An Experiment in Love: A Novel

‘Does it cost extra for the pin?’ Karina asked.

‘No, the pin’s free.’

‘That’s nice,’ Karina said. She stood with her chin raised, stock-still, like a soldier listening to lies before a battle, while the woman fastened the shamrock to her coat. Out of her pocket Karina took a stitched leather purse, a grown-up woman’s purse. I gaped at it. The popper, as she opened it, made a muffled explosion. ‘How much is that?’ Karina inquired.

She peered into the purse. Among the coins she had was a whole shilling piece. She put the money, bit by bit, into the florist’s cupped palm, then closed the purse with another thunderous snap.

‘Thanks, love,’ the florist said. ‘Watch the road when you cross.’ All grown-up people said that: watch the road. I looked forward to being grown up so I could say it myself. The wind gently rippled the shamrock as we stepped back into the street.

‘Karina . . .’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Can I have a bit?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m Irish.’

‘Why don’t you buy your own?’

‘I’ve got no money.’

‘What, none at all?’

‘A penny.’

‘A penny!’ she repeated.

‘Could I buy a pennyworth off you?’

‘That’d be about one leaf.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘It’d be about fifteen stalks with full shamrocks on.’

Just before the school gates, Karina stopped and reached up to her corsage; plucked a single head of shamrock, and placed it in my open and respectful palm.

About a week after that, my mother went down to school to see Sister Monica. As I’ve said, Karina and I were in the top class now. Every morning we did sums, followed by English, followed by Intelligence. Intelligence was about picking the odd one out: beetroot, asparagus, cabbage, pea. Hen, cow, jaguar, pig; pilot, fireman, engineer, nurse. I hesitated for hours over these questions, sucking the end of my pencil till it was pulp. ‘Carmel McBain,’ Sister Monica would say, ‘if the education committee was disposed to give a bursary for the slowest girl in this class, I’d say you’d get it every time. Don’t you realize this will be a timed test, girl, a timed test? You don’t pass your scholarship by sucking your pencil, my lady, and if you give me that look once again you’ll be out here and have the cane.’

Intelligence was about shapes; about the next number in the sequence. My mother had come to ask Sister Monica to give me extra homework, to increase my chances of passing my scholarship. She returned triumphant. ‘And I’m stopping your comics,’ she said. ‘You’ll have no time for all that folderol. Besides, we’ve to save up now. There’ll be your uniform and bus fares. Me and your father will have to scrimp and save.’

My comics were Judy, Bunty, Princess and Diana. ‘Belle of the Ballet’ was my favourite story. Sometimes when I was alone in my bedroom I hung on to the head of the bed and rose on my toes and teetered forward, a hand flailing at the mantelpiece for support; I did this until the bones crumpled, until tears of effort leapt into my eyes and my calves sang with pain. ‘Karina,’ I said, ‘do you get Princess?’

‘Do I get it?’ Karina said. ‘Princess? It’s soft.’

Coming back that day from school, my mother had looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve been talking to Sister Monica about Karina. Sister Monica tells me that she’s very bright.’

I looked up. I saw that some comment was called for. I remembered Karina’s exercise books, besprinkled with red ticks by Sister Monica. Karina was neat, and Sister often said so: not to praise her, but to blame the rest of us. Karina wrote slowly, forming big deliberate letters like house bricks, square at the corners and evenly spaced. She did her numbers the same, and though when she wrote a composition Sister Monica would often scrawl ‘More effort required’, she usually got nine out of ten for her sums and sometimes nine and a half. Even if she got all the sums right she didn’t get ten out of ten, because that was impossible; among human beings, perfection belongs to Our Holy Mother and Our Holy Mother alone.

‘Well?’ my mother said.

I nodded. ‘She’s good at sums. Fractions.’

‘Better than you?’ my mother said. There was an anxious, greedy edge to her voice.

‘Yes. But I’m better at compositions.’

‘You’ll have to work hard at your arithmetic,’ my mother said. ‘Say your times tables at night before you go to sleep, after you’ve said your night prayers.’ She gnawed her lip and then nodded, as if resolved. ‘There’s nothing like a good education,’ she said, ‘of which I personally didn’t have the chance.’

Night came. I was a good child and an ambitious one, and I did what I was told, though when I was sleepy the prayers and the times tables got mixed up. Three sevens are twenty-one. Hail, holy queen, mother of mercy. Four sevens are twenty-eight. Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope. Five sevens are thirty-five. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.

The other story I liked in my comics was ‘Sue Day of the Happy Days’. The Days were her family; that was their name. Sue had a snobby elder sister who wore tight skirts and ironed her blouses in the kitchen before she went on dates, but that was really the only disadvantage to Sue’s life. Sometimes she got a new classmate who was snobby or unpopular, but it usually turned out there was a good reason for that. Sue Day’s mother had a round perm and made gravy and her father was kind in a detached way, like Dr Carr in What Katy Did. Her best friend was called . . . Edie Potter? Sue wore a school blazer, and had fair hair that flicked