A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd

to make up. The school days had been slow and empty without her. Shell shrugged and cast back her mind through May, then it blurred.
    No curse days could she remember.
    In the heat of the evening, she listened to the house. Flies buzzed around the flypaper. The far cries of Jimmy and Trix came in from the back field. The clock on the sill ticked. She wished the old Bridie, knowing and pert, could materialize at her side to whisk away her worries. You're romancing , she imagined Bridie saying. You're no more up the spout than Mother Teresa .
    She looked over to the holy calendar on the wall. It was open in May because nobody had remembered to turn the pages since. Our Lady of Lourdes was in the grotto with stars forming a coronet floating over her head, and arms reaching forward, lovingly. Drapes of blue robe spilled from her, around the rocks. St Bernadette was kneeling off to the side, in a peasant dress of green and red. A spring of water bubbled up by her side.
    Mam had wanted to go to Lourdes for a cure. Dad had not allowed it.
    She leaped up from the chair at the sound of a car pulling up outside. A door slammed. She heard Dad saying, 'Thank you, Father.' She stole a look through the window and saw Father Carroll wave and pull out onto the Coolbar road.
    Her father stood on the path a second, dressed in his best suit. He'd unwrapped it some months back from the polythene and put it on for his city trips. The jacket hung open now; the shirt was two days old. He was looking at Trix and Jimmy, running across the top of the back field, heading for the copse, perhaps trying to get away from him. She saw her dad's shoulders sag, his head droop. Father Carroll's car vanished around the turn.
    'Shell,' he called. She could tell he wasn't in good humour. But he wasn't drunk either.
    She switched on an electric ring to warm the pan.

Nineteen

    With Dad back, they'd to get up and do the stones again. The morning was the first of autumn. A dew was on the grass, a smell of vitality in the yard. The cairn was taller than Shell and wider than the length of Trix.
    Trix and Jimmy went ahead of her while Shell put the cereal and jam back in the press. She wiped over the plastic cover on the table while her father jangled change in his pocket, impatient.
    'Get a move on,' he said.
    She rinsed off the crumbs from the sponge.
    She pushed the chairs back in under the table.
    She opened the window to air the room.
    He tutted.
    'Dad,' she said, hanging the tea cloth over the back of one of the dining chairs. 'There are no more stones to pick up.'
    The room went quiet. She could see his lips pucker, his brows come down.
    'We've picked up every last stone in that back field.'
    'Check over it, then. Inch by inch.'
    'But why , Dad? 'S too late to plough it this year. Unless you've a plan to sell it?'
    He blew out through his nose and got up. She saw his palm flatten, as if to strike. He raised it, walked forward, then stopped. She did not move.
    His hand dropped back to his side. He breathed out, hard and long. 'Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't. But get out of the house, Shell. Scram.'
    She shrugged and left.
    When she got out, she saw Trix and Jimmy over by the cairn. Jimmy had his arms up, aeroplane-wise, Trix was hopscotching. Instead of joining them, she tiptoed around to the front of the house and crouched by the window she'd deliberately left open.
    She could hear him moving around. A piece of furniture-a chair?-was being dragged across the floor. She brought her eyes up level to the sill and peered through.
    It was the armchair he'd moved. He'd brought it forward, so as to clear the space in front of the piano. Then she saw him rummaging under the keyboard. He eased off the panel of wood above the pedals. She'd forgotten it came apart like that. It hadn't been done since well before Mam died, when the piano tuner last called over. She ducked again when Dad stood upright, lifting the panel away. She came up for another peek; he'd rested it by