‘I don’t care either,’ she says. She looks at my father now. ‘Just get rid of those things before your mother gets back or we’ll never hear the end of it.’
My father named our cat Crito after Socrates’ closest friend, who cried the most at Socrates’ deathbed. I like Crito’s black-and-white face and her long white socks.
My mother shakes her head at my father and he stands. ‘Come on then,’ he says. ‘Let’s see what the boy is made of.’
I follow him to the cupboard under the stairs. He crouches in the sooty dark, between the Hoover and the shovel. He tells me to turn the light on and then he pulls six kittens by their tails to remove them from Crito’s teats. He puts them in the pouch he has created by tucking his jacket into his trousers.
‘It’s OK,’ I say to Crito, ‘we’re taking them for a walk.’
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ my father asks.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Then go and get the sack from the coal-scuttle and bring it to the bathroom. I’ll meet you there.’
He makes it sound as though we’re going somewhere far away, but the cottage is a small place and nobody could ever get lost in it: you walk in the front door and stand in the hallway, and if you turn right, you go through the kitchen, and from the kitchen you can either go back into the hallway, or you can go into the living room. The living room has two doors and you can go out again to the hallway where you will face the door to the bathroom and then take a few steps and you’ll see my bedroom door and then, at the back of the cottage, you’ll find my grandmother’s bedroom. And at the very end of the hallway is the back door, which leads to the small garden. The only adventure is going up the narrow wooden stairs to my parents’ bedroom.
I put the sack down by my father’s feet.
‘Right. Pop them in here for me.’
I take the kittens — all of them black and white like Crito — from the pouch in my father’s jacket and put them into the sack while he runs the bath with hot water. The steam makes my face sweat.
‘They’re not wriggling very much,’ I say. ‘It must be cosy in the sack.’
‘Don’t be soft,’ he says. ‘Grab that chair for me to sit on, and grab that stool for yourself.’
He pulls his chair near to the bath, and I sit on the stool by the taps, in case he needs more water. He lowers the sack into the hot bath. The sack floats for a moment, then sinks to the bottom. As the kittens move around inside, the sack moves with them.
‘How long does it usually take?’ I ask.
My father shrugs. ‘That depends.’
We don’t speak. His leg is jumping up and down and air bubbles float to the top of the water. I’m unstable on the stool and there is nowhere for me to hang on. I’m going to fall off and I want to get down, but I don’t say so.
‘God, Da,’ I say. ‘They’re moving around a lot. Maybe we should’ve given them some kind of injection or something.’
He doesn’t answer. He stares at the water and chews the inside of his lip. The heads of the kittens are straining against the darkened cloth of the sack.
Now there are fewer bubbles.
‘It’s taking a very long time,’ I say.
He turns on me. ‘Are you able for this or not? If you’re not, then go and help your mother in the kitchen.’
My mother is not in the kitchen; she’s in my bedroom next door. I can hear her singing.
‘I am able for it,’ I say.
There are certain things my father says, when we are alone, that give me a feeling that is a mixture of excited and sick.
‘Feck it,’ he says. ‘The water mustn’t’ve been hot enough.’
He gets up from his chair and lifts the sack out of the water. I climb off the stool and watch as he struggles to undo the knot in the sack. The kittens are still moving.
‘Quick,’ I say. ‘Let them out.’
The knot is hard to loosen, but at last the sack is open. My father is red in the face and neck. He empties four of the kittens onto the floor and they wriggle and climb on top of each other. Their small ribs heave up and down under thin strands of wet, dark fur. If not for their mewing, they wouldn’t seem like kittens at all.
‘I knew you’d let them out,’ I say, ‘I knew you couldn’t kill them.’
My father turns to me, takes a kitten in his hand, swings it over his shoulder, and smashes its head against the edge of the bath. The sound of the skull cracking is loud and sharp; like a ruler being snapped in half.
‘You stupid, soft little bastard,’ he says.
He holds the bashed kitten by the tail over the bath. I want it to live and I still hope it might but blood drips from its skull and ears and it doesn’t move. I know it must be dead.
There’s not much blood but there’s enough to drip down the inside of the bath, enough to turn the water pink near the surface. The blood sinks, then fades. I don’t look at my father and then, without warning, he lifts another wet kitten from the floor and bashes its head against the side of the bath. His face is redder than I’ve ever seen it and, as he reaches for the next kitten, his hand shakes.
‘Stop it!’ I say. ‘Please stop.’
He looks down. The kittens still in the sack have stopped moving.
‘It’s only nature,’ he says, his chest rising and falling. ‘You’ve got to learn that it’s only nature.’
I look at him. ‘Don’t you feel sad?’ I ask.
‘Why would it make me feel sad?’ He stands up. ‘It’s only what the farmers have to do every day of the week to get the food on your table.’
I look carefully at him and something happens. I know — I am certain — he is lying. There is something in his face, a flash, a momentary smirk, and then a frown. There is also something false about the way he said, ‘it’s only what the farmers have to do every day of the week’ (something he has never said before). He’s lying about not being sad.
‘Do you really not feel sad?’
He stares at me and, as I stare back, his hazel eyes turn black.
‘No, not a bit. They don’t even have a soul yet. It’s about time you toughened up.’
‘But you bashed their heads. Doesn’t that make you feel sorry for them?’
‘No, sure I told you. There’s nothing sad about it at all. They’re only grubs with fur.’
‘You’re brave,’ I say, and as soon as I’ve said it I am sick.
I vomit, without warning, on the bathroom floor, a few inches from a kitten’s head and an inch from my father’s foot. It is as though a bucket of yellow poison is coming out of me. He lied to me and it has made me sick. He stands back and calls out for my mother. ‘Helen, come help us with this mess.’
I move my shoes away from the pool of yellow vomit and vomit a second time. I look down so that he won’t see my face.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You poor, soft lad.’
My mother comes in with a dishrag in her hand and looks at my sick on the bathroom floor. ‘Michael? What’s wrong?’
‘He was sick,’ says my father.
I look at her shoes. They are my father’s shoes. She shouldn’t wear his shoes.
I want her to say something, but she stares at my sick and does not speak to me. I walk towards her and still she says nothing.
‘They’re all dead,’ I say, as I squeeze between my mother and father and walk out the door.
My mother comes to my room at half nine and sits on the end of my bed. ‘John, come and say goodnight to your father.’
‘What about a puppet show?’ I ask.
Some nights, before I go to sleep, my mother performs a finger-puppet show for me. There’s a cardboard apple-box with curtains painted on it and holes in the side for her hands to go through. This box stays in my room, near the foot of my bed, and the puppets are stored in my cupboard.