by Anna Smith
Tony sat up straight and stretched his legs out in front of him. Then he shifted around uncomfortably before settling down with his legs crossed. We all sat waiting desperately to hear his story.
‘Well, it’s kind of a long story …’ he began. His mother had gone over to America to work as an au pair in the home of a US pilot and his wife. She worked there for months, but fell in love with the pilot, who made her pregnant. He loved her even more than his wife, who was not a good woman by all accounts, but he could not leave her because they also had kids. The pilot moved Tony’s mum out of the house so their secret could be safe and put her into a little house in the country, and that was where Tony was born. Until he was eight years old, he always just thought his dad worked away from home. He visited most weekends, but left in the middle of the night, though sometimes he would stay over. He always brought Tony presents. But his mom always cried and cried for hours when he left. Then one day, about two years ago, a letter came and his mom was in bed for days not able to speak to anyone. He used to hear her at night weeping and sobbing. He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but guessed it must be something to do with his dad. Finally she told him that he had been killed in a plane crash.
‘It was a long day when she told me that,’ Tony went on, ‘because she also told me the whole stuff, about him being married and all to someone else, and that was why he was hardly ever there. I was mad at him at first for making her life like that, but then if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be alive. And he was really a good guy. He loved me, I think. He was always buying me stuff …’ Tony’s voice trailed off as he remembered.
‘Jesus, Tony, that’s terrible,’ I said. ‘It must be terrible now, living with the Polack who doesn’t like anybody, when you had a really good dad.’
‘I hate the Polack,’ Tony said, his face reddening.
‘At least you’ve got a dad,’ Dan said.
‘Yeah, but he beats the shit out of me …’ Tony’s voice began to tremble. ‘You know what he does, he takes his belt off his trousers and beats my bare back and legs. He’s a goddamn monster. And he hits my mom too. He hits me when he’s mad at her because he knows it will upset her. He’s like … he’s like some kind of torturer. I hate him.’ Tony was in tears now. We were all shocked. We had never seen him cry before. We sat in silence. Tony sniffed and sobbed into his hands. I wanted to put my arms around him, but I didn’t know what to do.
From the house we could hear someone singing.
‘Oh the pale moon was rising, above yonder mountain …’ One of the men was belting out the old Irish song that everybody seemed to sing at parties. The wake had started and the men would sit up all night by the body of Tommy Lafferty, telling stories and singing and drinking. We all sat and listened to the song that told the story of a beautiful woman who was the rose of Tralee. It seemed a sad song somehow. All of the songs they sang seemed sad. They were all about loving somebody who was far away or who died, or about dreaming of going home to some place they could never get to because the sea was so wide. Every now and then the back door would open and someone would leave, the men and women all hugging each other and crying. Tommy Lafferty was in a better place. But who would hug him and cry with him? I wondered. And who would laugh and sing songs with him when all the men had had too much to drink? I looked up to the night sky and wondered if he was missing us already.
Chapter Five
In my dream there was a coffin and I was edging slowly towards it. The faces of everyone in the room seemed to be larger than life, with blotchy, rubbery cheeks and swollen eyes. They were slurping tea and looking at me with wild, mad eyes. I crept up beside the coffin and looked inside. Tommy Lafferty was lying there with his face as black as it would be when he came up from the pit. He had on a white satin shroud and entwined in his joined hands were rosary beads. I reached into the coffin and put my hand on his black face and felt the icy-cold forehead. Colder than ice it was. Suddenly his face broke into a big toothy smile and he sat up in the coffin laughing like a crazy man and grabbed my hand. Everybody in the room shrieked with laughter as I tried to pull my hand away.
I woke up at the bottom of the bed, struggling to get my hand free from the grasp of a dead man. I was sweating. But at least there was nobody holding my hand. I lay in the quiet of the dark, my breathing slowly coming back to normal. Then I heard the sound of raised voices. It was my dad and Kevin. I sat up on the bed, straining my ears.
‘I don’t need your permission, so that’s where you’re wrong.’ Kevin’s voice sounded angry and indignant.
‘You’re goin’ nowhere. You’re hardly out of school and you know nothin’ of the world. Australia! Who do you think you are? Some kind of bastardin’ adventurer?’ Dad was emphatic. But Kevin’s voice was becoming hysterical.
‘You just don’t get it, do you, Da? There’s nothin’ for me here apart from the family. This place is a shithole where my only future is the factories or labouring. Well, if I’m going to labour I’ll do it in the sun, somewhere there’s a chance my life can be different. Can you not see that? Can you not get it into your thick head? I don’t want to be like you. I don’t want to end up like you, bumming about the pub, pissin’ my life up against the wall.’ There was the almighty sound of something falling over and glass breaking. I leapt out of bed and raced downstairs.
I was horrified when I barged in the door of the living room. The coffee table was overturned and cups were smashed. Dad was on top of Kevin and had him pinned on to the couch. Mum was crying and trying to pull Dad back. But his face was crimson with rage and drink. Kevin’s was too and he looked as though he was drunk. There were tears in his eyes.
‘I should take you outside and batter you up and down the street, you ungrateful, big-headed bastard.’ Dad had his shut fist up against Kevin’s face.
‘Martin! Don’t! Martin! For God’s sake, both of you!’ Mum was sobbing and trying to keep me back.
‘Dad! Stop! Kevin! Stop!’ I was in tears.
Kevin turned his face towards me, then he looked Dad in the eye and grabbed his fist away from his cheek. His cheek looked red and angry.
‘Don’t you hit me, Da! ‘Cos you’ll regret it. I’ll hit you back, by God I will! Don’t make me do something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life! Now get your hands off me. You’re a drunk, a useless excuse for a man, and I’ll never be like you! Do you hear? Never!’ Tears streamed down Kevin’s face. Dad released his grip and got unsteadily to his feet. He walked out of the room, the tears spilling out of his eyes. I wanted to run to him. I wanted to run to Kevin. I wanted to stop my mum crying. But I didn’t know what to do, so I just cried all the more.
Kevin was sobbing as Mum picked up the broken crockery that was strewn across the carpet.
‘Mum, I’m sorry … I’m sorry.’ He tried to help her. He pleaded, ‘Mum, why can’t you understand? I have my own life to live. There’s nothing in this place for me. You want me to be happy, don’t you, to make something of my life? I know I have a chance in Australia. Mum … please, it’s my big chance …’ Kevin wiped his face with his sleeve.
‘I know … I know, son,’ she said. ‘But Australia … It’s so far away. It’s the other end of the world. You’ll be lost to us …’
‘I won’t, I’ll keep in touch. But I want my own life, for me.’
Mum sat down with the pieces of broken cups in her hand. She sighed.
‘I know, I know. You have to do what you feel is right. But Kevin, you shouldn’t have insulted your father like that. He’ll be broken over it. Don’t you think he has little self-respect as it is, without you hurting him like that?’
‘But he talks at me as if I am a nobody, as if I was put on earth just to do what he tells me. Well I’m not.’
I watched his face as Mum tried to explain to him. She told him it wasn’t Dad’s fault he was the way he was. Nothing seemed to work for him. He had just given up and turned to the drink. But he was a good man in his day, bright too, and with dr
eams like Kevin and other young men. Somewhere along the line it all got lost and now he was bitter and angry. But he loved his family and he loved Kevin more than anything. He was just the kind of man who couldn’t show his feelings to a big lad like him, so it came out in anger and frustration. Kevin would have to apologize. Swallow his pride and give his father some kind of way out of the situation.
Mum was right. I knew and so did Kevin. But he wasn’t ready yet. He said he was going for a walk. He needed to be alone.
I helped Mum clear up and make some more tea. She poured a cup for me and we sat at the kitchen table drinking it in the quietness.
‘Will we never see Kevin again?’ I ventured, the thought too much to bear.
‘Oh, we’ll see him. But not like now, Kath. He’s going all right, and we can’t stop him. I’ve already lost him …’ Tears were in her eyes as she stared into space.
We sat in silence. Then she got up and poured a cup of tea and took it upstairs to Dad. I listened at the bottom of the stairs and could hear snatches of his conversation through his sobs.
‘I’ve ruined it for everyone, Maggie. Kevin’s right. I’m no use … I’m a waster and always have been. Look at you … You’re beautiful, Maggie, and you’re old before your time because I gave you nothing. Now my boy has grown up and he wants to punch my face. He’s gone now, Maggie, gone for ever. He’s as dead to me as Tommy Lafferty lying in his coffin.’
I drank my tea and tried to imagine Australia. It always looked sunny and dry and hot on the television, and Skippy the bush kangaroo was always solving everybody’s problems. So was Flipper. It didn’t seem such a bad place. But it was far away, further than anywhere I could ever imagine, and that was where Kevin was going. My stomach had butterflies at the thought that I might never see him again. I couldn’t bear to think of that. Surely he wouldn’t leave me. Not Kevin. I climbed the stairs and went to bed thinking of Australia and Flipper and Skippy. My mind was so full up I would never sleep.
*
I could tell by the light that it was too early to get up for school. It seemed like all the birds in the world were singing outside my window, and from my half-opened eye I could see that it was daybreak. I glanced across at Ann Marie’s empty bed and for a second wondered where she was, but then I realized that it must have been the noises that were coming from the bathroom that woke me. Someone was being sick, so I guessed it must be her. I listened and I could hear her retching and sighing. I got out of bed as she came back into the room. She looked the colour of pancake mix.
‘You sick?’ I asked, sleepily.
‘No … er … yes,’ she sniffed, climbing back under the covers. ‘And keep your trap shut about it!’
I went into the toilet and opened the window. I couldn’t understand why she was telling me to keep my trap shut. When I was sick everybody knew about it. My mum used to sit beside me and hold my hand. Why was Ann Marie wanting to keep it a secret? I went back to bed and slept.
When Mum came in to waken me I had been miles away in a scary dream. I was with Tony and we were swimming in the sea further and further away. We were laughing and smiling. Tony looked really happy, not like he had been when he was telling us about his dad. He had a beautiful smile on his face. We swam further away from the shore, our arms stretching out in front of us. Then I looked around and Tony wasn’t there. I spun around and there was nobody, only me and the sea that went on for ever. I dived under the water, but there was no sign of him. I was terrified. Everyone was leaving me. Tommy Lafferty, Kevin and now Tony. I was looking around anxiously for him when my mum put her hand on my shoulder and shook me. I sat bolt upright in the bed, rubbing my eyes. Thank God it had only been a dream.
I couldn’t get into the bathroom because Ann Marie was being sick again. Finally she opened the door and swept past me. She looked awful. She must have a bug, I thought.
*
It was the last day. No more school for the whole summer. No more dragging yourself out of bed and up the hill to sit in front of Miss Grant, wondering when she would go off the rails and start hitting people. No more knife-edge if you put your hand up and got a mental arithmetic answer wrong. No more catechism. No more rattling your hands with the ruler if you as much as opened your mouth to talk to the person next to you. No more torture, at least for the next seven weeks. We would be out there in our own world. It was a magic feeling and there was a smile on my lips as I got dressed.
Then I remembered Dan and what he must feel like wakening up this morning in a house with his dad in a coffin in the living room. It was unreal. I tried to imagine the house, how quiet it would be, everybody talking in whispers because the corpse was in the room, not that he could hear them. Dan wouldn’t be at school because the funeral wasn’t until tomorrow, so we would go and see him after we escaped.
I was washing my face in the bathroom when I looked in the mirror and saw right into my eyes. They looked back at me, pale blue and soft. Then I remembered confession. There was always confession on the last day of school, so that Father Flynn could send us out for the summer with our souls all spotless clean. It was important, because if anybody got drowned or run over by a car during the holidays, as quite often somebody did, they would go straight to heaven. Always start the holidays with a clean slate, he would say as he strode up and down the class preparing us for confession, booming at us to examine our conscience and spit out every little white lie and every big coal-black sin we must have committed since our last confession a month ago. Get rid of all the filth from your soul, he would say.
I was dreading it. Because if I was really going to make a true confession I would have to tell him about Shaggy Island, and I couldn’t even imagine how I would begin to do that. He was sure to come thundering out of his box and drag me out by the hair. And maybe I would have to tell him about Tony kissing me. I knew he would never understand that. Nobody would. Worst of all, I should really be telling him about what we did to Miss Grant’s clothes, because that was definitely a sin. Maybe even more than one sin. But if he got to know the culprits behind that, we would all probably be flogged to death in front of the whole school. Too risky.
I spat the toothpaste into the sink and decided that the only way round it was to add extra lies on to my standard list of sins. But the thought of going into that tiny, dark confessional with Father Flynn on the other side whispering and questioning made me feel sick. He would hear the guilt in my voice. He would smell it. What if he started questioning me closely like Perry Mason, and led me into a trap where I spilled the beans on the whole gang? I looked in the mirror. My eyes were gazing back. They looked shifty.
Downstairs Mum was busying around the kitchen making tea and toast and shaking cornflakes into a bowl for me. It was her day off as she had worked on Saturday, but I could see she had already been up for hours, because the washing machine was at full speed slopping stuff around. Ann Marie sat at the table, her face pasty, sipping tea.
‘What is the matter with you, Ann Marie?’ Mum said, looking at the untouched cornflakes in front of her. ‘Are you not feeling well? Are you sick?’
‘I heard you vom—’ I only got half the word out before Ann Marie shot me a glance that could have knocked me down. I suddenly remembered. I had to keep my trap shut.
‘What?’ Mum said.
I kept my head down and ate my cornflakes. Mum looked from me to Ann Marie, then back to Ann Marie, who sipped her tea. Her face seemed to flush.
‘I’m not very hungry, Mum, but I’m fine. Oh God! Is that the time? I’d better get movin’.’ She got up and put her bag over her shoulder in one movement, and before Mum could say any more she was out the door. Mum watched her as she went down the path and out of the gate. She had a worried look on her face. I couldn’t understand why. But I was glad I kept my trap shut because Ann Marie would have sulked with me for the rest of the week if I had said she was vomiting.
‘Last day today, Mum,’ I said to get her out of her daydream.
�
��Aye, summer holidays. Oh, I wish we could go somewhere, y’know, for a week or something. Maybe a caravan … something like that.’
‘Do you think we will? Oh, that would be brilliant. Can we go? Can we go, Mum?’ The very thought was exciting.
‘We’ll see. Your dad has got a few weeks’ work and maybe we can sort something with your auntie Margaret. They’re all going to a caravan in Girvan or something. We’ll see.’
I knew deep down we wouldn’t be going anywhere. We did this every year. We talked about it, the possibilities, the half-baked plans, but most of the time we never went anywhere, except on day trips to the seaside or to Butlins. They were all right though, and if you went on two or three of them it was just like going on holiday. That was what we told ourselves anyway. You never really knew you weren’t on holiday, and the only time it annoyed you was when some of your pals came back after a week or two somewhere with stories of what they saw and people they met, usually in Ireland or on a caravan site on the coast in Scotland. We went once or twice to Mum’s sister Auntie Nora in Donegal and it was brilliant. She lived near a caravan site on the seaside and we used to meet loads of people and have great laughs watching all the grown-ups dancing and having a sing-song at night. Sometimes there would be jaunting carts you could get a ride on and it was fantastic.
But the ones who really made us jealous were the kids who went to Blackpool. There was a place there called the Pleasure Beach and it was like one great big playground of terrifying rides and ghost trains and fruit machines that you could win a fortune in. But you needed money to go on a holiday like that, so most of us just imagined it and we were as good as there.
*
On the way to Tony’s house I met big McCartney, the man everybody knew as the tick man who collected the weekly cash for a large furniture and clothing store chain. I never knew his first name, and really he looked like the kind of guy who didn’t need a first name. Everybody knew him as McCartney, but my dad only ever called him Slippy Tits, though not to his face. Big McCartney swanned around the streets like some kind of public figure on missionary work. Almost the entire village was up to their eyes in debt with him. It was the only way to buy anything, from furniture to school shoes and clothes. It was always great when you came home with your new outfit for Easter Sunday, but before the week was out McCartney was at your door with the latest list of payments in the big red book he tucked under his arm. If you didn’t pay, you had to double up the next week and so on until it became a nightmare. People used to get up to all sorts of tricks to try to avoid him when he came knocking at the door. They would hide upstairs or in a neighbour’s house when they saw his blue van pull into the street. Sometimes people would be climbing the fence as he was at the front door and he would run round the back and catch them.