‘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.’