A Prayer for Blue Delaney (4 page)
Finally, two older boys realised that Colm needed help. They swam in close and helped push Dibs to shallow water and then dragged him up onto the bank. As soon as he touched the dry earth he knelt on his hands and knees, vomiting up water, and then what was left of his breakfast, and finally a flood of green bile. Slowly, he sat up. Tears streamed from his eyes.
‘He tried to drown me,’ he sobbed.
‘I did not!’ said Colm. ‘I tried to save you!’
‘Not you,’ Dibs whimpered. ‘Brother Brophy.’
The two older boys looked at each other and raised their eyebrows sceptically.
‘He was trying to teach you to swim, you Pommy whinger.’
‘To drown me,’ whispered Dibs. He looked small and wizened, his arms wrapped around his knees, his lip covered in watery snot, his eyes red-rimmed.
Colm sat down beside him in a gesture of solidarity against the big Australian boys.
‘Don’t thank us for saving you, then,’ said the older boy.
Colm and Dibs said nothing, waiting for the other boys to leave.
‘Pommy bastards,’ they said, walking away.
Dibs kept on crying hard. Awkwardly, Colm rested one hand on Dibs’s shoulder and the sobs subsided.
‘He said he was going to take me over the other side,’ said Dibs. ‘He said, “Put your arms around my neck.” And he swam out into the middle of the river and then, when we was in the deep water, he broke my grip. He dropped me in the deep water and swam away. If you hadn’t come, I’d have drowned.’
Dibs began to wail again, his mouth open, as grief spilled out of him and his skinny body convulsed with misery. Colm looked out across the shimmering Canning River and imagined floating away under the clear summer sky.
As the wait for a family to adopt him stretched into months, Dibs seemed to be shrinking inside himself. It was different for Colm. He had grown taller and stronger since arriving in Australia, as if the sunshine fed his body and soul. And he was glad no one wanted to adopt him. Every week he wrote another letter to his mother. Over and over again he imagined that moment when she would open his letter and realise that her future was in Australia. Some mornings he would look down the driveway and almost see her walking along it, her blue coat slung over her arm, her red hair a flame against the yellow grass. Even when the vision faded, he was sure she would come for him.
There was sunshine everywhere, so bright that it made his eyes ache. And there was music too. Sometimes Colm thought he could hear it in the fields - a low humming that seeped up through the earth. It was louder near the river, but it was everywhere he went. When they sang at mass, the sound of their singing seemed to vault into the high chapel and flow out into the blue Australian skies. There were bigger boys whose voices swelled rich and deep beneath the sweet high sopranos of the younger ones. If Colm shut his eyes, he could believe this was exactly what heaven would sound like. There would be nothing but blue skies and soaring voices merging together.
Colm longed to be allowed to join the band. The boys played all types of brass instruments and drums. They wore uniforms, too, with bright shining buttons and white caps. Sometimes he dreamt he was one of them. He imagined his mother coming to Clontarf to take him away and finding her boy dressed in a uniform, playing a brass trumpet. She would clap her hands and glow with pride at the sight of the boy she had travelled to Australia to be with.
Sometimes, Colm had to imagine his mother’s arrival over and over again, especially at the end of the day. Every evening, after dinner, was punishment time. Colm wondered if the Brothers chose that time so the boys would forget their hunger. They were always hungry. There was never much food on the table at breakfast, lunch or dinner. When a boy was called up to be punished, Colm would fold his hands and concentrate extra hard, trying to think of anything other than what was going on around him.
The boys were seldom sure why they were being punished. They only knew it was ‘for their own good’. One night, both Colm and Dibs were called up. Everyone was assembled in the big dining hall to watch.
Brother Brophy stood at the front of the hall, strap in hand. When Dibs and Colm shuffled up to the front of the hall, he turned them to face the assembly.
‘These boys are liars. You are not to pay heed to any of the evil stories they have spread.’
Dibs stood miserably, clutching the hem of his shorts. Colm started humming to himself under his breath.
‘McGinty, you are an ungrateful, lying cur. And McCabe, you must know it is a sin to bear false witness. Why did you support McGinty in his lies?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Colm, not meeting the man’s angry gaze. If he could just keep the tune in his mind, he wouldn’t notice the pain to come.
‘It is our duty to teach you right from wrong. We extend to you our charity, and you lie and abuse our generosity with your vile untruths.’
Colm felt the hum of his song warm in the back of his throat.
‘Take off your shorts and bend over the chair, McCabe.’
Colm bit his lip and heard the swish of the strap. His eyes stung as the leather cut his bare skin. When the sixth blow had fallen, Colm drew his shorts back on clumsily. He went back to his place and stared at the dark wood of the tabletop as Dibs stepped up to take his punishment. Dibs was crying even before he had taken his shorts off.
‘I didn’t tell any lies, sir. Please. It was Colm what said you tried to drown me. I know you was trying to teach me to swim. It was Colm. It was Colm who made the lie.’
Brother Brophy only looked angrier and Dibs cried harder. Suddenly, Colm couldn’t bear it. He stood and put his hand up.
‘It isn’t Dibs’s fault, sir. He’s right. It’s my fault. I started the lie.’
‘And why didn’t you speak up sooner?’ roared Brother Brophy. ‘Do you think it’s fair to allow McGinty to take punishment for your sins?’
Colm remained silent.
‘Speak up!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Colm.
Dibs stood silently all the while, clutching his shorts, looking from Colm to Brother Brophy.
‘Get up here now, McCabe.’
Dibs met Colm’s eyes for a moment. His face was bright red with shame. Colm wished he could make it clear he didn’t mind. It was easier to take another beating than to watch Brother Brophy beat Dibs.
Dutifully, Colm bent over again and waited for the strap to fall.
Colm was slow to wake from the nightmare. The first thing he was aware of was the searing pain in his hand and someone crying out for help. Then he was sitting in Matron’s office while she picked pieces of glass from his palm with a pair of tweezers.
‘What on earth were you thinking, child?’ she said as she dropped another sliver of glass into the metal dish beside her.
Colm didn’t answer. He’d learnt that whatever he said it was nearly always the wrong answer.
‘What were you doing? What were you thinking, pushing your hand through the glass like that?’
Colm shrugged and then winced at the pain.
‘I don’t remember.’
He looked away. It made him feel faint, watching the nurse at work on the bloody gashes in his hand. He did remember the dream, but it wasn’t something he would tell her about. It was the same dream that he’d had since he was six - the dream that always sent him sleepwalking. He was a tiny boy again, playing peek-a-boo with his mother. Then she was gone and the dreamworld turned dark as he ran searching for her. The sky grew black and forbidding and something evil pursued him through the blackness as a storm unfurled around him. It always happened when it rained.
When Colm thought about being little, about the time before St Bart’s, it was like remembering a dream, a life that belonged to someone else. He remembered the old woman down the street who used to sit outside her front door on sunny days. He had thought she was a witch and always ran as fast as he could when he had to pass her. He remembered the day her house wasn’t there any more, and wondering what had happened to her. He remembered the sirens and his mother scooping him up and carrying him in her arms as she ran to the bomb shelter. He knew he should have been frightened, but mostly he only remembered how exciting it had been.
It was raining now. The sound of the rain on the roof was a rhythmic thrumming, the first Colm had heard since he’d arrived in Australia. He walked along the wide balcony. When he lay down in his narrow bed, he tried to hold those thoughts of his mother, but instead he could only see Dibs’s startled face - Dibs adrift in the dark waters of the Canning River, while all his hopes and dreams were swept away by the current.
Colm stood by the roadside with a small group of boys. He wasn’t sure if it was because they thought he was a liar or because he broke the dormitory window, but he was being sent to another orphanage. He’d received a thrashing for breaking the window. The buckle of Brother Brophy’s strap had left a long, deep gouge in his back that hurt for days. Wherever they were sending him now, it couldn’t be worse than Clontarf.
When Colm had told Dibs he was being sent away, Dibs had said nothing, expressing neither interest, disappointment nor shame. Colm felt a flash of anger. It was in that moment that Colm realised Dibs wasn’t the boy he used to know.
The truck drove through stark, pale gold countryside. The gold grass gave way to rough dirt and then they turned off the main highway and down small, winding roads cut into red, red soil. Colm laughed out loud when they passed through the main gates of Boys’ Town and he saw the name of the orphanage: Bindoon. Tommy had been sent to Bindoon. He was going to be with Tommy again. He knelt on his seat and pressed his face against the bus window, smiling at every tree, stone and blade of grass.
Along the roadside stood small mounds of rock with pictures carved on them. It wasn’t until they’d driven past several that Colm realised they depicted the Stations of the Cross. Catching a glimpse of Mary and Jesus on the fourth Station, he touched the prayer card in his pocket. He’d only just had time to rescue it from beneath his mattress before they left. The gilt was wearing off the edges but Mary’s face still looked serene and Baby Jesus had lost none of his freshness, even if he was a little crumpled. As long as he had the prayer card, Colm knew his hopes and dreams might still come true.
At the bottom of the hill were the main buildings, like a mass of Spanish-looking castles with towers and arched porticos. As they drew closer, Colm could see that the buildings were still incomplete. There was scaffolding and piles of building materials clumped around the unfinished works. The ground was damp from recent rain. Red mud splashed up from the puddles as Colm jumped out of the truck. A group of small, bedraggled, barefooted boys watched the new arrivals with no interest. Then three figures came trudging along a road from the green hills, swinging braces of rabbits tied together with twine. Colm recognised Tommy, even before he could see his face, from the way he moved and the blaze of his white-blond hair. It was cropped close to his scalp and even more bleached by the sun than when Colm had seen him scrambling onto the truck at the docks in Fremantle.
Colm ran up the track to meet him.
‘Tommy, Tommy,’ he called, breathless with excitement.
Tommy stopped and groaned. ‘Tonto! What are you doing here?’
‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’
‘No. You don’t want to be here, mate. This place, this is hell.’
Colm looked to the green-and-gold countryside, and the dam lying dappled in the sunlight, and stared back at Tommy uncomprehendingly.
‘Nothing’s the way it looks from the outside,’ said Tommy darkly. He held up his brace of rabbits and pointed at the skinned carcasses.
‘Don’t tell no one,’ he whispered in a low voice, ‘but two of these is cats. I couldn’t catch me quota, but I fixed it. They look just like rabbits - took off their ribs and tails. You can’t tell, can you?’
Colm stared at the mangled bodies and shook his head. Tommy said nothing more until they reached the boys’ home. Two Brothers in black were herding the new boys ahead of them, driving them up the steps of the building with cuffs and blows. Colm slipped his hand into his pocket and touched Mary Help of Christians.
That afternoon, some official visitors called on the orphanage, and Tommy and two other boys were asked to sing for them.
‘Do you sing, Tommy?’ asked Colm.
‘Bloody hate it. Old Keaney makes us sing for the visitors. Wants to show off what a marvellous bloody job he’s doing. Bastard.’
‘It can’t be that bad. I don’t mind singing. I’d go in your place.’
Tommy laughed. ‘Sure, I’d love you to take me place, but us Belfast boys are the only ones who can sing in Gaelic. You might be a Paddy by blood, but I betcha don’t know a word of the Irish. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to go. Couldn’t do that to a mate. We get belted with his stick before we start and whacked again when we’re done, ‘cause we’re never good enough. And if we hit a wrong note when we’re singing, he clips us then, too. You’re well out of it.’
‘If you teach me the song, I’ll be able to sing it.’
Tommy slapped him on the back. ‘Don’t be a bleedin’ martyr, Tonto. I’ll see you later.’
In the evening, Tommy and the other Northern Irish boys were made to stand on a table in the dining room and sing for Brother Keaney again. Some of the other boys laughed at them. Colm squirmed uncomfortably on the hard bench. He could hear the misery in their voices and it made something ache deep inside him.
That night in the crowded dormitory, Colm lay staring up at the high roof. Boys whimpering in their sleep kept him awake long into the night. It was nearly six months since he’d left Liverpool. He counted up the weeks and months, trying to calculate when his mother might have got his letters. What if she went to Clontarf and didn’t find him? Surely they’d tell her he was here at Bindoon. Maybe if she came, she would take Tommy away as well. Colm pulled out his prayer card and pressed it against his chest, praying to Mary to guide his mother to him.
The next morning after mass, some of the boys went to the dining hall to write letters home. Colm went to follow them, but Tommy grabbed his arm.