Uncle Gerald sees what I am doing. He wags his finger at me, making a cross face. I smile and wag my finger back and, as usual, he doesn’t know what to do. He stands back and looks at me, his hands by his side, and then he turns and goes back to the truck and moves a chest of drawers a few inches for no good reason. Sometimes it is as though Uncle Gerald doesn’t take life very seriously; he tries things out, sees that nobody has noticed him, changes course, does something else, and seems not to care about the difference.
A group of neighbours has gathered. There are five women and two men. They stand on the footpath in front of number 17, in a mob. The way they stand close together makes it seem that they are all from the same family. They stare as though they have only one mind between them; when one stares at me, they all stare at me, and when one stares at my mother, they all stare at my mother. When one watches my Uncle Jack light up a cigarette, they all watch.
One of the women holds a wooden spoon with cold porridge glued to its end, and another holds a dishrag. They say they have come to wish us bon voyage, but it is plain that they have come to see what a ruined family looks like.
My mother looks across at them and waves, and suddenly they move in towards the door of the truck and surround her. She steps back to stop them getting in the way.
‘I hear there is central heating in every flat,’ says a thin woman with red hair.
‘And there’ll be a swimming pool in a wee while,’ says the one with the wooden spoon.
Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony are in the back of the truck with the furniture and I am happy to sit in the cab between my father and mother. I like being up high and my father’s arms look strong when he turns the steering wheel to get us around tight corners.
We drive in heavy traffic, and there’s a good view of all of the shops in North Circular Road. I look down at the children on their way to school and feel free. I hold my mother’s hand.
But, as we get closer to Ballymun, my mood changes. The streets here are narrow and the gutters are full of rubbish. The houses are small and grey and nobody has painted the doors or windowsills. And as we pull into the car park at the base of one of the Ballymun high-rise towers, it is clear that nothing good can happen here.
My father jumps out of the cab and I climb down after him. I feel heavy and tired. I look around at the seven towers and the dozens of smaller blocks of flats that surround us, the busy road at the edge of the car park, the big school across the busy road, and the roundabout.
My mother stays in her seat, her hands on her lap. My father lets Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony out of the back of the truck and then puts his hand on my shoulder.
‘Each tower is named after the men who signed the proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916,’ he says.
‘Which one is ours?’ I ask.
‘Plunkett,’ he says. ‘That one there. The one in the middle.’
It’s not possible to see all seven towers in one glance. There are too many and they make it dark as night. To see them all, it is necessary to turn in a full circle. How can they be new when they are so soiled and dirty? They are like rotted teeth, decayed and brown and stained with tar, teeth pulled from an awful and dirty giant.
‘How will we get everything up the stairs?’ I ask my father.
‘There are lifts, stupid.’
We go up to our new home. Unlike the dirty lifts and the dirty stairwell and the dirty corridors, the walls of our flat are white and clean and once inside there is no smell of urine or wet cigarette butts.
But it’s a small flat with everything in it smalclass="underline" a tiny kitchen and a tiny living room with just enough room for a settee, the television and a few chairs. And the toilet is the smallest I’ve ever seen, with a bath only fit for a midget. And there are two small bedrooms, both with windows that can’t be opened and which look down twelve floors to the car park and tarmac below.
Like everybody else who lives in the towers, we must send our rubbish down a chute, and the chute is at the top of the stairs, near my bedroom window.
‘I don’t want to sleep near the rubbish chute,’ I say.
‘Well, there’s nowhere else,’ says my father.
We go to the biggest bedroom. It has a built-in wardrobe covered in dark, tinted mirrors.
‘If I’m going to sleep in here,’ says my mother, ‘I’m going to cover those.’
‘First we need to finish moving,’ says my father and so we go back downstairs in the lift.
Although we have more to move, my father insists that Uncle Jack and Uncle Tony should leave us. But Uncle Jack comes back soon after with five bags of hot chips and we all sit on the small patch of grass near the truck and eat together.
‘All right, so. You’ll leave us now,’ says my father. ‘We can manage the rest on our own.’
They leave after my father gives Uncle Tony a few quid for a taxi.
The central heating is turned up high in the flat. We are too hot inside, and then feel the cold like a shower of icy water when we go outside. After each trip my father puts his head under the cold-water tap. We stand in the empty kitchen and watch him drench himself as we fan ourselves with pieces of cardboard torn from boxes.
‘Right, so. We’ll talk to the Corporation about getting that heat turned down,’ he says. ‘We can’t live in the tropics.’
My mother looks out the window to the dark block of flats behind us and sighs.
‘I’ve already spoken to our new neighbour, Mrs McGahern, and she says the thermostat is set by the Corporation and can’t be changed by the tenants.’
My father shakes his head.
‘We’ll get used to it,’ she says. ‘We’ll just have to wear our summer togs.’
My father’s rage is too ready. ‘That’s a fine attitude so early in the piece. Since when do you give in just like that? On the word of a nosy old woman?’
‘I didn’t say anything about an old woman or about anybody being nosy.’
‘I’ve seen her standing out there peering inside every box we carry up. And you! The word of a stranger and you cave in?’
‘Michael, I don’t think …’
‘I’m going to see some neighbours of my own and find out if there isn’t a better explanation.’
‘Waste your time getting a second opinion,’ says my mother. ‘I know what the answer will be.’
He storms out and slams the door behind him.
It is strange to be standing with my mother in an empty kitchen behind a door slammed shut with such echoing noise, standing with nothing to do, and so strange to have no choice but to leave by the same door without speaking.
Although it is dark when we finish unpacking and putting furniture where we want it, my father says we must take a walk around before we eat and go to our beds.
‘We’ll explore for a while and then we can have tea in a public bar. How’s that?’ We take the lift and I hold my nose all the way down and so does my mother. My father presses the button to take us to the basement.
‘Let’s have a look,’ he says.
‘What’s there?’ I ask.
‘It’s the activity centre. There’s one in every tower, I think.’
But when we get there, the centre is closed. There’s a sign on the door with the opening hours: it should be open on a Saturday night. There is also a sign listing free activities. There will be guitar lessons tomorrow for boys aged between ten and sixteen.
‘There you are,’ says my father. ‘Music lessons.’
‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘But I’m starving.’
‘Let’s look around a while longer. Then we can eat.’
As we come out of the lift, I look up at the tops of the towers, which poke out of the concrete ground and reach high, higher than any other building in all of Dublin, straight into the sky as though desperate to drink from the white clouds, or to get washed by the rain.