by M. J. Hyland
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ my father asks.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Then go and get the sack from the coal-scuttle and bring it to the bathroom. I’ll meet you there.’
He makes it sound as though we’re going somewhere far away, but the cottage is a small place and nobody could ever get lost in it: you walk in the front door and stand in the hallway, and if you turn right, you go through the kitchen, and from the kitchen you can either go back into the hallway, or you can go into the living room. The living room has two doors and you can go out again to the hallway where you will face the door to the bathroom and then take a few steps and you’ll see my bedroom door and then, at the back of the cottage, you’ll find my grandmother’s bedroom. And at the very end of the hallway is the back door, which leads to the small garden. The only adventure is going up the narrow wooden stairs to my parents’ bedroom.
I put the sack down by my father’s feet.
‘Right. Pop them in here for me.’
I take the kittens – all of them black and white like Crito – from the pouch in my father’s jacket and put them into the sack while he runs the bath with hot water. The steam makes my face sweat.
‘They’re not wriggling very much,’ I say. ‘It must be cosy in the sack.’
‘Don’t be soft,’ he says. ‘Grab that chair for me to sit on, and grab that stool for yourself.’
He pulls his chair near to the bath, and I sit on the stool by the taps, in case he needs more water. He lowers the sack into the hot bath. The sack floats for a moment, then sinks to the bottom. As the kittens move around inside, the sack moves with them.
‘How long does it usually take?’ I ask.
My father shrugs. ‘That depends.’
We don’t speak. His leg is jumping up and down and air bubbles float to the top of the water. I’m unstable on the stool and there is nowhere for me to hang on. I’m going to fall off and I want to get down, but I don’t say so.
‘God, Da,’ I say. ‘They’re moving around a lot. Maybe we should’ve given them some kind of injection or something.’
He doesn’t answer. He stares at the water and chews the inside of his lip. The heads of the kittens are straining against the darkened cloth of the sack.
Now there are fewer bubbles.
‘It’s taking a very long time,’ I say.
He turns on me. ‘Are you able for this or not? If you’re not, then go and help your mother in the kitchen.’
My mother is not in the kitchen; she’s in my bedroom next door. I can hear her singing.
‘I am able for it,’ I say.
There are certain things my father says, when we are alone, that give me a feeling that is a mixture of excited and sick.
‘Feck it,’ he says. ‘The water mustn’t’ve been hot enough.’
He gets up from his chair and lifts the sack out of the water. I climb off the stool and watch as he struggles to undo the knot in the sack. The kittens are still moving.
‘Quick,’ I say. ‘Let them out.’
The knot is hard to loosen, but at last the sack is open. My father is red in the face and neck. He empties four of the kittens onto the floor and they wriggle and climb on top of each other. Their small ribs heave up and down under thin strands of wet, dark fur. If not for their mewing, they wouldn’t seem like kittens at all.
‘I knew you’d let them out,’ I say, ‘I knew you couldn’t kill them.’
My father turns to me, takes a kitten in his hand, swings it over his shoulder, and smashes its head against the edge of the bath. The sound of the skull cracking is loud and sharp; like a ruler being snapped in half.
‘You stupid, soft little bastard,’ he says.
He holds the bashed kitten by the tail over the bath. I want it to live and I still hope it might but blood drips from its skull and ears and it doesn’t move. I know it must be dead.
There’s not much blood but there’s enough to drip down the inside of the bath, enough to turn the water pink near the surface. The blood sinks, then fades. I don’t look at my father and then, without warning, he lifts another wet kitten from the floor and bashes its head against the side of the bath. His face is redder than I’ve ever seen it and, as he reaches for the next kitten, his hand shakes.
‘Stop it!’ I say. ‘Please stop.’
He looks down. The kittens still in the sack have stopped moving.
‘It’s only nature,’ he says, his chest rising and falling. ‘You’ve got to learn that it’s only nature.’
I look at him. ‘Don’t you feel sad?’ I ask.
‘Why would it make me feel sad?’ He stands up. ‘It’s only what the farmers have to do every day of the week to get the food on your table.’
I look carefully at him and something happens. I know – I am certain – he is lying. There is something in his face, a flash, a momentary smirk, and then a frown. There is also something false about the way he said, ‘it’s only what the farmers have to do every day of the week’ (something he has never said before). He’s lying about not being sad.
‘Do you really not feel sad?’
He stares at me and, as I stare back, his hazel eyes turn black.
‘No, not a bit. They don’t even have a soul yet. It’s about time you toughened up.’
‘But you bashed their heads. Doesn’t that make you feel sorry for them?’
‘No, sure I told you. There’s nothing sad about it at all. They’re only grubs with fur.’
‘You’re brave,’ I say, and as soon as I’ve said it I am sick.
I vomit, without warning, on the bathroom floor, a few inches from a kitten’s head and an inch from my father’s foot. It is as though a bucket of yellow poison is coming out of me. He lied to me and it has made me sick. He stands back and calls out for my mother. ‘Helen, come help us with this mess.’
I move my shoes away from the pool of yellow vomit and vomit a second time. I look down so that he won’t see my face.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You poor, soft lad.’
My mother comes in with a dishrag in her hand and looks at my sick on the bathroom floor. ‘Michael? What’s wrong?’
‘He was sick,’ says my father.
I look at her shoes. They are my father’s shoes. She shouldn’t wear his shoes.
I want her to say something, but she stares at my sick and does not speak to me. I walk towards her and still she says nothing.
‘They’re all dead,’ I say, as I squeeze between my mother and father and walk out the door.
My mother comes to my room at half nine and sits on the end of my bed. ‘John, come and say goodnight to your father.’
‘What about a puppet show?’ I ask.
Some nights, before I go to sleep, my mother performs a finger-puppet show for me. There’s a cardboard apple-box with curtains painted on it and holes in the side for her hands to go through. This box stays in my room, near the foot of my bed, and the puppets are stored in my cupboard.
‘I don’t think so. Not tonight, John.’
She stands up. ‘Come. You need to say goodnight.’
My father is in his armchair by the fire. Usually when I come to him to say goodnight, he parts his legs, or uncrosses them. And even though I’m too big, I sit on his knee, just for the play of it, and he asks me whether I’ve combed my teeth, the same joke he makes every night, and we laugh.
But when he sees me walk into the living room, he keeps his legs tightly crossed, and looks at me as though he has never seen me standing by his chair before. He has swept his fringe away from his eyes and the artery on his left temple pulses in time with the grandfather clock; it looks like mercury pumping inside sausage skin, ugly and hot.
‘Goodnight, Da,’ I say.
‘Goodnight then,’ he says.
‘Goodnight,’ I say again, but he pretends not to have heard.
I go back to bed and read for a while.
My mother comes in. ‘OK?’ she asks.
‘Read for a bit longer tonight, if you want to,’ she says.
She’s wearing a pair of my father’s pyjamas, and the hems drag on the floor.
‘Why was everything different today?’ I ask.
‘Nothing was different today, John.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, darling. I’m sure.’
She steps closer to the bed. I sit up and lean forward. Instead of kissing me, she touches the collar of my pyjama top.
‘Sleep well,’ she says to the wall behind me. But her voice is kind, and after she leaves I am happy for a while, until I realise that there is something stuck in my throat and that the feeling is getting worse.
I can hear the melted snow trickling into the drain outside and I’m afraid of something, although I don’t know what. I wonder what it means to be sure that a person has lied. I will check the Guinness Book of Records tomorrow to see if there is an entry for lie detection.
2
My mother is outside in the car, waiting to take me for a drive with her into town to buy some new trousers. I’ve outgrown my old ones.
On the way out through the kitchen, I pass my father, who is reading at the table. During the night he buried the kittens in the back garden and put a rock over them. The window in my bedroom looks out over the side of the house and, when I stand up, I can see over the hedge to the small road that leads to the cemetery. And although I didn’t see outside last night (I was under the blankets, keeping warm), I knew by the kicking noises my father made that he was looking for a rock.
‘Hello,’ I say.
There’s a plate of half-eaten black pudding in front of him. I move towards him and ask, ‘What’s the book about?’
He looks up at me. ‘The same thing it was about the last time you asked.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘Criminals and criminology,’ he says, rubbing his knee.
‘What kind of criminals?’
‘Lombroso’s born criminals. Criminals who can’t seem to help but break the law.’
His dressing gown is too short and his knees and his hairy white calves poke out from under the table.
‘Like robbers and murderers?’ I ask.
‘Your mam’s waiting. I’ll see you later. And I’ll have a present for you.’
‘Last time you forgot.’
A gust of wind slams the door shut and he looks up at me as though it is my fault. ‘I didn’t forget,’ he says. ‘But this present will be a very good one. You’ll see.’
He looks back at his book and I look at his wide mouth. I wonder what would happen if I walked to the end of the table and kissed him goodbye. He might like that, or he might be irritated. I can usually tell whether he’s in the mood to be kissed, but today he seems both to want and not want me near him. I watch him carefully.
He rubs his knee again, then he looks up. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Goodbye, son. Have a good day with your mam.’
I walk away.
My mother is wiping the inside of the windscreen with the sleeve of her coat. I get in. ‘What kept you?’
‘I was talking to Da.’
It’s cold today and even colder in the car. I put my fingers against the palm of my hand and wonder how my palm can be warm when my fingers are already so cold they feel bruised. I fold my arms tight around my body and make myself rigid.
I want to ask my mother whether she thinks my father will go to university and, if he does, whether we will move to Dublin. I like it here, but I like Dublin too, and it’s only two hours away. It might be easier to meet with the people from the Guinness Book of Records in Dublin.
‘Are you looking forward to going back to school next week?’
‘Not really.’
She uses the same sleeve she used to wipe the windscreen to wipe under her nose.
‘Do you want a hanky?’ I ask. ‘I’ve one in my pocket.’
I wipe her nose with my handkerchief while she drives and I wonder where the pink hanky I gave her for Christmas has gone. The end of her nose is red and there’s a thin blue vein around the edge of her nostril. I don’t remember seeing this vein before or the dark mole near her knuckle with three black hairs growing from it.
‘When did they last measure you at school?’ she asks. ‘I thought maybe we should talk to the doctor again?’
‘I’m an inch and a half shorter than you,’ I say. ‘I’m exactly five foot eight and a half.’
‘We want to keep an eye on things. That’s all. Wouldn’t you be happier talking to the doctor about these things?’
‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’m just tall. That’s all.’
‘What about other things?’
‘There are no other things! I’m just tall.’
She clears her throat and slows the car. ‘What about puberty? It might begin early for you.’
‘Well, it hasn’t. So what’s there to talk about?’
‘But look at your legs,’ she says. ‘There’s barely room for them in the car. And your hands! As big as rubber boots.’
‘I’ve been this size for weeks. They’ve been like this for at least three weeks.’
‘Well, then. You’ve had another growth spurt. Maybe we should talk to the doctor? What do you say?’
Soon after my tenth birthday my voice began to break like the voices of the boys in the sixth class. But the sixth class is only one class above me now and my voice and height don’t bother me as much as they used to. Besides, I always feel the odd one out at school. I feel more nervous and, although I don’t like it, I am used to it.
I have only one friend at school. His name is Brendan and I made friends with him on my first day at Gorey school. He asked me if I knew how to make a paper helicopter and at break-time we sat down on the floor in the classroom and tried. Most of the other boys don’t like me because I don’t say much, and don’t play sports or games with them.
My class teacher, Miss Collins, doesn’t much like me because I’m doing poorly at Irish when she knows that, if I wanted to, I could do well enough. I’m not a brilliant student; third, fourth and sometimes as low as fifth place in tests, but I’m not stupid.
I’ll admit that I’d like to be smarter than I am and that it would be good to excel in tests with less effort. But I know I’ll discover how to stand out and make an impression in the world, in ways that will matter much more than being clever.
My mother doesn’t want to let the subject rest. ‘John, please listen when I ask you a question. Are you teased about your height? Do other children tease you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘They don’t even really notice.’
They do notice. They sometimes call me Troll, after the fairytale monster who lives under the bridge in ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’. And, before Christmas, when my Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony came to stay for a few nights, and played cards with my father, Uncle Jack came into the bathroom when I was washing before going to bed.
Uncle Jack has bits of beard on his cheeks and he’s shy and often has a frog in his throat; the words get stuck and he is sometimes unable to speak at all. But he must have had a few drinks that night because he seemed happy. He gave me a quid, and asked me about school.
I talked to him for a while and he said, ‘Talking to you is like watching a ventriloquist’s dummy with the ventriloquist nowhere to be found.’
Later, when I put the quid he gave me in my piggy bank, I wished I hadn’t talked to him at all. Talking to somebody who’s drunk is like talking to an animal.
My mother wipes the windscreen while we wait at the corner for some children to cross the road. When she’s finished wiping, she turns to me. ‘If you ever want to talk to Dr Ryan or Miss Collins, let me know. Your father and I love you very much.’
‘OK,’ I say, wondering if there’s anybody crossing the road who can read lips.
‘Darling boy. Will you talk to Miss Collins if
you need to? If there’s any trouble?’
‘I already have,’ I say. ‘Everything is fine.’
I haven’t talked to Miss Collins about my height or my voice. I want to get on; that’s all I want to do.
We drive down the dip in the road and enter the small and busy town where we shop for my new trousers. When we have finished in the shop, I go to the library around the corner, while my mother goes to the chemist. I borrow a book about lie detection and the librarian helps me to order another book from the Wexford library, which is much bigger. I tell her I’ll pick it up on my way home from school next week.
3
It is Tuesday, late afternoon and I am sitting on my bed eating a banana and reading a book when her car pulls into the gravel driveway. My granny is home from Dublin.
I get up from my bed and listen at the door. She is on the front doorstep, talking to Joseph, whose caravan is parked with five others by the side of the road, two miles from here. He must have been waiting for Granny to come back. She gives him some money and he says, ‘Thank you, Mrs Egan. You’re my truest friend. Would you have an apple for Neddy?’
Neddy is Joseph’s piebald horse, who stares at me and snorts whenever I see him. My granny goes to the kitchen, gets an apple and gives it to Neddy.
‘You’re a fine horse,’ she says.
She closes the front door and I go back to my bed where I listen as she goes to her bedroom and then to the kitchen before she makes her way to me. I wish she would leave me alone. When she comes to my room, I often want to pull a blanket over my head, hoping that I might create a blackout and wake when she’s gone.
‘I’m back,’ she says as she barges into my room and looks me up and down with the big, gaping eyes of a deep-sea fish.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Did you miss me?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Did you have a good time at the races?’
‘Oh, yes. And I saw your Aunty Evelyn in Dublin, too.’
‘That’s grand.’
‘Will I tell you a story, about a mouse in Gorey? Will I begin it? That’s all that’s in it.’
I hate this riddle. ‘Go away,’ I want to say, but I can’t. This is her cottage and I prefer living here. When she sits on my bed, and grabs hold of my hand, I don’t stop her.