Mrs Quinlan was announcing something about an art club and a sponsored swim. Katie relaxed – it didn’t concern her. She tried to pull the elastic on her ponytail tighter.
A boy with a book of names came down the line. He put a tick opposite each name.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘My name is Katie – Katie Connors. I’m new. This is my first day.’
He scanned the list.
‘Well, you’re not down here.’ He stopped and stared at her. ‘What year are you in?’ He had raised his voice and a few heads turned to stare at her.
‘First year.’
‘Wrong line, this is third year. Anyway, you’re too late now – get the first teacher to mark you in.’ He turned and walked away, leaving her standing between the lines, in no-man’s land. Then, as if by magic, the whole assembly turned around and started to make their way out the door. It was like a stampede and she was swept along in it.
Luckily, a few minutes later, Mrs Quinlan spotted her.
‘Ah Katie, good morning. Now let me look at your time sheet. Yes, your first class is maths, that’s upstairs in room 4. Mr Byrne will be taking you.’
When she reached the classroom door, Katie was tempted to take to her heels and run, but instead she took a deep breath and opened the door. Mr Byrne stopped in mid-sentence.
‘Ah, the new girl. What’s the name again?’
‘Katie. Katie Connors.’
‘Ah yes, I have it here on the list. Now find a seat for yourself.
All eyes turned and look at the new girl. A girl in the third row grudgingly moved a pile of books from the empty chair beside her and Katie sat down. Her name was Natalie, written in big letters on the book cover, and Katie noticed that she bit her nails. Her face was hidden by a curtain of straight brown hair which she used to avoid looking at Katie.
The blackboard was covered in numbers and Katie got out her pen and began to copy them down as the teacher explained what he wanted them to do for homework. As soon as the bell rang, everyone pushed back their chairs and headed out through the open door and down the corridor. Katie followed behind as they all went into another classroom. A tall, dark-haired teacher had already started class when she walked shyly in and was reading a passage from a book called The Diary of Anne Frank.
Natalie sat beside another girl now and avoided even looking at Katie. She whispered to her friend and they giggled. There were only two vacant desks, one on its own, practically under the teacher’s nose, the other right at the back. Katie opted for the latter and sat down beside a boy with glasses and a rash of pimples all over his neck. He smiled at her, then turned his attention back to the teacher.
Katie listened too. She became wrapped up in the world of this girl Anne, hidden in an attic room.
The teacher suddenly stopped. He began to go around the class asking questions at random. Everyone seemed to know the answers and be familiar with the book. Katie hoped above hope that he wouldn’t come to the back row, but like a strange homing device he must have read her mind and pointed at her.
‘The new girl. Yes, I mean you – Katie, is it? My name is Sean Ryan. Now with our introductions over, will you be so kind as to tell me why Anne and her family were hiding?’
Katie could feel her mouth go dry. She had missed the start of the story and she wasn’t sure. She tried to flip her memory back over his words in search of a clue. Two or three people tittered. The boy beside her coughed. Seconds were ticking away. The boy coughed again making her look slightly over at him and on his open pad he had written the word: Jewish.
Like a lifeline Katie grabbed the word. ‘Jewish, Mr Ryan, her family, they were Jewish.’
The teacher, satisfied, moved on to question someone else.
A wash of relief flooded over her and she murmured ‘Thanks’ to the boy.
‘My name is Paul. Welcome,’ he wrote in large round letters in the pad. At the end of class he pointed her in the direction of the computer room.
It was miles away and up two flights of stairs. The girls – there were mostly girls – sat in lines hitting the keyboards. They were all so busy concentrating they barely noticed her slip into her place.
Katie sat down in front of a machine. Jeepers, she thought, I haven’t a clue what to do. She had never used a computer before. The minute you barely tipped a letter with your finger it was printed up on the screen.
The teacher came up quickly.
‘Welcome, love! Have you ever used one of these wordprocessors before?’
Katie shook her head.
‘Well, I’ll just set you up.’ The teacher pressed two or three keys. ‘Now, see those lines there?’ She pointed to the screen. ‘It is taking you through the start-up programme. Try not to use just two fingers. Here, spread out your hands, each finger on a letter. Try and type this paragraph, okay?’
Katie had to concentrate really hard to find the right letters. The others around her were quick as lightning. She’d never be that quick.
The teacher, a tall freckle-faced woman with an easy smile, came back every now and then to check how she was getting on.
It was lunchtime before Katie knew it and she had to rush down to the locker-room. She had a sandwich and a can of orange, but no one stopped to tell her where to go to eat. She spotted Natalie and a crowd of other girls from her class heading for a large room, so she just followed. The walls were covered in noticeboards with posters advertising all kinds of activities in the school. As she ate her sandwich, squashed on the end of a bench with a crowd of second- and third-years who ignored her, she pretended to study the posters.
The afternoon passed, more classes and more people and more rooms until the final bell went. One or two from her class nodded at her as they headed for the bus stop.
Mam was waiting to pounce on her the minute she got home.
‘Well, pet! How did it go? Was it all right?’
Katie felt whacked. All she wanted to do was sit down and relax, but she could tell by Mam’s face that she expected a blow-by-blow account of it all. Katie couldn’t disappoint her.
‘What about your class? Did you make any friends?’
‘Yeah, Mam, I had lunch with a big crowd of them,’ she lied, ‘and we did computers and all sorts of things.’
Mam smiled. ‘I’ve been thinking about you all day long, worrying about you. When we were young they used call us the Black Wagons and no one in the class wanted to sit near us. The teachers never paid much heed to us. I suppose they thought a few days in from the cold and wet was as much as we deserved. I didn’t bother with schooling so I’m proud of you trying to get an education, Katie love. I know if your Da was here he would be too. He’s just a bit ignorant as my grandmother used to say, but he has a family to make him proud.’ Mam chattered on and on excitedly. ‘I’m glad they were all nice to you in that big school.’
* * *
The next few days things didn’t get any easier. She got some of her books second-hand and the headmistress gave her the rest.
The school day was so long. Most of the time she just felt really tired.
‘Knacker.’
‘Tinker.’
She heard them, the names they called as she walked by. Did they think she was deaf?
Natalie and her friends began to hold their noses and say ‘Phew, what a pong!’ when they were near her.
The classes and the teachers were all right though. Even in a week or two she had learned so much. Her head was bursting with it all and she wished there was someone at home to share all this with. She was surprised to find herself saying, ‘Francis would be interested in that’, and ‘I’ll tell Francis about that in the summer’.
The boys in class never said much to her. Paul, who was about the nicest of them, would explain what homework she had i f she didn’t understand.
She especially loved PE. It was great to get a chance to run around and move instead of just sitting at a desk all the time. Also she could run fast and had good
ball control. But when they picked teams for basketball, why was she always picked last? One by one the team captains chose until only the ones who were no good at sports and Katie were left at the bottom of the pile.
Funny, but once she started to play she didn’t care how or why they had picked her. She just loved playing the game and could run rings around most of them. She tossed her long red hair in their eyes to annoy them.
‘Keep your filthy hair away or you’ll give us all nits,’ Natalie shouted at her during one game.
‘Cut it out, Natalie.’ A strange-looking girl called Brona Dowling came over. She had short spiky hair and a row of earrings up one ear.
‘Yeah, leave her alone,’ one or two of the others added.
‘Ah! Now we know why Brona’s hair is cut so short,’ jeered Natalie, flouncing off the court, pretending to scratch her head.
Katie was often tempted to just not go back to school, to shout, ‘STUFF IT’, ‘I hate your school’, ‘I hate all of you’, to walk out through those doors, but the thought of Sally and that uniform hanging like a ghost in her wardrobe haunted her. She would not be beaten. She was a Connors and her people had survived a lot worse than this crowd could imagine.
Chapter 17
GALLOPING
‘A deserted wife, that’s what she called me. She said I probably wouldn’t have got the house if they knew those were the home circumstances.’ Mam was almost hysterical. A new social worker had called as Miss O’Gorman was sick. The new person had got Mam all worried and she was convinced that someone was trying to get her out of the house.
‘I told her Ned will be here soon, he wouldn’t stay away that long. I’m no deserted wife!’ Mam ranted on. ‘These people are always trying to put people into boxes, I know what I am and it’s not a deserted wife.’
Katie knew Mam was also worried about money as they had so little to manage on. There were gas bills and electricity bills, and rent to pay now too. Mam went door-to-door as often as she could around the estates and houses nearby. She always came back tired, but if she was lucky there would be some second-hand clothes and a few tins of food – usually beans and more beans and more beans. Katie kept hoping there might be a pair of black winter shoes in her size in one of the bags, but no such luck. Her old worn-out shoes would have to do.
Hannah let slip to Katie that Paddy was causing trouble on the bus. He wouldn’t sit down and the driver was very cross with him. The teacher said one more incident and he’d be put off the bus.
‘I don’t want to go on my own, Katie, I know I have friends there but I don’t want to go on my own.’
‘Don’t fret, I’ll talk to him,’ the older sister promised.
When she went into their room, Brian and Paddy were rolling around the floor mock-punching each other.
‘Paddy, get up and stop messing!’
‘Buzz off.’
‘Get up. I’m just saying this once: no more messing on the bus or Da will give you a right belt when he sees you.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s not around.’
‘He will be and I’ll tell him. Mam’s not well, she’s upset at the moment and you’re not helping one bit.’
Her younger brother just shrugged his shoulders and jeered at her. She looked at them, Brian and Paddy, how could two brothers be so different? When they were babies they were so identical that at first only Mam and Da could tell them apart.
Paddy had been born first and had always been the leader, the lively one, Brian was like a mirror image or shadow that followed him everywhere. He would always let Paddy answer first or talk when other people were around and yet when they played together they always seemed to be equals. Now they seemed to be going in different directions and it was affecting them both.
Three days later it happened. Paddy opened the emergency door of the bus and two of the other kids fell out. Luckily neither of them was hurt. But if the bus had not been stopped at the time or if the traffic had been heavy, things would have been much worse. So Paddy was off the bus for a month. He would have to walk all the way to school.
Things were going from bad to worse and Katie went to talk to Tom about it all. Her older brother was busy combing his hair and lacing up high canvas boots. She watched as he pulled on a bright new bomber jacket.
He swung around. ‘What are you gawping at?’
‘Nothing … Tom … Look, I’m worried about Mam. She’s not well and she’s scared we’ll lose the house.’
He kept combing his hair.
‘I never asked to be in this house,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘You never are in this house,’ she shouted back.
‘Look, Katie, I’m in a hurry. My pals are waiting for me up at the arcade.’
‘Don’t you care about Mam and Paddy? You could at least talk to him. You’re his brother!’
‘I can’t do anything. I’ll be late. I’m going.’ He brushed past her and began to run down the stairs shouting goodbye to Mam on his way out the door.
‘You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourself,’ she shouted after him.
Katie stared at his bed. A pale blue shirt that she had never seen before lay discarded in a heap on the bed with his old jumper. Then she thought of the new jacket he had on. How come he had a new jacket when the rest of them had got no new clothes since the fire, only the cast-offs Mam got? She tried to block out her worst fears and suspicions. It would be just too much if Tom was in trouble too.
* * *
Galloping, galloping. She could hear the thunder of hooves in her sleep. The dream came again. The blue horse – she was about to touch it when she woke up, and a feeling of loss overwhelmed her. She was really thirsty too and decided to go downstairs to get a drink of milk.
The light in the kitchen was already on and Mam was sitting waiting for the kettle to boil. She had grey shadows under her eyes.
‘So you’re awake too.’ Mam patted the stool beside her.
‘I had another dream,’ Katie confided.
‘I wish I could dream.’
‘Do you never dream?’
‘I do, but usually only bad ones.’
‘Are you okay, Mam?’ Katie blurted out.
‘Yes, Katie love, don’t you fret. It’s enough for one of us to be worrying.’
‘What are you worried about?’
‘All sorts of things.’
‘Do you miss Da?’
‘You know the answer to that, pet – we all do. Look at poor Paddy – he’s lost without him and getting into trouble. And I’m afraid that Davey and Hannah will forget him altogether. And as for Tom – that boy can’t look me straight in the eye – I’m uneasy about him. Maybe he should have stayed with Ned – a boy his age needs his father.’
‘Maybe Ned was right,’ she continued, ‘maybe we shouldn’t have taken the house. We would have found some way to manage. My mother raised ten of us in a wagon. We moved from place to place and camped wherever we could. Life was very hard in those days. Things were short. Many’s the time we went hungry or walked barefoot. Times were hard – and it wasn’t just us. The whole country was poor and yet people shared things. They weren’t paying back big loans for houses and cars and videos and gadgets. They didn’t chase us from their doors.’
‘I know, Mam,’ Katie whispered.
‘You don’t really, Katie. How is it I feel so bad sitting here in my fine big house with a good roof over my head and walls and windows to keep the rain and cold out? I who grew up in a wagon? Yet sometimes I feel the walls of this place closing in on me and I feel the floor above is going to fall down on me. I could scream and scream and not a sinner would hear me.’
‘It wouldn’t fall down, Mam, and the neighbours would hear you.’
‘I’m like an animal in a cage – being held in, running from room to room, doing tricks. I swear I can hear the blood going through my head and my heart pumping. There’s no one to have a laugh with or a bit of a chat to.’
‘I’m here, Mam. Yo
u have me.’
‘I know, Katie love, I know that.’
The kettle began to boil and Mam made a big mug of tea for herself. She took long slow sips of the hot milky liquid. ‘I just wish that I was half the woman my mother was … If only we still had our caravan, I’d have managed.’
‘You can’t turn the clock back,’ Katie whispered softly.
‘I know. If only I could. That fire – it was that fire that destroyed everything … it destroyed us. And my blue horse gone, burnt to bits – every bit of luck we had is gone … gone up in smoke.’
‘Mam, stop. Please stop. You’re getting too upset. Come on, we’ll go back upstairs and try to sleep.’
Katie switched off the kitchen light and followed her mother up the stairs.
‘Things will get sorted out, Mam, honest, they will.’ She wanted to make sure her mother went to bed and followed her into the larger room. Davey lay sprawled across half the double bed. Mam pulled back the pink nylon quilt and blanket to get in, and she tossed her old dressing-gown on the bottom of the bed.
‘Go on, love, away to bed yourself or you’ll fall asleep in school tomorrow.’
Katie barely heard what Mam was saying. She stared at her. Mam was pregnant.
In a few months’ time there would be another little brother or sister. She should have guessed. How did she not know? Another mouth to feed. How would Mam cope?
The Blue Horse Page 8
