After drinking tea, my grandmother has a glass of sherry, and her shoulders drop under the pleasure of it. Her head lolls, her eyes close and, finally, her head falls forward. My father moves his chair, and the scraping wakes her. She looks at him, startled.
‘What happened to your beard?’ she asks, as though waking from a dream.
My mother and I laugh.
‘I want to know what happened to my son’s face,’ she says. ‘He’s gone all soft and naked.’
She has hardly finished speaking when her eyes close and her head folds into her chest.
‘Wake up!’ my father shouts. ‘The table is not a bed.’
She opens her eyes. ‘It’s my house and I’ll sleep in the cupboard under the stairs if I want to.’
I wonder where Crito is and start calling for her. ‘Puss, puss, puss. Heeeeeere Crito! Heeeeeere Crito!’
My father frowns at me, gets up, and leaves the kitchen without speaking.
Whenever my grandmother wins more than fifty pounds at the races, she takes me to Butlins holiday camp or to a circus if there’s one near by. At Butlins last year there was an exhibition called Amazing Wonders of the World.
There were pictures of giants and midgets, of a man with no arms who played the piano with his feet, and of Siamese twins, who faced away from each other while they kissed their boyfriends.
My grandmother and I sat in the front row and watched a film of a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel and a re-enactment of Harry Houdini escaping from a straitjacket and chains. Houdini’s real name was Ehrich Weiss. He was born in 1874 and died in 1926.
My Aunty Evelyn has been to Niagara Falls. When she came home she said, ‘I’ve got quite a tan on me.’ But she was fatter than she was before she left, and nobody was looking at her tan. My mother says Aunty Evelyn is digging a grave with her teeth.
I look forward to seeing Aunty Evelyn because she tells me stories from that trip. She tells me about the town, with its big hill, called Clifton Hill, lined with museums and fun parlours; houses of oddities, miracles, neon lights and astonishing amusements. She says that the city by Niagara Falls is our way of competing with nature. ‘The natural freak of gigantic falls, and the human freak-show. It’s all there at Niagara.’
It occurs to me that I could get to Niagara sooner if only my grandmother would help.
‘Did you win?’ I ask as I tap her on the arm. She wakes. ‘Well? Did you win anything at the races?’
‘Not this time,’ she says. ‘But winning isn’t everything.’
‘So you won no races?’ I say.
‘No,’ she says. ‘But I enjoyed myself.’
I feel dizzy, suddenly, as though I have lost my balance. ‘Did you really not win any money?’ I ask.
‘Sure, didn’t I tell you already?’ she says. ‘I didn’t win a penny.’
I look down at the table.
‘I’ll make some more tea,’ says my mother. ‘Take Granny’s coat and bag and put them in her room.’
I take my grandmother’s coat and bag to her bedroom. Being inside her big bedroom is like being in another house, or in a chalet, like the one we stayed in at Butlins. I put her bag on the bed and open it.
Her purse is bursting with wads of money. I check the door and then I start counting the money by sorting the notes. Fifty, twenty, and five-pound notes in piles. Some of the notes are scrunched, a few are torn. I count once, and then count again, my heart pounding, shaking in my chest.
I’m going to be sick. I rush out to the bathroom, run the cold water tap, and I put my head over the toilet. It comes like last time, a rush of yellow liquid. I get most of the sick into the toilet and mop the rest up with toilet paper. My mouth tastes of bitter orange juice.
I go past the kitchen and look in. Granny is drinking tea and talking to my mother. I return to her bedroom and look at the money: seven hundred and forty-five pounds! I ask God to keep Granny in the kitchen so I won’t be caught and my hands shake as I take some of the money for myself. I put it in my pocket, but I am not a thief. This is the proof I need that I have not imagined these riches and that I have not imagined her lies.
I go to my room and don’t leave it again for the rest of the day. I can’t let anybody see my shaking hands. I put my chest of drawers in front of my door and count the money again. I have taken ninety pounds. I sort the notes into small bundles. Three twenties, two tens and two fives. I will keep the money under my mattress and decide what to do with it later.
At nine o’clock, my mother comes to my bedroom to say good-night.
‘How is Lord Muck?’ she asks.
‘Good.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Thinking.’
‘You do an awful lot of thinking. Be careful you don’t turn into a hermit.’
I don’t know why somebody spending their time thinking would surprise anybody. There are thousands of things to think about. When it comes to thinking, life is like a giant amusement park. When you walk into the park, you should want to go on all the rides.
I’d tell her this but she might think I’m being funny and laugh and I’m not in the mood for laughing.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’ll stop now. Can you stay with me for a while?’
She closes the door and sits on my bed.
‘Can you rub my feet?’ I ask.
‘You’ll have to get them out from under the covers.’
She massages my feet and I look at her.
‘You seem sad,’ she says.
‘Because Da is a liar,’ I say. ‘That’s why I was sick on the floor.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She lets go of my feet.
‘I said Da is a liar.’
‘What do you mean your father is a liar?’
I want to tell her that Granny is also a liar, but then she will know that I looked in her purse and might suspect me.
‘He’s a liar and I have proof. I vomited because he lied to me. He lied about not feeling sad.’
‘You vomited at the sight of the dead kittens.’
I sit up. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I vomited because I knew he lied. If I tell you how, will you promise not to tell Da?’
‘Go ahead and tell me.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise. Tell me.’
‘Swear you won’t tell?’
‘I swear it. Now tell me.’
‘I’ve suspected Da was a liar before. Sometimes he promises to do things and I know he’ll break his promise. Sometimes he says he’ll be home for tea and I know he won’t. I’ve suspected him for ages. I just needed proof. Now I have the proof because I vomited. I know that Da’s a liar.’
‘That’s nonsense. You were sick because you were upset. Your father is not a liar.’
‘It was more than being sick. I saw the expression on his face change when he told the lie and I heard the change in his voice and I saw his hands shake.’
She stands up and goes to the door without looking back at me.
‘You’re tired and upset,’ she says. ‘Go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘But …’
She has gone.
I look in the Guinness Book of Records to see whether there’s anybody who has a gift for lie detection. There’s nobody. I will write and tell them that I can detect lies. If they decide to test me and I pass the test, I might get in the book, not for breaking a record (like eating the most hard-boiled eggs, or having the longest moustache), but for doing an astonishing thing.
Perhaps, I should also write to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum. They might be interested in me. There’s a photograph of Robert Leroy Ripley over my bedhead. He stands with his arm around the shoulder of a man called El Fusilado, ‘The Executed One’, who faced the firing squad and lived. El Fusilado’s face is full of bullet holes, but he smiles, happy to be with Ripley. At the very least, I will make enough money from my gift to pay for a trip to Niagara Falls.