In a Fishbone Church Page 5

  While the water runs, Etta undresses in front of the mirror. The glass clouds, until all she can see is a luminous after-image of herself; a ghost. The mirror came out on the boat too.

  The bathroom smells of Three Flowers face powder, and Lily of the Valley. Bernadette and Theresa, Etta’s sisters, have been getting ready for a dance. Bernadette must be feeling better; she’s had the flu for the past couple of days, and has stayed in bed. She often gets the flu, and creeps around the place holding a hot water bottle to her stomach. There is a smudge of lipstick on the mirror, as if someone has tried to kiss it. The hand basin is streaked brown. Bernadette and Theresa have been painting their legs; stockings are still scarce.

  Just as Etta is stepping into the bath, Maggie pushes open the door.

  ‘You brought the wrong one,’ she says. ‘I wanted the mutton.’

  Etta has one foot in the water and one on the floor. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘The cat was in there. You let it in, didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Idiot. All that meat, ruined.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Maggie is raw in the face. Her breath is stale, acidic, the way Bernadette’s and Theresa’s floating dresses smell after a dance.

  ‘I’ll teach you sorry.’ Maggie’s hands are raised. She has beautiful hands, white as linen. Flowers have spilled from them, pastel petals, the initials of someone cherished. Etta concentrates on these. She thinks: satin stitch, loveknots, lazy-daisy, chain stitch, crewelling. Her mother’s hands, her needle fingers. Idiot. Wicked. I’ll teach you.

  Etta is giddy. She feels as if the bath is moving away from her, like a ship leaving dock, with only half of her in it. She will be pulled in two, starting at her thighs, straight down the middle. She is giddy. She is falling.

  ‘Be good,’ says Bernadette, stroking a gloved finger over Etta’s cheek. Then she and Theresa float out the door in their butterfly dresses, leaving the scent of flowers behind them.

  Etta is good. She has been good all afternoon. She cleaned up the mess in the meat safe; the cat was nowhere to be seen. The cool air was soothing on her bruises. She picked up the feathers from the ducks and the swan. They shone. Precious things, kept safe. She sat on the floor and waited for Maggie to come and let her out. She could be very patient when she had to be, like Saint Elizabeth waiting for a child. There was no sign of the cat for the rest of the day.

  ‘A bit of face powder would cover those for church tomorrow,’ said Theresa when she saw the purple marks on Etta’s face.

  ‘She is thirteen years old,’ said Maggie. ‘I will not have my daughter looking like a hussy.’

  Etta slipped over when she was getting out of the bath. She’s at a clumsy age. She’ll be all right.

  It is night. Etta has tiptoed over the cold cattle stop. She has wondered how it would feel for a foot, a leg, to slip through those bars, to have to wait there all night. The air is cool on her bruises. The flag on the letterbox is up, and she can hear the stream. She pauses at the Hoffmanns’ house. Mr Hoffmann is sitting at the piano; the lid is down. She passes the swings, which are still. She is in the field. A button pops off her blouse and is lost in the grass; she does not stop to find it. She goes to the stream. She stands on the bank and dips one foot into the water. The stream has swollen, she thinks. Under the water her foot is luminous. She steps from the bank, pulls off her skirt. She stands thigh-deep in water. Her legs are made of moon. The water flows between them. She smiles. Another button pops from her blouse, and another. They sink and become stones. She has no need for stones. Her blouse crumbles from her shoulders and dissolves. She inches down into the water, into the bed of the stream. Until she is kneeling. The water creeps up her body, parting to let her in. She glows. She is silver from the neck down.

  Maggie cannot sleep. She throws back the hot eiderdown and places a foot on the cool floor. It is a high bed. She can just reach. Her hand hurts. She hit her knuckles too hard. She didn’t mean to hit so hard. She wonders how these things happen so quickly. She thinks, I am unravelling. She will try to be more understanding, less irritable, more generous, less impatient. More gracious. More serene. More Christian. She will have a little brandy and fall asleep.

  Owen is sailing in the green bath. It is the colour of leaves. It turns the water the colour of leaves. The mirror is foggy. Owen looks through the fog and thinks he can see land. A misty green island. His Uncle Henry plays the violin. One of Owen’s feet is placed level on land. He ripples. His other foot is removed from the water and placed on land. He shivers like a view through old glass. People think he is drunk. He is not. For two weeks he cannot walk without falling over. His Uncle Henry plays the violin, and gives him a job cleaning the silver, so he can sit down.

  Maggie’s glass – finest Waterford – drops from her fingers. Her face sinks into white linen.

  ‘Violin,’ says Owen.

  Mrs Hoffmann is back in Dresden. Buildings are cracking like bone china. She must run to avoid the falling shards. A library smashes to the ground; pages flutter around her, shuffling themselves to form stories nobody would ever believe. She looks again, and people are cracking. Life-size, bone-china people. A man on a bicycle shatters. A girl with a dog smashes to dust. A woman in a floral dress explodes, showering Mrs Hoffmann with sharp flowers.

  Mr Hoffmann watches the shut piano. He thinks, ivory, ivory. Such a strange language.

  At the dance, Theresa swallows another vodka.

  ‘That’s the end of Bernadette’s,’ she says. She produces a hip flask from the folds of her dress, and leans back against George Morton’s best suit.

  ‘It’s lucky you girls have such long frocks,’ says George, slipping his hand under a layer of voile. ‘What else have you got under here?’

  ‘Dirty bugger,’ says Theresa, laughing.

  ‘Where did a good Catholic girl like you learn that sort of language?’

  ‘Some of the men on the farm will teach you anything you want to know. Isn’t that right, Bernadette?’

  George snorts.

  Bernadette arranges the powder blue layers of her dress around her, smoothing them over her knees, folding them along her body like wings.

  ‘She’s a quiet one, your sister,’ says George. ‘You girls still thirsty?’ He reaches inside his coat and slides a bottle out.

  ‘Gin!’

  ‘Nothing like a drop of mother’s ruin.’

  ‘Shame we haven’t got any proper glasses.’

  ‘The first champagne glass,’ says Bernadette, ‘was formed around Marie Antoinette’s bosom.’

  ‘Pity it wasn’t round Theresa’s,’ says George, gripping the neck of the bottle. ‘Lean in front of me while I open this, would you love?’

  Etta stays in the water until she cannot feel her bruises. She does not think she is cold. She can smell flowers. Under the water she gleams bone-clean. She stands up, slowly. Being careful not to slip. She is so clumsy. She curves her feet over round rocks, gripping with her toes. There is a shadow in the water where she was kneeling. It washed out of her; it spreads in the water. It is possibly red. It is possibly the colour of wine. It is dark.

  It is dark. Etta can’t find her clothes. Something brushes her thigh, and when she looks down she sees that her skin is still glowing. As if she has become a ghost of herself. A velvety moth has landed on her thigh and is beating its wings, slowly as a heart. Another one is on her foot, fanning her toes with cool breaths. She can feel them settling on her back, her arms. They are clouding around her, making the air whisper. They are covering her shoulders, her chest, her small breasts.

  Her mother hates moths, especially the fat ones that beat against the windows at night. When they get inside, she hits them with the back of her shoe.

  ‘They’re just night-time butterflies,’ says Owen. ‘They’re a hundred times smaller than yourself.’

  ‘Dirty creatures,’ says Maggie.

  Etta holds up her fingers. They are covered w
ith moths. She is not afraid (she should be). She feels warm. They do not fly away when she walks.

  She crosses the field, passes the swings. She comes to her road. She wonders if anyone will see her. Macrocarpas arch across her. The light is still on in the Hoffmanns’ front window, and a few moths are drumming on the glass. Etta stops and looks in from the road. Mr Hoffmann is still sitting at the piano; the lid is down. The moths on his window come and sit in Etta’s hair. Mr Hoffmann looks up and frowns. He walks to the window and cups his hands round his eyes. Etta stands in the middle of the road (it is the safest place) and stares back. Mr Hoffmann pushes up the sash and leans out.

  ‘It is Etta.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Etta is your full name?’

  ‘Henrietta.’

  ‘I have daughter called Ete. Margarete.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve never met her. Where does she live?’

  ‘She is in Germany with her man. She is died.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘In bomb.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you for the sausages.’

  ‘Ah, please, please.’

  ‘They were lovely.’

  ‘You enjoy Weißwurst.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My wife give you more. You come tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  When she places her foot on the cattle stop, Etta hears a sigh. Or rather, hundreds of tiny sighs. The air around her is moving; the moths are leaving. They arc away from the house, growing smaller. Etta looks at her body. It is not glowing any more.

  She creeps up the stairs, starting with her left foot so the ninth stair won’t creak. She is very tired, and she buries her face in her pillow. The pillowcase smells of mothballs.

  Maggie comes into Etta’s room at seven in the morning.

  ‘Up you get, I want to get the washing done before church. And you have to feed that lamb of yours, it’s driving me mad with its noise.’ She pulls back the blankets. ‘Your face is all marked. Looks awful.’

  Etta gets up to look in the mirror. ‘Oh, that,’ she says. ‘That’s just from the pillowcase.’

  Maggie is looking at her sheets. There is a stain on them. Etta doesn’t know where it’s come from. She didn’t think she’d been cut when she fell over in the bathroom, just bruised. She’s hardly ever been actually cut; with her strange and thin blood, this is a complication to be avoided. She hopes she won’t slip over in surprise. She’s so clumsy.

  But Maggie just strips the sheets off the bed and bundles them up. Then she sets her jaw, pulls off the pillowcase and tears it down the seams. She folds the pieces into squares and hands them to Etta.

  ‘Here. You’ll need these.’ She sighs, picks up the sheets, and leaves.

  In the bathroom, Bernadette’s and Theresa’s dresses are hanging to air. They look like shrivelled skins, and are stained under the arms. Etta looks in the mirror. There is an impression of flowers on her cheek, circling a butterfly. At least, she thinks it’s a butterfly. She turns the pieces of pillowcase over and over. They are still warm. She wonders what on earth she is supposed to do with them.

  It is

  wiser to be

  modest

  During the lunch hours at Sacred Heart College, when the classrooms are locked and the girls must get some fresh air, which is good for the teenage complexion, Bridget listens to the Beautiful Girls. They talk about various members of the Saint Bernard’s First Fifteen or the Saint Pat’s debating team. They assign identities. A honey, a sweetie, a spunk, a user, a stud. Available, taken. Experienced, romantic, desperate, a good kisser. When the Beautiful Girls roll their white ankle socks down over their feet and rub baby oil into their skin, Bridget sits in the shade.

  ‘I don’t tan,’ she says, watching the Beautiful Girls compare white wristwatch marks and the slimness of ankles. Her legs grow hair, which she does not remove. God made this hair, she thinks, therefore it is both beautiful and good.

  At night she reads the Bible in bed. Her aim is to memorise passages of it, so she will have relevant quotes for every occasion.

  Beautiful Girls, she says to herself between her soft flannelette sheets, people who are proud will soon be disgraced. It is wiser to be modest.

  She takes to the translucent pages of her Bible with a pen, underlining and circling and starring and ticking, sometimes even writing short comments in the margin, such as ‘JODIE D’, ‘DANCE COMMITTEE’ and ‘NETBALLERS’.

  At school, however, the right quote never occurs to her, and she finds herself saying entirely inappropriate things which at first make the Beautiful Girls say ‘Excuse me?’ or ‘Sorry?’ and then just make them laugh. Sometimes they ignore her completely.

  Bridget has been praying for stigmata to appear on her body, so that they will know she is holy. She stares at her palms, her white feet, her soft right side, and wills wounds to appear. They do not.

  Angela Gill is not a Beautiful Girl, although for the fortnight or so leading up to her arrival at Sacred Heart, she is the New Girl. She has just emigrated to New Zealand from Ireland with her mother and two brothers, and there is much speculation at the school as to what sort of accent she will have, if she will be arrested for protesting against abortion, how pale she will be, if she will have red hair. There is talk that her father and one brother were accidentally shot by IRA terrorists, and that she saw it happen. There is also much discussion about the two remaining brothers, who will be going to Saint Bernard’s. Everyone wants to meet her, even the Beautiful Girls, and especially Bridget. She and Angela will start a lunchtime prayer group, Bridget decides. They will be praised for their holiness, and the Beautiful Girls, with their turned-back socks and their oiled legs, will look on in envy. Bridget will take Angela to the Youth Group. They will do the Forty Hour Famine together, ration each other’s barley sugars. She will come and stay at the Stiltons’ house on weekends, sleep in Bridget’s room. They will build a bomb shelter together, fill the shelves with tins of food and bottled water, line the walls with lead.

  When Angela Gill is finally introduced to the fifth-form assembly, however, she is not what anyone was expecting. The hall falls silent and everyone simply stares. One girl’s pencil case slides to the floor, and the contents – pens, coins, cough drops, a plastic protractor – go spinning across the polished wooden boards. Angela’s face and arms, and what can be seen of her legs below her too-long uniform, are covered with raised patches of red. She looks as if she has suffered severe burns. Sister Juliana clears her throat.

  ‘Girls,’ she says, ‘I’d like to introduce the newest member of our community. I hope you will make her feel welcome.’

  Then the music teacher bangs out a hearty few bars on the piano, and the fifth form lurches through the school song while Angela Gill stands at the front of the hall for all three verses, as if she has been accused of something.

  They begin to call her Scaly Angela. Not to her face, of course – they are far too well brought-up to do that – but after the novelty of her Irish accent has worn off she is not paid much attention. In fact, most try to look at her as little as possible, including teachers, and including Bridget.

  ‘So the Forty Hour Famine is a very real way of helping,’ says Craig. ‘We’ve got permission to stay in the meeting room overnight, so we can get some videos, bring along guitars, games, whatever. Just no food!’

  Bridget gets her family to sponsor her.

  ‘I think its a very noble cause,’ says Etta. ‘It wouldn’t hurt any of us to find out what it feels like.’

  ‘I hardly think going without your Weetbix and chops for a day and a half quite compares,’ says Gene, ‘but put me down for fifty cents an hour.’

  ‘It’s a very real way of helping,’ says Bridget.

  ‘Cool,’ says Ch
ristina. ‘You get to help the starving millions, and maybe lose a few pounds yourself.’ And she pats Bridget’s stomach. ‘But hey, no sharing sleeping bags with the other Christians, right?’

  Bridget sighs. ‘It’s not that kind of party, okay? In fact, it’s not a party at all.’

  ‘I’ll bet it’s not,’ says Christina, and begins singing. ‘Nearer my Craig to thee, nearer to thee,’ she croons.

  The famine starts well. Craig supplies the Group with regular speeches, which stop Bridget thinking about food.

  ‘I want to tell you more about the Endtimes,’ he says. ‘About the signs we will witness – the signs we’re already witnessing – that signal the beginning of Armageddon. Look around you,’ he says, so Bridget scans the room. ‘How many new churches have sprung up recently, how many splinter groups of long-established religions? On American television, evangelists are appearing like weeds – new ones every week.’

  Bridget nods. So does Rosemary Stokes, who is wearing a very low-cut blouse.

  ‘It can be upsetting,’ says Craig, ‘to see so many frauds claiming to be working for God. But we in the true church recognise this as a sign that the Endtimes are here, and that salvation is at hand.’

  Rosemary leans further forward in her chair, her blouse gaping open. Craig clears his throat.

  ‘There will be an increase in natural disasters – ever wondered why they’re called acts of God? Famine and false prophets will abound, people will speak in tongues. A land in the far north will gain international power.’

  ‘Russia!’ yells Bridget, leaping to her feet. ‘Russia’s getting more powerful!’

  Craig looks her in the eyes, nods solemn approval. ‘That’s right, Bridget. The USSR is indeed gaining prominence. Some believe,’ and he pauses, ‘that it is already the lair of the Antichrist.’