Clay Read Free Page A

back the flowery sleeve with her other hand and pointed to a place under the elbow.
    “Your mother touched me there once,” she said. “She said, ‘There now, Mary. There now. Don’t trouble yourself.’ I can feel her fingers now.”
    She stroked her skin at the memory.
    “Is he in?” said Geordie.
    She narrowed her eyes. She stared past us into the empty sky. She said, “And I can hear her voice. ‘There now, Mary.’ She said that. Like a mother would.”
    She reached out and touched my cheek and I flinched.
    “Did you know that a boy has been sent to me?” she said.
    “Aye,” said Geordie. “We’ve come to see him, missus.”
    “To see him?”
    “Aye, missus.”
    She crossed herself.
    “You have been drawn to this place,” she said.
    “We could be his mates,” said Geordie.
    She opened the door wider.
    “Mebbe he has need of you,” she said.
    Geordie nudged me with his elbow and stepped inside.
    “There’s holy water there,” she said. “Cross yourselves and come inside.”
    We dipped our fingers into the bowl on the table inside the door. She watched us make the sign of the cross on ourselves. We rolled our eyes at each other and followed her through the narrow hall. There were dusty plaster angels flying on the wall. There was a great big ancient picture of Jesus with the crown of thorns stabbing his skull and his chest opened up to show his massive sacred heart. There was the scent of piss and the air was cold and the floor was just bare boards.
    “He was to have been a priest,” she said.
    “We know,” I said.
    “Right from the very start he had a holy heart,” she said.
    Geordie trembled as he held his laughter in.
    “This is my great-great-great-aunt Annie,” she said.
    She pointed to the wall, to an ancient photo of a tiny blurry woman smoking a pipe and standing outside a tiny filthy cottage.
    “That’s Connemara,” she said. “Annie spent every day of her life on that blessed bog.”
    “Aye?” snorted Geordie.
    “Aye.” She turned her eyes towards the ceiling. “And she’s in Heaven now if anybody is.”
    In the kitchen there was a battered aluminium teapot and two mugs on a table. There was bread and a lump of margarine and a pot of jam with a knife stuck in. A prayer book was open. A statue of Our Lady was silhouetted against the back window. Outside in the little garden the grass and weeds were knee-high, with a channel worn through towards the door of the black shed out there.
    “Is he in?” I said.
    “No,” she said. “He’s out. He’s at his sacred work.”
    She opened the door. A huge crow croaked, then flapped away into another garden. There was a baby crying its eyes out somewhere.
    “Wait here,” she said.
    She went to the shed. Geordie and I snorted.
    “Bliddy Hell,” I said. “Let’s get out before we’re trapped.”
    We snorted again.
    She opened the shed door. A shaft of sunlight was shining down inside. We saw Stephen in there, turning to Crazy Mary, then peering out at us. Then Crazy came back out. She raised her hands towards us.
    “Aye!” she called. “Aye! He says come to him!”
    We didn’t move.
    “Come!” she called.
    “Hell’s teeth,” I whispered.
    “Howay, man,” said Geordie.

six
    He was sitting at a bench with a knife in his hand. He was carving a piece of wood, a snapped branch. It had an arm, a leg, the start of a face. There were shavings on his arms and on the bench and floor. Dust poured through the shaft of light that fell through a little window in the pitched roof. The corners of the shed were deep in shadow.
    “I’m doing this for the priest,” he said.
    “Father O’Mahoney,” I said.
    “Aye. Him. He says the devil makes work for idle hands so I got to keep busy. Look,” he said, and he pointed to another bench. There were more figures on it, carved out of curved and twisted wood so they seemed to be staggering or leaning or stunted. “They’re no good,” he said. “And neither’s that.” He