by M. J. Hyland
My mother says nothing and, instead of speaking, she yawns again.
‘John, stop scratching your head,’ says my father.
The shouting from next door starts; a woman screams, and Aunty Evelyn looks at my mother.
‘When you’re used to that kind of noise, I think it’ll be nice,’ she says. ‘Maybe it’s a bit too warm with the heat coming up through the floor, but, overall, it’s really very cosy. I think you’ve made it very nice.’
I can see by my mother’s frown that she knows, as I do, that Aunty Evelyn is lying.
For the first time I wonder if I have inherited my gift from my mother, who sees what I see: Aunty Evelyn shrugs in the middle of the words, ‘It’s really very cosy’, and her body language doesn’t match what she is saying.
I have begun to sharpen my skills, master them. When I detect lies I get hot, around my ears and throat mostly, but I don’t feel sick. Eventually I will become a wizard. I have memorised more passages from books. Here is one of my favourites:
‘Most people will never recognise the signs and expressions of the liar. These facial expressions and gestures are involuntary and appear and disappear so rapidly that unless you have a very good eye – an instinct, a gift – you will never see them and you will never be able to detect lies.’
Aunty Evelyn goes on talking and seems too interested in my father’s job at the factory, where all he does is wear overalls and solder bits of metal together.
‘Just as well it’s only a temporary thing,’ says Aunty Evelyn, ‘something to tide you over.’
My father stands. ‘Nobody is going to die of a bit of manual labour,’ he says. ‘You make it sound like working in a factory was the curse of a stinking fistula.’
‘What in heaven’s name is a fistula?’ asks Aunty Evelyn.
Everybody looks at my father, but nobody speaks. I rush out and get the dictionary from the coffee table and take it back to the kitchen. ‘Wait, I’ll tell you.’
I read the meaning once, close the dictionary to my chest, and repeat it from memory. ‘A fistula is a hole in your rectum that bleeds foul-smelling pus and faeces all day long,’ I say.
My father laughs and keeps on laughing. ‘Oh, at times like this I’m so glad of you,’ he says.
Aunty Evelyn turns red. Her ears and neck are as red as cough medicine. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I said the wrong thing when I was only trying to show an interest and now I’ve been ganged-up on.’
‘I know it,’ says my mother. ‘Not to worry.’
Aunty Evelyn takes a deep breath; she will try one more time to have the fight she came for.
‘Well, Helen, it’s a blessing in disguise that you couldn’t have more. I mean, a blessing that you could only have the one, isn’t it?’
My mother frowns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Better that you only have John, no other kiddies to worry about. I mean, in this place, and all.’
My mother gets up from the table and goes to the sink where, with her back to Aunty Evelyn, she rubs a wet cloth over the draining board. I silently count with her. She rubs the cloth back and forth exactly ten times.
My father leaves the room without excusing himself. Once again, nobody speaks. Aunty Evelyn fiddles with her teaspoon and turns her empty plate round and round. According to the clock next to the window, there is silence for only three minutes but it is as though nobody on earth will ever speak again, and my throat feels full of dry dirt.
‘Well,’ says my mother, turning to face her sister, ‘it’s time to get the tea on.’
Aunty Evelyn looks at her watch. ‘Goodness! What happened to the time?’
‘The same thing that always happens to it,’ says my mother.
‘We will see you on Sunday, then?’ asks Aunty Evelyn as my mother shows her to the kitchen door.
‘Yes. Sunday, then.’
The front door slams and I am alone with my mother. ‘Why did she say that?’ I ask. ‘Why did she say, “It’s just as well you could only have the one child”? I thought you only wanted one.’
‘She had no right to say that. She was angry with your father and she couldn’t think straight.’
‘But still she meant something terrible by saying it.’
‘I don’t care if she did.’ She holds out her arms and I walk to her body and we hug. ‘Good. Now, go and wash your hands for tea.’
There is a picture on the news of starving African children.
‘Awful,’ says my mother, ‘when those poor babies die they’ll just be carted away in wheelbarrows.’
‘Do you want me to turn the telly off?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Leave it.’
When the news is over we sit down to our tea at the kitchen table, and after a few minutes’ silence my father says, ‘Listen up. There go the three blind mice.’
From upstairs comes the sound of the sewing machine and, a moment later, somebody walking across the floor in heels.
‘Walking sticks,’ says my father. ‘Listen.’ He starts to whistle the tune, ‘Three blind mice, Three blind mice, See how they run …’
‘There they go again,’ he says.
‘Meeces to pieces,’ says my mother, her eyes watery.
‘What are you talking about?’ I say.
‘Ask no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’ says my father.
‘But you do lie,’ I say.
He ignores me, I can’t believe it, and my mother pushes a chip into the yolk of her fried egg. I hate him for ignoring me and the blood filling my neck throbs and makes it hard to swallow.
Something is wrong, and I want to know what it is. I get up from the table and leave my food. They don’t scold me and I’m not surprised. I go to my room and write another letter to the Guinness Book of Records. But when I’m finished, I worry that they might hold the Ballymun address against me and I add a final note:
P.S. I am giving you our temporary Dublin address in Ballymun where we are living for a few months while my father builds our new house in Donnybrook.
It’s Sunday and we’ve been to mass with Aunty Evelyn, Uncle Gerald, the twins and Liam. We’ve eaten our dinner, and now my mother and I are alone in the kitchen listening to the radio.
‘Mam, I was wondering if I could have a radio in my room?’
‘What for?’
‘To drown out the sound of the rubbish chute. I hate the noise and the smell.’
‘You’re like the rich people who always insist on living upwind of the mill smoke,’ she says.
My father comes into the kitchen from behind me. He must have been lying on the settee. He didn’t come to mass. ‘We can’t afford another radio,’ he says.
‘But I hate the noise and the smell and I don’t want to sleep in there any more.’
He looks at my mother.
‘All right,’ he says, ‘You can sleep with your mammy, if you want.’
‘But where will you sleep?’
‘I’ll sleep on the settee. I’m getting quite attached to it.’
‘Good idea,’ I say.
‘There’ll be nobody sleeping on the settee,’ says my mother.
‘All right then,’ says my father as he scratches his beard, which has grown back even blacker and thicker than before. ‘Until we find ourselves a house, you’ll sleep with your mother, and I’ll sleep in the bedroom with the smell of rubbish.’
He winks cheerfully at me, but my mother isn’t sure. ‘Why don’t we talk about this a bit more?’ she says. ‘Maybe later.’
‘It’s not so complicated,’ says my father. ‘I’ll sleep in the small room and you two can share the big bed.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if somebody slept on the settee?’ she says.
‘I’m not sleeping on the settee,’ I say.
‘Nor am I,’ says my father.
My mother gives my father a mean and cold look. ‘For heavens’ sake, Michael! You’re only after saying you’ve become quite attached to the settee.’
&n
bsp; ‘I wasn’t serious,’ he says.
‘Well,’ she says as she walks away, ‘that’s that then.’
Last night my father slept on the settee after all, and now the three of us stand before breakfast in the living room in our pyjamas looking down at the mess of blankets and pillows, tissues and toffee wrappers he has left on the floor.
My mother reminds him that he must tidy up and put his bedding away. He says, ‘What the hell difference does it make to this death-hole whether or not it’s tidy?’
My mother shakes her head and tries to smile. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she says. ‘It has its good side.’
‘Where’s that?’ I ask. ‘Has this tower got a fifth side I don’t know about?’
My father punches me on the arm as though to say, ‘Good for you’, and my mother sighs.
Last night I slept soundly in the bed with her. It was warmer and, since she stayed over on her side and hardly moved at all during the night, my dreams were long and clear. And I liked sleeping with her because we talked before she turned out the light and when she’s sleepy her voice is soft and gentle.
When my father gets home from work I ask him what it’s like in the factory.
He shrugs. ‘It keeps me out of trouble,’ he says, which is not at all like the kind of thing he used to say.
‘I suppose you can read on the bus though,’ I say. ‘You can study for your exams at Trinity.’
‘And that’s exactly what I do,’ he says.
But this is a lie. I checked in his bag while he was in the bathroom; there were no books. Maybe he reads at night when my mother and I have gone to bed, but I don’t think so. I think he watches television.
I make myself stay awake and when it is midnight I leave the bedroom and go in search of my father. He’s not in the bedroom. He’s in the living room sitting up on the settee watching the television.
‘You’re up late,’ he says.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Did you have a nighthorse?’
I laugh. ‘No, just wide awake.’
‘Sit with me and watch this.’
‘But there’s nothing on.’
The television finishes at midnight with the Angelus bells.
‘I know. But staring at the blank screen helps me to think. Besides, Crito likes looking at her reflection in the black glass.’
I jump up from the settee. I can’t believe it. ‘Crito? Is Crito here? Did somebody bring her?’
‘No, sit down. Crito’s not here.’
‘Then why did you talk about her as though she was here?’
‘I imagine she is,’ he says. ‘Here. Watch.’
My father begins to stroke the air between us, soft, curved, cat-size strokes, as though Crito were sitting here. Then he taps his leg as though to invite her onto his lap. He says ‘Ooph’ when she jumps on and then he continues to stroke her back, this time, longer, flatter strokes.
‘You see, it’s as though she was here.’
I swallow twice, until my throat is dry again and look at the curtains.
‘That’s really mad, Da. I didn’t know you were such a lunatic.’
‘You should go back to bed. You don’t want to fall asleep at school.’
I stand up. ‘I haven’t even started school yet. Mammy’s trying to get me out of having to go to the Ballymun school.’
My mother wants to find me a place in a good convent school, like the one near Aunty Evelyn’s bookshop, which is surrounded by a high brick wall, and has a grotto and a statue of the Virgin Mary and a holy water font in the front garden.
‘Yes, of course. Still, you need your sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘G’night, Da.’
‘G’night, John.’
He kisses me on the hand for a joke and I laugh.
* * *
We have been in Ballymun for nearly two weeks, and I want to go to school. I want to make new friends and I’m tired of wandering around the flats. I’ve read all my books and I’ve nothing to put in my new Gol of Seil and I’ve even made a new puppet stage out of an apple box for my mother. There’s nothing else to do, so I walk up to the top of all seven towers and when I’m tired of walking up and down the stairs, I watch Ballymun life from the window, or lie on my mother’s bed and read. The bedroom we share is better now that she has used leftover wallpaper to cover the tinted brown mirrors.
In three days I see four ambulances and eight Garda cars. Sometimes the injured person is in the back of the ambulance with the person who has hurt them. Sometimes women hurt men, sometimes women hurt each other, and sometimes drunk men hurt women after long bouts of screaming, but the women scream more than the men.
I see an unconscious woman on a stretcher being put inside an ambulance. The way the doors open, and the ambulance officer in a white coat adjusts the stretcher to make it straight before he slides it in, looks just like a chef putting food on a tray into a cooker.
I see washing falling off the clotheslines people rig to their ground-floor balconies and, when the washing doesn’t fall, or get blown off by the wind, children steal it. The ground-floor flats are the ones nobody wants and nearly half are empty and boarded up.
26
A letter arrived yesterday announcing that I must go to Ballymun National School across the road. It will take me less than two minutes to walk there and I will probably be able to see Plunkett tower from the window of my classroom. I start tomorrow, and so this is my last free day. I get up late and go to the kitchen for breakfast. My mother is still sleeping but somebody has left two new exercise books on the table. I get a knife out of the drawer and cut squares out of the flock wallpaper in the gap between the cupboard and fridge and I use the wallpaper to cover the books. Then I see a note that has fallen from the table. It’s from my father and has five pounds Sellotaped to the back.
Dear son,
Have a great first day tomorrow. And here’s some money to buy yourself a present. I hope this will make things up to you a bit.
Love, Da.
I walk across the road and down two blocks to the toy shop in the big shopping centre. I’ve never been in a toy shop so big, so bright. I look around for an hour before settling on a remote-control racing car called Johnny Speed, The Most Fantastic Racing Car Ever Made, by Topper Toys. I turn the box over and read every inch of it and I gaze for ages at the big colour photo on the cover.
The car is a bright red convertible Jaguar XKE and there’s a little cream-coloured plastic driver in the front seat and the car goes forward and reverse and the wheels can be steered so it also turns around. Nobody else will have one, and I can drive it around behind the flats and, if people stop to ask me about it, I can give them lessons. If I had the money I took from Granny I could also buy some of the accessories. I could buy a racing track, the pit-stop men in overall and caps, the grandstand for the spectators and the man who holds the black and white finish flag.
I get enough change to buy batteries, a Mars bar and a bottle of Fanta and I sit for a while on a big bench in the warm shopping centre and read the instructions. When I’m sure I understand how the car works, I take it and the control box out of the foam compartments and do my first test-run on the shiny, flat floor of the shopping centre.
The car works and it’s fast! Two ladies come and stand by me and watch. There’s a cord connecting the control box to the Jaguar but it’s thirty feet long, so the car can go quite far.
‘Isn’t it magic?’ says one of the ladies.
‘It’s grand,’ I say. ‘I just got it for my birthday.’
‘Happy birthday.’
‘What a lovely present.’
‘Thanks, I love it,’ I say.
‘Ta-ta, now,’ says one lady.
‘We’ve got more shopping to do,’ says the other, and off they go.
I wish other people would watch. I make the Jaguar go around the bench. The cord gets caught, but I unravel it and try again. The second time, I get it just right.
&nbs
p; I walk back to the flats.
The boys in the gang are huddled in a pack near the lift. I decide to take the stairs. If any of them speak to me, I’ll pause before I answer, and take deep breaths so that I don’t sound nervous.
As I reach the landing of the first floor one of the gang members comes running up behind me. I keep walking along the balcony, but he catches up.
‘Get out of the feckin’ way!’ he says.
I’m not in his way so I stay to the left of the stairs and keep walking.
‘I said get out of the feckin’ way!’ he shouts.
I keep walking up to the second floor and then turn right, pretending that I live on this floor. The rest of the gang has come up behind me.
I stop and turn around. I will put on a Dublin accent. ‘Howya? I’ve just moved here from Gorey.’
‘I’ll show you Gorey,’ says the tallest one, and then I count them: there are only five, not the dozen or more I’ve imagined.
‘How old are ya?’ one of them asks.
‘Eleven,’ I say.
‘So, why aren’t you at school?’ asks the boy from the stairs, who has one blue eye and one hazel eye.
Now we’re all standing on the balcony outside number 29. I hope that if anything happens the people inside will hear us.
‘I didn’t feel like going,’ I say. ‘What about youse?’
They tell me they didn’t feel like going to school either. I wonder how they can get away with such a thing, but I don’t ask. They all look about thirteen or fourteen. None is as tall as I am and I’m not as scared of being beaten as I was, but I’d still prefer it if they let me alone so I could go home with my new car.
‘What’s in the big bag?’ asks the tallest boy, whose hair is blond at the top, with small greasy tails hanging out the back.
‘Shopping,’ I say.
‘Doesn’t look like shopping.’
‘Looks like a colourful box.’
I move back a little so that I’m against the balcony wall and realise I’m only making them more curious.
‘It’s a remote-controlled car,’ I say.
‘Give it here,’ says the boy with different coloured eyes.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘But let me get it started first. I’ll do a demo for you.’