by M. J. Hyland
As Mr Roche lowers himself into his chair, Kate turns to Brendan and whispers something that makes him laugh. Mr Roche gets to his feet and leaves the classroom without speaking. We hear him rummaging in the cupboard in the corridor and, when he returns, he is carrying a coal bucket filled with water. He clears a space on the floor near the front of the classroom, a foot from his desk, and puts the bucket down.
‘Kate Breslin, get down there on your knees and drink like a dog.’
‘What?’
‘Get down here on your hands and knees and drink from this bucket.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I won’t.’
‘Do it now, or I will do it for you.’
‘You must be mad,’ she says. ‘I won’t do it.’
Mr Roche rushes to her desk, clutches her hair, drags her by the scalp, pushes her to the floor and holds her head over the bucket of black, sooty water.
‘Do you know what your evil does to the world? Do you understand nothing about cause and effect? Do you think evil springs from nothing?’
She is silent. He pushes her face into the water. ‘Drink,’ he says.
She drinks and, when he is satisfied, he pulls her head out of the bucket. Water trickles down her neck and blackens her shirt at the back, like blood.
I think it is over when she begins to cry, but he kneels down and holds her bottom in one hand and, with the other, presses on the back of her neck, pushing her down again, her face in the water.
Kate moans and, at last, he stops.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Now stand up at the back of the classroom.’
She moves to the back wall and he gives her his jumper so she can mop herself up. She holds the jumper to cover her face.
‘It’s the likes of you who make the men that rape,’ he says. ‘At every school in the country, the killers and madmen are made by bullies like you.’
Kate sobs.
‘Please don’t do any more,’ she says. ‘I’m really sorry. I need to go to the toilet.’
But Mr Roche hasn’t finished.
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘Please, sir, let me go home. I’m sorry.’
He folds his arms and stares at her.
We all sit and wait. It’s three o’clock and the home bell has rung. We should be leaving. But nobody stirs, and it is quiet enough to hear stomachs churning. Nobody speaks when the teachers and the other children pass by our classroom to get their coats. Mr Roche stands by the door and smiles and waves at them.
Mr Donnelly walks by at ten past three, and Mr Roche tells him we are taking a test and won’t go home until the last pupil has finished. Mr Donnelly looks in, sees that nobody is writing, opens his mouth, but doesn’t speak. He looks at his watch, then leaves.
Nobody is able to move. We are turned to face the back of the room and we watch Kate, who watches Mr Roche. Then it happens: at fifteen minutes past three, Kate wets herself.
It is as though I am the one doing the wetting. The urine that runs down her legs and forms a pool on the floor belongs to me. I can feel the urine on my own legs and the wet heat of piss in my own socks. When Mr Roche goes to her and puts his hand on her shoulder, it is I who feels the comfort of his touch.
‘Clean yourself up,’ he says. ‘The rest of you go home.’
I stand by my desk and wait until everybody has left the classroom. He comes to me and takes my hand. ‘You’d better go home now, too,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I smile weakly.
‘You’ve no reason not to hold your head up high, John Egan,’ he says. ‘Hold it high for me and show me what you look like when you are proud.’
And, even though Kate is crying and watching, I hold my chin up.
‘Not that high,’ he says. ‘Like this.’
And he puts his hands on my face and puts it where he wants it.
‘Like this. You are strong and you should look strong.’
And when he lifts my chin up he stares at me and I get a surprising and nice feeling in my stomach.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you, Mr Roche.’
‘Go now,’ he says. ‘I’ll look after Kate.’
When I get home the cottage is quiet and there are no lights on. I think, at first, that nobody is home, but when I go to the living room I find the door won’t open. Somebody has pushed a chair under the handle. My heart thumps too hard and hurts my chest. I can hear low voices behind the door. I push, but it will not open. I call out, ‘Who’s there?’
My mother answers. ‘We’re having a bit of a talk, John. We’ll be out in a minute.’
‘Can’t I come in?’ I ask.
‘Just hold your horses,’ says my father, and I turn away and go to my room.
My nose tingles the way it does when I trip over and fall, the same tingling that happens on the way down to the ground. I need to go to the toilet but when I get there no urine comes out. I go to my room, close the door and reach under my mattress to make sure The Gol of Seil is still there. It is. And I check the money I took from Granny’s purse. It is still there.
I have put a hair in the first page of The Gol of Seil so that I’ll know if anybody has moved it, and I have put the money carefully under the mattress between two pieces of cardboard with a line marked with a black biro on the bottom piece of cardboard where the first note should be. Nothing has been moved. Still, I worry.
At half six, my mother comes in.
‘I’m sorry the door was locked, John. Your granny wanted to talk about some very private things.’
‘That’s all right,’ I say.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, John.’
‘I’m grand,’ I say. ‘I’m not worried.’
‘We’re having stew for tea. Will you come and help me with the carrots?’
‘OK.’
I don’t need to know what the talk was about.
21
Kate is not at school the next day, and Mr Roche behaves as though nothing has happened. He makes us laugh with stories of Dublin, and he explains how fractions work.
I look carefully and closely at him all day. I pay attention to everything he does, the way he speaks, the words he uses, what he does with his hands and how he holds the chalk and a pen. He looks at me, too.
He doesn’t smile or wink at me, but that’s because he should be careful: nobody should know that what he did yesterday was done for me. It would be wrong to make it obvious.
I’m happy on the way home and I follow the path I have made. But, after a while, walking doesn’t seem right for the mood I’m in and I pretend I’m running the marathon for Ireland in the Olympic games.
When I get to the doll stuck up the tree, I think, for the first time, that she looks comfortable, as though the branch is an arm holding itself up for her so that she can have a better view of the world.
But my happy mood does not last.
When I arrive home, my mother and father are waiting by the car. The engine is running and there are six suitcases on the gravel driveway. One of the suitcases – the small, blue, cardboard one – is mine.
I wonder if we might be taking a surprise holiday in a caravan park, the kind of holiday my father so often promises.
My grandmother’s car is at the side of the house, instead of in the front drive, and this change in the usual order of things tells me that something has happened to her, and that something other than a surprise holiday is about to happen to me.
‘We’re going to Dublin for a few days,’ says my father.
I need him to say a bit more before I can know if he’s lying. I wasn’t paying enough attention. Maybe he has passed his exam.
‘Why?’ I ask.
He comes forward with his arms outstretched, with the intention of putting his hands on my shoulders. I move away from him and he puts his hands on his hips, as though this is where he has always meant his hands to be.
‘Why are we going so suddenly?’ I ask.
‘I’ll tell you in
the car.’
My stomach drops. What about my money and The Gol of Seil?
I stand up close to him and look him in the eyes. ‘But Da, is Crito coming? Can I go and get her? She’s probably on my bed. I’ll go and get her.’
I start walking but he grabs my arm. ‘Stop worrying about that stupid cat and get in the car,’ he says.
‘You’re hurting me. Let go.’
He lets go and I step away from him. I move back, back towards the door, towards Crito and my money.
My mother comes forward, her arms outstretched. ‘I’m sorry, darling. But we need to go before it gets dark. And you can’t stay.’
‘What about my Guinness books?’
‘We’ve packed five of them. That’s all you’ll need. Please get in the car.’
‘Which five?’
‘Get in the car,’ says my father.
We travel a few miles in silence and then my father asks my mother to light a cigarette for him. She takes a few puffs before she hands it to him. He holds the cigarette between his thumb and index finger and sucks on the filter until it is flattened and wet.
‘But are we staying with Aunty Evelyn and Uncle Gerald?’ I ask.
My mother turns in her seat to look at me and as she turns she reaches out and puts her hand on my knee. ‘Yes, for a few days.’
‘Why?’ I ask.
My father slows the car and speaks in a low voice. There is a lorry behind us and I can barely hear him. ‘I’m going to tell you why but you must promise not to hound me for more information.’
‘I promise.’
‘There’s been a bit of trouble with your grandmother and she’s asked us to leave.’
‘Just for a while,’ says my mother.
‘What kind of trouble?’ I ask.
My father swerves the car and almost takes us into a ditch. The lorry blows its horn as it passes, and the driver looks at us.
‘I’ll only say this once,’ says my father. ‘Right?’
He throws his cigarette out the window without extinguishing it.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Right then,’ he says, ‘I’ve had a bit of a falling out with my mother and until things are patched up, we’ll be living in Dublin. You won’t ask what the falling out is over, and I won’t tell you.’
‘Is it because of money?’
My father pulls over to the side of the road and begins to shout; a kind of screaming, so loud it’s hard to hear what he’s saying. He is screaming at me, I think, but he looks at my mother. And then he leans his head against the steering wheel and he cries. At least, it sounds like crying, but I can’t see his face.
‘Why can’t I just live?’ he says. ‘That’s all I want. Why can’t I be allowed to live?’
And he says this, and words like this, over and over – sometimes loud, sometimes quiet – while my mother tries to calm him by putting her hand on his arm.
‘Will I drive?’ she asks.
‘No,’ he says, his voice hoarse and tired. ‘I’ll drive.’
And we drive without another word.
We drive slowly through rain on dark country roads. When we stop in towns at traffic lights I look into the other cars and notice that, even when the person I am staring at can’t see me, they often sense that I am staring and they look around. Each time somebody looks at me, I turn away, embarrassed. I would like to be able to keep on looking and to smile at these people, but this is difficult to do. I wonder what it is that makes the other person know they are being watched. Perhaps it has something to do with my gift.
After an hour of driving I start to feel cold in the back of the car. ‘I’m cold,’ I say.
‘OK,’ says my mother. ‘We’ll stop and get the picnic blanket out of the trunk.’
‘Not yet,’ says my father.
It is pitch dark when we stop for our tea in a hotel just beyond the Wicklow mountains. My father chooses a table near the back corner. I can’t look at him. I concentrate on looking around.
The hotel smells of beer and chips. The tables are covered in white cloths, and the heavy cutlery is neatly lined up. The glasses are turned over and the salt-and-pepper shakers are full. The lamps make it feel as though it is late at night. There is a packet of Tayto crisps in the middle of the floor, but nobody picks it up. Eventually, an old man kicks the packet, and the crisps fall out and become sharp crumbs on the carpet.
There’s a noisy little girl playing with the front door. She runs in and out, and when she leaves the door open the people at the end of the bar complain about the draught. Each time the door is left open, the little girl’s brother gets up and closes it. Nobody asks him to; he just does it, and he leaves his meal to go cold on the table.
I pay attention to all the details: what the little girl is wearing, and the colour of her hair; what the people say when they shout out for her to close the door and what the people do with their hands when they are shouting at her. I decide that for the rest of our journey I will test myself to see how much of the hotel I can remember.
After we’ve eaten, my father talks to the barman about Dublin, and my mother points to a map on the wall to show me where we have travelled from.
‘I know where we’ve come from,’ I say, ‘and I know where Dublin is.’
‘Of course you do,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d remember. It’s a long time since you’ve been.’
My mother gets the rug out of the trunk and, before we drive away, I try my best to curl up in the back seat, but I don’t fit, and my knees hit my father’s seat. I sit up instead with my back against the passenger door.
My mother puts the rug over me and tucks it in around my arms. My father looks at me in the rear-mirror, bites his lip, and starts the engine.
‘We need to go,’ he says.
My mother gets in the passenger seat and does not speak to him again.
I can’t sleep. I wonder what will happen to me now, where I will go to school and whether I’ll ever see Mr Roche or Brendan or Crito again. I wonder whether the stolen money will be found. ‘Then what?’ I ask my mother. ‘Will Granny come and visit us?’
‘No questions, John. Not yet.’
‘But what will happen? What about school?’
‘We’ll see,’ she says.
I stop asking questions and fall asleep in the back seat of the car. I don’t wake again until we arrive in Dublin and reach the gates of Phoenix Park.
My father says, ‘There’s a lion in the zoo in that park.’
‘And tigers and an elephant,’ says my mother.
I’d like to go to the zoo. I want to see a tiger. I read once about a Siberian tiger that escaped from his cage and ran amok in a city until he was shot in the hind leg with a tranquilliser. I want to look at the cages in the Dublin zoo and see what would be involved in getting out. I think Houdini once escaped from a monkey cage in a zoo. I hope they have packed the edition that has that story in it.
Aunty Evelyn greets us at the door of her three-storey terrace house, which is above the basement bookshop that she manages. She is wearing a big black coat over her nightdress and Uncle Gerald stands behind her and says nothing. He rarely speaks and it is easy to forget he is there. He once came to visit us in Gorey with Aunty Evelyn and the next day I asked my mother, ‘Why doesn’t Uncle Gerald ever come to visit?’
My mother laughed. ‘He was here yesterday,’ she said. ‘You told him that awful knock-knock joke. Knock Knock. Who’s there? I diddup? I diddup who?’
I laughed. ‘Oh, yeah. And he said, “You’re a dirty boy.”’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘But I’m not, am I?’
‘Clean as a whistle,’ she said.
In the long, narrow street where Aunty Evelyn lives there are no lights on in any of the houses and three men coming out of the hotel two doors down from the bookshop are singing.
I remember the street and Aunty Evelyn’s house from the time we came to stay when I was seven. But I don’t remember he
r house being painted dark red, like dried blood.
Aunty Evelyn takes hold of my hand. ‘Cheer up. You look like somebody just stole your brand new bicycle,’ she says.
‘Maybe they did,’ I say.
She pulls my hand. ‘Come and I’ll show you to your bed.’
On the way up the stairs she suddenly stops and looks over her shoulder at me. ‘You’ll share with your cousin Liam,’ she says. ‘He’s not in much of a talking mood at the moment, but he won’t bite.’
Liam is fifteen and, even though he’s my first cousin, I don’t know him very well.
‘I don’t care.’
We get to the third floor, the top floor, and turn left into a small, dark bedroom. Liam is lying on his back on his bed, with his hand down his loose tracksuit pants. His room smells like sour milk and his hair is dull yellow, like wet hay.
‘Howya,’ he says, without moving.
He doesn’t remove his hand from his pants and it rests there, doing nothing; keeping warm perhaps. The heating is off, and the house is icy cold.
‘Right, so,’ says Aunty Evelyn. ‘I’ll leave you two alone now. But don’t make too much noise. You’ll wake the twins.’
I put my case down next to Liam’s bed and since he doesn’t look at me, and doesn’t seem to want me in his room, I go back down the stairs to the bathroom on the first floor. There are spots of urine on the toilet seat and on the floor, and the bathroom smells like Crito’s box when her blanket hasn’t been changed for a long time. I stand over the toilet and stare into the water. There’s one pence in the bottom and a bronze stain around it. I take two pence from my pocket and, as I throw it in, I say, ‘Get me home to Gorey. Get me back there within one week. Please.’
I find my mother. She is in the only bedroom on the first floor, the same floor as the bathroom, living room and kitchen.
She is unpacking her case on the floor next to a single bed, which is covered in a yellow eiderdown. The only other thing in the small room is a small desk and a typewriter.
‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Where will Da sleep?’
She looks up at me and smiles. ‘I’m busy this minute, John. Go back up and unpack your case.’
I go to Liam’s room and unpack. He doesn’t talk to me. He sits up in bed eating a packet of crisps. I have the five most recent editions of the Guinness Book and most of my clothes. When I’ve put my books and my clothes on top of Liam’s chest of drawers, I sit on the bed next to him and still he doesn’t speak.