by M. J. Hyland
‘The gardener let us in,’ I say.
‘Good for him,’ says my father, as he gets a bottle of milk from the fridge.
‘Yeah,’ I say to his back. ‘Good for him.’
‘Anything else to report?’
‘I saw a model village of a French town, with a train with a balcony going to Pigalle.’
‘Stupid boy. There are no above-ground trains to Pigalle. Underground Metro trains, yes. Above-ground trains, no.’
My hands are in fists and my legs are shaking and all because of the hatred I have towards him now and, although he is holding the bottle of milk, and I have nothing in my hands, it is as though I am holding the bottle. I open my hands and can feel it: the coldness of the glass, the weight of it, and I feel my grip loosening on the bottle, and I feel the bottle slip through my fingers.
I hear the bottle smashing against the floor, and see the milk spreading over the slates and into the cracks between them, but when I look at my father, he is holding the bottle firmly.
He pours the milk into a white jug.
I look at him, as he stands by the range. I stare at his back and I gesture with my hands as though I am punching him in the head. He does not move. He must know what I am doing, but he does not turn to look at me. I stop the punching gestures.
His hands are steady; mine are shaking.
* * *
I go to my room and spend the night trying to find all of my plastic toy soldiers. I know that I’ve nearly two hundred of them and they are always turning up inside socks and under the settee. I don’t play with them any more, but I want to know where they are.
I think my father scatters them, stomps on them, breaks their plastic stands off. When I ask if he has seen them, he tells me they are missing in action, or that they have gone AWOL. I used to think AWOL meant that my soldiers had gone over a wall.
When they are lost, lost at war, I imagine them buried alive in the trenches, and I sometimes lie awake at night and worry for them.
I want my soldiers not to be crushed beneath the settee or fall out of the window, in the same way that I want the doll in the tree to be comfortable when she sits between the branches; face forward, legs neat, arms relaxed.
I should keep the soldiers in their box where they’d be warmer and happier: boxes like bed-houses.
7
It is raining hard this morning and I run with wellingtons on my feet and my anorak pulled over my head. Granny offered to drive me but I want to go by myself and I don’t want to be seen kissing her goodbye at the school gate. I cross four fields and two roads and I meet Brendan at the corner near our school and together we cross the road to begin our first day back in the fifth class.
‘Hi there,’ says Brendan in a fake American accent.
‘Howdy,’ I say in a Southern drawl.
‘What a horrible boring day this will be.’
‘I wonder what Miss Collins got for Christmas?’ I ask.
‘A cane made of foam or rubber, I hope,’ says Brendan.
‘But have you noticed that she doesn’t use it as much as she used to?’
‘On you, maybe. She’s afraid of you ’cause you’re twice her height.’
The bell rings and we go in. I open my schoolbag and put the current edition of the Guinness Book in my desk, along with my dictionary.
Our school is a small school run by the nuns; a convent school, with four classes of no more than twelve pupils each. Classes one and two and classes three and four are shared. But the pupils in the fifth and sixth classes have rooms to themselves.
I sit at the back and my desk is near one of two small windows along the left wall. I can see the playing field, the road, and the nuns as they pass by on their way to mass. Sister Ursula, who teaches first and second class, always looks in at us on her way to mass and she waves at us with her Bible. None of the others looks in.
During our first lesson, Brendan takes a pair of thick-rimmed bifocals out of his bag, puts them on and claims he is going blind. Miss Collins moves him from the middle of the room and sits him in the front row. I’m sure the glasses are plastic and that Brendan wants to sit up the front because it is close to the only heater in our cold, concrete-floor classroom. I don’t know why he didn’t tell me about this blindness lark. I’ll give him the chance and the time to tell me and if he doesn’t … well, I’ll find out anyway.
It is break-time and still raining heavily. Brendan and I sit on the bench that runs along the corridor under the coat racks outside our classroom, and the coats hanging on the hooks above our heads drip rain from this morning’s walk to school.
Brendan picks a scab off his knee and puts it in his pocket.
‘What’re you keeping that for?’ I ask.
‘To eat later.’
‘You eat scabs?’
‘If you don’t eat your scabs,’ says Brendan, ‘you’ll bleed to death the next time you get cut.’
I put my hand out and Brendan gives me the scab. I want to tell him about the scab I have on my head from scratching small holes in my scalp, but if I tell him he’ll want to see it.
‘Do you really have bad eyesight?’ I ask.
‘Why do you think I’m wearing these glasses?’
As Brendan speaks, wet biscuit crumbs fall onto his trouser legs and he picks them up with his wetted finger. I wonder what would happen if I played the part of detective with Brendan. What will happen if I interrogate him? Perhaps the tricks of detection will work even though I think I know the truth without having to inspect the glasses. Perhaps I will get proof of the lie from his hands and face and voice and from my physical symptoms.
‘What exactly is wrong with your eyes, then?’
‘I’m nearly blind!’ he says. ‘If I don’t wear glasses I could get a brain tumour.’
‘You weren’t blind when I saw you last week.’
‘It all happened the next day. Mam says I got a virus or something that causes blindness.’
He is lying, and I know it with the aid of only one physical symptom: my hot ears. And I know Brendan is lying because he looks away from me and up at the wall. One of the books says that a person usually looks up to the right or to the side to think, rarely to the left. Also, Brendan shrugs, and he speaks more slowly than he usually does.
The bell rings and we return to class.
I usually walk with him to his desk, then say a goodbye or tell a joke, something to keep us going until lunchtime, but I am short of breath and nervous. I’ve never felt nervous with Brendan before and it is the same kind of nervousness I’ve been feeling around my father since I caught him lying. This is not sickness: I know the difference.
8
School has been cancelled due to heavy snowfall. I am lying on the settee under a blanket. My mother is in her armchair next to the settee, reading a book. All day I’ve been wondering where my father is.
‘Where’s Da?’ I ask, at last. ‘Is he sick in bed?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘He was out with his friend very late last night and decided to stay at the hotel.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the state of the roads.’
My father is not a drinker. My uncles, Jack and Tony, say his disdain for drink is unnatural. My father tells them that when he took the pledge he meant it, and he sees no reason to do something he does not enjoy.
He goes to the pub once or twice a year. Whenever he drinks heavily he spends most of the next day sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the glass of Worcestershire sauce and raw egg he can’t bring himself to drink.
‘Mam?’ I say. I move with my blanket to sit at her feet.
‘What?’ she says. ‘Get off my feet.’
I move back to the settee. ‘Can we toast marshmallows on the fire?’
‘We don’t have any.’
‘What about toast then?’ I ask.
‘If you like,’ she says.
She gets up without speaking, climbs up the stairs to her bedroom and does not come down again. I wait for a
long time, watching television without concentrating.
I go up and knock on her bedroom door. ‘Mam?’
No answer.
I knock again. ‘Mam?’
‘Come in,’ she says.
She is under the eiderdown, with one arm hugging a pillow.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
‘I’m having a rest,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘Because I need one.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Shut the door,’ she says. ‘There’s a draught.’
I go over to the bed and lie down on top of the eiderdown and hug her from behind, with my arm over her stomach. ‘What kind of draught was it?’ I ask. ‘A draught horse, or a draught from a game of draughts?’
‘I don’t feel like playing,’ she says.
Perhaps she is sick.
‘Can I get under?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
When I get under the eiderdown, she rolls over and puts her arm around me, then she closes her eyes and falls quickly into sleep.
Her breath smells of eggs at first, and it is a hot, warm breath, and when I get used to it I do not mind it much. But after about ten minutes her breath begins to smell like the stale water in a blocked drain.
Her body is very warm. I get too hot, and take my arm off her and move to the other side of the bed. I look at her some more from over there, until, at last, I fall asleep.
* * *
She wakes me. It is dark now and, for a moment, I don’t know where I am. ‘What time is it?’ I say.
‘Time for some tea,’ she says, as she turns on the bedside lamp.
‘And your father’s home. Better get up.’
I don’t want to go downstairs. ‘You’re as cool as a cookie,’ I say.
‘Cool as a cucumber,’ she says without smiling.
‘Are you sure? Isn’t it cookie?’
‘I don’t want to play, John,’ she says. ‘We can’t be playing all the time.’
I rush from the room and ignore her when she calls out to me.
I meet my father coming up the narrow stairs. He sees me but says nothing. One of us has to move out of the way. He walks up the middle and I’m forced to turn sideways to let him pass. I press my back against the banister. His arm pushes against me and his body feels as though it hates mine. He passes without saying hello, without looking at me, as though he is a blind man. I stand still and wait. When he is at the top of the landing, he stops and looks down at me. ‘Is she up there?’ he asks.
He should not call my mother ‘she’ and he should know she’s up there because she just now called out my name.
‘Yes,’ I say, but he is not interested in my answer. He has asked me only to have something to say.
‘Are you cross with me?’ I ask.
‘Can a man not just get up his own feckin’ stairs?’
He doesn’t look at me. I feel his anger even before I hear what he has to say. I take a deep breath. ‘Mam’s been sleeping,’ I say.
‘If I say now what I really want to say, I think I could regret it for the rest of my life.’
‘What do you want to say?’ I ask.
‘Just keep out of my way,’ he says.
My stomach feels the way it does before I fall off a wall or from a tree: a rush of heat all the way to the bridge of my nose. When his back is turned, I speak in a soft voice. ‘I don’t need you,’ I say, but he does not hear.
I watch television for a while and then I make some new notes in The Gol of Seil. I describe the lies people tell on the television (especially on the news). I have more trouble detecting these lies – because the signs are fainter – but I can still tell. I’ve noticed that when people are uncomfortable, as they usually are when they are deceiving somebody, they often reach for something, or touch something nearby: a cup, a book, or the collar of their shirt. In The Gol of Seil I call this reaching for comfort and reaching for distraction.
9
The snow has stopped and the roads are safe for cars. We are back at school. I am hoping that today will be the day I tell Brendan about my gift for lie detection. I plan to tell him on the way home, but just before the bell, Mr Donnelly, the headmaster, comes into the classroom and calls for me.
‘John Egan, come here to the front.’
The room is filled with sniggering and whispering. If only they were laughing at Mr Donnelly’s stupid, loud way of speaking and not at me.
‘Now, stand up straight.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Please come with me now to my office.’
On the way to his office Mr Donnelly is silent but, once inside, he soon begins speaking in a loud rush. He sits behind his desk, and I sit in the chair nearest the window so I can look outside. I don’t want to look at his big red face and his fingers so long and fat they can barely fit inside the holes to dial a phone number.
‘Terrible bitter weather,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say, as I look out the window.
I don’t want to talk to him. I only want to know why he has called me in. He moves his chair in closer to his desk.
‘How are you getting on?’
‘Fine. Not a bother, sir.’
‘How old are you now, John?’
‘Twelve in July.’
‘Is there anything you need?’
He opens his desk drawer and rummages through his supply of stationery.
‘Do you have enough pens and pencils?’
‘Plenty, sir.’
He sighs.
‘Sit up straight.’
I look at the watch on his wrist.
‘Don’t sit on the edge of the seat like that. Now move back and sit up. That’s much better now. That’s right.’
I know what he really wants to talk about. He wants to talk about my body. He did the same thing last year. It was only a matter of time. I wish I had the strength to stop him. He is worthless, after all, an ugly man with red hair and a red beard. But I move in my chair just the way he tells me to.
‘Listen to me, now, young man. You struggled with your Irish last term. Why is that? You’re too bright to fall behind.’
I look at Mr Donnelly’s red hair and I don’t tell him the truth – that I use Irish lessons to read the Guinness Book. I tell him that I don’t like Irish because it’s hard to do well at something you don’t like. I feel a bit light-headed and I hold on to the seat to stop myself from moving.
‘So,’ says Mr Donnelly. ‘That’s a bit of a chicken and egg. And which comes first we’ll never know. So that doesn’t really help explain the nature of the problem, but we might as well move along and you can tell me what subjects you do like.’
‘I like history,’ I say, wondering what causes red hair and whether it is because of Mr Donnelly that I am angry around people with red hair.
‘Why do you like history?’ asks Mr Donnelly, his arms folded across his chest.
I sit as far back and as straight up as I can in the wooden chair and I remember the day last summer, when I was watching a film at the cinema in Wexford. There was a red-haired boy sitting alone in front of me and I took my shoes off and put my feet up on the seat near his face.
When the boy turned around and asked me to get my feet down, I didn’t respond or look at him, and I left one foot where it was, on the seat back, near the boy’s face. When he turned again and told me that my feet stank and asked me to move them, I didn’t answer and left my feet where they were.
‘I like history,’ I tell Mr Donnelly, making up my answer as I go along, ‘because it’s about knowing facts and stories. Like that King Charles the First was beheaded.’
Mr Donnelly stares at me and shakes his head. ‘It’s like hearing a voice calling up from the bottom of a well,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘it is.’
But I realise I have made a mistake: Mr Donnelly is talking about me. He means that the sound of my voice is deep for a young boy’s and that it is like somebody calling up a deep hole.
‘You�
�re very tall, John,’ Mr Donnelly goes on. ‘You’re the height of the senior boys. If you were performing like you are growing we might be able to consider putting you up a class so you would not stand out like a sore thumb. You’re doing well in most classes, very well in some, but quite poorly in Irish. So you’re not really ready to go up, except in height, if you get my drift.’
I don’t want to talk about my height. ‘I already fit in, sir, and Brendan is in class with me. I don’t want to go up.’
‘Well, that’s not an option, as I’ve just finished saying. Not unless you can get your act together with the Irish.’
‘OK, sir.’
I get out of my seat.
‘Sit down, John. I’ve some questions I need to ask you. Sit down there like a good boy and concentrate on our purpose today.’
I sit down and he watches me so closely it is as though he has the right to me and can do what he likes with me.
‘Now,’ he continues, looking at my whole body one more time, looking me up and down, all the way down and all the way up again, ‘do you feel well? How is your body holding up?’
I open my mouth but all I can feel is thickness in my throat.
‘Don’t be shy, now.’
I shrug, feel beaten. I am nothing. Even an animal can move if it wants to get out of the way of something.
‘Have you had any strange or unwanted activity below the waist?’
I shake my head, too fast. I must look like a fool. But I should not care what I look like to him.
‘Do you have any questions about what your body has been doing?’
‘No!’ I say. My voice is shaking.
‘Have you been to the doctor recently?’
‘Yes.’
‘What height does the doctor say you will become?’
I am dizzy with embarrassment. ‘I have to go to the toilet, sir. Can I come back after I’ve been to the toilet?’
‘When you come back, I’ll give you a brand new eraser, and a few new exercise books. Nothing like new stationery for a fresh start in your lessons. Would you like that?’
I don’t answer. I open the door and run down the corridor to the boys’ toilet and I wonder what’s wrong with a man like Mr Donnelly. He likes to abuse me with his badgering but he can’t stand to have me hate him. And so, at the end of a session of beating me with his opinions he almost always offers a parting gift or kind word, something free and nice for me; always just short of an apology for his ugly manners.
