by Roddy Doyle
I told him.
He just got up; he didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell him I’d locked it, just that I couldn’t unlock it. When he got into the hall he waited for me.
—Show me, he said.
He followed me up the stairs. He could have easily gone quicker than me but he didn’t. Sinbad would be alright.
—Alright in there, Francis?
—He might be asleep, I said.
My da pushed and the lock clicked out. He lifted the lid back and Sinbad was still in there, wide awake; his eyes were open. He turned on his stomach, pushed up, stood up and stepped out. He didn’t say anything. He stood there. He didn’t look at us or anything.
Da thought he was great because he could sit in the same room as the television and never look at it. He only looked at The News, that was all. He read the paper or a book or he dozed. I watched the cigarette burning nearer and nearer to his fingers but he always woke up on time. He had a chair of his own. We had to get out of it when he came home from work. Me and Sinbad and our ma with the babies on her lap could fit into it. There was one day it was raining out, lashing; we all sat in the chair for ages just listening to the rain. The room got darker. There was a nice smell off my ma, food and soap.
When I called Sinbad Sinbad he wouldn’t answer. Me and Kevin got him and gave him a dead leg on each side for not doing what we told him. He was crying but he didn’t make any noises. I had to look at his face to see that he was crying.
—Sinbad.
He closed his eyes.
—Sinbad.
I had to stop calling him Sinbad. He didn’t look like Sinbad the Sailor now any more; his cheeks were flatter. I was still way bigger than him but it didn’t matter as much. I could kill him in fights but the way he went scared me. He let me give him a hiding and then he just went away.
He didn’t want the night-light on any more. When my ma turned it on before she turned off the main light he got up and turned it off. The light had been for him. He’d picked it. It was a rabbit that went red when the bulb inside him was on. The room was completely dark now. I wanted to turn the night-light back on but I couldn’t; it was Sinbad’s. I’d never needed it. I’d said it was stupid. I’d given out about it, said I couldn’t sleep with it on. For a week my ma turned on the light and Sinbad turned it off. He turned off the light and I was trapped in the full dark.
Da had Sinbad. He was holding one of his arms, standing way over him. He hadn’t hit him yet. Sinbad’s head was down. He wasn’t pushing or pulling to get away.
—Christ almighty, said my da.
Sinbad had put sugar in Mister Hanley’s petrol tank.
—Why do you do these things? Why are you doing them?
Sinbad answered him.
—The devil tempts me.
I saw da’s fingers open their grip on Sinbad’s arm. He held Sinbad’s face.
—Stop crying now; come on. There’s no need for tears.
I started singing.
—I’LL TELL MY MA WHEN I GO HOME -
THE BOYS WON’T LEAVE THE GIRLS ALONE -
Da joined in. He picked up Sinbad and spun him. Then it was my turn.
The first time I heard it I recognised it but I didn’t know what it was. I knew the sound. It came from the kitchen. I was in the hall by myself. I was lying on my stomach. I was charging a Rolls-Royce into the skirting board. There was a chip in the paint and it was getting bigger every time. It made a great thump. My ma and da were talking.
Then I heard the smack. The talking stopped. I grabbed the Rolls-Royce away from the skirting board. The kitchen door whooshed open. Ma came out. She turned quick at the stairs so I didn’t have to get out of her way, and went upstairs, going quicker towards the top.
I recognised it now. I knew what the smack had been, and the bedroom door closed.
Da was alone in the kitchen. He didn’t come out. Deirdre was crying in the pram; she’d woken up. The back door opened and closed. I heard Da’s steps on the path. I heard him going from the back to the front. I saw his shape through the mountainy glass of the front door. The shape broke into just colours before he got to the gate and the colours disappeared. I couldn’t tell which way he’d gone. I stayed where I was. Ma would come back down. Deirdre was crying.
He’d hit her. Across the face; smack. I tried to imagine it. It didn’t make sense. I’d heard it; he’d hit her. She’d come out of the kitchen, straight up to their bedroom.
Across the face.
I watched. I listened. I stayed in. I guarded her.
Nothing happened.
I didn’t know what I’d do. If I was there he wouldn’t do it again, that was all. I stayed awake. I listened. I went to the bathroom and put cold water on my pyjamas. To keep myself awake. To stop me from getting cozy and warm and slipping asleep. I left the door a bit open. I listened. Nothing happened. I spent ages doing my homework so I could stay up longer. I wrote out pages from my English book and pretended I had to do it. I learnt spellings I hadn’t been given. I got her to check me on them, never him.
—S.u.b.m.a.r.i.n.e.
—Good boy. Substandard?
—S.u.b.s.t.a.n.d.a.r.d.
—Good boy. Great. Have you more to do?
-Yes.
—What? Show me.
—Writing out.
She looked at the pages in the book I showed her, two pages with no pictures on them, and at the pages I’d done already.
—Why are you doing all these?
—Handwriting.
—Oh good.
I did it at the kitchen table, then followed her into the living room. When she was putting the girls to bed he was in the room with me, so it was alright. I enjoyed the writing out; I liked doing it.
He smiled at me.
I loved him. He was my da. It didn’t make sense. She was my ma.
I went into the kitchen. I was alone. The noises were all upstairs. I slapped the table. Not too loud. I slapped it again. It was the right type of sound. It was duller though, hollow. Maybe it would be different from outside. In the hall where I’d been. Maybe he’d done that, smacked the table. When he was in a temper. That was alright. I did it again. I couldn’t make my mind up. I was tempted. I used the side of my hand. She’d come out of the kitchen, straight up to their bedroom. She’d said nothing. She hadn’t let me see her face. She’d started going faster before she got to the landing. Not because he’d slapped the table. I did it again. I tried to lose my temper and then do it. Maybe because he’d lost his temper. Maybe that was why she’d gone past me up the stairs, hiding. Maybe.
I didn’t know.
I went back into the living room. He wanted to check my spellings. I let him. I got one wrong, deliberately. I didn’t know why I did it. I just did it when I was doing it; I left out the r in Submarine.
I listened. I watched. I did my homework.
I came home at Friday lunchtime.
—I’m in the best desk.
It was true. I’d made no mistakes all week. All my sums had been right. I’d got through the twelve-times table inside thirty seconds. My handwriting was
—Much improved.
I’d put my stuff in my bag and walked up to the front of the room and across to the top desk. Henno shook my hand.
—See how long you can stay there now, he said.—Good man, Mister Clarke.
I was beside David Geraghty.
—Howdy-doody.
—I’m in the best desk, I told my da later.
—Is that right? he said.—That’s terrific.
He shook my hand.
—Put it there. Submarine?
-S.u.b.m.a.r.i.n.e.
—Good man.
The grass was wet though it hadn’t been raining. The day was too short to dry it. School was over; it was going to be dark soon. There was a new trench. It was really huge, really deep. The bottom was gooey, no crumbly muck; everything was wet.
—Quicksand.
—No, it isn’t.
&nbs
p; —Why isn’t it?
—It’s only muck.
Aidan was in it.
Liam and Aidan sometimes didn’t go to school. Their da let them stay at home sometimes if they were good. We saw the new white sticks sticking up over the grass. We knew they were markers and we went over to see what they were marking, and Aidan was in the trench. And he couldn’t get out. He had nothing to cling to.
—He’s sinking.
I watched.
One of his boots was under the goo, up to his knee. I looked at that leg; I counted to twenty. It didn’t go down any further. Liam had gone for a ladder or a rope. I hoped it would be a rope.
—How did he get down?
That was a stupid question. It had happened to us all. Getting down was never a problem. It was too easy, always. You never thought about getting back up.
I checked Aidan’s leg. His knee was covered now. He was sinking. He was trying to hold onto the side, trying not to fall, trying not to cry. He’d been crying earlier; you could tell from his face. I thought about throwing stones at him, but there was no need.
We sat on our school bags.
—Can you drown in mud? Ian McEvoy asked.
—Yeah.
—No.
—Say it louder, I whispered.—So he can hear.
Ian McEvoy thought about it.
—Can you drown in mud?
—Sometimes.
—If your boots are full and you can’t get up.
We pretended Aidan wasn’t there to listen. He was trying to lift a leg and keep the boot on it. We could hear the suck. Kevin made the noise with his mouth. We all did. Aidan slipped but he didn’t go down.
Then I started worrying. He really could drown. We’d watch him; we’d have to. Suddenly the grass felt very wet. It would be like in my dream, the one I sometimes had, when my mouth was full of muck, dry summer muck; I couldn’t wet it and swallow it. I couldn’t close my mouth round it. It took over my mouth, deeper and deeper. My jaws really hurt, fighting it, and knowing I was losing and my mouth was going to get fuller, and I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t breathe. Liam brought a ladder and his da and they saved him. Liam’s da complained to the builders but he wouldn’t let us come with him.
Keith Simpson didn’t drown in the trench. He drowned in a pond. The pond was way across six or seven fields where the building hadn’t started yet. It was great for frogspawn and ice. It wasn’t deep but it was slimy; you’d never have put your bare feet into it. The ice growled when you leaned on it. It was too small for a lake.
Keith Simpson was found in it. He was just found. Nobody knew how he got there.
My ma cried. She didn’t know Keith Simpson. Neither did I. He was from the Corporation houses. I knew what he’d looked like. Small and freckles. She snuffled and I knew she was crying. The whole of Barrytown went quiet, like the news had spread without anyone telling it. He’d slipped in face-first and his coat and jumper and his trousers got so wet and heavy he couldn’t get up; that was what they said. The water soaked his clothes. I could see it. I put my sock in the sink, hanging into the water. The water crept up the sock. Half the water went into the sock.
I looked at the house. I knew which one. It was a corner one. I’d once seen a man—it must have been Keith Simpson’s father—up on the roof putting up the aerial. The curtains were closed. I went closer. I touched the gate.
Da hugged Ma when he came home. He went up and shook hands with Keith Simpson’s ma and da at the funeral. I saw him. I was with the school; everyone in the school was there, in our good clothes. Henno made each of us say the first half of the Hail Mary and the rest joined in for the second half, and that took up the time before we were brought to the church. Ma stayed in her seat. There was a huge queue for shaking hands, down the side and around the back of the church, along the stations of the cross. The coffin was white. Some of the mass cards fell off during the Offertory. They slapped the floor. The sound was huge. The only other sounds were someone at the front sobbing and the priest’s stiff clothes, then the altar boy’s bell. And there was more sobbing.
We weren’t let go to the graveyard.
—You can go and say a prayer by yourselves some other time, said Miss Watkins.—Next Sunday. That would be better.
She’d been crying.
—They just don’t want us to see the coffin going in, said Kevin.
There was no more school. We sat on a flattened cardboard box in the field behind the shops to stop our clothes from getting dirty and to stop us from being killed by our mas. There was only room for three on the box and there were five of us. Aidan had to stand and Ian McEvoy went home.
—He was my cousin, I told them.
—Who was? said Kevin.
They knew who I was going to say.
—Keith Simpson, I said.
I thought of my mother crying. He must have been at least a cousin. I believed myself.
—Hari-kari.
—It’s hari-kiri, I said.
—What’s it mean? Ian McEvoy asked.
—Do you not know? said Kevin.—You’re dense.
—It’s the way Japs kill themselves, I told Ian McEvoy.
—Why? said Aidan.
—Why what?
—Why do they kill themselves?
—Lots of reasons.
It was a thick question. It didn’t matter.
—Cos they got beaten in the war, said Kevin.
—Still? said Aidan.—The war was years ago.
—My uncle was in the war, said Ian McEvoy.
—No, he wasn’t; shut up.
—He was.
—He wasn’t.
Kevin grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. Ian McEvoy didn’t try to stop him.
—He wasn’t in the war, said Kevin.—Sure he wasn’t?
—No, said Ian McEvoy.
He didn’t even leave a gap.
—Why did you say he was, then?
It wasn’t fair; he should have let Ian McEvoy go when he’d said No.
—Why did yeh?
He pulled Ian McEvoy’s wrist closer to the back of his neck. Ian McEvoy had to bend forward. He didn’t answer; he probably couldn’t think of anything, anything that would get Kevin to let go of him.
—Leave him alone, said Liam.
He said it like he was answering in school and he knew he was wrong. He still said it though. He was standing there. He’d said it. I hoped Kevin would get him, because he’d said it and I hadn’t and Kevin getting him would make me right. Kevin pulled Ian McEvoy’s arm up a little bit more till he bent him down - Ian McEvoy roared out - and then Kevin let him go. Ian McEvoy straightened up and pretended they’d been only messing. I waited. So did Liam. Nothing happened. Kevin did nothing. Aidan brought it back to normal.
—Do they have to kill themselves?
—No, I said.
—Why then?
—They only do it when they really have to, I said.—Or when they want to, I said, just in case.
—When do they have to? said Sinbad.
I was going to tell him to shut up and maybe hit him but I didn’t feel like it. He had two snailers coming out of his nose even though it wasn’t all that cold.
—When they lose a war and things like that, I said.
—When they’re sad, said Aidan.
He said it like a question.
—Yeah, I said.—Sometimes.
—Very sad, only.
—Yeah.
—Not just down in the dumps.
-No. Sad that you can’t stop crying. When your ma dies or something. Or your dog.
I remembered too late: Aidan and Liam’s ma was dead. But they didn’t do anything, look at each other or anything. Liam just nodded; he knew what I’d meant.
There were two other families with dead mas or das. The Sullivans had a dead ma and the Rickards had a dead da. Mister Rickard had died in a car crash. Missis Sullivan had just died. The Rickards had moved after Mister Rickard
got killed but they came back. They hadn’t been gone that long, not even a year. They didn’t go to our school, the three boys. There was a girl as well, Mary. She was older.
—A bit wild, my ma said.
She’d gone to London, run away. That was where they’d found her. She was a hippy, the only real one in Barrytown. The police in England had found her. They made her go home.
—They get a knife and they stick it in their belly, I told them.
It was impossible; their faces said that. I agreed with them. You couldn’t stick a knife in your own belly. I had no problem thinking about swallowing loads of tablets. It would be easy. I’d get a bottle of something to wash them down, to make it even easier, Coca-Cola or milk. Probably Coca-Cola. Even jumping off a bridge when a train was coming was easy to imagine. I could do it. I’d be jumping, not hitting the train. I’d jumped off high things before. You couldn’t smother yourself on purpose. If you jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool away from the sides and there was no one there to save you you’d drown, if you couldn’t swim or you weren’t a good swimmer. Or if you’d just had your dinner and got cramps. I couldn’t imagine me sticking a knife into myself. I didn’t even bother experimenting.
—Not a bread knife, I said.—Or one like that.
—A butcher’s.
—Yeah.
It was easy to see how you could accidentally stab yourself with a knife. We’d seen the butcher using his one. He’d let us. He let us come round the corner. Missis O‘Keefe, James O’Keefe’s ma, was in her hatch where she took in the money 198 and gave out the change, and she yelled at us for robbing the sawdust. We needed it for Ian McEvoy’s guinea-pig. There was loads of sawdust. It was early in the morning so it was clean and fresh. We grabbed handfuls and put them in our pockets. It wasn’t really robbing. Sawdust wasn’t worth anything. And it was for the guinea-pig. She yelled at us; it wasn’t even a word. Then she yelled a name.
—Cyril!
It was the butcher’s name. We didn’t run. It was only sawdust. We didn’t think she was calling him for us. He came out of the big fridge at the back.