The Shelter of Neighbours (31 page)

‘Why is she wearing sunglasses?' one of them asked, pointing his finger at Margaretta.

I nodded and said nothing.

They waited expectantly and after I while I managed to stutter, ‘She's blind.'

‘Janey Mack!'

‘Why are yez wearing dancing costumes?' the other one asked.

‘Why shouldn't we?' said Margaretta, tossing her head so that the sunglasses wobbled and nearly fell off. ‘It's a free country.'

They were shocked and so was I. We didn't expect a blind person to talk.

‘Can you dance?' the first boy asked Margaretta. He had blond curly hair and nice shiny brown shoes, Clarks.

‘Of course I can.'

‘How do you learn the steps?' He was genuinely curious.

Margaretta paused for a few seconds.

‘There are ways and means', was what she came up with. It wasn't a great answer, but it satisfied them. They moved to the other gatepost to start their collecting.

At about eleven the ten o'clock Mass – the endless Mass of Palm Sunday – was over and the congregation streamed out of the chapel and through the gate. We started to rattle our boxes under their noses, concentrating on the men. ‘Help the Blind, help the Blind,' we chanted. The coins poured in, a silver stream.

Only two people asked if Margaretta was blind, and I nodded.

When someone dared to ask Margaretta directly, though, she adjusted her pink glasses, which were sliding down her nose, and said, ‘Partially sighted.'

One woman, who had a dead fox hanging around her neck, asked, ‘How did it happen, love?'

Again Margaretta had to pause and think.

‘The blindness,' I whispered.

Why hadn't we thought of all this beforehand?

‘I had an accident when I was four,' she said. Her lips were pressed together so tightly that there was hardly any mouth at all. ‘I stepped on a garden rake and it blinded me in both eyes.'

‘Glory be to God,' said the old woman, opening her black handbag. ‘I do always think that's the worst kind of blindness, because you know what you're missing.'

She pulled a big brown purse out of her bag.

‘And tell me, love, do you remember anything?'

‘What?'

Margaretta played for time.

‘From the time before you were blinded. When you could see. Colours?'

‘I remember a lot.'

She paused.

‘My dolls.'

She paused again and added slowly, ‘I remember my mammy's face.'

‘Ah!' said the woman, digging in her purse and pulling out a shillingy bit. She looked at the shilling, put it back in her purse, and put a yellow thrupenny bit in the box instead.

Margaretta remembered to let her take the flag off the box herself, although sometimes she forgot this and pinned a flag on the lapel of a man's coat, very expertly – for a partially sighted person – finding exactly the right spot. Luckily the men never noticed, since they were busy staring at her thick dark hair, and her legs in their black stockings.

By half past twelve our boxes were heavy. Mine made a dull thud when I rattled it, and Margaretta's was completely silent. Because it was stuffed full of money.

When the time came, we got invitations to the party.

It was held on the second last Friday in June, just a week to the summer holidays. Father Braygy sent a letter to Mrs Doyle, with the names of the girls who had merited an invitation, and ten cloakroom tickets. Ten of us had made it. We lived in different places and planned to meet at the party, at St Lucia's for the Blind, which was far away, up on Hollywood Heights.

But Margaretta and I went out there together, taking the number 7 bus from town. We dressed in our newest clothes. Mine were tartan slacks with little bands under the feet to hold them down – there must have been some fear that girls' slacks would ride up the legs, unlike men's or boys'. With these, I wore a white blouse and a nice red cardigan. Margaretta had a denim skirt – the very latest thing. With it, she had a stripy T-shirt with long sleeves, blue and white, which meant she didn't have to wear a jumper or a cardigan. We both carried our Confirmation handbags, of course. Margaretta had hidden her latest treasure, a charm bracelet that her father had given her for her eleventh birthday, in her bag. She wasn't allowed to wear it outside the house because it was, she said, made of solid gold. But on the bus she pulled it out and fastened it carefully onto her wrist. There were only two charms on it: a tiny doll and a tiny beach ball. The doll was plain gold and the ball was gold with red stripes.

‘I'm just starting to collect them,' she explained. ‘I'll have dozens by the time I'm getting married. They bring you luck.'

I spent ages examining the bracelet, and the charms, which seemed to be the most desirable things on earth at that moment. The little beach ball was especially lovely, more intricate than the doll, the stripes made of some hard red stuff like marble – enamel probably. Collecting charms – that's what I wanted to do, more than anything, and somehow I knew that each charm would transform me, bringing me luck, whatever that was, and something else I couldn't put my finger on, something without a name that I longed for.

We got off the bus in Hollywood Heights village and walked up the hill. But we had difficulty in finding the School for the Blind. It was in a big manor house in grounds behind a high stone wall, Mrs Doyle had read from Father Braygy's letter, but Hollywood Heights was all manor houses behind high stone walls, miles and miles of them, snaking up the hill like the ramparts of some medieval fortress. We walked on and on, trying to find the right wall, the right gate. The party was on from four o'clock but it was almost six when we finally found the brass plaque that told us St Lucia's School for the Blind lay behind that particular wall.

I had had a vision of the party as I had a vision of everything in those days. Father Braygy would be in the hall of the school, standing under a big oil portrait, or a stuffed stag's head, to greet us and to congratulate us on doing so well in the collection. He would introduce us to other people and point us out as exemplary collectors – we would get some sort of recognition, a certificate, maybe a silver medal. Then we would go into a long, elegant dining hall, sit at tables covered with white cloths and set with china. Plates of cream slices, chocolate éclairs, triangular sandwiches, egg and cress and ham and cheese and beef, would be there, fruit cake, apple tart. Jugs of lemonade and orange juice. Afterwards, there would be a funfair in the grounds – swings and merry-go-rounds, a big wheel. In my vision fairylights dangled from the summer trees, and the grounds of the school smelt of jasmine, roses, sweet peas – anything that smelled good.

This was the best party in Ireland.

Nobody had ever had a better time.

Behind the grey wall there was no merry-go-round or big wheel, not even a swing, in sight. But there was a big tent, a marquee – marquees are always promising. Inside it, long trestle tables stood like biers – not covered with even a paper cloth. Lots of empty paper plates and cups, rubbish scattered on the table and the ground. A few children were raking over what was left on the table, but most people had gone home. There was no sign of Father Braygy.

Margaretta sighed, ‘We musta missed it.'

I examined a piece of barm brack, from which someone had taken a bite, and considered eating it.

You could tell it hadn't been much of a party. The debris told its own story. Brack, packets of Tayto, red lemonade.

We found an unopened packet of crisps and two fig rolls that hadn't been bitten and didn't look as if anyone had licked them, and split them between us. Then we left and had a look around the grounds, partly out of curiosity and partly in the hopes of seeing someone we knew. By which we meant Father Braygy.

In a brick wall near the tent was a small gate on which there was a sign: ‘Private. Keep Out'.

It opened when Margaretta pushed it and we went through.

Inside was another garden. Long green lawns, dotted with circular beds of roses, pink, yellow, red, and rectangular beds of lavender. Copses of trees, their leaves the light, shining green of June, with woodland paths winding sweetly under them, like paths in a storybook. Carpets of bluebells.

‘We should leave,' I said.

This garden was so beautiful that children would obviously be barred from it. It must have been a special garden for teachers, or priests.

But we were tired and dreamy after our exertions, and enchanted by the garden, too lazy to make a decision and go back. The sun was still high in the June sky and we kept walking on and on, through paths that wound this way and that, through dappled mazes of light and leaves, perfumed flowers and rippling purple shadows.

In a clearing a small fountain spouted from the willies of five fat cupids and splashed dancing sprays of water into a circular pond. Sitting on its crumbling old walls, we bathed our hands in the green water. Musically, the drops splashed into the pond; roses and lavender perfumed the air and behind the distant lilac mountains the sun shone still warm and summery, caressing our skin like the breath of calves or some soft sweet animal.

In and out goes Dusty Bluebells

In and out goes Dusty Bluebells.

I started to sing a rhyme we used to sing when we were four or five and playing on the street. Margaretta sang along, too; she had a nice soprano voice. The dusty words floated into the warm evening air and over the bluebell patch and the green copses.

In and out goes Dusty Bluebells,

Who will be my Master?

Then Margaretta yelped. Yelped violently, as if she'd been stung by a bee or bitten by an animal.

I was cross, startled out of my dreamy singing.

Her bracelet. The charm bracelet with the doll and the golden ball had disappeared.

‘Did you drop it in the pond?'

She might have. Or maybe she dropped it on the path, or on the grass, or into the bluebells. Or on the floor of the tent. Or on the bus – though she was pretty sure she'd had it when she came to St Lucia's School for the Blind.

I reached as far as I could into the pond. It looked shallow but the water was almost opaque and I couldn't reach the bottom. Slimy green weeds rubbed against my arm, disgustingly, and I wondered if there were fish in the murky water, or eels, that would nibble my fingers to the bone. Margaretta tried, too, leaning over so that her skirt rose right up and you could see her frilly pants sticking up in the summer air like the tail of a fat, white turkey.

‘Hello girls!'

Father Braygy.

We jumped down from the edge of the pond, guiltily, Margaretta smoothing down her skirt.

‘Is something the matter?'

His green eyes popped. He's like a frog, I thought, but it didn't bother me. I knew that now everything would be all right.

‘Margaretta lost her charm bracelet.'

Margaretta gave me a puck in the ribs.

‘Oh, that's a terrible state of affairs!' he said, but he was laughing, as always. ‘Where did she lose it? Sure, I suppose if you knew the answer, it wouldn't be lost, says you?'

He laughed louder and we did, too, to keep him company.

‘It might be in the pond.' I jerked my head towards the fountain.

‘Oh well then …'

He rolled up his sleeve, dipped his arm into the green water and fiddled around. His arm, it was surprising to see, was an ordinary man's arm, strong, with a thick coat of black hair, like my own father's arm.

‘Would this be it?'

Aloft, the golden bracelet glittered in the sun.

His hand was not like my father's, which was thick and broad as a bear's paw. This was a soft white hand.

‘Ah!' Margaretta was delighted. She reached for the bracelet.

He snatched it away and put it behind his back, chuckling.

‘Not so quick!' he said. ‘Not so quick!'

We smiled politely. Another not really funny joke.

‘I'll give it to you if you tell me all about the party!'

We looked at one another and shrugged. He beckoned and we had to follow him along the dappled pathway through the beds of roses and purple lavender. Nimble as always, he moved easily and quickly with a hop and a skip. Into the greeny woods we went. Bluebells spread underfoot, dark blue, purple now, as the sun reddened and prepared to sink behind the mountains.

A park bench appeared, under a spreading oak tree. An ordinary green bench under an ordinary green tree.

‘Sit yourselves down beside me now and tell me everything.'

I sat beside him. So did Margaretta. What was going to happen now?

This:

He picked her up as if she were a doll and sat her on his lap.

I shook my head but Margaretta did not respond. She sat on his lap as if it were the most normal place in the world to be.

‘Look what I have here!'

Laughter.

Two big sixpenny bars of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, in the pocket of his soutane. He handed a bar to each of us, and I peeled off the purple paper and the golden foil, and broke off two squares. The chocolate was beastly soft from being so close to his skin but beggars can't be choosers. As soon as it melted honey gentle chocolaty on my tongue I realised I was starving.

We were supposed to tell him about the party (though how could we do that, since we'd missed it?), but actually we didn't have to, because, as we sat and ate the chocolate, me on the bench and Margaretta on his knee, Father Braygy started to talk himself, as he always did.
Yap yap yap
, he went, just as in the classroom.
Yap yap yap
, and nobody else gets to say a word and doesn't want to because it's the cheerful priest that's talking, so who'd want to listen to a little girl? The pools of light grew paler and paler in the greenwood and the fragrant air cooled and the songbirds ceased their singing and Father Braygy yapped on and on and I sang under my breath: