Gabriel marches the girls in our group to the church and tells us Reverend Mother has decided we’ve had too much freedom. The female body is the temple of temptation and can only be saved by prayer. We are to say our prayers and be good Catholics for aren’t we Irish and always remember it was the Irish who gave Catholicism to the world. You’ve made your First Holy Communion, Matilda. You’ve made your Holy Confirmation. You are a Soldier of Christ.
There are groans all round the chapel but Gabriel waves us away and every Friday us Soldiers of Christ are brought to the chapel for the Stations of the Cross and to listen to Gabriel tell us any time we feel like complaining all we need do is look up there on the wall at Jesus struggling up Mt Calvary with that cross on his back and that will stop our complaining.
We stop at every picture in the chapel and say a decade of the rosary. We pray to all the statues and on the way out we kneel to St Joseph. He wears a brown robe and has a curly beard like a bunch of grapes stuck to his chin. Gabriel tells us to pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary who in turn will intercede on our behalf to her son Jesus who in turn will intercede to God the Father, and on a stifling day in July the chapel is hotter than Hell and, even though it’s a sin to say it, the whole thing would bore the arse off you.
Out in the playground I’m covered in sweat and I’m sore from kneeling and bowing and standing and genuflecting and I’m wondering what to do next. It must be at least an hour before the rosary. Mona and me sit on the low red-brick wall outside the door of our group watching the willy-wagtails dance along the roof of the green sheds while we wait for our skin to cool. Mona asks me keep an eye out while she opens the top three buttons of her blouse so she’ll get a colour on her chest.
You’d want some sun for that chest, Mona.
She didn’t hear me. I’m sitting on her deaf side. She flattens her curly black hair back from her face and lies back as far as she can to catch the sun. She holds her legs out straight and pulls her skirt up over her knees. Birds warble above our heads and the light breeze blowing from the nuns’ garden carries the sweet smell of flowers. I watch around the playground for nuns but there’s only kids playing on swings and the boys playing soccer using the broken gate on the green shed as a goal.
A blue car roaring like a tank comes around the corner by the fire escape. It’s so loud I expect to see a soldier’s head sticking out the top. It drives in circles around the playground with a stampede of kids screaming after it.
Gis a spin, mister, gis a spin.
A big girl comes running across to Mona and me pulling at her hair and bawling, It’s him, it’s him, it’s really him. Mona and me look at each other then back at the girl, still pulling out her hair. Mona sits up properly on the wall.
It’s who? she says.
John Lennon. John Lennon is after comin’ teh see us.
Who? says Mona.
John Lennon.
That’s my father, says Mona.
John Lennon is yeer father, Mona?
Shut the fuck up, yeh dope, says Mona.
He parks by the green shed and steps out rolling up his shirtsleeves. His hair and beard are still long and all he needs are those little round glasses and he’d really look like John Lennon. Without them he looks more like Jesus himself. He’s wearing Moses sandals, no socks, and he’s striding across the playground towards us and I just sit here because when you haven’t had a father from seven to ten you wonder if he’s your father anymore.
Part of me wonders is he better now and if he’s taking us out of the convent. It’s not too late to be a family. I know he hasn’t found Mum. I’d feel it if he did. Part of me is embarrassed because I don’t know what to say to him. He’s halfway across the playground now with a gang of kids swinging from his huge arms and trying to jump up on his broad back. He lifts them in the air and swings them around then puts them down and picks up another one.
I turn my eyes down and look at the cracks in the playground. But when I expect him to finally reach us and be beside me and he’s not, I worry he’s passed by and didn’t know me.
I look up and he’s sitting a little away from me on the bottom step of the fire escape with Danny on his lap. Sheamie is sitting sideways on the step above them with the sun glistening off his glasses. I don’t think Danny knew it was our father when he sat on his lap. Pippa sits on the wall beside Mona and me and I know she’s nervous too, the way she keeps tidying her blonde hair and straightening the hem of her frock in line with her knees. Pippa looks at me with her blue eyes as if to ask, What do we do? I just shrug my shoulders.
Gabriel comes to the door to see what the fuss is. Mona nearly shits herself and hurries to close her buttons. She gets away with it because when Gabriel sees my father her eyes roll under her eyelids and she murmurs, Oh, my, like she’s remembering the last time she saw him and she’s wondering what she’s going to say if he starts asking why she still hasn’t found a good man for herself. Any man.
My father comes across and bends down for Pippa and me to kiss his cheek, as if he’s seen us only yesterday. Mona’s cheeks blush when he puts his arms around her waist and bends to kiss her on the forehead. He says he’ll be back in a moment and goes inside to talk to Gabriel. We don’t know what to think until Gabriel and my father come back out smiling and chatting at the doorway, my father telling Gabriel how he met a man in hospital…
Hospital? What sort of hospital? says Gabriel.
Daddy doesn’t say. He just carries on about the man he met who showed him where he was going astray with his life. A man who showed him how to put the past behind him and move on. How he reads the Bible and understands Jesus’ message. He can even understand Gabriel being a nun even if he’s not Catholic himself. That stops Gabriel smiling.
You’re not?
She looks down at Mona, Pippa and me, then over at Sheamie and Danny. One of her eyebrows lifts and the corner of her mouth follows, like they’re joined by a piece of string. She looks confused. Maybe she’s wondering if we’ve had enough prayers yet to be protected. I’m confused too. I never knew you could be anything else if you were Irish. I thought Catholic and Irish were the same thing.
My father looks out to the playground over the heads of all the kids and talks in a voice I haven’t heard him use before. It’s calm and sweet and you can’t help but listen.
Most assuredly, I tell you, unless one is born again, that person can’t see the kingdom of God. Isn’t that right, Sister?
Gabriel looks up at him out the corner of her eye, then looks away. Oh, well, she says, as if she’s happy that’s the end of that particular conversation. She sits on the wall beside us and puts her hand on Mona’s knee. She says, You must be delighted to have your father home, Mona. He tells me he’s here for summer and he’s taking you all out for a spin in the car. Isn’t that only fabulous?
And fix your buttons, Mona. You’ve got them in the wrong holes.
Yes, Mother.
There’s a gang of kids standing around gawking and I know they’re going mad they haven’t a father with a car, a father who can stand up straight.
I run upstairs for my poncho and when I come back my brothers and sisters are already in the car. Mona is in the front seat beside my father. Sheamie, Pippa and Danny are jumping up and down in the back seat delighted to be getting out of the convent. I squeeze in the back beside Pippa. The car is old and you can see the hair-oil stains on the cloth above my father’s head and there’s a hole in the floor that I can see the road through and smell the fumes from the exhaust. My father wonders if we missed him and we tell him we did. Are we doing well in school?
We all say, Yes, Daddy, even though I never heard of anyone from the convent doing well in school. So long as you can write your name and answer the roll-call every morning, the teachers are happy with that.
I hope yee’re not telling lies. I’ll find out.
We look at each other before we all lie together. We’re not, Daddy.
We drive through town then across the bridge over the River Suir towards the railway station then turn left and travel miles into the countryside. The roads are narrow and we pass men with sticks hunting sheep along the road and when the car slows the sheep gather round us and stick their black faces to the glass and say, Baa.
We stop at a village where there’s a shop and people coming out the chapel from evening mass. The men pull their caps from their pockets and fix them on their heads and the women take off their scarves to put into their handbags and all of them blink when they walk out into the sunshine.
My father parks at the shop. There are jars of sweets in the window and I feel my mouth water from tiny springs at the back of my throat. I can taste liquorice already but my father says no. He has food we don’t yet know about.
We walk past the shop and stand on the steps of the chapel under the white statue of Jesus with his hands held out in front like he’s asking us to go inside. Daddy tells us to gather around and when we do he asks, Why are statues of God always of a good-looking man? We look at each other and shrug our shoulders.
Well, answer me.
Sheamie takes his glasses off and squints up at the statue like some kind of professor.
Because that’s what Jesus looks like, Daddy.
God could have been ugly, Sheamie. God could have been a snake or a bird a cat or a dog. Couldn’t he?
No.
What do you mean, no?
I mean, that’s Jesus up there.
That’s not Jesus, Sheamie.
It’s not?
That’s a big white stone.
But it’s still Jesus though. Everyone knows what Jesus looks like.
My father puts his hand on Sheamie’s shoulder and tells us it’s not Sheamie’s fault. The nuns have our minds corrupted and that’s one of the reasons he’s here. God has spoken to him and given him a mission. To spread His Word and bring people the Truth.
Pippa and Mona have moved to the third step by now so they’re a few feet from us. Pippa looks puzzled. Her bright blue eyes keep looking from the statue to my father. I go and stand between them. Sheamie would like to move away too, but my father’s hand is on his shoulder and Sheamie isn’t going anywhere. Danny is looking up at the statue like he’s trying to figure it out but Danny is only eight and you can’t figure anything out when you’re eight. You’re six before you can tie your shoelaces properly.
My father makes the five of us line up on the step facing Jesus and he stands on the step above us, so now we’re facing him as well. I feel like we’re having our photograph taken. I can see it in my mind. Mona’s at the edge, her curly black hair almost to her shoulders. She’s wearing a white blouse with the top button open. Her arms folded under her chest. You can see the shape of her bra. She has a pair of black slacks covering her long legs and a pair of green sandals, the ones with the silver buckle that you strap at your ankle. The straps are frayed and she’s not wearing socks. Sheamie is standing beside her with his hands behind his back dressed in brown corduroy pants with holes in the knees. Next Pippa, in a dress with a flowery pattern and a white cardigan with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows because the cardigan’s elbows are frayed. I’m next, in the blue poncho. Then Danny with his black hair cut in a fringe, brown eyes and scruffy white runners with little laces.
My father is in front of us with the sun shining behind his head like a halo. I can feel the sun’s heat on my face. I’m wearing jeans and the sweat runs down my legs. My father swings his arm towards the statue and tells us Jesus is not in lumps of stone. Jesus is in the air and the trees. Jesus is all around us. Jesus is not a lump of rock. Jesus is life itself.
By now the words are flowing from him like water gushing from a fountain. His face is glowing, his hands are waving. It’s like he’s someplace else altogether. Like he knows everything there is to know. The nuns never told us anything like this and what nuns don’t know about Jesus isn’t worth knowing. But not even nuns know everything, that’s why they have Sacred Mysteries. Anytime something doesn’t make sense it’s called a Mystery and only God himself understands. There are no mysteries with my father because now he’s telling us the Lord saved him from sin. Yes, he was a bad man, yes, he did go astray but the Lord saved his life for a special purpose and he must repay the Lord and where better place to start than with his own children. Don’t let me catch yee praying to statues.
Mona says, We have to, Daddy. The nuns will kill us if we don’t. They have us doing extra Stations of the Cross and everything.
The Lord, Mona. Pray directly to Our Saviour. I’ll sort out the nuns. I won’t have my children worshipping false Gods.
I think that might be a good thing but I’m not sure.
An old woman clutching rosary beads comes from the chapel and dips her fingers in the big concrete holy water font by the door. When she walks down the steps towards us Daddy asks her why was she in there praying to statues? The old woman looks my father up and down, then at the five of us. She blesses herself with the sign of the cross and hurries away down the street. I start down the steps towards the footpath, ’cos I’m certain my father’s after losing it altogether this time, but he grabs me by the arm and tells the five of us to follow him. We’re going inside.
The chapel has a sweet smell of incense and is so silent I hear the candles burn under St Joseph in his brown robe and no beard. The Virgin Mary is kneeling under Jesus nailed to the cross, the blood dripping from the Crown of Thorns. I know he’s in pain but I’m angry because God has a mother who weeps and kneels while he gave me no mother at all.
Daddy lets my arm go and we follow him down the aisle in his Moses sandals past the tired old man kneeling in the back pew with his cap in his hand. My father leads us up the aisle under the stained-glass windows with all the saints in Heaven watching us.
My father tells us that the Catholic church is the instrument of Satan. The priests and nuns are the Devil’s own henchmen. Danny asks what henchmen are and Daddy tells him shut up and listen. He’ll learn more if he listens.
There’s a priest on the altar cleaning the chalice with a white cloth. Daddy stands in front of the altar rail. He points his arm around the chapel to all the statues like he’s pointing arifle. He warns us, in a voice that seems a hundred times louder in the chapel, never to pray to false gods. Pray only to Our Lord.
The priest rushes from the altar. You can hear his footsteps across the marble floor. He has white hair and a white collar and he wears glasses. He tells Daddy to show respect. This is the Lord’s House. Daddy tells him he should have every statue down and smashed with hammers. He’d be only too pleased to help.
The priest looks down at Mona, Sheamie, Pippa, Danny and me. He lifts his glass over his forehead and asks Daddy if we’re his children. Daddy tells him our mother left and the nuns are rearing us and he’s not happy with the notions they’re putting in our heads.
Notions? says the priest.
Corrupting their minds with Hell. Frightening them with a vengeful God. God is Just. There’s no Hell in the true Bible. It’s a Catholic invention to control poor ignorant people and keep the power and the money for themselves. Daddy kneels before the altar with his hands clasped out in front. Look at this, look how they have my children. Praying to that. A great lump of rock.
The priest says, Good God, man, have you no shame? Leave this chapel or I’ll call the gardaí.
Daddy’s laugh echoes around the church and the priest is worried. His eyes dart around the chapel searching for more like us. He says we have to leave. Daddy stands up and pushes his face close to the priest’s and sneers. You hide behind the law of man yet profess to follow the law of God. You’re a disgrace. An insult to Our Lord and a betrayer of truth.
I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave.
My father turns to us and tells us, See, this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, but people sincerely loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
Now he points a wagging finger at the priest and his voice is breathing fire.
Everyone who practises evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. Whoever practises the truth comes to the light to show clearly that their deeds have been done with God.
The priest lowers his head and kicks at the floor like he’s trying to poke a hole in it with the toe of his shoe. You can see he’s trying to think up something to say. Something that will get my father out of here and keep himself in one piece. Danny sits down in the pew, then the rest of us sit in beside him. It’s as if the row is between my father and the priest. It’s between grown-ups and it’s nothing to do with us, though anyone looking at the way the five of us hang our heads would know we’re mortified.
The priest puts his hands in his pockets and says there are many roads to paradise. He’s happy my father has found God but he really has to lock up. He puts his glasses in his top pocket and follows us to the door and smiles down when he sees me dipping my fingers in the holy water font. I’m ashamed for my father making a show of us. My father shoves me away and roars in my face. It’s water, Matilda. Just water. There’s nothing holy about it. He dips his hand in the font and splashes the priest till water drips from the priest’s nose then he turns and walks outside into the light and saunters down the steps with his hands behind his back like he’s strolling along the beach in Galilee.
The priest makes the sign of the cross over us and says he’ll pray for us. We turn our faces away and mumble, Thank you, Father. The priest closes the doors behind us and slams the bolts across, leaving the old man in the pew to find his own way out.
He’s what?
Pentecostal, Mother.
Oh my.
Gabriel is sitting at the kitchen table embroidering one of those pocket-handkerchiefs and says she’d better send for Reverend Mother. She can handle the drunks falling in here but she’s never heard of a Pentecostal. What is it exactly, Sheamie?
Sheamie straightens his glasses. I don’t know, Mother.
Reverend Mother doesn’t know either but she’s certain it’s some class of a heathen and what would you expect from a man who doesn’t show his face for four years even to visit his poor mother. She says one thing is for certain, while we’re under her roof we’ll do as she says and that’s all there is to it.
My father stays for the summer and each day he calls to the convent there’s an argument with Gabriel over God and our education. We’re backward and stupid. We know nothing about the outside world. He wants us to have office jobs when we’re older so we can support him in his old age and for that we need education. He makes us sit in a circle in the playground and Mona has to ask us our spellings, but I don’t want to think about that now because some days he is good to us. He brings us to town and buys clothes and sweets and gives us money. He even bought us black jumpers with a big red letter G on the front. Reverend Mother had a fit because she thought we were taking God’s name in vain till we told her the G was for Gilbert O’Sullivan who is from the Cork Road. I knew she still wanted to take them but she’s having enough trouble with my father without fighting over jumpers.
Gabriel never knows what to say to my father. She just stands as far back from him as she can. Some days she sends for Father Devlin but Father Devlin can’t handle him. By the time my father goes back to London in September I’m so pissed off with penguins screaming in one ear and my father screaming in the other and making a show of us in chapels I don’t know what to think anymore. It seems like everyone is trying to save us. Father Devlin wants to save us from sin. The nuns want to save us from my father. My father wants to save us from the nuns. And all the time we’re stuck in the convent.
Sometimes I sit on my own in the green shed and wonder if any of my life is real or is God just testing me. I wonder if the people around me exist when I don’t see them and where do they go? Do they just vanish like my mother? Are my brothers and sisters really my brothers and sisters? Do they feel like I feel? Hurt like I hurt? Cry like I cry? When they laugh, do they feel the same way I do when I laugh?
Thinking about it gives me a headache. It’s too big for me. It’s like trying to think about algebra. Sometimes I think God is like Santa Claus. There’s a different one in every shop and none of them ever comes to the convent.
Halloween night, my belly is stuffed with apples and nuts and Pippa gives my shoulder a shake in the bed. Come on, Matilda. We’ll sneak over to Trinity Park to play spin the bottle. You can see her blue eyes twinkle in the moonlight and I know she’s excited.
Since when did you start kissin’, Pippa?
Never mind.
Come on tell us.
I went with Mona a few times.
Why don’t you go with her now, then?
I don’t know where she is.
Well, tough. You’re not usin’ me just ’cos Mona isn’t here.
Pippa doesn’t answer. She ties her blonde hair in a ponytail and pulls the blankets off me but I tell her I’m asleep and I don’t want to go spinning stupid bottles and kissing stupid youngfellas with spotty faces tryin’ to put their hands up me jumper.
They won’t try puttin’ their hands up your jumper, Matilda, ’cos there’s fuck all up there. Ah, come on girl, it’s only kissin’. Just don’t let ’em put their tongue in your mouth. ’Cos I told you already, that’s how you get babies.
Don’t be so stupid, Pippa. I seen the girls down in the toilets bent over the toilet bowl with their knickers around the ankles and the workmen queuing up outside the door.
Liar.
Suit yourself.
Pippa doesn’t want to hear anymore. She just wants to go over to Trinity Park. I pull the blankets over my head again but she still torments me. Come on, Matilda. Don’t be a scaredy cat. You have to do it sometime.
I’m not going.
Scaredy cat.
Don’t care, I’m not going.
Scaredy cat.
All right. I’ll go.
I climb out of bed, get dressed and we creep down the corridor. From the bathroom window we can see bonfires lit all over the city. We climb out the window. A few windows further on the girls from the group next door are swinging from bed sheets tied to the heating pipes. We shin down the drainpipe and climb out over the wall just as the fire truck roars past with its blue light flashing and bells ringing. Across the street, under the yellow light of a lamp pole, a gang of boys and girls from the estate are puffing cheap Albanys they bought in Kennedy’s shop after one of them asked a passing grown-up, Hey, Mister, will yeh get us five fags? Some do, others say, Piss off, yeh little bollox.
A boy in a tartan jacket offers me a drag. Pippa says, Go on, Matilda, but I won’t because of the running and Pippa doesn’t push it. She knows it’s a waste of time.
Young kids in masks and costumes go from door to door collecting money and slowly our group moves from the lamp pole and heads for the field behind the houses. There’re about ten of us. We strike matches till we get to the top of the lane. The iron gate is cold and rattles under us when we climb and once we’re in the field we stand and wait for the light of the moon to come from behind the clouds to show the way to the chapel ruin where the grown-ups can’t see us. A dog howls.
I’m goin’ back, Pippa.
It’s only a dog, Matilda.
I know it’s a dog. I’m not deaf. You’re mixin’ me up with Mona.
Very funny, says Pippa.
Yeah, well you asked for it.
Would you two ever shut the fuck up!
Mind your own business.
The damp from the grass seeps through our sandals and when we get to the ruin we sit in a circle around a small fire we light from bits of twigs and papers we find.
The empty milk bottle spins and clinks on the concrete floor and I want to go home again but the bottle is slowing. It passes Pippa, her blue eyes glowing in the firelight. Slower again, passing the girl with the ponytail. It rattles a bit, then stops, pointing to me.
I have to kiss George O’Brien. His mother scalps him to save money on haircuts so he wears a wool hat with a pom-pom and he’s the spottiest youngfella in Trinity Park. No, the world. He’s thirteen and I wonder if you can kiss a boy who’s thirteen when you’re only ten.
Pippa is laughing her head off telling me, Go on, Matilda.
I’m not kissin’ him, Pippa. Fuck that. Take that mask off a your head, boy.
I’m not wearin’ a mask, Matilda.
Could a fooled me.
Everyone shouts, Go on, Matilda. My face is on fire. I lean forward and a tongue rushes at me from the firelight.
Put that tongue back in your head, boy. I’m warnin’ yeh.
Scaredy cat, scaredy cat.
Pippa says, Thought you said nothing could happen to you over tongues, Matilda.
Something’ll happen to him if he doesn’t put it back in his gob.
The tongue goes back in his mouth and I lean forward. I close my eyes and my mouth. I feel him close. I hear him breathe. His lips touch mine. They’re soft, warm, minty. It only lasts a second. I’d a done it for longer.