About Matilda

by Bill Walsh

  He still has all his baby teeth like white needles in his gums. He can’t quite manage the climb, so he runs to the other side of the garden with his chubby little legs red from the cold and turns and runs at the fence with his head down and bumps straight into it and falls on his bum. Mona runs from the shed and catches his hand. She tells me to get down. But I can’t. I’m stuck.

  Danny pulls away from Mona and runs at the fence and bangs his head again.

  Sheamie turns around and sits up. He tells me, Just walk slowly, don’t straighten up yet, Matilda.

  I feel dizzy. I see the clouds moving across Sheamie’s thick glasses. I reach for Sheamie, who’s sliding towards me on his bum with his hand out. I feel his icy fingertips but before he catches my hand properly I slip and bounce on the footpath beside Mona.

  I stand up quick. I don’t want to be in trouble. I don’t feel pain until Mona pinches my leg.

  You were told not to climb.

  Danny points at my leg, Look, ‘Tilda. He covers his hand with his mouth and says, Bud!

  There’s blood spouting from my knee. I want my Mum.

  I run down the path and in the back door. Nanny is drinking tea at the kitchen table and I run to her.

  She jumps up, Jesus, Mary and holy St Joseph!

  Mona runs in the back door with Pippa behind her. Pippa yells, She fell off the roof. She fell off the roof.

  Nanny fixes her old grey eyes on Pippa. Did you see her climb?

  No, Nanny.

  Mona says, I told Matilda not to climb.

  My leg is cold but the blood is wet and warm and running into my sock and making it squishy.

  Nanny rinses a cloth under the tap and holds it to my knee and tells Mona to go upstairs for Grandad. That knee needs stitches.

  Daddy comes from the sitting room. He doesn’t say anything, just pulls on an overcoat that’s hanging on the back of one of the chairs and lifts me in his arms.

  I grab hold of his neck and he runs with me out the front door and through the streets. People stop and ask, What’s the matter? Daddy rushes past. He tells me I’m a brave girl for not crying. The wind is bitter and I shelter my face in his neck where it’s warm and smells of cod liver oil.

  At the top of a hill there’s a building with tall windows. The corridor is full. There are people on crutches, in wheelchairs, lying on trolleys complaining they’d be better off at home with a glass of water and an aspirin for all the attention they get. But I’m the only one with blood, the only one in her Daddy’s arms. He holds me high for all the world to see.

  A nurse in a blue veil hurries from behind a desk. She has a fluffy moustache and smells of medicine. She pulls at my knee and I pull my leg away. She says it’s nothing a few stitches won’t fix. There might be a scar but that can’t be helped. Sit and wait.

  Daddy pushes her aside, kicks the door open and sends the empty trolley behind it crashing off the wall. Nurses rush from behind bed curtains and patients sit up in their beds. Daddy lays me on an empty bed. Don’t move, Matilda, I’ll be straight back.

  He pulls the white curtain around me and comes back with a man wearing a white coat. The nurse in the blue veil rushes in and tells Daddy he’ll have to wait in the queue. Do you hear me?

  Daddy keeps his back to her and tells the man in the white coat we arrived from Australia yesterday, and about Mona, Sheamie, Pippa and Danny back in Nanny’s. About our mother walking out, about us spending a year in the orphanage and how I’m worn out from three days travelling on planes and trains and he won’t have his daughter sitting in a queue. She’s been through enough.

  The man has a kind face. He smiles at me and tells me I’m a lucky girl to have a Daddy that cares.

  The nurse complains to the man in the white coat. We can’t have people jumping queues, Doctor. They must wait their turn.

  We can make an exception, Sister. Disinfect that child’s knee. Give her a tetanus injection. I’ll be right back.

  Daddy holds my hand when the nurse puts the needle in my bum and, even though the needle is sharp and makes my leg stiff, I don’t cry. And I don’t cry when the man puts stitches in my knee with a needle and thread and wraps it in a bandage the same colour as my leg. He says I’m a great girl. They must make them tough in Australia. He hands me a lollipop from a glass jar on the windowsill and tells Daddy I’m young, there won’t be a scar.

  Grandad is waiting outside in the car in his slippers, but slippers or no slippers, he needs a pint after this. What would you think yourself, Peter?

  Daddy says he hardly drinks anymore. Yesterday was the first pint he had in years. Australia isn’t like Ireland with a pub on every corner.

  No pints? Is it jokin’ me yeh are? By Jesus, I’m after hearin’ everything now.

  A few days later Nanny is sitting at the kitchen table with big tears on her chin that she wipes away with her small white hands. Daddy bends down to kiss her forehead and she hugs him before saying, I’ll offer a novena that you uncover some news.

  We all go out to the garden. The clouds hurry by and a crow squawks away from the front gate and sails down Gracedieu Road and over the red-brick chimney of a factory at the bottom of the street. Nanny tries to smile as she wraps a scarf around Daddy’s neck and tells him to keep himself covered. The Irish Sea is a rough place in January.

  Daddy’s friend, who he calls Umbilical Bill, has got him a lift to England on a cattle boat. He’s going to see our Mum’s brother, the bishop, and his own brother James, who’s a millionaire. He says he’ll let no stone unturned to find our mother. I want to ask Nanny why would Mum be under a stone but she’d probably tell me I’m an awful blaggard to be coddin’ her like that.

  Daddy kisses us goodbye at the gate and tells us not to cry. He hoists his green canvas bag to his shoulder and tells us to be good for our Nanny.

  I watch him step out onto the footpath and down the street. I start to run after him and get the gate open but Nanny chases and clutches my arm. I try to pull away. I scream out, Daddy, come back. But he’s too far away.

  Nanny says, Shush, he’ll be back. Your father won’t leave you.

  Our Mummy did.

  Don’t worry about your Daddy, Matilda. Your Daddy had no choice but to put you into that place when your mother left. The man had to work. He had to search for your mother. Your Daddy loves all of you very much.

  Nanny’s fingers are soft and warm and calm me. I stop wriggling and she strokes my neck with her fingers.

  Pippa is at the gate, her bottom lip sticks out and there are tears in her blue eyes and I know Pippa doesn’t believe Nanny either when she says, Your father will be back. I lean my head against the top of Nanny’s leg where it’s soft and say a prayer that Daddy will come back with Mum so I can tell her I’m sorry. She left because I done something wrong even though I don’t know what. Daddy has to find her so I can tell her I love her and ask if she’ll come home to us again. I’ll say my prayers and I’ll be good and do what I’m told. We all will. It will be a new start. We’ll be happy and forget everything bad that happened. Maybe she’ll come tomorrow.

  Grandad lifts Danny into his arms and Danny waves after Daddy, even though we can’t see Daddy anymore. Sheamie wanders out into the street with his hands in his pockets. Nanny calls him back but Sheamie keeps walking.

  Mona says, Don’t mind him, Nanny. No matter where Sheamie is he wants to be someplace else.

  Nanny says, The poor little boy. He misses his mother.

  2

  Grandad likes to sit in his car with an oily rag in his hand listening to the radio. When he does come in, he sits in his chair with the hollow and drinks stout from small fat bottles and wonders when dinner will be ready.

  It will be ready when it’s ready!

  Nanny has two voices. The one that never stops talking and the one that barks and makes us hop. Even Grandad hops. He loves Friday nights when the greyhound races come on television. Other than that, he says he wouldn’t have television in the house.
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  Nanny says, That television is going nowhere till she sees what happens to Dr Richard Kimble chasing the one-armed man all over America and running from that awful Inspector Gerard. And what would I do without The Riordans?

  Couldn’t yeh do what yeh always done, Annie?

  Put them thoughts out of your head and don’t talk like that in front of the children.

  I meant the novena.

  I know what you meant, all right.

  I never know what they’re arguing about, but Nanny always wins.

  Friday nights, when Uncle Philip goes to the Savoy cinema with his girlfriend Rita, Nanny sends me into the shop for a big bottle of orange and some packets of crisps. Quick, she says, they’re starting. She brings Grandad his bottle of stout and sets it beside his ankle.

  Batten down the hatches, Annie, says Grandad, and pours his stout into a tall glass.

  Nanny tells Sheamie to get the bucket of coal from the yard. Pippa, turn off the sitting-room light. Mona, turn off the kitchen light. Nanny goes out to the hallway herself and takes the key out of the front door and stuffs a sock in the back of the letterbox to keep out the draught. She closes the sitting-room door behind her and sits in the armchair in front of the fire and tells us if we hear a knock, don’t answer. They can come back tomorrow. She takes the plastic moneybag from her apron pocket and divides the pennies between us as we take our places on the red rug. Nanny says there’re six greyhounds in each race. Everyone pick a dog and put a penny on it to win. Grandad says, Sure, I’ll pick an aul dog meself, but Nanny says there’re not enough dogs, because there’re five of us children and her and only six dogs in each race. Help Danny pick one.

  Grandad says to Danny, Come up to me youngfella and we’ll show ’em how it’s done.

  Danny climbs on Grandad’s lap and Grandad tickles Danny’s face with his chin whiskers until Danny begs him to stop but he’s laughing so much he can’t get the words out. Grandad calls it the giggilleens and it’s torture.

  We gather round the fire and open our crisps and scream for our dog. Grandad doesn’t mind how loud the crisp bags are because he’s shouting louder, Come on, black fella, come on yeh bastard, he’s gonna catch him, Danny, look at him, look he’s catchin’ up he’s catchin up look at him look at him, ah, Jasus, who won? Sheamie again. Danny jumps up and down on Grandad’s lap clapping his hands and laughing and tormenting Grandad for a sup of his stout till Grandad gives in.

  Nanny says, Good man, Sheamie, we won’t have a penny left with you. Sheamie has a grin like there’s a saucer in his mouth. His long legs are stretched out behind him and he makes stacks of his pennies on the rug and wonders is a penny all he can bet?

  When the ads come on television, Nanny says to Grandad, Stay as you are, Willie, I’ll get you another drink.

  Good girl, Annie.

  Grandad lights a cigar and makes big smoke circles for us to poke our fingers through. Sheamie prods the coal fire with the poker and the heat comes out as a pink glow we can see on Grandad’s trouser leg. He fills his glass with the stout, takes a sup, belches, tilts in his chair and farts.

  Right, Danny. Let’s see what we can do about Sheamie winning all the money.

  Afterwards, Nanny hands us a penny each and puts the rest back in the plastic moneybag for next week. Now, she says, wasn’t that great fun altogether?

  We all agree it was.

  Grandad goes to the pub to play cards and we have our bath in front of the fire in the huge silver bathtub. When we’re washed and dried and smelling of talcum powder, we stick forks through slices of bread thick as doorsteps and toast them at the fire and listen to Nanny tell the story of how our father met our mother.

  Nanny says our father was the quietest of her fourteen children, hardly said a word. He was always thinking. Then all of a sudden he’d get a notion into his head and neither Hell nor high water would persuade him out of it. Then one day he got into a fight in the school playground in the Christian Brothers. It was the other boy’s fault but your father was blamed and beaten half unconscious by a tramp of a Christian Brother. He left school at twelve, barely able to read or write, and went to sea until he was twenty-two. That’s where he learned to play guitar.

  He was a pirate, wasn’t he, Nanny? says Pippa.

  That’s right. He was indeed.

  He had a thing over his eye, a patch, says Pippa.

  A black one.

  And a parrot, says Pippa.

  That’s right, Pippa. A yellow one.

  Called Polly, says Pippa.

  That’s right, Pippa.

  It sat on his shoulder, didn’t it, Nanny? says Pippa.

  Shut the fuck up, Pippa, says Mona.

  Nanny makes a pretend swing at Mona. Pippa sits back against the brown sofa with her knees pulled up to her chin and a pout on her face but satisfied the story is going to be the same as every other time. The rest of us sit closer to our Nanny’s feet, only moving if the heat from the fire gets too much for our backs.

  Nanny carries on. Your father’s ship worked out of Hamburg in the fifties.

  What’s the fifties?

  A long time ago.

  Like once upon a time, Nanny?

  That’s right, Matilda.

  Anyway, that’s where he met the Beatles and became friendly with John Lennon. In fact, they looked so alike, your father was often mistaken for him.

  The real John Lennon, Nanny? says Sheamie.

  The one and only. Of course they weren’t famous, then. Anyway, where was I?

  Hamburg, says Sheamie.

  Now, when he returned from sea and there being no work in Ireland your father went to London with a friend who was starting a showband. I tried to talk him out of it but he said if Brendan Boyer and the Royal Showband could make a go of it, so could he. Even if he didn’t, wouldn’t it be a better life than standing on North London’s Cricklewood Broadway looking for a day’s work shovelling cement? One night he was playing in the National Ballroom in Kilburn and your mother was there on a night out from the Nurses Training College. Someone or other introduced the pair of them, they went out together for a year or so, next thing we hear they were to get married. For some reason Nanny gives Mona a queer look and shrugs her shoulders, then carries on, It was all done in a bit of a hurry. Grandad or myself didn’t get a chance to go across to London for the wedding.

  First time I met her was when your father and herself turned up at door with Sheamie in the pram and Mona barely walking. Said they were leaving for Australia. Your mother was hardly more than a child herself. Now, that’s as much as I know. Finish yeer supper and get off to bed.

  I don’t really want to go to bed. I’m not tired but I climb under the green coat with my brothers and sisters and, when we cuddle together, I fall asleep dreaming about a nurse who falls in love with a prince who plays a guitar.

  The door to Nanny’s shop buzzes when it opens. It has a wooden floor and a wooden counter with shelves behind. There’s a picture of a man on the wall with a grey beard and blue cap and underneath him in big letters it says, Players Please.

  Grandad says it’s a gossip shop.

  I ask him what’s a gossip shop and he whispers behind his hand so Nanny won’t hear, A place for passin’ on everyone’s business, girl.

  In the shop, I sit on the floor behind the counter eating jellybeans and listening to Nanny gossip to the neighbours, passing on what she’s heard from the last customer after promising may the Lord strike her down if she breathes a word.

  I love it when it’s just the two of us. I haven’t had anyone to love me for a long time and if it’s just the two of us here she might love me more.

  And tell me, Annie, the woman standing on the other side of the counter says, is that one of the grandchildren you were telling me about?

  It is indeed. Say hello to Missus Sullivan, Matilda.

  Missus Sullivan bends over the counter and looks down at me. She’s wearing a red scarf and red lipstick and smiling like she knows me.r />
  Isn’t she a sweet child, God love her. And very affectionate I’d say, Annie.

  She is, and a quiet poor child. Sure, I hardly know she’s there.

  Missus Sullivan pulls her head back and I can’t see her anymore. I wonder why she doesn’t say listen to that accent like everyone else, and what does affectionate mean? It must be something you get instead of an accent.

  It’s a big change from just having Philip in the house, says Nanny. He’s the last of them left in Waterford. John’s in the army and the rest of them are in London.

  I heard John was in the Congo, says Mrs Sullivan.

  He’s back a few years from there, says Nanny. His term of service is nearly up.

  Will he come back do you think? He must be hitting thirty. Time for him to settle down.

  Nanny glares out over the counter to Missus Sullivan. I don’t know what he intends to do. It’s his own business what he does.

  Oh I didn’t mean… says Missus Sullivan. Tell you what, I’ll have a pound of butter. Well, you’re a great woman, Annie, after what you done.

  Nanny takes the butter from the fridge and leaves it on the counter.

  What could I do after their mother walked out? I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to them way over there. I know the nuns were good to them, but ’tis not the same as a proper home, is it, Hannah?

  ’Tis not indeed, Annie. Look at them poor children down in the Holy Shepherd convent. Isn’t it disgraceful how they’re fired in there with the tinkers and the tippers without a mother or a father between them?

  It is of course. It’s no place for any child.

  Did I hear something on the news that the government were talking about improving those places?

  Talk is cheap, says Nanny.

  And I’ll have a pound of cooked ham too, Annie.

  A pound of ham, Hannah? A whole pound. Ah here, talk might be cheap but I wouldn’t say the same for ham. Have you visitors from America or what?

  Well, well, maybe a quarter, Annie?

  That’d be more like it right enough.

  I better go up and tidy the house before himself gets home or he’ll be wonderin’ have I anything better to do all day than gossip. No other news I suppose, Annie.