This time was very different.
It rained the whole way there, and the car was a steaming, claustrophobic headache. There was no warm burr of conversation from the front seats. Ma sat silently smoking, staring out the front window. Dad just drove. They’d been quiet like that since the day before, and I was beginning to get a familiar knot in my stomach about them. I told myself it was just that they were tired. Ma’s brothers and sisters had done their best for us; they’d opened their arms wide and taken us in without a word. But their families were big, their houses were tiny, and we’d spent nearly a week shunting between them, sleeping on floors, crammed into narrow shared beds. We were all wrecked for want of a good night’s sleep.
I shifted about a bit in the back seat, trying to get some room without waking Dee. She was sprawled between me and Dom, her feet on my lap, her head on his knee. Dom was looking out the window at the driving rain, humming to himself and absently stroking her silky hair. It looked light as feathers between his fingers, curling and dropping, curling and dropping around the ragged tops of his fingernails. He had been the usual soul of patience as she garbled her nonsense at him. He’d tolerated her tugging at his face with her fat little hands, and let her ‘comb’ his hair. He’d even taken her games of I-spy seriously, despite her thinking every word started with ‘M’ and none of us understanding half of what she said. When she’d tired of him, she’d flopped onto her back and shoved her pink sock-clad feet in my face.
‘’Mell, Pap,’ she’d ordered. ‘’Mell my pongy feets.’
I’d sniffed and gone ‘Paaawww!’ as though they stank like old cheese. This kept her in giggles until she’d subsided into a doze, and then – thank God – a full, boneless, drooling sleep.
I watched the movement of Dom’s fingers slow until his hand came to a standstill on Dee’s head. His chin began to drop forward onto his chest. I turned my attention to the rain-soaked road, and listened to the silence crackle between our parents.
WE CAME UP the main street of Skerries with the sky pressing down on the houses and the rain pummelling all the colour from the air. As we turned up a side street and onto the deserted beachfront, Dom and Dee were still unconscious. I was limp and heavy from the long drive, my head bobbling against the window. When we pulled up to the garden gate, I no more wanted to move than I wanted to eat my own hair.
Dad switched off the engine and sat there a moment, his hands clenched around the steering wheel. Ma said nothing. The rain hammered the roof of the car.
‘I’ll go in to the old biddies and get the keys,’ said Dad.
Ma didn’t answer him.
He sighed. There was a blast of cold as he got out of the car, then the abrupt slamming of the door. Ma sat like a stone in the front seat as he walked away. Dom and Dee’s sleeping breaths filled the silence between us, and I assumed Ma thought I was asleep, too. She stabbed out her fag. As Dad ducked under the apple trees and disappeared up the side alley that led to the old biddies’ house, I was shocked to hear her mutter, ‘Fuck you, Finnerty.’
As if remembering us, she glanced in the rear-view mirror. Our eyes locked. Then Ma looked away. Not quickly, or shamefaced. She just looked away – cold and imperious – as if she didn’t care that I had heard her.
I stared at the back of her head for a minute and swallowed something huge back down into my throat. Behind us, to the right, the whirligig’s chairs creaked in the wind. I turned my head against the glass and watched them swaying above me. Still locked up from the winter, their chains were knotted and tied with big padlocks, their gaily coloured seats snagged upside down. Rain flowed from the ride’s tent-shaped roof, down the knotted sinews of the chains, and hammered the sullied earth below. Everything was grey with rain.
Ma had just taken another fag out of the packet and was rooting for her lighter when Dad came running back down the garden, his jacket held up over his head. She sighed and slammed the fag back into its pack. Tossing it into her handbag, she gathered stray sweets and wrappers and flung them in after it. By the time Dad got to the car and opened her door in a shock of wind and rain, Ma was ready to step out. She brushed by him without a word, hoisted her handbag onto her shoulder and went around to the boot.
‘Olly, get in out of the rain, love. You’ll be soaked.’
She went ahead as though he hadn’t spoken, pulled the boot open and yanked a big box up and onto her hip. Dad gestured in exasperation. ‘Olive! I’ll do that! Go in out of the rain.’
She shifted the box and walked off up the garden with it, taking her time, her head held high. The rain had already plastered her hair to her head, and soaked her trouser-suit to the skin.
Dad stood and watched her, frustration evident in every taut muscle – in his clenched fists, and the furious rise and fall of his chest. Then he moved around to the boot, grabbed a box, slammed a bag down on top of it and stamped off after her.
I glanced at Dom. His eyes were open, his head still leaning against the glass. He was following our parents’ progress up the garden with an angry frown.
‘They’re fighting?’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it! What the hell is wrong with them?’
And I was angry with him then, for not having noticed the tension earlier; for having pointed it out, instead of ignoring it; for just bloody well being there and available when I needed someone to be annoyed at. ‘Jesus, Dom,’ I snapped, ‘what fecking planet do you live on?’
He gawped at me, a what-did-I-say-wrong look on his face, and that made me angry all over again. ‘How can you not have seen it coming?’ I said. ‘Is your head that far up your arse?’
His expression ate at me. It felt as if I’d just spat on my own reflection. But instead of apologising, I grabbed Dee, hoisted her rag-doll weight into my arms and ducked out the door. I left Dom sitting in the car, a receding ghost in the rain, and sloshed my way up the garden without looking back.
THE HOUSE WAS another shock in what was becoming a litany of shocks. All these years, I’d thought I’d known it, but stepping into the kitchen and looking around me I realised I had only known the atmosphere of it – the steady, nonstop rough-and-tumble of a long and boisterous holiday. The house itself had only ever been a background to the bright tapestry of summer at the beach. Now, lit by the grey spring light and empty but for us, it came into focus like a slap with a wet towel.
The two downstairs rooms – a kitchen that you stepped straight into from the garden and a sitting room immediately to your left – were horribly drab and used-looking, threadbare and grimy. The two old biddies had obviously done their best to make the place welcoming: a jam jar of daffodils sat on the battered kitchen table and another on the deep windowsill in the sitting room; a rosy fire spat and crackled in the little sitting-room grate. It sounded like they’d lit the Aga, and the huge old kettle on the hob was just beginning to sing. But the biddies – or Tom and Jerry, as Dad called them, one being tall and grim, one small and bouncy – were old women, and their eyesight must not have been the best, because there was a soft layer of dust on everything, and every windowsill had its own brittle colony of dead flies. The floor was gritty underfoot, and the smell of the daffs did nothing but emphasise the staleness of the air.
I carried Dee into the sitting room and went to lay her on the threadbare sofa, but then hesitated, frowning down at the slightly greasy texture of the upholstery. It just didn’t look clean. I straightened with her still in my arms and looked around me. Last year I would have flung myself blithely onto that sofa, laid my head against the mouldering cushions, and kicked my feet up onto the arms. I clearly remembered putting my food directly onto the floor at my feet, while I turned a page or watched TV. I gazed at the scarred walls and the chipped cupboards and thought, How have I never noticed this before? I clutched Dee tighter to me.
Nothing is the same, I thought. It’s all gone.
The house stood around me in a way it never had before, as something real, as something sharp and focused. I wondered if it sen
sed us moving around inside it – this sad, angry little knot of people. It felt to me as if it did. It felt as if the house and I were suddenly there to each other – that we were seeing each other for the first time. The stale air seemed to close around me like a fist.
I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it at all.
I wanted to go home.
Dad came up behind me, then, and flung a blanket over the sofa. He snapped it open in the air like a magician, tucked it into the corners, and left to head back out into the rain. He came and went with such a surreal deftness that it left me stunned. The ratty old sofa was gone, and in its place there was now this cosy little nest of blue and cream. From somewhere behind me, either Dad or Ma threw a pillow. It landed perfectly into the crooked arm of the sofa, and I was able to lay Dee down onto it – safe and warm. She sighed and curled up like a cat without ever really waking.
I stood watching her, her tiny chest rising and falling, her yellow curls matted onto her flushed little face. I felt a sudden gush of tenderness for her – the type I only ever felt when she was asleep and not annoying the crap out of me. The world always seemed very big when I allowed myself to see her this way. It made me want to protect her forever.
Ma came back into the kitchen with another box, dumped it on the table and began unpacking with sharp, angry noises. Dom shuffled in under the weight of a big suitcase and she snapped at him, ‘Don’t leave it there, for God’s sake. Have a titter of wit, and take it up to the bedrooms.’ I heard him labouring up the narrow stairs behind the kitchen, inching his way around the dark twists of the windowless stairwell.
Dad pushed through the door, heaving a big box of groceries and trailing rain all across the kitchen floor. Ma stuck her head around the corner and glared at me.
‘Patrick,’ she said, ‘are you waiting for a bloody invitation or what?’
I slunk past her and out into the rain to help finish unloading the car.
WE ALL TRAIPSED around each other for well over an hour, putting things here and storing things there. It was a silent, eyes-down operation, uncomfortable and tense, but blessedly free of further confrontation. All through it, Dee slept peacefully on the sofa and the unceasing rain fell outside. Finally Ma banished me and Dom to our room to change out of our wet things and unpack the rest of our clothes.
We had the room right at the head of the stairs, the one usually claimed by the four girl cousins and their assorted friends and hangers-on. It was a good room, big, with two windows: one overlooking the apple trees, the other looking out over the fairground and onto the sea. There was a huge old-fashioned dressing table with a darkly blotched mirror against one wall, and opposite it an ancient, creaking iron-framed bunk bed.
Dom immediately and without discussion claimed the top bunk. He did this by flinging his bag into the corner, climbing the ladder and lying down with his hands crossed behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
‘You’ve got to put your clothes away!’ I snapped. My heart sank at how angry I sounded. What was bloody wrong with me?
He shrugged. ‘I’ll unpack when you’re finished,’ he said. There wasn’t a trace of acid in his voice. He settled deeper into the mattress and closed his eyes, really laying on the I’m comfy vibe.
I smiled. Okay then. He had the top bunk. He got to lie down for a while. I didn’t have to say I was sorry. A hundred little knots undid themselves in the pit of my stomach. Feeling lighter than I had all evening, I started shoving my clothes into the musty drawers of the dressing table.
Every single item of clothing was brand new. Some still had the tags on them. Four days after the house had burnt down, the neighbours had done a whip-round, and the whole sprawling estate had chipped in. Some families had only been able to afford a quid or two, but nevertheless, between the lot of them they’d managed to raise the unearthly sum of one hundred pounds. Stunned, my ma had simply handed us a wodge of dosh each and let us loose in the shops.
Until then, Dom and me had only ever worn our cousins’ hand-me-downs. If it fit us, we wore it – the end. We had absolutely no concept of individual style. So when we finally got to choose our own gear, we were shocked at how different our tastes were. It turned out my brother was a bloody hippy! He was all cheesecloth shirts and tie-dyed jeans and all that bleedin’ Jim Morrison rubbish. He even bought a shark’s tooth on a piece of leather to wear around his neck. I couldn’t believe it. My clothes, however, were dead keen: poloneck jumpers, sharply creased trousers, a tweedy jacket. Steve McQueen wasn’t half as suave as me. I looked like a brown-eyed, curly-headed Man from U.N.C.L.E.
I was lovingly smoothing the creases from my new pinstriped shirt when I looked up and caught Dom watching me in the mirror. He grinned. I couldn’t help but smile back. He started to say something. Then the voices in the kitchen rose and the two of us went quiet.
It had been a low rumble in the background since we’d come upstairs – a lopsided conversation, just Dad mostly, his voice insistent and low. A brief reply from Ma had, eventually, led to more silence. Things were moved around, cutlery rattled, dishes snapped into place. Then Dad spoke again, a deep, questioning reverberation through the floorboards, and suddenly Ma’s voice rose, rapid and hard – an uninterrupted flow of anger. The words were unintelligible, but the bitterness and accusation were palpable nonetheless.
Dom and I watched each other in the mirror as her voice went on. He wasn’t grinning anymore. A sudden crash made us both jump: a cup being thrown, into the sink if experience served us right. We lost a lot of cups in our house. I moved wordlessly to the door. Behind me, Dom crept down the ladder and crossed the bedroom to join me.
We stopped halfway down the stairs and sat at the first turn. At home we would have sat side by side, very close together, like children, but these stairs were too narrow for that so Dom sat behind me, his legs pressed against my shoulder, his feet on the step where I was sitting. I fastened my arms around my knees and stared at the wall, my whole being focused on the voices coming from the kitchen. The dust and smell of damp wrapped itself around us in the dark. The house listened with us – breath held.
‘It’s just not possible, Olive.’
‘Why not? She’s their bloody mother, too!’
‘You know they don’t see her like that, love.’
Shut up! SHUT UP, DAVE! Why can’t you take my side? ‘Fuck them and their big bloody houses and their fucking cars and, We’re too busy, and, How would we possibly? FUCK THEM!’
‘Jesus, Olive! Stop that!’ The shock at Ma’s terrible language was evident in Dad’s voice. It was frightening to hear her talk like that; it didn’t sound like her at all.
There was an inarticulate cry from my mother and the sound of something being flung hard into the other side of the wall next to our heads. Dom flinched and pressed closer to me. I hoped to God that Dee would stay asleep; the last thing we needed was for her to wake up screaming for her tea.
Ma was crying now; I could hear it in her voice and it surprised me. Anger didn’t make my ma cry. Anger made her cutting – it made her scary – but it never made her cry. Her voice came floating up the stairs, wavery and broken, and I think it frightened me more than if she had been shouting.
‘Dave, I can’t have her here. How can I? Look at this place, look at those bloody stairs. There isn’t even a proper bathroom. Dave . . . ’ She started to cry in earnest. There was a soft scuffling sound, and then she yelled sharply, ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t want a bloody hug! I want some help. I want them to take her. Just for a little while! For God’s sake, is it so much to ask?’
Dad’s voice spoke, so softly: ‘Olly,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’
‘You won’t even be HERE! You’ll be off at work!’
Again, Dad, gently: ‘Ol, I have to go to work.’
Ma’s voice, much softer: ‘I think I hate her.’
‘Oh Jesus, Ol. Please don’t . . . ’
‘Every time I look at her now, I’m afraid I’m going to think . . .
I’m going to think of my luh-little house and how . . . and how hard we worked for it. And how she buh-buh-burnt the place dooown.’
The last word came out in a wail and I could imagine my mother standing there, her face creased up and covered in tears. I felt sorry for her then, and I wanted to hug her. But my ma was a fierce woman. You didn’t just go over and hug her – not in situations like this.
Okay, Olive. I’ll talk to Conner again. I’ll ask him to try and ‘get Maureen . . . ’
‘No.’ This statement came flat and decisive. ‘No. I’m sick of them. Poor Cheryl. God, they’re such . . . poor Cheryl.’ There was a scraping tinkle, shards of china being swept up. Even through the wall, I could feel my mother pulling herself together. I could hear it in the tone of her voice. She was battening down the hatches. ‘I’m not leaving her with them any longer than we have to.’
‘Olive . . . ’
She interrupted him before he could finish. ‘Tell them they can bring her down on Saturday, like they planned. Tell them we don’t need their help. Cheryl will be no trouble to me. She’s a lovely woman; their dad was lucky to find her. They didn’t deserve to have her in their lives. You tell them that, Dave.’
There were gentle sounds now: a chair scraping; my dad’s voice, muffled as though he had his face pressed against her hair. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them all that.’
‘Okay.’ Ma was barely audible. I knew he was hugging her now. She only came to his shoulder; her face would be buried in his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I, love. I wish . . . ’
‘Go get some chips, will you?’ She would have stood back now, cutting him short, scrubbing her face. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to cook.’
There was a gentle laugh, a moment of stillness and then the sounds of Dad gathering up his keys and heading out the door. We could hear Ma tidying things up. Then, very softly, we heard her sobbing, the private, muffled sound of quietly desperate tears.
We slunk back to our bedroom, soundless as phantoms on the darkly attentive stairs.
Taken Away Page 2