The Friday Tree (14 page)

“Some of the words are too hard for me, Francis,” Brigid said. “Will you help me?”

Francis turned his head as if he had been a long way away. At first, he did not speak, then he said: “I can’t read at the moment, Brigid. Tell me what you think they are. I’ll tell you if I know.”

Now, she was afraid. Francis not reading could be an accident: Francis not wanting to read, or worse, not knowing the answer, was too much like the latest bad dream, where she came home from school, by herself, and the door was opened by someone who was nearly Mama, but not, and inside were people who were Not-Isobel and Not-Francis, and Not-Daddy, and she could tell no one because in this town they must keep their business to themselves. Perhaps this was real, and the Not-people were taking over. Perhaps the happy life was the dream? No. No to that. There was Francis. There would always be Francis, even if he lived to be a hundred, and when he was a hundred, he would wait for her to be a hundred too.

“Well,” she said, opening at one of the pictures, “one shows a boy with his finger in a wall. He has a blue coat on and a cap, and fair hair. He looks cold. Why is his finger in the wall?”

Francis smiled a little. “Ah. This I can do. He is the Little Dutch Boy. If the water comes through the wall, the dyke, all of his country, a flat country, will be flooded and everyone will drown. He doesn’t have time to tell anyone, so he puts his finger in the hole he’s found and stays there till someone comes.”

“He saves the country?”

“Yes,” said Francis, “he saves the country.”

Brigid looked at the cold little boy, all alone by his wall. “Would you do that, Francis, to save a country?”

“I don’t know, said Francis. “I’ve never thought about it. If I had to, I suppose I might.”

“I think you would, Francis,” said Brigid. “But I know
I
wouldn’t.”

She laughed, and Francis almost joined her.

“Do you know who else wouldn’t?” she said.

The corners of his mouth turned up in something like his old smile. “Tell me,” he said.

“Ned!” cried Brigid. “Ned Silver wouldn’t.”

Francis laughed, at last. “I think you’re right,” he said but, as he
spoke, he drew in his breath and his hand went up to his head.

Brigid, concerned, looked at the bruises beneath his fingers. They were like a map of a country.

“Francis, what did happen to your head?”

Francis turned away; she felt him shift in the bed. “I don’t really know. There’s a street that runs between the road below your school and a road that’s near my school. Like the bar in the capital H?”

Brigid nodded her head.

“Well, there are quite a few of those streets round there. They’re like the rungs in a ladder. Do you know what I mean?”

Brigid nodded again.

“Those are short cuts for me when I’m going to the College. I get off the bus, and go across one of them – Agnes Street, usually, or sometimes over Dover Street.”

Brigid laughed. “Over Dover!” she said.

This time, he did not laugh. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Well, that’s where I was going when something hit me on the head. They said in the hospital it was a brick or a big stone. I don’t even go that way, usually, after school. I was coming to meet you all.” Now, he laughed a little, but he did not smile. “Trust me to get it wrong,” he said.

“Yes, but who did that?” Brigid asked. “Why? Who would want to hit you with a big stone?”

“I don’t know,” said Francis, his voice flat. “That’s the thing. They say it could have been children.”

“But, why?” said Brigid, and she felt the bed springs twang. “Who? Why?”

Francis turned in the bed, and looked away. “Brigid, would you please not bounce? Maybe because I was wearing a uniform that says I am a Catholic, and I went across a street where somebody didn’t like that. Someone, they think a Protestant boy, hit me because of that.”

“I don’t understand. I know Catholic from school. But what is prodoson? What does that mean?”

“Brigid,” he said, and his voice sounded very tired now, “I don’t have the energy to explain it to you now. We are Catholic. You know that. But not everyone in the world is. Some are Protestant. Some are Jews. Some are Muslims. There are many, many different religions in the world. There’s a good word for you, if you want one. Religion.”

“I hear that one in school,” said Brigid, “but I don’t really know what it means.”

“It comes from Latin,
religare
, to join together. I only learned the meaning myself last week. Then I learned it a different way today.” He started to laugh, and then stopped, as if it hurt. “Sometime I might tell you why that seems a good joke to me right now.” He smiled, but his eyes did not smile. He looked away again and the skin round his eyes was blue. “The thing is, they are all meant to be roads to God and heaven.”

“I don’t understand, Francis,” said Brigid, and she meant it. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Your book. What’s it called?”

She held it out to him.

“
Children of Other Lands
,” he read, then he let it fall back behind the folds of the eiderdown. “That’s it,” he said. “Maybe just think about that. We’re all children of other lands, to somebody. That’s it.”

Still, Brigid did not understand but, seeing that he had closed his eyes, that his hands had slipped from the book, she picked it up gently, slipped off the bed and backed from the room as quietly as she could. She wondered what he meant. How could they be children of other lands, if this was their land? And, now, who was there to ask? She looked up at Blessed Oliver as she went past, but there was no hope there.

The house sat silent. Her mother was in the cloakroom on the telephone, her voice indistinct. Brigid walked past on tiptoe, then swiftly through the kitchen, out into the yard with its comforting stack of coal and wood. She reached up, closed, with some effort, the high latch on the back door, and ran up to the garden.

Without Francis, everything felt too big. The garden seemed asleep, and all the trees had lost their leaves. Even the Friday Tree stood empty. Through its bare ribs, she saw a vast and lowering grey sky. Beyond the fence, the ground in the plot looked hard, dark and brown, unrelieved by anything green or soft. Everything seemed tired, as Francis was tired and, though it was Saturday, neither Mr Doughty nor Mr Steele seemed to have any work to do in the plot. All Brigid could hear was silence. Somewhere, there was a distant smell of smoke. She sniffed it, and a memory shifted inside her. Had there not been a day in summer when they had gone up to the Friday Tree and known someone had been there? She tried to remember. Had they not seen the remains of a little fire then, or did she make that up? She shaded her brow against the steely sun, and half-closed her eyes to see far away. Maybe there was a wisp of smoke beneath the Friday Tree, maybe not. Francis would know, if she could ask him. She looked up to his room, hoping she might see him at the window in his old way, looking beyond the trees, following a bird with his telescope, listening to sounds that only he could hear. There was no one. The window was a blank, sightless eye. Brigid, looking up, shivered quickly. What if Francis did not get better?

A voice sounded far away, a man’s voice, calling a child. Brigid, cold and suddenly lonely, in the damp air, went back inside. She could be in trouble for going out without a coat, but she did not care. Then again, as her parents were so concerned about Francis, she might escape notice. For a moment, she almost wished Isobel was still there. She did not like her, but she knew her. That was her mother she could see inside, apron round her, working at the sink. That was her mother pushing back the hair from her forehead as she moved to the stove. It was not right. Isobel should be there. Then, she heard the front door open, and close, and sped unchecked through the kitchen: her father must be home from the office.

On Saturdays he worked only until lunchtime. He did not see her as he took off his hat and his heavy coat, but she heard the rustle of paper and saw a brown-paper parcel in his hand – a new book for Francis, probably. He did not know that Francis did not want to read. From the kitchen door, she watched his long legs go up the stairs, steadily, firmly. In the kitchen she smelled shepherd’s pie. There would be plenty of the burnt, brown, crispy furrows across the potato. She saw the sauce bottle; she saw Francis in the summer, reading French from the label.
Absolument pure
.

“Were you outside without a coat?” said her mother.

“I’m sorry,” said Brigid absently, watching for her father.

“You suit your sorrow. Don’t blame me when you get pneumonia,” said her mother, but she did not stop working between sink and stove.

Brigid looked at her back, moving from board to saucepan, peeling and slicing, the fragrance of apples and cinnamon floating above. Apple crumble.

Brigid was not going to get pneumonia. She was better, and she was not going to be sick again, even to get away from school. Too much time got lost with sickness. All she wanted was for everyone
to be well, and stay well, and life to be the way it used to be.

She watched the stairwell, and presently saw her father come carefully down the last few steps, his hand on the newel post as if to steady himself.

In her head she said: Don’t have bad eyes again. See me. See me, and make everything right.

As if in answer, he looked up from the ground where he had carefully placed his last step, saw her, and put his hand on her head, the long fingers covering most of her scalp.

“How’s my girlie?” he said as they went into the kitchen. “And how’s the new book?”

“It’s very good, Daddy,” said Brigid, because she did not have the heart to tell him it was too hard for her. “It’s my nicest book,” she said, which was not untrue because it was certainly the most colourful.

He smiled, all the creases round his eyes appearing in their kind lines. “Good girl. Your brother has a new book too. I got him a Maurice Walsh,” he said above Brigid’s head to her mother, who was leaning to take out the pie. “He’ll like that.”

The smell of lamb and potato and apple drifted through the room.

Her mother nodded. “He will,” she said, but her voice was sad. Francis had clearly not told their father he did not want to read, and nobody else was going to do it. Nobody wanted him upset, too.

The next morning brought a change: she was to go with her father to Mass. Brigid had never before been considered suitable for Mass but, with Francis out of action, she found herself in her father’s car, travelling the school route, down to the monastery, with its great spires. It was different from school days: everywhere was quiet, like the day she met George Bailey. There were so few cars. No children played on the lamp-posts, and in the parks all the swings were looped back with chains. The whole town seemed to be holding its breath.

In the vast lofty space of the monastery, her nostrils filled with scented smoke, and singing voices floated across pictures of Heaven. Perhaps they were angels? It was very beautiful, and very strange, and Brigid did not do very well. The elastic of her hat hurt. She took it off. A lady behind her tapped her on the shoulder. “Ladies wear hats,” she whispered, and her breath smelled of sour fruit. “Brigid,” said her father, in a cold whisper she had not heard him use before, and she put her hat back on. Then, everything went on too long. The priest talked and talked, and Brigid could not understand him, though she gathered his news was not good. It was easier not to listen. If Francis had been there, she might have followed what was happening, but her father seemed to think she knew what to do. It irked him to find her watching him twirl his hat as the priest spoke, and her fascination at the practised flick with which he pulled up his trouser leg before he knelt down seemed to irritate him further. He told her to be still and Brigid, several times rebuked, hardly dared move. She tried to pass the time by counting the number of pink hats and blue hats on the ladies’ heads, but their edges softened and merged the further away they got. Then, she could not understand why only ladies and girls wore hats, and why she had to wear this tight elastic strap under her chin to keep her own hat on, while the men and boys did not. And, where was the priest? She could see a green shape moving very far away, she could hear bells and smell scented smoke, but where was the priest when he was not in the high stone well, shaking his arm and warning them?

Brigid pulled her father’s sleeve. She had to know. “Daddy,” she said, “are we meant to be able to see the priest?”

He took her arm in a firm grip and, leaning in to her said, crossly: “Brigid, I won’t tell you again. Behave yourself. I’m surprised at you.”

Brigid was silent then, but she thought: I’m not coming here again if I can help it. Maybe they were not meant to be able to see the priest, just believe in him, like God.

She took her father’s hand when it finally came to an end – all the standing and sitting and kneeling, and the prayers in words she did not understand. She had never been so glad to see daylight as she was when they approached the great door that stood open at the back of the monastery.

Outside, she drank in the cold air like water. She stood quietly in the shadow of her father’s coat while a tall, wide, wild-haired man swung towards them in a long black frock, like a nun without the butterfly hat. That must be the priest, out of his colours. He showed no interest in Brigid but, as she was all too conscious of having behaved badly, she did not question this. The wild-haired man talked to her father over her head as if she were not there.