Bronagh's Confessional (Part four of five)

The shadows are already too long outside for me to be shiting on like this. The sports outfitter’s is closing, and I can see Deirdre lighting up a ciggie down on the footpath after a job well done. It would have been nice to have old Sergeant Murphy to confide in, even if he hated my guts while he was here. But now I’m the one resting my elbows on his ratty old desk, jotting down memories of old friends whose faces won’t let me go home yet. I hate being Sergeant. And I still remember when it was all I wanted in the world.

Róisín would have laughed at my fate. A friendly chuckle, though, not a curse. Even if I deserve one now.

“The guards?” It was ten years ago and Róisín’s voice echoed across the street from the café. We were a couple of snot-nosed girlies with Sacred Heart uniform blazers letting our legs dangle from the edge of the pier. We had just nicked sweets from across the street and stuffed them up our jumpers, making us look like strange pregnant pixies with sugary eyes.

“Why not the guards?” I remember replying with a firm edge to my voice, chewing my way around a gummi bear that tasted medicinal rather than fruity. She’d hurt my feelings. Again. Rosie didn’t mean to, it was just something hiding behind her voice that whispered to me that no matter how hard I tried or how ambitious I was, I’d never be half as desirable or naturally charismatic as her. I sometimes watched her and Aoife, her twin, from across the classroom during Miss Carlow’s Irish class. They smacked their chewing gum the same way, true enough. But where Aoife was content to let her natural beauty be discovered in its own good time, Róisín tarted hers up with white makeup and mascara before the age of twelve, much to the consternation of the good nuns. She didn’t trust in other people’s ability to see the goodness she kept hidden behind that kabuki veil of hers. So she kept pushing. And that afternoon by the town square, she wasn’t easing up on me, either.

“Right, so,” she said, choosing a green candy shaped like a pear and sawing it in half with her teeth, leaving me the translucent one that always tasted bland. “Want to be top cop, then, is that it? Sit in that little red guardhouse with those other farts, and give out parking tickets to Dutch tourists? Glamorous, that’s what you are, Bronagh. Really daring.”

“I want to solve crimes,” I persisted, grabbing at a gummi candy shaped like a cherry, a half-second too late. Rosie threw it into the air and caught it on the way down, like a trained seal. The hatred I would feel later began bubbling up into my prepubescent limbs even then, like hot sour milk. Who was she to laugh at my dreams? One day at school, the nuns had handed out those What will I do when I grow up? questionnaires that were supposed to sharpen young minds for the adult drudgery ahead.

Aoife had answered “Joe Maxi,” meaning she wanted to drive her own cab one day, which pleased the nuns not one bit. Fiona, older by all of us by that precious two years, said her wish was to become a big game hunter in Africa and own a summer home on the Nile. That didn’t find much favor, either. The nuns would have been pleased to know that she never got to see the pyramids. My own pious wish to join the force drew some stares, but even the headmistress could imagine little Miss Bronagh Daltry in uniform, as long as she deferred to the menfolk, I’m sure. I wonder what she might have thought of me as Sergeant on the top floor, pouring my heart out to strangers like yourself. Don’t take that personally. It’s just that confession was never in my job description. It’s rather the other way around, if you get my meaning.

TOWN DRUNK Rosie had answered on her own page, and in capital letters, too. When she came back from the headmistress’ office on the second floor, I could tell from her flushed cheeks and ruffled skirt that she’d been caned, and good. But she smiled. She kept her promise, besides. Even the gobshites down at the pub who fancied themselves drinkers of some repute had nothing on my Rosie when she started in on the dark pints.

Did I just call her “my Rosie?” That was the Walsh sisters’ quality, you understand. No matter how furious Fiona or the twins would often make you, their irrepressible appetite for messing about made you follow them through Hell on a hot day.

“Solve crimes?” Rosie repeated with no malice in her all too grownup voice as she let me fight for the last sweet that had any color left in it. Raspberry. I swallowed it too fast, lest my phantom sister beat me to it, as usual.

“That’s right,” I said, feeling the invisible uniform already cover my pale knees and threadbare jumper. It made me feel invincible, even if it was only an afternoon daydream. “Any crime will do. And I’ll getcha some day too, you desperado, you.” I gave her a nudge.

“Oh, willya now?” Róisín said, cracking the kind of smile that was about to make her a town legend. “Chase me down the street for a bag of sweets? Then you best remember that we’re co-conspirators.” She winked. An invitation to that invisible fourth sister membership card that was always just slightly out of reach.

“I’ll be the one carrying the badge and the gun,” I answered, nudging her back harder.

Rosie grew silent and serious for a moment, as if she could peer across the bay and into both our futures.

“Then you’d better protect me, hadn’t you, Sergeant Daltry?”

And I wanted to. I did, you must believe me. I was simply too afraid.

But there’s still one left for me to save. And I won’t go back on my word.