Fairyland at last

Ireland is for me the sunny, freckled face of Ann.

She had arrived to my parent’s home, in Rome, through the winds of chance that blew in the school I attended. It was a convent school, for girls only, with a big, spooky door that opened in the mornings to gobble up the pupils and windows that peeked over the shadowy, timid Salita San Sebastianello that crawled up from Piazza di Spagna to Trinità dei Monti.

“There... is... a girl from Ennis...”, the principal had said to my mother, in a weird, shaky voice that had little to do with the frightful bulk of a nun that boxed me on my ears if I dared speak during the rosary.

“Perfetto!”, my mother said in italian, because she did not speak a word of the language she wanted me to learn.

Ann arrived on a grey Sunday morning, carrying a tiny pink bag which contained all her belongings. She had a small, pale freckled face, and all aound it savage, brown curls. Her chin curled up too, longing to touch her nose which poured down as if ready to fall. She was no beauty. She beamed at me and I thought she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She smiled to my family, but I thought that all those smiles only belonged to me.

“Mathilda is for you!”, she said, handing me the cutest ragdoll I had ever seen. She was dressed in purple and red and had a pair of button black eyes which stared at me from  the stars up above.

“My mother made her! Isn’t she adorable!”, came Ann’s voice. Then, with a tump, Ann sat down on the floor, beside me. La Mimma, our faithful housemaid sighed in despair: “What is this “signorina” going to teach to the little one...”.
I learnt to look for  Fairyland. Ann was convinced that the door was inside the great big cupboard where the sport stuff was kept. We looked and looked, fishing under old tennis rackets, dirty trainers, shabby tracksuits. Nothing. Mathilda watched with her black, keen eyes. Ann decided we should explore the garden and that is what we did. We looked beside the headless statue, inside the beheaded olive tree, in the old kennels of the dogs. We even went into the green shed where the rusty wheel barrows slept in peace and quiet.
 I asked Ann if we could look for Fairyland also in my parent’s villa in Sardinia. She answered that fairies do not like the heat and sun.
When we got to Sardinia, Ann started to feel sick. Her legs ached, she could not walk, her face was white as milk. I thought it was because we could not look for the entrance to Fairyland and said so to my mother. She did not listen to me. My mother rang my principal, and my principal rang Ann’s family in Ennis. Two days later Mrs Q. arrived. She packed the little pink bag, she talked gravely to my mother about a sickness that bore a kind of tender name, she thanked her for the blessed gift her daughter had received. The two mothers shook hands.

“I’ll see you soon! Be good to Mathilda”, said Ann to me with her moony voice. I never saw her again, but I did find Fairyland.

Many years later I visited Ann’s mother in Ennis. She led me in a small parlour. We sat, silently, in front of a cup of tea. Ann smiling in every corner. Then all of a sudden Mrs Q. stood up and showed me to a door. She opened it: hundreds and hundreds of Mathildas sat on sofas and stools and benches and cupboards. Their frocks had stolen the colours of the rainbow, black eyes watched me in mirth, a cloud of beauty and grace. Fairyland at last.

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