Oranges From Spain Read online

  ‘Leave the city,’ she whispered. ‘Leave his mother and his home? How in the name of God can they say that?’

  She continued to stare at the priest, desperately searching his face for some sign that he had made a mistake, or that she had misunderstood his words.

  ‘He’s no more than a boy – how can they do this to no more than a boy? Where will he go? What will become of him? And me – what’s to become of me? God in heaven knows, I’ve little enough in this world and they’re going to take away the one thing I’ve got left. I don’t care what he’s done, or what he hasn’t done, he’s my son and no one has the right to do this. What gives the likes of them the right to be judge, jury and executioner? Did you not tell them that, Father? Did you not make them listen to you? People respect Father Donnelly round here, people listen to you.’

  The priest sat back again in the chair, and felt the bitterness of his humiliation burn him again.

  ‘I tried, Eilish, I really tried, but these people are a law unto themselves, and to them I’m just an old man with old ideas. They pushed me aside like some old fool who didn’t understand. These are terrible times we’re living in, and this is a terrible thing they’re doing, but these people don’t want to listen to reason. And why should they? Yesterday, they were nobodies, and today they sit in judgment on the world. They told me they were being lenient with the boy – giving him a chance when there were some who wanted to make an example of him.’

  ‘But they can’t do this,’ she insisted. ‘He’s only a boy, where would he go? A boy isn’t some sort of bird that can flit from nest to nest. Anthony may not be the best son any mother ever had, but he’s mine and he’s all I have. They can’t take him away from me. In the name of Jesus, you can’t let them do this!’

  She got up and stumbled into the kitchen as the priest started to talk of people he knew south of the border who could provide accommodation and maybe even a job, and how the church would stand by her and help them both in every way possible, but his words blurred and circled aimlessly in her head before sinking slowly into futility. She searched frantically for the cigarette packet and the few remaining cigarettes but could not find it. She had hidden it and could not remember where. Soon there would be no need for hiding places, no need for anything any more.

  Her eye fixed on the milk jug which occupied pride of place on the tray and she cupped it carefully in her hands. She had always loved the coolness of the blue flowers against the white, and her fingers gently traced the delicate pattern. Then, as a surge of savage tears broke inside her, she smashed it into the yellow-stained sink and watched it crack and shatter before her splintered sight. The sound made the priest start, and for a second he thought of going to her, but he slumped back heavily into the chair and stared morosely into the smouldering fire, as if searching it for some flicker of flame.

  The Red Kite

  It was supposed to be a special treat. However, he was old enough to know that happiness was elusive and could not be pre-arranged. He saw, too, that the signs were not good. When his father first told him that they were going for a drive that Saturday, the prospect had pleased him, but his father’s insistent and repetitive assurances about how good it would be sowed doubt in his mind. His mother exuded indifference. He wondered for whose benefit the trip had been arranged.

  There had been something wrong in the house for a week, but he did not know what it was, and he was not old enough to ask. Several times, after he had gone to bed the sound of raised voices had carried to his room, but he had not been able to hear clearly enough to follow what was being said. He knew it was something to do with his father by the way he tried so hard to please and because his mother responded sullenly, almost resentfully. When she set his father’s meal on the table, she set it down with ill grace, and when she lifted it up, it was as if she was going to throw the plate away. In his presence neither said anything about what was on their minds, and his father filled the silences with forced jocularity that fell hopelessly flat. It was as if the whole house was shrouded in some nameless and indefinable misery that seeped stealthily into every corner.

  When Saturday arrived it was a cold September day that seemed to belong more to the coming winter than to the fading summer. His mother wrapped sandwiches in a greaseproof paper bag and placed them with a flask in a large white polythene bag. It was entrusted to his custody in the back seat of the car and he was told to make sure the flask didn’t topple over and start to leak. He liked it best when he sat in the front with his father, but this time he was assigned to the back. Sometimes his father would say, ‘Men in the front, women in the back.’ But not this time. His mother checked her make-up in the little vanity mirror behind the passenger’s sun-shield and they set off.

  No one said much. His father drove steadily and his mother looked at houses as they passed. From time to time she turned round to make sure the flask was all right. It made him feel that she didn’t trust him. His father began to talk about the old days and the old gang he had hung around with. He told them about the time they went camping in the Mournes and how the tent had blown away the first night. He told the stories he had told a score of times before. In spite of herself, his mother was laughing at them, just the way she always did. As his father drove, he glanced at her from time to time, as if to assure himself that it was really her laughter he was hearing. Once, almost as an afterthought, he glanced in his mirror to see if his son was laughing.

  After a while they left the main roads and drove through the countryside. Looking out at the empty fields he found it difficult to associate the land with the people who made their living from it, and there was a featureless similarity in weather and landscape that made the whole world take on a kind of indistinguishable oneness. His father had run out of funny stories now, and silence had settled once more. They were driving quite slowly and the lanes were narrow. A car appeared behind them. It followed closely for a few miles and then the driver grew impatient with his inability to pass. He came even closer until the two cars were almost nose to tail. His father made no effort to pull over, but obstinately hugged the middle of the road. An angry horn sounded and his father asked with heavy sarcasm, ‘Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire?’ His mother glanced over her shoulder and told him to let the man past. His father made no attempt to comply at first, but sensing his wife’s growing annoyance, he steered the car over towards the verge. There was another angry blast of horn as the car overtook them. His mother turned her head away and stared at the hedge, while his father glared at the driver. There was a little imitation dog sitting in the back of the other car, and as it disappeared into the distance the dog wagged its head at them with repeated scorn.

  Feeling a vague sense of guilt, his father tried to justify himself.

  ‘These young fellows think they own the roads.’

  ‘He only wanted past,’ his mother said flatly.

  ‘I was going to let him past until he started pumping that horn. Wonder what else he got for Christmas?’

  As he said this, he turned round to see if his son had appreciated the joke. His mother seemed to want to make an issue of it.

  ‘He might have been in a hurry,’ she insisted. ‘Why should everyone have to wait on your beck and call?’

  There was a reply on his father’s lips, but he let it slip away unsaid and pretended to be concentrating on his driving.

  Eventually they arrived in the small seaside town. The afternoon was cold with a strong wind blowing and few people on the streets. Most of the seafront shops were already closed and boarded-up for the winter. They found a place to park where they could sit and look at the sea. After a while they had their picnic, and it all seemed to be over too quickly. His father gave him twenty pence and told him to go and buy some sweets. As he got out of the car his mother began to busy herself with gathering up the papers and the cups. His father turned sideways and watched her.

  There was only one shop open – the type that sold everything, and it app
eared strange and out of place. Outside, it had buckets and spades hanging in the doorway and cowboy hats and brightly coloured beach balls. There was even a rack of postcards. The wind was blowing and some of the things seemed likely to blow away at any minute. He looked in the windows but did not go in. Then he slipped down on to the beach.

  The sea was whipped by the wind into an angry lather of foam and noise, and the waves broke so quickly he could not count them. Huddled at the bottom of the steps and the base of the wall was a girl in a duffle coat with the hood up and a long, green scarf wrapped around her neck. On her knees was a large sketch pad and she was drawing a view of the rocks and sea. She had long, black hair which blew across her face, and she had to keep pushing it back with one hand, while holding on to the sketch pad with the other. He walked along the beach. A woman was walking her dog and as she went she threw a stick for it to fetch. Sometimes she threw it into the sea and the water rippled up round the dog’s paws. On some rocks a man was fishing. He stood upright and motionless like a pole and didn’t seem to be catching anything.

  The boy began to skim stones but he couldn’t find any really flat, smooth ones, and in the rough sea didn’t manage more than two skips. Then he remembered the two coins his father had given him. He took them out and looked at them for a while. They were worn and soiled. With the second one he got four clear skims.

  Further on, about fifty yards away, he saw two young boys with a kite. The kite seemed to be made of cloth and was bright red in colour. He went closer and crouched down in the sand against the sea-wall to watch them. They were standing together, holding the kite between them and conferring about something. Everything seemed to be going wrong for them. First of all the string became ravelled and it took them about five minutes to sort it out. They were using one of those green fishing lines on a square wooden frame. Eventually, they sorted it out and one walked backwards holding the kite in his right hand, sometimes almost stumbling when his boots sunk into a patch of soft sand. The other boy stood still, letting out the line and keeping it taut. Then, when they were both in position, the boy with the kite lifted it with both hands to head height and threw it into the air. His friend began pulling frantically on the string and moving backwards, but it was no use. The kite rose to a height of about thirty feet and then lurched sideways in a crazy spin that brought it crashing to the ground. Even then the wind would not let it go but grabbed it by the hair and kicked it along the beach, snapping and snarling at its heels, and as he watched it bounce and trail along the sand, he thought the frame would break.

  But the frame did not break, and when the two boys recovered it they changed places and tried again. Their second attempt had no more success than the first. Once again, the kite veered out of control to the left and crashed to the ground, as if pulled by a magnet. The wind caught it and trailed it along. The boy holding the string fell over in his efforts to keep the line taut and the other chased after it, holding his woollen cap on with one hand.

  When the kite had been retrieved and the line untangled and wound in, they conferred again. This time the boy holding the kite walked to the sea-wall and stood facing out, while his partner let out the line carefully and stood with his back to the sea. Then, just as a strong breeze blew in, the kite was released, this time soaring skyward like a bird. It was up, it was really up, hooked tight on the wind, tugging and reeling at the line. Higher and higher it climbed, rippling and swooping in a drunken breeze. Its tail danced dizzily like a swirling, magic serpent. The boy felt a thrill of excitement shoot through him. Then, silently crouching down in the sand, he thought of his mother and father sitting in the car, and wished they would look up, if only people would look up at this red kite, everyone would be cured and everything would be well.

  On the Shore

  Straightening in his chair, he looked down the five rows of desks. Mary Blair’s pencil case would fall soon. She sat rule-breaking, with one leg curled beneath her on the seat, her tongue peeping out of the corner of her mouth as she wielded a broken stub of a pencil. He despised the clumsiness which left her oblivious to her elbow pushing the pencil case to the edge of the desk. It was heavy and wooden, and when it fell it would make a great noise. A boy at the back of the room coughed and then raised his eyes in an apology. Thomas Murray was showing his companion something under the desk, but he would not break the silence for one stupid boy. There would be opportunity for punishment later.

  It would soon be time to inspect their work. But not just yet. He settled into the seat again and for the hundredth time that day, despite all his inner protests, he allowed his gaze to rest on her empty desk. And then, almost involuntarily, his eyes swept to the back wall, to where her painting was. The flowers were all wrong – they were too big and too brightly coloured in red, green and yellow. They weren’t like real flowers. Against the prim neatness of the wall, they stood out like a beacon. They were too bright. It had been foolish to put them up and he would take them down as soon as the end of school came. That would not be long now. The directness of his resolution reassured him, and he drew strength from it, but it was only a temporary respite, and soon it slowly faded away like the afternoon sun. His eyes returned to the empty desk. He tried not to think about her. He marked some books, sorted some papers on his desk, totalled the monthly roll, but at every turn her face seeped through the dead weight of ritual with which he tried to block her out. He grew impatient and angry with himself, but even then the anger dissolved itself into a feeling he did not know the name of and whose strangeness brought him confusion and a little fear. He straightened in his chair again. Mary Blair’s pencil case slipped closer to the edge of the desk. Another few inches and it would fall. From the back of the room the flowers burned his eyes. He closed them and thought about her.

  There had been interruptions all afternoon, and this latest one annoyed him. He snapped the piece of paper out of the messenger’s hand. It was from the headmaster, asking if he could come to his office for a few minutes at the end of school. The messenger stood still with an expressionless face, neither smiling at his friends nor doing anything that could merit reprimand. He stared into the boy’s face until he lowered his eyes to the floor, then gave a curt nod to signify that he had read and understood the note. The boy stood on.

  ‘Are you going to stand there all day?’

  ‘Please sir, Mr Elliot asked me to wait for a reply.’

  ‘Tell Mr Elliot I can give him a few minutes.’

  The boy turned and left the room, carefully closing the door behind him so that it did not bang. He wondered what the headmaster wanted. He half wished that the note had told him to come, so that he could have announced a prior engagement, or that it was not convenient, but Elliot knew better than to take that approach with him. It had been a request, not a directive. In all the years he had been in the school, he could barely remember Elliot giving him a direct order. It wasn’t a question of politeness, because he had often seen Elliot play the headmaster with the younger women teachers – he had even seen one girl reduced to tears. But that was typical of Elliot, always aiming at the weakest targets, happy to take advantage of those who would let him. He almost wished he would try it on with him, but there was little chance of that – Elliot didn’t have the backbone. All he had was his fawning mediocrity, and yet Elliot held a position he himself would never hold. He had made too many enemies, had said the right things at the wrong times, had not cultivated influence in the right circles, and had won no patronage. Vice-principal in a city primary school was to be the pinnacle of his career. Now that he had reached that pathetic little position, there was nowhere for him to go, and the knowledge of it stung him with its bitterness. He tried to draw some consolation from the fact that he had always been his own man, but the thought of the spineless Elliot surged again and vanquished the little solace he had managed to summon.

  The end-of-school bell would ring soon. With a nod of his head, he set the packing-up process in motion. The pupils at the he
ad of each row collected their assigned items, a tall boy cleaned the blackboard, another closed the open windows, while two girls gave out homework books. It was all over in a minute. They sat with their arms folded, bags on desks and waited in silence for the bell to ring. When it sounded, he nodded again. A boy went over to the door as the class rose, put their seats under the desks and stood in the space where the seats had been. Another nod. The boy opened the door and the row nearest filed out, followed in sequence by the other rows. After the last person in the last row had left, the boy followed, closing the door behind.

  As he locked the drawers of his desk and set his own chair underneath it, he wondered what it was Elliot wanted with him. It couldn’t be a general staff meeting and it couldn’t be a meeting to discuss policy. The thought of policy meetings made him smile. Every so often, Elliot would have his head filled with some new half-baked idea from one of his headmaster cronies, usually in the golf-club bar, or at a one-day conference, and then feel obliged to pass it on to his vice-principal. He would receive it with barely concealed indifference, and then go on teaching in the way he had always done. Anyway, his results stood for all to see. Each year, he had a good percentage of examination passes and subsequent entrances to the grammar school. If Elliot thought anyone else could improve on his record, they were welcome to try; indeed, the more he thought about it, the more he suspected that he was growing a little weary of the examination class – too much trying to get blood out of stones, too much pushing, and too many parents with inflated opinions of their child’s ability. Of course, he wouldn’t give up the class without a struggle. Let Elliot try to take it away from him and he would fight him every step of the way, but all the same, perhaps in a few years’ time he himself might choose to relinquish the burden. Not that there was any natural successor waiting in the wings – just a series of young women teachers who stayed for three or four years and then moved on or started families. Below him there were only Mrs Simpson and Miss Sharp, who had been there seven years, and neither of them was up to taking the examination class.