Free Five Bells by Gail Jones

surprised by how loudly the nuns chattered and the topics of their conversation. Mam sat up the front with an old biddy and looked particularly pious. It felt like forever.
    When they arrived in Ballinspittle they found the place invaded: ‘Every Irish eedjit is here,’ whispered Brendan; ‘every sad fuckin headcase.’ Pilgrims were everywhere, spilling out of cars and buses. A public address system, from which prayers were broadcast, was in full crackly voice. There were little stalls, selling holy objects made of plastic, and toilets set up at the base of the statue. The Virgin Mary was disappointing, truth be told. A figure in cast concrete, ringed with eleven light-bulbs that signified her halo, she stood quietly in her little grotto, twenty feet up, and seemed obdurately disposed not to move at all. Catherine and Brendan stood where they were told and looked up at the statue. But nothing moved. They stood for ages and ages, with Mam looking too, and stood even when rain began to fall and others went for shelter.
    â€˜It takes patience,’ Mam said. ‘It takes patience to see what is true in this world.’
    Mam bought them each a keyring souvenir of the event, and some Lourdes holy water for Gran, and a little badge with Mary’s face, but her children could tell she was mightily disappointed.
    â€˜We didn’t go in the right spirit,’ she said softly. ‘Our hearts weren’t open.’
    Catherine hugged her mother and wished for her sake that the Virgin had danced a jig and blessed them all in a strident yawp. Or better still, just raised her white hand in a silent gesture, the way the priest does, quiet-like and calm and well-understood, at the shuffling, slightly sorrowful end of the holy mass. Just that: the simple, direct, loving code of the hand. It would have sufficed. It would have offered her mother meaning.
    Mam hugged her back. It was a rare moment of concord.
    Brendan also felt sorry for Mam. ‘It was me,’ he said meekly. ‘I spoiled it for you.’
    He glanced at Catherine to show that he cared for his mother, though she knew of his scorn and his atheism and his belief that Mam was merely gullible and had wasted their money. She loved her brother for that pretence, for trying to comfort Mam. And for the fact that he cared what his little sister thought.
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    In the evening Catherine saw her parents take a small glass of sherry together – another sign that all was not right with the world. Illnesses, wakes, these were the sherry occasions. They spoke together in low, hushed voices. Da smoked a cigarette. Catherine knew her mother was describing the trip and the nuns. She was telling him of the low-wattage halo and the little stalls selling trinkets; she was reconvening the details so they would make a good story. Da nodded and looked serious. In the yellow light of the kitchen there they were, her parents sharing a trip they could not afford, entering into the limitedcircle of their own experience, having never moved beyond Ireland, and little beyond Dublin.
    Only years later did Catherine realise what an important event this was for her mother, to journey with other souls to perform an act of witness, to see her own credulousness multiplied among the faithful, all looking at the same time in the same direction, all waiting for epic-scale confirmation and a fan of light from heaven. Afterwards, Mam spoke often of Ballinspittle, so that eventually the sense of failure fell away, and what replaced it was a tale of communal hope and the ardent wish to see something not on the telly. Her tone was solemn and prayerful: ah, you should have seen them, all lookin’ there together, all eyes fixed on her face, and the faith of it, and the love, even when the rain came down, and we all stood there together, patiently waiting, patiently waiting in the rain for her holy sign.
    After Ballinspittle Catherine and Brendan were linked inseparably. It marked