About Matilda by Bill Walsh

putting the little white balls back in the pockets of Grandad’s green coat. Pippa is looking up at Nanny with her lovely blue eyes and her teardrops hanging but Nanny won’t look at us. My koala is on the bed but I’m not going to take him. Nanny might see him and miss us and say we can come home. I want to say to her, Remember, Nanny, when you said we’d never be left on our own again, and when I sat behind the counter and you gave me jellybeans. But my tongue is tied and the words won’t come. Nanny won’t kiss us goodbye, either. She turns her back to us and says it’s our own fault. She hangs Grandad’s green coat back in the wardrobe and closes the door.

4
    A small shutter opens in the metal wicket gate. A nun, her head covered in a long black veil set out high over her forehead so only the circle of her wrinkled face can be seen, peers through. I hear the bolt scraping back. The gate creaks slowly open and we step inside to a courtyard surrounded by high stone walls. Away to one side are lawns, a pond, low red-brick buildings scattered in the mist. Ahead of us stands a great building made of stone. Four storeys high, its slated grey roof seems to reach Heaven. The nun grips my wrist with her bony hand. Daddy turns his collar against the October wind and takes Mona in one hand and Pippa in the other and we follow a straight gravel path lined with trees. The pebbles crackle under our feet and the wet leaves stick to our shoes. A door ahead of us in the four-storey building creaks open just enough to let us through and we’re in a hallway where holy pictures hang from white walls. Nuns with their arms folded inside their wide black sleeves are waiting. Daddy stays outside the door. We turn back to it screaming, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, don’t leave us, Daddy. But nuns grab Mona, Pippa and me and tell Daddy to leave. There are tears in his eyes and we scream again, We’ll be good, Daddy, don’t leave us, Daddy, we’re sorry, we promise we’ll be good.
    Daddy kneels with his arms held out and tears running down his cheeks and my heart dances. I pull away from the nun and run to him but the door is slammed in front of me and the hollow sound echoes all around.
    We’re dragged down long dark corridors through doorswith more dark corridors behind them and all the time getting farther away from Daddy. I scream, Let me go, I want to go home. They keep dragging and saying, Stop that nonsense. Stop it now! I keep looking back. Daddy has changed his mind. I know he has.
    We’re led to a big room where an old nun sits behind a desk in the corner. Her face is nearly as wrinkled as my Nanny’s. Her eyes flecked with yellow in a circle of white. She wears a white habit and veil and twists a walking stick in her hands. We’re put standing in front of her and warned there will be no crying and no nonsense in front of Reverend Mother. There’s a crucifix on the wall from floor to ceiling and Jesus hanging with a white rag around his waist and the Crown of Thorns ripping his flesh. His face is bloody. The rusty nails buried deep in his hands and feet and his eyes filled with sadness. We’re standing on a red carpet. It’s as if all the blood from Jesus has dripped into a lake on the floor. Two girls are standing by the door, one big, one small, their faces turned to the wall.
    On a glass shelf high up in the corner there’s a statue of a woman wearing a blue robe. Reverend Mother points to the statue with her walking stick and tells us that’s the Madonna. She makes us walk around the room and wherever in the room we are the Madonna’s eyes follow and make the small hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
    Reverend Mother hiccups as she writes our names and ages into the big black book on the desk, and, without lifting her head, snaps at the big girl standing against the wall.
    What are you laughing at, Shore? No father, no mother, an orphan like