I walked briskly over and, holding Kate with one hand, managed to shut the door and lock it securely with the other.
"You shouldn't have done that," said Anna darkly.
I looked at her in surprise.
I would have thought that it was far too early in the morning, even for Anna, to be all mystical and ethereal.
"Why?" I asked gently, fondly, prepared to humor her. "Is
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the Goddess of the Morn going to punish me for barring her entrance to our kitchen?"
"No," said Anna, looking at me as though I had gone crazy. Just then there was a muffled and frantic commotion outside the back door.
Someone or something was very annoyed to find the back door locked.
Lovely language for the Goddess of the Morn, let me tell you. Anna sighed and clumped over and opened the door. Dad stood on the step, al- most totally obscured by the huge pile of washing which he held in his arms.
"Who locked the bloody door?" he roared through his armful of jeans and blouses.
"I might have known you'd have something to do with it," he hissed at poor Anna, as she stood with her hand on the doorknob.
"No, Dad, it was me," I told him hastily. Anna's bottom lip had started to quiver and she looked on the verge of tears.
"No, no, because we were cold," I explained, as Dad fixed me with a wounded look. "Not because I wanted to lock you out."
My God, what a crowd of neurotics!
I was so normal compared to the rest of my family.
"Right," declared Dad, throwing all the clothes onto the table, mindless of the half-eaten slices of toast and the bowls of abandoned cornflakes that were already on it. "Which of these clothes do you want?"
"Oh, Helen, why are you so difficult?" sighed Mum. "You have a roomful of clothes up there but the one thing you want has to be in the washing machine or on the line."
Helen smiled like a little cat. Smirking, she selected a few garments from the mound on the table and handed them to Dad.
"What am I to do with them now?" he asked in surprise.
"But they have to be ironed," said Helen, sounding equally surprised.
"Ironed?" said Dad. "By me?"
"Are you going to send me to Belfast with wrinkled clothes?" asked Helen, outraged.
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"Right, right, right," shouted Dad, putting his arms up to defend himself from her passionate appeal.
The poor man, he never stood a chance.
Things settled down. Toast started to be eaten, coffee and tea started to be gulped, conversation--and I use the term oh so loosely--started to be made.
"Guess who I'm staying with in Belfast?" Helen asked in an innocent singsong type of voice. She sounded far too casual and blas�.
I knew that tone, and I sensed trouble.
"Who?" asked Anna.
"A Protestant," said Helen in hushed tones.
Mum continued sipping her tea.
"Mum, didn't you hear me?" Helen said petulantly. "I said I was staying with a Protestant."
Mum looked up calmly.
"So?"
"But don't we hate all Protestants?"
"No, Helen, we don't hate anyone," Mum told her, as if she was speaking to a four-year-old child.
"Not even Protestants?"
Helen was determined to have herself an argument, one way or the other.
"No, not even Protestants."
"But what if I fall under their influence and get all funny and start doing flower arranging?"
Somewhere along the line Helen had picked up some kind of vague and fussy generalization of what Protestants were like.
A funny mixture of Beelzebub and Miss Marple.
They had horns, of course, and cloven hoofs and breathed fire and made their own jam.
"Well, so what if you do," said Mum pleasantly.
"And what if I don't go to mass anymore?" gasped Helen in assumed horrified tones.
"But you don't go anyway," said Anna, sounding bewildered.
A rather tense and nasty silence followed.
Luckily, Kate, obviously sensing an awkward mood, smoothed things over by starting to cry like a banshee. I felt
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that she had a great future ahead of her as an ambassador, or working for the United Nations. There was a big rush to prepare her bottle; Anna and Helen practically tripped over themselves to help.
Dad busied himself by getting out the ironing board and making a great production of the ironing, pressing the steam button on the iron until the kitchen resembled a sauna.
Mum sat as though she was made of stone.
But after a while even she became roused to activity. She started to clear the table and grimly threw some cold chewy toast into the trash. Which was a pity because I kind of liked cold chewy toast. But I wasn't fool enough to cross my mother shortly after she had been notified of one of her daughters' nonattendance at mass.
Even when the daughter in question wasn't me.
Things again returned to normal. (Normal being, of course, an entirely subjective concept.)
"What'll it be like in Belfast. What if I get killed?" Helen mused. "I mean, anything could happen to me. I could get shot or blown up. This could be the last time you'll ever see me."
We all stared at her, struck dumb by emotion. Even Kate was silent.
Surely, surely we could never be that lucky.
"Or maybe I'll be kidnapped," she said dreamily.
My heart twisted with pity for the imaginary kidnapper. Anyone who kidnapped Helen would be convinced that he had been set up. That she was some kind of awesome secret weapon sent from the other side to des- troy him from within.
Nothing frightened her.
She could be chained in some filthy basement with a lean young white- faced fanatic, all wiry muscles and burning eyes, laden with weaponry, and she could start a conversation with him about where she bought her sweater.
Or about anything really.
"I suppose you'll have to torture me a bit," she would say offhandedly. "What'll you do? I suppose you could cut off my ear and send it in the mail for the ransom money. I wouldn't mind that too much. I mean, what do I need my ear for anyway? Because I hear with the inside of my ear. Not the outside. Although it would be a bit of a problem if I wanted to wear
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glasses. If I only had one ear they'd be all lopsided. But I could always get contact lenses. Yes! I could make Dad buy me some of those colored contact lenses. What about brown ones? Do you think I'd look nice with brown eyes?"