Chapter 4
A New Dress
‘Mammy, Daddy, can you believe I’m taking my First Holy Communion!’ I blurted out. I’d been thinking about it non-stop, and couldn’t help myself, even though I knew they would show no interest and might even punish me for mentioning it. They must know about it, because it was such a big event in every Catholic child’s life, but they had said nothing.
Normally, I kept out of Mammy and Daddy’s way, sensing they didn’t want me near them, but it was Friday night, and Daddy had come home to give Mammy some housekeeping money before he went to the pub. This was about as good as it ever got in 4 White’s Villas. Mammy was standing at the sink stirring a pot of thin stew, humming along to Jim Reeves on the radio. Getting money always made her happy.
‘Well, aren’t you the big grown-up girl?’ she replied. She sounded weird. I never trusted her moods. Sometimes she said one thing and then did another, or lost her temper without warning. Maybe she was being sarcastic, I wasn’t sure.
‘Here, take five shillings and your pocket money,’ she said, holding out a clenched fist to me and dropping the coins in my stretched-out palm. ‘Go and buy a bag of sweets to share, and fetch a bottle of lemonade while you’re at it.’
Daddy didn’t argue, so I grabbed the money quickly before either of them changed their mind. All us kids were meant to get a few shillings pocket money every week, but sometimes we had to trail round the pubs asking Daddy for it if he forgot to leave it for us, or if he didn’t come home after work. Having sweets and lemonade was a rare treat, and for Mammy and Daddy to be standing in the same room without arguing felt like an even bigger treat.
It was obvious I needed a dress for my Holy Communion dress. Was now a good time to talk about it? I’d never had a new dress in my life before, but my teacher Mother Clara had told us all to bring in our dresses for a rehearsal next week, so I had to have one, didn’t I? I wasn’t sure if I’d be forced to wear the one from Mammy’s side of the family, or if that would be too old and dirty. Should I ask them now, while they were calm? I wasn’t sure. The atmosphere in the house suddenly felt so alien it made me feel uneasy.
I didn’t want to push my luck, so I decided to get the sweets and the lemonade first, and risk mentioning my new dress later, just in case it made them mad and they took the money back off me. Then I’d be in trouble with my brothers and sisters, and if we started fighting Mammy and Daddy would get even madder. I didn’t want anybody to get hit, and I really didn’t want a beating myself, not when I was going to be dressing up and parading in front of the town.
When I got home with the goodies, breathless from running all the way to the corner shop, Daddy had gone to the pub. Mammy ordered me upstairs. I ran up quickly, hoping I wasn’t in trouble and not wanting to miss out on my share of the sweets and lemonade.
I pushed open the bedroom door and saw a tatty carrier bag on the end of my bed. I peeped inside nervously, and found a brand-new pair of shiny black shoes and some knee-length socks, as dazzling white as any the girls at school wore. Dumped in a pile next to them were a pretty little handbag, a pair of gloves and a long veil. Everything shimmered and looked snow-white against the dirty grey sheet on my bed. I stood there for what felt like ages, just staring at them and not daring to touch them, in case somehow they weren’t real and were going to disappear.
I had never had a new pair of shoes before. I’d never even had a new pair of socks. And as for the handbag, gloves and veil - well, I couldn’t believe my luck.
I pulled on the socks and giggled with glee when I felt the soft cotton kiss my toes. My feet were black with grime, but they felt clean and neat in the new socks. The shoes fitted perfectly too. I thought they looked as shiny as the black pebbles on the beach, after the sea had just washed over them.
‘Here’s your dress, Cynthia,’ Mammy announced. I hadn’t heard her come into the room, and her voice made me jump, because it suddenly sounded hard. I felt my spine stiffen as I turned round.
Mammy thrust a crumpled, faded, yellow bundle at me and in a stern voice that was not to be argued with said: ‘It has been handed down through all the girls in the family.’
The dress looked like an old rag, and I felt tears fizzing up behind my eyeballs. I wanted to blurt out: ‘How many girls? How many years?’ but I held my quivering tongue. Mammy would kill me and call me an ungrateful little bitch. I wanted to go downstairs and eat sweets with my brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to be hit or called names.
‘Thank you, Mammy,’ I said quietly, blinking rapidly to push the tears back inside my head. When she left the room I took off the socks and shoes and sobbed silently into my veil.
The following week, Mother Clara told us all to bring in our dresses for a rehearsal. I dawdled all the way to school, the faded dress shoved into a tatty old laundry bag. It felt like I was carrying around a shameful secret. As I arrived I caught glimpses of net underskirts fluttering in the breeze, escaping from the bottom of fancy suit-carriers being proudly paraded
