Page 19 of Heart of the Wren
“He thinks it’s a bit too pagan, a bit too primitive, y’know,” Bullseye said.
Carol marched into the schoolyard with several bulging supermarket plastic bags.
“Carol,” Bullseye said. “Carol, stop for a second. I wasn’t sure if you were going to come today.”
The family resemblance was unmistakable. The same eyes, the same nose, and the same air of purpose.
“I said I’d come, didn’t I?” She stood with her back to him and held up the bags. “I’ve got these ribbons for you. I had to wait until you left for work to go and get them from my room.”
“Why aren’t you wearing a coat? It’s freezing out.”
“Stop it. I’m grand.” She spoke to Lorcan as she headed towards the door. “Here, why’s he wearing a cloak?”
Lorcan frowned and looked me up and down. “Who’s wearing a cloak?”
“Oh.” She carried on into the school. “Must have been the way he was standing.”
I smiled at the ground so as not to arouse suspicions. She was perceptive, was young Carol. One might almost think she possessed someform of ESP.
“Sorry about her,” Bullseye said. “She’s got an imagination.”
“Hah! Nothing wrong with that. I’m prone to some daydreaming myself.”
“I hope you’re not encouraging her,” Bullseye said to Lorcan.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bullseye licked his lips. “What did she tell you?”
Lorcan returned to unloading the straw. “She said you caught her and Eddie kissing.”
Bullseye spluttered and shifted about on the spot. “Oh, is that what she said, is it? Sure I’ve caught her kissing plenty of boys.”
Lorcan took two armloads of straw to the door of the school. “Then what was it?”
Bullseye walked past him. “Why don’t you ask her? Since you’re so close?”
???
The square hallway was painted with a mural of legendary warrior Finn McCool and his two great wolfhounds walking among rolling green hills. The hills were mostly obscured by a series of hooks stuffed with the children’s coats. I poked my head into one of the two classrooms where young kids excitedly rushed around with handfuls of straw. Words and phrases in Irish and English lined the walls, as did the kids’ drawings.
Carol opened one of the supermarket bags and started handing out bright strips of ribbon. She held up a crude drawing of a Wrenboy mask — arough collection of angles and spikes, with crayon used to show where the ribbons should go. Though judging by the mess in the room, the masks were a long way from completion.
In a corner, a group of older children gathered around a sheet of paper and sang.
“The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St Stephen's Day was caught in the furze,
We got him there as you can see,
And pasted him up on a holly tree.”
The children stumbled in places and were not in any kind of tune, but they carried on singing.
“We up with our wattles and gave him a fall,
And brought him here to show you all.
