She grabs hold of my right arm. ‘And the manly muscles on you, too!’
I pull my arm away.
‘Come sit with me and help me put the stickers on.’
I sit with her and put stickers on tiny cubes of beef and chicken stock. Maureen takes the cubes out of the bigger packets and sells them individually, even though on the box it says, ‘Not for Individual Sale’.
‘So, what brings you all the way to Dublin, John?’
‘We just came because we wanted to come.’
‘Oh yes.’ She peels a sticker from the back of her wrinkled hand and puts it on a cube of stock. ‘Were you tired of the country air?’
‘Yes. Sick of it. Sick of the cows and the mud.’
For four days, my mother and father are out during the day, and don’t come back until it’s dark. I am left alone. Liam goes to school in the afternoon and I watch television or read the Guinness Book of Records.
I read and make notes about Jean François Gravelet, alias Blondin the Great, who crossed Niagara Falls on a three-inch rope in 1855. When Liam is at school I clear a space and make a three-inch strip with packing tape stretching from one wall to the other. I walk along it with my arms held out and I try to imagine being 160 feet in the air without a safety harness.
I can’t get my feet to stay inside the three-inch boundary. I don’t see how it can be done. But when I look more closely at the photo of Blondin, I notice for the first time that his feet are not straight; to walk the tightrope he has to flatten his slippered feet and keep them side-on to the rope. The more I think about it, the more puzzled I am. I will ask Aunty Evelyn to get me a book about Blondin and the other tightrope walkers.
At night, my mother and father go downstairs to the basement to talk and to make phone calls. My mother tells me that my father is looking for work, and they are both looking for a place for us to live.
When I ask why we can’t live in the cottage with Granny, she says, ‘Maybe later. We’ll be living in Dublin for a while.’ And when I ask if I can ring Granny on the phone in the kitchen, she says, ‘Yes, but maybe later. Just leave it be for a few more days.’
It’s our seventh night in Dublin. I’m in Liam’s bedroom, trying to see if there’s a way I can play Cluedo by myself. My father comes in and sits down on the end of the sagging bed.
‘Howya?’ he says in a mock Dublin accent.
‘All right,’ I say as I put my Swiss-army knife down on the board where he can see it.
‘I was wondering if we could ring Granny? Maybe we could do it now?’
He takes a deep breath. ‘Not just now, John. But soon. I promise we’ll do it soon.’
I look at the Cluedo board and at the pictures of the rope and candlestick. I want to know if Crito is all right and I want to know whether The Gol of Seil is safe and my money, too. I want to know whether the Guinness Book has written.
‘Don’t be so sad,’ he says. ‘Why not treat this as a holiday? An adventure?’
I stare at him until he looks away. I stare at him as though his face is a playing card or a photograph, or a piece of graffiti on the wall; something not real or human.
He stands up. ‘Don’t look at me like I just kicked you in the head,’ he says. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘But when are we going home?’
‘We are home,’ he says.
‘But Mam says we have to live in a flat.’
‘Don’t sulk. There’s nothing to be sulky about. Think of all the poor children who have nothing. No flat to live in and no shoes on their feet.’
‘Like the ones in Africa?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’d rather not,’ I say and I take the weapon card with the picture of the rope on it and show it to him.
He stares at it. ‘And what does this mean?’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Do you want to play a game?’
‘Not just now. Maybe later. We can all play tonight. Your cousins too.’
I hold the picture of the rope in front of him and I notice that, although I feel nervous, my hand is steady.
23
On Monday we go to church for a christening and we sit near the front in the same pew. I sit between Aunty Evelyn and Uncle Gerald, and Liam sits nearest the wall, which he kicks with his foot. Celia and Kay stare up at the Stations of the Cross and whisper in their private language.
When the priest comes out to the altar, his vestments flowing around him, it is as though an animal has come out of its cave. I want to see where he lives, to see behind the sacristy door into his cave and find out what it is like in there.
On the way home, my father suddenly stops outside a bookie’s shop, with Turf Accountants written across the smoky glass. ‘I’m just going to pop in here for a minute,’ he says. ‘You go on ahead.’
He goes inside and we stand on the street. Uncle Gerald shuffles his feet, embarrassed, and my mother’s face and neck turn red.
‘The bookie’s the last place he should be,’ says Aunty Evelyn.
‘I’m not going to stop him,’ says my mother. ‘Let him do what he wants. Let him ruin …’ She stops what she is saying and looks instead at a passing bus.
‘What’s being ruined?’ I say. ‘What’s he ruining?’
She looks through the window of the bookie’s shop and then rubs the back of her soft fingers against my cheek. She opens her mouth, then closes it.
‘What?’ I ask. ‘What were you going to say?’
‘Never mind.’
‘What?’
She takes a deep breath. ‘He …’
‘He what?’
‘He hit your granny,’ she says.
She looks down then, down at sheets of newspaper flying around by the lamp-post near my feet.
‘And now we’re out on the dirty old street.’
‘What?’ I say.
‘You are not out on the street,’ says Aunty Evelyn.
‘Why did he hit Granny? When?’
My mother puts her hand on my shoulder and Aunty Evelyn takes hold of my hand and pulls at me, the way she did when we arrived in the night. This is weird, the two of them touching me, one holding me down, the other pulling at me. A bolt of shame travels up my spine, all the way to my face.
‘Come on,’ says my mother. ‘It’s time to be getting home.’
‘I’m going to find out for myself,’ I say. ‘I’m going in there and I’m not coming home.’
I go inside. The Turf Accountant’s is full of smoke and noisy with the sound of the horse races on the radio. I stand by the doorway for a few minutes and scratch at the scab on my head until I draw blood and then I go up to him.
My father has already untucked his white shirt and is in a queue for the cashier’s desk. He stands near the back of the crooked row of men, all of them holding tickets and, like him, looking at the man at the head of the queue to see how long he might be.
I stand by my father’s side. ‘Da?’ I say.
He doesn’t seem surprised to hear my voice. He looks straight ahead at the counter, at the bars in front of the cashier’s window and at the grille under the sheet of glass where the money is put before it is taken by the cashier. ‘What?’ he says.
‘Is it true you hit Granny?’
Still he doesn’t look at me.
‘Well, did you?’
He clears his throat. ‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Now go home. Get out of this filthy place.’
‘We have no home,’ I say.
The hand that hangs down by his side curls into a fist, and the red worms he has for fingers hide under his hairy knuckles.
‘Go home,’ he says.
‘Why did you hit her?’
He looks at me. ‘Because she wanted to be hit,’ he says. He turns away again, to face the cashier. ‘I hit her because she nagged me. She knew I was about to hit her and still she nagged me. And then she told me to get out of her house. And I hit her and she knew I would.’