The Marble Collector

by Cecelia Ahern

  ‘What on earth?’

  She laughs and it’s light.

  ‘Are you there with friends?’

  ‘No. But there’s plenty of people around watching it. It’s one of those official viewing places.’

  Silence. There’s more to it, and she’s not telling me.

  ‘I’m just travelling around a bit, looking for something.’

  ‘You lost something?’

  ‘Yes. In a way.’

  ‘I hope you find it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She sounds distant again. ‘So how are you? Are you in a good spot to see the eclipse?’

  ‘I’m great. I’m sitting outside on the lawn with everyone eating cakes and drinking fizzy drinks, watching the sky. I don’t think we’re in the correct path, whatever it’s called, but it’s keeping us all busy. I was thinking though while waiting, something today reminded me of an incident when you were two.’ It was Lea’s smile that triggered the memory, Lea’s dimples that would fit miniature marbles, and I thought of the marbles because of the pouch in Sabrina’s hand this morning. ‘Don’t think I ever told you about it.’

  ‘If I did something bad then I’m sure Mum told me.’

  ‘No, no, she never knew about this. I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She had to go out on an errand one day, a doctor’s appointment, or maybe it was a funeral, I can’t quite remember, but she left you with me. You were two. You managed to get your hands on some marbles that you found in my office.’

  ‘Really?’ she sounds surprised, interested, so eager, surprisingly so as that isn’t the high point of the story. ‘What kind of marbles were they?’

  ‘Oh, tiny ones. Miniature ones. It’s getting darker here, is it happening there too?’

  ‘Yes, it’s happening here. Go on.’

  ‘Is that a dog I hear howling?’

  ‘Yes, the animals are getting nervous. I don’t think they’re happy with the situation. Tell me more, Dad, please.’

  ‘Well, you put the marble up your nostril. Right or left, can’t remember which.’

  ‘I what?’ she asks. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because you were two years old, and why not?’

  She laughs.

  ‘Well, I couldn’t get the bloody thing out. I tried everything I could, so eventually I had to bring you to A&E. They tried tweezers, tried to make you blow your nose, which you couldn’t do, you kept blowing out through your mouth until eventually Dr Punjabi, an Indian man that I subsequently had a few dealings with, did a kind of CPR. He blew into your mouth and pressed your nostril closed and pop, out it came.’

  We both laugh. It is dusk now, everyone around me is looking up, glasses on and looking like wallies, me included. Lea sees me and gives me an excited thumbs up.

  ‘When your mam got home that day you told her that an Indian man kissed you. I pretended I had no idea what you were talking about, that you’d seen it on a cartoon or something.’

  ‘I remember that story,’ she says, breathless. ‘Our next-door neighbour Mary Hayes said that I told her I kissed an Indian man. I never knew where it came from.’

  ‘You told the entire street I think.’

  We laugh.

  ‘Tell me more about the moonie,’ Sabrina says.

  I’m taken aback by her question. It unsettles me and I don’t know why. I feel uncomfortable and a bit upset. It’s all very confusing. Perhaps it’s got to do with what’s happening up there in the sky. Maybe everybody feels like this right now. I gather myself.

  ‘The moonie marble,’ I say, conjuring up the image in my mind. ‘An appropriate story for today, perhaps that’s why it came to mind. I was looking for a particular type, but couldn’t find it, could only get the miniature ones. A box of two hundred and fifty of them, like little pearls, and they came in a wonderful glass jar, like an oversized jam jar. I don’t know how you got your hands on one. I left you for a moment, I suppose, or wasn’t watching when I should have been.’

  ‘What did the marble look like?’

  ‘You don’t want to know about this, Sabrina, it’s boring—’

  ‘It’s not boring,’ she interrupts, voice insistent. ‘It’s important. I’m interested. Tell me about it, I want to hear.’

  I close my eyes and picture it, my body relaxing. ‘A moonie marble is a translucent marble, and I suppose what I like about it is that when a bright light casts a shadow on it there’s a distinct fire burning at its centre. They have a remarkable inner glow.’

  And it’s odd, and I feel so odd, in this unusual moment when the sun has faded, disappeared behind the moon in the middle of the afternoon, that I realise why it is exactly that I hold on to my ma’s photograph. It’s because, just like the moonie, you can see her fire burning at her centre, and that in anything and anyone is something to behold, to collect and preserve, take it out to study when you feel the need of a lift, or reassurance, maybe when the glow in you has dimmed and the fire inside you feels more like embers.

  ‘Dad? Dad, are you okay?’ she’s whispering and I don’t know why she’s whispering.

  The moon has passed the sun entirely and the daylight has returned again. Everyone around me is cheering.

  I feel a tear trickle down my cheek.

  I’m sitting on the hood of my car, in a field where I’ve pulled over to view the eclipse. A clever local farmer has charged two euro to everybody to effectively park and view the eclipse on his land. Every car hood is filled with people wearing ridiculous glasses. I’ve just hung up the phone to Dad and there is a lump in my throat but I’m ignoring that and flicking manically through the pages of Dad’s marble inventory. I stop suddenly.

  Moonies.

  He has many but I run my finger down the list and find what I’m looking for.

  Miniature moonies (250) and there is the mention of the glass jar too, in mint condition. Below that is ‘World’s Best Moon’ a Christensen Agate Company single-stream marble and Dad’s description: A translucent white opalescent marble, has tiny air bubbles inside and a slightly bluish tinge to it. Courtesy of Dr Punjabi.

  Everyone is cheering around me as the sun has appeared again in its total form. I don’t know how long the entire thing took, a few minutes maybe, but everyone is hugging and clapping, moved by the event and on a natural high. My eyes are moist. It was the tone of Dad’s voice which startled me and moved me the most. It had completely altered, it sounded like another man was talking to me. Somebody else shone through and told a story, a secret story about him and me as a child, but it wasn’t just that, it was a marble story. In the thirty years of my life I don’t recall that word passing his lips and now, while I’m on this … quest and while I watch a natural phenomenon, I feel overwhelmed. I take my eclipse-viewing glasses off to wipe my eyes. I must drive directly to Dad now, talk to him about the marbles. It didn’t feel right to raise the issue before when he clearly didn’t remember, but perhaps the bloodies triggered more memories today.

  I exhale slowly, deliberately, and hear Aidan’s voice from a previous conversation.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I snap.

  ‘You sighed,’ he says, demonstrating it. It’s heavy and slow, and sad. ‘You do it all the time.’

  ‘I wasn’t sighing, I was just … exhaling.’

  ‘Isn’t that what sighing is?’

  ‘No, it’s not. I just … doesn’t matter.’ I continue making the school lunch in silence. Butter, ham, cheese, bread, slice. Next.

  He bangs the fridge closed. I realise I’m not communicating again.

  ‘It’s just a habit,’ I say, making an effort to communicate, not to snap, not to be angry. I must follow the counsellor’s rules. I don’t want to be in the spotlight again this week for all of my bad faults. I don’t want to be at counselling at all. Aidan thinks it will help us. I, on the other hand, find that silence and tolerance is the best way forward, even if the tolerance is on the edge, particularly when I don’t k
now what the problem is, or even if there is one. I’m just told that my behaviour points to the fact that there is. My behaviour being one of silence and tolerance. It’s a vicious circle.

  ‘I hold my breath and then I release it,’ I explain to Aidan.

  ‘Why do you hold your breath?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I think he’s going to get in a huff again, because he’ll think I’m holding something back, some enormous secret that doesn’t exist but which he thinks does. But he doesn’t say anything, he’s thinking about it.

  ‘Maybe you’re waiting for something to happen,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say without really thinking it through, adding the raisins to the lunch box, just happy he’s not in a huff any more. Argument avoided, I don’t have to worry about the eggshells that surround him. Or maybe they’re around me.

  But I think about it now. Yeah, maybe I am waiting for something to happen. Maybe it will never happen. Maybe I will have to make it happen myself. Maybe that’s what I’m doing now.

  My phone rings and I don’t recognise the number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sabrina, Mickey Flanagan here. Can you talk?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m just on my way home, I pulled in to watch the eclipse.’ I wonder if he knows about my trip to his nephew. I hope not. Accusing him was one thing, accusing a nephew would be a double insult. Even though it turns out he did open the boxes.

  ‘Ah, a remarkable thing wasn’t it? I went home to watch it with my better half, Judy. We were talking about you and the marbles.’ He pauses and I know something is coming up. ‘We were talking about your boxes and Judy remembered that they didn’t all come together on the same day in the single delivery.’

  ‘No?’ I sit up straighter, slow the car down.

  ‘The first boxes came in one van with my delivery fella, just like I arranged with the family. But Judy reminded me just now that a few days later a few more boxes arrived, I forgot about it but Judy didn’t. She remembers because I hadn’t told her that I was storing anything for anyone and she only found out when a woman arrived to the house with three more boxes. Judy had to call me at the office to check. Wasn’t sure if the woman was a loo-lah making it up.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘A delivery woman?’

  ‘No, Judy doesn’t think that she was. And Judy’s good like that. Even though it was a year ago, she’s perceptive. Sharp memory. She wasn’t driving a van, just a car. She doesn’t know anything about the woman at all, they didn’t talk much. She thought maybe she was a neighbour, or a colleague.’

  ‘And this woman delivered three boxes?’

  ‘She did.’

  Which would have to make it the boxes of marbles. Wouldn’t it? Again I think of Mum, and wonder if for some reason she’s holding back, if she hadn’t wanted me to see these three boxes.

  ‘One other thing,’ he adds in a rush and sounds embarrassed by the minor detail. ‘Judy said she was a blonde woman.’

  My mother is not blonde. I think of my aunts but dismiss it quickly; I haven’t seen them for years, they could have purple hair for all I know, or had blonde hair last year and no hair now. I have more questions, but really it’s all he can help me with.

  ‘Good luck, Sabrina,’ Mickey says. ‘I hope you find them. It sure would put my mind at ease.’

  Commies. The poor boy’s marble. They were the first kind of marble. Made of clay, not always round and perfect but they were cheap and common, and they were what got every child playing outside during World War I. Then the aggies and porcelain came along, and glass marbles that were prettier, no two alike. Glass is my preference. But there are also steelies. I have a few of them too. Steelies are chrome-coated solid metal, like knights in battle, and they make deadly shooters. They’re heavy and fast and send opponents’ marbles flying out of the ring. That’s me today. I’m surrounded by glass and porcelain, maybe even a little clay, but I’m the steelie. I’m twenty-four, it’s my wedding day and I’m sending all the men in Gina’s life out of the ring.

  Iona parish church is the venue for the big day. Gina’s local church where she was baptised, received first confession, first communion as a little bride, was confirmed and took the pledge and now finally to get married. The same priest who carried out all those landmark events in her life marries us today and looks at me in the same way he has since the moment we met.

  He fucking hates me.

  What kind of family has a priest as a family friend? Gina’s kind of family. He buried her dad, comforted her ma on many late nights of free whisky and advice and he looks at me now like the bastard who’s taking his place in the family clan. I said it to Gina. Told her he was looking at me oddly. She said it’s because he’s known her since she was born, he’s protective, he’s fatherly. I didn’t say so but I think it’s the look of a father who needs to be locked up and given a good beating.

  Gina says I’m paranoid about most of her friends not liking me. Maybe I am. I think they look at me funny. Or maybe it’s the fact they’re so polite, like I can’t figure out who they really are, because they’re not shouting across from me at the table or pinning me down and telling me what they really think, that makes me suspicious of them. There was no politeness in my family, no smokescreens. Not in my house, not in my school, not on my street. I know where I stand with them, but the priest doesn’t like me and I know it. I know it from the way that he looks at me when Gina’s not looking. Two men, two stags who at any moment want to crash heads, tear each other’s antlers off. I was glad Gina’s dad is dead, so I wouldn’t have to deal with that male-ownership bullshit, the fella who’s ‘stealing’ the daughter away, but I didn’t expect to have the issue with the family priest.

  And the family doctor.

  Jesus, him too. What kind of family has a family doctor? Gina’s kind of family.

  When we were sick, Ma had her own ways of getting us better. Baking soda and water for sunburn, butter and sugar for a cough, brown sugar and boiling water for constipation. I remember I’d a lump on my knee so Mattie dipped it in boiling water then hit it with a book; simple, it disappeared. A pimple on Hamish’s nose was cut off with scissors then treated with aftershave. Iodine for cuts. Gargled salt water for throats. Rarely were we on antibiotics. Rarely were we with a doctor for enough time as to strike up the friendship Gina and her ma have with their GP. No family doctor and definitely none that would care who the fuck we marry. But that’s Gina’s family. Even worse, or better, I’m not sure, I’ll be part of their family. I can hear Hamish chuckling. I hear it as I fix my tie in the toilet and prepare for the reception that Gina’s grandda is paying for.

  ‘Best day of your life?’ Angus asks cheekily, taking a piss beside me in the urinal, disturbing my thoughts.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I’d asked Angus to be my best man, wished Hamish was here to do it even though he’d be a thousand times more risky and send every family anything running from the reception with his speech. No, that’s wrong. Hamish was subtle. He wasn’t like the rest, he observed, knew how to hustle, judge the atmosphere and then make his move. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t do anything wrong, but at least he’d think about it beforehand, not shoot out the first thing that came into his head like the others. Five years since he died and he’s still alive in my head. But Angus was the closest thing to Hamish and if I didn’t involve my family in the wedding in some way there’d be blue murder. If I’d really had the choice I’d have asked my mate Jimmy, but it’s complicated there. Shame, really, seeing as he’s the person I most enjoy talking to.

  I talk to him more than anyone else. We’re always talking about something, as long as the something is about nothing. I could do that all day with him. He’s the same age as me, he’s into marbles too, that’s how we met, and we play marbles a few times a week. Only grown man I know who does. He says he knows a few others, we joke about putting a team together, going for th
e International title. I don’t know. Maybe we actually will some day.

  It felt odd, not telling Jimmy about today. Friends would do that, wouldn’t they? Not us though. He doesn’t exactly spill the beans on himself though either; just enough for me to figure it out eventually, but he can be so bloody cryptic. I like it this way. Why? I’ve asked myself that a lot. I like it when I can keep myself to myself. I can control what people know about me. The boy from Scotland who moved to Dublin for everyone to talk about, slept on the floor for a year with everyone talking, before moving to Mattie’s house after a quick marriage with everyone talking – and they were right to, Ma’s baby Tommy came ‘early’; then us as kids, wild as anything; and then, much later, after Hamish died, the talk, everybody talking about what he did or didn’t do. Everyone summing him up in one phrase or one word or one look like they knew him, but they never did and never could. Not like I did. I don’t even think my other brothers knew Hamish like I did. And I wanted to get away from all that. All that talk. I wanted to be who I wanted to be, because I wanted to. No reasons, no talk. Hamish did it, but he left the country, I don’t know if I could do that.

  Get me away from all of them but not too far. They drive me crazy but I need them. I need to see them at least, from afar, know that they’re all right.

  If I’d wanted to marry a girl I’d fingered when I was fourteen I’d have stayed put but I didn’t. I was twenty-three years old, ready for marriage, and leaving my home turf to meet the likes of Gina was better. Not that I travelled far. Fifteen minutes’ walk away. Just a new community is all. And we didn’t come from nothing either. Lived on a farm in Scotland till the age of five, Ma met Da when she moved there to be a nanny, then after sleeping on Aunty Sheila’s floor, we moved to a nice house too, terraced house on St Benedict’s Gardens, around the corner from our stomping ground Dorset Street, Mattie’s family home that he got to keep when his ma and da kicked the bucket. Mattie does grand with the butcher’s, all of us working there now, giving every penny that we earn to Ma, until marriage. But it’s not where you’re raised, it’s how you’re raised, and Gina’s ma raised her differently to how Ma raised us. Raising men is different, I’ve heard Ma say when her and Mrs Lynch were talking about her girls.