by M. J. Hyland
‘What’s being ruined?’ I say. ‘What’s he ruining?’
She looks through the window of the bookie’s shop and then rubs the back of her soft fingers against my cheek. She opens her mouth, then closes it.
‘What?’ I ask. ‘What were you going to say?’
‘Never mind.’
‘What?’
She takes a deep breath. ‘He …’
‘He what?’
‘He hit your granny,’ she says.
She looks down then, down at sheets of newspaper flying around by the lamp-post near my feet.
‘And now we’re out on the dirty old street.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘You are not out on the street,’ says Aunty Evelyn.
‘Why did he hit Granny? When?’
My mother puts her hand on my shoulder and Aunty Evelyn takes hold of my hand and pulls at me, the way she did when we arrived in the night. This is weird, the two of them touching me, one holding me down, the other pulling at me. A bolt of shame travels up my spine, all the way to my face.
‘Come on,’ says my mother. ‘It’s time to be getting home.’
‘I’m going to find out for myself,’ I say. ‘I’m going in there and I’m not coming home.’
I go inside. The Turf Accountant’s is full of smoke and noisy with the sound of the horse races on the radio. I stand by the doorway for a few minutes and scratch at the scab on my head until I draw blood and then I go up to him.
My father has already untucked his white shirt and is in a queue for the cashier’s desk. He stands near the back of the crooked row of men, all of them holding tickets and, like him, looking at the man at the head of the queue to see how long he might be.
I stand by my father’s side. ‘Da?’ I say.
He doesn’t seem surprised to hear my voice. He looks straight ahead at the counter, at the bars in front of the cashier’s window and at the grille under the sheet of glass where the money is put before it is taken by the cashier. ‘What?’ he says.
‘Is it true you hit Granny?’
Still he doesn’t look at me.
‘Well, did you?’
He clears his throat. ‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Now go home. Get out of this filthy place.’
‘We have no home,’ I say.
The hand that hangs down by his side curls into a fist, and the red worms he has for fingers hide under his hairy knuckles.
‘Go home,’ he says.
‘Why did you hit her?’
He looks at me. ‘Because she wanted to be hit,’ he says. He turns away again, to face the cashier. ‘I hit her because she nagged me. She knew I was about to hit her and still she nagged me. And then she told me to get out of her house. And I hit her and she knew I would.’
‘Did you fail the test at Trinity?’
The Adam’s apple in his neck bulges and he stares ahead.
‘Did you?’
He turns to me and there are tears in his eyes. ‘Do you know? You even look a bit like her.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like your granny. You’re like a pair of gargoyles keeping watch over other people’s lives.’
I feel sorry for him and guilty and sorry for myself. I keep looking at him. If he cries, I’ll say I’m sorry. Then, maybe, when he’s finished in here we could go to the greasy spoon near Aunty Evelyn’s for a piece of cake. But he just coughs, puts his hand in his pocket and turns back to the cashier’s window.
‘Go home,’ he says.
I walk out.
On the way back to Aunty Evelyn’s I buy a Mars bar with the money he gave me yesterday to replace the one on the living room floor that Liam or one of the twins took.
When I get back everybody is sitting at the kitchen table. Uncle Gerald is at the end nearest the toilet, with the twins sitting close to him. He is playing with them. He whispers and smiles as he makes his hands into the church and the steeple. ‘Here is the church, and here is the steeple,’ he says. ‘Open the doors, and here are the people.’
The twins laugh when Uncle Gerald’s fingers poke up and wiggle like naked people and it makes me feel sick. He does it again and when he says, ‘Open the doors’, the twins open their mouths wide and show bits of mashed food and stretch the saliva between their teeth.
Liam is nearest the living room door, where he always sits. My mother and Aunty Evelyn are together, holding hands, in the middle. My mother has been crying.
They all talk about nothing. About weddings and the bridesmaid who was eating a chewy sweet and had a choking fit during the ceremony and spat the sweet onto the bride’s dress.
There is chicken pie in the cooker for tea and, even though everybody is hungry, my mother says we should wait for my father to come home.
When it is seven o’clock and he still hasn’t come, we eat, except Uncle Gerald; he doesn’t eat because he doesn’t like to eat in front of people, not even in front of his own family.
I look at the placemat on which there is a picture of a foxhunt – men in caps on horses, dogs, and dead foxes hanging from a fence. My mother sees me looking at the foxes. She makes her hands into paws and puts a frightened look on her face.
I smile and she smiles back. I wonder if this means she is feeling better and, if she is, whether I soon will be. Liam lifts his plate, holds it close to his face, then, when he thinks nobody is looking, sucks off bits of pie.
‘Liam,’ says Aunty Evelyn, ‘Go to your room and let us alone so we can talk.’
Liam leaves without argument and the twins follow him like puppies.
‘Well,’ says my mother. ‘I shouldn’t have told you what your father did, but now that it’s out I might as well set things straight.’
She stirs her tea while she speaks and I don’t hear the spoon hitting the side of the cup. She tells me that my father hit my granny during a row and she fell against the dresser. It was an accident and she was taken to hospital to have stitches. When I ask why Da doesn’t apologise so we can go back, she says, ‘He’s already made his apology, but it hasn’t been accepted yet.’
She tells me we won’t be here long; that we might live in a hotel for a while until we find our own flat.
‘What kind of hotel?’ I ask.
‘A cheap one,’ says Uncle Gerald from his place at the end of the table near the toilet door.
‘There’s a nice hotel near the gates of Phoenix Park,’ says my mother. ‘Right near the zoo and the elephant. We can take him peanuts.’
‘Is Da going to go to prison?’
‘Your granny isn’t pressing charges,’ says Aunty Evelyn. ‘She knows it was an accident.’
The telephone rings and my mother rushes to answer it. ‘They hung up,’ she says.
The telephone rings again. She answers it.
‘They hung up again,’ she says.
The telephone rings one more time.
I answer it. ‘Hello,’ I say.
‘It’s your da. Is your mammy there? Is she all right?’
‘Yes. Mam’s grand. We just had chicken pie and now we’re having some tea and cake.’
‘I’ll be home soon. Can you please tell her that?’
‘OK. Bye-bye.’
I stand by the phone, expecting it to ring again.
‘It was Da,’ I say.
‘Why were you yelling down the phone?’ asks my mother.
‘Because he was breathing so hard. It was like talking to a tractor or something.’
‘He’s probably just hoarse and choked up from all the cigarette smoke in that filthy place,’ says Aunty Evelyn.
I take my piece of cake into the living room.
My father goes missing for two days, and I spend two days believing that he’s in Mountjoy gaol. I have nightmares about him being in a cell with a toilet in the corner and a man with tattoos and a shaved head in the bunk above him.
He returns home on Thursday morning while I’m down in the bookshop with Aunty Evelyn. He is wearing a new brown coat with fu
rry black cuffs and collar and he has the beginning of a moustache. ‘Good news,’ he says, as he reaches out for me with his cold red hands, ‘we’ve got ourselves a new home.’
‘Where?’ I ask.
‘Ballymun. Emergency housing high up on the twelfth floor of a fifteen-storey tower,’ he says.
‘The twelfth floor!’ I say. ‘We’ll be living in a skyscraper?’
‘Yes. And a swimming pool is being built and should be ready in a few weeks. And from your bedroom window you can watch the jumbo jets flying overhead on their way to America.’
‘When are we going?’
‘We move in first thing tomorrow morning.’
Aunty Evelyn turns the sign on the door that says Back in 5 Minutes.
‘We’d better get moving,’ she says. ‘Let’s go up and find Helen.’
We go upstairs and find my mother sitting in a straight chair under the window in the living room. The television isn’t on and she isn’t doing anything with her hands.
‘You’ve got a flat, Helen! A brand new Corporation flat and you can move in tomorrow,’ says Aunty Evelyn. ‘And you can take the furniture from the junk room upstairs and the beds in the spare room.’
My father stands by the fire and plays with a box of matches. My mother nods but says nothing.
‘Some of the neighbours are sure to donate a few odds and ends. But we don’t have much time. I’ll start the door-knocking right now.’
My mother frowns.
Aunty Evelyn gets up from the settee and goes to her. She holds her hand out to my mother, as though reaching out to help a cripple to stand. But my mother doesn’t take her sister’s hand. She thanks her and leaves the room.
‘Don’t go chasing her,’ says my father.
I stay and turn on the television.
24
At eight o’clock in the morning, I stand with the blue suitcase at my feet and watch my father and my uncles load a dirty truck with furniture. My mother helps by giving directions and by putting small things on the trolley. I offer to help but she tells me to sit and wait by my suitcase in case errands need to be run. ‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘Like fetching somebody a cup of tea or a glass of water when they need it.’
I sit on the kerb with a packet of plasters. I put one on below my knee, leave it for a few minutes, and then peel it off again. The pain is good when the plaster is ripped away and I like the way it pulls at the hairs and leaves a clear, soft patch of skin.
Uncle Gerald sees what I am doing. He wags his finger at me, making a cross face. I smile and wag my finger back and, as usual, he doesn’t know what to do. He stands back and looks at me, his hands by his side, and then he turns and goes back to the truck and moves a chest of drawers a few inches for no good reason. Sometimes it is as though Uncle Gerald doesn’t take life very seriously; he tries things out, sees that nobody has noticed him, changes course, does something else, and seems not to care about the difference.
A group of neighbours has gathered. There are five women and two men. They stand on the footpath in front of number 17, in a mob. The way they stand close together makes it seem that they are all from the same family. They stare as though they have only one mind between them; when one stares at me, they all stare at me, and when one stares at my mother, they all stare at my mother. When one watches my Uncle Jack light up a cigarette, they all watch.
One of the women holds a wooden spoon with cold porridge glued to its end, and another holds a dishrag. They say they have come to wish us bon voyage, but it is plain that they have come to see what a ruined family looks like.
My mother looks across at them and waves, and suddenly they move in towards the door of the truck and surround her. She steps back to stop them getting in the way.
‘I hear there is central heating in every flat,’ says a thin woman with red hair.
‘And there’ll be a swimming pool in a wee while,’ says the one with the wooden spoon.
Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony are in the back of the truck with the furniture and I am happy to sit in the cab between my father and mother. I like being up high and my father’s arms look strong when he turns the steering wheel to get us around tight corners.
We drive in heavy traffic, and there’s a good view of all of the shops in North Circular Road. I look down at the children on their way to school and feel free. I hold my mother’s hand.
But, as we get closer to Ballymun, my mood changes. The streets here are narrow and the gutters are full of rubbish. The houses are small and grey and nobody has painted the doors or windowsills. And as we pull into the car park at the base of one of the Ballymun high-rise towers, it is clear that nothing good can happen here.
My father jumps out of the cab and I climb down after him. I feel heavy and tired. I look around at the seven towers and the dozens of smaller blocks of flats that surround us, the busy road at the edge of the car park, the big school across the busy road, and the roundabout.
My mother stays in her seat, her hands on her lap. My father lets Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony out of the back of the truck and then puts his hand on my shoulder.
‘Each tower is named after the men who signed the proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916,’ he says.
‘Which one is ours?’ I ask.
‘Plunkett,’ he says. ‘That one there. The one in the middle.’
It’s not possible to see all seven towers in one glance. There are too many and they make it dark as night. To see them all, it is necessary to turn in a full circle. How can they be new when they are so soiled and dirty? They are like rotted teeth, decayed and brown and stained with tar, teeth pulled from an awful and dirty giant.
‘How will we get everything up the stairs?’ I ask my father.
‘There are lifts, stupid.’
We go up to our new home. Unlike the dirty lifts and the dirty stairwell and the dirty corridors, the walls of our flat are white and clean and once inside there is no smell of urine or wet cigarette butts.
But it’s a small flat with everything in it small: a tiny kitchen and a tiny living room with just enough room for a settee, the television and a few chairs. And the toilet is the smallest I’ve ever seen, with a bath only fit for a midget. And there are two small bedrooms, both with windows that can’t be opened and which look down twelve floors to the car park and tarmac below.
Like everybody else who lives in the towers, we must send our rubbish down a chute, and the chute is at the top of the stairs, near my bedroom window.
‘I don’t want to sleep near the rubbish chute,’ I say.
‘Well, there’s nowhere else,’ says my father.
We go to the biggest bedroom. It has a built-in wardrobe covered in dark, tinted mirrors.
‘If I’m going to sleep in here,’ says my mother, ‘I’m going to cover those.’
‘First we need to finish moving,’ says my father and so we go back downstairs in the lift.
Although we have more to move, my father insists that Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony should leave us. But Uncle Jack comes back soon after with five bags of hot chips and we all sit on the small patch of grass near the truck and eat together.
‘All right, so. You’ll leave us now,’ says my father. ‘We can manage the rest on our own.’
They leave after my father gives Uncle Tony a few quid for a taxi.
The central heating is turned up high in the flat. We are too hot inside, and then feel the cold like a shower of icy water when we go outside. After each trip my father puts his head under the cold-water tap. We stand in the empty kitchen and watch him drench himself as we fan ourselves with pieces of cardboard torn from boxes.
‘Right, so. We’ll talk to the Corporation about getting that heat turned down,’ he says. ‘We can’t live in the tropics.’
My mother looks out the window to the dark block of flats behind us and sighs.
‘I’ve already spoken to our new neighbour, Mrs McGahern, and she says the thermostat is set by the Corpora
tion and can’t be changed by the tenants.’
My father shakes his head.
‘We’ll get used to it,’ she says. ‘We’ll just have to wear our summer togs.’
My father’s rage is too ready. ‘That’s a fine attitude so early in the piece. Since when do you give in just like that? On the word of a nosy old woman?’
‘I didn’t say anything about an old woman or about anybody being nosy.’
‘I’ve seen her standing out there peering inside every box we carry up. And you! The word of a stranger and you cave in?’
‘Michael, I don’t think …’
‘I’m going to see some neighbours of my own and find out if there isn’t a better explanation.’
‘Waste your time getting a second opinion,’ says my mother. ‘I know what the answer will be.’
He storms out and slams the door behind him.
It is strange to be standing with my mother in an empty kitchen behind a door slammed shut with such echoing noise, standing with nothing to do, and so strange to have no choice but to leave by the same door without speaking.
Although it is dark when we finish unpacking and putting furniture where we want it, my father says we must take a walk around before we eat and go to our beds.
‘We’ll explore for a while and then we can have tea in a public bar. How’s that?’ We take the lift and I hold my nose all the way down and so does my mother. My father presses the button to take us to the basement.
‘Let’s have a look,’ he says.
‘What’s there?’ I ask.
‘It’s the activity centre. There’s one in every tower, I think.’
But when we get there, the centre is closed. There’s a sign on the door with the opening hours: it should be open on a Saturday night. There is also a sign listing free activities. There will be guitar lessons tomorrow for boys aged between ten and sixteen.
‘There you are,’ says my father. ‘Music lessons.’
‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘But I’m starving.’
‘Let’s look around a while longer. Then we can eat.’
As we come out of the lift, I look up at the tops of the towers, which poke out of the concrete ground and reach high, higher than any other building in all of Dublin, straight into the sky as though desperate to drink from the white clouds, or to get washed by the rain.