Hugo Hamilton - The Sailor in the Wardrobe

‘We don’t want you to become a Mitläufer , a run-along,’ she says.

She says it’s the worst thing that can happen to you, because it makes you powerless in your legs and you can only run in the same direction as everyone else. It’s what happened to the Germans and she remembers how they all became Mitläufer under Hitler, with the same thoughts in their heads and the same look in their eyes. My father says it’s what happened to the Irish as well, when they started speaking English and were forced to run along after the British. Now we’ve all just become run-alongs after America, with the same dreams and the same music, and my mother says if you become a run-along, then you don’t have much choice. My father and mother both know how hard it is to go in the opposite direction and there are many things in this world they will never run along with. That’s why they got married and had an Irish-German family with lederhosen and Aran sweaters, so that we would not be afraid of being different.

When John F. Kennedy arrived on a visit in Ireland, I didn’t want to be brainwashed or become a run-along, so I was the only person who didn’t go up to the corner house to watch him on TV. I didn’t want to be like everyone else, blindly following the leader like they did in Germany under the Nazis. Even though John F. Kennedy was Irish and Catholic and my mother and father liked him for standing up to the Communists who had no religion, I didn’t want to be one of John F. Kennedy’s followers with American flags and green flags waving at him. When he was assassinated in Dallas one day, I was shocked like everyone else to see the pictures on the front of all the newspapers. I watched my mother pasting those pictures of the motorcade into her diary, but I knew I was not one of his followers because she had already taught me how to be different to everyone else. According to my mother and father, it’s alright to be a run-along after John F. Kennedy, or the Pope, or God, or any of the saints, but not somebody like John Lennon.

I don’t want to be a follower of John Lennon either, I like his music, that’s all. My mother says I have to be careful that I don’t get the weakness and lose control of my emotions. Onkel Ted says it’s hard to imagine music doing any harm or killing anyone and John Lennon is not mobilizing any armies. My father says John Lennon is an invader and it’s more like a cultural war. I wonder what he has planned for the record in the end, whether he’s going to break it in his hands in front of me or take it out one day and place it on the garden fire where it will melt down over the top of the weeds a bit like one of the early Beatles haircuts. But this time he’s obviously agreed to deal with this matter calmly. My mother has begun to change him and wants him to do things in the German way. She keeps saying that Stefan is coming to visit us soon and we’re all going to behave in a very different way from now on.

My father replaces John Lennon in the sleeve and takes out Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. He does all the usual things to keep the dust from interfering with the singing and then her voice comes through the room as if she was standing in the corner and you can actually see her chest lifting up every time she takes in a breath. I can see my mother becoming weightless, floating up above the chair with the music. Onkel Ted as well, all of them floating around the room with the ornaments and vases rising up from the mantelpiece. My father keeps looking at me with a big smile on his face now, because he knows I like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and I can never deny that. When the record is finished, he stores it away again and turns towards me.

‘Now tell me,’ he says. ‘Which one do you think is better?’

‘You can’t expect him to give a free answer,’ my mother says.

Onkel Ted is there and nobody would dream of losing their temper or disagreeing with each other. My mother wants to put an end to the door-slamming war between me and my father and maybe we should take all the doors off the hinges for a while so we’ll get used to the idea that they are not there to make noise with. She starts talking about Stefan again because she can see trouble around the corner.

‘Stefan is coming,’ she said, but my father holds his hand up to stop her talking.

‘Honestly,’ he asks me once more. ‘With your hand on your heart, which do you think is the better music?’

Onkel Ted says it’s hard to make a choice between apples and pears if you like them both. My mother tries to make a joke and says it’s a pity we can’t hear them both singing together at the same time, doing harmonies.

‘What is your choice?’ my father demands.

I don’t want to barricade myself behind any song. I don’t want to think of music as war, but I still feel I have to defend John Lennon, because it’s my generation and I want to belong to new music that my father doesn’t listen to.

‘He’s half Irish,’ I say. ‘His mother is Irish.’

My father doesn’t know what to say to that. He knows I’m trying to give the wrong answer again and searches for some hidden meaning to see if I’m deliberately insulting him.

‘Stefan is coming,’ my mother said. ‘Let’s be happy.’

‘John Lennon,’ I continue. ‘He’s an Irish singer actually. I know the songs are in English, but he’s really singing in the Irish language underneath.’

I know it’s a bit far-fetched and my father is blinking as if I’m pulling a trick on him. But I carry on telling him that even though John Lennon’s middle name is Winston, after Winston Churchill, he is still Irish underneath. He has the Irish language in his heart, even if he can’t speak it himself. But I’m no good at persuading my father. I can see him getting angry and he tells me to leave the room. So then I don’t care what he does with John Lennon any more because I’m angry myself and all I want to do now is get my own back on him. I get up to leave, but then I want to have the last word before I bang the door behind me.

‘He’s more Irish than Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,’ I say.

I can hear my mother pleading with him to leave it alone. But his footsteps are already thumping along the floor. He rips the door of the front room open again and comes limping out with my mother after him, saying Stefan would be arriving very soon and we didn’t want to have a bad atmosphere in the house. Onkel Ted is left standing in the front room, making the sign of the cross, but it’s having no effect.

I take flight into the breakfast room where my sisters are making a dress, hunched around a big pattern spread across the table. Ita and Bríd kneeling on the chairs helping Maria to connect up all the pieces of material. Their heads stuck together as if they all had the same sandy brown hair. They look up to see me running around the table with my father right behind me, trying to swing his fist out, scattering the pieces of the dress in all directions. The table is too wide, so he picks up a ruler.

‘Come here,’ he shouts.

My sisters drop everything and escape out to the kitchen, so it’s only my father chasing me around the table now and my mother hanging on to him until he shakes her off.

‘Stefan, Stefan,’ she keeps repeating.

My father takes off his glasses and stares across the table at me. Right or left. What’s his next move, I wonder. It’s a game that has often been played before but this time it’s serious. My mother lunges at the scissors to remove them. My father is out of breath and I feel sorry for him, because I’m younger and faster. I feel I should give myself up out of kindness, let him get me and then it will be over, but then he decides to push the table towards me, to trap me in one corner. He’s already crawling across the dissected dress, reaching out towards me with one hand, so the only thing left to do is to get out under the table, past my mother and up the stairs to lock myself into the bathroom.