A Swift Pure Cry Read Free

liked: first, because she'd steal a few pence for herself and buy some gums at McGraths', and second, because if Nora Canterville, the priests' housekeeper, answered, she'd get a wedge of coffee and walnut cake.
    Before she left, Dad grabbed her arm. 'If you steal it, even a penny of it, I'll know. Father Carroll'll tell me and all hell will be let loose.'
    'Yes, Dad. I know.'
    And she did know. The money he collected was always more than the money he sent in. She might be a thief, but he was a worse one. She'd seen him filching the larger coins, even notes, and dropping them into his pockets. The man was as mean as a blood-sucking midge. When he gave her the money for the shopping each week, he'd grab her wrist and tell her to bring him back the change down to the last penny and every last receipt. There was no such thing as pocket money in their house. And since Mam died, he'd made herself, Jimmy and Trix wear the same school uniforms three sizes too big, so as to save on having to buy new ones when they'd grown out of the old. They were the scarecrow pupils, the laughs of the townland. Shell's school had a song for her, courtesy of Declan Ronan, Coolbar's unholiest altar boy, and the cleverest boy in the Leaving Certificate year:
     
Shell looks worse than brambles
    Or empty tins of Campbell's.
    She smells of eggy-scrambles,
    Her greasy hair's a shambles.
     
    Whatever about his charity collecting, her dad had a black shrivelled walnut for a heart.
    The meanest thing she'd ever seen him do was steal Mam's ring off her corpse. Mam had only the one, the gold band on her left hand that meant she was his wife. When married women die, Shell knew, they get buried with their wedding rings on, so that they can take their loving and faithfulness to the grave. There the rings stay until time ends, surviving the flesh and even the bone.
    But her dad couldn't bear to see a good bit of yellow gold go to waste. The ring had loosened up in her final wasting. Before they put the coffin lid on, he'd said, 'Please: one last prayer, one last goodbye, on my own.' Everyone had left him to it. Everyone but Shell. She'd stopped outside the room behind the door that had been left ajar and peeked in through the crack. She saw him unravelling a portion of the milky white rosary from her mam's hand. She glimpsed a yellow flash dropping into his top waistcoat pocket. Then he fiddled with the rosary again.
    'You can cover her over now,' he'd called to the undertaker. 'I'm ready.'
    What he'd done with the ring, Shell didn't know. It wasn't in with his socks-she'd checked. He'd probably sold it when he was next in town.
    Dad and his demented readings. Dad and the stones in the back field. Dad and the rattle of the collection tins. She trudged up the back field with the envelope of small change tucked underarm. The sun was out, strong and pale. The lambs had arrived. One skipped up to her and baa-ed, then darted off again, its legs like airy springs. This is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. The thought of Dad faded. She reached the top of the hill. The clouds might have been lamb-cousins in their fluffiness. The trees brimmed with white blossom. She felt like a bride as she passed below them. Two fields on and Coolbar appeared before her in a fold of slope. She sat on a bank of grass and peeled the envelope flap open with a steady hand, watching the strands of gum stretch and shrivel as she tugged. She took out five pieces of silver and hurled them into the air for the poor of the parish to find in their hour of need.
    'So there, Dad,' she shouted.
    The coins sparkled, scattering to earth. She laughed and resealed the envelope, then walked down through the last pasture to human habitation.
    She meandered along the village pavement. At McGraths' shop the sweet aroma of newspapers and cigarettes made her linger. They sold postcards and beach balls all year round, liquorice, ice-cream cones, plastic buckets and spades. She felt the