by Phelan, Tom;
It was precisely because she spoke properly that she was a threat, not only to the men of Gohen and its environs, but to the women too.
As well as pronouncing and enunciating her words correctly, Deirdre Hyland was five and a half feet tall and capable of looking most people in the eye. She kept herself presentable with the frequent use of soap, water and hairbrush. She had straight, clean, white teeth; her skin was clear. Clever and creative use of her lean wardrobe enabled her to give the impression she had more than she actually had. She wore low-heeled, step-into shoes. She was beautiful to look at, as beautiful as the Protestant minister’s wife. If she had used makeup, she would have been called a slut.
Kevin Lalor had often seen Miss Hyland on the streets of Gohen and on the same streets had heard many disparaging remarks about her. But it wasn’t until Deirdre came into his office to introduce herself on her first day as the latest addition to the buildings-permit office, that he had heard her speaking. Feeling the same dismay as if he had run flat-out into a stone wall in the dark, Lalor felt the passage between his heart and his testes savagely excavated as he attempted to get out of his chair to greet the new arrival. By the time he got up on his underpinnings there was no blood left in his brain, and he was rendered stupid. He could not remember what he had mumbled in response to her introduction.
Now, three weeks later and still wondering what foolish things he had muttered, Kevin Lalor free-wheeled around Tuohys Corner on the Lower Road, and there, sitting on the grass verge of the lane, his feet dangling over the edge of the drain, was Mikey Lamb. The boy was clutching something to his belly and, pensively, he was staring down between his boots into the water. The narrow end of the birthday telescope was sticking out of his breast pocket. When he heard the song of bicycle tires on the lane, the child slurped at a dangling drool and closed his mouth. He looked up and yelped, “Kevin, I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”
It was a jam jar, full of murky water and seething with tadpoles, that Mikey was holding. As he plonked it down, some of the water sloshed over the rim. Stranded black tadpoles wiggled furiously in the grass.
As Lalor slowed down, he lifted his rear end off the saddle. When he came to a stop, he put his feet to the ground each side of the bike, the bar between his legs touching the shrinking remembrance of Deirdre Hyland.
“Look what I found,” Mikey said, and he lifted up a dead rabbit by its back legs. He pointed to the back of the neck. “Look where the weasel got him—chawed his way down to the bone. You can see the joins in the neck bone like when you suck the meat out of a chicken’s neck. And look at the eyes. The crows got them.” He put his left hand under the rabbit’s chin and lifted the head onto the center of Lalor’s handlebars.
“Will you get that yoke off my bike,” Lalor said. “You could get a disease from dragging a dead animal around.”
“Sure, it’s only a noul rabbit, Kevin. How could I get a disease off it and we eating rabbits all the time?”
“The crows and the weasels haven’t been at the ones you eat and they haven’t been dead for a week either. Throw that thing over the hedge and let the scall crows finish it off.”
Mikey swung the rabbit around his head several times. He finally released it, and as it sailed over the hedge trailing a streak of very yellow rodent urine, he whooped like an Indian doing a war dance in the pictures, tapping his rabbit-haired fingers against his lips.
“Is that what you stopped me for, to show me a dead rabbit?” Lalor asked, but he wasn’t annoyed. In fact he was feeling expansive, his patience with the boy related in some circuitous way to the foreign feeling glowing like magma deep in the area of his testes. “I saw you today—” he said, but Mikey cut him off.
“Aw, Kevin, let me tell you. That’s why I stopped you. Mister Tracey sent me to the bank with Brendan Healy today, and he said I’ll be doing it all next year by myself.”
Everyone in Gohen, Drumsally and Clunnyboe, knew that the teacher cum Picture House manager, Mister Tracey, counted last night’s takings on his desk first thing every morning—inspectors from the education department never made terrorist appearances before ten o’clock. While the master counted, his students practiced their penmanship—rounded shoulders and ankles for English letters, pointed ones for Irish, and six of the hardest for the child who mixed up the two styles.
“That’s great, Mikey,” Lalor said, even though he was surprised the teacher had singled out the boy for this particular job. It was commonly believed that the student who could be seen from Lalor’s courthouse window carrying the money in a cloth bag was the most mature and trusted of his peers. Because his job demanded absence from the classroom for almost an hour every day, he was also considered to be one of the best students in his class. In Lalor’s mind, Mikey could afford to miss the classroom instruction, but if he was the most mature boy in his class then the rest of the children must have been still fighting their way out of their nappies.
“Brendan Healy did it all this year, and now he’s showing me how to do it for next year. He told me about Mister Gorry on the way to the bank, and I nearly burst out laughing when I saw him twitching and blinking all over the place, like Brendan said. And the way he pushes his glasses up on his forehead when he wants to look at you! You should see how quick he counts the money—you’d hardly see his fingers moving when he was counting out Doul Yank’s fivers. There must have been a hundred of them. And the pennies in our Picture House bag zipping across the counter like bullets.”
“Not Doul Yank. Mister Gorman to you, Mikey. And all those fivers, I think you were seeing things,” the Civil Servant asked, hoping to get more information about Doul Yank’s business transaction. But his sly probe was not successful.
“What does Mister Gorry shave his head for, Kevin?”
Knowing how deeply a person’s name can be embedded in a piece of gossip, Kevin Lalor did not tell Mikey that Mister Gorry was as eccentric as a brain-damaged hen, that his facial and cervical twitchings were the stuff of cruel imitation in Gohen, and that it was believed he kept his pate in a state of hairlessness because of his terror of fleas. He didn’t tell Mikey that Mister Gorry was called Hairy Gorry. The more reckless gossipers claimed that Hairy also shaved his belly hairs, and that the ensuing itchiness was why Mister Gorry made so many lightning grabs at his crotch.
“Some people like bald heads, Mikey,” Lalor-the-discreet said.
“But how can he shave the back of his head if he can’t see it?”
“Maybe he’s done it so often he can do it with his eyes shut, like me shaving myself.”
“You can’t shave with your eyes shut, Kevin.”
“I could if I had to.”
Mikey changed the subject. “The Coughlins bought a motor car. Doul Yank saw Eddie—”
“Mister Gorman, to you, Mikey.”
“He saw Eddie learning how to drive it in the Beech Field, and Bridie was out waving all over the place and jumping out of the way. And you were right about the whitewashing. Doul Mister Gorman said Missus Madden was as white as the walls. And you were right about the brother coming home from India, too. Is he the one in the composition on your wall, Kevin?”
“That’s him, the man who was sent east to India,” Lalor said.
“Bridie told Mammy he was in the Suez Canal. How did you figure out the whitewashing and the brother before anyone else, Kevin?”
“Deduction,” Lalor said.
“What’s that?”
“If you see a fox’s tail sticking out from under a bush, you know there’s a fox hiding in the bush. When people make their roof look good with new thatch, you know they’ll make their walls look new as well. If they didn’t, it would be like putting on a pair of Wellingtons covered in cow dung when you have a new suit on.”
“But how could you tell the brother would be home from India?”
“If you thatch your house when it was thatched only a few years ago, you must be expecting someone important to visit you, and the only
one the Coughlins have to visit them is their brother in India.”
“Isn’t that what Sherlock Holmes does—deduction?”
“Yes, he deduces. And talking about deduction, Mikey, how badly did the Tilers beat you up in school today?”
The boy’s mouth dropped open, and before he could put a lie together, Lalor said, “Don’t make up a story for me, Mikey.”
“How did you know, Kevin?” Mikey asked. “They all grabbed me and dragged me to the back of the ball alley. I thought they’d leave me alone after swapping back the telescope.”
“What did they do to you?”
Suddenly, Mikey’s eyes were swimming. “Twisted my arms up behind my back; and pinned my head to the ground by the ears and pressed my nose flat on my face; and put their hands up the leg of my trousers and twisted my balls; and bent my fingers back; and stood on the backs on my knees; and gave me the Indian torture. Look.” Mikey pushed his arms out of his sleeves, and his wrists appeared to be badly chilblained. He used the back of his right wrist to swipe at a running tear on his cheek. “How did you know, Kevin?”
“Deduction, Mikey.” Kevin Lalor reached out and awkwardly rubbed the top of the child’s head. The hair was as coarse as the coat of an Irish terrier.
“But what was there for deduction? Where’s the fox’s tail?” Mikey wiped his nose with his sleeve.
“It’s very easy, Mikey.” Lalor leaned forward and rested his elbows on the bike’s handlebars. “Why do you think the Tilers grab your lunch every day and run away with it?”
“Because they’re bullies.”
“No. Because they’re hungry, Mikey. Why do you think they break your bike?”
“Because they’re bullies.”
“No. Because they’re poor, and if they can’t have a bike they don’t want you to have one either.”
“But we’re poor too, and even if I hadn’t a bike they’d still beat me up just because they’re bullies.”
“They’d still beat you up, but only because you’re the best in the class. The only way the Tilers can be better than you is by beating you up.”
“But why did they beat me up today?”
“Because Mister Tracey made you special by choosing you to bring the Picture House money to the bank.”
“Then it would be better to be thicker and poorer.”
“There’s nothing good about being thick or poor.”
“But there’s no way around that. You can get beaten up because you’re good at your lessons and have a bike, or you can be thick and have no bike and not get beaten up. Neither is good.”
“Maybe there is a way to be best in the class and to be friendly with the Tilers at the same time.”
“No, there’s not.”
“Yes, there is.”
“What is it?”
“Try to figure it out yourself.”
Mikey kicked the toe of his boot into the dusty lane. “I’ve tried to be on their side a whole lot of times, but they won’t let me. When I follow them around they throw clods at me and make pig sounds at me and tell me to go home to my pighouse. They’ll never let me be on their side.”
“Supposing you pick out one of the Tilers and become friends with him.”
“But the rest of them would still beat me up.”
“They might, but if one of them is your friend the rest might stop beating you up.”
“But that means I’d have to make friends with a tough one, like Elbows Kelly, because he’s the only one they’re all afraid of.” Mikey viciously kicked at the little depression he had made with the toe of his boot.
“Will you stop doing that? You’re ruining your boot. How about making friends with one of Elbows Kelly’s friends, someone who isn’t too tough?”
“Like Barlow Bracken? But how, Kevin? I’ve tried to play with Barlow Bracken, and he always tells me to frig off.”
“He has to do that to stay friendly with the rest of the Townies. Give him a piece of the curranty cake you bring for lunch on Mondays.”
“But that’s only curranty cake.”
“How many Tilers bring curranty cake for lunch on Mondays?”
“I don’t know.”
“None, Mikey. Their mothers are too poor to make curranty cake. That’s why they’re always grabbing it off you and stuffing it into their mouths while they’re running away. Give Barlow Bracken some of the curranty cake on the sly and he’ll soon become your friend.”
Mikey’s eyes began to brighten as his imagination took off with Lalor’s suggestion.
“Let him ride your bike a little bit on the way home now and then. Help him with his sums.”
“He doesn’t want any help with his sums or anything else. He got first place and won sixpence for the best composition.”
“Ask your father to let him come to your house to play. When there’s apples in your garden, bring him one.”
Mikey was now smiling broadly, and he offered his own suggestion. “If Mister Tracey has two money bags for the bank on Monday mornings, I could ask him to let Barlow Bracken go with me.”
“There you are!” Lalor said. He reached out again and rubbed the wiry hair.
“Maybe he’d come out to our house to play and maybe Mammy could give him rhubarb for his mother when he’d be going home. But how would he get out to our house?”
“Maybe you could carry him on the bar of your bike after school.”
“And I could carry him back some of the way too.” Mikey was grinning at what his imagination was dishing up—Barlow Bracken on the bar of his bike, the two of them laughing. “Wouldn’t it be great, Kevin? And it’s all like putting bait in a trap, only I wouldn’t be trapping Barlow Bracken, but everything would be like bait to catch him like Daddy putting a jam jar half full of water under the apple trees to catch the wasps.”
“Now you’re talking, Mikey, but don’t try everything at the same time. Give him the curranty cake for a few weeks before you do anything else. You can’t let him know what you’re up to.”
The boy was grinning. “I’ll buy him a Peggy’s Leg tomorrow.”
“No, Mikey. You can’t do that. If you start doing a whole lot of things he’ll know you’re up to something, and it’ll all backfire. Here’s what you have to do. Tear a page out of your copy and write tomorrow’s date on the first line, then the next date on the next line until you have all the school days to the beginning of the summer holidays filled in; then write down on each line what you’re going to do for Barlow. But on most of the lines write ‘nothing.’ The first week, do one nice thing; the second week, do two things. But once you have the list made up, you must stick to it. Bring the list up to me when you have it done, and we’ll go over it together.”
“Oh, Kevin, it all sounds like a plot. I’ll be like a secret agent in The Commando.”
“You’ll have to be very careful, Mikey, because if the Tilers find out you’re a secret agent, they’ll only beat you up all the more.”
“They’ll never get me to admit anything, Kevin, no matter how much they torture me. I’m going home to write down the plan.” Mikey’s feet spun in the dust of the lane.
Lalor called after him, “What about the tadpoles, Mikey?” He pointed to the jam jar in the grass.
The boy ran back and emptied a waterfall of tadpoles into the ditch. He didn’t notice that he was stepping on the marooned tadpoles in the grass. Without another word he ran off home, the empty jar in his left hand.
Lalor sat back on his saddle, and before he had gone three yards, Deirdre Hyland had elbowed Mikey Lamb out of his brain. But then he heard Mikey calling after him, “KAY-ven, KAY-ven!” The Civil Servant steered to the side of the lane and circled around to where he’d come from. Mikey was running toward him, the jam jar clutched into his belly. When they met, the boy was breathless and as pent as a steam engine.
“I forgot to tell you the one I heard in school today,” He had to take several breaths before he could deliver his lines. “Julius Caesar made a bree
zer off the coast of France. Napoleon thought he’d do the same and did it in his pants.”
Lalor guffawed, and a triumphant grin split Mikey’s face. “I made you laugh, Kevin.” He turned around and ran home.
14
In the Sunroom
In which Patrick Bracken confirms to Sam and Elsie Howard that his friendship with Mikey Lamb only lasted the length of one summer.
“PATRICK,” MISTER HOWARD INTERRUPTED, “by my mathematics you and Mikey could not have been friends for very long.”
“That’s right, Sam. Of course we kept the friendship going when my family moved to England, but we had only been friends for that one summer in nineteen fifty-one. We left for England in September.”
“Mikey only had you for a few months!” Elsie said. “But he must have been . . .”
“Devastated,” Patrick supplied the word. “We were all devastated, Else. Our family didn’t survive as a family.”
“Maybe Patrick would prefer not to talk about this, Else,” Mister Howard said.
“No, it’s all right,” Patrick said, and he lifted his hand to divert Sam’s concern. “Most of the pain has leeched away, but whenever I smell coal smoke I hear the train speeding through Yorkshire in the dark and I see the stump of a candle in my father’s hand.”
15
Emigration
1951
In which the uprooting of the Bracken family from their home in Gohen and their resettling in Bradford brought with it triumph and anguish.
IT WAS THE STUMP OF A CANDLE IN HIS FATHER’S HAND that Barlow Bracken saw first that night when Pops gently shook him awake. Then it was his face bent down and lit from below by the small flame—a Rembrandt face shining in the dark.
Barlow was annoyed, wanted Pops to stop shaking him out of the warmth of the bed onto the cold concrete floor.
“Wake the two lads,” Pops said quietly, and he began to gently awaken the girls in the other bed.
As clearly as in brutal Bergmanesque blacks and whites, Barlow saw his father spilling drops of grease onto the windowsill and setting the short piece of candle in it. Slow shadows moved on the walls and ceiling, as shapeless daubs of black.
