About Matilda (7 page)

The three of you get dressed, she says, and don't forget your slips. There's dark corner in Hell for girls who don't wear their slip. It's shameful and a sin.

All I can think of is my new black shoes Daddy sent from London. I hope she doesn't take my shoes.

She shouts to the girl on the bed.

Are those sheets dry, Lucy Flynn?

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

Make your bed and if you wet it tonight you'll spend tomorrow in here as well.

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

Pippa has big tears in her eyes and, when the light catches her soft pink cheeks, you can see how wet they are, and I
don't know if she's crying over her clothes or if she's like me, hoping Daddy comes to take us home and frightened she'll wet the bed if he doesn't.

Sister Gabriel leads us downstairs and across the rain puddles of the playground to a room like a shed that smells of stale feet and when she opens the wooden closet I want to cry. It's full of metal hooks and every hook has a pair of worn shoes. Mona has big feet. Sister Gabriel gives her a pair of boy's brown shoes. Pippa's are bright pink and her yellow stockings show through the toes. Mine are black painted, and the straps curl at the ends and don't fit, so Sister Gabriel stuffs the backs with old newspaper but they still clack when I walk. My Daddy will get my new shoes back when he comes. I know he will.

There's a bell at seven o'clock and we follow the other girls upstairs to the dormitory. Pippa and me are given a bed each by the window. Mona is further down between the girls my age and the bigger girls.

Sister Gabriel says we make our own bed, we're not at home now. I'll show you this time but you must learn.

She takes two sets of sheets, pillows and pillowcases from different shelves in different wardrobes and already I can see there's place for everything and everyone. The sheets are stiff and white and when she spreads them they land on the bed like flat pieces of cardboard. She talks and works quickly. You must tuck the sheets in properly, like this, at the top and bottom corners and she shows us how to fold each corner by flattening it with her hand. The top sheet comes in line with the end of the mattress. The blankets go the same way as the top sheet, but not tucked in. Do you see how I'm doing it?

We nod we do, but we don't.

The bedspread is tucked in like the bottom sheet but only at the bottom of the bed. Pull your quilt over the pillow and
fold back slightly, then we have this nice straight crease here under the pillow.

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

She hands us white wool pyjamas that zip up the front. They smell like starch and make my skin itch and I wonder am I wearing a dead girl's pyjamas and sleeping in a dead girl's bed.

The dormitory lights go out and we are in darkness when I hear the metal click of the key in the lock. I lie on my back listening to the weeping girls and the movement of bedsprings as girls toss and turn and wait for sleep. I watch the shadows on the wall of girls sitting up in their beds, too scared to sleep. Everywhere there's the stench of pee. I hear the tiptoe of big girls across the floorboards to each other's beds. I hear the moans from under blankets and that means they must be freezing. I want to be home at Nanny's where the five of us slept together in one big bed. Where I could feel my brothers and sisters beside me and we could cuddle together to keep warm and where I had Grandad's green coat with the smell of the ocean to keep me safe.

Slowly my eyes get used to the darkness. I turn to see the shadow of the rusty iron bars on Pippa's soft pink cheeks as she lays on her back sucking her thumb and trying not to cry.

I worry about my brothers, Sheamie and Danny. We left them sitting in the car. Daddy said they were going to a place for boys. A place in Kilkenny. It was thirty miles away. I didn't know how far that was and I didn't care. I just wanted my Sheamie and Danny. I stood on my tippy-toes on the pavement and waved in the window to them. I never had such an ache in my heart not knowing if I'd never see my brothers again. Sheamie was crying in the back seat, he couldn't look at me. Danny was sitting on Sheamie's lap, laughing. He climbed across the back seat and stuck his face to the glass and made a
funny shape with his lips. His breath was left on the glass with the shape of his mouth. The window steamed over and I couldn't see them anymore.

When the dormitory falls silent, the only noise is from cars passing on the other side of the high stone wall. Their headlights waltz across the ceiling and the flaking brown paint. Tears run into my mouth. I taste the salt on my tongue like the first day we came from Australia, when Grandad gave us the round crusty bread with country butter. You can taste the salt, he said. I think of our grandmother when she said we'd never be left alone again. I hear her voice in my head when she stood in front of the mantelpiece promising us, making sure we believed her.

This is yeer home as long as I'm alive and there's breath in my body. Do yee hear?

And we nodded that we did.

I want to be angry with her. But I'm scared to in case she finds out and doesn't come for us and then it'll all be my fault again. I want to hate her but I can't hate my Nanny, not when she's all we have.

It's late now. Maybe Daddy will come tomorrow. Maybe even Mum will come tomorrow.

In the morning, the dormitory lights come on and Sister Gabriel is walking between the beds ringing a bell. The stars are still shining in the dark blue sky and the windows are white with frost. We get up and make our beds.

Not like that, child, pyjamas inside your pillowcase.

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

Bottom sheet tucked in, folded at the corner.

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

Get washed and dressed and ready for mass.

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

We line up behind girls pushing and shoving each other away from the big cream washbasins against the wall. We wash and come back to our beds, get dressed. I've forgotten my slip. I don't have time to put it on, so I hide it in my pillowcase and chase downstairs after the other girls. By seven o'clock, the dormitory, stairway and corridors are empty and we're lined up in pairs in the dark icy playground.

A big girl at the front of the line complains to the nun with a black eye, Why can't we go through the corridor, Sister Ellen? It's all right for you out here with them big bloomers. The girls around her titter behind their hands but the nun with the black eye keeps walking down the line counting heads and, when she's happy everyone is here, she rings her bell. A door ahead of us creaks open and the line shuffles forward.

At the chapel door there's an old nun standing beside a brown cardboard box. Bigger girls ahead of me bend down to the box but I can't see what they're doing the way they gather round. All I see are backs and girls bending before they go inside. I don't know what to do. I'm sure they're putting money in and I don't have any. I look for Pippa. I think she's behind me but there're too many strange faces blocking the way. I can't see Mona either. Maybe if I tell the old nun I have no money she'll let me in without any, but you never know what nuns will do. She might drag me before the Reverend Mother who'd stand me in a corner and threaten me with her walking stick. I wonder if I should try and sneak in but if I get caught I'll be in twice as much trouble. I'm cold, but my neck sweats and I try looking for my sisters again but I'm pushed along in the crowd till I'm standing in front of the old nun. She looks down at me. I look up at her with the palms of my hands out straight so she can see I have no money. She looks in the box then I look in the box. The box is full of green pixie
hats with spikes like walking sticks on top. I take one and follow inside the chapel but Sister Gabriel rushes across to me wagging her finger, and whispering.

Where's your hat, child. You can't come into church without covering your head.

I put it on.

That's no way to wear a hat, child.

She grabs me by the arm and lifts me so my feet dangle above the floor and when she lets me down again I'm back out in the corridor where Sister Gabriel doesn't have to whisper anymore. Other girls giggle and my cheeks burn when Sister Gabriel warns me, Don't pull your hat over your ears like an idiot. It must sit on top of your head, but tilted to the left.

I put the hat back on but she yells, The left.

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

Get inside and catch Lucy Flynn's hand. She's the girl sitting on the bed when you arrived yesterday.

Lucy Flynn is waiting for me under the balcony with her hat on but mine keeps falling on the floor. Lucy gives me a nod of her head and shrug of her shoulders that I think means don't worry about right or left just stick it on your head and come on. So I do.

Reverend Mother is glaring from the bottom of the spiral stair and I'm sure she'd give me a clatter if we were anywhere but mass.

The chapel is small and has windows with coloured glass high up under the roof. Above the altar angels spread their white wings, and there's a clean holy smell of flowers and polish. The girls in their green pixies sit on the left, big girls at the front. The nuns sit in the middle and on the other side of the nuns, by the confession box, are four rows of older girls and old women in navy scarves. They keep their faces down and Gabriel warns us we are never to look at them, or speak
to them. They live in another part of the convent. I wonder are they like me, just older, and will I live here till I'm an old woman in a navy scarf that nobody can talk to. I wonder until the priest with the gold cross on his white robes walks on to the altar and we stand and sing Hallelujah.

After mass, it's breakfast in a big room Lucy calls the refectory. The walls are green. The windowsills are higher than my head but I can still see the iron bars. The girls sit at long wooden tables with benches down both sides. The nuns' table is on a raised platform behind a frosted glass screen. There's a gap under the screen so I can only see their shoulders or the glimpse of a hand moving to pick something from the table, but they can see everything we do.

Mona is sitting at the other side of the room with girls her own age. Pippa is at the same table as me but she's at the other end between two hungry-looking girls. I'm put beside Lucy Flynn and some of the girls I saw cleaning the stairs. We stand and pray when Sister Gabriel stands in the middle of the room and rings the bell for grace before meals.

Bless us O Lord

And these thy gifts

Which of thy bounty

We are about to receive

Amen.

The bell rings again and we sit. The nuns use wooden spoons to fill our tin plates on the table with porridge from great silver saucepans. The room is filled with the smell of rashers, eggs, sausages and toast from the nuns' table but all we have is porridge and lukewarm cocoa. The porridge is cold and I can feel the lumps in my mouth and the back of my throat. I want to be sick but I swallow because I don't want
to be in trouble. A girl with foxy hair and a flat nose leans across and asks why I'm here. Is your mother dead?

She's in Australia.

What does she look like?

The other girls around me stop eating and leave their spoons on the table to listen.

She has black hair.

Is it long?

Yes.

Does she look like you, only older?

I think so.

I seen her.

I look at her and she nods. She smiles. She's serious. She looks around at Lucy Flynn and the other girls and they nod their heads and get excited. They've all seen her. They're certain. She was in the hallway a minute ago looking for me!

I leap from the seat and run for the door, but Sister Gabriel catches my arm. I pull at her to get away, but she's big and strong and drags me back to my seat. I tell her my Mum is here and she tells me sit down and finish that porridge and don't move off that seat again until I'm told.

Lucy Flynn and the other girls are laughing and someone has emptied their porridge in my bowl. I want to cry. I want to go home. Lucy Flynn says it's no big deal. We do that to everyone.

I can't eat any more porridge. The clock above the kitchen door shows eight o'clock. I don't know what to do so I just turn my face to the plastic tablecloth and say nothing. Daddy will be here soon. He has to be.

After breakfast we wash the dishes and scrub the floors. Pippa and Mona are ahead of me leaving the room but when I get to the door leading to the playground they're lost in a crowd of girls. Lucy Flynn is standing by the door, her hair
damp from drizzle. She says sorry for what happened but that's the way it is. You gets used of it, and don't be standing there, it's dangerous. You have to stay out in the playground till the bell rings. Never mind. It's too late now.

Too late?

Lucy turns away and I feel a huge hand gripping my shoulder. It's Sister Gabriel, and she doesn't look happy.

She hauls me into her office at the bottom of the stairs where there's a tall statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary with yellow roses at her feet. Sister Gabriel lets me down on the floor then lifts me again by the ear and points to the blue slip on the table.

Didn't I tell you there's a dark corner in Hell for girls who don't wear a slip? Not wearing your slip is a sinful, shameful thing to do. Didn't I warn you?

Yes, Sister Gabriel.

And while you're waiting for Hell there's a dark cupboard under the stairs.

She tugs me closer to the table and lifts the slip to show me the leftover bowl of porridge underneath. Do I know it's a sin to waste God's Holy Food? Do I know about the millions dying in Africa and other heathen places? The million dead in Biafra? Poor unbaptized babies who will never see the face of God. Condemned for ever to Limbo.

Where's Limbo?

Never mind where Limbo is. Do you know the effort Sister Marge put into making that lovely porridge? You'll finish it before you leave this room. Now dry your eyes, Matilda.

She sits me in a chair and puts the spoon in my hand and stands over me with her arms folded inside her sleeves. I put the spoonful of porridge to my lips but it's colder than it was at breakfast and the lumps so thick I can't break them with my teeth. My stomach tightens and I puke all over her habit, her shoes and
her crucifix. I'm certain she'll kill me. Reverend Mother appears from nowhere, like a white sheet flapping in the wind demanding to know why our hair wasn't cut. It's a sinful length and there's enough temptation in the world and would you tell me, Sister Gabriel, what is going on here? You are responsible for these children.