The Girl From Barefoot House by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

against the counter, wood broke, glass broke, the counter fell backwards with a creak and a groan, and propped itself against the shelves where the ciggies should have been. Josie and her protector were showered with shards of glass.
    The rumbling stopped, the world stood still. There was, for a moment, silence. In that brief ensuing silence, Josie was sure she could have heard a pin drop. Then someone screamed, someone shouted, a child cried.
    Nora! She prayed the child was Nora. If Nora was all right, then so was Mam. Surely. Please, God, please, God, make Mam be all right .
    She tried to scramble to her feet, but the old woman said with bewildering calm, ‘Don’t move, luv. Let me edge out first. Careful you don’t cut yourself, mind. There’s glass everywhere.’
    Mam, Mam, Mam! The word hammered through her head.
    The woman was gradually crawling backwards, oh, but so slowly, too slowly. Josie felt the weight on her body ease. A minute later, ignoring the advice to take it easy, be careful where she put her hands, ‘Oh, mind out, luv!’, she was free to shuffle through the glass and the dozens of bars of chocolate that had slid off the counter. Her hands and arms were bleeding, she could feel glass in her hair. Her dress was torn. She didn’t care.
    The first thing she noticed when she stood upright was that it was so bright. When she’d entered the shop ithad been dark. Now it was bright, because there was no window, no door, no front to the shop at all, and no building opposite to shut out the light.
    No Prince Albert!
    The shop was full of chunks of masonry. Dark green tiles glittered like emeralds in the rubble. Grey dust hung in the air. The Prince Albert lay in ruins before her. It lay in the shop and in the street outside, blown into a million pieces.
    The crying child was Shirl. She cried still, across the street, standing in the rubble, holding her baby sister and crying for her mam.
    Josie regarded the destruction with dull, uncomprehending eyes. A bell clanged. A fire engine was approaching, or it might have been an ambulance, she didn’t know. People appeared, their faces fierce and angry, and began to pull at the debris with their bare hands.
    And as it slowly began to make sense, Josie felt curiously empty, withered, like Tommy’s arm, as if her heart and soul, her spirit, had flown up to heaven to be with Mam.

Machin Street
1940–1951
1
    After the explosion, Josie was taken to a still, silent place where there were nuns. She refused to give her name. Either she couldn’t speak, or she wouldn’t speak. No one was sure, not even Josie.
    The sisters were very kind. They blessed her, fed her, put her to bed, dabbed her cut hands with iodine and said hundreds of Hail Marys, rosary beads threaded through their worn fingers. They provided her with a red gingham frock much too small, and a cardigan much too big, because the clothes she had arrived in were dirty and badly torn. Josie had no idea how long she stayed in the silent place. She knew she was alive, but she felt dead.
    One morning, Sister Bernadette, who looked about a hundred, came to Josie’s tiny white room, with its iron bed and wooden crucifix on the wall. Maude was with her. She wore a dreadful felt hat shaped like a tin helmet, and a moth-eaten fur coat which Mam had said privately looked as if it was made from rats.
    ‘That’s her!’ Maude exclaimed. ‘That’s Josie Flynn.’ She fell upon Josie with open arms. ‘Oh, luv!’
    ‘I’m afraid she has lost the power of speech,’ Sister Bernadette murmured.
    At this, Maude gave a little shriek, seized Josie’s shoulders and violently shook her, as if the power of speech could be restored if she was rattled hard enough. Then she burst into tears. ‘She’s the spitting image of her poor mam, you know, Mabel – may the good Lord rest her soul.’ She bowed her head and made the sign of the cross.
    According to the whispered conversation that took place between Maude and Sister