to wear a cast-off from her hated cousin Sheelagh! Why hadn’t she thought that could happen? Her cousin was a year older than her and so had had her first communion the previous year. ‘And are the veil and the sandals and socks from Sheelagh too?’
‘Yes, and you can take that look off your face, miss, before I take it off for you,’ her mother said angrily. ‘I know your father’s working now, but there’s a lot of things we need and it’s silly to spend money on things Sheelagh already has.’
Lizzie knew she was right, but it made it no easier to bear. Nor did the party that her mammy arranged for Lizzie’s seventh birthday make it much easier either. She’d never had a party before, and the jelly and blancmange and tinned fruit had been delicious and she should have been thrilled. But across the table sat her hated cousin with a silly smile on her face that made Lizzie want to smack her. Sheelagh was a spiteful cat, and Lizzie knew what she was thinking, and she knew that she’d tell them all at school that Lizzie O’Malley was wearing her old communion dress.
But before long, Lizzie had more to worry about, and that was confession! Miss Conroy had let all the new communicants look in the confessional box, and of course they’d rehearsed and rehearsed all they would say, but that was nothing like the real thing.
The night before, she lay in bed thinking about it, and the more she thought, the more despairing she became. It was her first confession, and for that reason she’d had to examine her conscience not just for the last week or fortnight, but for the whole of her seven years. Lizzie decided there were a devil of a lot of sins you could build up in seven years, and she thought of all the bad things she’d done.
Disobedience – she wasn’t very good at doing as she was told. Not that she openly disobeyed her mother, or even her grandma – she might be bold, but she wasn’t stupid, and she had no wish to shorten her life. Forgetting prayers – oh, how easy it was to slip between the sheets at night if her mother and father didn’t come up straight away and make her kneel beside the bed. Then, when they did come up, Lizzie, not wishing to leave her warm bed, would often say she’d already said her prayers, so that was adding lies to it. And in the morning she was up and away and had started the day before she gave a mind to them, and then something more interesting would claim her attention if and when she did ever remember. Then there was fighting – she wondered if that was a sin; if it was, her soul must be as black as pitch, she decided, for she’d fought with Sheelagh for as long as she could remember.
And who would be hearing confession? It mattered because Father Flaherty was likely to give you a whole decade of the rosary for forgetting your prayers once, while Father Cunningham was much kinder and more understanding. But did you know who it was when they had the screen between them and you, and then voices were probably muffled in the box?
Lizzie decided she’d better not say she’d been too bad, for if it was Father Flaherty on the other side, she might spend the rest of her life on her knees. She’d say she’d been disobedient and cheeky and sometimes forgot her prayers; it would be better not to say she couldn’t be bothered sometimes. Anyway, three sins would do for now, Lizzie thought, as she curled sleepily in the bed. She had a mind it would take quite a few confessions to account for seven years of sins.
In the event it wasn’t so bad at all. They sat in the pews in the dimly lit church that was almost as familiar to them as their classroom, and shuffled down the rows, one by one, towards the confessional box in their turn. Strain as the children might, they could hear not a word spoken, just a tantalising mumble, and Lizzie was glad no one could hear the bold things she would tell to the priest.
Lizzie’s friend Maura Mahon told her that priests went blind into the confessional – it was well known, she said – and when you’d confessed, as soon as you left the box, anything you told them was wiped from their memory. Lizzie thought that very comforting, even if it was only Father Cunningham hearing the first confessions of the children.
Lizzie was given three Hail Marys and a Glory Be as a penance for the list of sins she told to the priest and Maura had the same, but Mairead Cleary had to say a whole decade of the rosary! Ask as they might, none of the children could get her to tell them what she’d said to be given such a heavy penance. Maura whispered to Lizzie she thought you’d get little more if you murdered someone and Lizzie was inclined to agree.
Certainly Mairead looked sorry enough as she knelt at the rails of the side altar with the statue of the Virgin Mary before her. She had her head bowed for a long time, but then one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be can’t be said in a couple of minutes. When Lizzie saw Mairead make the sign of the cross and then drop a coin in the box and light a candle, her eyes nearly popped out of her head; she’d never had money for candles.
‘She’s just making sure,’ Maura whispered. ‘She’s lit a candle so that Our Lady will put in a good word for her with God.’
‘She must have done something desperate, all right,’ Lizzie said with awe.
Her mammy had always said the Clearys were a funny bunch. She said it was strange these days to have the money they seemed to have to splash about when never a one of them appeared to be in work to earn it.
But all the same – a whole decade of the rosary…
The Saturday night before Lizzie’s first communion was the same as every other Saturday night as far back as she could remember. Her mammy would fill the boiler in the cellar early in the evening, and later her daddy would lift the large tin bath from the hook on the back of the cellar door and fill it with buckets of water from the boiler and cold from the tap so that Kathy could bath the children and wash their hair. Lizzie loved her bath, though in the winter the cellar was freezing. Now that her daddy had got a job, he’d bought an old oil stove which stank like mad but at least made the place warmer.
Lizzie was particularly glad to have her hair washed if she’d had stuff put on it to kill the nits. Every Friday night she had to sit over a newspaper while her mother attacked her with the nit comb, and if any were found, smelly lotion had to be put on her hair, and on Danny’s too, and left all the next day, and it stank worse than the oil stove.
That Friday night, nothing had been found in Lizzie’s hair, but her mammy gave it a good washing anyway to make it shiny. Then she carried Danny upstairs, and Lizzie’s daddy came for her with a towel he’d been warming by the fire while her nightclothes were draped over the guard to air.
Lizzie glanced over at the communion dress hanging from the picture rail. She knew her mother had washed it and starched it before ironing it to take some of the limpness out, and it looked quite pretty really. Kathy knew something of her daughter’s feelings; she’d been the eldest in her family and had had a new communion dress that later had to do for both her sisters – Maggie, who was six years younger than her, and Carmel, the baby of the family – and the same with the confirmation dress a few years later. It would have been nice to get Lizzie a new one, but such a waste with Sheelagh’s just lying there. It wasn’t as if they had another girl in the family to pass it on to either, though there would be one more O’Malley before Christmas, for since her sex life with Barry had resumed in February, she’d not had a period.
‘Do you like it, pet?’ she asked Lizzie.
‘Yes, yes, I do, I just wish it hadn’t been our Sheelagh’s.’
‘Now, Lizzie.’ But Kathy, though she rebuked her daughter, knew what she meant for, God forgive her, she didn’t like the child either, and was less than keen on her mother, Bridie.
She often wished Pat wasn’t quite so easy-going, for he’d allowed himself to be led down the aisle by that Bridie Mulligan, and everyone knew what she was. Sheelagh was one in the same mould, and yet Pat was the gentlest, most considerate and pleasant man you could wish to meet.
There would be no more children in that family, if you could go by what Bridie had told her. After Matthew was born, three years after Sheelagh, she’d said Pat would have to tie a knot in it, for he was not getting near her again. Kathy had been shocked, because even though she and Barry were having their own problems, those were connected with Barry having no job. Yet Pat