. “He kilt him a bar. You have to get these things right,” he said, and then he was gone.
Brigid followed him downstairs. She was still put out. When Ned said he was going to see Davy Crockett, she had thought he was being brought to the picture house, something rare enough to be remarkable in itself. It had not occurred to her that he might be going to see Davy Crockett himself, and it had never struck her that he might be going to do such a thing alone. Meanwhile, whatever Francis said, she had missed the nearest thing to an adventure. She might think up as many stories as she liked, but she would never meet Davy Crockett now.
Her disappointment, however, was short-lived. April brought longer, brighter days, and her mother came home from hospital. Brigid’s first, sharp disappointment about the baby was brief. She had never known the baby, had hardly taken in that she was expected, and had not yet learned to feign emotion. What she wanted was her mother at home, and life as it had always been. She welcomed every return to normality, glad even to hear her father read out the news, telling his wife what was going on in the world as if she had caused it, getting excited about who should speak for the people in Mid-Ulster, or why the government was cutting the children’s allowance. “In England,” he declared, “they have two shillings for third and following children. And we are to make do with one shilling and sixpence! Because Stormont doesn’t want to extend encouragement to people to have large families! Holy cats!”
“I don’t think we need worry, Maurice,” came the quiet reply.
Brigid, watching the blue lines on her mother’s thin hands, and the brown shadows beneath her eyes, felt a sadness she did not understand.
And then, though the days lengthened further and the leaves on the trees grew bolder, the Friday Tree waving to her its early summer bloom, time slowed. Even Brigid’s birthday, due in the middle of May, seemed to have stopped its steady approach. She could not understand why the days had extra hours and minutes, each longer than the one before, and began to believe she would never get to her birthday. She longed to be six, yet was sorry to leave five behind. It had been such an achievement to reach five that it seemed unkind just to abandon it, yet every lengthening day, every creamy blossom on the rowan or burst of pale yellow on the broom, the flowers that would become blackcurrants, every sound of the proud blackbird and his tired brown wife planning their day, and the cackling magpies swaggering up the garden, told her it was time to move into another summer. She wanted to get into short socks, but Isobel, whose business Brigid considered it was not, said, “Ne’er cast a clout till May be out”, and Brigid thought she would be in woollen socks forever. One morning, however, when the birthday was very near, Brigid asked again, and heard Isobel say the thing about clouts yet again. Just as she was about to pull on the grey woollens, her mother, frail still, but less tired, more like herself, called from the landing as she went past: “That refers to the May flower, Isobel, the hawthorn, not the month. And it’s well out. Put her in short socks, please.” Brigid felt a surge of happiness, and when she heard her mother say, “It’ll be time for sandals soon too,” she believed at last the summer days might come again.
There was something else going on, as the summer came in. Though nothing had been said to Brigid, she gathered on this first day of short socks that new schools were being considered. Coming along the hall in anticipation of breakfast, she heard her mother’s voice.
“I boarded,” she heard her say. “I came to like it all right in the end.”
Boarding meant going away to school, like Ned Silver. Brigid did not want that.
Then she heard her father: “I don’t want him sent away,” and Brigid, understanding, with relief, that she was not to be sent away, quickly realised with a cold jolt that it was Francis they were discussing. She stopped in the hall, still and silent, hardly breathing, listening as she had seen Isobel do.
“But that blow,” she heard her mother say. “Those streets across to the College. If he should be hurt again . . .”
She heard her father flap the paper, the signal that discussion was at an end.
“Well, anyway,” her mother said, “we’ll try to get Brigid changed – yes, Maurice, we will – even if she should have to pluck daisies and play with plasticine. She’s not even six, yet. There’s lots of time and, for heaven’s sake, can’t I bring her on myself at home?”
Brigid, wondering still if she ever would be six, felt her heart lift at the thought that she might be able to escape from her school. With a spring to her step, she announced her presence, and settled to her breakfast with new hope.
In fact, it was not so very bad any more in school. Now that she was reading well, and writing, and had learned to keep her stories to herself, she managed quite well. It was important to know the group games, to avoid being singled out. Skipping was essential. She learned to join the end of a line, poised on one foot, and not to miss her turn. Then, to the sound of a chant of a lady on a hillside, wanting quantities of gold and silver, she learned to jump through the semi-circle of rope without becoming tangled. If it caught in her legs it stung like a wasp, and on rainy days it smelled like wet washing, but Brigid mastered the rope, and got through playtime most days without much incident. Some days, hard voices closed about her, girls with folded arms lined up in twos and threes at the gate, at the door of the outside toilets, even in the classroom if the teacher stepped outside for more than a moment. Brigid learned to saw her natural voice to a harsh edge and to use this voice when the gang came after her to pull buttons off her coat or hold her down in mud. Approaching six, she knew that the most important thing in school was to keep her head down. She learned the things that would protect her, and protect her family from knowing what it was like. Her mother was still frail, and her father was far away these days, there but not there, always thinking, sitting with his head in his hands, holding the paper at different angles as though things would change if he looked at them another way. And, in the glorious month of her birthday, it began to seem that she might escape to a school where children plucked daisies and played with plasticine.
Every morning in May, a statue was carried to the front of the schoolyard, and flowers were placed in front of it. The statue was to remind them that Mary was the Mother of God, and that the month of May was hers. At first, Brigid thought that the statue itself was Mary the Mother of God, but it was quickly made clear that this was not so. She liked only one of the hymns, of flowers from woodlands and hillside: it made her think of Tullybroughan and the farm, and she decided that she, too, would bring flowers of the fairest. She would bring flowers of the fairest and blosso
ms the rarest, to Mary, the loveliest flower of the May, and perhaps then Mary would ask her son who was God to give her a new school, and keep Francis from being sent away, and make her mother strong, and help her father see the paper properly.
On the morning of her birthday, therefore, before anyone was up, Brigid managed to take scissors and a little string from the kitchen. She turned the lock and undid the latch of the back door without difficulty, and it struck her that this was because she was now six. She was able, with some effort, to cut a little of the pale broom with its slender stalk; and buttercups and daisies were easy. She picked white bells from the hedge, and long-stemmed daisies and yellow buttercups from the grass. She was tying this bundle when she had a sudden thought, and picked a bright flower, golden as the sun, and then another, and soon she had made a fitting bouquet for the May altar. It was fortunate that, the weather was still considered cold enough for a coat: it meant she was able to conceal her flowers fairly well. Her mother told her to behave in school, because when she got home, she would find surprises; and Brigid did not point out that in school there was no choice but to behave.
By happy chance she did not have to go with Isobel: her father drove her, and he was very quiet, not noticing the flowers tucked inside the coat, not noticing anything but the road ahead. Brigid wondered why he did not mention her birthday. She stood at the gate and waved to him, puzzled at his forgetting, then turned in to place her offering with those of the others.
As she stood back to admire them, she heard a thin voice, tall above her. “What do you think you are doing?” asked the voice, narrow and cutting, like wire. Even before she looked, Brigid knew it was the nun with steel-rimmed glasses, the nun she had thought on her first day might be Sister Chalk. Brigid felt the chill sweep of her habit past her head, and saw Sister Chalk’s handless wide sleeves joined at her wrist.
“Sister,” she said, standing up, eyes down, as she had learned, “I’m making an offering for . . .” she searched frantically for the right description, “for Our Lady, Queen of the . . . loveliest flower of the . . . fairest.”
The nun grew even taller: even the sunlight of the spring morning failed to make its way round her sharp pointing headdress. “An offering?” she said, her voice like ice. “Of weeds?” She took one hand out of the sleeve, and her long fingers flicked Brigid’s bouquet with disdain. “Hedge weeds, daisies, buttercups and – what are these – dandelions?” The bright yellow flowers were plucked out and torn. “How dare you,” said the nun, and her voice was deathly quiet. “How dare you insult Our Lady with your weeds!” In a moment she had reached out and caught Brigid’s wrist, produced from deep inside her sleeve a thick ruler, raised it high against the sun and brought it down hard, three times, on Brigid’s hand. Then she turned and swept away, her rosary beads clicking against the bunched skirt and her thin stick body.
Brigid, shocked, could not move, could not hear, could not see. Gradually she heard the laughing, the jeering. The gang was forming: “Dandelions! Dandelions! You’ll wet the bed! You’ll wet the bed!” The chant gathered momentum, turning in seconds to “She wet the bed,” and the mockery grew louder, until Brigid thought she must run, run away, run anywhere, and she thought she would burst, burst everything when, somewhere in the chaos, she heard a quiet voice.
Commanding silence, there stood above her another nun. Brigid stiffened, then saw that it was the kind round sister who had shown her how to make Brigid’s crosses. The nun dismissed the crowd of girls, then looked down at Brigid for a few moments before she spoke. Her arms, like the arms of Sister Chalk, were buried in her wide sleeves, and Brigid watched them carefully.
“You brought flowers for the altar, Brigid.” It was not a question.
Brigid nodded, then added, “Yes, Sister,” but did not look up to meet her eye.
The nun withdrew her hands from her folded sleeves, and Brigid stepped back. Yet the hand now extended towards her held not a ruler but a handkerchief, big like a man’s, but sewn with small neat stitches. She handed it to Brigid. “Dry your eyes,” she said, “like a good child. Blow your nose. There’s no call for all that drama.”
Brigid reached out her hand and took the handkerchief. “Thank you, Sister,” she said.
The nun did not move, or speak. Then she put her head on one side, and she was once more like a mother bird, her dark round bird eyes small and bright, and she said: “I remember reading somewhere that the dandelion is the flower of Brigid.” Then she reached behind her, lifted a large hand bell and, leaving Brigid with the big handkerchief in her hand, walked about the yard ringing the bell, until the girls scrambled and squeezed into lines.
To Brigid, joining her own line, the nun had performed a kind of magic. Brigit the Fire Goddess, Brigid the Saint and Brigid of the Flowers were all now one with Brigid Arthur and the girls were just girls again, small girls and big in straight lines on a May morning, singing their hymns to Mary. Brigid saw that the kind Sister had retrieved some of her golden dandelions and placed them, with her daisies and her buttercups, and her pale spiky broom, close by Mary and her silent blue folds. Brigid lifted her head. She was Brigid of the Flowers.
Throughout the remainder of that day, however, she moved very carefully. She did not want to attract any more attention. At the end of school, she stood at the gate, waiting for Isobel, who was never on time. The day was blue and the breeze light, and for a moment she remembered the other cold blue day when she had stood alone until George Bailey brought her home. She turned her eyes to the end of the road where she had run to him, thinking he was her father and, out of the corner of her eye, softened by distance, she thought for a moment that she saw him again. It almost seemed that George Bailey, her own George, was standing at the other side of the main road, near the park. It was too far for her to see clearly, but it was, for that second, so like him, as she remembered him, the day he brought her home. That day, so strange at the time, now seemed a lost and lovely place. In the deep pocket of her raincoat, she still had the two chestnuts he had given her, their rough and smooth sensations sliding and rolling beneath her anxious fingers. She had thought they were lost: when she found them, through a hole in the lining of her coat, she had shown them to no one, not even Francis. They were her secret with George Bailey, and now, today, she put her hands round them for comfort, as if she had really found George again. Her eyes closed, lost in her thoughts, she did not hear the engine of her father’s car, but when she opened her eyes, there he stood before her, his hand outstretched.
“Daddy!” she cried, in joy. “I thought it would be Isobel. I’m so glad it’s you. Daddy, I thought I saw . . .”
He spoke across her. “I telephoned home and told your mama I would bring you. I left the office early.” He never left the office early, even on Christmas Eve, and she could scarcely remember a time when he had collected her after school.
“For me, Daddy?” said Brigid.
“For you, Brigid,” he said, and Brigid was content.
She climbed into the car; her father told her to pull in her arms, and then he closed the door. They drove away from the school and turned on to the main road. At the corner, she saw some of the gang looking at the car and she could see she would pay for this pleasure, but that was for tomorrow, not today. The railings by the park where she thought she had glimpsed George were blank again; there was no George there. Yet, beside her father in the big grey car, Brigid stopped missing George Bailey. The day was soft and bright; she was with her father; she was going home to surprises. Beside them a young girl in a blazer and a summer dress cycled on the inside lane, the light breeze catching her hair.
“Tell me,” said her father, “does somebody have a birthday, today? Let me see. Who is it?”
Brigid saw that the corners of his eyes were crinkled; he looked like Francis, young and playful.
“You know fine well it’s me, Daddy,” she said, and gave his arm a little nudge with hers.
In that moment she heard two things
. The first was her father saying, “Brigid, don’t . . .” Then she heard a mighty thump, and the car stopped heavily in the middle of the road. The girl in her bright dress sat awkwardly on the kerb, all the pretty flowers of her skirt stained with brown and red. Brigid heard her father’s breathing, sharp, gasping: “What did she . . . What was she . . . turning there . . . ?”
Then he was out of the car, picking the girl up, settling her. Her knee appeared to be cut, and he bound it with his handkerchief. The girl got up and, with only a slight limp, wheeled her bicycle across the road, and walked into the neat garden of one of the houses. He waited until she turned her key in the door, and lifted his hand in farewell. She waved at him, a bright and friendly wave, as if he were her father, too. Then he got in the car again, starting up the engine.
“Turning there, in front of me,” he said. “She’s lucky she wasn’t killed.”
“Is she all right, Daddy?” Brigid heard her own voice, small and afraid. She should not have nudged him.
“She is, no thanks to herself. The knee is cut, but it’s not bad. She lives there, she says, in one of those houses. She wouldn’t let me go across with her to explain.”
“Daddy,” said Brigid, looking straight ahead, “I’m sorry I pushed your arm.”
He said: “It wasn’t your fault, Brigid. I didn’t see her. I’m not paying attention these days. I should have gone across with her.”
“But, thank you for collecting me, Daddy,” Brigid said, to feel better.
He did not reply, and she knew he was gone again, into that distant place where he could not be found.
Back at the house, Brigid’s heart was heavy. The journey home had begun so well. She felt she herself had gone far away, that everything was happening at a distance. Even the voices, her mother asking her father what was wrong, sounded distant, a little muffled. Yet, from behind her glass wall, she knew a great effort had been made, and that she must be pleased.
The Friday Tree Page 25
