26
A letter arrived yesterday announcing that I must go to Ballymun National School across the road. It will take me less than two minutes to walk there and I will probably be able to see Plunkett tower from the window of my classroom. I start tomorrow, and so this is my last free day. I get up late and go to the kitchen for breakfast. My mother is still sleeping but somebody has left two new exercise books on the table. I get a knife out of the drawer and cut squares out of the flock wallpaper in the gap between the cupboard and fridge and I use the wallpaper to cover the books. Then I see a note that has fallen from the table. It’s from my father and has five pounds Sellotaped to the back.
Dear son,
Have a great first day tomorrow. And here’s some money to buy yourself a present. I hope this will make things up to you a bit.
Love, Da.
I walk across the road and down two blocks to the toy shop in the big shopping centre. I’ve never been in a toy shop so big, so bright. I look around for an hour before settling on a remote-control racing car called Johnny Speed, The Most Fantastic Racing Car Ever Made, by Topper Toys. I turn the box over and read every inch of it and I gaze for ages at the big colour photo on the cover.
The car is a bright red convertible Jaguar XKE and there’s a little cream-coloured plastic driver in the front seat and the car goes forward and reverse and the wheels can be steered so it also turns around. Nobody else will have one, and I can drive it around behind the flats and, if people stop to ask me about it, I can give them lessons. If I had the money I took from Granny I could also buy some of the accessories. I could buy a racing track, the pit-stop men in overall and caps, the grandstand for the spectators and the man who holds the black and white finish flag.
I get enough change to buy batteries, a Mars bar and a bottle of Fanta and I sit for a while on a big bench in the warm shopping centre and read the instructions. When I’m sure I understand how the car works, I take it and the control box out of the foam compartments and do my first test-run on the shiny, flat floor of the shopping centre.
The car works and it’s fast! Two ladies come and stand by me and watch. There’s a cord connecting the control box to the Jaguar but it’s thirty feet long, so the car can go quite far.
‘Isn’t it magic?’ says one of the ladies.
‘It’s grand,’ I say. ‘I just got it for my birthday.’
‘Happy birthday.’
‘What a lovely present.’
‘Thanks, I love it,’ I say.
‘Ta-ta, now,’ says one lady.
‘We’ve got more shopping to do,’ says the other, and off they go.
I wish other people would watch. I make the Jaguar go around the bench. The cord gets caught, but I unravel it and try again. The second time, I get it just right.
I walk back to the flats.
The boys in the gang are huddled in a pack near the lift. I decide to take the stairs. If any of them speak to me, I’ll pause before I answer, and take deep breaths so that I don’t sound nervous.
As I reach the landing of the first floor one of the gang members comes running up behind me. I keep walking along the balcony, but he catches up.
‘Get out of the feckin’ way!’ he says.
I’m not in his way so I stay to the left of the stairs and keep walking.
‘I said get out of the feckin’ way!’ he shouts.
I keep walking up to the second floor and then turn right, pretending that I live on this floor. The rest of the gang has come up behind me.
I stop and turn around. I will put on a Dublin accent. ‘Howya? I’ve just moved here from Gorey.’
‘I’ll show you Gorey,’ says the tallest one, and then I count them: there are only five, not the dozen or more I’ve imagined.
‘How old are ya?’ one of them asks.
‘Eleven,’ I say.
‘So, why aren’t you at school?’ asks the boy from the stairs, who has one blue eye and one hazel eye.
Now we’re all standing on the balcony outside number 29. I hope that if anything happens the people inside will hear us.
‘I didn’t feel like going,’ I say. ‘What about youse?’
They tell me they didn’t feel like going to school either. I wonder how they can get away with such a thing, but I don’t ask. They all look about thirteen or fourteen. None is as tall as I am and I’m not as scared of being beaten as I was, but I’d still prefer it if they let me alone so I could go home with my new car.
‘What’s in the big bag?’ asks the tallest boy, whose hair is blond at the top, with small greasy tails hanging out the back.
‘Shopping,’ I say.
‘Doesn’t look like shopping.’
‘Looks like a colourful box.’
I move back a little so that I’m against the balcony wall and realise I’m only making them more curious.
‘It’s a remote-controlled car,’ I say.
‘Give it here,’ says the boy with different coloured eyes.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘But let me get it started first. I’ll do a demo for you.’
I take the car out of its box, and try to make sure they don’t see my hands shaking. I put the batteries in and think about what I’m going to do. I make the car drive along the balcony, all the way to the other end, and make it turn around when it reaches the stairs. They watch.
‘Give us a cigarette,’ I say. ‘I’ll show youse something.’
The boy with greasy tails gives me a cigarette, which I put in the passenger seat of the car, and then, from about ten feet away, I drive the car over to him.
‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘I’m after having my fags delivered!’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Fuck.’
I wish I hadn’t said it. They stare at me and then tell me to go down the other end of the balcony. I take the cigarette out of the car and put it in my pocket and make sure they see.
They call me back.
‘Wanna join?’ asks the boy with tails.
‘OK,’ I say.
‘But you have to give us your car,’ says the shorter boy. ‘For keeps. It’ll be instead of the membership fee.’
I crouch down to put my new car back in its box. I try to stay calm and I stall a while by making the batteries fall out, so there’s time to stop myself from crying. I swallow a few times before I look up.
‘Does your gang have a name?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ says the one leaning against the balcony wall with a smoke behind his ear, ‘we’re called The Fangs.’
They all laugh and I laugh too, even though I know they are laughing at me: they are not called The Fangs. I give them my new car and we shake hands.
They tell me their names. The leaders are Mark, the tallest one with the greasy tails, and Colman, the one with the different coloured eyes.
‘One more thing,’ says Mark, ‘you gotta do a job before you are a fully fledged member.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve gotta go to the new housing estate and bring us back a brand new sink.’
‘Yeah,’ says Colman. ‘And by five o’clock tomorrow.’
They ask me to swear that if I am ever caught doing anything I’ll say I don’t know them, and they promise that they’ll say they don’t know me.
‘Sure,’ I say and we shake hands again.
My hand is no damper than their hands.
They ask me which tower I live in and the number of my flat. I tell them the tower, but give them the number of Mrs McGahern’s flat. I should have given them a random number from a different floor.
‘But you better not come around,’ I say. ‘Me mam’s deaf and blind and she gets very upset with surprises.’
I am getting better at lying. My face doesn’t feel hot and my body doesn’t shake. I am steadier on my feet and stronger. Mark tells me about how the building sites work. First the surveyors come and then trenches are laid and then the concrete is poured into the trenches.