But what could I say to her? How could I tell her the name she gave me was wrong? So I’d just climb into her lap and clutch her and cry until finally she would grow cross. ‘We never had any secrets before,’ she’d say, lifting me down from her lap.
I’d set the tea things out on the oilcloth on the kitchen table and my father would come in and wash up after work. They called him The Doctor there because he arrived into the factory each morning in a suit with his lunch in a leather bag and changed into his overalls in the toilets. Johnny always seemed to have a fresh cut or bruise that he’d picked up after school, fighting in the Cabra Wars. Then, still clutching a bit of bread and butter and banana in our hands, the pair of us would rush out into the street and run screeching between the lamp-posts to play Statues or Relievio or Hide-and-Seek.
I’d stand on the wall with my face pressed against the telegraph pole and count up to thirty before spinning around to scan the dark gardens with their big rucks of hedges and walls to make out the shapes of the hidden figures.
And with my skin tingling with excitement and my breath clouding with the cold I’d forget everything except those friends dodging in and out of the shadows till morning came again and Kitty Murphy knocked to accompany me on another slow journey of fear. What would they have done to you? How could they have understood? Whatever else I’ve taken from you, daughter, at least I’ve spared you that.
Climb over the gate below the row of old labourers’ cottages on the slope of the hill. Drop down on to the grass where the horse’s hooves have left their mark. See the mare snort and quiver as she watches you approach. Two girls advancing hand in hand towards the nervous animal who turns as they dart forward with sunlight minting silver from her hooves and gallops towards the laneway that runs above the dairy where the old man is watching.
In the glade below the other children call as they run down towards the sparkling water. Johnny smiles as he stands with his net, barefoot in the stream, and she is surprised by how small he looks surrounded by the gangs of boys. A fish is sighted and they stumble clumsily towards it, their feet churning up muck through which it vanishes. Midges throb in the blue air, a parent shouts from the road, an older girl lifts up her dress and splashes across an overhung pool.
Summer pours through the twisting branches, the greens and browns mirrored in the stream, and she wishes they were all gone and there was just Johnny and her climbing down across the stones in the direction of the sea. They are all her servants inside her dream world. She lies like a princess on the bank as handmaidens splash around her, and in the evening she will bathe alone in the cool water while two maids wait with the silken cloak they shall drape about her shoulders. Johnny smiles and climbs up beside her. They hold hands, with their bare feet distorted in the water.
Do you know what I hate? I cannot stand to see you lying near the edge of the bed. If you stay in the centre you cannot fall. That’s sensible, and sense costs nothing. When I was young I was taught that you always left a space beside you for your guardian angel to rest. She was with you through the day and watched over you at night. I’d sleep with Johnny curled up beside me in a ball and our angels hovered on both sides never needing to rest. We were not supposed to talk but we did, often for hours about anything. Away from the crowd he always seemed bigger with all the wisdom of those two extra years. Often to tease me he’d put his feet up against my stomach and begin to roll me over towards the edge of the bed.
‘I’ll tell on you, I’ll tell, you’ll crush my guardian angel,’ I’d whisper urgently, and he’d giggle and roll me back to him with his feet. One night when he pushed me, I just seemed to keep rolling like the bed was being pulled down towards the floor. I remember the panic, with his hands trying to grab me and then falling into the black space with no angel there.
It was daylight when I woke in the depths of my parents’ bed and when I put my hand up to my head, it throbbed as if the bandage there had been strapped on too tight. It felt like a giant hand that was trying to crush my skull down through the mattress and I kept on screaming until my mother came. She had to lie in beside me to make me stop, just the pair of us in that double bed. And I curled up against her warmth and slept like I have never slept again, in that bed I used to crawl into after waking at night in our old flat. It was like being in the womb again, all black and safe, all loved and warm.
I was alone when I woke next and I could hear noises in the kitchens and backyards all down the row. The sound of people at tea and dogs barking across gardens so that I felt scared and forgotten, alone in the darkness. I wanted her back in there beside me, I screamed and screamed to make her come. And then I heard the creaking footsteps, one, two, three, four, the bogeyman climbing the stairs, only it was my father who opened the door to shout for me to stay quiet and not be disturbing the neighbours. I lay by myself feeling cut off, like Mrs Colgan’s retarded son up the street who was kept in the house all day and who I only saw once being chased by his mother when he escaped.
I must have slept again because it was the door opening that woke me and old Mrs Whelan, the nurse from around the corner, came into the room. On the landing I could hear my mother whispering as she sent Johnny out to the shops for biscuits. Mrs Whelan called me a brave little girl and held one hand on my shoulder as she pulled the plaster on the edge of the bandage off with one long tear. After she had bathed and rebandaged the cut and was gone, Johnny was sent up with the rest of the biscuits. He sat on the edge of the bed, apologetic and grateful that I hadn’t told on him. But I would never have betrayed him no matter what he did to me. Indeed, the more he would have done, the prouder I would have been to be able to forgive him and prove myself worthy to be his companion. I gave him two of the chocolate biscuits with a kiss and ate the rest in the darkness beneath the blankets. The next morning I woke up in my old bed still clutching the plastic wrapper.
In dreams the bed always seems to slope, the darkness waiting to claim her. Walls observe her climbing the stairs, coat-hangers sway behind stationary doors. Her father brings home a builder who tries to explain the changing temperatures in different rooms. Late one night they are awoken by her mother’s cry. Her father runs to the doctor in the next street. He drives the few hundred yards in his car to assert his social position.
She makes her First Communion in a net of white, orange candles weep heavenwards like tears defying gravity, the scrubbed knees of segregated boys gleam from the right-hand pews. She races down the steps towards the Dublin Evening Mail photographer, then watches her Saviour being crucified in the darkness of the State cinema, gently rattling the accumulated coins in her small white purse.
After school, Kitty and herself walk stiffly between the Stations of the Cross, with two lace handkerchiefs covering their heads. Kneeling at the grotto in the car-park they swap stories. The man who had raved that there was no God and ran up the aisle of the church without genuflecting, clutching a loaded revolver. And when he fired straight at the tabernacle, the bullet hit it and bounced back right through his heart.
Or the man in the house who’d renounced Christ and found that all the doors were locked. The calendar on the wall had a picture of Christ and that very date marked with a red circle. He tore it off and the next month had the same picture and date marked in red, and the next and the next. They found him dead on the floor with twelve different scenic views of Ireland lying torn from the calendar at his feet.
The wooden hatch slides shut and the mesh of light is gone. She leaves the darkness of the confession box and says her penance kneeling on the stone step of the side altar decked with candles for people’s intentions. Should I die now, my soul would fly straight to Heaven. My guardian angel appear in silver and gold to guide me home.
I have the scar still under my hair. If I shaved my head you could see it. Somehow, life seemed different afterwards. I began to stammer when asked questions in school. The words stuck like bits of hot coal in my throat. But Johnny was always there to protect me, to shout back at the