I only whispered it.
For a while I thought it was only Da, shouting in the way people did when they were trying not to, but sometimes forgot; a bit like screamed whispers.
My teeth chattered. I let them. I liked it when they did that.
But Ma was shouting as well. I could feel Da’s voice but I could only hear hers. They were having another of their fights.
–What about you!?
She said that, the only thing I could hear properly.
I did it again.
–Stop.
There was a gap. It had worked; I’d forced them to stop. Da came out and went in to the television. I knew the weight of his steps and the time between them, then I saw him.
They didn’t slam any doors: it was over.
I stayed there for ages.
I heard Ma doing things in the kitchen.
If your pony was healthy his skin was loose and flexible and if he was sick his skin was tight and hard. The television was invented by John Logie Baird in 1926. He was from Scotland. The clouds that had rain in them were usually called nimbostratus. The capital of San Marino was San Marino. Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics and Hitler hated black men and the Olympics were in Berlin that year and Jesse Owens was a black man and Berlin was the capital of Germany. I knew all these things. I read them all. I read under the blankets with my torch, not only after I’d gone to bed; it was more exciting that way, like I was spying and might get caught.
I did my eccer in braille. It took ages, being careful not to rip the page with the needle. There were all little dots on the kitchen table when I was finished. I showed the braille to my da.
–What’s this?
–Braille. Blind people’s writing.
He closed his eyes and felt the bumps on the page.
–What does it say? he asked.
–It’s my English homework, I told him.—Fifteen lines about your favourite pet.
–Is the teacher blind?
–No. I was just doing it. I did it properly as well.
Henno would have killed me if I’d brought in just the braille.
–You don’t have a pet, said my da.
–We could make it up.
–What did you pick?
–Dog.
He held the page up and looked at the light through the holes. I’d done that already.
–Good man, he said.
He felt the bumps again. He closed his eyes.
–I can’t tell the difference, he said.—Can you?
–No.
–When you don’t have your sight your other senses take over; that’s it, I’d say, is it?
–Yes. Braille was invented by Louis Braille in 1836.
–Is that right?
–Yes. He was blinded in a childhood accident and he was from France.
–And he named it after himself.
–Yes.
I tried. I tried to get my fingers to read. I knew what was on the page already. I got in under the blankets and I didn’t turn on the torch. I touched the page lightly: just bumps, pimples. My favourite pet is a dog. That was how my fifteen lines started. But I couldn’t read the braille. I couldn’t separate the dots, where each letter started and ended.
I tried to be blind. I kept opening my eyes. I tied a blindfold around my head but I couldn’t do a good knot and I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was doing. I told myself that I’d put my finger on the bar of the electric heater for every time I opened my eyes, but I knew I wouldn’t so I kept opening my eyes. I’d done that once, because Kevin told me to, put my finger on the bar of the heater. There was a striped mark for weeks after it and I kept smelling my finger burning.
The life expectancy of a mouse is eighteen months.
My ma screamed.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t go and see.
She’d gone into the toilet and found a mouse running round and around inside the toilet bowl. Da was home. He flushed the toilet and the water went over the mouse’s body because it was in close to the rim. He stuck his foot into the bowl and knocked the mouse into the water. I wanted to see now; I knew why she’d screamed. There was no room. The mouse was swimming and trying to get up the side and my da had to wait till the cistern filled up again.
–Oh Jesus, Jesus, said my ma.—Will it die, Paddy?
Da didn’t answer. He was counting the seconds till the water stopped hissing into the cistern; I could see his lips.
–The life expectancy of a mouse is about eighteen months, I told them.
I’d just read it.
–Not in this house, said my da.
My ma nearly laughed; she patted my head.
–Can I see?
She got out of my way, then stopped.
–Let him, said my da.
The mouse would have been a good swimmer but he wasn’t trying to swim properly. He was trying to run out of the water.
–Cheerio, said da, and he flushed the toilet.
–Can I keep him? I said.
I’d just thought of it. My favourite pet.
The mouse went round and further down into the water and he went backwards out of the bowl, down the pipe. Sinbad wanted to see.
–He’ll come out at the seafront, I said.
Sinbad looked at the water.
–He’ll be happier there, said my ma.—It’s more natural.
–Can I get a mouse? I asked.
–No, said Da.
–For my birthday?
–No.
–Christmas?
–No.
–They frighten the reindeer, said Ma.—Come on now.
She was making us get out of the toilet. We were waiting for the mouse to come back up.
–What? said Da.
–Mice, said Ma.—They frighten the reindeer.
She nodded at Sinbad.
–That’s right, said Da.
–Come on, lads, she said.
–I want to go, said Sinbad.
–The mouse’ll get you, I told him.
–Number ones, said Sinbad.—Standing up; so there.
–He’ll bite you in the mickey, I said.
Ma and Da were going down the stairs.
Sinbad stood too far back and he wet the seat and floor.
–Francis didn’t lift the seat! I shouted.
–I did so.
He whacked the seat off the cistern.
–He only did it now, I said,—when I said it.
They didn’t come back up. I kicked Sinbad when he was wiping the seat with his sleeve.
–If the world’s moving why aren’t we moving as well? said Kevin.
We were lying in the long grass on a flattened box, looking up. The grass was real wet. I knew the answer but I didn’t say it. Kevin knew the answer; that was why he’d asked the question. I knew that. I could tell by his voice. I never answered Kevin’s questions. I never rushed with an answer, in school or anywhere; I always gave him a chance to answer first.
The best story I ever read was about Father Damien and the lepers. Father Damien was this man and he was called Joseph de Veuster before he became a priest. He was born in 1840 in a place called Tremeloo in Belgium.
I needed some lepers.
When he was a small boy they all called him Jef and he was chubby. All the grownups drank dark Flemish beer. Joseph wanted to become a priest but his father wouldn’t let him. Then he did.
–How much do priests get paid? I asked.
–Too much, said my da.
–Shhhsh, Paddy, said my ma to my da.—They don’t get paid anything, she told me.
–Why not?
–It’s hard to—she started.—It’s very complicated. They have a vocation.
–What’s that?
Joseph joined a bunch of priests called the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The priest that had started them up had had a life filled with narrow escapes and thrilling adventure during the French Revolution. He’d lived under the shadow of the guillotine itself. Joseph had to get a new name and he called himself Damien after a man called Damien who was a martyr when the Church was young. He was Brother Damien before he became Father Damien. He went to Hawaii. On the way there the captain of the ship played a trick on him. He got his telescope and he put a hair across the lens and he got Father Damien to look into it and he told him that it was the Equator. Father Damien believed him but that didn’t make him an eejit because they didn’t know about those kinds of things in those days. Father Damien had to make hosts for Holy Communion out of flour on the ship because they’d run out of paper hosts. He didn’t get seasick. He found his sea legs nearly immediately.