About Matilda (22 page)

I turn my back and walk away from the table. Nanny stands up to go to the bathroom and I bump against her and knock her back in the chair but I keep going across the dance floor. I want my Daddy to follow and ask me why I didn't dance and I'll tell him, I will. He'll believe me too. He wouldn't have before, but tonight he will. He'll go straight in and kick Uncle Philip all over the Bridge Hotel when I tell him everything Uncle Philip made me do and if Uncle John tries to run we'll jump on him and so will Sheamie and Mona and Danny because they hate him as much as I do.

It's twilight out on the footpath. The night air is sweet and the breeze from the River Suir cools me. If you look hard you can just make out the quarter moon above Tory Hill. The cars are stopped at the traffic lights with their headlights on. The green man bleeps and I cross to the other side of the Quay and wait by the chains along the river. The breeze is colder here and brings goose bumps to my arms. The tide is rushing out. You can hear it gurgle under the bridge on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. This is where I want to tell my Daddy everything because I'm sure that's what girls do. We'll walk along the riverbank holding hands until I'm ready to talk. He'll give me time. We'll sit on a bench. He'll put his arms around me and pull me close to him and tell me he's sorry for everything. He misses us. He loves us. I'll lay me forehead against his chest and feel safe. He'll promise never to leave us again.

I see him coming now through the glass door and he looks angry. He's already guessed what's up. He sprints across the road in his white socks, making the cars stop for him, and stands so close to me I can't see his face without bending back. His huge forehead is wrinkled and the veins in his temples swollen like thick blue ropes.

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

What? I –

Why is he talking to me like this? The words are in my head but they won't come out. My feet that couldn't stop dancing are stuck to the ground.

I feel the back of his hand across my jaw that sends me flying against the chains. The chains sway and I hear the river gushing past. There's darkness and silver in my head like the great silver ball fell from the ceiling and shattered over my head. I'm losing my balance till my father grabs my arm and pulls me back.

Get back in there and tell Uncle Philip and your Nanny you're sorry. Go on. Do it right now. What is it with you? Everywhere you're brought you cause trouble. You're just stupid. That's why you're in that school. You know that, don't you? Now get back in there and apologize.

He grabs my hair and drags me across the road past the cars stopped at the traffic lights. He streals me through the hotel lobby past relations and strangers watching. They turn their backs to us but there's nothing new about that. I don't know which is worse, strangers or relations or the pain in my scalp. I try to yell out but my father doesn't care and there's nothing to do but go inside and do what I'm told.

Sunday morning, my head hurts and I know my father didn't change but I'm used of it. Anyway, Aunt Peg is calling. She'll come along early in her big English car. She'll bring us to Tramore where we'll go on the bumper cars and the roller coaster and spend as long as we like on the slot machines that gobble pennies by the bucketload, but who cares when you have a rich aunt handing out English pound notes. She'll definitely buy the pink ice cream cones and the chips in the Beach Grill, who every fool knows make the tastiest chips in the world. There's nothing in the world like Tramore when you can have chips in oodles of vinegar, cool ice cream at the
back of your throat and an English pound to do what you like with. If paradise has a feel, it has to be the feel of an English pound in your pocket.

We're scrubbed and washed. Gabriel is ironing my blue poncho on the worktop by the sink and says she wouldn't know me if she saw me in anything else, although it is getting a little small for you and isn't it time you thought about sending it to the missions, Matilda?

No, Mother.

But surely…

No, Mother.

I can't explain to Gabriel how the poncho reminds me of my mother so I wander outside to the playground. Danny is sitting on the swings with Mona and Sheamie. Pippa and me push each other on the roundabout and wonder what time Aunt Peg is coming. The bells for twelve o'clock mass ring out over the city and if she's not here soon she won't be here until after lunch.

We stay on the swings a while longer until Gabriel comes to the door to say lunch is ready, if we want it. She doesn't want to ruin our appetites with the big day ahead but the salt air will take care of that. There's nothing like salt air to give you an appetite.

By three o'clock Gabriel is complaining. Your Aunt Peg is very late. Are you certain she said today?

Yes, Mother.

Gabriel says she'll turn on the television while we're waiting. There's a film she wouldn't mind watching herself. We go into the sitting room and sit and watch Shirley Temple singing and dancing all over the orphanage because she has a rich aunt she never knew she had who's come to take her home.

Sheamie hates Shirley Temple.

Girls' stuff. Come on, Matilda, we'll do something else. Sheamie walks ahead of me out to the playground with his hands in his pockets. Gabriel lifts her head from embroidering one of her pocket-handkerchiefs and warns us not to stray. Stay where I can find you in case your aunt turns up.

Sheamie isn't interested in aunts or anything. He wants to go to the orchard, even though we're not supposed to, and we have to pass the penguins' mansion on the way. Sheamie says they won't see us unless they're looking out windows. It's Sunday and the penguins are too busy praying to look out windows. Sheamie's in such a mood over Aunt Peg not turning up when she should and our father turning up when he shouldn't I think I'd better go with him in case he does something daft.

We climb the stone wall to the penguins' garden then dive on our bellies and crawl through the sea of bluebells. The sun is overhead and we can feel the heat on our backs. When we're through the bluebells we can stand up and run the two fields to the orchard. I look back but Sheamie is gone and I think he's after turning back till his head sticks up from a hole with his glasses still on. He climbs out and runs past me and I wonder what sort of a brother I have trying to escape from the convent so he can go to Australia to find our mother when he can't even get to the orchard without falling down a hole.

The orchard is lovely in spring. The trees are thick with blossom and all round there's a sweet smell of apple. We can reach the bottom branches and pull ourselves up, then climb high into the trees where we'll never be seen. Sheamie jumps up on the big bough, scratching himself under his arms, making monkey noises, but his legs are skinny and he can't hang upside down from the branches and grip on by his knees like I can. He falls and twists his ankle and won't climb back up, so now he wants to do something else.

In the next field is the wooden hut where the pigs are kept. We see them stick their heads in the air and sniff and I wonder how they can smell anything with a flat nose like that. One pig struts around the wire pen with a ring through his nose. Another has baby pigs hanging from a belly full of swollen pink tits. It's sad to see them locked up. Penguins always keep things locked up. Sheamie wonders why they keep pigs at all when he never ate a rasher in his life. Rashers are for Father Devlin and special visitors like the government man who comes once a year to check we're all still breathing, but Reverend Mother has him so pissed on whiskey he never gets past her office. Sheamie smiles when he remembers the pigs eat the blood and leftover bits from the babies born to girls who come to slave in the laundry while they're waiting for their babies to be born.

We sit on the rusty tin roof and lie back with the sun on our faces. Sheamie complains, Grown-ups don't care, Matilda. Even Gabriel was only tormented because she had to get our clothes cleaned for nothin'.

Let's get them back, Sheamie.

Who?

All of them.

The iron gate at the front of the pen is heavy but the two of us manage to open it wide enough to make a gap. We climb back up on the tin roof and sit and watch. But the pigs don't move. Sheamie shouts, Hull, hull, but they still don't move. Sheamie throws a stone and hits the pig with the ring right between the two eyes. It jumps and squeals and sprays shit all over the pen and we have to hold our jumpers over our faces with the stench. The pig with the ring sniffs its way towards the gate and pokes his nose outside. His arse follows. The baby pigs follow the pig with the swollen pink tits. More pigs
come from inside the wooden hut till now the field is littered with pigs snorting and spraying.

There's a shout.

Sheamie and Matilda Kelly. Don't move!

I don't believe it. There's a penguin leaning out a window. She's so far away she's like a head on a postage stamp but somehow she's able to see us and soon we're surrounded by penguins. The pigs take off and the penguins take off after them. Sheamie is buckled up laughing on the tin roof. Penguins covered in mud are falling on their backsides, veils over their faces, chasing screeching pigs. By dark we're all locked up, the pigs in the sty and Sheamie and me upstairs. We're thumped, legs, heads, shoulders, and barred from leaving the playground. We are to go to Confession. In the meantime, do twenty-five Hail Marys, ten Our Fathers, a good Act of Contrition and the ten decades of the rosary. Do it in silence on your knees in that corner there, the both of you.

But we'll be here for a week.

Do it!

Sheamie is kneeling beside me. His face is serious but his eyes twinkle at the wall. I'm happy Sheamie is my brother and I know I could never swap any of my brothers or sisters for Uncle James and Aunt Peg or all the stock market returns in the world, whatever they are.

Sheamie whispers, It were worth it, Matilda.

It was, Sheamie.

Are you saying the rosary, Matilda?

It's kinda hard not to when you're on your knees, Sheamie. It's a habit.

But, are you really saying it, Matilda?

'Course not. Are you?

Nah.

Gabriel wants to see Mona, Sheamie, Pippa, Danny and me in her office, and when we go in there are five empty chairs in front of her desk. I'm certain there's trouble because Gabriel wouldn't care if you stood through High Mass. She's sitting behind her desk making a little roof with her fingertips, and now I'm not so sure we're in trouble. She keeps her eyes to one side and no way would she wait this long to scream her head off. The room is so quiet you can hear the clock tick on the wall. She fidgets in the desk drawer like she's looking for something important, before closing the drawer and taking nothing out. She covers her mouth with her hand to clear her throat before she tells us she's had a phone call from our grandmother to say we're going away with our father for the summer.

No way, Mother, says Sheamie. He'll drag us to every church in the country. We'll be reading Bibles all day. You can't send us.

Mona stands up and stomps her foot on the floor. No way, Mother, you know what he's like. You can't send us.

Gabriel waves her hand in front of her like she's patting a dog's head. Sheamie, you come with me. The rest of you wait upstairs in Mona's room.

We all complain, But, Mother.

But nothing. Get away upstairs and do what you are told.

Mona, Pippa, Danny and me go upstairs and sit at the end of Mona's bed and stare at the wall because there's nothin' else to stare at except the picture of Jesus and the Apostles
sitting at a long table breaking bread, drinking wine and Judas looking over his shoulder as he sneaks out the door, and who wants to be looking at Judas at a time like this.

I don't want to go. The churches and spellings are bad enough but, after what happened at the wedding, I don't want to go anywhere with him. Mona is leaning against the door in her blue school uniform, chewing her thumbnail and not looking at anything in particular. Just to say something I say, This is a nice room, Mona, even though that's stupid because all the rooms are the same but I know being allowed to sit on Mona's bed without Mona going demented means Mona is worried.

Pippa looks over at me.

Do you want to go, Matilda?

Do you?

No. Not for the whole summer, anyway.

Me neither.

Mona flicks her eyes over at us then back to the floor. She's thinking. Apart from anything else, we all know Mona has boyfriends to worry about and she'll do anything not to go.

Gabriel and Sheamie bustle in the door with suitcases and four sets of clothes each. Gabriel tells us to leave the lids open, she'll be back to check we've packed properly. The noise from the road outside comes through the open window so I shut it and the room turns quiet. Mona's room is across the corridor from mine and looks out on to the houses in Trinity Park. I hardly noticed before how every house seems to have a car now and nearly every car a different colour. Sheamie calls them Japanese rust buckets and you can see the rust bubbles eating away at the doors and wings even though the cars are still shiny and new-looking. It seems like everything outside the convent walls is full of colour. Inside, everything is as black and white as the nuns' habits.

I turn back to look at my brothers and sisters and it's the first time for a long time I can remember it just being the five of us together. I try to make myself believe we will have a nice time.

Sheamie sits on his suitcase in the middle of the floor. The sunlight bounces off his glasses and around the walls every time he moves his head to tell us he's running away. Pippa shakes her head at him.

You'd want to leave yourself alone at night-time, Sheamie. You have the brains pulled outa yourself. You wouldn't get as far as the bridge before our father finds you.