About Matilda (26 page)

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 the 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.

Assorted nuts. That's what Sheamie called them.

I thought they were peanuts, Sheamie.

I was talking about the hippies, Matilda.

I wander outside. I'm dizzy. My head feels heavier now and I can't feel my legs. My eyes feel huge and the smile on my face won't go away.

Our father is stretched along the ground beside Sonya. They're sharing a rollie and listening to the two men playing the guitar. I sit cross-legged by the fire. I feel giddy and hungry and I see strange shapes in the flames. Nuns on roller skates, nuns scrubbing floors, nuns disco dancing with Father Devlin. Reverend Mother flying on a broom. Now it's a white goat with horns that curve backward. Can't be. But it's making goat noises and watching me from the other side of the fire.

The hippies shout, There's tomorrow's dinner, don't let it get away.

They chase it through the flames, over my father's legs, in and out of caravans and tents and all around the marquee. The goat rattles pots and pans and knocks naked children on their backsides. The pots clank, the children bawl, the hippies roar and it's the funniest thing I've ever seen until the hippies catch it. They slit its throat with a black-handled dagger and hang it by the back legs from a tree until all the blood runs out on to the ground. They skin it. Stick a pole through its arse that comes out its mouth and burn it over the fire till its skin is roasted.

Sheamie rips a chunk off with his hands and attacks it like a Viking. He licks his fingers and the juice around his mouth glistens in the firelight. His eyes are huge too.

Do yeh want some, Matilda?

That's disgusting, Sheamie. What did that poor goat ever do to you?

I never met him before tonight. Ha, ha.

Don't be a smart arse, Sheamie. You know what I mean.

He's dead, Matilda, and do you know the best thing? It's free. Free is good. Remember that. Good, good, good, good, good. Now, I'm thirsty. See you later on.

Sheamie staggers away laughing and stumbles over Mona's legs and into the marquee looking for something to kill his thirst. Mona is sitting against a caravan wheel. She's talking to a man with a thick black moustache and a silver stud in his ear. I haven't seen him here before. He must have come for the wedding. It's late and I have a bad feeling how this is turning out. Time we went home.

I go into the marquee to look for Pippa, Danny and Sheamie but I only find Pippa and Danny. They're sitting on the floor trying to eat nuts from a bowl on the ground between them.
They're laughing and, when I ask what they're laughing at, they say they don't know. Nuts spew from their mouths and they spray each other with peanuts and laugh even harder and I have to help them from the floor before they'll get up. The three of us fill our pockets with bananas and ham slices and, when we come back outside, Mona is missing.