by Susan Stairs
Despite David’s predictions, Liz’s plane made it back safely and when I saw Shayne cycling around the green clicking a pair of castanets and wearing a huge orange sombrero on his head, I knew she was home.
It must’ve been about two days later when I stopped him at the edge of the green on my way back from Mealy’s and asked him if she’d had a good time. He said he didn’t know; she’d gone to bed as soon as she came back and hadn’t been up since. Uncle Vic had only dropped her off, he said, then had to go away ‘on business’.
‘Have you seen much of David?’ I asked him.
‘O’Dea? Nah. Not much. Keepin’ clear of his ma now, amn’t I?’
‘I wonder did she get her rug cleaned?’ I said and he sort of smiled.
I realized I must’ve grown a lot over the summer – my eyes were almost level with his. I was able to look straight into them now, and as I did, it was like they gave something to me. It seeped down into my body, deep and dark and endless, mixing with my insides, with my heart and blood and bones.
There was something about Shayne that would stay with me always. I could tell.
‘I . . . I have to go and check on me ma,’ he said, and in one swift move he was up on the saddle, pedalling fast towards his house. I followed after him, my legs not feeling like my own as I ran. My head tingled with sparks and flashes, with waves of hot and cold. He looked back when he reached his gate and I pictured myself as he did, racing down the road, my cheeks pink and my hair all over my face. The evening sun flashed between my eyelashes, golden and grainy. It was late August now; summer was nearly over. Soon we’d be back into the ordered, daily routine of school and homework and early bedtime. I still had a year to go in Kilgessin National, but Sandra, Mel and Shayne were heading off to Grangemount. Everything was changing. I was being left behind.
I got to his gate, breathless, and leaned my back against the pillar. He stood in front of me, blocking out the sun, took a length of Wrigley’s from his pocket and bent it into his mouth. My heart still raced and my legs shook. Then he reached into his pocket again and handed me a piece. I unwrapped it slowly and folded it into my mouth. It zinged against my tongue as my teeth worked it into a soft ball.
‘Ye can come in if ye want,’ he said, shouldering open the side passage door. I pushed myself away from the pillar.
‘Is she OK? Your mam, I mean. She’s not sick or anything, is she?’
He reached the kitchen door and stepped into the house. ‘Nah. Think she just got sunburned and stuff.’ He took a glass from the sink and held it up to the light. I could see it was filthy. He rubbed it against his T-shirt and poured the last of a bottle of red lemonade into it, taking a gulp of it himself before heading out to the hall and up the stairs.
The kitchen was just as untidy as the last time I’d been there: the sink filled with dirty plates and glasses, the countertops littered with crumbs. I peered out to the hall. Liz’s suitcase stood at the end of the stairs, half unzipped, some of its contents spilling out onto the carpet: a lime green swimsuit, a red, plastic, high-heeled sandal with a huge yellow daisy on the toe, and a multi-coloured towel.
‘Yeah, OK!’ I heard Shayne say, his voice raised. ‘Fuck’s sake. I’m gettin’ them!’ He thundered back down, sighing loudly, plunging his hand into the suitcase and rummaging around. He pulled out two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of red wine. Stuffing one pack in his pocket, he raced back up. There was some mumbling and heavy footsteps and the slamming of a door. Then silence.
I sucked on my chewing gum, pushing it from side to side with my tongue, and I waited. I watched how the dust floated in the shafts of sunlight that poured in through the crinkly glass panels beside the front door. I wandered back along the hall and peeped into the front room. It smelled like The Ramblers. The couch cushions were strewn about the floor, covered in cigarette ash and crumbs. A tower of LPs, stacked beside what looked like a brand-new record player, had collapsed and slid across the carpet in a line all the way to the window. Cliff Richard’s dark eyes peeped out at me from under the hem of the curtain.
On the coffee table, a box of Sugar Puffs lay on its side, along with a half-empty bottle of Martini and a mound of greasy chip bags. It was more or less exactly as I’d imagined, but I felt none of the satisfaction I usually did when I got things right. It’d seemed funny when I’d thought about how Shayne spent his evenings when Liz was away, but standing in the stuffy room with the pathetic still life of his week laid out before me, I felt flattened, sort of squeezed and tired.
Shayne was taking his time. Maybe he’d forgotten about me. Or maybe . . . he expected me to follow him. I left behind the sour, vinegary smell and made my way up to the landing, where soft radio sounds seeped out from Liz’s bedroom and eye-wateringly bitter smoke clouded the air. The smell of it followed me as I walked up the narrow attic stairs. At the top it was even stronger. I chewed harder on my gum and knocked gently on the door. I let about a minute pass before I quietly pushed down the handle and looked inside.
He was standing on the tea-chest, puffing on a cigarette and blowing clouds of the horrible, stinking smoke out the window. I coughed loudly and he turned around.
‘Needed a fag,’ he said when he saw me. ‘Want a pull?’
‘No thanks, I’m OK,’ I said, walking into the room. ‘You didn’t answer when I knocked.’
‘Didn’t hear ye, did I? Me head was stuck out the fuckin’ window.’ He frowned but then gave me a false grin, showing his neat white teeth. ‘Watchin’ Goggin, I was.’
‘Bridie, you mean? What’s she doing?’
‘Jump up and have a look.’
I put a foot on the chest and held onto the window frame to haul myself up. I stood beside him, trying not to touch him. It was difficult.
‘She’s having a chat, that’s all,’ I said when I looked out. I could see Bridie at the Farrell’s gate talking to Geraldine.
‘With Ma Walton, though. Gettin’ all the scandal.’
‘I think she got most of it already. She wasn’t too pleased when she heard what I said about David.’
‘Thinks the sun shines outta his arse, so she does.’
‘It’s not her fault, really. David has most people fooled. Everyone thinks he’s a saint. She was disgusted when David’s mam told her I said he’d done it on purpose. She’s not half as friendly with me as she was before.’
‘Tut tut. Poor Goggin.’ He blew a long plume of smoke in the air. ‘Oh, oh, Ruth dear! How could you!’ he mimicked her.
We watched her, so far away she was like a doll version of herself, patting her hair and glancing over at our house, her head leaned in close to Geraldine’s. Shayne sucked the end of his cigarette and stubbed it out on a roof tile. He flicked the butt with his finger and it bounced down along the slope, disappearing over the edge.
Far below I saw Tracey, lying flat on her back with Fiona sitting on her chest, slapping her big sister’s face. Things had been frosty between herself and Sandra since that night in O’Deas’. She’d lapped up the cream of the gossip then turned her back on her like a cat because of what I’d said about David. In the last few days, she’d made a display of the friendship she shared with Valerie, laughing and joking loudly with her when she knew Sandra was watching. I’d seen them both, linking arms and throwing nasty looks over their shoulders in an attempt to highlight the bond they’d formed long before Sandra had arrived on the scene. And whenever the twins were allowed out, Tracey marched over, grabbing their hands and making sure they stuck to her until they were called back in. During the past week, their mother had taken to rationing their time out on the green, watching them from her front door until she was sure Tracey had gathered them close, as if she was afraid Sandra or I might contaminate them.
The sun beat down on the roof and I could almost smell the heat that rose up from it. I noticed how a thin layer of vivid green moss covered the slates, except for a long strip that ran from the window down to the edge of the roof.
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��Isn’t that weird?’ I said. ‘The way there’s moss everywhere but there?’
Shayne grinned and scratched his head. ‘That’s where I piss out me window in the night. Too lazy to go down to the jacks. Piss must be fuckin’ poison, so it must.’
He didn’t seem embarrassed telling me. It was almost a boast. I pictured him in my head, standing at the open window in the moonlight, his piss spurting out and dribbling down into the gutter.
We watched Bridie tottering home and Geraldine gathering a few Farrells in for their tea. Then David appeared. He stood at the edge of the green, looking like Action Man from so far away, and gave a signal to the twins, who immediately ran over to his side. Then I saw Sandra coming back from the village with Kev, the pram handle hung with bags of shopping. I had to squint, but I could tell David didn’t take his eyes off them till they turned into the cul-de-sac.
‘Look at O’Dea down there,’ Shayne said. ‘Thinks he’s fuckin’ great, so he does, with his stupid ma and da and his poxy piano.’
He swung to the floor in one swift jump, his feet landing steady and sure. I took my time climbing down and stood awkwardly beside him in the cramped space. He kicked at a worn patch in the carpet and I could feel the walls of the room sort of closing in around us. It seemed smaller than the last time I’d been there. Then I realized why.
‘You got a new record player,’ I said, looking over at the huge wooden cabinet that was taking up most of the space along the wall opposite the bed.
‘A radiogram,’ he corrected me. ‘Me ma let me have it after me uncle Vic brought her over a new one.’ He lifted the lid on one side. ‘Took hours to get it up here. Fuckin’ weight of it.’
‘Must be good to have it, though,’ I said, sitting down on his bed.
‘Fuckin’ magic.’
He selected an LP and slipped it out of its sleeve. Lifting the lid, he raised the arm and placed the record onto the turntable. ‘Wait til ye hear this. It’s me favourite.’ He carefully dropped the needle then sat down beside me. The words burst into the room. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It was one of my favourites too. It’d been number one for weeks. I’d watched Queen loads of times on Top of the Pops. Dad said they all looked like girls with their long hair and sparkly outfits and it was the biggest load of wailing he’d ever heard in his life. But I thought it was the best song ever. Shane had a poster of Freddie Mercury on the wall beside his bed. There was no sign of the photo of his uncle Joe though; it wasn’t stuck to his headboard any more. And he seemed to have forgotten all about the snake tongue. At least, he never mentioned it.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, mouthing the words. His chest rose as he breathed in before each line and I looked along the length of his body. He wore a washed-out, red T-shirt with yellow stripes on the sleeves, and a pair of faded jeans, the same ones he’d had on the night he stayed in our house. But the patches Mam had sewn were gone. He’d unpicked every single thread. I was wearing my brand-new Wranglers, my very first pair of real jeans. They’d cost four pounds, something Mam kept reminding me of every time I wore them, which was practically every day now. But they were too clean and new and although I felt bad for Mam that Shayne had unpicked all her work, I sort of understood why he’d done it.
The scar under his chin shone in the sunlight that flooded the room. I leaned in closer to get a better look. ‘How . . . how did you get that scar?’
‘Dunno,’ he said, his eyes still closed. ‘Me ma says the devil gave me a kick when I was born.’
It sounded like something Liz would say all right.
‘So you’ve had it a long time?’
‘Long as I can remember, anyways.’
‘Did she . . . did she ever say anything else? About the day you were born, I mean?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know . . . anything.’
‘She says I nearly killed her, I was such a fuckin’ lump. And I came out legs first. Says I couldn’t even get that right.’
‘But, you know, does she ever say anything about . . . well, your dad or anything?’
He opened his eyes and reached his arms behind his head ‘Nah. Nothin’.’
‘Didn’t you ever ask?’
‘Nah. Never.’
‘Never ever?’
‘I said no, didn’t I?’ he snapped.
‘So . . . you don’t know who your dad is?’
‘Nope. Don’t care either.’
‘What about your uncle Joe? Did you ever . . . think it could be him?’
‘Look, I don’t care who me fuckin’ da is, OK? Maybe it’s him, maybe it isn’t. Whoever it is, he doesn’t care about me so why should I care about him?’
I sucked the last bit of flavour from my gum. I was aching to tell him what I knew about David. I hadn’t breathed a word. Even when Sandra and I had been talking in bed about some girl from the village who was only seventeen and who everyone knew had got herself into trouble, and who tried to hide it by wearing a huge woolly poncho all the time. ‘She’ll have to give it up for adoption,’ Sandra had whispered. ‘That’s what Tracey says.’ She’d also reluctantly told me I’d been right – Geraldine was indeed expecting Farrell number eight.
I took a deep breath. ‘David doesn’t know who his dad is either.’
He squinted at me. ‘Huh?’
‘He’s . . . well . . . he’s adopted. His mam and dad, they’re not his real parents.’
He sat up slowly, pushing the hair out of his eyes. ‘Who told ye that?’
I told him how I knew. He sank back down on the bed, stretching his arms above his head. ‘Yeah, well, I knew that anyways.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. It’s no big deal.’
‘Oh. I wasn’t sure if he knew.’
‘O’Dea? Ah yeah, sure you’d have to know somethin’ like that, wouldn’t ye?’
‘It’s just he never said, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, well, he doesn’t like talkin’ about it.’
‘I thought, you know, the way he’s always going on about his mam and dad, giving out about them. If he knew they weren’t his real parents, surely he’d have said?’
‘Nah.’ He picked at one of the holes in his jeans.
If David knew he’d spent the first year of his life in an orphanage, he must’ve wondered about it. What it’d been like. He had no one to ask. No one who could tell him when he’d first smiled. When he’d crawled. And all the funny little things babies do. He had to be curious. Maybe that explained why he’d taken Kev from outside Mealy’s. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that it was David who’d got into our house to watch him asleep in his cot. But whether he was curious or not, it was still all very creepy.
I faced Shayne. ‘What . . . what really happened that day? He did throw himself out of the tree deliberately, didn’t he? I mean, I was right about it, wasn’t I?’
He sighed and then he nodded, his face grim and pale.
‘Why didn’t you tell?’ I asked him. ‘And why do you even hang around with him?’
He chewed at his thumbnail, ripping off a length and biting it with his front teeth as we listened to the song filling the room.
‘He made me swear. Said he’d fuckin’ kill me if I told. That’s what he’s like. And I have to hang around with him. He makes me. I’m too scared not to. He’s mental, so he is. But no one round here’d believe it.’
‘I do. I mean, I can see what he’s like. The very first day I saw him, I knew he was weird. I can sense stuff like that.’
‘He’s always been crazy.’
‘Like how?’
He thought for a second or two, looking up at the sky through the open window. ‘Well, one time, before youse came, we found a nest full of eggs in the bushes up near the church. I tried to stop him but he . . . he tipped the eggs out. Stood on them all, so he did. There was . . . there was bird guts and stuff everywhere.’
I swallowed, trying not to feel sick. ‘That’s disgusting. H
ow could someone do that?’ I imagined the mother returning to the empty nest, her babies stamped into the ground, bits of broken shell all over the place. ‘I think . . . I think he got into our house on Christmas Eve. Someone got up our uncle Frank’s ladder and was in watching Kev. My dad said it was you but . . .’
‘Me? Me?’ His face was scary. ‘What do ye think I am? Who does yer da think I am?’
‘I . . . I . . . Look, it wasn’t me who said it.’
He relaxed a bit. ‘Yeah, well, sounds like something O’Dea would do. He’s crazy enough.’
‘Do you think it’s something to do with, you know, being adopted and all?’
‘Dunno, do I? Don’t think he cares much.’
‘You mean he’s OK with it?’
‘Think so. I dunno who me da is and I’m not crazy, am I? And anyways, da’s aren’t all they’re made out to be, half the time.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, ye know, look at yers.’
I shifted myself around to look him in the eye. ‘Mine? My dad?’
‘Yeah. Yer da.’
‘What about him?’
He managed to push his finger through the hole he’d been picking at in his jeans and he scratched at the skin on his thigh.
‘Ye think he’s the best, don’t ye? Better than anyone else’s?’
‘He’s . . . he’s my dad.’
He looked at me, his eyes dancing all over my face. ‘So, I asked ye before . . . Would ye forgive yer da anythin’?’
Slow but sharp, like stars pushing through the black of the sky, a million fiery needles prickled deep down in my flesh.