The Fall Girl (7 page)

No matter how hard I try to make sense of it, I'm not able to accept it. I still resent her for it; hate her even. She's been dead almost fourteen months now, and although I've shed many tears over her, I haven't yet shed one for her. What's more, I don't intend to.

For days afterwards, I cry at the drop of a hat. It's the shock of it that hits me hardest and lingers longest. I don't think I'll ever feel happy again. I'm scared that I've turned bad. But why or how? When I close my eyes, I see my soul with a big, dark, mortal sin spot on it, like a splat of black ink. It's weighing me down. I don't talk much, in case I say the wrong thing. Of
course I deserved to be punished for breaking the Fourth Commandment, but I wish my mother had given me a tongue-lashing, or extra chores, or no supper – anything but being pinned down and slapped stupid.

The frightening part is that I'm no longer sure that I know the difference between right and wrong. I don't trust my own judgement. I'll have to play it safe, stay out of harm's way … Lesley's way. I think it's sad how all the things that make me feel good turn out to be bad. I'm sure it's Satan trying to trick me. My mother has warned me about that fella, how he's always working on us, putting temptation in our way – poaching souls. He must have chosen me because I'm weak. What if he does it again? And succeeds? I'll need to be on constant guard. Because if I take the bait, she'll do it again – slap the badness out of me. The thought of it makes me quiver. I'll never be able to look at or touch my mother's hands again without hating them.

By the time my father comes home, the evening of the
Feis
, I'm in bed and on the verge of sleep; crying is so draining. My bedroom door creaks open and I know he's looking in on me, but I don't stir.

He's not himself over the next few days; he walks in and out of rooms with a puzzled expression, as if he's trapped in a maze and is searching for a way out. When he sits down, he hones in on the TV, and I think he looks like one of the rabbits that come into our garden from the back field and sit motionless for hours. I hope I'm not the cause of his peculiar mood, but suspect that I am. Still, he hasn't shown any anger towards me and I love him for that.

About a week later, my mother goes to visit Nancy, leaving me and my father alone in the house. It's a Sunday evening. We're watching
The Black and White Minstrel Show
, he on an
armchair, me on the sofa. Between the performances, he pops out to the kitchen, returns with two apples, sits down beside me and hands me one.

A minute later, I'm watching the show again, this time through a fog of tears, and now I can't tell the black from the white; everything seems grey. Leaning my head on my father's arm, I squeeze my eyes shut and tears slide down my cheeks.

‘I know, I know,' he whispers, caressing my head. ‘She isn't the easiest of women, your mother. But what can we do?'

It isn't a question. He's simply letting me know that there's nothing he can do. That's all right – he understands. That's all I need to know.

As the seasons pass, the beatings continue. Some are more severe than others, but all occur when my father is out of the house. Once she wallops the back of my legs as I climb the stairs ahead of her.

‘That's for interrupting me yesterday while I was talking to Missus Scully in the post office,' she says.

No matter how well I behave, I can't stop the beatings. I feel so stupid. I should know how to stay out of trouble, but I don't.

I'm sure my mother hates me, feels ashamed of me. That is, until one evening when Nancy and Father Vincent are at our house for tea. I'm ten or eleven at the time. We're in the sitting-room. We've all finished eating except for Father Vincent, who keeps stretching across to the coffee table and restacking his side plate with sandwiches.

As he munches his way through the egg and onion, and the ham and tomato, he starts quizzing me about what I'm
learning in catechism. My mother tells me to go and get my copybook; that way he'll be able to see for himself.

‘You'll be fit to tell us,' she says to him, ‘whether or not you think she'll be adequately prepared for her Confirmation.'

Handing him my copybook, I sit back down on the sheep-skin mat by the fire. He fingers the embossed wallpaper covering and says, ‘Isn't that very snazzy?'

Flicking through the pages, he stops at random and throws questions at me. I twiddle tufts of wool from the mat between my thumb and index finger and rattle off the answers; I have them off by heart by now.

‘So, what do you think, Father?' my mother asks when he finally closes my copybook.

‘Oh, she's well versed.' He looks at me. ‘I doubt the Bishop will be able to catch
you
out.'

‘Well, as I keep telling her,' my mother says, ‘there's no point in her making her Confirmation if she doesn't know what it's about.'

‘It's a woeful pity, Rita Fall, there aren't more parents like you,' he says, eyeing the Victoria sponge.

‘Do you fancy a slice, Father?' my mother simpers. ‘You may as well; it'll only go to waste otherwise.'

‘In that case, it'd be a sin to say no.'

I'm not sure that I should ask a question that's been worrying me for ages now, but with everyone looking so pleased, I decide to chance it.

‘Is it true,' I look up at our revered guest, ‘that if someone gives the Bishop the wrong answer, he'll slap them across the face?'

‘I suppose it all depends on the mood he's in,' the priest says, and my parents and Nancy laugh.

My father reaches over, pats my head and says, ‘Don't worry, Frances, that'll not happen to you.'

After a while, Nancy asks my mother if she's heard the latest.

‘What's that?'

‘About a certain young lady who doesn't live a hundred miles from your front doorstep.'

‘Who?'

Nancy glances at me, winks and says, ‘I'll fill you in later.'

But later isn't soon enough and my mother tells me to be a good girl and make a start on the dishes. I leave the room without a grumble, delighted with the opportunity to make her proud of me twice in the one day.

When I've finished the dishes, I go into the living-room to watch TV.

‘Ah now, that's a living dread, the poor unfortunate lassie,' I hear my father say as he leaves the sitting-room a few minutes later.

‘Well, you know what they say,' my mother says. ‘If you lie down with dogs, you can expect to get up with fleas.'

Dying to know who has fleas, I stand like a spy by the living-room door and listen. I hear my father climbing the stairs and muttering something about my mother always having to throw in her twopence-ha' penny's worth. I wait until he returns to the sitting-room before I turn off the TV and ease the door open. I don't manage to get the whole story, but apparently a girl in the village is in some sort of trouble and, judging by their tone, there's not too much sympathy going to waste. It's the parents Nancy feels sorry for, though; according to my mother, they're far too lenient. I don't catch the next bit.

Then, as if he has somehow sensed my sneaky presence
lurking behind the living-room door, Father Vincent says in a booming voice, ‘Frances is a fortunate lassie to have parents like ye, to keep her on the straight and narrow throughout her teenage years.'

I can almost hear my mother's lungs fill with pride. I am, according to Nancy, a credit to her.

‘Poor Missus Mooney,' my father says. ‘I'd say now, in fairness, she does her best by those kids. It's no picnic, having a family that size.'

‘She keeps no dick on them at all, Joe,' Nancy says. ‘They've been running the roads since they were knee-high to grasshoppers, every last one of them. She's far too soft for her own good.'

‘I think she's a grand wee woman myself,' my father says, ‘very warm.'

‘A bit more of the cane, a lot earlier on, wouldn't have gone amiss in that house,' my mother says.

‘Wise words, Rita,' Father Vincent says. ‘I've no time for the softly softly approach myself. It'll get parents nowhere in the long run.'

So that's why my mother does it – to keep me on what Father Vincent calls the straight and narrow. All that lying across her knee submissively and taking the scorch, it's going to pay off. I'm well trained. Thanks to my mother, I'll sail through my teenage years unscathed by sin.

Perhaps I should be grateful.

When I returned from a walk this morning, I noticed that Aunty Lily's wedding ring had slipped off my finger. Three times I retraced my steps down the path that cuts the front lawn in two. I got down on my hunkers several times and rummaged through the leaves with teary eyes. A shower of rain urged me back inside to the warmth of my room, where I lay down on my bed and wept.

A couple of hours later, I found it under my bedside table. It must have fallen off while I was dressing the bed. I'm going to wear it on the chain around my neck now, like she did when she lost all the weight before she died. How I miss her.

My mother is pacing the living-room floor, hands deep in her apron pockets. Her cheeks are pulled back tight and her mouth looks like the opening of a letter box. Aunty Lily and Xavier aren't long gone. They're living in Sycamore Street now.

‘That man,' my mother says, ‘sang one too many rebel songs for my liking; he could be an IRA man for all we know. And as for Lily, she can't even pass an afternoon without resorting to alcohol.'

My father is trying to watch the six o'clock news to see how the Catholics are getting on in Derry. I know all about the North, how the Catholics are out marching because the Protestants are treating them badly. I'm sitting beside my father and taking it all in. There are girls as young as myself out on the street with their parents, who are shouting at the police
and throwing things at them. I wonder which is worse: being a persecuted Catholic or having the wrong religion.

My mother paces in front of the TV, obscuring our view, while my father sways his upper body so he can keep his eye on the screen.

‘I blame London,' my mother says.

‘I couldn't agree with you more; they give them Unionists far too much clout.'

‘No, not for that hooliganism! For Lily. London's changed her.'

‘Lily was Lily,' my father says, ‘before she set her sights on London at all.'

‘Maybe so,' my mother says, coming to a halt and standing directly between my father and the evening news, ‘but she wasn't always an atheist, was she?'

My father sighs, gives up on the Derry Catholics, and looks at my mother. ‘And who says she is?'

‘I do. She's not seen the inside of a chapel since she came home from that godless metropolis.'

‘Isn't she on her way into evening Mass as we speak?'

‘She is my eye. Wait till you see. Come morning, she'll not be fit to tell me one thing about the readings or the homily. The girl is lying through her teeth.'

‘Well, whether she is or not, it's not up to you to get involved. Be careful what you say. She's a married woman now, with a husband to look after her.'

‘I told you before, Joe Fall, that I promised my mother I'd take care of her, and I'll be damned if I let her down now.'

An hour later I'm on my knees, hands joined and leaning into the sofa where Aunty Lily had been sitting all afternoon. I can smell the dregs of cigarette smoke off the cushion. My mother offers up a decade of the rosary for those misguided
people who have foolishly turned their backs on God, that they may see the error of their ways and ask for His forgiveness. I think that Father Vincent couldn't have put it better himself. With my eyes shut and my face scrunched in serious contemplation, I pray for my aunty's redemption.

The next time Aunty Lily visits us, my mother fires questions at her.

‘Still going to evening Mass?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Does there be many at it?'

‘A fair crowd.'

‘Any choir?'

‘Sometimes.'

The three of us are playing Ludo at the kitchen table. After a few minutes, my mother has dropped out to make the tea. I'm taking her turns for her.

She lifts the saucepan of custard off the hob. ‘Who did you tell me says it?'

‘Says what?'

‘Evening Mass.'

‘Oh. Father eh … what do you call him, Xavier?' Aunty Lily shouts out to her husband, who's in the living-room chatting with my father.

‘Who?'

‘The priest that says evening Mass.'

‘Isn't he Higgins?'

‘That's right, Higgins.'

‘God, isn't that odd?' my mother twitters, placing a plate of steaming apple tart and custard on the table in front of her sister. ‘Nancy was just telling me the other day how Father
Vincent has been saying the evening Mass in Castleowen this past month.'

‘Are you calling me a liar?' Aunty Lily reddens and reaches into her handbag for her cigarettes.

‘And why would I do the like of that?' my mother asks, turning to cut another slice of the tart. ‘Sure, you know as well as I do that Mammy'd turn in her grave if either of us strayed from our Christian duties. Said so herself, on her deathbed, if I remember rightly. I hardly think that you're denying the good woman her final wishes.'

‘Of course I'm not.'

‘There you are, then; it's just a bit of a mix-up. Maybe Father Vincent is the concelebrant.'

Aunty Lily tightens her grip on the cigarette with her lips and sucks on it so hard, the entire tip disappears into her mouth. When she inhales, a curly whiff of smoke escapes and disappears up her nostrils.

‘Here, love,' she says, pushing her plate over to me, ‘you can have that. And will you take my turn for me too, till I smoke my fag in peace?'