by M. J. Hyland
Half an hour later my father comes in. ‘Come down to the kitchen for a chat.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I say.
‘You will,’ he says.
I follow him down the stairs to the first floor.
* * *
My mother makes a pot of tea and Aunty Evelyn wipes the placemats on the kitchen table with a smelly dishrag. The table is dirty and covered with schoolbooks, fish-and-chip wrappings, and milk bottles. I sit down and clear a space in front of me, knocking a pencil to the floor. I don’t pick it up.
‘You’re going to need to be patient,’ says my mother as she uses her hands to gather crumbs from the table.
‘Patient about what?’ I ask.
‘There’ll be lots of changes, and some of them will take time,’ she says, as she drains the last of the milk from a bottle.
‘What changes?’ I ask.
My father leans forward and reaches out for my hands. His hands are sweaty. ‘Such as where we’ll live,’ he says.
‘But can’t we go back? You said we were only staying for a while.’
‘We might be Dubliners from now on,’ says my mother.
‘Won’t that be good?’ says Aunty Evelyn.
I am angry and don’t know what to say or how to say it. What about the money and The Gol of Seil under the mattress?
‘What about Crito?’
‘OK,’ says my father. ‘That’s enough for now. Go up to bed and we’ll have porridge for breakfast tomorrow.’
‘What’s so good about porridge all of a sudden?’ I say.
My father stands up. ‘Porridge has always been good,’ he says.
Uncle Gerald is smiling at me but all I can see is Granny hitting Crito over the head with a shovel and saying, ‘You have too much dander.’
I go up to the third floor and sleep, head to toe, in the single bed, with Liam. He snores and gyrates in his sleep, as though he’s having a fit. I move to the edge of the bed but fall back to the deep sag in the middle of the old mattress and find myself up against Liam’s legs.
22
I wake early, before the streetlights have been turned off, and I think that Liam is also awake. I hear him say, ‘To the bearer,’ and ‘One million pounds.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘To the bearer. One million pounds,’ he says again, as clear as though he were awake.
He is sleeping on his back, with his mouth wide open. I want to put something in it, like the lightbulb that hangs from its broken socket above my head.
I get out of bed at half eight and go into the kitchen in my pyjamas. Nobody is there, but the lights are on. I don’t want to be alone.
I go down the stairs that lead to the bookshop in the basement. The staircase is dark. There are rats scratching behind the walls and they sound like the ones we had behind the walls in our old flat in Wexford. Sometimes, when we had been sitting in silence in the living room, one of the rats would come out onto the carpet in the middle of the room and look around, as quiet as a pillow, as though it were sightseeing. Then it would see or smell one of us and run back to the hole it had come from.
The rats always came out alone, never as a family, and there was one especially big brown rat with a long black tail. I decided he was the boss rat. After I saw him a few times I expected to see him all of the time. If I walked into the living room and saw something brown or black on the floor, out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was the rat, and I’d feel jumpy. I’d often think I’d seen that rat. My father said I had a rare case of rat psychosis. ‘You saw one rat in the middle of the floor,’ he said, ‘and now you think everything smaller than a shoe is a rat.’
A few weeks after my father said this the rats stopped scratching behind our living room wall.
I stand for a while and listen to the scratching and then kick the wall once before I open the back door that leads to the bookshop.
‘Morning,’ says Aunty Evelyn, who is standing on a short stepladder reaching up to some bookshelves.
My twin cousins, Celia and Kay, sit on the floor and look up at me. They are seven years old, but small for their age and, like their father, hardly ever speak. Instead of speaking, the twins look at people; fix their eyes and stare. No matter where you move to, their eyes are on you. But they don’t seem to see anything. They aren’t really watching, I don’t think, not properly watching. Their eyes move as though pulled by magnets, as though they have no choice.
‘Morning,’ I say as I sit down behind the counter. Aunty Evelyn climbs down from the ladder and sits next to me. She takes hold of my hands.
‘Where are they?’ I ask.
‘Who? Mammy and Daddy?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ll be back soon.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They were in the greasy spoon a few doors down a while ago, but I’m sure they’ve gone somewhere else by now.’
‘But where?’
‘Ask them yourself when they get back. And move over out of the way. You’re taking up a lot of room.’
Kay and Celia, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bare floor, look up at me.
‘How old would you say I am?’ asks Aunty Evelyn.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘About the same age as my mam.’
‘No! I’m eight years older, but I don’t look as old as I am, do I? I use this cream. See here! It works. So, how old do you think I look? Not as old as I am, right?’
‘I suppose not.’
She stands. ‘Go up now, John, and get some breakfast.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You are hungry,’ she says.
‘Aunty Evelyn?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me one more story about Niagara Falls before I go upstairs?’
‘I’m busy now,’ she says.
It is ten past nine.
She tidies books on the shelves and serves the only customer who comes in. He is old, has one false eye, white, like a marble, and uses a walking stick. He buys a crossword puzzle book for 5p. When he leaves, she sits down again.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘Let me see. OK, there was a woman in one of the museums. It was night-time and the foyer was very dark …’ She puts a pile of books down on the counter and wipes her dusty hands on her apron.
‘Why was it dark?’
‘Because this was a museum of ghouls and ghosts and old medieval torture contraptions. Anyway, this woman had long painted fingernails, very long and painted orange, and the fingernails were painted with glow-in-the-dark polish. Can you imagine?’
I want more. ‘Can you tell me something else?’
She picks the biggest book off the counter and holds it to her chest. ‘If you’re not happy with the story I’ve told, there won’t be any more. Go on, get away with you. Up the stairs please and let me get on with my work.’
I go up to the kitchen. Liam is at the table, eating cereal. In between mouthfuls, he picks his nose, and then eats what he fetches from his nostrils.
‘It’s after ten,’ I say.
‘What’s it to you, goody-two-shoes?’
‘Nothing,’ I say.
He holds the bowl of cereal up to his face and slurps the milk; the noise makes me think of my grandmother and I wonder what she’s doing, what Crito is doing, and whether Brendan is still playing with Kate. And Mr Roche. I wonder has he asked about me.
‘For your information,’ says Liam with a mouth full of mush, ‘our school has two sessions, the morning and the afternoon.’
‘Why?’
‘Cause there’s too much kids.’
He has a Dublin accent and mumbles most of the time. I fiddle with the bowl of sugar, but I can’t eat. I’d like not to fight with Liam and so I keep talking, try to be friendly.
‘What time does the afternoon session start?’
‘Twelve,’ he says.
‘What’re you going to do till then?’
‘Kick the football over the road with me friend
s,’ he says. ‘I dunno.’
I am just about to ask him if I can join in when my mother and father arrive home.
My father is wearing a suit and tie.
I stand up. ‘Hello,’ I say.
‘All right?’ asks my mother.
‘All right,’ I say.
My father looks at me and frowns. ‘Not getting out of your pyjamas today?’
‘Why should I?’
‘You’re not sick, are you?’
‘No, but …’
‘Go and get dressed, please. Then come back and help your mother.’
When I come back, my father is gone again and my mother is at the sink, peeling potatoes. Aunty Evelyn comes up the stairs with some rashers from the grocery shop next door. ‘Sit,’ she says to my mother. ‘I’ll start the dinner nice and early. It’ll be ready by twelve.’
My mother sits next to me.
‘Where’s Da gone?’ I ask.
‘To see a man about a dog,’ she says.
‘Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?’
‘When your father gets home.’
‘We have to go back to Gorey,’ I say. ‘You have to help with the summer pantomime. You haven’t finished making the puppets.’
‘We’ll see,’ she says and, because I hate the expression unless it’s used as part of our game, I hate her for using it.
We sit in silence.
Aunty Evelyn moves quickly while she cooks, and seems nervous. She’s not normally a nervous person. She knocks a cup from the dresser and then a vase from the sideboard and catches both before they hit the floor; she moves very quickly for a woman with a body like Alfred Hitchcock’s.
‘Reflexes!’ she shouts.
‘Oh dear,’ says my mother, laughing in an odd way and putting her hands over her face.
While we eat, the conversation is about weather, weddings and christenings. I don’t speak. I get bored and go into the living room and watch TV. It is raining hard outside and the room is dark. But watching the television in the middle of day isn’t as much fun as it should be. I try to force myself to enjoy it but I think of Mr Roche and how I’d like to see him and how I was looking forward to sitting his first test and passing with flying colours.
I scratch at the scab on my head and stop when it bleeds.
It is nearly four o’clock when my father comes home. He smells of aftershave.
‘Your mother and I have to go out again. We’ve a few things to do,’ he says. ‘Keep yourself busy for a few more hours.’
‘But I’m bored. Can’t I come?’
‘Not this time,’ says my mother. ‘Read a book, or watch the television.’
My father throws a Mars bar at me but I don’t have time to catch it. It lands on the carpet about a foot away from me. I stare at it and he stares at it too. I’m not going to pick it up. ‘But where are you going?’ I ask.
‘To see a man about a dog,’ says my father.
My mother winks at me.
‘A different man about a different dog,’ she says, but I don’t want to join in with her joking.
* * *
When they leave I go back down to the bookshop to be with Aunty Evelyn. I sit on a chair behind the counter with her. She seems happy to have me with her and she offers me a bag of peanuts. The peanuts make me think of the zoo. I wonder if she might take me. Liam says it’s about fifteen minutes by bus. I wonder if anybody has ever helped an animal escape.
‘Could you take me to the zoo?’ I ask.
‘Not now,’ she says, without even thinking about it. ‘Maybe you’d like to go next door for a while.’
‘Why?’
‘I need to do something in private, that’s why.’
I walk down to the greasy spoon and go inside. The walls are covered in striped paper, red and yellow, and the radio is turned up loud. It is crowded with old men and old ladies and a few young women near the front with prams. Nearly everybody is facing the front, as though they are on a train. The tables are covered in plastic yellow cloths and every table has a bottle of HP and Worcestershire sauce. The smell of chips and sausages is a good smell and I feel hungry. I want to look at the red plastic menu book on the table near the door, but then I’d have to buy something even if I changed my mind.
The woman at the till looks at me and, even though she doesn’t speak or ask me anything, I say, ‘I’m just looking for my parents.’
‘Have you lost them, love?’
‘No. Thanks anyway. I’m going now.’
I don’t understand why I feel nervous.
I go into the grocery shop next door and as I walk in the bell rings.
Maureen, the old woman who works behind the counter, remembers me from the last time I visited. She comes rushing over. ‘John!’ she cries. ‘How you’ve grown! To the size of a man. Quite amazing.’
She grabs hold of my right arm. ‘And the manly muscles on you, too!’
I pull my arm away.
‘Come sit with me and help me put the stickers on.’
I sit with her and put stickers on tiny cubes of beef and chicken stock. Maureen takes the cubes out of the bigger packets and sells them individually, even though on the box it says, ‘Not for Individual Sale’.
‘So, what brings you all the way to Dublin, John?’
‘We just came because we wanted to come.’
‘Oh yes.’ She peels a sticker from the back of her wrinkled hand and puts it on a cube of stock. ‘Were you tired of the country air?’
‘Yes. Sick of it. Sick of the cows and the mud.’
For four days, my mother and father are out during the day, and don’t come back until it’s dark. I am left alone. Liam goes to school in the afternoon and I watch television or read the Guinness Book of Records.
I read and make notes about Jean François Gravelet, alias Blondin the Great, who crossed Niagara Falls on a three-inch rope in 1855. When Liam is at school I clear a space and make a three-inch strip with packing tape stretching from one wall to the other. I walk along it with my arms held out and I try to imagine being 160 feet in the air without a safety harness.
I can’t get my feet to stay inside the three-inch boundary. I don’t see how it can be done. But when I look more closely at the photo of Blondin, I notice for the first time that his feet are not straight; to walk the tightrope he has to flatten his slippered feet and keep them side-on to the rope. The more I think about it, the more puzzled I am. I will ask Aunty Evelyn to get me a book about Blondin and the other tightrope walkers.
At night, my mother and father go downstairs to the basement to talk and to make phone calls. My mother tells me that my father is looking for work, and they are both looking for a place for us to live.
When I ask why we can’t live in the cottage with Granny, she says, ‘Maybe later. We’ll be living in Dublin for a while.’ And when I ask if I can ring Granny on the phone in the kitchen, she says, ‘Yes, but maybe later. Just leave it be for a few more days.’
It’s our seventh night in Dublin. I’m in Liam’s bedroom, trying to see if there’s a way I can play Cluedo by myself. My father comes in and sits down on the end of the sagging bed.
‘Howya?’ he says in a mock Dublin accent.
‘All right,’ I say as I put my Swiss-army knife down on the board where he can see it.
‘I was wondering if we could ring Granny? Maybe we could do it now?’
He takes a deep breath. ‘Not just now, John. But soon. I promise we’ll do it soon.’
I look at the Cluedo board and at the pictures of the rope and candlestick. I want to know if Crito is all right and I want to know whether The Gol of Seil is safe and my money, too. I want to know whether the Guinness Book has written.
‘Don’t be so sad,’ he says. ‘Why not treat this as a holiday? An adventure?’
I stare at him until he looks away. I stare at him as though his face is a playing card or a photograph, or a piece of graffiti on the wall; something not real or human.
He stands up. ‘Don’t look at me like I just kicked you in the head,’ he says. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘But when are we going home?’
‘We are home,’ he says.
‘But Mam says we have to live in a flat.’
‘Don’t sulk. There’s nothing to be sulky about. Think of all the poor children who have nothing. No flat to live in and no shoes on their feet.’
‘Like the ones in Africa?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’d rather not,’ I say and I take the weapon card with the picture of the rope on it and show it to him.
He stares at it. ‘And what does this mean?’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Do you want to play a game?’
‘Not just now. Maybe later. We can all play tonight. Your cousins too.’
I hold the picture of the rope in front of him and I notice that, although I feel nervous, my hand is steady.
23
On Monday we go to church for a christening and we sit near the front in the same pew. I sit between Aunty Evelyn and Uncle Gerald, and Liam sits nearest the wall, which he kicks with his foot. Celia and Kay stare up at the Stations of the Cross and whisper in their private language.
When the priest comes out to the altar, his vestments flowing around him, it is as though an animal has come out of its cave. I want to see where he lives, to see behind the sacristy door into his cave and find out what it is like in there.
On the way home, my father suddenly stops outside a bookie’s shop, with Turf Accountants written across the smoky glass. ‘I’m just going to pop in here for a minute,’ he says. ‘You go on ahead.’
He goes inside and we stand on the street. Uncle Gerald shuffles his feet, embarrassed, and my mother’s face and neck turn red.
‘The bookie’s the last place he should be,’ says Aunty Evelyn.
‘I’m not going to stop him,’ says my mother. ‘Let him do what he wants. Let him ruin …’ She stops what she is saying and looks instead at a passing bus.