There’s still no word from Sheamie. To make things worse, my father could come home from London soon. If I couldn’t tell by the evenings getting longer and the swallows that nest under the convent roof swooping over our heads in the playground I could tell by Danny sitting on the stone wall. If Danny even thinks our father is coming, he climbs that wall faster than a nun’s confession. Gabriel is dreading it. She’s been praying a lot more lately. Praying is important to the nuns. As important as make-up is to the big girls. They always look so different afterwards, and this morning when I tell Gabriel I’m going for a run she looks badly in need of the blusher.
She’s sitting at the kitchen table in her new habit. I took me a while to get used to it. Well, actually, it took me a while to get used to the fact Gabriel has legs. It stops just below her knee. And her new veil is short and sits on top of her head and not strapped under her chin like the old one. Her hair is cut short and has a slight curl to it and it’s almost as dark as mine. She’s reading her prayer book and from the moment she lifts her head to ask, Is there any news of your father, Matilda? to when I answer, Not yet, Mother, even birds sitting on wires stop singing and are stuck there with their beaks open waiting for the answer.
I’m running along the edge of the pavement by the Apple Market when the hand comes out from the crowd. I know that hand better than my own. I know how the long straight fingers stick together and the thumb lies flat across the palm. The thick knuckles. The strong, sleeveless arm. The clean fingernails. I know that voice it belongs to. If I didn’t know what it could do, I’d want to hear it more than anything. If I didn’t know how quickly it can change, I couldn’t wait to hear it. I’d dream about it. I’d listen to every sweet and beautiful word and love it more than anything.
I look up. Not as far as those eyes. I wouldn’t dare. He’d kill me. He’d say I was challenging him. My eyes stop at the beard. It’s longer, scraggier, more grey than black.
Sorry, Daddy, I didn’t see you.
You’ll never get away from me. Remember that.
I didn’t see you, honest.
He bends for me to kiss his cheek and my mind goes blank but I know I’ve kissed him because there’s that bitter taste on my lips. He asks why I didn’t write and I tell him I did and he nods like he remembers. It was only one stupid letter Gabriel made me write.
Have you written to your father lately, Matilda?
No, Mother.
Wouldn’t it be nice now to tell him how well you’re doing in the running and you won the gold medal and had your picture in the paper? I’m sure he’ll want to hear all of it, Matilda.
He wouldn’t want to hear any of it.
Be sure to say you love him and miss him terribly. I’ll post it for you. Wouldn’t now be a lovely time to do it, with summer coming.
It wasn’t a question. What Gabriel meant by summer coming is, that crazy bastard is going to be here soon, in God’s name, do something. I wrote, but I didn’t tell him about the running. After what happened in Clew Bay I couldn’t, and I hated Gabriel for making me write because I didn’t miss him and I don’t love him. Now I’m glad she did.
I’m off school.
Did I ask about school?
No, Daddy.
I’m caught. I can’t tell him about my running. Something new for him to say I’m useless at, but I have my running togs on and the new runners that Sonny bought for my birthday and if he even thinks I’m lying he’ll kill me here and now. I tell him about the running and how I got my picture in the paper and, as I’m telling him, I remember how good I felt and for some stupid reason I hope he’ll be proud he has a daughter who has more gold medals than the whole Holy Shepherd put together, but it means nothing to him and for a little while it makes me feel nothing.
He sits on a chair with the straw sticking out of its arms and lights a cigarette. He pulls an empty fruit crate beside him and tells me to sit and there’s nothing to do but sit here with the cheap clothes, the lousy fruit and the broken records. He asks about Pippa and Danny and I tell him they’re in the convent.
Are you visiting your Nanny?
I lie that I called at Easter and he seems happy with that.
It’s important to keep contact with the family, Matilda. Family is all you have at the end of the day.
I know, Daddy.
The chapel bells ring for ten o’clock mass and I tell him Gabriel will be waiting, even though he knows she won’t and wouldn’t give a shit if she was. He twirls the cigarette between his thumb and finger and watches the smoke spiral. Umbilical Bill tosses me an apple.
Thanks, Bill.
I like Bill. I get a kick out of watching him flog the bruised pears he swears he picked this morning, when I know the only thing Bill ever picked any morning was his nose. My father asks how I’m doing with the music and I tell him I can play the accordion and the flute and wonder why is he interested and who told him I’m learning music in the Mad School.
The long thin lips smile to themselves and the eyebrows twitch.
You can go. Tell the others I’ll be down. Make sure you’re there.
At nearly fourteen you’d think there’d be some sign of a chest. Pippa has the biggest chest in the convent and I can’t understand why I have almost none. I sit on my bed looking down the front of my jumper screaming, Come on, come on, for Christ’s sake. I pull at my nipples but they only stick out like points and when I let go my skin slaps back flat to my chest and I end up with nipples raw and sore. If I had a bra, I could fill it with stockings and toilet paper, only I’m too nervous to ask Gabriel. She’ll say bras cost money and she can’t be handing out bras to someone with no chest.
I’m shaking walking down the stairs. I stop on the landing and chew the inside of my lip, wondering if now is a bad time to ask with my father around, but I’ll never get one unless I ask.
Gabriel is in the kitchen, her hands white with flour, baking scones for Father Devlin. Hello, Matilda, she says.
Oh shit, she knows.
I run back out to the hallway and sit on the end of the stairs with my chin in my hands. Maybe she doesn’t know, maybe she was just saying hello. I walk in and ask straight out.
Mother, can I have a bra?
A what?
A bra, Mother?
She looks at me like I’m demented and wonders, What would you do with a bra, Matilda?
What do you mean what would I do with it? What do you think I’d do with it?
You don’t need a bra. When you do I’ll let you know.
I need one now, Mother.
Don’t be silly. Be off out and play and let me get on with the work.
I feel like crying because she speaks to me like a child, a child with no chest. She wouldn’t speak to me like that if I had a bra. Then I could go around holding them up with my arms folded and not have to keep my arms by my side, because you can’t go around folding your arms under your chest when you don’t have a bra.
Gabriel goes to clean Polly’s cage and complains about the kids always sticking bits of weed and leftover corn flakes through the bars. I don’t know how the poor little thing survives at all, Matilda. It must be a miracle.
It’d be a miracle if you bought the poor little thing a box of birdseed.
What?
Nothin’.
Gabriel looks through the window and asks if my father plays the guitar and I don’t know what guitars have to do with anything.
A guitar?
I run to the window and there he is in the playground with a black leather guitar case in his hand. Pippa is skipping around him like she’s delighted he’s here. Part of her probably is. Part of her is terrified. That’s what happens when you have nobody to love and nobody to love you. You’ll look for it from the ones that hurt you most. Even from my father.
He hands Pippa something in a box like a tiny black coffin. It’s probably a watch. It is a watch, with a gold strap and clasp. Pippa kisses his cheek and runs to show the other kids what she’s got.
Gabriel goes to the sink, tidying what’s already tidied so she looks busy when he walks in all smiles saying, Hello, Sister, nice to see you again.
It’s hard not to laugh at the way Gabriel tries to sound surprised when she says, Oh, Mister Kelly, how nice to see you again.
Gabriel smiles at me like I’m a great girl altogether and I still hate it when she does that.
My father leaves the guitar on the table and bends for me to kiss his cheek and there’s that bitter taste again. He walks to the window and stands with his hands behind his back and asks where Danny is. Gabriel walks the other way, towards the sink. Have you seen Danny today, Matilda? And she knows he’s out on the wall since breakfast and by now he’s hiding on the other side of town.
No, Mother. Did you?
Well, I’m absolutely certain he was here earlier but I couldn’t say where he is right now. Though I’ll be certain he knows you’re looking, Mister Kelly.
My father walks to the piano and opens the lid. Plays one or two notes and closes it again.
Did you know Matilda’s mother played the piano, Sister?
Did she, indeed? Well, it must run in the family, because I’m receiving fabulous reports about Matilda and her music.
There’s a cold sweat soaking through my blouse. He’s up to something. By now he’s usually roaring abuse at Gabriel about our education and how stupid I am and how it’s all Gabriel’s fault.
I’d like to see Matilda on her own, Sister. Is that all right with you?
I’m looking at Gabriel, waiting for her to turn around and say we were going somewhere, but she gives me her back.
Go, Matilda, go with your father.
I thought we were goin’ somewhere, Mother?
Not that I’m aware of.
I thought you said…
You must be mistaken. Go with your father.
The sun is sinking above the chestnut trees and the playground glints orange. There’s a crack of wings as the starlings lift from the telephone wires and make great sweeping circles overhead. My father walks ahead of me with the guitar in his hand, through the wooden gate to the nuns’ garden full of shrubs and flowers and nuns on their knees with garden trowels digging in the clay.
He kneels beside Sister Rose, who’s in charge of the gardens and spends her life on her knees one way or another, and tells her in his sweet, calm voice, the Lord is in her two hands and the garden is an offering to the Almighty and would you mind if we share it with you a while? Sister Rose is so delighted she’s offering him slips and bulbs of every hedge, shrub, lily and rose in the garden and the way he’s going he’ll have her preaching on the side of the road with him if he doesn’t stop.
A pleasure, Mister Kelly, why anytime at all. And how is Matilda this evening?
Fine, Sister Rose.
I’m sure you’re only delighted to have your father home.
I am, Sister.
Don’t let me delay you both any longer. Have a nice evening, won’t you. It was a pleasure to meet you again, Mister Kelly.
And you, Sister Rose.
Near a small pond where a family of brown ducks live, my father sits cross-legged on the lawn fringed by shrubs and roses. The ground is hard and the grass is burned in the centre of the lawn and I know the nuns are saying isn’t it a wonderful sight to see a man and his daughter on such a splendid lawn on an evening such as this. I tremble when he tells me to sit closer, right here in front of him.
I bought you this.
Bought? My father doesn’t buy anything unless he’s up to something.
He unzips the black leather case and takes out a shiny wooden guitar. I tell him I can’t play the guitar and hope he’ll think he made a mistake, but he insists I have the gift.
Huh?
He twists the knobs at the top and listens to the wiry sound of each string, tuning it, getting it perfect. When he’s satisfied, he tells me to watch where he puts his fingers and, when he plays, the mother duck quacks. She flutters her stubby brown tail and her five chicks follow her through a patch of ivy to the other side of the garden, where they snuggle in the shade of the wall. He hands me the guitar.
You try, Matilda.
The guitar feels solid and makes a hollow sound when I take it. I sit up, cross-legged, and hold the guitar on my lap the way he did, but I don’t know where to put my fingers.
Just let go, Matilda. Be one with the Lord and the Lord will be in your fingers.
What?
The Lord is in every living thing. You must let Him guide you. Close your eyes and breathe the scent of the flowers, hear the birds chirping and be as one with your Maker.
I close my eyes and pray like a lunatic. My father is the lunatic and I’m praying like one. Please, Lord, be in my fingers. I pluck the strings and he screams in my face.
What was that?
I told you I can’t play. I don’t want to play.
I get up to go but he barks at me to sit, so I sit and try again but this time he doesn’t ask, What was that? This time it’s, What the fuck was that? You’re stupid.
He pulls the guitar from me. This is the G chord, listen to it.
Then he relaxes. His eyelids close and the beard ripples under his nostrils. I look to the other side of the garden to Sister Rose. She glances over her shoulder but, like Gabriel, she gives me her back. The nuns will never do anything. They’re too scared of him.
He hands me the guitar again and tells me in that sweet voice to let it all go and be one with the Lord. The Lord has given each of us a gift and yours, Matilda, is music. He told me so. But the Lord expects you to praise him in return.
He sounds so sure, for a moment I can’t help wondering if he’s right. No, I need him to be right, but when I play the beard around his lips bristles with sweat. He spits in my face. You’re stupid. You’re a stupid bitch. You’re just fucking thick.
I try to wipe the phlegm from my cheek but he forces my fingers on the strings one at a time and squeezes till they bleed. I try again but it’s no use and I scream, I’ll try, I’m sorry, I’ll try again. That’s no use either, and I know what’s coming. Before I see the long straight fingers curling into that fist. Before I see it speeding over the burned grass, I know it’s coming. My head spins and wobbles. Everything is wet and blurry. The roses are turning green and the shrubs are turning yellow and the next thing I see is the bathroom sink running red but it washes away and, when it does, it never happened.
In the morning, Gabriel doesn’t ask what happened to my face, she knows.
Pippa is going to town to meet Mona, but I can’t go anywhere with a face like a torn sack. Pippa doesn’t say it but she’s glad I’m not going. She’ll be leaving the convent for good next year. She knows the only thing that’s going to bother our father for the summer is that guitar, and me. She wants to be well out of the way.
I couldn’t go with her if I wanted to. I can’t go anywhere until I learn something on that guitar. I’ll go to my room and practice the G chord. The God Chord. That’s what my father calls it. The God Chord.
Through the open window, I hear the others running out to the playground and I don’t want to play this guitar. I don’t want to stand next to that lunatic, playing some stupid song he made up himself so I can praise the Lord while he preaches his gospel to the sinners of Waterford or London or wherever he plans to take us. I just want him to leave me alone.
I take the guitar from under the bed and sit on the bed with the guitar on my lap. Maybe if I learn a few chords, that’ll stop him hitting me. It probably won’t. After the guitar there’ll be something else, something new for him to say I’m useless at. There will always be something. I know that now. He’ll pick on me until I skip and dance around him in the playground like Pippa, or run from him in terror like Mona and Sheamie and Danny. He’ll torment me until he breaks me, until he controls me. I don’t know when it was I understood that. I just woke one morning and the answer was beside me on my pillow. It was as if the Tooth Fairy finally found out where I lived.
I’ll break a string, that’s what. I’ll break a string and say it just broke. Who’s to say it didn’t? I’m sure it happens all the time. Probably did it himself. But no, he’ll say, You stupid bitch for breaking the string, because people with the Lord in their fingers don’t break strings. I’ll say one of the other children broke it, one of the younger kids who won’t say I’m a liar. They’re always getting at things and breaking them. But I can’t do that either. He’ll say, You stupid bitch for leaving the guitar where a child can get it. What am I going to do? I’d practise if only my hands would stop shaking. I pray, Please, God, please, Jesus and Holy Spirit who’s in everyone. Please help me. I’ll be good. I won’t curse, I won’t fight, I’ll do whatever Gabriel says. Please just stop my hands from shaking. But he doesn’t answer. He never answers.
I get down on the floor and put my hands under my legs and sit on them. I’ll sit here for as long as it takes thinking about good things, but I can’t do that either because the only good thing I have is this stupid fuckin’ guitar.
I stand at the window watching the others playing on the swings and roundabout and fighting over everything. I’ll go outside and walk around for a while. I won’t talk to anyone in case they want me to play. I’m just not in the humour for playing. I know they’ll say I’m pure faintin’ and won’t talk to anyone because I got a new guitar, but I don’t care, it’s better than him beating me.
The sunlight stings my eyes when I walk out to the playground. Gabriel is sitting on the low red-brick wall around her garden talking to Sister Ellen. Gabriel smiles at me like I’m a great girl altogether and asks how the guitar is coming along. I’m sure you’ll be a fine guitar player, Matilda. You have the fingers for it.
I don’t answer. I’m not in the mood for her. I don’t know what torments me more about Gabriel. How she can be so sweet to my father or that stupid smile she gives me, and I don’t see what’s so special about my bleeding fingers that the Lord is in them and they’re so brilliant for playing guitar.
Danny kicks the football to me from across the playground. It lands at my feet and he stands there like he’s expecting me to kick it back.
Come on, Matilda, are yeh playin’ or what?
I’m nearly fourteen. I’m stuck in a Mad School, my father’s tormenting me with that damn guitar, my brother’s tormenting me to play football and I can’t get a bra for love nor money.
Gabriel says, Give it a break, Matilda. You’ve been up there all morning.
All morning and I haven’t even held the guitar properly.
There’s no use tormenting myself. I’ll play ball for a while and maybe I’ll feel better later, only we play ball until dark and later never comes.
My father comes to the convent most days now. He takes me to town and we sit in the apple market talking to Umbilical Bill or other people my father knows from when he was young. Those are the all right days. Other days he takes Pippa and me to town to preach. Some days he only takes Pippa. I’m to stay here and practise my guitar.
On a rainy evening in July, Pippa and me are in the sitting room practising disco dancing to the Bee Gees on Top of the Pops. Gabriel doesn’t mind the Bee Gees and even does a few steps herself. It’s like she’s just discovered she has legs, and they’re not bad either, for a nun.
The song has just finished when I hear Gabriel out in the kitchen telling my father we can use the Madonna’s room. I go upstairs and take the guitar from under the bed and, when I come down, my father is sitting in the armchair by the window. On the table beside him there’s a bunch of dead lilies in a vase. This is all I need. The Madonna’s blue eyes staring at me from one corner and my father’s yellow eyes glaring at me from the other.
Come here and show me your fingers, Matilda.
What do you want to see my fingers for?
I want to see if you’ve been practising.
I have.
He pulls my fingers closer and I feel his breath on my palm.
Those are teeth marks.
They’re not. It’s from the strings.
Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to your father.
One way or another I’m dead. They are teeth marks but if I tell him they’re not he’ll kill me for telling lies and if I tell him they are teeth marks he’ll kill me for not practising. I’d have practised if I knew what I was practising but there’s nothing written down because people with the Lord in their fingers don’t need things written down.
He gives me a thump to the temple that drives me onto the floor. I crawl under the table and crouch close to the wall with my hands over my head and he’s kicking chairs out of the way to get at me. I see Gabriel’s short skirts bustling across the red carpet.
Out. I want you out of here now. Leave that child alone and don’t come back here again or I’ll call the gardaí.
He’s holding a chair – I can see the legs dangling above the carpet. His toes curl tight in his Moses sandals when he turns to face Gabriel. He’d go for Gabriel when he’s like this and she knows it. I hear the banging in my chest when he takes a step towards Gabriel. She takes a step back and a bunch of fresh lilies drop from her hand to the floor. I try to find a prayer but there’s darkness in my head and the words don’t come. A gang of younger kids run in and my father slams the chair against the wall and storms out.
I crawl as far as the leg of the table and look up at Gabriel. She kisses her crucifix, mumbling a prayer. She goes out to the hallway and locks the door and when she comes back she tells me to come out from under there, he’s gone. Will you just look at what he’s done to this chair? It’s beyond repair. I’ve had enough of him. I really have.
She bends to pick up the lilies when the kids run in yelling, He’s back, he’s back, he’s back, and we hear him banging his fist on the glass. Gabriel goes back out to the hall and I run after her and hide behind her black skirts while she threatens him with the gardaí again. I can’t really see him, just the green of his jacket through the wire glass. The younger kids run up and down the hall shouting the gardaí are coming. They’re so excited something new is happening, if my father dragged Gabriel and me out to the playground and hung us from a chestnut tree they’d light a bonfire and dance around us like Indians. The bigger kids are gathering around Gabriel, terrified in case anything happens to her. Mickey Driscoll is telling me to hide.
Upstairs, Matilda. Hide under me bed. He won’t look there.
Doyler is waving her tea towel. Get away from that door. She runs down the corridor checking the windows are locked. One of the young kids pushes her face up to the glass and sticks her tongue out then runs and hides under the kitchen table. Pippa runs to the kitchen and hides under the table too. I think about following but decide to stay behind Gabriel. I can’t run from him if I’m under a table. My father could break the glass but he’s doing enough. He’s frightening Gabriel and that’s what he wants. He’s making sure she never interferes with him again.
When he’s gone, Gabriel is trembling. She takes out her rosary beads and prays for strength. An hour later, she gets off her knees and puts her rosary beads back in her pocket.
That’s it. That’s the last time he’ll set a foot in here.
Even as Gabriel’s saying it we both know it’s not true. Grandmother rings Father Devlin who rings Reverend Mother who says, Of course, Father Devlin, I’m certain there’s been a mistake, and on a cold Saturday in August he’s back telling Gabriel how sorry he is and here’s something I thought you’d like, Sister Gabriel.
He’s bought her a record player. I know he bought it second-hand in the Apple Market and a cardboard box stuffed with long-playing records and all of them about God.
Gabriel isn’t happy with Reverend Mother for leaving my father back in here. I catch her glaring at her behind her back when she thinks nobody’s looking. I know there’s nothing Gabriel can do and she’ll put up with it as long as my father behaves and she’s not distracted from putting her feet up with Sister Ellen so they can listen to Elvis Presley blaring out ‘Amazing Grace’ all over the place.
There’s an argument over which group gets the record player. Our father bought it so our group thinks it should be in our group, but the other groups complain that’s got fuck all to do with it.
Stop that swearing, says Gabriel.
Sister Ellen says the record player is for everybody.
Gabriel says, Yes, Sister Ellen, it is for everybody. But it’s staying in my sitting room.
Sister Ellen puts on a long face but grabs the nearest seat and for a week there’re fifty of us cramped in the sitting room until we get so sick of Elvis cryin’ and bawlin’ in the chapel we go back to the playground, leaving Gabriel and Ellen to argue over who they’ll listen to next.
Monday afternoon, he’s waiting for me outside the Mad School in his army jacket and Moses sandals. He’s leaning against the gate pillar watching the school door, making sure I don’t get past. I’m so ashamed, I run out to see what he wants when I’m still wearing the grey uniform. I walk behind him to his blue van parked at the back of the Cathedral where he takes a banner rolled around two long wooden poles from the roof rack. He puts them on one shoulder and a white wooden box he takes from the front seat on the other. We walk to the Cathedral where the purple banner opens larger than a bedspread. It has a picture of the Lord standing on a cloud and he has golden light coming from his head. My father stands on the white box, with one hand gripping my wrist and his long hair swept over his shoulders, and in that calm, powerful voice begins to preach.
The Cathedral is on the busiest street in the city and it’s throbbing with people. My father preaches to them all. He preaches to the people coming from or going to the Cathedral, lured to the temple of evil by the Catholic Church, the instrument of Satan himself. He preaches to the people who hurry past, blessing themselves, and the ones who just hurry past. He preaches to the ones who cross the street and the ones who stop to listen. He preaches to the ones that laugh and move on and the ones who listen and then move on. He preaches to the ones who stay and hang on every sweet and beautiful word. They’ve found a Saviour. They found my father.