‘Did you fail the test at Trinity?’
The Adam’s apple in his neck bulges and he stares ahead.
‘Did you?’
He turns to me and there are tears in his eyes. ‘Do you know? You even look a bit like her.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like your granny. You’re like a pair of gargoyles keeping watch over other people’s lives.’
I feel sorry for him and guilty and sorry for myself. I keep looking at him. If he cries, I’ll say I’m sorry. Then, maybe, when he’s finished in here we could go to the greasy spoon near Aunty Evelyn’s for a piece of cake. But he just coughs, puts his hand in his pocket and turns back to the cashier’s window.
‘Go home,’ he says.
I walk out.
On the way back to Aunty Evelyn’s I buy a Mars bar with the money he gave me yesterday to replace the one on the living room floor that Liam or one of the twins took.
When I get back everybody is sitting at the kitchen table. Uncle Gerald is at the end nearest the toilet, with the twins sitting close to him. He is playing with them. He whispers and smiles as he makes his hands into the church and the steeple. ‘Here is the church, and here is the steeple,’ he says. ‘Open the doors, and here are the people.’
The twins laugh when Uncle Gerald’s fingers poke up and wiggle like naked people and it makes me feel sick. He does it again and when he says, ‘Open the doors’, the twins open their mouths wide and show bits of mashed food and stretch the saliva between their teeth.
Liam is nearest the living room door, where he always sits. My mother and Aunty Evelyn are together, holding hands, in the middle. My mother has been crying.
They all talk about nothing. About weddings and the bridesmaid who was eating a chewy sweet and had a choking fit during the ceremony and spat the sweet onto the bride’s dress.
There is chicken pie in the cooker for tea and, even though everybody is hungry, my mother says we should wait for my father to come home.
When it is seven o’clock and he still hasn’t come, we eat, except Uncle Gerald; he doesn’t eat because he doesn’t like to eat in front of people, not even in front of his own family.
I look at the placemat on which there is a picture of a foxhunt — men in caps on horses, dogs, and dead foxes hanging from a fence. My mother sees me looking at the foxes. She makes her hands into paws and puts a frightened look on her face.
I smile and she smiles back. I wonder if this means she is feeling better and, if she is, whether I soon will be. Liam lifts his plate, holds it close to his face, then, when he thinks nobody is looking, sucks off bits of pie.
‘Liam,’ says Aunty Evelyn, ‘Go to your room and let us alone so we can talk.’
Liam leaves without argument and the twins follow him like puppies.
‘Well,’ says my mother. ‘I shouldn’t have told you what your father did, but now that it’s out I might as well set things straight.’
She stirs her tea while she speaks and I don’t hear the spoon hitting the side of the cup. She tells me that my father hit my granny during a row and she fell against the dresser. It was an accident and she was taken to hospital to have stitches. When I ask why Da doesn’t apologise so we can go back, she says, ‘He’s already made his apology, but it hasn’t been accepted yet.’
She tells me we won’t be here long; that we might live in a hotel for a while until we find our own flat.
‘What kind of hotel?’ I ask.
‘A cheap one,’ says Uncle Gerald from his place at the end of the table near the toilet door.
‘There’s a nice hotel near the gates of Phoenix Park,’ says my mother. ‘Right near the zoo and the elephant. We can take him peanuts.’
‘Is Da going to go to prison?’
‘Your granny isn’t pressing charges,’ says Aunty Evelyn. ‘She knows it was an accident.’
The telephone rings and my mother rushes to answer it. ‘They hung up,’ she says.
The telephone rings again. She answers it.
‘They hung up again,’ she says.
The telephone rings one more time.
I answer it. ‘Hello,’ I say.
‘It’s your da. Is your mammy there? Is she all right?’
‘Yes. Mam’s grand. We just had chicken pie and now we’re having some tea and cake.’
‘I’ll be home soon. Can you please tell her that?’
‘OK. Bye-bye.’
I stand by the phone, expecting it to ring again.
‘It was Da,’ I say.
‘Why were you yelling down the phone?’ asks my mother.
‘Because he was breathing so hard. It was like talking to a tractor or something.’
‘He’s probably just hoarse and choked up from all the cigarette smoke in that filthy place,’ says Aunty Evelyn.
I take my piece of cake into the living room.
My father goes missing for two days, and I spend two days believing that he’s in Mountjoy gaol. I have nightmares about him being in a cell with a toilet in the corner and a man with tattoos and a shaved head in the bunk above him.
He returns home on Thursday morning while I’m down in the bookshop with Aunty Evelyn. He is wearing a new brown coat with furry black cuffs and collar and he has the beginning of a moustache. ‘Good news,’ he says, as he reaches out for me with his cold red hands, ‘we’ve got ourselves a new home.’
‘Where?’ I ask.
‘Ballymun. Emergency housing high up on the twelfth floor of a fifteen-storey tower,’ he says.
‘The twelfth floor!’ I say. ‘We’ll be living in a skyscraper?’
‘Yes. And a swimming pool is being built and should be ready in a few weeks. And from your bedroom window you can watch the jumbo jets flying overhead on their way to America.’
‘When are we going?’
‘We move in first thing tomorrow morning.’
Aunty Evelyn turns the sign on the door that says Back in 5 Minutes.
‘We’d better get moving,’ she says. ‘Let’s go up and find Helen.’
We go upstairs and find my mother sitting in a straight chair under the window in the living room. The television isn’t on and she isn’t doing anything with her hands.
‘You’ve got a flat, Helen! A brand new Corporation flat and you can move in tomorrow,’ says Aunty Evelyn. ‘And you can take the furniture from the junk room upstairs and the beds in the spare room.’
My father stands by the fire and plays with a box of matches. My mother nods but says nothing.
‘Some of the neighbours are sure to donate a few odds and ends. But we don’t have much time. I’ll start the door-knocking right now.’
My mother frowns.
Aunty Evelyn gets up from the settee and goes to her. She holds her hand out to my mother, as though reaching out to help a cripple to stand. But my mother doesn’t take her sister’s hand. She thanks her and leaves the room.
‘Don’t go chasing her,’ says my father.
I stay and turn on the television.
24
At eight o’clock in the morning, I stand with the blue suitcase at my feet and watch my father and my uncles load a dirty truck with furniture. My mother helps by giving directions and by putting small things on the trolley. I offer to help but she tells me to sit and wait by my suitcase in case errands need to be run. ‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘Like fetching somebody a cup of tea or a glass of water when they need it.’
I sit on the kerb with a packet of plasters. I put one on below my knee, leave it for a few minutes, and then peel it off again. The pain is good when the plaster is ripped away and I like the way it pulls at the hairs and leaves a clear, soft patch of skin.