Martin Sloane

by Michael Redhill

  His mother came over from the table where she’d been sitting and smoothed down his hair. Both women gripped his skull in their hands, like they were testing a melon. It’s more likely straight out of Antrim, I’d think. From those Antrim Sloanes.

  Mrs. Hannah released him. I love his colour. We’ve all black hair to our flanges, look at us, like dark purebreds! She clapped her hands, her eyes shining. She nodded at Malcolm, who was sitting with a book on the couch. That one, he looks like we brought him straight from Palestine.

  I was born in England, the boy protested.

  You were right, said Mrs. Hannah. The future is in people of all different types coming together. No stopping it, anyway. You were right to ignore the prating of your friends. People can be backwards, as we know.

  I’m sure you remember when I came back with Colin to Hammersmith. It must have been hard to hear all the things people were saying. Wasn’t it?

  Oh it was, it was, said Mrs. Hannah, pushing her fish back down into the frothing water. But you know how hard it is to talk sense to some people.

  Yes, said his mother, staring at the back of Mrs. Hannah’s head. I do know.

  That night, at dinner, they tried their best to eat Mrs. Hannah’s meal. It was called kedgeree, and it smelled exactly like the streets: of mildew and salt.

  Malcolm, Sheila, and Gabriel cleaned their plates, and Gabriel, sitting beside Martin, rescued him by quietly offering to finish his supper. When dinner was over, Martin’s father spoke.

  Well, I’m glad to be able to share happy news. Our little streak of bad luck is at an end. He raised a glass of water to the rest of the table. I’ve found us a house.

  Their mother was beaming. You didn’t tell me!

  It was a surprise.

  Where is it, then?

  It’s a beautiful house in St. Mary’s Terrace, down on Taylor’s Hill. A beautiful little house behind a gate. We’ll have you over when we’re settled, he said to their hosts, and drink to your graciousness and hospitality.

  But of course they didn’t have them over. They never had the Hannahs over, even though they had an acknowledged debt to them, and the two families, in fact, never saw each other again. Instead, the Sloanes unpacked their boxes and set about transforming the little house on Taylor’s Hill into a home, a role it resisted. It was a not uncharming house, with its warm mahogany banisters and a three-piece mantel that framed a fire like someone sheltering a match in their palm. But the kitchen at the rear of the house was cold and cramped, and there were only two bedrooms, which forced Martin and Theresa into close quarters after years of independent living. Furious at the change in her station, Theresa reproached Martin in any way she could, and at night she folded herself into bed in silence, even refusing to respond to a plaintive goodnight, if he were so bold to offer one.

  But worse in the little house was the situation of light, something they discovered on their first morning. Although the front windows faced east, the houses on the west side of Taylor’s Hill were triangulated in such a way that none but the very end houses of St. Mary’s Terrace enjoyed any sunlight at all. From their new front windows, bits of sun like torn wrapping paper could be seen in the broad oak leaves over the rectory across the street. But it stopped there, in the oak leaves, censuring them. The darkness of the house hit them all like a coup de grace, extinguishing the last bit of optimism they had. The sense of cautious hopefulness that attended the closing of the house purchase was now briskly replaced by a sepulchral gloom. After a few weeks, Martin noticed that Theresa had stopped chastising him, and the cessation of even this form of caring chilled him.

  Soon the dark, cold little house became a fact of life, and they adapted, although their father complained bitterly that the dimness of the house would make them all blind, or turn them into lemurs. More lights with better wattage were found, and at night (at least) the house took on a semibright kind of a warmth that wasn’t entirely negated by the sun that had failed to reach the house by day.

  Gradually, bravely, their parents tried to reassume their lives. Not knowing anyone presented them with the daunting task of finding their equals, and they began trying on other couples for size. How hard it was for them, combating their loneliness, Martin thought, when he at least had Theresa, however obelisk-like she was at times. Their parents, alone in a new and cryptic social order, couldn’t find their place. Visits from strange couples became an unhappy ritual. A man and a woman, approximately their parents’ ages and located through mysterious channels, would appear around the hour of six, bearing flowers or a jar of clover honey or a sack of loose tea from Newell’s. Then the introductions (we have a young man very much your age!) and the dinner. More often than not, offal was served — tripe or liver or kidney — in an attempt to appear continental. Quantities were eaten, and then afterwards there was the smoking and the ponderous remembrances of one disconnected thing after another.

  Later, Theresa would creep out of bed to listen to the evening’s progress through the bars at the top of the stairs. He’d hear her, and venture out himself, standing close, but not beside her. The sound of the clock on the mantel would be louder than the guests, and the scent of pipe tobacco overpowering. Sometimes there would be a record on the turntable, and Martin would think contentedly that maybe they were all having fun down there.

  Mrs. Shaughnessy thinks Dad is below her, Theresa would say without turning to him, or, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were dressed poorly. She was good at parsing the code of their parents’ guests — what a certain type of gift meant, how the length of the visit and the volume of the conversation correlated with the potential for friendship.

  His parents seemed to Martin on those evenings even more foreign to this place than they did during the days. What they belonged to were the alder trees on Iona Road, the churning wrens circling the chimneys, the walled nunnery past St. Columba’s, the Morris cars ticking in the sunlight down the street. Not to this rot of wood and netting! Not to these sparse trees pocked with burls, or these raucous magpies! Their parents seemed pasted onto it all like cut-out figures from Everybody’s.

  He would lie in bed, the sounds of the last omnibus clacking past ten streets over in Eyre Square, and try not to drift off on those nights, would try to listen for the sounds of the cards being brought out, or the old photo albums, and sometimes, in the flickerings of near-sleep, it felt that one moment there was Sheila Dunne’s Popular Band and the sound of pennies crossing the table, and the next, silence and darkness, the moon a pale band across the foot of the bed. He’d call to Theresa across in her own bed, and she’d lift herself up on her elbows and say, You fell asleep. They’re gone. And they won’t be back either.

  After some time, people stopped coming altogether, and the effort was abandoned. It was a great relief. Now their parents resigned themselves to the gradual acquaintanceships of neighbours, connections that grew as slowly as quartz on the nourishment of occasional encounters. There were the Cadburys at one side and the Raleighs on the other; they hardly spoke to either, but by the middle of the summer, two of the Raleigh girls had absorbed Theresa into their circle of play. The stories she told of their adventures were Martin’s main connection to the world outside. The summer, however bright, however fragrant, was compressed for him into long afternoons of reading or rearranging his belongings. Their father had long since located a shop in town, but he discouraged Martin from coming there, and Martin had only once seen the grey interior of the store, bereft of browsers and certainly of buyers: his father didn’t want him to see what appeared to be impending failure. Later, Martin began to take solitary walks over the bridges and through the streets, and although this was not Dublin, some of Galway’s charms did gradually give themselves over: now the shop windows began to seem a little less dusty and prim — Thomas McDonogh & Sons always had a vibrant display of cheeses and fruits in pyramids, as well as an assortment of model trains half out of their cardboard boxes. Again, the peaceful silence of things began to come back to
him and comfort him. They had their mute order, their grace and vitality. These thoughts, with their power to make him happy, became his main solace as the lonely summer went on. His parents, though, however they tried, could not disguise their unhappiness. His mother sometimes smiled at him, trying to hide an expression he’d just catch a flicker of. And once, he heard his father in the kitchen say, What have I done? and when he’d quietly entered the room, he’d found his father alone there.

  They carried on as best they could. In the evenings, they all took their supper with the windows open, or sometimes even outside, their china in their laps, since they had no outdoor table. There was the occasional play in town, or visit to the movies, but although the feeling of real life had returned in their rituals, the centre of things felt hollow. Galway pushed them away. It was as if they skimmed along the surface of their new reality, like waterstriders on a pond.

  Finally August came, and at the end of it, it was time to go to school. Martin and Theresa walked together in the mornings behind the nunnery and the stream full of grassy islands. The banks, in early morning, were always occupied by two or three old men with their fishing poles and bowls of maggots, hoping to attract one or two of the salmon that made it past the weir at Newcastle Road Bridge. Beaky old men hauling beaky salmon out of the glistening waters. Then to the public school, to the left and up the hill.

  Martin recognized some of his fellow students in his form — the city was small enough that even two encounters with someone was enough to make them seem familiar. The Raleighs were here, and there was a girl who probably lived around the corner from him, he’d seen her so often. There were others — a grey-faced boy he’d seen once when he’d been taken to buy shoes; a couple of girls memorable for their tallness; a Chinese boy who was the only such child he’d ever laid eyes on, whose teeth tapered out from blackened stems.

  For the first few days, Martin kept his eyes down as much as he could, knowing that the kids with the power to do so were already making categories, and staying unnoticeable was essential to avoid being placed on either end of the social spectrum. There was as much responsibility in being extremely popular as there was in being outcast, and Martin wanted to be left out of it all. Theresa was one of the chosen in her form: she had the appeal, the confidence and the looks, and she was already friends with the Raleigh girls, who commanded not only the form but most of the girls in the school. This was an added burden to Martin — Theresa advertised a disdain for him that threatened to make him the target of unwanted interest. Having a powerful sister was not something that would accrue to his benefit, especially if it was known she wouldn’t protect him. He watched uncomfortably as the social strata was wrought. The Chinese boy was established, without delay, as one end of the spectrum, and the strongest of the boys — the sporting ones and the loudest — balanced him off at the other. When it was all done, Martin was relieved to find he was without appeal to any of them, and he settled into an easy and mostly invisible existence.

  In the third week, as the first cooling breezes of the autumn were arriving, Gabriel Hannah appeared in the class with his leather satchel held tight against his chest. He had been transferred out of the private school on Newcastle Road because his progress had been too slow. This was a dangerous stigma. Martin felt sorry for him (being added for such a reason after the beginning of school was a sure route to ostracism) but also afraid for himself, for he knew Gabriel would attach to him.

  The younger boy, however, showed an almost adult restraint in his desire for friendship, and for the second time, too. (The first had been the subtle removal of kedgeree from Martin’s plate.) He would wait silently outside the school until Martin appeared, and then walk away. Farther down the road, he’d stop and wait for Martin to catch up. In this way, their friendship rooted. The two hours between four-thirty and six-thirty on schoolnights were generally assumed to be filled with tutors or sports, so the two boys would not be missed if they struck out on their own. They wished to be anywhere but in their own houses, and the sea, the lake, and the forest behind the university gave cover.

  One afternoon in September, when the woods were at their fullest, the two of them walked deep into the one behind the school to look for birds. They’d given up on trapping woodcocks, with their beautiful bellies and long beaks, because they were hard to find, but the guidebook made them sound worth keeping an eye out for. The woodcocks were known to fly up as if shot from cannons, springing wildly from the undergrowth before plunging back into it. The prey this afternoon was cross bills, which Gabriel had read you could tell the presence of by the path of cracked pinecones that the birds would split in their scissored beaks. The male was a red-bellied bird, easy to see before the leaves changed. Gabriel carried a rough-made trap, a fruit crate and a string attached to a propping stick. Their bait was a ball of suet wrapped in cloth.

  Martin hung back a little, more involved in the smells and textures of the forest than Gabriel, who craned his neck to look for the tell-tale silhouettes of old leaves and twigs against the sky that might mean a nest of crossbills or siskins. He was also occupied with the undermoss and holly, which he kicked over for centipedes and charlie bugs that curled up into segmented balls like armadillos. When he found a worm or grub, he opened the cheesecloth and pressed it into the suet. Tastier that way, he said. They came to a small clearing where the sun came down more directly, and here Gabriel set up the trap. It lay open like a jaw at the edge of the tiny space, half in shadow, with the string trailing back to the base of an oak where the two boys sat and shared a raisin bun.

  How do you know anything is going to come this way? asked Martin.

  Something eventually will. Birds eat all the time.

  Martin started to get bored, but didn’t want to say anything. He’d sat with Gabriel on a number of occasions now, waiting for something that never came, and he decided that maintaining the friendship was more important to him than revealing his lack of interest in the hunt. He dug his feet into the soft moss around the base of the tree and took small bites of his half of the bun. They’d have to head back in a matter of half an hour or so, and when they did, they’d talk again, about this and that. Which was the thing he liked best about Gabriel. The sun moved diagonally against them, soon covering the box in complete shadow.

  Listen, said Gabriel. There was a sound like zizzeek, but they couldn’t tell where it came from because it seemed to bounce around the canopy above them.

  What is it?

  A bird.

  Which one, though?

  Shh —

  The sound came nearer, and then stopped, and the next time they heard it, it was far away. Gabriel was stock-still, his head tilted to capture the sound, but Martin had had enough of sitting and doing nothing. At the edge of the clearing, some white mushrooms with broad umbrella-like caps stood straight against a tree trunk. He looked back at Gabriel, who had given up on hearing the birdcall again, and called him over. His friend unrolled the string to reach the edge of the sunlight.

  They’re field mushrooms, Gabriel said.

  Martin squatted down to inspect them. They looked like warts in the moss. We’re not in a field.

  Close enough. Gabriel lay on his side and looked under the mushrooms. White gills, he said. If they were grey, it’d be a death cap, but this one is fine.

  Sure. You don’t know anything about them.

  Death cap can kill you in ten seconds. This is just a field mushroom, though. Harmless.

  Martin poked it with a twig. It felt solid and hollow all at once. You can tell just by looking?

  And smell. If it’s like honey, it’s the death cap. That’s how it gets you to eat it.

  So it wants to be eaten, does it?

  If you were a mushroom, you’d love a rotting body to root in. Gabriel took out a pocket knife and cut the stem without touching the mushroom. It tipped over into sunlight where it glowed a little green, like an underripe olive. See — white gills. Harmless.

  Someone els
e might call that grey, though. And it does kind of smell like honey.

  That’s the moss. Trust me. You want me to pop it in my mouth?

  No.

  I will if you want me.

  No you won’t. I found it. If anyone’s going to eat it, I am. He took the knife from Gabriel and drove it down through the hard white cap. The flesh inside was an ethereal white, but even as they looked at it, it began to pale to a light pink, and then a ruddy red. Now it looks like meat, he said.

  Might taste like a pork chop!

  I’m sure. His death would be hard at first for his parents, he thought again, but then afterwards, they could move back to Dublin and pick up their old lives. Maybe he was supposed to have died on Temple Street, in the hospital, along with the boy who moaned and the girl with one black shoe. Death had had its fill on the other children, so it appeared, but he could give it another chance. He cut off a hunk of the mushroom about the size of his thumb. Everywhere he touched it, the mushroom became wet, as if the heat of his fingers were liquefying it. But before he could put it in his mouth, Gabriel emitted a shout of joy — Got you! — and there was the sound of the crate hitting the ground. Gabriel leapt up and ran to the other edge of the clearing and Martin followed. There, in the crate, its black eyes shining, was a woodcock the size of a gravy boat. It jumped around banging its head on the roof of the crate, screeching anxiously.

  Ho-ly! said Martin. Gabriel was crouched on his haunches looking into the box. After a few more excited moments, the bird settled into the corner of the crate, trying to make itself tiny.

  Look at her! Just look at her! She’s gorgeous!

  It’s a woodcock, right?

  You bet it is. This is like finding twenty quid! Hello, Woodie! Hello, sweetie! Did you like your suet and grubs?

  The two of them stared into the crate, holding it down with their palms. In its dark square, the bird tried to stay equidistant from the two faces, its breast rising and falling quickly, and it jerked its beak up and down a number of times, as if it were swallowing something. It had dark brown wings and a grey underbelly, and just like in the book, its beak was a long dark needle, perfect for rooting worms out of muddy earth. Gabriel ran his fingers along the side of one of the slats and stroked her wings. The bird tried to peck at him.