–Morning not to get up.
I was good at waiting for the scab to be ready. I never rushed. I waited until I was sure it was hollow, sure that the crust had lifted off my knee. It came off neat and tidy and there was no blood underneath, just a red mark; that was the knee being fixed. Scabs were made by things in your blood called corpuscles. There were thirtyfive billion corpuscles in your blood. They made the scabs to stop you from bleeding to death.
I was the same way with sticky eyes. I let them stay sticky and they got hard. In the mornings this happened sometimes. One eye was sticky where I’d had my head on the pillow. My ma said a draught caused it. I turned on my back. I concentrated on the eye; I kept it shut. Sleepy eyes, my ma called them. She’d cleared them out with the facecloth when I’d shown her them the first time, both of them sticky. I didn’t tell her any more. I kept them for myself. I waited. When my ma shouted up at us to hurry up for our breakfast I got up and got dressed. I tested the eye. I pulled the lids as if I was going to open them. They were nice and stuck, and dry. I finished dressing. I sat on the bed and touched the eye carefully, around the outside and the corners. The outside corner first, I scooped the crust away on the top of my finger and looked. There was never as much on the finger as it felt there’d be, only a tiny bit of flake. They’d pop open and I could feel the air on my eyeball. Then I’d rub the eye and it was normal again. There was nothing when I looked in the mirror in the bathroom. Just two eyes the same.
Sinbad didn’t notice the way I did. There had to be shouts and screams and big gaps between them before he knew anything. When it was quiet it was fine; that was the way he thought. He wouldn’t agree with me, even when I got him on the ground.
I was alone, the only one who knew. I knew better than they did. They were in it: all I could do was watch. I paid more attention than they did, because they kept saying the same things over and over.
–I do not.
–You do.
–I do not.
You do, I’m afraid.
I waited for one of them to say something different, wanting it—they’d go forward again and it would end for a while. Their fights were like a train that kept getting stuck at the corner tracks and you had to lean over and push it or straighten it. Only now, all I could do was listen and wish. I didn’t pray; there were no prayers for this. The Our Father didn’t fit, or the Hail Mary. But I rocked the same way I sometimes did when I was saying prayers. Backwards and forwards, the rhythm of the prayer. Grace Before Meals was the fastest, probably because we were all starving just before lunch, just after the bell.
I rocked.
–Stop stop stop stop—
On the stairs. On the step outside the back door. In bed. Sitting beside my da. At the table in the kitchen.
–I hate them this way.
–They’re the same as last Sunday.
Da only had a fry on Sunday mornings. We had a sausage each and black pudding if we wanted it, as well as what we always had. At least an hour before mass.
–Gollop it down now, Ma warned me,—or you won’t be able to go up for communion.
I looked at the clock. There were nine minutes before half-eleven and we were going to halftwelve mass. I divided my sausage in nine.
–I told you before, I hate them runny.
–They were runny last week.
–I hate them this way; I won’t—
I rocked.
–Do you need to go to the toilet?
–No.
–What’s wrong with you then?
–Nothing.
–Well, stop squirming there like a halfwit. Eat your breakfast.
He said nothing else. He ate everything, the runny egg as well. I liked them runny. He got it all up with about half a slice of bread: I could never do that properly. The egg just ran ahead in front of the bread when I did it. He cleaned his plate. He didn’t say anything. He knew I was watching; he’d caught me rocking and he knew why.
He said the tea was nice.
He was still chewing at halfeleven. I watched for the minute hand to click, up past the six; I watched him. I heard the click from behind the clock. He didn’t swallow for thirty-six seconds after that.
I kept it to myself. If he went up for communion I’d see what happened. I knew and God knew.
I loved twirling the dial on the radio. I turned it on and put it on its back on the kitchen table. I was never allowed to bring it out of the kitchen. I got the dial and turned it as much as my wrist would let me, as quick as I could. I loved the high-pitched scratch and then the voice and the scratching again, different, and a voice, maybe a woman; I wouldn’t stop to find out. Around and back, around and back; music and bloops, voices, nothing. There was dirt in the lines of the plastic front, where the sound came out, like the dirt under your nails, and in the letters of the gold BUSH stuck on the bottom corner. My ma listened to The Kennedys of Castleross. I stayed in the kitchen with her when it was on during the holidays, but I didn’t listen to it. I sat on a chair and waited till it was over and watched her listening.
I opened the box of Persil and sprinkled some of it on the sea. Nothing happened really; it just spotted the water and disappeared. I did it again. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.
–Give us it, said Kevin.
I did.
He grabbed Edward Swanwick. We grabbed him as well when we saw what he was doing. Edward Swanwick wasn’t really a friend of ours. He was on the edge. I’d never called for him. I’d never been in his kitchen. At Halloween, when we knocked at his house, they never gave us sweets or money—always fruit. And Missis Swanwick warned us to eat it.
–What did she mean?
–It’s none of her business what we do with it, said Liam.
We got Edward Swanwick onto the ground and tried to get his mouth open. It was easy; there were ways of doing it. Keeping it open was the problem. Kevin started pouring the Persil onto his face; Liam held Edward Swanwick’s head by the ears so he couldn’t get his face away; I held his nose and pinched his diddy. Some of the Persil got in. Edward Swanwick was gagging and shuddering, trying to shake us off. It was in his eyes as well. The box was empty. Kevin shoved it up Edward Swanwick’s jumper and we let him up. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t; if he didn’t pretend he’d enjoyed himself he was gone, out of the gang. He got sick; not much, mostly the Persil.
That was the type of thing we robbed, mostly. Sweets were hard, up at the counter, hard to get at because of the glass and the women. They guarded the sweets because they thought that no one would be bothered robbing the other stuff. They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that robbing had nothing to do with what we wanted; it was the dare, the terror, the getting away with it.
It was always women. There were about six shops between Raheny and Baldoyle that we raided. There were no supermarkets yet, just grocers and shops that sold everything. Once, when we were out on a walk, Ma asked for the Evening Press, four Chocpops, a packet of Lyons Green Label and a mouse trap and the woman was able to get them all without stretching. I was a bit nervous: I’d robbed a box of Shredded Wheat out of there a few days before and I was afraid she’d recognise me. I minded the pram while my ma talked to her, about the weather and the new houses.
We only robbed when the weather was nice. We never robbed in Barrytown. That would have been stupid. There was Missis Kilmartin’s oneway glass, but that wasn’t all; the people in the shops were friends with our parents. They’d all got married and moved to Barrytown at the same time. They were all pioneers, my da said. I didn’t know what he meant but he liked saying it; he loved going down to the shops and meeting and talking to the owners, except Missis Kilmartin. He told me that Mister Kilmartin was locked up in the attic.