We are quiet for a minute and we watch the dog scratching until he stops and turns to look at us. I wind the window down.
‘Woof,’ I say.
‘Woof, woof,’ says my mother. And the dog looks baffled and walks away.
‘Now,’ she says. ‘I can leave the puppets. Tell me what you’d really like to do. We can’t stay at the crossroads all day. We can go wherever you like for the whole afternoon. As long as we’re back for tea.’
‘Will we still go to Niagara Falls?’
‘Of course. We’ll go when you’ve finished your Leaving.’
‘I want us to go on my thirteenth birthday,’ I say. ‘When I’m older I might grow out of the idea of going.’
‘That’s not what we’d planned. That’s less than two years from now. It’s a very expensive trip.’
I wonder if ninety pounds would be enough for one ticket. I know that it is at least two weeks’ salary for a man working in a factory.
‘How much would it cost?’
‘Much more than we have.’
‘What if Granny would help to pay?’
‘That’s too much to ask.’
There’s a car behind us, waiting for us to move.
‘But what if she did? What if she gave us the money now before it’s all gone?’
‘I don’t think …’
The driver behind us toots the horn.
‘You haven’t even asked her. What if you promise to ask her?’
‘I could ask her,’ she says, ‘but you mustn’t hound me and you mustn’t hound her. Whatever she says will be final, and I’ll tell you whether it is yes or no, and that’ll be the end of the matter. All right?’
My mother waves the driver to pass and as he passes he shakes his head.
‘Can you imagine?’ I say. ‘Can you imagine the waterfalls and the amusements and the funfairs and Ripley’s and going on a 747?’
‘Try not to get too excited,’ she says, but she seems to be the one who is most happy and excited; her cheeks are flushed and her hands are fidgety on the steering wheel.
She turns left at the crossroad and drives faster again. And as we approach the big house — a mansion — near the road that turns off to Gorey town, she slows down and pulls into the driveway.
‘Why are you stopping?’ I ask.
‘I have an idea,’ she says. ‘I’ve always wanted to look around the grounds. Why don’t we see if we can?’
The big house is well known to everybody who lives in Gorey, and tourists come to look at it and the dark woods that surround it and the rose garden and lake out the back.
The people who own the mansion live in Dublin and come only once or twice a year; they pay groundstaff, gardeners, cleaners, maids and caretakers to keep it in good repair.
‘I want to go inside,’ I say. ‘I want to go inside and see all the rooms.’
She looks at her watch. ‘We’ll see,’ she says.
When my mother says, ‘We’ll see’, it is my cue to think of something far-fetched to say in reply. It is a game of ours; a game only my mother and I play.
‘And I don’t want to be a person any more,’ I say. ‘I want to be a sleeping-in otter that can fly over mountains and eat ice-cream all day.’
‘We’ll see,’ she says and we smile.
We park the car at the gates and walk down the path. The gardener stands near the main entrance, wearing a long green jacket and wellington boots. We walk towards him and he watches us coming and does not speak until we are standing a few feet away. ‘These are private grounds,’ he says.
‘Yes, but my son would like to see inside,’ says my mother. ‘Could he have just a quick peek?’
The gardener wipes his face with the back of his hand. Otherwise he does not move. His blank expression makes him seem more asleep than awake. ‘It’s private property,’ he says, again.
My mother wastes no time. ‘My son is very ill,’ she says. ‘Just a brief look inside.’
She has lied but I have no reaction. It’s the kind of lie many people would call a white lie. But it’s still a lie and it’s told to benefit one and deceive another. Perhaps white lies don’t work in the same way because the person telling them doesn’t feel as anxious or troubled. And yet a white lie could have consequences just as awful as a black lie.
‘And we’ve no mud on our shoes,’ I say. The gardener looks over his shoulder, towards the house, and wipes his face with the back of his other hand, which has a tattoo of a rose on it, and then he reaches for the keys in his pocket.
‘It needs airing anyway,’ he says.
On the way in, I cough a few times, pretending to be sick, and my mother blushes. Her face is redder than I have ever seen it. I look away until she is pale again and then I hold her hand as we walk through the rooms of the mansion. It’s dark and cold inside and smells like Mr Sheen.
The gardener talks about the age of the furniture, and my mother, who is not usually a boring person, asks numbing questions in a strained voice.
‘Are the chandeliers Waterford?’ she asks.
When we are at the kitchen at the back of the mansion, and I know our tour is nearly over, I decide to break away. I turn and go back to the entrance hall. I look around once and then I run up the wide, bare stairs.
When my mother calls out for me I stand against the wall of the first-floor landing. ‘John!’ she shouts. ‘John!’ Then I hear her talking to the gardener and I expect him to come up after me. I mightn’t have much time. I run up three more flights and when I reach the top floor, I am out of breath and nervous, but I go on. I open doors and look inside rooms until I come to one with toys in it. I go in and close the door behind me.
There is a rocking horse and boxes filled with games and two single beds covered with teddy bears and dolls and in front of the fireplace there is a row of milk bottles filled with sand.
There is a model village on a table beneath the open window, with a train station, post office and grocer’s store. As I stand and look, a small gust of air comes through the window of the grocer’s shop, a tiny puff, just like Crito’s breath on the back of my hand.
I am worried that somebody outside will see me through the tall windows. I take the model village from the table and carry it to the corner behind a bed, near the back wall. As I lower the model village to the floor, it buckles in the middle and two small trees come loose. I lower the village to the floor more carefully and put the trees back where I think they belong, then I sit cross-legged on the rug.
There are trains and shops and plastic people and shrubs and dogs. I take the train carriages off the tracks and lay them out in a row.
This is not a model of an Irish village, but a French one; there is a train destined for Pigalle. I play with the train for a while. It has a balcony at the back for passengers to stand on so that they can watch the scenery, and I wonder why our trains don’t have balconies.
I would like to have one of the model trains for myself, but I have nowhere to hide a carriage. I take hold of the stationmaster instead, and put him in the pocket of my anorak. He has a moustache, wears a red cap with a visor, and he stands on a flat piece of green plastic, like the flat bits of plastic my soldiers stand on.
My mother is coming up the stairs, calling my name. I put the model village back on the table and walk down the stairs to meet her.
She is alone.
‘Why did you run away?’
I shrug.
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to get the gardener in trouble.’
As we walk down the stairs, I take her hand. ‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘You’re all right,’ she says.
The gardener walks us to the gate.
‘You shouldn’t have disappeared like that,’ he says. ‘You could get me into a lot of trouble.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to run up and down the stairs. For the fun of it.’