About Matilda

by Bill Walsh

  Now, my father says to Pippa, now you’re clean.

  Danny’s jaws are purple and his arms dangle like he’s carrying heavy bags and when he’s told to get in he falls on top of Pippa in the doorway. There’s only Mona, Sheamie and me, and I pity Mona with the soapsuds still in her hair, bits of it flying off or running down her cheeks. The third time around my father calls her in and she collapses beside Danny and Pippa.

  Sheamie’s legs are like bent spoons stirring in the mud and his bare feet sliding under him every time he turns a corner, and, when he passes the caravan for the fifth time, our father tells him to keep going, but when Sheamie stumbles and falls to his knees my father lifts him by the neck and throws him on top of the others like Sheamie’s a wet sack. Now there’s just my father and me in this muddy field and there’s no way he’s doing that to me.

  He shouts after me, Keep going.

  I wish he knew what a fool he is. Punishing me with my favourite thing in the world. I wish he knew how stupid he looks with his skin showing through his white shirt and rain dripping from his beard. Every time I see the wind blow his hair around his face I know I could run around this field for ever.

  I stopped counting laps after ten, and that’s a long time ago. I pass him again and turn my face away so he won’t see me laugh. The wind and rain have turned his nose red; he looks like a clown. He tells me to get in but I keep going. He shouts after me, I told you to get in, get in now. I keep going past the people in the other caravans who by now are looking out their windows. I see their faces at the glass and wonder why they don’t ask, What the fuck are you doing out there in your underwear, girl? Is your father mad? Come in here out of it and we’ll call the gardaí.

  Does God see me? Is he up there hiding behind the rain clouds waiting for me to give up? I wish I knew so I could ask why we’re the ones with a lunatic father. Gabriel would say I’m lucky because I have my faith and that’s the greatest gift of all. It doesn’t feel like a gift and it’s easy for Gabriel to talk when she’s not the one running around a field in her knickers.

  I slow down by the trees. He’ll think I’m tired, think he’s beaten me. I speed up along the cliff edge and as I get near him he roars at me to get in. He runs after me and reaches out to grab me but I’m too fast and, when I look back and he’s gone inside, I want to sing and dance in the rain, but I only do one little jump and punch my fist in the air. That’s enough. I stop running and walk back to the caravan because there’s no point running now when there’s no one looking. I know my father might kill me when I go in. I don’t care. It’ll be worth it. I’ve beaten him.

  I do care though when the caravan door is locked. I hear the others pleading, Please Daddy, let her in, and he threatens them to eat their breakfast before he throws it in the bin. I want to knock but if he was going to let me in he’d be out here making me apologize.

  It’s cramped under the caravan and I have to lie flat. The grass is turned yellow and everywhere smells of wet clay. The only sound is the others washing plates above me. I take off my vest and wring the rain from it but it still clings to my wet skin when I put it back on. I curl up in a ball behind the rusty wheel where the icy wind doesn’t blow in my face but it still creeps up from behind clawing the soles of my feet and the backs of my legs and sends a shiver through to my bones and I wonder how long before he lets me in. Did he keep something for me to eat? Did the others hide something? Maybe they’ll drop a sausage or a slice of bread out the window. Maybe they already did. I crawl out on my stomach and root between the green blades. I claw, scratch and scrape the wet clay and find nothing and finding nothing I crawl back under the caravan, emptier, weaker and hungrier.

  July days are long, longer in the rain, not long enough when you fear being alone in the dark. Sometimes I hear a scream or a cry from one of my brothers and sisters or his feet above my head kicking the table or a chair or one of them. Then the silence when they go to bed that’s even worse. I watch the candles being lit in the other caravans. They’re having supper, warm tea, toast, maybe a grilled rasher or a scrambled egg. I think about running for help but they wouldn’t help. I crawl out and pull down my knickers and squat to piss in the wet grass like an animal. I think about knocking on our caravan door. I’d say anything now. Say I’m sorry a thousand times. Fall on my hands and knees in the mud and say anyone who prays to statues must be a screwball. Please, Daddy, let me in.

  I crawl under the caravan again and try to shelter behind the rusty wheel. I’ve never heard wind so loud. Great chunks of it squeeze under the caravan screeching like a train in a tunnel. I put my hands to my ears and watch across the field as one by one the other caravans vanish in the blackness. I know he’ll never let me in. He never let our mother in when he threw her out. That’s the last time I saw her. In the back garden. She was naked. Her face covered in shit from where he held her head down in the septic tank. One arm across her breasts, the other between her legs, and in the morning she was gone. Why do I only remember those things now? Remember how he was with her. I was too young, but still I knew. Inside I knew, and I feel a fool for thinking he could ever be different. Part of him is broken and can never be fixed. I know now why my mother left. Why she had to leave. Why she’s never coming back. Nobody is ever coming for us because there’s nobody to come. Maybe we had to come to this place so I could understand why. I feel angry. And I promise that when we’re big and he’s old I’ll do to him what he’s doing to us. I’ll make him suffer. I’ll stick hot needles in his eyes till he roars and begs me to stop and prays on his knees to statues for forgiveness, but I won’t forgive and thinking that makes me warm. My eyelids are heavy but I’m afraid to sleep for fear I’ll roll over the cliff. I pray, Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, and God answers me. I drift to sleep with dreams of escaping far from here to a place where there’s a warm bed and hot food every day.

  In the morning I feel the huge wet hand pulling on my ankle, strealing my face through the grass. My father sticks his beard in my mouth.

  Next time I tell you to get in, you’ll do it. Stupid bitch. Now get in and eat your breakfast.

  I’d like to tell him to shove his breakfast up the highest part of his hole, only I’m hungry and, if we’re going to escape, I need to be clever.

  Every morning we do spellings. We swim in the ocean because my father says salt water is the best thing for any cuts or bruises we picked up playing.

  Playing? Jesus, we haven’t played since we got here.

  In the afternoons we walk to chapels so my father can scream at worshippers, priests and statues. Some days we get fed, but every day the milk gets a little sourer in the bottle and it’s plain to see Mona’s right, we’re not going anywhere.

  Some evenings, when he goes to the hippie camp he leaves us behind and doesn’t come back till morning and that’s when I tell the others about escaping. But the open roads are too dangerous; our father would find us. We’re two hundred miles from the convent, we’d never make it.

  We’re sitting around the table and suddenly Sheamie’s eyes light up. He has the best idea.

  Pippa says, You’re an arsehole, Sheamie. One day you’re planning to escape from the convent, now you’re trying to escape back. You’re not getting me on a raft. We’ll all drown.

  She folds her arms and turns her back on us. We tell her she can suit herself. We’re going without her.

  Yee wouldn’t to that to me.

  We would.

  Pippa pouts.

  Stay there, so.

  All right, she’ll come with us.

  Mona fixes her curly black hair behind her ears and goes to fill the kettle.

  We’ll have tea and make a plan.

  On the evenings our father goes to the hippies without us, we roam the island in circles and, as we grow braver, bigger circles each time until we know every inch of the island for miles. We’ve been at it for weeks. My father hasn’t mentioned Donegal or Aunt Peg. We decide to take what we need in t
he one morning. We’ll get up at daybreak and gather everything before our father gets back. Sheamie says that’s best because if the islanders start missing things they’ll get posses on the look-out all going around in their white wool jumpers and black rubber boots looking for arses to kick because that’s what islanders are like. Always looking for arses to kick.

  There are mornings I lie in the long grass at the cliff edge and look out at Clew Bay. That’s where Sonya told me we are. Clew Bay, off the coast of Mayo. Sonya says it’s the most tranquil spot on earth.

  Tranquil. Sonya says that means peaceful. She mustn’t notice the rain.

  On fine mornings, I watch the fishermen from the village carrying their flat-bottomed boats over their heads down the pathway to the gravel beach. They’re like giant spiders. I watch them row out against the tide with their lobster pots balanced at the front of the boat. The air around me is so fresh I want to wrap myself in it like a warm blanket. Birds warble over my head and, below me, long-necked birds fly low over water so blue you’d think the sky had fallen on it. I can see why Sheamie finds escaping exciting. It’s like ants nesting in my guts.

  We rob the gate off the caravan park and hide it in the wood across from our caravan. We know the houses and farms that might have wood for our raft and poles for our mast. We know where there’s a cattle trough made of long boards. We know there’s no bull. He’s in the next field tied with a thick iron chain that runs from his nose to a rock as big as an altar.

  We set out early, while the mist is still on the grass and the birds safe in their nests. We have to be careful of farmers with dogs, and women watching from behind lace curtains.

  We let the water out of the trough through the plughole at the bottom while the cattle gather round us and moo. They have flies in their eyes and lift their tails to shit. Pippa worries they’ll attack us for robbing their trough. No one answers because we’re in a hurry, but I can’t help wondering if she’s right because I’ve never been this close to a cow unless you count Reverend Mother.

  We’re heading for the road when we hear the growl of an engine and the bark of a big dog. A farmer in a tractor is coming over the hill. The big dog is running behind him.

  Pippa shouts, Scatter!

  We tell her to keep going, he’s a long way away.

  But he’s in a tractor.

  Oh, shut the fuck up, Pippa, we all say together.

  The farmer is going so fast the tyres stick in the mud. He skids and slides, firing great showers of mud up behind him and we worry he might topple over. He gets out waving his stick and begins to chase us with his dog barking and bounding across the field. We’re at the gate by now and we don’t know whether to keep going or drop the trough and scatter. It’s heavy but we need it. We need it more than the cattle. They’re happy with plenty of grass and nobody bothering them over spellings. The farmer is fat and slow in his muddy boots, and he’s more worried over his tractor than his trough because now it’s after rolling back down the hill, so he’s chasing after that instead and we’d be fine only his dog is still coming toward us. It has a head like a bull and chases us up the road till Danny lets the trough go and picks up a rock. He throws it and hits the dog between the eyes. The dog somersaults like he’s been shot and we’re sure that’s the end of him, but when we get back to the wood he’s leaping across the field with the rock in his mouth. He’s a good dog now because he’s pawing Danny to throw the stone again. We call him Blacky and take turns throwing the stone.

  Sheamie says we have to break up the trough with rocks and don’t crack the boards we need them long to tie to the gate. Pippa wonders what we’re breaking it up for? We can use the cattle trough instead. It looks like a boat except it has a flat bottom and all the boats on the island have flat bottoms.

  She’s right.

  We jump in. Sheamie at the front. Danny at the back. Pippa and me and Mona in the middle and we fit, but Sheamie isn’t happy. Sheamie wants to join the Navy some day so he can travel the world and never stay in one place too long. He’s forever stealing magazines about boats. He never read about anyone putting out to sea in a cattle trough. That’s what it’s called. Putting out to sea. It’s a stupid fuckin’ idea.

  Pippa says, They would if they thought of it.

  Sheamie says, You’re only trying to get out of building the raft. You’re always the same, always trying to get out of things.

  So? I have asthma, you know.

  Yeh have when it suits you. Everything has to suit you, even your shittin’ asthma.

  Pippa doesn’t answer.

  Mona complains the trough smells like cow shit and Sheamie tells Mona she’s getting as bad as Pippa. Mona scrunches those freckles at him and Sheamie has to tell her, All right, all right, calm down. Danny says, We’ll wash it with seawater.

  Pippa says, Seawater? I’m not goin’ all the way down to the beach getting dirtier than I am already when there’s a tap across the field. Sheamie says, There you go again, Pippa. See what I mean? Pippa sticks her tongue out at Sheamie but somehow we all agree. We’ll wash the trough with seawater and try to make a boat out of it.

  We scrub it clean and head off again. We rob a clothes pole, a clothesline and a blue bed sheet from the house next door to the Gardaí’s Barracks after we see the officer wobbling away on his black bike. We steal five boards from the fence of the house next to that for oars. We use rocks for hammers and the nails from the fence to nail the clothes pole to the trough for a mast, and we tie the blue sheet to it with the clothesline.

  It looks great. Pippa is pure faintin’.

  See, I told yee it would work.

  Sheamie has to admit even a blind dog pisses against a lamp pole once in a while.

  He says we’ll go Sunday morning after the hippie wedding. The father won’t come home and a passin’ ship’ll rescue us. When they see us all bones and our clothes hanging they’ll know we’re telling the truth.

  Will it be an Irish ship, Sheamie? asks Pippa.

  It don’t matter so long as they get us back to the convent.

  What if the people on the ship don’t speak English? We’d end up in Timbuktu.

  Sheamie says, Pippa, I’m really sick o’ you.

  Pippa pouts.

  The Saturday afternoon of the wedding, Sonya brings Pippa and me to her tent with the two rooms you can stand up in. She dresses us in white lace and brings us to the fields to make necklaces and braids from daisies and buttercups. Sonya skips through the long grass with the sun on her hair and there’s something so tranquil about her we just have to skip behind. Sonya says we’re hippies now. We don’t go to school or mass, we can take our clothes off or leave them on and oh, girls, did she tell us yet how she loves our Daddy. Would we like her for a mother? Our Daddy is wonderful, so handsome, so cool, so like John Lennon and oh, God, Sonya loves John Lennon.

  Sonya won’t be saying our father is cool when he’s swinging her by the hair. Sonya won’t love John Lennon when the sight of him makes her piss in her knickers or when she’s hiding in bus shelters with her children, afraid to go home.

  Sonya is nice and I like her but how can I tell her these things when I’m twelve and she’s in love? How do I tell her I don’t want her for a mother because I have a mother and I don’t want to live in a tent even if the hippies are nice and the only thing bothering them is there are too many trees being chopped down and that’s the worst thing of all because trees have feelings, man? That’s the trouble with this planet, too many people and not enough trees. And still, there’s a guilty part of me wants Sonya to marry my father so he’ll just piss off and let the five of us alone. That won’t happen. He’d try taking us out of the convent and back to this place I dream of escaping from, and all our work robbing troughs and building our boat will be for nothing.

  Sonya lifts her dress by the sides and it opens like a white fan. It’s like she’s advertising herself for our mother’s job. What do you think, girls?

  Pippa panics and blows on her
inhaler till the pink comes back to her cheeks and all I can do is smile and pray we escape in the morning because, next time Sonya asks, she mightn’t take a smile for an answer.

  My father says we’re gorgeous when he sees us back at the caravan. He’s sitting at the table screwing the lid back on the bottle of cod liver oil. And do you know the best thing, girls? Costs nothing. Anything free always looks well on you. Free is good. Remember that. Good, good, good, good, good.

  There’s a bright August moon floating over the island and smiling down on the white marquee glimmering with candlelight. Two hippies standing by the fire play guitar and sing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. The young hippie bride stands by the fire in a white satin frock, her golden pigtails tied with the red ribbon. I can’t understand why such a pretty girl would marry that slob standing beside her. He looks as old as my father and there’s enough hair growing from his nose to lace a pair of boots.

  We join hands and form a circle around the fire. About fifty of us with flowers in our hair and our faces red and orange in the firelight. No way Lucy Flynn will believe me when I tell her this. She’ll laugh her head off. I wonder where the priest is. Will he wear the full robes or just the black suit and white collar? The white collar, I’d say. He’ll hardly dress up for a hippie wedding.

  Pippa tugs my elbow and says it’s over.

  Over, Pippa? What do you mean, over?

  It is though, Matilda.

  It can’t be over. There was no priest or nothin’.

  Pippa shrugs her shoulders. She can’t understand either but we’re certain it’s a mortal sin till we wonder can you get a mortal sin if you’re not Catholic and don’t believe in mortal sins and even if you can it’s hard to imagine God doling out mortal sins to people who care so much about trees.

  Inside the marquee, the hippies puff the cigarettes with the strange smell that makes my eyes sting and my head dopey. There’s a table against the back wall filled with trays of fruit – apples, pears, oranges, bananas. Another table is overflowing with hams, cheeses and all kinds of breads. Round, long, short, square and some twisted like braids. Crates of beer, bottled and canned, are stacked against the side wall. There’s lemonade, orange and assorted nuts.