My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Read Free Page A

not a pretty child – or should I say that little attempt was made to prettify me? I was the seventh child born to a harassed mother, and I can well understand that she had probably given up caring too much at that stage. My little podgy face was marred by a pair of round pink spectacles and a blunt, chin-length haircut, that looked as though mother had used a pair of hedge clippers. She topped off the look with a white ribbon, tied in an enormous bow. The bow seemed like a rueful afterthought, some kind of vain attempt at glamorising the dull little package that was me.
    Gradually, in the warm presence of my new temporary mother, I began to thaw and hesitantly unfold my wings, stretching them out to the sides of my desk to touch my equally tremulous classmates. I sat beside Doreen and made tentative friends with her. She broke into my solitude and gave me the acceptance I needed in the vast, strange world of school.
    Doreen was tall and pale and thin with long, black hair cut in a Cleopatra fringe. We held hands in the playground and kept fear at arm’s length as best we could by sharing talk and toys. Doreen was my first friend. We’d endure a lot together, especially throughout our final three school years.
    In P1 we copied down the endless letters and numbers that marched across the blackboard. With thick, black pencils cocked in our clumsy fists, we patterned pages with ‘walking-stick Fs’ and ‘fat-men 5s’. My jotter was a marvel of disorder, showing all those fitful attempts at accuracy. I would force the pencil so hard onto a page that its grooved impression could be seen on all thoseunderneath. Then the shame of a silly mistake was rubbed with such frenzy that not only the flawed letter disappeared but the very paper itself, leaving damning evidence in the shape of a big, smudgy hole. Miss would give me an admonitory tap on the hand and sigh at my red face and threatened tears, and I’d guiltily turn to a clean page and start again.
    Relief from such rigour came in the form of a great fulvous ball of Plasticene and a board. My classmates and I spent many happy afternoons rolling out long sausages and shaping them into people and dogs. What an industry this was: palms moving together in circular motions to make bodies and heads, our stubby fingers stumbling over the more delicate demands of noses, eyes and ears.
    Before hometime Miss would read us a story as the fire died. She’d open a big, shiny book on her lap and tell us about fairies or goblins, or sometimes the man named Jesus. She was on her favourite territory then; I was to hear a whole lot more about Him in the near future.
    Miss McKeague’s choice of career had obviously been arrived at after much soul-searching. I believe she’d pondered deeply the confines of the convent before settling on the relative freedom of the classroom. I can picture her as a young girl: head bowed over steepled fingers, kneeling at the altar in pious supplication, asking the Good Lord for guidance. Her final choice seemed a fitting compromise, promising God that as a teacher she would do all in her power to instil His message in her pupils.
    To say that she was a religious zealot would be an understatement because the nun within the educator was forever to the fore. Under her tutelage I learned more about Catholicism than I would at any other time in my life. Too much too soon is a recipe for disaster, so muchso that these days I can only describe myself as ‘a recovering Catholic’.
    The RE lesson started at nine and ended at three, or so it seemed. There were morning prayers, mid-morning prayers, grace before meals, grace after meals, then the RE lesson proper, which lasted longer than any other, and finally prayers before hometime. We might have had difficulty with the two-times table or the spelling of our own name, but any such faltering with the Our Father or Hail Mary was the gravest sin of all, and a very good reason