She laughs and doesn’t cover her face with her hands. This is good.
We wait for my father to get home, but he is late again, working, and he comes home when The Late Late Show is nearly finished.
He smiles when he sees us sitting together under the blanket on the settee. He messes my hair. ‘All right?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Cup of tea?’ says my mother.
‘I’ll get it myself,’ he says.
‘Hungry?’ she asks.
‘No, I had a steak sandwich in the cafeteria.’
I go to my room and get the new apple-box stage with the curtains drawn on the side.
When my father has settled down on the settee with his cup of tea, I stand in front of him. ‘Da? I’d like to put on a puppet show. It only takes about five minutes.’
He smiles. A happy mood tonight. ‘All right, son. Let’s see it.’
‘Youse have to turn off the television first.’
‘Don’t say youse,’ says my father. ‘It’s common.’
I set the stage up on the coffee table, cover my head with a black cloth and crouch down. ‘Welcome, lady and gentleman, to our special puppet show. It’s called Puppet Philosophers of the World.
‘One by one, you will meet four famous philosophers who are in disguise and you have to guess who they are. If you guess correctly, you get a piece of chocolate.’
I start with a hand puppet, a white sock with a face drawn on, wearing a toga. The sock puppet says to another sock puppet, ‘You smell. You’re annoying. You’re an eejit.’
I ask, ‘Can any member of the illustrious audience guess who this philosopher is?’
My father laughs and shouts. ‘I’ve got it! I’d recognise that fat sock-face anywhere!’
His voice is so loud it is as though he thinks I won’t be able to hear properly under the black cloth, or as though the puppets won’t understand.
‘It’s Socrates!’ he shouts.
‘A-ha,’ I say. ‘Very clever deduction: Sock-ra-tease.’
I do three more philosophers, including Plato; a cardboard toe playing with a soccer ball made out of a piece of cotton wool with a small stone inside it. My father gets two right and my mother gets one.
I am pleased and excited about the final philosopher I have prepared, and I got his name, like the others, from one of Da’s books.
The final philosopher in disguise is a Lego man holding a shovel. I make the Lego man perform a digging motion into a small pile of straw.
‘Who can guess the identity of this final philosopher?’ I ask.
There is no answer.
‘Do you need a hint?’ I ask. ‘He’s digging.’
Silence.
‘Come on, lady and gentleman!’ I say. ‘Can’t you figure it out? Just think. All the clues are here.’
‘We give up,’ says my mother. ‘Just tell us.’
‘No,’ I say, getting hot under the black cloth. ‘It’s not that hard! You have to think. Just think a bit longer. Just think!’
My father turns the television on.
‘Not yet,’ says my mother.
‘I’ve had enough thinking for one night,’ he says.
I come out from under my black cloth. ‘It was Heidegger,’ I say, as I kick the box across the room. ‘Hay digger.’
My father looks away from Gay Byrne’s face on the television, and smiles at me. ‘Very clever,’ he says. ‘You get the last piece of chocolate.’
I go to my room so they won’t see my disappointed face.
28
After school the next day, I see the gang at the base of the stairs. They are huddled together, rummaging through a shopping trolley full of somebody’s groceries.
I turn back and walk around the block a few times and, when I return, they have gone.
My mother is sitting in the living room darning socks, and she is wearing one of her good dresses, the pink and black dress she wore to mass on Easter Sunday. She looks beautiful, darning and listening to the radio.
I say hello and then go to the bedroom, where I lie on my stomach. I need to think about the gang and what I’ll do next.
At teatime, she comes in to ask me what I’m doing. I tell her I’m thinking about some of the things I’ve read in The Guinness Book of Records.
She puts her long hair into a ponytail. ‘It’s time for tea.’
‘Can I stay here? I’m not hungry.’
‘If you want.’
She leaves and I scratch my head, the same place I always scratch. But I have gone too far again and there’s blood on my fingers. I wipe the blood away on my trousers. I go on thinking and scratching and then I close my eyes.
My mother comes back a few minutes later with a ham sandwich and sits on the end of the bed. ‘Here, you have to eat something.’
I take the plate but don’t eat the sandwich.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Everything’s fine.’
I would like to tell her about the gang; about how I owe them a sink and about how I will need to avoid them on the way home every night.
She stands next to the bed and looks down at my head. ‘You’re bleeding!’
‘I didn’t realise.’
‘I’m going to put some Dettol on that.’
She returns with the bottle and a ball of cotton wool and sits next to me on the bed as she puts the Dettol on the hole in my scalp.
‘Are you troubled by something?’ she asks.
‘No, I’m just thinking. I’ve been thinking a lot.’
‘You’re in the amusement park again? The one you told me about?’
At least she can remember this.
‘Yes.’
Then, as we lie on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, we both hear it: an aeroplane flying low, on its way down to Dublin airport. The groan of the landing gear, the low moan of the engines.
I go to the window. ‘I can see the tip of the wing,’ I say. ‘It’s very low.’
I get quite excited when I say this, even though I’m lying. I can’t see the plane. I’m a better liar than I was in Gorey. It seems likely that I will become both a great lie detector and a gifted liar. I have no intention of lying in any bad way, and I won’t be a criminal or a cheat, but it will be a crucial second stage of my art to be able to sit through a polygraph test and win. Surely this combination of talents will bring more fame.
I keep looking up at the sky, at nothing but grey clouds. And I say, ‘I can see the plane, Mam!’
I imagine being on that plane, the dinner on my lap and a blanket to sleep under. I tell my mother about the headphones, slippers and eye-masks first-class passengers are given on aeroplanes.
‘You seem to know a lot about what happens on planes for somebody who hasn’t been in one.’
‘That’s because I know I’m going to go on one. Unlike some people, like Da, I know I’m going to do the things I really want to do and not just talk about it.’
She pulls the eiderdown up under her chin. ‘John, if you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all.’
‘Even if it’s the truth?’
‘You’re not being fair. I think you need to learn some tolerance. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’
The Bible! I can’t speak so I make a loud and long growling noise, like a dog shouting.
‘John? What’s got into you?’
She didn’t sound like this in Gorey. She read books and used witty and interesting words and talked about making puppets, and now she is sad and weak for no good reason.
‘How can you not realise how dumb you sound?’ I shout. ‘You’re a dummy all of a sudden! A dummy lady with the voice of an old hag at the bus stop. Why do you only talk to me with these sayings all the time? You’re a dummy!’
‘That’s not fair.’ She closes her eyes.
‘Yes, it is. It’s fair and it’s true. You’re like a zombie since we moved here.’