The Shelter of Neighbours (32 page)

Clap a clap a clap trap

On her shoulder

Clap a clap a clap trap

On her shoulder

Clap a clap a clap trap

On her shoulder

He will be her Master.

The blue shadows shivered around us like ghosts and we ate the chocolate, and we got more chocolate, oh he had a lot of chocolate in that deep, dark soutane pocket, and he kept talking, for a long time.

I was getting impatient. But at last he said ‘Ah!', as if he had just remembered that we were with him. ‘Here!' He handed Margaretta her bracelet. She shoved it into her white Confirmation bag. Snapped it shut with the golden clasp.

As the bus wound down the hill towards home, swaying on the narrow road in the dying light of evening, I asked her if she minded sitting on the priest's lap.

She tossed her head and said it was a free country.

‘I got my bracelet back, didn't I? If I'd lost it, my father would've murdered me.'

In an office in Dublin where I worked years later there was a switchboard operator who was sight impaired. His official title, the name of his grade, was ‘Blind Telephonist' and that is what we called him. I was walking down the street with him one evening, towards his bus stop. It was the Friday of the June bank holiday. I was working in an office, though I had hoped to travel the world and do exciting things, and I still hoped that, and believed that my job (which was permanent and pensionable and interesting enough and well paid) was temporary, that soon I would be embarking on my real life of adventure and exploration. I was twenty-five.

He was a past pupil of St Lucia's. The blind telephonist was. This he told me between Leinster House and Nassau Street.

‘Oh, yes.' It came back to me in a rush. ‘Did you know Father Braygy?'

‘Yes.'

‘He used to come to our school.'

I told him briefly about the flag days. We were standing at the traffic lights at the corner. It was five o'clock and the traffic was heavy, the air smoky with fumes. But it was sunny and the city had that fizzy, light-hearted mood it has at the beginning of a long summer weekend.

The blind man was silent for a while and then he said, ‘He was a lovely man.'

He fixed me with his blank look.

‘A heart of gold.'

The lights changed and I helped him across to the other side, where his bus stop was, outside the dark green railings of Trinity College.

FICTION

Blood and Water

The Bray House

Eating Women is Not Recommended

Singles

The Inland Ice and Other Stories

The Dancers Dancing

The Pale Gold of Alaska and Other Stories

Midwife to the Fairies: New and Selected Stories

Dúnmharú sa Daingean

Cailíní Beaga Ghleann na mBláth

Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow

The Shelter of Neighbours

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

The Uncommon Cormorant

Hugo and the Sunshine Girl

The Hiring Fair

Blaeberry Sunday

Penny Farthing Sally

The Sparkling Rain

Hurlamaboc

PLAYS

Dún na mBan trí Thine

Milseog an tSamhraidh

The Nettle Spinner