‘But you do lie,’ I say.
He ignores me, I can’t believe it, and my mother pushes a chip into the yolk of her fried egg. I hate him for ignoring me and the blood filling my neck throbs and makes it hard to swallow.
Something is wrong, and I want to know what it is. I get up from the table and leave my food. They don’t scold me and I’m not surprised. I go to my room and write another letter to the Guinness Book of Records. But when I’m finished, I worry that they might hold the Ballymun address against me and I add a final note:
P.S. I am giving you our temporary Dublin address in Ballymun where we are living for a few months while my father builds our new house in Donnybrook.
It’s Sunday and we’ve been to mass with Aunty Evelyn, Uncle Gerald, the twins and Liam. We’ve eaten our dinner, and now my mother and I are alone in the kitchen listening to the radio.
‘Mam, I was wondering if I could have a radio in my room?’
‘What for?’
‘To drown out the sound of the rubbish chute. I hate the noise and the smell.’
‘You’re like the rich people who always insist on living upwind of the mill smoke,’ she says.
My father comes into the kitchen from behind me. He must have been lying on the settee. He didn’t come to mass. ‘We can’t afford another radio,’ he says.
‘But I hate the noise and the smell and I don’t want to sleep in there any more.’
He looks at my mother.
‘All right,’ he says, ‘You can sleep with your mammy, if you want.’
‘But where will you sleep?’
‘I’ll sleep on the settee. I’m getting quite attached to it.’
‘Good idea,’ I say.
‘There’ll be nobody sleeping on the settee,’ says my mother.
‘All right then,’ says my father as he scratches his beard, which has grown back even blacker and thicker than before. ‘Until we find ourselves a house, you’ll sleep with your mother, and I’ll sleep in the bedroom with the smell of rubbish.’
He winks cheerfully at me, but my mother isn’t sure. ‘Why don’t we talk about this a bit more?’ she says. ‘Maybe later.’
‘It’s not so complicated,’ says my father. ‘I’ll sleep in the small room and you two can share the big bed.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if somebody slept on the settee?’ she says.
‘I’m not sleeping on the settee,’ I say.
‘Nor am I,’ says my father.
My mother gives my father a mean and cold look. ‘For heavens’ sake, Michael! You’re only after saying you’ve become quite attached to the settee.’
‘I wasn’t serious,’ he says.
‘Well,’ she says as she walks away, ‘that’s that then.’
Last night my father slept on the settee after all, and now the three of us stand before breakfast in the living room in our pyjamas looking down at the mess of blankets and pillows, tissues and toffee wrappers he has left on the floor.
My mother reminds him that he must tidy up and put his bedding away. He says, ‘What the hell difference does it make to this death-hole whether or not it’s tidy?’
My mother shakes her head and tries to smile. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she says. ‘It has its good side.’
‘Where’s that?’ I ask. ‘Has this tower got a fifth side I don’t know about?’
My father punches me on the arm as though to say, ‘Good for you’, and my mother sighs.
Last night I slept soundly in the bed with her. It was warmer and, since she stayed over on her side and hardly moved at all during the night, my dreams were long and clear. And I liked sleeping with her because we talked before she turned out the light and when she’s sleepy her voice is soft and gentle.
When my father gets home from work I ask him what it’s like in the factory.
He shrugs. ‘It keeps me out of trouble,’ he says, which is not at all like the kind of thing he used to say.
‘I suppose you can read on the bus though,’ I say. ‘You can study for your exams at Trinity.’
‘And that’s exactly what I do,’ he says.
But this is a lie. I checked in his bag while he was in the bathroom; there were no books. Maybe he reads at night when my mother and I have gone to bed, but I don’t think so. I think he watches television.
I make myself stay awake and when it is midnight I leave the bedroom and go in search of my father. He’s not in the bedroom. He’s in the living room sitting up on the settee watching the television.
‘You’re up late,’ he says.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Did you have a nighthorse?’
I laugh. ‘No, just wide awake.’
‘Sit with me and watch this.’
‘But there’s nothing on.’
The television finishes at midnight with the Angelus bells.
‘I know. But staring at the blank screen helps me to think. Besides, Crito likes looking at her reflection in the black glass.’
I jump up from the settee. I can’t believe it. ‘Crito? Is Crito here? Did somebody bring her?’
‘No, sit down. Crito’s not here.’
‘Then why did you talk about her as though she was here?’
‘I imagine she is,’ he says. ‘Here. Watch.’
My father begins to stroke the air between us, soft, curved, cat-size strokes, as though Crito were sitting here. Then he taps his leg as though to invite her onto his lap. He says ‘Ooph’ when she jumps on and then he continues to stroke her back, this time, longer, flatter strokes.
‘You see, it’s as though she was here.’
I swallow twice, until my throat is dry again and look at the curtains.
‘That’s really mad, Da. I didn’t know you were such a lunatic.’
‘You should go back to bed. You don’t want to fall asleep at school.’
I stand up. ‘I haven’t even started school yet. Mammy’s trying to get me out of having to go to the Ballymun school.’
My mother wants to find me a place in a good convent school, like the one near Aunty Evelyn’s bookshop, which is surrounded by a high brick wall, and has a grotto and a statue of the Virgin Mary and a holy water font in the front garden.
‘Yes, of course. Still, you need your sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘G’night, Da.’
‘G’night, John.’
He kisses me on the hand for a joke and I laugh.
* * *
We have been in Ballymun for nearly two weeks, and I want to go to school. I want to make new friends and I’m tired of wandering around the flats. I’ve read all my books and I’ve nothing to put in my new Gol of Seil and I’ve even made a new puppet stage out of an apple box for my mother. There’s nothing else to do, so I walk up to the top of all seven towers and when I’m tired of walking up and down the stairs, I watch Ballymun life from the window, or lie on my mother’s bed and read. The bedroom we share is better now that she has used leftover wallpaper to cover the tinted brown mirrors.
In three days I see four ambulances and eight Garda cars. Sometimes the injured person is in the back of the ambulance with the person who has hurt them. Sometimes women hurt men, sometimes women hurt each other, and sometimes drunk men hurt women after long bouts of screaming, but the women scream more than the men.
I see an unconscious woman on a stretcher being put inside an ambulance. The way the doors open, and the ambulance officer in a white coat adjusts the stretcher to make it straight before he slides it in, looks just like a chef putting food on a tray into a cooker.
I see washing falling off the clotheslines people rig to their ground-floor balconies and, when the washing doesn’t fall, or get blown off by the wind, children steal it. The ground-floor flats are the ones nobody wants and nearly half are empty and boarded up.