Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— I am sure nobody wants to make you feel there is any difference between how you are all viewed in Clachan Fells, but when it gets bad …

— What? We’ll die first? Fucking bullshit, he mutters.

— Okay, can all volunteers please write your names on the pad at the door!

The Sisters dip their heads to pray and everybody folds their hands. Stella looks down at the floorboards, which are worn and have paint on them in green and yellow circles. The middle of the room has delineated areas for basketball and netball. Even just looking at them, like they have stored the echo of a basketball thwacking off wood. Kids shouting. Rubber shoes. White socks. Someone talking about someone else because they just got a bra, and her wanting a bra and not knowing if she’d ever get one, and the boys trying to swagger on their skinny legs and carol-practice in winter, and then going home for mince pies. Stella gazes around at the bended heads and Mother Superior is looking at her — all the heads remain bowed around them and a cross is nailed above the stage and there are smaller crosses above all the doors. Mother Superior has a freckled nose and she is looking at her and there is a faint distaste in her eyes, or is there? Stella is tired of guessing, so she does something she wouldn’t do last week; she lets her hands rest in her lap so that she is relaxed and she quietly stares back at her, and after a while she realises they are simply looking at each other. Snow falls steadily, a shiny white glitter against the dark outside.

THE CHATTER is brighter and louder than before. Stella weaves through the adults. Parents linger, chatting it over, glancing back toward the nuns. Constance puts her hand out and Stella takes it, holds her mum’s hand like when she was little.

— Lewis is a loathsome little bastard; he’ll wake up one night to find me cutting off — his dick!

— Mum, have you been drinking?

— No. Is that the first time something like that has happened?

— Yup, Stella lies.

— That boy stayed over at ours hundreds of times — what happened to you being best friends? I’m going to speak to his mum about that drawing. I’m not having that.

— Don’t, Mum, it will only make it worse.

Down the street a girl is walking home in the snow and she moves so lightly, so easily, Stella stashes it in her brain like she is stealing gestures to try out later or discard like old clothes.

— I got rid of that wardrobe today. How about I treat you to something from the chip shop to cheer us both up?

— Yes!

— If the weather gets too bad, we’ll visit Aunt Agnes.

— Is she still alive?

— I hope so.

— If I had a sister I’d have stayed in touch with her.

— Agnes is pure Satan, as the nuns would conjecture — she is, though, through and through. You’ll see what I mean if you meet her! However, if there isn’t anywhere else to go, we could still try her.

Constance holds Stella’s chin for just a second and looks down. They are almost the same height now. In a few more years Stella will be taller than her mum. They walk into the hot chip shop and Stella puts her hands up on the metal edge of the counter display so they get warm. The man slaps a piece of fish into a big bowl of batter. He glides it through the mixture once to the left and once to the right, then drops it into the fat. The fryer sizzles a sullen gold while bubbles jump all around the batter. He wipes his fingers on his apron and picks up another bit of pale fish. A young girl struggles through from the kitchen with a plastic vat of freshly cut chips. She places it down, then takes her place back at the till. She shovels hot chips onto greaseproof paper and asks the man in front if he wants salt and sauce. He nods and puts his hot chips into a bag and disappears out into the darkness.

— Yes?

— White-pudding supper, two pickles. Mum, do you want fish? A single fish, please — salt and sauce on everything.

They stand side-by-side watching the girl wrap their food. Stella holds onto the corner of her mum’s coat. Constance’s fish is picked out of the hot display with metal tongs and deluged with sauce and folded neatly into newspaper. Stella points at a Crunchie. The woman looks at her mother and she nods, so it is popped in the clear bag too, but Constance takes it out and puts it in her pocket so it doesn’t melt. Constance counts out change and she even has to count out about eighty pence in five pences. When they step onto the street it is so cold that Stella can see her breath on the air.

As they walk back up to Ash Lane there is a shape ahead on the path. Stella runs on to see what it is. He is on his pathway. On his side. Like a dead spider. His boots have thick soles that are worn and rubbery and they squeak when he walks on plastic floors, and when she’s over at the industrial estate with Mum, having tea in Ikea, she knows he has walked into the cafeteria without even having to turn around. He looks quite dead. Stella nudges his foot with her boot and then bends down to stare at his craggy face. It has good features. She never gets to see Barnacle from this straight-on angle — and it would seem rude to get a mirror and hold it under his chin when he is talking, just to get a better view of his expression. He has hair up his nose and his nostrils are wide and some of his white moustache-hair is ginger. His hair is long at the back and the sides and his beard is mostly white with grey and brown. He has rings on his fat fingers and a harmonica sticks out of his back pocket.

— Barnacle, are you dead?

— Not today, dear.

— Why are you lying on the path? It’s freezing.

— I think I drank a little too much at lunch, with an old friend.

— Lunch was seven hours ago.

— A good lunch takes at least seven hours, sweetheart. Don’t you look pretty tonight?

— Stella, take his other arm.

Constance and Stella lift him up, one arm under each shoulder, and he is heavy but he moves forward with them, silently, his head hanging even lower than usual and an apathy to his movements, like a poorly child. The steps up to Barnacle’s caravan are buckled and her mum has to go through his pockets to find his key and open the door. He smells bad. He smells like his trousers need washing and maybe that he has done a wee on them at some point. Stella tries not to face him, and up on Ash Lane the caravans all have windows lit, with tellies on and people chatting behind the metal walls, so there is always a low murmur out here at night. The stars are bright and she can see Dylan putting a comb through his hair and she wonders if he likes her mum. Imagine that. Her mum just with one person, and a nice one that doesn’t have a wife or go travelling or generally dick about in a triad of endless confusion. Except it wasn’t Constance who used to seem that confused, was it? It was her, and she supposes what she wanted was a normal dad who lived with her and they did usual stuff, and when she became a girl he would have gone over to Fort Harbour and found the boys who beat her up and he’d make them pay. That’s what dads are meant to do. She doesn’t have that and she doesn’t know how any of this works; being a girl isn’t an easy thing, and neither is shoving Barnacle’s bent-over frame through his door and her mum leading him into the living room and sitting him on an armchair and putting a blanket over him. And he is snoring already, and all around his caravan are heaps of magazines, clothes, newspapers, empty tins that haven’t been thrown out, and dirty dishes.

— I’m coming over here tomorrow to clean this shit up, Constance whispers.

The two of them pull the door closed behind them.

THERE ARE two benches, one on each side of the table. Stella sits barefoot scuffing her feet on the wooden floor. Dylan smiles again, tucks his hair behind his ear. Constance studies both of them.