Carry Me Down

by M. J. Hyland

  It occurs to me that all my cards are from the same batch; perhaps from a box of a hundred or more, purchased wholesale when I was born. He might as well give me the same card each year, ask for it back, and re-use it.

  I look at him, sitting in his armchair, legs crossed, his short dressing gown loosely tied with the cord that dangles between his hairless knees. I stand directly in front of him so that he must look up at me.

  ‘When I was six,’ I say, in my surest voice, ‘you must have bought a box of a million identical cards with the same stupid picture on them!’

  He looks at me blankly; a complete lack of interest. But I stand my ground and don’t speak to fill the silence. ‘Show me that card,’ he says.

  He grabs the card, then shoves it back in my hand. ‘There’s nothing wrong with this card,’ he says. ‘It’s brand new.’

  I throw the card into the fire.

  He watches the card burn in the orange and pink flames but does not speak. His hands and face are stiff: he is nervous. I wonder whether my mother has told him about my gift. I’ll soon find out.

  ‘You are cold-blooded and selfish,’ I say. ‘And I’m eleven now. Not two.’

  He gets up and we are almost standing chest to chest, but I will not move.

  ‘How dare you!’ he says, without moving aside. ‘I bought that card yesterday afternoon. That’s a brand new card.’

  ‘Did you? Did you buy this card yesterday?’

  ‘What do you mean, did you?’

  ‘It looks like all the others you’ve given me, and it’s faded and old-looking. Well, Da?’

  He walks towards the door, reaches out for the handle, and misses it. ‘I’m not hanging around for this rubbish.’

  ‘But did you, Da? Did you really buy the card yesterday?’

  His hand finds the door handle. ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘When did you leave the house? What shop did you go to?’

  ‘How many times do you want me to repeat myself? I bought that card in Gorey yesterday.’

  There it is: he can’t have gone to Gorey yesterday unless he took Granny’s car. But I don’t need to interrogate him about this. He is lying. My ears are hot and my stomach churns.

  ‘But which shop?’ I ask. ‘And how did you get there? By magic carpet?’

  ‘You suspicious little bastard,’ he says. ‘Go to your room!’

  My grandmother wakes up and seems to know there has been trouble. I stare at my father and refuse to go. I know he would hit me if I was not so big. But I don’t know how to finish what I’ve started.

  I go to my bedroom.

  I leave my door open, to listen out. I expect to hear my father telling my mother what has happened, but instead there is a brief silence followed by singing: my mother and father and grandmother singing along to one of my father’s favourite records, and probably eating my piece of cake. Nobody comes to get me and I talk to myself and read The Gol of Seil to stop myself from feeling lonely. I lie on my bed for a few minutes but know I must go back or lose this Easter Sunday for good.

  I go back into the living room and sit on the rug in front of the fireplace. I look at my father. He sits cross-legged in his armchair with a cup of tea in one hand and a slice of cake in the other.

  ‘Those African Watutsi can jump very high,’ I say. ‘Why don’t they compete in the high jump at the limpics?’

  He does not look at me. ‘It’s Olympics,’ he says to my mother, with a fat grin. ‘O-limpic. Not limpics. Limpics are for spastics.’

  My mistake was a deliberate one, but he laughs and turns the joke against me.

  ‘Limp-ics! Get it!’

  He stamps his foot and they all laugh and I laugh with them because it is one of the worst things to be in a room full of people and not laughing when everybody else is.

  14

  ‘Good morning, class,’ says Miss Collins. ‘I’d like you all to meet a new pupil.’

  The new girl stands straight, with her feet together and her hands by her side. ‘Hello, everybody. My name is Kate Breslin. I am an only child, and I’ve just moved here from Dublin.’

  She has long brown hair – down to her waist – and green eyes and a straight posture. ‘My father has taken over a deceased estate in Gorey,’ she says. ‘We are four miles from the school.’

  She sounds as though she’s reading. I wonder what a deceased estate is, and I want to put my hand up and ask, but I lose my nerve and open the lid of my desk to hide.

  ‘We lived near the Shelbourne Hotel,’ she says. ‘Where all the famous people stay.’

  Miss Collins gives Kate the spare desk in the front row, next to Brendan’s, and appoints him, and Mandy, as Kate’s minders. I watch them carefully. During the first lesson, Kate leans across and says something to Brendan. He smiles when he answers and pushes his hair back with his hand.

  In the second and third lessons, Kate leans across and speaks to Brendan again. I wish I could hear. At the beginning of break-time I go to Brendan’s desk and they both look at me, then at each other. Brendan gives the impression that he has known Kate for a long time.

  I leave the classroom and go around to the window where I see Brendan run his hand through his hair and give one of his exercise books to Kate. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she says as she touches him on the arm. I want to be touched on the arm like this. I like the way it looks. And even though Brendan is being touched and not me, I can feel it in my stomach. I keep watching.

  On the way home from school I throw a rock at the doll in the tree, but it misses her and hits the branch instead. I bury the rock in the ground near the trunk. When I get home, my mother and father are sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of letters and bills in front of them.

  My father gathers them up when I sit down. ‘Good day at school?’ he asks.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘A new girl started today.’

  I tell him about Kate Breslin. He is surprised that a new girl has started in the middle of the school year.

  ‘It’s because of a diseased estate,’ I say. ‘They moved into one.’

  My father laughs in the loud and horrible way he sometimes does when my uncles are with him or when somebody has made a fool of himself on the television. My mother lowers her eyes to the table.

  ‘A deceased estate,’ he says, still laughing at me. ‘Not a diseased estate.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘No you didn’t,’ he says. ‘You said a diseased estate.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ I say.

  Crito jumps onto the kitchen table and, instead of pushing her off, my father pats her on the head. ‘Crito? You heard. Didn’t John say a diseased estate?’

  ‘Michael,’ says my mother, ‘he just had a slip of the tongue. Let it rest! Leave him be.’

  The three of us sit in silence. There’s no tea on the range, no food on the table, and nothing to do. My mother takes the papers from the pile and looks through them. My father pushes Crito off the table so hard that she wails.

  I watch my mother, hoping she’ll tell me what those letters and bills and papers are. I want my father to leave so we can talk. Then it occurs to me: they are both waiting for me to leave. They are willing me to leave.

  I won’t.

  I look at my mother and keep looking at her as she rifles through the papers.

  ‘Stop staring at me,’ she says.

  ‘I’m only looking,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing wrong with looking.’

  ‘You’re staring. I want you to stop.’

  ‘You never tell me not to stare when we’re by ourselves.’

  My father puts his book down, suddenly interested. ‘Go to your room and leave us in peace,’ he says. ‘We’ve things to talk about.’

  My mother is running hot and cold, just like him. Just like my father, she has become two different people. Now there are four of them. Four different people instead of two.

  I go straight to my room and get under the blankets. I listen to
them eat and talk and laugh. I lie on my side, all my weight on my arm. I turn to my other side. I want to sleep to stop the thinking. My blood is pumping so fast and so hard it makes my whole body shudder. My blood pummels me, pumping through my arm; there’s too much of it, like a dam that wants to burst, and it won’t let me sleep.

  At half eight my mother comes to me. ‘John,’ she says. ‘Come and eat something. You can’t go to sleep without food.’

  ‘I can,’ I say. ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘You’re too old to sulk. Come out to the kitchen and make yourself a sandwich.’

  She closes the door and a minute later my father comes. He doesn’t knock. ‘I’ve made you a blackcurrant jam sandwich. Here.’

  He puts the sandwich on the bed, near my feet. I want to kick the plate onto the floor, but I can see there’s thick butter on the fresh bread and I’m very hungry.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. I want to say more, but I’d prefer him to start. I want him to say something first, so that it is his idea to talk to me. I look at the sandwich and wait.

  ‘John? Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No, not really. But there’s something the matter with you and Mammy. You seem different.’

  ‘Different from what?’

  ‘Different from yourselves.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. You seem strange around me.’

  ‘Maybe you’re strange.’ He laughs but when I don’t join in, he pulls at his fringe and keeps pulling at it until it covers the right side of his forehead and right eye.

  ‘Sorry, son. I just don’t know what you mean. The only thing I can think of is that we’re worried about you. We want you to be all right.’

  ‘Are you sure? Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘No, the only thing wrong with us is the worry about you. Worried a bit about how you’re getting on.’

  ‘I’m getting on fine. I’m better than anybody realises.’

  ‘That’s good to know. Shall we stop worrying so?’

  ‘Yes. Stop worrying.’

  ‘Will you eat the sandwich I made specially?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Will I give it to Crito then?’

  ‘No. Leave it. I’ll give it to her myself. Later.’

  ‘Shall I send her in to you then? Will I tell her she’s wanted in the master’s bedroom?’

  He is smiling now and I can’t help it. I smile back and once I start I notice that I feel happy. Happiness makes my body warm, my stomach and all the way down. He laughs and I laugh too.

  ‘Wait here. I’ll fetch the jam-eating contraption.’

  I want to act out my happiness, get to my feet, jump up and down on the spot and clap my hands. I want to get up off the bed and run and go after him and not be ashamed and keep him with me longer, just now, just the way he is now, just us, and with him smiling at me the way he did.

  I wait for him. But he doesn’t come back straight away. I won’t go out to the hall and I won’t go to the living room. I take my watch off and wait for the second hand to get to twelve and then I start the countdown to sixty seconds. If he doesn’t come in one minute, I’ll never wait for him again. The second hand reaches the nine and he comes back, with Crito wrapped in a blanket, her black-and-white face sticking out.

  ‘Special delivery for Master Egan,’ he says. ‘A four-legged friend in need of jam.’

  No, my brain says to me, the only thing wrong with us is the worry about you.

  ‘Thanks, Da.’ And he goes and I keep Crito in her blanket while I eat the blackcurrant sandwich.

  At school the next day, I am alone during the break, sitting in the empty classroom reading a book about Harry Houdini and eating chocolate cake, biscuits and a ham sandwich. I like reading about Houdini’s underwater escapes from locked containers while handcuffed and shackled with irons. But I’m disappointed to learn that his escapes were ‘protracted and agonised’ and that the fastest straitjacket escape he performed was 138 seconds. I know from the Guinness Book that this is a long way from the world record broken last year by Jack Gently. On 26th July, 1971, in front of an audience of 600 witnesses, Gently escaped from a standard straitjacket in forty-five seconds.

  A few minutes before the end-of-break bell, the mongoloid boy comes in. His name is Osmond and he spends one day a week here and the other days at the special school in Enniscorthy. Every Tuesday he spends break and lunchtime alone, walking around the playing field, talking, and singing off-key. I’ve never been up close to his droopy face and I’ve never spoken to him.

  He stands in the doorway with his mouth open and shifts his weight from one leg to the other, smiling at me, humming, waiting for me to speak. I look away but he comes closer and, when I look up, he is standing by my desk, an inch from my arm. He doesn’t speak, but smiles at me, rocking from one foot to the other. I don’t want him near me.

  ‘Nice book,’ he says.

  He smells of vomit. I don’t want to talk to him. If I’m seen talking to him, it will be as though I am his friend, that I’m the same as him: the two of us lonely. ‘Nice book,’ he says. ‘Nice pictures.’

  His spit falls out when he speaks and there’s a glob of it shining on my jumper sleeve. I close the book to stop him looking at Harry Houdini. But he is staring at my food.

  ‘Nice biscuits. Nice cake. Nice sandwich.’

  Could he be hungry? I check my watch: only five minutes until the bell for the end of break.

  ‘Are you hungry? Do you want some cake? You can take it to your class? Take it to room 3G? Wouldn’t that be good?’

  He holds out his fat hand and I put the last of my chocolate cake in his palm. He pushes the cake into his mouth, like a tractor shovelling dirt, and then he closes his mouth, moves his closed lips from side to side and, finally, swallows. He has dissolved the cake in his mouth without chewing. I like that I can stare at him; he lets me stare and doesn’t mind.

  ‘Nice brown cake,’ he says. His voice is not too spastic, but too loud and it sounds strangled, as though somebody is sitting on his neck.

  ‘Ssssh,’ I say. ‘Please be quiet.’ My leg is jumping up and down and I put my hand on my knee to stop it.

  ‘Nice biscuit.’

  ‘Here,’ I say.

  He eats the biscuit by the same method – no chewing – and then he says, ‘Nice book.’

  ‘You can’t eat the book,’ I say.

  I’ve made him laugh and he jumps up and down. ‘Cookie monster! Cookie monster!’

  He’s not so stupid. He can say what he wants to and he only wants somebody to say things to. That’s all. But I put my finger against my lip to tell him to be quiet. He looks hurt and walks away. I look at my watch: one more minute before the bell.

  ‘Look,’ I say. I open the book to the page with the photograph of Harry Houdini in a glass cage, his body covered in thick chains. ‘Harry Houdini,’ I say, quietly. ‘He could do magic.’

  ‘Magic! Magic makes rabbits.’

  ‘Can you whisper?’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Magic makes rabbits.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Magic makes hats and ace of diamonds and no rabbits and rabbits.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I didn’t know he had so many words. If he had a normal face I’d probably want to talk to him. I keep whispering and hope he will too. ‘Do you know what an escape is?’

  ‘Escape.’

  ‘Yes. Get out of trouble. Escape from boxes and glass cages.’

  He points at Houdini. ‘He escapes from glass jar!’

  His voice is loud again, but I don’t mind. He’s right. He understands. I smile at him. Even though his face is droopy, he looks better than I thought he did and he looks better when you are closer to him, paying attention. I thought they all looked like identical twins, but now I see that isn’t true. Osmond has his own nose, his own lips, his own eyes, and his own expressions.

  The bell rings and, when it finishes r
inging, and we can hear the sounds of people coming down the hall, he says, ‘Nice book.’ His voice is even louder than when he first came to me, as though he thinks the bell is still ringing and he needs to shout to be heard.

  ‘Sssssh,’ I say.

  ‘Nice book, nice cake, nice biscuit, nice big boy. Nice John.’ He reaches out to touch my eyes.

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘Don’t touch! Go away.’

  I don’t want him to know my name. No, that’s not right. I do. But I don’t want him to say it. He stops smiling and steps away, backwards. There are tears in his eyes.

  ‘I go,’ he says.

  ‘Bye, so,’ I say.

  ‘I go. I escape backwards. I go out of way of John.’

  ‘All right,’ I say, and then, even though I haven’t planned it, and even though I think I shouldn’t, I smile again and I say, ‘See you next week.’

  He smiles back. ‘Giant biscuit escape backwards from cookie jar.’

  I laugh and, when Brendan walks to his desk with Kate, they look at me, and they see that I am laughing and seem to wonder what they have missed. I stare at them until they look away and, when they smirk at each other, I don’t think I care.

  15

  When I go to breakfast, nobody is there. My mother has left a note.

  Dear John

  I’ve gone to the church hall today to help build a set for the school pageant and your Da has gone into town on the early bus. We’ll both see you tonight for tea. Your lunch is on the dresser. Have a good day at school.

  Love, Mammy

  I decide not to go to school. When they get home I’ll tell them I wasn’t feeling well. I eat some porridge and fried eggs on toast in the living room in front of the fire while watching TV and then I eat some chocolate and two bananas. Crito sits on my lap and together we watch some of a Carry On film set at the seaside and then, at half eleven, I go to my grandmother’s bedroom.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  She’s sitting in a recliner by the fireplace, facing the door, and she has her feet up on the empty armchair across from her. She’s not reading or sewing or knitting; just plain sitting. There’s a songbook by her feet so maybe she has been learning new songs to sing for us from the bath.