–Who asked him?
The interviewer had asked him but I knew what my da meant. Sometimes I got there before him.
–Bloody eejit.
–Good man, Patrick.
My ma didn’t mind me saying Bloody when The News was on. The News was boring but sometimes I watched it properly, all of it. I thought that the Americans were fighting gorillas in Vietnam; that was what it sounded like. But it didn’t make any other kind of sense. The Israelis were always fighting the Arabs and the Americans were fighting the gorillas. It was nice that the gorillas had a country of their own, not like the zoo, and the Americans were killing them for it. There were Americans getting killed as well. They were surrounded and the war was nearly over. They had helicopters. Mekong Delta. Demilitarised zone. Tet Offensive. The gorillas in the zoo didn’t look like they’d be hard to beat in a war. They were nice and old looking, brainy looking, and their hair was dirty. Their arms were brilliant; I’d have loved arms like that. I’d never been on the roof. Kevin had, and his da had killed him when he found out about it when he got home, and he’d only been on the kitchen roof, the flat bit. I was up for the gorillas even though two of my uncles and aunties lived in America. I’d never seen them. They sent us ten dollars, me and Sinbad, one Christmas. I couldn’t remember what I got with my five dollars.
–I should get seven cos I’m the oldest.
And I couldn’t remember the names of the uncle and auntie who’d sent it, which ones; Brendan and Rita or Sam and Boo. I had seven cousins in America as well. Two of them were called the same as me. I didn’t care though; I was still up for the gorillas. Until I asked.
–Why are the yankees fighting the gorillas?
–What’s that?
–Why are the yankees fighting the gorillas?
–D’you hear this, Mary? Patrick wants to know why the yanks are fighting gorillas.
They didn’t laugh but it was funny, I could tell. I wanted to cry; I’d given something away. I was stupid. I hated being caught, more than anything. I hated it. That was what school was all about, not being caught and watching others getting caught instead. It was alright now though; it wasn’t school. He told me what a guerrilla was. It made sense now.
–Impossible to beat, he said.
I was still up for them, the guerrillas.
It went back to the man in the studio. Charles Mitchell.
–His tie’s crooked, look.
Then it was Richard Nixon.
–There’s a nose, said my da.—Look.
–He’s a betterlooking man than some of them.
It didn’t last long. He just shook a few people’s hands. When Charles Mitchell came back his tie was straight. They laughed. I did too. There wasn’t much else; two dead cows and a farmer talking about them. He was angry. I heard the creak.
–Bloody eejit.
There was nothing in any of that, no hints, no edges, no hard voices. It was normal.
–Bedtime, sonny jim.
I didn’t mind. I wanted to go. I wanted to lie awake for a while. I kissed them. He tried to tickle me with his chin. I got away. I let him grab me without him having to get out of his chair. I got away again.
–Do your ma and da have fights?
–No.
–Not fights like thumping and kicking, I said.—Shouting. Giving out to each other.
–Yeah then, said Kevin.—They have them all the time.
–Do they?
–Yeah.
I was glad I’d asked. It had taken me all day to get to it. We’d walked to Dollymount, had a mess—it was freezing—and come home and I hadn’t asked till we were back on Barrytown Road, nearly at the shops.
–Do yours? said Kevin.
–Have fights?
–Yeah.
–No.
–What did you ask for then? They must.
–They don’t, I said.—They have arguments, that’s all; like yours.
–What did you ask me for then?
–My uncle and auntie, I said.—My ma was talking about it to my da. My uncle hit my auntie and she hit him back and she called the guards.
–What did they do?
–They arrested him, I said.—They came for him in a car with a siren.
–Is he in jail?
–No; they let him out. He had to promise that he’d never do it again. On paper. He had to write it down and sign his name under it. And if he ever does it again he has to go to jail for ten years and my boy cousins get sent to Artane and my auntie keeps my girl cousins cos she wouldn’t be able to afford to keep them all.
–What does your uncle look like?
–Big.
–Ten years, said Kevin.
That was as old as us.
–That’s ages for just hitting someone. And what about her? he remembered.—She hit him as well.
–Not hard, I said.
I loved making up stuff; I loved the way the next bit came into my head, it made sense and expanded and I could keep going till I came to the end; it was like being in a race. I always won. I told it the second I made it up, but I believed it, I really did. This was different though. I shouldn’t have asked Kevin in the first place; he was the wrong one. I should have asked Liam. I’d escaped, but Kevin would probably tell his ma now about my uncle and auntie and she’d tell my ma, although they didn’t like each other much; you could tell from the way they kept moving when they met each other on the street or outside the shops, like they were too busy to stop for long, they were in a hurry. She’d tell my ma and then she’d ask me what I’d said to Kevin about my uncle and auntie and I didn’t think I was good enough to get out of that one.
–But why were you talking about mams and dads fighting anyway?
I’d have to run away from home.
I hadn’t named the uncle and auntie. I’d done that, hadn’t named them, on purpose.
–I was only messing with him.
I was thinking of running away anyway.
–Having him on.
I’d spent ages—Henno had gone off to have a chat with another teacher—looking at the map of Ireland.
–Leading him up the garden path.
She’d laugh. She always did when I said things like that. She thought I was brainy because of it.
–I’m leaving you for a few minutes, gentlemen, said Henno.
We loved it when he said that; I could nearly hear it, backs relaxing. Getting ready.
–A few minutes only, said Henno.—I’ll be leaving the door open. And you know all about my famous ears.
–Yes, Sir, said Fluke Cassidy.
He wasn’t messing. If anyone else had said that he’d have got walloped.
Henno went out the door. We waited. He came back to the door and waited. We stayed looking at our books, not looking up to see if he was there. We heard his shoes. They stopped. We heard them again, going away.
–Fuck your famous ears.
We tried not to laugh too loud. It was better that way, trying not to. I laughed more than I usually did; I couldn’t help it. I had to wipe my face. I got my atlas out of my bag. We hadn’t used it much, only for learning the counties of Ireland so far. Offaly was the easiest one to remember because it was the hardest. Dublin was okay just as long as you didn’t mix it up with Louth. With Fermanagh and Tyrone it was hard to remember which was which. I stared at the map of Ireland from the top to the bottom. There was nowhere I wanted to run away to, except maybe some of the islands. I was still going to do it though. You couldn’t run away to an island; you had to sail or swim part of the way. It wasn’t like a game though; there were no rules that you had to stick to. An uncle of mine had run away to Australia.
I opened up the map of the world in the middle of the atlas. There were places right in the middle that I couldn’t read properly because the pages wouldn’t flatten fully for me. There were plenty of other places though.
I was serious.
Henno had said that my eyes were red. He said I hadn’t got enough sleep. Right in front of everybody. He’d given out to me, said he was going to phone my mother and tell her to make sure I was in bed by halfeight every night. Right in front. I was being allowed to watch too much television.