2004 - Dandelion Soup

by Babs Horton

  Siobhan bit the insides of her mouth. She closed her eyes each time the strap was raised and winced as the leather made contact with the soft flesh of Denny’s little hand.

  Siobhan felt misery and fury ballooning up inside her at the unfairness of it all. She swallowed hard. Denny’s hand erupted in lines of angry red weals. He was desperately trying to hold back his tears but he couldn’t His nostrils bubbled with snot and tears began to run unchecked, making tributaries of grime on his grubby face.

  As Sister Veronica raised the strap again, there was a great banging on the study door.

  “Wait!” screeched the nun. But the door opened and then seconds later all hell broke loose.

  When the women had marched back down the drive Solly Benjamin had taken the child inside the house and bolted all the doors. He was paralysed with indecision and panic. Dancey was white with shock and would not leave his side. Solly tried his utmost to keep calm; he didn’t want to alarm the child but he wasn’t sure what to do next. He’d no doubt that Sister Veronica meant what she’d said about calling out the guards and having Dancey removed to St Joseph’s. He didn’t have a leg to stand on, either. He had no proof of who the girl was or what she was doing there.

  He hadn’t liked the look of Sister Veronica at all. She was a big domineering bully of a woman. No wonder that little Padraig had wanted to get out of there.

  Solly knew that he had to make plans, but for the moment he was unable to make a rational decision. He thought of ringing Uncle Sammy in London but he wouldn’t be able to help from that far away. Maybe, though, if he could get to Uncle Sammy’s he’d know what to do for the best. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t putting her in the care of those vile beings at St Joseph’s.

  Oh God! Someone surely would have made contact if they wanted the child back. Why the hell hadn’t they?

  Hurriedly he packed a travelling bag with essentials. He had plenty of cash on him and access to money was no problem. He began to pack the child’s clothes in another bag but when he turned round she was standing there silently looking at him, holding her battered brown suitcase out towards him. He kneeled down and spoke to her even though he knew she couldn’t understand a word of what he said. He tried desperately to sound confident and in control.

  “I don’t know if you can understand any of this, Dancey, but I promise you that I am going to keep you safe. I know you are afraid but please don’t be. Well go away for a while just the two of us. Trust me, Dancey.”

  And he held the child close, feeling the beat of both their hearts.

  In her bedroom Siobhan lay on her belly and smiled grimly through her tears. Mammy had paddled her arse with the hairbrush when she’d got her home from St Joseph’s. But that was nothing to the way those bloody cows had thrashed little Donny Keegan. Still, hadn’t he had the last laugh!

  Sister Veronica’s door had burst open just as the strap made contact with Denny’s hand. Jeez, it was like something out of a film except it wasn’t in black and white.

  “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing bursting in here uninvited?” Sister Veronica had screeched.

  “I’ve come for my son, Donny Keegan,” the tiny glowering man in the doorway had said.

  Honest to God. Just like that.

  That’s when Donny had fainted.

  Out like a bloody light. Face down on the mat and arse towards heaven.

  Siobhan giggled just thinking about it, and winced. God, her own arse was hurting but it had been worth it. Padraig would have loved it. Oh, you should have seen Sister Veronica’s face. Bloody lovely it was! And the air in the room was blue. Denny’s dad could swear like…like a bloody good swearer.

  “Get your hands off that child! What’s a bloody big lump of a woman doing battering a small child like that? You’re nothing but a bleeding savage. He’s been through enough already. Touch him once more and woman or not I’ll put you flat on your bleeding arse!”

  For a minute Siobhan had been worried because Sister Veronica was enormous and could probably have pasted the daylights out of the fellow, but she was so shocked at the interruption that she just stood with her trap open, feet splayed and the pulse in her neck doing overtime.

  Holy hell, it had been marvellous!

  Lying there on her bed as daylight faded Siobhan suddenly remembered the papers in her pocket. While she and Donny had been in the cupboard at St Joseph’s she’d stretched out her hand and found a pile of papers. Unable to see what they were in the dark, she’d slipped them into the pocket of her skirt.

  She got up from the bed now and pulled out the papers from her pocket. They looked like letters that had been ripped up.

  Outside her room a floorboard creaked. Shite! Mammy on the prowl. If she got caught with a pile of stolen letters she’d have another pasting. She hurried across to her school trunk, bent down and slipped the letters carefully into a rip in the lining of the trunk, covering it with a pile of regulation pants and itchy-looking vests.

  Solly wondered how long it would take for the Guarda to get to Nirvana House? They’d have to come from Ross-macconnarty, which was a good hour away. An hour! He’d never do it. How he wished now that he’d learned to drive and bought himself a car.

  Outside the sun was sinking fast and golden-winged gulls screamed and soared in the last red light before night fell on Ballygurry. At least soon they’d have darkness on their side. If they made their escape through the Dark Wood, they could come out further down the road closer to the station. Maybe someone, a stranger, would pass through in a car, a tractor, anything.

  They made it past the station and down to the crossroads, turned right towards Rossmacconnarty. They had travelled about a half-mile or so down the road when they heard the sound of an engine. Seconds later a black car overtook them.

  Further down the road the car turned round and Solly and Dancey were blinded by the glare of headlamps. There was a shout and the sound of car doors slamming. Two men in dark clothes leaped out of the car and ran towards them.

  Solly Benjamin bowed his head in despair and held tightly on to Dancey’s hand.

  Part Four

  Santa Eulalia

  The Ballygurry pilgrims were over three hours late arriving at the monastery of Santa Eulalia. The storm that had raged fiercely for most of the day had passed and the night air was fresh and cool.

  The mule cart wound its way slowly up the steep mountain track. Padraig, who had slept for most of the journey, with his head resting in Father Daley’s lap, was jolted from sleep as the cart hit a bump in the road.

  “We’re nearly there, Padraig,” Father Daley said and yawned tiredly. “Just around the next bend.”

  Padraig sat up and rubbed his eyes. Pale moonlight drizzled the track and he was aware that they were passing through a small cluster of dilapidated houses. A donkey brayed fretfully somewhere close by and a dog ran out of the darkness, barked lackadaisically at them as they passed by and then disappeared back into the shadows.

  As they passed the last of the tumbledown houses a figure loomed out of the darkness on their left.

  “What’s that?” asked Miss Carmichael fearfully.

  Father Daley spoke to the driver in Spanish.

  “It’s all right, the driver said don’t worry. It’s only the statue of the Blue Madonna. He says in olden times it was famous and people came from miles around to put prayer requests at her feet but they don’t much now.”

  “Would you ask him how long ifs been there?” Padraig asked sleepily.

  “Hundreds of years apparently.”

  Padraig looked eagerly at the shadowy statue. Its eyes gleamed eerily in the silvery moonlight. In the morning he would find his way back down here but after all the excitement at Camiga this morning all he wanted to do now was eat and sleep.

  “Santa Eulalia!” the driver announced, turning his head to address them.

  High above them on a rocky perch above the deep river valley, the monastery of Santa Eulalia was cocoo
ned in moonlight, a swathe of mist drifting around the crumbling turrets.

  “Wow!” said Padraig sleepily. “Would you look at that!”

  “A bit spooky don’t you think? Like Dracula’s castle,” said Miss Carmichael with a nervous giggle.

  “Oooooo,” said Padraig making ghostly movements with his arms.

  Miss Carmichael giggled and ruffled his hair fondly. She was getting used to Padraig O’Mally, he wasn’t such a bad little fellow when you got to know him.

  Padraig looked up at the monastery and shivered. It was beautiful enough to knock the breath out of you, but awesome too.

  The mule cart climbed more slowly now and after several minutes turned into a deserted cobbled courtyard. A dog howled mournfully from a broken-down barn and bats sliced silently through the air above their heads.

  Pulling up outside a large wooden door, the three pilgrims clambered stiffly down from the cart.

  Padraig was the first to notice the bell-pull in the wall next to the enormous door. He tugged it heartily, then leaped back in alarm as a large grille set into the door opened instantly and an impish face popped out at him, like a cuckoo in a clock.

  “Hola! Bienvenue! Come in, come in.”

  A small wiry monk opened the door and greeted the weary pilgrims excitedly.

  “I am Brother Bernardo. I have welcome to give for you and food also, if you follow me, you must be starved!”

  He led them across a high-ceilinged, stone-flagged hallway lit only by spluttering candles set into niches in the uneven walls.

  Padraig stopped and sniffed the air curiously. The monastery smells reminded him of Sister Immaculata; camphor and candle wax and old age. He’d really missed Sister Immaculata; she was one of the few things he did miss about St Joseph’s.

  “Come on, Padraig, pick your feet up,” Father Daley called out, and Padraig hurried to catch up.

  Brother Bernardo showed them into the refectory and soon they were seated at one of several large scrubbed wooden tables. Brother Bernardo brought them earthenware jugs of wine and water, fresh bread and black-rinded cheese; large oddly shaped tomatoes and slivers of red onions. He set before them a bowl of sweet grapes and furry-skinned peaches.

  As Padraig ate hungrily he looked round the room with interest. There were large paintings hung on the walls and not the sort you’d expect in a monastery. There were big colourful canvases similar to the ones Mr Leary had in the schoolhouse back in Ballygurry, only these looked like they’d been done by a child. There were also sketches of faces done in charcoal, and half-naked bodies of men and women. It was difficult to get a really good look in the candlelight but in the morning he’d look at them properly.

  The pilgrims ate their feast hungrily and even Miss Carmichael drank two glasses of red wine. Padraig noticed that within minutes it had brought the blood to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. She was getting more like a human being by the day.

  Brother Bernardo spoke good English and he seemed happy to practise it on them.

  “You,” said the smiling brother, “are first pilgrim in many year. We welcome very well and hopes you tells everyone this is good place to stay. Then maybe we make lots of money and don’t have to close, eh?”

  The pilgrims nodded in agreement.

  “Why would you have to close, Brother?” asked Father Daley.

  “Not many monks left now, most very old and Santa Eulalia is not owned by us, belongs to an old lady, Isabella Martinez. The monastery now it needs many repairs and is not self-sufficient any more. When the old lady dies, who knows what will happen to us?”

  “That’s awful sad,” said Padraig. “I think ifs just real lovely here.”

  “I understand that you know Michael Leary?” Brother Bernardo enquired.

  “Indeed,” Father Daley replied. “He’s Padraig’s teacher.”

  “He was very good friend with Brother Francisco but today Francisco has gone with a man to hear confession of our benefactor, a very sick woman. She’s a distant relation of Brother Francisco. When she dies that could be it for us here.”

  “Carlos Emanuel came here yesterday to collect Brother Francisco, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, funny little man. Very impatients. Can’t wait minutes but wants to be gone.”

  “Mr Leary got shot when he was staying here, didn’t he?” Padraig asked eagerly.

  Brother Bernardo looked nonplussed.

  “An old monk thought he was a pig and shot him…”

  “Oh, si, Brother Anselm. Big hunter in his day. He very eccentric. Bad shot with gun but he don’t use one no more. Too old now, thank the good Lord.”

  Then he rattled on in excited Spanish and Padraig and Nancy had to wait patiently for Father Daley to translate.

  “He says that Michael Leary was here for quite a while at the end of the war. He was a great help to the monks. A comical chap, always on the look-out for some lost statue. Brother Anselm thinks he was a bit strange in the head. He used to drive Brother Anselm mad with all his questions about the statue.”

  “That’s because one of the monks who lost the statue was his ancestor and he wants to find out all about it,” said Padraig.

  Brother Bernardo went on to tell them that Michael Leary had just left when the other Englishman came.

  “Rosendo, a man who lives down in the hamlet, found him and brought him here. He was a young man who had been wounded in the fighting down south; he was trying to cross back into France and make his way home. He’s buried here, the poor man, down in the graveyard. The monks wrote to his family but no one ever wrote back or came to see the grave. He was from same country as you.”

  “What was he called?” Father Daley asked even though it was hardly likely that they would know the man.

  “George. Let me think, that’s it George Fitzallen.”

  Nancy Carmichael drew in her breath and turned quite white.

  “Are you all right?” said Padraig with concern.

  “Yes, yes, I just swallowed my wine too fast, that’s all.”

  It seemed to Nancy that she could never be free from the damned Fitzallen family; why even here in the middle of nowhere she couldn’t escape them.

  Although Nancy seemed to lose her appetite at that point, Padraig and Father Daley ate their fill.

  Brother Bernardo led them back through the flickering hallway, up a steep winding staircase and along a narrow corridor.

  The monk carried a candelabrum and the shadows of the pilgrims writhed eerily along the whitewashed walls.

  Padraig had the horrible feeling that someone was behind him; a frisson of fear caught him between his shoulder blades. Turning his head slowly he saw the lurking shadow, a bent-backed thing close to the top of the stairway. There one minute and gone the next. Padraig shook his head, rubbed his tired eyes and yawned.

  Then as they passed an open doorway he caught sight of an old monk lying prostrate on a bed. Padraig stopped and peered nervously into the room.

  The monk lay as still as a stone bishop on a cathedral tomb. His bony hands were clasped across his sunken chest, his head raised up on a pillow. His eyes were closed, his bloodless lips collapsed in a pallid grimace. His skin was the colour of translucent ochre and violet thread veins lay beneath the surface like contour lines on a map. The skeletal bones of his skull looked as if they were about to break through the taut skin at any moment.

  Padraig stared at him in horrified fascination. This must be Brother Anselm, the man he’d seen in the photograph in Mr Leary’s scrapbook. The big beaky nose was a dead giveaway.

  At that moment the old monk opened his eyes and looked across at Padraig.

  Padraig flinched under his gaze. The monk blinked lizard-like and his mouth twisted into a ravaged, almost toothless smile. For a second he struggled to sit up but then collapsed back on to the pillows.

  Padraig shivered violently; fear seeped up from his feet, rattled on up his backbone.

  “Come on, Padraig, keep up,” Nancy Carmichael
called out to him.

  Padraig turned his face away from the old man and hurried towards the others, who stood waiting for him in an oasis of candlelight further down the corridor.

  Father Daley climbed thankfully into his own bed and blew out the candle on the bedside table. He pulled the freshly starched sheets up over him and lay for a while looking up at the huge moon through the opened shutters. Padraig, in his bed on the opposite side of the room, was already curled up in a ball, dead to the world and snoring softly.

  Father Daley yawned; he was absolutely exhausted what with the journey and all the commotion at Señora Hipola’s that morning. The weather had changed quite suddenly during the previous night and the storm had blown into Camiga without any warning.

  He had been woken at just before six by the shutters banging against the bedroom window. He had looked out into a very different Pig Lane. The lines of bunting that were stretched across the lane were whirling madly. Flowerpots had crashed to the ground from the balconies and broken geraniums were strewn across the cobbles. A dog was chasing its tail like a thing possessed. The sign that hung above the Bar Pedro clanked loudly, and on the balconies songbirds clung shrieking to their perches inside their swinging cages.

  Then the screaming had begun downstairs and Father Daley had dressed hurriedly and gone to see what was going on.

  Down in the lobby Señora Hipola was standing with her apron pulled up over her head, hollering and stamping her feet like an overwrought tap dancer.

  “Calm yourself, Señora Hipola. Whatever has happened?”

  Nancy Carmichael and Padraig came hurrying downstairs moments later, their eyes still heavy with sleep.

  It was a good five minutes before Father Daley could get any sense from Señora Hipola. When he finally coaxed her out from under her apron she said that Marta, her ungrateful niece, had done a bunk in the middle of the night. Señora Hipola had discovered her bed empty this morning and her few belongings gone. What was Señora Hipola to do? The wedding was to take place tomorrow. The dress was bought the guests invited. Holy saints, the shame of it all would kill her. What would people say? What would she tell Ramon and his father?