I’m not nervous. I’ve never before been calm talking in front of my class. I usually feel nervous. Sometimes I even feel nervous when somebody else is nervous, like the time I was at a school concert and the girl who was turning the pianist’s sheet music was shaking so much the pages fell from the stand.
When I’m finished, Mr Roche walks towards me and puts his hand on my shoulder. There is silence as he says, ‘That was splendid, John. First class.’
I sit down, and he gives the class a long history lesson about Vikings. We learn some of the names of the swords of the Vikings, including ‘baby-killer’, ‘brain-biter’ and ‘man-splitter’. I write these things down and keep the piece of paper in my pocket.
I will call my Swiss army knife ‘father-biter’ from now on.
From the moment I walk in the door at home I know that the mood has changed; it is as though my good fortune at school has spread. The house is warm and there’s a smell of roast chicken and my mother, father and grandmother are together in the kitchen, talking. My mother is cooking onions and rashers in a frying pan; the radio is on and the range is full of wood. My father sneaks up behind her on tiptoes, and pretends to take a rasher from the pan.
‘Mmm,’ he says as he wipes his hand on his trousers.
‘Don’t do that!’ says my mother, but she is laughing, not cross.
My father’s fringe is long and messy over his eye and he looks happy. His lips are red and so too are his cheeks. He takes a rasher from the frying pan and hands it to me. ‘Here, son. This one’s for you.’ I go forward and take the hot rasher and I lower it into my mouth.
‘Nothing finer than stolen meat, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Yeah, I would,’ I say and laugh with him.
My mother lunges at him and they race around the table. ‘Catch him, Mam!’ I say.
My grandmother finishes frying the rashers and laughs as she watches my father crawl under the table. My mother crawls under the table too, even though she’s wearing her good pink dress and high-heeled shoes.
I want to join in, so I go to the table and crouch down. ‘Chase me,’ I say. ‘Give me a go.’
‘Another time,’ says my father. ‘I think we’ve had enough running around for one day.’
They crawl out from under the table and my father pushes my mother’s backside and keeps pushing her until she is on the other side of the kitchen, nearly at the door.
‘Oh, you rascal,’ she says and they run around the table again.
I want to join them. ‘Why are you dressed up?’ I ask my mother when she finally sits down at the table, panting and flushed.
‘We’re going to a dance tonight, and your granny is going to be our chauffeur.’
Granny smiles.
‘Am I staying here?’
‘Yes, but no need to worry. We won’t be very late. And you can eat all the custard.’
I leave them and go to the living room. They come to say goodbye and I hardly look at them. I watch television until after ten, then I sit on my bed with Crito on my lap and wait for them to come home. It is late, past eleven o’clock. When a car drives by the cottage, Crito jumps up and goes to my bedroom window, then comes back when nobody walks up the gravel driveway.
I hold her tight so she won’t jump off again, and I squeeze and stroke her stomach and talk to her.
‘Whatever you do, don’t have any more kittens,’ I say.
She tries to jump off when another car goes by, and so I hold her tight.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Stay here.’
She struggles and I take hold of the middle of her tail and, as she struggles to get away, I feel the strange rubbery bone under her skin and fur, and I pull it too hard. She pulls but I don’t want to let go.
She hisses at me. I feel bad. I let go but I don’t go after her. Instead, I stare up at the ceiling and daydream about going to Niagara Falls. I meet two tall men from the Guinness Book at the airport in New York and they offer to carry my suitcase. They tell me we’re going to stay on the fourteenth floor of a big hotel near the Empire State Building and in the morning we’ll go to Niagara in a first-class carriage on a train that has a restaurant, a balcony and its own band. In Niagara, near the Horseshoe Falls, there’ll be a television camera crew waiting to film my first meeting with Robert Ripley. I fall asleep before the daydream ends but even this little bit does the job of stopping me from wondering when they’ll be home.
20
It is half two and time once again for us to form a queue behind the curtain of the imaginary library.
Brendan is first. He rings the bell, closes the curtain behind him and goes to Mr Roche. ‘I’d like a book about how to make umbrellas because me ma keeps losing ours.’
‘A book about the making of umbrellas. Ah, here we are,’ says Mr Roche and he makes a label for the front of the Reader’s Digest, as he always does, and this one says: The Making of Umbrellas.
When Brendan has taken his book, Kate pushes her way to the head of the queue, rings the bell and goes behind the red curtain.
‘What about a book about stopping your brother from wetting the bed?’ she says.
‘I’ll have to go to the archives for that one,’ says Mr Roche. He comes out from behind the curtain and goes into the broom cupboard and emerges with another Reader’s Digest. He makes a special show of clearing the dust from it and humming to himself.
But does he not realise that Kate has asked for that book so that she can tease me? Does he not see what she will do?
‘Here’s just what the doctor ordered: Ten Steps to the End of Bed-Wetting,’ he says as he hands the book to Kate.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘This will be very helpful.’
Perhaps Mr Roche suspects her and wants to give her some time to reconsider. Perhaps he has forgotten that he is here to protect me. When he has returned to his place behind the curtain, Kate takes the book and puts it in my desk. ‘Here,’ she says, as she closes the lid of my desk. ‘Read this and stop pissing your pants!’
Kate sits at her desk with her arms folded across her chest and I can hardly breathe as I try to find something to say. But I don’t need to speak: Mr Roche comes out from behind the curtain and, as though he was able to see Kate through the curtain, he walks straight over to her desk.
‘Where did you put that book I just now gave you?’ he asks.
‘In my desk.’
Mr Roche looks in Kate’s desk and, when he sees that the book isn’t there, he checks mine. He sees the book in my desk. He walks to Kate and takes hold of her hair. She struggles and the pink ribbon tied to the end of her long brown plait comes loose and falls to the floor. Then, he stops.
‘Ow,’ she says.
He is so angry that he doesn’t bother to speak. Instead, he pulls her out of her seat. Kate frees herself and runs to the window. Mr Roche stands by her desk. ‘Kate Breslin, get back over here. Everybody else sit back down at your desks!’
He is on his toes with anger now; his neck is fat and pulsing. Kate takes the edge of the curtain in her hand and Mr Roche goes to her.
‘You lied to me,’ he shouts. ‘You lied to me.’