Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

A poster on the village-hall wall has a big advert up for performance night: Raise Funds for Those without Homes! Beside that a sign reads: Jesus Is My Saviour! The hall smells dank and earthy; everyone is looking at the Sisters now.

Stella flexes her toes in her welly boots and her feet are too warm. What he drew! She knows it was him. He is disgusting. Right then she knows he is more obsessed with her than she is with him. She will not think about Lewis. She is more embarrassed that her mum has seen the picture when she hid all the others. The stupid, stupid thing is that even though Constance is the most independent person, she is always trying to fix the world so it will be okay for Stella, and it is not okay. It really isn’t. Her class don’t believe she is a girl. Hardly anybody does anywhere. She has to stop thinking or she will cry. What if the Sisters try to stop Bonfire Night? That would be the last thing to go wrong. They couldn’t. Nobody would let them. Is it unchristian for children to want to gravitate to fire like moths in the night? All the villagers look worried and that is the worst thing. Before it was just poverty, pestilence, terrorists, paedophiles, drugs, eating disorders, online grooming, meteors skimming a bit too close for comfort. Now every single person in this hall looks like they are terrified they’re all about to become frozen corpses. For the first time since the news broke, Stella gets this stabbing feeling in her heart that must be some new kind of fear.

— Well, I’m telling ye right now, neither of ma girls will be staying here — we’re going!

— Going where, Mr Cranston? Have you seen the global news?

The Mother Superior sits back.

The hall falls silent.

Mr Cranston is Donna-from-down-the-glen’s dad; he sits down. Not one person says a thing. One of the crosses up on the mountain from last year is for his eldest boy, who had been out on his motorbike with his brother on the back when they took a corner too fast. Stella and her mum drove by last week and all along the verge there were soggy teddy bears, half-burnt candles and wilting flowers. Stella wants to go home suddenly. She wants to go to sleep. A mutter all around the hall; people exchange words and the Sisters wait for them to finish. Stella has been to the cross with her mum even though they didn’t know the boys. Constance carved a flower out of wood and Stella painted it and they left it there. On the way home that day she sat right next to her mum in the ambulance, as close as she could get, so close that she could get that reassuring thing she gets when her mother is there — like not even a nun, not even an Ice Age, not even the whole community could stop her mother, if she was really angry.

A boy next to Stella picks his nose and wipes it on the floor.

He always does that.

He wipes it underneath the chairs in registration as well; he is a disgusting smelly bastard who turns his eyelids inside out. He’ll sit like that until a teacher notices and then he flicks his eyelids back the right way round. He’s not done it to any of the nuns yet. He told Stella he could pop his eye totally out of the socket too, but he can’t. Lewis looks back at Stella again like he is trying to say sorry. She scans the hall. The nuns sit still on the stage like a painting, with eyes moving. The audience is more relaxed, quieter. It is a truce between people and the agents of everlasting peace. Her mother raises her hand.

— How long has Clachan Fells been without a library service? Is there even one at Fort Hope?

The Mother Superior looks out over the audience and faces are blank and a few parents shake their heads at Constance’s question. The Mother Superior fixes her habit and, while all the other nuns have small crosses around their necks, she has a huge one on the end of her rosary. She looks up at them again and smiles, and Stella can tell the woman is pissed off about the people shaking their heads when someone mentions books and it makes her like her, despite the penguin outfit and the napkin hat.

— We want to work with the other Sisters who normally teach at Clachan Fells Primary School and of course that involves keeping the children engaged in their education. Clachan Fells Primary School has had long-standing issues with the old boiler systems and there is no way we can heat the place with portable heaters, so we do think reinstating a library source is imperative to the health of the community. We would like donations of all appropriate texts — novels, poetry, cook books, self-help, anything you have to spare, please. Do come and leave them in the hall, we’ll set up a table for them.

Appropriate texts.

The nuns look like a row of crows.

Ready to peck a few eyes out.

Constance stands up and Stella’s heart falls. Stella looks at her like she is a stranger, like it is the first time she has ever seen her. There is melted snow on her mother’s clothes and hair and in a slushy pool around her feet. She’s not been eating enough, so she’s bonier than usual, and her skin is pale except for her nose, which is red from the cold. Around the hall villagers give little glances at each other. They are looking at her mother. They are always judging her. She can take the looks at herself, curiously enough, but not at her mum. It’s because she was with Caleb and Alistair for so long. She loved one and also the other, and they say you can’t love more than one person so it must have been about sex, but it wasn’t. Her mum really, really loved them and she is heartbroken and they should never look at her like this! Leave her alone! She’s not your mother! SO FUCKING WHAT if she had two lovers. So what! She HAD two — get fucking over it!

— Mrs Fairbairn?

— My name is Constance. I would like to see texts in the library addressing issues of intolerance, hate-based crimes and ignorance of anything different.

The whole hall stops like all the air has gone. Stella can hear the blood in her veins and her heart and even her eyelashes drag as she looks up. Villagers are looking at her mother and she doesn’t give even the remotest fuck, and Stella watches that, she takes it right in.

— We are sure that is an appropriate section for the library, Mrs Fairbairn. We could perhaps discuss it later on.

Constance walks to the front of the hall right past her classmates; she tears the picture into pieces and they flutter down into the bin like she is discarding a tissue. As she walks back she goes as close along the row of classmates as she can. Her boots are heavy and for a minute the only sound in the hall is her steady clunk as she walks by, and Stella can tell that every single one of the kids in her class is shitting their pants. None of the parents or nuns have a clue what is going on. Stella feels her cheeks burning, but she is also ready to rip Lewis’s soul from his body should he ever, ever upset her mum like that again.

— We are going to personally deliver leaflets to everyone in the community this week. We will hold a meeting to discuss the upcoming fundraiser, and those of you in the community who are able to offer time or talent, please get in touch. We need your participation. There will be ideas on how to insulate and heat your homes. Those of you living nomadically will be particularly vulnerable.

— Where’s the nomads, like?

— We mean the caravan community, of course — you all know that’s what I meant.

— We urnay nomadic, pal, our caravans are static.

— That may be so, but you will be the most vulnerable. You are closest to the mountains and furthest from the emergency services.

— We are a bit sick of being differentiated from the rest of the village, you know. We live in a caravan park and most of the units are mobile homes; we pay our taxes, just like youz all do!