I saw things with such clarity then. The memory loss came afterwards. One moment I was in sunlight; the next in chequered shadows, with only a few flecks of brilliance left to prove that the memories had ever been there. But that day, everything was clear. I remember all of it.
It begins with a little girl crying in the row just in front of me. That was Emily White, of course. Two years younger than I was, and already stealing the limelight. Dr Peacock was there, as well — a large, kind-looking, bearded man with an affable voice like a French horn, whilst elsewhere — another small drama played out, unseen by the major protagonists.
It wasn’t much of a drama. Just a blue-eyed boy in the choir pitching forward on to his face. But there was a minor commotion; the music wavered, but did not stop, and a woman — the boy’s mother, I assumed — rushed forward into the stalls, her high shoes skidding on the polished floor, her face a lipstick blur of dismay.
My own mother looked disapproving. She wouldn’t have rushed forward. She would never have made such a fuss — especially not here, in chapel, with everyone so ready to judge and to spread those hateful rumours.
‘Gloria Winter. I should have known—’
It was a name I’d heard before. She’d told me the boy had caused trouble at school. In fact, the whole family was bad news: godless, wicked and profane.
Irredeemable, she’d said. It was the word Mother reserved for the worst kind of sinners: rapists, blasphemers, matricides.
Gloria was holding her son. He had cut his head on the side of the pew. Blood — a surprising amount of it — spattered his chorister’s surplice. Behind her, two boys, one in black, one in brown, stood by like extras in a game. The black one looked sullen; even bored. The one in brown — a clumsy-looking boy with long, lank hair over his eyes and an oversized sweatshirt that emphasized, rather than hid, his gut — looked distressed, almost dazed.
He put a shaking hand to his head. I wondered if he’d fallen, too.
‘What do you think you’re playing at? Can’t you see I need help?’ Gloria Winter’s voice was sharp. ‘B.B., get a towel, or something. Nigel, call an ambulance.’
Nigel, at sixteen; an innocent. I wish I could say I remembered him. But frankly, I never noticed him; my attention was all on Bren. Perhaps because of the look in his eyes: that trapped and helpless expression. Perhaps because I sensed, even then, a kind of bond between us. First impressions matter so much; they shape us for what comes later.
He raised his hand to his head again. I saw his expression, a rictus of pain as if he’d been hit by something falling from the sky, and then he stumbled against the step and fell to his knees almost at my feet.
My mother had already moved to help, guiding Gloria through the crowd.
I looked down at the boy in brown. ‘Are you all right?’
He stared at me in open surprise. To tell the truth, I’d surprised myself. He was so much older than I. I rarely spoke to strangers. But there was something about him that moved me, somehow: an almost childlike quality.
‘Are you all right?’ I repeated.
He had no time to answer me. Gloria turned impatiently, one arm still supporting Benjamin. It struck me then how tiny she was: wasp-waisted in her pencil skirt, stiletto heels barely grazing the floor. My mother disliked stiletto heels — which she called slutilloes — and which, she claimed, were responsible for a variety of conditions ranging from chronic back pain to hammer toes and arthritis. But Gloria moved like a dancer, and her voice was as sharp as those six-inch heels as she snapped at her ungainly son:
‘Brendan, get over here right now, or, God help me, I’ll wring your fucking neck—’
I saw my own mother flinch at that. The F-word was strictly outlawed in our house. And coming from the boy’s mother, too — I couldn’t help but feel sympathy. He scrambled clumsily to his feet, his face now flushing a dull red. And I could see how troubled he was, how scared and self-conscious and filled with hate.
He wishes she were dead, I thought, with sudden, luminous certainty.
It was a dangerous, powerful thought. It lit up my mind like a beacon. That this boy should wish his mother dead was almost beyond imagining. Surely this was a mortal sin. It meant that he would burn in hell; that he was damned for eternity. And yet, I was drawn to him somehow. He looked so lost and unhappy. Maybe I could save him, I thought. Maybe he was redeemable . . .
11
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 02.04 on Thursday, February 21
Status: restricted
Mood: anxious
Let me explain. It’s not easy. As a child I was very shy. I was bullied at school. I had no friends. My mother was religious, and her disapproval weighed upon every aspect of my life. She showed me little affection, making it clear to me from the start that only Jesus deserved her love. I was my mother’s gift to Him; a soul for His collection, and though I was far from perfect, she said, with His grace and my efforts I might one day be good enough to meet the Saviour’s exacting standards.
I don’t remember my father at all. Mother never spoke of him, though she wore a wedding ring, and I was left with the vague impression that he had disappointed her, and that she had sent him away, as I too would be sent away if I failed to be good enough.
Well, I tried. I said my prayers. I did my chores. I went to Confession. I never spoke to strangers, or raised my voice, or read comic-books, or took a second slice of cake if Mother invited a friend to tea. But even so, it was never enough. I always fell short of perfection, somehow. There was always a fault in my stubborn clay. Sometimes it was my carelessness; a tear in the hem of my school skirt; a smear of mud on my white socks. Sometimes it was bad thoughts. Sometimes, a song on the radio — Mother detested rock music and called it Satan’s flatulence — or a passage from a book I’d read. There were so many dangers, Mother said; so many pits on the road to hell. But she tried, in her fashion; she always tried. It wasn’t her fault I turned out this way.
There were no toys or dolls in my room, just a blue-eyed Jesus on the cross and a plaster angel (slightly cracked) that was meant to drive away bad thoughts and make me feel safe at night.
In fact, it made me nervous. Its face, neither male nor female, looked like a dead child’s. And as for the blue-eyed Jesus, with his head thrown back and his bleeding ribs, he looked neither kind nor compassionate, but angry, tortured and frightening — and why not, I asked myself? If Jesus died to save us all, why wouldn’t He be angry? Wouldn’t He be furious at what He’d had to endure for our sakes? Wouldn’t He want vengeance somehow — for the nails, and the spear, and the crown of thorns?
If I die before I wake, I pray, dear Lord, my soul to take —
And so at night I would lie sleepless for hours, terrified to close my eyes in case the angels took my soul, or, worse still, that Jesus Himself would rise from the dead and come for me, ice-cold and smelling of the grave, and hiss in my ear:
It should have been you.
Bren was dismissive of my fears, and indignant that Mother encouraged them.
‘I thought my Ma was bad enough. But yours is a fucking fruitcake.’