–No, said Da.
He held the wheel.
–We’re here now, he said,—so—
He tapped the wheel.
Ma got the straw bag up from between her feet and dished out the picnic.
–Don’t get crumbs and muck all over the place, Da said.
He was talking to me and Sinbad.
We had to eat the sandwiches; there was no place to hide them. They were nice; egg. They’d gone real flat; there were no holes left in the bread. We had a can of Fanta between us, me and Sinbad. Ma wouldn’t let us open it. She had the opener. She hooked it under the rim of the can and pressed once for the triangular hole for drinking out of and again, for the hole on the other side for the air to go into. After a few slugs each I could feel little bits of food in the Fanta; I could feel them when I was swallowing. The Fanta was warm.
Ma and Da said nothing. They had a flask with tea in it. There was the cup off the top of the flask and a real cup that Ma had wrapped in toilet paper. She held out the cups for Da to hold so she could pour but he didn’t take them off her. He was looking straight in front of him at the rain milling down the windscreen. She didn’t say anything. She put one cup down and filled it, over Catherine’s head. She held it out; Da took it. It was the big cup, the one off the flask. He sipped it, then he said Thanks, like he didn’t mean it.
–Can we get out?
–No.
–Why not?
–No.
–It’s too wet, said Ma.—You’d catch your death out in that.
Sinbad put his hand under his arm and slammed his arm shut. It made a fart noise. Margaret, Mister O’Connell’s girlfriend, had taught us how to do it. Sinbad did it again.
–Once more—, said Da.
He didn’t turn around.
–See what happens.
Sinbad put his hand under his arm again. I held his arm up so he couldn’t slam it; I’d get the blame. He smiled at me trying to stop him. He never used to smile at all. Even when Da was taking photographs of us, Sinbad wouldn’t smile. We had to stand side by side in front of our ma—it was always the same—and Da would walk away and turn around and look at us through the camera—it was one of those box ones; my ma bought it with her first wages before she got married, before she met my da—and he’d tell us to move a bit and then he’d take ages looking down into the camera and then up at us, and then he’d notice that Sinbad wasn’t smiling.
–Smile now, he’d say, to all of us first.
Smiling was easy.
–Francis, he’d say, sounding ordinary.
–Head up; come on.
Ma would put her hand on Sinbad’s shoulder and still try to hold one of the babies.
–God damn it; the sun’s gone behind a cloud.
But Sinbad kept his head down. And Da lost his temper. All the photographs were the same, me and Ma smiling like mad and Sinbad looking down at the ground. We held the smile for so long, they weren’t really smiles any more. When Ma swapped so Da could be in the photograph Da looked like he was really smiling and Sinbad’s face disappeared completely he was looking down so much.
There were no photographs this day.
Ma had the biscuits wrapped in tinfoil for each of us. That way we didn’t have to share and there were no fights. I could tell from the shape of the foil what biscuits were inside; four Mariettas, two together like a sandwich with butter in the middle, and the square shape at the bottom was a Polo. I’d keep the Polo till last.
Ma said something to Da. I didn’t hear it. I could tell by the look on the side of her face, she was waiting for him to answer. But it was more than that, her face.
You got the Mariettas and you squeezed them together and the butter came out the holes. We called them botty bickies sometimes, because of the way the butter came out, but Ma wouldn’t let us call them that.
I took the Fanta off Sinbad. He let me. It was empty, and it shouldn’t have been.
I looked at Ma again. She was still looking at Da. Catherine had one of Ma’s fingers in her mouth and she was biting real hard—she had a few teeth—but Ma didn’t do anything about it.
Sinbad was eating his biscuits the way he always did, and I did as well. He was nibbling all around the edge till he went all the way round and the Mariettas were the same shape again, only smaller. He licked where the butter had come out of the holes. When he got to the end of his first lap he stopped. I grabbed the hand the biscuit sandwich was in and I squashed his hand in my hands and made him smash the biscuits into crumbs that were too small to rescue. That was for drinking all the Fanta.
Ma was getting out of the car. It was awkward because of Catherine. I thought we were all getting out, that it had stopped raining.
But it hadn’t. It was lashing.
Something had happened; something.
Ma left the door open; it closed back a bit but it was still open. Me and Sinbad waited for Da to move, to see what we were supposed to do. He leaned over and grabbed the passenger door handle and pulled the door shut. He grunted when he was straightening up.
Sinbad was licking his hand.
–Where’s Ma gone to? I asked.
Da sighed, and turned a bit so I could see some of the side of his face. Then he didn’t say anything. He was looking in the windshield mirror at us. I couldn’t see his eyes. Sinbad had his head down, the way he used to. I rubbed the wet off the inside of the window beside me. I hadn’t been going to touch it until we got home. I couldn’t see anything, miles of the sand but not Ma. I was on the wrong side, behind Da.
–Has she gone for 99s?
I rubbed the window again.
The door clicked open. Ma got in, ducking her head, making sure that Catherine wasn’t bashed against anything. Her hair was stuck down on her. She didn’t have anything; she hadn’t got us anything.
–It was too wet for Cathy, she said after a while, to Da.
He started the car.
–You’re getting very tall, she said.
She was trying to get the zip of my trousers to close.
–You’ll soon be the same size as your daddy.
I wanted that, to be the same size as my da. My name was the same as his one. I’d waited till he’d gone to work before I’d shown her that the zip wouldn’t shut properly. He’d have shut it. I hoped she wouldn’t be able to do it. I hated the trousers. They were yellow corduroy. One of my cousins had owned them first. They’d never been mine.
She hitched them up. She tried to hold the two sides together so the zip would go up. I didn’t cheat. I even sucked in my belly.
–No, she said.—No use.
She let go of the trousers.
–They’re finished, she said.—You’re growing too fast, Patrick.
She didn’t mean it.
–We’ll have to use a safety pin, she said.
She saw my face.
–Just for today.
They were checking the B.C.G., that was what everyone said. Henno hadn’t told us anything. He’d just said that we were to queue up and the first two in the queue were always to have their jumpers and shirts and vests off ready when the door opened or there’d be trouble. Only two had gone in and they hadn’t come back out yet. He was supposed to be looking after us but he wasn’t. He’d gone off, upstairs to the teachers’ room for a cup of tea.
–I’ll hear any noise, he said.—Don’t worry.
He stamped his foot on the wooden floor. The noise bounced down the corridor. It took ages to die.
–There, he said.—Whispering is impossible in this school. I’ll hear every little thing.
Then he went.
We heard him at the top of the stairs. He’d stopped.
Ian McEvoy made sure that the wall was guarding him, then he stamped his foot the way Henno had. The laughing was great, waiting to hear Henno coming back down. He didn’t. We all stamped our feet. It must have been his shoes though; we couldn’t get the same noise. But that was all we did; we didn’t shout or mess.