by Laura Elliot
‘You’ll be able to make a racket then,’ said Conor. He waited for everyone to laugh. When the adults did not turn around he repeated his remark in a louder voice. Beth stuck her tongue out at him, hating him because he was always making fun of her and doing Chinese burns on her arm worse than anyone she knew.
The previous summer, the back garden of Cherry Vale had been as smooth as a carpet, marked with white lines, with a net stretched across the centre.
‘Lady Muck, showing off as usual,’ said Marjory, sounding cross when Aunty May invited them over to see the new tennis court and have tea on the lawn. Her cousins, dressed in white shorts and tops, were hitting balls at each other across the net.
‘You could play with Kieran and Conor if you had your own racquet,’ Aunty May said.
Beth told her she was not allowed to make a racket and everyone except her mother laughed.
‘Really, Marjory, does the poor child know anything?’ Her aunt’s thin brown eyebrows disappeared under her fringe and Uncle Albi lifted Beth high up in the air. He said she was a great one for making a racket wherever she went but she was still his favourite sweetheart.
When Christmas tea was over, Barry played his accordion. Sara danced a reel, her hair bobbing around her face, light on her toes, and when she bowed, everyone clapped as if they were never going to stop. She would have danced again only her father said it was Beth’s turn. He squeezed the accordion and the notes seemed to dance with her. In her head she could hear his voice saying, ‘Listen to the beat, Beth.’ She felt herself rising, moving into the rhythm, her legs swinging high, her arms stiff beside her green velvet dress. Her mother frowned, saying something with her hand over her mouth to Aunty May. They laughed together, a silent sound buried under the music. The accordion raced away in front of Beth, her feet no longer able to find the notes. Her father slowed down and stopped. He told her to start again and not to be nervous – she was a terrific dancer. She felt hot and cross, her cheeks heavy as if she was going to cry.
‘I’ve got the very thing to cheer her up,’ said Uncle Albi. ‘Come with me, Beth.’
The back garden was cold and dark. Beth could hardly see Anaskeagh Head, the big mountain behind Cherry Vale. Her father said it was higher than Mount Everest. Fairies lived under the rocks where they spun the magic gorse blossom and covered the mountain in a coat of gold. Uncle Albi switched on a torch. It shone on the tennis court and the high bushes that bent like crouching animals, reminding her of monsters in wardrobes, silly things she had imagined when she was only a kid.
He opened the door of the garden shed. ‘Look at what we have here,’ he said, shining the torch over Sadie. His voice made goosebumps on Beth’s skin. The dog lifted her head and growled but did not move.
‘Don’t go too close,’ he warned Beth. ‘She’ll snap if you touch her babies.’
The pups had golden coats and floppy ears. They tugged at Sadie’s belly, making thin yelping noises and swiping at each other with their paws.
‘We’re not supposed to go near the puppies.’ Uncle Albi looked cross, as if it was Beth’s fault they were in the shed where it was cold and smelly from the dogs.
‘Blossom will murder us if she finds out. So we must keep this our secret. Do you understand me, Beth?’ He crouched down in front of her, trapping her between his knees. ‘If you don’t tell anyone I showed you the puppies I’ll give you one when it’s weaned from its mammy. What do you say, Beth? Our big secret, huh? Say it now. Come on now, our big secret.’
‘Our big secret.’ Her throat felt sore, as if it was closing over and she would never again be able to swallow. She wanted to go back to the drawing room with the log fire and the Christmas tree and Sara, sitting between her cousins, watching the train running fast and far away along the tracks. She made herself think about Jess O’Donovan, her very best friend in school, and she sang the song Sister Maria had taught them, singing it so loudly inside her head that she couldn’t hear anything else except the words of ‘Over the Sea to Skye’. Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing… Carry me safe to Skye.
He ran his finger inside the collar of her green Christmas dress, the material rustling soft as the crepe paper they used in school for the Christmas decorations. He untied the white sash at the back and she heard the silvery clink of the zip opening.
‘I didn’t think little girls wore woolly vests any more.’ He was laughing softly, as if he had said something very funny. He pushed down the shoulders of her dress, lifting out her arms – first one and then the other. The vest her mother had knitted hurt her face when he pulled it over her head because he didn’t know he was supposed to open the buttons at the top. But she was afraid to cry in case he told her mother, who would sigh and say, ‘Honest to God, Beth, I can’t take you anywhere.’
Sadie’s eyes were closing. The pups were quiet, sleepy quiet. Their names were Goldie, Banjo, Lily and Pete. Uncle Albi asked her if he was her favourite uncle. She nodded her head and he said, ‘Then give me a kiss to prove it.’
Her heart pounded as the hot red feeling opened up in her head and Uncle Albi kept whispering, ‘Jesus… Jesus… Jesus,’ as if he was in church, on his knees and saying his prayers.
Chapter 3
Statues was a game of absolute stillness. The girl who was ‘on’ stood with her back to the other girls, trying to guess the exact moment to spin around and catch one of them moving. Sara was the best at the game, nimble on her feet or frozen as a statue. Beth was always caught, stumbling forward, swaying to the side, sometimes falling.
When her uncle called to Fatima Parade she stayed perfectly still and silent. Invisible until he looked at her and smiled. ‘Little liar, Beth. Black spots on your soul. If your mother finds out you’re a liar she’ll take you to Sergeant O’Donnell and he’ll put you where he puts all the bad girls… In jail forever.’ In Cherry Vale, when no one was watching, he pointed to her reflection in the big mirror above the mantelpiece and said, ‘God sees your soul, Beth Tyrell. He sees the dark stains upon it and his heart bleeds because he knows you’re a naughty girl, a girl who tells wicked lies.’
Her eyes had been stolen from a witch, he said, his breath warm in her ear. Green eyes that cast a spell and bewitched him. She didn’t want to be a witch with big bold eyes. She wanted baby-blue eyes like Sara and long blonde hair in ringlets. But her black hair never curled, no matter how tightly her mother twisted it in rags at night.
‘Forked lightning,’ sighed Marjory, trying to comb it in the mornings. She cut it short with her dressmaking scissors, traced a parting at the side and said, ‘At least it’s manageable now.’
Beth stared at her white witch’s face in the mirror and saw what her uncle saw. Her soul was no longer small and pure as the Eucharistic Host but spotted like a sheet of blotting paper, inky sins that spread and spread until all the space was gone and she was ready to burn in everlasting flames. How to make it pure again? At night she prayed, her knees numb on the lino, and Sara shrieked, complaining about her sister’s cold feet, when she finally climbed into bed.
In confession Father Breen was silent when she told him she had committed a grievous mortal sin. His face beyond the grille was lost in a dark holy place. He leaned towards her. She could see his eyes. He was searching beyond her body, staring deep into her black soul.
‘Tell me this sin, child. Don’t be afraid.’ His stern voice commanded the truth. She tried to find the words to describe what had happened in those hidden moments. When she sobbed Father Breen sighed, as if he was very tired. ‘Child, you must talk to your mother. Come back and see me next week when you have done so. Do you promise to talk to her?’
She nodded wordlessly, afraid to explain about Charlie and jail and how hell was waiting for her because of the disgrace she would bring on her family. Little liar Beth. Black spots on your sinful soul.
Her uncle was the most important man in Anaskeagh. He owned a factory with fields all around it and a fancy furniture shop in the centre of th
e town. He called his shop his ‘showrooms’ and put red notices in the window about ‘Unbeatable Bargains’. When he called to Beth’s house he did not knock on the front door.
‘Anybody home?’ he shouted and opened the door with his own key. He brought gifts, presents for Christmas and for the girls’ birthdays, furniture from his factory and envelopes with money. When no one wanted new clothes and people no longer danced to the music of the Anaskeagh Ceili Band, he opened the kitchen press and placed the envelopes behind the milk jug.
‘When are you going to get yourself a real job, Mr Music Man?’ He would slap Beth’s father on the back and jerk him forward. ‘One that supports Marjory and the children? Just say the word and I’ll fix you up tomorrow. A regular wage and the delivery van to take home with you in the evenings.’
‘I’m well able to look after my own family, thank you very much.’ Barry’s face would turn red. ‘When I want charity I’ll ask for it. But you’ll see me eat grass first.’
After he left, Marjory always sighed and said, ‘Thank God for the goodness of Albert. I dread to think how we would manage without his kindness.’
Her father talked about moving to Dublin where he could get proper work with a proper band in proper dance halls. There was nothing ‘proper’ about Anaskeagh, he said. It suffocated him, its small-town gossip, with people interfering in other people’s business and running to the confession box every time they put a little finger out of place. He would rather die than drive a delivery van for Albert Grant. The sooner they all moved the better. He told Beth about the wide streets in Dublin and the lights that shone in shop windows, and how the women in their clicking high heels and red lipstick always met their boyfriends under Clerys’ clock. Marjory said her roots were in Anaskeagh and it would take more than the word of Barry Tyrell to persuade her to pull them up.
Sometimes she allowed Beth to stay overnight at Jess O’Donovan’s farm, where yellow cats dozed under the tractor and geese marched up and down the cobbled yard, flapping their wings when they were shooed away from the open kitchen door.
Jess’s mother, Catherine O’Donovan, wore wellingtons and jeans and drove a tractor. When she wasn’t herding cows down the lane to be milked or digging up turnips in the fields, she read books about the stars. She kept a telescope under her bed and on clear nights she went up to the hill field to study the sky. Sometimes she took Jess and Beth with her. She pointed to Venus, traced the Milky Way, the Plough and the Great Bear. When they returned to the kitchen they toasted bread in front of the range and drank hot milk with sugar sprinkled on top. In the evening Frank O’Donovan and his sons milked the cows in the byre and sang cowboy songs. They asked Beth to sing ‘Papa Oom Mow Mow’, which her father had taught her, and Frank swore her singing turned the milk into pure cream.
On the farm no one told Beth she was wicked. When she accidentally broke the cut-glass bowl used only for the Christmas sherry trifle Catherine said it was one less dust gatherer to worry about. She handed Beth a blouse from the laundry pile and ordered her to dry her eyes. Tears should only be shed for reasons of the heart. Beth wasn’t sure what she meant. Maybe it was supposed to stop her heart pounding, and it did, but she knew deep down, no matter what Catherine or anyone else said, that she was a very bad little girl.
The friends were separated in fourth class when they were discovered playing dot games on the back pages of Beth’s copybook. Sheila O’Neill was moved to the bench beside Beth. She had chilblains on her ears and her pale blue eyes reminded Beth of a frightened rabbit. Not that Beth had ever seen a frightened rabbit. Only dead ones that the O’Donovan brothers had shot. Or a fleeting glimpse of their bobbing tails disappearing into burrows on the slopes of Anaskeagh Head. When the rabbits were dead their eyes were as pale as glass stones. Sheila’s eyes moved all the time, darting around as if she believed people were watching her behind her back and she would catch them staring. Her three sisters in America sent her parcels of jeans and candy bars and dresses with flounces and sequins. She talked about them all the time, whispering behind her hand in case their teacher, Mrs Keane, heard.
Another sister called Nuala lived in London. Mrs O’Neill told everyone she worked in a fancy department store. Beth’s mother smiled and said that was a lie. Even the dogs in the streets knew that Nuala O’Neill had shamed her family’s good name forever.
One day, Sheila brought photographs into school. Before she showed them to Beth, she made her cross her heart and hope to die screaming if she broke her promise not to tell.
‘Nuala made the baby inside her tummy. Swear to God you won’t tell anyone?’ She leaned closer, her hand cupped close to her mouth, breathless with the need to share the secret that had caused her sister to disappear one day and her mother to cry whenever Sheila asked when Nuala was coming home.
Beth studied the photographs, holding them on her knees in case Mrs Keane saw. A baby with plump cheeks in a lace christening cap and gown sat on his mother’s knee. Nuala O’Neill used to play camogie for the Anaskeagh Juniors and had danced every Saturday night in the Emerald Ballroom.
‘How did she make her baby?’ Beth whispered.
‘Derry Mulhall put a seed from his willie inside her tummy and the baby grew from it,’ Sheila whispered. ‘That’s how grown-ups do it but it’s a mortal sin if you don’t wait until you’re married. That’s why Nuala had to go away.’
Beth felt hot and sick, as if the air had suddenly been sucked from the classroom. Sheila’s whispering hurt her head. The photographs merged into dots, black and dancing, causing her to sway forward as they fell to the floor.
‘Oh God, we’re done for!’ hissed Sheila, scrabbling frantically to retrieve them. When she straightened up Mrs Keane was standing at the desk with her hand outstretched. The teacher studied the photographs, frowning when she recognised Nuala.
‘You two! Come with me,’ she ordered.
Their footsteps echoed along the corridor as she escorted them to Sister Rosa’s office. The photographs were spread out on the head nun’s desk. Her long black habit reminded Beth of crows flapping on the schoolyard wall. Sheila twisted her fingers together as if she was playing cat’s cradle without the twine. She began to cry. Tears splashed the toes of her heavy black shoes. Sister Rosa said she would be expelled if she ever dared bring such sinful photographs into school again. The rosary beads hanging from her waist rattled as she raised her arm and slapped their hands with her leather strap. The floor tilted in a see-saw sway when Beth walked from her office and back into the classroom of curious, staring girls.
That evening she tried to drown Goldie in the zinc bath that hung on a nail in the backyard. Sadie’s pup, as her uncle had promised. Beth hadn’t looked at Goldie when her uncle had carried him into the house. She refused to feed him or clean up after he peed on the floor. Goldie became Sara’s dog, trotting behind her wherever she went and sitting on his hind legs when she said, ‘Beg!’
Beth’s head felt like a red-hot fire as she pushed the cocker spaniel under the water, ignoring his terrified, wriggling movements until Sara came running into the yard, fists pummelling wildly, and pushed Beth against the wall. She lifted the dripping animal in her arms and ran weeping into the kitchen to tell her mother. Beth welcomed the stinging pain that followed. It was the only way to let the badness out.
Chapter 4
Barry Tyrell was driving a van now. ‘Grant’s Fine Furniture’ was engraved on the side. His accordion was silent in the cubbyhole under the stairs. When Sara begged him to play music so that she could practise her Irish dancing he refused and shouted at her to stop being a nuisance.
When he played in the band he used to bring chips from Hatty’s Chipper home with him. The sisters would tiptoe downstairs to eat them, giggling and huddling around the kitchen table, nervous in case Marjory woke, their fingers digging into the vinegary chips, which tasted so different late at night. Now they no longer smelled chips and the only sounds they heard were the loud slamming of the hall
door and Barry’s footsteps on the landing as he passed their bedroom door without stopping.
Beth would waken instantly, as if an alarm had gone off inside her head, knowing he had been drinking in The Anaskeagh Arms. She would wait for the voices on the other side of the wall to rise. Smothery and hot from her sister’s closeness, she wondered how Sara could sleep so peacefully when even the walls seemed to blister with her parents’ anger. Her father still talked about moving to Dublin. Beth no longer believed him and suspected he didn’t believe it himself. The father who had made these promises no longer existed. In his place was a small, grumpy man who told too many stories and drove a van for the person she hated most in the world.
Beth woke one night and heard his footsteps thudding down the stairs, his suitcase bumping against the banister rails. From the cubbyhole in the hall he took his accordion and slung it across his chest.
‘You needn’t think you’ll get back into this house again,’ Marjory shouted, leaning over the top rail. In her long nightdress, her hair tousled, she reminded Beth of a figurehead on the bow of a ship, riding furiously through a storm. ‘Not in a million years will you ever set foot in here again!’
‘That’ll be too soon for me.’ The crash of the front door was followed by a stark silence. Beth’s mother stared at her then looked away again, her hand moving over her stomach as if she was brushing crumbs from a tablecloth. ‘He’s gone for good. Your precious father has dumped us.’
‘Where’s he gone?’ Beth couldn’t grasp what her mother was saying. ‘Has he joined the band again?’
‘I haven’t a notion where he’s gone. I only hope it’s to hell and that he stays there forever.’
Sara woke and ran to the landing, her eyes glazed with sleep.
‘Your cruel father has left us,’ Marjory said, soothing her plaintive wailing. ‘He doesn’t want us any more, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t cry, my pet… don’t cry. I’ll always be here to love you. We don’t need him. We never have.’
